Like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they were
at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account,
there was long a prejudice against them. Even at the present day,
it is said that in France, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if
asked whether she wears drawers: "I wear drawers, Madame? A
respectable girl!" Drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized
in France, and Dufour (op. cit., vol. vi, p. 28) even regards
them as essentially a French garment. They were introduced at the
Court towards the end of the fourteenth century, and in the
sixteenth century were rendered almost necessary by the new
fashion of the _vertugale_, or farthingale. In 1615, a lady's
_calecons_ are referred to as apparently an ordinary garment. It
is noteworthy that in London, in the middle of the same century,
young Mrs. Pepys, who was the daughter of French parents, usually
wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. (_Diary_
of S. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, May 15, 1663, vol. iii.) They were
probably not worn by Englishwomen, and even in France, with the
decay of the farthingale, they seem to have dropped out of use
during the seventeenth century. In a technical and very complete
book, _L'Art de la Lingerie_, published in 1771, women's drawers
are not even mentioned, and Mercier (_Tableau de Paris_, 1783,
vol.
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