Europe Revised — 21 - Ch. X: Modes of the Moment; a Fashion Article, pt. 2

Nothing daunted by this I looked up the address of a sporting tailor in a side street off Regent Street, whose genius was reputed to find an artistic outlet in knee breeches.

Before visiting his shop I disclosed my purpose to my traveling companion, an individual in whose judgment and good taste I have ordinarily every confidence, and who has a way of coming directly to the meat of a subject.

"What do you want with a pair of knee breeches?"

inquired this person crisply.

"Why--er--for general sporting occasions," I replied.

"For instance, what occasions?"

"For golfing," I said, "and for riding, you know.

And if I should go West next year they would come in very handy for the shooting."

"To begin with," said my companion, "you do not golf.

The only extensive riding I have ever heard of your doing was on railway trains.

And if these knee breeches you contemplate buying are anything like the knee breeches I have seen here in London, and if you should wear them out West among the impulsive Western people, there would undoubtedly be a good deal of shooting; but I doubt whether you would enjoy it--they might hit you!"

"Look here!"

I said.

"Every man in America who wears duck pants doesn't run a poultry farm.

And the presence of a sailor hat in the summertime does not necessarily imply that the man under it owns a yacht.

I

cannot go back home to New York and face other and older members of the When-I-Was-in-London Club without some sartorial credentials to show for my trip.

I am firmly committed to this undertaking.

Do not seek to dissuade me, I beg of you.

My mind is set on knee breeches and I shan't be happy until I get them."

So saying I betook myself to the establishment of this sporting tailor in the side street off Regent Street; and there, without much difficulty, I formed the acquaintance of a salesman of suave and urbane manners.

With his assistance I picked out a distinctive, not to say striking, pattern in an effect of plaids.

The goods, he said, were made of the wool of a Scotch sheep in the natural colors.

They must have some pretty fancy-looking sheep in Scotland!

This done, the salesman turned me over to a cutter, who took me to a small room where incompleted garments were hanging all about like the quartered carcasses of animals in a butcher shop.

The cutter was a person who dropped his H's and then, catching himself, gathered them all up again and put them back in his speech--in the wrong places.

He surveyed me extensively with a square and a measuring line, meantime taking many notes, and told me to come back on the next day but one.

On the day named and at the hour appointed I was back.

He had the garments ready for me.

As, with an air of pride, he elevated them for my inspection, they seemed commodious--indeed, voluminous.

I had told him, when making them, to take all the latitude he needed; but it looked now as though he had got it confused in his mind with longitude.

Those breeches appeared to be constructed for cargo rather than speed.

With some internal misgivings I lowered my person into them while he held them in position, and when I had descended as far as I could go without entirely immuring myself, he buttoned the dewdabs at the knees;

then he went round behind me and cinched them in abruptly, so that of a sudden they became quite snug at the waistline; the only trouble was that the waistline had moved close up under my armpits, practically eliminating about a foot and a half of me that I had always theretofore regarded as indispensable to the general effect.

Right in the middle of my back, up between my shoulder blades there was a stiff, hard clump of something that bored into my spine uncomfortably.

I could feel it quite plainly--lumpy and rough.

"Ow's that, sir?"

he cheerily asked me, over my shoulder; but it seemed to me there was a strained, nervous note in his voice.

"A bit of all right--eh, sir?"

"Well," I said, standing on tiptoe in an effort to see over the top, "you've certainly behaved very generously toward me--I'll say that much.

Midships there appears to be about four or five yards of material I do not actually need in my business, being, as it happens, neither a harem favorite nor a professional sackracer.

And they come up so high I'm afraid people will think the gallant coast-guards have got me in a lifebuoy and are bringing me ashore through the surf."

"You'll be wanting them a bit loose, sir, you know," he interjected, still snuggling close behind me.

"All our gentlemen like them loose."

"Oh, very well," I said; "perhaps these things are mere details.

However, I would be under deep obligations to you if you'd change 'em from barkentine to schooner rig, and lower away this gaff-topsail which now sticks up under my chin, so that I can luff and come up in the wind without capsizing.

And say, what is that hard lump between my shoulders?"

"Nothing at all, sir," he said hastily; and now I knew he was flurried.

"I can fix that, sir--in a jiffy, sir."

"Anyhow, please come round here in front where I can converse more freely with you on the subject," I said.

I was becoming suspicious that all was not well with me back there where he was lingering.

He came reluctantly, still half-embracing me with one arm.

Petulantly I wrestled my form free, and instantly those breeches seemed to leap outward in all directions away from me.

I grabbed for them, and barely in time I got a grip on the yawning top hem.

Peering down the cavelike orifice that now confronted me I beheld two spectral white columns, and recognized them as my own legs.

In the same instant, also, I realized what that hard clump against my spine was, because when he took his hand away the clump was gone.

He had been standing back there with some eight or nine inches of superfluous waistband bunched up in his fist.

The situation was embarrassing, and it would have been still more embarrassing had I elected to go forth wearing my breeches in their then state, because, to avoid talk, he would have had to go along too, walking immediately behind me and holding up the slack.

And such a spectacle, with me filling the tonneau and he back behind on the rumble, would have caused comment undoubtedly.

That pantsmaker was up a stump!

He looked reproachfully at me, chidingly at the breeches and sternly at the tapemeasure--which he wore draped round his neck like a pet snake--as though he felt convinced one of us was at fault, but could not be sure which one.

"I'm afraid, sir," he said, "that your figure is changing."

"I guess you're right," I replied with a soft sigh.

"As well as I can judge I'm not as tall as I was day before yesterday by at least eighteen inches.

And I've mislaid my diaphragm somewhere, haven't I?"

"'Ave them off, please, sir," he said resignedly.

"I'll 'ave to alter them to conform, sir.

Come back to-morrow."

I had them off and he altered them to conform, and I went back on the morrow; in fact I went back so often that after a while I became really quite attached to the place.

I felt almost like a member of the firm.

Between calls from me the cutter worked on those breeches.

He cut them up and he cut them down; he sheared the back away and shingled the front, and shifted the buttons to and fro.

Still, even after all this, they were not what I should term an unqualified success.

When I sat down in them they seemed to climb up on me so high, fore and aft, that I felt as short-waisted as a crush hat in a state of repose.

And the only way I could get my hands into the hip pockets of those breeches was to take the breeches off first.

As ear muffs they were fair but as hip pockets they were failures.

Finally I told him to send my breeches, just as they were, to my hotel address--and I paid the bill.

I brought them home with me.

On the day after my arrival I took them to my regular tailor and laid the case before him.

I tried them on for him and asked him to tell me, as man to man, whether anything could be done to make those garments habitable.

He called his cutter into consultation and they went over me carefully, meantime uttering those commiserating clucking sounds one tailor always utters when examining another tailor's handiwork.

After this my tailor took a lump of chalk and charted out a kind of Queen Rosamond's maze of crossmarks on my breeches and said I might leave them, and that if surgery could save them he would operate.

At any rate he guaranteed to cut them away sufficiently to admit of my breast bone coming out into the open once more.