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CHAPTER IV.

DRESS AND COSTUME.

Transitional character of English dress in the eighteenth century-Female attire-Commodes-Preposterous size of head-dresses-The hoopThe train-Minor decorations-Snuff, paint, patches, and fans-Lace -Scattered contemporary notices relative to female costume—The dress of beaux-Wigs and their varieties-Hats--'The cock'-Powder -Ruffles-Watches-Clouded canes-' The muff-The umbrellaBuckles - Dress of the learned professions - Military and naval costume - Juvenile attire-Notices of male costume selected from contemporary writers.

NOTWITHSTANDING the ban under which philosophy has always placed the vanity of dress, it has never failed to engross the constant attention of civilised humanity. It does so now, it did so in the last century, and from the closing years of the reign of William III. down to 1799, the dress and costume worn by men and women in England passed through transitions so numerous and so frequent, that neither the historian, the essayist, nor the painter has been successful in preserving all of them. Like the fabled sea-god Proteus struggling in the arms of Telemachus on the Pharic coasts, it passed from shape to shape with the velocity of thought. In the face of this, it will be manifest that any attempt to detail the multifarious fantastic alterations which the eighteenth century wrought in the costume of English society with anything approaching completeness would require researches far too extensive for the limits of a single chapter. All that it is possible to do here, therefore, will be to pass in brief review the styles which male and female attire most commonly assumed during the four reigns which the century comprises, freely according place aux dames.

For the first few years during which Queen Anne wielded the sceptre, the ladies of this land dressed very much in the

same way as in the reign of her predecessor, 'adding or subtracting minor decorations which did not materially affect their tout ensemble. About the year 1711, however, the good taste of the Queen induced her to discontinue the wearing of those monstrous fashionable head-dresses, sadly misnomered commodes, which were (as may be learnt from a reference to the 'Lady's Dictionary') frames of wire, two or three storeys high, fitted to the head, and covered with tiffany or some other thin silk. Why the appellation of commodes should have ever been applied to obvious inconveniences passes the understanding, for no name could possibly have been more appropriate to the style of coiffure which they represented than that of 'tower,' or 'Bow steeple,' names which the wits bestowed upon them in derision. Addison, who with Steele endeavoured, through the medium of the 'Spectator,' to correct what was amiss in the fashions of his day, thus alluded to the change :

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's headdress. Within my own memory I have known it rise and fall within thirty degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men. The women were of such enormous stature that we appeared as grasshoppers before them. At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seem almost another species. I remember several ladies who were once very near seven feet high, that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus curtailed I cannot learn. Whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with something of that kind which shall be entirely new, or whether some of the tallest of the sex, being too cunning for the rest, have contrived this method to make themselves appear sizeable, is still a secret, though I find most are of opinion they are at present like trees new lopped and pruned, that will certainly sprout up and flourish with greater heads than before.

Nor was Mr. Spectator very far out in the conjecture he thus hazarded, seeing that shortly after the accession of George III. female head-gear rose to more exaggerated and ridiculous heights than ever, reaching the climax of absurdity between the years 1763 and 1780, when the head was usually surmounted with a high cushion, over which the front hair

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reduced to a cloudy hue by a mixture of powder and greasewas combed to meet that behind, and when strained tight was surrounded by ribbons and jewels or artificial flowers, or adorned with a plume of feathers standing frequently half a yard in height. It was about this time that the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire supported in her hair two ostrich-feathers (each more than an ell in length) which had been presented to her by Lord Stormont, and as her Grace wielded absolute sway over the then existing fashions, the craze for towering feathers became well-nigh universal. The poet Rogers, in speaking of the preposterous size of the female head-dresses prevalent in his youth, once told the company at a dinner-table that he well recollected, on one occasion, going to Ranelagh in a coach, accompanied by a lady who was obliged to sit upon a stool placed in the bottom of it, on account of the height of her head-dress precluding her from occupying the regular seat.2 George Colman the younger, describing the head-gear of the spouse of his tutor, a parson named Fountayne, who kept a famous boarding establishment at Marylebone in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, says that

Although she rejected powder and pomatum (which were universally worn), she nevertheless so far conformed with the prevalent female fashion as to erect a formidable messuage or tenement of hair upon the ground-plot of her pericranium. A twopenny toupee, pulled up all but by the roots, and strained over a cushion on the top of her head, formed the centre of the building; tiers of curls served for the wings, a banging chignon behind defended the occiput like a buttress, and the whole fabric was kept tight and waterproof, as with nails and iron cramps, by a quantity of long single and double black pins.3

According to some accounts, this hideous fashion was first introduced by the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, and entailed hours of suffering under the friseur, who not unfrequently failed entirely to give satisfaction. From a letter written by Hannah More to one of her sisters from London in 1776, it

Stone, Chronicles of Fashion, ii. 436; Life of Nollekens, i. 61; J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, pp. 35-36; Life and Times of Nollekens, i. 18; Correspondence of the First Earl of Malmesbury, i. 296; Miss Burney's Evelina, c. xix.

Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, p. 24. 8 Random Records, p. 35.

appears that some ladies went to the length of wearing a large quantity of fruit in their head-dresses, others four or five ostrich feathers of different colours at the back of their perpendicular caps. Visiting some relations at Bungay, in Suffolk, in April 1777, Hannah met a number of damsels who, she declared, had amongst them on their heads, 'an acre and a half of shrubbery, besides slopes, grass-plats, tulip-beds, clumps of peonies, kitchen-gardens, and greenhouses.' 2 It is stated that this now scarcely credible but fashionable folly was abolished through the instrumentality of Garrick, who appeared in the character of Sir John Brute, dressed in female attire, with his cap decorated with a profusion of every kind of vegetable, a huge carrot being dependent from each side. The picturegalleries in many of our historic mansions bear testimony to the truly frightful phantasy of head-gear to which the despotic and exacting canons of fashion required fashionable belles to conform. It is perpetuated, for example, in some of the finest handiwork of Thomas Gainsborough ; and it may be mentioned that, while this master of English portraiture was slowly fighting his way to fame and competence at Bath, there resided in the same city a friseur who was far more honoured and far better paid than the painter. So high was the esteem in which this friseur was held by the leaders of bon ton, that they would employ no one else; with the result that they were often compelled to submit to his operations whole days before they were to appear at some grand ball or brilliant fête, and to rest at night in an upright position, lest they should damage or destroy his work by lying down. Under date of November 1, 1779, the 'Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser' records that a young lady of Grantham, in looking over some papers with a lighted candle in her hand, set fire to her head-dress. Her cries alarmed some of the neighbours, who hastened to her relief; and happily put an end to the dreadful conflagration without any other material injury than the loss of a large mountain of hair, wool, powder, pomatum, &c.' By way of variety, fashionable belles not unfrequently bound up kitchen2 Ibid. p. 100.

1 Roberts's Memoirs of H. More, i p. 65.

garden stuff into their hair, the flower of the scarlet-runner being considered particularly suitable for the adornment of their locks.

The second abomination in point of female costume of which the eighteenth century witnessed the birth was that 'sevenfold fence,' the hoop, which for so many years afforded 2 such a rich theme for the lively pens of wags and satirists. The manufacture of this famous article, which was the precursor of the crinoline, has been generally ascribed to the inventive genius of a certain Mrs. Selby, concerning whom nothing definite appears to be known beyond the fact that she was a noted London mantua-maker, who died in January 1717. Wearers of the hoop pleaded in excuse of its absurdity that it rendered them cool in summer by admitting a free circulation of the air. In the reign of Anne, the hooped petticoatwhich was no more a petticoat than Diogenes' tub was his breeches 2-attained such enormous proportions that the editor of the 'Tatler' felt in duty bound to ridicule the innovation. Forthwith Mr. Bickerstaff (i.e. Sir Richard Steele) inserted in the pages of that journal the bogus 'humble petition of William Jingle, coachmaker and chairmaker, of the city of Westminster,'

which showeth, that upon the late invention of Mrs. Catherine Crossditch, mantua-maker, the petticoats of ladies were too wide for entering into any coach or chair which was in use before the said invention. That for the service of the said ladies, your petitioner has built a round chair in the form of a lantern, six yards and a half in circumference, with a stool in the centre of it, the said vehicle being so contrived as to receive the passenger by opening in two in the middle, and closing mathematically when she is seated. That your petitioner has also invented a coach for the reception of one lady only, who is to be let in at the top. That the said coach has been tried by a lady's woman in one of these full petticoats, who was let down from a balcony, and drawn up again by pulleys, to the great satisfaction of her lady and all who beheld her.3

On another occasion Mr. Bickerstaff enlivened his readers by reporting the imaginary proceedings of a court established 2 Ibid. 3 Malcolm, Anecdotes of London in Eighteenth Century, ii. 321.

1 Noble's Continuation of Granger.