Sketcher.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1193, 4 November 1882, Page 4 (Supplement)

Sketcher.

THE GOTHAM COACHING CLUB. 11 FLANEUR ” TELLS OF ITS PARADE, AND OF ANGLOMANIA IN GENERAL. The Coaching Club has paraded. The great event wound up the winter season, and its social ally, the Jockey Club, opened the spring campaign at Jerome Park last Tuesday, so that the season of heavy dinners, state receptions, annoying teas, elaborate balls, theatre and opera parties, and extravagant weddings, was transformed into a season of racing, fox-hunting, polo-playing, yachting, riding, lunching, hopping and flirting, with great eclat. There has never been a more brilliant coaching parade than Saturday’s, though only ten coaches drew up in line. The absent ones belonged to members now in Europe> or to families in mourning. The principal reason of the success of this year’s parade was the care shown in selecting the guests, not one of them being below the highest social line. The costumes of the ladies were gorgeous, and the bold contrasts in colors made the coach-tops look brilliant in the extreme. Mrs. Wittier, Miss Oelrichs, Miss Townsend, Miss Ledyard, Mrs. Bronson, Mrs. Goelet, and Miss Marie, all wore costumes made by Worth for the occasion. The man milliner has many customers in New York, and his creations are followed here by fashionable ladies, as far as full-dress occasions are concerned, but other costumes come from England. In the coaching dresses, he seems to have given his imagination full play, for the departures were, in many cases, startling. The members of the club wore the regulation uniform, of light trousers, darkgreen driving coats with gold buttons, and tall white hats, and the other gentlemen were dressed in frock coats of light material, untanned leather shoes, and white hats. All along Fifth Avenue the houses were festooned with bunting, and the Brunswick Hotel was decorated

with scarlet satin with gilt fringe. At five o’clock, the guard of Colonel Jay’s coach blew a ringing blast, and the line went bowling up toward the park at a spanking pace. The beautiful blooded horses, the glistening drags, and their brightly-coloured freight, made a very pretty picture, and the air resounded with the musical blasts of the horns. While they were skimming through the park, the crowd of peo{fle who had congregated in Madison Square to see them off, moved slowly about, • awaiting their return, staring idly at one another. There were at least three thousand there, nearly all of them with social pretensions or aspirations. It was a curious throng. I was born, and have lived in New York all . my life, and I have seen a great many New York crowds, but the crowed of Coaching Day this year, was extraordinary, and in no way similar to the crowd of a year ago. The most striking thing, was the result of the Anglomania—the craze for the English. It was not only striking in itself, but was especially noteworthy, considering the fact that it has sprung up within a year, and has already secured so firm a hold on New Yorkers. The girls and women all wore English walkingdresses, with the close-fitting jerseys that Mrs. Langtry made so popular in London. I am a long way from a moralist, but I must say that I was shocked in several instances at these jerseys. Two girls of rather plump build, were followed and stared at openly by the men, but they didn’t seem to mind it at all. Their jerseys looked as though they were made of rubber, so close did they fit the form. They buttoned up in the back, and the front view left about as little to the imagination as it would be reasonable to expect if a piece of fine satin were drawn so closely about a nude figure, that a wrinkle, when the body bent one way or another, showed as though uncovered. The two girls were unquestionably of good social standing, and entirely respectable, but I couldn’t help wondering at the effect they would have created if they had walked down Broadway in their eel-skin jerseys, two or three years ago. There were hundreds of other jerseys, cut almost as close, and the girls, and in many instances their married sisters wore the hair in a knot at the back of the neck, with a bushy friz in front, the whole surmounted by a little English hat. The skirts were short, and the shoes of the English pattern, with heavy soles. It is worth noting, too, that the fashionable walk has suffered a complete transformation, and the girl who walks new, as the girl walked a year ago, places herself without the pale of society, and falls beneath the notice of even the lowest circles of fashion. Formerly she carried her arms akimbo—the further out she could thrust her elbows the better—clasped her hands about waist high, bent the shoulders over so as to make the chest narrow, and walked with a sinuous, undulating sort of step, moving her elbows and shoulders in unison with her knees, and holding her chin well forward. It was elegantly known as the “ kangaroo slump.” Now she is no more the creature that she was, than the kangaroo is a British dragoon. The fashionable girl —and indeed nearly all New York girls, so quickly does custom spread—-to-day throws her head back and her toes forward. To say that she walks like an English grenadier would be rather severe on that functionary, as he is simply erect, and holds his arms at his side, while the New York girl of to-day throws her head and shoulders so far back, that her arms, which she allows to hang straight, fall behind the profile of her 'back. This naturally throws her—that portion of her—well, I’m nothing if not modest, so I’ll say it throws her hips very far forward, and, jf anything, enhances the effect of her jersey. The appearance of a fashionable girl, walking with a fashionable strut, looking as though she had been melted, and run into a fashionable jersey, is at least startling. If she looks English, she is satisfied ; if she is mistaken for an Englishwoman, she is enchanted. I have before written of the costume of the stylish young man, how tight his trousers are, how pointed he wears his shoes, and what extremities he reaches in hats. Coaching Day brought him out in his latest importation in head-gear. It is, of course, English. The hat is white, and the same form as a beaver, except that it is so low as to appear sat upon. It is bell-crowned, and the rim curls half-way to the top. It is grotesque, but English. Canes made like shepherds’ crooks are the rage. The crooks bend around fully six inches, and are silver. The majority of men in Madison-square that day did not wear the single glass, but a great many did, and the score who could not hold it in the eye had it dangling on the coat front. They moved about, staring at each other, and bowing to friends. It is the proper thing to assume a glassy, not to say ghastly, smile when meeting a friend. The girl does not bow at all (how could she with her jersey on ?) but simply smiles. The man both bows and doffs his hat. His new way of removing the hat is a study. He first bows, with the aforementioned glassy smile, then straightens again, seizes the hat-rim directly over his nose, lifts it clear of his head—the hat, notthe nose—and with one motion sweeps it downward nearly to the knee, and then brings it up again, and drops it on his head. Meanwhile the maiden smiles. No wonder. A hat and jersey greeted each other while I was wedged in a corner formed by a tree and a bench. I was talking with Park Commissioner Lain, and we instinctively stopped and listened to the two for a moment. “ Oy soy,” said he—which is supposed to be the way Englishmen would pronounce “ I say.” Then he smiled, and continued with, a vacant stare: “It’s quoit a tidy sort of a day, hoy? Chawming air for dwiving, don’t chew know, and quite as balmy as Epsom meeting a year ago. Were you there?” The girl looked up without a remnant of the free and fearless expression we are so fond of ascribing to American women, but with a largeeyed and idiotic stare, and said, with a childlike stupidity that I must say I have often noticed in English girls: “No ; I was indeed not there lawst year. This is a very proper day, though, I’m sure, don’t chew think? And I’m so satisfied with everything; it really puts one in mind of the other side. You’ll really be up Chewsday, now, for it would be putting it upon mammaw dreadfully if you disappoint her again. Good-doy.” “ Good-doy. Oy will—aw—be up Chewsday, without doubt.” Then he went through the laborious process of removing his hat, and they drifted apart. “ That’s English, commissioner,” I said, sadly.

“ Yes,” snorted the old man, “ stable-boy and scullery-maid English. Do you know who they are ?” “ I know that he sold me cigars in Park & Tilford’s five years ago, when he impressed me as a very obsequious down-easter, but I haven’t seen him for somo years. His face always attracted me on account of stupidity.” “ I don’t know him; but 118*3 probably running the ribbon-counter of some dry-goods house. Possibly he has been sent to Liverpool for two weeks to deliver some letters. But the girl. She’s the daughter of an old South Street cotton dealer, and I’ve known her for years. I’ll wager my seat that she’s never been across the pond in her life. Epsom I bah I”

Then we all rushed pell-mell across the park to see the coaches come in. They swept down charmingly, with everything in running order. It was an unfortunate fashion that decreed that coach-horses this year must not be of a color. Last year nearly every coach ran four blooded bays, and a prettier four-in-hand than that of pure bays can not be found. This year, however, the greatest diversity was voted the best form, because Lord Dunmore closed the season in London with a variegated four, and Mr. Roosevelt’s composition of chestnut and roan leaders, and gray and bay wheelers, received the greatest applause. The number of married ladies on the coaches would lead a stranger to wonder where all the society belles are. The fact is, there are very few girls in society who are at all popular. The palm is carried off by the young married ladies, who virtually control the social destinies of the metropolis. A coterie of more beautiful women can not be found in any

other city in the world. After their drive the club sat down to a magnificent dinner at the Brunswick. The table was over seventy feet long, the whole middle surface being a minature Jerome Park, with race-course, water-jumps, grand-stand, club-house, and a model coach, with four little five-inch horses speeding down the roadway, with a six-inch President Jay on the box seat. The little park was made with real grass, and was girted by a ten-inch band of full-blown roses.

The spring festivities were ushered in by ten thousand people—the upper ten thousand —on Tuesday, at Jerome Park. The day determines the toilets of the summer in advance, and fixes the fashions irrevocably. It was a very showy crowd—a gaudy crowd—for the costumes were in many cases too loud, and the actress is never too notorious and, the woman never too fast to be denied admission at the gates of Jerome Park. I suppose objectionable women will always visit racecourses, where their more desirable sisters assemble, but it is rather annoying to have them push themselves forward as vigorously as they did at Jerome Park. And their costumes were in many cases astounding. They know apparently what society women will wear, or at least they divine what will be worn, and get up in the most advanced styles themselves in rivalry. I saw a curious thing on the drive to the races. Mr. Blank’s coach (he does not belong to the club) was rolling along easily with a party of brightly dressed ladies and gentlemen on top, the owner handling the reins like a veteran whip, but there was evidently something the matter, for the ladies held their heads high in the air, and their escorts scowled palpably. The horses were a little wet, as though from hard driving, and the look of annoyance on the faces of the party increased every minute as people passed them with knowing smiles or grins of coarse derision. On the other side of the coach, and running within two feet of its fore-wheels, was another vehicle drawn by a couple of thin and rawboned trotters. In the little sat a man and woman, and it was the fact of their proximity to the aristocratic drag that caused the sensation. Not on the man’s account, though he is well known as an ex-convict, and the keeper *of a faro bank that has been “ pulled ” half a dozen times, but because the woman, by a mysterious and dismal fate, was dressed precisely like the lady who sat on the box-seat of the coach, even to the parasol. They were about the same build, both pronounced blondes, and wore exactly the same shade of blue, with huge coaching hats, and brightly painted parasols. I never saw two women look more alike,, except, of course, the ex-con-vict’s companion showed the signs of a terrible life. He sat in the trim little waggon with a cigar-butt in his mouth, and an impudent leer on his face, while she sat at his side with her head thrown back, and a pair of brazen blue eyes riveted on the face of the lady who sat nervous and ill at ease above her on the coach. The likeness between the women was striking. It set me thinking. I wonder if there was anything in it ? Flaneur (in the