“Full many a chance or dire mishap,
Ofttimes ‘twixt the lip and the cup is;
The tax that should have hung our dogs,
Excuses them, and falls on puppies.”
Of the inconveniences attending the use of powder the following anecdote is an instance—
“At one of Lady Crewe’s dinner parties, Grattan, after talking very delightfully for some time, all at once seemed disconcerted, and sunk into silence. I asked his daughter, who was sitting next to me, the reason of this. ‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘he has just found out that he has come here in his powdering coat.’” (Samuel Rogers, Table Talk.)
The Act claimed one guinea a year from every user of powder, and was calculated to bring in about £400,000 per annum. The Royal Family, clergymen whose incomes were under a hundred pounds, subalterns and all below that rank in the army, officers in the navy under the rank of commander, and all below the two eldest unmarried daughters of a family were exempt.
Walter Savage Landor was the first of undergraduates at Oxford to do without powder, and was told he would be stoned for a republican.
“The regular academic costume, so late as 1799, consisted of knee breeches of any colour, and white stockings. The sun of wigs had not even then set; they covered the craniums of nearly all dons and heads of houses. The gentlemen wore their hair tied up behind in a thin loop called a pigtail; footmen wore their hair tied up behind in a thick loop called a hoop.” (Sydney, England and the English.)
In regard to the rest of the costume of ladies, the most noticeable points of the mode were the high waists and long flowing skirts clinging tightly to the figure. This, if not carried to excess, was certainly becoming, but fashion cannot be content with mediocrity, it must be extravagant. Consequently, “With very low bodices and very high waists, came very scanty clothing, with an absence of petticoat, a fashion which left very little of the form to the imagination. I do not say that our English belles went to the extent of some of their French sisters, of having their muslin dresses put on damp—and holding them tight to their figures till they dried—so as absolutely to mould them to their form ... but their clothes were of the scantiest, and as year succeeded year, this fashion developed, if one can call diminution of clothing development.” (John Ashton, Old Times.)