When some fashionable
reception was taking place, the street was gay with coaches and
sedan-chairs, and the attire of the people who then gathered was as
brilliant as a flight of cockatoos. It was a period of spectacular dress
and behavior for both men and women, the men rivaling the women in their
use of lace, silk, and satin. Dr. John Bard, the fashionable doctor of his
day, who attended Washington through the severe illness which laid him up
for six weeks early in his administration, habitually wore a cocked hat
and a scarlet coat, his hands resting upon a massive cane as he drove
about in a pony-phaeton. The scarlet waistcoat with large bright buttons
which Jefferson wore on fine occasions, when he arrived on the scene,
showed that he was not then averse to gay raiment. Plain styles of dress
were among the many social changes ushered in by the French Revolution and
the war cycle that ensued from it.
Titles figured considerably in colonial society, and the Revolutionary War
did not destroy the continuity of usage. It was quite in accord with the
fashion of the times that the courtesy title of Lady Washington was
commonly employed in talk about the President's household.
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