Husband, the 'Sir' and
'Madam' of the children to their parents, make us wonder
whether their flesh and blood were ever as warm as ours; or
whether they were a race of prigs and puppets?
My memory carries me back to the remnants of these lost
externals - that which is lost was nothing more; the men and
women were every whit as human as ourselves. My half-sisters
wore turbans with birds-of-paradise in them. My mother wore
gigot sleeves; but objected to my father's pigtail, so cut it
off. But my father powdered his head, and kept to his knee-
breeches to the last; so did all elderly gentlemen, when I
was a boy. For the matter of that, I saw an old fellow with
a pigtail walking in the Park as late as 1845. He, no doubt,
was an ultra-conservative.
Fashions change so imperceptibly that it is difficult for the
historian to assign their initiatory date. Does the young
dandy of to-day want to know when white ties came into vogue?
- he knows that his great-grandfather wore a white neckcloth,
and takes it for granted, may be, that his grandfather did so
too. Not a bit of it. The young Englander of the Coningsby
type - the Count d'Orsays of my youth, scorned the white tie
alike of their fathers and their sons.
