Dr. Doran

“ To no such craven tune runneth the song of stupendous Feeble! Mouldy urges affection for his old dame as ground of exemption from running the risk of getting decorated with a bloody coxcomb. No such jeremiade is chanted by Titanic Francis. “By my troth,” gallantly swears that lion-like soul,—“by my troth, I care not!” He, the tailor, cares not! neither subterfuge, lie, nor excuse will he condescend to! Moreover, he is not only courageous, but Christian-like and philosophical; as, for example:—“A man can die but once;—we owe God a death. ”

“ When one has been awhile in the East one generally ceases to wonder at varieties of costume; but the beau monde of Bucharest in holiday attire might well rouse the most nonchalant or phlegmatic into surprise and attention. Fashions of dress seldom remain long in one’s memory. The man who this year enters the Park with a terribly broad-brimmed hat does not remember for a moment that twelve months previously he would have been miserable had he worn one with a brim more than an eighth of an inch wide. ”

“ The once young leader of fashion would not lay down his sceptre when he grew old; and as an octogenarian he played, in the eyes of Vienna, an airier “ci-devant jeune homme” than was ever conceived or executed by the inimitable Potier. He could be a boy with the boys; and the old gentleman played heartily at soldiers with the little King of Rome, before that shadow of a monarch grew up to welcome those other favourites, one of whom especially was as fatal to him as the Fornarina to the gifted Raphael.
But the Prince loved to be with young men, and to be thought of by them ”

“ She further honoured him by despatching him to France with the news of the great victory; and there he became the intimate friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cavalier of the basely brilliant Du Barry, and the cynosure of all the hooped ladies and red-heeled gallants who killed Time on the verdant lawns of the Trianon or in the gilded saloons of Versailles. He became at once the King of Fashion, as he was the favourite of a dozen kings. Two Louises named him “friend;” and he sat, a gallant servitor, at the feet of Marie Antoinette. ”

“ It was a singular world that, which Balthazar held in durance within his stronghold of Orléans. It was an aristocratic, pleasure-seeking world: within one confined gallery all the pomps and vanities of the earth,—all the weaknesses of nature,—all the vices and some of the virtues of humanity reigned triumphant. The sword of Damocles hung over every head, but the symbol was taken for the oriflamme of pleasure. The fashions and pursuits of the old world were not forgotten within the prison walls. ”

“ Extravagance in dress has brought many a family to two-and-sixpence in the pound, but it ruined Miletus outright. The rich people there not only impoverished themselves by their incredible extravagance in finery, worse than our ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, who wore whole estates upon their backs, but they despised the poor, who were offensive to them for their homely fashions and rough tongues. Well, these extravagant persons became insolent and helpless, or what we should now call so; and the poor then sued them after the fashion of men who knew not of Bankruptcy Courts. ”

“ Paul was the Parny of this and similar sets; and when his patrons required a lay against loyalty, a rhyme against royalty, a metrical kick at kings, songs against statesmen, or diatribes against dunces, the Muse of the tailor’s clever boy was ever ready for the nonce. For clever he was, despite the abuse of Churchill—himself very far from immaculate. If Paul was a reprobate, Churchill was that, and a parson to boot,—two professions which should never be united in one and the same individual. ”

“ The damsels of this age very much affected the dress of the men, and we have seen the same affectation in our own time; and this fashion was pushed to such an extreme, that they even carried two tiny daggers in the pouches of their embroidered zones. Their head-dress still lingers among the female peasantry of Normandy, and may be recognized in the species of mitre cap, of enormous height, from the summit of which streamers float in the air like pennants from the masts of some “tall amiral.” ”

“ The progress of the change worked like a dissolving view at the Polytechnic; and, when the ex-tailor felt the water percolating through the lower chinks of his leg-armour, he was thoroughly satisfied, or rather dissatisfied, that his opponent was playing him a sorry joke. “Nay,” cried he, on second thoughts, “it is not so; the men shall not catch so much as a cold!”
The dykes had been cut, and he forthwith began himself to cut out a plan of triumph. He would neither be starved, nor beaten, nor moistened into submission. ”

“ Katherine Howard was in most things her very opposite, in taste for dress as well as in observance of duty; and Katherine Parr, the sixth wife, was superior to both. The first Protestant Queen of England and preserver of Cambridge University was not only a scholar but a “very woman,”—in which phrase I recognize one with a whole string of virtues and accomplishments. She was a perfect mistress of the needle (Queen Adelaide herself was not a greater) ; and her taste in dress was shown by her uniting magnificence of material with simplicity of form. ”

“ Paul was one of those daring wits whom profane men most admire; and as the young tailor’s style was one which had respect for neither Olympus nor the mortals, he became a laureate, like William the Baker, but not, like him, poet-laureate to the King. ”

“ GEORGE DÖRFLING, THE MARTIAL TAILOR.
“Of stature tall, and straightly fashion’d;
Like his desire, lift upwards, and divine.”
Marlowe: Tamburlaine.
George Dörfling was born in Bohemia, in the year 1606. It is popularly said in that country, that when a child is born there, a fairy presents herself at his side and offers him a purse and a violin, leaving to him to choose which gift most pleases him. According as he makes his selection, is his future character determined. If he takes the fiddle, he turns out a musician. If he grasps at the purse, he invariably becomes a thief. ”

“ A scarlet cloth coat adorned with gold lace, ruffles deeper plaited than Lord Ogilvie’s, a shirt-frill as wide as a mainsail, silk stockings, knee-breeches, and an acre of buckles on the shoes enriched with gold and gems, a low-crowned cocked hat under the arm, too small for the head, and a stout walking-stick or fancy cane, with clouded or carved head-pieces,—and ever applied to prop the chin in cases where it was necessary to let it be thought that the physician was thinking,—it was thus attired that these patented murderers went forth to slay. ”

“ Fresher in wit, I mean in clothes, to the highest;
For he that’s out of clothes is out of fashion;
And out of fashion is out of countenance;
And out of countenance is out of wit.” And the moral of all is, that if a man would prosper in the world, he should, at all events, not neglect his tailor.
Of all the poets yet named, Ben Jonson is the only one who introduces a somewhat dishonest tailor, Nick Stuff, in ‘The New Inn;’ but Apollo was angry at the liberty, and visited the poet with the retributive damnation of the piece. ”

“ Starveling is more of the carpet knight than Feeble. The one is gallant in stricken fields, the other airs his gallantry in ladies’ bower.
It was right that the race of Feebles should not expire. It was said of old, that to be the sire of sons was no great achievement, but that he was a man indeed who was the father of daughters. Such no doubt was Feeble, one of whose spirited girls married a Sketon; and their eldest son it is, as I would fondly think, who figures so bravely among the followers of Perkin Warbeck, in John Ford’s tragedy of that name. ”

“ Weston, Sir, talked to the fellow with an aplomb that would have done honour to either of my friends the Lord Primate or the Lord Chancellor. The brute,—not the tailor, but the ‘gentleman,’—was deaf to remonstrance, and ruder than ever. Thereupon, Weston, without losing his self-possession, stopped the coach, dragged the astonished fellow out, explained to the outside passengers the state of the case, and found his challenge to fight received with acclamations by everybody but his designated opponent. ”

“ Difficult as they were to satisfy, Hawkwood accomplished it. The man who laid on his blows with such good heart, and thwacked the foe so lustily and to excellent purpose, albeit in anything but an excellent cause, was a man whose sword was sure to carve out fortune for him. Accordingly, he soon passed from poor private to plumed captain. His purse was not much the better filled because of his brighter corslet and his new feathers; and as the foe he had to encounter was as badly furnished as himself, he got abundance of honour, but few pistoles. ”

“ Oh, Thersites, good friend, how scurvily hast thou been dealt with at the hands of man! Thou art emphatically un homme incompris, but thou art not therefore un homme méprisable. The poets have comprehended thee better than the people; and Homer himself has no desire to prove thee the coward and boaster for which thou art taken by the world on Homeric authority. I think that Ulysses, with whom, in the ‘Iliad,’ Thersites is brought in contact, is by far the greater brute of the two. The husband of Penelope is cringing to the great, and cruel to the lowly. ”

“ Whatever he did on the stage, let it be ever so trifling,—whether it consisted in putting on his gloves, or taking out his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking snuff,—every movement was marked by such an ease of breeding and manner, everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of a gentleman, that it was impossible to consider the character he represented in any other light than that of reality ”

“ The soul of the honest and refined tailor, the sentiment of the zealous antiquary, was shocked at the spectacle of gallants, emancipated apprentices, and giggling City girls, knocking about the mazzard of the gallant king, as they sipped their muscadel or tasted their cakes and ale. John Stow expostulated, and the glazier consented to ransom the royal sconce. ”

“ He too was but a “woman’s tailor;” but what an heroic soul was in that transparent frame! He reminds me of Sir Charles Napier. When the latter hero was complimented by the Mayor of Portsmouth, he simply undertook to do his best, and counselled his worship not to expect too much. Sir Charles must have taken the idea of his speech from Francis Feeble; and what an honour is that for the entire profession, not of sailors, but of tailors! “Wilt thou make me,” asks Falstaff, “as many holes in an enemy’s battle, as thou hast done in a woman’s petticoat?” ”

“ So in the above heart-stirring speech of valiant Sketon, we miss something which reveals to us how chaste and chivalrous a soldier was the grandson of Feeble. His views go to bold invasion, to the burning of towns, and the sacking of cities, and to splendid victory, built upon the cutting of throats, which he nicely, and as it were apologetically for the act, describes as “unnecessary throats.” A taste of the quality of the roystering soldier is perhaps to be found in this speech; but you are entreated to remark, that all the vengeance of the tailor is directed solely against his enemy, man. ”

“ Besides, how great is the outlay required to make a “beau,”—well-scented and useless, though perhaps temporarily agreeable! The sacrifices are greater than I have space to enumerate; the result in proportion is infinitesimally small. It reminds me of the six hundred pounds’ weight of rose-leaves required to produce a single ounce of the attar. Sad waste of many values in order to achieve a fashionable smell!
Not that a man should be indifferent to dress or to personal appearance. ”

“ The head master-tailor is a highly respectable individual, who has our sympathy because he is betrayed by his wife; and the chief Flint wins admiration, because he gets hanged and is cheated out of his mistress. The strike ends unfavourably for those who make it; but though the author sets out with the determination to render all his dramatis personæ ridiculous, he cannot do it. He is like the prophet who was compelled to vaticinate against his inclinations; and the deity of dramatic poetry and tailors compels him to reverence where he would fain have committed desecration. ”

“ Allusions to wigs are frequently made both by the historians and poets of ancient times. We know that they were worn by fashionable gentlemen in Palmyra and Baalbec, and that the Lycians took to them out of necessity. When their conqueror, Mausoleus, had ruthlessly ordered all their heads to be shaven, the poor Lycians felt themselves so supremely ridiculous, that they induced the king’s general Condalus, by means of an irresistible bribe, to permit them to import wigs from Greece; and the symbol of their degradation became the very pink of Lycian fashion. ”