Mother's darling: the Fauntleroy suit

During their heyday, sailor outfits found favor with both adults and children. Another juvenile style introduced in the late nine­teenth century, though admired by parents, was detested by nearly all the little boys who were forced into it. This, of course, was the Fauntleroy suit, popularized (but not invented) by Frances Hodgson Burnett and pictured by Reginald Birch in the early editions other Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886). In its original form, it consisted of a black or sapphire-blue velvet jacket and knickers worn over a white blouse with a large lace Vandyke collar. It was completed by a colored silk sash, silk stockings buckled pumps, an oversize velvet beret and long curls. The original inspiration of the costume seems to have been Gains­borough's portrait of Master Jonathan Buttall, known familiarly as The Blue Boy; its meaning for fond parents was romantic and aristocratic, recalling pictures of Charles II as a child and Dumas's Three Musketeers. It is perhaps no coincidence that this costume appeared at a time when the dress-up clothes of adult men were uniformly drab, formal and solemn.

Cedric, the eponymous hero of Little Lord Fauntleroy, is by no means a "mollycoddle" - the contemporary phrase for a boy too well coddled by mollies, or women. He can hold his own or better against other boys his age, and excels at sports. His outfit,however, soon became the quintessential sign of the sissy. Gen­erations of boys in both England and America grew up with awful memories of having been forced to wear it, and authors of children's books used it as a sign that a character was at best a weak nincompoop and at worst a sniveling sneak.

The ill repute of the Fauntleroy suit may in part have been due to its resemblance to contemporary aesthetic dress for men. This costume, which differed from Cedric's by including a flowing tie, was adopted most prominently by Oscar Wilde. In 1882, he toured America in black velvet knickerbockers and curls, speaking about poetry to large and adoring audiences - and possibly influencing Mrs. Burnett's choice of outfit both for her own two sons and for Cedric. Wilde's subsequent trial and imprisonment cast a shadow not only over the role of the aesthete, but also over the costume he had worn, which was henceforth obscurely contaminated. Among the final results of his disgrace, therefore, we should perhaps count not only a generation of tiresomely manly and aesthetically timid writers, but also the release of thousands of little boys from their scratchy lace collars and tight velvet suits.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24