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.'
From the splendid pageant of history what figures come to you most
willingly? Does a great procession go by the window of your mind?
Knights bronzed by the sun of Palestine, kings in chains, emperors in
blood-drenched purple, poets clothed like grocers with the souls of
angels shining through their eyes, fussy Secretaries of State,
informers, spies, inquisitors, Court cards come to life, harlequins,
statesmen in great ruffs, wives of Bath in foot-mantles and white
wimples, sulky Puritans, laughing Cavaliers, Dutchmen drinking gin and
talking politics, men in wide-skirted coats and huge black
periwigs--all walking, riding, being carried in coaches, in
sedan-chairs, over the face of England. Every step of the procession
yields wonderful dreams of colour; in every group there is one who, by
the personality of his clothes, can claim the name of beau.
Near the tail of the throng there is a chattering, bowing, rustling
crowd, dimmed by a white mist of scented hair-powder. They are headed,
I think--for one cannot see too clearly--by the cook of the Comte de
Bellemare, a man by name Legros, the great hairdresser. Under his arm
is a book, the title of which reads, 'Art de la Coiffure des Dames
Francaises.' Behind him is a lady in an enormous hoop; her hair is
dressed _a la belle Poule_; she is arguing some minute point of the
disposition of patches with Monsieur Leonard, another artist in hair.
'What will be the next wear?' she asks. 'A heart near the
eye--_l'assassine_, eh? Or a star near the lips--_la friponne_? Must I
wear a _galante_ on my cheek, an _enjouee_ in my dimple, or _la
majestueuse_ on my forehead?' Before we can hear the reply another
voice is raised, a guttural German voice; it is John Schnorr, the
ironmaster of Erzgebinge. 'The feet stuck in it, I tell you,' he
says--'actually stuck! I got from my saddle and looked at the ground.
My horse had carried me on to what proved to be a mine of wealth.
Hair-powder! I sold it in Dresden, in Leipsic; and then, at Meissen,
what does Boettcher do but use my hair-powder to make white porcelain!'
And so the chatter goes on. Here is Charles Fox tapping the ground
with his red heels and proclaiming, in a voice thick with wine, on the
merits of blue hair-powder; here is Brummell, free from hair-powder,
free from the obnoxious necessity of going with his regiment to
Manchester.
The dressy person and the person who is well dressed--these two
showing everywhere. The one is in a screaming hue of woad, the other a
quiet note of blue dye; the one in excessive velvet sleeves that he
cannot manage, the other controlling a rich amplitude of material with
perfect grace. Here a liripipe is extravagantly long; here a gold
circlet decorates curled locks with matchless taste. Everywhere the
battle between taste and gaudiness. High hennins, steeples of
millinery, stick up out of the crowd; below these, the towers of
powdered hair bow and sway as the fine ladies patter along. What a
rustle and a bustle of silks and satins, of flowered tabbies, rich
brocades, cut velvets, superfine cloths, woollens, cloth of gold!
See, there are the square-shouldered Tudors; there are the steel
glints of Plantagenet armour; the Eastern-robed followers of Coeur
de Lion; the swaggering beribboned Royalists; the ruffs, trunks, and
doublets of Elizabethans; the snuffy, wide-skirted coats swaying about
Queen Anne. There are the soft, swathed Norman ladies with bound-up
chins; the tapestry figures of ladies proclaiming Agincourt; the
dignified dames about Elizabeth of York; the playmates of Katherine
Howard; the wheels of round farthingales and the high lace collars of
King James's Court; the beauties, bare-breasted, of Lely; the
Hogarthian women in close caps. And, in front of us, two posturing
figures in Dresden china colours, rouged, patched, powdered, perfumed,
in hoop skirts, flirting with a fan--the lady; in gold-laced wide
coat, solitaire, bagwig, ruffles, and red heels--the gentleman. 'I
protest, madam,' he is saying, 'but you flatter me vastly.' 'La, sir,'
she replies, 'I am prodigiously truthful.'
'And how are we to know that all this is true?' the critics ask,
guarding the interest of the public. 'We see that your book is full of
statements, and there are no, or few, authorities given for your
studies. Where,' they ask, 'are the venerable anecdotes which are
given a place in every respectable work on your subject?'
To appease the appetites which are always hungry for skeletons, I give
a short list of those books which have proved most useful:
MS. Cotton, Claudius, B. iv.
MS. Harl., 603. Psalter, English, eleventh century.
The Bayeaux Tapestry.
MS. Cotton, Tiberius, C. vi. Psalter.
MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., R. 17, 1. Illustrated by
Eadwine, a monk, 1130-1174.
MS. Harl. Roll, Y. vi.
MS. Harl., 5102.
Stothard's 'Monumental Effigies.'
MS. C. C. C., Camb., xvi.
MS. Cott., Nero, D. 1.
MS. Cott., Nero, C. iv. Full of drawings.
MS. Roy., 14, C. vii.
Lansdowne MS., British Museum.
Macklin's 'Monumental Brasses.'
_Journal of the Archaeological Association._
MS. Roy., 2, B. vii.
MS. Roy., 10, E. iv. Good marginal drawings.
The Loutrell Psalter. Invaluable for costume.
MS. Bodl. Misc., 264. 1338-1344. Very full of useful
drawings.
Dr. Furnivall's edition of the Ellesmere MS. of
Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.'
Boutell's 'Monumental Brasses.'
MS. Harl., 1819. Metrical history of the close of
Richard II.'s reign. Good drawings for costume.
MS. Harl., 1892.
MS. Harl., 2278.
Lydgate's 'Life of St. Edmund.'
MS. Roy., 15, E. vi. Fine miniatures.
The Bedford Missal, MS. Add., 18850.
MS. Harl., 2982. A Book of Hours. Many good drawings.
MS. Harl., 4425. The Romance of the Rose. Fine and
useful drawings.
MS. Lambeth, 265.
MS. Roy., 19, C. viii.
MS. Roy., 16, F. ii.
Turberville's 'Book of Falconrie' and 'Book of Hunting.'
Shaw's 'Dresses and Decorations.'
Jusserand's 'English Novel' and 'Wayfaring Life.' Very
excellent books, full of reproductions from illuminated
books, prints, and pictures.
The Shepherd's Calendar, 1579, British Museum.
Harding's 'Historical Portraits.'
Nichols's 'Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.'
Stubbes's 'Anatomie of Abuses,' 1583.
Braun's 'Civitates orbis terrarum.'
'Vestusta Monumenta.'
Hollar's 'Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus.'
Hollar's 'Aula Veneris.'
Pepys's Diary.
Evelyn's Diary.
Tempest's 'Cries of London.' Fifty plates.
Atkinson's 'Costumes of Great Britain.'
In addition to these, there are, of course, many other books, prints,
engravings, sets of pictures, and heaps of caricatures. The excellent
labours of the Society of Antiquaries and the Archaeological
Association have helped me enormously; these, with wills, wardrobe
accounts, 'Satires' by Hall and others, 'Anatomies of Abuses,'
broadsides, and other works on the same subject, French, German, and
English, have made my task easier than it might have been.
It was no use to spin out my list of manuscripts with the
numbers--endless numbers--of those which proved dry ground, so I have
given those only which have yielded a rich harvest.
BEAU BRUMMELL AND CLOTHES
_'A person, my dear, who will probably come and speak to
us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to
give him a favourable impression of you, for,' and she
sunk her voice to a whisper, 'he is the celebrated Mr.
Brummell.'_--'Life of Beau Brummell,' Captain Jesse.
Those who care to make the melancholy pilgrimage may see, in the
Protestant Cemetery at Caen, the tomb of George Bryan Brummell. He
died, at the age of sixty-two, in 1840.
It is indeed a melancholy pilgrimage to view the tomb of that once
resplendent figure, to think, before the hideous grave, of the witty,
clever, foolish procession from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford; from
thence to a captaincy in the 10th Hussars, from No. 4 Chesterfield
Street to No. 13 Chapel Street, Park Lane; from Chapel Street a flight
to Calais; from Calais to Paris; and then, at last, to Caen, and the
bitter, bitter end, mumbling and mad, to die in the Bon Sauveur.
Place him beside the man who once pretended to be his friend, the man
of whom Thackeray spoke so truly: 'But a bow and a grin. I try and
take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat
with frogs and a fur coat, a star and a blue ribbon, a pocket
handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty-brown
wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock,
under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing.'
Nothing! Thackeray is right; absolutely nothing remains of this King
George of ours but a sale list of his wardrobe, a wardrobe which
fetched L15,000 second-hand--a wardrobe that had been a man. He
invented a shoe-buckle 1 inch long and 5 inches broad. He wore a pink
silk coat with white cuffs. He had 5,000 steel beads on his hat. He
was a coward, a good-natured, contemptible voluptuary. Beside him, in
our eyes, walks for a time the elegant figure of Beau Brummell. I have
said that Brummell was the inventor of modern dress: it is true. He
was the Beau who raised the level of dress from the slovenly, dirty
linen, the greasy hair, the filthy neckcloth, the crumbled collar, to
a position, ever since held by Englishmen, of quiet, unobtrusive
cleanliness, decent linen, an abhorrence of striking forms of dress.
He made clean linen and washing daily a part of English life.
See him seated before his dressing-glass, a mahogany-framed sliding
cheval glass with brass arms on either sides for candles. By his side
is George IV., recovering from his drunken bout of last night. The
Beau's glass reflects his clean-complexioned face, his grey eyes, his
light brown hair, and sandy whiskers. A servant produces a shirt with
a 12-inch collar fixed to it, assists the Beau into it, arranges it,
and stands aside. The collar nearly hides the Beau's face. Now, with
his hand protected with a discarded shirt, he folds his collar down to
the required height. Now he takes his white stock and folds it
carefully round the collar; the stock is a foot high and slightly
starched. A supreme moment of artistic decision, and the stock and
collar take their perfect creases. In an hour or so he will be ready
to partake of a light meal with the royal gentleman. He will stand up
and survey himself in his morning dress, his regular, quiet suit. A
blue coat, light breeches fitting the leg well, a light waistcoat over
a waistcoat of some other colour, never a startling contrast, Hessian
boots, or top-boots and buckskins. There was nothing very peculiar
about his clothes except, as Lord Byron said, 'an exquisite
propriety.' His evening dress was a blue coat, white waistcoat, black
trousers buttoned at the ankle--these were of his own invention, and
one may say it was the wearing of them that made trousers more popular
than knee-breeches--striped silk stockings, and a white stock.
He was a man of perfect taste--of fastidious taste. On his tables lay
books of all kinds in fine covers. Who would suspect it? but the
Prince is leaning an arm on a copy of Ellis's 'Early English Metrical
Romances.' The Beau is a rhymer, an elegant verse-maker. Here we see
the paper-presser of Napoleon--I am flitting for the moment over some
years, and see him in his room in Calais--here we notice his passion
for buhl, his Sevres china painted with Court beauties.
In his house in Chapel Street he saw daily portraits of Nelson and
Pitt and George III. upon his walls. This is no Beau as we understand
the term, for we make it a word of contempt, a nickname for a feeble
fellow in magnificent garments. Rather this is the room of an educated
gentleman of 'exquisite propriety.'
He played high, as did most gentlemen; he was superstitious, as are
many of the best of men. That lucky sixpence with the hole in it that
you gave to a cabman, Beau Brummell, was that loss the commencement of
your downward career?
There are hundreds of anecdotes of Brummell which, despite those of
the 'George, ring the bell' character, and those told of his heavy
gaming, are more valuable as showing his wit, his cleanliness, his
distaste of display--in fact, his 'exquisite propriety.'
A Beau is hardly a possible figure to-day; we have so few
personalities, and those we have are chiefly concerned with trade--men
who uphold trusts, men who fight trusts, men who speak for trade in
the House of Commons. We have not the same large vulgarities as our
grandfathers, nor have we the same wholesome refinement; in killing
the evil--the great gambler, the great men of the turf, the great
prize-fighters, the heavy wine-drinkers--we have killed, also, the
good, the classic, well-spoken civil gentleman. Our manners have
suffered at the expense of our morals.
Fifty or sixty years ago the world was full of great men, saying,
writing, thinking, great things. To-day--perhaps it is too early to
speak of to-day. Personalities are so little marked by their clothes,
by any stamp of individuality, that the caricaturist, or even the
minute and truthful artist, be he painter or writer, has a difficult
task before him when he sets out to point at the men of these our
times.
George Brummell came into the world on June 7, 1778. He was a year or
so late for the Macaroni style of dress, many years behind the
Fribbles, after the Smarts, and must have seen the rise and fall of
the Zebras when he was thirteen. During his life he saw the
old-fashioned full frock-coat, bagwig, solitaire, and ruffles die
away; he saw the decline and fall of knee-breeches for common wear,
and the pantaloons invented by himself take their place. From these
pantaloons reaching to the ankle came the trousers, as fashionable
garments, open over the instep at first, and joined by loops and
buttons, then strapped under the boot, and after that in every manner
of cut to the present style. He saw the three-cornered hat vanish from
the hat-boxes of the polite world, and he saw fine-coloured clothes
give way to blue coats with brass buttons or coats of solemn black.
It may be said that England went into mourning over the French
Revolution, and has not yet recovered. Beau Brummell, on his way to
Eton, saw a gay-coloured crowd of powdered and patched people, saw
claret-coloured coats covered with embroidery, gold-laced hats,
twinkling shoe-buckles. On his last walks in Caen, no doubt, he
dreamed of London as a place of gay colours instead of the drab place
it was beginning to be.
To-day there is no more monotonous sight than the pavements of
Piccadilly crowded with people in dingy, sad clothes, with silk tubes
on their heads, their black and gray suits being splashed by the mud
from black hansoms, or by the scatterings of motor-cars driven by
aristocratic-looking mechanics, in which mechanical-looking
aristocrats lounge, darkly clad. Here and there some woman's dress
enlivens the monotony; here a red pillar-box shines in the sun; there,
again, we bless the Post-Office for their red mail-carts, and perhaps
we are strengthened to bear the gloom by the sight of a blue or red
bus.
But our hearts are not in tune with the picture; we feel the lack of
colour, of romance, of everything but money, in the street. Suddenly a
magnificent policeman stops the traffic; there is a sound of jingling
harness, of horses' hoofs beating in unison. There flashes upon us an
escort of Life Guards sparkling in the sun, flashing specks of light
from swords, breastplates, helmets. The little forest of waving
plumes, the raising of hats, the polite murmuring of cheers, warms us.
We feel young, our hearts beat; we feel more healthy, more alive, for
this gleam of colour.
Then an open carriage passes us swiftly as we stand with bared heads.
There is a momentary sight of a man in uniform--a man with a wonderful
face, clever, dignified, kind. And we say, with a catch in our voices:
'THE KING--GOD BLESS HIM!'
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Illustration captions in {curly brackets} have been added by the
transcriber for the convenience of the reader.
Hyphenation has been made consistent. Minor errors in punctuation have
been corrected.
The following items were noted by the transcriber:
Page 361--the text reads, "Another thing the women did
was to cut from their bodices all the little strips but
the in the middle of the back, ..." which seems to be
missing the word 'one' between 'the' and 'in'. It has
been added in this etext.
Page 442--the word CUROSY may be an error for CURSORY,
or it may be the pen-name of the quoted writer. However,
as the transcriber was unable to confirm either way, it
has been preserved as printed.
Archaic spelling is preserved as printed. Variable spelling has been
made consistent where there was a prevalence of one form over the
other, and typographic errors have been repaired, as follows:
Page 38 (plate facing)--whimple amended to wimple--"She
has a wimple in her hands which she may wind about her
head."
Page 52 (plate facing)--whimple amended to
wimple--"There is a chin-band to be seen passing under
the wimple; ..."
Page 54--Fontevfaud amended to Fontevraud--"The effigy
of the Queen at Fontevraud shows her dress ..."
Page 73--wode amended to woad--"... by staining
themselves blue with woad and yellow with ochre, ..."
Page 74 (plate facing)--whimple amended to wimple--"...
a plain cloak, a plain gown, and a wimple over the
head."
Page 82--kaleidscope amended to kaleidoscope--"... like
the symmetrical accidents of the kaleidoscope, ..."
Page 87--head-hankerchief amended to head-handkerchief--"...
as was the gown and head-handkerchief of his wife."
Page 92--repeated 'new' deleted--"... for, although men
followed the new mode, ladies adhered to their earlier
fashions."
Page 94--tieing amended to tying--"Every quaint thought
and invention for tying up this liripipe was used: ..."
Page 96--tow amended to two--"Then there were two
distinct forms of cape: ..."
Page 123--Ploughman amended to Plowman--"... William
Langland, or Piers the Plowman."
Page 142--Louttrell amended to Loutrell--"... together
with the artist of the Loutrell Psalter, ..."
Page 142--repeated 'British' removed--"... are cheap to
obtain and the British Museum is free to all."
Page 154--waistcoast amended to waistcoat--"Over his
tunic he wears a quilted waistcoat, ..."
Page 189--excresences amended to excrescences--"...
surmounted by minarets, towers, horns, excrescences of
every shape ..."
Page 247--Katharine amended to Katherine--"Married,
1509, Katherine of Aragon; ..." and "... 1540, Katherine
Howard; ..."
Page 259--martin amended to marten--"... to wear marten
or velvet trimming you must be worth over two hundred
marks a year."
Page 291--anp amended to and (typesetting error)--"How,
they and we ask, are breeches, ..."
Page 296--Nuserie amended to Nurserie--"'The Wits
Nurserie.'"