A Victorian Scrapbook

MR EDITOR. – And so you would like to know my opinion on low-necked dresses, would you? Well, you shall have it for what it is worth; and, though my ability is small, my intentions are excellent, and what I do is done with all my heart even to “speaking the naked truth at all times,” as you say. But the subject of low-necked dresses is rather a delicate one, and I hardly know how to approach it at all. It should be handled very nicely, for there are strong predjuces in the minds of many people. Both pro and con. But to be honest, and express my candid opinion, I do not believe that anybody ever was opposed to reasonably low-necked dresses, save scrawny old maids or worn out old bachelors. Now, it is well known that when the mother of us all, Mrs Eve, was in a state of purity and innocence, she dispensed with dresses altogether, and there is nothing on record to show that Adam blushed when he looked at his rib; or that she felt any compunctions of conscience at all about it. But no sooner did she make a faux pas and listen to the words of the tempter, than she went to work to exercise her ingenuity in the art of dress-making, and got up an extempore sort of demi-toilette out of fig-leaves; so that it was not till after she had lost the perfection of her modesty, that she had any idea that she was immodest. Her daughters, too, profited by the maternal example, and so they became more and more wicked and refined, added garment to garment, till women looked like bundles of dry goods, and waddled along, their fleshy components hidden in balloons of tape, white muslin and crinoline. My grandmother tells me that it is not so very many years ago, since a great fuss was made because women wore their dresses so high! And cross old bachelors, and crosser old maids, who had no “symmetry” to boast of, used to complain sadly of the immodesty of those who used to be able to add a nicely turned ankle to the list of their charms; and raised such a terrible din about their ears, that they were glad to pull their dresses down a foot or two, and then a yard or two till every woman resembles a locomotive, and drew a long train behind her. So you see that do as we will, the world will not be satisfied, and we shall ever be too high or too low to please the male and female “Miss Nincles” of creation. Now I do admit that there are some women in the world, on whom a low necked dress would be an absolute wickedness, which could serve no good purpose neither useful or ornamental, without it might be to enable some poor medical student, who could not indulge in the luxury of “a head and shoulders,” to study the structure of the “bony system” from their exposed anatomy. And, I do not think that even such facilities could justify them in inflicting such torture as they do upon all who look at them it is painful in the extreme to meet such cases. I have one in my eye just now, but as she has on a high-necked dress at present, I shall not expose her. But she, as well as you, ought to be much obliged to me for my forbearances.