OLD BEAUTY DEVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1937, Page 15

OLD BEAUTY DEVICE

POWDER & PATCHES

SAMUEL PEPYS'S WIFE Old books and chronicles show that the custom among women of decorating their faces with patches did not originate, as is sometimes supposed, among the beauties of the Court of Louis XV. I'airholt's "Costume in England" pictures a woman in the time of Charles I with very elaborate patchwork upon her face, the objects represented in cut-outs being a coach and horses, a star, and two moons, not to mention a disc-like patch upon her chin, states "The Spectator." And the historian R. Chambers says the cutout decoration was common among the Roman women.

Mr. Pepys dully recorded his wife's first appearance in patches, which, Mr. Chambers remarks, "seems to have taken place without his concurrence, as, three monins afterwards, he makes an entry in his diary. 'My wife seemed very pretty today, it being the first

time I had given her leave to wear a black patch.' And a week or two later he declared that his wife, with two or three patches, looked far handsomer than the Princess Henrietta. Lady Castlemaine, whose word was law, decreed tha-t patches could not be worn with mourning, but they seem to have been held proper on all other occasions, being worn in the afternoon, at the theatre, in the parks in the evening, and in the drawing-room at night." In the days of Queen Ann, it is said on the authority of "The Spectator," patches were used by women as party symbols, the Whigs patching on the right and the Tories on the left side of the face. Those who were neutral appear to have decorated both cheeks. Women, it seems, were even then in politics, and though they had not the vote, they held out for some of the rights that their followers later contended for. In a draft of marriage articles it is related that one prospective bride stipulated that she could wear patches on whichever side of her face she pleased, regardless of her husband's political convictions. That was in 1711. Forty years later the patch was still not only in existence, but "threatened to overwhelm the female face altogether."