QUEENS IN CRINOLINES

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 20, 19 May 1906, Page 4

QUEENS IN CRINOLINES

(By

M. Winifred Jones.)

Colonial visitors to the Alhambra in London must have been struck by the comic element as seen in the biograph pictures depicting the inconveniences caused by the re-introduction of the crinoline. A lady is seen making frantic efforts to enter or leave a railway carriage or to mount the roof of a ’bus, with lamentable results in both instances. One of the chief attractions of “Treiawny of the Wells” was the introduction of crinolines on the stage, recalling the early sixties. Quite recently the readoption of the crinoline was considered imminent. The methods adopt ed to this end have been insidious. The change from the tight skirt, which had so firm a hold on the affections of the woman conscious of a shapely form. to a crinoline would have been too sudden, too violent! But from the short trottoir skirt fully flounced to that of greater length but equal amnvhich proves Uncomfortably heavy to walk in, and which is kept away from the feet by the insertion of a strip of steel or whalebone round the foot, which strip becomes broader, and broader and mounts gradually to the knees; from these small beginnings to the crinoline proper is not a very great matter. As skirts become fuller and fuller, and as more material and more trim ming are crowded into and on to them, the advent of the crinoline, in some form or other, it was hoped would be but a matter of time. It becomes an actual necessity to lighten the weight of material, which also impedes freedom of action—et voila, the crinoline! There is nothing new under the sun. and anyone who has ever looked through a book of illustrated historical costumes must have come to the conclusion that in whatever department of life originality is shown it is not in dress. From the garb of the lady of ancient Greece or Rome, through the successive ages of civilisation, we see in each sketch in turn a sleeve, a skirt,

a bodice, a drapery of familiar design—something we wore a few years ago. or are adorning to-day. And it is both curious and instructive to observe how through the centuries the crinoline has survived in some form or other.

It was well worn in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and later Queen Elizabeth and Catherine de Medici —both strong-minded women, and both devotees of the toilet—were among its votaries, and it often displayed the rich

robes of Mary Queen of Scots. The crinoline, farthingale, or hoop—its earlier name—was never more noticeable than at the beginning of the eighteenth century, especially as the hoop was then placed just below the waist, which raised the skirt much in the way of a canopy

—a style of dress that must have been distinctly embarrassing when ascending or descending from a height. It flourished exceedingly we all know in the mid-Victorian period, and its eccentricities and inconveniences provided “Punch”—the satirist of our manners and foibles—with many jests.

One illustration, entitled “Servantgalism,” .shows us a mistress and maid, both in huge crinolines of course, and the following dialogue ensues:— Mary: “Did you call, mum?” Lady:

“Yes, Mary, I thought I told you not to wear your hoop before you had done your rooms, because you broke the jugs and basins with it!” Mary: “Oh. mum. you see the sweeps were coming this morning, and really I could not think of opening the door to them, such a

figure as I should a’ been without my hoop!”

Yet another represents a grate dressed in the truly terrible mid-Victorian style with flamboyant paper flounces adorned with bloated-looking paper roses, and “Little Freddie” is not to be blamed for hurrying to his mamma with the awful intelligence that “Aunt Fanny, in her new dress, was stuck in the chimney!” While another sketch shows us an irate husband, a la Othello, who has seized his wife’s crinoline in one hand, and a lengthy knife in the other, exclaiming with fervour: “It is the cause! It is the cause!”

Between that period and the present year of grace an immense change has come over the ways and habits of women, who have reverted more to the

athletic independence that distinguished the Englishwomen of the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. Gone —we devoutly hope for ever—are the black-board, the stocks, and the wasp-waist that formed an important part of the curriculum of the unhappy

school-girl of the early nineteenth century.

In the place of that anaemic, fairylike creature, we have the athletic girl—the healthy, muscular woman, who plays golf, hockey, and tennis, who cycles and rides hard; the woman who is as at home on the top of a ’bus as in her own arm-chair; the woman who fishes, and motors, and shoots. What place can the crinoline have in her life?

Imagine its voluminous expanse being piloted up the stairs of an omnibus; imagine it on a bicycle in a gale of wind; in the thick of a hockey match; on the links in a foursome! It would even be in the way at a bridge table! If it does return—in large and convincing reality —it must of necessity be restricted to use at home or on the promenade! The crinoline perforce flourished when women led strictly domesticated lives, when their main interests were centred in their homes, when no lady dreamt of dining out —save on rare occasions—except under the roof tree of a friend. Tradition says that the idea of the crinoline was borrowed from the natives of the South Sea Islands, and a curious old print supports this statement, the word itself—now used to describe a certain make of straw—was the term applied to the horse hair cloth for stiffening dresses.