Art. 27. The School for Fashion.
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: August 1801

Elizabeth Moody Art. 27. The School for Fashion. By Mrs. Thicknesse. 8vo. 2 Vols. 12s. Boards. Debrett, &c. 1800. [The Monthly Review , vol. 35, second series, August 1801, pp. 430-31. Benjamin Nangle identifies Elizabeth Moody as the author of this review from an editor's marked copy of The Monthly Review . See Nangle, The Montly Review, Second Series, 1790-1815: Indexes of Contributors and Articles , Clarendon Press, 1955. Jon Pinkerton and Mary A. Waters prepared this edition for The Criticism Archive.]

These volumes contain a variety of miscellaneous matter, divided into chapters. They commence with a description of Bon-Ton Hall, where we are rather surprised to meet with only those shades of fashion who are now walking in the Elysian fields. It is long, very long, since the Duchess of Queensberry dressed like a beggar woman, with a tucked up linen gown and an old black bonnet, diverting herself and the world by going about in masquerade: [Born Catherine Hyde, the eccentric wife of the third Duke of Queensberry was known for her masquerade parties and her unfashionable habits of dress.] —but we have no other objection to renewing our acquaintance with this whimsical but worthy Duchess, than that she is here completely out of her place, because, when we look to the title, we expect to meet with fashionables of the present day, not those of antiquity. The great personages who formed the circle at Bon-Ton Hall, and whom we recollect by the initials of their names, having exhibited themselves on a theatre on which the scenes have long been closed, the curtain let down, and the actors and actresses disappeared, we can say no more to them than "peace be to their manes."

The indecorous freedoms, also, introduced through the familiarity of the stay maker and the hair dresser, no longer make us tremble for our young people; though, as every age has its peculiar incentives to vice and folly, the present times may have other fashions of an equally objectionable nature. In the dedication to Fashion , however, which is written with spirit, we question whether Mrs. T. be not rather too severe on the reigning goddess: since, after the scenes described at Bon-Ton hall, it appears that she was as much "the demon of impudence" at that period as at the present, with scarcely any exception even of Grecian drapery.

As this miscellany is detailed in rather a desultory manner, it produces a sensation on the reader similar to that which we have occasionally experienced from great talkers, whose discourse consists of disjointed materials, and who, by rapidly passing from one subject to another, leave the hearer's attention at a remote distance, unless he be a very good listener.—Euterpe's travels on the continent, furnished (we apprehend) from the late Mr. T.'s common place book, abound with such very extraordinary anecdotes, that they must often impose a hard task on the reader, in requiring him to find credulity sufficient for the occasion: yet, in general, we have been amused by them; and they merit praise for some pertinent and sensible remarks.