The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-08
THE MILLINERS' MUDDLE.
From the NJ Y. World,

A truly tragical announcement comes to us
from Paris. Contemporaneously with the
statement that the Emperor yearns to restore
constitutional government to France, and
that M. Olivier is the political head of the
nation, we have intelligence that the wife of
that minister has intruded into the imperial
prerogative of fashion, and has usurped the
function of debating to female France where
withal it shall be clothed. She has issued
notification that she will henceforth wear her
"corsage" high, and that she expects her
visitors to do the like.
Whether her visitors will fulfil her modest
expectation, and whether, if they do, they
will be able to persuade all Paris to secrete
its shoulders under the impenetrable veil of
sterner stuff than the transparent and Elusive
devices at present in vogue, ostensibly in
tended to conceal the upper dorsal and pecto-
raj conformation of the female figure, but
really resulting in mere device, so to speak,
to advertise mystery and invite specula-
ton" are altogether subordinate questions.
The appalling fact is that the empire of
fashion is no longer undisputed, and that
there is no longer any single fountain of honor
and of Honiton in which female devotees
can bathe and be immaculate. If the EN-
press makes stand for her authority, as she
could not, without dereliction of dignity, take
direct notice of the defiance of her office by
subject, she will be compelled to exhibit her
contempt of the regulations which that sub
iect has imposed by marked disregard of
it in an excessively decOltetee decoration of her
own imperial person. Hence will inevitably
arise two fierce factions, in the struggle of
which the whole female world will participate
The young the beautiful, the gay will become
Bonapartists, and "cut out" at once their
dresses and their rivals according to the pre-
cepts and the practice of their imperial
leader The ancient, the eruptive, the ema-
ciated, the weazened, and the withered will
clothe their thoraxes with thunder and pop
lin, and erect battlements of bombazine about
their ears.
The sympathies of the readers of this Jour-
nal will doubtless be with the mutineers in
this contest. 1t is easy for malice to asperse
the motives of Madame Olivier, and to sug-
gest that her declaration arose from personal
tenuity or personal aingularity. 1t is better
to believe that it is at vast personal sacrifice
that she has made this concession to conserv-
ative notions and complied with the plaintive
note of the proprieties, enjoining her
Glide, oh hide those hills of snow
Which thy frozen bosom bears"
But even supposing her aim to be selfish
she is in no worse case than any other re-
former. John Hampden did not revolt until
the ship-money came to be demanded from
him. Those eminent citizens of Boston who
unloaded British ship with such remark
able celebrity were actuated by their purely
personal preferences for free breakfast
table. And if the noble action of Madame
Olivier sprang from similarly sordid source,
it behooves us all to invoke blessings on the
blotches and prosperity to the pimples which
have contributed TO consummation so de-
sirable. We may be permitted to congratu-
late mankind that Madame Olivier, while she
shares the spirit Of independence with Smol-
lett, does not, like him, propose to follow it
prospect that by her exertions we may here
after be spared the spectacles we have been
heretofore occasionally compelled to contem-
plate, and which were only exhibited in con-
formity to the dictates of an irrational but
irresistible decree.