The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages Part 32

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Southey.

[127] We have seen cartouche-boxes embroidered precisely in the same style, and probably therefore of the same period as some of the embroidered books here referred to.

[128] Ballard's Memoirs.

CHAPTER XXIV.

NEEDLEWORK OF ROYAL LADIES.

"Thus is a Needle prov'd an Instrument Of profit, pleasure, and of ornament, Which mighty Queenes have grac'd in hand to take."

John Taylor.

Needlework is an art so attractive in itself; it is capable of such infinite variety, and is such a beguiler of lonely, as of social hours, and offers such scope to the indulgence of fancy, and the display of taste; it is withal--in its lighter branches--accompanied with so little bodily exertion, not deranging the most _recherche_ dress, nor incommoding the most elaborate and exquisite costume, that we cannot wonder that it has been practised with ardour even by those the farthest removed from any necessity for its exercise. Therefore has it been from the earliest ages a favourite employment of the high and n.o.bly born.

The father of song hardly refers at all to the n.o.ble dames of Greece and Troy but as occupied in "painting with the needle." Some, the heroic achievements of their countrymen on curtains and draperies, others various rich and rare devices on banners, on robes and mantles, destined for festival days, for costly presents to amba.s.sadors, or for offerings to friends. And there are scattered notices at all periods of the prevalence of this custom. In all ages until this of

"inventions rare Steam towns and towers."

the preparation of apparel has fallen to woman's share, the spinning, the weaving, and the manufacture of the material itself from which garments were made. But, though we read frequently of high-born dames spinning in the midst of their maids, it is probable that this drudgery was performed by inferiors and menials, whilst enough, and more than enough of arduous employment was left for the ladies themselves in the rich tapestries and embroideries which have ever been coveted and valued, either as articles of furniture, or more usually for the decoration of the person.

Rich and rare garments used to be infinitely more the attribute of high rank than they now are; and in more primitive times a princess was not ashamed to employ herself in the construction of her own apparel or that of her relatives. Of this we have an intimation in the old ballad of 'Hardyknute'--beginning

"Stately stept he east the wa', And stately stept he west."

"Farewell, my dame, sae peerless good, (And took her by the hand,) Fairer to me in age you seem, Than maids for beauty fam'd.

My youngest son shall here remain To guard these lonely towers, And shut the silver bolt that keeps Sae fast your painted bowers.

"And first she wet her comely cheeks, And then her boddice green, Her silken cords of twisted twist, Well plett with silver sheen; And ap.r.o.n set with mony a dice Of needlewark sae rare, Wove by nae hand, as ye may guess, Save that of Fairly fair."

But it harmonises better with our ideas of high or royal life to hear of some trophy for the warrior, some ornament for the knightly bower, or some decorative offering for the church, emanating from the taper fingers of the courtly fair, than those kirtles and boddices which, be they ever so magnificent, seem to appertain more naturally to the "milliner's practice." Therefore, though we give the gentle Fairly fair all possible praise for notability in the

"Ap.r.o.n set with mony a dice Of needlework sae rare,"

we certainly look with more regard on such work as that of the Danish princesses who wrought a standard with the national device, the Raven,[129] on it, and which was long the emblem of terror to those opposed to it on the battle-field. Of a gentler character was the stupendous labour of Queen Matilda--the Bayeux tapestry--on which we have dwelt too long elsewhere to linger here, and which was wrought by her and under her superintendence.

Queen Adelicia, the second wife of Henry I., was a lady of distinguished beauty and high talent: she was remarkable for her love of needlework, and the skill with which she executed it. One peculiar production of her needle has recently been described by her accomplished biographer; it was a standard which she embroidered in silk and gold for her father, during the memorable contest in which he was engaged for the recovery of his patrimony, and which was celebrated throughout Europe for the exquisite taste and skill displayed by the royal Adelicia in the design and execution of her patriotic achievement. This standard was unfortunately captured at a battle near the castle of Duras, in 1129, by the Bishop of Liege and the Earl of Limbourg, the old compet.i.tor of G.o.dfrey for Lower Lorraine, and was by them placed as a memorial of their triumph in the great church of St. Lambert, at Liege, and was for centuries carried in procession on Rogation days through the streets of that city. The church of St. Lambert was destroyed during the French Revolution. The plain where this memorable trophy was taken is still called the "Field of the Standard."

Perhaps, second only to Queen Matilda's work, or indeed superior to it, as being entirely the production of her own hand, were the needlework pieces of Joan D'Albert, who ascended the throne of Navarre in 1555. Though her own career was varied and eventful, she is best known to posterity as the mother of the great Henry IV. She adopted the reformed religion, of which she became, not without some risk to her crown thereby, the zealous protectress, and on Christmas-day, 1562, she made a public profession of the Protestant faith; she prohibited the offices of the Catholic religion to be performed in her domains, and suffered in consequence many alarms from her Catholic subjects. But she possessed great courage and fort.i.tude, and baffled all open attacks. Against concealed treachery she could not contend. She died suddenly at the court of France in 1572, as it was strongly suspected, by poison.

This queen possessed a vigorous and cultivated understanding; was acquainted with several languages, and composed with facility both in prose and verse. Her needlework, the amus.e.m.e.nt and solace of her leisure hours, was designed by her as "a commemoration of her love for, and steadiness to, the reformed faith." It is thus described by Boyle: "She very much loved devices, and she wrought with her own hand fine and large pieces of tapestry, among which was a suit of hangings of a dozen or fifteen pieces, which were called THE PRISONS OPENED; by which she gave us to understand that she had broken the pope's bonds, and shook off his yoke of captivity. In the middle of every piece is a story of the Old Testament which savours of liberty--as the deliverance of Susannah; the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt; the setting Joseph at liberty, &c. And at all the corners are broken chains, shackles, racks, and gibbets; and over them in great letters, these words of the third chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, UBI SPIRITUS IBI LIBERTAS.

"To show yet more fully the aversion she had conceived against the Catholic religion, and particularly against the sacrifice of the ma.s.s, having a fine and excellent piece of tapestry, made by her mother, Margaret, before she had suffered herself to be cajoled by the ministers, in which was perfectly well wrought the sacrifice of the ma.s.s, and a priest who held out the holy host to the people, she took out the square in which was this history, and, instead of the priest, with her own hand subst.i.tuted a fox, who turning to the people, and making a horrible grimace with his paws and throat, delivered these words, DOMINUS VOBISc.u.m."

We are told that Anne of Brittany, the good Queen of France, a.s.sembled three hundred of the children of the n.o.bility at her court, where, under her personal superintendence, they were instructed in such accomplishments as became their rank and s.e.x, but the girls, most especially, made accomplished needlewomen. Embroidery was their occupation during some specified hours of every day, and they wrought much tapestry, which was presented by their royal protectress to different churches.

Her daughter Claude, the queen of Francis I., formed her court on the same model and maintained the same practice; Queen Anne Boleyn was educated in her court, and was doomed to consume a large portion of her time in the occupation of the needle. It was an employment little suited to her lively disposition and coquettish habits, and we do not hear, during her short occupation of the throne, that she resorted to it as an amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Ai lavori d'Aracne, all'ago, ai fusi Inchinar non degn la man superba."

The practice of devoting some hours to embroidery seems to have continued in the French court. When the young Queen of Scots was there, the French princesses a.s.sembled every afternoon in the queen's (Catherine of Medici's) private apartment, where "she usually spent two or three hours in embroidery with her female attendants."

It is also said, that Katharine of Arragon was in the habit of employing the ladies of her court in needlework, in which she was herself extremely a.s.siduous, working with them and encouraging them by her example. Burnet records, that when two legates requested once to speak with her, she came out to them with a skein of silk about her neck, and told them she had been within at work with her women. An anecdote, as far as regards the skein of silk, somewhat more housewifely than queenly.

In this she differed much from her successor, Queen Catherine Parr, for having had her nativity cast when a child, and being told, from the disposition of the stars and planets in her house, that she was born to sit in the highest seat of imperial majesty; child as she was, she was so impressed by the prediction, that when her mother required her to work she would say, "My hands are ordained to touch crowns and sceptres, not needles and spindles."

When the orphaned daughter of this lady, by the lord admiral, was consigned to the care of the d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk, the furniture of "her former nursery" was to be sent with her. The list is rather curious, and we subjoin it.

"Two pots, three goblets, one salt parcel gilt, a maser with a band of silver and parcel gilt, and eleven spoons; a quilt for the cradle, three pillows, three feather-beds, three quilts, a testor of scarlet embroidered with a counterpoint of silk say belonging to the same, and curtains of crimson taffeta; two counterpoints of imagery for the nurse's bed, six pair of sheets, six fair pieces of hangings within the inner chamber; four carpets for windows, ten pieces of hangings of the twelve months within the outer chamber, two quishions of cloth of gold, one chair of cloth of gold, two wrought stools, a bedstead gilt, with a testor and counterpoint, with curtains belonging to the same."

Return we to Katharine of Arragon: her needlework labours have been celebrated both in Latin and English verse. The following sonnet refers to specimens in the Tower, which now indeed are swept away, having left not "a wreck behind."

"I read that in the seventh King Henrie's reigne, Fair Katharine, daughter to the Castile king, Came into England with a pompous traine Of Spanish ladies which shee thence did bring.

She to the eighth King Henry married was, And afterwards divorc'd, where virtuously (Although a Queene), yet she her days did pa.s.s In working with the _needle_ curiously, As in the Tower, and places more beside, Her excellent memorials may be seen; Whereby the _needle's_ prayse is dignifide By her faire ladies, and herselfe, a Queene.

Thus far her paines, here her reward is just, Her works proclaim her prayse, though she be dust."

The same pen also celebrated her daughter's skill in this feminine occupation.

Mary was skilled in all sorts of embroidery; and when her mother's divorce consigned her to a private life, she beguiled the intervals of those severer studies in which she peaceably and laudably occupied her time in various branches of needlework. It is not unlikely the Psalter we have alluded to elsewhere was embroidered by herself; and a reference to the fashionable occupations of the day will bring to our minds various trifling articles, the embroidery of which beguiled her time, though they have long since pa.s.sed away.

"Her daughter Mary here the sceptre swaid, And though she were a Queene of mighty power, Her memory will never be decaid, Which by her works are likewise in the Tower, In Windsor Castle, and in Hampton Court, In that most pompous roome called Paradise; Who ever pleaseth thither to resort, May see some workes of hers, of wondrous price.

Her greatness held it no disreputation To take the needle in her royal hand; Which was a good example to our nation To banish idleness from out her land: And thus this Queene, in wisdom thought it fit, The needle's worke pleas'd her, and she grac'd it."

We extract the following notice of the gentle and excellent Lady Jane Grey, from the 'Court Magazine.'

"Ten days' royalty! Alas, how deeply fraught with tragic interest is the historic page recording the events of that brief period! and how immeasurable the results proceeding therefrom. Love, beauty, religious constancy, genius, and learning, were seen in early womanhood intermingling their glorious halo with the dark shadowings of despotism, imprisonment, and violent death upon the scaffold!

"In the most sequestered part of Leicestershire, backed by rude eminences, and skirted by lowly and romantic valleys, stands Bradgate, the birth-place and abode of Lady Jane Grey. The approach to Bradgate from the village of Cropston is striking. On the left stands a group of venerable trees, at the extremity of which rise the remains of the once magnificent mansion of the Greys of Groby. On the right is a hill, known by the name of 'The Coppice,' covered with slate, but so intermixed with fern and forest-flowers as to form a beautiful contrast to the deep shades of the surrounding woods. To add to the loveliness of the scene, a winding trout-stream finds its way from rock to rock, washing the walls of Bradgate until it reaches the fertile meadows of Swithland.

"In the distance, situate upon a hill, is a tower, called by the country-people Old John, commanding a magnificent view of the adjoining country, including the distant castles of Nottingham and Belvoir. With the exception of the chapel and kitchen, the princely mansion has now become a ruin; but a tower still stands, which tradition points out as her birth-place. Traces of the tilt-yard are visible, with the garden-walls, and a n.o.ble terrace whereon Jane often walked and sported in her childhood; and the rose and lily still spring in favourable nooks of that wilderness, once the pleasance, or pleasure-garden of Bradgate. Near the brook is a beautiful group of old chestnut-trees.

"'This was thy home then, gentle Jane, This thy green solitude; and here At evening from the gleaming pane, Thine eye oft watched the dappled deer (While the soft sun was in its wane) Browsing beside the brooklet clear; The brook runs still, the sun sets now, The deer yet browseth--where art thou?'

"Instead of skill in drawing she cultivated the art of painting with the needle, and at Zurich is still to be seen, together with the original MS. of her Latin letters to the reformer Bullinger, a toilet beautifully ornamented by her own hands, which had been presented by her to her learned correspondent."

In the court of Catherine de Medicis Mary Queen of Scots was habituated to the daily practice of needlework, and thus fostered her natural taste for the art which she had acquired in the convent--supposed to have been St. Germaine-en-Laye, where she was placed during the early part of her residence in France. She left this convent with the utmost regret, revisited it whenever she was permitted, and gladly employed her needle in embroidering an altarpiece for its church.

This predilection for needlework never forsook her, but proved a beguilement and a solace during the weary years of her subsequent imprisonment, especially after she was separated from the female friends who at first accompanied her. During a part of her confinement, while she was still on comparatively friendly terms with Elizabeth, she transmitted several elegant pieces of her own needlework to this princess. She wrought a canopy, which was placed in the presence-chamber at Whitehall, consisting of an empalement of the arms of France and Scotland, embroidered under an imperial crown.

It does not appear at what period of her life she worked it. During the early part of her confinement she was asked how, in unfavourable weather, she pa.s.sed the time within. She said that all that day she wrought with her needle, and that the diversity of the colours made the work seem less tedious; and she continued so long at it till very pain made her to give over.

"Upon this occasion she entered into a pretty disputable comparison between carving, painting, and working with the needle; affirming painting, in her own opinion, for the most commendable quality. No doubt it was during her confinement in England that she worked the bed still preserved at Chatsworth."