Watching this on youTube at the moment. Somehow I missed the TV series (1999) probably becaue it was on Sundays afternoons or Monday midnight. I am so enjoying it. I think the book is by Stella Tillyard, about the five grandaughters of Charles II. It's not the story that I find so interesting, it's the dresses! Mouthwatering silks and laces, charming hats, even the shoes are works of art.
The things that we miss in these series (and what makes viewing them so pleasant) are the nasty realities of life. The poor wore drab clothes of homespun home-dyed brown and grey. People would smell. Few people bathed, there were no deodorants and the perfumes used to cover up the stink would have been fairly crude and obvious by our standards. The rivers and lakes around cities and towns were full of raw sewage and vermin, and even aristocrats fell victim to the many diseases that swept through the population at regular intervals, diseases and maladies that would nowadays be fixed by a course of antibiotics or a few days in hospital. Gambling, domestic violence and alcoholism were popular ways of letting off steam in a straitjacketed society where you were expected to know your place and stay there.
Little of this occurs to me when I'm watching a lovely woman in in a green watered-silk gown with a delightful straw hat perched on her carefully ringleted hair, choosing which Meissen dinner-set she will buy for her sister's wedding. Beauty is a drug, and one I am truly addicted to.
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