MARY HITCHCOCK, At the same Place, where Ladies may be accommodated with all sorts of Fans, at the most reasonable Rates.’ From the extremely naïve and interesting ‘fan-shop’ fan belonging to Mr. Messel we are able to gather some idea of what these shops were like. The inscription on the shop sign is ‘Fanmaker, London,’ showing that the district represented was within the London boundary of this period, _c._ 1745. During the comparatively brief reign of Queen Anne fans were again made large. Sir Roger de Coverley, upon his courting the perverse widow, declared that he would have allowed her the ‘profits of a windmill for her fans.’[123] With the proverbial fickleness of fashion, however, this vogue lasted but a short time; the fan lessened its proportions in the second and third decades of the century, when, during the forties, its size once again increased, following the lead of France. ‘Ventosus,’ writing in the _London Magazine_ for 1744, quotes, with some amusing comments, an epigram by Dr. Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, originally written upon a white fan borrowed from Miss Osborne, afterwards his wife, and referred to by Steele in the _Tatler_ for October 19, 1710: ‘Flavia, the least and lightest toy Can with relentless art employ: This Fan, in meaner hands, would prove An engine of small force in love; Yet she, with graceful air and mien, Not to be told, or sagely seen, Directs its wanton motions so, That it wounds more than Cupid’s bow; Gives coolness to the matchless dame, To ev’ry other breast a flame.’ ‘The whole turn of this,’ exclaims our commentator, ‘depends upon the smallness and slightness of the Instrument—the least and lightest toy? Fans now in vogue are both monstrously _large_ and monstrously _strong_. To say that a fan of eight or nine inches long, which, when extended in a semicircle could not admit a string of more than fourteen or fifteen, _wounds more than Cupid’s Bow_, is somewhat extraordinary, but to ascribe the same excellence to one of our modern _ventilators_, whose Diagonal line, when it is full spread, is longer than one of the Bowstrings of our _Hoxton_ Archers, is ascribing nothing miraculous to it from the fair Hand that may happen to use it.’ Our good Ventosus had witnessed an increase from ‘3 Quarters of a Foot’ to ‘even 2 Foot within this week past’; he looks forward to a still greater improvement when the fan would extend to the same distance as the _fashionable Hoop_. This would introduce ‘somewhat of uniformity in a Lady’s Dress, and the age would be agreeably engaged at either meeting or following a fair Toast, with both her sails spread, in observing the harmony between the _Curve at Top_ and the _Curve at Bottom_,’ etc. Our ingenious friend discovers other uses for such an instrument—‘a lady might mount it horizontally, to skreen herself and Family against all the Inclemencies of the weather.’