Before quitting the lighter and gossipy items to be found in these letters, let us say a word or two about the rich Court costumes of the period. We need not speak of the dresses of the ladies; for although the fashion of those dresses has changed, indeed is ceaselessly changing, in richness and costliness female attire at the present time is quite on a par with what it was when George the Second was king. But a notable change has taken place in the full dress of the men. Probably only a minority of our readers can remember the time when colour disappeared from the evening costume of gentlemen: it is nearly forty years since coloured coats, with white or coloured silk or velvet waistcoats vanished from the private dinner-party and ball-room—though the taste for colour is now reviving. Warren, in Ten Thousand a Year, dresses his hero Gammon for the evening in blue coat with metal buttons, white waistcoat, and black trousers—and such was a quiet evening dress of that time. In the long interval since then, there has been a monotonous reign of simple black cloth. The change in the Court or gala dress has been still more striking. Apropos of this change, a philosophic writer has remarked, that whenever any class abandons its distinctive costume, it is a sign of decadence and coming extinction. There is some truth in the remark, but it is partial truth only. It ignores the fact that the peculiar source of distinction for each class, and especially with the nobility, who are or ought to be the leaders of the nation, varies from age to age with the spirit of the times. It might as well be said that our nobility verged on extinction three centuries ago, when they ceased to wear mail and to lead their retainers to the field. No doubt the French Revolution, with its levelling doctrines, and the principle of social equality (not new in this country), tended to abolish the 'bravery' of dress previously distinctive of the nobility; but the change was far more due to the gravity of the times, the sober spirit natural during a most critical period of the country, and of the economy rendered necessary throughout the community at large by the heavy costs of the great war with France. Indeed, the fact that a corresponding change took place in the gala dress of the middle classes serves to show that there was nothing exceptional or peculiar in the diminished finery of the aristocratic costume. All classes alike felt the sobering influence of the time, and then, as in all such cases, a corresponding change took place in costume.
Firstly, then, as to the gala costume of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III., who certainly cannot be suspected of too great a devotion to fashion or the frivolities of dress. In a Drawing-room in St. James's in 1745, the Prince of Wales wore a light-blue velvet coat, laced with silver, and the sleeves of it brocade—as was also his waistcoat. On another occasion he 'had on a crimson damask laced with silver, very rich and handsome.' Again, the Countess of Shaftesbury, writing to her cousin, Mr. Harris, in December, 1754, 'enlivening her epistle with a detail of the birthday finery' at Court, says: 'The Prince of Wales looked as blooming as his clothes; they were a blossom-coloured velvet, with gold and lace down before; the waistcoat and cuffs a rich white-and-gold stuff. Prince Edward's was a yellow and silver velvet, with a silver lace before, turned up with white and silver cuffs, and the waistcoat the same.' She adds: 'My lord's clothes and mine were both admired. His was a very rich scarlet and gold velvet coat—waistcoat and breeches the same; and mine a gold stuff with purple spots on the ground, and coloured sprigs of flowers that looked like embroidery.' On a similar occasion, 'Lord Kildare was unexceptionably the finest of any gentleman there: his coat was a light-blue silk, embroidered all over with gold and silver in a very curious manner, turned up with white satin, embroidered as the other; the waistcoat the same as his sleeves.' His Majesty (George II.), however, by no means set the fashion in gala dress. Even at Drawing-rooms, we read, 'he dressed in his usual way, without aiming at finery of any sort;' his usual costume being a deep-blue cloth coat, trimmed with silver lace, and waistcoat the same. At another Birthday Drawing-room, 'the King was dressed in black velvet; the sleeves of his coat and his waistcoat were red, embroidered with gold.' The last time his Majesty's costume at Drawing-rooms is mentioned is in 1754, six years before his death, when we find the following curious statement, that 'his Majesty had told Mr. Shutz [the fashionable German tailor of the day] he would have him bespeak him a very handsome suit, but not to make a boy or a fop of him;' and as the result of this consultation with his tailor, his Majesty appeared in brown, very richly laced with silver, and turned up with a blue cuff laced, and a blue and silver waistcoat.' We read of 'very mortifying disasters' happening at some of these Birthday Drawing-rooms. On one such occasion, the Countess of Salisbury writes:—
'Miss Young, in making her curtsey to his Majesty, entangled the heel of her shoe [there were high heels in those days] in her train, so that she fell quite backwards, with her legs up. The laugh was so general that nobody thought of helping the poor young creature, until his Majesty, though as well diverted as the rest, said he would go himself; but, as you may imagine, was prevented. Lady Young was not in less confusion than her daughter.
'The second hustle was about Miss Corke, whose hoop, in climbing over the Foreigner's box, caught in such a manner that all her petticoats flew up, to the undermost flannel. Lady Arvon, in endeavouring to help her, was caught in the hoop, which pulled off her fine diamond sprig and head-dress.'
As might be expected, there were flirtations, runaway matches, and mésalliances in those days, as they are still. One of the beauties immortalized by the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and whose portrait is preserved at Holland House, gave rise to much gossip by marrying a 'player:'—
'The Court and assembly's talk yesterday was all of the match of Lady Susan Strangeways and O'Brien, the player. It is said she went out on Saturday with a servant, whom, under pretext of having forgotten something, she sent back, and said she would wait in the street till her return. O'Brien was waiting in a hackney coach, which she got into; and they went to Covent Garden Church, and were married. 'Tis a most surprising event, as Lady Susan was everything that was good and amiable; and how she ever got acquainted with this man is not to be accounted for. They say she sent him £200 a little time since. She is of age.'
Gretna Green, on the Scottish borders, although it has now relapsed into the obscurity natural to such a poor little hamlet (although it still gives name to a railway station), was a famous place in those days in connection with runaway matches; indeed, it was so even within the memory of the present generation. A century ago, we often read of lovers having 'gone to Scotland.' Among others—
'Lady Jane Tollemache, daughter to Lord Dysart, is gone to Scotland with a Captain Halliday of the Light Horse: his father is a man of fortune. The captain was just going to to be married to Miss Byron; the coach and clothes were bought; but he saw Lady Jane twice at the Richmond assembly, was captivated, wrote a letter to Miss Byron, to inform her he had changed his mind, and had set out for Scotland.' [The gay captain would have had to pay heavy damages for so cavalier a proceeding now-a-days.]
Whatever amount of what is commonly called 'scandal,' and which merits a worse name, there may have been in our aristocratic circles in the latter half of last century, there is but little trace of it to be found in these letters. But in one of Mrs. Harris's letters to her son, giving him the talk and gossip of the town, there is a mysterious-looking allusion to some such matrimonial scandal, which reads as follows:—'Lady S—— B—— is in lodgings at Knightsbridge. She says her husband [whom doubtless she had deserted] is a most angelic man; but her attachment for the other is so great, she must live with him.'
What was the 'Pantheon' in those days? Whatever else it was, it appears to have been a sort of assembly-rooms for balls and dances; and, though frequented by persons of rank and of the highest respectability, its doors were not impregnable against the entrance of 'soiled doves' and doubtful reputations—whose presence, however, was against the rules of the place, for, as the following embarrassing incident to one of Mrs. Harris's daughters shows, they were liable to be turned out. Mrs. Harris thus writes of it to her son:—