Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/127

VIII embroideries and tinselled fringes, velvet and fur increasing the burden.

The excessive elaboration of the hoods and the scarves and the aprons dangling with silver tassels and fringes was responsible for some criticism from Beau Nash, the autocrat of Bath, where he had

established the strictest rules of dress and procedure, covering all delinquencies of conduct with a bearing of convincing dignity set in an atmosphere of punctilious etiquette. Goldsmith gives an instance of the despotic rule of Nash, and of the special liberties he arrogated to himself. "I have known him on a ball-night strip even the Duchess of Q." (the "Kitty beautiful," as the poet Prior called this Duchess of Queensberry), "and throw her apron at one of the hinder benches among the ladies' women, observing that none but Abigails appeared in white aprons."

Women had indeed to suffer in those days to attain what they were pleased to call the beautiful, and it is quite a relief to remember the moment when Marie Antoinette took a sudden caprice to appear without hoops in a soft satin gown with wide sleeves, which set the fashion in London as well as in France. For a short time only, however, such moderation ruled, and the hoops came back larger than ever in 1784, when the Duchess of Cumberland swept the floor in five yards of brocade, and a stomacher blazing stiffly with jewels.