ON THE TRAIL OF A CLEMENS DRESS
SUSAN W. GREENE
Copyright 2004
INTRODUCTION
Members of the Chemung County Historical Society of Elmira,
New York may not be aware that their Society “attic” harbors a grand stash of “old
clothes.” Fortunately realizing they were more than old clothes, a succession
of donors has passed many treasures on to the Society for the sake of future
viewers and, yes, scholars. Over the last couple of years I have worked
sporadically with Curator Amy Wilson to systematically review all of the
costume collection which is housed in the
WHOSE DRESS IS IT?
Of particular note is a garment which Amy and I spent some time examining: a stunning lilac afternoon or visiting dress of about 1883 shown here. (Figure 1) It took me on an unanticipated research adventure which I will share here to illustrate how an object like a garment might yield historical information.
This was an expensive dress which had been carefully preserved in pristine condition until 1968. At that time it was donated to the Society by Geraldine Quinlan, stating that it had been given to her by Ida Langdon shortly before her death four years earlier.
The 19th century Langdons were wealthy, prominent Elmirans, well-known even today if only because Charles Jervis Langdon’s sister, Olivia (“Livy”), married his friend, Sam Clemens, know to the world as Mark Twain. Ida Langdon, who gave the lilac dress to Ms. Quinlan, was Charles’ youngest daughter, helpfully named “Ida” after her mother. This story is complicated by the fact the Langdons liked to recycle favorite family names. From this point, the mother (Mrs. Charles Langdon) will be called “Ida” and her unmarried daughter who gave away the dress, “Miss Ida.” Charles’ and Livy’s mother (Ida’s mother-in-law) will be referred to as “Mrs. (Olivia Lewis) Langdon.” Livy was named after her.
A mystery arises from the fact that the donor could not recall whether Miss Ida had said the lilac dress had belonged to Ida or Olivia. If it should prove to be Mrs. Olivia Clemens’ dress, what a jewel of the collection it would be, especially since there are no other dresses of hers known to exist. Where does one begin an investigation?
DOCUMENTATION
The obvious place to start is to find out from someone who should know, the name of the original owner. Provenance — information about the garment and the wearer — is what makes the difference between a nice donation and a valuable one. Unfortunately the provenance for this fascinating garment is very shaky, as we have seen. Even if a specific provenance had been given, like many a family tradition or story, it could have proven incorrect anyway. The greater the claim to be made for this garment, the more iron-clad the provenance and supporting facts, or documentation have to be.
What next? Determining the date of the garment from its own evidence is in order. This is where knowledge of fashion and costume is critical. As we are all aware, fashion changes with the wind. Just as my brother-in-law can identify a car at sixty paces by its silhouette or by small details (or sounds!), one can identify style attributes in clothing — usually. As with cars, the way a garment is put together also reflects its period or age. To a great degree, technology influences style, so once you have looked at the various models, it is useful to conduct an examination under the hood, so to speak.
THE MODELS
Generally, the silhouette of the large bustled skirt with panniers (side- drapes) resembles some seen as early as 1872 or 1873, which increased in popularity through the early 80s. However, the lilac dress is narrow at the sides and front, and long seams in the front of the basque, or top, extend the fit smoothly over the abdomen. (Figure 2) Indeed, this dress embodies typical points of fashion of the early 80s as we may see in this comment from Peterson’s Magazine of June, 1882:
...dresses still cling closely at the front and sides. Small tournures or bustles are worn, to throw out the skirt slightly at the back; and no long dresses are worn on the street, or for walking, though many, for dressy occasions, are worn to just touch the ground. If these rules are followed, the skirt may be much or little trimmed. Panniers may or may not be worn. Sleeves may be tight to the arms, or a little puffed, though the latter fashion is not general. Bodices may be close fitting or gathered. Overskirts are still fashionable; and in fact, fancy rules fashion with a gentle, graceful sway.
UNDER THE HOOD
The first thing to ascertain is the maker; alas, there is no dressmaker’s label on the interior grosgrain waistband. Neat seam finishes indicate the hand of an expert seamstress but the dress could have been made anywhere.
The garment was assembled with a combination of machine stitching and hand finishing. The main fabric, a slightly greyed lilac silk satin, was combined with a dull magenta voided velvet of a bold, simplified rose design. (Figure 3) The velvet was used for the standing collar typical of the 1880s, as well as cuffs, buttons and rear flounce, and an apron-like overskirt parted at the front to reveal the underskirt. The velvet was also used for a removable neckpiece that suggests an informal but smartly tailored jacket-front with satin shawl collar. Aesthetically, this velvet accent is needed to balance out the velvet used elsewhere. There seems to be no point in making it removable unless the neck piece might have been deemed unnecessary for visiting when the wearer would be impressively enveloped in an ornamental — and probably heavy — cape or mantle. Butterick offered a pattern for a similar neck piece.
The basque, (Figure 4) fits the wearer tightly at the hips, due to the use of paired darts extending from the bust to the bottom of the basque. The seams and darts are boned; these bones did not shape the wearer’s torso; they were used to prevent the basque from riding up on the body and looking unkempt. Strain on the seams was minimal because the dressmaker carefully fitted the garment, like a slipcover, to the wearer in her corset. The basque front comes to a point over the abdomen, with wide rectangular tails in the back deflected into gently draped folds by shirring at the center. Descending from the bottom edge of the basque in front and at the sides are curved panels, deeply shirred along the top to form draped panniers — a consciously “historic” or “old-fashioned” look. Above each back hip a darkly sparkling rectangular buckle — another fashionable touch — connects a narrow extension of the pannier to each tail.
The sleeves convey a divergent fashion message, as we shall see below, because they are not the typical tight ones seen in most fashion plates. They are soft and loose, the fullness restrained with three widely-spaced bands of shirring. (Figure 4) Soft, ecru machine lace frills on cuffs, collar and neckpiece complete the look.
Heavy silk with stiff underlining endows the skirt with the requisite upholstered presence. (Figure 7) When drawn tightly, two pairs of tapes inside the skirt back cause it to fit closer to the legs in front while concentrating the back fullness behind. (This was not done with the lilac dress as shown here.) Box pleats provide neat fullness across the back while a wide shirred section shapes the upper front skirt, with another shirred band near the shins forming soft puffs above the hem flounce. Behind, a carefully arranged satin festoon emanates from under the basque tails, descending halfway down. (Figure 8) The hem is finished in back with a velvet band over a stiff pleated flounce; in front the flounce is manipulated into bow-like projections. The inside hem was fitted with a standard, replaceable, crisply pleated, lace-trimmed tarlatan flounce intended to protect the hem edge from soiling. (Figure 9)
OPTIONS
When compared with the styles offered by Butterick Patterns in 1882, we find that this dress has just about all the available options including the detachable neck piece, artistic sleeves, shirred poufs, polonaise, drapes, contrasting fabrics, lace trim, standing collar, ornaments, hem details and side drape. (Figures 5 and 6)
The dress appears to be in its original form. However, on one occasion around 1882, Livy is said to have taken a dress to her New York dressmaker for remodeling, and paid an astounding $350 to do so — an amount equal to her butler’s annual salary. Part of the expense was the purchase of additional materials. If this lilac dress was significantly restyled from an earlier garment, it was done expertly, and it would have had to have been a fairly old garment to obtain enough satin to supply yardage for large sleeves and skirt. Nevertheless, whether in an original or remodeled state, we may safely conclude that the style of the dress dates to the early 1880s. For reassuring contrast, we may look at one of Ida’s documented dresses dated 1870, in the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection. (Figures 10 -11)
Would the size of the dress offer any clues?
THE CHASSIS
This consideration provoked some quick hands-on research in the hope that there might be an easy answer. To see how tall its owner might have been, we put the dress on a mannequin and Amy, who is 5’ 4” tall, stood next to it for comparison. (Figure 12) Livy was about 5’8” tall. Indeed, the wearer, who would have worn 1-inch heels so that the hem cleared the floor a little, was rather tall as well as extremely slender. Certainly Livy’s height and build were a possible match for this dress. Ida had a startling 22” waist, as can be seen in these photographs of her dresses. If the waist size of the lilac dress should prove significantly different, Ida could be ruled out as the owner.
A specific comparison of the measurements of this dress with those of the well-documented 1880s examples belonging to Ida Langdon in the Cornell collection could settle the matter. Several Langdon garments were thoroughly measured and documented by Elsie Frost McMurry, Cornell University Professor Emerita, for her CD, Identification of American Dresses, 1780-1900.
Data from the CD yielded what seemed to be insignificant variations in waist measurements. Back length measurements were equally non-conclusive. There were no data useful in determining overall body size or height. Although it is possible to measure skirt length, the presence of a bustle or train makes a continuous full length measurement of garment length difficult, if not impossible to ascertain. The probability that skirt and bodice waistlines of two-piece garments may never have been perfectly aligned in wearing ensures an unreliable reading.
However, it became apparent that there might be a meaningful measurement of proportion to be derived from the data. Seemingly trivial differences in back measurements might be very significant factors in determining the height or general shape of different bodies.
When the center back measurement, from neck to waist, (Figure 13) is subtracted from the waist circumference, a new measurement is derived that usefully represents the apparent proportions of the wearer’s upper torso.
This “waist differential” ranges from 8.8 to 14.3 among all the 1880s dresses measured belonging to other ladies. The Langdon dresses have the smallest differentials ranging from 7.5 to 8.5 and one of 9 or 10 (another story). The so-called pansy dress (always assumed to have belonged to Ida) and the lilac dress have the smallest of all, 6.9 and 7.5; the back measurements, 15.9”and 16.3”, are distinctively longer than the others which range from 14.3” to 15.4.”
According to Dr. Susan Ashdown of Cornell University, who specializes in body measurements, an additional inch or more in the back measurement within a ten or twelve year span is not indicative of a growth spurt, but of a different spine. It is possible that a different dressmaker was satisfied with the longer measurement for the same spine, but the coincidence is tantalizing.
ENGINE SIZE
Thus, a significant, if subtle, relationship of proportions begins to convincingly distinguish both the lilac dress and the pansy dress from the others in McMurry’s study.
Recently, for the first time in recent memory, one of the other Langdon dresses and the pansy dress were mounted on identical mannequins side by side for a class. (Figure 14) This dramatically demonstrated that they, indeed, were made for different wearers.
The difference in height is distinctive. For a recent exhibit, the lilac dress and the pansy dress were mounted — not on identical mannequins — near each other for height comparisons. As expected, they appeared to fit the same tall, extremely slender woman. (Figure 15)
In the adjoining case stood another dress dating about 1885; both bodice and skirt are identified by a period tape label inked “Langdon.” (Figure 16) It makes a very good comparison with the lilac dress because it is very similarly styled of rich, chocolatey brown satin and voided velvet with a matching velvet mantle. Not only was this dress worn by a shorter person than the other two — it has a distinctly modern, cleanly elegant look rather than an assertively decorative presence. (Figures 17 and 18)
HOOD ORNAMENT
The lilac dress offers a potential clue in its shirred
sleeves, which are not often found in the mainstream fashion plates of the
period. The
Concurrently there was an older, but strong movement in support of “rational” or reform dress based in part upon replacing rigidly boned corsets with flexible ones to allow for a healthier, more naturally-formed body capable of moving freely. (Figure 19) This untrammeled form was much admired by the aesthetes because it was so obviously in harmony with classical Greek ideals as exemplified by the Venus de Milo. (Figure 20) In addition to being artistic, loose sleeves had the functional advantage of allowing the wearer to bend her elbows at will. It may be that the lilac sleeves embodied deliberate conformity with both ideals.
REFERENCES
Which of the two ladies was most likely to have favored this sort of aesthetic or reform style?
Ida would have been very aware of, and probably in tune with
these latest intellectual trends. In the 1860s, she had attended
Avant-garde taste did manifest itself in the Langdon
wardrobe around 1885-1895. The Cornell collection holds two thin
Designed in obvious emulation of traditional British farmers’ smocks, these garments would have nicely satisfied the expectations of an educated mother seeking to clothe her daughter healthily and artistically at once.
Even the colors, one a soft mossy green and the other a muted bronzy yellow, exemplify the “greenery-yallery” palette spoofed in the 1881 Gilbert & Sullivan lampoon of the aesthetic movement, Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride. (Figure 23) It’s not difficult to imagine the Langdons and Clemenses attending a performance and having a good laugh; we do know that Livy and Sam attended at least one performance of the Mikado.
Nevertheless, Ida’s social position was too exalted to withstand a complete rejection of that most basic of fashionable dictates, the corset (Figure 24), no matter how she felt about dress reform. Her tiny waist, the product of a lifelong commitment to tight lacing, was, in fact, the very antithesis of a natural, “healthy” waist. She may have embraced the Aesthetic and reform movements when convenient, but she did not leave evidence of making any real concessions to reform dress for herself. (Figure 25)
Livy was the daughter of parents both wealthy and enlightened. Jervis and Olivia Lewis Langdon were avid readers, and the habit of reading privately and aloud with other members of the family was well-established. Apart from her more predictable interests in maintaining an attractive home and busy social life, Mrs. Langdon also actively followed current events and politics. Women’s rights and women’s interests were respected and integral elements of the family philosophy. In fact, Livy was very well-read in ‘female’ and suffragist literature of the day and seriously considered joining activist ranks.
The Langdons were vital members of
their church community which they helped found as a declaration of ardent
commitment to the abolitionist cause, with Thomas Beecher Beecher
(of the famous
All their lives, the Langdons and Clemenses obtained health care from leading practitioners of hydropathy — in fact, they were supporters of and close friends with Rachel Gleason, who ran the Elmira Water Cure, one of many in the region. (Figure 26)
Because Livy endured several years of suffering with spinal tuberculosis, she had ample experience with the newest medical treatments whose protocols typically required loose clothing. Extant correspondence reveals one instance in which Livy specifically requested that her black and white wrapper be sent to her for her upcoming sitz bath; she also requested a new, pretty bathing costume for an impending visit to a water cure. (Figures 27 - 28)
Rev. Beecher and his wife, Julia, were also close family friends — Julia did go so far as to dispense with corsets, her long hair, and ladylike shoes (in favor of heavy ones). Mrs. Langdon, herself, even pursued dress reform to the extent that she and Livy wore loose clothing at least some of the time.
However, to many people, corsets represented more than mere
fashion nonsense. Mrs. Langdon’s sister was a teacher in the 1840s when ladies
were not considered to be appropriately employed as such. While visiting at
This was an alert, thinking, participating family. Livy married a distinctly common-sense writer of an iconoclastic turn of mind, who more or less readily embraced the Langdons’ open-minded philosophies. Livy knew first-hand what dress reform was all about, although she, like Ida, appears to have been tight-laced as a rule.
BACKGROUND CHECK
Mr. Langdon had deeded the family home to his wife years before his death in 1870. After that, Charles and Ida lived there with her until her death in 1890.
Now replaced by a strip mall, the Langdon mansion lives on, well-documented by interior and exterior photos revealing that little expense was spared in its fittings. The Historical Society owns a series of stereopticon images of the home as decorated by the French firm of Pottier and Stymus. Along with the likes of Christian Herter, Roux and Company, and L. Marcotte and Company, they were among the first in the long line of decorators serving the rich and famous. Bringing in interior decorators — a French firm, at that — was an avant-garde stroke, especially for the heart of the Southern Tier.
After the death of
Mrs. Langdon in 1890, Charles and Ida engaged the preeminent Louis Comfort Tiffany and
Associated Artists to redecorate the mansion. The Society has copies of photos
dating around 1895 from the Mark Twain Memorial archives in
For example, in the dining room we find major changes.
Overhead, the coved ceiling, previously ornamented with stenciling by Pottier and Stymus, is completely
transformed by the application of gilded plasterwork arabesques between
imitation beams — an amusing tribute to Medieval-inspired
truth-in-construction! (Figure 29) The stenciled walls are blanketed with a
dense pattern of gilt arabesques in relief, perhaps top-of-the-line Japanese
gilt leather wallpaper. Oriental carpets spread exotic charm across the floor
in place of the staid
On the mantel, an artistic arrangement replaces the traditional ornaments.
Looming above a tankard of mums, two Japanese porcelain chargers and bric-a-brac, are three monumental
In its niche the Renaissance-style sideboard presents a row of Imari plates behind a row of glassware, some of which looks like cut glass (a newly fashionable product). Colonial Revival ‘Queen Anne’ chairs with Art Nouveau arms replace Italianate ones. In the eye of this cultural storm reposes a modest bucolic touch: a small fern-filled bowl on the tapestry-draped table. No doubt influenced by family friend Harriet Beecher Stowe, who with her sister Catherine Beecher wrote a popular book of Martha-Stewartesque household tips, Livy and Ida enjoyed ferny centerpieces.
A goodly sum was spent but the Langdons didn’t attempt a clean sweep. It would be fascinating to evaluate this renovation for quality, source, currency and thoroughness, but that is another topic in itself.
In
Now restored with painstakingly researched authenticity, this dwelling clearly proclaims that the owners were, indeed, thoroughly modern and consummately artistic. Sam was pleased to trumpet the transcendent taste represented by their new house. At all levels, from structural features to travel souvenirs, we see evidence of international and historic taste. Medieval column and stained glass window play against Arts and Crafts tile, lily-emblazoned aesthetic wallpaper, ‘colonial’ fan-light, and Rococo woodwork. The ever-correct classic statue mingles its antiquity with Venetian bed, Scottish mantelpiece, Moorish screen, Turkish sofa and Japanese lantern. Even health reform concerns are addressed with porches, convenient bathrooms and a greenhouse in a commodious bay window.
The Aesthetic Movement prevailed in each home. Both Ida and Livy knew what was “in,” and made sure it showed.
UPHOLSTERY
Having established that both households were current, we must dig deeper to see if there are nuances of the lilac dress which indicate ownership. Since evidence of personal taste in attire could rule out one of the two ladies, we shall probe into matters of color, fabric and design.
Ida and Livy patronized the same
dressmakers in
The lilac voided velvet is very similar in scale and style to that used in Ida’s rich brown dress . The clean, almost Japanese designs of both probably looked trendy to beholders — no familair paisleys or fussy florals here. (Figure 30)
The August, 1882 issue of Peterson’s affirmed the fashion of this luxurious fabric, (Figure 31) but a lilac hue was not much appreciated:
Velvet-figured goods will also be extensively worn next season. In solid colors the ground will be a dead, rep-like fabric, and the velvet figure will be quite large…. …all the late fashionable colors: pale-blue, pink, and cream as well as in the darker hues, such as garnet, myrtle-green, marine-blue and chestnut brown.
A quick survey of Harper’s Bazar, Peterson’s, Arthur’s, Leslie’s and Godey’s magazines reveals that fashion consistently upheld the aesthetic palette throughout the late 1870s and early 1880s. During the early 1870s, coral, lavender, lilac, violet and mauve were named frequently, only to gradually sink into the background somewhere in the middle of the decade. The later palette steadfastly hovered around rich, dark hues: dark and medium blue, warm green — sometimes “grayed down” — along with cardinal red, scarlet, garnet, wine, maroon, plum and an occasional soft yellow. Brown, gray, ecru and cream were named very frequently; violet, lilac, peach and coral, were mentioned seldom — there was no orange, although copper color was beginning to be mentioned in the early 1880s. (Figure 32) For the young or lighthearted, sky blue, rose and pink were popular as ever, particularly for evening dress. Of course, black and white remained staple choices then, as now.
Ida knew how to dress not only at the top of fashion, but well. As McMurry recalls:
In 1937 when Jervis Langdon [Miss Ida’s brother] offered the
wardrobe to
The Cornell Collection contains 22 of Ida’s dresses dating from 1870 to 1910 whose distinctive hues evidence a natural leaning toward the Aesthetic palette before, during and after the ‘80s: slate blue, dark brown, mahogany, copper, garnet, dark red and gold, butter yellow, soft pink, a silvery yellow and cyclamen pink. The last one is black — for Sam’s funeral? She favored judiciously placed, rich embellishments of beads and embroideries. (Figure 33)
The colors used in her daughters’ mainstream-style clothes
are maroon, eggplant, celadon green, pink and ecru. Even Ida’s white dress,
known to the family as the “garden party dress,” was particularly stylish for
its lavish use of
Unfortunately, there remains no extant clothing identified as Livy’s to give comparable evidence of her preference for color in dress. Fortunately, the written word helps; we know she favored brown, too. More importantly, we have at least three references specifying lavender in her wardrobe.
From Isabella Hooker’s account, we do know that Livy wore lavender for the 1868 New Year’s day reception at Mrs.
While the she and her husband toured
At the end of her life, Livy requested that she be buried in a recently made lavender satin robe of flowing lines, beautifully trimmed with lace. In this distinctive attire she was indeed buried. There seems little reason to doubt that lavender satin, for whatever reason, signified the quintessence of Livy.
This was a confident young woman who married a man whose quirkiness and high humor would have sorely tested the mettle of a merely ordinary wife. Sam loved color; he made it clear to the world that he hated black attire and would have loved to be clothed in the colors of the rainbow. Livy was given to a certain amount of high humor, herself. She obviously was independent — she accompanied him on his 1895 lecture tour which must have struck strait-laced onlookers as little better than joining a theater troupe — no place for a lady.
On her passing, Sam specifically praised Livy’s lighthearted character and consistently upbeat disposition even amidst their period of great financial hardship. If we could look into her closet, clearly we should not be surprised to find in it clothing of self-assured, lighthearted color choices like lavender.
BELLS & WHISTLES
Ida’s dresses and the lilac one follow the trend for multiple layers, contrasted colors, textures and fabrics, and lavish trimmings seen in high-style, “artistic” wardrobes and even home interiors. To our eyes the architectural backsides, tablecloth draperies and floating ribbons seem a speck “over the top,” but like almost everyone else, Ida and her circle apparently found them to be aesthetically satisfying. (Figure 34)
However, a critical evaluation of the composition of Ida’s dresses, in particular, the brown one in Figure 17, reveals that Ida’s taste favored clarity of line and organization — a certain elegance — while the lilac dress seems a jumble of detail, every part puffed, pulled, puckered or pleated.
Figure 35 shows Livy attired in a dress similar to the lilac one, exhibiting a remarkable amount of fashion punch in the small area visible. We see a standing collar, a lace frill and fichu, and a pleated satin insert surrounded by contrasty voided velvet. She has opted for the newest sleeve style featuring a little extra fullness in the sleeve cap (very top) which Ida apparently disliked, for few of her dresses have that kind of sleeve. Livy obviously is quite small and tightly encased.
This tantalizing image is evidence that Livy’s taste might encompass things like busy lilac dresses, but it is still not enough to support a conclusion about ownership of such a garment. Normally she dressed plainly, and Sam had been known to offer pithy remarks about overdressed women. Interestingly, Livy’s severe coiffure and lack of jewelry suggests that the dress is worn more for making an impression than a fashion statement like the young lady in Figure 36. Sam proudly touted his “high aesthetic” home, and, it would seem, he liked having his spouse dressed in kind when on public view.
If this lilac dress was Livy’s, given the expense of the voided velvet, would she have owned two such dresses? Was price no object to a couple spending money lavishly because they had it to spend? Were two voided velvet dresses twice as good as one? Are such questions meaningful only to persons accustomed to budgetary constraints, like modern researchers?
OWNERSHIP
Disregarding evidence teased out from the garment itself, the circumstances of preservation might offer a clue. Ida had worn some ensembles but once, and much of her wardrobe had been saved. With the loss of her hearing toward the end of the century, she withdrew from regular social activity and its requisite displays of fashion bravura. Ida herself meticulously packed away all her beautiful clothes in custom-made boxes.
Charles died in 1916. Their youngest daughter, Miss Ida, had
received her master’s degree and doctorate from Cornell. After teaching at
The three ruefully concluded around 1937 that their family home had to be sold although it was actually demolished in 1939 to make room for a nondescript shopping mall. Faced with the need to empty the building and knowing Cornell had a new costume collection, Miss Ida and Jervis worked to donate their parents’ and their own childhood clothing to the (then) College of Home Economics.
But, some years before her death, Miss Ida gave Geraldine
Quinlan the lilac dress to use in
Her task of dismantling the house will be arduous but giving up these very personal relics has so much of an emotional quality — yet she seems almost grateful to us for taking all of the things as a compete unit.
In October of 1939, Miss Ida reported to Miss Blackmore that she had finally completed the “very distasteful performance” of having a sale in the house, and admitted she was keeping some things with which she could not bear to part, although she had no room for them in her home. Perhaps the lilac dress was one of those keepsakes.
Miss Ida also noted that Julia had been present while boxes
were being packed for sending to Cornell.
Observing that one of her favorite girlhood frocks was about to leave,
Julia identified it as hers and asked to keep it. That one did not make it to
Cornell, but its successor did. The first one, made in
Miss Ida had been unsure whether the Langdon clothes would
be of interest to Cornell. She hesitated to offer her father’s uniform which
she said could be given to the
If the lilac dress had belonged to Miss Ida’s mother (Ida), why was it not donated to Cornell with the other ones? Given her expressions of doubt about the appeal of the family wardrobe, had Miss Ida considered the lilac dress to be unworthy in some way, or had it been a cherished favorite, perhaps a memento of a special event?
If, instead, it was originally Livy’s dress, how did Miss Ida come to own it? Had Livy given or left it to brother Charles (Miss Ida’s father) — or did Livy give it directly to her niece, Miss Ida? Did the dress, one of a few cherished relics of his wife, come to rest in the Langdon attic after Sam died? One wonders how Miss Ida — adoring niece of Samuel Clemens, and an English literature professor who would be impressed by such things — could have retained so little of her historic sense that she would relegate an intact, imposing, eighty-year-old dress of Mrs. Samuel Clemens’ to a rough life of theatre duty.
Maybe it was neither Ida’s nor Livy’s dress. There is also the possibility that this was the elder Mrs. Langdon’s dress. Miss Ida could have told Ms. Quinlan the lilac dress had belonged to “Grandmother Olivia Langdon,” and Ms. Quinlan forgot the “Grandmother” part, retaining only a recollection of a Langdon connection and a possible “Olivia” association without remembering that Miss Ida’s grandmother was “Olivia.”
Maybe Miss Ida had kept one of her Grandmother Langdon’s dresses all those years. Among the more than two hundred items donated to Cornell, four have “Olivia Langdon” inked on them. One is a white cotton petticoat of about 1860 with an eyelet-embroidered front panel, to be worn under an elegant dressing gown whose parted skirt fronts revealed the decoration. The other is a white cotton dressing gown of the same date; the other two are mourning handkerchiefs obviously associated with Mr. Langdon’s death in 1870, after Livy became Mrs. Clemens.
There are also fans, mitts, handkerchiefs, gloves and many lacy morning caps of the sort favored by elderly ladies. (Figure 38) Along with a lilac-sprigged summer dress these were identified as belonging to “Olivia who died in 1870 [it was 1890] in her late 70s.” Thus we see that Jervis and Miss Ida included their grandmother’s clothes in the donation.
The similarity of Ida’s brown dress in Figure 17 with the lilac dress might be more than coincidence. Charles and Ida were living under Mrs. Langdon’s roof. Because the two ladies patronized the same dressmakers, they could very well have ordered these two similar dresses from the same dressmaker at the same time.
However, like many older women then and now, Mrs. Langdon did not keep up with hair fashions! One 1870s photograph of her shows a stout woman in her 60s, steadfast in the 1830s forehead curls of her youth. (Figures 39 and 40) If a 73ish Mrs. Langdon wore the aggressively stylish lilac dress with her customary coiffure, it would have been a ludicrous sight, and she would have had to acquire a wasp-waisted figure as well. Assuming that the dress fit, one must also assume that onlookers were accustomed to accepting dazzling ensembles worn by elderly ladies with retrograde coiffures.
Whoever it had belonged to — after all those years of holding on to it, why would Miss Ida finally consign a remaining family treasure to theatrical purposes rather than to a collection like the ones at the historical society or Cornell? Was it that she was ailing and tired, disinclined to deal with the bother of a donation procedure?
Perhaps a bigger perspective is required. The donor could have been completely incorrect in her belief that the dress was either Ida’s or Olivia’s. Miss Ida had another Langdon aunt, Susan Langdon Crane, who dressed as well as Ida and Livy, in part, at least, because she patronized the same dressmakers. Of course, Ida Clark Langdon came from a family of her own; the lilac dress could have belonged to a Clark relative — sufficient reason, perhaps, for it to not be passed on to Cornell.
SUNDAY DRIVER
Adding to the confusion is a fragment of a cardboard-mounted
photograph given with the dress, showing a woman of about 25 years of age, wearing the
lilac dress. (Figure 41) The photo was
taken by the McFarlin Studio of
Judging from the subject’s general coiffure ‘silhouette,’ the date might be about 1910-20. The sausage curls behind her ears suggest (to modern eyes) that the subject was trying to look “old timey” — we see a hair style evocative of the 1840s with the 1880s dress. Of course, if the speculative date of the photo is correct, the dress was only about twenty-five years old at the time, no more “old timey” to contemporary eyes than a 1975 dress would be to our own. Surely someone would have been able to give the wearer appropriate grooming directions from personal experience.
Interestingly, from her stance it appears that she did not also don an 1880s corset; this would have been a sloppy — even impossible — posture for the 1880s because the top of her pelvis is tipped forward and her shoulders back. By 1910 this relaxed position appears in fashion illustration. She looks to be a child of reform dress efforts, intentionally or not.
The young woman’s face could be a Langdon face — not Livy’s, but whose? Is this Miss Ida garbed for some special Langdon family event or a fancy dress party? If it is, we may reasonably assume she was free to liberate something from the family attic for the purpose — something so meaningful that she withheld it from Cornell and kept it with her almost to the end of her life.
Was the subject intending to portray a particular person rather than just anyone from a bygone day? If the photo shows Miss Ida impersonating her grandmother, then the old timey party curls might be what Ida thought she remembered seeing on her mother-in-law.
The argument against this hypothesis is that, given her conservative coiffure habit, Mrs. Langdon was unlikely to have ever worn the sausage curls seen in Figure 41. When she was in her thirties (1840), only girls or younger women wore them — and that was a newer style than the one Mrs. Langdon maintained all her life (see caption of Figure 39). It would seem that Ida, having lived all those years with her mother-in-law, would have been able to help her daughter replicate her Grandmother’s outmoded curls. Why didn’t that happen?
Again, if this is Miss Ida, she could be portraying her mother (Ida), or her Aunt Livy. One would think Ida could remember how she or Livy wore their hair thirty years earlier, in order to assist her daughter’s portrayal.
The fashion plate shown in Figure 42 shows an interesting set of style elements, not the least of which is evidence for an alternate style of coiffure for dressy day wear as late as 1869: sausage curls in back, with waved hair and probably an additional hairpiece on top. (Figure 43) It leads one to wonder if the 1910 wearer of the dress was representing Livy in 1868, clad in lavender at a New Year’s Day reception. It occurred the day after Samuel Clemens met his future wife, and, heart afflutter, he hovered all day at this historic event. The tale was a treasured cornerstone of family lore. If Miss Ida, with a Ph.D. in English Literature, was ever inclined to role-play a family member, it would almost certainly be the Clemens branch of the family tree that so moved her.
Among the documents in the archives at Cornell’s Kroch
Library are the manuscript of Miss Ida’s address given at a Convocation during
a “Festival Week” at Elmira College on October 13, 1960, and a 1963 letter from
Joseph Van Why writing from the Stowe House in Hartford, Connecticut, quoting
Isabella Hooker’s description of Livy’s 1868 lavender
reception dress. If this letter was so important that it was one of the few
that landed in the Cornell archives, what was its significance to Miss Ida? Was
it a bit of documentation for the lilac dress she had recently given to
Perhaps the color and the general style of the lilac dress, and Ida’s input regarding 1868 semi-festive coiffures added up to what we see in the photograph. The dress was fifteen years too late for the historic event it was representing, but it was close enough to make the point... especially if it was Livy’s own dress.
The Langdons helped found
When Miss Ida disbanded the family estate in the 30s, her personal space constraints notwithstanding, she kept the lilac dress and the photo as a memento of an intensely meaningful — if sad — period in her life as a Langdon.
By giving the lilac dress to
DETOUR
An unanticipated outcome of this research was the discovery
that the pansy dress in the Cornell collection (Figure 45) has more in common
with the lilac dress than with its companions from Ida’s wardrobe. It is made
of elegant striped silk gauze overlaid on black silk taffeta. On that long tour
of
We cannot know for sure if these purchases had anything to do with the pansy dress, but surely the exotic makings were intended for something special. A significant clue resides in the emphatic display of pansies — “remembrance” in the language of flowers so close to the Victorian heart.
The Clemenses were extremely sentimental about commemorating the death anniversaries of loved ones, most particularly their children. We might easily imagine a reception held at the newly decorated Clemens home in 1882, for which Livy donned this remarkable black reception dress in discreet recognition of the tenth anniversary of the death of Langdon, their first child and only son, who died at the age of two. Sam had urged Livy to discontinue wearing mourning for his mother after the funeral because he hated seeing anyone, particularly his wife, in black. Sentimental Livy would have insisted here, and added colorful pansies and ribbons to mitigate the sombre effect. Sam could hardly have objected since the net result also showed Livy to be “...at the same time extremely elegant and wealthy.” (Figure 45)
The embroidered stockings that belong to the pansy dress are
smaller than the ones known to belong to Ida, and their size corresponds to the
lilac stockings that go with the lilac dress. When she was in
(Figure 49) The richly embroidered purple velvet shoes were
identified by the donors as the ones worn with the pansy dress. They were made
in
If the pansy dress was also Livy’s, it was simply packed away in its pristine splendor and moved on to Cornell when the time came, since it was not so laced with powerful memories for the other Langdons as the lilac dress. There is no record of its being identified as Livy’s dress.
DRIVER’’S TEST
Detailed examination will be necessary to rule out the
possibility that the lilac dress was remodeled, although it is irresistibly
tempting to link it to the tale of Livy heading to
The lilac dress is endowed with as many of fashion’s “bells and whistles” as could be accommodated in one garment. Its effect is more striking than elegant even by 1880s standards. She who owned this intense confection intended to make an unmistakable impression as a person of artistic vision and means. The aesthetically sensible sleeves may have been the latest word in artistic and wholesome living, but the shapely corseted torso with the tiny waist reveals that, when faced with a choice, the lady preferred a fashionable silhouette to a wholesome one. Possibly for her it was a non-issue; her diminutive form was such that a corset probably was not the uncomfortable impediment that it would have been for a woman with more to encase.
As the beautiful wife of a prominant, wealthy man, Ida had a well-defined social role to carry out, appropriately and elegantly attired. Livy was similarly positioned, but her fiscal underpinnings were not quite as stable as Ida’s despite her father’s care to ensure her financial independence. Her role was complicated by the demands of marriage to an extremely opinionated, volatile and highly visible man — one deploring pretense, yet consumed by compelling social ambitions.
Seen in this light, the image of Livy bedecked in a “drop-dead” dress, devoid of jewelry and topped by a minimalist coiffure, makes a good argument for Livy as the cooperative model, parading a high-powered dress contrived for state occasions, when ostentation conveyed the desired message better than simplicity.
DRIVING OFF
Until further investigation disproves it, the most plausible explanation, I believe, is that the lilac dress belonged to Livy; it came out of Sam’s estate to be worn for a commemorative Twain event at the college, after which the dress passed from the Langdon attic into Miss Ida’s loving stewardship until this story begins. That would explain why she did not include the dress in the Cornell donation in the 1930s, and why she would think to give the dress to the college theater many years later.
The pansy dress went straight from the Clemens attic to the Langdon attic and from there to Cornell fifty years later, by which time memory of its ownership was long lost.
That so little remains of Livy’s wardrobe suggests that when a disheartened Sam sold their beloved Hartford home, the valuable clothing was given away, perhaps to servants, a not-unusual thing to do. Conceivably Sam retained Livy’s two most poignantly memorable ensembles — redolent of the halcyon days and possibly also of the happy hours of shopping together on the Continent — which came to rest in Langdon storage before taking separate routes into history.
Upon examination, we find these two dresses speak of more than posh fashion and “the good life.” In order to begin to comprehend them, we had to ask questions about makers, materials, methods, sources, ideas, ideals, attitudes, beliefs, preferences, habits, practices, associates, associations and settings. The satin and lace, as it turns out, bear intimate, palpable and powerful witness to the life and character of the Elmira girl who chose for a husband one of our greatest — and most challenging — American treasures.