Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/353

Rh crape, and trimmed with feathers, flowers, ribbons in all sorts of fantastic shapes, till, after a time, the turban was relegated to old-fashioned matrons and merged into a simple cap. It was an age of capacious bonnets and weeping veils, of voluminous muffs, long mittens, prunella slippers, embroidered scarfs and boas: it was also the era of the Empire gown, long and straight, low-necked, short-sleeved, and high-waisted, as worn by Napoleon's Empress.

Perhaps the most important change in men's dress was the disappearance of the pig-tail in 1808. So great was the joy in the army at getting rid of this foolish fashion, that, when the order came, one regiment, already starting abroad on foreign service, gave three cheers and flung the pig-tails into Portsmouth harbour while others made bonfires of these relics of a barbarous custom. But, indeed, there was little time and thought to bestow on men's fashions during these troubled years that ushered in the new century. The momentous struggle against Napoleon monopolised men's attention, and the conversation of our great-grandfathers centred around "Old Boney," whom they regarded as the very devil. Shop windows were full of caricatures