The costume of the Catholic church at the altar has always been prominent and unchangeable, and even the secular garb of its priests has undergone fewer mutations than that of any other class of the community. All, however, will be struck with the marked difference between the following portrait of a young abbé and the churchmen of to-day.
We have to do, generally, in this and the following articles merely with the fashionable dress of the day, and therefore might omit all that related to what the noblesse were pleased to call the bas peuple; we will, however, give a portrait of a famous French Intendant of that day, filling an office the English call a steward. Except that the coat is plainer, that there is no sword, and that the coiffure is less labored, it is almost identical with the first engraving given.
An examination of the above will show that one great difference between the costumes of that day and our own was the use of powder; a stupid fashion which nothing but the confusion of the French revolution could do away with, yet which was adhered to with the most wonderful tenacity. Another whim was the habit of wearing the sword, which may be said yet more positively to separate the eighteenth from the nineteenth century. This habit, which had its use in the days of the Ligne and the Fronde, lasted till the commencement of the present century. Etiquette absolutely required that all who presented themselves within the sacred precincts of Versailles should be thus decked, and it became ultimately a passport, so that the shopkeeper, dancing-master and coiffeur had only thus to deck themselves, and they might jostle in the stairway of the palace gentlemen as noble as the king. This, however, all disappeared amid the revolution, when the pike and musket usurped the place of the gilded rapier.
The materials of the fashionable coat of that day were Brussels’ camlet, velvet or silk. At this time we can form little idea of the variety of colors worn; black, green, blue, rose, yellow and violet all were seen. The waistcoat was not a gilet, but reached the hip, extending below which were breeches, which being worn like a sailor’s, without suspenders, had from time to time to be hitched up by the hands. In the cold winter of 1739 the English gaiters and over-coat were worn for the first time, and to this new fashion an old French nobleman attributed the decay of the monarchy.
The fashions of the present time date from the days of Louis XVI. and when we come to treat of his reign, we shall see the passing away and development of the old and new modes. Nor do they disappear alone, for classes go with them. Having been rejected as a livery unworthy of men, the beings who had glittered in them disappeared like shadows, either because they had really been annihilated, or had been regenerated under the new order of things. Among the classes which thus disappeared was the Morgues, the gilded type of French folly, not the creature, but the butt of the wit of Moliere; a compound of pride, insipidity and wit, of politeness and impudence, of gallantry and impertinence, of affectation and good manners. Not even comedy preserves them. Dandies are eternal—for such were the Muscadins, the Mervelleux and the Incroyables, but the Morgues are gone. With the Morgues disappeared their younger brothers, the abbés and mousquetaires, and with their estates the intendants.
[To be continued.