WHEN IS FULL RESS IMMODEST?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8472, 24 January 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHEN IS FULL RESS IMMODEST?

The tirade of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Mrs. Ward) on decollete dressing has called forth considerable comment from the London press, much of which is far from complimentary to the thin-skinned American propagandist. Oue writer says, referring to Mrs. Ward's article : —"People who talk and write in this style are either not very well informed on their subject or they are constitutionally incapable of believing that there is more cleanliness and sound health in the world at large than exists in their own minds and natures. Some of us are so unfortunately constructed that wo must first create the vices wo want to destroy, and there is nothing that does so much moral harm to society as this blatant crusading by prurient purists against evils that have scarcely the shadow of an existence outside of their own imaginations. Mrs. Ward is sorry that ladies who go to the theatre do not avert their glances and blush when the ballet comes on. Well, there are some who do so, but, they are the sort of women who make assignations with their lovers in church, ask French conundrums in whispers at the dinner table, and read anonymous French vice between the covers of fashion print!. The woman who opens her eyes when the ballet comes on finds a good deal less impropriety in that entertainment than she would be likely to find in the occasional diatribes against it in magazine articles by British or American matrons."