The Empress Eugenie, Her Immoral Drawers II

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

Now, resumes the Professor, to return our thoughts to drawers proper—a highly complicated affair. Throughout the past, feminine underwear generally has been surrounded with much darkness. The witnesses, those who profess to a special acquaintance with this subtle matter, are continually in disagreement, on one intimate garment after another.

Throughout long stretches of time all that could be uncovered pertaining to ladies' underwear was what might be called purely circumstantial evidence. Now, especially, as we approach the period of history which for purposes of scholarship may be termed the Drawers Age, the earnest student is further confused by the doleful consequences of the intimidating frown of Mrs. Grundy—an incredibly ancient but apparently indestructible lady. This era fell between the demure day of pantalettes (or frilled leggings, unconnected with each other) and the sprightly age of the pantie.

The awful admonition "What will Mrs. Grundy say ?" touched costume with especial severity during the period under consideration. "Under Victoria," according to Mr. Leo Markun, a gentleman who has followed the social ministrations of this celebrated personage in her innumerable incarnations throughout four centuries, "it took twelve yards of serge to make a bathing suit for a decent Englishwoman, and this was in spite of the fact that extremely tight lacing of early Victorian days must have reduced the average circumference of ladies." During the seventies and eighties, he says further in his instructive and entertaining volume, it was very shocking when young ladies so far forgot them-selves as to mention nightgowns in a mixed gathering.

In the privacy of an epistle written in the middle of the nineteenth century, Lady Chesterfield mentions to her daughter, "I have worn skirts that dragged on the ground, and skirts that ended one inch above my ankles, showing the vandyked or frilled edges of those comfortable garments which we have borrowed from the other sex, and which all of us wear and none of us talk about." When, however, the letters were published, it was evident that it was pretty brash for Lady Chesterfield so to set herself above society and come right out with 'em in print like that—though, indeed, she named nothing at all. After the first edition of her book, the Professor tells us, the concluding clause of the observation just cited was perforce omitted.

Through the middle eighteen hundreds a "genteel" euphuism frequently employed for drawers (when encasing a member of the "gentler sex") was, oddly enough, "trousers." This manifestation of delicacy is peculiarly baffling to the devout historian. The reason is that the frilled leggings affected during this time of transition from one style of nether garment to the other, also were often alluded to by the same inept term. A curiously exaggerated instance of this refinement of mind is presented in an English house-hold book published in 1840. Here, accompanied by perfectly forthright illustrations, directions are given for making what are indubitably drawers, under the heading Turkish Trousers.

But the intricacies of drawers have led us somewhat ahead of our story. Very early in the century, something new and peculiar happened to the legs of women in England. By whatever name called, the novelties adorning the lower reaches of the feminine body were at first plainly visible to all.

"Pantaloons of corded cambric," records a news item in a fashion journal for June, 1806, "trimmed round the bottom with lace or fine muslin, made their appearance in the gardens last Sunday." A month later the magazine was dubious about the new fashion, remarking, "The pantaloons will have but a short run, being truly ungraceful." In the November issue of the same year the subject is resumed: "A few of our haut ton have adopted the short frock and trousers of the same texture edged with lace. This dress is much too singular to be general." And, reporting the visit of a young girl to a friend in the country, the comment continues: "She made her entree at breakfast in a frock of French cambric scarcely reaching below the calf of her leg, with trousers of the same, at the bottom of which was a broad French lace."

The French of it was pantalon; English, pantaloons or trousers. The most eminent work of reference in the English tongue mentions "a sort of trouser with a frilled edge" worn in England for a time "after 1820" by women of fashion; and then comes reference to the later pantalette, for young girls, the leggings being attached above the knee by tapes.

Still, the problem of priority between these garments presumably with a seat, the "trousers" or "pantaloons," and those without, the leggings sometimes termed pantalettes, remains almost as deep a question as that of the chicken and the egg. Britannica's allusion to leggings as of "later" date is not borne out by other evidence which, though of humbler status, has a convincingly human flavor.

The Professor has unearthed the testimony of an old lady born in England in 1820, who remembered both forms of leg-covering. It was in 1822 that she first noticed a young girl wearing these leggings. It does not seem likely that, unless she had been extremely precocious in her sensitiveness to Fashion, she would have made this observation before the age of two. However, here is evidence that leggings were worn by growing girls as early as that date.

This witness is positive that no girls, nor any woman with whom she was acquainted, wore "drawers" until some twenty years later; and that only a very few women did then. And though she says, "I well remember the drawers fashion beginning," her recollections apparently turn to leggings. Her reminiscences continue: "The style of dress was an imitation of the Swiss, reaching not quite to the sandals or the slippers. A few wore these leggings, being very smartly trimmed. Many mothers objected to them, as did also some of their daughters to wearing them, as they were considerably ridiculed by being called `tomboys: " At the time to which this Englishwoman refers in her concluding observation, the Professor explains, boys wore nankeen trousers, often with two or three tucks at the bottom.

There were, apparently, other objections to the wearing of frilled leggings by young girls. As a result of the strings breaking or becoming loose they were, unfortunately, very likely to come down. Frequently a young girl might be seen walking about with only one legging. The other was tucked away in her reticule, in default of pockets at that period, until the coast was clear for putting it on again. Later, this social mishap was ingeniously avoided by adding a side piece to each legging by which to button them to the bodice. This device, it is said, led to the construction of drawers open at the side and buttoned fore and aft to an upper garment. A number of years, however, were required before these developments were thought out.

During the thirties, and particularly in the forties, it appears to have been a general practice for girls to wear leggings out of doors and take them off when in the house, to save them from becoming crumpled or soiled when the wearers were not on public view. And as a decorative accessory of dress, leggings for the young apparently persisted even after the introduction of an encasement for upper regions. We hear of the practice of buttoning them on to "short drawers" which terminated above the knee—evidently real drawers with bottoms to 'em. This custom, one gathers, was popular with those who had the care of small children, as it enabled them to keep their charges presentable by simply buttoning on fresh leggings as occasion required, without the necessity of a complete change.

A youthful personage affectionately known to all Dickensians, evidently had the difficulty with her drawers mentioned a moment ago. Who, indeed, has not a picture, tucked away in the filing cabinet of his mind, of the Infant Phenomenon! She "was rather a troublesome companion, first the right sandal came down, then the left, and, these mischances being repaired, one leg of the little white trousers was discovered longer than the other."

A spirited English gentleman who around 1906 was moved to digest the resources of the British Museum on the subject of women's drawers, but preferred to lift his voice under the pseudonym of "Lato," gives us his word of honor that in their upper architectural construction these "trousers," or pantalettes, of the Infant Phenomenon were drawers. In his curious brochure this learned student is pamphleteering against feminine leg attire of much later date—bloomers or "rationals."

The records indicate that Dickens may have begun to write Nicholas Nickleby late in 1837; the book ran in parts (as novels were then published) from April, 1838, to October, 1839. Nowhere discoverable until something like half a century after this is there a grain of allusion to the two great divisions which developed in the kind of drawers: namely, "open" and "closed" drawers. There should be historical significance in the fact that nobody ever has heard of "open trousers" ! The Infant Phenomenon's drawers, we may safely assume, were "closed."

The estimable "Lato" is, alas, distinctly at variance with the juicy Eugenie fable sponsored by George Moore. After sifting the varied evidence, which altogether would seem to prove that drawers were considered quite a novelty "prior to 1825," he is persuaded that it cannot be affirmed that the French or any other nation had "so far" given to English-women the custom of wearing such garments under the skirt. Indeed, he maintains that the custom in England can be shown to have had a "native origin." Going back surprisingly in point of time, his version of the matter does not lack pungency.

"About the year 1800," he says, "a fashion was in vogue among women for wearing clothing that was so thin as to be semi-transparent. Thus, in the summer in 1799, the transparency was so marked that it was voted indecent, and there was an outcry against the fashion in consequence. It allowed the form of the limbs to appear, and, according to a caricature of Gillray's, published June 25, 1799, even the garters as well!

"But the winter of 1800-1801," he continues, "was unusually severe, and in order to remain in the fashion, girls appear to have adopted frilled leggings, `those things with a frill round the ankle,' which covered the shank and were tied with string above each knee, whereby they were kept in place. On January 5, 1800, another caricature was published, entitled Boreas effecting what Health and Modesty could not do, in which the women are represented with drawers under their skirts." This drawing, he states, may be found in Wright's Caricature History of the Georges.

The time here given was very early in the day indeed for bona-fide drawers. And the hitch in this lively story is that, in default of access to the history cited, it is far from clear whether the "drawers" so rudely discovered by Boreas might not have been the frilled leggings—or pantalettes, as some called them. A curious thing is that, no matter how much he may have railed against others for looseness in the use of terms, no sooner does a student touch feminine underwear at any point than, apparently, he himself becomes untrustworthy in his language.

This same commentator, indeed, draws upon other evidence to show that drawers proper, so to say, were not worn until at least well into the nineteenth century. Turning again to the draughtsmen who—in particular, the caricaturists—all along have been among the most stimulating sources of light on feminine undies, he directs attention to one of the finest of the more purely satiric drawings of Rowlandson, who with such consummate vividness summed up his age and his nation.

This highly animated drawing is the famous "Staircase," as it is popularly called. Now in a private collection in England, it is entitled The Exhibition Stair Case and dated 1811. In this ridiculous scene in which the admirable curve of the staircase itself and the action of the struggling, tumbling figures are integrated into one continuous, beautiful, and all-embracing line, a number of women are represented falling downstairs. In the original drawing and in contemporaneous color-prints, we have the unadorned testimony of a thoroughly veracious social historian. In the reproduction given sometime later in a volume of the Works of Rowland-son, however, the abashed publishers have taken upon them-selves to supplement the clothing of the women with drawers!

But we now come upon at least one remarkable contradiction. James Gillray, an English caricaturist and engraver born in the same year as Rowlandson and, except for his great contemporary, unrivaled in his portrayal of the manners and customs of the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the next, made many cartoons representing the fashionable society at Vauxhall Gardens. And, as has been noted, he depicted ladies of Fashion who, it is quite apparent, wore beneath their petticoats nothing but stockings and garters.

This master cut short his career by drink in 1815, sometime before there is anything but very flickering evidence of drawers as distinct from frilled trousers and leggings. Yet, a drawing in his series Progress of the Toilet presents a lady, in the hands of her maid, encased in stays of the type of the time, below which is shown—what? A startling premonition of undies of a mode to attain universal popularity in a day far ahead! The creations upon these jaunty legs are nothing less, indeed, than something remarkably similar to the article of underwear we know as knickers. This unique lady in stays and knickers is admittedly inexplicable.

To return to "Lato." This voracious student of drawers observes, "It is quite apparent that dual leg-covering was never a staple article of women's dress, also that its ultimate adoption was due to delicacy of constitution rather than decency." And, indeed, he is supported there by the fact that when drawers, garments slung from the waist, got to England, doctors especially zealous in the interest of public health pronounced them "eminently unwholesome."

Further, he notes, it is on record that farmers' wives in the fifties would not permit their maidservants to wear drawers because they were considered "fine-ladyish." He adds that the verbal evidence (referring to the reminiscences of divers deponents) of those who live in districts not reached by Fashion tends to prove that there was no established rule as to wearing them. "As a matter of fact," he continues, "those writers who have discussed the point are of opinion that the adoption of drawers was due to the gradually increasing luxury that has made women more `dressy' and, alas, more susceptible to cold."