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after a few nasty accidents revealing more than anyone cared to see, the wisdom of wearing legging-like tights was accepted as an extra precaution when riding.

    The Graces in a Storm (Gillray, c . 1810). Caricaturists of the day were fascinated by the sartorial accidents that could befall the fashionable lady and produced numerous prints where, betrayed by their finery, ladies revealed more than they wanted to.
    In 1804 the Chester Chronicle noted that ‘drawers of light pink [are] now the ton among our darling belles’, but many women resisted wearing them until much later. They were adopted by Parisian ladies after the French Revolution, whose Grecian gowns were so accurate that the diaphanous fabric was barely joined at the sides, frequently opening to reveal the legs. Few English ladies went so far, but they too had moments of near nudity. The Times wrote:
    If the present fashion of nudity continues its career, the Milliners must give way to the Carvers, and the most elegant fig-leaves will be all the mode. The fashion for false bosoms has at least this utility, that it compels our fashionable fair to wear something .
    Despite the call for all things au naturel, there were various falsies available to embellish nature’s gifts. To wax lyrical about wax bosoms The Oracle wrote in 1800:
    Spite of the gibes of wanton wit,
What emblems can the fair,
Of their dear tender hearts more fit
Than waxen bosoms wear?
’Twixt mounts of wax and hills of snow
How small the difference felt!
With due degrees of heat we know
That both will gently melt.
    These ‘bosom friends’ had to be fitted, and a description in The True Briton in 1800 recorded how a father was horrified when returning home he found a very smart young man with his hands all over his fourteen-year-old daughter, only to be told by his wife, ‘the man is only fitting Euphrasia with a proper bosom; the girl cannot appear in fashionable company with her present horrid flatness of chest.’
    Stockings did not climb much above the knee and were secured beneath it with garters, sometimes knitted, like those Jane Fairfax made for her grandmother in Emma . Garters were usually ribbons tied or buckled, but by the end of the eighteenth century, dentist Martin Van Butchell invented the ‘spring garter’ using the springs he had developed for false teeth, but they were expensive at 30 shillings a pair.
    Jane was particular about her stockings, writing in October 1800, ‘I like the stockings also very much, and greatly prefer having two pair only of that quality to three of an inferior sort’. In 1811 she bought silk stockings for 12 shillings a pair at the fashionable London store Grafton House and wrote that she was pleased with them despite the indignity of having to wait half an hour to be served. The quality of cotton stockings was hugely improved by developments in industrial processes (especially Arkwright’s machines, which allowed for cotton to be spun extremely finely) and by 1822 fine cotton stockings were universal except for wear with silk gowns. W. Gardiner recalled in 1838 in the first volume of Music and Friends that ‘No articles were so highly esteemed as English ladies’ cotton stockings. Their peculiar whiteness and fineness recommended them as preferable to silk, and they sold for higher prices.’ The Empress Josephine insisted that her stockings were ordered from England despite the war.

    Good-Bye Till This Evening (La Mésangère c .1800 ). Visible beneath her raised skirt are her delicate slippers and white stockings with embroidered clocks at the ankle.
    Ladies wore stockings with decorative embroidered clocks at their ankles, which in response to the ballet slipper style shoe became larger, decorating the instep within the ‘V’ of the low front of the shoe. Lace inserts were added to the clocks, which were embroidered around by the process of ‘chevening’ – a form of subtle embroidery – sometimes using contrasting colours to create