oats
with tails of preposterous length, cocked hats of ponderous dimensions,
green cravats, powdered hair plaited and turned up with a comb, while on
each side of the face hung down two long curls called dogs' ears
(_oreilles de chien_). These charming fellows carried twisted sticks of
enormous size, as weapons of offence and defence, and spoke in a
peculiarly affected manner.[51] Some fourteen or fifteen years later on,
when we had driven Joseph Bonaparte and his brother's legions out of
Spain, the fashions had not improved. The biographer of Victor Hugo
gives us the picture of one Gile, a Parisian dandy of that period, whose
coat of olive brown was cut in the shape of a fish's tail, and dotted
all over with metal buttons even to the shoulders. Young men who went to
moderate lengths in fashion were content to wear the waists of their
coats in the middle of their backs, but the waist of this Gile intruded
on the nape of his neck. His hat was stuck on the right side of his
head, bringing into prominent notice on the left a thick tuft of hair
frizzed out with curling irons. His trousers were ornamented with
stripes which looked like bars of gold lace; they were pinched in at the
knees and wide at the bottom, giving his feet the appearance of
elephant's hoofs. Our own costume had been strange enough, in all
conscience; but when Napoleon's continental system had been broken up
after Leipzig, and a free market had been once more opened out between
this country and foreign nations, fashions more strange and eccentric,
if possible, found their way into England. Thackeray, when writing his
"Vanity Fair," the scenes of which are laid prior and subsequent to the
battle of Waterloo, was fain to confess that he had intended to depict
his characters in their proper costumes; "but when he remembered the
appearance of people in those days, he had not the heart to disfigure
his heroes and heroines by costumes so hideous," and thenceforth he
habited these men and women of 1815 in the costume of the men and women
of 1848. George Cruikshank's "Monstrosities" are familiar to all
acquainted with his works; and his brother Robert and his contemporaries
were equally fond of ridiculing the preposterous fashions of their time.
We find in the year 1818 a pictorial satire by Robert, which shows us a
pair of _Dandies at Tea_, habited in the short-waisted, long-tailed
coats, tight breeches, terrific stocks, shirt collars, and top boots of
the period