E-text prepared by Jason Isbell, Sam W., and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the numerous original illustrations, many of which are in full color. See 33020-h.htm or 33020-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33020/pg33020-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33020/33020-h.zip) ENGLISH COSTUME Painted & Described by DION CLAYTON CALTHROP Published by Adam & Charles Black London . MCMVII [Illustration: {Scissors}] Published in four volumes during 1906. Published in one volume, April, 1907. Agents America The Macmillan Company 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York Canada The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd. 70 Bond Street, Toronto India Macmillan & Company, Ltd. Macmillan Building, Bombay 309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE IV. (1820-1830) Here you see the coat which we now wear, slightly altered, in our evening dress. It came into fashion, with this form of top-boots, in 1799, and was called a Jean-de-Bry. Notice the commencement of the whisker fashion.] INTRODUCTION The world, if we choose to see it so, is a complicated picture of people dressing and undressing. The history of the world is composed of the chat of a little band of tailors seated cross-legged on their boards; they gossip across the centuries, feeling, as they should, very busy and important. Someone made the coat of many colours for Joseph, another cut into material for Elijah's mantle. Baldwin, from his stall on the site of the great battle, has only to stretch his neck round to nod to the tailor who made the toga for Julius Caesar; has only to lean forward to smile to Pasquino, the wittiest of tailors. John Pepys, the tailor, gossips with his neighbour who cut that jackanapes coat with silver buttons so proudly worn by Samuel Pepys, his son. Mr. Schweitzer, who cut Beau Brummell's coat, talks to Mr. Meyer, who shaped his pantaloons. Our world is full of the sound of scissors, the clipping of which, with the gossiping tongues, drown the grander voices of history. As you will see, I have devoted myself entirely to civil costume--that is, the clothes a man or a woman would wear from choice, and not by reason of an appointment to some ecclesiastical post, or to a military calling, or to the Bar, or the Bench. Such clothes are but symbols of their trades and professions, and have been dealt with by persons who specialize in those professions. I have taken the date of the Conquest as my starting-point, and from that date--a very simple period of clothes--I have followed the changes of the garments reign by reign, fold by fold, button by button, until we arrive quite smoothly at Beau Brummell, the inventor of modern clothes, the prophet of cleanliness.