Crinolines and their Comfort Zone

Dressing for the ball - NYPL Digital Collections

Clothes in Books roams all over the place – nearly always books, often clothes, but I never feel constrained by the name. (Compass directions anyone? – two posts and more comments than any other topic ever)

But – one of the key purposes of the blog is to discuss clothes with examples and illustrations from books.

Today we are going after crinolines, in the full hope that many of my readers will enjoy, and have something to add…

A forgotten book I am very fond of is Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale (one of the first posts on the blog, to be followed by several more on the same book). The author wanted to show how young women become old wives, but he also said he was fascinated to have overheard a comment from a woman who had lived through a busy time of history, including the Paris Commune and siege, apparently without noticing much. He put it straight into the book:

Sophia…noticed how much easier it was for attired women to sit in a carriage now that crinolines had gone. That was the sole impression made upon her by this glimpse of the last fete of the Napoleonic Empire.

Crinolines feature a lot in the book – they arrive at the beginning and are gone at the end. Early on, Aunt Harriet climbing into a small carriage is described as being “an operation like threading a needle with cotton too thick.” But once in, “her hoops distended in sudden release, filling the waggonette.”

The underpinning that we call a crinoline arrived in the mid1850s – the metal hoops were patented then though the silhouette already existed -  and lasted well into the 1870s, though changing its shape along the way.

Anthony Trollope’s novels cover a long period, but he is very prolific in peak crinoline time, and apparently did not like them.

The very distinguished artist John Everett Millais illustrated many of his books, and the only time Trollope was less than happy was this one – Lucy being very upset in Framley Parsonage,  throwing herself on her bed to cry. He considered that the very exaggerated skirt dominated the picture, because of the crinoline, and that Lucy looked as though she was sleeping rather than weeping dramatically.

In The Small House at Allington, the crinoline acts as  a barricade:

Cradell looked half afraid of his fortunes as he took the proffered seat; but he did take it, and was soon secured from any positive physical attack by the strength and breadth of Miss Roper’s crinoline.

 

In his The Three Clerks, one of the young men has invented a Lady Crinoline (honestly, not worth pursuing). In Rachel Ray we see them at the beginning of a small dance:

Now the room was partially cleared, the non-dancers being pressed back into a border round the walls, and the music began. Rachel, with her heart in her mouth, was claimed by her partner…she would have preferred to be left in obscurity behind the wall of crinoline.

 

A Trollope biographer, Victoria Glendinning, says the author was conflicted – he was quite rude about them, but she thinks he also found them ‘exciting’ in certain circumstances (and on younger good-looking women).

I did a post on crinolines last year, brought on by Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Flint Anchor – written in the 1950s but set 100 years earlier and carefully researched:

 

Women had begun to wear crinolines, and Mary prided herself on having the most imposing crinoline in Loseby. Every year more yards of silk and velvet were required to drape the structure, and a more elaborate system of flounces and outworks was festooned about it. With her stiffly corseted body, her necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, she seemed to be an idol rising from some peculiar dome-shaped altar, and looking calmly and negligently down on the offerings that had been laid around her...

Dress from NYPL.

 

Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece is a gorgeous book and a fine resource for fashion info. There is this

I once asked Aunt Etty what it had been like to wear a crinoline. “Oh it was delightful” she said, “I’ve never been so comfortable since they went out. It kept your petticoats away from your legs, and made walking so light and easy.”

In a recent comment section we were talking about people writing about experiences they had never had: men and women writing about each other are a  particular feature. Roughly speaking, men assume that crinolines were ridiculously uncomfortable and awkward but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Men also felt that they got in their – men’s – way and enabled women to take up too  much space. We look at that differently these days.

Punch the comic magazine was apparently obsessed with crinolines: the attention they paid, and the number of cartoons on the topic, are quite extraordinary. The men of Punch just couldn’t get over the idea of crinolines…

Jerome K Jerome has a ‘funny’ story in his collection Evergreens, about a dog getting trapped inside his aunt’s crinoline. It’s obviously meant to be a tall story and amusing, but it doesn’t make the slightest sense. The conclusion would be that JKJ had no idea what a crinoline really consisted of, or how it operated. Or – of course – what it was like to wear one.

My aunt thinks that it--the crinoline--must have got caught up in something, and an opening thus left between it and the ground. However this may be, certain it is that an absurdly large and powerful bull-dog, who was fooling round about there at the time, managed, somehow or other, to squirm in under my aunt's crinoline, and effectually imprison himself beneath it.

Great hilarity ensues, but I don’t think so.

How to wear them: I recently mentioned Irene Thomas, in relation to astrakhan collars, and she also came up with helpful input into keeping your tights up  on stage – a topic that gave us one of our most popular blogposts a good many years ago.

And now we will bring in this fascinating insight from her days in the chorus of the Royal Opera House:

[Verdi opera] La Traviata is a great favourite with choruses, it’s one of the few operas where no designer can make you look awful, because all the women are supposed to be high-class Parisian tarts, and all the men rich and sophisticated…

The girls were taught how to walk in the vast crinolines of the 1860s. I wince now whenever I see an actress lift the skirt by one of the hoops…. The proper way is to press the hoop inwards towards your knees and glide.

In Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle (which I mentioned recently as an almost-perfect book, and is in general all over the blog) Rose needs a new dress for an evening out. Family friend Miss Marcy has an idea:

‘It should be pink,’ she said, ‘a crinoline effect – there’s the very thing here in this week’s Home Chat.’ She dived into her satchel for it.

‘Oh, dear, that would be perfect for her,’ sighed Topaz.

The two women are conspiring to find a good match for Rose and know that an old-fashioned look will suit her.

 

Rose had a real crinoline to wear under the dress; only a small one but it made all the difference. We borrowed it from Mr Stebbins’s grandmother, who is ninety-two. When the dress was finished, he brought her over to see Rose in it and she told us she had worn the crinoline at her wedding in Godsend Church, when she was sixteen.

I thought of Waller’s ‘Go, lovely Rose’ – 

How small a part of time they share 

That are so wondrous sweet and fair! 

– though I refrained from mentioning it; the poor old lady was crying enough without that. But she said she had enjoyed the outing.

[After the big night]

I saw Rose going along the lane with Mrs Stebbins’s crinoline: Stephen had brought word that the old lady was fretting for it... Rose had it over her shoulder; she did look peculiar.

The book, first published in the 1949, is set in the 1930s. If we guessed at 1934, that would mean Mrs S was born in 1842 and married in 1858 – exactly correct for the crinoline. 

There's probably a lot more to say on this topic, and I am relying on some reader input, and I still have oa few more examples ready...

Rose in her pink dress – an illo from 1921 NYPL