By the time those gorged and converted pilgrims touched the Eastern
seaboard again any one of them, if he caught fire, would burn for
about four days with a clear blue flame, and many valuable
packing-house by-products could be gleaned from his ruins. It
would bind us all, foreigner and native alike, in closer ties of
love and confidence, and it would turn the tide of travel westward
from Europe, instead of eastward from America.
Let's do it sometime - and appoint me conductor of the expedition!
Chapter X
Modes of the Moment; a Fashion Article
Among the furbearing races the adult male of the French species
easily excels. Some fine peltries are to be seen in Italy, and
there is a type of farming Englishman who wears a stiff set of
burnishers projecting out round his face in a circular effect
suggestive of a halo that has slipped down. In connection with
whiskers I have heard the Russians highly commended. They tell
me that, from a distance, it is very hard to distinguish a muzhik
from a bosky dell, whereas a grand duke nearly always reminds one
of something tasty and luxuriant in the line of ornamental arborwork.
The German military man specializes in mustaches, preference being
given to the Texas longhorn mustache, and the walrus and kitty-cat
styles. A dehorned German officer is rarely found and a muley one
is practically unknown. But the French lead all the world in
whiskers - both the wildwood variety and the domesticated kind
trained on a trellis. I mention this here at the outset because
no Frenchman is properly dressed unless he is whiskered also;
such details properly appertain to a chapter on European dress.
Probably every freeborn American citizen has at some time in his
life cherished the dream of going to England and buying himself
an outfit of English clothes - just as every woman has had hopes
of visiting Paris and stocking up with Parisian gowns on the spot
where they were created, and where - so she assumes - they will
naturally be cheaper than elsewhere. Those among us who no longer
harbor these fancies are the men and women who have tried these
experiments.
After she has paid the tariff on them a woman is pained to note
that her Paris gowns have cost her as much as they would cost her
in the United States - so I have been told by women who have invested
extensively in that direction. And though a man, by the passion
of the moment, may be carried away to the extent of buying English
clothes, he usually discovers on returning to his native land that
they are not adapted to withstand the trying climatic conditions
and the critical comments of press and public in this country.
What was contemplated as a triumphal reentrance becomes a footrace
to the nearest ready-made clothing store.
English clothes are not meant for Americans, but for Englishmen
to wear: that is a great cardinal truth which Americans would do
well to ponder. Possibly you have heard that an Englishman's
clothes fit him with an air. They do so; they fit him with a lot
of air around the collar and a great deal of air adjacent to the
waistband and through the slack of the trousers; frequently they
fit him with such an air that he is entirely surrounded by space,
as in the case of a vacuum bottle. Once there was a Briton whose
overcoat collar hugged the back of his neck; so they knew by that
he was no true Briton, but an impostor - and they put him out of
the union. In brief, the kind of English clothes best suited for
an American to wear is the kind Americans make.
I knew these things in advance - or, anyway, I should have known
them; nevertheless I felt our trip abroad would not be complete
unless I brought back some London clothes. I took a look at the
shop-windows and decided to pass up the ready-made things. The
coat shirt; the shaped sock; the collar that will fit the neckband
of a shirt, and other common American commodities, seemed to be
practically unknown in London.
The English dress shirt has such a dinky little bosom on it that
by rights you cannot refer to it as a bosom at all; it comes nearer
to being what women used to call a guimpe. Every show-window where
I halted was jammed to the gunwales with thick, fuzzy, woolen
articles and inflammatory plaid waistcoats, and articles in crash
for tropical wear - even through the glass you could note each
individual crash with distinctness. The London shopkeeper adheres
steadfastly to this arrangement. Into his window he puts everything
he has in his shop except the customer. The customer is in the
rear, with all avenues of escape expertly fenced off from him by
the proprietor and the clerks; but the stock itself is in the
show-window.
There are just two department stores in London where, according
to the American viewpoint, the windows are attractively dressed.
One of these stores is owned by an American, and the other, I
believe, is managed by an American. In Paris there are many shops
that are veritable jewel-boxes for beauty and taste; but these are
the small specialty shops, very expensive and highly perfumed.
The Paris department stores are worse jumbles even than the English
department stores. When there is a special sale under way the
bargain counters are rigged up on the sidewalks. There, in the
open air, buyer and seller will chaffer and bicker, and wrangle
and quarrel, and kiss and make up again - for all the world to see.
One of the free sights of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with his
face extensively haired over, pawing like a Skye terrier through a
heap of marked-down lingerie; picking out things for the female
members of his household to wear - now testing some material with
his tongue; now holding a most personal article up in the sunlight
to examine the fabric - while the wife stands humbly, dumbly by,
waiting for him to complete his selections.
