Dress as a Fine Art Part 5

SOME THOUGHTS ON CHILDREN'S DRESS.

BY MRS. MERRIFIELD.

Can any good and sufficient reason be given, said a friend, as we were contemplating the happy faces and lively gestures of a party of boys and girls, who, one cold, frosty evening, were playing at the old game called "I sent a letter to my love," why, when one of the party picks up the ball which another has thrown down, the boys always stoop, while the girls (with the exception of one little rosy girl, who is active and supple as the boys) invariably drop on one knee? At first we almost fancied this must be a new way of playing the game; but when one of the seniors threw a handful of _bonbons_ among the children, and in their eager scramble to pick up the tempting sweets we observed the same respective actions, namely, that the boys stooped, while the girls knelt on one knee, we began to meditate on the cause of this diversity of action. A little more observation convinced us that the girls, though equally lively, were less free in their movement than the boys. We observed, also, that every now and then some of the girls stopped and hitched their clothes, (which appeared almost in danger of falling off,) with an awkward movement, first upon one shoulder, and then on the other, while others jerked one shoulder upwards, which caused the sleeve on that side to sink nearly to the elbow. "Now," we exclaimed, "we can solve the problem: the different actions are caused by the difference in the dress; let us see where the difference lies." So we continued our observations, and soon found that the boys were all dressed in high dresses up to the throat, while the bands which encircled their waists were so loose as merely to keep the dress in its place without confining it; in short, that their dress did not offer the slightest restraint on their freedom of movement. It was otherwise with the girls, excepting the little rosy girl before mentioned: they were dressed in low dresses, and their shoulders were so bare that we involuntarily thought of a caterpillar casting its skin, and began to fear, from the uneasy movement of their shoulders, that the same thing might happen to the children, when we observed that this was rendered impossible by the tightness of the clothes about the waist. The mystery was now cleared up; the tightness of the dress at the waist, while it prevented the children from "slipping sh.e.l.l," as it were, entirely destroyed their freedom of movement. We could not help contrasting these poor girls--dressed in the very pink of fashion, with their bare shoulders, compressed waists, and delicate appearance--with the rosy face, quick and active movement, and thick waist of the little girl before alluded to; and we sighed as we thought that, induced by the culpable folly or ignorance of parents,

"Pale decay Would steal before the steps of time, And s.n.a.t.c.h 'their' bloom away."

"Whence does it arise," continued my friend, "that the boys are clad in warm dresses, suited to the season, their chests and arms protected from the wintry air, and their feet incased in woollen stockings, while the girls are suffered to shiver at Christmas in muslin dresses, with bare necks and arms, and silk or thin cotton stockings? Are they less susceptible of cold than boys? Is their circulation less languid, that their clothes are so much thinner? Are their figures better, their health stronger, for the compression of their tender bodies by stays?" At this point our cogitations were stopped by a summons to supper; and after supper, hats and shawls were produced, and we took our leave. Our young companions, fatigued with their exertions, soon fell asleep in the corners of the carriage, and we were left to our own meditations. Our thoughts once more reverted to the subject of children's dress, and gradually a.s.sumed the following form:--

The subject of dress, which is so important both to our health and comfort, is usually treated as a matter of fashion, and is regulated partly by individual fancy, partly by the dictates of the _modiste_. Fashion, as it applies to the costume of men, is, with the exception of the hat, controlled by convenience and common sense; but with regard to the dress of women and children, neither of these considerations has any weight. The most extravagant and _bizarre_ arrangements of form and colors will meet with admirers and imitators, provided they emanate from a fashionable source. The dress of children, especially, appears to be exceedingly fantastic in its character, and, with regard to that of girls, is ill adapted to secure the enjoyment of health and the perfect development of the figure. We venture to offer a few remarks on this highly interesting theme.

In discussing the subject of children's dress, several points present themselves for our consideration, namely, first, the adaptation of the costume to the climate, the movements, and healthful development of the figure; and secondly, the general elegance of the habiliments, the harmony of the colors, and their special adaptation to the age and individual characteristics of children. The first are essential conditions; the latter, though too frequently treated as the most important, may, in comparison with the first, be deemed non-essentials. We shall remark on these subjects in the before-mentioned order.

With regard to the adaptation of the dress of children to the climate, this appears so evident that any observations upon it might be deemed almost unnecessary; yet, in practice, how little is it understood! The great object in view in regulating the warmth of the clothing, is to guard the wearer from the vicissitudes of the climate, and to equalize the circulation, which is accelerated by heat and r.e.t.a.r.ded by cold.

Children are habitually full of activity, which quickens the circulation and produces a determination to the skin; in other words, causes some degree of perspiration, and if this, perspiration be suddenly checked by the application of cold, illness in some shape or other is induced. In order to lessen this risk, the clothing should be light and warm; sufficiently warm to shield the child from the effects of cold, but not to elevate greatly the temperature of the body. The latter would only render the child more susceptible of cold.

Children are, by some over-careful but not judicious parents, so burdened with clothes that one is surprised to find they can move under the vast enc.u.mbrance.

There is much diversity of opinion among medical men as to the propriety of wearing flannel next to the skin. The arguments appear to be in favor of the practice, provided that the thickness of the flannel be proportioned to the seasons of the year. In winter it should be thick; in summer it can scarcely be too thin. Flannel is preferable to linen or calico, because, although it may be saturated with perspiration, it never strikes cold to the skin; whereas linen, under similar circ.u.mstances, always does, and the sudden application of cold to the skin, when warmed by exercise, checks the circulation, and causes illness.

Parents are frequently guilty of much inconsistency in the clothing of their children. The child, perhaps, has delicate lungs; it must, therefore, have warm clothing; so garment after garment, made fashionably, that is to say, very full and very short, is heaped one upon the other over the chest and upper part of the body, until the poor child can scarcely move under the heavy burden with which, with mistaken kindness, it has been laden, while the lower limbs, in which the circulation is most languid, and which require to be protected as well as the chest, are frequently exposed to the air, and the foot is covered with a shoe which is too thin to keep it dry. The consequence of this arrangement is, that the child, oppressed by the weight of its clothing, becomes overheated, and being cooled too hastily, catches severe colds.

The habiliments of children cannot be too light in weight; and this is perfectly consistent with a proper degree of warmth. Those parents are greatly to blame who, influenced only by appearance, and the wish to dress their children fashionably, add to the weight of their clothing by introducing so much unnecessary fulness into the skirts.

The next point for consideration, and which is not inferior in importance to the last, is the adaptation of the dress to the movements and healthful development of the figure; and, strange to say, this point is almost entirely overlooked by those who have the management and control of children, although a few honest and sensible medical men have raised their warning voices against the system now pursued.

We hear every where of the march of intellect; we are perpetually told that the schoolmaster is abroad; lessons and masters of all kinds are endeavoring

"To teach the young idea how to shoot;"

while the little delicate frame which is to bear all this mental labor is left to the ignorance of mothers and nurses, and the tender mercies of the dressmaker, who seems to think that the human frame is as easily moulded into an imitation of those libels on humanity represented in books of fashionable costume as the materials with which she works. Would that we had powers of persuasion to convince our readers how greatly these figures, with their excessively-small waists, hands and feet, deviate from the actual proportions of well-formed women! Unfortunately, the pinched waist is too common in real life for those unacquainted with the proportions of the figure not to think it one of the essential elements of beauty. So far, however, from being a beauty, a small waist is an actual blemish.

Never, until the economy of the human frame is studied by all cla.s.ses, and a knowledge of the principles on which its beauties depend is disseminated among all ranks, can we hope that just ideas will be entertained on this subject.

If there is one thing in which the schoolmaster or the reformer is more wanted than in another, it is in our dress. From our birth to our death we are the slaves of fashion, of prejudice, and of circ.u.mstances. The tender, unresisting infant, the delicate girl, the mature woman, alike suffer from these evil influences; some fall victims to them, others suffer during life. Let us consider the dress of an infant. Here, however, it must be acknowledged that of late years much improvement has taken place in some respects, although much still remains to be done. Caps, with their tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of three or four rows of lace, and large c.o.c.kades which rivalled in size the dear little round face of the child, are discontinued almost entirely within doors, though the poor child is still almost overwhelmed with cap, hat, and feathers, in its daily airings, the additional weight which its poor neck has to sustain never once entering into the calculation of its mother and nurse. Fine feathers, it is said, make fine birds. This may be true with respect to the feathered creation, but it is not so with regard to children. They suffer from the misplaced finery, and from the undue heat of the head. And yet the head has, generally speaking, been better treated by us than the rest of the body. When we look back upon the history of costume, it really seems as if men--or women, shall we say?--had exercised their ingenuity in torturing the human frame, and destroying its health and vigor.

The American Indian compresses the tender skull of the infant, and binds its little body on to a flat board; the Chinese squeezes the feet of the females; the Italian peasants, following the custom of the Orientals, still roll the infant in swathing bands; the little legs of the child, that when left to its own disposal are in perpetual motion, now curled up to the body, then thrust out their extreme length, to the evident enjoyment of their owner, are extended in a straight line, laid side by side, and bandaged together, so that the infant reminds one in shape of a mummy. In this highly cultivated country we are guilty towards our infants of practices quite as senseless, as cruel, and as contrary to nature. The movements of the lower limbs, so essential to the healthy growth of the child, are limited and restrained, if not altogether prevented, by the great weight that we hang upon them. The long petticoats, in which every infant in this country has been for centuries doomed to pa.s.s many months of its existence, are as absurd as they are prejudicial to the child. The evil has of late years rather increased than diminished, for the clothes are not only made much longer, but much fuller, so that the poor victim has an additional weight to bear. Many instances can be mentioned in which the long clothes have been made a yard and a quarter long. The absurdity of this custom becomes apparent, if we only imagine a mother or nurse of short statue carrying an infant in petticoats of this length; and we believe that long clothes are always made totally irrespective of the height of mother or nurse. Imagine one or the other treading on the robe, and throwing herself and the child down! Imagine, also, the probable consequences of such an accident! And when one ventures to express doubts as to the propriety of dressing an infant in long clothes, instead of arguments in their favor, one is met by the absurd remark, "A baby looks so grand in long clothes!" We have for some years endeavored, as far as our influence extended, to put an end to this practice, and in some cases we have so far succeeded as to induce the mother to short-coat the child before it was three months old, and even previous to this period to make the under garments of a length suited to the size of the child, while the frock or robe, as it is called, retained the fashionable length. The latter, being of fine texture, did not add considerably to the weight of the clothes. Children who have the free use of their limbs not only walk earlier than others, but are stronger on their feet.

Another evil practice, which some years since prevailed universally, was that of rolling a bandage, three inches in width, and two or three yards in length, round the body of the child. The pain that such a bandage, from its unyielding nature, would occasion, not to speak of its ill effects on the health, may be readily imagined. This bandage was, in fact, a kind of breaking in for the tight lacing, the penalty which most females in this country have had, at some period or other, to undergo.

There is no end of the inconsistencies of children's dress. If, in early infancy, they are buried in long petticoats, no sooner can they walk than the petticoats are so shortened that they scarcely cover the child's back when it stoops. The human race has a wonderful power of accommodating itself to a variety of temperatures and climates; but perhaps it is seldom exposed to greater vicissitudes than in the change from long clothes to the extremely short and full ones that are now fashionable. The very full skirt is not so warm in proportion to its length as one of more moderate fulness; because, instead of clinging round the figure, it stands off from it, and admits the air under it. The former is also heavier than the latter, inasmuch as it contains more material; and the weight of the clothing is a great disadvantage to a child. A sensible medical writer, Dr. John F. South, in an excellent little work ent.i.tled "Domestic Surgery," makes some very judicious observations relative to children's dress. Of the fashion of dressing boys with the tunic reaching to the throat, and trousers, which are both so loose as to offer no impediment to freedom of motion, he approves; but he condemns, in the strongest terms, "the unnatural"--Mr. South remarks he had almost said "atrocious--system to which, in youth, if not in childhood, girls are subjected for the improvement of their figure and gait."

It is fortunate for the present generation that it is the fashion for the dresses of even little girls to be made as high as the throat; the old fashion of cutting the frock low round the neck, which still exists in what is called "full dress," is objectionable on more than one account. In the first place, it is objected to on the consideration of health; because the upper part of the chest is not protected from the influence of currents of air, and by this means, as Mr. South observes, the foundation is laid for irritable lungs. In the next place, the dress is generally suffered to fall off the shoulders, and is, in fact, only retained in its place by the tight band about the waist. To avoid the uneasiness occasioned by the pressure of the latter, the child slips its clothes off one shoulder, generally the right, which it raises more than the other; the consequence of this is, that the raised shoulder becomes permanently higher than the other, and the spine is drawn towards the same side. It is said that there is scarcely one English woman in fifty who has not one shoulder higher or thicker than the other; and there appears but little doubt that much of this deformity is to be ascribed to the above-mentioned cause. In confirmation of this opinion, it may be mentioned that the practice of wearing dresses low in the neck is almost peculiar to English girls; French girls, nearly from infancy, wear high dresses, and it is certain that deformity is not so frequent among French women as it is among English.

The discipline of tight lacing is frequently begun so early in life, that the poor victim has little or no recollection of the pain and suffering occasioned by the pressure of the stiff and uncomfortable stays before the frame has become accustomed to them. Those of our readers who were fortunate enough to escape this infliction in early life, and who adopted stiff stays at a more mature age, can bear testimony to the suffering occasioned by them during the first few weeks of their use. "O," said a girl who put on stiff stays, for the first time, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, "I wish bedtime was come, that I might take off these stiff and uncomfortable stays, they pain me so much." "Hush, hush!" exclaimed a starch old maiden aunt, shocked at what she thought the indelicacy of the expression which pain had wrung from the poor girl; "you must bear it for a time; you will soon get used to it." Used to it! Yes, indeed, as the cook said the eels did to skinning, and with, as regards the poor girls, almost as disastrous consequences.

There are three points of view in which tight lacing is prejudicial.

It weakens the muscles of the shoulders and chest, which rust, as it were, for want of use; it injures, by pressure, the important organs contained in the chest and trunk; and, lastly, instead of improving the figure, it positively and absolutely deforms it. A waist disproportionately small, compared with the stature and proportions of the individual, is a greater deformity than one which is too large; the latter is simply clumsy; it does not injure the health of the person, while the former is not only prejudicial to health, but to beauty. Were our fair readers but once convinced of this fact, there would be an end of tight lacing; and the good results arising from the abolition of this practice would be evident in the improved health of the next generation.

What a host of evils follow in the steps of tight lacing! Indigestion, hysteria, spinal distortion, consumption, liver complaints, disease of the heart, cancer, early death!--these are a few of them, and enough to make both mothers and daughters tremble. It is an aggravation of the evil that is brought upon us frequently by the agency of a mother--of her upon whose affection and experience a child naturally relies in all things, and whose lamentable ignorance of what const.i.tutes beauty of form, as well as her subjection to the thraldom of fashion, is the prolific source of so much future misery to her unsuspecting daughter.

Education is the order of the day; but surely that education must be very superficial and incomplete, of which the study of the economy of the human form, its various beauties, and the wonderful skill with which it was created, form no part. A girl spends several years in learning French, Italian, and German, which may be useful to her should she meet with French, Italians, or Germans, or should she visit the continent; she spends three, four, five, and sometimes six hours a day, in practising on the piano, frequently without having any real talent for this accomplishment, while she is kept in utter ignorance of that which is of vital consequence not only to herself, but to her future offspring, namely, a knowledge of what const.i.tutes true beauty, and contributes to the preservation of health, and, we may also add, of good humor and happiness; for it is one of the evils attending ill health, that it frequently induces a fretful and irritable state of mind. Instead of the really useful knowledge of the economy of the frame, and the means of preserving health, girls are taught the constrained att.i.tudes and the artificial deportment of the dancing master. The remark of Sir Joshua Reynolds on this subject has been often quoted. He said, "All the motions of children are full of grace; affectation and distortion come in with the dancing master." To dancing itself there is not the slightest objection; it is at once an agreeable and healthy occupation, and it affords a pleasing and innocent recreation. The pleasure which most children take in it, in spite of the "exercises" which they are compelled to practise, proves, we think, its utility.

The treatment of the feet is on a par with that of the rest of the body. The toes are thrust close together into a shoe, the shape of the sole of which does not resemble that of the foot. It is generally narrower than the foot, which, therefore, hangs over the sides. The soles of children's shoes are, moreover, made alike on both sides, whereas the inside should be nearly straight, and the width of the sole should correspond exactly with that of the foot. Boots, which have been so fashionable of late years, are very convenient, and have a neat appearance, but they are considered to weaken the ankle, because the artificial support which they give to that part prevents the full exercise of the muscles, which waste from want of use. Shoes should be cut short in the quarter, because the pressure necessary to keep such shoes as are now worn on the feet will, in this case, be on the instep instead of the toes, which will, by this arrangement, have more room.

We shall conclude our observations on children's dress, considered in a sanitary point of view, in the words of Mr. South. "If, then, you wish your children, girls especially, to have the best chance of health, and a good const.i.tution, let them wear flannel next their skin, and woollen stockings in winter; have your girls' chests covered to the collar bones, and their shoulders _in_, not _out_ of their dresses, if you would have them straight; and do not confine their chests and compress their digestive organs by bone stays, or interfere with the free movement of their chests by tight belts, or any other contrivance, if you desire their lungs should do their duty, upon which so mainly depends the preservation of health."--_Sharpe's London Magazine._

NOTE.--The Fig. 58, referred to on the top of page 59, is not found in the plate; but the same style of dressing the hair may be seen in Fig. 57.