p. 526 | THE POWER OF CLOTHES by T. De Witt Talmage

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1880

THE POWER OF CLOTHES.

By T. De Witt Talmage

ONE cannot always tell by a man's coat what kind of a heart he has under it; still, his dress is apt to be the out-blossoming of his character, and is not to be disregarded.

We make no indiscriminate onslaught upon customs of dress. Why did God put spots on the pansy, or etch the fern leaf? And what are china-asters good for if style and color are of no importance?

The realm is as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as all the generations over which Fashion hath extended her scepter. For thousands of years she hath sat queen over all the earth, and the revolutions that rock down all other thrones have not in the slightest affected her domination. Other constitutions have been torn, and other laws trampled; but to her decrees conquerors have bowed their plumes, and kings have uncovered. Victoria is not Queen of England; Napoleon was not Emperor of France; Isabella was not Queen of Spain. Fashion has been regent over all the earth; and lords and dukes, kings and queens, have been the subjects of her realm.

She arranged the mantle of the patriarch, and the toga of the Roman; the small shoe of the Chinese women, and the turban of the Turk; the furs of the Laplander, and the calumet of the Indian chieftain. Hottentot and Siberian obey the mandate, as well as Englishman and American. Her laws are written on parchment and palm-leaf, on broken arch and cathedral tracery. She arranged how the Egyptian mummy should be wound, and how Cæsar should ride, and how the Athenians should speak, and how through the Venetian canals the gondoliers should row their pleasure-boat. Her hand hath hung the pillars with embroidery, and strewn the floor with plush. Her loom hath woven fabrics graceful as the snow and pure as the light. Her voice is heard in the gold mart, in the roar of the street, in the shuffle of the crowded bazaars, in the rattle of the steam presses, and in the songs of the churches.

You have limited your observation of the sway of fashion if you have considered it only as it decides national or individual costumes. It makes the rules of behavior. It wields an influence in artistic spheres—often deciding what pictures shall hang in the house, what music shall be played, what ornaments shall stand upon the mantle.

Fashion helps to make up religious belief. It often decides to what church we shall go, and what religious tenets we shall adopt. It goes into the pulpit, and decides the gown, the surplice, and the style of rhetoric.

It goes into literature and arranges the binding, the type, the illustrations of the book, and oftentimes the sentiments expressed and the theories evolved.

Men the most independent in feeling are by it compelled to submit to social customs. And before I stop I want to show you that fashion has been one of the most potent of reformers, and one of the vilest of usurpers. Sometimes it has been an angel from heaven, and at others it has been the mother of harlots.

Excessive fashion is productive of a most ruinous strife. The expenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors have, not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great anxiety is as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly equipage. The weapons used in the warfare of social life are not Minie rifles, and Dahlgren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs, and mirrors, and vases, and Gobelins, and Axminsters. Many household establishments are like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific explosion. "Who cares," say they, "if we only come out ahead?"

There is no cause to-day of more financial embarrassment, and of more dishonesties, than this determination, at all hazards, to live as well as or better than other people. There are persons who will risk their eternity on one fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the splendors of Heaven to get another trinket.

"My house is too small." "But," says some one, "you cannot pay for a larger." "Never mind that; my friends have a better residence, and so will I." "A dress of that pattern I must have. I cannot afford it by a great deal; but who cares for that? My neighbor had one from that pattern, and I must have one." There are scores of men in the dungeons of the penitentiary, who risked honor, business,—everything, in the effort to shine like others. Though the heavens fall, they must be "in the fashion."

The most famous frauds of the day have resulted from this feeling. It keeps hundreds of men struggling for their commercial existence. The trouble is that some are caught and incarcerated, if their larceny be small. If it be great, they escape, and build their castle on the Rhine. Men go into jail, not because they steal, but because they did not steal enough.

Again: excessive fashion makes people unnatural and untrue. It is a factory from which has come forth more hollow pretences, and unmeaning flatteries, and hypocrisies, than the Lowell Mills ever turned out shawls and garments.

Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has made society insincere. You know not what to believe. When people ask you to come, you do not know whether or not they want you to come. When they send their regards, you do not know whether it is an expression of the heart, or an external civility. We have learned to take almost everything at a discount. Word is sent, "Not at home," when they are only too lazy to dress themselves. They say, "The furnace has just gone out," when in truth they had no fire in it all winter. They apologize for the unusual barrenness of their table, when they never live any better. They decry their most luxurious entertainments, to win a shower of approval. They apologize for their appearance, as though it were unusual, when at home they look just so. They would make you believe that some nice sketch on the wall was the work of a master painter. "It was an heir-loom, and once hung on the walls of a castle; and a duke gave it to their grand-father." People who will lie about nothing else, will lie about a picture. On a small income we must make the world believe that we are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat, a counterfeit, and a sham.

Few persons are really natural. When I say this, I do not mean to slur cultured manners. It is right that we should have more admiration for the sculptured marble than for the unhewn block of the quarry. From many circles in life, fashion has driven out vivacity and enthusiasm. A frozen dignity instead floats about the room, and grinds against iceberg. You must not laugh outright: it is vulgar. You must smile. You must not dash rapidly across the room: you must glide. There is a round of bows, and grins, and flatteries, and oh's! and ah's! and simperings, and namby-pambyism—a world of which is not worth one the good, round, honest peal of laughter. From such a hollow round the tortured guest retires at the close of the evening, and assures his host that he has enjoyed himself.

Thus social life has been contorted and deformed, until, in some mountain cabin, where rustics gather to the quilting or the apple-paring, there is more good cheer than in all the frescoed ice-houses of the metropolis.

We want, in all the higher circles of society, more warmth of heart and naturalness of behavior, and not so many refrigerators.

Again: inordinate fashion is incompatible with happiness. Those who depend for their comfort upon the admiration of others are subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody will criticise their appearance or surpass them in brilliancy, or will receive more attention. Oh! the jealousy, and detractions, and heart burnings of those who move in this bewildered maze!

The clock strikes one, and the company begins to disperse. The host has done everything to make all his guests happy; but now that they are on the street, hear the criticisms of everybody and everything. "Did you see her in such and such apparel?" "Wasn't she a perfect fright!" "What a pity that such an one is so awkward and uncouth!" "Well, really,—I would rather never be spoken to than be seen with such a man as that!"

Poor butterflies! Bright wings do not always bring happiness. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." The revelations of high life that come to the challenge and the fight are only the occasional croppings out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like the stars of heaven for multitude, but like the demons of the pit for hate. The misery that to-night in the cellar cuddles up in the straw is not so utter as the princely disquietude which stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offences of high life. The bitterness of trouble seems not so unfitting, when drunk out of a pewter mug, as when it pours from the chased lips of a golden chalice. In the sharp crack of the voluptuary's pistol, putting an end to his earthly misery, I hear the confirmation that in a hollow, fastidious life there is no peace.

Fashion is the world's undertaker, and drives thousands of hearses to Laurel Hill and Greenwood.

But, worse than that, this folly is an intellectual depletion. This endless study of proprieties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is bedwarfing to the intellect.

Worse than all, this folly is not satisfied until it has extirpated every moral sentiment, and blasted the soul. A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven. The excitement of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up more souls than the Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. What room for elevating themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal? Who can wonder in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles and winged thistle-down, men should tumble into ruin? The travelers to destruction are not all clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles against chariot; and behind steeds in harness golden-plated and glittering, they go down, coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing on the hot pavements of hell. Clear the track! Bazaars hang out their colors over the road; and trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the way. No sound of woe disturbs the air; but all is light and song, and wine and gorgeousness. The world comes out to greet the dazzling procession with Hurrah! and Hurrah! But, suddenly, there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the Egyptians. Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk! Wormwood squeezed into impearled goblets! Death, with one cold breath, withering the leaves and freezing the fountains.

In the wild tumult of the last day,—the mountains falling, the heavens flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom of the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning world,—what will become of the fop and the dandy?—Rev. T. De Witt Talmage.