How to survive in the curious world of the Georgian court

The royal household headed by King George I (1660–1727) and then his son King George II (1683–1760) was staggeringly vast and complicated.  The highest ranking of its members, the courtiers proper, were the ladies and gentlemen in waiting.  These noblemen and women were glad to serve the king and queen in even quite menial ways because of the honour involved.  Henrietta Howard, for example, Queen Caroline’s Woman of the Bedchamber (and, curiously, the king’s mistress too) had to hold the basin into which the queen spat while cleaning her teeth.   

Beneath these top courtiers were about 950 other servants, organised into a byzantine web of departments ranging from hair-dressing to rat-catching, and extending right down to the four ‘necessary women’ who cleaned the palace and emptied the ‘necessaries’ or chamber-pots.

What should you wear at court?
Ladies have to wear the court uniform: the ‘mantua’.  A coat-like dress spread out sideways over immensely wide hoops, this formal court dress became trapped in a fashion time warp when the rest of the world moved on.  Tightly-laced, uncomfortable, and immensely heavy because of the silver thread, the skirts got wider and wider as the eighteenth century went on.  Gentlemen should wear a wig, an embroidered suit and a sword, and under their elbows they carry a flat, unwearable version of a hat.  Because you have to bare your head in front of the king, no one wore real hats at court.  On the other hand, you can gate-crash the court quite easily if you had the right clothes.  You can even hire a sword from a booth at the entrance. 
       
How do you walk in a dress like that?
It’s quite hard to walk in a mantua – the whalebone hoops force you to take tiny steps, and you have to go through doors sideways.  (Grand palace doorways are just the right width to accommodate the hooped skirts.)  Because of their tiny steps people said court ladies looked like they rolled about on wheels.  Ladies in waiting weren’t allowed to sit down, or to fold their arms, and leave the royal presence they had to curtsey three times then back out of the room.  Your dancing master trained you how to do all this. 

How do you get about town?
Travelling by sedan chair, you would fold up your whalebone hoops on each side: ladies were described as looking like strange winged insects.  This reveals everything underneath, and Georgian ladies didn’t wear underpants (not invented yet).  But they didn’t mind what their footmen saw.   You also had to tilt your head back and remain motionless so the roof didn’t squash your piled-up hair.

How do you go to the loo in a dress like this?
It’s easier than it looks, as you wouldn’t be wearing knickers.   You would either squat over a chamberpot, or use a ‘bourdaloue’: a little jug like a gravy boat that you clench between your thighs.  However, if the queen didn’t grant you permission to go, you just had to try to hold on.  Once, one of Queen Caroline’s ladies couldn’t wait, and a humiliating pool of urine crept out from under her skirt and ‘threatened the shoes of bystanders’.

What messages can you signal with your fan?
Most people think that the secret language of the fan – ‘beware, my husband approaches’, ‘you are cruel’, ‘don’t forget me’, etc. - is a Victorian invention.  But I believe it was already in place in the 1720s.  According to the language of the fan, the ladies painted by William Kent on the staircase at the Kensington Palace are all saying variations of the same thing: ‘I am married’, ‘I wish to get rid of you’ or just plain ‘no’.  Either this is a very strange coincidence, or else William Kent was playing a joke in depicting all these ravishing ladies making such cruel denials!