n hooped skirts, but
the bodice and gown over the petticoat, the apron, and the turned back
cuff to the short sleeve were worn by all. The orange wench laced her
gown neatly, and wore a white cloth tied over her head; about her
shoulders she wore a kerchief of white, and often a plain frill of
linen at her elbows. There were blue canvas, striped dimity, flannel,
and ticken for the humble; for the rich, lustrings, satins, Padesois,
velvets, damasks, fans and Leghorn hats, bands of Valenciennes and
Point de Dunquerque--these might be bought of Mrs. Holt, whose card
Hogarth engraved, at the Two Olive Posts in the Broad part of the
Strand.

[Illustration: {Two women of the time of George II.}]

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five saw the one-horse chairs introduced
from France, called cabriolets, the first of our own extraordinary
wild-looking conveyances contrived for the minimum of comfort and the
maximum of danger. This invention captivated the hearts of both men
and women. The men painted cabriolets on their waistcoats, they
embroidered them on their stockings, they cut them out in black silk
and patched their cheeks with them, horse and all; the women began to
take up, a little later, the cabriolet caps with round sides like
linen wheels, and later still, at the very end of the reign, there
began a craze for such head-dresses--post-chaises, chairs and
chairmen, even waggons, and this craze grew and grew, and hair
grew--in wigs--to meet the cry for hair and straw men-of-war, for
loads of hay, for birds of paradise, for goodness knows what forms of
utter absurdity, all of which I put down to the introduction of the
cab.

I think that I can best describe the lady of this day as a swollen,
skirted figure with a pinched waist, little head of hair, or tiny cap,
developing into a loose sacque-backed figure still whaleboned out,
with hair puffed at the sides and powdered, getting ready to develop
again into a queer figure under a tower of hair, but that waits for
the next reign.

One cannot do better than go to Hogarth's prints and
pictures--wonderful records of this time--one picture especially,
'Taste in High Life,' being a fine record of the clothes of 1742; here
you will see the panier and the sacque, the monstrous muff, the huge
hoop, the long-tailed wig, the black boy and the monkey. In the 'Noon'
of the 'Four Parts of the Day' there are clothes again satirized.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of George II.;