Beecher’s Last Letter.

Evening Star, Issue 7177, 2 April 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Beecher’s Last Letter.

The Rev. Mr Beecher was a regular contributor to the ‘New York World.’ We quote some extracts from his last letter, dated Brooklyn, January 26 I have been asked, and several times, to write upon the subject of tall bonnets and upon the slaughter of birds for the sake of ornamentation. I take this public manner of refusing to do any such thing. It is true that both are bad, and one of them outrageous. But what of that ? The pulpit attacking fashion is the modern imitation of Don Quixote attacking a windmill; or, as it would be in this case, the windmill attacking Don Quixote. Preaching against fashion has been the stern amusement of the pulpit for hundreds of years. What has ever been gained ? It is true that Friends, called Quakers, adopted absolute simplicity as a badge of certain religious beliefs, and that Primitive Methodism had for one of its requirements the rejection of all ornaments. This is very different from preaching or writing against extravagances. The protests were reactions. They were part of an organised reformation of the whole life, and not of a mere change of fashion. It was part of an intense and general religious movement, made up of deeper impulses than those of mere taste in apparel; and plainness itself becomes, in a sort, the symbol of beauty. . Fashion is fickle, fantastic, changeable, and often destructive of taste or beauty. But these are the imperfections of fashion. It is in itself rooted in some of the strongest elements of human nature. The sense of the beautiful is stronger in woman than in man. The desire of being attractive, the quick sense of what will be attractive, are especially influential. It is true that the world’s great artists have been men, and not women. It is not any the less true that women are, more than men, influenced by the sense of the beautiful. In woman it follows her genius for domesticity. It creates order and good taste in homes, it refines conduct, it blossoms in apparel, regulates etiquette, and everywhere in the realms of home seeks to secure elements of the beautiful. In man, on the contrary, the inspirations of beauty fill a wider sphere, represent intellectual elements, or aim at moral grandeur at one extreme, or robust and masterful passion on the other extreme. Men represent strength, women attractiveness ; the one builds, the other decorates ; men seek to produce the beautiful, women to be themselves beautiful. The masculine and the feminine are as marked in the realms of the beautiful as in bodily organisation, The wonderful exception to this rule of nature is found among birds. The female is unadorned, without glow or color, without song, plain and unattractive. It is the male bird that weaves the rainbow, and fills the fields with music.

It will be all' in vain for the pulpit to inveigh against fashion with any hope of suppressing it. It may be corrected, educated, but never suppressed. Neither ridicule nor reasoning will prevent the flow of that stream whose fountains are deep and organic. Newspaper essays, sermons, lampoons, epigrams, fall upon fashions as dew upon a sleeping lion. Fashion springs from a necessity of being attractive, in part; also, but far less, from a relish of the beautiful, and from the imitative faculty and the love of change and novelty. These forces constitute, if not the deepest and strongest, yet the most excitable and active

of the forces of the mind. Fashion is an efflorescence of taste, of sympathy, of the love of pleasing, and the hunger for admiration. It is not a mere surface peculiarity. One may destroy this particular fashion, but not fashion itself. The great need, then, is not moral discourse, but education in taste. Little by little the aesthetic education is becoming part of our schools and seminaries. The general influence of art cannot fail to limit the oscillations of fashion in costume, to repress violent contrasts whether in form or color, and to reduce the sphere in which extravagances are apt to prevail. Fashion comes from no one knows where. Who invents and who propagates? This is an unsolved mystery. Where is the nest out of which come these flocks of forms, colors, combinations ? It is certain that in colors fashion is far nearer to a correct standard than in lines and combinations of forms. Fine lines and simple forms are rare, but the discords of color are rarer yet! And yet antiquity gives us enduring examples of beauty and symmetry of form; but nothing of color! If it were not for the charm of color fashion would become hideous. The human form is hardly considered as worthy of consideration. Now fashion puffs out behind, then swings round to the front with swathing bandages suggestive of anything, but beauty. It rejoices m lumps; it swells out the long train—useless and, in the circumstances in which it must be used, absurd to ridiculousnesson the plea of the beauty of flowing lines, and then it breaks up at the next hour all simple lines of ruffles, flounces, and dropsical bandages. We may not hope, we may not desire even, that fashion shall become precise and repetitious. We may even wish that it may enlarge the sphere of men’s dresses, both in colors and forms. A welldressed man is to-day a plaster of white on a background of black. There is no copiousness, no range of color, no grace of fulness and elasticity. Color is banished, grace and mutable forms are unknown. A welldressed man is scarcely more than a sleek crow with a white bib on his breast. Clergymen, gentlemen, and waiters come forth with the insignificant cockade of a cravat on their necks—no scarfs, no flowery gowns, no richness of color. If women’s fashions are borrowed from the glow of sunrise, men’s are cut from the loom of midnight, and aed off with the clumsy, graceless, and jss hat. And now as to bird’s plumage on female costume and high hats that are just now in growing fashion, all of which I am exhorted to condemn. I am like Balaam of old—called to curse, but compelled to bless. For it cannot be denied that birds’ plumage, as a mere matter of decoration, is exceedingly beautiful. The only objection, and it is a grave one, is that it will, if pursued long, exterminate the birds of exquisite plumage. There is grievous danger in this. It will be robbing Nature to make women yet more attractive, though already enough beautiful. But, should the taste persist, it must lead to the artificial breeding of birds or to artificial construction of plumage. It is one consolation that our best singing birds are not those which wear the finest colors. Like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. The unicorn bonnets at present in vogue are very comely in my eyes; a world finer than the scrimpy patches on women’s heads, that were of no use, and were positively homely. The present style gives elevation to the head and a kind of dignity. I cannot be bribed to decry them. The one valid objection to them is that in churches, theatres, or assemblies they intercept the view. Why not lay them aside for the l[iour, as women do shawls, pelisses, and cloaks, and as men do hats? It would seem a great pity that one should lose the usual objects of going -to church merely for the sake of hearing the sermon!