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I shall write, and urge him not to bring his wife here. A primitive woman, with the north star in her hair, would look well down there in the Casino eating a pineapple ice, wouldn't she? It's all very well to have a soul, you know; but it won't keep you from looking like a guy among women who have good dressmakers. I shudder at the thought of what the poor thing will suffer if he brings her here."
It is the public who are to blame. If they insist upon being supplied with certain articles of consumption or of dress, the shopkeepers have no alternative but to supply them. If ladies prefer what is ugly and misbecoming, the dressmakers have to make it. It is the old story over again of the demand creating the supply.
"Of course, she couldn't have been a dressmaker here where everybody knows her," purred Cousin Pussy, with her arm about Gabriella, "but in New York it is different, and they tell me that even titled women are dressmakers in London." "Well, she has pluck," declared Cousin Jimmy, as he had declared eighteen years ago at the family council.
On these plantations there were scores of young coloured men and women who were constantly being trained, not alone as common farmers, but as carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, plasterers, brick masons, engineers, bridge-builders, cooks, dressmakers, housekeepers, etc. I would be the last to apologise for the curse of slavery; but I am simply stating facts.
Ladies are apt to take offence at their taste being too severely criticized, and dressmakers do not always find it the easiest possible task to steer clear between securing their own reputation as "artistes" of fashion and good taste, and avoiding giving offence to their patronesses. It is the public who are to blame.
"I don't think so," said Jeanne. "It would be very stupid every morning when you got up, and every time you were going out, or friends coming to see you, or anything like that it would be very stupid never to have to think, 'What shall I put on? or to plan what colours would look nice together. There would hardly be any use in having shops or dressmakers, or anything.
Europe, which had originated it, could use it but little; but great opulent America adopted it and made it her own. So, while the rest of the world was gray, America flamed, and Natalie Spencer, spending her days between dressmakers and decorators, flamed with the rest.
West-end dressmakers were communicated with. A French milliner, who looked like a lady of fashion, arrived one morning at Maudesley Abbey, and for a couple of hours poor Laura had to endure the slow agony of "trying on," while Mrs. Madden and Dora Macmahon discussed all the colours in the rainbow, and a great many new shades and combinations of colour, invented by aspiring French chemists.
The next weeks were full of hurry, hubbub and perturbation. Our house was turned upside down. Milliners, sewing-maids and dressmakers were working day and night. Flowers, feathers and silk remnants were flowing like sea-wrack into every room. Orders were given, orders were retracted and given again, and then again retracted. Such flying up and down stairs! Everybody so breathless!
Then we long to make some reparation to him for our unjust judgment; and if we happen to be women this reparation frequently takes the form of ordering his dinner for the rest of his dining days, and of giving him the right to pay our dressmakers' bills until such time as we cease to be troubled with them.
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