Punch (85.1883)

300

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [December 22, 1883.

THE MODERN ARS AMANDI.

(By Punchius Naso.)

CANTO V.— Dress.

Dress ! Spheric word with cyclic meaning- fraught!
Whole universe of fancy, passion, thought,

Closed in five letters ! What, of all that moves
The female breast, from teas to tragic loves,

Moves it so solely, with such conquering stress,

As to crowd out emotions horn of Dress ?

Punchius, his task the course of love to trace,

Perchance should have apportioned the first place—

Not the Fifth Canto—and his freshest fire,

To the soul-searching subject of Attire !

Woman’s infirmity, alone supreme
And self-sufficing, boundary of all dream,

And all desire, circuit beyond whose scope
Flies fancy never, never flutters hope.

Love seems its mere dependent. Yet the tie

’Twixt them is close and strong. To lure Love’s eye

Vestureless Venus vaunts a lesser charm

Than she whom “ Form” and Fashion jointly arm

For wider conquest. Young Vanessa knows

The power of “ Form ” as well as she who rose

Fair from the Paphian foam-wreaths, “Form” displayed

Not less bewitchingly because arrayed

By Fashion, not by Neptune. It were odd

If deftest skill of the old briny god,

With snowy spray and sea-wrack only aided,

Revealed so deftly, so discreetly shaded,

As the joint wisdom and united skill
Of Modistes and Mammas, equipped at will
With all that Mode and Mammon furnish forth.

The wealth of Babylon, the wit of Worth,

The typic fig-leaf aptly to adjust
To varying exigence of zone and bust.

Vanessa, matron-coached, has an idea
That she could give long odds to Cytherea
In roseate revealins-s, and romp in
An easy winner. How to best begin,

How most adroitly finish—problem this
Young jockeys and coy ingenues may miss,

Not Archer or Vanessa.

But a pout

Wreathes with the shadow of a wistful doubt
Those soft, uncalculating, free-arched lips,

Not yet in love with scorn or cynic quips.

Well, willow-waisted Grace, your dainty guise
Is innocently aimed at manly eyes!

Aha! You blush, bending the briar-spray down
O’er the white forehead which affects to frown.

Why not ?_ ’Tis seldom men sincerely scorn
The Art whose aim is Nature to adorn
In Nature’s highest shape. Though Satire gird
With pen or pencil at a mode absurd,

Satire would feel the funniest of shocks
Should Satire’s wife abjure the mode he mocks,

And earn the dreaded name of Dowdy ! Clime
Compels convention. Ours no golden prime
Of life Arcadian. To the critic eye
All human vesture seems absurdity,

Most comic of necessities. But men

Are not all Teueelsdrockhs. Attack them then

With arms Le Follet fashions to your use.

Culture the code of Fashion may abuse

But. not abolish. Dress is the supreme
Philistinism of our sphere ; no dream
Of rational revolution or revolt,

No wit-winged flight of Ridicule’s swift bolt,

Can move our soft assailants. Dullard man
Abides the siege, but fathoms not the plan.

The witchery of line folds and artful dyes
He ’ll credit, clever Clelia, to your eyes ;

The tasteful cincture of the trim-laced zone,

Lithe Lucy, is a charm he ’ll deem your own ;

The swell and sweep of drapery ordered well
He ’ll blend with you, majestic Isabel ;

The snowy girth of taper wrist and throat,

The lace that flutters, and the plumes that float,

0 dainty Grace, he’ll think seraphic things,
Inseparable from you as gowns and wings
From the ideal angels of our songs.

“ Form’s ” fitting vesture to the soul belongs,

In common apprehension. Who so keen
As to appraise the spell of glow and sheen
Apart from silk-clad sorceress, siren trim,

Whose every contour soft and slender limb
Radiates robe-charmed brightness ? Cupid knows
The witchery of tense glove and tasteful hose.

Hear what the genial god confides to Punch,

O'er “ Boy ” and bivalves, at a Fleet Street lunch !

Cupid.

“ Beauty when unadorned adorned the most ” !

Oh, prettiest of Parnassian commonplaces !

The tri-forked Mount, for all its valiant boast
Of free ideals and unfettered graces,

Is as convention-bound—in most things—still,

As Primrose Hill.

Pygmalion to-day might compromise
With vesture ere he vitalised his statue.

Picture pure Galatea's gentle eyes
Arch o’er a Mayfair fan-arch beaming at you!

No Cyprian studio yours for sculpture Phidian,

Or song Ovidian!

Is Art a grey Tithonus lagging slow

After the flying footsteps of the Morning ?

So twitterers tell us. But the roseate glow

Of clouds, the pomp of flowers make sweet “ adorning,”
Which scarcely mars the beauty of Aurora,

The charm of Flora.

Beauty in beauty robed, though less divine.

Than in pure self-suflicingness, best fitteth
Our less than Golden Age. The hyaline,

O’er which storm-wrack or snow-cloud never flitteth,
May canopy the robe-unaided Charis
The free-limbed Paris;

But could the charm-appraising shepherd-boy
Judge at a modern Beauty-Show, he’d grapple
With the idea of “ Dress as a Decoy,”

And, I will wager, not withhold the apple
Because La Mode arrays your Mayfair goddesses
In ball-room bodices!

So Cupid, sweetings, on the mighty theme.

What subtler sense through his soft praise may gleam
’Tis yours to measure. That the Paphian fire
Is quickened and not quenched by deft attire
He ownet.h.

Yet be wise ; cross not the gods
By inharmonious freaks with Taste at odds.

A tint flamboyant, or a dowdy turn
Of skirt or scarf, may dim the lights that burn
In eyes late worshipping ; a tender twist
Of tendril hair, a curve of slender wrist,

Lace-girt or golden-circled, may avail
To re-illumine flames that faint or fail.

Fitness, not fashion, is the cohquering lure,

Eros to win and suitors to secure.

But there ’s a subtler art—oh, study this!—

’Tis blending both in one fine synthesis!

Fitness on fashion moulds, and fashion bends
To the behests of fitness to such ends
As sublimate Le Follet into charm,

Making of Beauty’s bonds a keener arm,

And half redeem us from the stern duresse
Of that opprobrium of the Human—Dress!

Cracker Doom.—To be pulled at Christmas.