The Lady in White
June 9, 2016
Henry Benbridge (1743-1812). Margaret Cantey (Mrs. John Peyre)
APROPOS of the recent entries on older women and dress, I offer this 2012 entry:
ALAN writes:
One day three years ago, I happened by chance to see an elderly woman walking slowly near an apartment building. She was dressed all in white and wearing an attractive white hat. Her distinctive dress caught my eye, and I thought to myself how extraordinary – and pleasant – it was to see such a lady in a culture where so many women agree to dress like men or adolescents.
About a year after that, I caught sight of the same woman, walking slowly and using a cane. She wore a white blouse, black-and-gray dress, black dress shoes, and a hat the color of straw. Everything about her suggested gracefulness and good taste.
Many comments posted at your blog pertain to vanishing standards of dress, demeanor, and femininity. Thankfully, there are still some women who choose not to abandon those standards. Clancy Strock had such women in mind when he wrote: “…our older citizens are the ones you can count on to show up in public places nicely dressed.” (Reminisce magazine, March/April 1998)
And St. Francis de Sales said: “Old people are always ridiculous when they try to appear young. Instead, let them adorn themselves with gracefulness, decency, and dignity.”
This woman obviously possessed that wisdom. At her age, she still paid the kind of careful attention to appearance and demeanor that many American women practiced scrupulously in years now long past. She reminded me of those virtues in my mother, grandmother, aunts, and great-aunts.
In a brief essay I wrote afterward about that woman, I characterized her as “The Elegant Lady in White. I wrote that she “is a symbol of another age and another way of living, a better way of living – an age of virtues now mostly abandoned…”
A mutual acquaintance shared a copy of my essay with this woman, and she in turn sent me a card and note of thanks. Our mutual acquaintance told me that the lady was 94 years old and always wore a dress, hat, and dress shoes when going out in public.
Women like her are out of place in modern culture, not because anything is wrong with them, but because very much is wrong with modern culture and because modern culture is out of place in any set of proper standards and values.
“There was a time when the elder generation was cherished because it represented the past; now it is avoided and thrust out of sight for the same reason,” wrote Richard Weaver in 1948 (Ideas Have Consequences, p. 30). That was unfortunately true then and is even more hideously true now. The calculated assault on that tradition – on respect for the generations who preceded us – is one of the greatest evils I have witnessed in my lifetime.
