Happy wedding anniversary to artist Henry Holiday – even if you can't place the name, there's a good chance you know his work: in 2009, millions of Christmas cards posted in the UK carried a stamp showing a detail from one of his stained glass windows, the Madonna and Child at Ormesby St Michael, Norfolk.
When he wasn't busy staining windows (is that the phrase?), Holiday's energies were devoted to a range of political causes, including socialism, irish republicanism, environmentalism, women's suffrage ... and "Rational Dress."
Some campaigns from the 19th century still make perfect sense to us today; some, no doubt about it, less so.
Born in London in 1839, Henry Holiday was an artist in various mediums who was part of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Some of his paintings hang in galleries to this day. He was a muralist, a sculptor, and he also illustrated the first edition of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.
After a breakdown in 1870, seemingly brought on by overwork arising from his increasing success, Henry got himself a pet gazelle. Mind, he got the gazelle after he'd recovered from the breakdown which is good because that's not the sort of decision to be taken when you're feeling under the weather.
In middle-age he became increasingly politically active. He was a friend of Gladstone, and Henry's politics were a mixture of radical liberalism with utopian socialism. He produced banners and cartoons, and designed a firework display for an irish home rule campaign. And in 1893 he became editor of Aglaia, the journal of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union.
The main dress reform organisation was the Rational Dress Society, founded in London in 1881. It's seen as an important part of "first wave" feminism, though it campaigned for men as well as women to be liberated from clothing styles which were thought injurious to health, inherently uncomfortable, and which oppressed their wearer's freedom of movement.
Specifically, no-one should be expected to wear underwear which weighed more than 7lbs, about 3kg. (To put that in context, and to save you having to do it, I have just weighed a set of my socks, pants and t-shirt: 11oz/312g. And remember, 7lbs was their target weight.)
It was a hugely controversial stance, a true culture war, pitting modernist ideas of equality and individual freedom against a conservative fear of anarchy. Churchmen, journalists and politicians, amongst other opinion-formers, went purple trying to get across that dress reform would lead inexorably to the loss of Britain's empire if not of human civilisation itself.
Dress reformers tended to be very pro-trouser, at least on the more militant leg of the movement, with some female activists insisting on wearing trousers in public, which took real bottle.
In 1899, Lady Harberton (Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton, a leading dress reformer, pioneer cyclist, and founder of the Short Skirts League, members of which blatantly wore skirts with hems 5 inches off the ground) was refused entry to the coffee room of a hotel in Ockham, Surrey, because she was wearing "full rationals," otherwise known as knickerbockers (a type of baggy, knee-length trouser).
Lady Harberton sued the hotel landlady, who explained in court that she did not allow women in rationals to use her establishment in case the menfolk present made rude jokes about their ankles. Of which, to be fair, there must have been a certain risk. Harberton lost the case, defiantly declaring that "short skirts for walking-wear will be a boon that ought to be easily attained, and once attained, cherished like Magna Carta in the British Constitution," but the resultant publicity swelled the memberships of both the rational dress and the cycling communities.
Henry Holiday, meanwhile, didn't just talk the talk - he also strode the strides. His own preferred escape from what he damned as restrictive "tubular" clothing for men was a Norfolk jacket, a pair of breeches, and woolen combination underwear. Henry, you devil.
*
Sources:
www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22440
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG31834
https://riponcivicsociety.org.uk/2016/08/25/henry-holiday-stained-glass-artist-and-dress-reformer
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/dante-and-beatrice-henry-holiday/XAEGdUo8BUOPYQ?hl=en
www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-rational-dress-societys-gazette
https://recollections.biz/blog/victorian-dress-reform-who-what-when-and-why/
https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/exhibition-rational-dress-society
https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2014/08/28/lady-harberton-cycling-and-the-%E2%80%98rationals%E2%80%99-scandal/
https://womeninspire.co.uk/blog/the-rational-dress-society