Reigned twelve years: 1702-1714.

Born 1665. Married, 1683, Prince George of Denmark.

THE MEN AND WOMEN

When I turn to the opening of the eighteenth century, and leave Dutch William and his Hollands and his pipe and his bulb-gardens behind, it seems to me that there is a great noise, a tumultuous chattering. We seem to burst upon a date of talkers, of coffee-houses, of snuff and scandal. All this was going on before, I say to myself—people were wearing powdered wigs, and were taking snuff, and were talking scandal, but it did not appeal so forcibly.

We arrive at Sedan-chairs and hoops too big for them; we arrive at red-heeled shoes. Though both chairs and red heels belong to the previous reign, still, we arrive at them now—they are very much in the picture. We seem to see a profusion, a confused mass of bobbins and bone lace, mourning hatbands, silk garters, amber canes correctly conducted, country men in red coats, coxcombs, brass and looking-glass snuff-boxes.

Gentlemen walk past our mental vision with seals curiously fancied and exquisitely well cut. Ladies are sighing at the toss of a wig or the tap on a snuff-box, falling sick for a pair of striped garters or a pair of fringed gloves. Gentlemen are sitting baldheaded in elegant dressing-gowns, while their wigs are being taken out of roulettes. The peruquier removes the neat, warm clay tube, gives a last pat to the fine pipes of the hair, and then gently places the wig on the waiting gentlemen. If you can look through the walls of London houses you will next see regiments of gentlemen, their faces pressed into glass cones, while the peruquier tosses powder over their newly-put-on periwigs. The bow at the end of the long pigtail on the Ramillies wig is tied—that is over.

A MAN OF THE TIME OF QUEEN ANNE (1702-1714)

The coat has become still more full at the sides. The hat has a more generous brim. Red heels in fashion.

Running footmen, looking rather like Indians from the outsides of tobacco shops, speed past. They are dressed in close tunics with a fringed edge, which flicks them just above the knee. Their legs are tied up in leather guards, their feet are strongly shod, their wigs are in small bobs. On their heads are little round caps, with a feather stuck in them. In one hand they carry a long stick about 5 feet high, in the top knob of which they carry some food or a message. A message to whom?

The running footman knocks on a certain door, and delivers to the pretty maid a note for her ladyship from a handsome, well-shaped youth who frequents the coffee-houses about Charing Cross. There is no answer to the note: her ladyship is too disturbed with household affairs. Her Welsh maid has left her under suspicious circumstances, and has carried off some articles. The lady is even now writing to Mr. Bickerstaff of the Tatler to implore his aid.

This is the list of the things she has missed—at least, as much of the list as my mind remembers as it travels back over the years:

Of these things one strikes the eye most curiously—the canvas petticoat with whalebone hoops. It dates the last, making me know that the good woman lost her things in or about the year 1710. We are just at the beginning of the era of the tremendous hoop skirt.

This gentleman from the country will tell me all about it. I stop him and remark his clothes; by them I guess he has ridden from the country. He is wearing a wide-skirted coat of red with deep flap pockets; his coat has buttons from neck to hem, but only two or three—at the waist—are buttoned. One hand, with the deep cuff pushed back from the wrist to show his neat frilled shirt, is thrust into his unbuttoned breeches pocket, the two pockets being across the top of his breeches. Round his neck is a black Steenkirk cravat (a black silk tie knotted and twisted or allowed to hang over loose). His hat is of black, and the wide brim is turned back from his forehead. His wig is a short black periwig in bobs—that is, it is gathered into bunches just on the shoulders, and is twisted in a little bob at the back of the neck. I have forgotten whether he wore red or blue stockings rolled above the knee, but either is likely. His shoes are strong, high-heeled, and have a big tongue showing above the buckle.

A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF QUEEN ANNE (1702-1714)

Notice that the fontage has become much lower, and the hoop of the skirt has become enormous. The hair is more naturally dressed.

He tells me that in Norfolk, where he has come from, the hoop has not come into fashion; that ladies there dress much as they did before Queen Anne came to the throne. The fontage is lower, perhaps, the waist may be longer, but skirts are full and have long trains, and are gathered in loops to show the petticoat of silk with its deep double row of flounces. Aprons are worn long, and have good pockets. Cuffs are deep, but are lowered to below the elbow. The bodice of the gown is cut high in the back and low in front, and is decked with a deep frill of lace or linen, which allows less bare neck to show than formerly. A very observant gentleman! ‘But you have seen the new hoop?’ I ask him. Yes, he has seen it. As he rode into town he noticed that the old fashions gave way to new, that every mile brought the fontage lower and the hair more hidden, until short curls and a little cap of linen or lace entirely replaced the old high head-dress and the profusion of curls on the shoulders. The hoop, he noticed, became larger and larger as he neared the town, and the train grew shorter, and the patterns on the under-skirt grew larger with the hoop.

I leave my gentleman from the country and I stroll about the streets to regard the fashions. Here, I see, is a gentleman in one of the new Ramillies wigs—a wig of white hair drawn back from the forehead and puffed out full over the ears. At the back the wig is gathered into a long queue, the plaited or twisted tail of a wig, and is ornamented at the top and bottom of the queue with a black bow.

I notice that this gentleman is dressed in more easy fashion than some. His coat is not buttoned, the flaps of his waistcoat are not over big, his breeches are easy, his tie is loose. I know where this gentleman has stepped from; he has come straight out of a sampler of mine, by means of which piece of needlework I can get his story without book. I know that he has a tremendous periwig at home covered with scented powder; I know that he has an elegant suit with fullness of the skirts, at his sides gathered up to a button of silver gilt; there is plenty of lace on this coat, and deep bands of it on the cuffs. He has also, I am certain, a cane with an amber head very curiously clouded, and this cane he hangs on to his fifth button by a blue silk ribbon. This cane is never used except to lift it up at a coachman, hold it over the head of a drawer, or point out the circumstances of a story. Also, he has a single eyeglass, or perspective, which he will advance to his eye to gaze at a toast or an orange wench.

There is another figure on the sampler—a lady in one of those wide hoops; she has a fan in her hand. I know her as well as the gentleman, and know that she can use her fan as becomes a prude or a coquette. I know she takes her chocolate in bed at nine in the morning, at eleven she drinks a dish of bohea, tries a new head at her twelve o’clock toilette, and at two cheapens fans at the Change.

I have seen her at her mantua-makers; I have watched her embroider a corner of her flower handkerchief, and give it up to sit before her glass to determine a patch. She is a good coachwoman, and puts her dainty laced shoe against the opposite seat to balance herself against the many jolts; meanwhile she takes her mask off for a look at the passing world. If only I could ride in the coach with her! If only I could I should see the fruit wenches in sprigged petticoats and flat, broad-brimmed hats; the ballad-sellers in tattered long-skirted coats; the country women in black hoods and cloaks, and the men in frieze coats. The ladies would pass by in pearl necklaces, flowered stomachers, artificial nosegays, and shaded furbelows: one is noted by her muff, one by her tippet, one by her fan. Here a gentleman bows to our coach, and my lady’s heart beats to see his open waistcoat, his red heels, his suit of flowered satin. I should not fail to notice the monstrous petticoats worn by ladies in chairs or in coaches, these hoops stuffed out with cordage and stiffened with whalebone, and, according to Mr. Bickerstaff, making the women look like extinguishers—‘with a little knob at the upper end, and widening downward till it ends in a basis of a most enormous circumference.’

To finish. I quite agree with Mr. Bickerstaff, when he mentions the great shoe-shop at the St. James’s end of Pall Mall, that the shoes there displayed, notably the slippers with green lace and blue heels, do create irregular thoughts in the youth of this nation.