Brighton, of course, was the fashionable watering-place, for there were the life and gaiety of the young Court, in contradistinction to the humdrum existence led by the King, Queen, and younger branches of the Royal Family, at Weymouth. So it will be interesting to know their habits at this famous sea-side resort. The Morning Post, 18th September 1788, has the following:—
"The Ladies have no particular dress for the morning, but huddle away to the bathing place, in close caps, and gipsey bonnets, so that they look like a set of wandering fortune-tellers, who have just had the opportunity of pillaging the contents of a frippery warehouse, with which they had bedecked themselves in haste.
"It is to be remarked that the ladies do not atone for the negligence of the morning, by neatness, and elegance, during the rest of the day, but shuffle on something by dinner time, covering themselves with an enormous nondescript bonnet, which, to the confusion of all order, they afterwards think a proper garb for the Assembly."
In doors, the dresses were not so outré, as we see by the two illustrations taken from "The School for Scandal," 1st August 1788.
That ladies copied the eccentricities of male attire, and made them their own, we have proof in this cutting from the Morning Post, 15th January 1789:—
"Among other fashions lately introduced from Paris is the brace of gold watch chains now sported by our fashionable females. Some economical husbands may wish their wives were less imitative."
The portrait of the Duchess of York (the Princess Frederique, Charlotte, Ulrique, Catherine, of Prussia, married to the Duke, November 1791), shews us the indoor dress of a lady of rank in 1792. She had a remarkably small foot, and many were the delineations of her shoes—actual size, &c.
Of all curious freaks of fashion the following is the most incomprehensible, yet it doubtless obtained:—
"The fashion of dressing, at present, is to appear prominent, and the stays are made accordingly. This is holding out a wish to be thought in a thriving way, even without the authority of the Arches Court of Canterbury—something in the French way—a philosophical desire to be conspicuously great with MISCHIEF, without any regard to law or reason. The idea was at first sent forward by a few dropsical Ladies."—(Times, March 25, 1793.)
"The Wapping Land-ladies are all at the very pinnacle of the fashion. Nature has given them prominences which far out-picture the false mountains at the West end of the town. It is not only the fashion of appearing six months gone, that prevails with the ladies—but that of not having any waists, so that, even with their prominences, they may be called—No-body." (Times, April 15, 1793.)