"Yester-year"; ten centuries of toilette from the French of A. Robida

The ' pouf au sentiment ' allowed great latitude to invention, and the display of feeling and taste. The Duchesse de Chartres, mother of King Louis-Philippe, wore on her pouf a miniature museum of little images, her eldest son in his nurse's arms, a little negro, a parrot nibbling a clierry, and designs executed in the hair of her nearest and dearest kinsfolk.

After the ' garden ' hair-dressing, we find the ' Cascade of Saint-Cloud ' style, consisting of a cataract of powdered ringlets falling from the top of the head, the ' kitchen-garden ' style, with bunches of vegetables hooked in to the side-curls, the ' rural ' style, with landscapes representing a hill-side, windmills which actually turned, a meadow crossed by a silver stream, with a shepherdess tending her sheep, mountains, a forest with a sportsman and his dog in pursuit of game, &c., &c.

Then came the ' Coliseum,' the ' Innocence,' the 'Peal of bells,' the 'Bobwig,' the 'Milkmaid,' the ' Bather,' the ' Kerchief,' the ' Neckerchief,' the ' Oriental,' the ' Circassian,' the ' Minerva's helmet,' the ' Crescent,' the

' Bandeau of Love,' and among hats, the ' Enigma,' the ' Desire to please,' the ' Tiirned-up Calash,' the 'Pilgrim Venus/^ the 'Treasurer of the age,' ' Frivolous Bather/ &c., while hair-curling was done in ' sustained sentiments/ or ' sentiments recalled.'

The full-dress head-gear, a great scafFolding bedecked with feathers and flowers in tufts and garlands, was so large and so heavy, and took up so much space, that ladies, who already found it difficult to get their paniers into their cai'-riages, had to hold their heads down on one side, or even to kneel on the floor of the vehicle.^

Caricatures of the period represent ladies wearing these monstrous head-dresses in Sedan chairs, with the roof taken off to allow the top of the gigantic structure, powdered to an Alpine whiteness, to come through.

The most amazing of all these inventions was the ' Belle-Poule,' so called in honour of

1 Pilgrim Venus apparently means Venus with her cockle-shell, an antique design.

2 See note, Appendix, p. 263.

PARISIENNES 17S9.

the victory of the frigate La Belle Poule over The Arethusa, an English ship, in 1778. Upon the great mass of hair arranged in rolling waves, was placed a frigate in full sail, witli

Head-dress à la Belle Poule.

all its masts, yards, guns, and little sailors. After having composed such a master-piece, Léonard or Da<ïé micjht g;o hano- themselves, they could never beat that.

It was in '89 that the ridiculous head-gear of women reached its utmost absurdity. The highest of them all set the example, Alas ! she had to expiate her fault and her folly ! The head had sinned, the head paid the penalty, and if the loftiest of all fell, it was through the fault of the very person who had tempted her with his eccentric inventions during her prosperous years.

Léonard, the ' illustrious ' hair-dresser to the Queen, was one of the party who went to Varennes. At that terrible moment, in the great shipwreck of tlie monarchy, the object was to secure—what ? The services of the indispensable Léonard. That last weakness of hers turned out ill for the poor Queen, for, it is said, some erroneous information given (quite innocently) to a detachment of the troops commanded by the Marquis de Bouille, by Léonard, who had preceded the royal fugitives, was the cause of the disaster of Varennes, where the expected aid was missing.

When the fashionable lady's hair had been dressed, she hid her face in a large paper bag, While a thick coating of powder was applied to the structure—what a strange fashion it was that shed the snow of years on the heads of

Lirge Pouf.

young and old alike—and then, her cheeks being rouged to the right colour, forming a harsh contrast with the plastered white hair—'rouge,' said Madame de Sévigné, is all the law and the prophets"—she needed only to put on the patches which were intended to bring out certain points of physiognomy, and give piquancy to expression, in order to be quite irresistible.

These patches, which women were careful to place in the most becoming manner, each according to her special style of beauty, bore the following amusing names—

The ' majestic ' was j)laced on the forehead, the ' funny ' at a corner of the mouth, on the lips of a brunette the patch-was 'the roguish,' on the nose it Avas ' the saucy,' in the middle of the cheek ' the gallant,' near the eye, as it rendered the glance either languid or passionate, according to the fair one's intention, it was ' the murderous,' while the fanciful patches, crescents, stars, comets, hearts, etc., were past counting.

But we are coming to the last days of a world about to go to pieces, of a society about to disappear in a sudden catastrophe.

From 1785 the old réo^ime was in a totterinçf state ; the revolution was an accomplished fact —in dress.

It was a complete revolution, and it came almost without transition, the gay and gallant costume of the eighteenth century was aban-