By Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com
- THE MEN AND WOMEN
- A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I - 1714-1727
- A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I - 1714-1727
This costume history information consists of Pages 406-414 of the chapter on the early C18th dress in the 13 YEAR REIGN era of King George The First 1714-1727 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 Early Georgian dress in the reign of Hanoverian King George I, 1714-1727
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.
GEORGE THE FIRST
Reigned thirteen years: 1714-1727.
Born 1660. Married, 1682, Sophia of Brunswick.
THE MEN AND WOMEN Passage From Thackeray
We cannot do better than open Thackeray, and put a finger on this passage:
'There is the Lion's Head, down whose jaws the Spectator's own letters were passed; and over a great banker's in Fleet Street the effigy of the wallet, which the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy.
People this street, so ornamented with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lacquey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer-book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are silent now).
'Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their periwig appearing over the red curtains.
Fancy Saccharissa beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers bawling and bustling at the door - gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruffs and velvet flat-caps. Perhaps the King's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass.'
The Four Georges.
Early Georgian Fashionable Society
The Gorgeous Shoes
We find ourselves, very willingly, discussing the shoes of the King of France with a crowd of powdered beaux; those shoes the dandyism of which has never been surpassed, the heels, if you please, painted by Vandermeulen with scenes from Rhenish victories!
Georgian Masks
Or we go to the toy-shops in Fleet Street, where we may make assignations or buy us a mask, where loaded dice are slyly handed over the counter.
The Beau
Everywhere - the beau. He rides the world like a cock-horse, or like Og the giant rode the Ark of Noah, steering it with his feet, getting his washing for nothing, and his meals passed up to him out by the chimney.
Here is the old soldier begging in his tattered coat of red; here is a suspicious-looking character with a black patch over his eye; here the whalebone hoop of a petticoat takes up the way, and above the monstrous hoop is the tight bodice, and out of that comes the shoulders supporting the radiant Molly - patches, powder, paint, and smiles.
The Nithsdale Hood Cloak
Here a woman passes in a Nithsdale hood, covering her from head to foot - this great cloak with a piquant history of prison-breaking; here, with a clatter of high red heels, the beau, the everlasting beau, in gold lace, wide cuffs, full skirts, swinging cane.
Embroidered Coats
A scene of flashing colours. The coats embroidered with flowers and butterflies, the cuffs a mass of fine sewing, the three-cornered hats cocked at a jaunty angle, the stockings rolled above the knee.
Early Georgian Accessories
Wigs in three divisions of loops at the back pass by, wigs in long queues, wigs in back and side bobs.
Lacquer-hilted swords, paste buckles, gold and silver snuff-boxes flashing in the sun, which struggles through the mass of swinging signs.
A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I - 1714-1727
A major change has happened with men's periwigs. The great periwig is going out of fashion, and the looped and curled wig is heavily whitened with powder.
The buckles on the shoes have become larger and the stockings are simply loosely rolled above the knee.
Clean Shaven Faces
There is a curious sameness about the clean-shaven faces surmounted by white wigs; there is - if we believe the pictures - a tendency to fat due to the tight waist of the breeches or the buckling of the belts.
The ladies wear little lace and linen caps, their hair escaping in a ringlet or so at the side, and flowing down behind, or gathered close up to a small knob on the head.
Coats
The gentlemen's coats fall in full folds on either side; the back, at present, has not begun to stick out so heavily with buckram.
Fashionable Georgian Fabrics
Aprons for ladies are still worn. Silks and satins, brocades and fine cloths, white wigs powdering velvet shoulders, crowds of cut-throats, elegant gentlemen, patched Aspasias, tavern swindlers, foreign adventurers, thieves, a highwayman, a footpad, a poor poet - and narrow streets and mud.
Everywhere we see the skirted coat, the big flapped waistcoat; even beggar boys, little pot-high urchins, are wearing some old laced waistcoat tied with string about their middles - a pair of heel-trodden, buckleless shoes on their feet, more likely bare-footed.
Here is a man snatched from the tripe-shop in Hanging Sword Alley by the King's men - a pickpocket, a highwayman, a cut-throat in hiding. He will repent his jokes on Jack Ketch's kitchen when he feels the lash of the whip on his naked shoulders as he screams behind the cart-tail; ladies in flowered hoops will stop to look at him, beaux will lift their quizzing glasses, a young girl will whisper behind a fan, painted with the loves of Jove, to a gorgeous young fop in a light-buttoned coat of sky-blue.
There is a sadder sight to come, a cart on the way to Tyburn, a poor fellow standing by his coffin with a nosegay in his breast; he is full of Dutch courage, for, as becomes a notorious highwayman, he must show game before the crowd, so he is full of stum and Yorkshire stingo. Maybe we stop to see a pirate hanging in chains by the river, and we are jostled by horse officers and watermen, revenue men and jerkers, and, as usual, the curious beau, his glass to his eye. Never was such a time for curiosity: a man is preaching mystic religion; there is a new flavour to the Rainbow Tavern furmity; there is a fellow who can sew with his toes; a man is in the pillory for publishing Jacobite ballads - and always there is the beau looking on.
Country Ladies In Small Hoops
Country ladies, still in small hoops, even in full dresses innocent of whalebone, are bewildered by the noise; country gentlemen, in plain-coloured coats and stout shoes, have come to London on South Sea Bubble business. They will go to the Fair to see the Harlequin and Scaramouch dance, they will buy a new perfume at The Civet Cat, and they will go home - the lady's head full of the new hoop fashion, and she will cut away the sleeve of her old dress and put in fresh lace; the gentleman full of curses on tavern bills and the outrageous price of South Sea shares.
'And what,' says country dame to country dame lately from town - 'what is the mode in gentlemen's hair?' Her own goodman has an old periwig, very full, and a small bob for ordinary wear.
'The very full periwig is going out,' our lady assures her; 'a tied wig is quite the mode, a wig in three queues tied in round bobs, or in hair loops, and the long single queue wig is coming in rapidly, and will soon be all the wear.' So, with talk of flowered tabbies and fine lutestring, are the fashions passed on.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I - 1714-1727
In this costume plate of an early Georgian woman its noticeable that the high fontage headdress has given way to a small lace cap. The hair is neater and now drawn off the forehead. The hooped skirt is still large.
Just as Sir Roger de Coverley nearly called a young lady in riding-dress 'sir,' because of the upper half of her body, so the ladies of this day might well be taken for 'sirs,' with their double-breasted riding-coats like the men, and their hair in a queue surmounted by a cocked hat.
Colours and combinations of colours are very striking: petticoats of black satin covered with large bunches of worked flowers, morning gown of yellow flowered satin faced with cherry-coloured bands, waistcoats of one colour with a fringe of another, bird's-eye hoods, bodices covered with gold lace and embroidered flowers - all these gave a gay, artificial appearance to the age; but we are to become still more quaintly devised, still more powdered and patched, in the next reign.
GEORGE THE FIRST
Reigned thirteen years: 1714-1727.
Born 1660. Married, 1682, Sophia of Brunswick.
- THE MEN AND WOMEN
- A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I - 1714-1727
- A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE I - 1714-1727
This costume history information consists of Pages 406-414 of the chapter on the early C18th dress in the 13 YEAR REIGN era of King George The First 1714-1727 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 Early Georgian dress in the reign of Hanoverian King George I, 1714-1727
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.