JUST contemporary with our Queen Anne were the fashions in dress and furniture which by the natural process vulgarised the French king's grand conceptions; when skill and knowledge of effect had arrived at a point when they could go no farther, and thus began to decay. Hence our strict Jacobean habits merged into those which gradually came over the Channel and were much the reverse of strict; and the curious, and most ungainly, medley of Puritan starch and French levity represented in English costume, I have described briefly under 'Queen Anne Dress.'

The floral decoration which we particularly connect with Louis XIV.'s time - an airy, easy adaptation of garden images to every purpose - was carried presently to a vexing extreme. Under Louis XV. there was no end to the eccentricities of the endive foliage and the anthemion. In the hands of the first masters, endive like acanthus could be moderate and therefore graceful; but when freedom of handling was degraded into licence, every pupil exaggerating (which means diminishing) the charms made popular by his master, what was the result?

A caricature. Not a line was allowed to be straight; forms were more and more disguised to suit the fretful appetite for novelty, and to create perspectives for the eye. The chiffonier and cabinet bulged, squatted, shrank, in curves so unexpected and unnatural that they seemed positively to wriggle. These caprices weakened the construction, and drawers which had not a straight line anywhere left cavities of waste space that had to be concealed or excused by additional useless ornament.

Fig. 36. - Clock, Louis Quinze ornament.

All meaning was sacrificed to effect, as in the clock here reproduced - pretty at first sight, but on examination ridiculous. Parallel sides were no longer tolerated, and the furniture became tiresome in its silly straining after-false effects. The panels looked moist and clammy with deceptive grapes and cherries in Florentine pietra dura, which jutted forth from the ground. The mirror-frames whirled in meaningless curves, slight relief changed to immoderate projections that wearied the eye with shadows and lights; the strange beasts and faces that peeped from every leaf or tendril meant no longer rich fancy, but delirium.

The best of a straight line is that you cannot vulgarise it. It may be ever so uninteresting, it cannot sin in itself. But a curved line may be vulgarised ad libitum; there is no end to the contortions it may be driven to, and it sickens us by its antics while the straight line is simply forgotten.

Similarly, colour was abused in this reign by the same process of vitiation of the eye and craving for novelty. Tortoiseshell was stained blue and green and red before it took its place among the costly incrustations. The Gobelin tapestry became so brilliantly naturalistic that the hangings and portieres formed a breach in the wall contrary to all propriety in art, and emblems and trophies were confusingly mixed up with visions of farmyard life or mythical scenes. Painting was added to the crowded feud between needle-work, jewel-work, and marqueterie, and even Caffieri's clever puncheon hardly redeemed the florid vulgarity of cabinets, clocks, tables, wherein every effect being claimed at once, no really powerful effect was gained anywhere.

Presently a reaction seized the frantic ornament, and under Madame de Pompadour, who, with all her crimes, was a capital patroness of art, the endive was pruned, the festoons of flowers and fruit reduced to some sort of discipline, the colours of marqueterie and their designs modified, or at least a choice was offered by the trade, between tenderness and violence.

In England, where the luxury of Paris was mimicked under Charles II., we learn from Evelyn's description of the dressing-room of Madlle. Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, what wealth had long commanded. 'That which engaged my curiosity,' he says, 'was the rich and splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice or thrice pulled down and rebuilt to satisfie her prodigal and expensive pleasures, whilst her Majesty's does not exceedesome gentlemen's ladies in furniture and accommodation. Here I saw the new fabriq of French tapissry, for designe, tendernesse of worke.and incomparable imitation of the best paintings, beyond anything I had ever beheld. Some pieces had Versailles, St. Germain's, and other palaces of the French king with huntings, figures, and landskips, exotiq fowls, and all to the life rarely don.

'Then for Japan cabinets, screenes, pendule clocks, great vases of wrought plate, tables, stands, chimney-furniture, sconces, branches, braseras, etc, all of massive silver, and out of number, besides some of Her Majesty's best paintings.'