| | | | | | Not many years ago no really refined gentlewoman | would have worn pinchbeck. False jewelry and | imitation lace were touchstones with the sex, and the | woman who would condescend to either was assumed, | perhaps not quite without reason, to have lost | something more than the mere perception of technical | taste. This feeling ran through the whole of society, | and pinchbeck was considered as at once despicable | and disreputable. The successful speculator, sprung | from nothing, who had made his fortune during the war, | might buy land, build himself a mansion, and set up a | magnificent establishment, but he was never looked on | as more than a lucky adventurer by the aboriginal | gentry of the place; and the blue blood, perhaps | nourishing itself on thin beer, turned up its nose | disdainfully at the claret and Madeira which had been | personally earned and not lineally inherited. This | exclusiveness was narrow in spirit, and hard in | individual working; and yet there was a wholesome | sentiment underlying its pride which made it valuable | in social ethics, if immoral on the score of natural | equality and human charity. It was the rejection of | pretentiousness, however gilded and glittering, in favor | of reality, however poor and barren; | | it was the condemnation of make-believes ~~ the | repudiation of pinchbeck. It is not a generation since | this was the normal attitude of society towards its | and Brummagem | jewelry; but time moves fast in these later days, and | national sentiments change as quickly as national | fashions. | We are in the humor to rehabilitate all things, and | pinchbeck has now its turn with the rest. The lady of | slender means who would refuse to wear imitation lace | and false jewelry is as rare as the country society which | would exclude the | because of his newness, and not adopt him because of | his riches. The whole anxiety now is, not what a thing | is, but how it looks ~~ not its quality, but its | appearance. Every part of social and domestic life is | dedicated to the apotheosis of pinchbeck. It meets us at | the hall door, where miserable make-believes of | stuccoed pillars are supposed to confer a quasi-palatial | dignity on a wretched little villa run up without regard | to one essential of home comfort or of architectural | truth. It goes with us into the cold, conventional | drawing-room, where all is for show, nothing for use, | where no-one | lives, and which is just the mere pretence | of a dwelling-room, set out to deceive the world into | the belief that its cheap finery is the expression of the | every-day life and circumstances of the family. It sits | with us at the table, which a confectioner out of a back | street has furnished, and where everything, down to the | very flowers, is hired for the occasion. It glitters in the | brooches and bracelets of the women, in the studs and | signet-rings | | of the men; it is in the hired broughams, the hired | waiters, the pigmy page-boys, the faded paper flowers, | the cheap champagne, and the affectation of social | consideration that meet us at every turn. The whole of | the lower section of the middle classes is penetrated | through and through with the worship of pinchbeck, | and for one family that holds itself in the honor and | simplicity of truth, ten thousand lie, to the world and to | themselves, in frippery and pretence. | The greatest sinners in this are women. Men are often | ostentations, often extravagant, and not unfrequently | dishonest in that broadway of dishonesty which is | called living beyond their means ~~ sometimes making | up the deficit by practices which end in the dock of the | Old Bailey; but; as a rule, they go in for the real thing in | details, and their pinchbeck is at the core rather than on | the surface. Women, on the contrary, gibe themselves | up to a more general pretentiousness, and, provided | they can make a show, care very little about the means; | provided they can ring their metal on the counter, they | ignore the want of the hall-stamp underneath. Locality, | dress, their visiting-list, and domestic appearances are | the four things which they demand shall be in accord | with their neighbor's; and for these four surfaces they | will sacrifice the whole internal fabric. They will have | a show-looking house, encrusted with base | ornamentation and false grandeur, though it lets in | wind, rain, and sound almost as if it were made of mud | or canvas, rather than a plain and substantial | dwelling-place, with comfort instead of stucco, and moderately | | thick walls instead of porches and pilasters. Most of | their time is necessarily passed at home, but they | undergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from | this preference of cheap finery over solid structure, | rather than forego their

"genteel locality"

and | stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on | the one side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a | nursery full of crying babies on the other; more Battles | of Prague opposite, diversified by a future Lind | practicing her scales unweariedly; water-pipes bursting | in the frost, walls streaming in the thaw, the lower | offices reeking and green with damp, and the upper | rooms too insecure for unrestricted movement ~~ all | these, and more miseries of the same kind, she willingly | encounters rather than shift into a locality relatively | unfashionable to her sphere, but where she could have | substantiality and comfort for the same rent that she | pays now for flash and pinchbeck. | In dress it is the same thing. She must look like her | neighbors, no matter whether they can spend pounds to | her shillings, and run up a milliner's bill beyond what | she can afford for the whole family living. If they can | buy gold, she can manage pinchbeck; glass that looks | like jet, like filigree work, like anything else she | fancies, is every bit to her as good as the real thing; and | if she cannot compass Valenciennes and Mechlin, she | can go to Nottingham and buy machine-made | imitations that will make quite as fine a show. How | poor soever she may be, she must hang herself about | with ornaments made of painted wood, glass, or | vulcanite, she must break out into | | spangles and beads and chains and | , which are cheap luxuries, and, as she | thinks, effective. Flimsy silks make as rich a rustle to | her ear as the stateliest brocade, and cotton-velvet | delights the soul that cannot aspire to Genoa. The love | of pinchbeck is so deeply ingrained in her that even if, | in a momentary fit of aberration into good taste, she | condescends to a simple material about which there can | be neither disguise nor pretence, she must load it with | that detestable cheap finery of hers till she makes | herself as vulgar in a muslin as she was in a cotton | velvet. | The , which used to be | held as a canon of feminine good taste, is now | abandoned altogether, and the more she can bedizen | herself according to the pattern of a Sandwich islander | the more beautiful she thinks herself, the more certain | the fascination of the men, and the greater the jealousy | of the women. This is the cause of all the tags and | streamers, and bits of ribbon here and flying ends of | laces there, the puffed-out chignons, and the trailing | curls cut off some dead girl's head, wherewith the | modern Englishwoman delights to make herself | hideous. It is pinchbeck throughout. But we fear she is | past praying for in the matter of fashion, and that she is | too far given over to the abomination of pretence to be | called back to truth for any ethical reason whatsoever, | so indeed by anything short of high examples. And | then, if simplicity became the fashion, we should have | our pinchbeck votaries translating that into extremes as | they do now with ornamentation | | if my lady took to plainness, they would go to | nakedness. | Another bit of pinchbeck is the visiting-list ~~ the cards | of invitation stuck against the drawing-room glass ~~ | with the grandest names and largest fortunes put | forward, irrespective of dates or tenses. The chance | contact with the people represented may be quite out of | the ordinary circumstances of life, but their names are | paraded as if an accident, which has happened once and | may never occur again, were in the daily order of | events. They are brought to the front to make others | believe that the whole social thickness is of the same | quality; that generals and admirals and sirs and ladies | are the common elements of the special circle in which | the family habitually moves; that pinchbeck is good | gold, and that stucco means marble. Women are | exceedingly tenacious of these pasteboard appearances. | In a house with its couple of female servants, where | formal visitors are very rare, and invitations, save by | friendly word of mouth, rarer still, you may see a | cracked china bowl or cheap mock | on the hall table, to receive the cards | which are assumed to come in the thick showers usual | with high people who have hall-porters, and a thousand | names or more on their books. The pile gets horribly | dusty to be sure, and the upper layer turns by degrees | from cream-color to brown; but antiquity is not held to | weaken the force of grandeur. The titled card left on a | chance occasion more than a year ago still keeps the | uppermost place, still represents a perpetual renewal of | aristocratic | | visits, and an unbroken succession of social | triumphs. Yellowed and soiled, it is none the less the | trump-card of the list; and while the outside world | laughs and ridicules, the lady at home thinks that | no-one sees | through this puerile pretence, and that the | visiting-list is accepted according to the status of the | fugleman at the head. She is very happy if she can say | that the pattern of her dress, her cap, her bonnet, was | taken from that of Lady So and So; and we may be | quite sure that all personal contact with grand folks | does so express itself, and perpetuate the memory of the | event, by such imitation ~~ at a distance. It is too good | an occasion for the airing of pinchbeck to be | disregarded, and, consequently, for the most part is | turned to this practical account. Whether the fashion | will be suited to the material, or to the other parts of the | dress, is quite a secondary consideration, it being of the | essence of pinchbeck to despise both fitness and | harmony. | There is a large amount of pinchbeck in the appearance | of social influence, much cultivated by women of a | certain activity of mind, and with more definite aims | that all women have. This belongs to a grade one step | higher than the small pretences we have been speaking | of ~~ to women who have money, and so far have one | reality, but who have not, by their own birth or their | husband's, the original standing which would give them | this influence as of right. Some make themselves | notorious for their drawing-room patronage of artists, | which, however, does not often include buying their | pictures; others gather | | around them scores of obscure authors, whose books | they talk of, if they do not read; a few, a short time | since, were centres of spiritualistic circles, and got a | queer kind of social influence thereby, so far as | Philistine desire to witness the

"manifestations" |

went; and one or two are names of weight in the | emancipated ranks, and take chiefly to what they call | . These are they who attend Ladies' | Committees, where they talk bosh, and pound away at | utterly uninteresting subjects, as diligently as if what | they said had any point in it, and what they did any | ultimate issue in probability or common sense. But | beyond the fact of having a large house, where their | several sets may assemble at stated periods, these | would-be lady patronesses are utterly impotent to help | or hinder; and their patronage is just so much | pinchbeck, not worth the trouble of weighing. | In all this gaudy attempt at show, this restless | dissatisfaction with what they are, and ceaseless | endeavour to appear something they are not, our | middle-class ladies are doing themselves and society | infinite mischief. They set the tone to the world below | them, and the small tradespeople and servants, when | they copy the vices of their superiors, do not imitate her | grace the duchess, but the doctor's wife over the way, | and the lawyer's lady next door, and the young ladies | everywhere, who all try to appear women of rank and | fortune, and who are ashamed of nothing as much as of | industry, truth and simplicity. Hence the rage for cheap | finery in the kitchen, just a trifle | | more ugly and debased than that worn in the | drawing-room; hence the miserable pretentiousness, and | pinchbeck fine-ladyism, filtering like poison through | every pore of our society, to result God only knows in | what grave oral cataclysm, unless women of mind and | education will come to the front, and endeavour to stay | the plague already begun. | Chains and brooches may seem but small material | causes for important moral effects, but they are | symbols; and, as symbols, of deep national value. No | good will be done till we get back some of our fine old | horror of pinchbeck, and once more insist on truth as | the foundation of our national life. Education and | refinement will be of no avail if they do not land us | here; and the progress of the arts and society must not | be brought to mean chiefly the travesty of civilized | ladies into the semblance of savages, by the cheap | imitation of costly substances. Women are always | rushing about the world eager after everything but their | home business. Here is something for them to do ~ the | regeneration of society by means of their own energies; | the bringing people back to the dignity of truth and the | beauty of simplicity; and the substitution of that | self-respect which is content to appear what it is, for the | feeble pride which revels in pinchbeck because it | cannot get gold, and which endeavors to hard to hide its | real estate, and to pass for what it is not and never could | be.