A hundred years ago it would have been unsafe to have sold a plaid waistcoat in either Rag Fair or Houndsditch. In 1752 Mr. Thornton said in the House of Commons, that “he believed it true, plaid waistcoats had been worn by some wrong heads in the country; but in the parts where he lived he saw no occasion for an army to correct them” (he was speaking against a standing army), “for some that had attempted to wear them had been heartily thrashed for doing so.” In the same year it is worthy of remark that we were exporting gold and silver bullion to the Continent; not indeed at the rate at which we are now importing it, especially the former, but still in quantities that seem almost incredible. The metal-import question as it stood then excites a smile in those who read it now. For example, among the current news given by our juvenile friend, Sylvanus Urban, in his volume for 1752, we learn that “a parcel of waistcoats embroidered with foreign gold and silver (which were lately seized at a tailor’s house, who must pay the penalty of £100, pursuant to Act of Parliament), were publicly burnt in presence of the custom-house officers and others.”
The steeple head-dresses of Anne and the first George’s days came under the notice of Addison, in the ‘Spectator.’ He compares them with the commodes, or towers, of his time. Speaking of the former, he tells us that the women would have carried their head-structures much higher had it not been for the preaching of a monk named Concete. The good and zealous man preached with more effect than Rowland Hill did, when he inveighed from the pulpit against Mrs. Hill’s top-knots. So logically did he prove that steeple head-dresses were devices of the devil, that they who wore them were the devil’s daughters, and that after this life the everlasting home of the latter would be with their father, that the ladies, in a fit of religious enthusiasm, cast off the denounced decorations during the summer, and made a bonfire of them after it was over. It must have been a pretty fire in which pride was burned, for the congregation amounted to something like ten thousand women, with as many male hearers; from which it is to be supposed that the preaching took place in the open air. If only half the ladies committed their caps to the flames, it was, no doubt, a glad sight to the makers of the caps. They were sure that if fashion went out in one blaze, it would rise phœnix-like from the flames of that fire or another. For a time however, these exaggerated head-dresses were excommunicated; and it was as unsafe for a lady to appear in one in public, as it would be for a lady to make a tour through the liberty of Dublin on the 12th of July, clad entirely in materials of Orange hue, and singing at the top of her voice the exasperating song of ‘Boyne Water.’ She would assuredly be pelted, as they were pelted by the religious and unfashionable rabble, who, years ago, if they could tolerate sin, were shocked at the sight of tall gay caps, which had been denounced by a short grave friar. But the milliners had not long to wait unemployed. As soon as the monk had turned his back, the needlewomen were again set to work; and “countless ’prentices expired” in the efforts made to execute the orders. “The women,” says Monsieur Paradin, “who had, like snails in a fright, drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over.”
When Walpole had been to King George the Second’s Levee and Drawing-room, in 1742, he wrote of what he witnessed in this lively fashion:—“There were so many new faces that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken it for Carleton House, or my Lady Mayoress’s visiting day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted to see the King dine in public. ’Tis quite ridiculous to see the numbers of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years; out they come, in all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne’s days. Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is inexpressible. They titter, and wherever you meet them, they are always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow: they seem to have said to themselves twenty years ago, ‘Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver;’ and they keep their resolution.”
Walpole is quite right in designating the gaiety of the women as an awkward jollity. Rough enjoyment was a fashion at this time with the fair. Mrs. Sherwood, in her pleasant Autobiography, adverts to this subject in speaking of her mother’s early days, when undignified amusements were not declined by ladies of any age. One of these she describes as consisting of the following sort of violent fun. A large strong table-cloth was spread on the upper steps of the staircase, and upon this cloth the ladies inclined to the frolic seated themselves in rows upon the steps. Then the gentlemen, or the men, took hold of the lower end of the cloth, attempting to pull it downstairs; the ladies resisted this with all their might, and the greater the number of these delicate creatures the longer the struggle was protracted. The contest, however, invariably ended by the cloth and the ladies being pulled down to the bottom of the stairs, when everything was found bruised, except modesty. ‘High Life below Stairs’ could hardly have been too rampant in its exposition, if it really reflected what was going on above. We can hardly realize the matter. We hardly do so in merely fancying we see good Lord Shaftesbury Admiral Gambier, Baptist Noel, and Dr. M’Neil engaged in settling Miss Martineau, Catherine Sinclair, the “Authoress of Amy Herbert,” and Mrs. Fry on a table-cloth upon the stairs, and hauling them down in a heap to the bottom. It would be highly indecorous; but, I am almost ashamed to say, I should like to see it.
In 1748 George II. happened to see that gallant French equestrian, the Duchess of Bedford, on horseback, in a riding-habit of blue turned up with white. At that time there was a discussion on foot, touching a general uniform for the navy: the appearance of the Duchess settled the question. George II. was so delighted with her Grace’s appearance, that he commanded the adoption of those colours; and that accounts perhaps for the fact, that sailors on a spree are ever given to getting upon horseback, where they do not at all look like the Duchess whose colours they wear.
Taste was undoubtedly terribly perverted in this century. Some ladies took their footmen with them into their box at the play; others married actors, and their noble fathers declared they would have more willingly pardoned their daughters had they married lacqueys rather than players. A daughter of the Earl of Abingdon married Gallini the ballet-master, of whom George III. made a “Sir John”; and Lady Harriet Wentworth did actually commit the madness of marrying her footman,—a madness that had much method in it. This lady, the daughter of Lord Rockingham, transacted this matter in the most business-like way imaginable. She settled a hundred a year for life on her husband, but directed her whole fortune besides to pass to her children, should she have any; otherwise, to her own family. She moreover “provided for a separation, and ensured the same pin-money to Damon, in case they part.” She gave away all her fine clothes, and surrendered her titles: “linen and gowns,” she said, “were properest for a footman’s wife;” and she went to her husband’s family in Ireland as plain Mrs. Henrietta Sturgeon.
It is characteristic of the manners of this period, that Lady Harriet Wentworth, in marrying her footman, was not considered as having so terribly dérogé as Lady Susan Fox, Lord Ilchester’s daughter, who in the same year, 1764, married O’Brien the actor, a man well to do, and who owned a villa at Dunstable. The actor had contrived something of the spirit of farce in carrying out his plot. He succeeded so well in imitating the handwriting of Lady Susan’s dearest friend, Lady Sarah Bunbury, that Lord Ilchester delivered the letters to his daughter with his own hand, and without suspicion. The couple used to meet at Miss Read’s, the artist;—that is, Catherine Read, who painted whole bevies of our grandmothers, and whose portraits of young Queen Charlotte and of that dreadful woman Mrs. Macauley (represented as a Roman matron weeping over the lost liberties of her country) were the delight of both connoisseurs and amateurs.
The meetings of the lovers became known to the lady’s proud sire, and terrible was the scene which ensued between the “père noble” and the “ingénue.” The latter however promised to break off all intercourse, provided she were permitted to take one last farewell. She waited a day or two, till she was of age; and then, “instead of being under lock and key in the country, walked downstairs, took her footman, said she was going to breakfast with Lady Sarah, but would call at Miss Read’s; in the street, pretended to recollect a particular cap in which she was to be drawn; sent the footman back for it, whipped into a hackney chair, was married at Covent Garden Church, and set out for Mr. O’Brien’s villa at Dunstable.”
This marriage was, as I have said, thought worse of than if the bridegroom had been a lacquey. The latter appear to have been in singular esteem, dead or living. Thus we read that the Duchess of Douglas, in 1765, having lost a favourite footman rather suddenly in Paris, she had him embalmed, and went to England, with the body of “Jeames” tied on in front of her chaise. “A droll way of being chief mourner,” says Walpole, who adds some droll things upon the English whom he encountered in journeying through France. When half a mile from Amiens, he met a coach and four with an equipage of French, and a lady in pea-green and silver, a smart hat and feather, and two suivantes. “My reason told me,” says the lively Horace, “it was the Archbishop’s concubine; but luckily my heart whispered that it was Lady Mary Coke. I jumped out of my chaise, fell on my knees, and said my first Ave Maria, gratiâ plena!”