Tailoring

“ Dad is a good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he first sent me off to learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a cousin that'd made a lot of money tailoring out in Dakota, and he said tailoring was a lot like drawing, so he sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew, to work in a tailor shop. ”

“ For tailoring underwent the sage revision to which the whole philosophy of life was subjected, and one ardent youth, asserting that the human form itself suggested the proper shape of its garments, caused trousers to be constructed that closely fitted the leg, and bore his testimony to the truth in coarse crash breeches. ”

“ And then the gown sleeves! What a description by Stubbes of the virago-sleeve “tied in and knotted with silk ribbons in love-knots!” It is all wonderful to read.
We learn from these tailors’ bills that tailors’ work embraced far more articles than to-day; in the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, 1659, a tailor’s shop has hanging upon the wall woollen hats, breeches, waistcoats, jackets, women’s cloaks, and petticoats. There are also either long hose or lasts for stretching hose, for they made stockings, leggins, gaiters, buskins; also a number of boxes which look like muff-boxes. ”

“ So he hastened to cut out a belt, and he stitched it, and put on it in large capitals "Seven at one blow!"
"——The town, did I say!" said the little tailor; "the whole world shall know it!" And his heart quivered with joy, like a lamb's tail.
The tailor fastened the belt round him, and began to think of going out into the world, for his workshop seemed too small for his worship. So he looked about in all the house for something that it would be useful to take with him, but he found nothing but an old cheese, which he put in his pocket. ”

“ Notwithstanding almost everybody cares more about the outside than the inside of his coat, the tailor will make the inside more lasting than the outside.
He makes custom work and will work for your custom. Too often when his work is done he has to dun his customer for the pay. The tailor owes his living to sin, for through sin came cloth; but though one of the cloth, the tailor is not a clergyman, who also, by the way, gets his living through sin. ”

“ The tailor, with fresh-ground shears, and perfect faith in the gentility and solvency of his “client,” snips, and snips, and snips, until the “superfine” grows, with each abscission, into the first style of elegance and fashion, and the excited schneider feels himself “every inch a king,” his shop a herald’s college, and every brown paper pattern garnishing its walls, an escutcheon of gentility. ”

“ A loosely hanging garment, and not a strait-waistcoat, in fact, a fashion very much in favour of bunglers, seeing that anybody can make a sack, while it takes a tailor to make a coat. The Major’s cost him about two pounds five, the cloth having been purchased at a clothier’s and made up at home, by a three shilling a day man and his meat. We laugh at the ladies for liking to be cheated by their milliners; but young gentlemen are quite as accommodating to their tailors. Let any man of forty look at his tailor’s bill when he was twenty, and see what a liberality of innocence it displays. ”

“ One bitter cold day near Christmastime the tailor began to make a coat (a coat of cherry- coloured corded silk embroidered with pansies and roses) and a cream- coloured satin waistcoat for the Mayor of Gloucester. The tailor worked and worked, and he talked to himself: "No breadth at all, and cut on the cross; it is no breadth at all; tippets for mice and ribbons for mobs! for mice!" said the Tailor of Gloucester. When the snow-flakes came down against the small leaded window- panes and shut out the light, the tailor had done his day's work ”

“ There is one thing very strange about the tailor. Although the pantaloons he turns out are constructed on correct principles, he makes them all cross-legged. Like other men he pants for renown, but is mainly concerned for the renown of his pants. If you say ought against his trousers, I trow, sirs, he will give you fits. No matter how he may wear with others, the tailor tries to make others wear well. If he trusts you for your breeches, do not repay his kindness by breaches of trust.
He cuts his cloth economically, and yet much of it goes to waist. ”

“ Yet the hill, as I say, is a thing that we never speak of. Instead of it, my tailor passes to the weather. Ordinary people always begin with this topic. Tailors, I notice, end with it. It is only broached after the suit is ordered, never before.
"Pleasant weather we are having," he says. It is never other, so I notice, with him. Perhaps the order of a suit itself is a little beam of sunshine. Then we move together toward the front of the store on the way to the outer door.
"Nothing to-day, I suppose," says my tailor, "in shirtings?" ”

“ This coat was probably a petticoat. It is curious, too, to find a tailor making gloves and stockings at any price. I think both buff gloves and stockings were of leather. Perhaps he charged thus broadly because it was “not in his line.” Work in leather was always well paid. We find tailors making leather breeches and leather drawers; the latter could not be the garments thus named to-day. Tailors became prosperous and well-to-do, perhaps because they worked in winter when other Virginia tradesfolk were idle; and they acquired large tracts of land. ”

“ All the implements used by the Tailor are so well known as to need no particular description; the sleeve-board is used to place in the sleeve of a coat while the seams are pressed with the heated iron or the goose. In the measure book the dimensions are written when measurement of a customer is made, and the French chalk marks the direction in which the cloth is cut to the pattern of the various shapes, which are afterwards sewn together to make complete garments. ”

“ Any garment resting on the floor would have been too soiled for a gentleman’s wear before it was donned at all.
I have discovered one thing about old-time tailors,—they were just as trying as their successors, and had as many tricks of trade. A writer in 1582 says, “If a tailor makes your gown too little, he covers his fault with a broad stomacher ”

“ To possess mechanical skill alone is not sufficient. A successful garment depends not only upon the dexterity with which the worker manipulates the actual tools of her craft, but upon all her faculties and her power of applying them. She must have a comprehension of the laws of beauty in dress, construction, ornament, color, selection, economy. The artisan knows the technical part only, and looks upon each dress—each piece of lace and velvet—as so much material to be snipped and cut and sewed, copying from the fashion plate, making gown after gown alike. ”

“ It is the tailor's aim to make the outside fit; the lining is merely an accessory; it is the dressmaker's aim to make the lining fit. Have your bone casings put in very long over the waist; let them be made from material on the bias; do not let them come higher than the top of the darts, or nearer the bottom than 1⁄2 an inch; let the bones be carefully prepared and firmly secured. In sewing the seams, full on the round ones a trifle, especially when they are joined to a hollow; put the collar on long in the gorge hollow, and keep the sleeve tight round the back scye. ”

“ They quizzed the cut and colour, proud of their own envelopes; and, to their cost, judged us by our clothes. They have since felt our arms. Your tailor is an important personage all the world over, but alas! he is too restricted in his commerce. He is confined to spots and spaces, that is, individually speaking,—universal is the race. It is quite curious to consider what free trade may do for him. The export and the import may quite change the appearances of all, men, women, and children. ”

“ The tailor is a great student of human nature. He takes the measure of every one of his customers. Of this you may surely speak. The tailor is full of pluck. I have seen him collar a man twice as big as himself, and he did it coolly and without choler.
The good tailor never slops over, though he puts in much time over slop work. The tailor cuts to order and orders to cut. ”

“ Should the American tailor try ever so hard to make a badly-fitting garment, his conscience, his taste, his everything, would rebel against doing such work as the English tailor considers quite good enough for anybody.
You can get at a fairly fashionable shop in London a suit of black or blue, frock coat, trowsers and vest, for five pounds, which looks very cheap to one who has been in the habit of paying sixty-five dollars for the same clothing in New York or Boston. ”

“ Some people complain of the tailor because he is generally behind time with their garments; but the tailor doesn’t care to sell clothes on time, and in fact he suits most of his customers.
Many mean things are quoted against the tailor, but he gets even by coating those who talk about him. No matter how he seems in society, a good tailor always seams when about his work. ”

“ Those, with all my servants, will do very well.’ I ventured to suggest that I was not likely to want any clothes made for three weeks. ‘Oh, but tailors are always of use. I remember the time a tiger fastened on my elephant’s trunk, and so nearly clawed me out of the howdah, and my tailor saved the elephant’s life by sewing up the wound.’ I see myself sitting on an elephant while the tailor is stitching at the trunk! ”

“ The demand and orders for these garments have, so far, been considerable in the leading houses, and a few hints are always seasonable, not only to those who make them for the highest fashionables, but especially to those who are located in smaller towns and who are not often called upon to make this style of garment. There are now many ladies who have a horse at their disposal, and whose chief enjoyment is in equestrian exercise, and it is quite necessary, not only for the tailor but the dressmaker, to know how a riding-habit should be cut and made. ”

“ A merchant tailor has in the same shop with himself one or more "bushelmen," who repair garments, and one cutter who cuts all the garments. Besides these, there are usually several "journeymen" tailors in his employ, who come to the shops for garments and make them up in their own homes, unless a "back- shop" is provided a room near by where the tailors work together, although on separate garments. ”

“ The average tailor has an unpleasant sense of humor. He allows you fifteen pockets, and then proceeds to fit your suit so closely that not a single one of them can be used. Unless you take the precaution of stuffing each pocket with cotton batting when he tries the suit on you, he will systematically take in all seams and buttons, in such a way that a post-card inserted in the breast-pocket would be sufficient wadding to throw the entire coat out of shape. ”

“ If you want to know how wrong, you have only to go into a tailor's place, Friend Reader—supposing you keep a tailor and not a bargain-counter—while some fat old boy with mutton-chops and a protuberant abdominal profile is raising the dickens because the poor tailor can't take the strain off the trouser-band and put it on the top buttons of the vest. Then you will learn that the shaping of collars and shoulders is a matter of supreme masculine concern, and that the hang of a trouser-leg is a thing on which the happiness of years may depend. ”

“ He becomes great in that which he regards as of all things greatest—dress. A young tailor may be known by the cut of his coat and the merits of his pantaloons, among all other workmen; and as even fine clothes are not enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also have fine manners; and not having such advantages of seeing polite society as his neighbour the barber, his gentlemanly manners are always less fine than grotesque. Hence more ridicule of tailors among working men than of any other class of mechanics. ”

“ With never a pause the thirty continue making shoes, and I wear a pair for one day and only by a chance wear them a second day. After I have cast off a pair of these shoes they are taken to the market and sold to some prince or nobleman for their full value. I have another thirty young men in my hire, each one a master tailor. With never a pause the thirty continue making coats, and I wear a coat for one day and only by a chance wear it for a second day. ”

“ Shooting coats that had seen better days, a dozen shabby overcoats-worn proudly through the hottest noons-raggety breeches and trousers made by some London tailor, queer baggy homemades of the same persuasion, or quite simply the square of cotton cloth arranged somewhat like a short tight skirt, or nothing at all as the man's taste ran. ”

“ The tailor has generally a good selection of them from which to choose, and they should be chosen for their lightness and warmth. Very pretty tweeds are now made from two colours of the natural wool, and are consequently preferable to dyed materials. All garments which can be made by a tailor should be so made. ”

“ But I had not been there many minutes when the tailor came to me, saying, “There [171] is one, a foreigner, in the shop, who desires to speak with thee. He hath an axe and a pair of sandals, which he thinks are thine, and the other woodcutters have directed him to thee; so come forth to receive them, and to thank him.” With this, he returned to the shop, leaving me pale with fear, for well I knew the meaning of this thing. While I was planning what to do—whether to go into the shop, or escape by some other way—the floor was rent asunder, and there rose from it the Efrite. ”

“ He whistled and sang so gaily that all the little boys who passed the shop on their way to school thought what a fine thing it was to be a tailor, and told one another that when they grew to be men they’d be tailors, too. ”