THE WOMEN
Let me picture for you a lady of this time in the language of those learned in dress, and you will see how much it may benefit.
‘We see her coming afar off; against the yew hedge her weeds shine for a moment. We see her figuretto gown well looped and puffed with the monte-la-haut. Her échelle is beautiful, and her pinner exquisitely worked. We can see her commode, her top-not, and her fontage, for she wears no rayonné. A silver pin holds her meurtriers, and the fashion suits better than did the crève-cœurs. One hand holds her Saxon green muffetee, under one arm is her chapeau-bras. She is beautiful, she needs no plumpers, and she regards us kindly with her watchet eyes.’
A lady of this date would read this and enjoy it, just as a lady of to-day would understand modern dress language, which is equally peculiar to the mere man. For example, this one of the Queen of Spain’s hats from her trousseau (curiously enough a trousseau is a little bundle):
‘The hat is a paille d’Italie trimmed with a profusion of pink roses, accompanied by a pink chiffon ruffle fashioned into masses bouillonnée arranged at intervals and circled with wreaths of shaded roses.’
The modern terms so vaguely used are shocking, and the descriptive names given to colours by dress-artists are horrible beyond belief—such as Watteau pink and elephant grey, not to speak of Sèvres-blue cherries.
However, the female mind delights in such jargon and hotch-potch.
Let me be kind enough to translate our William and Mary fashion language. ‘Weeds’ is a term still in use in ‘widow’s weeds,’ meaning the entire dress appearance of a woman. A ‘figuretto gown looped and puffed with the monte-la-haut’ is a gown of figured material gathered into loops over the petticoat and stiffened out with wires ‘monte-la-haut.’ The ‘échelle’ is a stomacher laced with ribbons in rungs like a ladder. Her ‘pinner’ is her apron. The ‘commode’ is the wire frame over which the curls are arranged, piled up in high masses over the forehead. The ‘top-not’ is a large bow worn at the top of the commode; and the ‘fontage’ or ‘tower’ is a French arrangement of alternate layers of lace and ribbon raised one above another about half a yard high. It was invented in the time of Louis XIV., about 1680, by Mademoiselle Fontage. The ‘rayonné’ is a cloth hood pinned in a circle. The ‘meurtriers,’ or murderers, are those twists in the hair which tie or unloose the arrangements of curls; and the ‘crève-cœurs’ are the row of little forehead curls of the previous reign. A ‘muffetee’ is a little muff, and a ‘chapeau-bras’ is a hat never worn, but made to be carried under the arm by men or women; for the men hated to disarrange their wigs.
‘Plumpers’ were artificial arrangements for filling out the cheeks, and ‘watchet’ eyes are blue eyes.
The ladies have changed a good deal by the middle of this reign: they have looped up the gown till it makes side-panniers and a bag-like droop at the back; the under-gown has a long train, and the bodice is long-waisted. The front of the bodice is laced open, and shows either an arrangement of ribbon and lace or a piece of the material of the under-gown.
Black pinners in silk with a deep frill are worn as well as the white lace and linen ones.
The ladies wear short black capes of this stuff with a deep frill.
Sometimes, instead of the fontage, a lady wears a lace shawl over her head and shoulders, or a sort of lace cap bedizened with coloured ribbons.
Her sleeves are like a man’s, except that they come to the elbow only, showing a white under-sleeve of lace gathered into a deep frill of lace just below the elbow.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1702)
Here you see the cap called the ‘fontage,’ the black silk apron, the looped skirt, and the hair on the high frame called a ‘commode.’
Country Folk.
She is very stiff and tight-laced, and very long in the waist; and at the waist where the gown opens and at the loopings of it the richer wear jewelled brooches.
Later in the reign there began a fashion for copying men’s clothes, and ladies wore wide skirted coats with deep-flapped pockets, the sleeves of the coats down below the elbow and with deep-turned overcuffs. They wore, like the men, very much puffed and ruffled linen and lace at the wrists. Also they wore men’s waistcoat fashions, carried sticks and little arm-hats—chapeau-bras. To complete the dress the hair was done in a bob-wig style, and the cravat was tied round their necks and pinned. For the winter one of those loose Dutch jackets lined and edged with fur, having wide sleeves.
The general tendency was to look Dutch, stiff, prim, but very prosperous; even the country maid in her best is close upon the heel of fashion with her laced bodice, sleeves with cuffs, apron, and high-heeled shoes.