Who shall describe the hats of 1910?--and before and since--in all
but the very poorest women? They were enormous; and so were the
hat-boxes; and they could only be held on to the head by running
hatpins through wisps of hair.
I will not portray the evening dresses that it sometimes takes a
kindly husband an hour to fasten, with "press-buttons" and hooks and
eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette
maid because at all costs she mustn't look dowdy or the woman's
cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's receptions.
As to night gear: of course Vivie being a free agent slept in
David's paijamas. She had long ago cut the Gordian knots of her
be-ribboned, girdled night gowns in favour of the Indian garment.
But can you wonder after this true recital of the simplest forms of
a decent woman's costume in 1909-1910 and even now (a recital drawn
from a paper on _Woman's dress_ delivered by David on one of the
last occasions in which he appeared at the Debating Society of the
Inner Temple--and checked by my jury of matrons)--can you wonder
that Vivie took very hardly to giving up a man's life in the clothes
of David Williams? How she vowed to herself--fruitlessly, because
now she is one of the best-dressed women in town (in a quiet
way)--that she would one day enfranchise women in their costume as
in their citizenship? This will never be done until the modistes of
Paris, in some great popular uprising, are strangled and burnt on
the Place de la Concorde.
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