to remember is that the coat changes more than anything else; from
the stiff William and Mary coat with its deep, stiff cuffs, you see
the change towards the George I. coat, a looser cut of the same
design, still simple in embroideries; then the coat skirts are
gathered to a button at each side of the coat just behind the pockets.
Then, in George II.'s reign, the skirt hangs in parallel folds free
from the button, and shapes to the back more closely, the opening of
the coat, from the neck to the waist, being so cut as to hang over the
buttons and show the cravat and the waistcoat. Then, later in the same
reign, we see the coat with the skirts free of buckram and very full
all round, and the cuffs also free of stiffening and folding with the
crease of the elbow. Then, about 1745, we get the coat left more open,
and, for the beau, cut much shorter--this often worn over a
double-breasted waistcoat. Then, arriving at George III., we get a
long series of coat changes, with a collar on it, turned over and
standing high in the neck, with the skirts buttoned back, then cut
away; then the front of the coat cut away like the modern dress-coat.
[Illustration: {Four men of the time of George II.}]
In following out these really complicated changes, I have done my best
to make my meaning clear by placing dates against those drawings where
dates are valuable, hoping by this means to show the rise and fall of
certain fashions more clearly than any description would do.
It will be noticed that, for ceremony, the periwig gave place to the
tie-wig, or, in some few cases, to natural hair curled and powdered.
The older men kept to the periwig no doubt from fondness of the old
and, as they thought, more grave fashion; but, as I showed at the
beginning of the chapter, the beau and the young man, even the quite
middle-class man, wore, or had the choice of wearing, endless
varieties of false attires of hair.
The sporting man had his own idea of dress, even as to-day he has a
piquant idea in clothes, and who shall say he has not the right? A
black wig, a jockey cap with a bow at the back of it, a very
resplendent morning gown richly laced, a morning cap, and very
comfortable embroidered slippers, such mixtures of clothes in his
wardrobe--his coat, no doubt, a little over-full, but of good cloth,
his fine clothes rather over-embroidered, his tie-wig often pushed too
far back on his forehead, and so showing his cropped hair underneath.
Muffs must be remembered, as every dandy carried a muff in winter,
some big, others grotesquely small. Bath must be remembered, and the
great Beau Nash in the famous Pump-Room--as Thackeray says, so say I:
'I should like to have seen the Folly,' he says, meaning Nash. 'It was
a splendid embroidered, beruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled,
impertinent Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should
like to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he
actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots!), with his blue
ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a chicken in his
hand, which he had been cheapening for his dinner.'
It was the fashion to wear new clothes on the Queen's birthday, March
1, and then the streets noted the loyal people who indulged their
extravagance or pushed a new fashion on that day.
Do not forget that no hard-and-fast rules can be laid down; a man's a
man for all his tailor tells him he is a walking fashion plate. Those
who liked short cuffs wore them, those who did not care for solitaires
did without; the height of a heel, the breadth of a buckle, the sweep
of a skirt, all lay at the taste of the owner--merely would I have you
remember the essentials.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of George II.; four styles of hair
for men}]
There was a deal of dressing up--the King, bless you, in a Turkish
array at a masque--the day of the Corydon and Sylvia: mock shepherd,
dainty shepherdess was here; my lord in silk loose coat with paste
buttons, fringed waistcoat, little three-cornered hat under his arm,
and a pastoral staff between his fingers, a crook covered with cherry
and blue ribbons; and my lady in such a hoop of sprigged silk or some
such stuff, the tiniest of straw hat on her head, high heels tapping
the ground, all a-shepherding--what? Cupids, I suppose, little Dresden
loves, little comfit-box jokes, little spiteful remarks about the
Germans.
[Illustration: {1745: Two men of the time of George II.; 1758: Three
men of the time of George II.}]
Come, let me doff my Kevenhuller hat with the gold fringe, bring my
red heels together with a smart tap, bow, with my hand on the third
button of my coat from which my stick dangles, and let me introduce
the ladies.
THE WOMEN
I will introduce the fair, painted, powdered, patched, perfumed sex
(though this would do for man or woman of the great world then) by
some lines from the _Bath Guide_:
'Bring, O bring thy essence-pot,
Amber, musk, and bergamot;
Eau de chipre, eau de luce,
Sanspareil, and citron juice.
* * * * *
In a band-box is contained
Painted lawns, and chequered shades,
Crape that's worn by love-lorn maids,
Watered tabbies, flowered brocades;
Straw-built hats, and bonnets green,
Catgut, gauzes, tippets, ruffs;
Fans and hoods, and feathered muffs,
Stomachers, and Paris nets,
Earrings, necklaces, aigrets,
Fringes, blouses, and mignionets;
Fine vermillion for the cheek,
Velvet patches a la grecque.
Come, but don't forget the gloves,
Which, with all the smiling loves,
Venus caught young Cupid picking
From the tender breast of chicken.'
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE II. (1727-1760)
She is wearing a large pinner over her dress. Notice the large
panniers, the sleeves without cuffs, the tied cap, and the shortness
of the skirts.]
[Illustration: {Three women of the time of George II.}]
Now I think it will be best to describe a lady of quality. In the
first years of the reign she still wears the large hoop skirt, a
circular whalebone arrangement started at the waist, and, at
intervals, the hoops were placed so that the petticoat stood out all
round like a bell; over this the skirt hung stiff and solemn. The
bodice was tight-laced, cut square in front where the neckerchief of
linen or lace made the edge soft. The sleeves still retained the cuff
covering the elbow, and the under-sleeve of linen with lace frills
came half-way down the forearm, leaving bare arm and wrist to show.
[Illustration: {Four women of the time of George II.}]
Over the skirt she would wear, as her taste held her, a long, plain
apron, or a long, tucked apron, or an apron to her knees. The bodice
generally formed the top of a gown, which gown was very full-skirted,
and was divided so as to hang back behind the dress, showing, often,
very little in front. This will be seen clearly in the illustrations.
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.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of George II.; four types of
shoe}]
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.
[Illustration: {Two women of the time of George II.}]
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.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of George II.; a shawl}]
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.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820)
The full-skirted coat, though still worn, has given way, in general,
to the tail-coat. The waistcoat is much shorter. Black silk
knee-breeches and stockings are very general.]
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.
[Illustration: {Eleven types of head-dress for women; three types
of shoe}]
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.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820)
In the earlier half of the reign. Notice her sack dress over a satin
dress, and the white, elaborately made skirt. Also the big cap and
the curls of white wig.]
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.
[Illustration: {Fourteen styles of hair and hats for men}]
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820)
The cuffs have gone, and now the sleeve is left unbuttoned at the
wrist. The coat is long and full-skirted, but not stiffened. The
cravat is loosely tied, and the frilled ends stick out. These frills
were, in the end, made on the shirt, and were called chitterlings.]
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.'
[Illustration: {1772: A woman of the time of George III.; two types
of hat; 1775: A woman of the time of George III.; 1794: A woman
of the time of George III.}]
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820)
This shows the last of the pannier dresses, which gave way in 1794
or 1795 to Empire dresses. A change came over all dress after the
Revolution.]
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
[Illustration: {Four men}]
[Illustration: {Five men}]
[Illustration: {Four men}]
[Illustration: {Four men}]
[Illustration: {Four men and a boy}]
[Illustration: {A man and three women}]
[Illustration: {Four women}]
[Illustration: {Four women}]
[Illustration: {Four women}]
[Illustration: {Four women}]
[Illustration: {Four women}]
[Illustration: {Four women}]
[Illustration: The King.]
[Illustration: The Navy.]
[Illustration: The Army.]
[Illustration: Pensioners.]
[Illustration: The Church.]
[Illustration: The Law.]
[Illustration: The Stage.]
[Illustration: The Universities.]
[Illustration: The Country.]
[Illustration: The Duke of Norfolk.]
[Illustration: The City.]
[Illustration: The Duke of Queensberry.]
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.