Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/112

76 just for all the world like mine, and buttoned their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs and hats, so that only for a long petticoat dragging under

their men's coats nobody could take them for women in any point whatever. It was an odd sight, and a sight which did not please me."

But Pepys, in his immortal diary, did not pay proper respect to fashion. He commented on the clothes of the ladies, it is true, but he showed a lamentable vagueness, if not careless indifference, about their details. Doubtless his notes on dress were quite satisfying to his masculine mind, but I find them practically useless in assuaging the deepest emotions of feminine curiosity. However, I know from him and other sources that Nell Gwynn, the careless slattern, wore a cart-wheel hat when delivering a prologue in a play, and furthermore that she "looked pretty" on one occasion when Pepys passed her as she stood at her lodging door in "smock-sleeves and a bodice,"