DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51519#0047
INTRODUCTION.
33
extreme^ that even women of character and reputation scarcely
affected a superficial decency of attire. Painting- the face, which had
declined since Queen Elizabeth’s time., was again introduced from
France, and became a fashion. Hoods of various colours were
worn, and long trains, which caused, very unreasonably, almost as
much scandal as the meretricious display of the person.* Women,
instead of wearing’ long ringlets clustering down the neck, began
to frizzle up their hair like periwigs, as in the portrait of the
Duchess of Portsmouth. It is remarkable, that the elevation,
decline, and fill of the female coiffure, comprised exactly a century.
It began to rise between 1680 and 1690 ; rose gradually for the
next fifty years; and reached its extremes! height toward the end
of George the Second’s reign, when it absolutely emulated the
Tower of Babel: from that time it declined by slow degrees, and
about the period of the French Revolution, the heads of our women
began to assume their natural shape and proportion.
Other fashions and tastes of Charles’s time may be dismissed in
a few words. The King, from spending his youth abroad, and
perhaps in earlier years from his mother, had imbibed a decided
* In the Preface to a curious religious Tract, entitled “ A just and seasonable
reprehension of the enormity of naked breasts and shoulders,” published by a
Non-conformist Divine, but translated, as the title sets forth, from the Drench
of a grave and learned Papist, these long trains are censured, with much spiritual
indignation, as “ a monstrous superfluity of cloth or silk, that must be dragged
after them, or carried by another, or fardelled behind them.” There is an anec-
dote of a lady of that time, who being forbidden, by court etiquette, to bring
her train-bearers into the Queen’s presence, had her train made long enough to
reach into the ante-chamber.
[The inconvenient fashion of long trains belonged properly to an earlier, more
stiff and formal, and less civilized period. During the fourteenth, and part of
the fifteenth centuries, they were most enormous, both in Prance, England, and
Scotland, if we may judge by the paintings on the manuscripts of that period, and
by the allusions by contemporary writers. The puritans, and particularly the
reformers in Scotland, had too much zeal to be reasonable; and among the
numerous writings of the latter which remain, we find invectives against these
long trains so virulent and so gross, as is not easily to be conceived.—En.]
33
extreme^ that even women of character and reputation scarcely
affected a superficial decency of attire. Painting- the face, which had
declined since Queen Elizabeth’s time., was again introduced from
France, and became a fashion. Hoods of various colours were
worn, and long trains, which caused, very unreasonably, almost as
much scandal as the meretricious display of the person.* Women,
instead of wearing’ long ringlets clustering down the neck, began
to frizzle up their hair like periwigs, as in the portrait of the
Duchess of Portsmouth. It is remarkable, that the elevation,
decline, and fill of the female coiffure, comprised exactly a century.
It began to rise between 1680 and 1690 ; rose gradually for the
next fifty years; and reached its extremes! height toward the end
of George the Second’s reign, when it absolutely emulated the
Tower of Babel: from that time it declined by slow degrees, and
about the period of the French Revolution, the heads of our women
began to assume their natural shape and proportion.
Other fashions and tastes of Charles’s time may be dismissed in
a few words. The King, from spending his youth abroad, and
perhaps in earlier years from his mother, had imbibed a decided
* In the Preface to a curious religious Tract, entitled “ A just and seasonable
reprehension of the enormity of naked breasts and shoulders,” published by a
Non-conformist Divine, but translated, as the title sets forth, from the Drench
of a grave and learned Papist, these long trains are censured, with much spiritual
indignation, as “ a monstrous superfluity of cloth or silk, that must be dragged
after them, or carried by another, or fardelled behind them.” There is an anec-
dote of a lady of that time, who being forbidden, by court etiquette, to bring
her train-bearers into the Queen’s presence, had her train made long enough to
reach into the ante-chamber.
[The inconvenient fashion of long trains belonged properly to an earlier, more
stiff and formal, and less civilized period. During the fourteenth, and part of
the fifteenth centuries, they were most enormous, both in Prance, England, and
Scotland, if we may judge by the paintings on the manuscripts of that period, and
by the allusions by contemporary writers. The puritans, and particularly the
reformers in Scotland, had too much zeal to be reasonable; and among the
numerous writings of the latter which remain, we find invectives against these
long trains so virulent and so gross, as is not easily to be conceived.—En.]