Then "mutton chops" and a moustache were the thing;
then only a moustache; now we have got back to the Romans and the clean
shave. But where is the absolute "good taste" in all this? Or take
trousers. If you had lived a hundred years ago and had dared to go about in
trousers instead of knee-breeches you would have been written down a vulgar
fellow. Even the great Duke of Wellington in 1814 was refused admittance to
Almack's because he presented himself in trousers. Now we relegate
knee-breeches to fancy dress balls and Court functions.
But sometimes the canons of good taste are astonishingly irrational. Who
was it who set Christendom wearing black, sad, hopeless black as the symbol
of mourning? The Roman ladies, who had never heard of the doctrine of the
Resurrection, clothed themselves in white for mourning. It is left for the
Christian world, which looks beyond the grave, to wear the habiliments of
despair. If I go to a funeral I am as conventional as anybody else, for I
have not the courage of a distinguished statesman whom I saw at his
brother's funeral wearing a blue overcoat, check trousers, and a grey
waistcoat, and carrying a green umbrella.
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