When prosperity came...and when shoes spelled status

by S. Pathiravitana

At the turn of the last century, Ceylon is said to have entered its most prosperous decade since the British occupation. But prosperity had not yet brought it the benefits of electricity.

The homes and shops in general lit up their premises with, believe it or not, coconut oil lamps. We do not have to be shy about having used coconut oil lamps for lighting up our homes and shops because around this time our imperialist rulers too, back home, were burning the midnight oil using whale oil and candles. The well to do in Ceylon had the use of global lamps, that is to say, coconut oil lamps enclosed by a frosted glass in the shape of a globe to diffuse the light evenly. This healthy trend, for coconut oil, collapsed the moment kerosene oil began to be imported.

Today coconut oil is used mostly to light clay or brass lamps on religious or social occasions or at solemn opening ceremonies and at magical rituals.

As coconut oil was expensive, the poor had to depend on the less expensive kekuna oil, but they were robbed of that soon when the tea industry started cutting down the kekuna trees as it was found that its timber was excellent for making tea chests.

Kekuna, as the Sinhala saying goes, is now rarely available 'even for medicine.' The oil battles seem to have simmered down leaving kerosene, after the wave of prosperity, to kill quite a few people every year with its use of kuppi lamps and the king of all oils - petrol, which came a little later, to kill or maim hundreds of innocents on the roads.

Change from the old

In this age of prosperity that dawned for Ceylon it was a time for a change from the old into the new in every direction.

The words of caution uttered by the Anagarika Dharmapala about rushing to embrace the new seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Except perhaps on the ears of the women as far as their clothes were concerned. Anagarika appealed to women to take to the saree, which he said was the Aryan dress.

Soon there was a noticeable movement towards wearing the saree instead of the spreading gowns, long-sleeved blouses and ruffs, which may have been a leftover from the days of the previous imperial regimes.

The bodice, as it was called, was a part of feminine attire and to those who may not have heard of this word being used might be told that it referred to a woman's corset, which helped to tighten any sagging flesh.

Some idea of what corset wear implies may be gathered from this note from the Encarta Encyclopaedia: "Women did wear a great deal of clothing during the Victorian Age... An average woman of 1850 wore a chemise (under slip), a corset, several petticoats, drawers (underpants), a two-piece dress (consisting of a matching skirt and bodice), stockings, shoes, gloves, a bonnet or hat, and any necessary outer garments, such as a shawl."

Mention of hats and bonnets reminds me of the times when we were just emerging into prosperity how this head gear was widely used by females and males.

And such was their popularity that there was a 141 per cent increase in the imports of hats and bonnets recorded in the first decade of the last century. This trend did not, however, last very long, for strangely enough there are not even the remote signs of hats and bonnets visible today.

In the height of its fashion some wore bowlers, others straw hats among which the Panama hat was the most stylish, and still others wore the most popular and useful of them all - the sun topee. I saw the last of the sun topees resting bravely on a weary old head disappearing in the wake of the second world war.

The austerity, that overtook us soon after may have caused the virtual death of male head gear in this country, just before we attained independence, leaving only the Prime Minister at that time who received the freedom to wear a top hat and tails. With austerity, too, male dress became simpler.

In that first age of prosperity, however, gentlemen often wore a cloth over their longs to hide, as it were, the trouser.

But in that process gave the show away rather badly being nicknamed the 'reddha assay mahathaya'. But he came out of that embarrassment soon enough by shedding the cloth altogether and donning the full suit, tie, coat and all, instead.

It was about this same time that at village weddings the bridegrooms, too, used to wear hats. Did we have a weakness for headgear? I ask this because Robert Knox made a small fortune by knitting caps and selling them.

He doesn't tell us to whom he sold this and why there was a demand for this and from whom. There is a hint, however, made by Heydt who gives us a description of the people he met on his way to Kandy through Sitawaka: "As to their clothing, this is white throughout, except the caps which the greatest have of red scarlet, but the lesser only of white."

The two sorts of caps might give the idea that some discrimination was going on about who should wear what.

Furthermore, the tiled houses that only the nobility was permitted to build might confirm this suspicion of a discriminatory practice. What was in operation here was a kind of social distinction, which had public acceptance, in order for the economy of the country to balance easily. In fact, social distinction was a universal practice that prevailed in countries as far apart as Japan and England.

The best way to understand it is to see it in practice even today among us. Take the school uniform, for instance.

The rule has been laid down as to the kind of dress that should be worn by the children attending school. No coloured dresses or anything fancy just a uniform dress.

One reason, given for the adoption of such preventive measures in other countries like England was extravagance. "Extravagance became so universal that the church and crown thought it necessary to put a check on the ostentatious display of the newly rich.

While these laws were aimed primarily at extravagant expenditure on dress they were not limited to it...Autocratic control of clothes and customs has been practised since the beginning of civilisation.

Today, what would be viewed as a gross infringement of personal liberties, then, was part of keeping the ruling class separate from those being ruled. Sumptuary laws were passed in England and Europe from about the middle of the 1300s to the middle of the 1600s."

Pointed shoes

Looking back on the introduction of sumptuary laws in the West there were many interesting episodes connected with it. Today shoes have become inseparable from human feet.

But there were times when many, generally the lower classes, went without. Here in Ceylon the feet went generally uncovered whether you were rich or poor. Only the King, regarded as a divine being, had his feet shod so that he was symbolically free from the trammels of the earth. But when Heydt attended the audience given by the King to the Dutch Ambassador he claims to have seen the King with his feet uncovered.

To come back to the West, their sumptuary laws were at one time levelled particularly against shoes.

The size, the colour, the height of the heels of the shoes, were all indicators of the different ranks making up that society.

It was the affluent class that toyed with shoe fashions and from that arose a style of two different shapes of shoes - the pointed long toe shoe, which clowns wear now, and the broad toe shoe.

The pointed shoe extended about half a foot beyond the toes. It may have been useful to tread softly and slowly and for no other purpose, as you can see what happened to a certain aristocrat.

He was in a hurry to get away from some assassins, who surrounded him, but the pointed shoe with the long toe impeded his getaway and he was killed. Along with that died the pointed toe shoe fashion.

In the age of prosperity that dawned for us we got our first automobile and the first tramcar both in the same year - 1899. And in 1906 was founded the Ceylon Social Reform League whose chairman was a young man called Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy and its aims were, hopefully, to prevent innocent Ceylonese from striving for the wrong social goals.