The Banyan, the 18th century's most fashionable accessory

If you have ready anything in this blog, you will quickly come to the conclusion that I am completely obsessed with all things 18th century, from the history itself, to the characters which inhabit that story, to the aesthetic of the era, from clothes, to wigs, to Georgian architecture, to bookmaking, etc. Verily, I tell you, I could go on and on about this topic, which would certainly bore you into eternity. One of the many things that completely enraptures me about the 18th century is the high sense of fashion of the people of that bygone era, and the banyan is one of the more extravagant examples of men's (and sometimes women's) fashion in that time period.

It is no surprise, then, that when I was considering for my novel a villainous sort of character, a rather debauched, rakish, 'enlightened', hypocritical slaver, in my mind, that sort of outlandish walking contradiction appeared immediately crowned in an illustriously garnished periwig and wrapped in a flowing silky banyan. Not to say that every human wearing a banyan or indulging in elegant fashion is inherently villainous, yet, it seemed to me, that this outlandish character in my mind was a slaver precisely because he enjoyed the finer things in life, and was therefore completely willing to sacrifice common decency and morality on the alter of worldly gain and vacuous possessions (am I moralizing a bit here? I beg your pardon, dear reader, if it were not that the voice of Ecclesiastes rings loud in my ears "vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas!").

Without presuming a right to your patience any longer, I present to you a draft of the section with the aforementioned villain, alongside some glorious contemporary paintings of elegant folk in banyans, and I remain, as ever, your humble and obedient servant, C.B.

Except, from Chapter 69, Act 2 (1769-1771):

"He was the very type of ostentatious man who used scented and colored wig-powder, always sporting vibrant blues and yellows and oranges. Whenever he approached one would immediately be enveloped with the overwhelming scents of citrus and lavender. He would often roam about his plantation in a silk banyan and was oft to describe himself as a man who sought to “transport the Parisian salon into the slave-racked New World”. He was not the normal slave master in King’s County, yet beneath his external gaiety there hid a monstrous wrath that waxed hot at any of the enslaved who strayed beyond the bounds of servitude, discipline, and obedience, and thus alongside the volume of Diderot’s Encyclopédie that he always cradled firmly under arm, there hid a wicked lash, much like a Roman cat o' nine tails, buried in the flowing sleeve of his sky-blue silky banyan."

Colonel George Douglas [1662-1738], who was present at a golf match between Cap. John Porteous and Alexander Elphinstone in 1721.

Sir Isaac Newton, by James Thornhill,

A lovely painting from 1767 by the famous John Singleton Copley