The lace, the paint, and warlike things
That make up all their magazines,"[[1049]]
and the consequent distress of the lace merchants, to whom ladies are indebted for thousands. After a drawing-room, in which the fair population appeared in "borrowed," i.e., unpaid lace,[[1050]] one of the chief lacemen became well-nigh bankrupt. Duns besieged the houses of the great:—
"By mercers, lacemen, mantua-makers press'd;
But most for ready cash, for play distress'd,
Where can she turn?"[[1051]]
The Connoisseur, describing the reckless extravagance of one of these ladies, writes:—"The lady played till all her ready money was gone, staked her cap and lost it, afterwards her handkerchief. He then staked both cap and handkerchief against her tucker, which, to his pique, she gained." When enumerating the various causes of suicide, he proposes "that an annual bill or report should be made out, giving the different causes which have led to the act." Among others, in his proposed "Bill of Suicide," he gives French claret, French lace, French cooks, etc.
The men, though scarcely coming up to the standard of Sir Courtly Nice,[[1052]] who has all his bands and linen made in Holland and washed at Haarlem, were just as extravagant as the ladies.
GEORGE II.
"'How well this ribband's glass becomes your face,'