This costume history information consists of Pages 395-405 of the chapter on the
first decade of the early C18th dress in the 12 YEAR REIGN era of
Queen Anne 1702-1714 and taken from English Costume by Dion Clayton Calthrop.
The 36 page section consists of a text copy of the book ENGLISH
COSTUME PAINTED & DESCRIBED BY DION CLAYTON CALTHROP. Visuals,
drawings and painted fashion plates in the book have a charm of their own and are
shown amid the text. The book covers both male and female dress history of
over 700 years spanning the era 1066-1830.
This page is about dress in
the reign of Anne 1702-1714.
For the Introduction to this book see this
introduction written by Dion Clayton Calthrop. I have adjusted
the images so they can be used for colouring
worksheets where pupils add some costume/society facts. My comments are in italics.
QUEEN ANNE
Reigned twelve years: 1702-1714.
Born 1665. Married, 1683, Prince George of Denmark.
When I turn to the opening of the eighteenth century, and leave Dutch
William and his Hollands and his pipe and his bulb-gardens behind, it
seems to me that there is a great noise, a tumultuous chattering. We
seem to burst upon a date of talkers, of coffee-houses, of snuff and
scandal. All this was going on before, I say to myself - people were
wearing powdered wigs, and were taking snuff, and were talking scandal,
but it did not appeal so forcibly.
We arrive at Sedan-chairs and hoops too big for them; we arrive at
red-heeled shoes. Though both chairs and red heels belong to the
previous reign, still, we arrive at them now - they are very much in
the picture. We seem to see a profusion, a confused mass of bobbins and
bone lace, mourning hatbands, silk garters, amber canes correctly
conducted, country men in red coats, coxcombs, brass and looking-glass
snuff-boxes.
Gentlemen walk past our mental vision with seals curiously fancied
and exquisitely well cut. Ladies are sighing at the toss of a wig or the
tap on a snuff-box, falling sick for a pair of striped garters or a pair
of fringed gloves. Gentlemen are sitting baldheaded in elegant
dressing-gowns, while their wigs are being taken out of roulettes.
Peruquier
The peruquier removes the neat, warm clay tube, gives a last pat to the fine
pipes of the hair, and then gently places the wig on the waiting
gentlemen. If you can look through the walls of London houses you will
next see regiments of gentlemen, their faces pressed into glass cones,
while the peruquier tosses powder over their newly-put-on periwigs. The
bow at the end of the long pigtail on the Ramillies wig is
tied - that is over.
Running footmen, looking rather like Indians from the outsides of
tobacco shops, speed past. They are dressed in close tunics with a
fringed edge, which flicks them just above the knee. Their legs are tied
up in leather guards, their feet are strongly shod, their wigs are in
small bobs. On their heads are little round caps, with a feather stuck
in them. In one hand they carry a long stick about 5 feet high, in the
top knob of which they carry some food or a message. A message to whom?
The running footman knocks on a certain door, and delivers to the pretty
maid a note for her ladyship from a handsome, well-shaped youth who
frequents the coffee-houses about Charing Cross. There is no answer to
the note: her ladyship is too disturbed with household affairs. Her
Welsh maid has left her under suspicious circumstances, and has carried
off some articles.
The lady is even now writing to Mr. Bickerstaff
of the Tatler to implore his aid.
This is the list of the things she has missed - at least, as much of the
list as my mind remembers as it travels back over the years:
A thick wadded Calico Wrapper.
A Musk-coloured Velvet Mantle lined with Squirrels' Skins.
Eight night shifts, four pairs of stockings curiously darned.
Six pairs of laced Shoes, new and old, with the heels of half 2 inches
higher than their fellows.
A quilted Petticoat of the largest size, and one of Canvas, with
whalebone hoops.
Three pairs of Stays boulstered below the left shoulder. Two pairs of
Hips of the newest fashion.
Six Roundabout Aprons, with Pockets, and four strip'd Muslin night rails
very little frayed.
A silver Cheese toaster with three tongues.
A silver Posnet to butter eggs.
A Bible bound in Shagreen, with guilt Leaves and Clasps, never opened
but once.
Two Leather Forehead Cloathes, three pair of oiled Dogskin Gloves.
Two brand new Plumpers, three pair of fashionable Eyebrows.
Adam and Eve in Bugle work, without Fig-leaves, upon Canvas, curiously
wrought with her Ladyship's own hand.
Bracelets of braided Hair, Pomander, and Seed Pearl.
A large old Purple Velvet Purse, embroidered, and shutting with a
spring, containing two Pictures in Miniature, the Features visible.
A Silver gilt box for Cashu and Carraway Comfits to be taken at long
sermons.
A new Gold Repeating Watch made by a Frenchman.
Together with a Collection of Receipts to make Pastes for the Hands,
Pomatums, Lip Salves, White Pots, and Water of Talk.
Of these things one strikes the eye most curiously - the canvas petticoat
with whalebone hoops. It dates the last, making me know that the good
woman lost her things in or about the year 1710. We are just at the
beginning of the era of the tremendous hoop skirt.
The coat has become still more full at the sides. The hat has a more
generous brim. Red heels in fashion.
This gentleman from the country will tell me all about it. I stop him
and remark his clothes; by them I guess he has ridden from the country.
He is wearing a wide-skirted coat of red with deep flap pockets; his
coat has buttons from neck to hem, but only two or three - at the
waist - are buttoned. One hand, with the deep cuff pushed back from the
wrist to show his neat frilled shirt, is thrust into his unbuttoned
breeches pocket, the two pockets being across the top of his breeches.
»
Cravats
Round his neck is a black Steenkirk cravat (a black silk tie knotted and
twisted or allowed to hang over loose). His hat is of black, and the
wide brim is turned back from his forehead.
His wig is a short black
periwig in bobs - that is, it is gathered into bunches just on the
shoulders, and is twisted in a little bob at the back of the neck.
I
have forgotten whether he wore red or blue stockings rolled above the
knee, but either is likely. His shoes are strong, high-heeled, and have
a big tongue showing above the buckle.
He tells me that in Norfolk, where he has come from, the hoop has not
come into fashion; that ladies there dress much as they did before Queen
Anne came to the throne.
The fontage is lower, perhaps, the waist may be
longer, but skirts are full and have long trains, and are gathered in
loops to show the petticoat of silk with its deep double row of
flounces.
Aprons are worn long, and have good pockets. Cuffs are deep,
but are lowered to below the elbow. The bodice of the gown is cut high
in the back and low in front, and is decked with a deep frill of lace or
linen, which allows less bare neck to show than formerly.
A very
observant gentleman! 'But you have seen the new hoop?' I ask him. Yes,
he has seen it. As he rode into town he noticed that the old fashions
gave way to new, that every mile brought the fontage lower and the hair
more hidden, until short curls and a little cap of linen or lace
entirely replaced the old high head-dress and the profusion of curls on
the shoulders.
The hoop, he noticed, became larger and larger as he
neared the town, and the train grew shorter, and the patterns on the
under-skirt grew larger with the hoop.
I leave my gentleman from the country and I stroll about the streets
to regard the fashions.
Here, I see, is a gentleman in one of the new Ramillies wigs - a wig of white hair drawn back from the forehead
and puffed out full over the ears. At the back the wig is gathered into
a long queue, the plaited or twisted tail of a wig, and is ornamented at
the top and bottom of the queue with a black bow.
I notice that this gentleman is dressed in more easy fashion than
some. His coat is not buttoned, the flaps of his waistcoat are not over
big, his breeches are easy, his tie is loose. I know where this
gentleman has stepped from; he has come straight out of a sampler of
mine, by means of which piece of needlework I can get his story without
book.
I know that he has a tremendous periwig at home covered with
scented powder; I know that he has an elegant suit with fullness of the
skirts, at his sides gathered up to a button of silver gilt; there is
plenty of lace on this coat, and deep bands of it on the cuffs.
He
has also, I am certain, a cane with an amber head very curiously
clouded, and this cane he hangs on to his fifth button by a blue silk
ribbon. This cane is never used except to lift it up at a coachman, hold
it over the head of a drawer, or point out the circumstances of a story.
Also, he has a single eyeglass, or perspective, which he will advance to
his eye to gaze at a toast or an orange wench.
There is another figure on the sampler - a lady in one of those wide
hoops; she has a fan in her hand. I know her as well as the gentleman,
and know that she can use her fan as becomes a prude or a coquette. I
know she takes her chocolate in bed at nine in the morning, at eleven
she drinks a dish of bohea, tries a new head at her twelve o'clock
toilette, and at two cheapens fans at the Change.
I have seen her at her mantua-makers; I have watched her embroider a
corner of her flower handkerchief, and give it up to sit before her
glass to determine a patch. She is a good coachwoman, and puts her
dainty laced shoe against the opposite seat to balance herself against
the many jolts; meanwhile she takes her mask off for a look at the
passing world. If only I could ride in the coach with her! If only I
could I should see the fruit wenches in sprigged petticoats and flat,
broad-brimmed hats; the ballad-sellers in tattered long-skirted coats;
the country women in black hoods and cloaks, and the men in frieze
coats. The ladies would pass by in pearl necklaces, flowered stomachers,
artificial nosegays, and shaded furbelows: one is noted by her muff, one
by her tippet, one by her fan.
Here a gentleman bows to our coach, and
my lady's heart beats to see his open waistcoat, his red heels, his suit
of flowered satin. I should not fail to notice the monstrous petticoats
worn by ladies in chairs or in coaches, these hoops stuffed out with
cordage and stiffened with whalebone, and, according to Mr. Bickerstaff,
making the women look like extinguishers - 'with a little knob at the
upper end, and widening downward till it ends in a basis of a most
enormous circumference.'
To finish. I quite agree with Mr. Bickerstaff, when he mentions the
great shoe-shop at the St. James's end of Pall Mall, that the shoes
there displayed, notably the slippers with green lace and blue heels, do
create irregular thoughts in the youth of this nation.
Ω
Anne - 1702-1714 -
English Costume by Dion Clayton Calthrop
Reigned twelve years: 1702-1714.
Born 1665. Married, 1683, Prince George of Denmark.
his costume history information consists of Pages 395-405 of the
chapter on the first decade of the early C18th dress in the 12 YEAR
REIGN era of Queen Anne 1702-1714 and taken from English Costume by Dion
Clayton Calthrop.
The 36 page section consists of a text copy of the book ENGLISH
COSTUME PAINTED & DESCRIBED BY DION CLAYTON CALTHROP. Visuals,
drawings and painted fashion plates in the book have a charm of their own and are
shown amid the text. The book covers both male and female dress history of
over 700 years spanning the era 1066-1830.
This page is about dress in
the reign of Anne 1702-1714.
For the Introduction to this book see this
introduction written by Dion Clayton Calthrop. I have adjusted
the images so they can be used for colouring
worksheets where pupils add some costume/society facts. My comments are in italics.
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This costume history information consists of Pages 395-405 of the chapter on the
first decade of the early C18th dress in the 12 YEAR REIGN era of
Queen Anne 1702-1714 and taken from English Costume by Dion Clayton Calthrop.
I notice that this gentleman is dressed in more easy fashion than
some. His coat is not buttoned, the flaps of his waistcoat are not over
big, his breeches are easy, his tie is loose. I know where this
gentleman has stepped from; he has come straight out of a sampler of
mine, by means of which piece of needlework I can get his story without
book.
