English Costume Part 37

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A woman of the time of George I.}]

We find ourselves, very willingly, discussing the shoes of the King of France with a crowd of powdered beaux; those shoes the dandyism of which has never been surpa.s.sed, the heels, if you please, painted by Vandermeulen with scenes from Rhenish victories! Or we go to the toy-shops in Fleet Street, where we may make a.s.signations or buy us a mask, where loaded dice are slyly handed over the counter.

Everywhere--the beau. He rides the world like a c.o.c.k-horse, or like Og the giant rode the Ark of Noah, steering it with his feet, getting his washing for nothing, and his meals pa.s.sed up to him out by the chimney. Here is the old soldier begging in his tattered coat of red; here is a suspicious-looking character with a black patch over his eye; here the whalebone hoop of a petticoat takes up the way, and above the monstrous hoop is the tight bodice, and out of that comes the shoulders supporting the radiant Molly--patches, powder, paint, and smiles. Here a woman pa.s.ses in a Nithsdale hood, covering her from head to foot--this great cloak with a piquant history of prison-breaking; here, with a clatter of high red heels, the beau, the everlasting beau, in gold lace, wide cuffs, full skirts, swinging cane. A scene of flashing colours. The coats embroidered with flowers and b.u.t.terflies, the cuffs a ma.s.s of fine sewing, the three-cornered hats c.o.c.ked at a jaunty angle, the stockings rolled above the knee.

Wigs in three divisions of loops at the back pa.s.s by, wigs in long queues, wigs in back and side bobs. Lacquer-hilted swords, paste buckles, gold and silver snuff-boxes flashing in the sun, which struggles through the ma.s.s of swinging signs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I. (1714-1727)

The buckles on the shoes are now much larger; the stockings are loosely rolled above the knee. The great periwig is going out, and the looped and curled wig, very white with powder, is in fashion.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A hat; coat tails; a wig}]

There is a curious sameness about the clean-shaven faces surmounted by white wigs; there is--if we believe the pictures--a tendency to fat due to the tight waist of the breeches or the buckling of the belts.

The ladies wear little lace and linen caps, their hair escaping in a ringlet or so at the side, and flowing down behind, or gathered close up to a small k.n.o.b on the head. The gentlemen's coats fall in full folds on either side; the back, at present, has not begun to stick out so heavily with buckram. Ap.r.o.ns for ladies are still worn. Silks and satins, brocades and fine cloths, white wigs powdering velvet shoulders, crowds of cut-throats, elegant gentlemen, patched Aspasias, tavern swindlers, foreign adventurers, thieves, a highwayman, a footpad, a poor poet--and narrow streets and mud.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George I.}]

Everywhere we see the skirted coat, the big flapped waistcoat; even beggar boys, little pot-high urchins, are wearing some old laced waistcoat tied with string about their middles--a pair of heel-trodden, buckleless shoes on their feet, more likely bare-footed.

Here is a man s.n.a.t.c.hed from the tripe-shop in Hanging Sword Alley by the King's men--a pickpocket, a highwayman, a cut-throat in hiding. He will repent his jokes on Jack Ketch's kitchen when he feels the lash of the whip on his naked shoulders as he screams behind the cart-tail; ladies in flowered hoops will stop to look at him, beaux will lift their quizzing gla.s.ses, a young girl will whisper behind a fan, painted with the loves of Jove, to a gorgeous young fop in a light-b.u.t.toned coat of sky-blue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George I.}]

There is a sadder sight to come, a cart on the way to Tyburn, a poor fellow standing by his coffin with a nosegay in his breast; he is full of Dutch courage, for, as becomes a notorious highwayman, he must show game before the crowd, so he is full of stum and Yorkshire stingo.

Maybe we stop to see a pirate hanging in chains by the river, and we are jostled by horse officers and watermen, revenue men and jerkers, and, as usual, the curious beau, his gla.s.s to his eye. Never was such a time for curiosity: a man is preaching mystic religion; there is a new flavour to the Rainbow Tavern furmity; there is a fellow who can sew with his toes; a man is in the pillory for publishing Jacobite ballads--and always there is the beau looking on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A woman of the time of George I.}]

Country ladies, still in small hoops, even in full dresses innocent of whalebone, are bewildered by the noise; country gentlemen, in plain-coloured coats and stout shoes, have come to London on South Sea Bubble business. They will go to the Fair to see the Harlequin and Scaramouch dance, they will buy a new perfume at The Civet Cat, and they will go home--the lady's head full of the new hoop fashion, and she will cut away the sleeve of her old dress and put in fresh lace; the gentleman full of curses on tavern bills and the outrageous price of South Sea shares.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George I.}]

'And what,' says country dame to country dame lately from town--'what is the mode in gentlemen's hair?' Her own goodman has an old periwig, very full, and a small bob for ordinary wear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George I.}]

'The very full periwig is going out,' our lady a.s.sures her; 'a tied wig is quite the mode, a wig in three queues tied in round bobs, or in hair loops, and the long single queue wig is coming in rapidly, and will soon be all the wear.' So, with talk of flowered tabbies and fine lutestring, are the fashions pa.s.sed on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I. (1714-1727)

You will see that the fontage has given way to a small lace cap. The hair is drawn off the forehead. The hoop of the skirt is still large.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A woman of the time of George I.}]

Just as Sir Roger de Coverley nearly called a young lady in riding-dress 'sir,' because of the upper half of her body, so the ladies of this day might well be taken for 'sirs,' with their double-breasted riding-coats like the men, and their hair in a queue surmounted by a c.o.c.ked hat.

Colours and combinations of colours are very striking: petticoats of black satin covered with large bunches of worked flowers, morning gown of yellow flowered satin faced with cherry-coloured bands, waistcoats of one colour with a fringe of another, bird's-eye hoods, bodices covered with gold lace and embroidered flowers--all these gave a gay, artificial appearance to the age; but we are to become still more quaintly devised, still more powdered and patched, in the next reign.

GEORGE THE SECOND

Reigned thirty-three years: 1727-1760.

Born 1683. Married, 1705, Caroline of Ans.p.a.ch.

THE MEN

Just a few names of wigs, and you will see how the periwig has gone into the background, how the bob-wig has superseded the campaign wig; you will find a veritable confusion of barbers' enthusiasms, half-forgotten designs, names dependent on a twist, a lock, a careful disarrangement--pigeon's-wing wigs with wings of hair at the sides, comets with long, full tails, cauliflowers with a profusion of curls, royal bind-wigs, staircase wigs, ladders, brushes, Count Saxe wigs, cut bobs, long bobs, negligents, chain-buckles, drop-wigs, bags. Go and look at Hogarth; there's a world of dress for you by the grim humorist who painted Sarah Malcolm, the murderess, in her cell; who painted 'Taste in High Life.' Wigs! inexhaustible subject--wigs pa.s.sing from father to son until they arrived at the second-hand dealers in Monmouth Street, and there, after a rough overhauling, began a new life. There was a wig lottery at sixpence a ticket in Rosemary Lane, and with even ordinary wigs--Grizzle Majors at twenty-five shillings, Great Tyes at a guinea, and Brown Bagwigs at fifteen shillings--quite a considerable saving might be made by the lucky lottery winner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Back view of a man's coat; seven types of hat for men}]

On wigs, hats c.o.c.ked to suit the pa.s.sing fashion, broad-brimmed, narrow-brimmed, round, three-cornered, high-brimmed, low-brimmed, turned high off the forehead, turned low in front and high at the back--an endless crowd. Such a day for clothes, for patches, and politics, Tory side and Whig to your face, Tory or Whig c.o.c.k to your hat; pockets high, pockets low, stiff cuffs, crushable cuffs, a regular jumble of go-as-you-please. Let me try to sort the jumble.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {1739: Two views of a coat for men}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George II.; a sleeve; a waistcoat}]

Foremost, the coat. The coat is growing more full, more spread; it becomes, on the beau, a great spreading, flaunting, skirted affair just b.u.t.toned by a b.u.t.ton or two at the waist. It is laced or embroidered all over; it is flowered or plain. The cuffs are huge; they will, of course, suit the fancy of the owner, or the tailor.

About 1745 they will get small--some will get small; then the fashions begin to run riot; by the cut of coat you may not know the date of it, then, when you pa.s.s it in the street. From 1745 there begins the same jumble as to-day, a hopeless thing to unravel; in the next reign, certainly, you may tell yourself here is one of the new Macaronis, but that will be all you will mark out of the crowd of fashions--one more remarkable, newer than the rest, but perhaps you have been in the country for a week, and a new mode has come in and is dying out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE II. (1727-1760)

Notice the heavy cuffs, and the very full skirts of the coat. He carries a _chapeau bras_ under his arm--a hat for carrying only, since he will not ruffle his wig. He wears a black satin tie to his wig, the ends of which tie come round his neck, are made into a bow, and brooched with a solitaire.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George II.}]

From coat let us look at waistcoat. Full flaps and long almost to the knees; but again, about 1756, they will be shorter. They are fringed, flowered, laced, open to show the lace cravat fall so daintily, to show the black velvet bow-tie that comes over from the black velvet, or silk, or satin tie of the queue. Ruffles of lace, of all qualities, at the wrists, the beau's hand emerging with his snuff-box from a filmy froth of white lace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of George II.; a wig; breeches and stockings}]

In this era of costume--from George I. to George IV.--the great thing 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton, 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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.toned back, then cut away; then the front of the coat cut away like the modern dress-coat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {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-cla.s.s 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.

m.u.f.fs must be remembered, as every dandy carried a m.u.f.f 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 n.o.ble 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.