Laundress

“ Widgetts carries the coat and waistcoat into his bed-room, R., Twill is going towards door, L., when MARY WHITE, the laundress, enters, carrying a basket of clothes under her arm.
Mary. Here, Twill, take my basket, good chap. Is master at home?
Twill. (Takes basket.) Yes, he is at home. (Aside.) Take my basket, good chap. Well, there’s no bearing the impudence of the lower orders. (Sets down basket, R., and calls at door, R.) Please, sir, here’s the laundress come for your clothes. (Crosses to door, L. Aside.) Good chap! ”

“ If you have never done any laundering and expect a laundress to do up fine lingerie at a low rate, it will be a revelation to you to attempt to iron a shirt waist or lingerie dress, and then decide what remuneration you would yourself like to receive. One class of high school girls, after a course of six laundry lessons, decided that a dollar a dozen was fair pay for ordinary work! ”

“ There may be fish in his ocean, but there is no beauty there. How can there be with that fiend plucking at his suspenders?
And oh, the country washerwoman! Can anybody tell why she, having tried her fists only on red flannel, calico, and sheets, should announce herself as a professional laundress, and up to the mysteries of bluing, rinsing, clear-starching, and ironing? Trustingly you place your linen in her hands, and she departs to some spot where sun, fresh air, clover-blossoms, and plenty of water are all in her favor. In process of time she returns your clothes. ”

“ Her simple wardrobe is systematically arranged, and it is impossible to displace a single article in her drawers, without her perceiving and reinstating it. When the large baskets of clean linen are weekly brought from the laundress, she selects her own garments without hesitation, however widely they may be dispersed among the mass. ”

“ If you are economical with your tailor, you can be extravagant with your laundress. The beaux of forty years back put on three shirts a day, but except in hot weather one is sufficient. Of course, if you change your dress in the evening you must change your shirt too. There has been a great outcry against colored flannel shirts in the place of linen, and the man who can wear one for three days is looked on as little better than St. ”

“ Since I have possessed a "Wonderland Stamp Case", Life has been bright and peaceful, and I have used no other. I believe the Queen's laundress uses no other. ”

“ For Milly had expatiated on the fortune they might confidently expect from the new laundry. Milly was sure that all nice, well-to-do families would be only too thankful to pay large prices for their laundry work, if they could be assured that it would be done in such sanitary, picturesque fashion by expert laundresses. And she had thought of another plan which combined philanthropy with æstheticism and business. They might employ "fallen women" as laundresses and teach them also expert mending of linen. To all of which Ernestine smiled as one would at the fancies of an engaging child. ”

“ These laundresses are generally the wives of the married soldiers, and each man contributes a halfpenny per day to the laundry fund, and there is no limit to the clothes he likes to send to be washed. ”

“ The woman who goes to business must dress inconspicuously. Clean, freshly laundered white shirt waists with simple dark skirts form the best of outfits. But with laundry bills at prohibitive prices, a substitute must be found for them for the girl in moderate circumstances. For this reason it is more sensible to wear dark serge, silk, or satin fashioned into severely simple frocks relieved perhaps by white linen or organdie collars and cuffs.
The woman who entertains at home in the morning wears a simple frock of the sort in which she may appear on the street. ”

“ Her chief garment consisted of a skirt with grey bodice and red flannel skirt, very much torn. Her black hair hung in wild tails on to her shoulders.
“We must go in here,” said I, approaching the girl. She, however, hastily seized the kettle and ran indoors with an “Oh, mother——!”
A woman came to the door. One breast was bare, and hung over her blouse, which, like a dressing-jacket, fell loose over her skirt. Her fading, red-brown hair was all frowsy from the bed. In the folds of her skirt clung a swarthy urchin with a shockingly short shirt. ”

“ Shirts and blouses of thin flannel, washing silk and muslin can be brought in any number that space allows—the more the better, but the local laundry cannot goffer frills and almost always tears lace! Cambric and muslin blouses of the ‘shirt’ order are the most useful kind, as silk rots almost at once. For this reason let your smarter blouses be of crêpe de chine rather than silk. Evening gowns you will scarcely want; one, or at most two simple dinner frocks, and a tea-gown to wear for dinner at home, will be ample. ”

“ A few years ago it took about sixteen yards of common-width cloth to make a dress for a lady, for she wanted two or three yards to drag in the streets, to be smeared by every nuisance she walked over. Now I suppose they make their dresses out of five yards and a half, and then have abundance left for an apron. They put me now strongly in mind of the ladies I used to see in Canada some years ago, who made their dresses out of two breadths of tow and linen, and when they were in meeting they were all the time busy pulling them down, for they would draw up. ”

“ A plain material formed the over-skirt of many a dress which bore a striped under-skirt, tight sleeves, and a plain, tightly-fitting bodice. Cuffs and collars grew wider, the linen apron had two pockets, and there was added to costume a circular cape of dull serge. The high felt hat was adorned simply by a plain band of ribbon.
During the Restoration, colour asserted itself once more, and dress was again pretty, a comendable example having a blue linen skirt with a band of fancy material round the hem, a full basque, and a linen collar, the front adorned with braid, the apron striped. ”

“ The last few years of the fifteenth and the earliest ones of the sixteenth centuries were marked by great changes in the male attire; the Butlers, Cliftons, Carletons, Westbys, Allens, Molyneux, and many others of the gentry of the neighbourhood, figured at that period in fine shirts of long lawn, embroidered with silk round the collar and wristbands, a doublet with sleeves open at the elbows to allow the shirt to protrude, a stomacher, over which the doublet was laced; a long gown or cloak, with loose or hanging sleeves and broad turn-over collar of fur or velvet; long hose or stockings ”

“ In the system of under-clothing which I advocate, and which is illustrated by the above figure, combinations should be worn next to the skin; or, if the objection to these, which I spoke of on p. 131, is raised, a vest of woven wool, coming well down over the hips, may be worn next the skin, and drawers, either of the same material or of flannel, can be buttoned on to the bodice. The thickness of the material of which this and all the other garments are made can, of course, be varied to suit the temperature of the air. ”

“ She will take that and make fine, beautiful linen, nice enough for any man to wear for the bosom of his shirt; and the rest she makes into table-cloths, towels, shirts, and good dresses, handsome enough for any lady.
When I married my wife, she was a spinner of both wool and flax, and wore woollen dresses for winter and linen for summer, and never put on a calico dress except to go to meeting, nor fine shoes. She would wear her coarse shoes until she got to the meeting-house, and then she would change her shoes. ”

“ But, except in certain circumstances, the person who wears or wore the garment has little actual relevancy to the garment itself."
"I'm afraid I don't understand," said Sir Pierre, looking puzzled.
"Look at it like this, sir: That gown wouldn't be what it is if the weaver hadn't made the cloth in that particular way. It wouldn't be what it is if the seamstress hadn't cut it in a particular way and sewed it in a specific manner. You follow, sir? Yes. Well, then, the connections between garment-and-weaver and garment-and-seamstress are strongly relevant. ”

“ But the old fashions are passing from Europe: the sewing machine and the railway sweep before them the pleasant provincialisms of dress. A shirt with the bosom heavily embroidered, a skirt with a year’s stitching in the hem are not to be imitated by the dealer in ready-made clothing, who offers, instead, cheapness and the brisk variety of the town. ”

“ But a fair number of peasants in the streets, and peasant women in rather ordinary costume: tight-bodiced, volume-skirted dresses of hand-woven linen or thickish cotton. The prettiest is of dark-blue-and-red, stripes-and-lines, intermingled, so made that the dark-blue gathers round the waist into one colour, the myriad pleats hiding all the rosy red. ”

“ Fashion is, however, worshipped by all. Their bonnets must be of the proper size, their collars and capes of the proper shape, their dresses of the proper length and breadth, and their waists reduced to the proper circumference.
But the sleeves of their dresses are the parts appropriated to the display of their most exquisite skill. One poor human brain could never invent the puffings, plaitings, and gatherings; quiltings, flutings, and bandings, which are lavished upon that peculiar portion of their dress; to devise them must be an arduous task, to construct them an herculean labour. ”

“ On the one hand, there has been the revolution in the popular habits of dress, caused chiefly by the uprising of the cotton manufacture; and, on the other hand, there has been an apparent over-supply of needlewomen, instead of the scarcity which might have been expected. In old times, when the working-classes wore woollen garments, as stoutly put together as our shoes are now, and seldom or never washed; and when the gentry wore costly stout linens within, and woollen or stiff silk fabrics as upper dresses, the sewing was very elaborate and precise, but it was to last for years or for life. ”

“ The ordinary dress of men of the middle classes comprises a short shirt cut low at the throat, drawers, socks of material made with a single seam up the back, a long embroidered coat, and a shorter jacket of some plain fabric, held by a broad waist-belt, embroidered in colours and fastened by a jade ornament. ”

“ All these people wore garments of exceedingly fine material, mostly white, richly trimmed with elaborate embroidery in colours or gold, the women’s dress being a long, sleeveless garment reaching from the throat to the feet and confined at the waist by an ornamental belt, handsome sandals, much jewellery, and the head bare, the heavy masses of dark hair being wound upon the head very becomingly, and intertwined with ribbon or strings of coloured beads. ”

“ She slowly replaced all her simple maiden underlinen with garments which, while still simple, were wrought with beautiful French embroidery, tucks, and drawnwork. She crocheted fine edgings on the inexpensive knitted underwear she wore in winter. She made little corset covers and chemises of fine but fairly inexpensive lawns, and, with simple flowered designs and perfect laundering, her nightgowns were always sweetly fresh and dainty. ”

“ Personal clothing can be carried in tin uniform cases, and it should be reduced as far as is compatible with the foregoing axiom. I have found that a touring wardrobe, consisting of a habit skirt, boots, etc., two coats, one short holland skirt, a plain tea-gown, two changes of underclothing, a few muslin stocks, one pair of thick boots, and, instead of slippers, long, loose, Hausa boots, can be easily packed into a fair-sized uniform case. ”

“ The said wardrobe consisted of several long sacerdotal robes, of the finest cambric; a dozen or more very unsacerdotal looking nether garments of linen and cambric, ruffled and trimmed with thread lace; a number of gowns of rich material; also a couple of flannel skirts, heavily embroidered, and seemingly intended only to tangle the feet; and quite a pile of unmentionables, with necessary fastenings.
There was also an elegant India muslin robe, trimmed with embroidery and fretted with lace, and a handsome lace cap, laid apart to themselves. ”

“ A survival of the latter as an outer garment is to be seen in the short smocks worn by labourers who dig drains and do similar work. The lady’s nightgown may be elegantly ornamented with lace in the same way as are the linen garments which she wears in the daytime; but very often we find a large collar edged with lace, which recalls the falling band which we have had so often to mention. ”

“ A NEW SYSTEM OF DRESS FOR WOMEN. WHEN stays are not worn, it becomes a matter of some difficulty how to fasten the clothes so that their weight shall not fall unduly on any particular part of the body, and so that they shall not press tightly on any part; the figures of most young girls are so slight that their garments have a strong tendency to slip down over the narrow hips. To counteract this tendency it is necessary either that union garments should be worn, or that all separate skirts and drawers should be fastened to a bodice. ”

“ It was again in a strain of old-fashioned intolerance that, writing on the Rational Dress question in 1883, the same journal remarked, "That monstrosity of fashion the divided skirt is an outrage not to be countenanced—an unnatural costume which must be productive of unwomanly ways which are to be deprecated. Moreover, as it approaches the trouser in form and in use, it must engender an increase in the heat of the body which is most undesirable." It is a pity that so excellent and high an authority as the Lancet should have stooped to express such hasty and evidently ill-considered opinions. ”