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It was pleasant to be involved in the bustle about the precious thing they were unwrapping from swathes of tissue paper. "Be careful, dear," the elder woman kept saying, "there's a pin here." Or "Don't hurry, or you'll have the pleats out of place." And Marie's hands trembled over their task. When all the paper was removed, Mrs.
Meissonier could not only draw the figure, give it life and action, keep it harmonious in color, perfect in its gradations of black and white, but he had that marvellous gift of color analysis which reproduces for you in a picture the size of the top of a cigar-box every tone in the local and reflected light to be found, say, in the folds of a cavalier's cloak, the pleats no wider than the point of a stub pen.
I have said that her gown was dark, black laces draping over a close fitted under bodice; and there was no relief to this somberness excepting that in the front of the bodice were many folds of lacy lawn, falling in many sheer pleats, edge to edge, gathered at the waist by a girdle confined by a simple buckle of gold.
"Show me a fine libretto!" "Tell me how much you'd pay." She laughed. "Five times as much as anyone else offered you. But you would have to prove the offer to my satisfaction." Gillier fidgeted on his chair, took hold of the Dépêche Algérienne, and began carefully to fold it into pleats. "I should want a royalty," he said, keeping his shining eyes on her.
In my day, all such feeble watery minds as hers were regarded as semi-imbecile, pitied as intellectual cripples, and wisely kept in the background of society; but, bless me! in this generation they skip and prance to the very edge of the front, pose in indecent garments without starch, or crinoline, or even the protection of pleats and gathers; and insult good, sound, wholesome common sense with the sickening affectations they are pleased to call 'aesthetics. Don't waste your time, and dilute your own mind by quoting the silly twaddle of a poor girl who was turned loose too early on society, who falls on her knees in ecstasies before a hideous broken-nose tea-pot from some filthy hovel in Japan; and who would not dare to admire the loveliest bit of Oiron pottery, or precious old Chelsea claret-colored china in Kensington Museum, until she had turned it upside down, and hunted the potter's mark with a microscope.
Poundmaker was a splendid-looking man, stately and grave in manner, and his chivalry at Cutknife, where he ordered the "cease firing" when Otter was withdrawing, entitled him to consideration. I recall his pride in the long pleats of glossy black hair that adorned his handsome head.
I heard heart-strings snap as I went through the linen, and in the white pleats to be folded over the still heart I saw the snow banked on a grave. Give me, the old scissors, fifty bridal dresses to make rather than one shroud to prepare. I never recovered from the chill of those dismal days, but at the end of life I can look back and feel that I have done my work well.
I did not mind how gaudily I dressed the part of Weeding Woman now. "You are good, Mary. It will make it simply perfect; and, kilts don't you think? Not box pleats?" Arthur groaned. "You shall have which you like, dear. Now, Arthur, what is it?"
Another simple dress was made of white silk, trimmed with old Venetian point, the train of striped ivory point and white satin depending ... la Watteau from the shoulders, and fastened at the point of the waist. At the side three large pleats formed a drapery, which was fringed with orange-blossoms. From England we hear of the most curious combinations as to travelling-dresses.
An enlargement from a drawing by Walter Crane was shown as illustrating the principles of artistic and natural costume costume which permitted the waist to be the normal size, and allowed the drapery to fall in natural folds costume which knew nothing of pleats and flounces, stays and "improvers" costume which was very symbolization and embodiment of womanly grace and modesty.
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