The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-21
ABOUT A PLEA FOR FEMALE ExTRAv-
AGANCE.

Mademoiselle de Gentelles is president of
society in France called "The Christian
Mothers" She has written q book against
female luxury in Dress And it is perfectly
natural that she, as head of the above named
society, should have done SO, supposing her
to possess fair authorial talent, since nothing
could well be more inimical to Christian or
any sort of decent motherhood than the pas
sionate devotion to dress and personal dis
play which this book reprobates and aims to
reform. Pope Plus the Ninth, who knows
the snares and pitfalls of the world with the
penetration peculiar to men who commence
their sacred vocation by renouncing it, writes
letter to Mademoiselle de Gentelles praising
her book, adjuring her to persevere in the
good work of curing women of their habits
of extravaganza, and delivering quite a lee
ture on the grave and far-reaching evils
which flow from this species of dissipation
in time and money. This informal
allocution of the pope is followed
up by Bishop Coke, of western New York,
with pastoral letter on the general subject
of costly and luxurious living. The state
ments of the bishop would be sensational if
they were not supported by undisputed sta
tistics. His positions are, briefly repeated
that in all the centers of civilization there is a
marked diminution in the marriage rate
attended by corresponding increase of pros
titution; that, along with this accelerated
reinforcement of the ranks of unchaste cell
bacy, there is a constant falling off in the
number of births within the sphere of we'd
lock, falling off only too often assisted by
ante-natal infanticide; and that all these
coincident and correlated facts have their
solution in a common cause-a growing pas
sion for sumptuous, voluptuous and expensive
modes of life, in which the matrimonial
estate is more and more disrelished as
species of imprisonment and servitude,. and
children are more and more Stunned as bur-
dens and distractions incompatible with the
liberal cultivation of personal graces and en-
joyments.
We have no doubt that many readers were
disposed to look upon remarks which have
appeared heretofore in these columns on the
same subject and of like tenor to the view
indicated above, as the product of a sensa-
tional imagination confounding conjectural
possibilities with present realities of social
vices and distempers. But when pope and
prelate solemnly bear witness to the existence
and rapid growth of the comprehensive and
frightful evil in question, surely the hour
is come for the public at large as well as pub
Lie journalists to recognize the presence of
this evil and to inquire how it may be
remedied.
Now, the ststep in discussing the remedy,
as far as women are concerned, is to get at
the cause of that luxury and gaud and extrava-
gance of dress which is admitted to be one,
if not the chief of the conditions precedent
and concomitant of the unnatural and ominous
state of things referred to. We have seen it
stoutly denied that the responsibility for
abuse of dress among women lies with that
sex. A lady of Baltimore, for example,
spurred into print by the pope's structure,
defends herself and her fashionable sister,
hood In long, sprightly letter addressed to
one OF the journals of that city. She says /:
81 don't deny that the pope is right in what
he says about the time that is taken up in
dressing, and shopping and in visiting peo-
pie you don't care one straw for, nor they for
you-which is the stupidest thing in the
world. But whose fault is it I? The pope and
everybody else-that is, al the men-it is a
great misfortune that the lions are not pain
ters-talk as if it were all the fault of the wo-
men, and that the remedy is IN our hands