Part 19

The hair is very tightly gathered up behind, twisted into a small knob on the top of the head, and either drawn straight back from the forehead or parted in the middle, allowing a small fringe to hang on the temples. Nearly every woman wore a small cap or a small round straw hat with a ribbon round it.

The lady's shoes would be high-heeled and pointed-toed, with a little buckle and strap.

About the middle of the reign the sacque became the general town fashion, the sacque being so named on account of the back, which fell from the shoulders into wide, loose folds over the hooped petticoat. The sacque was gathered at the back in close pleats, which fell open over the skirt part of this dress. The front of the sacque was sometimes open, sometimes made tight in the bodice.

Now the lady would puff her hair at the sides and powder it; if she had no hair she wore false, and a little later a full wig. She would now often discard her neat cap and wear a veil behind her back, over her hair, and falling over her shoulders.

In 1748, so they say, and so I believe to be true, the King, walking in the Mall, saw the Duchess of Bedford riding in a blue riding-habit with white silk facings--this would be a man's skirted coat, double-breasted, a cravat, a three-corned hat, and a full blue skirt. He admired her dress so much and thought it so neat that he straightway ordered that the officers of the navy, who, until now, had worn scarlet, should take this coat for the model of their new uniform. So did the navy go into blue and white.

The poorer classes were not, of course, dressed in hooped skirts, but the bodice and gown over the petticoat, the apron, and the turned back cuff to the short sleeve were worn by all. The orange wench laced her gown neatly, and wore a white cloth tied over her head; about her shoulders she wore a kerchief of white, and often a plain frill of linen at her elbows. There were blue canvas, striped dimity, flannel, and ticken for the humble; for the rich, lustrings, satins, Padesois, velvets, damasks, fans and Leghorn hats, bands of Valenciennes and Point de Dunquerque--these might be bought of Mrs. Holt, whose card Hogarth engraved, at the Two Olive Posts in the Broad part of the Strand.

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five saw the one-horse chairs introduced from France, called cabriolets, the first of our own extraordinary wild-looking conveyances contrived for the minimum of comfort and the maximum of danger. This invention captivated the hearts of both men and women. The men painted cabriolets on their waistcoats, they embroidered them on their stockings, they cut them out in black silk and patched their cheeks with them, horse and all; the women began to take up, a little later, the cabriolet caps with round sides like linen wheels, and later still, at the very end of the reign, there began a craze for such head-dresses--post-chaises, chairs and chairmen, even waggons, and this craze grew and grew, and hair grew--in wigs--to meet the cry for hair and straw men-of-war, for loads of hay, for birds of paradise, for goodness knows what forms of utter absurdity, all of which I put down to the introduction of the cab.

I think that I can best describe the lady of this day as a swollen, skirted figure with a pinched waist, little head of hair, or tiny cap, developing into a loose sacque-backed figure still whaleboned out, with hair puffed at the sides and powdered, getting ready to develop again into a queer figure under a tower of hair, but that waits for the next reign.

One cannot do better than go to Hogarth's prints and pictures--wonderful records of this time--one picture especially, 'Taste in High Life,' being a fine record of the clothes of 1742; here you will see the panier and the sacque, the monstrous muff, the huge hoop, the long-tailed wig, the black boy and the monkey. In the 'Noon' of the 'Four Parts of the Day' there are clothes again satirized.

I am trusting that the drawings will supply what my words have failed to picture, and I again--for the twenty-first time--repeat that, given the cut and the idea of the time, the student has always to realize that there can be no hard-and-fast rule about the fashions; with the shape he can take liberties up to the points shown, with colour he can do anything--patterns of the materials are obtainable, and Hogarth will give anything required in detail.

GEORGE THE THIRD

Reigned sixty years: 1760-1820.

Born 1738. Married, 1761, Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

THE MEN AND WOMEN

Throughout this long reign the changes of costume are so frequent, so varied, and so jumbled together, that any precise account of them would be impossible. I have endeavoured to give a leading example of most kind of styles in the budget of drawings which goes with this chapter.

Details concerning this reign are so numerous: Fashion books, fashion articles in the _London Magazine_, the _St. James's Chronicle_, works innumerable on hair-dressing, tailors' patterns--these are easily within the reach of those who hunt the second-hand shops, or are within reasonable distance of a library.

Following my drawings, you will see in the first the ordinary wig, skirted coat, knee-breeches, chapeau-bras, cravat or waistcoat, of the man about town. I do not mean of the exquisite about town, but, if you will take it kindly, just such clothes as you or I might have worn.

In the second drawing we see a fashionable man, who might have strutted past the first fellow in the Park. His hair is dressed in a twisted roll; he wears a tight-brimmed little hat, a frogged coat, a fringed waistcoat, striped breeches, and buckled shoes.

In the third we see the dress of a Macaroni. On his absurd wig he wears a little Nevernoise hat; his cravat is tied in a bow; his breeches are loose, and beribboned at the knee. Many of these Macaronis wore coloured strings at the knee of their breeches, but the fashion died away when Jack Rann, 'Sixteen String Jack,' as he was called after this fashion, had been hung in this make of breeches.

In number four we see the development of the tail-coat and the high-buttoned waistcoat. The tail-coat is, of course, son to the frock-coat, the skirts of which, being inconvenient for riding, had first been buttoned back and then cut back to give more play.

In the fifth drawing we see the double-breasted cut-away coat.

Number six is but a further tail-coat design.

Number seven shows how different were the styles at one time. Indeed, except for the Macaroni and other extreme fashions, the entire budget of men as shown might have formed a crowd in the Park on one day about twenty years before the end of the reign. There would not be much powdered hair after 1795, but a few examples would remain.

A distinct change is shown in the eighth drawing of the long-tailed, full coat, the broad hat, the hair powdered, but not tied.

Number nine is another example of the same style.

The tenth drawing shows the kind of hat we associate with Napoleon, and, in fact, very Napoleonic garments.

In eleven we have a distinct change in the appearance of English dress. The gentleman is a Zebra, and is so-called from his striped clothes. He is, of course, in the extreme of fashion, which did not last for long; but it shows a tendency towards later Georgian appearance--the top-hat, the shorter hair, the larger neckcloth, the pantaloons--forerunners of Brummell's invention--the open sleeve.

Number twelve shows us an ordinary gentleman in a coat and waistcoat, with square flaps, called dog's ears.

As the drawings continue you can see that the dress became more and more simple, more like modern evening dress as to the coats, more like modern stiff fashion about the neck.

The drawings of the women's dresses should also speak for themselves. You may watch the growth of the wig and the decline of the hoop--I trust with ease. You may see those towers of hair of which there are so many stories. Those masses of meal and stuffing, powder and pomatum, the dressing of which took many hours. Those piles of decorated, perfumed, reeking mess, by which a lady could show her fancy for the navy by balancing a straw ship on her head, for sport by showing a coach, for gardening by a regular bed of flowers. Heads which were only dressed, perhaps, once in three weeks, and were then rescented because it was necessary. Monstrous germ-gatherers of horse-hair, hemp-wool, and powder, laid on in a paste, the cleaning of which is too awful to give in full detail. 'Three weeks,' says my lady's hairdresser, 'is as long as a head can go well in the summer without being opened.'

Then we go on to the absurd idea which came over womankind that it was most becoming to look like a pouter pigeon. She took to a buffon, a gauze or fine linen kerchief, which stuck out pigeon-like in front, giving an exaggerated bosom to those who wore it. With this fashion of 1786 came the broad-brimmed hat.

Travel a little further and you have the mob cap.

All of a sudden out go hoops, full skirts, high hair, powder, buffons, broad-brimmed hats, patches, high-heeled shoes, and in come willowy figures and thin, nearly transparent dresses, turbans, low shoes, straight fringes.

I am going to give a chapter from a fashion book, to show you how impossible it is to deal with the vagaries of fashion in the next reign, and if I chose to occupy the space, I could give a similar chapter to make the confusion of this reign more confounded.

DRAWINGS TO ILLUSTRATE THE COSTUME OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD

THE FIRST FORTY-EIGHT DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR, AND THE REMAINING TWELVE BY THE DIGHTONS, FATHER AND SON

GEORGE THE FOURTH

Reigned ten years: 1820-1830.

Born 1762. Married, 1795, Caroline of Brunswick.

Out of the many fashion books of this time I have chosen, from a little brown book in front of me, a description of the fashions for ladies during one part of 1827. It will serve to show how mere man, blundering on the many complexities of the feminine passion for dress--I was going to say clothes--may find himself left amid a froth of frills, high and dry, except for a whiff of spray, standing in his unromantic garments on the shore of the great world of gauze and gussets, while the most noodle-headed girl sails gracefully away upon the high seas to pirate some new device of the Devil or Paris.

Our wives--bless them!--occasionally treat us to a few bewildering terms, hoping by their gossamer knowledge to present to our gaze a mental picture of a new, adorable, ardently desired--hat. Perhaps those nine proverbial tailors who go to make the one proverbial man, least of his sex, might, by a strenuous effort, confine the history of clothes during this reign into a compact literature of forty volumes. It would be indecent, as undecorous as the advertisements in ladies' papers, to attempt to fathom the language of the man who endeavoured to read the monumental effigy to the vanity of human desire for adornment. But is it adornment?

Nowadays to be dressed well is not always the same thing as to be well dressed. Often it is far from it. The question of modern clothes is one of great perplexity. It seems that what is beauty one year may be the abomination of desolation the next, because the trick of that beauty has become common property. You puff your hair at the sides, you are in the true sanctum of the mode; you puff your hair at the sides, you are for ever utterly cast out as one having no understanding. I shall not attempt to explain it: it passes beyond the realms of explanation into the pure air of Truth. The Truth is simple. Aristocracy being no longer real, but only a cult, one is afraid of one's servants. Your servant puffs her hair at the sides, and, hang it! she becomes exactly like an aristocrat. Our servant having dropped her _g's_ for many years as well as her _h's_, it behoved us to pronounce our _g's_ and our _h's_. Our servants having learned our English, it became necessary for us to drop our _g's_; we seem at present unwilling in the matter of the _h_, but that will come.

To cut the cackle and come to the clothes-horse, let me say that the bunglement of clothes which passes all comprehension in King George IV.'s reign is best explained by my cuttings from the book of one who apparently knew. Let the older writer have his, or her, fling in his, or her, words.

'CUROSY REMARKS ON THE LAST NEW FASHIONS.

'The City of London is now, indeed, most splendid in its buildings and extent; London is carried into the country; but never was it more deserted.

'A very, very few years ago, and during the summer, the dresses of the wives and daughters of our opulent tradesmen would furnish subjects for the investigators of fashion.

'Now, if those who chance to remain in London take a day's excursion of about eight or ten miles distance from the Metropolis, they hear the innkeepers deprecating the steamboats, by which they declare they are almost ruined: on Sundays, which would sometimes bring them the clear profits of ten or twenty pounds, they now scarce produce ten shillings.

'No; those of the middle class belonging to _Cockney Island_ must leave town, though the days are short, and even getting cold and comfortless; the steamboats carrying them off by shoals to Margate and its vicinity.

'The pursuit after elegant and superior modes of dress must carry us farther; it is now from the rural retirement of the country seats belonging to the noble and wealthy that we must collect them.

'Young ladies wear their hair well arranged, but not quite with the simplicity that prevailed last month; during the warmth of the summer months, the braids across the forehead were certainly the best; but now, when neither in fear of heat or damp, the curls again appear in numerous clusters round the face; and some young ladies, who seem to place their chief pride in a fine head of hair, have such a multitude of small ringlets that give to what is a natural charm all the _poodle-like_ appearance of a wig.

'The bows of hair are elevated on the summit of the head, and confined by a comb of tortoise-shell.

'Caps of the cornette kind are much in fashion, made of blond, and ornamented with flowers, or puffs of coloured gauze; most of the cornettes are small, and tie under the chin, with a bow on one side, of white satin ribbon; those which have ribbons or gauze lappets floating loose have them much shorter than formerly.

'A few dress hats have been seen at dinner-parties and musical amateur meetings in the country, of transparent white crape, ornamented with a small elegant bouquet of marabones.

'When these dress hats are of coloured crape, they are generally ornamented with flowers of the same tint as the hat, in preference to feathers.

'Printed muslins and chintzes are still very much worn in the morning walks, with handsome sashes, having three ends depending down each side, not much beyond the hips. With one of these dresses we saw a young lady wear a rich black satin pelerine, handsomely trimmed with a very beautiful black blond; it had a very neat effect, as the dress was light.

'White muslin dresses, though they are always worn partially in the country till the winter actually commences, are now seldom seen except on the young: the embroidery on these dresses is exquisite. Dresses of Indian red, either in taffety or chintz, have already made their appearance, and are expected to be much in favour the ensuing winter; the chintzes have much black in their patterns; but this light material will, in course, be soon laid aside for silks, and these, like the taffeties which have partially appeared, will no doubt be plain: with these dresses was worn a Canezon spencer, with long sleeves of white muslin, trimmed with narrow lace.

'Gros de Naples dresses are very general, especially for receiving dinner-parties, and for friendly evening society.

'At private dances, the only kind of ball that has at present taken place, are worn dresses of the white-figured gauze over white satin or gros de Naples; at the theatricals sometimes performed by noble amateurs, the younger part of the audience, who do not take a part, are generally attired in very clear muslin, over white satin, with drapery scarves of lace, barege, or thick embroidered tulle.

'Cachemire shawls, with a white ground, and a pattern of coloured flowers or green foliage, are now much worn in outdoor costumes, especially for the morning walk; the mornings being rather chilly, these warm envelopes are almost indispensable. We are sorry, however, to find our modern belles so tardy in adopting those coverings, which ought now to succeed to the light appendages of summer costume.

'The muslin Canezon spencer, the silk fichu, and even the lighter barege, are frequently the sole additions to a high dress, or even to one but partially so.

'We have lately seen finished to the order of a lady of rank in the county of Suffolk, a very beautiful pelisse of jonquil-coloured gros de Naples. It fastens close down from the throat to the feet, in front, with large covered buttons; at a suitable distance on each side of this fastening are three bias folds, rather narrow, brought close together under the belt, and enlarging as they descend to the border of the skirt. A large pelerine cape is made to take on and off; and the bust from the back of each shoulder is ornamented with the same bias folds, forming a stomacher in front of the waist. The sleeves, _a la Marie_, are puckered a few inches above the wrist, and confined by three straps; each with a large button. Though long ends are very much in favour with silk pelerines, yet there are quite as many that are quite round; such was the black satin pelerine we cited above.

'Coloured bonnets are now all the rage; we are happy to say that some, though all too large, are in the charming cottage style, and are modestly tied under the chin. Some bonnets are so excessively large that they are obliged to be placed quite at the back of the head; and as their extensive brims will not support a veil, when they are ornamented with a broad blond, the edge of that just falls over the hair, but does not even conceal the eyes. Leghorn hats are very general; their trimmings consist chiefly of ribbons, though some ladies add a few branches of green foliage between the bows or puffs: these are chiefly of the fern; a great improvement to these green branches is the having a few wild roses intermingled.

'The most admired colours are lavender, Esterhazy, olive-green, lilac, marshmallow blossom, and Indian red.

'At rural fetes, the ornaments of the hats generally consist of flowers; these hats are backward in the Arcadian fashion, and discover a wreath of small flowers on the hair, _ex bandeau_. In Paris the most admired colours are ethereal-blue, Hortensia, cameleopard-yellow, pink, grass-green, jonquil, and Parma-violet.'--_September 1, 1827._

Really this little fashion book is very charming: it recreates, for me, the elegant simpering ladies; it gives, in its style, just that artificial note which conjures this age of ladies with hats--'in the charming cottage style, modestly tied under the chin.'

They had the complete art of languor, these dear creatures; they lisped Italian, and were fine needlewomen; they painted weak little landscapes: nooks or arbours found them dreaming of a Gothic revival--they were all this and more; but through this sweet envelope the delicate refined souls shone: they were true women, often great women; their loops of hair, their cameleopard pelerines, shall not rob them of immortality, cannot destroy their softening influence, which permeated even the outrageous dandyism of the men of their time and steered the three-bottle gentlemen, their husbands and our grandfathers, into a grand old age which we reverence to-day, and wonder at, seeing them as giants against our nerve-shattered, drug-taking generation.

As for the men, look at the innumerable pictures, and collect, for instance, the material for a colossal work upon the stock ties of the time, run your list of varieties into some semblance of order; commence with the varieties of macassar-brown stocks, pass on to patent leather stocks, take your man for a walk and cause him to pass a window full of Hibernian stocks, and let him discourse on the stocks worn by turf enthusiasts, and, when you are approaching the end of your twenty-third volume, give a picture of a country dinner-party, and end your work with a description of the gentlemen under the table being relieved of their stocks by the faithful family butler.

POWDER AND PATCHES

'The affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus had.'

'At the devill's shopps you buy A dresse of powdered hayre.'