Courage with swords, gentility with lace."--_Connoisseur._
The accession of the House of Hanover brought but little change either in
the fashions or the fabrics. In 1717 the King published an edict regarding
the hawking of lace, but the world was too much taken up with the Old
Pretender and the court of St. Germains; the King, too, was often absent,
preferring greatly his German dominions.
We now hear a great deal of lace ruffles; they were worn long and falling.
Lord Bolingbroke, who enraged Queen Anne by his untidy dress--"she
supposed, forsooth, he would some day come to court in his nightcap"--is
described as having his cravat of point lace, and his hands hidden by
exaggerated ruffles of the same material. In good old Jacobite times, these
weeping ruffles served as well to conceal notes--"poulets"--passed from one
wary politician to another, as they did the French sharpers to juggle and
cheat at cards.
Lace continued the mania of the day. "Since your fantastical geers came in
with wires, ribbons, and laces, and your furbelows with three hundred yards
in a gown and petticoat, there has not been a good housewife in the
nation,"[1044] writes an indignant dramatist. The lover was made to bribe
the Abigail of his mistress with a piece of Flanders lace[1045]--an
offering not to be resisted. Lace appeared {352}at baptisms,[1046] at
marriages, as well as at burials, of which more hereafter--even at the Old
Bailey, where one Miss Margaret Caroline Rudd, a beauty of the day, tried
for forgery, quite moved her jurors to tears, and nigh gained her acquittal
by the taste of her elegantly-laced stomacher, the lace robings of her
dress, and single lace flounce, her long pendulous ruffles, hanging from
the elbow, heard, fluttering in her agitation, by the court; but, in spite
of these allurements, Margaret Caroline Rudd was hanged.
Every woman, writes Swift,[1047] is
"In choosing lace a critic nice,
Knows to a groat the lowest price."
Together, they
"Of caps and ruffles hold the grave debate,
As of their lives they would decide the fate."
Again, he says:--
"And when you are among yourselves, how naturally, after the first
compliments, do you entertain yourselves with the price and choice of lace,
apply your hands to each other's lappets and ruffles, as if the whole
business of your life and the public concern depended on the cut of your
petticoats."[1048]
Even wise Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, who wrote epistles about the ancients,
and instead of going to a ball, sat at home and read Sophocles, exclaims to
her sister--"Surely your heroic spirit will prefer a beau's hand in
Brussels lace to a stubborn Scævola without an arm."
PLATE LXXXIV.
[Illustration: JOHN LAW, THE PARIS BANKER, Author of the Mississippi
Scheme, 1671-1729.--In cravat of Point de France, between 1708-20. Painted
by Belle. National Portrait Gallery.
Photo by Walker and Cockerell.]
_To face page 352._
{353}In the middle of the nineteenth century it was the fashion that no
young lady should wear lace previous to her marriage. In the reign of
George II. etiquette was different, for we find the Duchess of Portland
presenting Mrs. Montague, then a girl, with a lace head and ruffles.
Wrathfully do the satirists of the day rail against the expense of
"The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribbon, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things
That make up all their magazines,"[1049]
and the consequent distress of the lace merchants, to whom ladies are
indebted for thousands. After a drawing-room, in which the fair population
appeared in "borrowed," _i.e._, unpaid lace,[1050] one of the chief lacemen
became well-nigh bankrupt. Duns besieged the houses of the great:--
"By mercers, lacemen, mantua-makers press'd;
But most for ready cash, for play distress'd,
Where can she turn?"[1051]
The _Connoisseur_, describing the reckless extravagance of one of these
ladies, writes:--"The lady played till all her ready money was gone, staked
her cap and lost it, afterwards her handkerchief. He then staked both cap
and handkerchief against her tucker, which, to his pique, she gained." When
enumerating the various causes of suicide, he proposes "that an annual bill
or report should be made out, giving the different causes which have led to
the act." Among others, in his proposed "Bill of Suicide," he gives French
claret, French lace, French cooks, etc.
The men, though scarcely coming up to the standard of Sir Courtly
Nice,[1052] who has all his bands and linen made in Holland and washed at
Haarlem, were just as extravagant as the ladies.
{354}GEORGE II.
"'How well this ribband's glass becomes your face,'
She cries in rapture; 'then so sweet a lace!
How charmingly you look!'"
--Lady M. W. Montagu. _Town Eclogues._
For court and state occasions Brussels lace still held its sway.
In the reign of George II. we read how, at the drawing-room of 1735, fine
escalloped Brussels laced heads, triple ditto laced ruffles,[1053] lappets
hooked up with diamond solitaires, found favour. At the next the ladies
wore heads dressed English, _i.e._, bow of fine Brussels lace of exceeding
rich patterns, with the same amount of laced ruffles and lappets. Gold
flounces were also worn.
Speaking of the passion for Brussels lace, Postlethwait indignantly
observes:--"'Tis but a few years since England expended upon foreign lace
and linen not less than two millions yearly. As lace in particular is the
manufacture of nuns, our British ladies may as well endow monasteries as
wear Flanders lace, for these Popish nuns are maintained by Protestant
contributions."[1054]
Patriotism, it would appear, did come into vogue in the year 1736, when at
the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the bride is described as
wearing a night-dress of superb lace, the bridegroom a cap of similar
material. All the laces worn by the court on this occasion are announced to
have been of English manufacture, with the exception of that of the Duke of
Marlborough, who appeared in point d'Espagne. The bride, however, does not
profit by this high example, for shortly after we read, in the _Memoirs of
Madame Palatine_, of the secretary of Sir Luke Schaub being drugged at
Paris by an impostor, and robbed of some money sent to defray the purchase
of some French lace ruffles for the Princess of Wales.
{355}It was of native-made laces, we may infer, Mrs. Delany writes in the
same year:--"Thanks for your apron. Brussels nor Mechlin ever produced
anything prettier."
It appears somewhat strange that patriotism, as regards native
manufactures, should have received an impulse during the reign of that most
uninteresting though gallant little monarch, the second George of
Brunswick.[1055] But patriotism has its evils, for, writes an essayist,
"some ladies now squander away all their money in fine laces, because it
sets a great many poor people to work."[1056]
Ten years previous to the death of King George II. was founded, with a view
to correct the prevalent taste for foreign manufactures,[1057] the Society
of Anti-Gallicans, who held their quarterly meetings, and distributed
prizes for bone, point lace, and other articles of English
manufacture.[1058]
This society, which continued in great activity for many years, proved most
beneficial to the lace-making trade. It excited also a spirit of emulation
among gentlewomen of the middle class, who were glad in the course of the
year to add to a small income by making the finer kinds of needle-point,
which, on account of their elaborate workmanship, could be produced only in
foreign convents or by {356}persons whose maintenance did not entirely
depend upon the work of their hands.
Towards the year 1756 certain changes in the fashion of the day now again
mark the period, for--
"Dress still varying, most to form confined,
Shifts like the sands, the sport of every wind."
"Long lappets, the horse-shoe cap, the Brussels head, and the prudish mob
pinned under the chin, have all had their day," says the _Connoisseur_ in
1754. Now we have first mention of lace cardinals; trollopies or
slammerkins[1059] come in at the same period, with treble ruffles to the
cuffs; writers talk, too, of a "gentle dame in blonde lace," blonde being
as yet a newly-introduced manufacture.
Though history may only be all false,[1060] as Sir Robert Walpole said to
that "cynic in lace ruffles," his son Horace, yet the newspapers are to be
depended upon for the fashion of the day, or, as Lady Mary would say, "for
what new whim adorns the ruffle."[1061]
The lace apron,[1062] worn since the days of Queen Elizabeth, continued to
hold its own till the end of the eighteenth century, though some considered
it an appendage scarcely consistent with the dignity of polite society. The
anecdote of Beau Nash, who held these articles in the strongest aversion,
has been often related. "He absolutely excluded," says his biographer, "all
who ventured to appear at the Assembly Room at Bath so attired. I have
known him at a ball night strip the Duchess of Queensberry, and throw her
apron on one of the hinder benches among the ladies' women, observing that
none but Abigails appeared in white aprons; though that apron was of the
costliest point, and cost two hundred guineas."[1063]
{357}George II. did his best to promote the fabrics of his country, but at
this period smuggling increased with fearful rapidity. It was a war to the
knife between the revenue officer and society at large: all classes
combined, town ladies of high degree with waiting-maids and the common
sailor, to avoid the obnoxious duties and cheat the Government. To this
subject we devote the following chapter.
{358}CHAPTER XXVII.
SMUGGLING.
"May that mistaken taste be starv'd to reason,
That does not think French fashions--English treason.
Souse their cook's talent, and cut short their tailors;
Wear your own lace; eat beef like Vernon's sailors."
--Aaron Hill. 1754.
We have had occasional mention of this kindly-looked-upon offence, in the
carrying out of which many a reckless seaman paid the penalty of his life
in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
From 1700 downwards, though the edicts prohibiting the entry of Flanders
lace were repealed, the points of France, Spain and Venice, with other
fabrics of note, were still excluded from our ports. "England," writes
Anderson,[1064] "brings home in a smuggling way from France much fine lace
and other prohibited fopperies." Prohibition went for nothing; foreign lace
ladies would have, and if they could not smuggle it themselves, the
smuggler brought it to them. It was not till 1751 that the Customs appear
to have used undue severity as regards the entries, prying into people's
houses, and exercising a surveillance of so strict a nature as to render
the chance to evade their watchfulness a very madness on the part of all
degrees. In short, there was not a female within ten miles of a seaport,
writes an essayist, that was in possession of a Mechlin lace cap or pinner
but they examined her title to it.
Lord Chesterfield, whose opinion that "dress is a very silly thing, but it
is much more silly not to be dressed according to your station," was more
than acted up to, referring to the strictness of the Customs, writes to his
son {359}in 1751, when coming over on a short visit: "Bring only two or
three of your laced shirts, and the rest plain ones."
The revenue officers made frequent visits to the tailors' shops, and
confiscated whatever articles they found of foreign manufacture.
On January 19th, 1752, a considerable quantity of foreign lace, gold and
silver, seized at a tailor's, who paid the penalty of £100, was publicly
burnt.[1065]
George III., who really from his coming to the throne endeavoured to
protect English manufactures, ordered, in 1764, all the stuffs and laces
worn at the marriage of his sister, the Princess Augusta, to the Duke of
Brunswick, to be of English manufacture. To this decree the nobility paid
little attention. Three days previous to the marriage a descent was made by
the Customs on the court milliner of the day, and nearly the whole of the
clothes, silver, gold stuffs and lace, carried off, to the dismay of the
modiste, as well as of the ladies deprived of their finery. The disgusted
French milliner retired with a fortune of £11,000 to Versailles, where she
purchased a villa, which, in base ingratitude to the English court, she
called "La Folie des Dames Anglaises." In May of the same year three
wedding garments, together with a large seizure of French lace, weighing
nearly 100 lbs., were burnt at Mr. Coxe's refinery, conformably to the Act
of Parliament. The following birthday, warned by the foregoing mischances,
the nobility appeared in clothes and laces entirely of British manufacture.
Every paper tells how lace and ruffles of great value, sold on the previous
day, had been seized in a hackney coach, between St. Paul's and Covent
Garden; how a lady of rank was stopped in her chair and relieved of French
lace to a large amount; or how a poor woman, carelessly picking a quartern
loaf as she walked along, was arrested, and the loaf found to contain £200
worth of lace. Even ladies when walking had their black lace mittens cut
off their hands, the officers supposing them to be of French manufacture;
and lastly, a Turk's turban, of most Mameluke dimensions, was found,
containing a stuffing of £90 worth of lace. Books, {360}bottles, babies,
false-bottomed boxes, umbrellas, daily poured out their treasures to the
lynx-eyed officers.
In May, 1765, the lace-makers joined the procession of the silk-workers of
Spitalfields to Westminster, bearing flags and banners, to which were
attached long floating pieces of French lace, demanding of the Lords
redress, and the total exclusion of foreign goods. On receiving an answer
that it was too late, they must wait till next Session, the assemblage
declared that they would not be put off by promises; they broke the Duke of
Bedford's palings on their way home, and threatened to burn the premises of
Mr. Carr, an obnoxious draper. At the next levée they once more assembled
before St. James's, but, finding the dresses of the nobility to be all of
right English stuff, retired satisfied, without further clamour.
The papers of the year 1764 teem with accounts of seizures made by the
Customs. Among the confiscated effects of a person of the highest quality
are enumerated: "16 black à-la-mode cloaks, trimmed with lace; 44 French
lace caps; 11 black laced handkerchiefs; 6 lace hats; 6 ditto aprons; 10
pairs of ruffles; 6 pairs of ladies' blonde ditto, and 25 gentlemen's."
Eleven yards of edging and 6 pairs of ruffles are extracted from the pocket
of the footman. Everybody smuggled. A gentleman attached to the Spanish
Embassy is unloaded of 36 dozen shirts, with fine Dresden ruffles and
jabots, and endless lace, in pieces, for ladies' wear. These articles had
escaped the vigilance of the officers at Dover, but were seized on his
arrival by the coach at Southwark. Though Prime Ministers in those days
accepted bribes, the Custom-house officers seem to have done their
duty.[1066]
When the body of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire was brought over from
France, where he died, the officers, to the anger of his servants, not
content with opening and searching the coffin, poked the corpse with a
stick to ascertain if it was a real body; but the trick of smuggling in
coffins was too {361}old to be attempted. Forty years before, when a
deceased clergyman was conveyed from the Low Countries for interment, the
body of the corpse was found to have disappeared, and to have been replaced
by Flanders lace of immense value--the head and hands and feet alone
remaining. This discovery did not, however, prevent the High Sheriff of
Westminster from running--and that successfully--£6,000 worth of French
lace in the coffin of Bishop Atterbury,[1067] when his body was brought
over from Calais for interment.
Towards the close of the French war, in the nineteenth century, smuggling
of lace again became more rife than ever. It was in vain the authorities
stopped the travelling carriages on their road from seaport towns to
London, rifled the baggage of the unfortunate passengers by the mail at
Rochester and Canterbury; they were generally outwitted, though spies in
the pay of the Customs were ever on the watch.
Mrs. Palliser had in her possession a Brussels veil of great beauty, which
narrowly escaped seizure. It belonged to a lady who was in the habit of
accompanying her husband, for many years member for one of the Cinque
Ports. The day after the election she was about to leave for London,
somewhat nervous as to the fate of a Brussels veil she had purchased of a
smuggler for a hundred guineas; when, at a dinner-party, it was announced
that Lady Ellenborough, wife of the Lord Chief Justice, had been stopped
near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable lace seized concealed in the
lining of her carriage. Dismayed at the news, the lady imparted her trouble
to a gentleman at her side, who immediately offered to take charge of the
lace and convey it to London, remarking that "no one would suspect him, as
he was a bachelor." Turning round suddenly, she observed one of the hired
waiters to smile, and at once settling him to be a spy, she loudly accepted
the offer; but that night, before going to bed, secretly caused the veil to
be sewn up in the waistcoat of the newly-elected M.P., in such a manner
that it filled the hollow of his back. Next morning they started, and
reached London in safety, while her friend, who remained two days later,
was stopped, and underwent {362}a rigorous but unsuccessful examination
from the Customhouse officers.
The free trade principles of the nineteenth century put a more effectual
stop to smuggling than all the activity of revenue officers, spies, and
informers, or even laws framed for the punishment of the offenders.
{363}CHAPTER XXVIII.
GEORGE III.
"In clothes, cheap handsomeness doth bear the bell,
Wisdome's a trimmer thing than shop e'er gave.
Say not then, This with that lace will do well;
But, This with my discretion will be brave.
Much curiousnesse is a perpetual wooing,
Nothing with labour, fully long a doing."
--Herbert, "The Church Porch."
In 1760 commences the reign of George III. The King was patriotic, and did
his best to encourage the fabrics of his country.
From the year 1761 various Acts were passed for the benefit of the
lace-makers: the last, that of 1806, "increases the duties on foreign
laces."[1068]
Queen Charlotte, on her first landing in England, wore, in compliment to
the subjects of her royal consort, a fly cap richly trimmed, with lappets
of British lace, and a dress of similar manufacture.
The Englishman, however, regardless of the Anti-Gallicans, preferred his
"Macklin" and his Brussels to all the finest productions of Devonshire or
Newport-Pagnel.
Ruffles,[1069] according to the fashion of Tavistock Street and St.
James's, in May, 1773, still continued long, dipped in the sauce alike by
clown and cavalier.[1070]
"The beau,
A critic styled in point of dress,
Harangues on fashion, point, and lace."
{364}A man was known by his "points"; he collected lace, as, in these more
athletic days, a gentleman prides himself on his pointers or his horses. We
read in the journals of the time how, on the day after Lord George Gordon's
riots, a report ran through London that the Earl of Effingham, having
joined the rioters, had been mortally wounded, and his body thrown into the
Thames. He had been recognised, folks declared, by his point lace
ruffles.[1071]
Mr. Damer, less known than his wife, the talented sculptor and friend of
Horace Walpole, appeared three times a day in a new suit, and at his
death[1072] left a wardrobe which sold for £15,000.[1073] Well might it
have been said of him--
"We sacrifice to dress, till household joys
And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellars dry,
And keeps our larder bare; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and woe,
Where peace and hospitality might reign."[1074]
There was "no difference between the nobleman and city 'prentice, except
that the latter was sometimes the greater beau," writes the _Female
Spectator_.[1075]
"His hands must be covered with fine Brussels lace."[1076]
Painters of the eighteenth century loved to adorn their portraits with the
finest fabrics of Venice and Flanders; modern artists consider such
decorations as far too much trouble. "Over the chimney-piece," writes one
of the essayists, describing a citizen's country box, "was my friend's
portrait, which was drawn bolt upright in a full-bottomed periwig, a laced
cravat, with the fringed ends appearing through the button-hole (Steinkirk
fashion). Indeed, one would almost wonder how and where people managed to
afford so rich a selection of laces in their days, did it not call to mind
the demand of the Vicaress of Wakefield 'to have as many pearls and
diamonds put into her picture as could be given for the money.'"
{365}Ruffles were equally worn by the ladies:--[1077]
"Frizzle your elbows with ruffles sixteen;
Furl off your lawn apron with flounces in rows."[1078]
Indeed, if we may judge by the intellectual conversation overheard and
accurately noted down by Miss Burney,[1079] at Miss Monckton's (Lady Cork)
party, court ruffles were inconvenient to wear:--
"'You can't think how I am encumbered with these nasty ruffles,' said Mrs.
Hampden.
"'And I dined in them,' says the other. 'Only think!'
"'Oh!' answered Mrs. Hampden, 'it really puts me out of spirits.'"
Both ladies were dressed for a party at Cumberland House, and ill at ease
in the costume prescribed by etiquette.
About 1770 the sleeves of the ladies' dresses were tight on the upper arm,
where they suddenly became very large, and, drooping at the elbow, they
terminated in rich fringes of lace ruffles. A few years later the sleeves
expanded from the shoulders till they became a succession of constantly
enlarging ruffles and lappets, and again, before 1780, they became tight
throughout, with small cuffs and no lace at the elbows, when they were worn
with long gloves.
Our history of English lace is now drawing to a close; but, before quitting
the subject, we must, however, make some allusion to the custom prevalent
here, as in all countries, of using lace as a decoration to grave-clothes.
In the chapter devoted to Greece, we have mentioned how much lace is still
taken from the tombs of the Ionian Islands, washed, mended, or, more often,
as a proof of its authenticity, sold in a most disgusting state to the
purchaser. The custom was prevalent at Malta, as the lines of Beaumont and
Fletcher testify:--
"In her best habit, as the custom is,
You know, in Malta, with all ceremonies,
She's buried in the family monument,
I' the temple of St. John."[1080]
{366}At Palermo you may see the mummies thus adorned in the celebrated
catacombs of the Capuchin convent.[1081]
In Denmark,[1082] Sweden, and the north of Europe[1083] the custom was
general. The mass of lace in the tomb of the once fair Aurora Königsmarck,
at Quedlenburg, would in itself be a fortune. She sleeps clad in the
richest point d'Angleterre, Malines, and guipure. Setting aside the jewels
which still glitter around her parchment form, no daughter of Pharaoh was
ever so richly swathed.[1084]
In Spain it is related as the privilege of a grandee: all people of a lower
rank are interred in the habit of some religious order.[1085]
Taking the grave-clothes of St. Cuthbert as an example, we believe the same
custom to have prevailed in England from the earliest times.[1086]
{367}Mrs. Oldfield, the celebrated actress, who died in 1730, caused
herself to be thus interred. The lines of Pope have long since immortalised
the story:--
"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!
(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.)
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face;
One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead--
And--Betty--give this cheek a little red."