Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/318

280 angles was seen in company with a bonnet that was a gay garland of flowers. A vast cape that might have enshrouded the form of a Mater Dolorosa hung by the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood."

Of the purely æsthetic fads of Society were also the Pastoral Plays at Coombe Wood, and a very charming fad they must have been. There was one specially great occasion when Shakespeare's play, "As you like it," was given. The day was as hot as a June day can be, and every one drove down in open carriages and hansoms, and in the evening returned in the same way. It was the very Derby Day of æstheticism. "To every character in the play was given a perfectly appropriate attire, and the brown and green of their costumes harmonised exquisitely with the ferns through which they wandered, the trees beneath which they lay, and the lovely English landscape that surrounded the Pastoral Players." It must have been a proud day for the Lady Archibald Campbell, who gave this fête, and for E. W. Godwin, who directed its giving. Fairer to see than the mummers were the guests who sat and watched from under the dark and griddled elms. The women wore jerseys and tied-back skirts. Zulu hats shaded their faces from the sun. Bangles shimmered upon their wrists. And the men of fashion wore light frock-coats and light top-hats with black bands, and the aesthetes were in velveteen, carrying lilies.

Nor does it seem that Society went entirely to the æsthetes for instruction in life. There was actively proceeding, at this time, an effort to raise the average of aristocratic loveliness, quite independently of the aesthetes. The Professional Beauty was, more strictly, a Philistine production. What exactly this term, Professional Beauty, signifies, how any woman gained a right to it, we do not and may never know. It is certain, however, that