I heard my women folks the other day mention that the red or striped petticoat was beginnin’ to come into fashion again. I don’t bother myself much about women’s gear, but really this red petticoat has quite a little local and general history connected with it.
The red Petticoat was originally a Russian institution, worn by Russian peasant girls or female serfs. The French fisher-girls also used to wear it, and it got to be popular in stormy times among the fish-women and other women of the lower class in Paris. So both despotism and democracy had the red petticoat in common.
After a while the red Petticoat got adopted as an article of dress by some eccentric ladies of rank, and of course all the rest of the female world followed suit, and the red petticoat made its first appearance in tip-top society.
From London it found its way to New York and Washington. A lLady Gore Ousley, who was herself I think, an American lady married to a foreign nobleman, is said to have been the first lady to wear it in America, as an article of fashionable apparel.
It was made of wool, but it wasn’t, properly speaking, a red petticoat but a red and black one, red ground with black stripes, makin’ it quite striking and picturesque. As a sportin’ man once called it, “it was a rouge et noir petticoat.”
It took the eye, and it took the town. It was just as much a rage for a while as “banged hair” has been. Every other woman had a red petticoat, and would contrive to let every man she met know that she had one on. The ladies at Washington adopted the fashion, and from the District of Columbia it spread all over the Southern country.
Everybody didn’t like it though; one minister pitched into it from the pulpit and said it reminded him of “the scarlet woman of Babylon.” And Dr. Charles Mackay, who was then travelin’ in this country, wrote a song against it, in which he said that:
‘She
With the red, the flauntin’ petticoat
Is not the girl for me.’
One of the Astor family, Charles Astor Bristed, a clever writer, took up the cudgel in defense of the red petticoat, and “Prince” John Van Buren also took its part. So it didn’t lack for distinguished male champions.
At that time it was held that General Fremont wore his hair parted in the middle, and as Fremont was popular then, a lot of young swells parted their “capillary coverin’”–as Frank Brower used to call it–in the middle. One of these hair-parted-in-the-middle chaps one day said somethin’ against the red petticoat, and then the red petticoat people went for the hair-parted-in-the-middle people, and between the two there was quite a lively war of words, in which I think the hair-parted-in-the-middle people got the worst of it.
The red petticoat is associated with a startlin’ occurrence. One day at a public dinner the subject of the R. P. came up, and a number of ladies and gentlemen got discussin’ it. Among the party at the dinner was Mr. James G. Ring, a well-known New York lawyer. He listened to the R. P. chat awhile, and then took a part in the discussion, rather favoring the R. P. While talkin’, Ring was fixin’ some lobster salad for a lady sittin’ next to him. All of a sudden in a twinklin’, just as he handed the lady the lobster, the lawyer fell forward on the table dead–stone dead.
A bullet through his heart couldn’t have killed him swifter or surer. He died without a groan. He looked the picture of health, too, was a handsome man, and only a little over forty years of age.
There was, of course, great excitement at the table, and the dinner was ended at once. A doctor made an examination and pronounced his disease paralysis of the heart. It had nothin’ to do with red petticoats, of course, but somehow it was noticed that from that time the rage for the red petticoat declined.
Just before the red Petticoat had come into fashion there had been a great deal of “financial depression” in New York, which made things look blue awhile. For some time the fashionable women of the metropolis had to “curtail their expenses,” which all fashionable women hate doin’. But at last a smart lady conceived the idea–the very bright idea–of turnin’ the very panic into pleasure and havin’ fun out of financial ruin. The way this clever lady managed to do this was very simple.
She gave what she announced as “a poverty party,” and invited about five hundred people, who all came to see the novelty, of course.
Well, the hostess wore her best dress and her family diamonds. There was no “poverty” about her, but all the appointments of the “party” were on a scale of “poverty.” Instead of a band of Music there was only one performer on the piano; instead of flowers and decorations in the rooms everythin’ was unadorned; and when it came time for supper, instead of having a splendid “spread” there was only cakes and lemonade. The lemonade itself was weak, and there was no “stick” in it. It was a “poverty party” truly, and its very novelty tickled the guests, who enjoyed it heartily.
For a while these “poverty parties” were very popular, especially with the husbands and fathers of the ladies who gave the parties, as they combined novelty and economy, two things not often found together in New York. But soon the sensation wore off, and poverty and poverty parties were alike consigned to forgetfulness.
About the time of the poverty party there were several big social scandals in New York which kept Mrs. Grundy in food for gossip for six months. There was a lady who was the wife of a New Orleans druggist, and who aspired to be the belle of the United States. She had very fine eyes, and a very small waist, which was “tight-laced” still smaller. She used to boast that it wouldn’t require an arm to go round her waist–a hand would answer.
She likewise posted that she had a different dress for every day in the month, and two dresses for the Sundays. She kept quite an extensive establishment, and spent her husband’s money faster than he could make it. She dashed about the country, travelin’ from New York to Saratoga and Newport, and was very seldom, if ever, seen with her husband.
But she had several lovers, and one of ‘em was a New York swell belongin’ to a big family. His name got to be constantly mixed with hers, they were seen constantly together, and one day the husband made a public matter of the whole affair, and published a very spicy card about it, showin’ up the New York lovers completely. Public sympathy was with the injured husband, and the swell and the lady were obliged by public opinion to subside, the lady finally leavin’ New York and sinkin’ into obscurity.
Another “celebrated case” just then was the trouble between the handsome Mrs. Woodman and her husband, in which young Furniss, a New York swell, and others, were indirectly connected.
A third affair was a very spicy encounter between a lah-de-dah sort of young chap and the “leadin’ lady,” or principal singer of the choir of a fashionable church. The lah-de-dah chap accused the lady of goin’ behind the organ and bein’ made love to by the leadin’ tenor of the troupe–I mean the choir. The lady confessed to disappearin’ behind the organ durin’ every sermon, regular, but said she did so to get a chance to get asleep, which wasn’t very complimentary to the minister’s eloquence.
Well, one day the lah-de-dah chap, who had been circulatin’ all these reports, happened to be up in the choir loft, he bein’ a friend of the organist, who himself had a grudge against the tenor for cuttin’ him out of the good graces of the lady, and who was therefore satisfied to get even with his favored rival, even at the lady’s expense, and through the agency of such a mean-spirited cuss as the lah-de-dah chap.
The lady happened to see her traducer sittin’ there by the organ, and she couldn’t endure it. Church as it was, the service goin’ on, the indignant leadin’ woman, the infuriated prima donna rushed to the lah-de-dah chap and seized him by the hair of his head and pulled him along.
Before anybody could interpost to interfere, the lady had hurled the lah-de-dah chap out of the choir loft, down the back stairs, and then, as soon as she got out of the hearin’ of the congregation, she pulled out a rawhide and literally whipped him out into the street, bein’ about the only case I ever remember hearin’ of in which a man was flogged out of church.
About the time of which I’m writin’ in this chapter New York was also kept in a flutter by a young man by the name of McCarthy, with three handles to it, his full name, which the owner was very fond of usin’, being William Fitzcharles Eustace McCarthy.
McCarthy was a rather handsome man, a splendid talker and with inexhaustible impudence. Naturally enough, therefore, he got along well with women–too well, in fact, for the women, for he brought dozens of ‘em to grief, includin’ a most worthy wife.
McCarthy was mixed up in the Cuban filibuster business as a spy and go-between, in the pay of the United States Government. He managed to get a hold of some letters written by the Cuban insurgents, or which he claimed were written by ‘em, and he contrived to get a prominent Government official to believe in him and his letters and to buy ‘em both.
With the money obtained by either betrayin’ the Cubans or foolin’ Uncle Sam, McCarthy went to London and kept a harem, pretendin’ to be interested pecuniarily and heavily in American wines. As long as his money lasted he splurged; then, afraid to try any of his fine points over in England, where the law was not so liberal as in “the land of the free and home of the the knave,” as a wag once sarcastically parodied it, he came to New York again, where he got implicated in a big diamond swindle, and finally he took himself to Paris.
After he got rid of his wife he met a fine young American lady, a relative of General Sickles, and made love to her, finally elopin’ with her.
