Jane Austen and Her Times

by G. E. Mitton

The word “mamalouc” was used at this time to describe many articles of dress; it had come into fashion after Nelson’s great victory in Egypt, and there were mamalouc cloaks as well as caps, but whether these articles of attire bore the most distant resemblance to those worn in Egypt, or whether the word was tacked on to them merely for the purpose of advertisement, I do not know. Another cap Jane mentions seems to have been much more pert: “Miss Hare had some pretty caps and is to make me one like one of them, only white satin instead of blue. It will be satin and lace and a little white flower perking out of the left ear, like Harriot Byron’s feather. I have allowed her to go as far as one pound sixteen.” “My cap has come home, and I like it very much, Fanny has one also, hers is white sarsenet and lace, of a different shape from mine, more fit for morning carriage wear, which is what it is intended for, and is in shape exceedingly like our own satin and lace of last winter, shaped round the face exactly like it, with pipes and more fulness and a round crown inserted behind. My cap has a peak in front. Large full bows of very narrow ribbon (old twopenny) are the thing. One over the right temple perhaps, and another at the left ear.”

Some ladies used to hang at the back of their turban-like caps four or five ostrich feathers of different colours. But apparently a bow or a bit of ribbon sometimes was worn instead of a cap, and supposed to represent it, just as a bit of wire and gauze a few years ago was supposed to be a toque. In one place Jane says—

“I wore at the ball your favourite gown, a bit of muslin of the same round my head bordered with Mrs. Cooper’s band, and one little comb.”

The fashion of caps for middle-aged ladies has so recently gone out that it is well remembered, but the fashion of night-caps, which belongs to a much older generation, seems to us now curious. They were then an essential part of a wardrobe; Henry Bickersteth, afterwards Lord Langdale, writes to his mother in 1800, “I must give you my thanks for the supply of linen you have sent me; it was indeed seasonable, as that which I had before was completely worn out. I am still obliged to solicit some night-caps.” He was then only a boy of sixteen, and the vision of all the boys in a school going to bed in night-caps is a funny one.

Head-dresses reached their climax of absurdity at the end of the eighteenth century, but the styles varied so much that almost everyone could please themselves. At a famous trial only a few ladies were dressed in the French taste. “All the rest, decked in the finest manner with brocades, diamonds, and lace, had no other head-dress, but a ribband tied to their hair, over which they wore a flat hat, adorned with a variety of ornaments. It requires much observation to be able to give full account of the great effect produced by this hat; it affords the ladies who wear it that arch and roguish air, which the winged hat gives to Mercury.” And Sir Walter Besant says: “The women wore hoods, small caps, enormous hats, tiny milkmaid’s straw hats; hair in curls and flat to the head; ‘pompoms,’ or huge structures two or three feet high, with all kinds of decorations—ribbons, birds’ nests, ships, carriages and waggons in gold and silver lace—in the erection.”

“Nothing can be conceived so absurd, extravagant, fantastical, as the present mode of dressing the head. Simplicity and modesty are things so much exploded, that the very names are no longer remembered. I have just escaped from one of the most fashionable disfigurers; and though I charged him to dress me with the greatest simplicity, and to have only a very distant eye upon the fashion, just enough to avoid the pride of singularity without running into ridiculous excess, yet in spite of all these sage didactics, I absolutely blush at myself and turn to the glass with as much caution as a vain beauty, just risen from the small-pox, which cannot be a more disfiguring disease than the present mode of dressing.” (H. More, 1775.)

But in 1787 a great change occurred in the mode of hair-dressing, the huge cushions disappeared and the main part of the hair was gathered together at the back in a chignon from which one or two loose curls were allowed to escape.

The long feathers, which have already been commented on, varied in number from three to one, and continued to be worn well on into the nineteenth century. These feathers appeared in turbans, bonnets, and head-dresses of all kinds, and hardly a picture of the period representing ladies at a card-table does not show one or more of these ludicrous quivering monstrosities.

Samuel Rogers says that he had been to Ranelagh in a coach with a lady who was obliged to sit on a stool on the floor of the coach on account of the height of her head-dress.

Fantastic headgear was not in Jane’s line, all the accounts of her hats and bonnets are simple. “My mother has ordered a new bonnet and so have I; both white strip trimmed with white ribbon. I find my straw bonnet looking very much like other people’s and quite as smart. Bonnets of cambric muslin are a good deal worn, and some of them are very pretty, but I shall defer one of that sort until your arrival.”