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 surpassed, 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 assignations or buy us a mask, where loaded dice are slyly handed over the counter. Everywhere—the beau. He rides the world like a cock-horse, or like Og the giant rode the Ark of Noah, steering it with his feet, getting his washing for nothing, and his meals passed 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 passes 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 butterflies, the cuffs a mass of fine sewing, the three-cornered hats cocked at a jaunty angle, the stockings rolled above the knee. Wigs in three divisions of loops at the back pass 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 mass of swinging signs.
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.
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 knob 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. Aprons 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.
