Pictorial, rather than picturesque, might be the word for the present
dress of Englishwomen. It forms in itself a lovely picture to the eye,
and is not merely the material or the inspiration of a picture. It is
therefore the more difficult of transference to the imagination of the
reader who has not also been a spectator, and before such a scene as one
may witness in a certain space of the Park on a fair Sunday after church
in the morning, or before dinner in the early evening, the boldest
kodak may well close its single eye in despair. As yet even the mental
photograph cannot impart the tints of nature, and the reader who wishes
to assist at this scene must do his best to fancy them for himself. At
the right moment of the ripening London season the foliage of the trees
is densely yet freshly green and flatteringly soft to the eye; the grass
below has that closeness of texture which only English grass has the
secret of. At fit distances the wide beds of rhododendrons and azaleas
are glowing; the sky is tenderly blue, and the drifted clouds in it are
washed clean of their London grime. If it is in the afternoon, these
beautiful women begin to appear about the time when you may have bidden
yourself abandon the hope of them for that day. Some drift from the
carriages that draw up on the drive beside the sacred close where they
are to sit on penny chairs, spreading far over the green; others glide
on foot from elect neighborhoods, or from vehicles left afar, perhaps
that they may give themselves the effect of coming informally. They
arrive in twos and threes, young girls commonly with their mothers,
but sometimes together, in varied raptures of millinery, and with
the rainbow range in their delicately floating, delicately clinging
draperies. But their hats, their gowns, always express sentiment, even
when they cannot always express simplicity; and the just observer is
obliged to own that their calm faces often express, if not simplicity,
sentiment. Their beauty is very, very great, not a beauty of coloring
alone, but a beauty of feature which is able to be patrician without
being unkind; and if, as some American women say, they do not carry
themselves well, it takes an American woman to see it. They move
naturally and lightly--that is, the young girls do; mothers in England,
as elsewhere, are apt to put on weight; but many of the mothers are as
handsome in their well-wearing English way as their daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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