Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/386

366 wear as many as fourteen starched petticoats! In these they were driven to their ball "standing up in their carriages." Silk dresses were very much the fashion of this period, "Every lady felt that a silk dress was necessary to her self-respect" In it she attended church on Sunday, paid her afternoon calls, or sat at home to receive her visitors. It was an age of shawls too—shawls with large patterns, shawls with light grounds and gay flowers. There is Mrs. Bungay (1850) dressed in her "gorgeous shot-silk dress, which flamed with red and purple," wearing a yellow shawl with red flowers inside her bonnet, and carrying a brilliant, light blue parasol. Caps were no longer worn under the bonnet, but a quilling of lace filled the gap, and a bunch of bright-coloured flowers was tucked under the brim. Muslin, cambric and piqué were used as dress materials for young people, but at a comparatively early age all women retired into dresses of sombre colours, as befitted their advancing years. The black silk jackets, the wide flounced sleeves, the small round hats and the smoothly parted hair gathered behind into chenille nets—all these are familiar to us in the early photographs. The