On the sidebreadth and go as a prairie schooner.
If I can succeed in training a Missouri hound-dog to trail along
immediately behind me the illusion will be perfect.
After these two experiences with the English tailor I gave up.
Instead of trying to wear the apparel of the foreigner I set myself
to the study of it. I would avoid falling into the habit of making
comparisons between European institutions and American institutions
that are forever favorable to the American side of the argument.
To my way of thinking there is oniy one class of tourist-Americans
to be encountered abroad worse than the class who go into hysterical
rapture over everything they see merely because it is European,
and that is the class who condemn offhand everything they see and
find fault with everything merely because it is not American. But
I must say that in the matter of outer habiliments the American
man wins the decision on points nearly every whack.
In his evening garb, which generally fits him, but which generally
is not pressed as to trouserlegs and coatsleeves, the Englishman
makes anexceedingly good appearance. The swallow-tailed coat was
created for the Englishman andhe for it; but on all other occasions
the well-dressed American leads him - leads the world, for that
matter. When a Frenchman attires himself in his fanciest regalia
he merely succeeds in looking effeminate; whereas a German, under
similar circumstances, bears a wadded-in, bulged-out, stuffed-up
appearance. I never saw a German in Germany whose hat was not too
small for him - just as I never saw a Japanese in Occidental garb
whose hat was not too large for him - if it was a derby hat. If a
German has on a pair of trousers that flare out at the bottom and
a coat with angel sleeves - I think that is the correct technical
term - and if the front of his coat is spangled over with the
largest-sized horn buttons obtainable he regards himself as being
dressed to the minute.
As for the women, I believe even the super-critical mantuamakers
of Paris have begun to concede that, as a nation, the American
women are the best-dressed women on earth. The French women have
a way of arranging their hair and of wearing their hats and of
draping their furs about their throats that is artistic beyond
comparison. There may be a word insome folks' dictionaries fitly
to describe it - there is no such word in mine; but when you have
said that much you have said all there is to say. A French woman's
feet are not shod well. French shoes, like all European shoes,
are clumsy and awkward looking.
English children are well dressed because they are simply dressed;
and the children themselves, in contrast to the overdressed, overly
aggressive youngsters so frequently encountered in America, are
mannerly and self-effacing, and have sane, simple, childish tastes.
Young English girls are fresh and natural, but frequently frumpy;
and the English married woman is generally dressed in poor taste
and appears to have a most limited wardrobe. Apparently the husband
buys all he wants, and then, if there is any money left over, the
wife gets it to spend on herself.
Venturing one morning into a London chapel I saw a dowdy little
woman of this type kneeling in a pew, chanting the responses to
the service. Her blouse gaped open all the way down her back and
she was saying with much fervor, "We have left undone those things
which we ought to have done." She had too, but she didn't know it,
as she knelt there unconsciously supplying a personal illustration
for the spoken line.
The typical highborn English woman has pale blue eyes, a fine
complexion and a clear-cut, rather expressionless face with a
profile suggestive of the portraits seen on English postage stamps
of the early Victorian period; but in the arranging of her hair
any French shopgirl could give her lessons, and any smart American
woman could teach her a lot about the knack of wearing clothes
with distinction.
In England, that land of caste which is rigid enough to be cast
iron, all men, with the exception of petty tradespeople, dress to
match the vocations they follow. In America no man stays put - he
either goes forward to a circle above the one into which he was
born or he slips back into a lower one; and so he dresses to suit
himself or his wife or his tailor. But in England the professional
man advertises his calling by his clothes. Extreme stage types
are ordinary types in London. No Southern silver-tongued orator
of the old-time, string-tied, slouch-hatted, long- haired variety
ever clung more closely to his official makeup than the English
barrister clings to his spats, his shad-bellied coat and his
eye-glass dangling on a cord. At a glance one knows the medical
man or the journalist, the military man in undress or the gentleman
farmer; also, by the same easy method, one may know the workingman
and the penny postman. The workingman has a cap on his head and
a neckerchief about his throat, and the legs of his corduroy
trousers are tied up below the knees with strings - else he is no
workingman.
When we were in London the postmen were threatening to go on strike.
From the papers I gathered that the points in dispute had to do
with better hours and better pay; but if they had been striking
against having to wear the kind of cap the British Government makes
a postman wear, their cause would have had the cordial support and
intense sympathy of every American in town.
It remains for the English clerk to be the only Englishman who
seeks, by the clothes he wears in his hours of ease, to appear as
something more than what he really is.
