his dressing the british

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Dressing the British:Dressing the British:Dressing the British:Dressing the British:Dressing the British:Clothes, Customs, and Nation in Clothes, Customs, and Nation in Clothes, Customs, and Nation in Clothes, Customs, and Nation in Clothes, Customs, and Nation in W. H. PynesW. H. PynesW. H. PynesW. H. PynesW. H. PynesThe Costume of The Costume of The Costume of The Costume of The Costume of

Great Britain Great Britain Great Britain Great Britain Great Britain

CHLOE WIGSTON SMITH

In his preface to The Costume of Great Britain (1804), W. H. Pynes publisher, William Miller, declares that a book devoted to domesticdress will help to contextualize the Manners, Habits, and Decorations of several highly interesting Foreign Countries. 1 Pynes folio concludesMillers series of costume books on Turkey, China, Russia, Austria, Spainand Portugal, Italy, and the city of Rio de Janeiro, published at the end of the long eighteenth century. Similar to early modern examples of the genre(well-established by the eighteenth century), the series focuses on foreign

apparel, perhaps accounting for Millers description of British style as auseful postscript to international dress. 2 The publication of Pynes costume

book corresponds with the popularity of Microcosms as a genre, whose pages often illustrated an encyclopedic collection of domestic trades andscenes; Pyne himself was working on a Microcosm while he gathered the

plates for his costume book, and his text anticipates the small flood of domestic costume books published at the end of the Napoleonic wars.Towards the end of the long eighteenth centuryas Britain consolidatedits strengths in textile manufacturing and as the country was gripped bythe Great Terrorthese costume books document a growing interest inthe national and regional dress of Britons. This essay examines how British


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costume booksa genre that favors everyday dress and customs over cutting-edge styleattempt to imagine national habits. While the nationalfocus of The Costume of Great Britain suggests the volume seeks to

depict a coherent portrait of British identity, the volume instead conveysthe difficulty of doing so. This diverse national portrait reflects the aestheticfluidity of the text, as well as its emphasis on social variety. The shiftinglandscape of dress in The Costume of Great Britain is linked, I demonstrate,to its exploitation of competing artistic conventions, as well as to thetensions between text and image that crisscross its visual and verbal portraitsof customs and class.

Pynes costume book pictures the attire of a range of social classes, notmerely the apparel of the urban elite. In doing so, the volume imaginescostume as a form of national habit, a collection of customs materializedthrough familiar activities and rituals. Although the conflation of clotheswith custom underwrites many costume booksin contemporary Frenchexamples, the same slippage occurs between costume and coutume,and earlier German examples, such as Christoph Weiditzs Trachtenbuch(1529), devote attention to occupational wearI argue that Pynecomplicates the interlacing of dress and custom by articulating nationalstyle through images of rural and urban labor. 3 The Costume of Great

Britain theorizes dress as rooted in manual work and economic productivity,revealing how British identity grows from the labor of ordinary womenand men.

Just as Pyne casts a wide social net for his study, he also exploits arange of eighteenth-century artistic traditions. Pynes work contributed tothe library of drawing manuals aimed at amateur artists from the 1790sonwards, such as Microcosms and collections of rural figures andlandscapes (which Pyne also produced). While Pyne has been primarilyassociated with the picturesque aesthetic popularized by William Gilpinand others, his costume book draws on conventions such as fashion platesand urban street criers in addition to the picturesque. 4 Pynes costume

book, however, resists each of these aesthetics, producing an incoherent portrait of national identity during wartime (as I discuss in the first sectionof this essay). With its longstanding commitment to representing a varietyof apparel, the costume book, as a genre, is wedded to diversity rather than to continuity, often depicting figures across time, space, and class.Pynes contribution to this genre, as my second section shows, constitutes

the first sustained attempt, in Britain, to represent contemporary habits a move that distinguishes his work from earlier British examples. In theend, as my third section reveals, the social variety of Pynes costume

book, and the tensions between text and image that emerge in its treatment


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of elite figures, opens the possibility of social commentary during a periodof heightened patriotism in Britain. In its own time, the Costume of Great

Britain was perceived as unsuitably patriotic, and its efforts to include a

variety of laboring men and women appeared as a slight to the countrysupper classes. Pynes muted, though palpable, critiques of the elite and of his governments treatment of working people emerge more sharply when

juxtaposed with British costume books published at the end of the Napoleonicwars in 181415. As this essay reveals, the tension between verbal andvisual representation across Costume of Great Britain paradoxically

produces the portrait of a divided nation, in a volume focused on domestichabits.

Pyne, the Picturesque, and Urban Habits

At the turn of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth, Britain, like therest of Europe, looked to Napoleonic France with fear and loathing. LindaColley describes the year 1803, during which Pyne worked on the platesfor Costume of Great Britain and his Microcosm , as the height of British

panic about an imminent French invasion: villages prepared to evacuatewomen and children, and recruiting parties roamed the countryside enlisting

volunteers for homeland defense.5

Coupled with the years 179798, theinvasion crisis of 180205, or the Great Terror, marks a period of intensefranco-phobia and fervent patriotism within British shores. 6 Pynes work during the Napoleonic wars looks inwards to Britains landscape and peoples;together the Microcosm (1803, 1806, 1808) and Etchings of Rustic Figures

for the Embellishment of Landscape (1815) present picturesque views of rural laborers and cottagers, offering the amateur artist suitable figureswith which to populate landscape drawings. Pynes costume book,however, exploits other aesthetics, in addition to that of the picturesque,incorporating urban street criers and fashion plates into its national canvass.Pyne resists these different aesthetics, even as he exploits them; internaldivisions, expressed by the gaps between text and image in the volume,lace the edges of Pynes plates. These tensions produce a disjointed portraitof national identity in a text, whose devotion to the costume of the nationmight at first imply a unified picture of domestic customs.

During the Great Terror, Pyne composed his costume book andengraved the plates for a two-volume Microcosm , the work for which he

is best remembered today. Pynes Microcosm , A Picturesque Delineationof the Arts, Agriculture, Manufacture, &c. of Great Britain, in a Series of above a Thousand Groups of Small Figures for the Embellishment of

Landscape has received substantial attention for what its introduction calls


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its presentation to the student and the amateur [of] picturesque sceneryof active life in Great Britain. 7 Pynes encyclopedic rendering of largelyoutdoor laborthe two volumes feature 121 plates crowded with small

groups of figureshas been described as a patriotic response to the Napoleonic wars. Ann Bermingham, for instance, links Pynes celebrationof rural productivity in the Microcosm to the years of the Napoleonic

blockade when rural agricultural productivity was essential to the war effort. 8 Likewise, Christiana Payne cites the Microcosm s many scenes of military life as indicative that it was self-consciously patriotic. 9 In Pynes

Microcosm , patriotism limns the picturesque, an aesthetic which, as JohnBarrell argues, prioritizes the eye of the artist and viewer over the experiencesof the rural figures depicted and attempts to reform the rural poor throughvisual representation. 10 Labor is valued for its aesthetic appeal, and as Barrellshows, the prose essays (composed by C. Gray) and the patterning of the

plates in Microcosm , invite us to understand these different stages of a productive process as together composing not just a coherent story, witha beginning, a middle and an end, but a unity. 11 According to Barrellsreading, Pynes Microcosm , through its double object to please andinstruct, struggles to unify labor via the picturesque aesthetic, but alsoresists the totalising aspirations of the division of labour by representing

occupations (such as gypsies) that embellish the landscape rather thancontribute to the nations wealth. 12 Barrel concludes that the opposing aimsof Pynes Microcosm ultimately produce the representation of a societyirretrievably atomised and dispersed. 13

Pynes lesser-known costume book stages a similar struggle in itsrepresentation of the variety of the British people. Like the Microcosm , the

plates and text of The Costume of Great Britain betray a vested interest inthe productivity of British professions and trades; this professional interestdelivers a work in which costume invariably means custom and inwhich little attention is devoted to the clothes depicted (some plates do notdepict any clothes at all). The Costume of Great Britain , however, departsfrom the Microcosm in several key ways. 14 While the subtitle to Microcosm

promotes its function as a Picturesque Delineation of the Arts, Agriculture, Manufacture filled with Groups of Small Figures for the Embellishment of Landscape , apart from the publishers presentation of British dress asa postscript to foreign dress, the aims of the costume book are far lessclear. Pyne includes many illustrations of laboring men and womenjust

as he does in Microcosm but he also depicts the functionaries and officialsof the upper classes, whose economic productivity he tries (but fails to) todefend. Unlike the laborers of Microcosm , such figures would have occupiedhigher stations than Pyne (who experienced periods of financial trouble)


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and perhaps enjoyed higher status than most of his readers. The genericdifferences between Microcosm and Costume of Great Britain render itimpossible to assess the costume book solely through the lens of the

picturesque, and make it equally difficult to read the text as a prescriptivevision of labor that offers a clear narrative of the laboring classes, or of thenation.

These differences also encompass the organization of both works. In Microcosm , Pyne arranges his figures in small groups, clustered four or even six to a page. In the costume book, by contrast, each illustrationexpands to fill its own folio page; the engravings are hand-tinted with

bright color washes. Pyne composed his own text for the costume book,whereas the text for the 1806 and 1808 editions of Microcosm was penned

by C. Gray. In the Microcosm , illustration is separated from the text. In thecostume book, the text faces the accompanying image; this proximity, aswe shall see, heightens the discrepancies between text and image. Mostimportantly, the costume book exploits several artistic traditions,interweaving the aesthetic conventions of the picturesque, Cries of London,and fashion plates and juxtaposing images of agricultural production withthose of urban markets.

The emphasis on usefulness echoes the Microcosm s patriotic invocation

of national productivity, but the social and generic diversity of Costume of Great Britain renders narrative unity impossible to achieve from the outset.Rather than drawing on the work of other artists, and in contrast withearlier costume books on British dress, Pyne created 60 original aquatint

plates of British trades and professions. 15 Each plate is accompanied by atextual explanation, ranging from a paragraph to two pages. In addition toillustrations of public functionaries, Pyne offers views of working apparel;he records the appearance of potters, brick-makers, shrimpers, fishermen,tanners, coal-heavers, lamp lighters, and watermen. As his publishers

preface reveals, the variety of costumes reflects the diversity of the Britishnation:

In a country presenting such an infinite variety of interestingsubjects, the only difficulty has been to compress the Volumewithin moderate bounds. In making this selection, it has beenattempted to include all classes of society; and delineationsare therefore given from the most elevated ranks of publicfunctionaries, to the lowest gradation of mechanic and

laborious avocation. 16


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While Pynes Microcosm largely depicts outdoor manufacturing, his costume book incorporates multiple figures of urban street sellers and publicfunctionaries, positioning them alongside the lowest gradation of mechanic

and laborious avocation. 17The first platePottery (fig. 1)provides several important insights

into Pynes understanding of costume as custom and establishes thevolumes emphasis on labor. The subject of the plate is a tradeas opposedto a personand the image depicts a group of potters at work, portrayingthree generations of men (probably family members) gathered around amechanical wheel. The seated man rotates the wheel as the elderly manshapes a bowl. The boy pats a large round of clay as he looks out at theviewer. The plate emphasizes the labor behind the manufacturing of ceramicwares, from the engrossed expressions of the elderly and middle-agedmen to the rows of pots set out to dry on the table on the right. These mendo not wear elite garments, and their clothes are granted secondary status,visually and textually, to their work. The composition sketches in the ground,setting, and furnishings of the potters workspace. Moreover, their labor finds visual expression in their muddied aprons, vests, and boots. Whereasearlier costume books tend to use text as a place to expound on the detailsof fabrics, laces, ribbons, and jewelry, Pynes text delivers a historical

account of pottery. Taking the long view, he begins: THE useful andelegant art of pottery is of great antiquity. 18 Pyne describes the history of clay-making in antiquity, China, Europe, and England, concluding with

praise for Josiah Wedgewoods wares. The text offers no informationabout clothing at all; indeed, few of Pynes descriptions do. We gleansome kernels of information about the plate from the rather perfunctoryconcluding sentence: The subject of this plate is employed in making thered pottery, and was selected, in preference to any other, from the

picturesque simplicity of the wheel, &c. 19 Pynes selection of the mostpicturesque kind of pottery seems to affirm Barrells contention that the

picturesque overwrites labor, transforming manual work into the materialsof visual ornamentation. Yet the entrys emphasis on the usefulness of British trades, rather than on the composition of the plate or the clothes of the figures, undermines Pynes rare reference to his aesthetic choices.

For Pyne, British costumes are produced through labor and ritual.Indeed, all of his subjects are defined by occupation, suggesting thecorrelation between costume and work, apparel and function throughout

his costume book. The bulk of his text pairs historical background withcontemporary facts about the economics of production. In the case of theMilk Woman, Pyne lauds urban milk peddlers for their difficult work:The London milk carriers are a hardy set of people, their employment


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Figure 1. Pottery, William Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain (London,1804), Photo Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

being extremely laborious. 20 Pyne then reports that milk women together sell 481,666 of milk per year and notes the exact number of cows inLondon neighborhoods (for example, 150 cows supply Hoxton). He

positions his Woman Churning Butter (plate 13) as a vital supplier of the50,000 tons of butter consumed in London each year. For Tanning,Pyne stresses the global importance of this industry, proclaiming that themanufacture of leather is a branch of business, by which the Englishhave acquired reputation in foreign markets. 21 Pyne includes the exactnumbers of skins, including fox, sable, wolverine, musquoah, and rabbit,sold in one day to America. In his entries for the manufacturing trades, heconsistently extols the physical exertion and manual labor of his subjects,admiring, for example, the essential work of Coal Heavers: Among themany laborious avocations essential to the support of society in a highstate of civilization, perhaps none can be found that demands greater bodilyexertion, than various departments of the coal trade. 22 Pyne celebratesBritish trade through his facts and figures, applauding physical labor and

positioning ordinary women and men as the backbone of British culture.The range of classes Pyne depicts suggests an inclusive portrait of thenation, one that encompasses both urban and rural workers, the laboring

poor and elite officials. But what roles do public officials play in shaping


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Figure 2. Alderman, William Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain (London,1804), Photo Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.


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common plebeian accessory)remarkable only perhaps for the pristinewhiteness of the fabric brightened by its juxtaposition with the brownhorses and cart. 23 His garments follow a fashionable line and his white

stockings, worn here for work, suggest a degree of sartorial refinement,even if Pyne does not offer any textual details on the quality of the fabric.The farmers dress joins style with rural work: the plain fabrics reflect thevogue for simple textiles in mens dress in the early 1800s, while the redand bluecolors associated with the dress of rural womenreinforce thecountry setting. 24 The engraving captures the farmer in a moment of respite:he has laid his blue coat on the edge of the grass roller and glances towardsa prospect view that lies beyond the right edge of the plate.

The accompanying text makes no mention of the farmers apparel; insteadit focuses on the importance of agricultural improvement. 25 At first glance,Pynes resting farmer, in his clean clothes and with his four well-fed horses,confirms Barrells emphasis on how images of rural life both prescribevirtuous industry and resist representations of actual labor. 26 Taking adidactic tone, Pyne argues that the practice of grass rolling should bewidely adopted by British farmers and should extend to all corners of therealm. The first paragraph praises the scientific study of agriculture,describing a process of agricultural improvement in which the good

examples of the higher orders are imitated by the other classes of thecommunity. 27 Pyne proceeds to advocate the culture of pasturage in thesecond paragraph, celebrating, as he does in scenes of rural labor in his

Microcosm , what Bermingham calls the new patriotic aesthetic of agricultural labor. 28 According to Pyne, the rollers work contributes toagricultural improvement and increases the productivity of the English

pasture, a patriotic act during the Napoleonic wars but one that glossesover the acceleration of the enclosure movement during this period. Butthe lack of hard factsnumbers and listsabout agricultural production

jars with Pynes standard explanations of the bounty and utility of Britishtrades. In his description of the plate, Pyne explains how the picturesquehas informed his decision to depict wood rollers rather than those of castiron or stone because no rollers accord so well with the picturesque asthose rollers which are made entirely of wood, echoing his earlier

preference for the picturesque simplicity of red pottery. 29 But does thisreference to the picturesque undermine the texts emphasis on productivity?Pynes closing comment on the wood rollers implies that he sees iron or

stone as more productive. Pynes text thus compromises the aesthetic of the plate by drawing attention to the friction between the picturesque and productive agricultural practice.


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Besides bearing the influence of the picturesque, Pynes plates reflectthe aesthetic of fashion plates in the 1790s and early 1800s, whichincreasingly sketched in settings for their figures. Pyne generally fills in

the backgrounds for his figures, in contrast with the blank spaces of earlier examples of costume books, as we shall see in the next section. Thiscomposition corresponds with images of women in periodicals such as

Nicolaus Heideloffs The Gallery of Fashion (17941803) which portraygroups of fashionable figures conversing at the tea-table, promenading inthe park, and enjoying a seaside view while dressed luxuriously. In a 1795illustration of riding dressA Lady going out on horseback (vol. 2, fig.55)Heideloff sets a female figure in front of a horse, whip in hand, asthough she has just dismounted from the saddle. In the recessed space

behind the woman and her horse, Heideloff places a male figure onhorseback. He fills in the entire page with bucolic park scenery: greengrass blankets the rolling hills, and shrubbery and trees dominate the rightside of the plate. Heideloff matches the figures fashionable dress to thesetting, showing how the latest riding habit might look and perform inactual practice. The female figure rules the composition. The bright redfolds of her riding habitas well as her placement in the centeroverwhelmthe softer greens of the park and the pale browns applied to the male

figure, creating a visual hierarchy that declares the allure of fashion. Thecolors of the womans dress are brighter and richer than the washed-outshades of the picturesque scenery. Heideloff demonstrates how thecomposition of fashion plates blends realism with fiction by creating scenesthat simultaneously suggest ordinary activities and fabricate visualhierarchies. As we have seen, Pyne uses composition to similar effect,supplying his figures with prospect views or the furnishings of a workspace.Pynes plates, however, resist the aesthetic of fashion plates by representingfigures in generic dress. Although his figures wear clothes in the cut anddesign of early-nineteenth-century fashions, none of the figures is adornedin the newest gowns or suits from London or Paris. Judges, barristers,yeomen, and peers dressed in ceremonial robes and adorned withemblematic ornaments wear professional uniforms, rather than display thefashionable garments of their non-ceremonial lives. Thus while his designs

borrow from the compositions of fashion plates, Pyne creates a timelessimage of British customs, in keeping with the costume-book genres interestin habits, broadly conceived, rather than the seasonal trends of fashion.

Pyne further anchors his national customs to ritual by drawing on thegenre of urban street criers, popular in London since the seventeenthcentury. 30 He includes familiar figures such as the milk woman (fig. 3),who simultaneously evokes the everyday practice of milk selling and May


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Day celebrations. As Sean Shesgreen notes, Londoners worshippedmilkmaids as pastoral characters. 31 Poised between the festive and the

plain, Pynes illustration interlaces ritual with economy; the milk woman

carries her pails in the urban streets, while behind her two carriers transportthe ornate milk pyramid used in May Day celebrations. Although the two

pyramid carriers don matching liveries, the milk woman wears rather ordinary apparel composed of simpleand sturdy lookingred and brownfabrics. Her short sleeves and the relatively high waist of her gown followthe fashionable cut of womens gowns, while her matching pink handkerchief and ribbon brighten her plain attire. Many laboring women of the period wore bedgownsa shorter, loose gown tied with an apron

but the bulk of the brown fabric around the milk womans hips suggeststhat she has used her apron to tuck up the edges of her dress, possibly to

protect it from city streets. 32 Her straw or chip hat brings her outfit closer to the common wear of rural women, although her white stockings anddelicate shoes (she eschews the pattens or clogs associated with milk women) evoke urban styles. 33 Other contemporary views of milkwomen

present far more sentimentaland picturesquevisions, inscribing milk women in ideologies of female charity. Francis Wheatleys Milk belowMaids (1793), for instance, depicts a beatific milk woman from the front;

she wears a pastel pink petticoat, a pale blue gown, white apron, and astraw bonnet ornamented with a pink ribbon. In comparison with the practical clothes of Pynes milk woman (graced with a few fashionabletouches), Wheatleys milk woman wears fashionable dress. She hands alarge cup of milk to two children, a boy and a girl, clustered around her skirts. Shesgreen describes Wheatleys image as sweetening Laroon,noting how the milk woman constitutes a model of altruism, for she doesnot sell milk to servants but donates it to the deserving poor. 34 Thecomposition of Pynes plate, by contrast, emphasizes the labor of the milk woman, even as it acknowledges the folkloric allure of the figure. Thecomposition foregrounds her labor by shunting the May Day pyramid tothe background of the plate. Moreover, the rear view of her clothes preventsa full interpretation of her garments (unlike Wheatleys version). Althoughwe see her only in profile, Pyne places another market woman (carrying a

basket of greens and walking with a small child) directly in her path; her loose attire suggests that she wears the working womans bedgown. Thisfellow street seller and her child look up at the milk woman who, standing

at the top of the stairs, dominates the composition. The milk womans pose echoes that of the alderman, and by doing so joins the working womanwith elite official. Moreover, the composition both directs our attention tothe focus of the plateordinary work rather than May Day festivities


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the costume, in which the figure is shown both from the front and fromthe backonly one of three figures shown in double views in the four volumes. 44 The visual and verbal details suggest both Jefferys intimate

knowledge of the costume, and how the text might enable dressmakers toreplicate the costume as fancy dressin sharp contrast to the financiallists and descriptions of manufacturing that dominate Pynes text.

Throughout Jefferys costume book, the lines between authentic andfictional dress are blurred. In the case of the Imoinda costume Jefferysnotes the false Jacket and Sleeves which is only sewed to the Robe,suggesting how theatrical dress merely imitates the construction of actualgarments. 45 More suggestively, Jefferys own plates alter the designs of the original Holbein, Van Dyck, and Hollar sources advertised by the subtitle.Jefferys, for instance, reproduces Hollars early 1640s engravings of Englishwomen. 46 In the originals, each woman stands on a raised ground, with alow skyline behind her. The prospect views depict estates, parks, andLondon streets, similar to the prospects found in Pyne. Jefferys, however,removes the background scenery of the original etchings, showcasing theclothing of his figures on a blank page. He also paints in the color of thefabrics, or what he imagines them to have been: Hollars black and whiteengravings are transformed by bright washes of red, blue, green, and

gold. These alterations convey the importance of line and color inrepresenting dress; the composition suggests that background scenerywould only distract from the apparel on display. With its comprehensiveattention to visual detail and minimal text, Jefferys collection positions thecostume-book genre as visual entertainment.

While Jefferys collection overflows with fashions from around theworld, Joseph Strutts late-century text focuses exclusively on the historyof British dress. Like Jefferys, Strutt sources his material from other artists. 47

A Complete View of the Dress and Habits of the People, from theestablishment of the Saxons in Britain to the present time (179699)concentrates on historic costume. His most recent examples date to theseventeenth century, whereas Jefferys includes a few images of Englishwomen from 1755, just two years before the publication of his first volume.In contrast with Jefferys and Pyne, Strutt offers a much morecomprehensive history of fashion. His extensive commentary elaborateson the colors and weaves of fabric and cloth production and also draws onhistorical documents to describe changes in fashions. The changes are

then illustrated by a large number of plates. Like Jefferys, Strutt divideshis volumes between the textual and the visual, though there is greater balance here between the two: volume 1 includes an introduction and fivechapters (228 pages) and 210 plates; volume 2, eight chapters (293 pages)


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and 75 plates. Strutts rich descriptions of the history of British dress andtextile manufacturing reveal how his costume book presents national dressas deserving of solid and extensive scholarly research.

A former history painter, Strutt strives for sartorial accuracy. In hisAddress to the Public, he promises to deliver authentic costume history,assuring his readers that the engravings are faithfully copied from theoriginals, without any additional fold being made to the draperies, or theleast deviation from the form of the garments. 48 This authenticity is

buttressed by the lengthy lists of source materials and manuscripts fromdifferent libraries, including the British Museum and the Bodleian. Drawingon ancient decorative arts, illustrated manuscripts, architecture, and effigies,Strutt depicts men and women of rank, religious dress, military armor, theapparel of state officials, masquerade dress, the costumes of jesters, andthe garments of artisans and laborers. He includes lively images of fifteenth-century beaux adorned in bright cloaks and feathered hoods (plate 122),

but he is also interested in extending his historical lens to working peoplesuch as artisans, farmers, and stonemasons who are shown holding thetools of their trade (plate 70). His costume book presents a far more inclusiveswath of British society in contrast with the largely aristocratic focus of Jefferys collection, anticipating Pynes combined attention to the laboring

classes, military ranks, and public functionaries. Strutt, in contrast withJefferys, preserves the settings for his figures; this pictorial strategy reflectshis efforts to faithfully [copy] from the originals in contrast with Jefferysremoval of the original backdrops. 49 In the case of plate 70, which he titlesRustics &c. of the 14 th cent y, artisans and laborers are shown wieldingthe tools of their trade. The stonemason kneels next to a mound of earthwhich forms a pedestal for his slabs of stone. These gestures towardssetting and landscape constitute a striking distinction from Jefferys costume

book and reveal Strutts interest in the overlap between costume and custom.Like Strutt, Pyne fills in the background for his figures, but his costume

book reimagines both the pictorial and verbal representations of Strutt andJefferys. Pyne substitutes the scant textual detail on fashions and fabricsin Jefferys for longer treatments of British professions, which rarelyreference the clothes or fabrics on display (despite the fact that Pyne wasthe son of a weaver). He takes Strutts attention to artisans and laborers astep further by focusing his attention on the usefulness of each of hisfigures, whether elite or not, and expands the representation of laboring

men and women. These changesas well as Pynes emphasis oncontemporary dressallow more textual space for social commentaryand political critique.


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his costume book as a mechanism for social reform, imagining that therepresentation of workers might bridge class distance by revealing theinterdependence of rich and poor. In his entry for Woman Selling Salop

(a hot drink of milk and sassafras), the text barely mentions the subject of the plate, but instead describes market sellers who begin work in the earlymorning hours. These workers remain unseen by the affluent still intheir beds, but Pynes costume book uncovers their toil: He who wishesto study the manners, and note the modes of life of the inhabitants of thisgreat metropolis, must extend his observations beyond the court, the bar,the theatre, or the Exchange. A mutual dependence binds the societytogether; and the honest exertions of the meanest member is of consequenceto the whole. 54 Pyne describes himself as a kind of social geographer whoventures into urban territories, inspired perhaps by the city georgics of Jonathan Swift and John Gay in early eighteenth-century London. In thissame passage, the industry of urban workers is set against the leisuredlifestyles of the rich: the infant chimney-sweeperperhaps evokingWilliam Blakes chimney sweeperbegins his ignominious drudgery whenthe nobleman is still engaged at the gaming-table, and the lady of fashionis stepping into her sedan, to be carried home to her couch. 55 Here Pyneattacks the social hierarchies that force an infant to work by juxtaposing

his ignominious drudgery with dissipated aristocrats. Moreover, the imageof the youthful chimney sweep setting out before dawn suggests that thefuture of the country lies in the working poor; the waning elite, by contrast,are both wasting financial resources and about to fall asleep.

In other plates, the absence of people undermines attempts to visualizethe elite, as longed for by the critic of The Monthly Review , who complained,Besides, the Royal State Coach, Mail-Coach, and a Waggon, do not properly

belong to the subject; and if they did, why was it necessary to give theLord Mayors State Coach. 56 More so than in Pynes other plates, theseillustrations of non-human subjects are marked by even greater tensions

between the visual and the verbal. Such fissures follow W.J.T. Mitchellsargument that the tensions between visual and verbal representations areinseparable from struggles in cultural politics and political culture. 57 In thedescription for the Royal State Carriage (fig. 4)an illustration that falls

between Life-Boat and Lottery WheelPyne describes materials notseen in the image (his two-page entry constitutes the longest description inthe book). Although Pyne refers to George III as our present beloved

Sovereign, he does not represent the king, but rather his carriage.58

Whilethe illustration depicts the gilded carriage led by a liveried footman andeight white horses, Pynes text details the manufacture of the carriage,explaining the allegorical meanings of its carvings, ornaments, and panels


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Figure 4. Royal State Carriage, William Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain (London, 1804), Photo Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

with careful attention to how the carriages design symbolizes the gloriesof the nation. After describing the structure and meaning of the coachsfour supporting tritons who announce the approach of the monarch of the sea, Pyne sums up: This allegory all nations must allow to be

prophetic. 59

Such emphatic declarations, however, are obscured by the gaps betweentext and image. The text fills in what the loose washes of the illustrationobscure, as if the plate cannot quite encapsulate the full meanings of theobject on display. 60 In the plate, the paintings on the coachs panels are

vaguely suggested by disjointed lines and pale pinks and blues. In the text, by contrast, Pyne describes at length the painting of Britannia on the frontside before he proceeds to describe the back panel of the coach; he evennotes that the inside of the coach is lined with crimson velvet richlyembroidered with gold. 61 In addition to describing visual details neglected

by the plate, the text lingers over the costs of productionvia an inventoryof the payments for the carver, gilder, bit-maker, milliner, and saddlerfor a total expense of 7,562 pounds, 4 shillings, and 3 pence. The cost of the coach is typographically set off in its own table in the middle of the

page. The royal coach thus exemplifies how monarchial consumptionsubsidizes a number of smaller trades, some of which are representedelsewhere in the costume book. At the same time, the substantial gaps


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between text and image suggest the difficulty of presenting a unified pictureof regal opulence, a problem made all the more significant by the absenceof the monarch himself. Whereas the image displays the picture of gilded

glory, Pynes text emphasizes his interest in illuminating the smaller players the carvers, mercers, milliners and saddlerswho contribute to the materialconstruction of the royal state carriage.

While the fissures between text and image undermine the grandeur of the Royal State Carriage, in another example of his non-human subjects,Prison Ships (plate 50), Pyne critiques government oppression,documenting the human costs of war. Bookended by more congenial viewsof a Highland Shepherd and the Lord Mayors State Coach, PrisonShips depicts the practice of impressing seamen for navy service. 62 The

plate shows three large ships anchored off the Tower of London, eachvessel topped with a flag. Eight small boats in the water transport impressedseamen towards the navy ships. The image barely depicts clothes at all.Viewed from afar, the blue, brown, and black garments worn by the smallseated figures in the boats echo the hues of the ships for which they aredestined. The three flags introduce isolated spots of color in the image, buton the whole the plate is dominated by grey shadows. Pyne pairs thisimage with a short account of the practice of press-gangsbriefer than

most of the descriptions in the collectionin which he condemns the practice as illegal. He then urges reform:

Nothing can be more distressing than to reflect, that the bravefellows who are idolized by the country, should be liable,through state necessity, to be torn from their homes, whenevery other subject of his Majesty, in this country, so justlyrenowned for its liberty, has his personal safety protected bythe laws. Nothing could be done by the legislature in the way

of reform perhaps, more grateful to the feelings of the people,than the doing away the practice of impressing seamen. 63

Pyne finds consolation in the knowledge that these prison ships, accordingto his entry, are cleaner and more comfortable than those of the past. Buton the whole, the dark hues of the illustration, coupled with the text, confirmhow his conceptualization of costume as practice allows visual and textualspace for political critique.

Elsewhere in the volume, Pyne intersperses illustrations of willing

combatants. At first glance, the inclusion of military figures during a periodof extensive recruiting efforts throughout the countryside evokes Paynesdescription of the patriotic overtones of scenes of military life in the

Microcosm .64 In his costume book, Pyne heaps visual and verbal praise on


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military figures. In plate 41, for instance, we see a general in full uniformcharging forward on a horse on a hill top (as troops gather in the

background). Pyne, in his text, admires the generals heroism, closing

with this rousing piece of patriotism: Of generals possessing as many of the high qualities, so essential to a commander, as can be united in one

person, Britain may with justice boast of having exhibited upon the greattheatre of the world her fair proportion. 65 But at other moments, Pyneabruptly departs from his emphasis on the most elite classes of commandersand heroes. In the text that accompanies plate 27 Waterman to a CoachStand and in the midst of a peripatetic description of the history of coachesin city centers, Pyne proclaims in mid-thought: Modern history hasevinced, that the banner of war is as readily unfurled, and as bravelydefended, by those who are nursed in the bosom of elegance and ease, as

by the hardy bands of unlettered barbarians. 66 In times of war, as Pynesuggests, national unity and bravery trump the differences between thosewho belong to the bosom of elegance and ease and those who water their horses. Such statements revisit the sentiment, evinced in WomanSelling Salop, that mutual dependence binds the society together. But if his costume book reveals anything about national identity, it is that varietyand diversity overwhelm any attempt to imagine a unified national canvass.

In effect, war divides the country, turning some men into generals anddooming others to prison ships.Pynes social critique surfaces in greater relief when compared with

later publications on British dress, which attest to the influence of hiswork. In the years leading up to the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars,several costume books on British dress appeared, including Hamilton SmithsSelections of the Ancient Costume of Great Britain and Ireland (1814);George Walkers Costume of Yorkshire (1814); William Alexanders

Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English (1814);and Samuel Rush Meyricks Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the

British Islands (1815). 67 Alexander, in particular, owes substantial debts toPynes work: he duplicates many of the figures from Pynes costume

book and in his larger costume series, repeats several countries (such asChina, Turkey, and Austria) from Millers costume series in which Pyneappeared. For his fifty figures, Alexander repeats most of Pynes subjects,with some crucial differences. He includes fewer images of rural workersand urban street sellers, replacing them with images from the upper classes

and the military. As though he is taking cues from the critic of The Monthly Review , Alexander opens his volume with a plate of the sovereignGeorgeIII in his coronation robes, scepter in hand; he later provides an image of a Lady in her Summer Dress (plate 25). Whereas Pyne offers nothing


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but praise for working men and womenapart from a single reference tothe low dissolute people who live by attending statues, fairs, &c. in TheRound-AboutAlexander repeatedly critiques the behavior and speech

of female workers such as the Billingsgate Fish-Woman: Like the samedescription of characters in other ports, their manners and language are of the lowest and most brutal kind. 68 George Walker in The Costume of Yorkshire also conceives of the low manners of Lowkerswomen fieldworkers responsible for weedingas indicative of the behavior of working

people at large: It is perhaps unnecessary to add that these, in commonwith most other work people, require the frequent eye of the master. 69 Incontrast with Pynes praise for the honesty and labour of working womenin Welsh Peasants Washing (plate 9), Alexanders study depicts agriculturalworkers as in need of moral reform.

In Etchings of Rustic Figures for the Embellishment of Landscape(published by Rudolph Ackermann in 1815), Pyne provides a coherent anddidactic narrative for the rural figures he imagines will dot the landscapesof amateur artists. The title page to the volume notes that Pyne is theauthor of The Costume of England. Like his Microcosm , the Etchingsmanual crowds several figures to a page; the collection includes 60 platesof individuals and groups of rural laborers and cottagers, often posed in

convivial family scenes. The introduction to the volume lauds the Britishinterest in landscape painting and praises amateur artists from the politeclasses for their pursuit of picturesque scenes, emphasizing the classdifference between the artist and the object of representation. 70 Pyne assureshis readers that they will derive much improvement . . . by the applicationof such colours as are usually exhibited in great variety by persons whoseattire is regulated by no rules of taste. 71 The drawing manual thus conceivesof the garish fashion choices of laboring people as a tool for technicalimprovement; in this collection, rural figures constitute useful ornamentsfor the polite student and Pyne remains silent on the specific meanings andvalue of their work and habits. In 1815, with the Napoleonic wars finallyat an end, Pyne substitutes the usefulness and productivity of averageBritons for their aesthetic ornamentation of the landscape.

Etchings of Rustic Figures for the Embell ishment of Landscapecorresponds with the aesthetic and narrative unity of the 181415 costume

books, despite the general national depression that gripped the countryafter the victory at Waterloo. 72 In his costume book, however, Pyne fails

to wrench his habits into a unified narrative, a symptom both of the genrein which he is working, and of the verbal and visual tensions that dominatethe volume. The varied collection illustrates urban types, rural laborers,ceremonial costume, and military practices. But there is no order to the


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series of images; the book lacks a structure or sequence. Unlike the earlier costume books of Jefferys and Strutt, the fissures here between text andimage, urban and rural, ceremonial and ordinary life produce a disjointed

account of British habits. Pyne offers no solutions to how national clothingmight be worn, imitated, or adopted in contrast with the garments ondisplay in Jefferys and Strutts costume books; rather, he theorizes nationalcostume as physical practice. By wedding costume to habit and work,Pyne prioritizes the labor of working people, revealing how British dressoriginates in the labor of ordinary women and men. The costume booksaesthetic tensions, in turn, provide the touchstones for Pynes social critique.Pynes extensive textual efforts to inscribe and ascribe value to Britishcostumeto produce a domestic costume book that could compete and

perhaps rival the reading publics interest in foreign dressinstead producesan untimely and unfocused snapshot of the nation.

N O T E S

Research for this essay was supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studiesin British Art (2004) and the Yale Center for British Art (2005). I am grateful toLinda Zionkowski, the readers of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture , andaudience members in the Theorizing Fashion panel at ASECS 2007 for their thoughtful responses to earlier versions of this essay.

1. William Miller, Preface, The Costume of Great Britain (London, 1804).2. Some early costume books include Nicolas de Nicolays Les quatres

premiers livres des navigations et peregrinations orientales (1567), Bartolomeo

Grassis Dei veri ritratti deglhabiti di tutte le parti del mondo, intagliati inrame (1585), and Cesare Vecellios De gli Habiti antichi e moderni, di Diverse Parti del Mondo (1589). By costume books, I mean books that illustratedactual garments and accessories generally of foreign countries (as opposed totheatrical costumes, although costume books were often used as inspirationfor stage costume and masquerade dress). For a discussion of the intersection

between costume books and antiquarianism, see Aileen Ribeiro, AntiquarianAttitudesSome Early Studies in the History of Dress, Costume 28 (1994):60 70.

3. On the shift from histories of moeurs et coutumes to costumes etcoutumes, see Joan de Jean, Man of Mode: Watteau and the Gendering of Genre Painting, in French Genre Painting in the Eighteenth Century , ed.Philip Conisbee, Studies in the History of Art 72 (New Haven: Yale University


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Press, 2007), 39 47. Publications such as Sylvain Marchals Costumes civilsactuels de tous les peoples connus (1788) and Sauveur S. Grassets Voyages

pittoresque dans les quatres parties du monde (1806) refer to both costumes

and moeurs in their subtitles.4. Several of Pynes figures draw on the urban genre popularized byMarcellus Laroon in The Cryes of the City of London (1687). See SeanShesgreens extensive study of the genre, The Criers and Hawkers of London(Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990).

5. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707 1837 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1992), 283; 306; 307. On military recruitment during theinvasion crisis, see Norman Longmate, Island Fortress: The Defence of Great

Britian 1603 1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1991), 284 300.6. See Stella Cottrell, The Devil on Two Sticks: Franco-Phobia in 1803, in

Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity , ed. RaphaelSamuel, vol. 1: History and Politics (New York: Routledge, 1989), 259 74. Seealso Simon Bainbridges work on war poetry during the invasion crisis in British

Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress), 99 119. 7. C. Gray, Introduction, Microcosm , vol. 1 (London, 1806). Quoted in

John Barrell, Visualising the Division of Labour: William Pynes Microcosm ,in The Birth of Pandora (London: MacMillan, 1992), 92. In the last 25 years, alarge body of scholarship has uncovered the political and social agendas of the

picturesque, an aesthetic with which Pyne is engaged in The Costume of Great Britain , but deploys more extensively in his other works such as Etchings of Rustic Figures for the Embellishment of Landscape (London, 1815). For comprehensive discussions of the politics of landscape painting and the

picturesque, see John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1980); Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); The Politics of the Picturesque ,eds. Stephen Copley and Peter Garside (Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity Press,1994); and Land, Nation, and Culture, 1740 1840 , eds. David Simpson, Nigel

Leask, and Peter de Bolla (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).8. Ann Bermingham, Learning to Draw (New Haven: Yale University Press,2000), 111.

9. Christiana Payne, Calculated to gratify the patriot: Rustic Figure Studiesin Early-Nineteenth Century Britain in Prospects for the Nation , eds. ChristianaPayne, Michael Rosenthal, and Scott Wilcox (New Haven: Yale University Press,1997): 61 78; 72.

10. In The Dark Side of the Landscape , Barrell elucidates how the aesthetic both represents and attempts to reform the rural poor: it is not a descriptiononly, but a prescription; the poor must be shown at work, not only because thatis what they do, but because that is what they ought to do (77). In reference toPynes Microcosm , Barrell describes how the picturesque eliminates allsentimental and moral reflection. It is thus also absolutely hostile to narrative;and when it depicts figures it attempts to do so in such a way as raises no


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laboring men and women plowing, threshing, and cleaning corn. See Authentic Everyday Dress of the Renaissance: All 154 Plates from the Trachtenbuch(New York: Dover, 1994).

30. Laroons Cryes of the City of London first appeared in 1687 and illustratediconic peddlers such as milk maids, dustmen, chapmen, and fishmongers. InCostume of Great Britain , Pyne includes a number of street seller types suchas the Fireman (plate 4), Knife Grinder (plate 20), Milk Woman (plate 24),Waterman to a Coach Stand (plate 27), and Rabbit Woman (plate 33).

31. Sean Shesgreen, Images of the Outcast: The Urban Poor in the Cries of London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 120. Barrell sees theshift from images of shepherdesses to milkmaids as indicative of the shift fromthe pastoral to the picturesque: A milkmaid is more of a country girl, and lessa courtier, than is the silken shepherdesswe can imagine her working a little,even if she cannot often be portrayed squeezing the cows udders ( The Dark Side of the Landscape , 51).

32. See Buck, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England , 145 46.33. See Buck, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England , 126; 132.34. Shesgreen, Images of the Outcast , 119; 179.35. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 24.36. The earliest costume books appeared in the sixteenth century on the

continent. Well-known examples such as Cesare Vecellios De gli Habiti antichie moderni, di Diverse Parti del Mondo , published in Venice in 1589, combined

woodblock illustrations with commentary on the fashions of antiquity, European,Eastern, and African countries and regions. For his more than four hundredentries, Vecellio either faces or backs each image with a textual description,detailing the fabrics and colors of his figures garments. Vecellios expansivecollection, as Aileen Ribeiro notes, was used as a source book by artists for decades after its publication; see Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2005), 143. Some early examples of travel narratives alsoserved as costume books. The French traveler Nicholas de Nicolay, for instance,seems as interested in documenting dress as in recording his journeys in Lesquatres premiers livres des navigations et peregrinations orientales (1567), atext that was translated into English in 1585. De Nicolay punctuates his travelaccounts with woodblock illustrations of men and women and full descriptionsof their apparel and accessories.

37. Thomas Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern: particularly Old English Dresses: after the Designs of Holbein,Vandyke, Hollar, and others , 4 vols. (London, 1757 72).

38. Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses , 1:4.39. Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1995), 183.

40. In vol. 2, English dress falls between a section on Scotland and one onHabits of the English Stage; here Jefferys covers clothing from 1537 to 1755.He returns to Great Britain in vol. 4, with images of Ancient Bretons andPicts, closing with Hollars mid-seventeenth-century engravings.

41. Ribeiro, The Art of Dress , 222.


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42. See, for instance, plate 43, LADY of CHINA, from Du Halde, in Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses , 1:27.

43. Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses , 2:83.

44. See vol. 3, plates 56 and 57 of Habit of a Moor of Morocco in Winter in1695 and vol. 3, plates 58 and 59, Habit of a Moorish Woman in 1695 inJefferys, A Collection of the Dresses .

45. Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses , 2:83.46. Jefferys, A Collection of the Dresses , 4:187, 188, 189, 190.47. Ribeiro credits Strutts publication as the first detailed, illustrated, and

thoroughly sourced history of dress in England (Antiquarian Attitudes, 63).She also notes that he relied on the manuscripts drawings of Randle Holme, aseventeenth-century author of illustrated guides to armor and heraldry (60).

48. Joseph Strutt, A Complete View of the Dress and Habits of the People, from the establishment of the Saxons in Britain to the present time , 2 vols.(London, 1796 99), 1:iii.

49. Strutt, A Complete View of the Dress and Habits , 1:iii.50. Article 6, The Costume of Great Britain, The Monthly Review , 56 (1808):

265 69; 265.51. Article 6, The Costume of Great Britain, The Monthly Review , 56:265.52. Colley, Britons , 152.53. The full critique reveals the reviewers patriotism: This account is neither

so full nor so correct as we expected to find it. When we were informed that the

English China manufacturers have rivalled the foreign, we imagined that weshould hear of our Chelsea china , and that our present most celebratedmanufactories of the elegant and ornamental kinds, viz. at Derby , Worcester ,and Colebrook-Dale , would have been specified ; even if the author had notchosen to enumerate those places at which the common blue and white ware,which has superseded the use of Nankin, is produced (Article 6, The Costumeof Great Britain, The Monthly Review , 56:268).

54. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 5.55. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 5.56. Article 6, The Costume of Great Britain, The Monthly Review , 56:265.57. W. J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1994), 3.58. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 56.59. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 56.60. Jennie Batchelor notes a similar rhetorical struggle at work in fashion

plates in womens periodicals; she argues that the tension between plate andtext expresses anxiety about the ability of the written word to truly accommodatefashion ( Dress, Distress, and Desire [Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005],114).

61. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 56.62. On press-gangs in the early 1800s, see Longmate, Island Fortress , 266.63. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 50.64. Payne, Calculated to gratify the patriot, 72.


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65. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 41.66. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 27.67. Myers also suggests that Pyne inspired imitators like William Alexander

(Myers, William Henry Pyne , 59).68. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain , plate 45; William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English (London,1814), plate 6.

69. George Walker, Costume of Yorkshire (London, 1814), plate 17.70. Pyne, Etchings of Rustic Figures , 3 8.71. Pyne, Etchings of Rustic Figures , 4.72. Colley, Britons , 321.

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