Queen Marie of România

[One of the traditions of the Rumanian Court--established by Queen Elizabeth, who wrote under the pen name 'Carmen Sylva'--is the literary queen. The tradition is carried on by Queen Marie, daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, who might, had she so desired, now be Queen of England. Her present article in the Neue Freie Presse is being widely copied in Central Europe. A Prague newspaper reproduced it the day after it was published in Vienna.]

Feminine fashions have played a great part in the world from time immemorial, ever since the day when Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden--at least according to Mark Twain, who, in his series of Extracts from Adam's Diary, makes the first man observe in a tone of protest that his clothes 'are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes,' according to Eve.

I suspect that Eve was right, but chic and comfortable--and here I must agree with Adam--have not always been one and the same thing.

Clothes have played their part in my life, just as they have in the lives of all women. I have even been described as one of the best-dressed women of my time, though I have never striven very keenly to follow the mode, and though I have rebelled many a time against the tyranny of fashion when I happened to find it unbecoming or uncomfortable.

Like every other girl, I was tremendously excited over my first ball-gown, and on my wedding day--I was married at seventeen--I did my best to look as pretty as I possibly could. Later on, when I was to be crowned, I wanted even my crown becoming, and as it was being specially made for me out of the gold of my country, I myself selected the shape that I preferred. Once a lady of the older generation scolded me because I wanted to look pretty when I was in deep mourning.

Since the days of the bustle, which I wore as a very little girl and of which I was ridiculously proud, I have lived through every kind of fashion. I have worn bell skirts and leg-of-mutton sleeves. I have stumbled over gowns of ridiculous length which flowed upon the floor like waves. I have protested against skirts that reached only to my knees. Sometimes I have worn my waistline under my arms, and again I have had to accustom myself to the modern waistline, of which a gentleman once said, 'I don't understand why modern women like to sit on their waists.' And likewise I have pulled in my waist or let it out according to the whim of fashion. To-day, God be praised, we need not lace until we can no longer breathe--and that at least is an improvement.

One thing is certain--the eyes accustom themselves with astonishing speed to whatever fashion happens to be en vogue at any particular moment. I cannot, indeed, pretend that modern fashions especially appeal to me, for only a few of them have any real charm, but all unsuspecting of this fact, we bestow upon the fashions of yester-year no more than a shrug.

I at least am past the age where I feel 'dressed' in a short and shapeless frock that comes to my knees and is so narrow I can hardly get into it or out of it, and in which it is impossible even to walk through a room unhampered. I have always avoided the hobble skirt, for to a queen or a princess it is of the greatest importance that nothing shall interfere with the freedom of her movements. One must be able to get out of a carriage with dignity, and it is extremely important to be able to walk easily across a room in which everyone is looking at you and making way for you. One must not stumble or trip like a Japanese girl in gala attire. Japanese girls seldom have large rooms to cross, whereas I, as a sportswoman, like to be able to jump across a ditch or climb a hill, or take strides as big as I like, without coming to grief because the cut of my skirt happens to be senseless.

To-day, it seems to me, the tendency everywhere is to do away so far as possible with all distinctions between the sexes. There is much to be said, I suppose, both for and against this tendency, but it would take me too far afield were I to dwell upon such a theme--though I am perfectly willing to admit that I have very definite views.

Modern feminine fashions offer an example of this tendency. I might almost say that the women of to-day want an unjustifiably large share in everything. They want the privileges of womanhood and the satisfaction that they owe to the mere fact of being women, meantime assuming masculine habits and bearing, plus a masculine interest in sport--all of which they express, as far as possible, in their dress. They cut their hair, although there was a time when they thought it their most precious posession; and I cannot help thinking that the time will come when many a woman will regret having sacrificed to a transitory fashion her 'crowning glory,' which she cannot recover in a day.

My youngest daughter wore bobbed hair as a child. It was very becoming, and as no one tried to force it to curl, it was exceedingly comfortable; but as she grew up and began to notice things, my little girl asked permission to let her hair grow. At first, like every mother, I was tempted to protest against anything that might threaten the childlike appearance of my darling, but the little girl used an argument whose force there was no denying: 'But Mother, I can cut off my hair any time, in five minutes, while it will take a year or more for it to grow. Just suppose "he" came along in the meantime and didn't like bobbed hair!'

There is no disputing that her idea had a certain force of its own.

Modern girls, however, have gone beyond simple bobbing, and many of them seem to feel that only the so-called 'shingle bob' is a sufficiently close imitation of a man's haircut; but I wonder sometimes how many men are really pleased by this fashion. What chances are there now to 'play with her soft golden locks?' Have they gone forever? I am inclined to think not.

I am not one of those who dislike the exaggeratedly slender and boyish figures of modern girls (it is so easy to admire what one does not have), and though I myself am of somewhat ampler proportions, I can only fancy that it must be glorious to have no weight whatever. But I suspect that it was less the men than the ladies themselves who introduced this exaggerated admiration for the extremely straight figure, instead of the rounded lines which from the time of the Greeks down--or is it up?--we have learned to regard as an element of true feminine beauty.

Sport, no doubt, has had a great deal to do with this, and it is quite true that the slender and pliant girl possesses an advantage over her rounder sister in polo, hockey, tennis, and the ultra-modern dances. Our ladies of yester-year, who had perhaps a little too much of everything, would cut a very poor figure riding astride in the modern fashion. Obviously the juste milieu ought to be the ideal in everything, but how rarely is it attained. I think that we have gone a step too far in the modern direction, and that
health--and, may I add, children--ought not to be sacrificed to an exaggerated curvelessness--if I may use the expression.

The automobile worked the first revolution in modern dress. We were compelled to wear smaller hats, dust-colored cloaks, shorter skirts, and all the rest of it. When carriages vanished the world lost the greater part of its elegance. The sense of distance was overcome; our distant neighbors were brought within reach; but the younger generation will never know what a magnificent sight Hyde Park used to be in the late afternoon, when the beautiful Queen Alexandra used to drive, smiling and bowing, through the long row of wonderfully turned-out victorias and barouches drawn by magnificent horses in dazzling harness such as only England knows. All the women were like flowers, as if resolved to be more beautiful than any other women in the world, and as if they were there only to give brilliance to the day.

These things belong to the past. Nowadays we rush along wrapped in veils and wearing goggles. It is true that we see more of the world, that we can get over more ground in twenty-four hours, than we used to, but we and our equipages are certainly far less pleasing to the eye.

Still, we must not waste our energies weeping for the past. I for my part am an enthusiastic motorist, and have learned to know my country as queens of former days could not; but since I love everything that surrounds itself with beauty, I must be allowed a sigh, thinking of things that once rejoiced our eyes and that we shall never see again.

Although, compared to the very young, I am of the older generation, I belong nevertheless to those who move with the times. I am no crabbed has-been. I admire the magnificent discoveries of our age. In many things, especially in the furnishings of our rooms and gardens and houses, we show better taste than our grandmothers, and yet I fear that with our all-too-numerous practical discoveries, we have by no means beautified the world.

With the automobile and all the innovations that accompanied it, a custom came in with which I am not in sympathy. I mean the way in which to-day all ladies, old or young, fat or thin, big or little, wear exactly the same things. In my humble opinion a woman should wear only what is becoming. Of course, I do not expect her to take to crinolines while her sisters are going about in narrow skirts, but I expect her to look into her mirror with the eyes of her neighbors and not to feel compelled to wear garments in no wise suited to her size, her figure, or her style.

We must, I fear, blame the democracy of our time, in which all articles are prepared by the hundreds and thousands, and in which the styles change every two months, so that people keeping step with the hasty tempo of fashion assume a kind of uniform which every woman dons because 'people are wearing it.' To my taste, evening dress has grown extremely unbecoming. The mania for short skirts is responsible for the grotesque fashion of stingy little evening-gowns that scarcely reach the knees, from which rags of every shape and form dangle in unexpected corners, forming a kind of substitute for the train, which serve only to entangle the feet or to be trampled on and torn by the first gentleman who pauses to say good evening. To my artistic eyes these fashions do not seem pretty, no matter if they are creations of the greatest and most famous modistes. They remain sins against line. Then, too, in such gowns women cannot move without clumsines, and as it is never easy to move gracefully, one's gown ought to be a help and not a hindrance. Evening dresses ought to be sharply distinguished from ordinary clothes, and why should flowing lines and pleasing folds be reserved for tea gowns? Perhaps the modern fashion for the dance is responsible for these never-ending short-skirted fashions; but in that case a still shorter frock, swaying like a flower as the girl who wears it dances, would be far, far more becoming than the tasteless tight skirt that hampers all free movement. I have always been surprised that people have clung so pitilessly through so many years to these terrible narrow styles. I should have thought that our athletic, sports-loving modern women would much prefer something that allows freer movement.

As for the mania of wearing almost nothing and of leaving nothing--or pretty nearly nothing--to the imagination, does this really represent an artistic advance upon the wide skirts and the crinolines in which ladies looked like flowers and moved with a grace which may be too feminine for our taste, but which at least produced a more agreeable effect than the perpetual crossed legs that you see in modern
restaurants--which, to put it mildly, make one long for days gone by?

It may be well to observe that I put this merely in the form of a question, for I have not the least intention to criticize or advise. As the French say, 'Je constate seulement.' And with that I say adieu.

The Living Age, 7 February 1925, pp. 297-300