“toupee” with two large rows of curls at the side. This head-dress,
clubbed into a heavy knot behind, was surmounted by a
very little hat. The coat with small cuffs was much cut away
before, the skimped skirts reaching midway down the thigh.
Waistcoat flaps were but little below the waist. Breeches,
striped or spotted like those of a Dresden china shepherd, were
fastened at the knee with a bunch of ribbon ends; a watch-guard
hung from each fob. The shirt-front was frilled and a white
cravat was tied in a great bow at the chin. Macaronis wore a
little curved hanger, or replaced the sword with a long, heavily
tasselled cane, which served to lift the little hat off the topmost
peak of the toupee. The woman-Macaroni wore no hoop but in
full dress. Her gown was a loose wrapper, the sleeves short and
wide with many ruffles, the skirt pulled aside to show a petticoat
laced and embroidered with flowers. But her distinguishing
mark was her head-dress, which exaggerated the male fashion,
towering upward until the flowers and feathers at the top
threatened the candelabra of the assembly room. The Macaronis
appear about 1772 and stay but a short while, for the revolutionary
fashions tread upon their heels.
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| Fig. 46.—An English Lady (c. 1730). |
Women’s dress in this 18th century is dominated by the hoop-petticoat which Sir Roger de Coverley recognizes in 1711 as a new fashion and an old one revived. A stiff bodice laced in front, a gown, with short and wide-ended sleeves, gathered up in folds above the petticoat, a laced apron and a lace cap with hanging lappets, is the dress of the century’s beginning. So the women of fashion are compared with children in go-carts, their tight-laced waists rising from vast bells of petticoats over which the gown is looped up like a drawn curtain. By 1750 the hoop-petticoat ringed with whalebone is so vast that architects begin to allow for its passage up London stairways by curving the balusters outward. Great variety of women’s dress appears under George II., but those in the height of the mode affected a shepherdess simplicity in their walking clothes, wearing the flat-crowned or high-crowned hats and long aprons of the dairymaid. At this time a new fashion comes in, the sacque, a gown, sometimes sleeveless, open to the waist, hanging loosely from the shoulders to near the edge of the hoop-petticoat. George III.’s reign saw women’s head-dressings reach an extravagance of folly passing all that had come before it. Hair kneaded with pomatum and flour was drawn up over a cushion or pad of wool, and twisted into curls and knots and decorated with artificial flowers and bows of ribbon. As this could not be achieved without the aid of a skilled barber, the “head” sometimes remained unopened for several weeks. At the end of that time sublimate powder was needed to kill off the tenantry which had multiplied within. At the beginning of the last quarter of the century the feathers grew larger, chains of beads looped about the curls, while ships in full sail, coaches and horses, and butterflies in blown glass, rocked upon the upper heights. Loose mob-caps or close “Joans” were worn in undress, often as simple as the full dress was fantastic. Varieties of the gown and sacque remained in fashion, the petticoat being still much in evidence, flounced or quilted, or festooned with ribbons. Before the ’eighties of this century were over, a new taste, encouraged by the painters of the school of Reynolds, began to sweep away many follies, and the revolutionary fashions of France, breaking with all that spoke of the old régime, expelled many more. The age of powder and gold lace, of peach-bloom brocade coats with muff-shaped cuffs, of bag-wigs and three-cornered hats drew suddenly to an end. Mr Pitt killed hair-powder by his tax of 1795, but before that time fashionable men, who since the beginning of George III’s. reign had been somewhat inconstant to the wig, were wearing their own hair unpowdered and tied in a club at the back of the coat collar. Before the century end the roughly cropped “Brutus” head was seen. The wig remained here and there on some old-fashioned pates. Bishops wore it until far into the Victorian age, and it may still be seen in the Houses of Parliament and in the courts of law. Even breeches were passing, tight pantaloons showing themselves in the streets. The coat, cut away over the hips, began to take a high collar and the beginnings of the lappel. Its cuffs were of the modern shape, showing a narrow ruffle. The waistcoat ended at the waist. Loose neck-cloths were worn above a frilled shirt-front. Great jack-boots were given to postillions, and men of fashion walked the streets in short top-boots of soft black leather. Most remarkable of the revolutionary changes, the round hat came back, sometimes in a form which recalled the earlier 17th century, and at last took shape as the predecessor of our modern silk hat. Court dresses kept something of their magnificence, but men at home or in the streets were giving up in this time of change their ancient right to wear rich and figured stuffs. Laces and embroideries were henceforward but for military and civil uniforms.
Before 1790 women had begun to dismantle their high headgear, returning to nature by way of a frizzled bush, like a bishop’s wig, with a few curls hanging over the shoulders. Over such heads would be seen towering mob-caps tied with ribbon and edged deeply with lace. Skirts took a moderate size and even court hoops were but panniers hung on either side of the hips. Short jackets with close half-sleeves were worn with the neck and breast covered with a cambric buffant that borrowed a mode from the pouter pigeon. A riding habit follows as far as the short waist the new fashions for men’s coats, the wide-brimmed hat being to match. Short waists came in soon after 1790, the bodice ending under the arm pits, “a petticoat tied round the neck: the arms put through the pocket-holes.” With these French gowns came small coal-scuttle-shaped bonnets of straw, hung with many ribbons and decorated with feathers. At last the woman of fashion, dressed by a Parisian modiste after the orders of David the painter, gathered her hair in a fillet and clothed herself in little more than a diaphanous tunic gown over a light shift and close, flesh-coloured drawers. Her shoes became sandals: her jewels followed the patterns of old Rome. Yet the same woman, shivering half-clad in something that wrapped her less than a modern bathing-dress, appeared at court in the ancient hoop-skirt, tasselled, ribboned and garlanded, hung with heavy swags of coloured silk, and this until George IV. at last broke the antique order by a special command.
The 19th century soon made an end of 18th century fashions already discredited by the revolutionary spirit. The three-cornered hat had gone, the heavy coat cuff and the cravat with hanging ends. Civilians had given up the 19th century.ancient custom of going armed with a sword. The wig and even the pigtail tied with black shalloon were abandoned by all but a few old folk. Soldiers cut off their pigtails in 1808. But judges and lawyers wear their wigs in court in the 20th century, state coachmen wear them on the box, and physicians and the higher clergy wore them even in the street long after laymen had given them up. George IV. refused to receive a bishop of London who appeared at court without a wig, and Sumner, archbishop of Canterbury, wore one until his death in 1862. A few powdered heads were seen as late as the ’forties. M. de Ste Aulaire, the ambassador, made, as Lord Palmerston writes, a very deep and general impression in London society of 1841, not because he wore hair-powder but because he used so much of it. It is now used only by a few lacqueys. In the early Victorian period the cropped “Brutus” head was out of fashion, many men wearing their hair rather long and so freely oiled that the “anti-macassar” came in to protect drawing-room chair-backs.
