Clothes wear out in an asylum, and are not always taken off, though
Agriculture has long and justly claimed them for her own. And when it is
no longer possible to refuse the Reverend Mad Tom or Mrs. Crazy Jane some
new raiment, then consanguineous munificence does not go to Pool or
Elise, but oftener to paternal or maternal wardrobes, and even to the
ancestral chest, the old oak one, singing:
"Poor things, they are out of the world: what need for them to be in the
fashion!" (Formula.)
This arrangement keeps the bump of self-esteem down, especially in women,
and so co-operates with many other little arrangements to perpetuate the
lodger.
Silverton Grove in particular was supplied with the grotesque in dress
from an inexhaustible source. Whenever money was sent Baker to buy a
patient a suit, he went from his lunacy shop to his pawnbroker's, dived
headlong into unredeemed pledges, dressed his patient as gentlemen are
dressed to reside in cherry-trees; and pocketed five hundred per cent. on
the double transaction. Now Alfred had already observed that many of the
patients looked madder than they were--thanks to short trousers and
petticoats, holey gloves, ear-cutting shirt-collars, frilled bosoms,
shoes made for and declined by the very infantry: coats short in the
waist and long in the sleeves, coalscuttle bonnets, and grand-maternal
caps.
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