Feminine Underwear - A Little Background II

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

Thus, as I have said, in early youth I was garters-minded —and I was frustrated in expressing myself. The years went by, and I did nothing further about my composition.

Except, perhaps, to meditate upon it. I grew to man's estate.

I don't remember just how long it was after this that the unforeseen happened and garters universally came into view. Suddenly, it seemed, those studiously inclined toward garters could see, during a brief ride in the subway, almost as many of them as had filled my friend's collection. Further, he could see every one not as a museum piece but in all the glow of life.

Their display became a point of Fashion. They increased in gaiety of decorative effect and, for the observer's convenience, were frequently moved down somewhat below the logical position—from a practical point of view. This generous gesture doubtless resulting in some impairment of gar-ter efficiency, not only rows but a double tier of garters began to be seen. Two pairs of garters were 0ften worn, one pair purely to gladden the appreciative eye and the other to hold up the stockings—which rapidly became more and more light-hearted in color.

Though a technique was developed of placing the pocket-book across the knees when in a direct breeze from the door, subway underwear displays were, all in all, as complete as anyone could desire—under the circumstances. The urge to my composition was again revived. Now, I said to myself, It Can Be Told. Forthwith I dedicated myself to my labors.

After no more than two years of intensive study I perceived that the secret of feminine underwear is in the glands. So, to the resources of anthropology, archaeology, historical scholarship, scholastic philosophy, psychology, and sociology, I was obliged to add physiological chemistry. Within less than ten years of toil, however, I had completed A Preface to Undies, both psychic and social, which I regarded as perhaps fairly comprehensive.

But my work had one fault—which is likely to be a serious one in a book. It was unreadable. The weight of learning I had assembled would sink a ship. Of this I was solemnly assured by three experts. Not, indeed, experts at reading, but experts in disseminating reading matter. However, the remedy was simple. All I had to do was to popularize my material.

In the intervening years I have been engaged upon this task. The literature of the popularizers is so vast that a life-time is not enough in which to read it. But it has the great merit that a little of it will often go a great way. I had read hardly more than ten thousand books vulgarizing history, science,and art before the idea came to me. Certainly, an account of underwear, however informed, should be a Bed-side Book. Thus the reader will find in these pages a Fairy Story about one Marjorie who lived for ever and ever; but (like all genuine fairy stories) it is perfectly true—underneath.

The title of this tale is, of course, all wrong. That is, historically. Unmentionables—let us glance at the use of the term in its original setting. Ineffable, Inexpressibles, Indescribables, Inexplicables, Unhintables, Unutterables, Unwhisperables, a cetera.. Outlandish concoctions, these variants, now probably quite forgotten, except by Dickensians. Mostly introduced by Dickens, it is stated by the standard philological authority on colloquial speech.

As early as 1793, however, Gibbon in a letter to a gentleman of title referred to his "inexpressibles." In all instances contemporary with its popular usage the term expressed the exaggerated sensitivity of the time in referring to men's outer nether garments—breeches or trousers. Curious it is that this could acceptably be done only by a humorous euphemism. Writing in 1880, one Helen Bedingfeld in Jerningham Letters spoke of, "A pair of old inexpressibles . . . containing seven thousand Guineas ! . . . deposited in so vulgar a garment." In 1809 an English magazine observed that "a fine lady can talk about her lover's inexpressibles, when she would faint to hear of his breeches."

Lord Lytton in Paul Clifford speaks of a gentleman in boots and spurs, with one hand in the pocket of his "inexpressibles." A conversation in a little-remembered book of the period has the line, " `Hush: you should say inexpressibles—that's the way genteel people talk!' " One of the Ingoldsby Legends alludes to "Bond Street inexpressibles." In Sketches by Boz appears, "He usually wore a brown coat without a wrinkle, light inexpressibles without a spot." In the story Shabby-Genteel People, "The knees of the unmentionables soon began to get alarmingly white." Pickwick Papers has "symmetrical inexpressibles, and scented pocket-handkerchiefs." And so on. Gentlemen's legs might be named without circumlocution, but not their habiliments. In 1875 a Melbourne newspaper stated that "the episcopal inexpressibles for obvious reasons will be unsuited to lay legs."

Sometimes, presumably in the eighties or nineties, however, the humor of the term became extended—among people more bold than genteel. This occurred, at least, in the United States. Thenceforth it was a very reliable witticism, which endured with undiminished vitality well into the present century, in intimate gatherings to refer orally to the mysterious underthings of femininity as unmentionables.

Unmentionable by their given names certainly they were.

The matter of the explosive events occasioned by the early presentations of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, first in Dublin in 1911 and, four years later, in various American cities, has been variously explained. In New York potatoes were thrown at the players. These famous incidents probably had their origin in the tender sensibilities of Irishmen who felt the dignity of their country, then seeking to become a State, affronted by so veracious a picture of an unflattering aspect of life in Ireland. At any rate, upon the introduction of the play in Dublin, Lady Gregory wired to Yeats, "Audience broke up in disorder at the word 'shift.' The riots would no doubt have broken out without the mention of a shift, but that word was a good blasphemy to begin with.

The course by which feminine unmentionables became the lavishly featured articles they are today is, of course, one of the threads of our story. In 1930, writing his novel The Party Dress, Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer felt it his duty, as an artist and social historian, faithfully to record in precise detail the articles of underdress of his leading lady —a woman of smart American country club society. From her bath, "in no more than a pair of black mules, with straps caught on her rosy heels," she walked into the bedroom shared with her husband. Then, colorfully seen with the innocent eye of the painter, comes this modern genre picture:

She went to a set of drawers built into a closet and chose from orderly rolled stockings a pair the color of her skin and extravagantly sheer, she secured a bras—her daughter, Cordelia, had brought Nina to that abbreviation of brassiere—and China crepe drawers that bore a pattern of minute and gay flowers. Nina gathered up a girdle of silver and pink brocade, and then she slowly proceeded to put on her stockings. She always consumed an unnecessary length of time in dressing. The garters that held up her stockings ended in little pink bows of ribbon. Her bras was a hand's breadth of Binche lace.

"Meet Our Latest Lingerie Triumph." " And the announcement at once makes anyone not suffering from cataracts quite well acquainted with "3 ounces of smartness" that "wash and iron like a hanky" and "can't ride up." So, altogether, unmentionables as a designation for feminine wear should still be a pleasantry—in a new light. Indeed, just the other day I noted the term thus publicly employed—in no less popular a quarter than the movies.

To give feminine underwear its rightful place in the history of the manners and customs of humankind. That is the high ambition of these pages. When, however, you set out to study feminine underthings, you set out, as will be-come increasingly plain as we proceed, to con the cosmos. For instance, there is the history of the Dance. To take but a single illustration of how this is interwoven with the story of undies, let us glance at the chemise.

The ancient form of the word was camis, which carried the general sense of a thin dress. "All in a Camis light of purple silk," we find in The Faerie Queene. Around the middle of the nineteenth century we begin to hear of the chemise, a feminine undergarment, under the humorous designation of the shimmy or shimmey. Certainly, in a day when a young lady would faint to hear mention of her sweetheart's breeches, you would hardly expect such a vulgarism as this to get into print. But a few scattered instances cannot be denied.

A tale of that time explains that "the ghost was Aunt Kate's shimmeys pinned on the line to dry." In Captain Marryat's Snarley Yow is this bit of dialogue. "We have nothing here but petticoats and shimmeys. . . . Never mind, I'll lend you a shimmey." And in 1856 even a reverend gentleman, one Dow, exclaimed in a sermon, "As interesting a sight as a shimmey in a wash-tub." Soon shimmy, and chemise as well, was not uttered, save among outcasts, for a considerable spell.

When the genteel tradition had broken up, the word shimmy, come to be frequently spelled shimmie, flared into social favor as the name of a dance. In contemporaneous accounts of that vogue, ending less than a decade ago, though the name of the dance is always set in quotation marks, considerable research revealed no clue as to why it was given that name. Neither was this to be found in the numerous "yesterday" books consulted. When this dance, not congenial to hampering underwear, was in fashion, corsets were pretty much out and the chemise was the principal feminine under-garment. Wasn't there some hookup between this fact and the name of the dance?

Seeking an answer from a source of authority, I communicated with Mr. Ned Wayburn of the Ned Wayburn Institute of Dancing. His reply was so lively, colorful, and taking in manner that I cannot forbear to print here, with his kind permission, the major proportion of the letter.

To the best of my recollection the first girl that I re-member doing the shimmie dance was Bee Palmer, who came under my direction at the Ziegfeld Midnite Frolic on top of the New Amsterdam Theatre and in the Ziegfeld Follies. I conceived the idea of putting on a shimmie number which I have been told helped to start the shimmie craze. I staged this number in the Ziegfeld Midnite Frolic with Frances White being up in front of the dancing girls and during the number I also for encores had William Kurth our host (head waiter) and all of the waiters employed there and finally Ford Dabney, colored, and his entire colored orchestra, as well as all of the stage-hands come out in the various encores and then I also had guests planted at various tables that got up and took part in it.

Without throwing any bouquets at myself, I may tell you that the number was a sensation and everybody was trying to do the shimmie soon after that. I believe the name of the number was "The World is going Shimmie Mad." The lyric was written by Gene Buck and music by Dave Stamper. The shimmie movement as you know was a sort of shivering, quivering, muscular shoulder movement and I believe the expression originated with the negro where the Charleston, Black Bottom, Snake Hips and a great many other dance movements have come from, and there was a phrase at one time "shake your shimmie," and I believe that that expression was inspired by the undergarment known as the chemise.

In various directions, equally cordial aid has been received from numerous persons whose assistance altogether has been too considerable to specify individually. And the books herein pillaged have been many.

As quarters of valuable information, where much courtesy was extended, particular mention should be made of the following: The Butterick Company, The Century Company Library, Fairchild's Costume Library, the offices of Printer's Ink, and the United Underwear and Lingerie League of America. Appreciative acknowledgement of favors received are due also to the May Hosiery Mills, Inc., Burlington, North Carolina.

Documentation of the author's findings will be found segregated at the back of this book. There, in the bibliography, the various printed sources may be identified from allusions in the text, and credit is given to numerous copyrighted works to which these pages are much indebted. Grateful acknowledgement is here made to the authors and publishers of all such volumes.