Warren's, doubly perfumed and scented; so that _positively_, my lady,
it has not the least of the vulgar odour of the flowers." "I vow, Sir
Harry, you are a man of such nice sensations that you would do honour
to nobility. I am surprised you have hitherto been overlooked in the
creation of Lords." "To be sure, my lady, my taste has never yet been
called into question. It was I who first dethroned those abominable
monsters the Bucks, and established the reign of the Macaronies--who
first improved upon the Poudre à la maréchale by throwing in a dash of
the violet. This hat your ladyship sees is of my own cocking--those
barbarians the hatters have no more idea of 'de retrousser un
chapeau' for a man of genuine taste, than they know how to wear it, and
send it home with the smell of the dye, almost sufficient to make one
faint. I always order my valet to give it a thorough perfume before it
comes into my presence." "O! exquisite refinement--what do you think of
my cap?" "Amazing, my lady, beyond description--yet, had it been but
an inch higher, it would have been at the very summit of the mode--you
would then have been unable to come into a room without stooping, or
riding in a coach without the top being heightened." "You see, Sir
Harry, I have anticipated you: that upon the table is _two_ inches
higher; I shall wear it to-morrow night at the Pantheon." "I hope I
shall have the felicity of your ladyship's hand to walk a minuet. We
shall have all eyes upon us, no doubt!" "I beg, Sir Harry, that your
club may be increased in proportion to my head, else we shall not be
fit partners." "My lady, I shall have it as large again--my toupee
shall be heightened three inches." "You will then, Sir Harry, be the
emperor of the Macaronies." "And you, my lady, their empress."
[Illustration: RIDICULOUS TASTE, OR THE LADY'S ABSURDITY.]
In a print of the period of the French lady in London, by J. H. Grimm,
published by Carrington Bowles, who appears to have been somewhat
of a wag amongst publishers, devoting himself to the curious and
extraordinary, the lady is seen bowing as she enters the room, the
head-dress reaching to the top of the ceiling. The good man of the
house is so astonished and overcome that he falls to the ground,
bringing the table with him. A large picture upon the wall represents
the Peak of Teneriffe.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH LADY IN LONDON.]
Another print, issued by the same publisher, representing the
fashionable head-dresses for the year 1776, shows two ladies out
walking, attended by their black servant, with head-dresses two yards
high.
In the illustration given of "Ridiculous Taste, or the Lady's
Absurdity," Monsieur le Friseur is mounted on a high pair of steps, and
is operating upon the summit of the lady's coiffure; a gentleman is
taking stock, and giving orders from below.
In the example given from "Jacquemin," the head-dress represents a ship
in full sail.
[Illustration: HEAD-DRESS.
_From Jacquemin._]
In 1776 an etching appeared entitled "Bunker's Hill, or America's
Head-dress." The enormous headgear of the lady represents the battle,
with tents, fortifications, cannon, and battalions. From the crests
of the three hills of the head-dress, which are duly fortified and
defended with soldiery and cannon, three banners are flying, on which
are figured, respectively, a goose, a monkey, and two ladies holding
arrows. The lower portion of the head-dress represents a sea fight.
In the same year appeared "The New Fashioned Phaeton," a mezzotint
representing a conveyance provided with springs, which lifts the lady
and her headgear up to the first-floor window, and does away with the
need for walking up and down stairs.
Another print issued by the same publisher is a "hint to the ladies to
take care of their heads." The ladies' head-dress having caught alight
from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling of a high room, and people
are putting out the fire by means of large squirts.
A charming design for a fancy head-dress is entitled "Betty the Cook
maids Head drest." It is in the form of a heart, the centre of which is
occupied by a Cheshire cheese with mice, surrounded with a border of
greengrocery, &c. On the summit is a stove, with fire alight and meat
cooking. A monkey sits upon the stove, wearing a fool's cap and bells,
and admiring himself in a mirror. On either side of the head-dress are
two trophies composed respectively of a mop and fire-irons and a besom
and cooking utensils.
The legend runs--
"The taste at present all may see,
But none can tell what is to be.
Who knows, when fashion's whims are spread,
But each may wear this kitchen head?
The noddle that so vastly swells,
May wear a fool's cap hung with bells."
High plumes of feathers re-appeared in 1796. Gillray produced a
caricature of a fashionable belle journeying to the Assembly Rooms
at Bath in a sedan chair. The top of the conveyance is opened to
accommodate the lady's head-dress, a monstrous feather projecting yards
above the sedan--a parasol is fastened to a long pole strapped on the
back of the hindermost portion and protecting the top.
During the feather period, a favourite idea was to represent attacks
by ostriches, peacocks, and other interested birds. This occurs in a
number of prints of the period. The print by John Collet, 1779, of
"The Feathered Fair is a Fright; or, Restore the Borrowed Plumes,"
represents two girls attacked by ostriches:--
"Two lassies who would like their mistresses shine,
On their heads clap'd some feathers to make them look fine;
When two ostriches suddenly came within sight,
And put the poor girls in a terrible fright.
"But how the Birds got to England's no matter,
Tho' they certainly made a most terrible clatter;
Fanny screamed as she ran, and scampering Polly,
With her Fan fought the birds in defence of her folly."
If the reader be curious in regard to the _modus operandi_ of these
astonishing creations, he (or more probably it will be she) is referred
to "Plocacosmos; or, The Whole Art of Hairdressing," by James Stewart,
1782, wherein the mysteries of the art are set forth with great
minuteness and elaboration, far too long to be explained here. The
directions for the lady's "nightcap" may, however, be given:--
"All that is required at night is to take the cap or toke off, as
any other ornament, and as you put them on, you can easily know how
to take them off: with regard to the hair, nothing need be touched
but the curls; you may take the pins out of them, and, with a little
soft pomatum in your hands, stroke the hairs that may have started;
do them with nice long rollers, wind them up to the roots, and turn
the end of each roller firmly in to keep them tight, remembering at
the same time the hair should never be combed at night, having always
so bad an effect as to give a violent headache next day. After the
curls are rolled up, touch them with your pomatumy hands, and stroke
the hair behind; after that take a very large net fillet, which must
be big enough to cover the head and hair, and put it on, and drawing
the strings to a proper tightness behind, till it closes all round the
face and neck like a purse, bring the strings round the front and back
again to the neck, where they must be tied; this, with the finest lawn
handkerchief, is night covering sufficient for the head."
"Heads" usually lasted a matter of three weeks, when--'twould be
dangerous, madam, to delay longer the opening of your head. We get a
glimpse of the possible state of a lady's head at the expiration of
that time from the many recipes and advertisements for the destruction
of insects in the magazines of the period, which reminds us of Julian,
who likened his beard to a "forest grown populous with troublesome
little animals."
"Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Than all the adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not mine heart."
BEN JONSON, _The Silent Woman_.
The apeing by the tradespeople of the manners of the great is amusingly
told in the _Lady's Magazine_ for August, 1782, in the form of a letter
to the editor, purporting to be from a respectable greengrocer, who
signs himself "Artichoke Pulse." He says: "I wish to God you would
write something smart against fashion. My family is almost ruined by
the article of dress." It appeared that his son Tom had worked himself
into a gentleman's family as footman, and from this circumstance his
troubles began. "You can scarcely conceive, my dear Sir, what an
alteration this acquaintance with the great family has made. Sally,
my eldest daughter, talks of taste and the mode, aye faith, and the
dresses too. I will give you a description of her going to see the
new comedy of the 'East Indian' the other night, in company with her
brothers and sisters, and a lord's footman, who presented them with
orders for the two-shilling gallery.
[Illustration: LOUIS XVI., MARIE ANTOINETTE, AND THE DAUPHIN.
_Engraved by Augustin de St. Aubin._]
"Dick Dusty, the hairdresser's apprentice, who lives in a court
near us, was sent for at two o'clock, and two pound of Sangwine's
eightpenny-halfpenny powder being procured, with a proper quantity
of grease, the operation of the head was begun among the cabbages,
lettuces, turnips, carrots, peas, and beans that surrounded us. Dick,
who was but a novice at his business, cut and slashed away until
he had left just as much hair as he could conveniently dress, and
then, having worked the grease and the flour into a kind of paste, he
plaistered over the head, using his hand as a trowel, until it was
fairly encrusted so as to hide the colour of the hair, or to deceive
the eye into a belief that the head was a pudding bag turned inside out!
"As it was summer, my daughters chose to go without caps, and an
artificial bouquet was stuck in the front of those puddings. The gowns
were silk; but being purchased at a pawnbroker's they were not properly
cut for the fashionable hoop. Hoops, however, were to be wore, and even
my wife resolved for once, to figure away in one of those oval pieces
of nonsense."
. . . . .
"Perhaps in nature, there was never such a figure! Only fashion
to yourself a greengrocer's wife issuing from her cellar in Drury
Lane, with a monstrous hoop, exposing a pair of legs, the ankles as
thick as the calf, and the calf as thick as the modern waist; her
hair bepuddened, her cheeks bedaubed with red, her neck of a crimson
hue, her arms bursting through a pair of white gloves, the contrast
between the two skins being almost the very opposite to each other; a
thick-flowered silk exposing the whole front of a quilted petticoat
that once was white, and then you have the appearance of my wife! Her
daughters made as ridiculous a figure, and Will, I do assure you, was
not the least remarkable in the group."
This sally, recounting the woes of the hapless "Artichoke," provoked
an indignant reply from a champion of the women, which duly appeared in
the next number:--
"I think it high time, then, for every female to exert the little
knowledge she may be possessed of in the scribbling line, when the
wits, under the characters of Green Grocers, dare to insult us, and
speak of our hoops, and other parts of our dress, as freely as they
exercise their authority over the ostlers at a country inn.
"The favour, dear Madam, we wish of you, is to remonstrate with
these smart gentlemen, and, with us, tell them they are incapable
of correcting the foibles in the ladies' dresses, till they have
established a criterion for their own. Did they adopt no other fashions
than useful and becoming ones, they might have some solid reasons for
reprehending us; but how is this to be done? Can they point out of
what use are the high-crowned hats, their shoes tied with strings, the
number of buttons lately added to their coats: of what real service
that ponderosity of their watches and canes? We will even attend to the
Green Grocer, if he can defend them, and no longer despise the opinions
of those scrutators of our dress; but till then we must insist that the
hoop (the battery at which most of their present artillery is played
off against), when of a moderate size, is an addition to the appearance
of a fine woman; it is a finishing grace to their persons, and gives
them that dignity of appearance that every woman in a genteel line of
life has a right to assume."
Although Kings have often vainly endeavoured to impose their will upon
the people in the matter of apparel it has often happened that monarchs
have set the prevailing fashion of the period. This is especially
noticeable in the Cavaliers of Charles I., numbers of whom adopted the
short, pointed beard and moustachios and long hair of their master, in
striking contrast to the close cropped and shaven round heads of the
Cromwellians. It was so with the Bonapartists of the Third Empire, when
the "imperial" became the vogue.
[Illustration: A REIGNING MONARCH.]
At a still more recent period, the illustrious personage who is figured
here, and who, be it known, appears here _strictly incognito_ (we would
fain escape the dire consequences of _lèse-majesté_), has imposed his
imperious will, not only upon his own countrymen, but upon the world at
large, in the matter of the turned up moustachio.
"When you come to be trimed, they will aske you whether you will be cut
to looke terrible to your enimie, or amiable to your freend, grime and
sterne in countenance, or pleasant and demure,--how their mowchatowes
must be preserved and laid out, from one cheke to another, yea, almost
from one eare to another, and turned up like two hornes towards the
forehead" (Stubbes, "Anatomy of Abuses," 1583).
[Illustration: PHILIP IV. OF SPAIN.]
The angle at which it is pointed provides an index as to character,
and of the degree of pugnacity of the wearer. At an angle of, say, 45
degrees forward we may expect to see its owner enter a crowded omnibus
with the point of his umbrella held at the same angle, or as a soldier
makes ready to present arms.
In the dressing of the hair, as in costume generally, the lowest depth
of the commonplace has been reached during the nineteenth century. It
is, however, extremely dangerous to indulge in any kind of sweeping
generalities with respect to our own epoch; we are either, from long
habit and custom, prejudiced in favour of a particular _régime_, or
we are afflicted with that contempt which is born of a too great
familiarity. The chignon, in its many developments, is within the
memory of most of us; the odious Piccadilly fringe still endures with
those persons who are either slaves to habit or who find that the
curling and frizzing of the hair of the forehead destroys its capacity
for growth. Dundreary and mutton-chop whiskers are even now to be found
in out-of-the-way country places. Goldsmith, in one of his delightful
essays, tells a story of a traveller who, on his way to Italy, found
himself in a country where the inhabitants had each a large excrescence
depending from the chin--a deformity which, as it was endemic and
the people little used to strangers, it had been the custom, time
immemorial, to look upon as the greatest beauty. Ladies grew toasts
from the size of their chins, and no men were beaux whose faces were
not broadest at the bottom. It was Sunday; a country church was at
hand, and our traveller was willing to perform the duties of the day.
Upon his first appearance at the church door the eyes of all were fixed
upon the stranger; but what was their amazement when they found that he
actually wanted that emblem of beauty, a pursed chin! Stifled bursts
of laughter, winks, and whispers circulated from visage to visage; the
prismatic figure of the stranger's face was a fund of infinite gaiety.
Our traveller could no longer patiently continue an object of deformity
to point at. "Good folks," said he, "I perceive that I am a very
ridiculous figure here, but I assure you I am reckoned no way deformed
at home."
Lord Dundreary would have been impossible in any other epoch than
the Victorian, although the Dundreary whisker is but a glorified
development of earlier forms--
"A marchaunt was ther with a forked berd,
In motteleye high on horse he sat."
_Canterbury Tales._
Dundreary, with his striped peg-tops, his eyeglass, and his drawl,
exactly fitted his environment. His whiskers represent the very
antithesis of the "Piccadilly fringe," also happily gone, or relegated
to the coster fraternity, together with the bell-bottomed trouser with
which it is in singular affinity.
The Piccadilly fringe was persistently condemned by artists, notably
Mr. G. F. Watts, who pointed out that it obscured and destroyed
the beautiful way in which the hair springs from the forehead. Mr.
Watts, however, was not the first to warn the ladies against the sin
of cropping short and pulling out the hair of the forehead. If there
should, peradventure, be any fair readers who are enamoured of the
beauties of either the Piccadilly or other fringe, or who should be
smitten with the insane desire to pop, paint, or powder the face, let
them listen to the sound advice and good counsel which the Knight of
La Tour Landry gave to his daughters, and to the terrible "ensaumples"
which he held up to them for their consideration and avoidance:
"Alas!" he exclaims, "whi take women non hede of the gret love that God
hathe yeve hem to make hem after hys figure? and whi popithe they, and
paintithe, and pluckithe her visage otherwise than God hath ordeined
hem?" Why indeed! There was once a lady who died and suffered great
tortures in hell, the devil holding her "bi the tresses of the here of
her hede, like as a lyon holdithe his praie...." and the same "develle
putte and thruste in her browes, temples, and forehede hote brenninge
alles and nedeles"; and why was she subjected to all this torment?
_Because she had "plucked her browes, front and forehed, to have awey
the here, to make her selff the fayrer to the plesinge of the worlde._"
It is a very far cry from the good Knight of La Tour Landry to the
wicked Mr. Punch of Fleet Street, who satirises the variations in the
form of the short side whisker still beloved of butlers and ostlers,
and which, in the early days of the Volunteer movement of the
beginning of the sixties, became identified with particular regiments
or companies:--
"HAIRDRESSER: South Middlesex or Keveens, sir? (_Customer
looks bewildered._) Why, sir, many corpses, sir, 'as a rekignised
style of 'air, sir, accordin' to the Reg---- (_Customer storms._) Not
a wolunteer, sir?--Jus' so, sir. Thought not, sir; leastways I was
a-wonderin' to myself d'rectly I see you, what corpse you could a
belonged to, sir."
FOOTNOTES:
[23] William of Malmesbury.
[24] 2 Sam. xiv. 25, 26.
[25] "Phisicke is good, and yet I would wish that every ignorant doult,
and especially women, that have as much knowledge in phisick or surgery
as hath jackeanapes, being but smatterers in the same noble sciences,
should be restrained from the publike use therof" unless they do it
_gratis_ (Stubbes, "Anatomy of Abuses," 1583).
[26] The fillet which encircles the barber's pole indicates the ribbon
used for bandaging the arm in bleeding, and the basin the vessel to
receive the blood.
[27] "He speaks like a lady for all the world, and never swears, as
Mr. Flash does, but wears nice white gloves, and tells me what ribands
become my complexion, where to stick my patches, who is the best
milliner, where they sell the best tea, and which is the best wash for
the face and the best paste for the hands; he is always playing with my
fan, and showing his teeth; and when ever I speak, he pats me--so--and
cries, 'The devil take me, Miss Biddy, but you'll be my perdition--ha,
ha, ha!'" (David Garrick, "Miss in Her Teens," 1747).
X
BOOTS, SHOES,
AND OTHER
COVERINGS
FOR THE
FEET
"'Who is there in the house?' said Sam, in whose mind the inmates
were always represented by that particular article of their costume
which came under his immediate superintendence. 'There's a wooden
leg in number six; there's a pair of Hessians in thirteen; there's
two pair of halves in the commercial; there's these here painted
tops in the snuggery inside the bar; and five more tops in the
coffee-room.'
"'Nothing more?' said the little man.
"'Stop a bit,' replied Sam, suddenly recollecting himself. 'Yes;
there's a pair of Wellingtons a good deal worn, and a pair o'
lady's shoes in number five.'
"'What sort of shoes?' hastily inquired Wardle, who, together
with Mr. Pickwick, had been lost in bewilderment at the singular
catalogue of visitors.
"'Country make,' replied Sam.
"'Any maker's name?'
"'Brown.'
"'Where of?'
"'Muggleton.'
"'It is them!' exclaimed Wardle. 'By Heaven, we've found them.'"
_Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club._
[Illustration: FLEMISH (EIGHTEENTH CENTURY).]
[Illustration: FRENCH (SEVENTEENTH CENTURY).]
X
BOOTS, SHOES, AND OTHER COVERINGS FOR THE FEET
The good St. Crispin, of blessed memory, cobbling shoes for the poor by
the light of his candle and filling up the interval with preaching, is
a figure which all shoemakers regard with reverence. How did Crispin
become the tutelary saint of shoemakers? Well, it was in this wise.
Crispin, travelling with his brother Crispinian, in company with
St. Denis, to Soissons in France to propagate the Christian faith,
towards the close of the third century, in order that he might not be
a burden to others for his maintenance, exercised at night the trade
of shoemaker, preaching the Gospel by day. The shoes were sold at a
low price to the poor, an angel (so the legend recounts) miraculously
furnishing the leather. According to another version of the legend,
the saint _stole_ the leather, so as to enable him to benefit the poor.
Crispin's efforts, like those of so many other benefactors of their
kind, were poorly rewarded. He was ordered to be beheaded, and suffered
martyrdom in 287 A.D., not, however, for his shoemaking, or
for his thefts, but on account of his religious tenets. Some accounts
state that he and his brother were flung into a cauldron of molten lead.
[Illustration: CLOG, OR PATTEN.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
The brotherhood of the shoemakers has always included men of remarkable
character and parts. Hans Sachs, born at Nuremburg in 1494, the most
eminent German poet of his time; George Fox, first of Quakers, true
follower of Crispin, dividing his time and energies between shoemaking
and preaching; William Gifford, less remembered perhaps as a shoemaker
than for his editorship of the famous _Quarterly_--these are a few
only of the men "who have imparted a glory to the 'gentle craft,' as
shoemaking has been called since the days of the illustrious Crispin,"
and invested it with distinction.[28]
The universal observance by Eastern nations of the custom of removing
the shoes as a mark of reverence is in obedience to the command given
to Moses from the burning bush at Horeb: "Put off thy shoes from off
thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." The
Western practice of uncovering the reverse end of the human anatomy
presents a curious and somewhat startling contrast.
Footgear began as a protection to the _soles_ of the feet, since it
is the soles which necessarily demand some sort of protection until
that time when the "rough places shall be made plain," although Nature
provides her own protection to the soles of feet which are habitually
bare, by thickening the skin. The skin of the habitually barefooted
Irish lassie varies, we are told, from a quarter to half an inch in
thickness, and even more.
The sandal, then, may be considered as the precursor of the shoe.
Most of the early nations wore sandals. The Egyptians, however, were
usually barefooted, with the exception of the priests, who wore shoes
of _byblus_, and were not permitted to wear any other. The Greek sandal
consisted of a strip of thick hide, tanned or untanned, for the sole,
with a thinner piece, assuming some ornamental form, upon the instep,
the whole connected or drawn together with straps drawn crosswise over
the instep and round the ankle, or a cord or thong passing between the
great toe and the first of the smaller toes.
Sandals were worn either with bare feet or with stockings or hose,
in which case a division of the stocking would be necessary between
the great and little toes. Some modern hygienic reformers have,
indeed, recommended toed stockings for present use, _i.e._, stockings
provided with a separate receptacle for each toe, like the fingers
of a glove, to be worn even with the modern shoe or boot, on the
ground of healthiness, and this would seem to be reasonable, since the
objectionable condition of the skin between the toes, which no amount
of cleanliness and care can wholly avert, is due to the inability
of the perspiration to escape when the surfaces are in contact.
"The interposition in the five-toed socks of a layer of woollen or
other material between each toe absorbs the perspiration and rapidly
effects a remarkable change. The skin between the toes becomes dry and
wholesome, and the squeezed, crippled appearance of the toes greatly
alters for the better."[29]