The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages Part 18

or did she spring from Ocean while Nereids revelled around, and Mermaids strung their Harps with their own golden locks, soft melodies the while floating along the glistering waves, and echoing from the Tritons' booming sh.e.l.ls beneath? No. Alas, no! She is subtle as the air; she is evanescent as a sunbeam, and unsubstantial as the ocean's froth;--but she is none of these. She is--but we will lay aside our own definition in order that the reader may have the advantage of that of one of the greatest and wisest of statesmen.

"Quelqu'un qui voudrait un peu etudier d'ou part en premiere source ce qu'on appelle LES MODES verrait, a notre honte, qu'un pet.i.t nombre de gens, de la plus meprisable espece qui soit dans une ville, laquelle renferme tout indifferemment dans son sein; pour qui, si nous les connaissions, nous n'aurions que le mepris qu'on a pour les gens sans moeurs, ou la pitie qu'on a pour les fous, disposent pourtant de nos bourses, et nous tiennent a.s.sujettis a tous leurs caprices."

Can this indeed be that supereminent deity for whom so "many do shipwrack their credits," and make themselves "ridiculous apes, or at best but like the cynnamon-tree, whose bark is more worth than its body."

"Clothes" writes a venerable historian, "are for necessity; warm clothes for health; cleanly for decency; lasting for thrift; and rich for magnificence. Now, there may be a fault in their number, if too various; making, if too vain; matter, if too costly; and mind of the wearer, if he takes pride therein.

"_He that is proud of the russling of his silks, like a madman laughs at the rattling of his fetters._ For, indeed, clothes ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency. Besides, why should any brag of what's but borrowed? Should the Estrige s.n.a.t.c.h off the Gallant's feather, the Beaver his hat, the Goat his gloves, the Sheep his sute, the Silkworm his stockings, and Neat his shoes (to strip him no farther than modesty will give leave), he would be left in a cold condition. And yet 'tis more pardonable to be proud, even of cleanly rags, than (as many are) of affected slovennesse. The one is proud of a molehill, the other of a dunghill."

But the worthy Fuller's ideal picture of suitable dress was the very antipodes of the reality of Elizabeth's day, when that rage for foreign fashions existed which has since frequently almost inundated the island, and our ancestors masked themselves

"------in garish gaudery To suit a fool's far-fetched livery.

A French hood join'd to neck Italian, The thighs from Germany and breast from Spain.

An Englishman in none, a fool in all, Many in one, and one in several."

And Shakspeare, who has perhaps suffered no peculiarity of his time to escape observation, makes Portia satirize this affectation in her English admirer:--"How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere."

A reverend critic thus remarks on the luxurious modes of his time: "These tender Parnels must have one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter, another for summer.

One furred through, another but faced; one for the workday, another for the holiday. One of this colour, another of that. One of cloth, another of silk or damask. Change of apparel; one afore dinner, another at after: one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey. And to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions and strange. Yea, a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose than he should spend in a year. He which ought to go in a russet coat spends as much on apparel for him and his wife as his father would have kept a good house with."

The following is of later date, and seems, somewhat unjustly we think, to satirize the fair s.e.x alone.

"Why do women array themselves in such fantastical dresses and quaint devices; with gold, with silver, with coronets, with pendants, bracelets, earrings, chains, rings, pins, spangles, embroideries, shadows, rebatoes, versicoloured ribbons, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, tiffanies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, ta.s.sels, golden cloth, silver tissue, precious stones, stars, flowers, birds, beasts, fishes, crisped locks, wigs, painted faces, bodkins, setting sticks, cork, whalebone, sweet odours, and whatever else Africa, Asia, and America can produce; flaying their faces to produce the fresher complexion of a new skin, and using more time in dressing than Caesar took in marshalling his army,--but that, like cunning falconers, they wish to spread false lures to catch unwary larks, and lead by their gaudy baits and dazzling charms the minds of inexperienced youth into the traps of love?"

Though the costume of Elizabeth's day, especially at the period of her coronation was, splendid, it had not attained to the ridiculous extravagance which at a later period elicited the above-quoted strictures; and we are told that her own taste at an early period of life was simple and unostentatious. Her dress and appearance are thus described by Aylmer, Lady Jane Grey's tutor, and afterwards Bishop of London.

"The king (Henry VIII.) left her rich clothes and jewels; and I know it to be true, that, in seven years after her father's death, she never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will. And that there never came gold or stone upon her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness. And then she so wore it as every man might see that her body carried that which her heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel, which she used in King Edward's time, made n.o.blemen's daughters and wives to be ashamed to be dressed and painted like peac.o.c.ks; being more moved with her most virtuous example than with all that ever Paul or Peter wrote touching that matter. Yea, this I know, that a great man's daughter (Lady Jane Grey) receiving from Lady Mary, before she was queen, good apparel of tinsel, cloth of gold and velvet, laid on with parchment-lace of gold, when she saw it, said, 'What shall I do with it?' 'Marry!' said a gentlewoman, 'wear it.' 'Nay,' quoth she, 'that were a shame, to follow my Lady Mary against G.o.d's Word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth G.o.d's Word.' And when all the ladies, at the coming of the Scots' Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise, (she who visited England in Edward's time), went with their hair frownsed, curled, and double-curled, she altered nothing, but kept her old maidenly shame-facedness."

And there is a print from a portrait of her when young, in which the hair is without a single ornament, and the whole dress remarkably simple.

Yet this is the lady whose pa.s.sion for dress in after life could not be sated; to whom, or at least before whom (and the Queen was not slow in appropriating and resenting the hint[109]), Latimer, Bishop of London, thought it necessary to preach on the vanity of decking the body too finely; and who finally left behind her a wardrobe containing three thousand dresses. A modern fair one may wonder how such a profusion of dresses could be accommodated at all, even in a royal wardrobe, with fitting respect to the integrity of puffs and furbelows. But clothes were not formerly kept in drawers, where but few can be laid with due regard to the safety of each, but were hung up on wooden pegs, in a room appropriated to the sole purpose of receiving them; and though such cast-off things as were composed of rich substances were occasionally _ripped_ for domestic uses (viz., mantles for infants, vests for children, and counterpanes for beds), articles of inferior quality were suffered to _hang by the walls_ till age and moths had destroyed what pride would not permit to be worn by servants or poor relations. To this practice, also, does Shakspeare allude: Imogen exclaims, in 'Cymbeline,'--

"Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion; And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls, I must be ripp'd--"

The following regulations may be interesting; and the knowledge of them will doubtless excite feelings of joy and grat.i.tude in our fair readers that they are born in an age where "will is free," and the dustman's wife may, if it so please her, outshine the d.u.c.h.ess, without the terrors of Parliament before her eyes:--

"By the Queene.

"Whereas the Queene's Maiestie, for avoyding of the great inconvenience that hath growen and dayly doeth increase within this her Realme, by the inordinate excesse in Apparel, hath in her Princely wisdome and care for reformation thereof, by sundry former Proclamations, straightly charged and commanded those in Authoritie under her to see her Lawes provided in that behalfe duely executed; Whereof notwithstanding, partly through their negligence, and partly by the manifest contempt and disobedience of the parties offending, no reformation at all hath followed; Her Maiestie, finding by experience that by Clemencie, whereunto she is most inclinable, so long as there is any hope of redresse, this increasing evill hath not beene cured, hath thought fit to seeke to remedie the same by correction and severitie, to be used against both these kindes of offenders, in regard of the present difficulties of this time; wherein the decay and lacke of hospitalitie appeares in the better sort in all countreys, princ.i.p.ally occasioned by the immeasurable charges and expenses which they are put to in superfluous apparelling their wives, children, and families, the confusion also of degrees in all places being great; where the meanest are as richly apparelled as their betters, and the pride that such inferior persons take in their garments, driving many for their maintenance to robbing and stealing by the hieway, &c. &c.

"Her Maiestie doth straightly charge and command--

"That none under the degree of a Countess wear:

Cloth of gold or silver tissued;

Silke of coulor purple.

"Under the degree of a Baronesse:--

Cloth of golde;

Cloth of silver;

Tinselled satten;

Sattens branched with silver or golde;

Sattens striped with silver or golde;

Taffaties brancht with silver or golde;

Cipresses flourisht with silver or golde;

Networks wrought in silver or golde;

Tabines brancht with silver or golde;

Or any other silke or cloth mixt or embroidered with pearle, golde, or silver.

"Under the degree of a Baron's eldest sonne's wife:

Any embroideries of golde or silver;

Pa.s.semaine lace, or any other lace, mixed with golde, silver, or silke;

Caules, attires, or other garnishings for the head trimmed with pearle.

"Under the degree of a Knighte's wife:--

Velvet in gownes, cloakes, savegards, or other uppermost garments;

Embroidery with silke.

"Under the degree of a Knighte's eldest sonne's wife:--

Velvet in kirtles and petticoates;

Sattens in gownes, cloakes, savegards, or other uppermost garments.

"Under the degree of a Gentleman's wife, bearing armes:--

Satten in kirtles, } Damaske, } Tuft taffetie, } in gownes."

Plaine taffetie, } Grograine }

Venice and Paris seem to have been the chief sources of fashion; from these depots of taste were derived the flaunting head-dresses, the "shiptire," the "tire valiant," &c., which were commonly worn in these days of gorgeous finery, and which were rendered still more _outre_ and unnatural by the _dyed_ locks which they surmounted. The custom of dyeing the hair is of great antiquity, and was very prevalent in the East. Mohammed dyed his hair red; Abu Bekr his successor did the same, and it is a custom among the Scenite Arabs even to this day.

The ancients often mixed gold dust in their hair, and the Gauls used to wash the hair with a liquid which had a tendency to redden it. It was doubtless in personal compliment to Queen Elizabeth, that all the fashionables of her day dyed their locks of a hue which is generally considered the reverse of attraction. Periwigs, which were introduced into England about 1572, were to be had of _all colours_. It is in allusion to this absurd fashion that Bened.i.c.k says of the lady whom he might chuse to marry:--"Her hair shall be of what colour it please G.o.d."