This costume history information consists of Pages 440-463 of the
chapter on early C19th dress in the 10 YEAR REIGN era of King George The
Fourth 1820-1830 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 Late Georgian dress in
the reign of King George IV 1820-1830.
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.
Here you see the coat which we now wear, slightly altered, in out
evening dress. If came into fashion, with this form of top-boots, in
1799, and was called Jean-de-Bry. Notice the commencement of the whisker
fashion.
GEORGE THE FOURTH
Reigned ten years: 1820-1830.
Born 1762. Married, 1795, Caroline of Brunswick.
Out of the many fashion books of this time I have chosen, from a little
brown book in front of me, a description of the fashions for ladies
during one part of 1827. It will serve to show how mere man, blundering
on the many complexities of the feminine passion for dress - I was going
to say clothes - may find himself left amid a froth of frills, high and
dry, except for a whiff of spray, standing in his unromantic garments on
the shore of the great world of gauze and gussets, while the most
noodle-headed girl sails gracefully away upon the high seas to pirate
some new device of the Devil or Paris.
Our wives - bless them! - occasionally treat us to a few bewildering
terms, hoping by their gossamer knowledge to present to our gaze a
mental picture of a new, adorable, ardently desired - hat. Perhaps
those nine proverbial tailors who go to make the one proverbial man,
least of his sex, might, by a strenuous effort, confine the history of
clothes during this reign into a compact literature of forty volumes. It
would be indecent, as undecorous as the advertisements in ladies'
papers, to attempt to fathom the language of the man who endeavoured to
read the monumental effigy to the vanity of human desire for adornment.
But is it adornment?
Nowadays to be dressed well is not always the same thing as to be well
dressed. Often it is far from it. The question of modern clothes is one
of great perplexity. It seems that what is beauty one year may be the
abomination of desolation the next, because the trick of that beauty has
become common property. You puff your hair at the sides, you are in the
true sanctum of the mode; you puff your hair at the sides, you are for
ever utterly cast out as one having no understanding. I shall not
attempt to explain it: it passes beyond the realms of explanation into
the pure air of Truth. The Truth is simple. Aristocracy being no longer
real, but only a cult, one is afraid of one's servants. Your
servant puffs her hair at the sides, and, hang it! she becomes exactly
like an aristocrat. Our servant having dropped her g's for many years as
well as her h's, it behoved us to pronounce our g's and our h's. Our
servants having learned our English, it became necessary for us to drop
our g's; we seem at present unwilling in the matter of the h, but that
will come.
To cut the cackle and come to the clothes-horse, let me say that the
bunglement of clothes which passes all comprehension in King George
IV's reign is best explained by my cuttings from the book of one who
apparently knew. Let the older writer have his, or her, fling in his, or
her, words.
'The City of London is now, indeed, most splendid in its buildings and
extent; London is carried into the country; but never was it more
deserted.
'A very, very few years ago, and during the summer, the dresses of the
wives and daughters of our opulent tradesmen would furnish subjects for
the investigators of fashion.
'Now, if those who chance to remain in London take a day's
excursion of about eight or ten miles distance from the Metropolis, they
hear the innkeepers deprecating the steamboats, by which they declare
they are almost ruined: on Sundays, which would sometimes bring them the
clear profits of ten or twenty pounds, they now scarce produce ten
shillings.
'No; those of the middle class belonging to Cockney Island must leave
town, though the days are short, and even getting cold and comfortless;
the steamboats carrying them off by shoals to Margate and its vicinity.
'The pursuit after elegant and superior modes of dress must carry us
farther; it is now from the rural retirement of the country seats
belonging to the noble and wealthy that we must collect them.
'Young ladies wear their hair well arranged, but not quite with the
simplicity that prevailed last month; during the warmth of the summer
months, the braids across the forehead were certainly the best; but now,
when neither in fear of heat or damp, the curls again appear in numerous
clusters round the face; and some young ladies, who seem to place their
chief pride in a fine head of hair, have such a multitude of small
ringlets that give to what is a natural charm all the poodle-like
appearance of a wig.
'The bows of hair are elevated on the summit of the head, and
confined by a comb of tortoise-shell.
'Caps of the cornette kind are much in fashion, made of blond, and
ornamented with flowers, or puffs of coloured gauze; most of the
cornettes are small, and tie under the chin, with a bow on one side, of
white satin ribbon; those which have ribbons or gauze lappets floating
loose have them much shorter than formerly.
'A few dress hats have been seen at dinner-parties and musical amateur
meetings in the country, of transparent white crape, ornamented with a
small elegant bouquet of marabones.
'When these dress hats are of coloured crape, they are generally
ornamented with flowers of the same tint as the hat, in preference to
feathers.
'Printed muslins and chintzes are still very much worn in the morning
walks, with handsome sashes, having three ends depending down each side,
not much beyond the hips. With one of these dresses we saw a young lady
wear a rich black satin pelerine, handsomely trimmed with a very
beautiful black blond; it had a very neat effect, as the dress was
light.
White muslin dresses, though they are always worn partially in the
country till the winter actually commences, are now seldom seen except
on the young: the embroidery on these dresses is exquisite. Dresses of Indian red, either in taffety or chintz, have already made
their appearance, and are expected to be much in favour the ensuing
winter; the chintzes have much black in their patterns; but this light
material will, in course, be soon laid aside for silks, and these, like
the taffeties which have partially appeared, will no doubt be plain:
with these dresses was worn a Canezon spencer, with long sleeves of
white muslin, trimmed with narrow lace.
»
'Gros de Naples dresses are very general, especially for receiving
dinner-parties, and for friendly evening society.
'At private dances, the only kind of ball that has at present taken
place, are worn dresses of the white-figured gauze over white satin or
gros de Naples; at the theatricals sometimes performed by noble
amateurs, the younger part of the audience, who do not take a part, are
generally attired in very clear muslin, over white satin, with drapery
scarves of lace, barêge, or thick embroidered tulle.
'Cachemire shawls, with a white ground, and a pattern of coloured
flowers or green foliage, are now much worn in outdoor costumes,
especially for the morning walk; the mornings being rather chilly, these
warm envelopes are almost indispensable. We are sorry, however, to find
our modern belles so tardy in adopting those coverings, which
ought now to succeed to the light appendages of summer costume.
'The muslin Canezon spencer, the silk fichu, and even the lighter barêge,
are frequently the sole additions to a high dress, or even to one but
partially so.
'We have lately seen finished to the order of a lady of rank in the
county of Suffolk, a very beautiful pelisse of jonquil-coloured gros de
Naples. It fastens close down from the throat to the feet, in front,
with large covered buttons; at a suitable distance on each side of this
fastening are three bias folds, rather narrow, brought close together
under the belt, and enlarging as they descend to the border of the
skirt. A large pelerine cape is made to take on and off; and the bust
from the back of each shoulder is ornamented with the same bias folds,
forming a stomacher in front of the waist. The sleeves, à la Marie, are
puckered a few inches above the wrist, and confined by three straps;
each with a large button. Though long ends are very much in favour with
silk pelerines, yet there are quite as many that are quite round; such
was the black satin pelerine we cited above.
'Coloured bonnets are now all the rage; we are happy to say that some,
though all too large, are in the charming cottage style, and are
modestly tied under the chin. Some bonnets are so excessively
large that they are obliged to be placed quite at the back of the head;
and as their extensive brims will not support a veil, when they are
ornamented with a broad blond, the edge of that just falls over the
hair, but does not even conceal the eyes. Leghorn hats are very general;
their trimmings consist chiefly of ribbons, though some ladies add a few
branches of green foliage between the bows or puffs: these are chiefly
of the fern; a great improvement to these green branches is the having a
few wild roses intermingled.
'The most admired colours are lavender, Esterhazy, olive-green, lilac,
marshmallow blossom, and Indian red.
'At rural fêtes, the ornaments of the hats generally consist of flowers;
these hats are backward in the Arcadian fashion, and discover a wreath
of small flowers on the hair, ex bandeau. In Paris the most admired
colours are ethereal-blue, Hortensia, cameleopard-yellow, pink,
grass-green, jonquil, and Parma-violet.' - September 1, 1827.
Really this little fashion book is very charming: it recreates, for
me, the elegant simpering ladies; it gives, in its style, just that
artificial note which conjures this age of ladies with hats - 'in the
charming cottage style, modestly tied under the chin.'
They had the complete art of languor, these dear creatures; they
lisped Italian, and were fine needlewomen; they painted weak little
landscapes: nooks or arbours found them dreaming of a Gothic revival -
they were all this and more; but through this sweet envelope the
delicate refined souls shone: they were true women, often great women;
their loops of hair, their cameleopard pelerines, shall not rob them of
immortality, cannot destroy their softening influence, which permeated
even the outrageous dandyism of the men of their time and steered the
three-bottle gentlemen, their husbands and our grandfathers, into a
grand old age which we reverence to-day, and wonder at, seeing them as
giants against our nerve-shattered, drug-taking generation.
As for the men, look at the innumerable pictures, and collect, for
instance, the material for a colossal work upon the stock ties of the
time, run your list of varieties into some semblance of order; commence
with the varieties of macassar-brown stocks, pass on to patent leather
stocks, take your man for a walk and cause him to pass a window full of
Hibernian stocks, and let him discourse on the stocks worn by turf
enthusiasts, and, when you are approaching the end of your twenty-third
volume, give a picture of a country dinner-party, and end your
work with a description of the gentlemen under the table being relieved
of their stocks by the faithful family butler.
Ω
'The affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus
had.'
'At the devill's shopps you buy
'A dresse of powdered hayre.'
From the splendid pageant of history what figures come to you most
willingly? Does a great procession go by the window of your mind?
Knights bronzed by the sun of Palestine, kings in chains, emperors in
blood-drenched purple, poets clothed like grocers with the souls of
angels shining through their eyes, fussy Secretaries of State,
informers, spies, inquisitors, Court cards come to life, harlequins,
statesmen in great ruffs, wives of Bath in foot-mantles and white
wimples, sulky Puritans, laughing Cavaliers, Dutchmen drinking gin and
talking politics, men in wide-skirted coats and huge black periwigs -
all walking, riding, being carried in coaches, in sedan-chairs, over the
face of England. Every step of the procession yields wonderful
dreams of colour; in every group there is one who, by the personality of
his clothes, can claim the name of beau.
Near the tail of the throng there is a chattering, bowing, rustling
crowd, dimmed by a white mist of scented hair-powder. They are headed, I
think - for one cannot see too clearly - by the cook of the Comte de
Bellemare, a man by name Legros, the great hairdresser. Under his arm is
a book, the title of which reads, 'Art de la Coiffure des Dames Françaises.' Behind him is a lady in an enormous hoop; her hair is
dressed à la belle Poule; she is arguing some minute point of the
disposition of patches with Monsieur Léonard, another artist in hair.
'What will be the next wear?' she asks. 'A heart near the eye - l'assassine, eh? Or a star near the lips - la friponne? Must I wear a
galante on my cheek, an enjouée in my dimple, or la majestueuse on my
forehead?' Before we can hear the reply another voice is raised, a
guttural German voice; it is John Schnorr, the ironmaster of Erzgebinge.
'The feet stuck in it, I tell you,' he says - 'actually stuck! I got
from my saddle and looked at the ground. My horse had carried me on to
what proved to be a mine of wealth. Hair-powder! I sold it in
Dresden, in Leipsic; and then, at Meissen, what does Böttcher do but use
my hair-powder to make white porcelain!' And so the chatter goes on.
Here is Charles Fox tapping the ground with his red heels and
proclaiming, in a voice thick with wine, on the merits of blue
hair-powder; here is Brummell, free from hair-powder, free from the
obnoxious necessity of going with his regiment to Manchester.
The dressy person and the person who is well dressed - these two showing
everywhere. The one is in a screaming hue of woad, the other a quiet
note of blue dye; the one in excessive velvet sleeves that he cannot
manage, the other controlling a rich amplitude of material with perfect
grace. Here a liripipe is extravagantly long; here a gold circlet
decorates curled locks with matchless taste. Everywhere the battle
between taste and gaudiness. High hennins, steeples of millinery, stick
up out of the crowd; below these, the towers of powdered hair bow and
sway as the fine ladies patter along. What a rustle and a bustle of
silks and satins, of flowered tabbies, rich brocades, cut velvets,
superfine cloths, woollens, cloth of gold!
See, there are the square-shouldered Tudors; there are the steel
glints of Plantagenet armour; the Eastern-robed followers of Cœur de
Lion; the swaggering beribboned Royalists; the ruffs, trunks, and
doublets of Elizabethans; the snuffy, wide-skirted coats swaying about
Queen Anne. There are the soft, swathed
Norman ladies with bound-up
chins; the tapestry figures of ladies proclaiming Agincourt; the
dignified dames about Elizabeth of York; the playmates of
Katherine
Howard; the wheels of round farthingales and the high lace collars of
King James's Court; the beauties, bare-breasted, of Lely; the Hogarthian
women in close caps. And, in front of us, two posturing figures in
Dresden china colours, rouged, patched, powdered, perfumed, in hoop
skirts, flirting with a fan - the lady; in gold-laced wide coat,
solitaire, bagwig, ruffles, and red heels - the gentleman. 'I protest,
madam,' he is saying, 'but you flatter me vastly.' 'La, sir,' she
replies, 'I am prodigiously truthful.'
'And how are we to know that all this is true?' the critics ask,
guarding the interest of the public. 'We see that your book is full of
statements, and there are no, or few, authorities given for your
studies. Where,' they ask, 'are the venerable anecdotes which are given
a place in every respectable work on your subject?'
To appease the appetites which are always hungry for skeletons, I give a
short list of those books which have proved most useful:
MS. Cotton, Claudius, B. iv.
MS. Harl., 603. Psalter, English, eleventh century.
The Bayeaux Tapestry.
MS. Cotton, Tiberius, C. vi. Psalter.
MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., R. 17, 1. Illustrated by Eadwine, a monk,
1130-1174.
MS. Harl. Roll, Y. vi.
MS. Harl., 5102.
Stothard's 'Monumental Effigies.'
MS. C. C. C., Camb., xvi.
MS. Cott., Nero, D. 1.
MS. Cott., Nero, C. iv. Full of drawings.
MS. Roy., 14, C. vii.
Lansdowne MS., British Museum.
Macklin's 'Monumental Brasses.'
Journal of the Archæological Association.
MS. Roy., 2, B. vii.
MS. Roy., 10, E. iv. Good marginal drawings.
The Loutrell Psalter. Invaluable for costume.
MS. Bodl. Misc., 264. 1338-1344. Very full of useful drawings.
Dr. Furnivall's edition of the Ellesmere MS. of Chaucer's 'Canterbury
Tales.'
Boutell's 'Monumental Brasses.'
MS. Harl., 1819. Metrical history of the close of Richard II's
reign. Good drawings for costume.
MS. Harl., 1892.
MS. Harl., 2278.
Lydgate's 'Life of St. Edmund.
MS. Roy., 15, E. vi. Fine miniatures.
The Bedford Missal, MS. Add., 18850.
MS. Harl., 2982. A Book of Hours. Many good drawings.
MS. Harl., 4425. The Romance of the Rose. Fine and useful drawings.
MS. Lambeth, 265.
MS. Roy., 19, C. viii.
MS. Roy., 16, F. ii.
Turberville's 'Book of Falconrie' and 'Book of Hunting.'
Shaw's 'Dresses and Decorations.'
Jusserand's 'English Novel' and 'Wayfaring Life.' Very excellent books,
full of reproductions from illuminated books, prints, and pictures.
The Shepherd's Calendar, 1579, British Museum.
Harding's 'Historical Portraits.'
Nichols's 'Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.'
Stubbes's 'Anatomie of Abuses,' 1583.
Braun's 'Civitates orbis terrarum.'
'Vestusta Monumenta.'
Hollar's 'Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus.'
Hollar's 'Aula Veneris.'
Pepys's Diary.
Evelyn's Diary.
Tempest's 'Cries of London.' Fifty plates.
Atkinson's 'Costumes of Great Britain.'
In addition to these, there are, of course, many other books,
prints, engravings, sets of pictures, and heaps of caricatures. The
excellent labours of the Society of Antiquaries and the Archæological
Association have helped me enormously; these, with wills, wardrobe
accounts, 'Satires' by Hall and others, 'Anatomies of Abuses,'
broadsides, and other works on the same subject, French, German, and
English, have made my task easier than it might have been.
It was no use to spin out my list of manuscripts with the numbers -
endless numbers - of those which proved dry ground, so I have given
those only which have yielded a rich harvest.
Here you see the coat which we now wear, slightly altered, in out
evening dress. If came into fashion, with this form of top-boots, in
1799, and was called Jean-de-Bry. Notice the commencement of the whisker
fashion.
'A person, my dear, who will probably come and speak to us; and if he
enters into conversation, be careful to give him a favourable impression
of you, for,' and she sunk her voice to a whisper, 'he is the celebrated
Mr. Brummell.' - 'Life of Beau Brummell,' Captain Jesse.
Those who care to make the melancholy pilgrimage may see, in the
Protestant Cemetery at Caen, the tomb of George Bryan Brummell. He
died, at the age of sixty-two, in 1840.
˚
It is indeed a melancholy pilgrimage to view the tomb of that once
resplendent figure, to think, before the hideous grave, of the witty,
clever, foolish procession from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford; from
thence to a captaincy in the 10th Hussars, from No. 4 Chesterfield
Street to No. 13 Chapel Street, Park Lane; from Chapel Street a flight
to Calais; from Calais to Paris; and then, at last, to Caen, and the
bitter, bitter end, mumbling and mad, to die in the Bon Sauveur.
Place him beside the man who once pretended to be his friend, the man of
whom Thackeray spoke so truly: 'But a bow and a grin. I try and take him
to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs
and a fur coat, a star and a blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief
prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty-brown wigs reeking
with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more
under-waistcoats, and then nothing.'
Nothing! Thackeray is right; absolutely nothing remains of this King
George of ours but a sale list of his wardrobe, a wardrobe which fetched
£15,000 second-hand - a wardrobe that had been a man. He invented
a shoe-buckle 1 inch long and 5 inches broad. He wore a pink silk coat
with white cuffs. He had 5,000 steel beads on his hat. He was a coward,
a good-natured, contemptible voluptuary. Beside him, in our eyes, walks
for a time the elegant figure of Beau Brummell.
I have said that
Brummell was the inventor of modern dress: it is true. He was the Beau
who raised the level of dress from the slovenly, dirty linen, the greasy
hair, the filthy neckcloth, the crumbled collar, to a position, ever
since held by Englishmen, of quiet, unobtrusive cleanliness, decent
linen, an abhorrence of striking forms of dress.
He made clean linen and washing daily a part of English life.
See him seated before his dressing-glass, a mahogany-framed sliding
cheval glass with brass arms on either sides for candles. By his side is
George IV, recovering from his drunken bout of last night. The Beau's
glass reflects his clean-complexioned face, his grey eyes, his light
brown hair, and sandy whiskers. A servant produces a shirt with a
12-inch collar fixed to it, assists the Beau into it, arranges it,
and stands aside. The collar nearly hides the Beau's face. Now, with his
hand protected with a discarded shirt, he folds his collar down to the
required height. Now he takes his white stock and folds it carefully
round the collar; the stock is a foot high and slightly starched. A
supreme moment of artistic decision, and the stock and collar take their
perfect creases. In an hour or so he will be ready to partake of a light
meal with the royal gentleman. He will stand up and survey himself in
his morning dress, his regular, quiet suit. A blue coat, light breeches
fitting the leg well, a light waistcoat over a waistcoat of some other
colour, never a startling contrast, Hessian boots, or top-boots and
buckskins. There was nothing very peculiar about his clothes except, as
Lord Byron said, 'an exquisite propriety.' His evening dress was a blue
coat, white waistcoat, black trousers buttoned at the ankle - these were
of his own invention, and one may say it was the wearing of them that
made trousers more popular than knee-breeches - striped silk stockings,
and a white stock.
He was a man of perfect taste - of fastidious taste. On his tables lay
books of all kinds in fine covers. Who would suspect it? but the
Prince is leaning an arm on a copy of Ellis's 'Early English Metrical
Romances.' The Beau is a rhymer, an elegant verse-maker. Here we see the
paper-presser of Napoleon - I am flitting for the moment over some
years, and see him in his room in Calais - here we notice his passion
for buhl, his Sèvres china painted with Court beauties.
In his house in Chapel Street he saw daily portraits of Nelson and
Pitt and George III upon his walls. This is no Beau as we understand the
term, for we make it a word of contempt, a nickname for a feeble fellow
in magnificent garments. Rather this is the room of an educated
gentleman of 'exquisite propriety.'
He played high, as did most gentlemen; he was superstitious, as are many
of the best of men. That lucky sixpence with the hole in it that you
gave to a cabman, Beau Brummell, was that loss the commencement of your
downward career?
There are hundreds of anecdotes of Brummell which, despite those of
the 'George, ring the bell' character, and those told of his heavy
gaming, are more valuable as showing his wit, his cleanliness, his
distaste of display - in fact, his 'exquisite propriety.'
A Beau is hardly a possible figure to-day; we have so few personalities,
and those we have are chiefly concerned with trade - men who uphold
trusts, men who fight trusts, men who speak for trade in the House of
Commons. We have not the same large vulgarities as our grandfathers, nor
have we the same wholesome refinement; in killing the evil - the great
gambler, the great men of the turf, the great prize-fighters, the heavy
wine-drinkers - we have killed, also, the good, the classic, well-spoken
civil gentleman. Our manners have suffered at the expense of our morals.
Fifty or sixty years ago the world was full of great men, saying,
writing, thinking, great things. To-day - perhaps it is too early to
speak of to-day. Personalities are so little marked by their clothes, by
any stamp of individuality, that the caricaturist, or even the minute
and truthful artist, be he painter or writer, has a difficult task
before him when he sets out to point at the men of these our times.
George Brummell came into the world on June 7, 1778. He was a year or so
late for the Macaroni style of dress, many years behind the Fribbles, after the Smarts, and must have seen the rise and fall of the
Zebras when he was thirteen. During his life he saw the old-fashioned
full frock-coat, bagwig, solitaire, and ruffles die away; he saw the
decline and fall of knee-breeches for common wear, and the pantaloons
invented by himself take their place. From these pantaloons reaching to
the ankle came the trousers, as fashionable garments, open over the
instep at first, and joined by loops and buttons, then strapped under
the boot, and after that in every manner of cut to the present style.
He
saw the three-cornered hat vanish from the hat-boxes of the polite
world, and he saw fine-coloured clothes give way to blue coats with
brass buttons or coats of solemn black.
It may be said that England went into mourning over the French
Revolution, and has not yet recovered. Beau Brummell, on his way to
Eton, saw a gay-coloured crowd of powdered and patched people, saw
claret-coloured coats covered with embroidery, gold-laced hats,
twinkling shoe-buckles. On his last walks in Caen, no doubt, he dreamed
of London as a place of gay colours instead of the drab place it was
beginning to be.
To-day there is no more monotonous sight than the pavements of
Piccadilly crowded with people in dingy, sad clothes, with silk tubes on
their heads, their black and gray suits being splashed by the mud from
black hansoms, or by the scatterings of motor-cars driven by
aristocratic-looking mechanics, in which mechanical-looking aristocrats
lounge, darkly clad. Here and there some woman's dress enlivens the
monotony; here a red pillar-box shines in the sun; there, again, we
bless the Post-Office for their red mail-carts, and perhaps we are
strengthened to bear the gloom by the sight of a blue or red bus.
But our hearts are not in tune with the picture; we feel the lack of
colour, of romance, of everything but money, in the street. Suddenly a
magnificent policeman stops the traffic; there is a sound of jingling
harness, of horses' hoofs beating in unison. There flashes upon us an
escort of Life Guards sparkling in the sun, flashing specks of light
from swords, breastplates, helmets. The little forest of waving plumes,
the raising of hats, the polite murmuring of cheers, warms us. We feel
young, our hearts beat; we feel more healthy, more alive, for this gleam
of colour.
Then an open carriage passes us swiftly as we stand with bared
heads. There is a momentary sight of a man in uniform - a man with a
wonderful face, clever, dignified, kind. And we say, with a catch in our
voices:
'The King - God bless him!'
THE END
‡
This costume history information consists of Pages 440-463 of the
chapter on early C19th dress in the 10 YEAR REIGN era of King George The
Fourth 1820-1830 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 Late Georgian dress in
the reign of King George IV 1820-1830.
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.
You have been reading English Costume History at
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on King George IV 1820-1830, from Dion Clayton Calthrop's
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