FROM THE
CANADA COUNCIL SPECIAL GRANT
FOR
HISTORY OF THEATRE AND DRAMA
HABITS AND MEN.
HABITS AND MEN,
Eemnants of Eecorti
TOUCHING
THE MAKERS OF BOTH.
BY
DR. DORAN,
AUTHOB OS ' TABLE TRAITS,' ' HISTOBY O BEADING,' ' UPB OF DS. YOUSO/ BTC.
" See, sitting here,
Just face to face with you, in cheery guise,
A real, live gossip ; to your charities
Do I appeal, my friends." T. Wtttxood.
THIRD EDITION.
LONDON :
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STBEET,
$ul)Iis!)cr in rtinarg to $t fHajcstg.
1855.
PBINTED BY
JOHN EDWAEI) TAYLOR, LITTLE QUEEN STBEET,
VTIfCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
THESE "TRIVIAL, FOND RECORDS"
TOUCHING
^a&its atrti fften
ABE INSCRIBED TO A GOOD MAN, OF GOOD HABITS,
TO
HENRY HOLDEN FRANKUM, ESQ.,
IN TESTIMONY OF THE ESTEEM AND REGARD ENTERTAINED FOR HIM
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
PAQB
BETWEEN You AND ME 1
MAN, MANNEES, AND A STOEY WITH A MOEAL TO IT ... 9
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD, PAET 1 26
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD, PAET II 40
REMNANTS OP STAGE DEESSES 60
THESE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE 67
THE TIEING-BOWEES OP QUEENS 88
" LA MODE " IN HEE BIETHPLACE 114
HATS 129
WlGS AND THEIE WEAEEES , 141
BEAEDS AND THEIB BEAEEES 158
SWOEDS 168
GLOVES, B s, AND BUTTONS 185
STOCKINGS 200
" MASKS AND FACES " 204
PUPPETS FOE GBOWN GENTLEMEN '. . . . 212
TOUCHING TAILOBS . 227
VI CONTENTS.
PAGE
WHY DID THE TAILOHS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM FOB THEIB
PATRON? 229.
THE TAILORS MEASURED BY THE POETS 240
SIB JOHN HAWKWOOD, THE HEBOIC TAILOR 261
G-EOBGE DOBFLING, THE MABTIAL TAILOB 275
ADMIBAL HOBSON, THE NAVAL TAILOR 283
JOHN STOW, THE ANTIQUABIAN TAILOB 285
JOHN SPEED, THE ANTIQUABIAN TAILOB 296
SAMUEL PEPYS, THE OFFICIAL TAILOB 300
EICHABD RYAN, THE THEATBICAL TAILOB 309
PAUL WHITEHEAD, THE POET TAILOB 315
MEMS. OF " MERCHANT TAILOBS " . . . 322
CHAPTEBS ON BEAUX 337
THE BEAUX OF THE OLDEN TIME 337
BEAU FIELDING .'.. r ...... 347
BEAU NASH 356
THE PBINCE DE LIGNE 370
BEAU BBUMMELL 373
DOCTORS BEADY DRESSED 395
ODD FASHIONS 402
HABITS AND MEN.
BETWEEN YOU AND ME.
" Here, Sir, you'll find, by way of prologue,
A choice imbroglio. Philosophy
Gay in her gravity ; and Poesy
Casting her spangles on the theme of dress.
Lik'st thou't not, no merry Christmas to thee!"
OLD PLAT.
IT is remarked by Mr. T. C. Grattan, in his ' Jacqueline
of Holland,' that the " suitableness of raiment and the be-
comingness of manners are links in the chain of social life,
which harmonize with and beautify the whole. There is in-
finitely more wisdom," he add% "in submitting to than in
spurning those necessary concomitants of civilization, which,
being artificial throughout, require the cement of elegance
and refinement to polish, if it cannot lighten, the chain."
I offer this pinch of philosophy to those who like to be
tempted by something didactic. I would not, for the world,
however, have them believe that I shall repeat the tempta-
tion, or follow the example, in jny illustrations of ' Habits
and Men.' And when I say "Men," I would imply mem
in its general sense, a sense in which "woman" has the
better and more perfect half; for, as the poet sings of
Nature,
B
2 HABITS AND MEN.
" Her 'prentice ban'
She tried on man,
An' then she made the lasses, oh!"
The latter, consequently, will come in for their share in
these trivial, fond records. For, have not the poets loved
especially to dress and undress them ? And have not the
nymphs been consenting ? None have defied them, save
" Fair Khodope, as story tells,
The hright, unearthly nymph who dwells
'Mid sunless gold and jewels hid,
The Lady of the Pyramid."
Ehodope has been a snare to the versifiers ; but I recognize
in her a lady who loved home, and dressed as well when
there as her more gadding sisters do only when abroad.
If Ehodope be the only maid who has puzzled the poets,
Butler is the only poet who has seriously libelled the maids,
and their mothers. See what the rude fellow says of ladies
ii their company suits and faces:
" Yes, 'tis in vain to think to guess
At women, by appearances ;
That paint and patch their imperfections
Of intellectual complexions,
And daub their tempers o'er with washes
As artificial as their faces."
It is certainly strange that women, in earlier days, when
they dealt in neither washes nor washing, should have been
gravely- commended for that less commendable fashion.
Thus, Thomas of Ely lays down a very nasty maxim when
he describes the toilet of Queen St. Ethelreda : " Quae
enim lota erat corde, non .necesse erat ut lavabatur cor-
pore" (who was so thoroughly well- washed in heart that
she never found it necessary to wash her person).
Very well ! I only wish this lady could have been mar-
ried to the Irish Saint Angus Keledeus (Kele De, " God
BETWEEN YOU AND ME. 3
worshiper," thence Culdees). They would have had a nice
household of it ; for the gentleman in question had the
barn and the mill-work of his convent, and, as he never
cleaned himself, some of the grain which stuck in his hair
and about his hairy body, used to grow as in a good soil,
and then he pulled it out ; gaining a portion of his bread
in this nasty field. St. Angus, all over ears, would have
been a novelly dressed bridegroom for Ethelreda, newly
washed, in imagination !
" Tut !" said St. E/omnald, " filthy habits are the anchors
by which holy hermits are kept fast in their cells ; once let
them dress well and smell nicely, and worldly people will
invite them to their parties." Depend upon it, when Ethel-
reda left off her habits of cleanliness, she wickedly thought
of seducing some St. Angus to come and be her resident
confessor !
A better example was shown by that saintly sovereign,
Jayme II. of Mayorca, who made ministers of his tailors,
as George IV. made tailors of his ministers, who set those
useful dignitaries to work in superb offices, wherein no pro-
fane person dared tread. On the garments made, no profane
person dared lay a hand ; the number of suits was seven,
for the seven great festivals ; and when these were com-
pleted, all the inhabitants were compelled to celebrate the
event by a voluntary illumination.
Certainly, Ethelreda did not sit for the original of Cow-
ley's ' Clad all in White,' wherein he says :
" Fairest thing that shines below,
Why in this robe dost thou appear ?
Wouldst thou a white most perfect show,
Thou must at all no garment wear :
Thou wilt seem much whiter so
Than winter when 'tis clad with snow."
But, altogether, Cowley cannot be said to dress his ladies
well. He would banish all art, just as the nymphs in hoop-
B2
4 HABITS AND MEN.
petticoats banished all nature. Herrick is the man, to my
thinking, who has hit the happy medium, in his ' Delight
in Disorder':
" A sweet disorder in the dress,
Kindles in clothes a playfulness.
A lawn about the shoulder thrown
Into a fine distraction ;
An erring lace, which here and there
Inthrals the crimson stomacher ;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly ;
A winning ware, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat ;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility ;
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part."
Herrick was exquisitely taken by the "liquefaction," as he
calls it, of his Julia's robes, and his very heart was rumpled
by their " glittering vibration." He dresses her in the airy
fashion which Moore followed when called upon to deck his
Nora Creina:
" The any robe I did behold,
As airy as the leaves of gold,
Which erring here and wandering there,
Pleased with transgression ev'rywhere :
Sometimes 'twould pant, and sigh, and heave,
As if to stir it scarce had leave ;
But having got it, thereupon
'Twould make a brave expansion,
And pounced with stars, it show'd to me
Like a celestial canopy."
Gothe, that lover of many ladies, never decks one wholly,
but now and then he makes a gift interpreting his taste, as
when Lamon remarks, in the ' Laune des Verliebten':
" Die Rose seh' ich gern in einem schwarzen Haar."
BETWEEN YOU AND ME. O
The French poets put all their swains in tight gloves
and loose principles; and their nymphs are as anxious
about their dress, as though there were soirees in Tempe,
and a Longchamps in Arcadia. Thus Chenier's Nais bids
Daphnis not to crease her veil, and, with a shrewd idea of
the cost of a new frock, how snappishly does the pretty
thing reply to the invitation to recline on the shady bank :
" Vois, cet humide gazon
Va souiller ma tunique!"
How pure, compared or not compared with this calcula-
ting nymph, is the Madeline of Endymion Keats. The
English poet undresses his young maiden with a " nice-
ness " that gives us as much right to look as Porphyro :
" Her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one ;
Loosens her fragrant boddice ; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees :
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in seaweed,
Pensive awhile, she dreams awake."
It is clear that this lady, although belonging to a more
artificial society than Na'is, thinks 4ess of her dress, and
more of her principles. Not but that ladies have a fine
eye for the snares by which they may either catch or be
caught.
There is something in the following, from an old Spanish
ballad (' A aquel caballero, madre'), which proves what I
say, and may be useful to gentlemen when contemplating
the subject of costume :
To that cavalier, dear mother,
When a child, I simply told
How three kisses I would owe him :
I must pay them, now I'm old !
6 HABITS AND MEN.
I am now sixteen, dear mother :
If the noble youth should come,
And call upon his little debtor,
Sighing for him here at home ;
Should he come with feathers dancing,
Helm of steel and spurs of gold,
And claim the kisses that I owe him,
I would pay him, now I'm old !
" Hush, child ! this is not the language
Worthy a Castilian maid,
One too promised to the altar,
Convent's gloom, and cloister's shade.
For thou'rt given to St. Cecil,
To her holy shrine thou'rt sold ;
Will not my sweet one read her missal?"
" Yes ! I'll pay him now I'm old !"
Grave commentators on this ballad suggest, that if the ca-
valier had not been a superbly dressed cavalier, the little
maiden wo;ild have forgotten her vow ; and in the south of
Spain, when a man is inclined to become heedless of ex-
ternal adornment, he is warned of the peril of losing the
three kisses of St. Cecilia's Nun.
But the overture to my " opera" is extending beyond
due limits ; and as I have hitherto been repeating snatches
from the airs of others, I will here add, to save my honour,
one of my own. It is well known that Henrietta Maria
mostly favoured the colour known as the Maiden's Blush,
from the rose of that pretty name. The following lines
will show
HOW THE ROSE GOT ITS HUE.
One starry eve, as Psyche lay
Beneath a cistus bower's shade,
Tearing the flowers in idle play,
Young Love came tripping by, that way,
And to the girl thus, laughing, said,
BETWEEN YOU AND ME.
The sweetest rose that ever eye
Yet smiled upon I plucked hut now ;
Pure as the stars in yon hlue sky
And whiter than the flowers that lie
In wreaths about thy sunny brow.
The sweetest rose that ever spent
Its balmy store of scented bliss
About thy locks, or gently bent
Above thy bow'r, had ne'er the scent
That lies enshrined, my soul, in this.
Oh for a name, my gentle girl,
That mortals fittingly may call
This matchless rose, of flowers the pearl!
Look, sweet, how soft the petals curl !
A name ! and thou shalt have them alL
While Love thus urged his pretty suit,
And to the blushing girl drew near,
He softly struck bis golden lute,
As Psyche sat, entranced and mute,
Drinking the sounds with willing ear.
And when the golden lute was hush'd,
And Love still nearer drew, to seek
His usual meed from lips that flush'd
With softer hues than ever brash' d
Upon his own sweet mother's cheek,
He whisper' d something soft and low,
With arm and flower around her thrown,
That call'd upon her cheeks a glow
Which shed upon the leaves of snow
A hue still deeper than her own.
And Love, rejoicing, mark'd the rush
Of soft and rosy light that came
Upon the flower, which caught the flush
From Psyche's cheek, whose maiden blush
Gave to the rose both hue and name.
8 HABITS AND MEN.
Between the days when Psyche blushed on the rose, and
the age when Delamira bought her blushes at fifteen shil-
lings the pot, there is a long period ; nature at one end,
and hoop-petticoats at the other. The fashion of the latter
had got so preposterous, that Mr. William Jingle, coach-
maker and chairmaker of the Liberty of Westminster, in-
vented for the service of the ladies " a round chair in the
form of a lantern, six yards and a half in circumference,
with a stool in the centre of it ; the said vehicle being so
contrived, as to receive the passenger, by opening in two in
the middle, and closing mathematically, when she is seated."
Honest Jingle also " invented a coach for the reception of
one lady only, who is to be let in at the top." For these
inventions he asked the patronage of that Censor of Great
Britain, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff, and therefore it must be
true. However, how wide the time between the blushes of
Psyche and the era of hoops ! Now it is something con-
nected with costume, during this interval, and subsequent
to it, that I am now about to speak. These words, between
you and me, reader, have been as the fragments of airs,
which in musical introductions give us an inkling of more
fulness to come. I will only pause to add a sentiment from
Cowper; but that would really be worse than Joseph
Surface. No, reader ! I will fling in my sentiment at the
end, and here invite you to consider a subject, whose title
heads the following page.
MAN, MANNERS, AND A STORY WITH A
MORAL TO IT.
" Les hommee font les lois, les femmes font les moeurs." DB SE'GTJE.
"L'HOMME est un animal!" said a French orator, by way
of peroration to his first speech in the Chamber of De-
puties ; " Man is an animal !" and there he stopped. He
found his subject exhausted, and he sat down in confusion.
Thereupon his own familiar friend arose, and suggested
that it was desirable that the honourable gentleman's
speech should be printed, with a portrait of the author!
The definition is, as far as it goes, a plagiarism from Plato.
In the Apophthegmata of Diogenes Laertius, it is stated that
Plato defined Man as an animal with two legs and without
feathers. The definition having been generally approved
of, Diogenes went into the school of the philosopher,
carrying with him a cock, which he* had stripped of his
plumage. "Here," said he, "is Plato's man!" Plato saw
that his definition needed improvement, and he added to it
" with broad nails." He might have further said, "and
needing something in place of feathers."
So much depends upon this substitute, and so much more
is thought of habits than of manners, that is, morals, and
of the makers of the former than the teachers of the latter,
that it is popularly and properly said, " The tailor makes
the man." No doubt of it ; and tailors are far better paid
than tutors. The Nugees keep country-houses and recline
in carriages ; the philosophers are accounted of as nugte,
and plod on foot to give golden instruction for small thanks
B 3
10 HABITS AND MEN.
and a few pence. Their device, if they are ever so ennobled
as to be thought worthy of one, might be that of the pa-
triotic ladies of Prussia, who, before the time when their
country became a satrapy of Muscovy, exchanged their
golden adornments for an iron ring, on which was engraved
the legend, "Ichgab Gold urn Msen" I gave gold for iron.
This being the case, it is little to be wondered at that
man is more careful about his dress than his instruction.
The well-dressed man looks, at all events, like a man well
to do ; and bow profound is the respect of the world for a
man who may be catalogued as "well to do!" That man
thoroughly understood the meaning of the term who, when
on his trial for murder, and anticipating an acquittal, invited
his counsel to dinner. The invitation was accepted, but,
the verdict rendering the inviter incapable of even ordering
a dinner for himself, the intended guest frowned on the
convict, and went and dined with the prosecutor.
Philosophy has done its best to cure man of vanity in
dress ; but philosophy has been vain, and so has man.
" For a man to be fantastic and effeminate in attire," says
Stobseus, " is unpardonable. It is next to Sardanapalus's
spinning among women. To such I would say, Art thou
not ashamed, when Nature hath made thee a man, to make
thyself a woman ? "
Seneca hath something to the same purpose, and not al-
together inapplicable in our days. " Some of the manly
sex amongst us," says he, "are so effeminate, that they
would rather have the commonwealth out of order, than
their hair; they are more solicitous about trimming and
sprucing up their heads, than they are of their health or of
the safety of the public ; and are more anxious to be fine
than virtuous." Sir Walter Ealeigh asserts that " No man
is esteemed for gay garments, but by fools and women,"
an assertion which shows that his philosophy and his civility
were both in a ragged condition. Sir Matthew Hale throws
MAN, MANNEBS, AIO) A STOBY. 11
the blame where it ought to be borne, when he declares
that the vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashions, and
valuing ourselves by them, is one of the most childish pieces
of folly that can be."
The philosophy of the judge is " truer steel" than that
of the soldier. But, for philosophy in describing a dress, I
know nothing that can surpass that of the poor Irishman,
who, looking down at his own garment of million tatters,
smilingly said that it was "made of holes."
There is very good philosophy in the story of Nessus
and his tunic. We all know how the story is told in his-
tory, and that it therefore cannot be true. Apollodorus
and Pausanias, Diodorus, Ovid, and Seneca, have all told the
same tale, without guessing at the truth which lies hid in it.
It is to this eifect : When Hercules was on his way to the
court of Ceyx, king of Trachinia, in company with his "lady,"
Dejanira, the travellers came to the swollen river of Evenus.
Nessus, the centaur, politely carried the lady over, and be-
came very rude to her on the opposite bank. The stalwart
husband, from the other shore, observing what was going
on, sent one of his shafts, dipped in the poison of the Ler-
naean Hydra, right into the centaur' s*heart. Nessus, while
dying, presented his shirt, that is, his tunic, to Dejanira,
informing her that if she could persuade Hercules to wear
it, he would never behave to her otherwise than as a gen-
tleman. Now, as he never had yet so comported himself
for he was a dreadful bully Dejanira accepted the gift; and,
as the hero was soon after found flirting with his old love
lole, and was vain of his appearance, she sent the gay gar-
ment to him, and he had no sooner donned it than death
clasped him, and the hero was transferred to where there
were so many other powerful rascals, the halls of Olym-
pus. So much for fiction, and those never-to-be-trusted
poets. Here is the truth.
Nessus was a ridiculous old dandy, with a juvenile wig
12 HABITS AKD MEN.
and reprobate principles. He courted Hercules' "lady,"
and so flattered her that she became fonder than ever of
fashionable garments, and even accepted a shawl from the
centaur, who had ordered it in the name of the husband,
and left him to pay for it. Hercules forgot his vexation in
the leaux yeux of lole ; and remembering how the " old
beast," as he used to call the centaur, had contrived to sun
himself in Dejanira's eyes, he adopted the fashion of Nessus ;
and, lightly as nymphs were dressed in the days of lole, he
ran up a right royal bill at the milliner's, and no more
thought of what he should have to pay than the Duke of
York, when ordering cashmeres for Anna Maria Clarke.
The fall of the year however came, and therewith the " little
account," with an intimation that a speedy settlement would
oblige. Hercules, hero as he was, felt his heart fail him as
he looked at "thetottle of the whole," and he fell into such
extravagances that, being hunted to death by bailiffs, and
his honesty as small as that of the proprietor of an ultra-
pietist paper who cheats his editor, he took the benefit of
the act, and retired to the country, where he kept a shabby
chariot, drawn by only two mangy leopards, and ultimately
died, like other heroes, bewailing his amiable weaknesses.
But let us go further back than to mythology, in order to
examine the origin of dress.
It may be said (and I hope without profanity) that sew-
ing came in with sin; or rather, it was one of the first con-
sequences of the first crime. Perhaps, for this reason, has
a certain degree of contempt been inherited by the profes-
sors of the art. The trade of a tailor is not honoured with
mention in any part of the Scriptures. Gardening was the
early occupation, and hence horticulture is accounted re-
fined. Tubal Cain was the first worker in iron ; and from
his time down to a very late period, the employment which
required much exercise of muscular strength had the prece-
dence of mere sedentary callings. The French, indeed, as
MAN, MANNEBS, AND A STORY. 13
becomes a nation which prides itself as being the most par-
ticular touching the external dressing of a man, has always
confessed to a sort of tender regard for the tailor. The vo-
cation against which Gallic wits direct their light-winged
shafts, is that of the grocer. The epicier with them is a
man whose soul does not rise above lait de poule and cotton
nightcaps. He is generally the coward in farces, while he-
roism is not made separable from the melancholy wielders
of the needle.
In France however we may still trace a remnant of the
time when the highest honour was awarded to the pliers of
the heaviest tools, or the workmen whose vocation had a
spice of peril in it. Thus the farrier smith, in France, still
enjoys a courtesy rank which places him on a nominal
equality with the tried commanders of valiant hosts ; and
if Soult was Marshal of France, so every Gallic farrier is
" marechal ferrant" the marshal of the workers in iron.
As weavers and fullers are noticed in Holy Writ, while
the tailor is passed over in silence, it is probable that he
had no distinct status among the. Jews, and that, during a
long period at least, every man was his*Dwn costumier. In
other countries the tailor and the physician were both slaves,
and probably the first was as little or less of a bungler than
the second; for the servus vnstiarius could often improve
the outer man, when the servus medicus could not do as
much for the inner one.
Under the old dispensation, sewing, as I have said, fol-
lowed sin ; and- he who forged a bill-hook or a brand was in
higher esteem than he who lived by the exercise of the
needle. Under a later dispensation we find examples of
this order of precedency being reversed. Lydia of Thyatira
was among the first who joined Paul in prayer, by the river-
side at Philippi. Her office was to make up into garments
the purple cloth for which Lydia-itself was famous. "With
this proselyte Paul dwelt, and on her he left a blessing. It
11 HABITS AND MEN.
was not so with a certain strong handicraftsman. "When
Paul was once at the point of death he bethought him of an
old vicious adversary, and said, " Alexander the coppersmith
did me much evil ; the Lord reward him according to his
works !" And by this we not only see that he who taught
so wisely could sometimes err against his own instructions,
but we may even make this strange circumstance profitable
to us by viewing in it the proof that even the nearest to
heaven are not entirely free from the stains of earth; and
that the spirit truly worthy of immortality has never yet
been found in aught that was mortal.
And this reminds me, that while every Jew learned some
trade, there is none recorded as having learned that of a
tailor. The coppersmiths endeavour to disconnect their
calling from the excommunication of Paul, by asserting that
the Alexander who did evil to Paul, by maligning him and
by broaching heresies upon the resurrection, was really a
philosopher, who was only a coppersmith for his amusement.
This however is not likely, for it was not usual to designate
learned men by the nain,e of their adopted trades. And
however this may be, it was Lydia the maker of purple vests
who obtained the blessing, while Alexander the coppersmith
inherited the curse.
And may I here remark, for I hope to be permitted to
indulge in a good deal of " cross stitch" in these unpretend-
ing sketches, that the best of men of modern times can,
like St. Paul, be vigorously minded against their opponents.
I will only cite Cowper, who was more wrathful than the
Apostle, without the provocation by which the latter was
judicially moved.
Cowper is certainly the sweetest of our didactic poets.
He is elevated in his 'Table Talk;' acute in detailing the
'Progress of Error;' and he chants the praises of 'Truth'
in more dulcet notes than were ever sounded by the fairest
swan in Cayster. His ' Expostulation' is made in the tones
MAN, MANNERS, AND A STOUT. 15
of a benevolent sage. His 'Hope' and his 'Charity' are
proofs of his pure Christian-like feeling ; a feeling which
also pervades his ' Conversation' and his ' Retirement,' and
which barbs the shafts of his satire without taking away
from their strength. The same praise is due to the six
books of the ' Task,' of which perhaps the Garden is the
least successful portion. If however we be disposed to find
fault at all with anything in his sentiment or expression, it
would be in this, that while he celebrates in warm praises
the delights of his own peaceful and retired life a life which,
on the respectable authority of the old medical writer Cel-
sus, I may call as hurtful to the body as it is profitable or
necessary to the mind (" Literarum disciplina, ut animo
praecipue omnium necessaria, sic corpori inirnica est"), there
is some illiberality in his declaring that the various occu-
pations of other and more active men are either frivolous
or criminal. Cowper patiently enjoys holding the ravelled
thread for ladies to wind it on to their bobbins, but he
sneers at the party who sits down to chess or stands up to
billiards. He will praise air and exercise, if you will only
take them in company with him, in covered walks where
there is what he so well and quaintly calls
"An obsolete prolixity of shade."
But if you enjoy your air and exercise in field sports, you
are more ignoble than your groom, and a greater brute than
the victim you pursue. Again: he acknowledges change of
scene to be beneficial to the animal economy; but he in-
tends thereby a change from one parish to another. You
must not go to France for change, without being undeniably
anything but a gentleman and a Christian. He is ready too
to eat game and dine on venison, but he would not, for the
world, be so guilty as to course a hare or shoot a buck.
Finally, he would listen with all imaginable pleasure and
rapture to the strains of Handel, were they only composed
16 . HABITS AND MEN.
to the glory and praise of Damon and Dolly, ratter than, as
they are, to the eulogy of the Messiah and in illustration of
His sacrifice.
But why, it may be asked, this piece of patchwork with
Cowper's name thereon ? "Well, Cowper was something of
a tailor in his way, and could sew a button on his sleeve as
adroitly, if not as any tailor in town, at least as any sailor
in the fleet. And in this he was something akin to Pope
Pius VII. when prisoner at Fontainebleau.
What a heavy captivity was that ! not so much for the
prisoner," as for those who were compelled to listen to the
long and dreary and pointless stories of the good-natured
and weak old man. When the officers who had this Pope
in charge, were conducting him from Rome to Paris, they
on one occasion shut him up in a coach-house, where he
remained seated in his carriage, while his captors dined.
Cardinal Pacca says of this Pope, who was an admirable
tailor when necessity pressed him, that, during the eighteen
months he was resident at Fontainebleau, he could never be
prevailed upon to quit his own suite of apartments. He,
and the Cardinals who accompanied him, were employed in
conjugating the verb s'ennuyer. He loved a little gossip,
and hated books ; but the captive had a solace one worthy
of the dignity of Diocletian, when he cultivated cabbages.
Savary, Duke de Eovigo, who was chief gaoler over the
chief Pontiff, says, of the latter, that " he did not open a
book the livelong day ; and he occupied himself in things
which, if I had not myself seen, I never should have be-
lieved; stitching and mending, for instance, holes and
rents in his clothes, sewing a button on his breeches, and
washing with his own hands his dressing-gown, on which
he had a habit of allowing his snuff to fall in large quan-
tities." Savary is especially, and naturally, astonished that
the supreme Pontiff preferred his amateur tailoring to en-
joying the books in the great library of Fontainebleau.
MAN, MANNERS, AND A STOET. 17
Poor man ! he did not like reading, but he did like kill-
ing time at the point of the needle. The tailors of his
community are doubtless proud of such a patron. The
story rests on Savary's authority ; and while Cardinal Pacca
abuses him for telling it, his Eminence does not deny its
authenticity.
But we must not allow the Pope and his pursuits to
take us away from the consideration of sacred things.
Eeverting therefore to the Jews, it may be said of them
that if they did not possess the tailor as a professor, they
had a sufficient variety of dress to perplex the domestic
ministers of fashion. There is quite as much perplexity
for those who have to write about it. The Jews, like the
modern children of the Prophet, would not tolerate the
representation of any living figure, and the antiquary has
therefore no chance of consulting a Hebrew ' Journal des
Modes.' The monuments of nations distant from Pales-
tine cannot be accepted as authority whra they are said
to represent the Jewish people, for we have no assurance
that the people are thereon represented ; or if they be Jews,
that they are, in slavery, wearing a national costume.
Of one thing however there is a certainty. The Jews
had a national costume ; and, except in ceremonial dresses
and some female appendages, it had very little resemblance
indeed to the costume of the Egyptians. The material of
Jewish garments was manufactured at home ; the skilful
hands of the women spinning and weaving the raw mate-
rial afforded by the flocks. Not all the women appear to
have been given to the useful work. There were some
fine ladies among the multitude that came out of Egypt,
and these had an aristocratically foolish contempt for the
spinners and tailoresses of the tribes. But I would espe-
cially recommend my fair readers to remember the sacred
record, which ennobles labour, where it says : " All the
18 HABITS AND MEN.
women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands,
and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and
of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen;" and again
it is said, and it sounds like God's blessing upon the
daughters of toil, " And all the women whose hearts stirred
them wp in wisdom spun goats' hair." No doubt these
women, whose hearts were the thrones of wisdom, were
primeval tailoresses. And much value was set upon the
habits which they made, the shaping of which, I may add,
presented little difficulty. The principal article of dress
was an ample woollen garment, a cloak by day, and a
couch by night. It served two purposes, like Goldsmith's
stocking, which, at night, he drew from his feet to place on
his head. Much value, I have said, was attached to this
garment ; as, for instance : " If thou at all take thy neigh-
bour's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it to him by
that the sun goeth down. For that is his covering only ;
it is the raiment for his skin : wherein shall he sleep ?
And it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto Me, that I
will hear; for I am gracious."
At Beni Hassan, in Egypt, there are some painted re-
presentations of men who are supposed to be the counter-
feit presentment of Jews fresh from their own country,
and therefore in undoubted Jewish costume. The men are
variously attired : they are all sandalled. Some wear only
short tunics, others a cloak over the tunic. This cloak or
plaid, for it is of a striped and figured pattern, and is de-
scribed as resembling the fine grass-woven cloth of the
South Sea, is worn over the left shoulder and under the
right arm, leaving the latter free for action. Other figures
are clad in fringed shirts, or tunics of the same material
as the plaid, reminding one of the command given unto
Moses in the fifteenth chapter of Numbers : " Speak unto
the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them
fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their
MAN, MANNEBB, AND A STOET. 19
generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the
borders a ribbon of blue." And again, in Deuteronomy :
" Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of
thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself:" and it will
be remembered that a formal observance of this command
gave ground for censure, when the Jews were, at a later
period, reproached because " all their works they do for to
be seen of men ; they make broad their phylacteries, and
enlarge the borders of their garments."
The garments in the paintings at Beni Hassan are of the
very simplest construction. The Hebrew maker of them
could hardly have committed the trifling mistake made by
Andrew Fern, the weather-brained tailor of Cromarty, who
used, says Hugh Miller, " to do very odd things, especially
when the moon was at the full, and whom the writer re-
members from the circumstance that Andrew fabricated
for him his first jacket, and that though he succeeded in
sewing on one sleeve to the hole at the shoulder, where it
ought to be, he committed the slight mistake of sewing on
the other sleeve to one of the pocket-holes !" There are
no pocket-holes visible in the Jewish garments.
The Jews soon learned to enlarge their fringes. In the
Valley of Bab el Malook, near Thebes, Belzoni discovered
a tomb in which is represented the triumph of Pharaoh
Necho, after the victory over the Jews at Megiddo. The
Jews, among the captives, look very much like High-
landers, with nothing on but kilts kept down about the
knees by leaded bunches of ribbons, a fashion not un-
known to modern Ballerinas, who wear " very thin clothing,
and but little of it." The captives, however, have proba-
bly been stripped of their upper garments, which the con-
querors may be supposed to have sold to the tailors of
Misraim, whereupon to model new fashions for the modish
dwellers by the purple Nile.
The Rabbins had some curious ideas touching the origi-
20 HABITS AND HEN.
nal form of Adam, and the peculiar dress made for Mm and
Eve before the Fall. Bartolozzi, in his ' Bibliotheca Rab-
binica,' notices the tradition that the father of mankind was
originally furnished with a tail, but that it was cut off by
his Maker, because he looked better without it. Another
tradition asserts that, before the fall, Adam and Eve had a
transparent covering, a robe of light, of which remnants
are left to mankind in the nails of the hands and feet.
Let me add, for the sake of those who are fond of adopt-
ing primeval colours, that the original hue of the father of
man is said to have been a bottle-green. "When Stulz fur-
nished Mr. Haynes with his celebrated pea-green coat, the
schneider only made him as closely resembling as he could
to Eliezer the Tanaite, in his bright green gabardine. And
Eliezer if a good patron to tailors, and a wearer of gay
colours, was also one of the most learned of men. It is
said of him, that if all the firmament were changed into
parchment, and the entire ocean into ink, it would not
suffice to write all that he knew ; for he was the author,
among other brief works, of three hundred volumes, solely
upon the subject of sowing cucumbers. Perhaps Stulz
wished to make the wooer of Miss Eoote look as like a
philosopher as possible, for Eliezer was not the only sage
who walked the world in verdant suit. When Amelia
Opie paid her visit to Godwin in Somers' Town, the teacher
of the peoples wore over a fiery crimson waistcoat a bottle-
green coat, the colour of the original man, from whom
Godwin of course very much doubted whether he really
were descended.
The Jews, as rather given to luxury in dress, would have
been excellent patrons of the tailors, but for Christian jea-
lousy. In Spain and Portugal, the rich Hebrews were the
unqualified delight of the most orthodox of tailors who
loved to dress even more than they did to burn them. But
the ultra-pietism of the Queen Eegent at Valladolid, in the
MAN, MANNERS, AND A STOET. 21
year 1412, a year when the prospects of the unfortunate
descendants of Israel were particularly gloomy, put a clog
upon trade, without, in any degree, accelerating religion.
The counsellor of the Queen was Brother Vincent Ferrer,
the inveterate enemy of the Jewish nation. The two to-
gether fulminated a decree, in the name of the infant mo-
narch, Don John, which in substance declared that the Jews
should live apart, and exercise no trade or calling that was
either respectable or profitable. The tailors of Castile
would not have been much troubled at this decree, for
their old customers had saved money enough to make the
fortunes of the entire trade, had it not been for one of the
concluding clauses, which did more injury to Christians
than to Jews. By these clauses Jews were forbidden to
wear cloaks, and were restricted to long robes, of poor ma-
terials, over their clothes. The Jewesses were ordered to
wear common mantles reaching to their feet, and with hoods
to be worn over the head. Disobedience fb these clauses
was to be visited by " the forfeiture of all the clothes they
may have on, to their under garments." An additional
clause fixed against them the canon of a sumptuary law ;
and no tailor dared to supply to a Jew a suit, the cloth
of which cost upwards of thirty maravedis. If the tailor
offended against this decree, the Church admonished him,
but the law scourged the Jew. The first time a Hebrew
donned a suit worth more than the thirty maravedis, he for-
feited the suit, and was sent home in his shirt. For a se-
cond offence, he forfeited his entire wardrobe ; but Justice
kept him warm by administering to him a hundred lashes, vi-
gorously applied by the hand of an executioner, who ima-
gined that the more blood he drew the better Heaven would
be pleased. For a third indulgence in forbidden finery the
Jew was mulcted of all he possessed; "but," says the gra-
cious Queen Eegent, " it is my pleasure that, if the Jews
choose, they may make coats and cloaks of the clothes which
22 HABITS AND MEN.
they now possess." How lucky for Baron Rothschild that
he is not compelled, like his predecessors, to carry his cast-
off clothes to his tailor, and have one new coat made out of
two old garments !
The Persian Jews were as ill-content at having their
tailors' bills regulated by the Government as were those of
the Peninsula. When the Persian Caliphs, who would allow
nobody to be well-dressed but the faithful, closed the col-
leges at Babylon, and expelled the professors, it is said that
nobody wept for the latter so much as the handicraftsmen
who used to adorn their outward persons. Of these ex-
pelled professors, a corsair captured at sea Rabbi Moses,
his handsome wife, and their son, Rabbi Hanoch. On their
way to Cordova, some Tarquinian-like overtures were made
to the lady, who, walking up to her husband, inquired if
those drowned at sea would be resuscitated at the resurrec-
tion ? The Rabbi smiled, and answered with the text :
" The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring
again from the depths of the sea." Thereupon the Hebrew
Lucretia plunged into the waves, and her husband into a
reverie, in which the calmly-pleasant abounded.
The Jews of Cordova redeemed the other captives, and
the first visit of Rabbi pere was to a tailor, of whom he or-
dered an outfit of sackcloth. The honest man was disgusted
with his customer's taste, and valued below cost-price a phi-
losopher who declared that his logic was always more con-
clusive in sackcloth than in habits spun from finer webs.
Attired in his new suit, he entered the Jewish college,
where a learned dispute was being carried on with equal
warmth and obtuseness. A few words from the mean
stranger had an effect like the sun upon a fog, and the pre-
sident quitting his chair, the man in sackcloth was voted
into it by acclamation. The tailor, who had followed out
of curiosity, ran to the captain of the corsair, and told him
that his late captive was a rare man, of whose value he had
MAS', MANNEBS, AKD A STOBY. 23
been ignorant ; and therewith the captain would fain have
had the sale cancelled, but the Caliph of Cordova would not
listen to such a proposition. Hanoch, the son of Moses,
was even more fortunate than his sire, for he espoused a
daughter of the House of Peliag. Hanoch displayed such li-
berality on the occurrence of this union, that for a long time
the corporation of tailors, whom he especially benefited on
this occasion, were accustomed to name one son in their re-
spective families after so liberal a patron of the craft. The
two Jewish households on that day were long celebrated at
the hearths of those who made their dresses. The wedding
feast was held at Zahara, near the city, and not less than
seven hundred Israelites rode thither in costumes that would
have dazzled the Incas. Ask a well-to-do Cordovese tailor
as to the state of his vocation, and, if he has not now
forgotten the once popular legend, he will answer, " It
is almost as flourishing, Sir, as in the days of Hanoch,
whom our predecessors cursed as a Jew, arfQ. blessed as a
customer." It was a neatly cut distinction, and fitted
exactly.
Deformity of principle, as well as deformity of person,
may sometimes be the mother of Fashion. Thus it is stated
by an old French writer, that " the use of great purfles and
slit coates was introduced by wanton women ;" but he adds,
with great unction, that the fashion of these lemans had been
adopted by the princesses and ladies of England ; and with
them he trusts that it will long remain. The same author
shows how a fair lady, by following the fashion thus lightly
set, became the victim of Satan himself. It must be pre-
mised that the author's daughters had been very desirous
of indulging in furred garments, and purfles, and slashed
coats ; and as the father saved himself from a long bill at
the dressmaker's by telling the following story, I calculate
upon the gratitude of all sires similarly beset, if the telling
of it here, and by them to their respective young ladies,
24 HABITS AND MEN.
should be followed by the desired consequences, which I
do not at all anticipate.
A certain knight having lost his wife, and not being at all
sure as to the locality in which her spirit rested, applied to
a devout hermit, who picked up a living by revealing that
sort of secret. In our own days, the Rev. Mr. Godfrey
professes to get at the same mystery by dint of table-turn-
ing. "Well ; the reverend gentleman's ancestor, the hermit,
thought upon the question by going to sleep over it ; and
when he awoke, he informed the knight that he had been,
in a vision, to the tribunal of souls, and that he had there
learned all about the lady in question. He had seen St.
Michael and Lucifer standing opposite each other, and be-
tween them a pair of scales, in one of which was placed the
lady's soul, with its select assortment of good deeds ; and
in the other, all her evil actions. A fiend, with all her gar-
ments and jewellery in his possession, was looking on. The
beam of the balance had not yet made a movement, when
the impetuous St. Michael was about generously to claim
the soul thus weighed. Thereupon Lucifer urbanely re-
marked, that he would take the liberty of informing his
once-esteemed friend of a fact probably unknown to him.
" This woman," said he, "had no less than ten gowns and
as many coats ; and you know as well as I do, my good
Michael, that half the quantity would have sufficed for her
requirements, and would not have been contrary to the
law of G-od."
St. Michael looked rather offended at its being supposed
that he knew anything about women and their gear, and
suggested that too much intercourse with both had been
the ruin of his ex-colleague.
"Fier comme un Archangel" was the commentary of
the deboshed Lucifer, who, according to some old fathers,
tempted Eve in very excellent French. However that
may be, he added, "the value of one of this pretty wan-
MAN, MANNEES, AND A STOET. 25
ton's superfluous gowns or coats would have clothed and
kept forty poor men through a whole winter : and the mere
waste cloth from them would have saved two or three from
perishing. Touche-fille," he said, addressing the fiend who
carried the finery, "throw those traps into the scale." The
fiend obeyed, by casting them in where the lady's bad ac-
tions lay; and straightway down sank that scale, and upward
flew .the beam which bore the soul and its ounce of virtues.
This was done with such a jerk that the soul itself fell into
the outspread arms of Touche-fille, who made off with his
prey, without waiting for further award. Lucifer looked
inquiringly at St. Michael ; but the latter observed, that
though his opponent's aide-de-camp had been somewhat
too hasty, he would not dispute the case any further.
" But what, may I ask, do you intend to do with her ?"
" She shall have a new dress daily, and fancy herself ugly
in all."
" Umph !" said Michael, " you certainly are the most ex-
quisite of torturers."
"And Michael, despite his modesty, does know what most
vexes a woman!"
" Go to ;" whither, the last person addressed had
not time to say. He was interrupted by Lucifer, who re-
marked :
" I have business upon earth. My affairs at home are
well cared for in my absence by a regency."
And so they parted ; and the moral of the tale is, that
luxury in dress tends to lead to the Devil. And though it
be lightly said, it is also truly said. Let us look through
the book of patterns, wherein we may trace the varieties of
costume, its fashion and its follies, and see how what was
irreproachable today becomes ridiculous tomorrow.
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD.
PAET I.
" L'habit est Tine partie integrante de 1'homme ; il agit sur nos sens,
et determine notre jugement." LA. BEUYEEE.
OIJE ancestors, in early days, had what may be called early
ways. They were in no respect superior to New Zealanders
in a savage state. Civilization has however copied some of
O A
their customs, and old ladies who paint their cheeks and
necks are not much further advanced than their ancestors,
who coloured themselves all over, and that not out of vanity.
Straho says that the people in the west of England
shaved their chins, but cherished mustachios, wore black
garments, and carried a stick. This description might
serve for half the gentlemen who are to be seen in Regent
Street and Eotten Eow during the " season." But I sup-
pose one may take the liberty to doubt that the Cradocks
of today really resemble so closely as the description would
seem to warrant, their progenitors the Caradocs of other
times, who " looked like furies," says Strabo, " but were in
fact quiet and inoffensive people."
The early "Welsh bards, we are told, dressed in sky-blue ;
the modern bards of the million are content to breakfast
on it: the British astronomers wore green, which was not in-
dicative of what the colour might have stood for, a verdant
knowledge of the science. When the Komans planted their
conquering eagles on our soil, the old British chieftains
resisted them and their fashions. Tacitus says that it was
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 27
the sons of the chieftains who first adopted the Roman mode;
and no doubt the old gentlemen were disgusted when they
beheld their unpatriotic young heirs wandering about with-
out their Iraccce, and sporting the tunic before whose pre-
sence liberty and trousers had disappeared, but not for ever.
The Saxons brought in their own fashions, and some of
these still prevail ; the smock-frock, for instance, is the old
Saxon tunic without the belt. Such a dress was never
known in Ireland nor in Scotland: the Saxons kept for
whole centuries to a fixed fashion, as may be seen in any
illustrated work on costume. In this respect they were only
less tenacious than the Persians, whose garments passed from
father to son as long as they could hold together. It would
be difficult, I fancy, to persuade any modern young Anglo-
Saxon to draw on the scanc-beorg, or shank-coverers, of his
respected and deceased " governor." It is only the mantles
of our Peers that descend hereditarily upon the shoulders
of succeeding generations ; and some of thesc^mantles look
dingy enough to date their origin from the time when
Henry III. established Tothill-fields Fair, in order to spite
the Londoners. The latter, it will be remembered, were
compelled to close their shops for an entire fortnight during
the holding of the fair in Westminster ; and the man on
Tower Hill who wanted to furnish his outward or inward
person with the smallest article was compelled to resort
for it to the neighbourhood of the Abbey, or to do without
till the fair was raised.
The taste of the Anglo-Saxons was rather of a splendid
character, but sometimes questionable. A lady with blue
hair, for instance, could not have been half so pleasant to
look at as a lady with blue eyes ; though the custom of
dyeing the hair blue was perhaps scarcely more objection-
able than that of the young ladies and gentlemen of Graul,
who washed theirs in a chalky solution, in order to make
it a more fiery red than it had been rendered by nature. I
c 2
28 HABITS AND MEN.
may add that, of the tasteful Anglo-Saxons, the nuns were
the most especially tasteful ; and the gorgeous attire of the
sisters, with other attractions, seems to have stirred the very
hearts of some of the most stony of prelates.
Many of the latter however were rigidly severe in their
censures against the luxurious dressing of lively Saxon
nuns ; hut their objurgations take very much the form of
that delivered by Tartuffe when he handed his kerchief to
Dorine :
" Couvrez ce sein que je ne sqaurais voir :
A de tels objets les yeux sont blesses,
Et cela fait venir de coupables pensees."
Though it be necessary to consider climate and tempera-
ture in the matter of dress, we. have had weather, even in
England, from the severity of which no dress could protect
the wearer. Thus, in the year 851, the winter became so
suddenly cold and inclement, and went on with such increas
ing severity, that clothing afforded no warmth to the frame,
and the people were widely smitten by paralysis. They suf-
fered excruciating anguish in the limbs ; generally the arms
and hands were first seized upon by the disease, and those
limbs usually became altogether withered and useless. The
paralysis respected neither rank, age, nor sex ; the highest
dignitaries of the Church did not escape, though, of course,
they miraculously recovered. The clothiers of the period ap-
pear to have been as much puzzled to discover a material for
useful wear that would meet the contingency, as a modern
tailor would find it difficult to take measure of the pulpy 7
shapeless, boneless being which Professor Whewell, in his
' Plurality of Worlds,' thinks may be existing in Jupiter.
And he has a right to think so; for, on our own earth,
have we not had animals whose bones were on the outside,
and whose inward parts were all of cartilage ? They would
have been pretty playthings for Jupiter's emphatically soft
nymphs and unvertebrated swains !
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 29
If the nuns of the Anglo-Saxon times were given to gor-
geousness, the clergy were not at all uninclined to dan-
dyism. Boniface himself denounced those priests who wore
broad studs and images of worms, as servants of Antichrist.
Garments so adorned are looked upon by the descendants
of this great Anglo-Saxon missionary as the undoubtedly ori-
ginal " M. B. coats."
The Danes introduced fashions that sadly perplexed the
simple tailors of all Anglia. The former, in the days of
their paganism, were attired in garments as black as the
raven which soared on their national standard. When
they came to England they learned to surpass the Anglo-
Saxons themselves in the gaiety of their apparel and man-
ners. They even took to combing their hair once a day ;
became so effeminate as to wash weekly ; and changed their
body-linen, if not as often as they might, still more fre-
quently than was their wont of old. "By these means,"
says old Wallingford, " they pleased the eyes of the women,
and frequently seduced the wives and daughters of the
nobility." Alas, that virtue should not be proof against
even a half- washed seducer !
One of the greatest of the North Sea chieftains derived
his name from his dress, and Eagner Lodbroch means Ralph
Leatherbreeches. The Lethbridges of Somersetshire are
said to be descendants from this worthy. They might go
further in search of an ancestor and fare worse. Lodbroch
delighted in blood and plunder ; wine he drank by the quart ;
wealth he acquired by "right of might;" he believed in
little, and feared even less. A family anxious to assert its
nobility could hardly do better than hold fast by such a
hero. Many a genealogical tree springs from a less illus-
trious root.
The submission with which England received laws of
fashion from France is seen in the circumstance that even
before the Conquest the English imported the " mode"
30 HABITS AND MEN.
from beyond Channel, and universally adopted it. This
was the case both in speech and dress. The Saxon tongue
became as mute at the court of Edward the Confessor as
the Flemish language has around the throne of Leopold
of Belgium. The respectable sires however of the period
did not make themselves so " outlandish" in their garb
as did their sons ; yet when William tumbled on the sands
at Pevensey, half the hostile array prepared to resist his
coming, as well as those who looked on and awaited the
course of events, were familiar with his form of speech
and accustomed to his fashion of dress. The fact that
when William was agitated he invariably occupied himself
in lacing and untying his cloak, is at least as well worth
knowing as that the great Coligny under similar circum-
stances used to insert two or three toothpicks into his
mouth, and there champ them into pulp. Let us add, that
the Normans shaved close and washed thoroughly ; and the
dirty Saxons might have found consolation in the circum-
stance that their throats were cut by cleanly gentlemen.
They were a costly people however, those Normans ;
and they not only ruined the Saxons, but themselves, by
the extravagance of their dress, and the ever-varying fa-
shions to which they bore an alacrity of allegiance. Some
of our wealthiest men of Norman descent, or fancying
themselves to be so, adopt in these days a fashion com-
mon enough in the period of the Norman Kings, wear-
ing a plumed helm on parade for show, and a "wide-
awake" elsewhere for comfort. The Normans even took
the venerated smock-frock of the Saxons, and modifying
it a little, and lining it with fur for the winter, they wore
it as a surcoat over their armour, and called it by the name
of lliaus. Any gentleman therefore who wears a blouse
and a wide-awake may fancy himself, if he please, as being
attired like a Norman knight. Well, in spite of the
strength of his fancy and the sameness of the articles
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 31
in question, lie will be as little like to Norman cavalier
" as I to Hercules."
I have said that the Normans generally were remark-
able for the splendour and variety of their costume ; I may
add that some of the Saxons were in no degree behind
them. There is Becket, for instance, the champion of the
Saxons and advocate of the Commons. When that re-
markably humble man went on his famous progress to
Paris, the rustics observed, as he rode meekly along, that
the king of England must be a marvellous personage
indeed, seeing "that his Lord Chancellor looked more like
a king on his throne than a traveller in the saddle. He
was as stately in dress at home as abroad ; and he never
forgave King Henry for tearing from his shoulders his
splendid new scarlet mantle lined with fur, to fling it to
a shivering beggar at his side. Excellent practical lesson,
it may be observed. Well, it assuredly was all the prac-
tical charity ever evinced by the king, and moreover
it was inappropriate. We all laughed when the angelic
Irving subscribed his gold watch to some benevolent fund ;
and we should feel no particular increase of respect for
our Sovereign and the Lord Primate if they were to stand
at Temple Bar, and the former were to distribute the
wardrobe of the latter among the mendicants who pass
beneath that hideously ridiculous arch.
Foppery in dress was at its height in the reign of
Henry III., when men half-ruined themselves in order
that they might dress in vestments of the magnificent
material called cloth of Baldekins, or of Baldeck, the usually
received term for Babylon. The rich Cyclas of this time
were also named from the locality where the material was
manufactured, a custom common enough, as may be seen
in the names Worsted, Blanket, Cambric, Diaper (d'Tpres),
Bayonet, and many others. The general love of dress, and
the wealth manifested by the grandeur of the latter, made
32 HABITS AND MEN.
Innocent IV. to speak of England as a "garden of de-
lights," and a "truly inexhaustible fountain of riches."
From this fountain his Holiness drank many a draught ;
and they who were compelled to supply it wished it might
choke him. But Innocent made cheap compensation to
England by conferring on it the signal honour of adopt-
ing its old national "wide-awake," and after dyeing it red,
conferring it on his Cardinals. The scarlet wide-awake was
first worn at the Council of Lyons, in 1245. The Car-
dinals did not exhibit their accustomed vigilance when they
permitted the fashion of this covering to glide from that
of the wide-awake into that of the "broad-brim" of the
Society of Friends. But perhaps it is because of its pre-
sent fashion that Mr. Bright, who loves Eussia and hates
the press, has such respect for Home and such welcome
for her aggressions.
""Why do you not wear richer apparel?" once asked a
familiar friend of Edward I. " Because," said the sensible
king, " I cannot be more estimable in fine than 1 am in
simple clothing." If the monarch had only shown as
much sense in other matters, he would have been a more
profitable king to the state, however little beneficial he may
have been to tailors. It was, of course, the fashion now
to be rather simply dressed ; but there were occasional de-
partures from the rule : such as when the young Prince
Edward was invested as a knight, on which occasion the
Temple Gardens were crowded with the young nobility,
his " companions," who assembled there to receive a mag-
nificent distribution of purple robes, fine linen garments,
and mantles woven with gold. The two latter were fur-
nished by the merchant-tailors ; and these, no doubt, blessed
the donor as heartily as the trade would now do, were her
Majesty to assemble the heirs and younger sons of Peers,
have them measured in public, and dressed at her ex-
pense for the benefit of trade. There are many younger
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABBOAD. 33
sons who would be as rejoiced thereat as the tailors them-
selves.
Old Kit Marlowe, and doubtless from good authority,
has graphically described not only Edward the Second, but
that fine gentleman, his favourite Gaveston. Of the latter
he says :
" I have not seen a dapper Jack so brisk ;
He wears a short Italian hooded cloak
Larded with pearl, and in his Tuscan cap
A jewel of more value than the crown."
And of Edward, Mortimer is made to say :
" When wert thou in the field with banner spread ?
But once ; and then thy soldiers march' d like players,
With garish robes, not armour ; and thyself,
Bedaub'd with gold, rode laughing at the rest,
Nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest,
Where women's favours hung like labels down."
If the Norman Kings up to the period of Edward I.
had encouraged a costly extravagance of dress, there was
another Norman habit which had spread among the people
generally, and quite as much to their cost, the wretched
habit of swearing. To that people might well be applied
the assertion, that they were covered with curses as with
a garment. The Saxons were astounded at the variety
and intensity of these oaths. They had not been accus-
tomed to such profanity; but as the conquerors, and par-
ticularly the kings, swore whenever they spoke, why to use
oaths was to put on the air of a conqueror and gentle-
man, and so a species of Norman pride kept oaths in vigour
among the elite of society until a very recent period ; but,
as Mr. Robert Acres remarks, " the best terms will grow
obsolete, and Damns have had their day." How we pro-
gressed through execratory terms until this consummation
was arrived at, is very tersely told in an old epigram of
Sir John Harrington's :
o 3
34 HABITS AND MEN.
" In elder times an ancient custom, was
To swear, in weighty matters, by the mass ;
But when the mass went down, as old men note,
They swore then by the cross of this same groat.
And when the cross was likewise held in scorn,
Then by their faith the common oath was sworn ;
Last, having sworn away all faith and troth,
Only ' G d damn them' is their common oath.
Thus custom kept decorum by gradation,
That losing mass, cross, faith, they find damnation."
Henry I. was surrounded by a crowd of friends, whose
dresses were splendid and whose principles were detest-
able, not to say "devilish." These were the "Effemi-
/
nati." They were like the " mignons " of the French King
Henri, and acquired their appellation from the fact of
dressing nearly after the fashion of women. Their tunics
were deep-sleeved, and their mantles long-trained. The
peaks of their shoes were not only enormously long, but
twisted so as to represent the horns of a ram or the coils
of a serpent. Their peaks, introduced by Fulk, Earl
of Anjou, to conceal his misshapen feet, were stuffed with
tow ; and certainly, were any earl or other gentleman now
to enter a drawing-room thus remarkably shod, he would
himself be taken in tow (if I may be so bold as to say so),
and conveyed before a tribunal de lunatico inquirendo. The
Effeminati, like the French "mignons," wore their hair
long, smooth, and parted in the middle ; and they were not
only unpleasantly unnatural to look at, but were horribly
so in their deeds.
The foreign knights and visitors who came to Windsor
in Edward the First's reign, and brought with them a con-
tinual succession of varying fashions, turned the heads of
the young with delight, and of the old with disgust. Dou-
glas, the monk of Grlastonbury, is especially denunciative
and satirical on this point. He says that in the horrible
variety of costume, " now long, now large, now wide, now
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 35
straight," the style of dress was "destitute and devert
from all honesty of old arraye or good usage." It is all,
he says, " so nagged and knibbed on every side, and all so
shattered and also buttoned, that I with truth shall say,
they seem more like to tormentors or devils in their cloth-
ing, and also in their shoying and other array, than they
seemed to be like men." And the old monk had good
foundation for his complaint ; and the Commons themselves
having, what the Commons now have not, a dread of be-
coming as extravagant as their betters in the article of
dress, actually sought the aid of Parliament. That august
assembly met the complaint by restricting the use of furs
and furls to the royal family and nobles worth one thousand
per annum. Knights and ladies worth four hundred marks
yearly, were permitted to deck themselves in cloths of gold
and silver, and to wear certain jewellery. Poor knights,
squires, and damsels were prohibited from appearing in the
costume of those of higher degree. As fofr the Commons
themselves, they could put on nothing better than un-
adorned woollen cloth ; and if an apprentice or a milliner
had been bold enough to wear a ring on the finger, it was
in peril of a decree that it should be taken off, not the
finger, but the ring, with confiscation of the forbidden
finery.
The consequence was that the Commons, being under
prohibition to put on finery, became smitten with a strong
desire to assume it ; and much did they rejoice when they
were ruled over by so consummate a fop as Richard of Bor-
deaux. All classes were content to do what many classes
joyfully do in our own days, dress beyond their means ;
and we find in old Harding' s ' Chronicle' that not only were
" Yemen and gromes in cloth of silk arrayed,
Sattin and damask, in doublettes and in gownnes,"
but that all this, as well as habits of " cloth of greene and
86 HABITS AND MEN.
scarleteen, cut work and brodwar, was all," as the Chroni-
cler expresses it, "for unpayed ;" that is, was not paid for.
So that very many among us do not so much despise the
wisdom afforded us by the example of our ancestors as
didactic poets and commonplace honest writers falsely
allege them to do. And those ancestors of Eichard the
Second's time were especially given to glorify themselves
in parti-coloured garments of white and red, such being
the colours of the King's livery (as blue and white were
those of John of G-aunt) ; and they who wore these gar-
ments, sometimes of half-a-dozen colours in each, why they
looked, says an old writer, " as though the fire of St. An-
thony, or some such mischance," had cankered and eaten
into half their bodies. The long-toed shoes, held up to the
knee by a chain and hook, were called cracTcowes, the fashion
thereof coming from Cracow in Poland. The not less sig-
nificant name of "devil's receptacles" were given to the
wide sleeves of this reign, for the reason, as the Monk of
Evesham tells us, that whatever was stolen was thrust into
them.
The fashion of clothes has long ceased to mark the posi-
tion of the wearer. On this subject, Fuller says in his
' Church History,' when treating of the time of Edward III.,
that " some had a project that men's clothes might be their
signs to show their birth, degree, or estate, so that the
quality of an unknown person might, at the first sight, be
expounded by his apparel. But this was at once let fall as
impossible : statesmen in all ages, notwithstanding their
several laws to the contrary, being fain to connive at men's
riot in this kind, which maintaineth more poor people than
their charity."
Distinction in dress, it will be remembered, was not al-
lowed by More in his Utopia. "All the island over," he
says, " they make their ( own clothes, without any other dis-
tinction than that which is necessary for marking the dif-
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 37
ference between the two sexes, and the married and un-
married. The fashion never alters ; and as it is not un-
grateful nor uneasy, so it is fitted for their climate, and
calculated both for their summers and winters. Every
family makes their own clothes ; but all among them, women
as well as men, learn one or other of the trades formerly
mentioned." A costume suitable for all conditions of the
seasons, were a consummation that will long be among the
things to be devoutly wished for, and never attained.
It was once the fashion to wear coats, the material for
which had not long before been on the back of the sheep.
For rapidity of work in this way, I know nothing that
can compete with the achievement of Coxeter of Greenham
Mills, near Newbury. He had a couple of South Down
sheep shorn at his factory, at five o'clock in the morning ;
the wool thus produced was put through the usual pro-
cesses ; and by a quarter past six in the evening, it resulted
in a complete damson-coloured coat, which was worn at an
evening party, by Sir John Throckmorton. A wager for a
thousand guineas was won by this feat, with three-quarters
of an hour to spare. The sheep were roasted whole, and
devoured at a splendid banquet. In one day they afforded
comfort to both the inner and outward man.
"We have often been told, that " Beauty, when unadorned,
is adorned the most ;" and there is much truth in that whole-
some apothegm. Beauty indeed needs to be dressed ; but
Prudence should be her handmaiden. In illustration of the
excellence of this counsel, I may quote what happened to
two young ladies and one lover in the days of chivalry.
In those days there lived an old noble, rich in two
daughters, and in nought besides. Of these, he promised
one to a young knight, who was wealthy and idle, and who
strange characteristic of young and gallant knight ! was
well content to be saved the trouble of wooing.
On a certain fine morning the sire made the same an-
38 HABITS AND MEN.
nouncement to his girls which the father of Dinah made to
that now celebrated and unhappy young lady, namely,
the necessity of decking themselves in their most seductive
array, as there was a lover on the road who would dine
with them that day. Now, if the morning was fine, there
was also an eager and a nipping air abroad ; but the elder
of the two damsels, disregarding the temperature, and
thinking only how best to display her slender waist and
graceful shape, put on a "cote hardie;" and in this close-
fitting garment, without an inch of fur to lend it warmth,
she accompanied her sister to the portal, to bid welcome to
the lover, looking for a lady of his love. But that sister
was attired with reference to the condition of the thermo-
meter, if her father had one, which is exceedingly doubtful.
She was warmly clad ; and if her figure was concealed by
her mantle, the result of such covering was, that her young
blood, in circulating, left a rose upon her cheeks, and did
not fix itself, in obstinate stagnation, as in her more airy
sister's case, on the tip of the nose.
Now a red nose is not fascinating ; and the knight's
choice was soon made. He gave his hand to the maiden
who had shown most sense in the choice of attire, and a
very merry wedding was the speedy consequence. As for
what turned up in the way of further results, it was, I
believe, chiefly the nose of the unsuccessful candidate,
which became " retrousse en permanence." The moral of
the tale is respectfully recommended to the notice of all
young ladies who seek to catch ardent knights on wintry
mornings.
If the men in the days of Edward III. wore " tails be-
hind," as well as beards before, the ladies were not behind
them in extravagance in tails ; and indeed in other mat-
ters. For a lady to ride on a palfrey, and not on a charger,
would have been considered as derogatory as for a brides-
maid, in our days, to "spoil her prospects" by going to a
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 39
wedding in a one-horse fly. The damsels of this age very
much affected the dress of the men, and we have seen
the same affectation in our own time ; and this fashion was
pushed to such an extreme, that they even carried two tiny
daggers in the pouches of their embroidered zones. Their
head-dress still lingers among the female peasantry of Nor-
mandy, and may be recognized in the species of mitre cap,
of enormous height, from the summit of which streamers
float in the air like pennants from the masts of some " tall
amiral." It may be added, that if, in many respects, the
dresses of the women resembled those of the men, their
deeds, too, were like theirs ; and these were often (like the
dresses) none of the cleanest.
"We will discuss the progress of these matters in a new
chapter.
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD.
PAKT II.
" La modestie, la plus touchante des vertus, est encore la plus sedui-
sante des parures." MAD. COTTIN : MathUde.
THE Jews were undoubtedly an ill-fated people. In Lon-
don, in the olden time, whenever any class had a grievance,
the work of redress was commenced by slaying the He-
brews. In the reign of Henry III. the municipality of
London and a portion of the nobility were dreadfully in-
censed against Queen Eleanor ; and to show their indig-
nation, they not only plundered and murdered scores of
common Israelites, but the City Marshal and Baron Fitz-
John repaired to the residence of Kok ben Abraham, the
wealthiest Hebrew in the city, where the noble lord ran
his sword through the body of the child of the synagogue,
laughing the while as if the jest were a good one. . Cer-
tainly, this was a strange method of showing a political
bias ; and it would be no jest now if Lord Winchelsea, for
instance, angry at the desire of the Crown to admit
Jews into Parliament, were to rush down to the city and
plunge his paper-cutter into the diaphragm of poor Baron
Eothschild.
In the case above alluded to, not only were some four
hundred of the devoted race robbed and killed, but the
mob, satiated with savagery, determined to wind up their
well-spent evening with a frolic. Accordingly they turned
out of their beds all the Jews, of various ages and both
sexes, and compelled them to walk the streets throughout
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 41
the entire night, with nothing on but their " bed-gowns."
This was scant dress enough in those times, and there was
no active police to afford the victims protection. I notice
this incident, because it comes fairly under the head of
costume. I think, moreover, that all the police in the city
at the present time would be puzzled what to do, were the
last night of an election, returning " Sir Solomon" at the
head of the poll, to be signalled out by a riot, the climax of
which presented all the Levys, G-oldschmidts, Isaacs, and
Marx, of " Simmery Axe," wives and husbands, sons and
daughters, compulsorily parading through Cheapside in
their night-gear. Between the blushes of Miss Tryphena
Levy, and the indignation of Mr. Penuel Isaacs her ad-
mirer, the gallant and loud-laughing Division X. would
hardly know which victim to succour first. Such a cortege
however would probably bring into fashion the " bonnets de
nuit a la Juive."
Our gallant knights of old thought it no degradation to
receive clothes at the hands of the king. "When Henry IV.
dubbed some four dozen the day before his coronation, he
made presents to all of long green coats, with tight sleeves,
furred, and verdant hoods : the cavaliers must have looked
like cucumbers. The sumptuary laws of this reign had this
additional severity in them, that they decreed imprisonment
during the King's pleasure against any tailor who should
dare to make for a commoner a costume above his degree.
The tailors, like wise men, did not ask their customers
whether they were gentle or simple ; and burghers dressed
as before, more splendidly than barons.
There was this difference between the two wretched
monarchs, John and Bichard III. John was curious about
his wife's dress, and careless touching his own; whereas
Richard (who was not half so bad as history and Mr. C.
Kean represent him) was perhaps the most superbly royal
dandy that ever sat on an English throne : George IV. was
42 HABITS OF MEN.
the mere Dandini to that Prince Ramiro. Henry VII.,
again, was utterly void of taste, and seems to have wanted
a nurse more than a valet.
The author of the 'Boke of Kervynge' says to the
"proper officer" of this king, in a sort of advice to ser-
vants, " Warme your soveregne his petticotte, his doublet,
and his stomacher, and then put on hys hozen, and then
hys schose or slyppers ; then stryten up hys hozen mannerly,
tye them up, and lace his doublet hole by hole."
We have an illustration of the national feeling with regard
to dress in Henry VIII.'s time, in the story of Drake, the
cordwainer.
John Drake, the Norwich shoemaker, was resolved to
dress, for once, like a knight ; and accordingly he betook
himself to Sir Philip Calthrop's tailor, and seeing some fine
French tawney cloth lying there, which the cavalier had
sent to have made into a gown, gentlemen then, as now,
it seems, sometimes found "their own materials," the
aspiring Crispin ordered a gown of the same stuff" and
fashion. The knight, on calling at the tailor's, saw the
two parcels of "materials," and inquired as to the pro-
prietary of the second. "The stuff"," said the master, "is
John Drake's, the Norwich shoemaker, who will have a
gown of the same fashion as your valiant worship." " Will
he so?" asked proud Sir Philip; " then fashion mine as
full of cuts as thy shears can make it, and let the two be
alike, as ordered." He was obeyed; but when John Drake
looked wonderingly upon his aristocratic garment, and saw
the peculiar mode thereof, and was moreover told the reason
there/or, he rubbed his bullet-head vexedly, and remarked,
" By my latchet, an it be so John Drake will never ask for
gentleman's fashion again."
I have spoken in my ' Table Traits' of how a French knight
gained a livelihood by making salads ; I may notice here
that a Flemish frau, Dingham van der Plafze, did the same
ADONIS AT HOME ATTD ABEOAD. 43
by starching ruffs in London, in Queen Elizabeth's time.
She gave lessons to the nobility at four or five pounds the
course for each pupil, and an additional pound for showing
them how to make the starch. The nobility of course
patronized her ; being a foreigner, the duchesses accounted
her " divine." People of the commonalty, with as much
wisdom, esteemed her as a devil ; and starch itself was looked
upon as a sort of devil's broth. The women who wore ruffs
were looked upon as anything but respectable ; and the men
who placed around the neck the " monstrous ruff, of twelve,
yea sixteen, lengths apiece, set three or four times double,"
were accounted of as having made " three steps and a half
to the gallows."
James I., and his subjects who wished to clothe themselves
loyally, wore stupendous breeches. Of course the " honour-
able gentlemen" of the House of Commons were necessarily
followers of the fashion. But it led to inconveniences in
the course of their senatorial duties. It was an old mode
revived ; and at an earlier day, when these nether garments
were ample enough to have covered the lower man of
Boanerges, the comfort of the popular representatives was
thus cared for : " Over the seats in the parliament-house,
there were certain holes, some two inches square, in the
walls, in which were placed posts to uphold a scaffold round
about the house within, for them to sit upon who used the
wearing of great breeches stuffed with hair like wool-sacks,
which fashion being left the eighth year of Elizabeth, the
scaffolds were taken down, and never since put up." So
says Strutt ; but doubtless the comforts of the members
were not less cared for when the old fashion again prevailed.
The honourable gentlemen must have looked as if they were
worshipping Cloacina rather than propitiating the god of
Eloquence.
" When Sir Peter Wych," says Bulwer, in his ' Pedigree
of an English Gallant,' " was sent ambassador to the Grand
44 HABITS AND MEN.
Seigneur, from James I., his lady accompanied him to Con-
stantinople, and the Sultaness having heard much of her,
desired to see her ; whereupon Lady Wych, attended by
her waiting-women, all of them dressed in their great var-
dingales, which was the court dress of the English ladies
of that time, waited upon her highness. The Sultaness
received her visitors with great respect ; but, struck with
the extraordinary extension of the hips of the whole party,
seriously inquired if that shape was peculiar to the natural
formation of Englishwomen ; and Lady Wych was obliged
to explain the whole mystery of the dress, in order to con-
vince her that she and her companions were not really so
deformed as they appeared to be." Lady Wych probably
did not look more astounding to the Turks than the Mar-
chioness of Londonderry did to those of some thirty years
ago, when she traversed the courts of the Sultan's palace in
the full undress of a lady of the " Regent's Drawing Room."
Both these ladies were ambassadresses, and they remind me
of the English nobleman in the reign of Anne, who was
informed that he had been appointed representative of his
sovereign at the court of the Sultan. " Oh !" he exclaimed,
" I can never undertake it, I should look so absurd and
awkward in women's clothes !" He seriously thought that
to represent his mistress he must be dressed as she was !
But I shall say more of Anne hereafter. I have here to
/
exhibit Oliver ; Charles, as we all know, was a gentleman,
at all events in dress. In that respect Cromwell differed
from him.
" The first time that I ever took notice of Oliver Crom-
well," says Sir Philip "Warwick, " was in the beginning of
the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I vainly
thought myself a courtly young gentleman, for we courtiers
valued ourselves much upon our good clothes. I came one
morning into the house well clad, and perceived a gentle-
man speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled,
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 45
for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to have been
made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain, and
not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood
upon his little band, which was not much larger than his
collar. His hat was without a hatband ; his stature was of
good size ; his sword stuck close to his side." Altogether
it is clear that Oliver was a trifle slovenly, and sometimes
unsteady enough of hand to cut himself when shaving.
About the year 1660-1, we find our old friend Mr. Pepys
gradually soaring in the sky of fashion. He had been con-
tent with camlet, then he gets him a suit of cloth with
broad skirts, and adds the unheard-of atrocity of rakish
buckles to his shoes. Subsequently he enshrines his little
person in silk ; ultimately rises to the dignity of a velvet
coat ; and on a " Lord's Day," in February, he writes down
that " this day I first began to go forth in my coate and
sword, as the manner now among gentlemen is." " Among
gentlemen!" quotha; and his sire the tailor was yet alive,
and his cousin Tom Pepys was an honest turner, and sold
mousetraps !
A velvet coat was not for every-day wear by a clerk in
the Admiralty, and Pepys had his by him a full half-year
before he had the heart to surprise the world and gratify
himself by the wearing of it. Nor could Peers walk every
day in velvet and embroidery in Coleman-street, seeing
that the cost of a suit was not under 200. They were
content to go occasionally like the King at the Council
Board in a plain common riding-suit and a velvet cap ;
not half so fine as the livery of Pepys' s own boy, " which
is very handsome, and I do think to keep the black and
gold lace upon grey, being the colour of my arms, for ever."
The " colour of his arms!" This reminds me of the re-
joinder of Russell, the porter at the old Piazza, who, on
being asked if his coat-of-arms was the same as that of
the Duke of Bedford, replied that as for their arms they
46 HABITS AND HEN.
might be pretty well alike, but that there was a deal of dif-
ference between their coats !
Pepys was however as proud as a popinjay, as the manner
then among gentlemen was ; and his man "Will imitated his
master. Tel maitre, tel valet. See what he says of an oc-
currence which he notices on " Lord's Day," June 8, 1662.
" Home, and observe my man Will to walk with his cloak
flung over his shoulder, which, whether it was that he
might not be seen to walk along with the footboy, I knew
not, but I was vexed at it ; and coming home, and after
prayers, I did ask him where he learned that immodest
garb ; and he answered me that it was not immodest, or
some such slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes
on the eares, which I never did before." But the trans-
gressor forgot his fault, in his gratification a few Sundays
after in going to church with his wife, " who this day put
on her green petticoate of flowred sattin, with the white
and black gimp lace of her own putting on, which is very
pretty." I fear that our ancestors thought as much upon
matters of dress at church as any of their descendants. To
what an extent this feeling was carried may be seen in the
case of Pepys, who, seeing Captain Holmes in his pew in a
new gold-laced suit, was so chagrined that a disquisition
upon damnation failed to put him into spirits. The feel-
ings of both husband and wife were very sensitive touching
costume ; for does he not tell us, on one occasion, that on a
certain visit being paid them, they " were ashamed that she
should be seen in a taffeta gown when all the world wears
moyre" ?
The gentleman's eyes indeed had just been regaled by
a sight of the "Eussian Embassador," "in the richest
suit for pearl and tissue that ever I did see." The envoy
appears to have been an exceedingly well-dressed barba-
rian ; and the Muscovite officials of our own day are in no
respect behind him. Eelony and mendacity would seem
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 47
to be accounted of as peches mignons by those gentlemen
who wear polished boots and profess honest principles, with
coats like Count d'Orsay's, and hearts beneath them like
Jack Sheppard's. After all, the pearl and tissue of the
E.USS was not half so tasteful as Lord Sandwich's " gold-
buttoned suit, as the mode is;" and Pepys took to the
fashion, buying fine clothes, and half afraid to wear them,
yet rejoicing that he is not now " for want of them, forced
to sneak like a beggar." A camlet suit for common wear
then cost him four-and-twenty pounds ! But Pepys had
fits of extravagance as well as economy. The former how-
ever were generally born of patriotism : witness his buying
" a coloured silk ferrandin suit, for joy of the good news we
have lately had of our victory over the Dutch."
About the time above specified, the Court of Spain was
remarkable for its gravity of dress. The king and grandees
wore simple mantles of Colchester baize; and in winter,
the mantles of the senoras were of no more^costly material
than white flannel. Thereupon English and Dutch handi-
craftsmen repaired to Madrid, in order to establish a manu-
factory of these articles. The men engaged were sober
religious men ; and they had with them Psalters and Testa-
ments, and they were given to be glad in spiritual songs
and to solace their weariness with a refreshing draught
from the Gospels. Thereupon the Inquisition fell upon
them, destroyed their houses, and imprisoned the work-
men. Had these been Atheists, the " Holy Office" would
not have molested them in their manufactory of baizes and
flannels ; but as they dared to worship God in sincerity of
heart and independence of mind, the Cahills and Wisemans
of the pure* and enlightened Peninsula ruined them in bo-
dily estate, and sent their souls to Gehenna.
Louis XIV. was quite as arbitrary and absurd on a
matter of fashion. Charles II. of England was the in-
ventor of the "vest dress." It consisted of a long cassock
48 HABITS AND MEN.
which fitted close to the body, of black cloth, " pinked" with
white silk under it, and a coat over all ; the legs were ruf-
fled with black ribbon, like a pigeon's leg; and the white
silk piercing the black made the wearers look, as Charles
himself confessed, very much like magpies. But all the world
put it on, because it had been fashioned by a monarch ; and
gay men thought it exquisite, and grave men pronounced it
" comely and manly." Charles declared he would never
alter it, while his courtiers " gave him gold by way of
wagers, that he would not persist in his resolution." Louis
XIV. showed his contempt for the new mode and the
maker of it, by ordering all his footmen to be put into
vests. This caused great indignation in England, but it
had a marked effect in another way : for Charles and our
aristocracy, not caring to look like French footmen, soon
abandoned the new costume.
This reminds me of a foolish interference of Louis XVI.
in a matter of dress. In the days of our grandfathers there
was nothing so fashionable for summer wear as nankeen.
No gentleman would be seen abroad or at home in a dress
of which this material did not go to the making of a portion ;
and as we ever fixed the fashion on questions of male cos-
tume, the mode was adopted in France, and English nan-
keens threatened to drive aD French manufactured articles
of summer wear out of the market. The king however
surmounted the difficulty : he ordered all the executioners
and their assistants to perform their terrible office in no
other dress but one of nankeen. This rendered the material
"infamous;" and many a man who deserved to be hanged,
discarded the suit because a similar one was worn by the
man who did the hanging. So Mrs. Turner, the poisoner,
being executed in the reign of James I. in a yellow starched
ruff, put to death the fashion of wearing them.
Picturesqueness of costume went out with chivalry ; and
few things could be uglier than an Englishman of James
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD. 49
the Second's or of William and Mary's days, except an
Englishman of our own tight and buttoned period.
A hundred years ago it would have been unsafe to have
sold a plaid waistcoat in either B/ag Fair or Houndsditch.
In 1752 Mr. Thornton said in the House of Commons, that
"he believed it true, plaid waistcoats had been worn by
some wrong heads in the country ; but in the parts where
he lived he saw no occasion for an army to correct them"
(he was speaking against a standing army), " for some that
had attempted to wear them had been heartily thrashed for
doing so." In the same year it is worthy of remark that
we were exporting gold and silver bullion to the Continent ;
not indeed at the rate at which we are now importing it,
especially the former, but still in quantities that seem almost
incredible. The metal-import question as it stood then ex-
cites a smile in those who read it now. For example, among
the current news given by our juvenile friend, Sylvanus
Urban, in his volume for 1752, we learn "that " a parcel of
waistcoats embroidered with foreign gold and silver (which
were lately seized at a tailor's house, who must pay the pe-
nalty of 100, pursuant to Act of Parliament), were publicly
burnt in presence of the custom-house officers and others."
The steeple head-dresses of Anne and the first George's
days came under the notice of Addison, in the ' Spectator.'
He compares them with the commodes, or towers, of his
time. Speaking of the former, he tells us that the women
would have carried their head-structures much higher had it
not been for the preaching of a monk named Concete. The
good and zealous man preached with more effect than Row-
land Hill did, when he inveighed from the pulpit against
Mrs. Hill's top-knots. So logically did he prove that
steeple head-dresses were devices of the devil, that they who
wore them were the devil's daughters, and that after this
life the everlasting home of the latter would be with their
father, that the ladies, in a fit of religious enthusiasm, cast
D
50 HABITS AND MEN.
off the denounced decorations during the summer, and made
a bonfire of them after it was over. It must have been a
pretty fire in which pride was burned, for the congregation
amounted to something like ten thousand women, with as
many male hearers ; from which it is to be supposed that
the preaching took place in the open air. If only half the
ladies committed their caps to the flames, it was, no doubt,
a glad sight to the makers of the caps. They were sure
that if fashion went out in one blaze, it would rise
phrenix-like from the flames of that fire or another. For a
time however, these exaggerated head-dresses were excom-
municated ; and it was as unsafe for a lady to appear in one
in public, as it would be for a lady to make a tour through
the liberty of Dublin on the 12th of July, clad entirely
in materials of Orange hue, and singing at the top of her
voice the exasperating song of ' Boyne Water.' She would
assuredly be pelted, as they were pelted by the religious and
unfashionable rabble, who, years ago, if they could tolerate
sin, were shocked at the sight of tall gay caps, which had
been denounced by a short grave friar. But the milliners
had not long to wait unemployed. As soon as the monk
had turned his back, the needlewomen were again set to
work; and "countless 'prentices expired" in the efforts
made to execute the orders. " The women," says Mon-
sieur Paradin, " who had, like snails in a fright, drawn in
their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was
over."
When Walpole had been to King George the Second's
Levee and Drawing-room, in 1742, he wrote of what he wit-
nessed in this lively fashion . " There were so many new
faces that I scarce knew where I was ; I should have taken
it for Carleton House, or my Lady Mayoress's visiting day,
only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as
admitted to see the King dine in public. 'Tis quite ridi-
culous to see the numbers of old ladies, who, from having
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABEOAD.
been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty
years ; out they come, in all the accoutrements that were
in use in Queen Anne's days. Then the joy and awkward
jollity of them is inexpressible. They titter, and wherever
you meet them, they are always going to court, and looking
at their watches an hour before the time. I met several
on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make
clothes), and they were dressed in all the colours of the
rainbow : they seem to have said to themselves twenty years
ago, ' Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink
and silver, or a blue and silver ;' and they keep their reso-
lution."
Walpole is quite right in designating the gaiety of the
women as an awkward jollity. Rough enjoyment was a
fashion at this time with the fair. Mrs. Sherwood, in her
pleasant Autobiography, adverts to this subject in speaking
of her mother's early days, when undignified amusements
were not declined by ladies of any age. Oifc of these she
describes as consisting of the following sort of violent fun.
A large strong table-cloth was spread on the upper steps of
the staircase, and upon this cloth the ladies inclined to the
frolic seated themselves in rows upon the steps. Then the
gentlemen, or the men, took hold of the lower end of the
cloth, attempting to pull it downstairs ; the ladies resisted
this with all their might, and the greater the number of
these delicate creatures the longer the struggle was pro-
tracted. The contest, however, invariably ended by the
cloth and the ladies being pulled down to the bottom of the
stairs, when everything was found bruised, except modesty.
' High Life below Stairs ' could hardly have been too ram-
pant in its exposition, if it really reflected what was going
on above. We can hardly realize the matter. We hardly
do so in merely fancying we see good Lord Shaffcesbury
Admiral Grambier, Baptist Noel, and Dr. M'Neil engaged in
settling Miss Martineau, Catherine Sinclair, the " Authoress
D2
52 HABITS AND MEN.
of Amy Herbert," and Mrs. Fry on a table-cloth upon the
stairs, and hauling them down in a heap to the bottom.
It would be highly indecorous ; but, I am almost ashamed to
say, I should like to see it.
In 1748 George II. happened to see that gallant French
equestrian, the Duchess of Bedford, on horseback, in a
riding-habit of blue turned up with white. At that time
there was a discussion on foot, touching a general uniform
for the navy : the appearance of the Duchess settled the
question. George II. was so delighted with her Grace's
appearance, that he commanded the adoption of those co-
lours ; and that accounts perhaps for the fact, that sailors
on a spree are ever given to getting upon horseback, where
they do not at all look like the Duchess whose colours they
wear.
Taste was undoubtedly terribly perverted in this century.
Some ladies took their footmen with them into their box at
the play; others married actors, and their noble fathers de-
clared they would have more willingly pardoned their daugh-
ters had they married lacqueys rather than players. A
daughter of the Earl of Abingdon married Gallini the bal-
let-master, of whom George III. made a "Sir John"; and
Lady Harriet Wentworth did actually commit the madness
of marrying her footman, a madness that had much method
in it. This lady, the daughter of Lord Buckingham, trans-
acted this matter in the most business-like way imaginable.
She settled a hundred a year for life on her husband, but
directed her whole fortune besides to pass to her children,
should she have any ; otherwise, to her own family. She
moreover " provided for a separation, and ensured the same
pin-money to Damon, in case they part." She gave away
all her fine clothes, and surrendered her titles : " linen and
gowns," she said, " were properest for a footman's wife ;"
and she went to her husband's family in Ireland as plain
Mrs. Henrietta Sturgeon.
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 53
It is characteristic of the manners of this period, that Lady
Harriet AVentworth, in marrying her footman, was not con-
sidered as having so terribly deroge as Lady Susan Fox, Lord
Ilchester's daughter, who in the same year, 1764, married
O'Brien the actor, a man well to do, and who owned a villa
at Dunstable. The actor had contrived something of the
spirit of farce in carrying out his plot. He succeeded so
well in imitating the handwriting of Lady Susan's dearest
friend, Lady Sarah Bunbury, that Lord Ilchester delivered
the letters to his daughter with his own hand, and without
suspicion. The couple used to meet at Miss Bead's, the
artist ; that is, Catherine Bead, who painted whole bevies
of our grandmothers, and whose portraits of young Queen
Charlotte and of that dreadful woman Mrs. Macauley
(represented as a Boman matron weeping over the lost
liberties of her country) were the delight of both connois-
seurs and amateurs.
The meetings of the lovers became known" to the lady's
proud sire, and terrible was the scene which ensued between
the " pere noble" and the " ingenue." The latter however
promised to break off all intercourse, provided she were per-
mitted to take one last farewell. She waited a day or two,
till she was of age ; and then, " instead of being under lock
and key in the country, walked downstairs, took her foot-
man, said she was going to breakfast with Lady Sarah, but
would call at Miss Bead's ; in the street, pretended to recol-
lect a particular cap in which she was to be drawn ; sent the
footman back for it, whipped into a hackney chair, was mar-
ried at Covent G-arden Church, and set out for Mr. O'Brien's
villa at Dunstable."
This marriage was, as I have said, thought worse of than
if the bridegroom had been a lacquey. The latter appear to
have been in singular esteem, dead or living. Thus we read
that the Duchess of Douglas, in 1765, having lost a fa-
vourite footman rather suddenly in Paris, she had him em-
54< HABITS ANT> MEN.
balmed, and went to England, with the body of " Jeames"
tied on in front of her chaise. " A droll way of being chief
mourner," says "Walpole, who adds some droll things upon
the English whom he encountered in journeying through
France. "When half a mile from Amiens, he met a coach
and four with an equipage of French, and a lady in pea-
green and silver, a smart hat and feather, and two suivantes.
"My reason told me," says the lively Horace, "it was the
Archbishop's concubine; but luckily my heart whispered
that it was Lady Mary Coke. I jumped out of my chaise,
fell on my knees, and said my first Ave Maria, gratia
plena!"
The esteem of the ladies for their liveried servitors does
not appear to have been in all cases reciprocal, if we may
believe a circumstance which took place at Leicester House,
the residence of the Prince of "Wales, in 1743, when one of
his Eoyal Highness' s coachmen, who used to drive the maids
of honour, was so sick of them, that he left his son three
hundred pounds upon condition that he never married a
maid of honour !
There was laxity both of manners and dress as time went
on ; and as we were an ill-dressed, so were we an ill- washed
people. In the latter half of the last century we were dis-
tinguished as the only people in Europe who sat down to
dinner without "dressing" or washing of hands. Indeed
we were for a long time "not at all particular."
Fashions, cleanly or otherwise, often come by the clever
exercise of wit. Thus the Eussian confraternity made little
fortunes through a well-timed joke perpetrated by Count
Eostopchin. And the joke was cut after the following fa-
shion. The Emperor Paul had an undisguised contempt
for Eussian princes, and loved to lower their dignity. He
was one day surrounded by a glittering crowd of them, at-
tired in gold lace and dirty shirts, when he carelessly asked
his favourite Count Eostopchin, how it happened that he
ADOiaS AT HOME AND ABBOAD. 55
had never gained the slight distinction of being created a
prince. ""Well, your Majesty," said the Count, "it arises
entirely from the circumstance that my ancestors, who were
originally Tartars, came to settle in Russia just as winter
was setting in." " And what of that ? " asked Paul. " Why,"
answered the Count, " whenever a Tartar chief appeared at
court for the first time, the sovereign left it to his option
either to be made a prince or to receive the gift of a pelisse.
Now as it was hard midwinter when my grandfather arrived
at court, he had sense enough to prefer the pelisse to the
princeship." This satire gave the fashion to the Rostopchin
cloaks, of which our grandfathers who travelled in Russia
used to tell long stories, that were not half so good as Ros-
topchin' s brief wit.
Here was a fashion arising from a joke ; but they have
been as often "set" by very serious causes. Some two
hundred and fifty years ago, the prevailing colour in all
dresses was that shade of brown called tbfc " couleur Isa-
belle," and this was its origin. A short time after the siege
of Ostend commenced in 1601, Isabella Eugenia, Grouver-
nante of the Netherlands, incensed at the obstinate bravery
of the defenders, is said to have made a vow that she would
not change her chemise till the town surrendered. It was
a marvellously inconvenient vow, for the siege, according
to the precise historians thereof, lasted three years, three
months, three weeks, three days, and three hours ; and her
highness's garment had wonderfully changed its colour be-
fore twelve months of the time had expired. The ladies
and gentlemen of the court resolved to keep their mistress
in countenance, and after a struggle between their loyalty
and their cleanliness, they hit upon the compromising ex-
pedient of wearing dresses of the presumed colour finally
attained by the garment which clung to the Imperial Arch-
duchess by force of religious obstinacy and something else.
Mrs. Sherwood offers us, in her posthumous ' Life,' a fair
56 HABITS AND MEN.
picture of the fashion and simplicity of the good old coun-
try rector in the last century, as regards the adorning of
the outer man. Her father, the Eev. Dr. Butt, was Eector
of Kidderminster ; he is the hero of the story, which Mrs.
Sherwood shall tell herself.
" My father was invited to dine at Lord Stamford's, at his
seat at Enville, not very distant from Kidderminster.
" It was the custom, when he was to go out, for some
competent person to arrange his best cloth suit on a sofa in
his study, his linen and stockings being in a wardrobe in
the same room. On this day he was very much engaged in
writing. However, thinking that he would be quite pre-
pared when apprised that John and the horses were ready,
he laid down his pen at an early hour, and dressed himself,
laying his old black suit, neatly folded, as was his wont, on
the sofa, from whence he had taken the best one ; this being
done, to make the best of his time, he sat down to write
again, till admonished that the horses were waiting. ' Bless
me !' he cried, ' and I not dressed !' and he hurried himself
to put on again fresh linen and another pair of silk stock-
ings, whilst, as his old coat and waistcoat, which lay where
the new ones ought to have been, came most naturally to
hand, they were put on, and a great coat over all concealed
the mischief from John and my mother ; and away he drove,
reaching Enville but a little time before dinner. My father
happened to know Lord Stamford's butler, an old and valued
servant ; and as he stopped in the hall to take off his great
coat, Mr. Johnson, having looked hard at his attire, said,
' My dear Sir, you have a large hole in your elbow, and the
white lining is visible.' ' Indeed ! ' said my father ; ' how
can that be ?' and, after some reflection, he made out the
truth as it really had happened. ' Well ! ' said Mr. Johnson,
not a little amazed with the story, ' come to my room, and
we will see what is to be done.' So he took my father, who
was in high glee at the joke, into his own precincts, and
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 57
brushed him, and inked his elbow, and put him into better
order than the case at first seemed possible (sic) . When all
was complete, he said, ' Now, Sir, go into the drawing-room ;
set a good face on the matter ; say not a word on the sub-
ject ; and my life for it, not a lady or gentleman will find
you out.' My father promised to be vastly prudent ; and as
he was always equally at home in every company, on the
principle of feeling that every man was his brother, he was
not in the least disturbed by the consciousness of his old
coat and inked elbow. Thus everything went on prosper-
ously until dinner was nearly over. My dear father, having
probably, as usual, found the means of putting everybody
in good humour about him, he turned towards the butler,
and said, 'Johnson, it must not be lost!' The good man
frowned and shook his head, but all in vain. ' It is much
too good, Johnson,' he added ; ' though you are ever so an-
gry with me, I must tell it.' And then out came the whole
story, to the great delight of the whole nobl party present,
and to the lasting gratification of my father himself; for
he never failed to be highly pleased whenever he told the
story ; and it was no small addition to the tale, to tell of
the scolding he got, before he came away, from the honest
butler, whose punctilio he had most barbarously wounded."
Since the beginning of the present century, the laws of
fashion have been more stringent, those of taste ever exe-
crable. Taste, in its true sense, and as applied to costume,
has never of late been
" The admiration
Of this short-coated population,
This sew'd-up race, this button' d nation,
Who, while they boast their laws so free,
Leave not one limb at liberty ;
But lire, with all their lordly speeches,
The slaves of buttons and tight breeches."
Even George IV. and his favourites could not bless or
curse the nation with a taste for dress. After all, we are
D3
58 HABITS AND MEK.
better off in that respect than the Italians of the last cen-
tury, who were accustomed to walk abroad without hats,
and with parasols and fans ; and we do not desire to see
Kensington Gardens like that at Schesmedscher, near Bu-
charest, of the figures on which gay stage the correspondent
of the 'Daily News' thus graphically speaks:
" From three o'clock in the afternoon till an hour after
sunset the place is crowded with boyards, boyardines, and
the sons and daughters of the same, shopkeepers, peasants,
gipsies, officers, and cadets, without any distinction of rank,
but all dressed regardless of expense, and swaggering in
thoroughly peacock pride. We have matter-of-fact people,
practical people, go-ahead people, ingenious people, etc., but
without exception this is the 'dressiest' people of Europe.
To see the manner in which the young people fig themselves
out here, one might imagine that millinery, hosiery, and
tailors' goods were a profitable investment of capital. When
one has been awhile in the East one generally ceases to won-
der at varieties of costume ; but the beau monde of Bucha-
rest in holiday attire might well rouse the most nonchalant
or phlegmatic into surprise and attention. Fashions of dress
seldom remain long in one's memory. The man who this
year enters the Park with a terribly broad-brimmed hat does
not remember for a moment that twelve months previously
he would have been miserable had he worn one with a brim
more than an eighth of an inch wide. It needs engravings
to call up really vivid recollections of what one's-self, as well
as every one else, wore ten, twenty, or thirty years ago ; and
Bucharest recalls very vividly a certain class of engravings.
Every one is familiar with those splendid works of art which
represent his Majesty George III. reviewing the Middlesex
Volunteers in Hyde Park, the Pump Boom in Bath, Cha-
ring-cross at the period of the erection of Nelson's Column,
or any other remarkable scene as it appeared in the days of
that illustrious individual, Mr. Brummell. Your readers well
ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD. 59
remember the broad-crowned Caroline hats, the short- waisted
coats, the long- tailed surtouts, the 'pumps' and Hessian
boots, in which fashionables strutted at that period. All
this, and more, is to be seen here. Young men walk about
in sky-blue cutaway coats with brass buttons and shock-
ingly short skirts, trousers almost as tight as the ancient
pantaloons, and cream-coloured kid gloves. Others appear
on promenade with coats whose tails descend to their heels,
and others again in all the brilliancy of the latest Paris
fashions. The contrast and melange are curious and infi-
nitely amusing, and the display of jewellery is immense.
In short, in London I would take the proudest man in the
place for a linendraper's shopman in his Sunday clothes. It
is in the article of gloves however that most extravagance
is displayed. White or cream-coloured is the colour de ri-
guewr. Present yourself to a "Wallachian lady to pay a
visit, with your hands cased in anything more durable, and
you excite as great a sensation as if you waHted into a Lon-
don drawing-room in top-boots. Nor must you go about the
town on foot ; a birtcha, or two-horse open hackney carriage
or caleche, at two zwanzigers an hour, is indispensable. The
vehicles are however generally very good and clean, and the
drivers civil; disputes about fares are unknown."
A portion of the above looks like a scene in a pantomime,
and this induces me to offer a remnant or two of remark
connected with stage costumes.
REMNANTS OF STAGE DRESSES.
" All these presentments
Are only mockeries, and wear false faces."
CHAPMAN'S ' BUSSY D' AMBOIS.'
THERE were few people who wore such a stage-look in the
last century as a country squire in London. Mr. Isaac
Bickerstaff speaks of one whom he had just seen in the
Park. He was of a bulk and stature, we are told, larger
than the ordinary ; " had a red coat, flung open to show a gay
calamanco waistcoat ; his periwig fell in a very considera-
ble batch upon each shoulder ; his arms naturally swung
at an unreasonable distance from his sides, which, with the
advantage of a cane that he brandished in a great variety
of irregular motions, made it unsafe for any one to walk
within several yards of him."
If this was the public dress of a country gentleman,
the town fops had their own costume for their own stage.
There was the dapper gentleman, with his cane hanging to
the fifth button. The smart fop rejoiced in red-heeled
shoes and a hat hung, rather than cocked, upon one side of
the head. The set of "a good periwig made into a twist"
denoted the "fellow of mettle." The coffee-house politi-
cian was known by the moustache of snuff on his upper
lip ; and the lords of acres, as I have just remarked, by
their glaring scarlet coats.
The walks looked like a masquerade scene at a time of
high carnival, and bad taste reigned undisturbed. Refor-
mers however sought to amend it ; and Paul Whitehead,
the tailor-poet, used to say that the taste of the nation
EEMNANTS OF STAGE DEESSES. 61
depended upon Grarrick! Davy's own taste was very ques-
tionable in some respects, for he played Macbeth in the
then costume of a general officer, with scarlet coat, gold
lace, and a tail-wig. All the other actors were attired in
similar dresses ; and if Malcolm, on seeing Eosse at a dis-
tance, exclaimed, "My countryman!" he was quite right
to exclaim, on seeing an English recruiting sergeant ad-
vance, "and yet I know him not!" But Eosse might
have said as much of Malcolm. It was Macklin who first
put Macbeth and all the characters into national costume,
when he played the chief character himself, in 1773 ; and
all the thanks he got for it was in the remark that he
looked like a drunken Scotch piper which he did. But
Macbeth in kilts is nearly as great an anomaly as when
he is in the uniform of a brigadier-general ; and even Mr.
Charles Kean, though he exhibited the Thane short-petti-
coated, seemed glad to get into long clothes and propriety
as soon as the Thane had grown into a king.*
Macklin was a comedian rather than a tragedian, and it
is singular that it is to another comic actor we owe the
correct dressing of Othello. It was in the latter character
that Foote made his first appearance in London, at the
Haymarket, in 1744. He was announced as a "gentle-
man" whose Othello " will be new dressed, after the man-
ner of his country." Mr. "Wright would now play the cha-
racter with about as much propriety and equal success, or
the want of it. Foote is said to have looked very much
like the black boy with the tea-kettle in Hogarth's ' Mar-
riage a la Mode.' " Bring the tea-kettle and lamp !" was
Quin's exclamation, when he saw Grarrick enter, blacked as
Othello. And we may note that, at this time, if a stage-
manager were not acting in any piece represented during
the evening, he was exempted from coming before the audi-
ence, whatever confusion might reign in the house. He was
said to be not dressed. Austin never so much offended
62 HABITS AND MEN.
Garrick as when lie bought a cast-off dress, the exact
counterpart of that worn by Garrick himself in Lothario,
and in which Austin intended to accompany Eoscius on
the stage. It was assumed on purpose to annoy Garrick,
who wanted Austin to increase the number of companions
who should surround the gallant, gay Lothario ; and Aus-
tin's method of obedience made Davy eager to excuse his
humble friend's attendance.
A better illustration of stage costume is afforded us in
the story of (I think) Bensley. He had to play Henry VI.
in ' Eichard the Third.' After the monarch's death in the
early part of the play, he had to appear for a moment or
two as his own ghost, in the fifth act. The spirits were at
that time exhibited en Iwte, by a trap. Now our Henry
was invited out to supper, and being anxious to get there
early, and knowing that little more than his shoulders
would be seen by the public, he retained his black velvet
vest and bugles ; but, discarding the lower part of his stage
costume, he drew on a jaunty pair of new, tight, nankeen
pantaloons, to be as far dressed for his supper company as
he could. When he stood on the trap, he cautioned the
men who turned the crank not to raise him as high as usual,
and of course they promised to obey. But a wicked low
comedian was at hand, whose love of mischief prevailed over
his judgement, and he suddenly applied himself with such
goodwill to the winch that he ran King Henry up right to
a level with the stage ; and moreover gave his majesty such
a jerk, that he was forced to step from the trap on to the
boards, to save himself from falling. The sight of the old
Lancastrian monarch in a costume of two such different
periods, mediaeval above, all nankeen and novelty below,
was destructive of all decorum both before the stage and
upon it. The audience emphatically " split their sides ;"
and as for the tyrant in the tent, he sat bolt upright, and
burst into such an insane roar, that the real Eichard could
BEMNANTS OF STAGE DBESSES. 63
not have looked more frantically hysterical had the de-
ceased Henry actually so visited him in the nankeen spirit.
Mrs. Barry is said to have been a very elegant dresser ;
but, like most of her contemporaries, she was not a very
correct one. Thus, in the ' Unhappy Favourite,' she played
Queen Elizabeth, and, in the scene of the crowning, she
wore the coronation robes of James the Second's queen ;
and Ewell says that she gave the audience a strong idea of
the first-named Queen. Anne of Modena, with the excep-
tion of some small details, was dressed as little like Eliza-
beth as Queen Victoria was dressed like Anne. Royal
dresses in earlier days were not turned to such base uses.
"Wichtlaf, King of the Mercians, gave his purple corona-
tion robes to the monks of courteous Croyland ; and they
wore the same, cut up into copes and chasubles, at the
service of the altar. Goodman, the comedian, who left the
stage towards the close of the seventeenth century, was ori-
ginally a Cambridge student, celebrated for his extravagance
in dress, and for his being expelled for cutting and defacing
the picture of the Duke of Monmouth, Chancellor of the
University. He took to the stage, and was successful;
but his salary was not sufficient to enable him to dress as
he liked, and consequently he was " compelled," as he him-
self said, " to take the air." The light comedian, when the
play was over, mounted a horse, turned highwayman, and
was brought thereby so near to the gallows, that it was
only the sign manual of James II. that saved his neck.
The famous Duchess of Cleveland, " my Duchess," as Good-
man used to call her, ought not to have left her handsome
favourite in such a mean condition,
His condition was so mean, that he and a fellow comedian,
named Griffin, lived in one room, shared the same bed, and
had but one shirt between them. This they wore alter-
nately. It happened that one of them had to pay a visit to
a lady, and wished to wear the shirt out of his turn ; and
64 HABITS AND MEN.
this wish so enraged the other, that a fierce battle ensued,
which ended, like many other battles, in the destruction
of the prize contended for, and the mutual damage of the
combatants.
Jevon was another of the actors of this period who was
noted for his dress and easy manners. The latter were par-
ticularly easy. As an example of it, I may remark that one
day, as he entered a club room, he took a clean napkin
from one of the tables, and wiped therewith his muddy shoes.
The waiter begged him to wait till he fetched a coarser
cloth. " No, thank you, my lad," said Jevon, " this will serve
me well enough. I'm neither proud nor particular."
Wilks the actor was the great ruler in ' matters of dress
about this time. He was exceedingly simple in his tastes
off the stage, but he was the best-dressed man upon it ;
and what he adopted was universally followed. An emi-
nent critic, writing of this actor in 1729, says : " What-
ever he did on the stage, let it be ever so trifling, whe-
ther it consisted in putting on his gloves, or taking out
his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking snuff, every move-
ment was marked by such an ease of breeding and man-
ner, everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of
a gentleman, that it was impossible to consider the cha-
racter he represented in any other light than that of re-
ality ; but what was still more surprising, that person who
could thus delight an audience from the gaiety and spright-
liness of his manner, I met the next day in the street hob-
bling to a hackney coach, seemingly so enfeebled by age
and infirmities, that I could scarcely believe him to be the
same man." This splendid dresser exercised charity in a
questionably liberal manner. He was a father to orphans,
and left his widow with scarcely enough to find herself in
cotton gowns.
Our provincial theatres exhibit some strange anomalies
with regard to costume, and there the sons and daugh-
BEMNANTS OF STAGE DEESSES. ' 65
ters of today have middle-aged sires wearing the costume
of the time of George I. But the most singular anomaly
in dress ever encountered by my experience was at a small
theatre in Ireland, not very far from Sligo. The entertain-
ment consisted of ' Venice Preserved,' and the balcony
scene from ' Romeo and Juliet.' The Venetian ladies
and gentlemen were attired in every possible variety of
costume ; yet not one of them wore a dress that could
have been distinguished at any period as being once worn
by any people, civilized or savage. Jaffier and Pierre how-
ever presented the greatest singularity, for they were not
only indescribably decked, but they had but one pair of
buskin boots between them ; and accordingly, when it
was necessary for both to be in presence of the audience,
each stood at the side-scene with a single leg protruded
into sight and duly booted ! When a soliloquy was to be
delivered, the actor came forward, as easy in his buskins
as though they belonged to himself, and weffe not enjoyed
by a partner, a la Box and Cox. Nor was this all. The
appointments of the entire house were of the same cha-
racter. The roof was of tiles, the seats in the pit were
of potato-sacks and sacks' of potatoes ; and never did I
laugh so much at a tragedy as when a torrent of rain fell
upon audience and actors, and Juliet went through the
balcony scene in a dirty bed-gown, and under a cotton
umbrella.
I may observe that this Juliet, though unmarried, was
spoken of as " Mrs." and not " Miss," for the reason that
she was old enough to be the former. This was invariably
the rule on our own stage a century and a half ago ; and
Gibber, in the ' Lady's Last Stake,' calls two of his
female characters Miss Notable and Mrs. Conquest, though
both are unmarried ; but the former is hardly old enough to
be a bride, and the latter might have had daughters of her
own. Another coincidence struck me in the Irish theatre.
66 HABITS AND MEN.
The performances were announced as for the benefit of a
certain actor and Ms creditors. I should have set this down
to Irish humour, had I not remembered having read that
Spiller, in 1719, had made the same announcement at Lin-
coln's Inn Fields.
But enough of these remnants. I leave them, to portray
an illustrative drama, the chief character in which was
enacted by one who was great in costume ; and who may
therefore claim to have his story, hitherto told but to the
select few, placed upon our record.
THREE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE.
" My youth
Pass'd through the tropics of each fortune, I
Was made her perfect tennis-ball ; her smiles
Now made me rich and honour' d ; then her frowns
Dash'd all my joys, and blasted all my hopes."
THE HUNTINGDON DIVEETISEMENT,
played at Merchant Tailors 1 , 1678.
ACT I.
"BALTHAZAB," said a fine-looking lad in the prison of
Orleans, " you are a brute !"
By way of reply to this testimonial to character, the
gaoler struck the boy with his heavy bunch^f keys on the
head. The blow sent young Edmond staggering against
the wall. He recovered himself, however, and dauntlessly
repeated
" Balthazar, you are nothing better than a brute !"
And Edmond Thierry was right. Balthazar was not only
a brutal gaoler, but he took delight in his vocation. He
had abandoned the honest calling of a " marbrier," to
take upon him the duties of guarding the victims whom
Republican suspicion had consigned to captivity, and whom
it destined to death. There is no doubt but that Balthazar
was a brute.
But brute as he was, his prisoners despised him. They
endured, but they defied him. His hand might smite, but
his ferocity could not subdue them. They would be happy,
and their determination only rendered him the more fe-
rocious. From the old Briton gentleman, Pantin de la
Guerre, to little Edmond Thierry, there was not one whom
68 HABITS AND MEN.
he would not daily cuff, and cuff all the harder from the
conviction that they dared not, for their lives, strike again
an officer of the Republic, one and indivisible.
Balthazar then was incontestably a brute; and young
Thierry had just told him so, for the third time, when the
youthful Madame de Charry opened the door of her cell
and entered the gallery. The latter was secured at either
end by an iron grating, which was always locked ; but
the cells themselves, twelve in number, with three or four
occupants in each, were barred and fastened only at night.
The "citizens" inhabiting them were untried aristocrats;
and until the law condemned them to death, they were al-
lowed the liberty of an obscure gallery, from which they
could not by any means escape to freedom.
The proud beauty who, albeit so young, had been some
months a widow, was passing on her way to an adjacent
cell, but she paused for an instant to kiss young Edmond
on the brow, and to address some words of remonstrance
to Balthazar touching his treatment of the little King of
the Gallery, as Thierry was called.
" May our holy mother the guillotine hug him as she
did our other king, Capet!" said Balthazar. "The little
reptile taunted me, because his father has escaped from
Amiens and reached England ; and he refused, moreover,
to carry the pretty message I gave him from the public
accuser, and addressed to you, citoyenne."
The boy's eyes filled with tears. They sprang, like the
twin fountains of Benasji, from a divided source. Joy
sent them gushing at the thought of his father's escape ;
and sorrow paid its tribute at the peril which was then
threatening his good friend, Madame de Charry.
That lady loosened her bracelet, readjusted it on her
marble arm, and asked, as she did so, what the public
accuser could possibly have to say to her.
" Ah ! ah !" roared Balthazar, the brute ; " he invites you
THBEE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 69
to honour the tribunal with your presence tonight; and
the faucTieuse with the broad knife will send you an invita-
tion to another party tomorrow."
"Be it so," said the young beauty, without apparent
emotion. " In the meantime, vive le Boi ! And now, my
little King Edmond, let us leave citizen Balthazar to his
reflections, and come with me to the soiree of Madame
de Bohun."
"They will cut off your head!" cried Balthazar, with a
candour meant for cruelty.
"They!''' said the lady, with great sweetness; "not if
they are gallant gentlemen. They will be the very canaille
of butchers indeed, if they strike oif so pretty a head as
mine: n' 'est-ce pas, mon roi?" said she to Edmond.
But the boy's heart was too full to answer, for he loved
the charming Stoic of Orleans. His courage, however,
was not buried beneath his emotion ; for as he entered
the cell of the Countess de Bohun, he turned and gave
the huge Balthazar a kick on the right shin, which made
the tall savage turn pale. The giant vowed vengeance at
a better opportunity, and he limped away to his kennel,
cursing the authorities for keeping alive a Royalist child
at the expense of the Republic, and for the particular
annoyance of their own citoyen qfficiel.
It was a singular world that, which Balthazar held in
durance within his stronghold of Orleans. It was an aris-
tocratic, pleasure-seeking world: within one confined gal-
lery all the pomps and vanities of the earth, all the
weaknesses of nature, all the vices and some of the virtues
of humanity reigned triumphant. The sword of Damocles
hung over every head, but the symbol was taken for the
oriflamme of pleasure. The fashions and pursuits of the
old world were not forgotten within the prison walls. The
rich arranged their domiciles with as much care and anxiety
as though the boudoirs they fitted up in their dungeons
70 HABITS AND MEN.
were taken for a fixed term of years, instead of an uncertain
tenure of minutes. Fashion had its rigid laws, Etiquette
was enshrined, and Ennui denounced. The duties, dresses,
and pleasures of the day were distinctly defined ; and the
duties generally consisted in getting ready the dresses for
the better enjoyment of the pleasures. The separation of
castes was rigorously observed, and common misfortune
was not permitted to level ranks ; the noble captive might
be courteous to the commoner in captivity, but he would
not associate with him. The wife of a noble would not
visit the cell which contained the spouse of a professional
man. During the day visits were not only regularly made
between parties of the same degree, but were punctually
returned; else discord arose thereat. Contests at chess,
trials at cards, games at forfeits, shuttlecock, and ball, were
matters of daily occurrence during the days, weeks, or
months that preceded condemnation or enlargement. The
high-caste nobility got up pic-nic dinners amongst them-
selves. Those who were of the very top cream of even
that high caste found tea for large parties. Music was no
rarity ; singing awoke the echoes of every cell. In short,
the habits, customs, manners, morals, frivolities, fashions,
and virtues of the upper classes were openly practised.
The greatest care was exhibited in matters of toilet. As
republican simplicity grew more republican and more simple
without, aristocratic fashions waxed more royal and more
sumptuous within. A head after the fashion of Brutus, was
never seen upon noble shoulders. Among the ladies there
was a mania for flowers, feathers, and many-coloured rib-
bons. Some wore their own hair, and some wore wigs,
but in either case the hair was curled and powdered, and
the fair wearer was rouged, Spanish-whitened (where blanc
(TEspagne was to be procured), pencilled, and plastered into
all the beauty that could be achieved by burying her own
beneath poisonous paint, black-lead, and adhesive mouches.
THBEE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 71
At Orleans the necessity for some change of air, and for
taking some exercise, caused the younger people, on certain
days of the week, when permitted, to have recourse to the vast
courtyard of the prison. Fashion here reigned as she had
been wont to do at the Tuileries. Here were given concerts
al fresco ; and les graces became the favourite game of the
hour. It even occasionally happened for Love, like Vir-
tue, will make his way into strange places that affections
were aroused, and attachments between young hearts worthy
of a purer locality sprang up, throwing a charm over the
wearisomeness of captivity. Death stood on permanent
guard, looking over the wall of that vast prison ; and his
gaunt, long arm often plunged into the crowd below, and
dragged up a victim. But each individual there, caring
little for the teaching of the past or the prospects of the
future, endured and yet forgot everything. Each consi-
dered every fellow-captive exposed to death, but none was
without hope for himself. Like the selfisji Neapolitans,
who, when they see a neighbour borne to the grave, shrug
their shoulders, and cry, " Salute a noi!" so did the Orleans
prisoners, on losing an old companion, bury sympathy for
the departed in congratulations at their own escape.
It was early in a summer's afternoon when Madame de
Gharry, with Edmond, entered the cell whose oldest occu-
pant and recognized proprietor was the Countess de Bohun,
a lady who had once borne the honoured name of De Girar-
din. A large party was assembled, and, save the locality,
the hour, and the absence of lights, there was little to dis-
tinguish it from a party in the Chaussee d'Antin. Some
were at cards, some were looking at pictures, some were
circulating scandal, and a few were sipping eau sitcree,
heightened as to flavour with a little capillaire. Fra^ois
Vouillet, the son of a chair-mender, was there playing the
guitar. His poverty had not saved him from the suspicion
of holding aristocratic opinions, nor had his misfortune pro-
72 HABITS AND MEN.
cured for him any commiseration from the aristocrats. He
attended among them as a hired musician, and he played for
the dinner which he could not purchase. The appearance of
the new-comers interrupted the song, for a shout of Vive
le Boi hailed the arrival of Edmond, and the most courteous
welcomings that of his companion. M. de Bohun, who was
attired in a flannel dressing-gown, and the only individual
in the cell not in full dress, advanced to Madame de Charry
and gallantly kissed her on the brow.
"You are becoming Eepublican in your tastes," said that
exquisite lady, as she pointed to the flannel robe de chambre.
"Madame," said the Count, laughing, "I am twice as
aristocratic as the Prince de Ligne, the very quintessence of
a knight and a nobleman. It is not two years since we
visited him at Vienna, and he received the Countess and
myself in no other dress than his shirt."
" Oh!" exclaimed all the ladies at once.
" It is true," exclaimed Madame de Bohun, corrobora-
tively, " and yet short of the truth : he had one arm with-
drawn from the sleeve, and within it he took my own, and
led me into the apartment of his young daughter-in-law."
It was within an hour of the evening period for locking
up, when the wife of Balthazar entered the room with but
scant attention to ceremony, and telling Edmond as she
passed him, that she had just well-beaten her husband for
his cruelty towards the "little king" of the prison, she ad-
vanced towards Madame de Charry and whispered some-
thing in her ear. With all her courage, the fair creature
slightly trembled; but she arose, begged the Chevalier
Eabien to play out her cards, and promised speedily to re-
turn. An inquiring look was directed to her by all the
company, but she gave it no reply, either by word or ges-
ture. She left the cell, accompanied by the gaoler's wife,
and followed by Edmond. The latter, in speechless fear,
saw her descend to the courtyard between two gendarmes.
THREE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 73
The wicket was locked upon Mm, but from the window he
beheld her rudely pushed into a building in which the re-
volutionary tribunal was wont to hold its bloody sittings.
The "little king" burst into tears, a weakness of which
he became half-ashamed when he felt the arm of the gaoler's
wife passed round his neck, and heard words of condolence
fall from the lips of the subduer of the prison tyrant.
From this period they stood in utter silence for a quarter
of an hour, at the end of which time they saw Madame de
Gharry brought out from the building and made to enter a
cart, which was driven and backed up to the steps expressly
to receive her. At the sound of a broken glass and a boy's
scream, her face, pale and dignified, was turned to the win-
dow, through which Edmond had thrust his head. She
smiled the sweet smile of a dying saint, and the radiancy
of a martyr seemed to glow around her as she pointed to
heaven, and with her eyes still fixed on the toy, uttered the
words, " Esperance ! Adieu !" In another moment the cart
received two more victims, and, with its load of courageous
misery, soon after disappeared beneath the archway that led
to the exterior of the prison. Before the chimes of the
cathedral had struck the next quarter, three lives had been
sacrificed, and Monsieur de Fabien had just won the game
with his cousin's cards.
"Citizen Fabien!" roared the voice of Balthazar at the
door of the cell.
" May I not speak a word with Madame de Charry before
you lock us up for the night ?" said the Chevalier.
" The Citoyenne Charry has been dead these ten minutes,"
answered the brute with his usual bluntness, "and Citizen
Fabien will never be locked up here again."
"Bah!" said the Chevalier, who not only felt sick, but
looked so.
" The authorities are at the door, ready to read to you
the decree which discharges you from custody. The tri-
74 HABITS AND MEN.
bunal is growing tender ; it has demanded but three lives
today. It sees no ground for accusing you, and it has
ordered the Citizen Edmond Thierry to find his way to his
father, if he can. The ungrateful villain nearly threw me
on my back as I opened the wicket to set him free."
"Ladies and gentlemen," said De Fabien, who suddenly
recovered both his courage and his colour, "I wish you a
good night, and luck like mine. I am now eligible to the
bals a la guillotine, for I have had a relative who has been
beheaded."
"Poor Madame de Gharry!" exclaimed the sympathetic
ladies, as the tears ran down their cheeks with laughing at
the Chevalier's drollery.
"Poor me /" said M. de Bohun, " for now Edmond is gone,
who will sew on a button for me, or mend a rent in my
clothes?"
ACT II.
The Dean of St. Patrick's has immortalized an Irish
festival of the eighteenth century, by declaring that
" O'Eourke's noble feast will ne'er be forgot
By those who were there, or those who were not."
Some such memories will cling for ever about the last of
the great European Congresses, that of Vienna. It will
be a costly reminiscence for Europe as long as the world
endures; and no one is likely to forget the assembly of
monarchs and statesmen who, after arranging the affairs of
the universe, amused themselves by enacting the French
vaudeville of ' La Danse Interrompue,' and, in the very
middle of that ominously-named piece, received intelligence
that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and had thus inter-
rupted their dance indeed.
Among the most useful of the personages who figured at
Vienna during the celebrated period of 1814-15 there was
THBEE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 75
none whose utility could be compared with that of a gay
and generous young Frenchman, who was known by the
sobriquet of " the King of Good Fellows." He did not serve
much, it is true, for the furtherance of political purposes ;
but he was always indispensable, and never missing, when
a ball, a masquerade, a concert, or a pic-nic was in question,
and some difficulty opposed its successful accomplishment.
Little was known of him, save that he had been attached to
the French Legation at Lisbon ; but whispers were circula-
ted to the effect that in the days of the exile of the French
nobility, he had earned a livelihood in London by applica-
tion of the needle, while it was more loudly asserted that
he had given lessons on the guitar in the English capital,
and that he and his father had played duets, under the
patronage of Banti, at the Pantheon. Two or three out of
the dozen of Talleyrand's discreet secretaries confidently
affirmed, that when a boy he had been confined in the pri-
son of Orleans, "on suspicion of being suspected" by the
Republic. But Baron Thierry himself was profoundly silent
on his antecedents ; and he was wont to say that the me-
mories of the past were of a very unsubstantial nature, and
that his designs for the present and the future were to
make the most of all opportunities, and get a crown, if he
could, since one might perhaps be had at the mere cost of
setting up a pretension to it.
People laughed at the idea of Baron Thierry becoming a
monarch ; but at such mirth the baron assumed a gravity
that was very majestic, and which looked like determination.
"Who is that pretty child whom your Majesty keeps so
close to your side tonight?" said a lady to Thierry at a
ball given by "Wellesley Pole. The lady was remarkable for
her natural beauty and her bad taste. She wore her hus-
band's " Garter" as an ornament round her head, and Honi
soit qui mal y pense glittered in diamonds upon her radiant
brow.
E 2
76 HABITS AND MEN.
"She is the half of an imperial princess," replied the
Baron, in a whisper ; " and she and I are characters in a
romance of an hour. "Watch us well, and you will see the
denouement"
The Baron had scarcely uttered the words when the lovely
and childless Czarina of Eussia passed by his side. The
Czarina paused for a moment at an open window, and then
stepped on to the balcony overlooking a handsome garden.
No one accompanied, and no one followed her. The Baron
however occupied the centre of the window, and the angelic-
looking child, at his bidding, passed on to the balcony, and
stood by the imperial lady's side. Lady Castlereagh, and
some three or four persons who were aware that Thierry
was contriving something for the especial gratification of
the Czarina, contrived to witness what passed without ap-
pearing to do so.
The scene that ensued was curious, touching, and rapid.
The Czarina burst into tears, kissed the wondering child
with a fiery and uncontrollable emotion, and gazed upon
her with an almost frantic look of mingled love, jealousy,
and despair. The Baron slightly coughed, the Czarina re-
entered the salon, and the spectators appeared unconscious
of anything but the imperial presence, and the reverence
due to it. Lady Castlereagh alone heard her say to the
Baron, as she passed. "Thanks for your courtesy, Mon-
sieur le Baron. Tell her mother I envy and forgive her!"
"Who is her mother?" asked Lady Castlereagh.
" Madame Krudener, the mistress of Alexander, the pious
Czar. The Czarina has just kissed her rival's child, and
her heart is breaking that she is not the mother of it."
The night that succeeded was a brilliant one at the im-
perial palace of Austria. In a small room adjoining the
great gallery was assembled a strange group. A very hand-
some young man, in the costume and with the attributes of
Jupiter, was walking to and fro, eating a slice of pine-apple,
THREE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 77
and declaring that the Count de Wurbna was mad. A some-
what older but a fine-looking personage, easily recognizable
as Mars, was lying recumbent on a sofa, repeating the de-
claration that De Wurbna was mad. These two theatrical
deities were, in their mortal positions, no other than Prince
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and the Count de Zichy. De
Wurbna was seated on a stool, bending forward to fasten
his sandal. His dress, his lyre, and his insignia told at
once that he was Phoebus Apollo. There was- nothing like
insanity about him ; but when he raised his head, the beholder
was constrained to confess that there was something about
him very unlike the lover of Daphne and Coronis. In fact,
he wore a very formidable pair of mustachios. However
appropriate this adornment might be to the Apollo Corybas-
sides, who disputed the dominion of Crete with Jupiter him-
self, it little suited the fair son of Latona, the only one of
all the gods whose oracles were in general repute throughout
the world. Be this as it may, the Viennes^ Apollo, whose
transcendent beauty had designated him as the only man
who could fittingly represent the graceful god, strictly re-
fused to sacrifice his cherished moustache. Madame de Wil-
helm, the destined Venus of the tableaux vivans about to be
represented, had suggested that his head should be turned
from the spectators ; but the proud Minerva of the night,
the Countess Rosalie Rzewouska (the original of M. Sue's
Eleur de Marie), declared that the suggestion lacked wis-
dom, and that, if adopted, Miss Smith, the daughter of the
Admiral Sir Sidney, would spoil her Juno, and laugh out-
right, as she did at everything.
" I thought Thierry could do anything," said Jupiter.
" He has superintended the getting up of all our costumes ;
and he engaged, a fortnight ago, to render De Wurbna rea-
sonable."
Apollo caressed his very objectionable hirsutory adorn-
ment, humming as he did so, " Du, du liegst mir im Herzen."
78 HABITS AKD MBIT.
He smiled as Mars asserted that if Thierry had entered
into any such engagement, Apollo would be shaved, and the
heathen goddesses in raptures. The ubiquitous and indefa-
tigable Baron had, at all events, done his best, but hitherto
he had failed. At the eleventh hour however he thought of
the claim which he had on the Czarina Elizabeth, for whom
he had contrived the strange gratification of kissing the
daughter of her husband's mistress. He procured an audi-
ence, and stated the predicament into which he and the
court-players were thrown by the obstinacy of Apollo. The
Czarina had recourse to her sister of Austria, but the two
imperial ladies knew not how to solve the difficulty. The
Emperor of Austria was called in, and then the difficulty
began to wear an aspect less redoubtable.
The mythological deities were yet disputing in their luxu-
rious green-room, when an officer of the Imperial Gruard
appeared at the door, and summoned De Wurbna to the
imperial presence. The latter flung a cloak over his shoul-
ders and hastened to obey.
" My dear fellow," said the officer, " you will not appear
before the Emperor in those mustachios !"
" Why not ?" said the son of Latona, who began to sus-
pect a mystification.
" Because of this morning's general order, which com-
mands the entire guard to which we belong to be shaved."
De Wurbna had already remarked the smooth lip of his
Hungarian comrade, but, still doubting, he proceeded to
wait upon his master the Emperor.
" I'll wager a whole chest of Latakia," said Mars, " that
this is a feat of Thierry's accomplishing. He is well named
the ' King of Good Fellows,' for he knows how to meet every
emergency. He deserves to get a crown in the general
scramble."
" He is a good fellow," said Prince Leopold, " but he is
about as likely to get a crown as I am."
THREE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 79
"Who knows?" asked De Zichy, who cared little for
crowns, and felt no envy at kings. " There may be
half-a-dozen political earthquakes before another score of
years have been added to the register; and another re-
modelling of kingdoms may strangely affect the market for
monarchs."
In another moment Apollo entered, half laughing, half
ashamed, and entirely shaven. The Emperor had really is-
sued an order that the Guard should be shaved ; De Wurb-
na had forthwith submitted, and, in his private quarters, he
consummated the heavy sacrifice. The decree however,
which had been issued to please the imperial ladies, only
lasted for a day. It nevertheless served its purpose ; and
never was such honour done to the diplomatic abilities of
Thierry, as when the mimic Olympus discovered that by his
aid a king of men had subdued a refractory deity, and that
the consistency of a mythological tableau was saved from
shipwreck. ^
The representation went off with extraordinary eclat.
The only persons among the spectators who were not en-
raptured with the spectacle, were the obose King of "Wiir-
temberg, who was sound asleep in his chair, and who was
never awake except at dinner-time ; his son, the Crown
Prince, who was breathing out his soul in the ear of the
young Duchess of Oldenburg ; and that youthful widow
herself, whose eyes beamed with a lustre born, not of the
outward show, but of inward feeling.
"With these exceptions, all were delighted ; and when
Thierry, in the intervals of the performance, took up his
guitar and discoursed eloquent music, the entire audience
declared that they had never heard so exquisite a voice,
nor seen so king-like a fellow.
The loudest in his praise, and the best-dressed man
among the eulogizers, was the nonagenarian Prince De
Ligne ; an old dandy, of whom his tailors made, as nearly
80 HABITS AND MEN.
as dress could do it, a comparatively young-looking man.
He was more carefully dressed than ever on this eventful
night. It was the night on which he went through the
snow, to keep, at least he said so, an assignation of a tender
nature on the ramparts, and where he was kept waiting so
long in vain by his Cynthia of the minute, that he caught a
cold which, within a very short space of time, carried 'him
into a bronze coffin, and covered him up in a marble tomb.
All Vienna laughed, except the tailors ; for though he pa-
tronized these, he never paid them.
Thierry was standing by the burying-place when he first
heard of the return of Napoleon.
" "Well," thought he, " there are no crowns to be had
here. The kingdom of good-fellowship is a sorry monarchy.
Perhaps something may turn up under the Corsican."
ACT III.
The " Corsican" however had run out his brief second
imperial career, when one of the many who had hoped to
profit by his rise was prostrated by his fall. The name of
this one was Thierry. With the world before him where
to choose, he turned his steps to South America, and went
in search of a people who might happen to be in want of a
king. It was always his fortune, or misfortune, wherever
such a servant of the people was required, to present his
credentials only after the situation was filled up. He was
at Poyais just a week subsequent to the attainment of the
caciqueship of that pseudo El Dorado by Gregor M'Gregor.
He was in Hayti when the garrison of St. Marc revolted
against Christophe the king, and when the citizens and troops
of Cape Haytien invited Boyer to relieve them of royalty
and the Marquises of Marmalade. He heard the pistol-
shot at Sans Souci which terminated the career of Chris-
tophe and his house ; and he witnessed the abject submis-
THEEE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 81
sioii of the sable heir-apparent, who has not only since
honoured Great Britain with his presence, but who has, at
the invitation of the law, submitted (some six or seven
years ago) to the rotatory penalties and the weak gruel of
Brixton, for forgetting his royal dignity, and, with it, com-
mon humanity.
The Haytians were resolved upon enjoying a republic and
new rum ; and they declined a proposal to accept Thierry,
and a promise of French protection. The crown-seeker,
disgusted with the bad taste of the dingy republicans,
passed over to Mexico. Things were promising there to all
adventurers but himself, and Iturbide snatched an imperial
crown from his hopes, if not from his hands : the wanderer,
nevertheless, continued to look about him, and the opening
revolt at Soto la Marina, against this same Iturbide, was
hailed in his secret thoughts as an avenue to a throne. He
saw the fallen potentate, under the escort of General Bowo,
embark at Antiguo, near Vera Cruz, and, with his family
and followers, sail in an English ship for Leghorn. With
all his throne-mania, however, when Iturbide returned in
the following year (1824) to Mexico, to be shot the night
after his landing at Padilla, Thierry could not help thinking
that if the Mexican republican government had awarded him
twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, he would rather,
with such a revenue, have risked European fevers at
Leghorn, than have reigned in that quarter of the world
where the bark grows that cures them.
He wandered further abroad, but the Indian tribes of
South America deeply declined him as a prince. The
islanders of the Southern Ocean laughed a negative in his
face, and sent him away with a lapful of yams and a sen-
tence of perpetual banishment. At length the erratic king-
player fell among the Marquesas. The good-natured people
were willing to make him whatever he desired ; and in re-
turn for teaching them some useful matters touching the
E 3
82 HABITS AND MEN.
fashion of garments, and for profitable exercise of his me-
dical experience, they really constituted him king of one of
their smallest islands, called Nebuhwa.
But, see what is human nature ! The new king became
speedily tired of his new dignity ; and after a brief but not
inglorious reign, he abdicated with but little outlay of cere-
mony. He embarked one night in a French vessel, one of
those political appliances which is always sure to find itself
by accident wherever it has been ordered by design. His
Majesty's subjects bore their loss with philosophy, and
cared so little for dynasties that they did not seek for a
successor. Some old South Sea whalers however shook
their heads portentously, vowed that the fellow was a poli-
tical agent, and that he would turn up again somewhere
for the benefit of himself and his employers.
Well ! in the summer of 1839, a weary party of New
Zealand travellers were on their way from Hokianga to the
Bay of Islands. They were one night proceeding up the
river in a canoe, to a native settlement, where the foot-
track to the Bay of Islands then commenced. They were
drenched through with rain, and were desirous of finding
food and shelter.
" There is a light on that eminence," said one of the
party, an English medical man, to the natives in the boat ;
" does any one live there ?"
The natives laughed, and intimated that the light came
from King Edmond's palace.
" Who is King Edmond ?"
"Not know. Frenchman. Not Wesleyan; not Bishop's
man. Come from Sydney ;" were the four distinct replies
received from the natives.
" From Sydney ?" said the Doctor ; " then it is no other
than Thierry ; the fellow was there in '35. He proclaimed
himself, " by the grace of God King of Nebuhwa and
sovereign chief of New Zealand,' and he showed documents
THKEE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 83
to prove that he had the support of Louis Philippe and his
Government. He drew upon the same French Government,
and raised a considerable sum of money by the sale of the
bills, which were discounted by some queer people, consi-
dering they came from so far north as Aberdeen; and
which, on being forwarded to their destination, were, as
might be expected, returned dishonoured. Nevertheless,
with the proceeds he got together a body of retainers,
chartered a ship, and came over to Hokianga."
" What did the resident say to it ?" asked a young engi-
neer, of a native at his side.
" What resident speak, Mister Chalton ? He no speak !
he go mad! Church missionaries go madder; and chiefs
maddest of all. Write to Queen Victoria ; Queen speak :
' New Zealand chiefs all independent. King Thierry no
king.' Church missionaries almost mad like chiefs, cause
Thierry speak Hokianga land belong to him."
" No wonder !" said the doctor, " for his Majesty declared
that the Church missionaries had sold it to him, years be-
fore, for twenty tomahawks! What did he do at Hoki-
anga?"
" Make fine coat for naked Zealander," said one of the
natives, with a grin.
" A royal tailor, by Jove ! " exclaimed the medicus.
After some further discussion upon this strange' person-
age, the travellers agreed to make for his island palace, and
ask hospitality. Leaving two natives in charge of the boat
and luggage, under the guidance of the other two the
English travellers made their way, with difficulty, over
stumps of trees and decayed logs, to the royal residence.
On reaching the palace, they found, to their dismay, that it
had nothing to distinguish it from the huts of the natives,
save one solitary glazed window. At the back there was a
hole, which served for a door; a Kawri board was fixed
against it, and to this the four travellers applied their
84 HABITS AND MEN.
knuckles. They had not long to wait ; the board was re-
moved by an ill-dressed man, of perhaps fifty years of age,
who welcomed them into a tolerably neat kitchen, well-
warmed by a blazing fire. To an inquiry as to whether
they could see the Baron, he announced himself as Baron,
and Sovereign Chief of New Zealand. He reiterated his
welcome ; introduced them to his wife, who confidently be-
lieved that her husband was a sovereign, because he had
told her so twenty times a day for the last three years ; and
he finally asked them if they were fond of music.
The guests pleaded guilty to the taste, but they also
honestly confessed that they were exceedingly hungry.
"You shall have all we possess," said the ex-King of
Nebuhwa. " Katchen," added he to his consort, " get the
bread, and bring out the Beethoven."
The Queen took the loaf and the duet out of a large fish-
kettle which lay in one corner of the apartment. The King
placed upon the table a guitar, four pewter plates, a violin,
and a piece of cheese. Their Majesties dispensed their hos-
pitality with much grace, a quality that is seldom wanting
where there is goodwill. They apologized for the absence
of wine, spirits, and beer, but they praised the virtues of
the water of Hokianga. The beverage having been poured
into horns, and each guest supplied with cheese and bread,
her Majesty, at a signal from the King, who had assumed
the violin, took up the guitar, and in a minute they were
deep in the melodious mysteries of Beethoven. That Titan's
music on the guitar was something of an anomaly ; but the
truth is, that the lady's copy was written for the piano, and
it was her German ingenuity that adapted it to the only
instrument she possessed. The guests had long terminated
their repast, and ventured, as the duet proceeded, to make
an occasional remark, which was speedily hushed by the chef
d* orchestra, who would tolerate no commentaries during the
interpretation of so splendid a text. The duet was finished
THREE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 85
only to be recommenced ; detached passages were repeated
over and over again ; and the guests meanwhile were awed
into absolute silence by the look, speech, and action of their
host. It was a singular exhibition in a singular locality :
Beethoven in New Zealand, and free-born Englishmen sub-
dued at Hokianga by the despotism of a French monarch
in a foreign territory.
" You play superbly, Baron," at length said one of the
four travellers.
" Sir," said the sovereign chief, "it is impossible to play
ill on such an instrument as this. I adore my wife ; I love
my subjects, whom I would dress like Parisians if they would
only heed me ; but I venerate my violin."
" He has caught heathenism, and worships his fiddle,"
whispered Chalton to a missionary on his right hand.
" This violin, Sir," resumed the Baron, " has seen as many
lands as the Wandering Jew. It had been all over the
world before it got into the hands of Platt ; 'and it has been
all over the world since it left them."
"And who is Platt ?" said the missionary.
" Platt, Sir," answered the Baron, "was one of the first
violin-players in England ; but he was afflicted with mo-
desty, and consequently was only known to his friends. He
led your Duke of Cumberland's private band at Kew, and
what a well-dressed band that was ! it did honour to its
tailor ; and it had a European reputation for excellence.
I wish I were as rich as a duke, and possessed so great a
maestro di capella.
The Baron then proceeded to enlarge upon his position
and prospects, entered into discussion on his rights, and
pronounced himself a sterling king, in spite of Lord Stanley,
the British Queen, or the English Ministry. "I would
make these islanders," said he, "the best-dressed people
out of France, and if they could but acknowledge my
principles, I would myself furnish them with paletots ; but
86 HABITS AND MEN.
they denounce my tyranny, and laugh at me when I offer
to put them into the dignity of trousers."
To hear this mock potentate speak of his people, his do-
minions, religious toleration, the rights of man, and the du-
ties of monarchs, one might have concluded that he really
was a recognized sovereign, with an actual kingdom, a people
to protect, parties to reconcile, a faith to uphold, and re-
sponsibilities to oppress him. Beyond his musical instru-
ments, his solitary instrumental duet, his fish-kettle, an old
' Journal des Modes,' and some needles, he can scarcely be
said to have had at this moment a single possession incon-
testably his own.
As the party of travellers, after sleeping in the hut, pro-
ceeded on the following morning to their boat, they were ac-
companied to the beach by their entertainer, who expressed
his hopes of meeting with them again. But this was not
to be.
THE EPILOGUE.
Four years afterwards, a solitary English traveller, named
Chalton, was standing in the centre of a wide district, near
to where the last-mentioned guests had spent a summer
night in 1839. He was apparently in search of some loca-
lity, and two chiefs were closely watching him. A couple
of "Wesleyan natives were not far off. They were assisting
him in making a survey for a road.
"There used to be a hut on that hill in the distance,"
said he to one of the chiefs.
"King Thierry's hut," answered both the chiefs at once.
"True," rejoined the inquirer; "why is it no longer
there?"
" Zealanders' gods are not sleeping," replied one of the
chiefs. " Thierry and his priests were cruel to his people.
The island spirits told us, in our dreams, to punish him.
"We burned the hut down last moon."
THBEE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE. 87
" And Thierry and his wife ?" asked the astounded engi-
neer.
" The good lady perished "in the flames. The people
from the other side of the island saved King Thierry."
"Ah!" exclaimed Chalton, partly relieved; "what are
they going to do with him ?"
" Oh, nothing!" cried the chiefs, somewhat eagerly.
" The Government will not let the people keep him a
captive."
" The Grovernment can't get him," said one of the chiefs.
" And the tribe haven't got him," said the other.
" Why, what have they done to him ?"
"Hem!" growled somewhat unctuously the elder chief
of the two, "they have eaten him!"
Such is said to have been really the fate of the little
prisoner who used to mend the garments of M. de Bohun
in the prison of Orleans ; of the costumier of the court
masquerades at the Congress of Vienna ; aftd of the wan-
dering adventurer in distant seas, where he could find no
one who would either acknowledge his fiats or accept his
fashions. He was unable to establish himself in the world
either as monarch of men or as makers of their habits.
And having thus spoken of a mock king, let us consider
now our English liege ladies at their respective toilets.
THE TIRING-BOWERS OF QUEENS.
" I could accuse the gaiety of your wardrobe
And prodigal embroideries, under which
Rich satins, plushes, cloth of silver, dare
Not show their own complexions ; your jewels,
Able to burn out the spectators' eyes,
And show like bonfires on you, by the tapers :
Something might here be spared, with safety of
Your birth and honour, since the truest wealth
Shines from the soul, and draws up just admirers."
SHIELEY.
LET us not presume to look into the primitive boudoirs of
the Queens before the Conquest, and only reverently into
those of the sovereign ladies who succeeded. " Tread lightly,
this is sacred ground!" is an injunction not to be forgotten
in this locality.
The first Queen after the Norman invasion, Matilda of
Flanders, who was pummelled into loving her ungallant
wooer "William, had a costly wardrobe. Before her death
she disposed of the most valuable of her garments by will,
and named therein the dressmaker who had provided them
for her, a species of advertisement that ought to have made
Madame Alderet's fortune. " I give," says the royal tes-
tatrix, " to the Abbey of the Holy Trinity my tunic, worked
at Winchester, by Alderet's wife ; and the mantle embroi-
dered with gold, which is in my chamber, to make a cope.
Of my two golden girdles, I give that which is ornamented
with emblems, for the purpose of suspending the lamp before
the great altar." The abbey named was at Caen, and the
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OP QUEENS. 89
nuns connected therewith came in for all Matilda's petti-
coats, no indifferent legacy, for they were stiff with gold
and dust. She was an elegant dresser, as far as outside
show was concerned.
Eufus was a bachelor, and the ladies who frequented his
uproarious court were remarkable for their adoption of gar-
ments which very much disgusted the sober ladies of Saxon
times. Matilda of Scotland, wife of Henry I., being graceful
of form, was given to wear tight kirtles, and may be said to
have brought in tight lacing. Henry's second wife, Adalicia
of Louvaine, imitated the fashion set by her predecessor.
On the King's death, she espoused the hereditary cupbearer,
"William de Albini, surnamed Fortembras ; and if she dressed
a trifle less gloriously in her bower at Arundel Castle, she
at least became there the mother of a numerous progeny,
who grew up and gave the fashions to the entire county of
Sussex. 4
The third Matilda, she of Boulogne, wife o5' Stephen, was
the first of our Queens who introduced simplicity of dress.
On ordinary occasions she was perhaps less plainly dressed
than the very elegant inmates of that very elegant " St.
Katherine's College," which still commemorates her bene-
volence, and whose inmates are doubtless a cause of some
astonishment to the spirit of that gentle lady.
Eleanora of Aquitaine, ex-wife of Louis XI. of France,
and consort of Henry II. of England, was extravagant in
the article of dress, and loved to see her ladies around her
splendidly attired. She ran their purses hard, for, like Marie
Antoinette, she was exceedingly fond of private theatricals ;
and the barons who groaned over the cost of their own
armour, looked grim at the bill of outlay for materials which,
be it said for the honour of the parties concerned, were made
up for the most part by the young ladies themselves. In
those days, people used to resort to the pleasant and sweet-
smelling village of Bermondsey, to see the well-dressed
90 HABITS AND MEN.
Eleanor walk in the quaint gardens there. The idea of
Bermondsey being pleasant and sweet-smelling is one now
to smile at. It is in these times the seat of ill odours, amid
which however many a quean still walks and keeps her state,
and a very sad state it is.
Berengaria, the spouse of the first Richard, is one of the
two Queens of England who never were in England. Her
tiring maidens found in her a gentle lady who gave grace
to, rather than borrowed it from, what she wore. It may
be added that she wore nothing that was not wet with her
tears ; for her royal spouse was like most knights of his day,
ready to make and ready to break all vows of fidelity, and
indeed all promises, of whatsoever quality. But Richard was
not parsimonious, like his brother John, who kept poor
Isabella of Angouleme as poorly dressed as a scrivener's
wife ; and who wrote down what cloth she was to have for
her garments, and on what allowance of shoes she was to
stand, all with the shopkeeping sort of correctness which is
to be found in no king save Louis Philippe. Isabella how-
ever had some rich appurtenances in her wardrobe, for we
find that when her son, the little Henry III., was crowned,
the royal circlet not being procurable for the purpose, the
boy was at length crowned with the gold throat-collar be-
longing to his mother's gala suit.
That same Henry III. was as gorgeous a dresser as his
father, but he loved to see not only his wife, the fair Eleanor
of Provence, whom he gallantly married without a dower,
but also her ladies, as gorgeously attired as himself. Had
he been as careful of paying for their dresses as he was in
the selection of them (he was a dreadful fop, and would
discuss lace and frippery with a lady with as much unneces-
sary knowledge as any Belgian petit-maUre of modern days),
he might have passed reproachless. But he was one of those
men who, after squandering their own money, squander that
which they hold in trust : and then cheat their own tailors
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 91
aud their ladies' milliners with a composition of five shillings
in the pound. Henry, his Queen, and court glittered like
dragon-flies, thought nothing of " settling day," and turned
up their noses at their more honest and less gaily-dressed
kindred. The result was what might be expected. They
got into pecuniary difliculties, and descended to the com-
mission of intense meanness. They invited themselves out
daily to dine with the wealthy aristocracy of London, whose
dinners they ate and whose plate they carried away with
them as a gift or a loan. In fact, Henry and Eleanor esta-
blished a fashion which is far from being obsolete, so great
is the authority for its observance. The extravagant are
always mean, mean and dishonest ; they first cheat their
creditors, and then would cheat their more judicious relatives,
were the latter weak enough to be persuaded that the very
attempt is a compliment. I could not of course, but you,
good reader, can put your finger on a score of people who
are like Henry and Eleanor in this, living* beyond their
means, and looking to their more honest friends for aid to
relieve them from the consequences of their knavery. Exactly ;
I see you smile as your eye falls on that pair of cousins of
yours, the lady all flounce, and the cavalier irreproachable
in dress, and in nought besides ! He has just asked you, a
man with eight children, four hundred a year, and two ser-
vants, to put your name to that little bill. But you have
been singed at that fire before, and you now decline. My
dear Sir, if you will not allow youself to be cheated by your
extravagant relations, you cannot expect to be on good terms
with that part of your family. But you will find compensa-
tion for the loss of such a luxury at your own hearth and in
your own heart. Why should you wrong those who cluster
about both to help worthless people, who, if they could, would
further do as Henry and Eleanor did, pawn the " Virgin
Mary" to pay their jewellers' bills. That precious couple
compelled the sheriffs of various counties to furnish them
92 HABITS AND MEX.
with linen for their royal persons. Had /been a sheriff" at
the time, they should have had huckaback, compared with
which they would have found a hair-shirt a positive luxury !
And let me hope, young ladies, that you will not con-
found this Eleanora with her of the following reign, that
Eleanora of Castile, who was surnamed the " faithful," and
who was the glorious first wife of Edward I. She showed
what an excellent eye she had to comfort, by introducing
into the cold, damp dwellings of the day, tapestry hangings
to protect the inmates frqm chill and moisture. She was
the royal mother of all good English housewives ; although
she did a little scandalize the sober matrons by wearing
long curls adown her peerless neck, after she was married.
There were some, too, who did not complacently admire
her habit of dressing in public ; but it was only a public of
ladies. It was for Elizabeth, in later days, to attire herself
in presence of men. In Eleanor's oriel at Caernarvon
Castle, ladies were presented to the daughter of Castile,
while her tirewomen combed and braided her renowned
long tresses. A contemporary poet thus describes the
scene :
" In her oriel there she was,
Closed well with royal glass ;
Filled it was with imagery,
Every window by and by ;"
the poetry of which is of as poor a quality as was probably
the glass in the oriel. "We must not forget to add, that
there was as much sewing as romping, and an abundance of
both among the young princesses (of whom there was a
noisy abundance too) in the " Maiden's Hall " at West-
minster Palace ; and that Eleanor is immortalized as the
only sovereign who bequeathed " a legacy to William, her
tailor."
When she died, Edward made solemn oath of sempi-
ternal grief, and in a week or two, took to flirting. Ulti-
THE TIBING-BOWERS OF &UEENS. 93
mately he espoused Marguerite of France ; and the match
was so happy a one that the two consorts bore their respec-
tive arms in one scutcheon, in testimony of their entente
cordiale. Those particular gentlemen, the heralds, were in a
sort of delirium tremens at this innovation ; but they were
almost as little cared for then as now. Marguerite and
Edward were a worthy.couple. Edward, indeed, slaughtered
all the inhabitants of Berwick for calling him " Longshanks ;"
but nobody thought the worse of him for that. As for
Marguerite, she is distinguished for her taste, her double
taste, in dressing becomingly, and paying regularly. She
never omitted acquitting a debt at proper time, but once ;
and this so alarmed John of Cheam, her creditor and gold-
smith, that out of fear that the fashion of long credit was
coming in again, he besought the king, "for God's sake,
and the soul of his father, King Henry, to order payment."
The prayer was heeded; and I may further notice, as
creditable to Marguerite especially, that she willingly con-
sented to be Queen without a coronation, as the then pre-
sent poverty of the finances offered an obstacle to the
ceremony.
Isabelle of France, the consort of Edward II., was a lady
of another quality. Her outfit, when it was displayed in
London, perfectly astounded the beholders. The Queen of
Fairyland could have had nothing more splendid ; and mor-
tal wives could not have been more usefully endowed. The
ladies of households, as they talked the matter over at their
own chimneys, expatiated on the hundreds of yards of linen
for the bath, and the six dozen French 'nightcaps. These
were pronounced "loves;" and every unmarried daughter,
whose heart wore the figure of a bachelor knight, deter-
mined that when another night arrived, her head should
wear nothing less than a " coiffe de nuit a la Reine"
Philippa of Hainault, Queen of Edward III., ranks among
the reasonable as well as the glorious ladies. She was
94 HABITS AND MEN.
simple in her dress and gentle to the maids who decked her.
While she dressed not beneath her dignity, she was mindful
that a plain dignity suited best a Queen whose crown had
been pawned, for the same reason that less noble persons
pawn their spoons. In her later days, she fell into dropsy
and a loose style of covering it.
Richard II. pledged half his own jewels to pay for his
bride and bridal, the former was Anne of Bohemia. This
lady was not only a member of the Order of the Garter,
but she was attended by ladies who were also associates of
that noble company, pleasanter associates there could not
have been ; and I wish that the fashion were still observed,
and that I could enumerate some of my fair friends on the
roll ; and then we might ride double to the festival, for
" This riding double was no crime
In the great King Edward's time.
No brave man thought himself disgraced
By two fair arms about his waist ;
Nor did the lady blush vermilion,
Dancing on the lover's pillion.
Why ? Because all modes and actions
Bow'd not then to Vulgar Fractions ;
Nor were tested all resources
By the power to purchase horses."
There is little said about Anne's style of dressing; but
two things are told of her, better worth the telling. She
ruled her husband without his ever suspecting it, and she
did this by a soft voice and gentle ways ; this to the newly-
espoused ladies. The second circumstance was not publicly
known until after tier death. It was told at her grave-side
at "Westminster, by Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury,
who stated, that this good Queen passed her leisure hours
in reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongiie. This was
perhaps in the Bohemian tongue ; for Bohemia possessed a
translation long before England.
Eichard's second wife, Isabella of Valois, was as inordi-
THE TIEING-BOWEES OF QUEENS. 95
nately fond of dress as her husband was ; and never, per-
haps, were royal couple so profusely provided with means
whereby to look well in the eyes of men. But she was but
a little child, and he, man-grown, treated her as a daughter.
Little did Isabella have cause to wear in England but the
trappings of woe ; and the gems of tears, ever set in her
eyes, were brighter than the jewels in her famous casket,
and about which, the two Crowns .ultimately quarrelled with
no more dignity than a couple of Abigails.
Queen Joanna of Navarre, spouse of Henry IV., and her
ladies, appear to have been attired at her coronation after
much the same fashion as was observed at the crowning of
Queen Victoria. In after-days Joanna, who was terribly
"near," dressed as ladies do who labour under that infir-
mity : even her mourning for the King was calculated liko
a widow of small means ; and a black cloth gown at seven
shillings and eightpence per yard, with one and sixpence for
the making, and shoes at sevenpence per pairt tend to show-
that the royal widow furnished herself at what may be called
the " mitigated affliction department."
How Katherine of Valois was wooed by Henry V. may
be seen in Shakspeare. The record is probably as true as
much that is penned down by those other poets, the chro-
niclers. She is the second Queen of England who passed
from the couch of a king to that of a soldier ; and Katherine
founded a new line of sovereigns when she gave her hand
to Owen Tudor. Like all Frenchwomen, she dressed with
taste ; and she deserved a better fate than to be left, as her
body was, during so many years, a spectacle for sightseers
in "Westminster Abbey. Her corpse, removed from her
tomb during repairs, in the reign of her grandson, Henry
VII., was never restored. It became mummified, and, in
a coffin with a loose lid, was open to the eye and touch.
People kissed it for twopence, until the year in which Louis
XVI. was beheaded, and thrones began to tumble. The
96 HABITS AND MEN.
Revolution showing to what complexion royalty might come,
the body of Katherine was deemed no longer profitable as
a morsel, nor indeed as an investment, to those self-denying
men, the Dean and Chapter. At the end of the last century,
when it became the fashion to sweep away kings and queens,
and nobody would pay to see their wretchedly-dressed
mummies, the body of Katherine of France was unceremo-
niously swept off, too, into the general dust-hole covered
by Westminster Abbey.
When old King Rene married his daughter Margaret of
Anjou to Henry VI., he did what many modern fathers do,
and spent upon the festival a sum which would have served
the bride and bridegroom for household expenses for a year.
Margaret possessed little but the clothes in which she stood;
and she remains known as the most indifferently clad and
the worst-fated of all our sovereign ladies. But she was a
woman of too much heart and intellect to care more about
coifs and kirtles than they deserved.
It was one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth Woodville,
who shared the throne of Edward IV., a mesalliance in
every respect, and unfortunate to all parties. She however
astonished the good people of Reading by the " bravery"
of her attire, when she first appeared there as England's
Queen.
Anne of Warwick's whole reign with Richard III. was
one of almost uninterrupted sickness, and she more often
wore the garb of the invalid than the costume of a queen.
The daughter of Elizabeth Woodville, the good Elizabeth
of York, wife of Henry VII., was a lady who was never
better dressed than at her coronation banquet in Westmin-
ster Hall, where the King wa s aspectator and not a guest.
She sat in a kirtle of purple velvet, furred with ermine
bands in front ; and the Lady Katherine Gray and Mistress
Ditton went under the table, and sat at the Queen's feet ;
while the Countesses of Oxford and Rivers knelt on each
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 97
side, and now and then "held a kerchief before her Grace."
The milliners especially prayed for benison on this Queen,
and justly ; for never had the dressmakers so fair and so
faithful a patroness. She was provident of what she well
paid for ; and Elizabeth did not think it beneath her to pay
sixteen pence to her tailor, Eobert Addington, " for mending
eight gowns of divers colours, for the Queen's Grace, at
2d. apiece." She also occasionally pawned her plate, when
she was pressed for money ; but altogether she was not an
improvident Queen.
Elizabeth's young daughter, Mary, sometime Queen of
France, but who ultimately died Duchess of Suffolk, was a
sportive child in a cumbrous dress. At four years of age
she was provided, according to a warrant still existing, with
kirtles of tawny damask and black satin ; gowns of green
and crimson velvet, edged with purple tinsel ; and, as if to
show that only outside appearance was cared for, lined with
nothing more costly than simple black buckram. She was
the widow, almost as soon as she was the wife, of Louis XII. ;
and, after a marriage of some two months' duration, she
expressed her grief by retiring to the Hotel de Cluny,
where, clothed in white, and confined in a darkened apart-
ment lighted by wax tapers, she kept mourning state during
six long, heavy weeks.
Of the wives of Henry VIII. it is told that Katherine
of Arragon entered London wearing "a broad round hat."
She rose at five, and she used to say that dressing-time was
murdered time ; and she wore the habit of St. Francis of
the third order, of which she was a member, beneath her
ordinary attire. Anne of Boleyn was a lady of another qua-
lity. She was as long at her mirror as any modern maiden
of them all ; and, when arrayed for conquest, perhaps no
woman was ever more decidedly armed against the peace of
mankind. Her costume was almost daily varied, the only
permanent fashion being the hanging sleeve, to conceal the
98 HABITS A1SD MEF.
double tip of the little finger of her left hand ; and the
kerchief over the neck, on which was a slight mark, which
she had worn from her birth. Of course, kerchief collar-
bands and hanging sleeves were adopted by all who recog-
nized in Anne the undisputed Queen of Fashion.
Jane Seymour, who married Anne's husband the day
after he had beheaded Anne herself, was far from having the
taste of her predecessor. She enjoyed the better fortune of
dying a natural death, and Henry wept for her, poor man !
because he lost the opportunity of otherwise disposing of
her. When Anne of Cleves first presented herself to him,
she was attired in abundance of petticoats, " after the Dutch
fashion." The King was horrified at such fashion, but
sturdy Anne wore more petticoats, in the same national
mode, on her wedding-day ; nor was it till the morrow that
she put off her national dress and assumed one shaped ac-
cording to the English mode, and which, we are told, made
her look more tolerable than she was before. She had the
most splendid wardrobe of all Henry's Queens, with the
worst taste in dress. She was fonder of experimental cooking
than of dress, was more made for a buxom hostess than
a Queen, and was most fortunate as Queen when she laid
down her dignity and retired with a pension, and a neck
secured against the King's violent affection for it. Kathe-
rine Howard was in most things her very opposite, in taste
for dress as well as in observance of duty ; and Katherine
Parr, the sixth wife, was superior to both. The first Pro-
testant Queen of England and preserver of Cambridge Uni-
versity was not only a scholar but a "very woman," in
which phrase I recognize one with a whole string of virtues
and accomplishments. She was a perfect mistress of the
needle (Queen Adelaide herself was not a greater) ; and her
taste in dress was shown by her uniting magnificence of
material with simplicity of form. She was the third of our
Queens who descended from royalty to wed with a " mere
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 99
nobleman ;" but as Lady Seymour, good Queen Katherine
was still the Queen of Hearts, and when the ivy peered
into her coffin at Sudeley Chapel, and wound a wreath
about her unconscious head, she gained a crown which
caused her less uneasiness than that she had worn as living
Queen.
It is a trait worth noticing, both in Mary Tudor and in
the times, that she purchased six bonnets at 1 apiece, and
two frontlets at 10*., at the shop of Lady Gresham, the ac-
tual Lady Mayoress, who was a near relation of the Boleyns.
So that Mary was not ashamed of humble relations, nor a
Lady Mayoress too proud to keep a shop. This was when
Mary was only the " Lady Mary," or Princess. When she
became Queen she was not disinclined to wrap her dignity
in all the glory, gold and brocade could give it. Her taste
was not always of the best, and young ladies will shudder
as they hear that when Mary was married, she marred
a superb wedding costume, a la Franpaist} by wearing a
black scarf and scarlet shoes ! True, young ladies, this was
worse than burning Protestants ; which, after all, she
sanctioned less from inclination than that she had bloody
men around her, who put compulsory strain upon her tastes
and feelings. For one Dr. Cahill, who gloats over the
" glorious idea" of massacring Protestants, there were a
score then, not only with the inclination but the power to
give it effect ; which, fortunately, our friend of gloomy no-
toriety does not possess.
I have above said, the " shop" of Lady Gresham. Until
the 10th or 12th of Elizabeth there were but few silk-shops
at all in London, and those were invariably kept, or served,
by females. The supply too was very scanty. Stowe, the anti-
quarian tailor, says that citizens' wives in general were then
constrained to wear knit caps of woollen yarn ; silver thread,
lace, and silk being very scarce, and only the very wealthy
being able to purchase garments of which these materials
3? 2
100 HABITS AND MEN.
formed a part ; and even then, the husbands of ladies who
desired to deck themselves in costly apparel, were obliged
to prove that they were " gentlemen by descent."
When the Princess Elizabeth lost her mother, her ward-
robe, which was none of the most brilliant before, became
of very mean condition. Lady Bryan wrote to Cromwell
that " she hath neither gown nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor
no manner of linen, nor forsmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails
(night-dresses), nor body stichets, nor handkerchiefs, nor
sleeves, nor mufflers, nor biggins" (the last two signifying
day caps and night caps), and the whole list showing that
the little lady was as ill provided for as any villein's daugh-
ter in the land. No wonder that she was at an early period
smartly touched by rheumatism. When she came to the
court of Edward VI. she was remarkable for the simplicity
of her dress ; it was religiously grave, as prescribed by the
polemical ' Journaux des Modes ' edited by Calvinistic di-
vines. Dr. Aylmer, in his ' Harbour for Faithful Subjects,'
says : " The King, her father, left her rich clothes and
jewels ; and I know it to be true, that in seven years after
his 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 sober-
ness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness : and
then she so bore it that all might see that her body carried
what her heart disliked. I am sure that her maidenly ap-
parel which she used in King Edward's time, made the no-
blemen's wives and daughters ashamed to be dressed and
painted like peacocks, being more moved with her most
virtuous example than all that ever Paul or Peter wrote
touching the matter."
The needle was the solace of Elizabeth in her captivity in
the Tower and at Woodstock, and the instrument of her
pastime in the days of her greatness. Taylor, a very pro-
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OP QUEENS. 101
perly named poet to have sung the praise of the needle, says
of her in his poem :
" When this great Queen, whose memory shall not
By any turn of time be overcast,
For when the world and all therein shall rot,
Yet shall her glorious feme for ever last,
When she a maid had many troubles past,
From gaol to gaol by Marie's angry spleen,
And Woodstock and the Tower in prison fast,
And after all was England's peerless Queen ;
Yet howsoever sorrow came or went,
She made the needle her companion still,
And in that exercise her time she spent,
As many living yet do know her skill.
Thus she was still, a captive or else crojm'd,
A needlewoman royal and renowned."
She grew in love with costly suits when she became indepen-
dent of church and grave churchmen ; and the officers of her
wardrobe were continually recording in their journals that
there were " lost from her Majesty's back " gold enamelled
acorns, buttons, aylets or eylets, with which her dresses
were sprinkled ; or rubies from her hat, or diamonds, pearls,
and tassels of gold ; but always from the royal back, whence
they were cut ,by the over-loyal, as the Eussian princess the
other day stole the great jewel from the Moscow " Virgin,"
out of piety and a taste for gems. She kissed the figure,
and carried away the precious stone in her mouth. When
the Scottish Queen, Mary of Lorraine, came to visit Edward
VI., she deluged the court with new French fashions ; " so
that all the ladies went with their hair frowsed, curled,
and double-curled, except the Princess Elizabeth, who al-
tered nothing," says Aylmer, "but kept her old maiden
shamefacedness." In latter days Elizabeth had other ways ;
and we read with astonishment of her never-to-be-forgotten
eighty wigs, with her " weeds (costume) of every civilized
country," and her appearing in a fresh one every day. After
102 HABITS AND MEN.
all, it is questionable if she was a better " dresser" than the
fair Grabrielle, of whom the chivalrous TJnton writes to
Elizabeth that she was "very silly, very unbecomingly
dressed, and grossly painted." But this was a courtier
speaking of one woman to another, and his testimony is to
be taken with reserve. Elizabeth was in another respect
more like Marie Antoinette, for she had a dairy at Barn-
Elmes, where she played the milkmaid, as the poor Queen
of France used at Trianon.
If we may trust La Mothe Fenelon, Leicester was as much
the Queen's "maid" as her Master of the Horse. The French
Ambassador says, that the public was displeased with the
familiar offices he rendered at her toilet. He was in her
bed-chamber ere she aro^e ; and there, according to the re-
ports of men who denounced his privileges merely because
they were not their own, he would hand to her a garment
which did not become the hands of a Master of the Horse,
and would dare to " kiss her Majesty when he was not even
invited thereto," but when, as he very well knew, "he was
right welcome." For Elizabeth took all she could get, even
"nightcaps," which were among the presents sent to pro-
pitiate her by the Queen of Scots. She took with both
hands ; and gave, as she herself truly said, only with the
little finger. She ever graciously received new-year's gifts
that enriched her wardrobe ; and was especially wroth with
the Bishop of London for preaching too strictly against
vanity of attire. When she saw Harrington in a frieze
jerkin, she declared that the cut liked her well, and she
would have one like it for her own wear ; but she spat on
Sir Matthew Arundel's fringed suit, with the remark,
" The fool's wit is gone to rags. Heaven spare me from
such gibing!" A queen of later days would not think of
assuming the fashion of Lord Palmerston's paletot, nor
spoil the uniform of a bran-new deputy-lieutenant, as Eli-
zabeth did Sir Matthew Arundel's embroidery. I believe
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 103
our Gracious Sovereign never went further in this direction
than to laugh good-humouredly at the Duke of Welling-
ton's hair when he had had it newly cropped, as was his
wont, into the appearance of short bristles on a scrubbing-
brush.
If it be true that Leicester helped her at her toilet, he
was the only happy individual who enjoyed the privilege.
At least, in her mature years she had a horror of being
seen en deshabille. Essex once came upon her unexpectedly
in the hands of her tiring-maids, and hardly escaped with
his ears. Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury's son, also once
beheld her in her night-gear, as she stood at a window to
look out at a May morning. The Virgo, magis quam tern'
pestiva, hurried away with such blushes as she could call up
at forty-five. Twenty years before she would have shown
less haste and more discretion ; at forty-five, in her " night-
stuif " at sunrise, no Gyges would have thanked Candaules
for letting his eye rest on so questionable ^vision.
Even in her midday glories, she was no attractive sight
as she grew in years. See her going to prayers, when her
threescore years had thrice as many nobles to honour them,
and she walking amid all, wrinkled, small-eyed, with teeth
that made her smile hideous, and with not only false hair,
but that hair red. Hurtzner, who saw her on one of these
occasions, says : " Her bosom was uncovered, as all the
English ladies have it till they marry, and she had on a
necklace of exceeding fine jewels. . . . She was dressed in
white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans ; and
over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads ; her
train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness ;
the ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome
and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white.
The older she grew, the more splendidly she bedizened her-
self, as decaying matter puts on variety of colour. " She
imagined," says Bacon, " that the people, who are much
104 HABITS AND MEN.
influenced by externals, would be diverted, by the glitter of
her jewels, from noticing the decay of her personal attrac-
tions." The people were not such simpletons, and they saw
plainly enough that she was dying, in spite of the majesty
of her exquisitely braided periwig.
Anne of Denmark, the next Queen of England, did not
look queenly even in Elizabeth's robes. Her taste in dress
was extremely bad. She patronized especially the huge far-
thingales, high behind, low before, and swelling out into un-
limited space on all sides. These monstrous dresses were
kept in countenance by the as monstrous padded costumes
of the courtiers; and it was not very unusual for a bevy of the
bearers of them to stick fast in the narrow passages, whence
only dexterity could decently disentangle them. The King
issued a proclamation against the farthingales; but the ladies,
to show their contempt for his authority in matters of
fashion, continued to wear them till he died, and then left
them off. Spirited women !
King Charles wore a white mantle at his coronation, and
when his poor hearse, poorly attended, crossed the yard of
Windsor Castle, the snow descended upon it, and covered
the coffin as it was taken out with its silently-falling flakes ;
and so, from crown to grave, Charles was, as his servants
used to call him, " the White King." His consort, Henrietta
Maria, was fond of the colour, that in which Mary Tudor
had mourned. But poor Henrietta, less fortunate than the
sister of Henry VIII., gay and graceful as she was at her
husband's court, was too ill-conditioned in France to dress
becomingly even in weeds. She was one of the founders
of good taste in England ; and in her exile she wore con-
tentedly the coarsest stuffs. But then Louis XIV. buried
her splendidly at his own cost ; and Charles II. and his
people spent twice as much in a six months' mourning for
her as would have sufficed to have kept her and her house-
hold for ever.
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 105
When Katherine of Braganza landed in England as Queen
Consort of Charles II., she excited mirth by the stiff out-
landish fashion in which her luxuriant tresses were done up
by her Majesty's " barber," and her exceedingly ugly maids
of honour. Indeed she had as little taste for dress as she
had for the fine arts ; though she had a taste for music. In
full court dress, however, she looked a handsome woman,
without studying how she might best become so. Pepys has
recorded that he saw her and the King dining together once,
on which occasion she wore a loose white wrapping gown, as
was supposed to become her imaginary condition ; and Pepys
adds, that she looked handsomer in it than in her robes of
state and ceremony.
Mary Beatrice of Modena, the wife of James II., is re-
markable for her detestation of rouge, and for her wearing it
in obedience to her husband's wishes. Ladies will be pleased
to make a note, not so much of the fact as of the motive.
Father Seraphine, her Capuchin confessed gave an impu-
dent stare of horror when he beheld it ; and as she murmured
something about the paleness of her complexion, he ex-
claimed, and in the very face of the King too, " Madam,
I would rather see your Majesty yellow or green than
rouged ;" at which the good lady fell a laughing, as servilely
as a barrister at a judicial bad joke, such as Baron Alder-
son's light puns, with which he cuts short heavy suits.
This is almost the only trait of interest told in connec-
tion with her toilet. It was simply observed that in Eng-
land she dressed as became her state ; and in exile, as became
a lady whose dower was stolen by William III. and appro-
priated to his own use. Apply it as he would, he could
never look so well as the owner. She cared little for that of
which Elizabeth thought so much ; and when, in after-days, it
was remarked that she dressed as plainly as a citizen's wife,
and wore no jewels, it was known that she had sold her jewels,
to profit her son. As often happens with mothers who despoil
F 3
106 HABITS AND MEN.
themselves to benefit their boys, the gift profited neither the
recipient nor the giver. The splendour of the silver orna-
ments of her toilet was well known ; and the ladies of France
could well appreciate the sacrifice, which was in truth no
sacrifice to her who made it.
Queen Mary II., if she rolled joyously over the couches
from which her affectionate father had just before been
rolled off 1 , the unfilial romp was, at least, a private bit of in-
gratitude. She did not, like her sister Anne, go to the play
in a dress covered with orange ribbons.
Mary, in her later days, patronized the cornette head-
dresses of monumental elevation, and ihefontanges, of which
she was desirous to deprive, by royal decree too, the " city
minxes ;" but the ladies beyond Temple Bar would neither
heed her decrees nor wear the high-crowned hat, which had
fallen into disuse save by the pagani, and they continued to
" flaunt in cornettes and top-knots, after her own gracious
example."
Anne was too lame to walk at her coronation, and ac-
cordingly she was carried in a low sedan chair ; and as she
could not take her huge train with her, the same was as
gravely carried by the privileged bearers behind the chair,
as though it had been hanging from the back of her most
sacred person. She was indifferently dressed for the occa-
sion, but there were two figures present whose appearance
compensated for whatever lacked. The Queen, being " Queen
of France " as well as of England, must necessarily be at-
tended by her French nobility ; but as the real article was
not to be had, a spurious one was invented, and two men,
named Clarke and Andrews, were dressed up to represent
the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine. They stood at the
foot of the throne, answered to their fictitious titles, and
looked, like all shams, very much embarrassed and supremely
ridiculous. If this Queen was not a very splendid dresser,
the makers and washers of her dresses had profitable places
THE TIBINa-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 107
under her. Mrs. Abrahal enjoyed a pension of one hundred
a year, in return for having "washed and starched the Queen's
heads (triple-tiered caps, brought into fashion by Main-
tenon) when she was princess, for twenty pounds a year."
The Queen's sempstress came off more fortunately still ; for
Mrs. Ravensford pricked the heart of a gallant as easily as
she could pierce her own pincushion, and ultimately mar-
ried the son of the Bishop of Ely. And stick lawn sleeves
she made for her father-in-law !
But it was a reign in which the devisers of garments had
a lucky time of it. I may instance John Duddlestone, the
bodice-maker of Bristol, who asked Prince George to din-
ner when none of the Bristol merchants had the hospitality
to do so. The Prince accepted the invitation, kissed Dame
Duddlestone, ate his beef and pudding with more appetite
after such a grace, and ultimately presented the pair to the
Queen at Windsor. Anne not only invited them to dine
with her, but, like the French lady who usdft to find all her
male visitors in black velvet breeches, attired him in a suit
of violet velvet at her own cost ; and when the bottle had
gone a round or two, drew her husband's sword, and laying
it on the bodice-maker's shoulder, bade him " stand up, Sir
John!"
The full dress of Queen Anne's time was perhaps never
seen to more advantage than at the grand soirees which the
obese lady gave in that conservatory at Kensington which,
as Defoe says, she was afterwards pleased to turn into a
summer supper-room. The well-known old building was in-
deed divided into three rooms, a ball-room, with a drawing
and music-room on either side. The Corinthian pillars, the
elegant friezes, and the niches for statues bearing girandoles,
are yet to be seen. The Queen came to the parties given in
this modest Trianon in a chair, by the gate on the north-
west of the palace. Concerts, balls, and illuminated galas
alfresco, were the usual entertainments ; and to witness them
108 HABITS AND MEN.
the wealthy public were admitted, on condition of their ap-
pearing in full dress ; the ladies patched, feathered, sacked,
or hooped; the gentlemen in three-cornered hats, velvet
coats with stupendous skirts, powder on the head, a bodkin
across the loins, and two inches of heel to give increase of
dignity. Where the Broad "Walk now exists there was then
a railing; and through this the mobility, worse dressed,
but probably not less washed, than their betters, looked
on at the genteel people who glided about the gardens in
brocaded robes, hoops, fly-caps, and fans.
Indifferent as Anne's clothing was, there were terrible
squabbles, touching the cast-off garments, between the
Duchess of Marlborough,who was Mistress of the Robes, and
the bed-chamber women and dressers. These complained
that they only received very old mantuas, and sacks, and
gowns, petticoats, commodes, head-clothes, and mantes, from
the Duchess, who kept all the best of the old clothes, they
said, for her own wear. Her Grace, in return, rated them
as hussies ; told them that she had a right to all, and that
they could claim none, although she gave, out of her libe-
rality, more than they deserved. Nay, she so well distri-
buted the cast-off garments among the subaltern ladies, that
of petticoats and other habits left, she had, as she protested,
"only two or three for my own service." Such was the
delicacy of a ducal Mistress of the Robes in the palmy days
of Queen Anne.
"Mistress" indeed she was, and what a virago to boot!
Witness the incident when Anne was entering St. Paul's,
the Duchess at her side, to render thanks for the great vic-
tory achieved at Oudenarde. The Duchess of Marlborough
had had the royal jewels newly set for that especial day ; and
sublime was her horror, as the royal carriage ascended Lud-
gate-hill, at observing that the Queen had no jewels at all
about her. The vicinity to Billingsgate lent power to the
vituperative eloquence of the offended wife of the General
THE TIBIKG-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 109
whose valour had won the victory. The Queen, for once,
was not an iota less vituperatively eloquent than her Mis-
tress of the Robes. As they mounted the steps, and entered
the cathedral, they flew at one another with winged words,
that fly swiftly, and wound where'er they fall. Anne's
voice was by far the louder; and for every thrust of the
Duchess's tongue, she fired a volley of asseverations that
made the lieges long to tear the "Mistress's" robes from her
own back. That lady saw as much herself, and became
alarmed ; but, like a skilful general, she had the last shot,
and fairly battered the Queen into silence, as she attempted
to renew the contest in the royal pew, by the imperative
order to "hold your tongue!" " don't answer me!" and
poor Anne obeyed.
But if Anne claimed the privilege of dressing as she
pleased, she was angry if the necessary etiquette was dis-
regarded by others. When Eugene of Savoy came over
here in 1712, to uphold, as well as he coiftd with his one
hand, the war-faction against the Queen, he marvellously
offended her by appearing in her august presence in a tie-^
wig. Mr. Secretary St. John, who presented him, wore a
periwig so huge that he perfectly extinguished therewith
the illustrious stranger whom he held by the hand. Eugene
had been forewarned that the Queen could not bear to look
upon a man unless he were covered with a full-bottomed
periwig. Eugene carelessly, and not truthfully, answered,
as he stood in the royal antechamber, " I don't know what
to do ; I never had a long periwig in my life ; and I have
sent to all my valets and footmen to know if any of them
have one, that I might borrow it ; but no one has such a
thing." And so the Prince was conducted to the Queen,
who thought more of the tie-wig on his head than she did
of the gallant heart that beat within his " plaguy yellow and
literally ugly" person.
Queen Anne, on the death of Prince George of Denmark,
110 HABITS AND MEN.
wore black and white, with a mixture of purple in some
part of her dress. The precedent was taken from that worn
by Mary Queen of Scots for the Earl of Darnley. Mourn-
ing, with such variety in it, was, after all, better than none.
The Pope's nieces, for instance, never wear mourning, not
even for their nearest relatives. The Romans account it so
great a happiness for a family to have a Pope in it, that they
think no calamity whatever ought to be permitted to afflict
his Holiness' s kindred ! On the other hand, the dowager
Empresses of Germany were accustomed never to leave off
their mourning, and even their apartments were hung with
black till their death. I will just add, that the French
Queens, previous to the era of Charles VIII., wore white
upon the decease of the King. They were thence called
"Seines blanches." In later days, the state mourning of
the French court was purple. Consequently, when Anne
wore white, black, and purple, in mourning for her departed
lord, she put on the suits of woe sanctioned by the practice
of three different courts.
Sophia Dorothea, the wife of George I., was the second
of the royal consorts of England who never visited our shores.
For allowing Count Konigsmark to kiss her hand, her jea-
lous husband murdered the Count, and shut the lady up in
prison for more than thirty years. In her youth she was a
charming person, charmingly dressed. The most touching
circumstance of her long captivity was her weekly appear-
ance, all clad in white, at the communion-table of the chapel
of her prison-house, the Castle of Alden, where she partook
of the sacrament, made solemn asseveration of her innocence,
and forgave her enemies.
The process of dressing Marie Antoinette, it will be seen
in another page, was at times a splendid misery. That of
Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., was a splendid
mockery. Horace "Walpole describes a scene as having taken
place in Queen Anne's tiring-room, which really occurred
THE TIBING-BOWERS OF QUEENS. Ill
in that of the sovereign lady of the second George. This
exemplary Queen dressed and transacted her early worship
at one and the same moment. She and her nymphs were in
one room, the chaplain solus in another. Occasionally these
nymphs, in their discretion, closed the door. Whenever
this occurred, the chaplain, liberal Whiston, ceased to pray,
and meditated on the mysteries proceeding within. This
observance nettled the Queen, and did not please her ladies.
One of the latter, on re-opening the door one morning, and
finding the chaplain had not progressed in his duties while
he had been shut out, angrily inquired, " Why did you
stop?" "I stopped," said Whiston, "because I do not
choose to whistle the word of God through the key-hole."
It is not to be wondered at, since queens afforded such
examples of laxity, that fine ladies followed with alacrity the
unseemly fashion. Miss Strickland notices the fact, that
great ladies had, in the days upon which we are treating, a
bad custom of proceeding with the affairs of tUt toilet during
prayers ; which was severely satirized, says the fair historian,
in one of the old plays of that era, " where the fashionable
belle is described preparing for her morning toilet, by say-
ing her prayers in bed to save time, while one maid put on
her stockings, and the other read aloud the play-bill."
The consort of George III., the "good" Queen Charlotte,
lived in a transition time, and wore the costumes of two se-
parate centuries. The little lady lacked taste ; and though
she set the fashion to loyal maids and matrons, seldom be-
came the robes she wore. But at the worst of these periods
she displayed more taste, and, what is better than taste,
more personal cleanliness, than her daughter-in-law, the
coarse wife of the heartless George IV. Queen Adelaide
was simply a lady. Expensive dresses were her abhorrence ;
and she never put on a robe of state without a sigh at the
cost. In any sphere of life she would have been a thoroughly
tidy, honest, careful housewife.
112 HABITS AND MEN.
Except for a few days, Queen Victoria lias not resided at
Anne's favourite Kensington since her accession. In her
early days, the then little princess, clad so simply that it is
wonderful the middle classes did not avail themselves of the
example, and dress their darlings less tawdrily, might be
seen of a bright morning in the enclosure in front of the
palace, her mother at her side. On one of these occasions I
remember seeing a footman, after due instruction given,
bringing out to the lively daughter of the Duke of Kent a
doll most splendidly attired, sufficiently so to pass for the
etScoAov of an heiress, and captivate whole legions of male
pou/pees, all gold without, and sawdust within. The brilliant
effigy, however, had no other effect upon the little princess
but to put her in a passion. She stamped her little foot
and shook her lustrous curls, and evidently the liveried
Mercury had unwittingly disobeyed her bidding. He dis-
appeared for a minute or two, but returned, bearing with
him a very torso of a doll. A marine-store dealer would not
have hung up such an image, even to denote that he dealt
in stolen goods, and " no questions asked." But the un-
happily deformed image was the loadstone of the youthful
affections of the princess. She seized it with frantic delight,
skipped with it over the grass, gambolled with it, laughed
over it, and finally, in the very exuberance of joy, thrust it
so suddenly up to the face of a short old lady, who was con-
templating the scene from the low iron fence, that the
stranger started back and knew not well what to make of
it; thereupon the maternal Mentor advanced, and some-
thing like an apology appeared to be offered, but this was
done with such a shower of saucy " curtsies," so droll, so
rapid, so "audacious," and so full of hearty, innocent, un-
controllable fun, that duchess, princess, old lady, and the
few spectators of the scene, broke into as much laughter
as bienseance would permit ; and some of them, no doubt,
"exclaimed mentally" as well-bred people do in novels,
THE TIBING-BOWEBS OF QUEENS. 113
that there was a royal English girl, who had most unques-
tionably a heart and a will of her own, and may God bless
both!
I have noticed above how queens of foreign birth intro-
duced to our* ancestresses fashions of which their young
imaginations had never dreamed. The origin of all fashion
then, as now, was in France ; and thitherward we now will
take our way.
"LA MODE" IN HER BIRTH-PLACE.
Chacvuj a sa mode, et lea aiies a 1'ancienne.
MODISH PBOYEKB.
THE Honourable James Howard, in the year 1764, wrote a
sprightly comedy, entitled ' The English Monsieur.' The
hero is an individual who sees nothing English that is not
execrable. An English meal is poison, and an English coat
degradation. He once challenged a tasteless individual
who had praised an English dinner ; and, says the English
Monsieur, " I ran him through his mistaken palate, which
made me think the hand of justice guided my sword.'
He can tell whether English or French ladies have passed
along the moist road before him, by the impressions that
they leave.
"I have often," he remarks, "in France, observed in
gardens, when the company used to walk after a small
shower of rain, the impression of the French ladies' feet. I
have seen such bonne mine in their footsteps, that the King
of France's mo/itre de danse could not have found fault with
any one tread amongst them all. In this walk," he adds, "I
find the toes of English ladies ready to tread upon one an-
other."
Subsequently our "English Monsieur" quarrels with a
friend, because he had found fault with " a pair of French
tops" worn by the Philogallist, and which were so noisy
when the wearer moved in them, that the other's mistress
could not hear a word of the love made to her. The wearer
justifies the noise as a fashionable French noise ; " for look
'LA MODE' IK HEE BIBTH-PLACE. 115
you, Sir, a French noise is agreeable to the air, and therefore
not unagreeable, and therefore not prejudicial to the hear-
ing ; that is to say, to a person who has seen the world."
The slave of Gallomania even finds comfort, when his own
mistress rejects him, in the thought that " 'twas a denial
with a French tone of voice, so that 'twas agreeable !" and
when she bids him a final adieu, he remarks to a friend,
" Do you see, Sir, how she leaves us ? she walks away with
a French step."
Such was the early allegiance rendered even in this
country to the authority of France in the matters of
" Mode," of that ever- variable queen, of whom a French
writer himself has despairingly said, that she is the despot
of ladies and fops ; " La mode est le tyran des femmes et des
fats."
But Paris is the focus of insurrection, and Fashion itself
has had to endure many a rebellious assault. Never was
rebellion more determined than that carrieft on against
towering plumes.
In Paris, feathers and head-dress extended so outrage-
ously, both in a vertical and a horizontal direction, that a
row of ladies in the pit stalls, or in the front row of the
boxes, effectually barred the " spectacle " from an entire
audience in the rear. The fashion was suppressed by a
Swiss, who was as well known in the Paris theatres as the
celebrated critical trunk-maker once was in our own galle-
ries. The Swiss used to attend, armed with a pair of scissors ;
and when he found his view obstructed by the head-dresses
in front, he made a demonstration of cutting away all the
superfluous portions of the head-dresses which interfered
with his enjoyment. At first, the result was that the ladies
made way for him, and he obtained a front place ; but over-
come by his obstinate warfare they at length hauled down
their top-knots, and by yielding defeated the Swiss, for he
never got a front place afterwards.
116 HABITS AND MEN.
I will take the liberty of adding here, that the fans used
by Queen Elizabeth were usually made of feathers, and
were as large as a modern hand fire-screen, with all sorts of
devices thereon, such as would have singularly delighted an
astronomical Chinese philosopher. Sir Francis Drake gave
her one of this description, and she used to leave fans of a
similar description at country houses as memorials of her
visits ; as, for instance, when she left Hawsted Hall, she
dropped her silver-handled fan into the moat. Happy of
course was the lucky man who got it thence. But to get
back to France.
Carlin, the famous French harlequin, once excited uni-
versal laughter by appearing on the stage, not with the
usual rabbit's tail in his harlequin's cap, but with a pea-
cock's feather, and that of such length, that the stage was
hardly high enough for him. If the laughter however was
universal, there was not wanting something of indignation,
for lofty feathers formed a fashion in which Marie An-
toinette very much rejoiced, and old royalists thought that
Carlin ought to be sent to prison for his impertinence ; but
Carlin had not ventured on the caricature but by superior
order, and the King would not consent to his being mo-
lested.
The fashion deserved to be caricatured, for feathers and
head-dresses had raised themselves to such an outrageous
elevation, when Mdlle. Bertin, the milliner, and Marie An-
toinette set a fashion between them which ruined many a
family, that they who followed the mode to the extreme
were compelled, as they rode in carriages, either to hang
their heads out at the door, or to set on the floor of the
vehicle.
When Hardicanute lived at the house of Osgod Clappa,
the Clapham district, which took its name from the chief,
was not half so obsequious in copying the costume and
carriage of the royal dandy, as all France was in trans-
'LA MODE' IN HER BIRTH-PLACE. 117
forming themselves into multiplied copies of the consort of
Louis XVI.
And what a cruel ceremony was the dressing of that
same Queen! "When Marie Antoinette, in the days of
her cumbersome greatness, stood of a morning in the cen-
tre of her bedchamber, awaiting, after her bath, her first
article of dress, it was presented to her, or rather it was
passed over her royal shoulders by the " dames d'honneur."
Perhaps, at the very moment, a prinoess of the blood entered
the room (for French Queens both dressed and dined in
public), the right of piitting on the primal garment of her
Majesty immediately devolved upon her, but it could not
be yielded to her by the "dame d'honneur;" the latter,
arresting the chemise de la Seine as it was passing down the
royal back, adroitly whipped it off, and, presenting it to the
" premiere dame," that noble lady transferred it to the
princess of the blood. Madame Campan had once to give
it up to the Duchess of Orleans, who, solemnly taking the
same, was on the point of throwing it over the Queen's
head, when a scratching (it was contrary to etiquette to
knock) was heard at the door of the room. Thereupon
entered the Countess de Provence, and she being nearer to
the throne than the lady of Orleans, the latter made over
her office to the new-comer. In the meantime, the Queen
stood like Venus as to covering, but shaking with cold,
for it was mid- winter, and muttering "what an odious
nuisance!" The Countess de Provence entered on the
mission which had fallen to her ; and this she did so awk-
wardly, that she entirely demolished a head-dress which
had taken three hours to build. The Queen beheld the
devastation, and got warm by laughing outright.
As England had its "macaronies," its "bloods," its
"bucks," its "dandies," and its "exquisites," so France
had its " hommes a bonnes fortunes," its " petits-maitres,"
its " importuns," its " elegans," and last of all, its "lions."
1]8 HABITS AND HEN.
"With us, variety of names scarcely indicated variety of
species ; the " macaroni " and the " exquisite " were simply
the fast and fashionable men of their respective times ; their
titles were conferred by the people, not arrogated by them-
selves.
It was otherwise with our neighbours. The " hommes a
bonnes fortunes " assumed the appellation, and therewith
became the terror of fathers and husbands. His glory was
to create a " scandal '' to be ever mixed up with the
coteries of the women, and to be for ever fighting the
men. Compared with him, the "importuns," who took the
Due de Beaufort for their Magnus Apollo, and the " petits-
maitres," who swore by their great master, the Prince de
Conde, were simply harmless fops.
The " elegant " was the first of the butterfly race who ex-
hibited a calmness of bearing. He smiled rather than an-
swered, when spoken to ; never gazed at his reflection in a
glass, but concentrated his looks upon his own proper per-
son. He was in a continual calm ecstasy at the sight of
so charming a doll, so admirably dressed.
"The 'elegant,' " says Mercier, "pays visits of not more
than a quarter of an hour's duration. He no longer pro-
claims himself the ' friend of the duke,' the ' lover of the
duchess,' or the ' indispensable man at little suppers.' He
speaks of the retirement in which he lives, of the chemistry
which he studies, of his distaste for the great world. He
lets others speak ; and while they speak, an almost impercep-
tible smile of derision flutters on his lips. He is dreaming
while he listens to you. He does not noisily leave a room,
but glides out of it ; and a quarter of an hour after he has
quitted you, he writes you a note, as if he had not seen
you for months, just to show you that he is an absent man."
The "elegant" was not without his uses. He brought
down superlativeism. Exaggeration of speech and of dress
went out as he came in. This change extended to female
' LA MODE ' IN HEB BIETH-PLACE. 119
as well as male society. He rendered social intercourse
however a difficulty for intellectual men. The latter had
indeed no difficulty in talking of science with the wise, of
knowledge with the learned, of war with the soldier, and
of dogs and horses with the nobles ; but he did find a dif-
ficulty in talking about nothing with those fashionable
women who cared only for the subject most patronized by
the " elegant."
What dreadful guys were the French children of the
middle of the last century ! Their monkeys, who danced
upon cords, for the edification of the grande nation, were not
more ridiculous. Fancy a boy seven years old: his head
was powdered profusely, and between his little shoulders
hung the wide tie or bag of his hair. Therewith he wore a
full-sleeved and broad-skirted coat, immense ruffles, a cocked
hat, not on his head, it was not big enough for that, but
beneath his arm ; and upon his tobacco-pipe of a thigh
there hung a needle of a sword ! And this jfeung old man
could hold himself erect, could bow like a judge, and was
kept lean by late hours. He had, in the common accepta-
tion of the words, neither wrists, arms, nor legs of his own.
He seemed jointless, but he had been taught how to sit
down, and how to walk a minuet.
Mercier groans over the contrast between French and
English boys of this period. Take, he says, a little Gallic
monseigneur to London, and introduce him to the son of a
lord, a boy of his own age. What does he see? Clean,
fair, and long flowing hair ; the skin pure and healthy ; the
head unmolested by a peruke ; the body supple and robust.
The little Frenchman might be sulky thereat, but he found
consolation in his gold-laced embroidery. He thinks to
make an impression on the other boy by his profound bows,
at which the English lad laughs ; and when, according to
the French custom, the little monseigneur advances to em-
brace the youthful Briton, the latter skips ofi", with the ex-
120 HABITS AND MEN.
clamation, that they wanted to take him in by pretending
to introduce him to a playfellow, which proved to be only
a monkey.
The extravagances of fashion were carried to the utmost
in France when it was the custom for ladies not only to
keep the head powdered and uncleaned, but to wear over
it a napkin less clean still. The authors of the period are
murderously satirical against a mode which especially pre-
scribes that the napkin should not only seem dirty, but be
so. Lady Mary Wortley Montague however thought the
idea admirable, and she adopted it with a nasty alacrity.
The fashion nevertheless could not long " obtain," and
soon we find la Mode raised from an art to a science, and
women de\t>ting themselves to the study thereof with an
intensity worthy of a better cause.
A pretty woman, says Mercier, meaning thereby a pretty
Frenchwoman, daily goes twice through the ceremony of the
toilet. The first was a mystery, from which lovers were
as rigorously banished as the profane from solemn rites in
the temples of old. A lover, says Mercier, dare not enter
his lady's tiring-bower but at an appointed hour. Tou
may deceive a woman, but you must never come upon her
by surprise : that is the rule ; the most favoured and the
most liberal of lovers never dares to infringe thereon.
Mercier however seems to have had free admission to the
performance of the early ceremony ; for he says that
thereat mysterious use was made of all the cosmetics whose
application beautifies the skin. He only alludes to " other
preparations which, among women, form a science apart,
ah ! I might say, a whole encyclopaedia."
The second toilet he describes as a game invented by
coquetry. If faces be thus made before a glass, it was, he
says, with a studied grace. It was not contemplation, but
admiration. If the finger was run through the long curls,
it was only for effect, for they had already been duly
'LA MODE' IN HEE BIETH-PLACE. 121
arranged and perfumed. It was at this second toilet that
the world was present. The lovers fluttered round the half-
dressed object of what they called their love, and that
object was only a quarter dressed, and looking not unlike
Anadyomene herself as to form and feature and position,
but with a glance in her eyes and a significance in her bear-
ing that bespoke much more the Venus Pandemia than the
Venus Ourania. And there too were the abbes, who were
permanent lovers wheresoever they were to be found ; they
were of all sizes and conditions of health, but they were
all, without exception, gay, gallant, witty, impudent, and
blasphemous beyond all belief, and happily beyond all con-
ception. Reputations were made and unmade at these morn-
ing toilets ; and as for the detail of the dressing, while the
caquet and causerie were going on, it was very like that
which Pope has so brilliantly described in the Rape of the
Lock, and in which a reputation died at every word.
In modern days France has become more^than ever the
locality where the Popess Fashion is enthroned, and whose
slipper is reverently kissed by a devoted world. Parenthe-
tically may I say that the custom of kissing the Pontiff 1 ' s
slipper arose from the time when one of the Leos, having
been offended by an act of one of his fingers, cut it oft', and
in his strange humility would no longer permit his hand to
be saluted by the faithful. That was a queer cause for a
strange fashion ; but it rests only on legendary authority.
In France causes as strange, sometimes more and sometimes
less pleasant, have fixed the fashion of the hour. Last
century, that is to say, during something more than the
traditionary "nine days" of that century, the rage in
Paris was for pantaloons made, from aloes, the colour of a
lady's finger-nails, between rosy tint and delicate blue.
France not only gave the fashion for fine dresses, but
also prescribed how people should visit in them. It was in
Paris, about the year 1770, that was introduced the custom
122 HABITS AND MEN.
of visiting en blanc, as it was called ; that is by leaving a card.
The old ladies and gentlemen who loved to show their cos-
tume, called this fashion fantastic ; but it has its advantages,
and, though sometimes anti-social, is perhaps generally less
so than it at first sight appears. Society would often gain
nothing by the closer contact of individuals.
There was wit however in many of the modish inventions
of the Parisians. Here is an instance. La Harpe was the
vainest of men, and the most unfortunate of authors. His
pieces were invariably failures ; but he used to speak of their
success with as little regard to truth as the Czar Nicholas and
his Muscovite "gentlemen" show, when, being thoroughly
well beaten, they go and outrage Heaven with thanks for
a victory. La Harpe's tragedy of "Les Barmecides" was
hissed off the stage ; but he complacently pottered about its
merits. He was one day riding in the Bois de Boulogne
with the Duchess de Grammont and another lady, when a
man was heard calling for sale " Cannes a la Barmecide."
La Harpe rapturously summoned hirn to the carriage-door,
at the request of the Duchess, who wished to make him a
present of a walking-stick a la Barmecide, in celebration of
the success achieved by his tragedy. "But why do you
call your canes a la Barmecide?" said La Harpe. "I will
show you," said the man ; and taking off the ivory head, he
pointed to a whistle within, warranted to be shrill of note,
and which the vendor pronounced to be very useful to
owners of good dogs and hissers of bad tragedies. La
Harpe could have shed "tears of bile," says Beaumarchais ;
and, what is worse, the story got abroad, and the tailors pro-
fited by it, and sporting vests with a little pocket to carry a
whistle, were immediately named "vestes a la Barmecide."
What the Bourse and Royal Exchange are to the mag-
nates of the commercial world, the Temple in Paris is (and
Eag Fair and Houndsditch in London are or have been) to
the dealers in the cast-off skins, if we may so speak, of
'LA MODE' IN HEE BIBTH-PLACE. 123
glittering metropolitan and other snakes. It is especially
at Paris that the commerce of renovated ancient garments
(di<c-huits, as they are sometimes called, because deux fois
neuf) is carried on with eagerness.
The locality of the Temple, where knights displayed a
sovereign splendour and the roues of Paris laughed at the
philosophers' splendid wit, where kings put their plate
in pawn, and where the people made prisoners of kings,
was turned to something like base uses when, upon its sa-
cred or classic soil, soil, at all events, on which flourished
a giant crop of varied memories, was erected the arcaded
and pilastered rotunda, beneath which dealers drove bar-
gains in dilapidated habits. The Paris class of such deabrs
is a class apart, who barter, sell, and re-sell ; and through
whose hands pass the rejected garments of court and city.
There, in old chests, may still be found tarnished lace coats,
which once shone brilliantly at the court, of Louis XV. ;
and embroidered robes, whose original wearers sat at the
suppers of the Regent, and laughed at Heaven. By the
side of the republican carmagnole hangs the red robe of the
parliamentary magistrates, or judges rather, with something
of the senator annexed, a little of the legislative with a
trifle of the executive, and not very much of either, and who
wore those scarlet robes on days of high rejoicing, when the
grand wearers of them were accustomed, as they met at the
tribunal, not to bow but to curtsey to each other. The act
is not incongruous to the dress ; for when the Turkish Am-
bassador first saw our own judges in their crimson draperies,
seated in the House of Lords, he innocently asked who all
those old ladies were who were huddled together and
looked so uncomfortable. But to return to Paris.
It is to the Temple that the correct comedian runs who
would fain discover the proper type of a lost mode of the
last century. And this reminds me that the law in France
is exceedingly strict, even with respect to the costume of a
G 2
124 HABITS AND MEN.
comedian. It is not many months since that a young French
actress, possessed with becoming ideas of decency, refused
to put on the extremely minute portion of transparent
gauze which was allotted to her as her entire costume, in a
fairy piece then about to appear. She averred that to
stand so attired, rather undressed than dressed, before the
public, would be an insult to the audience and a degradation
to herself. The manager, not more modest than those de-
licate creatures generally are, did not comprehend, and
therefore could not respect, the sentiment which influenced
the young actress ; and he accordingly summoned her to the
tribunal of the law. The grave magistrate heard the case,
examined the bit of gauze, condemned the poor girl to wear
it, and went in the evening to see how she looked. The
worthy official of the very blind Astrsea repaired to the lady's
"loge" when all was over, and inquired pleasantly how she
had felt when greeted by the acclamations of the audience.
" I felt as if I were in the pillory," said the really decens
Nympha, " and that every shout was a missile flung at my
head." The solemn villain smiled, tapped her on the cheek,
and bade her take courage ; " that foolish excess of mo-
desty," he said, "would soon disappear!" Thus we see
that Paris has not improved in this respect since the days
when people saw " the Testament turned into melodramas
nightly:"
" Here Daniel in pantomime bids bold defiance
To Nebuchadnezzar and all his stuff 5 d lions ;
While pretty young Israelites dance round the prophet,
In yery thin clothing, and but little of it.
Here Begrand, who shines in this scriptural path
As the lovely Susanna, without e'en a relic
Of drapery round her, comes out of the bath
In a manner that, Bob says, is quite Eve-angelic."
Many a royal garment has been carried off" from the
Temple to the theatres. The former place is most crowded
'LA MODE' iisr HER BIBTH-PLACE. 125
about eleven in the morning. All the marchands d'Jiabits in
Paris assemble there at that hour, laden with the purchases
which they have made during the early part of the day ;
and these purchases are immediately resold to the stationary
dealers in the rotunda, who divide the same according to
their respective merits and expected customers.
One of the best-dressed men in France under the Em-
pire was General Dorsenne. " Look at Dorsenne," Napoleon
would say, " on the day of battle ; he looks like the. true type
of a Trench general, while Murat has the air of a rider
from Franconi's."
Dorsenne was about to set out for the campaign in Prus-
sia. He was the possessor of a tasteful but brilliant uni-
form, which he was desirous of exhibiting as closely as
possible to the enemy, and which he intended to wear at the
balls at Berlin. It was duly packed up; and Dorsenne, who
was to set out on the morrow, took it into his head to pay
a visit in the evening to the Theatre de la Gaite, where
they play such melancholy melodramas, in order to see the
somewhat celebrated 'actor Tautain in one of his military
characters. The first act passed off well enough ; but in
the second Tautain appeared in the full uniform of a gene-
ral. Dorsenne was astonished ; he put up his glass, recog-
nized his property on Tautain' s back, and, exploding with
wpath, he cried to his aide-de-camp :
" Arrest that rascal ; take him to the corps-de-garde ; I
will be there as soon as you ; he has stolen my coat !"
The piece was interrupted : four soldiers escorted Tau-
tain to the neighbouring "poste," and there stood the Ge-
neral as scarlet as Major Bagstock.
" "Where did you steal that coat, you wretched mounte-
bank?" exclaimed Dorsenne.
" I am neither thief nor mountebank," said Tautain, who
was pale with rage and fright ; " I bought it not two hours
ago at the Temple."
126 HABITS AND MEF.
When the affair was examined into, Dorsenne's valet
turned out to be the thief. The latter was punished as he
merited ; and the General, leaving his coat, lace, and epau-
lettes to the comedian, went through the campaign in an
old uniform and with his accustomed success.
In this quarter of the Temple takes place the last trans-
formation of the black dress coat, the silk waistcoat, and the
polished leather boots. The French feuilletoniste who is
known by the name of M. D'Anglemont, has devoted much
of his acute observation to the manners of the Temple Ex-
change. It is from him we learn that when a coat has passed
through all its degrees of descent, when it has been trans-
ferred from maker to owner, from the latter to his valet, from
the valet to the porter, and from that functionary to the
Norman who plies in Paris the vocation which is monopolized
in London by sons of ancient Israel, it soon after arrives at
the Temple, the necropolis of Parisian costumes. It is there
turned, mended, and re-made ; and it has yet a phase to go
through before it is ultimately sold to those Paris manufac-
turers who make "1'engrais de laine," guano for worn-out
clothes. This last phase it owes to the ingenuity of the
brothers Meurt-de-Soif.
This name, Meurt-de-Soif, as we are told by M. D'Angle-
mont, is not a name invented by the Paris wits. The family
of Meurt-de-Soif (Die of Thirst) has its residence in the sixth
arrondissement. Its especial occupation is the purchase of
old garments in huge quantities, which are made temporarily
to wear a new aspect, and then sold to the suburban beaux
who sun themselves beyond the Barriers.
The traffic carried on by this family takes place at night,
by torch-light, and by Dutch auction. There you may see
put up a coat from the studio of Humann, a genuine waist-
coat from the hand of Blanc, and trousers whose incompa-
rable cut declares them to have proceeded from the genius
and shears of Morbach ; in a word, the costume complete of
'LA MODE' IN HER BIBTH-PLACE. 127
a " fashionable " of the first water, for how much ? Three
francs ! just half-a-crown ! the pleasantry of the vendor
included, without extra charge.
This pleasantry is something like that of our " Cheap
Jacks," whose invention is so facile, and whose power of
lying exceeds that of Osten-Sacken and the Czar together.
" Look, gentlemen," exclaims one of the illustrious house in
question; "this coat originally belonged to a Eussian prince,
and was the means of rendering him irresistible in the eyes
of a danseuse of the Grande Chaumiere. It subsequently
became the admiration of all the inhabitants of the Closerie
du Lilas, who saw its effect on the back of a celebrated corn-
cutter. By means of this coat the valet of a " milord ' ' carried
off &figwante from the little Theatre des Delassemens, who
mistook him for his master. The coat has come to us imme-
diately from this last possessor, the extravagance of whose
Dulcinea compelled him to part from it. Well, gentlemen,
notwithstanding all these glorious souveni|te, in spite of all
the conquests due to it, I give it to you, gentlemen, at three
francs ! Three francs ! there is an opportunity for those
accustomed to profit by it!"
The coat put up at three francs has a gradually diminishing
value put upon it, until it is at last purchased at thirty sous.
Morbach's trousers go for a franc ; and Blanc's waistcoat
for the small price of fifty centimes fivepence !
The garments thus purchased are often only retained for
a single Sunday, some fete day, on which the poor cavalier
desires to look splendid, though it be with a second-hand
splendour, in the eyes of his " belle." If the costume holds
together through the severe ordeal of a night's dancing, it
is often resold to the Temple merchants, who repair the
damage, and again fit it to the back of some ephemeral
dandy of the suburbs who wishes but to shine for " a little
day."
" La Mere Moskow" drives her own trade by the side of
128 HABITS AITD MEN.
the Meurt-de-Soifs. She is an ex-vivandiere of the Grand
Army, who lets out body-linen to poor gentlemen suffering
from scarcity. A shirt may be hired of her for a week for
the modest price of twopence, the wearer being required
merely to leave his old one, by way of a security deposit.
Nothing can be more delicate than, not the deposit, but
the manner in which the request is made ; and a shirt of
La Mere Moskow might have been worn, without scruple,
at Lord O'Grady's by the Reverend Ozias Polyglot, or the
better-endowed Eeverend Obadiah Pringle.
But I shall have more to say hereafter touching Gallic
influences incidentally ; I will therefore turn from persons
and places to things, and, hat in hand, discourse of what I
hold.
HATS.
" Your bonnet to its right use." SHAKSPEARE.
NEWTON observed this Shakspearian injunction by always
taking off his hat when he pronounced the name of God.
This was a right use. The grandmother of Guy Faux de-
voted one to a strange use when she bequeathed her best
velvet hat to a nephew. I have often wondered if he went
to church in it ! The grandees of Spain treat their sacred
sovereign with less respect than Newton showed for a sacred
name. It is the privilege of the grandees of Spain that
they may stand with their hats on in the presence of their
sovereign. There is but one noble in England so privileged,
the head, so to speak, of the De Courcys, Earls of Kinsale.
It is just six centuries and a half since Philip of France
sent over a knight to summon King John to answer for the
murder of Prince Arthur, or abide by trial by combat. John
had no relish to do either, but he looked round for a substi-
tute willing to meet one of the alternatives. There was a
gallant soldier in prison of the name of De Courcy. He had
conquered Ulster for his master, Lackland, and had been
rewarded with captivity because he had not done more. His
fetters were struck off, and he was asked if he were willing
to be champion for John in this bloody arbitrement. " No,
not for him!" cried De Courcy, "but for my country, ay!"
The adversaries met, yet did not come to an encounter ; for
the French knight, not liking the look of his gigantic foe,
declined the combat, and so lost his honour. John and Philip,
who were together present, directed De Courcy to give them
a 3
130 HABITS AND
a taste of his quality. "Whereupon the champion placed Ms
helmet upon a post, and cleaving through the first into the
second, his sword stuck so fast in the wood that none but
himself could draw it out. " Never unveil thy bonnet, man,
again, before king or subject," was the cheap privilege ac-
corded him by the economical John ; " but tell us why thou
lookedst so fiercely round ere thou didst deal thy dainty
stroke." " Because, had I failed, I intended to slay all who
had dared to mock me." " By the mass," said John, " thou
art a pleasant companion, and therewith Heaven keep thee
in good beavers !"
It was long the custom for the De Courcys to wear their
hat, but for a moment, in presence of their respective kings,
just for the purpose of asserting their privilege, and then to
doff it, like other men. The head of the family, at one of
George the Third's Drawing-rooms, thinking this not suffi-
cient assertion of his right, continued wearing his court head-
piece throughout the time he was in the "presence." The
good old King at length extinguished this poor bit of pride,
by bluntly remarking, " The gentleman has a right to be
covered before me ; but even King John could give him no
right to be covered before ladies." The rebuke was most
effectual ; and De Courcy saw, to his horror, that the entire
court, ladies, princesses, courtiers, and attendants, were
wreathing a broad girdle of grins " all round his hat."
It is said that when Fox the Quaker had an interview
with Charles the Second, the King observing that his
"friend" kept on his beaver, immediately took off his own.
" Put on thy hat, friend Charles," said the plain gentleman.
" Not so, friend George," replied the King ; " it is usual for
only one man to be covered here." It was a neat retort,
and may serve as a pendant to the remark of the peasant
boy, whom Henri IV. had taken up behind him, and who
pretended that he would take the lad where he might see
the monarch. " How shall I know the King when he is
HATS. 131
among so many nobles ?" said the rustic, as he rode en
crou/pe behind the sovereign, of whose identity he "was igno-
rant. " You will know him," said Henri, " by his being the
only person who will keep his hat on." At length the two
arrived where the King's officers awaited him, and they all
uncovered as he trotted up to them. "Now, good lad,"
said he, " which is the King ?" " "Well," exclaimed the boy,
" it must be either you or I, for we have both got our hats
on!" An old-world story, I fear, but not inal trovato.
Hats have been of divers service in battle. The plumed
hat of Henri IV. was the rallying point of his followers.
In later times, the head-covering was put to good purpose
by a 'cute Highlander. In the Peninsular war, one of the
93rd and a French infantry-man came upon one another in
a wood. As their pieces were unloaded, they both rushed
to the cover of a tree, in order to put their muskets in
deadly order ; but this done, neither was inclined to look
out, lest the other should be beforehand w$ih him, and let
fly. At length the Highlander quietly put his feathered
hat on the end of his piece, and held it a little beyond the
tree, as though a head was in it, looking out. At the same
moment the impatient Frenchman reconnoitered, saw his
supposed advantage, and, from his rifle, sent a ball through
his adversary's bonnet ; thereupon the bonny Scot calmly
advanced with his loaded piece, and took his enemy prisoner
without difficulty.
I do not know if it ever occurred to any one that hats
had something to do with the dissolution of the Long Par
liament ; but such is the fact. As soon as Cromwell had
declared that assembly non-existent, he flung on has hat,
and paced up and down the Parliament Chamber. The
members, however, were piqued by such truly cavalier swag-
ger, and would not budge an inch. Cromwell called in
Major Harrison and the guard. The Major saw how mat-
ters stood, and he felt at once that he could get the ex-
132 HABITS AND MEN.
deputies out much sooner by courtesy than carbines. Ac-
cordingly he approached the Speaker, and taking off his own
hat with much ceremony, he bowed low, kissed the fallen
official's hand, detaining it at the same time with such gen-
tle violence that the deposed dignitary was constrained to
follow whither the very polite but unwelcome republican
chose to conduct him. The Major led him out of the Hall,
we are told, " as a gentleman does a lady, the whole Parlia-
ment following." Thus a hat in hand helped to do what a
hat on head failed to accomplish ;_ and the Long Parliament
resisting rudeness, yielded to gallantry, and was demolished
for ever.
The close of the last national Parliament held in Scotland
has something in connection with the hat. On the 22nd
April, 1707, that illustrious but sometimes turbulent as-
sembly adjourned never to meet again. There must have
been some aching hearts under the old-fashioned dresses of
many of the members ; but there was no sorrow to be read
on the brow of Seafield the Chancellor. He put on his hat
as he pronounced, with brutal levity, the annihilation of the
parliamentary body. Had he done it to hide confusion or
to mark contempt, there might have been some excuse for
him, but, it was a mere formality ; and he unfeelingly added
thereto, words which were the cruel knell of the dying vic-
tim. " There," said he, " there is the end of an auld sang !"
It was a song that, in its day, had been sung to some tune,
despite some harshness and occasional discord ; but, as the
Chancellor remarked when he put on his hat, there was an
end of it.
When Sir Edward Coke, in 1645, was trying Mrs. Turner,
the physician's widow, as an accessory before the fact in the
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury (the poor woman had a
penchant for poisoning people, but we have all our little
foibles), he observed that she wore a hat, and he bade her
take it off. "A woman," said he, "may be covered in a
HATS. 133
church, but not when arraigned in a court of justice." The
lady tartly commented on the singularity that she might
wear her hat in presence of God, and not in that of man.
" For the reason," said the judge, " that man with weak
intellects cannot discover the secrets which are known to
God ; and therefore, in investigating truth, where human
life is in peril, and one is charged with taking life from
another, the court should see all obstacles removed. Be-
sides," he added, "the countenance is often an index to the
mind, and accordingly it is fitting that the hat be removed,
and therewith the shadow which it casts upon your face."
The hat was taken off; but the lady, although a murderess,
was modest, and she covered her hair with a kerchief.
Had good Mrs. Turner been like the ladies and gentlemen
of Natal, she might have puzzled the chief justice. The
Natal " fashionables" wear hats of from half a foot to a foot
in height, made of the fat of oxen. They first gradually
anoint the head with a purer grease ; and tfcs, mixing with
the hair, fastens these" bonnets on during the lives of the
wearers ! Or the fashion of the Myantses would have done.
These people carry on their heads a slight board, a foot long,
and half of that broad ; with this they cover their hair, and
seal it with wax. They cannot lie down or lean without
keeping the neck straight; and the country being very
woody, it is not uncommon to find them with their head-
dress entangled in the trees. "Whenever they require to
comb their hair, once or twice a year, they have to pass a
preliminary hour in melting the wax, before they can get
their hats off.
Better keep them on than take them off to such poor
purpose, as was once observed in the case of one of the
celebrities of the Place Royale, Beautru, whose name was
a mine of tinsel to the little punsters of Paris, in the reign
of Louis XIII. Beautru was bold, haughty, and an inve-
terate gambler. He was a libertine both as to morals and
134 HABITS AND MEN.
religion, and the slanderer 'par excellence of his age. Riche-
lieu had a strong liking for him, proof enough that he was
not worth the affection of an honest man. His repartees
were more spiced with wickedness than wit. One day, on
passing in front of a crucifix in the public streets, he, with
an air of humble reverence, raised his hat. "Ah!" ex-
claimed one who saw the unwonted action, " that is what
I call setting a good example." "Very good!" cried the
scoffer, pushing his hat firm upon his brows, " but you will
be pleased to observe that though we bow, we are not on
speaking terms."
The Place Eoyale was in the olden times the sanctum
sanctorum both of fashion and wit ; and never had either
a more celebrated high-priest than Voiture. This famous
Euphuist was only the son of the keeper of a wine-shop,
but he used to say that he had been born again in the
society of Madame and Mademoiselle de Eambouillet.
He was a renowned humourist, was given to love-making
and to card-playing, but rather to the latter than the
former. He was remarkable for the fashion of his hats,
which he wore in the very extreme of the mode, like Don
Basilio in the 'Barber of Seville ;' and he never uncovered
even to the greatest noble, until the latter had first lowered
his bonnet to Mm in testimony of salute to the wit of the
son of the wine-dealer. He once brought two bears from
the street into the boudoir of Mademoiselle Eambouillet; and
the lords and ladies both laughed and screamed at seeing
Voiture cover their heads with the hats of two of the com-
pany, and give the animals fine Greek names, as was the
custom of the Euphuists of the day. It was he who uttered
the neat expression applied to Bossuet, when the latter, at
the premature age of fourteen, delivered a sermon before
the gay sinners of the Hotel de Eambouillet, at midnight.
Voiture sat with his hat on to listen to the discourse, but
when it was concluded, he uncovered, and making a low
HATS. 135
bow to the young orator, "Sir," said he, "I never heard
a man preach at once so early and so late!" and the gal-
lants putting on their plumed hats, declared with round
oaths that Voiture's wit had capped young Bossuet's
sermon !
It was in truth a strange locality, that same old Place
Eoyale. The Arnault family, with their grave manners and
fashions, were perhaps the worthiest of the residents of any
age ; but it is not among them that we must look for stri-
king anecdotes respecting passing modes. These are more
plentifully furnished by the household chronicles of the
more worldly people. The Marchioness de Sable and the
Countess de] Maure were among these latter. They were
next-door neighbours, and they daily sent each other little
billets, remarkable for the aristocratic contempt which they
showed for orthography; and little patterns of head-dresses,
quite as remarkable for their grace and " killingness." It
happened one day that the Countess was ^k, and there-
upon the Marchioness 'resolved to pay her a visit of con-
dolence, in state. She was poor and proud, and her pride
and poverty were displayed in the circumstance of cere-
mony, so to speak, with which she waited on her much-
afflicted friend. She could not, like an honest woman, put
on her bonnet and carry a posset under the folds of her
farthingale to the noble patient. That would have been
derogatory to both noble houses. Accordingly, she de-
scended her grand and not over-clean staircase, beneath
a canopy which consisted of nothing more than the top
and vallance of her cook's bedstead, upheld on crossed
staves by two grooms, who bore their burden with un-
covered heads, as though royalty were walking beneath the
striped-linen canopy of the old cook's couch. But it was
a canopy, and so there was dignity therein, though it was
rather of a dusty sort.
"While people were laughing at this illustration of pride
136 HABITS AND MEN.
in Paris, London was being sadly scandalized at a royal
illustration of obstinacy. When William III. went to
church, it was impossible to induce him to take off his
hat. He might indeed doff it during the liturgy, but the
preacher was no sooner in the pulpit than on went the
ponderous beaver, and up fired the indignation of the be-
holders. William cared not a jot for their indignation.
The Dutch wore their hats during Divine worship, and
he had not ceased to be a Hollander simply for having
become a King of England. Besides, that ancient and
scriptural people the Jews sat in their synagogues with
their heads covered, and was not he their most religious
and gracious king ? and did it not become him to follow
the practices of a Biblical race, when the doing so tended
to the increase of his comfort, and jumped with the incli-
nation of his caprices ? And so the broad hat was worn,
and censure disregarded.
In the middle of the last century, when actors at their
benefits expected great houses, the pit was not only incor-
porated with the boxes, but a graduated building was
erected on the stage for the superflux of audience. The
consequences were sometimes ridiculous enough; exempli
gratia :
When Holland, the Chiswick baker, played Hamlet, at
his first benefit at Drury Lane (1762), the little village
poured out all its inhabitants to do him both honour and
profit ; and I do not know if the predecessor of the present
estimable rector, the Eev. Mr. Bowerbank, was not at the
head of them. However this may be, there was assuredly
amongst them a young Chiswick maiden, who contrived to
seat herself at a corner of the lowest seat of the amphi-
theatre, with her feet resting on the stage.
When the Ghost appeared, Hamlet's hat fell off; and
this so excited the commiseration of the damsel from Chis-
wick that she gently stepped forward, picked up the hat,
HATS. 137
and with her own hands placed it upon Holland's head,
with the broad corner foremost, as it might have been worn
had Hamlet been exceedingly drunk. Holland gravely
finished the scene, but his appearance was too much for
the gravity of the house ; and although the audience, be-
comingly but with difficulty, restrained their risibility till
the young prince with the' queer hat and his respected
sire's ghost had diversely departed, they burst out into so
uproarious a laugh then, that the whole house rang again ;
and Holland too when he was led to a glass, and con-
templated his own counterfeit and highly ridiculous pre-
sentment.
Such was a hat on the English stage; here is one on
that of America. Mr. Charles Kean, when once playing
Richard, at New Orleans, observed, as he was seated on
the throne, and the curtain was rising, that his noble
peers wore their hats or caps in his presence. With his
truncheon to his lips he contrived a stage Tfhisper, which
said, " Take off your hats ; you are in the presence of the
king." "And what of that?" roared high-reaching Buck-
ingham, looking round at the audience, and smacking his
own cap tighter on his circumspect head ; " what of that ?
I guess we know nothing of kings in this country." The
New Orleaners were in raptures, and the king sat cor-
rected.
In old days there was not only a fashion in the hat, but
also in the cock of it. The famous battle of Ramilies intro-
duced the Ramilies cock of the hat. In No. 526 of the 'Spec-
tator,' " John Sly, a haberdasher of hats, and tobacconist,"
is directed to take down the names of such country gentle-
men as have left the hunting for the military cock, before
the approach of peace. In a subsequent number is told how
the same John Sly is preparing hats for the several kinds
of heads that make figures in the realm of Great Britain,
with cocks significant of their powers and faculties. His
138 HABITS AND MEN.
hats for men of the faculties of law and physic do but just
turn up to give a little life to their sagacity. His military
hats glare full in the face ; and he has prepared a familiar
easy cock for all good companions between the above-men-
tioned extremes.
Admiring mothers would sooner have followed their sons
to the grave than see them walk about with hats uncocked,
whether the form took that of a spout or the point of a
mince-pie. The German Kevenhuller came on about the
accession of George III. They were as tasteless as those
French chapeaux a cornes, of whom Mr. Bob Fudge says
that he
" would back Mrs. Draper
To cut better weather-boards out of brown paper."
At this time, we are told, there was the military cock and
the mercantile cock ; and while the beaux of St. James's
wore their hats under their arms, the beaux of Moorfields
Mall wore them diagonally over their left or right eye. Some
wore their hats with the corners which should come over
their foreheads, in a direct line, pointed into the air. These
were the Gawkies. Others did not above half cover their
heads, which was indeed owing to the shallowness of their
crowns. A hat with gold binding bespoke a man given
to the pleasures of the turf. The tiny JSTivernois hat came
into fashion early in the reign of the third George ; and it
is said that gold-laced cocked hats used to be worn in the
year '78, because they had a military look with them, and
would therefore protect the wearer against the press-gangs
that were then more than usually active.
When round hats came in, at first merely for morning or
undress wear, but finally became a fait accompli, like that
other little matter, the French Eevolution, all the young
wearers of whem (and there were, at first, no others) were
denounced as "blackguards" and "highwaymen." The
HATS. 139
youthful votaries of fashion retorted by nicknaming the
three-cornered hats, as "Egham, Staines, and Windsor,"
in allusion to the three-fingered road-post pointing in that
tripartite direction. The flat, folding, crescent-shaped beaver,
called a cocked or an opera hat, was still to be seen as late
as 1818 ; and a party of gentlemen returning on foot from
Almack's on a summer's morning, with pantaloons tight as
the Venetian standard-bearer's, and hats cocked according
to the mode, presented a rather martial look. Since that
time, the round hat has gained headway ; even coachmen
only wear the old cocked covering on state occasions ; and
the ugliest article that ever could be devised for the pur-
pose seems to be planted upon our unwilling brows for
ever.
In New, as formerly in Old, England, Quakers objected
to take off" their hats. A judge in the former locality once
remarked thereon, that if he thought there was any religion
in a hat, he would have the largest he could>purchase for
money. Poor Essex, at his mock trial before his enemies in
Elizabeth's palace, was compelled to stand uncovered. He
was so embarrassed with his hat and the papers in it, that
he forgot something of what he had to say ; and perhaps too
much care for his hat helped him to lose his head.
Finally, do my readers know why " beaver " was the ori-
ginally favourite material for a hat ? Dr. Marius was told
by a Jew physician of Ulm, that it was because by wearing
a cap of beaver's fur, anointing the head once a month with
oil of castor, and taking two or three ounces of it in a year,
a man's memory may be so strengthened that he will re-
member everything he reads. I would eschew French vel-
vet, and would stick to beaver, if I thought that.
And now as hats were put upon heads, the next fashion
that will naturally come under our notice is the fashion of
Wigs and their Wearers. Previous to turning to which, I
may mention, by way of being useful, that "beaver" is not
140 HABITS AND MEN.
beaver in our days ; and that perhaps is why we are all so
forgetful of our duties. English beaver is a mixture of
lamb's wool and rabbit's fur. Silk, satin, and velvet hats
are made of plush, woven for the most part in the north of
England. Paris hats are made in London from French
plush, of which we import annually about 150,000 Ibs. We
export few hats except to our own colonies. They are chiefly
made, like our wigs, for native wear.
WIGS AND THEIR WEARERS.
"Wigs were to protect obstinate old heads from the rays of truth."
ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.
WHEN it is said that Hadrian was the first Roman Emperor
who wore a wig, nothing more is meant than that he was
the first who avowedly wore one. They were common
enough before his time. Caligula and Messalina put them
on, for purposes of disguise, when they were abroad at night ;
and Otho condescended to conceal his baldness with what
he fain hoped his subjects would accept as a natural head of
hair belonging to one who bore the name of C<esar.
As for the origin of wigs, the honour of the invention is
attributed to the luxurious lapygians, in Southern Italy.
The Louvain theologians, who published a French version
of the Bible, affected however to discover the first mention
of perukes in a passage in the fourth chapter of Isaiah. The
Vulgate has these words : " Decalvabit Dominus verticem
filiarum Sion, et Dominus crinem earum nudabit." This
the Louvain gentlemen translated into French as follows :
" Le Seigneur dechevelera les tetes des filles de Sion ; et le
Seigneur decouvrira leurs perruques." The which, done into
English, implies that " The Lord will pluck the hair from the
heads of the daughters of Sion, and will expose their peri-
wigs." My fair friend, you would perhaps fling your own
in my face were I to presume to tell you what the true
reading is.
In the above free-and-easy translation, the theologians in
question followed no less an authority than St. Paulinus of
142 HABITS AND MEN.
Nola, and thus had respectable warrant for their singular
mistake.
Allusions to wigs are frequently made both by the histo-
rians and poets of ancient times. We know that they were
worn by fashionable gentlemen in Palmyra and Baalbec,
and that the Lycians took to them out of necessity. When
their conqueror, Mausoleus, had ruthlessly ordered all their
heads to be shaven, the poor Lycians felt themselves so su-
premely ridiculous, that they induced the king's general
Condalus, by means of an irresistible bribe, to permit them
to import wigs from Greece ; and the symbol of their de-
gradation became the very pink of Lycian fashion.
Hannibal was a stout soldier, but on the article of pe-
rukes he was as finical as Jessamy in ' Lionel and Clarissa,'
and as particular as Dr. Hoadley's Eanger, as nice about
their fashion as the former, and as philosophical as the latter
on their look. Hannibal wore them sometimes to improve,
sometimes to disguise, his person ; and if he wore one long
enough to spoil its beauty, he was as glad as the airy gen-
tleman in ' The Suspicious Husband,' to fling it aside when
it wore a battered aspect.
Ovid and Martial celebrate the gold-coloured wigs of
Germany. The latter writer is very severe on the dandies
and coquettes of his day, who thought to win attraction
under a wig. Propertius, who could describe so tenderly
and appreciate so well what was lovely in girlhood, whips
his butterflies into dragons at the bare idea of a nymph in
a toupet. Venus Anadyomene herself would have ' had no
charms for that gentle sigher of sweet and enervating sounds,
had she wooed him in borrowed hair. If he was not parti-
cular touching morals, he was very strict concerning curls.
If the classical poets winged their satirical shafts against
wigs, these were as little spared by the mimic thunderbolts
of the Fathers, Councils, and Canons of the early Church.
Even poets and Christian elders could no more digest hu-
WIGS AND THEIE WEABEBS. 143
man hair than can the crocodile, of whom, dead, it is said,
you may know how many individuals he devoured living by
the number of hair-balls in the stomach, which can neither
digest nor eject them. The indignation of Tertullian respect-
ing these said wigs is something perfectly terrific. Not less
is that of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who especially vouches
for the virtue of his simple sister Grorgonia, for the reason
that she neither cared to curl her own hair, nor to repair
its lack of beauty by the aid of a wig. The thunder of St.
Jerome against these adornments was quite as loud as that
of any of the Fathers. They were preached against as un-
becoming to Christianity. Council after Council, from the
first at Constantinople to the last Provincial Council at
Tours, denounced wigs even when worn in joke. " There
is no joke in the matter !" exclaimed the exceedingly irate
St. Bernard ; " the woman who wears a wig commits a
mortal sin!" St. John Chrysostom cites St. Paul against
the fashion, arguing that they who prayed d? preached in
wigs could not be said to worship or to teach the Word of
Grod "with head uncovered." " Look !" says Cyprian to
the wearers of false hair ; " look at the Pagans ! they pray
in veils. What better are you than Pagans if you come to
prayers in perukes ?" Many local Synods would authorize
no fashion of wearing the hair but straight and short. This
form was especially enjoined on the clergy generally. St.
Ambrose as strictly enjoined the fashion upon the ladies of
his diocese: "Do not talk to me of curls," said this hard-
working prelate ; " they are the lenocinia formce, non prce-
cepta mrtutis" The ladies smiled. It was to some such
obdurate and beautiful rebels that Cyprian once gravely
preached, saying : " Give heed to me, ye women ! Adul-
tery is a grievous sin ; but she who wears false hair is
guilty of a greater."
It must have been a comfortable state of society when
two angry ladies could exclaim to each other, " You may
144 HABITS AND MEN.
say of me what you please ; you may charge me with break-
ing the seventh commandment ; but, thank Heaven and
Cyprian, you cannot accuse me of wearing a wig !"
No pains were spared to deter women from this enormity.
St. Jerome holds up the fate of Praetexta as a warning to
all ladies addicted to the fashion of the world. Praetexta
was a very respectable lady, married to a somewhat pagan-
ish husband, Hymetius. Their niece, Eustochia, resided
with them. At the instigation of the husband, Praetexta
took the shy Eustochia in hand, attired her in a splendid
dress, and covered her fair neck with ringlets. Having en-
joyed the sight of the modest maiden so attired, Prsetexta
went to bed. To that bedside immediately descended an
angel, with wrath upon his brow, and billows of angry
sounds rolling from his lips. " Thou hast," said the spirit,
" obeyed thy husband rather than the Lord, and hast dared
to deck the hair of a virgin, and made her look like a daugh-
ter of earth. For this do I wither up thy hands, and bid
them recognize the enormity of thy crime in the amount of
thy anguish and bodily suffering. Five months more shalt
thou live, and then Hell shall be thy portion ; and if thou
art bold enough to touch the head of Eustochia again, thy
husband and thy children shall die even before thee."
St. Jerome pledges himself for the truth of this story,
which is exceedingly perplexing and utterly unintelligible.
The ladies were more difficult of management than the
clergy. The former were not to be terrified by the assu-
rance, that breaking an ordinance of men was a worse crime
than breaking one of the commandments of God. The hair
of the clergy was kept straight, by decree of forfeiture of
revenues or benefice against incumbents who approached
the altars with curls even of their natural hair. Pomades
and scented waters were denounced as damnable inventions ;
but anathema was uttered against the priest guilty of wear-
ing one single hair combed up above its fellows. The well-
WIGS AND THEIR WEARERS. 145
curled Bishop of Oxford would have been in the olden time
ipso facto, because of being so curled, excommunicated,
according to the decree of the Council of Lateran (Gre-
gory II.), which says : " Cuicumque ex clericis comam re-
laxaverit, anathema sit!"
"All personal disguise," says Tertullian, "is adultery
before God. All perukes, paint, and powder are such dis-
guises, and inventions of the devil;" ergo, etc. This zealous
individual appeals to personal as often as to religious feel-
ing. "If you will not fling away your false hair," says he,
" as hateful to Heaven, cannot I make it hateful to your-
selves, by reminding you that the false hair you wear may
have come not only from a criminal but from a very dirty
head, perhaps from the head of one already damned ?"
This was a very hard hit indeed ; but it was not nearly
so clever a stroke at wigs as that dealt by Clemens of Alex-
andria. The latter informed the astounded wig-wearers
that, when they knelt at church to receive fche blessing,
they must be good enough, to recollect that the benediction
remained on the wig, and did not pass through to the
wearer ! This was a stumbling-block to the people ; many
of whom however retained the peruke, and took their chance
as to the percolating through it of the benediction.
On similarly obstinate people, Tertullian railed with a
hasty charge of ill-prepared logic. " You were not born
with wigs," said he ; " God did not give them to you. God
not giving them, you must necessarily have received them
from the devil." It was manifest that so rickety a syllo-
gism was incapable of shaking the lightest scratch from a
reasoning Christian's skull. Indeed the logic of Tertullian,
when levied against wigs, is exceedingly faulty. Men of
the world he points out as being given to over-scrupulous
cleanliness. Tour saint is dirty from an impulse of duty ;
were he otherwise, he might be too seductive to the weaker
*sex. This reminds me of the monk of Prague who was
H
146 HABITS AND MEN.
blind, but he had so fine a nose that he was able to distin-
guish between a saint and a sinner by the smell !
Not only were the Scriptures pressed into service against
those who wore false hair or dyed their own, but zealous
Christian priests quoted even heathen writers to shame men
out of the custom. It is a remarkable thing how well ac-
quainted these well-meaning, but somewhat over-straining,
personages were with the erotic poets of heathendom.
Before the period of the Conquest, ecclesiastics were
hardly distinguishable from the laity except by the ton-
sure ; and of this they seem to have been partly ashamed,
for they concealed it, to the best of their ability, by brush-
ing the long hair around it, so as to cover the distinctive
mark. It was only the great dignitaries who wore beards :
had a poor priest ventured to carry one on his face, he would
have had the one pulled and the other slapped by his eccle-
siastical superiors. The inferior clergy cared nothing about
the matter till beards were interdicted, as far as they were
concerned ; and when the Council of Limoges, in 1031, de-
creed that the wearing of the beard was to be entirely
optional, all concerned lost all concern in the question.
Desire had only fastened itself upon what was forbidden.
As for the more dignified clergy of the period, they were the
most splendid dressers of the day; and the greatest "dandies"
were those who officiated at the altar. No censure directed
against their extravagance in this respect had any effect
upon them. It was only when the reproof seemingly came
from Heaven that they cared for it ; as in the case of the
young soldier in the army of Stephen, who was intensely
vain of the locks which fell from his crown to his knees,
and which he suddenly cut off close to the roots, in con-
sequence of dreaming that the devil was strangling him
with his own luxuriant ringlets. The dream did not cure
other fops. In the days of King John, our excellent fathers
actually curled their hair with crisping irons, and bound
WIGS AND THEIE WEAEEES. 147
their locks with fillets, like girls. They went bareheaded
lest the beauty of their curls should be disturbed by a cap ;
and they were not at all the sort of men that we should sus-
pect of having wrung Magna Charta from the King ; that
Magna Charta the original copy of which once fell into the
hands of a tailor, who was cutting it up into other measures
for men, when it was rescued, not without difficulty, and con-
signed to its present safe custody in the British Museum.
English ladies (despite the fact that English lords che-
rished wigs even in the days of Stephen) do not appear to
have adopted the fashion of wearing wigs until about the
year 1550. Junius, in his ' Commentarium de Coma,' says
that false hair came into use here with the ladies about that
time, and that such use had never before been adopted by
English matrons. Some three hundred years before this,
the Benedictine monks at Canterbury, who were canons
of the cathedral, very pathetically represented to Pope
Innocent IV. that they were subject to catchfVery bad colds
from serving in the wide and chilly cathedral bareheaded.
The Pontiff gave them solemn permission to guard against
cathedral rheum, bronchitis, and phthisis, by covering their
heads with the hood common to their order ; bidding them
have especial care however to fling back the hood at the
reading of the Gospel, and at the elevation of the host.
Zealous churchmen have been very indignant at the attempts
made to prove that the permission of Innocent IV. might be
construed as a concession to priests, allowing them to wear
wigs if they were so minded. The question was settled at
the Great Council of England, held in London in 1268.
That Council refused to sanction the wearing by clerics of
" quas vulgo coif as vocant," except when they were travel-
ling If a coif even was profane, a wig to this Council would
have taken the guise of the unpardonable sin. It is, how-
ever, well known that although Borne forbade a priest to
officiate with covered head, permission to do so was pur-
H 2
148 HABITS AND MEN".
chaseable. In fact, the rule of Borne was not founded, as it
was asserted to be, on Scripture. Permission was readily
granted to the Eomish priests in China to officiate with
covered heads, as being more agreeable to the native idea
there of what was seemly.
Native sentiment nearer home was much less regarded.
Thus, when the Bulgarians complained to Pope Nicholas,
that their priests would not permit them to wear, during
church-time, those head-wrappers, or turbans, which it was
their habit never to throw off, the Pontiff returned an
answer which almost took the brief and popular form of
" Serve you right !" and the Bulgarians, on the other hand,
took nothing by their motion.
Our Anselm of Canterbury was as little conceding to
the young and long-haired nobles of his day as was Pope
Nicholas to the Bulgarians. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury,
relates that on one occasion (Ash Wednesday) the Primate
soundly rebuked the hirsute aristocracy, put them in
penance, and refused them absolution, until they had sub-
mitted to be close shorn. The prelate in question would
allow none to enter his cathedral who wore either long or
false hair.
Against both the objection remained for a lengthened
period insuperable. When Heny I. of England was in
France, Sirron, Bishop of Seez, told him that Heaven was
disgusted at the aspect of Christians in long hair, or who
wore on manly heads locks that perhaps originally came from
female brows. They were, he said, sons of Belial for so
offending : " Pervicaces filii Belial, capita sua cornis mu-
lierum ornata."
The King looked grave : the prelate insinuatingly invited
the father of his people, who wore long if not false hair,
to set a worthy example. "We'll think of it," said the
sovereign. " No time like the present," replied the prelate,
who produced a pair of scissors from his episcopal sleeve,
WIGS AJSD THEIB WEABEBS. 149
and advanced towards Henry, prepared to sweep off those
honours which the monarch would fain have preserved. But
what was the sceptre of the prince to the forceps of the
priest ? The former meekly sat down at the entrance of
his tent, while Bishop Sirron clipped him with the skilful
alacrity of Figaro. Noble after noble submitted to the same
operation ; and, while these were being docked by the more
dignified clergy, a host of inferior ecclesiastics passed through
the ranks of the grinning soldiers, and cut off hair enough
to have made the fortunes of all the periwig builders who
rolled in gilded chariots during the palmy days of the
Grand Manarque.
In what then but in profligate days could wigs have
triumphed in England? Periwigs established themselves
victoriously (dividing even the Church) under Louis XIV.
When a boy, that king had such long and beautiful hair,
that a fashion ensued for all classes to wear at least an
imitation thereof. When Louis began to lose his own, he
also took to false adornment ; and full-bottomed wigs bade
defiance to the canons of the Church.
Charles II. did not bring the fashion with him to White-
hall. On the contrary, he withstood it. He forbade the
members of the University to wear periwigs, smoke to-
bacco, or read their sermons. The members did all three,
and Charles soon found himself doing the first two. " On
the 2nd November, 1663," says Pepys, " I heard the Duke
say, that he was going to wear a periwig ; and they say the
King also will. I never till this day," he adds, " observed that
the King was so mighty grey." This perhaps was the reason
why Charles stooped to assume what he had before denounced.
Pepys himself had adventured on the step in the previous
May ; and what a business it was for the little man ! Hear
him. " 8th. At Mr. Jervas's, my old barber. I did try two
or three borders and periwigs, meaning to wear one ; and
yet I have no stomach for it ; but that the pains of keeping
150 HABITS A!NT> MEN.
my hair clean is so great. He trimmed me, and at last I
parted ; but my mind was almost altered from my first pur-
pose, from the trouble which I foresee will be in wearing
them also." He took some time to make up his mind ; and
only in October of the same year does he take poor Mrs.
Pepys " to my periwig maker's, and there showed my wife
the periwig made for me, and she likes it very well."
In April, 1665, the wig was in the hands of Jervas, under
repair. In the meantime, our old friend took to his natural
hair ; but early in May we find him recording, " that this
day, after I had suffered my own hayre to grow long, in
order to wearing it, I find the convenience of periwigs is
so great, that I have cut off all short again, and will keep to
periwigs." In the autumn, on Sunday the 3rd of Septem-
ber, the wicked little gallant moralizes thus on periwigs
and their prospects. " Up, and put on my coloured silk
suit, very fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while
since, but durst not wear, because the plague was in West-
minster when I bought it ; and it is a wonder what will be
the fashion, after the plague is done, as to periwigs, for
nobody will dare to buy any hayre for fear of the infection,
that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the
plague." The plague and fear thereof were clean forgotten
before many months had passed ; and in June, 1666, Pepys
says : " Walking in the galleries at Whitehall, I find the
ladies of honour dressed in their riding-garbs, with coats
and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like
mine ; and buttoned their doublets up their breasts, Avith
periwigs and with hats. So that only for a long petticoat
dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them
for women in any point whatever ; which was an odd sight,
and a sight that did not please me." The moralist at
Whitehall, however, could forget his mission when at " Mer-
cer's." There, on the 14th of August, 1666, the thanks-
giving day for the recent naval victory, after " hearing a piece
WIGS A3D THEIR WEABEBS. 151
of the Dean of "Westminster's sermon," dining merrily,
enjoying the sport at the Bear Garden, and letting off fire-
works, the periwig philosopher, with his wife, Lady Penn,
Pegg and Nan Wright, kept it up at Mrs. Mercer's after
midnight ; " and there, mighty merry, smutting one another
with candle-grease and soot, until most of us were like
devils. And that being done, then we broke up, and to
my house, and there I made them drink ; and up stairs we
went and then fell into dancing, W. Battelier dancing well ;
and dressing him and I, and one Mr. Banister, who, with
my wife, came over also with us, like women ; and Mercer
put on a suit of Tom's, like a boy. And Mr. "Wright, and
my wife, and Pegg Penn put on periwigs, and thus we
spent till three or four in the morning, mighty merry ;"
and little troubled with the thought whether the skull which
had afforded the hair for such periwig were lying in the
pest-fields or not.
By the following year, our rising gentleman grows extra-
vagant in his outlay for such adornments ; and he who had
been content to wear a wig at 23s. buys now a pair for
4. 10s., " mighty fine ; indeed too fine, I thought, for me."
And yet, amazingly proud was the macaroni of his pur-
chase, recording two days afterwards, that he had been " to
church, and, with my mourning, very handsome ; and new
periwig made a great show."
Doubtless, under James II,, his periwigged pate made a
still greater show ; for then had wigs become stupendous in
their architecture. The beaux who stood beneath them, as
I have stated in another page, carried exquisite combs in
their ample pockets, with which, whether in the Mall, at the
rout, in the private box, or engaged in the laborious work
of "making love," they ever and anon combed their peri-
wigs, and rendered themselves irresistible.
Even at that period, "Wisdom was thought to be beneath
the Wig. "A full wig," says Farquhar in his 'Love and a
152 HABITS AKD MEN.
Bottle' (1698), " is as infallible a token of wit as the laurel;"
an assertion which I should never think of disputing.
Tillotson is the first of our clergy represented in a wig,
and that a mere substitute for the natural head of hair.
" I can remember," he says, in one of his sermons, " since
the wearing of the hair below the ears was looked upon as
a sin of the first magnitude ; and when ministers generally,
whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion
to reprove the great sin of long hair ; and if they saw any
one in the congregation guilty in that kind, they would
point him out particularly, and let fly at him with great
zeal."
The victory of Ramilies introduced the Hamilies wig, with
its peculiar, gradually diminishing, plaited tail, and tie, con-
sisting of a great bow at top, and a smaller one at the bottom.
This wig survived till the reign of George III. The maca-
ronis of 1729 wore " a macaw-like toupee and a portentous
tail." But when the French Revolution came in contact
with any system, from the German Empire to perukes,
that system perished in the collision. So periwigs ceased,
like the dynasty of the Doges of Venice ; and all that re-
mains to remind us of bygone glories in the former way, is
to be found in the Ramilies tie, which still clings to court
coats, though the wigs have fallen from the head, never again
to rise.
Lady Wortley Montague makes a severe remark in her
letters, less against wigs indeed than their wearers. She is
alluding to an alleged custom in the East of branding every
convicted liar on the forehead ; and she smartly adds, that
if such a custom prevailed in England, the entire world of
beaux here would have to pull their periwigs down to their
eyebrows.
Tillotson, as I have noticed above, makes reference to the
opposition which perukes met with from the pulpit. The
hostility from that quarter in England was faint, compared
WIGS AND THEIE WEABEES. 153
with the fiery antagonism which blazed in Prance. In the
latter country, the privilege of wearing long hair belonged,
at one time, solely to royalty. Lombard, Bishop of Paris,
in the middle of the twelfth century induced royalty not to
make the privilege common, but to abolish it altogether.
The French monarchs wore their own hair cut short, until
the reign of Louis XIII., who was the first King of France
who wore a wig. To the fashion set by him is owing that
France ultimately became the paradise of perruquiers.
In 1660, they first appeared on the heads of a few dandy
abbes. As Ireland, in Edward Dwyer, or " Edward of the
Wig," has preserved the memory of the first of her sons
who took to a periwig, so France has handed down the Abbe
de la Riviere, who died Bishop of Langres, as being the ec-
clesiastical innovator on whose head first rested a wig, with all
the consequences of such guilty outrage of canonical disci-
pline. The indignation of strict churchmen was extreme ;
and as the fashion began to spread amongst prelates, canons,
and cures, the Bishop of Toul sat himself down and wrote
a "blast" against perukes, the wearing of which, he said,
unchristianized those who adopted the fashion. It was even
solemnly announced that a man had better not pray at all
than pray with his head so covered. No profanity was in-
tended when zealous, close-cropped, and bareheaded eccle-
siastics reminded their bewigged brethren, that they were
bound to imitate Christ in all things ; and then asked them,
if the Saviour were likely to recognize a resemblance to him-
self in a priest under a wig.
Nor was this feeling confined to the Eomish Church in
France. The Reformed Church was fully as hostile against
the new and detested fashion. Bordeaux was in a state of
insurrection, for no other reason than that the Calvinist
pastor there had refused to admit any of his flock in wigs
to the sacrament. And when Biviers, Protestant Professor
of Theology at Leyden, wrote his ' Libertas Christiana circa
H 3
154 HABITS AND MEN.
TJsum Capillitii Defensa' in behalf of perukes, the ultra-
orthodox in both churches turned to gore him. The Ro-
inanists asked, what could be expected from a Protestant
but rank heresy ? and the Protestants disowned a brother
who defended a fashion which had originated with a Ro-
manist. Each party stood by the words of Paul to the
Corinthians. In vain did some suggest that the apostolical
injunction was only local. The ultras would heed no such
suggestion, and would have insisted on bare heads at both
poles.
"And yet," remarked the wiggites, "it is common for
preachers to preach in caps." " Ay," retorted the orthodox,
"but that is simply because they are then speaking only
in their own name. Reading the Gospel or offering up
the adorable sacrifice, they are speaking or acting in the
name of the Universal Church. Of course," they added,
" there are occasions when even a priest may be covered.
If a Pope invented the baret, a cure may wear a cap."
Sylvester was the first Pontiff who wore a mitre, but even
that fashion became abused ; and in the year 1000 a Pope
was seen with his mitre on during mass, a sight which
startled the faithful, and a fact which artists would be none
the worse for remembering. After that period, bishops
took to them so pertinaciously that they hardly laid them
by on going to bed. These prelates were somewhat scan-
dalized, when the Popes granted to certain dukes the privi-
lege of wearing the mitre ; but when the like favour was
granted to abbots of a peculiar class, the prelatic execra-
tion was uttered with a jealous warmth that was perfectly
astounding.
When the moderns brought the question back to its sim-
ple principles, and asked the sticklers for old customs if
wigs were not as harmless as mitres, they were treated with
as scant courtesy as Mr. Gorham or the Lord Primate is in
the habit of experiencing at the hands of a "mediaeval"
WIGS AND THEIE WEABERS. 155
bishop. If, it was said, a priest must even take off his calotte
in presence of a king or Pope, how may he dare to wear a
wig before G-od ? Richelieu was the first ecclesiastic of his
rank in France who wore the modern calotte ; but I very
much doubt if he ever took it off in the presence of Louis
XIII. It is known however that the French King's ambas-
sador, M. d'Oppeville, found much difficulty in obtaining an
audience at Home. He wore a wig a calotte, that is, a wig
with a coif, as though the tonsure had been regularly per-
formed, and that the wig was natural hair. The officials de-
clared he could not be introduced unless he took off the ca-
lotte. He could not do this without taking off the wig also,
as he showed the sticklers of court etiquette, and stood be-
fore them with clean-shaven head ; asking, at the same time,
" Would the Pope desire me to stand in his presence in
such a plight as this ?" The Pontiff however did not yield
the point readily. Perhaps his Holiness, had he received
the ambassador under bare poll, would have graciously served
him as one of his predecessors had served the Irish saint,
Malachi, put his pontifical tiara on the good man's head,
to prevent his catching cold !
But of all the tilters against wigs, none was so serious and
ehivalresque as " Jean Batiste Thiers, Docteur en Theologie
et Cure de Champrond." Dr. Thiers, in the year 1690,
wrote a book of some six hundred pages against the wearing
of wigs by ecclesiastics. He published the same at his own
expense ; and high authority pronounced it conformable in
every respect to the "Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church."
Dr. Thiers wrote a brief preface to his work, in which he in-
vokes an abundant visitation of divine peace and grace on
those who read his volume with tranquillity of mind, and
who preferred truth to fashion. The invocation, I fear, is
made in vain; for the tediousness of the author slays all
tranquillity of spirit on the part of the reader, who cannot
however refrain from smiling at seeing the very existence of
Christianity made to depend upon the question of perukes.
156 HABITS AND MEN.
The book is a dull book : but the prevailing idea in it, that
it is all over with religion if perukes be not abolished, is
one that might compel a cynic to inextinguishable laughter.
Yes, says the Doctor, the origin of the tonsure is to be
found in the cutting of Peter's hair by the Gentiles, to
make him look ridiculous ; therefore, he who hides the ton-
sure beneath a peruke insults the Prince of the Apostles !
A species of reasoning, anything comparable with which is
not to be found in that book which Rome has honoured by
condemning Whately's ' Logic.'
The volume however affords evidence of the intense ex-
citement raised in France by the discussion of the bearing
of wigs on Christianity. For a season, the question in some
degree resembled, in its treatment at least, that of baptismal
regeneration, as now treated among ourselves. No primi-
tively-minded prelate would license a cure who professed
neutrality on the matter of wigs. The wearers of these
were often turned out of their benefices ; but then they
were welcomed in other dioceses, by bishops who were
heterodoxly given to the mundane comfort of wiggery. Ter-
rible scenes took place in vestries between wigged priests
ready to repair to the altar, and their brethren or superiors
who sought to prevent them. Chapters suspended such
priests from place and profit ; Parliaments broke the decree
of suspension, and Chapters renewed the interdict. Decree
was abolished by counter-decree, and the whole Church was
rent in twain by the contending parties.
Louis XIV. took the conservative side of the question,
so far as it regarded ecclesiastics ; and the Archbishop of
Eheims fondly thought he had clearly settled the dispute
by decreeing, that wigs might or might not be worn, accord-
ing to circumstances. They were allowed to infirm and
aged priests, but never at the altar. One consequence was
that many priests used first to approach near to the altar,
and there taking off" their wigs, deposit the same, under
protest, in the hands of attending notaries. Such a talk
WIGS AND THEIE WEAEEBS. 157
about heads had not kept a whole city in confusion since
the days wherein St. Fructuarius, Bishop of Braga, decreed
the penalty of entirely-shaven crowns against all the monks
of that city caught in the fact of kissing any of its maidens.
Three-fourths of the grave gentlemen thus came under the
razor ! Such would not have been the case, good reader,
with you and me. Certainly not ! We would not have
been found out, and we know better than to " kiss and tell,
as they do at Brentford."
Thiers could not see in the wig the uses discerned by
Cumberland, who says, in his ' Choleric Man,' " Believe
me, there is much good sense in old distinctions. When
the law lays down its fuIUbottomed periwig, you will find
less wisdom in bald patss than you are aware of." The
Cure of Champrond says that the French priests, who yearly
spent their thirty or forty pistoles in wigs, were so irreli-
gious that they kept their best wigs for the world, and their
oldest for God! wearing the first in drawing-rooms, and
the latter in church. This was certainly less ingenious than
in the case of the man celebrated in the ' Connoisseur,' who,
having but one peruke, made it pass for two : " It was
naturally a kind of flowing bob ; but by the occasional addi-
tion of two tails, it sometimes passed as a major."
In France wigs ended by assuming the appearance of na-
ture. In the Reign of Terror, the modish blonde perukes
worn by females were made of hair purchased from the ex-
ecutioner, of whom old ladies bought the curls which had
clustered about the young necks that had been severed by
the knife of Samson. But after this the fashion ceased
among women, as it had already done among men, beginning
to do so with the latter when Franklin appeared in his own
hair, unpowdered, at the Court of Louis XVI. ; and from
that period wigs have belonged only to history.
If you please, gentle reader, we will now descend from
the wig to the beard.
BEARDS AND THEIR BEARERS.
" Now of beards there be
Such a company,
Of fashions such a throng,
That it is very hard
To treat of the beard,
Though it be ne'er so long."
Ballad in LE PEINCE D' AMOUR. (1650.)
WHOEVER invented wigs, proud as he may be of the achieve-
ment, cannot boast of the same antiquity for his fashion as
that which attaches to the beard. The beard, like sewing,
came in with or was a consequence of sin. With respect
to sewing and sin, I have before spoken ; and I will only add
here, that in the most prosperous times of Puritanism, it
was the fashion for Puritan ladies to wear aprons only of a
green colour, that being presumedly the colour of the apron
worn by Eve, whose daughters they were, and the remem-
brance of whose sin and the acknowledgment of their own,
they perpetuated in the adopted fashion of their day.
It is confidently asserted by Dutch philosophers, so con-
fidently that to suppose they have not good authority for
what they assert, would be very ungenerous on my part,
it is asserted then by these Hollanders that Adam was cre-
ated without a beard, and that the latter appendage was sud-
denly conferred on his chin on the very evening of the day
that he had been such a " beast" as to allow himself to be
beguiled into rebellion by his wife. He was consequently
so far changed into the similitude of a beast, being rendered
most like the goat, who is an impostor in his way, wearing
BEABDS AND THEIR BEAEEBS. 159
as he does the grave airs of a judge, and yet being given to
very frolicsome indulgences, in which judges should not,
though they often do, indulge.
If this be fact, one may wonder why Eve and her daugh-
ters generally escaped this badge of opprobrium. It was
perhaps on the principle according to which we punish the
receiver more than the thief. If there were no receivers
there would be less pilferers ; and though Eve offered the
temptation, if Adam had only resisted it, the consequences
would have been confined within their original narrow limits,
and Mr. Mechi's razor-strops would have been without a
market.
Van Helmont, in support of this theory, asks us if we
ever saw a good angel with a beard ; one of those ques-
tions which are supposed by those who put them to deter-
mine a dispute at once. He falls to another conclusion
thereupon ; and maintains that if good angels do not wear
beards, the men who do are guilty of profanity, and love
goats rather than godliness. Van Helmont himself was ex-
tremely perplexed by the Jesuit casuists, who wrote on the
lawfulness of beards, and who most lucidly proved, under
three heads, 1st, That we are bound to shave the beard ;
2nd, That we are bound to let it grow ; and 3rd, That we
may do either the one or the other.
St. Fra^ois de Sales, the gentleman saint, was less
perplexing when, on being asked by a lady whether she
might not rouge, smiled, and answered, certainly, if she only
painted one cheek.
Van Helmont hit the happy medium left by the Jesuiti-
cal argument, and, shaving his beard, only cultivated his
mustachios.
Southey is rather inclined to accept the Dutch account
of the derivation of beards, based as it is on the certainty
that no man ever saw a good angel wearing one ; " for,"
says he, " take the most beautiful angel that ever painter
160 HABITS AND MEN.
designed or engraver copied, put him on a beard, and the
celestial character will be so entirely destroyed, that the
simple appendage of a tail will cacodsemonize the Eudse-
mon." So it may be said, that a monk with a fine po-
lished bald head is hedged with a sort of divinity, and looks
altogether reverend ; but only sprinkle powder from a
dredging-box upon the baldness, and you make him, if not
ridiculous, certainly mundane.
The English clergy do not appear to have estimated
beards by Van Helmont's scale. One of the body, in the
reign of Elizabeth, cherished his beard as an incentive to
righteousness. "He wore it," he said, "to remind him
that no act of his life should be unworthy of the gravity of
his appearance." This good gentleman's beard assuredly
did not deserve what Shakspeare affirms some men's do,
* namely, "not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's
cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle."
Henry VIII. on the other hand, would not tolerate moni-
torism even from his own beard, and he accordingly and
characteristically cut it short. Perhaps this monarch wished
also to have it out of the way of petitioners ; for stroking
the beard, in sign of supplication for mercy, was for thou-
sands of years a recognized fashion, as may be seen in the
Classics', and in Shakspeare, passim. It will be remembered
that Hudibras stroked his own beard before he proceeded
to "honour the shadow" of the lady's shoe-tie. This act
has been editorially declared to have been done as in sign
of asking for her favour ; from the recollection, I suppose, of
Thetis " palming" the chin of Jupiter ; but I think it was
merely a piece of gallantry, "dressing" as it were, for the
occasion, as in Congreve's ' Way of the World,' wherein it
is said, " The gentlemen wait but to comb, Madam, and will
wait on you." Formerly, no gallant ascended to a lady's
boudoir without first combing his peruke at the foot of the
stairs, and assuring himself, by a glance at his pocket mir-
BEAEDS AND THEIE BEAEEBS. 161
ror, that lie was as well-looking a fop as ever wasted morn-
ing in talking nonsense to a speaking and painted doll.
To pull another person's beard, was to inflict on the
wearer the most degrading insult that could be thought of.
When the Jew, who hated and feared the living Cid Bui
Dios, heard that the great Spaniard was dead, he contrived
to get into the room where the body lay, and he indulged
his revengeful spirit by contemptuously plucking at the
beard. But the "son of somebody" (the hidalgo) was
plucked temporarily into life and indignation by the out-
rage ; and starting half up, endeavoured to get at his sword,
an attempt which killed the Jew by the mere fright
which it caused.
To shave a Moslem's beard was once a penalty as terrible
as to a Chinese the cutting off of his extended tail ; and
Christian princes have so esteemed the appendage, that
they have pawned the beard, or a portion of it, for money
lent, and redeemed the sacred pledge punctually at the pro-
mised hour. They would have forfeited all claim to be ho-
noured of men, or rewarded of God, had they failed in their
contract. In modern times they pledge only their words ;
and as words are of less value than beards, they are not so
careful about the redemption thereof. That terribly men-
dacious personage, the Czar Nicholas, has, at all events,
made his " parole de gentleman " to be synonymous with
deliberate falsehood.
The beard however was long a cherished ornament of
Eussian chins, and the Czar Peter was accused of profanity
against that orthodoxy which so distinguishes his successors
by abolishing them. He certainly abolished the huge and
spreading honours of the Muscovite jaws by a rough pro-
cess. Taxes were laid upon them, which had their weight
upon every hair ; and when the recalcitrant were encoun-
tered in the street, they were seized, and their beards either
torn from them, or shaved off with an oyster-knife, whereby
162 HABITS AND MEN.
half the chin went with the entire beard. The loyal no-
bility compromised the matter by preserving their beards
in their cabinets, to be buried with them. They conjec-
tured that the angels would neither know nor welcome them
if they presented themselves at Heaven's gate with clean
chins : they thought more of these than of clean souls.
Taylor, the water poet, catalogues in rough rhymes the
various fashions after which beards were worn. They are
too tedious to enumerate, and yet do not enumerate every
fashion ; for .omission is made of the fact that it was once
the very "sweetest" mode to wear strings to the beard, as
Jack the highwayman did to the knees of his breeches, and
the Kings of Persia, who interwove their beards with gold
thread. The " cane-coloured" beard was always held as de-
testable, that hue having been, according to tradition, that of
the beard of the traitor Judas. The famous Count Bruhl,
who lost Saxony but preserved a collection of wigs, was
more practical than the Water Poet. His wig museum not
only contained every variety, but they were chronologically
arranged, from the days of Aaron to those of the Count's
own time. I may add, that I have never heard of the
beard being held in dishonour except among the Chaymas,
in South America, who have a great antipathy against it.
Apollo and Mercury are the only deities of olden times
who are represented beardless. When professional barbers
first arose it would be difficult to say ; Rome got hers from
where she procured her cooks Sicily ; but the Eternal City
was four centuries and a half old before the chins of her
sons were submitted to the handling of mercenaries. Scipio
Africanus, despite the turmoil of battles, found time to shave
every day ; and he was the first Roman who did so. Had
the Senate followed the same fashion, the invading Gaul
would not have found a beard to pluck, and perhaps the city
might have been saved. The old Persians were very obsti-
nate in this respect ; and they and the Tartars waged bloody
BEABDS AND THEIR BEAEEBS. 163
wars, and spilled oceans of blood in no better quarrel than
the fashion of the beard. These heathens were almost as
wicked as the Christian inhabitants of the adjacent towns
of Bouvignes and Dinant, in Flanders. The people of both
localities manufactured copper kettles, and each declared
that the other's ware was made after a sorry fashion. The
animosity thus created led to bloody and long-continued
feuds ; but peace was happily restored by the time that
other towns had applied themselves to the manufacture,
and this gave the old antagonists the more leisure to rumi-
nate upon their own folly.
When Alexander ordered the Macedonian soldiers to
shave, lest their beards should be handles whereby their
enemies might capture them, smooth chins become a uni-
versal Greek fashion. It so continued to the reign of
Justinian, but when the Turks took Byzantium, they would
allow of beards only on the chins of the conquerers ; and
the Normans treated the Anglo-Saxons according to the
same rule. Subsequently, in the year 1200, the Council of
Lateran swept off the beards of the monks, " lest in the
ceremony of receiving the sacrament, the beard might
touch the bread and wine, or crumbs and drops fall and
stick upon it." The monks then were, like the Emperors,
utraquists. Of course dispensation was to be obtained by
paying for it, and it was probably therefore that the decree
was issued ; but some wore their beards, in despite of the
Church and her chancery, for the same reason that Fitz-
herbert Longbeard did in the Norman times, to show his
independence of all superiors and their orders.
If there has really been wisdom in the wig, there has
been wit in the beard, or its owner. More, on the scaffold,
put it out of reach of the axe, because, as he said, it had
committed no treason. Raleigh, when visited by the barber
of the Tower, declined to have his beard trimmed, on the
ground that there was a lawsuit pending about it, between
164 HABITS AND MEN.
him and the King, and he would not lay out any capital on
it till the cause had been decided.
Ealeigh's wit reminds me of something still more witty,
and quite as germane to the subject.
A few years prior to the Eevolution, the witty but rather
too fiery Linguet was committed to the Bastille. It is
seldom that confinement calms the bile of the confined ; and
accordingly Linguet, the next morning, was engaged in
writing ab irato an article against his incarcerators ; when
he was interrupted by the entrance into his room of a tall,
thin, pale, personage, whose appearance very much dis-
pleased the celebrated advocate.
"What is your business?" said the latter, in a marked
tone of ill-humour.
" Sir," answered the other, " I come
" I see you are come !" interrupted the impatient lawyer,
"but you are not wel-come."
" Possibly, Sir ; but I am the Bastille barber, and I have
come :
Here the Figaro of state-prisoners burst into a laugh,
and rubbing his chin significantly with his hand, exclaimed,
" Ho ! ho ! my good Sir, that is a different matter ; puisgue
vous etes le barbier de la Bastille, rasez-la ;" and after so
capital a pun, he addressed himself in better humour to the
cutting up of his adversaries.
The last barber who held something more than barber's
office under a Christian king was Olivier le Dain, tine fami-
liar of Louis XI. In Persia, it has been common for the
monarch's barber to be a prince over the people. The
Khasterash, or " personal shaver," is reverenced by all in-
ferior citizens ; and they see nothing incongruous in the fact
that a palace and slaves are part of the rewards of a man
who makes of the beard of the Shah an eighth wonder of
the world. The beard, in fact, has ever been held in reve-
rential regard by all Moslems, for the reason that their
BEARDS AND THEIB, BEABEBS. 165
prophet never allowed instrument to diminish, his own. An
Arab would be as much horror-stricken now as ever Lace-
demonian fugitive was of old, if in punishment for offence
he were condemned to lose, by shaving, the half of his
beard. He would infinitely prefer to lose half his family.
The wit of Linguet, mentioned above, recalls to my
memory a trait of a Due de Brissac. This nobleman was
frequently heard saying, as he was at his matutinal toilet,
and was about to raise his razor to the surface of his ducal
chin : " Now then, Timoleon de Cosse, God hath made
thee a gentleman, and, the King hath made thee a duke ;
nevertheless, it is right and proper that thou shouldst have
something to do therefore thou shalt shave thyself." I
may add that it was the fashion of the De Cosses to have
one general Christian name ; and I think it is Bungener
who remarks, in his ' Julian,' that on a gentleman of this
house being brought before the revolutionary tribunal, and
asked what his baptismal name was, he aifewered indig-
nantly, " Am I not a De Cosse ? and what should my
Christian name be but Timoleon ?" and he added an ex-
clamatory "de par Dieu!" to show that though he was in
danger of death, he could swear as recklessly as though he
had still been in the galleries of Versailles.
I have said that philosophers have not disdained to write
upon the beard, and I may be honestly proud of an op-
portunity to follow in the wake of the philosophers. Chry-
sippus has chronologized its history, and it is from him
we know that it was not before the reign of Alexander
that shaving became a fashion in the East. Timotheus,
that renowned musician, long stuck to the olden mode, and
played the flute in a beard as long as his instrument, 7noyj/a
neyav excov r)v\ti : and how sweetly does that last word in-
terpret the flute's sweet sound qvX ! it dies away like a
cadence beneath the lips of as great a flutist as Timotheus,
our own modest and able Richardson.
166 HABITS AND MEN.
The first man who shaved himself at Athens acquired
a name by the act. He was called Korses, the shaven, or
clipped. Diogenes despised fashion, and therefore kept his
beard. Not only that ; he abused all who dispensed with it.
"Ah!" he exclaimed with that mouth which lay behind
a portion of his own hirsute dirtiness, for Diogenes had a
contempt for soap; "Ah!" cried he, on encountering a
friend newly mown, " art thou inclined then to reproach
Nature ? Wouldst thou insinuate that she had done better
to have made thee a woman rather than a man ?"
At Ehodes all shaving was forbidden ; but the Rhodians
loved to display their independence of the law, and every
man did what seemed best to his own chin. The same
unruly sort of liberty was taken by the Byzantine barbers.
The law expressly denounced razors, but scissors were tole-
rated. Clipping was permitted, but shaving was pronounced
irreligious. Some priests shaved in spite of the decree. It
was made a diocesan-court matter of; and the chief pon-
tiff, a sort of bishop in his way, rendered an admirable
judgement on the occasion. He regretted his limited powers,
but he said his course was clear. Scissors were lawful,
razors illegal ; but the priests had first used the former,
and the law did not say that razors should not be used
after the scissors had been applied. For his own part, he
did not well know which to adopt ; but he thought his re-
verend gentlemen would be justified in keeping razors, but
not in using them themselves. They might shave each
other ! One poor priest inquired what he was required to
do, seeing that he had no beard. " Oh," said AOJ/&WKOS,
" in this case I have no doubt. The use of scissors is im-
perative ; and if you do not obey the law, I will clap you
into the Ecclesiastical Court."
The Mahometans are very superstitious touching the
beard. They bury the hairs which come off in combing it,
and break them first, because they believe that angels have
BEABDS AND THEIB BEABEBS. 167
charge of every hair, and that they gain them their dismissal
by breaking it. Selim I. was the first Sultan who shaved
his beard, contrary to the law of the Koran. " I do it,"
said he apologetically to the scandalized and orthodox
mufti, "to prevent my vizier leading me by it." He cared
less for it than some of our ancestors, two centuries ago,
did for their own. They used to wear pasteboard covers
over them in the night, lest they should turn upon them
and rumple them in their sleep !
The famous Raskolniki schismatics had a similar super-
stition to the Mahometan one mentioned above. They
considered the divine image in man to reside in the beard.
Not only have the shavers of barbaric kings been ac-
counted superior to the Prime Minister, as in our own
country French coiffews are infinitely better paid than
English curates ; so to be shaved by a Prince is to be ex-
alted to ecstatic honours. Hoskins, the traveller, was so
operated on by the heir apparent of the Shaghes. His
royal highness used a threepenny razor, and at every
stroke carried away as much chin as beard ; the honour was
too much for the traveller, especially when it was cut out
with a blunt razor.
Rogers is said to have once asked Talleyrand if Napoleon
shaved himself. "Yes," said the latter; "one who is born
to be a king has some one to shave him, but they who ac-
quire kingdoms shave themselves." He might have added,
" And the people too, pretty closely !"
But I am pulling the beard to a greater extent than my
readers' patience will be inclined to bear with it. I have
only to add, that the beard was a symbol of bravery as well
as of wisdom ; and he who had a good one on his chin was
usually able to grasp a sword to some purpose in his hand.
Let us therefore draw the sword too, and see what can be
made of it.
SWORDS.
" I love an enemy, I was born a soldier ;
And he that at the head of his troop defies me,
Binding my manly body with his sword
I make my mistress." BONDUCA.
IN the first book of the Peloponnesian War, it is stated by
Thucydides that "the people of the Continent exercised
robberies upon one another ; and to this very day," he adds,
" the people of Greece are supported by the same practices."
The great historian especially names the Ozolian Locrians,
-3tolians, and Acarnaiiians, and their neighbours on the
continent ; among whom, as he informs his readers, the
custom of wearing their swords, or other weapons required
by their old life of rapine, was still retained. " This cus-
tom," continues the writer, " of wearing weapons, once pre-
vailed throughout Greece, as the houses had no manner of
defence, as travelling was full of hazard, and the whole lives
of the people were passed in armour, like barbarians. A
proof of this," says the civilized Thucydides, "is the con-
tinuance still in some parts of Greece of these manners,
which were once with uniformity general to all. The Athe-
nians were the first who discontinued the custom of wearing
their swords, and who passed from the dissolute life into
more polite and elegant manners."
What the Athenians did so long ago was not accomplished
in our own metropolis until the end of the first quarter, or
rather the beginning of the second half, of the last century.
The example, slowly set by London, was soon enforced at
Bath. I say "enforced," because there was a pleasant
despot there, who ruled so supreme that the very " Baths
of Bath " seemed only to flow at his permission.
SWORDS. 169
It was in presence of " Beau Nash " that fell the swords
and top-boots of the squires* and the aprons of the ladies.
The results thereof, at least of the putting aside the sword,
at Bath and in London, and throughout the country gene-
rally, where gallant submitted to be disarmed in obedience
to law or to custom, may be described in the language of
Thucydides, as applied to the Athenians when they aban-
doned ruffianism and adopted refinement : " Men passed
from the dissolute life into more polite and elegant manners."
In the simple old Saxon days the sword played a consi-
derable part in the making of a knight. The candidate for
chivalry was required, the day before his consecration, to
confess ; and then pass the night in the church, in prayer
and fasting. On the following day he was to hear mass,
and during the service he placed his sword upon the altar ;
the priest, after the Gospel, took the weapon, blessed it, and
then, with benison on the warrior, laid the blade on the
neck of the knight, who however was not a Knight complete
until he had received the Sacrament as a complement of the
blessing.
Thus the Church made her own cavaliers : but the Nor-
mans, who came among us under a banner blessed by the
Pope, held his method of consecration in scorn and abo-
mination. The knights so made they accounted of as no
knights at all, but as mere " tardy troopers and degenerate
plebeians." So, in modern times, a militia ensign with a
Norman name affects to took with contempt on a "captain "
who may have fought his way to his title in Spain or South
America ; and the young noble who at Oxford has taken a
degree, not conferred by right of knowledge, but seized by
right of nobility, pretends to look down upon men who, at
Bonn, at Marburg, or at Gottingen, have penned their
Latin thesis, and maintained its statements against all ad-
versaries, and who have won their honours, in short, by
earning and deserving them.
170 HABITS AND MEK.
They were godless fellows, those Normans, though they
did come with a papal benediction. Previous to their ap-
pearance no deed was legal that was not marked by golden
crosses and other sacred signs. The Northmen changerent
tout cela : they transferred estates simply by word of mouth,
without writing or charter, and only with the sword, helmet,
horn, or cup of the owner. Tenements, we are told, were
conveyed with a spur, a bow, an arrow, or even a " body-
scraper." But this was soon found to be inconvenient ; and
then the conquerors introduced the custom of confirming
deeds by wax impressions, made by the especial seal of each
person, with the subscription thereto of three or four wit-
nesses present. Now many a Norman had no other seal
than the end of the pommel of his sword, and by such an
instrument many a Saxon was pommelled out of his estate.
And what were these Normans, from whom so many
amongst us are proud to trace their descent ? They were
at least good numbers of them were unbaptized thieves.
Such certainly were the Mandevilles and Dandevilles, the
Mohuns and Bohuns, the Bissets and Bassets. These were
fellows who had converted themselves to Christianity fifty
times in the course of the year, for the sake of the garment
given each time to every convert. Those renowned swords-
men, the Dagotes, Bastards, Talbots, Laceys, Percys, what
were they but so many robbers who came hither penniless,
and were very much astonished at the superabundance of
their own good fortune?
Still lower in the scale must have been those Norman
swordsmen whose names translated signify Bull-head, Ox-
eye, Dirty-villain, Breechless, and the like. Nay, Wim
(the) Carter, Hugh (the) Tailor, and Wim (the) Drummer
stand recorded in the Honast. Anglic, as having been made
Norman knights and noble by right of conquest. The
ancestor of one of our proudest dukes was a plundering
scoundrel, who, having no name at all, was known by that
SWORDS.
171
of the town in which he had been recruited, St. Maur;
and the ladies of the Somerset family do not appear
ashamed of the descent, since they, not long ago, adopted
the old name in preference to that of Seymour, which some
of the branches of the family still retain.
Our Chaloners, Rochfords, and Chaworths can boast of
no more honourable ancestry : they all spring from the
sword-begirt loins of vagabonds, born or recruited in Cha-
lons, Eochefort, and Cahors ; and the honourable house of
Sacheverele has no more glorious founder than a limping
brigand, known by the name of "Saute Chevreau," or "Saut
de Chevreau," because he hopped like a goat. Why, if an-
tiquity of name be a thing to boast of, that of John Adams
should be most admired among men; and Winnifred Jenkins
is, in such case, more truly noble than the proudest Nor-
man of them all.
I have noticed how possession was sometimes given with
the sword. It was perhaps in allusion to that old custom
that Jack Cade touched with his weapon that ancient piece
of mystery, "London Stone." He felt that his title was
not good until that ceremony was performed; and, that
done, "Now!" exclaimed that popular .hater of national
schools, "now is Mortimer Lord of London city!" His
worship the Mayor carries, by his deputy, a similar weapon,
as emblem of his sovereignty. The sword in the City shield
has another signification. Some have supposed it was
placed there in memory of the gallant chief magistrate who
so summarily despatched Wat Tyler ; but the sword was in
the City shield long before that period. It was called the
Sword of St. Paul ; and the Domine dirige nos is an invoca-
tion that the magistracy may be taught to bear such sword
like gentlemen and Christians. Is it because the prayer
has been ineffectual that a new legend was constructed to
account for the emblazoned weapon ?
In the reign of Elizabeth there were two adjuncts which
i 2
172 HABITS AND ME>\
especially went to the making of a gallant the ruff and the
rapier. He whose ruff was the deepest and rapier the long-
est was the most unqiiestionable gallant ; the consequence
was, that apprentices robbed their masters in order to look
like gallants. The vigorous Queen looked to it, however ;
and she placed grave citizens at the gates, with orders to
cut off all ruffs of above a nail in depth, and break the
points of all rapiers that were above a yard long. The
scenes at the City gates must have been turbulent enough
at those times, for it is not to be supposed that a "ruffian"
would submit quietly to the cutting of his collar or the clip-
ping of his sword.
In earlier times, in England, the sword and poniard too
had something of sacredness attached to them : thus, when
Athelstan was marching against the Danes and Scots, he
paid a visit by the way to the shrine of St. John of Bever-
ley. Upon the altar of the church there he deposited his
poniard, vowing that if Heaven and the Saint would help
him to a victory, he would redeem the arm at a suitable
price. He gained the victory, and observed his vow ; and
for years the monks there blessed the good Athelstan for
not only putting them above the law, but making them as
rich as Croesus. If he had not, they were men who would
have taken their revenge; and they would not have scrupled,
as the member of the Peace Society says in one of the
comedies of Aristophanes, " to take his measure for a suit
of Sardian scarlet," or to have served his body as the
heralds have the arms of the Duke of Buccleuch, which,
as we all know, are "bruised by a baton sinister."
The readers of Sterne will not need to be reminded that
in ancient days in Brittany a nobleman, too poor to sup-
port his dignity, was allowed to make temporary sacrifice of
the same by turning to commercial pursuits, after first
surrendering his sword to the keeping of the magistracy.
When fortune was achieved by honest industry, the old
SWORDS. 173
sword was once more hung upoix the thigh. It was a wise
custom, superior to that I have heard of in another country,
where pauper aristocrats condescend to get rich by marry-
ing merchants' daughters, whose dowries they as profligately
squander as though they had inherited them from their own
fathers.
I have, in my ' TABLE TBAITS,' alluded to the use and
abuse of the sword, and therefore will not repeat here inci-
dents already related therein; I will merely remark that
the best exemplification of the career of a mere swordsman
is to be found in the history of fighting Fulwood, the law-
yer. This hero, ever ready to draw his blade with or with-
out reason, while standing (one night in the year of 1720),
as was the custom of the pit, to see Mrs. Oldfield in ' The
Scornful Lady,' remonstrated roughly with Beau Fielding
for pushing against him. " Orlando the Fair" straightway
clapped his hand to his sword ; and the pugnacious lawyer,
determined not to be behindhand, drew his blade, and
passed it into the body of the Beau. While the latter, who
was a mature gentleman of some half-century old, was ex-
hibiting his wound, in order to excite the sympathy which
he could not arouse in the breasts of the laughing ladies,
Fulwood, flushed by victory, hastened to the playhouse in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he picked a quarrel with Cap-
tain Cusack, who was a better swordsman than Orlando
and who stopped the lawyer's triumphs by straightway slay-
ing him.
The sword-clubs were suppressed by royal proclamation
in 1724. They had been denounced as unlawful three years
previously. The object of the proclamation was to banish
from civilized society the sword itself, in order thereby to
check the practice of duelling, which was, at that period,
exercised exclusively by means of the sword. The law be-
came stringent, and judges merciless upon this point. This
was made sufficiently clear in 1726, when Major Oneby
174 HABITS AND MEN.
killed Mr. Grower in a duel with swords, fought in a tavern,
after a dispute over a game at hazard. The adversaries had
fought without witnesses, in a room the door of which was
closed. The Major, who had been both the aggressor and
the challenger, mortally wounded Mr. Grower, who however
declared that he had fallen in fair combat. A jury, never-
theless, found Oneby guilty of murder ; the judges acqui-
esced in the verdict, but the Major escaped public execution
by committing suicide.
The law had not long to wait before other offenders were
summoned for too freely using the sword. On a night in
November, 1727, Savage the poet, with two companions,
named Gregory and Merchant, entered a coffee-house near
Charing-cross. Merchant insulted the company, a quarrel
ensued, swords were drawn, and a Mr. Sinclair was slain by
a thrust, it is said, but not proved, from the sword of
Savage. The result of the trial that followed is well known.
The verdict of guilty of murder against Savage and Gregory,
and of manslaughter against Merchant (who was the most
culpable of the three), was exacted by a villanously partial
judge, evidently under pressure of the proclamation against
swords.
Merchant was at once burned in the hand in open
court ; he was also fined, compelled to give security for
future good behaviour, and discharged. His associates had
a narrow escape of an ignominious death, for which they
were assiduously prepared by that Dr. Edward Young, who
had not then achieved a reputation for ' Night Thoughts,'
but who was establishing a reputation by the publication
of those ' Satires ' which so faithfully portray the social
crimes and errors of the day.
Johnson's Life of Savage does not notice Merchant's
sentence, nor does it state upon what terms Savage and
Gregory obtained their liberty. They were liberated upon
condition of their withdrawing to the Colonies for the space
SWORDS. 175
of three years, and giving security to keep the peace. The
conditions appear to have been evaded. Gregory indeed
did proceed to Antigua, where he obtained an appointment
in the customs ; but the wayward Savage sat down as a pen-
sioner at the hearth of Lord Tyrconnell, whose benevolence,
it is hardly necessary to add, he most shamefully abused.
I think that the last duel, certainly the \a,st fatal duel,
fought with swords, was between Lord Byron and Mr.
Chaworth, in January, 1762. They had quarrelled at the
Star and Garter, Pall Mall, upon a question touching
manors and game-preserves ; they fought in a closed room
of the tavern, and Mr. Chaworth was slain. The circum-
stances of the killing looked much more like murder than
in the case of Major Oneby and Mr. Gower. The Peers,
however, acquitted Lord Byron of the capital crime, but
they found him guilty of manslaughter. His lordship
claimed the benefit of the statute of Edward VI., and
he was discharged on paying his fees. A bitter mockery
of justice !
The sword appears to have been drawn in as hot wrath
at the playhouse as in the park; and sometimes to have
figured by way of ridicule. I may cite, as an example of
the latter, an incident of the time of Charles II. The
court was at Dover, whither the King had gone to receive
his sister, and the mistress which that sister brought in her
hand as a bribe whereby to make of Charles the enemy of
his people ! At this time, the French courtiers wore laced
coats, of various colours, but all ridiculously short. The
shortness of the front part was made up for by the breadth
of the waistbelt. Nokes, the Keeley of his day, was dressed
to play Sir Arthur Addle, in 'Sir Solomon;' and his cos-
tume, a caricature on the already sufficiently absurd dress
of the French, so delighted the celebrated Duke of Mon-
mouth, that the latter took his own sword and belt from
his side, and buckled it with his own semi-royal hands
176 HABITS AND MEN.
about the person of the player. We should be somewhat
startled in these days if we were to hear of Lord Au-
gustus Fitzclarence fastening a cutlass upon the thigh of
Mr. Keeley, when acting in the ' Thirst for Gold ;' but in
Charles's days such freaks were very mildly construed of.
The appearance of Nokes, in his short coat and long sword,
elicited a roar from King and court, all the louder that the
French originals were present. The latter must have taken
our most religious and gracious King for a sorry barba-
rian ; and, as chivalrous ideas went, it was very well that
they did not surround Nokes as he was going home, and
"pink" him into an everlasting incapability of ever carica-
turing them again.
James II. was unquestionably more of a true gentleman
in outward bearing than his brother Charles. I have an
instance of this appropriate to this very subject of swords
and actors. In. the reign of James, an actor of unimpeach-
able character and of very refined manners, named Smith,
had a discussion behind the scenes with a young noble-
man, who, losing his temper with getting the worst of the
argument, drew his sword and struck Smith, for want of
logic to confute him. The King forbade the courtier to
appear in his presence ; and by this means proclaimed his
opinion that the nobleman was less of a gentleman than
the player. But such a manifestation of opinion roused
all the so-called gentlemen against the so-called vagabond
players ; and the next time Smith played they resorted to
the theatre, sword in hand and catcall between their lips,
and so plied both, that, despite the royal protection, he
was driven from the stage for ever. Luckily for him, the
"vagabond" was better off, on two points, than the "noble
gentlemen," his antagonists: he had a considerable fortune,
and he was in debt to no man, not even to his tailor.
Smith's story of the swords drawn against him, reminds
me of Mrs. Yerbruggen's, with the sword always ready
SWORDS. 177
to leap from the scabbard to defend her. Mrs. Verbrug-
gen was *the Mrs. Sterling of her period, that is, the
cleverest of artificial actresses. It would be pertinent to
my subject of ' Habits ' to speak of her as she appeared
in what is called " breeches parts ; " but I am afraid if I
were to describe her, as old Anthony Aston does, who
so often saw and wondered, it would be considered very
impertinent indeed. I may tell however what he says of
her face. " It was of a fine smooth oval," says Anthony,
" full of beautiful and well-disposed moles, as were her
neck and breast." He afterwards adds: "She was the
best conversation possible, never captious or displeased
at anything but what was gross or indecent. For she was
cautious, lest fiery Jack should so resent it as to breed a
quarrel ; for he would often say, ' Damme ! though I don't
much value my utife, yet nobody shall affront her ; ' and his
sword was drawn on the least occasion, whiyh was much in
fashion at the latter end of King William's reign."
It is a funny trait of the sword-wearers, that they could
extol the virtue which they had ineffectually endeavoured
to destroy. We see this in the case of Mrs. Bracegirdle,
that Diana of the stage before whom Congreve and Lord
Lovelace, at the head of a troop of bodkined fops, wor-
shiped in vain. The noblest of the troop, and it reckoned
the Dukes of Devonshire and Dorset, the Earl of Halifax,
and half-a-dozen delegates from each rank of the peerage
among its members, were wont, at the coffee-house, and
over a bottle, to extol the Gibraltar-like virtue, if I may
so speak, of this incomparable woman. " Come," s;iid
Halifax, " you are always praising the virtue ; why don't
you reward the lady who will not sell it ? I propose a
subscription, and there are two hundred guineas, pour
encourager les autres." Pour times that amount was raised,
and with it the nobles, with their swords in their hands,
waited on Mrs. Bracegirdle, who accepted their testimonial,
i 3
178 HABITS AND MEN.
as it was intended in honour of her virtue. What should
we think now if ? but this is a delicate master, and I
might make a mistake. I will only add, therefore, that had
Mrs. Bracegirdle been rewarded for her charity, the re-
compense would have been, at least, as appropriate. For
it is true of her that when the poor saw her they blessed
her, and, we may add, she richly merited the well-earned
benedictions. She was, at all events, not quite so prudish
as Mrs. Eogers, who not only objected to act any but virtu-
ous characters, but made a public vow of chastity, in an
epilogue, and broke it, out of good-nature.
It must be understood that the players wore swords in
the streets, and used them, like gentlemen, for the destruc-
tion of one another. Thus Quin killed Will Bowen, in 1717.
The former had declared that Ben Jonson acted Jacomo,
in the ' Libertine,' better than Bowen. The latter pursued
Quin to a tavern, shut the door of the room in which he
found him, placed his back against the door, and threatened
to pin Quin to the wainscot if he did not immediately draw.
Quin remonstrated, but drew and kept on the defensive ;
while the impetuous Bowen so pressed upon his adversary
that he actually fell upon that adversary's sword and died,
after acknowledging his own rashness. Quin was tried and
acquitted.
The actors however had need to wear swords to defend
themselves from their noble assailants. The latter used to
crowd between the side-scenes, and often interrupt the per-
formance by crossing the stage and conversing aloud with
one another. On one occasion, at the house in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, an earl, who was said to have been drunk for six
years continuously, was guilty of this rudeness ; and Rich,
enraged thereat, threatened never to allow him to be admitted
again, whatever he might offer for it. The Peer replied by
slapping Rich in the face; and Rich returned the salute with
all the vigour and rapidity that belonged to him as an accom-
SWORDS. 179
plished harlequin. The drunken lord's drunken companions
immediately drew, and solemnly devoted Eich to death. The
comrades of the latter, headed by Ryan, the ex-tailor, whipped
out their swords too (some of them wore them with their
court suits in Macbeth), charged the nobles, and after a
bloody melee drove them into the streets. The illustrious
drunkards, brandishing their weapons, attacked the front of
the house, fought their way into the boxes, proceeded to
destroy the interior adornments, and would have set fire to
the theatre but for the arrival of the " watch," who captured
the whole of the rioters. Justice was both lame and blind
in those days, and the peers compromised the matter with
the managers ; but George I. was as much disgusted with
the conduct of his " noble" subjects as a quiet scamp could
be at the peccadilloes of noisy ones. The only men, not
nobles, who were as great nuisances with their swords, were
the Darby Captains. These were old "half-pays" or pen-
niless " disbanded," who used to pitch their cent at Derby's
Coffee-house in Covent-garden, and who were sanguinary in
their cups. The " H. P.'s" who now meet in Eyder-street
have little idea of the truculency of their predecessors, who
most did congregate at the hostelrie whence they derived
their name, and some pretenders their rank.
I have alluded to the proclamation against swords in 1724.
It appears to have been made in vain, for in 1755 I find the
aristocrats still ruling the theatre by power of naked weapons
and impudence. G-arrick received from them this question-
able support when he brought out the ' Chinese Festival,'
with Noverre and other foreign dancers from the neighbour-
hood of " Zurich's fair waters." A war with France had just
broken out, and the mob were like Foote's patriot ginger-
bread-maker in the Borough, who would not tolerate three
dancers from Switzerland because he hated the French. The
ochlocracy hissed ; the aristocracy drew their swords to
silence the villains ; the latter welcomed the battle, and
180 HABITS AND MEN.
they not only damaged the theatre and many illustrious
heads, but they pretty nearly destroyed Grarrick's own pri-
vate residence. Roscius lost nearly 4000 in this quarrel,
wherein swords were drawn and blood spilt that was of no
value to the manager; and the present Mr. Noverre, of
Norwich (I believe), can hardly make even a faint guess of
the dire storm which greeted his great-grandsire when he
first cut an entrechat on the boards of Old Drury.
But actors had bloody frays of their own, and that too
among the gentler part of the profession. One I may men-
tion, as it is connected with a matter of dress. The charming
G-eorge Anne Bellamy had procured from Paris two gorgeous
dresses, wherein to enact Statira in the 'Rival Queens.'
Roxana was played by Peg Woffington ; and she was so over-
come with malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, when she
saw herself eclipsed by the dazzling glories of the resplendent
Bellamy, that Peg at length attempted to drive her oif the
stage, and with upheld dagger had wellnigh stabbed her at
the side-scenes. Alexander and a posse of chiefs with hard
names were at hand, but the less brilliantly-clad Roxana
rolled Statira and her spangled sack in the dust, pommelling
her the while with the handle of her dagger, and screaming
aloud
" Nor he, nor Heaven, shall shield thee from my justice ;
Die, sorceress, die ! and all my wrongs die with thee !"
Poor Madge ! Not many weeks afterwards she was playing
Rosalind, when she was, at the age of forty-four, struck with
the fit that slowly conducted her to the grave. Her last words
were, " If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you
as had beards that pleased me." The stroke followed, then
a scream, and she who had charmed multitudes was for ever
charmless. I will only add here that it is said of O'Brien,
of whom I have spoken elsewhere as having married an earl's
daughter, that " in the drawing of his sword he threw all
other performers at a wonderful distance by his swiftness,
SWORDS. 181
grace, and superior elegance." But O'Brien was the son
of a fencing-master, and his brother actors were as jealous
of him as Pepys of his friend Pen, as illustrated by the entry
which says (May, 1662), " Walked with my wife to my
brother Tom's ; our boy waiting on us with his sword, which
this day he begins to wear, to outdo Sir W. Pen's ioy." From
which it would appear that gentlemen and footmen once had
fashions, if not vices, in common ; and that our ancestors,
with regard to pride, were as great fools as ourselves ; and
that is eminently, nay, pre-eminently consoling.
The players were not scared from using swords as well
as displaying them. When Garrick played Bayes in the
' Rehearsal,' in 1741-2, he gave imitations of Hall, Delaney,
Ryan (the ex-tailor), Bridgewater, and of Gifford. The first
four bore the ridicule better than Roscius would have en-
dured the like of himself; but Gifford was so dreadfully
enraged at the liberty taken with him that he sent Davy
a challenge, and the two mimes fought until Gifford, whip-
ping his rapier through the fleshy part of Garrick' s arm, laid
him up for a fortnight, and cured him of mere mimicry.
I have noticed above how Peg WofBngton, with her pointed
dagger, punched the ribs of the exquisite Bellamy ; a si-
milar, but more disagreeable sort of excitement, once seized
on Woodward, the old pupil of Merchant Tailors', who had
turned actor. He was playing Petruchio to Kitty Olive's
Catherine, when, borne away by his towering rage, he not
only threw the lady down, but ran a fork into her finger ;
and as he had no love for Kitty, it is said that there was
more design than accident in the matter. But this I do
not believe. More credit, I fancy, is to be attached to the
story which says, that when Pasta played Otello to Sontag's
Desdemona, the former was so excited by the superabundant
applause gained by her rival, that in the killing scene Otello
twisted a strong hand into Desdemona' s luxuriant hair,
and gave it a series of such hearty tugs, that the gentle
182 HABITS AND MEN.
lady, married to the Moor, screamed with all her might, au
naturel !
When the most pleasant and reasonable of Popes was
Legate at Bologna, a circumstance connected with swords
came under his observation. Two senators had fallen into
a deadly quarrel touching the pre-eminence of Tasso and
Ariosto. A duel ensued, in which the champion of Ariosto
was mortally wounded. The future Pope visited the dying
man, whose sole observation to his visitor's religious injunc-
tions was " What an ass I am, to get run through the body
in the very flower of my age, for the sake of Ariosto. of whom
I have never read a line." " But " interrupted the priest.
" And if," exclaimed the dying/ man, not heeding the in-
terruption, " if I had read him, I should not have under-
stood him ; for I am but a fool at the best of times." Be-
nedict himself had a respect for swordsmen ; and it was
said of him and that other pleasant fellow, his contempo-
rary, the Sultan Mahmoud, that if they were made to change
places, the Holy Father becoming Grand Seigneur, and the
Sultan becoming Pope, nobody would be sensible of any
consequent diiference ; except, perhaps, the most intimate
portion of the Sultan's household. Benedict was, at all
events, wiser than that celebrated Capuchin, who, preaching
repentance to a party about to resort to the arbitration of
the sword, exclaimed, " Brethren, admire and bless Divine
Providence, who has placed death at the close of life, in
order that we might have the more time to be prepared for
it." This confusion of ideas reminds me of that which ex-
isted in the mind of the soldier who remarked, that people
nowadays did not live to such a lengthened age as when he
was young. " Not that there are not old people now," said
he, " but then they were born a very long time ago !"
Finally, let me 'conclude the subject of swords with some-
thing better worth remembering than mere gossip. Toledo,
Damascus, and Milan have been especially renowned for
SWORDS. 183
the excellence of the swords manufactured in those respec-
tive places. The quality of the Spanish blade is said to
have been given it by the cunning of Arab workmen ; but
the fact is, that Spanish blades were famous for their power
of letting daylight into the soul's tabernacle as early as the
old Roman time. When the first Ca3sar was master of the
empire, Iberian tailors (and ladies) worked only with To-
ledo needles ; while Iberian officers and gentlemen (for the
characters were distinct in those heathen times : as for the
matter of that, they sometimes are now) fought only with
Toledo blades. Virgil alludes to the excellence of the Spa-
nish steel in his first Georgic : " At Chalybes nudi ferrum
(mittunt)." Justin says the Chalybes were Spaniards; and
the nudi, no doubt, refers to the fashion in which they
worked at the forge. Dryden translates the line "And
naked Spaniards temper steel for war." Further, Diodorus
Siculus states, " that the Celtiberians so tempered their
steel, that no helmet could resist the stroke? of the sword."
The temper of the Damascus blade was of another sort.
It was so fine that the sword passed through the lightest
object floating in the air. The merits of the two methods
will be found admirably illustrated in Scott's story of ' The
Talisman.'
The English blade, I am sorry to say, has never been fa-
mous for excellence of temper. Some two centuries ago, an
attempt was made to improve the home-manufactured sword,
by incorporating a company of sword-cutlers for making hol-
low sword-blades, in Cumberland and the adjacent counties.
The project failed, owing to the parsimony of the principals
and the ignorance of the workmen. During the greater por-
tion of the last century, our sword-blades were " regular
bricks," quite as blunt, but not half so dangerous. An Eng-
lish officer was as safe with one in his hand as if he had bought
it at a toyshop ; but he never met the enemy with a native-
manufactured weapon. This state of things, and a mixed
184 HABITS AND MEN.
idea of profit and patriotism, fired Mr. Gill of Birmingham
into experiments which became realities ; and the English
weapon was turned out as well calculated to help its wearer
to cut through the sixth commandment as any foreign
blade of them all.
A sword is only perfectly tempered at a heat of 550
Fahrenheit. The testing is by means of a process of bend-
ing and twisting almost torturing to read of. I only wish
that all monarchs who unjustly draw the sword, were first
subjected to the tempering and testing which the weapon
itself undergoes. Could such a course have been applied to
that miscreant Nicholas, what a relief it would have been to
the world ! An exposure, during ten minutes in an oven,
to a heat of 550, would have been followed by uncomplain-
ing acquiescence on the part of the Czar ; and there would
not have been added to his account so many murders as
those for which, as Heaven is just as well as merciful, he
will be held responsible, at the tribunal which that gigantic
criminal can not avoid.
The sword was grasped by hand, or mailed or gloved;
and to the question of gloves we will now direct attention.
GLOVES, B S, AND BUTTONS.
" He said he had his gloves from France ;
The Queen said, ' That can't be ;
If you go there for glove-making,
It is without the g.' " FAIR ROSAMOND.
THE elder D' Israeli, in his sketch 011 the history of gloves,
sets out by observing, that in the 108th Psalm, where the
royal prophet declares he will cast his shoe over Edom, and
in Buth iv. 7, where the custom is noticed of a man taking
off his shoe and giving it to a neighbour, as a pledge for
redeeming or exchanging anything, the word shoe may in
the latter, if not in both cases, mean glove. He adds, that
Casaubon is of opinion that gloves were worrfby the Chal-
deans ; and that in the Chaldee paraphrase of the book of
Euth, the word which we render as shoe or sandal, is ex-
plained in the Talmud lexicon as " the clothing of the
hand." Here is a sad confusion of hands and feet, as much
so as in the celebrated observation by Mrs. Eamsbottom,
that she " had had a great deal of walking on her hands,
lately."
The flinging down of a sandal upon a territory was a
symbol of occupancy or possession. " Upon the land of
Edom do I cast my shoe" (sandal), says the Psalmist, in the
9th Psalm. And this was a symbol of slavery to the Edom-
ites, for to loose the sandal was the office of a slave ; and in
Egypt, especially, we find paintings of slaves who are carry-
ing their master's sandals. On the sole of the latter was
sometimes represented a captive, whom the wearer had the
pleasure of thus pictorially treading underfoot. "When an
old shoe is thrown after a newly married couple, it does
186 HABITS A>*D HEX.
not so much imply that they have probably been put in
possession of felicity, as that they have certainly lost their
liberty.
Xenophon remarks that the Persians wore coarse clothes,
fought bareheaded, and never required pocket-handker-
chiefs. He laughs at them however for using gloves, and
for effeminately covering their heads, when the latter might
best dispense with the protection. Laertes, the Greek, wore
gloves when he was gardening, in order to protect his fingers
from the thorns ; and this shows that young Greek noble-
men, in remote times, could occupy themselves usefully and
innocently. Our youths, with much time, heavy purses, and
a lordship of self, would find considerable profit in " putting
on the gloves " for no worse purposes.
Gloves were not common among the Romans, but they
were not entirely unknown. Varro says that to pluck olives
without them was to spoil the olive ; and Athenaeus tells of
a glutton who used to dine out in gloves, and so be enabled
to dispose of the hot things quicker than the guests who
were less prepared for the handling them. The fashion of
gloves made its way however in Eome, in spite of the philo-
sophers who aifected to despise comfort, and did assuredly
decline cleanliness. They were worn, for instance, by the
secretary of the elder Pliny.
The mode seems to have been adopted in some excess by
the monks, until a decree of the Council of Aix ordered that
they should wear none but gloves of sheepskin. Had they
turned their cilices into gloves, and made flesh-brushes of
them, it would have been more profitable to themselves, and
to all who stood near them. In France, the use of gloves
was allowed only to bishops. They were sometimes used in
great formalities of the " Church," and indeed of the State
also ; for bishops received investiture by presentation of a
glove, and kings were not half crowned who did not receive
a pair, with an episcopal blessing to enhance the gift.
GLOVES, B S, AND BUTTONS. 187
Among the early English, the Anglo-Saxons, we find that
ladies, before they knew the use of the glove, or applied
their knowledge to its most convenient conclusion, had the
ends of their mantles shaped into gloves, and these were
worn over the hand, under the name of mufflers. Gloves
were worn by females before the Reformation, despite what
Gough says to the contrary. A dishonoured knight was
deprived not only of his spurs, but of his gloves also. It
was right that the symbol for or gage of battle should be
taken from him whose office it had been to carry arms, but
who was no longer accounted as worthy of wielding them.
In Germany, he who entered a prince's stables, or was
present at the killing of a stag, without taking off his gloves,
had to pay his footing or fine ; in the first case to the grooms,
in the second to the huntsmen, and for this reason, because
they could not mingle among grooms and huntsmen, and
yet retain their dignity (asserted by keeping on the glove),
without paying for it.
Gloves are distributed at funerals, perhaps originally as
a challenge from the doctor, defying all who shall dare say that
he had committed murder contrary to the rules of art. But
they were acceptable presents on other occasions ; and when
gloves were rare, and James I. and Elizabeth gave those
rich and rare articles as gifts to various members of the
Denny family, 110 doubt the fingers of the latter felt the
honour deeply. When these gloves were sold, some two
centuries and a half later, a single pair fetched a price for
which a man with judgment and taste might purchase a
select library. One of this family, Sir William Denny him-
self, contributed a remarkable poetical work to the libraries
of 1653, namely, the ' Pelecanicidium, or the Christian Ad-
viser against Self-murder ; together with a Guide, and a Pil-
grim's Pass to the Land of the Living.' In the preface he
says, " Mine ears do tingle to hear so many sad relations, as
ever since March last, concerning several persons, of divers
HABITS AND ME>".
rank and quality, inhabiting within and about so eminent a
city as late-famed London, that have made away and mur-
dered themselves."
In England gloves came in about the time the Heptarchy
went out. The exact period is not known; but we do
know that when a society of German merchants sought
protection for the trade which they carried on between their
own country and England, they propitiated King Ethel-
red II. by presenting him with five pairs of gloves : their
not being able to muster the half-dozen shows the rarity of
the article. In the case mentioned the gloves were probably
not so much a gift or bribe, as a portion of duty paid in
kind. Prior to this period the hands of both sexes were
covered, as I before observed, by the mantles ; and some per-
sons with rapidly progressing ideas, had donned an imper-
fect structure which presented a stall for the thumb, and a
sort of stocking-foot for the rest of the fingers. They were
like the mufflers which we place on the digits of young
England ; and when Mrs, B-amsbottom made the observa-
tion I quoted in the first paragraph, of " having had much
walking on her hands lately," she may have had these very
mufllers in her eye.
Gloves soon became fashionable among the higher classes ;
at least, Ordericus Vitalis tells us that when the Bishop of
Durham escaped from the Tower, during the reign of Henry
I., he had to slide down a rope ; and as the bishop, in his
hurry, had " forgotten his gloves," he rubbed the skin off his
hands to the bone, in descending from the window. Duke
Charles of Guise, when he escaped in a similar manner,
from the Chateau at Tours, in the days of Henri III., had
better fortune ; he descended more leisurely than the
bishop, being lighter, and with no further detriment than
a rent in his hose.
Long before the period referred to by Ordericus, the
French monks were the authorized glove-makers. They
GLOVES, B S, AND BUTTONS. 189
especially loved hunting, but respectability required that
they should not love the sport merely for the sport's sake.
Accordingly, Charlemagne granted to the monks of Sithin
especially, unlimited right of hunting, because of the skins
of the deer killed by them they made gloves and girdles, and
covers for books. I have before noticed, that by a subse-
quent decree of the Council of Aix, in the time of Louis le
Debonnaire, monks were forbidden to wear any gloves but
those made of sheep-skin.
Gloves were popular new-year's gifts, or sometimes
" glove-money" in place of them ; occasionally, these gloves
carried gold pieces in them. When Sir Thomas More was
Chancellor, he decided a case in favour of Mrs. Croaker
against Lord Arundel ; the former, on the following new-
year's day, gratefully presented the judge with a pair of
gloves with forty angels in them. " It would be against
good manners," said the Chancellor, "to forsake a gentle-
woman's new-year's gift, and I accept the gloves. The
lining you will elsewhere bestow."
It will be remembered that St. Grudule had the faculty of
being able, when her candle was extinguished, to blow it in
again. Many among us enjoy the same faculty, and school-
boys often practise the miracle, the only one ever performed
by St. Grudule. It is said however that when the saint
prayed, barefooted, in church, the attendant priest, moved
by compassion, put his gloves under her feet. They imme-
diately rose, and hung in the air for a whole hour ; but
what that proves, I really do not know.
But we have had gloves suspended in our own churches.
"When Bernard Gilpin was preaching in the North of Eng-
land, he observed, on entering one of the churches there, a
glove suspended from the roof; and having learned that it
was a challenge placed there by a Borderer, in defiance of
some other Borderer, he tore it down, to the great disgust
of the sexton, who had a respect for established usages, even
190 HABITS AND MEN.
though the devil had invented them. Good Bernard Gil-
pin gave a challenge of his own from the pulpit : he flung
down the Gospel before the rather angry people, who were
highly civilized, and therefore averse to innovation ; and he
told them so defiantly of the difficulties in the way of their
salvation, that they determined to surmount them and be-
came a Christian people ; and that, under correction, is a
better glove, and a greater miracle, than those of St.
Gudule.
I have spoken, in another page, of our old English custom
of kissing. It is one which is not likely to decay. We still
kiss persons caught napping, that is, if they be worth the
kissing, and exact as forfeit the price of a new pair of
gloves. In old days, he who first saw the new moon could,
by kissing a maiden, and proclaiming the fact, that is, the
lunar fact, claim a pair of gloves for his service. The Per-
sian habit was to kiss only relatives, which must have been
highly proper, but uncommonly insipid, a perfect waste of
good things, except among cousins.
Our Queen Elizabeth was a wearer of gloves that are said
to have been of a very costly description. Shakspeare was
once acting in her presence the part of a king one of his
own making ; and so careful was he of the illusion of the
scene, that he forgot all other things beside. The Virgin
Queen resolved to put him to the proof; and as the mimic
king passed before her, she dropped one of her gloves.
Shakspeare, faithful subject as well as actor, immediately
paused, and with the words that, " although bent on this high
embassy, yet stoop we to pick up our cousin's glove," he
presented it to the real queen, and then passed on. This
anecdote is often cited to prove that nothing could induce
the poet-actor to depart from the business of the stage ;
and it proves exactly the contrary ; but as an illustration of
gloves I have found it handy to my purpose.
Elizabeth treated Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, more
GLOVES, B S, AND BUTTONS. 191
generously than she did Shakspeare. The Queen gave him
her glove, which, she having dropped it, he had picked up
to return to her. He immediately adorned it with jewels,
and placed it in his cap, where he displayed it at all jousts
and tournaments. Chivalrous gentlemen at Donnybrook
Fair follow something of this fashion when they draw a chalk
line round their hat, and knock down every one bold enough
to declare that it is not silver lace. Elizabeth, I may add,
received as well as gave gloves. The first embroidered pair
ever worn in England were presented to her by Vere, Earl
of Oxford, when he returned from a mission abroad. The
Queen had her portrait taken with the gloves introduced.
And speaking of embassies, recalls to my memory another
story connected with gloves and legations. Ambassadors'
effects are passed without examination, not by law, but
out of courtesy. This Courtesy has made smuggleresses of
many an envoy's wife ; of none more than of a French Am-
bassadress, not very many years ago, in England. She used
to import huge cases of gloves under the name of "de-
spatches," and these she condescended to sell to English
ladies who were mean enough to buy them. But the cus-
tom-house officers became tired of being accomplices in this
contraband trade, and they put a stop to it by a very inge-
nious contrivance. Having duly ascertained that a case di-
rected to the Embassy contained nothing but ladies' gloves,
they affected to treat it as a letter which had been sent
through the Customs by mistake, and which they made over
to the Post-office. The authorities of the latter delivered
the same in due course ; the postage-fee of something like
250 was paid without a remark ; and the Ambassadress
stopped all further correspondence of that sort by declining
to deal any longer in gloves.
But even the Customs get defeated occasionally, in spite
of their cleverness. Some years ago a celebrated exporter
of contraband goods, residing at Calais, sent on the same
192 ' HA.BITS ATfD MEX.'
day, to two different parts of England, two cases of gloves,
one containing gloves only for the right, the other case,
gloves only for the left hand. The "left hands" got safely
to their destination, but the "rights" were seized. The
Customs however could find no purchaser at the usual
sales for single gloves, but they were at last bought by an
individual at the rate of a penny a dozen ; this individual
happened to be the possessor of the other single gloves, and
he reaped a rich profit by the trick over the fair and honest
dealer.
This was a more successful trick with the gloves than
that practised by the lady who, flinging her pretty gauntlet
on to the arena where some wild beasts were struggling,
bade her knight descend and bring it back to her. The
cavalier accomplished the task, but he smote the cruel
damsel in the face with the glove ere he threw it at her
feet ; and, turning on his heel, he left her for ever. She
of course lived on in single sullenness ; and I warrant that
she never saw white gloves and a wedding without a twinge
at her heart.
The late Duke of Orleans was once almost as unlucky as
this lady, and all through a glove. He was visiting some
of the wounded of Antwerp in a hospital near the scene of
conflict. He spoke kindly to all, and he shook hands with
several ; but one of those he so honoured bluntly remarked,
that when the Emperor shook hands with the wounded he
first drew off his gloves.
The Duke as much offended contra bonos mores by keep-
ing his gloves on, as an old-fashioned naval captain once did
by keeping them off. The marine hero in question had
stood up to go through a country-dance with a very fine
lady, who was shocked to observe that his huge and warm
hands were not covered according to etiquette. " Captain,"
said his fair partner, " you are perhaps not aware that you
have not got your gloves on." " Oh, never mind, Ma'am !'
GLOVES, B S, AND BUTTONS. 198
answered the commander, " never mind ; I can wash my
hands when we've done!" The gallant sailor was not as
wide-awake to the advantages of opportunity for gallantry
on the question of gloves as Yorick was when the grave
gentleman flirted with the Calais grisette. He was no de-
scendant albeit his name was Harley of that Earl of
Oxford I have just named, who once presented Elizabeth
with a pair of gloves, ornamented with four tufts of rose-
coloured silk, so deliciously scented, that she called the scent
" Lord Oxford's perfume."
London, Ludlow, and Leominster, "Worcester, Woodstock,
and Teovil, are the great seats of the leather-glove manu-
facture in England. The Worcester district alone supplies
six million pairs annually, and all, or nearly all, made by
hand. Derby contributes silk gloves ; the worsted come
from Leicester ; and Nottingham furnishes us with cotton
gloves. In addition to these, we yearly import between
three and four million pairs of leather gloves from France.
The export of home-made gloves is very small, not large
enough to keep warm the fingers of the little republic of
San Marino.
But a man, to be well dressed, must don something be-
sides hat and gloves. I will not put one part of the ne-
cessary addition under a separate head ; nor indeed will I
mention its name, save in an anecdote. I will simply, by
way of introduction, quote two salient sayings uttered by
French moralists on the article in question.
The first is to the admonitory effect that " a la femme
altiere, mechante, imperieuse, on est tente d'offrir une cu-
lotte." The second is still more salubrious of character,
and observance of it will prove highly efficacious. " Une
femme qui porte les culottes," says a melancholy and mar-
ried philosopher, "ne peut marcher longtemps sans tom-
ber." And now to my promised anecdotes.
A gentleman once said, in defence of Shakspeare, that
194 HABITS AND MEN.
his vulgar characters, though low, were natural. Voltaire,
to whom this was said, observed the advantage to be derived
from such an assertion by one who, like himself, hated
Shakspeare : " Avec permission, mon derriere est bien dans
la nature, et cependant je porte culotte." This illustration
reminds me of a stage pair of breeches, which, some eighty
years ago, had wellnigh killed that fair and fairly-reput-
able actress, Miss Maria Macklin. She was famous for her
male characters, and for her taste in dressing them ; De-
jazet has not a better taste in this respect. But Miss
Macklin unfortunately had not only worn the male gar-
ment repeatedly, but she was in the habit of buckling the
garter portion of it so tightly, that the result was a large
and dangerous swelling in the knee, which, we are told by
Kirkman and Cooke, " from motives of delicacy, she would
not suffer to be examined till it had increased to an alarming
size !" An operation however was successfully performed,
and she bore it courageously ; but she never regained her
strength, and she died the victim of false delicacy and a
little vanity.
But, false or not, her delicacy was very like that of Mary
of Burgundy, who died in consequence of over-modesty, in
concealing an injury in the thigh, caused by a fall from a
horse. Mary's husband, Maximilian, had his delicate scru-
ples too, lhat is, on one point the point of putting on a
shirt, which he would never do in the presence of a valet.
The idea of doing what Louis XIV. so regularly did,
namely, put on a shirt, and that sometimes a rather dirty
one, in presence of a roomful of people, would have made
the modest and moneyless Maximilian turn pale with dis-
gust. Perhaps however Maximilian hated shirts, because
they were not of German invention. Like the old gentle-
man in the 'Wasps' of Aristophanes, who, being desired
to put on a pair of Lacedaemonian boots, excuses himself on
the plea that one of his toes is irdw /wo-oXa/cwv altogether
GLOYES, B S, AND BUTTONS. 195
hostile to the Lacedaemonians ; a bit of wit, by the way,
which honest Sheridan has fitted on to the character of
Acres, who hates French dancing terms for the reason that
his feet don't understand pas this and. pas that; and that
he decidedly has most " Anti-Gallican toes." This expres-
sion is decidedly a plagiarism from the admirable low-
comedy scene in the ' Wasps,' where good Master Bdely-
cleon so daintily dresses his father Philocleon, the Athenian
Dicast, and gallantly compliments him at last, by comparing
him to " a boil covered with garlic."
The Aristophanic incident recalls to my memory one of a
somewhat similar quality, which really occurred some years
ago at Gosport. Mr. Joseph Gilbert, who had been at-
.tached to the astronomical service in Captain Cook's expe-
dition to observe the transit of Venus, and whose name was
conferred by the great navigator on " Gilbert's Island," re-
sided at Gosport ; where, according to the fashion of the day,
he, like the Count d'Artois, wore very tight leather breeches.
He had ordered his tailor to attend on him one morning,
when his granddaughter, who resided with him, had also or-
dered her shoemaker to wait upon her. The young lady
was seated in the breakfast-room, when the maker of leather
breeches was shown in ; and, as she did not happen to know
one handicraftsman more than the other, she at once inti-
mated that she wished him to measure her for a pair of
"leathers," for, as she remarked, the wet weather was com-
ing, and she felt cold in "cloth." The modest tailor could
hardly believe his ears. "Measure you, Miss?" said he
with hesitation. " If you please," said the young lady, who
was remarkable for much gravity of deportment; "and I
have only to beg that you will give me plenty of room, for
I am a great walker, and I do not like to wear anything
that constrains me." "But, Miss," exclaimed the poor
fellow in great perplexity, " 1 never in my life measured a
lady ; I " and there he paused. " Are you not a lady's
K 2
196 HABITS AND MEtf.
shoemaker ?" was the query calmly put to him. " By no
means, Miss," said he ; " I am a leather-breeches maker,
and I have come to take measure not of you, but Mr. Gil-
bert." The young lady became perplexed too, but she re-
covered her self-possession after a good common-sense laugh,
and sent the maker of breeches to her grandpapa.
Rosemary-lane was not only of old, and under its name
of Rag Fair, a great mart for cast-off garments, but espe-
cially, by some freak of ochlocratic fashion, for breeches. It
has had the honour of being noticed by Pope as " a place
near the Tower of London, where old clothes and frippery
are sold;" and, says Pennant, " the articles of commerce by
no means belie the name. There is no expressing the po-
verty of the goods, nor yet their cheapness. A distin-
guished merchant, engaged with a purchaser, observing me
to look on him with great attention, called out to me, as his
customer was going off with his bargain, to observe that
man, ' for,' says he, ' I have actually clothed him for fourteen
pence.' " And in the ' Public Advertiser' for February 14,
1756, we read, as an incident of the locality " where wave
the tattered ensigns of Rag Fair," that " Thursday last one
Mary Jenkins, who deals in old clothes in Rag Fair, sold a
pair of breeches to an old woman for sevenpence and a pint
of beer. Whilst they were drinking it in a public-house, the
purchaser, in unripping the breeches, found quilted in the
waistband eleven guineas in gold, Queen Anne's coin, and a
thirty-pound banknote, dated in 1729, which last she did
not know the value of till after she sold it for a gallon of
twopenny purl."
To go a little further back, I may say that the Refor-
mation had other results besides those usually recorded ;
thus that great event was no sooner accomplished than
the brokers and sellers of old apparel took up their resi-
dence in Hounsditch, where their great enemy, the Spanish
.Ambassador, had previously had a residence. Their locality
GLOVES, B S, AND BUTTONS. 197
was then " a fair field, sometime belonging to the Priory of
the Holy Trinity, at Aldgate." " Where gott'st thou this
coat, I mar'le," says Wellbred to Brainworm, in Jonson's
' Every Man in his Humour.' " Of a Houndsditch man,
Sir," answers Brainworm ; " one of the devil's near kins-
men, a broker."
We have another portion of dress whose origin dates from
a serious personage and from eventful times. I allude to
that terror of gentlemen who do not possess that which
frogs and properly-built men alone possess in common,
namely, calves ; I allude, I say, to " pantaloons." This
tight-fitting garment was once part of the official costume
of the great standard-bearer of the Venetian Republic. He
carried on his banner the Lion of St. Mark, and he was
the Piantaleone, or Planter of the Lion, around whose glo-
rious flag and tightly-encased legs the battle ever raged
with greatest fury, and where victory was most hotly con-
tended for. The tight parti-coloured legs of the tall Pian-
taleone were the rallying points of the Venetians. Where
his thighs were upright, the banner was sure to be floating
in defiance or triumph over them ; and Venice may be said
to have stood upon the legs of her Pantaloons. He who
once saved states was subsequently represented as the
most thoroughly battered imbecile of a pantomime. But
therein was a political revenge. Harlequin, Clown, and
Columbine represented different states of Italy, whose de-
light it was to pillory Venice by beating her nightly under
the guise of the old buffoon " Signor Pantaloon." The
dress has survived the memory of this fact, though the
dress too is almost obsolete.
In the last paragraph there is the phrase "I say" in-
terpolated, the use of which reminds me of a tailor-like
comment made upon it. Erskine writing to Boswell, or
Boswell to Erskine, I forget now which, remarks that " a
sentence so clumsily worded as to require an ' I say ' to
198 HABITS A1TD MEff.
keep it together, very much resembles, in my candid opinion,
a pair of ill-mended breeches."
The article of braccce is suggestive of buttons ; and touch-
ing these, I may observe that there is a curious law extant
with regard to them. It is, by Acts of Parliament passed
in three reigns, William III., Anne, and George I., per-
fectly illegal for tailor to make, or mortal man to wear,
clothes with any other buttons appended thereto but buttons
of brass. This law is in force for the benefit of the Bir-
mingham makers ; and it further enacts, not only that he
who makes or sells garments with any but brass buttons
thereto affixed, shall pay a penalty of forty shillings for every
dozen, but that he shall not be able to recover the price
he claims, if the wearer thinks proper to resist payment.
Nor is the Act a dead letter. It is not many weeks since,
that honest Mr. Shirley sued plain Mr. King for nine pounds
sterling, due for a suit of clothes. King pleaded non-
liability on the ground of an illegal transaction, the but-
tons on the garment supplied having been made of cloth,
or bone covered with cloth, instead of gay and glitter-
ing brass, as the law directs. The judge allowed the plea ;
and the defendant having thus gained a double suit with-
out cost, immediately proceeded against the defendant to
recover his share of the forty shillings for every dozen
buttons which the poor tailor had unwittingly supplied.
A remarkable feature in the case was, that the judge who ad-
mitted the plea, the barrister who set it up, and the client
who profited by it, were themselves all buttoned contrary
to law !
If I were writing an Encyclopedia of Trades, I would
be as elaborate as Dryasdust on the manufacture of buttons
of all sorts of metal, more or less costly ; of wood, bone,
ivory, horn, leather, paper, glass, silk, wool, cotton, linen,
thread, flock, compressed clay, etc. etc. so that both my
readers and myself have a lucky escape. As the age how-
GLOVES, B : S, AND BUTTONS. 199
ever is statistical in its inclinations, I will save my credit
by remarking that at Birmingham, the chief seat of button-
manufacture, there are not less than five thousand persons
engaged in the manufacture of buttons, and that half this
number consists of women, and children.
Having said this, I turn to a new chapter, wherein there
will be something more of statistics, and something new
about stockings.
STOCKINGS.
" Troth, Master Inkpen, thou hast put thy foot
Into a pretty subject." OLD PLAT.
WHEN the old trunkhose was found to fray the sacred
epidermis of Christian kings and queens, the first fruits
of a remedial discovery were presented for the benefit of
the illustrious sufferers. Thus we hear that when stock-
ings were first known in Europe, a Spanish grandee mani-
fested his loyalty and love for his Queen, by presenting
a pair to the Prime Minister, with a request that that
official would place them at, if not on, the feet of his sove-
reign lady. The Minister was shocked at the grandee's as-
surance and lack of modesty. "Take back thy stockings,"
said he, " and name the thing not again ; for know, O
foolish Sir Duke, that the Queen of Spain has no legs ! "
Our Henry III., less nice with regard to his own sister
the Princess Isabella, did not scruple to present her with
a pair of stockings of cloth, embroidered with gold.
These cloth hose went out of fashion in the reign of
Elizabeth. Her silk-woman, Montague, had presented her
Majesty with a pair of black knit silk stockings ; and these
were so pleasant to the legs of " England," that her Ma-
jesty discarded hot cloth for ever. She found double com-
fort in the first; namely, to herself, and further comfort
that by adopting them she was encouraging a home-made
article. The first pair of English-knit worsted stockings were
worn by Elizabeth's Peer, "proud Pembroke." They had
been imitated from an Italian knit pair by William Eider,
apprentice to Thomas Burdett, at the Bridge foot, opposite
STOCKINGS. 201
St. Magnus' Church ; and their presentation to Pembroke
was, doubtless, profitable to the apprentice.
Disappointed love has been the cause of various dire
effects, but I do not know that it ever caused effect so
singular as when it invented a stocking-frame. This too
was in Elizabeth's time. In those golden days, Will Lee,
of Woodborough, in Norfolk, was a student at Cambridge;
somewhat given to maidens as well as to mathematics, but
not so utterly wasting his time with the former pleasant
trifles but that he found both learning and leisure to achieve
an M.A. degree, and obtain a Fellowship.
Master Lee was especially addicted to talk agreeable non-
sense to an honest lass in the town, who gained her living,
and increased the smiles on her pretty face, by knitting
stockings, to her very great profit. Now this Cambridge
damsel did not care the value of a dropped stitch for such
love as rich Will Lee brought her at sundown every coming
eve; and she told him as much. "Ay, marry!" said the
vindictive lover, "then thou shalt rue thy words and thy
contempt." " Marry scenteth of Rome," said the orthodox
knitter ; " and thou art as false in love as in faith."
Master Lee however was a "fellow" who was true to his
word. He was piqued at being rejected, he, a gentleman, by
a pert knitter of stockings ; and he took but a base way of
revenging his pique. He had sat knitting his brow in vain,
when all at once the thought struck him that he would knit
stockings too, and that by a process which should ruin the
poor damsel, who, poor as she was, despised an unworthy
gentleman and scholar. Thereupon he actually invented
and set up the stocking-frame. He first worked at it him-
self, and then taught his squire-brothers, and his gentle re-
lations ; and finally he opened a manufactory at Calverton in
Nottinghamshire, and made stockings for the Maiden Queen.
All the hand-knitters were in despair, and they left no
means untried to bring the new invention into disrepute.
202 HABITS AND MEN.
Nor did they try in vain, for "Will Lee was driven out of
England by the force of the coalition against him. He set
up his frames at Rouen, and drove a " roaring trade" there,
which was however interrupted by the confusion which fol-
lowed upon the assassination of Henri IV. ; and the inven-
tor of the stocking-frame ultimately died at Paris, poorer
than the humble knitting-maiden whom he tried to ruin in
two ways, and failed in both.
And a double moral may be drawn upon this story as
neatly as two stockings upon a pair of becoming legs.
Swains too lightly given of phrase in honest maidens'
ears may reflect, as they pull on their hose, that treachery,
as in the case of Will Lee, brought that gentlemanly knave
to want even a foot to the stockings he had made at his
own frame. Maidens, on the other hand, may as profitably
reflect, when similarly engaged, that they had better knit
stockings than lend ear to the wicked words of a fool ; and
that if once a hole be made in the stocking of their reputa-
tion, the most skilful darning will hardly repair, and can
never conceal, the permanent injury.
And a propos of darning, though it be not at all so to the
above story, Shuter was one day reproached by a brother
actor that he had a hole in his stocking, and the friend ad-
vised inimitable Ned to have it darned. "I will not be such
an ass," exclaimed the original Sir Anthony Absolute; "a
hole in the stocking is an accident that may happen to any
gentleman, but a darn is premeditated poverty."
King James I. was willing to do what would have shocked
even Shuter, namely, wear borrowed stockings. There is
a letter extant in which that monarch asks a noble to lend
him the " scarlet hose with the gold clocks," on a particular
day on which he was desirous of giving the French Ambas-
sador " an extraordinary idea of his magnificence !"
This idea would never have entered the head of his great
predecessor Henry YIII., of whom Stowe, the tailor, says :
STOCKINGS. 203
" You shall understand that Henry VIII. did only wear
cloth hose, or hose cut out of ell-broad taffeta, unless by
great chance there came a pair of silk stockings from Spain.
King Edward VI.," he adds, "had a pair of Spanish silk
stockings sent him as a great present."
While upon these times I may add, that when Elizabeth
made Knights of the Garter those great noblemen, the
Due de Montmorenci, and the Lords Burleigh, Chandos,
Essex, and Grey of Wilton, the Queen distinguished her
favourite Burleigh from the rest, by buckling the garter
about his knee herself; and this is said to have been the
first occasion on which this personal favour was conferred
by the hands of a female sovereign, and to have given rise
to the exclamation, first uttered by the offended prudes, of
" 'Ods Stars and Garters !"
I have read somewhere of stockings made out of the hu-
man hair, and how the pretty conceit was adopted by lovers
who were willing to entangle their legs, as well as heart, in
their mistresses' tresses. To be once more statistical and
useful, I have to add for your information, that although we
no longer export anything but cotton yarns, instead of the
manufactured article, to Saxony, our general export is still
large ; saving of silk stockings, of which we send abroad
annually only some 60,000 pairs. Two hundred and fifty
thousand dozen pairs of cotton stockings go abroad annu-
ally to deck foreign legs, and about half that amount of
worsted, the latter being generally sold by weight. Fi-
nally, I conclude with the remarkably interesting statistical
fact, that a lady always takes off her left stocking last !
The possibility that this bit of statistical darning may ex-
cite a blush on susceptible cheeks, reminds me of another
fashion to which I will now advert, under the title at the
head of the following chapter. Having got down to the
feet, and shoes having been already incidentally noticed, we
will again mount upward.
"MASKS AND FACES."
" II faut 6ter les masques des choses aussi bien que des personnes."
MONTAIGNE.
FBANCIS BACON somewhere remarks that politeness veils
vice just as dress masks wrinkles. Perhaps this saying of
his was founded on the circumstance, that Queen Eliza-
beth not only wore dresses of increasing splendour with in-
creasing age, but that she also used occasionally to appear
masked on great gala occasions. The mode thus royally
given, was not however very speedily or generally followed.
The introduction of masks as a fashion appears to have
" obtained," as old authors call it, only about the year 1660.
Pepys, in 1663, says that he went to the Royal Theatre, and
there saw Howard's comedy of 'The Committee' (known
to us in its new form and changed name of ' The Honest
Thieves'). He designates it as "a merry but indifferent
play, only Lacy's part, an Irish footman, is beyond imagi-
nation." Among the company were Viscount Falkenberg,
or Palconbridge, with his wife, the third daughter of Crom-
well. "My Lady Mary Cromwell," he goes on to say,
" looks as well as I have known her, and well clad ; but
when the house began to fill, she put on her vizard, and so
kept it on all the play ; which of late is become a great
fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face.
So," he adds, and it shows, does that sighed-forth "So!"
the melancholy consequence of leading wives into tempta-
tion, " So to the Exchange, to buy things, with my wife ;
among others a vizard for herself."
Certainly that pretty precisian, Mary Cromwell, in a
'MASKS AND FACES.' 205
vizard at the play, sounds oddly ; one would as soon expect
to hear of Mrs. Chisholm at a Casino ! No wonder Mrs.
Pepys admired her !
But Mrs. Pepys was not very long content with her Eng-
lish vizard ; for six months after we find the little man, her
husband, recording " To Covent Garden, to buy a maske at
the French house, Madame Charett's, for my wife." The
taste of Mrs. Pepys was doubtless influenced by the example
of the court, " where six women, my Lady Castlemaine and
Duchess of Monmouth being two of them, and six men, the
Duke of Monmouth, and Lord Arran, and Monsieur Blan-
fort (Lord Feversham) being three of them, in vizards, but
most rich and antique dresses, did dance admirably and most
gloriously." What Pepys thought of the fashion and the
time is seen again by a sighing comment " God give us
cause to continue the mirth !"
The fashion was still in full force in 1667 ; and to what
purpose it was used, and to what purpose it might be abused,
may be seen in the following extract.
" To the King's House to ' The Maid's Tragedy,' but vexed
all the while with two talking ladies and Sir Charles Sedley ;
yet pleased to have their discourse, he being a stranger.
And one of the ladies would and did sit with her mask on
through all the play ; and, being as exceeding witty as ever
I heard woman, did talk most pleasantly with him ; but was,
I believe, a virtuous woman, and of quality. He would fain
know who she was, but she would not tell ; yet did give him
many pleasant hints of her knowledge of him, by that means
setting his brains at work to find out who she was, and
did give him leave to use all means to find out who she
was but pulling off her mask. He was mighty witty, and
she also making sport with him very inoffensively, that a
more pleasant rencontre I never heard ;" and then once
more a groaning commentary, " but by that means lost the
pleasure of the play wholly."
206 HABITS A1TD MEN.
In the following year Pepys makes record of his having
been at Bartholomew Fair with his wife and a party. We
"took a link," he says, "the women resolving to be dirty,
and walked up and down to get a coach ; and my wife being
a little before me, had like to have been taken up by one
whom we saw to be Sam Hartlib. My wife had her vizard
on ; yet we cannot say that he meant any hurt ; for it was
just as she was by a coach-side, which he had, or had a mind
to take up : and he asked her, ' Madam, do you go in this
coach ? ' but as soon as he saw a man come to her (I know
not whether he knows me) he departed away apace." By all
which we may see that a vizard at a fair was evidently " an
outward and visible sign," recognized by the rakes and gal-
lants of the locality.
A vizard in the Park, at dusk, was equally intelligible ;
and though the men were not masked at that or any other
hour, they were at that time and place more than sufficiently
disguised. " And now" says Vincent, in Sir George Ethe-
rege's comedy of ' Love in a Wood, or St. James's Park,'
" now a man may carry a bottle under his arm, instead of his
hat, and no observing, spruce fop will miss the cravat that
lies on one's shoulder, or count the pimples on one's face."
As at park and fair, so fell the convenient covering into
evil application at the play itself. The matter is alluded
to by the Widow Blackacre in the epilogue to the ' Plain
Dealer :'
" For as in Hall of Westminster
Sleek sempstress vends amid the Courts her ware ;
So while we bawl, and you in judgement sit,
The visor-mask sells linen too i' the pit."
By the end of the seventeenth century the fashion of
masks was being tarnished by vulgarity ; and the practice of
concluding comedies with a ' Marriage in a Mask,' a cere-
mony which may not have been unusual, was already consi-
' MASKS A.TSD PACES.'
dered as a stale device. Congreve winds up two of his co-
medies, ' The Old Bachelor ' and ' Love for Love,' with this
jovial sort of bouquet.
The mode however still held on at the theatre. The
latter was never more licentious than now, and the ladies
never so much loved to resort thither. Our great grand-
mothers however, when young, were extremely modest :
many of them were afraid of venturing to a new play till
their lovers assured them they might do so without offence
to their exquisite delicacy. The bolder spirits, still modest
but impatient, went in masks, not unwilling to listen to sa-
voury uncleanness, but so modest that they could not bear
any one to see that they did not blush at it. " Such inci-
dents as these," says the 'Spectator,' "make some ladies
wholly absent themselves from the playhouse ; and others
never miss the first night of a new play, lest it should prove
too luscious to admit of their going with any countenance to
the second ;" a most exquisite reason. It was good enough
however to authorize vizards ; and the theatre became some-
thing like what Nat Lee in his ' Nero ' describes Mount
Ida to have been,
" Where the gods meet and dance in masquerade ! "
But Mount Ida had something divine about it, which our
stage in the days of vizards certainly had not. As Joe
Jtaines said to his masked audience, in the concluding lines
of the prologue to the very play just named
" AH tragedies, egad ! to me sound oddly ;
I can no more be serious than you godly."
The fashion, after it had been indifferently well worn by
the ladies, of course fell to their maids, and Abigail wore
the vizard which Lady Betty dropped. In Malcolm's
' London ' (eighteenth century) a writer is quoted, whose
communication shows whither the masks had fallen in 1731.
208
HABITS AND HEN.
It is in a letter on " Boxing Day," and in it occurs the fol-
lowing passage : " My friend next carried me to the upper
end of Piccadilly, where, one pair of stairs over a stable, we
found near a hundred people of both sexes (some masked,
others not), a great part of which were dancing to the music
of two sorry fiddles. It is impossible to describe this med-
ley of mortals fully ; however, I will do it as well as I can.
There were footmen, servant-maids, butchers, apprentices,
oyster and orange women, and sharpers, which appeared to
be the best of the company. This horrid place seemed to
be a complete nursery for the gallows. My friend informed
me it was called 'a threepenny hop;' and while we were
talking, to my great satisfaction, by order of the "Westmin-
ster justices, to their immortal honour, entered the consta-
bles and their assistants, who carried off all the company
that was left ; and had not our friend been known to them,
we might have paid dear for our curiosity."
After all, Justice was here, as usual, uncommonly blind ;
for the boxing party, masked or not, was not more offensive
against bonos mores than the Eanelagh parties, where pow-
dered "bloods" percolated their dreadfully luscious non-
sense through the filter on the faces of the masked " belles."
And besides, masking at holiday-time had long been a pri-
vilege of the people. In ' Vox Graculi ' (1623), above a cen-
tury prior to the last date, I find it stated of Twelfth Night
" On this night, much masking in the Strand, Cheapside,
Holborn, and Fleet-street."
I have already noticed how our exceedingly precious grand-
mothers used to resort to the theatres with covered faces
instead of stopped-up ears. The ears of the public did how-
ever rise angrily at last; the palled appetite loathed the
long-served food. A society was formed " for the reforma-
tion of manners, for immoral words and expressions contra
bonos mores, uttered on the stage." The society retained
hired informers, who sat in the pit, took down the naughty
'MASKS AND FACES.' 209
words and the names of the speakers, and then entered a
prosecution against the utterers. They were driving a pretty
trade, for the benefit of modesty and the suppression of
masks, when all at once Queen Anne, sipping her hollands,
gently bethought herself that these spies were flourishing
by the abundance of that which they feigned desire to put
down ; and indeed the fellows were like some of our pro-
fessional missionaries of the pave, who steal spoons from
chop-houses, and have as many wives as Eugantino. The
Queen accordingly crushed the trading prosecutions by a
" Nolle prosequi," and took the matter into her own hands.
She issued a " royal command " for the better regulation of
the theatres, whereby she left to her Master of the Eevels
" the special care that nothing be acted in either of the the-
atres contrary to religion or good manners, upon pain of
our high displeasure, and of being silenced from further
acting."
Now, leaving to a Master of the Eevels the care of sup-
pressing revelry on the stage, was very much like entrust-
ing to Satan the suppression of sin. However, so it was ;
but her Majesty tore the masks off herself, or rather threat-
ened to do so, as thus :
" "We do hereby strictly command that no person, of what
quality soever, presume to go behind the scenes, or come
upon the stage, either before or during the acting of any
piece ; that no woman be allowed or presume to wear a
vizard mask in either of the theatres ; and that no persons
come into either house without paying the price established
for their respective places."
Good Queen Anne issued this decree in the second year
of her reign, and it had just the effect that might have been
expected. The houses played ' London Cuckolds ' to vizards
of masked ladies, as usual, on the 9th of November ; and
Pinkethman roared his buffoonery in his booth near Hyde
Park during May Fair. "What then did her Majesty deem
210 HABITS AND MEN.
contrary to religion and good manners ? Well, I really do
not know ; but I do know that, in the very year of the de-
cree, she herself had the comedy of ' Sir Solomon ' acted
before her and her ladies at court ; and if she could listen
to that without a blush, or a mask to conceal the want of it,
why she must have construed immorality, and her royal
command against it, in a very mild sense indeed.
The ladies were uncommonly angry with their liege mis-
tress Anne for this decree, and the sentiment is exemplified
by the song so popular at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre in
1704, ' The Misses' Lamentation, for want of their Vizard
Masques at the Theatre.' The " misses " however, and the
matrons too, had long before this indulged in a fashion
which was not dropped until long subsequent to the fall of
the mask.
About five years after Mrs. Pepys had taken Samuel for
her liege lord, that is to say in 1660, she first essayed to
add new lustre to her charms by affixing a few " beauty
spots" to her face. "This is the first day," says he, on
the 30th of August of the year above named, " that ever I
saw my wife wear black patches since we were married."
It was some time before the gentleman could make up his
mind to the propriety of wearing these adjuncts to beauty.
In October, he expresses his astonishment that even Lord
Sandwich should "talk very high how he would have a
French cook, and a master of his horse, and his lady and
child to wear black patches ; which methought was strange,
but he has become a perfect courtier." It was perhaps
because the court patronized patches, that Pepys permitted
them on his wife. Hitherto the lady had worn them with-
out the marital sanction, but in November we find him say-
ing, " My wife seemed very pretty today, it being the first
time I had given her leave to weare a black patch." And
therewith his admiration increased; and some days later,
on seeing his wife close to the Princess Henrietta (daughter
'MASKS AND FACES.' 211
of Charles I.) at court, on the occasion of a visit she paid
to her brother Charles II., as Duchess of Orleans, he re-
marks : " The Princess Henrietta is very pretty ; . . . but
my wife standing near her, with two or three black patches
on, and well-dressed, did seem to me much handsomer than
she."
A century subsequent to this, patches still kissed the
cheek of beauty ; and as professors taught how to wield
the fan, so French essays were " done into English," and
instruction therein given as to the secret of applying them
in an artful manner, how to arrange them with the most
killing effect, and how to so plant them about the eye that
the expression desired should be at once achieved, whether
of proud disdain, amorous languor, or significant boldness.
They were the hieroglyphics of vanity and of party spirit ;
and beaux and politicians read in the arrangement of
patches not only the tender but the political principles of
the wearer.
Despotism too had something to do with patches. Thus
Lady Castlemaine fixed the fashion of mourning, by " for-
cing all the ladies to go in black, with their hair plain, and
without spots." It is a curious trait of the manners of other
times that a royal concubine should order the tiring of ho-
nest women. She could hardly have influenced that "comely
woman," the Duchess of Newcastle, who went about, in the
second Charles's time, with a velvet cap, her hair about her
ears, " many black patches, because of pimples about her
mouth," naked-necked, and in a black justaucorps.
The ladies marked or patched, the gentlemen red-heeled
and similarly " nosed," had no greater delight than in kill-
ing time by looking at the "puppets ;" and the fashion of
these same puppets is a thing of such antiquity and such
duration, that I may fairly add a chapter thereon to those
through which I have already been accompanied by the
courteous and indulgent reader.
PUPPETS FOR GROWN GENTLEMEN.
" They do lie in a basket, Sir ; they are o' the small players, and as
good as any, none dispraised, for dumb shows." BEN JONSON : Bar-
tholomew Fair.
MADAME DE PUTSIETJX was a witty and vivacious lady.
Among her recorded sayings is one that exceedingly well
suits me for the nonce. " I would rather," she said, " be
occasionally found looking at puppets than listening to
philosophers."
There was doubtless some reason in this ; but the fact is
also indubitable, that puppets and philosophy are not so far
apart. The latter has often condescended to illustrate the
former. The learned and serious Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi,
devoted his brief leisure to writing upon them. The great
mathematicians, Commendino d' Urbino and Torniano di
Cremona, stooped to play with and perfect them. Le Sage
and Piron wrote plays for them. Ben Jonson brought
them on the stage. Addison has immortalized them in
stately verse ; and Haydn seriously addressed himself to
composing exquisite music, wherewith to grace their mo-
tion. These are but modern illustrations. We shall how-
ever presently discover, that the great and gifted men of a
very remote antiquity were wont also to turn from the
consideration of mighty problems, and carve puppets that
should excite ecstasy in the wide world of " the little peo-
ple."
Surely there is dignity in a subject treating even of toys
that have been in fashion for three thousand years, and
PUPPETS FOB GROWN GENTLEMEN. 21 3
have afforded amusement to two-thirds of the human race.
The subject was largely discussed in France not many years
since, by M. Charles Magnin, a gentleman who, in love with
his plaything, had recourse to every source of information,
and who brought away from all something worth knowing.
M. Magnin shows that the gravest of authors are at issue as
to the origin of the puppet race. Charles Nodier, however,
traces it to the doll that lies in unconscious felicity in the
arms of youthful and precocious maturity. M. Magnin
maintains, on the other hand, that the puppet does not
spring from the hearth, but from the altar. The rude god
whittled out of a gnarled bough is, with him, the un-
doubted sire of the universe of dolls. The puppet served
for pious, before it was suited to domestic, purposes ; and it
excited awe long before it won laughter or excited admira-
tion. It lived in a wood, and ruled savages. As civiliza-
tion advanced, it changed its habits, form, and features ;
and, ceasing to affright man, undertook the happier task of
amusing him.
Such is the legendary record of puppets. "We must turn
over the graphic pages of the ' Father of History,' to find
the first authentic mention of their employment. The
guests at an Egyptian feast, when they grew hilarious, were
called back to sober propriety by the exhibition of a little
skeleton, and the admonition to reflect upon the lesson it
conveyed. The British Museum possesses many of these
figures, as well as others which appear to be toys that have
been buried with their loved little owners. There is some
uncertainty on this point, however ; for it is known that on
diseased persons it was the custom to place little figures,
supposed to represent the deity which had particular in-
fluence over the part whereon the image was laid. I be-
lieve that the liver was the only portion of the body that
had not its peculiar divinity. That obstinate organ has
always defied gods and men. " In jecore nigro nascuntur
214 HABITS AND MEN.
domini ;" and over these even the Egyptian Pantheon availed
nothing.
Whether the figures in our Museum be actual toys, or
counterfeit presentments of very swarthy gods, it is not in
every instance easy to determine. From conjecture how-
ever we can turn to Herodotus ; and certainly that worthy
Halicarnassian tells us, in his second book, that in Egypt, on
the festival of Osiris, or Bacchus, a puppet figure of the joy-
ous god, a cubit in height, with some indecent mechanism
moved by the pulling of a string, was carried in procession
by the women. "When previously speaking of the figure
of Pan, he says, that the deity in question is worshiped
under a form known not to be his real one, for a reason, he
adds, which he " had rather not mention." So, in the case
of Bacchus, he confines himself to stating that there were
"sacred and mysterious reasons" for the same. We are
now aware that the unseemly practice was really a species
of invocation that the earth might be impregnated with
prolific virtue.
We next arrive at articulated figures. The statue of
Jupiter Ammon nodded to the attendant priests when he
was about to prophesy. So Apollo, at Heliopolis, would not
open his lips till his ministers had carried him whither he
would go. Aloft on the shoulders of his bearers, he guided
them as with reins. On being questioned, he graciously
bowed his head, if he approved ; or fell back, if he dis-
sented. When placed on the ground of his temple, he was
seen to ascend, without aid, till his head touched the roof ;
and there he remained fixed till prayers brought him down
again. It is suggested that the magnet may have been em-
ployed to accomplish the feat. How this may have been
defies aught but conjecture.
Voluntary motion of inanimate objects was always an
evidence of their divinity. When Juno paid her cele-
brated visit to Vulcan, she found him engaged in the ma-
PUPPETS FOE GBOWN GENTLEMEN. 215
nufacture of tripods, which moved about and performed
their office with a bustling air of the most zealous assi-
duity.
" Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed,
That, placed on living wheels of massy gold,
Wondrous to tell, instinct with spirit, roll'd
From place to place around the blest abodes,
Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods."
We have here in England, if not tripods, at least bipeds,
who can
" instinct with spirit roll
From place to place."
And this subject reminds me of Bacchus, generally. Now,
my readers know that there were of old not less than ten
cities known by the name of Nysa. At two of these, Nysa
in India and Nysa in Ethiopia, Bacchus (Dio Nysus) was
w held in extreme reverence. In the last-named city, Ptolemy
Philadelphus manifested his veneration for the god, by ho-
nouring the deity's great festival after a pleasing fashion.
The King had a figure of the joyous divinity made ex-
pressly for the occasion. It was eight cubits in length, and
was drawn through the city, attired in a tunic of yellow and
gold, with a Macedonian mantle hanging from the shoulders.
The god was seated in a car, and as he passed through the
gazing crowds, he ever and anon majestically arose, poured
out, not wine, but milk, from a bowl, and then solemnly re-
seated himself.
Among the Greeks, Daedalus is famous, in legend at least,
as the founder of the art of figure-making. He is said to
have flourished about a thousand years before Christ ; and
despite what is generally told of him, he was probably but
a rude craftsman. He was the first who introduced quick-
silver into figures, and by this process he lent a sort of
Chinese-tumbling motion to a wooden image of Venus.
216 HABITS AND MEN.
Some of his figures were so given to activity as to require
being made fast when not wanted to move, without which
precaution they would, like the leg in the legend, have con-
tinued running about without intermission.
All the Greek puppets belong to the Dzedalus school
they were generally of wood or baked clay, were set in mo-
tion by strings, and were invariably of the feminine gender.
It was customary to place them in the coffins of young girls.
M. Magnin quotes from Xenophon's graphic description of
the banquet in the house of Callias, to demonstrate that the
noblest Athenians condescended to be amused with repre-
sentations by puppets. There is however not a word touch-
ing puppets throughout the lively narrative of the learned
and gallant Greek. The Syracusan showman therein in-
troduced exhibits a living boy and girl, who go through
some rather dangerous gymnastic exercises, which excite
considerable disgust in the mind of Socrates. That sage is
much better pleased when the graceful pair represent in his
presence the ballet of ' Bacchus and Ariadne.' These chil-
dren not only danced but sang ; and if it be suggested that
the feat of singing might easily be contrived for a puppet
by a clever stage-manager, we may also suggest that the
Syracusan speaks, on one occasion, in answer to Socrates,
so plainly as to leave no doubt that " flesh, blood, and blue
veins" entered into the composition of his elegant little
slave.
Antiochus Cyzenicus, half-brother to .Antiochus Grypus
the huge-nosed Antiochus was celebrated as the in-
ventor of puppets as well as of larger machines ; and his
counterfeit animals, whose limbs simulated motion, were as
agreeable to his friends, as his engines, with unpronounce-
able names, were horridly distasteful to his enemies.
In Greece again, Archytas the mathematician constructed
for his young acquaintances a hollow pigeon that could fly,
the original Montgolfier. In like manner, Daedalus, who
PUPPETS FOE GEOWN GENTLEMEN. 217
made quicksilvered tumblers, also discovered the use of the
wedge and the science of sailing ; while Cnidus, the great
astronomer, not only regulated the year and brought the
celestial sphere from Egypt, but made all his little cousins
glad by the excellence of the puppets he invented, and the
fantasticness of their movements.
The public puppet-plays were fashionable in Greece after
the theatres had been suppressed by the Puritan Macedo-
nian faction. The method of representation was, in many
respects, like that still followed by the itinerant managers
of wooden companies in our own days. The like perma-
nence of fashion has clung to our childish games. The old
Muinda is the modern Blind- Man' s-Buff; Chytrinda is Hot
Cockles ; Trigodiphasis is Bob-Cherry ; and Scriblerus, we
remember, permitted his illustrious son to play at Puss-in-
the-Corner, for the sufficient reason that it was the Apodi-
dascinda of the ancients. There is one classical game that
has gone out of fashion, and I am not altogether surprised
at it, seeing that it consisted in one of the players standing
on a round ball, with his neck in a noose hung from above ;
in one hand he held a knife. It was the part of his oppo-
nents to kick the ball from under his feet. If, when this
was done, he succeeded in cutting the rope, he won the
game ; if not, he lost it, and got hanged.
To return to our figures, we may state that the Italian
temples were celebrated for their moving gods. In the
fane of the two Fortunes at Antium, the goddess moved
both arms and head when that solemnity was required.
So at Praeneste, the figures of the youthful Jupiter and
Juno, lying in the lap of Fortune, moved, and excited awe
thereby. The marble Servius Tullius is said to have shaded
his eyes with his cold hand whenever that remarkably
strong-minded woman, his daughter and murderess, passed
before him.
It was a common thing for the images of the gods to turn
I/
218 HABITS AND MEN.
away their heads when displeased with the meats placed
before them. This act filled a whole district with terror,
and excited a desire in the people to do whatever the
priests enjoined. When the Athenians were slow to de-
sert their capital and take to their ships, the sacred wooden
dragon of Minerva not only refused to eat his cakes, but
rolled himself out of the temple and down into the sea, as
though to indicate 1# the people the direction in which re-
sided safety. As for the huge puppets used in religious
processions, nothing now exists like them, save in some of
the festival processions in Flemish towns. Our venerable
city brethren, Gog and Magog, are the ancient freemen of
that guild. In some of the smaller images our worthy
friend Punch figures with his w r onted eclat. M. Magnin
holds that the French Polichinelle is not a descendant of
the puppet with the Phrygian bonnet, but an image carica-
turing some old boasting cuirassed captain of Gascony. The
breast protuberance he considers to be merely an exaggera-
tion of the bow r ed cuirass, an explanation which I am far
from feeling bound to honour with acceptance.
Puppets *found favour at the hands of the early Fathers
of the Church : perhaps for the reason that more decency
was observed in the speeches of the shows than in those of
the stage. The Fathers however were divided on the point.
Some advocated the use of every and any means whereby
religion could be furthered ; others declared that nothing
was lawful but what was in itself holy. The fashion never-
theless prevailed, and allegorical figures became common.
The Fish, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and similar repre-
sentations gladdened the hearts of simple people, till the
Church planted her canons against them exclusively, and
insisted upon the adoption of figures of the Saviour in his
human form.
The command was but slowly complied with. In the
fourth century artists had not got beyond the bust of Jesus.
PUPPETS FOB GROWN GENTLEMEN. 219
By the end of the seventh century, we meet with the sacred
figure in slight relief carved on the wooden cross. It re-
quired full another century before the reluctant or incapable
artists achieved the complete anatomical figure hanging from
the cross. But when this was once accomplished, progress
was soon made beyond it ; and images of the Saviour and
the Madonna, with movable limbs, set in motion by strings,
became common throughout Europe. "We hear of one
gravely moving through Lucca on foot, and gravely blessing
the people as he passed along : this was the counterpart of
the Bacchus at Nysa.
The Boxley Madonna was long the glory of Kent. It
not only moved the head, but opened and closed the eyes ;
and I would tell its story here, as apt to the subject, but
that I have already narrated it at some length in the ' Gren-
tleman's Magazine.'
The Rimini Madonna is but a poor plagiarism of Our
Lady of Boxley. Maundrill, at the end of the seventeenth
century, saw an image of Christ, so flexible, that it was dif-
ficult to distinguish, at a distance, between it and a dead
body. These figures were so often used to deceive the
people, that the employment of them was forbidden by se-
veral Councils ; but in vain. Some of them were of such
exquisite workmanship, that their makers were taxed with
having the devil for an ally ; and the figure-makers generally
were consigned to infamy.
One day, in the year 1086, the holy Abbot Thergius, at-
tending at Cluny to give investiture to some half hundred
novices, refused conferring the benediction upon one of
them, under the plea, " Mechanicum ilium esse et necro-
mantise deditum." And yet the abbot artists were among
the priests themselves; nay, were sometimes to be found
among the Popes. Sylvester II. is said to have constructed
a brazen head. Roger Bacon and Robert Greathead were
celebrated for the same achievement ; while Albertus Mag-
12
220 HABITS AKD MEN.
iius lias the reputation of having constructed an android
or semblance of a man, of such perfection, that it would
support an argument with satisfaction to itself .and discom-
fort to its opponents. Thomas Aquinas, when young, ven-
tured to enter upon a discussion with this figure ; when the
androide so perplexed the priest with his shower of syl-
logisms, that the latter broke his head for his pains, and
ruined his argumentative powers for ever.
The ecclesiastical puppets were probably productions
with more than mere pretensions to rank among objects of
art and science. The semi-religious and popular puppets
were too gross to deceive ; and yet the great dragon of
Paris, slain by St. Marcel, whose simulacrum dragged itself
through the city during the Rogation Days, was probably
contemplated with as much awe by the youthful beholders,
as the sacred dragon of Minerva was at Athens, by such of
the citizens as lived before the innovating period of the free-
thinking Anaxagoras.
Galen speaks of puppets so anatomically perfect, that
Heaven might have taken a hint therefrom. Synesius,
Bishop of Ptolemais, too, referring to effects following at
long intervals, the impelling cause divinely given, stumbles
upon an unprofitable simile, and compares such effects to
the motion in the limbs of the puppet long after the show-
man has ceased to pull the strings.
If our little actors fell into disuse from the thirteenth to
the fifteenth century, it was only to reappear in Italy with
an eclat which they never previously enjoyed. Of modern
puppets, Italy is the birthplace and permanent home. In
front of a puppet-show exists an equality of all classes, who
fraternize for the moment to enjoy the liberty which pup-
pets alone in the peninsula appear to possess. These
imitate nature with such perfection as to confer on their
constructors the name of artists. In the regular puppet-
theatre, where none but wooden actors appear on the stage,
PUPPETS FOB GROWN GENTLEMEN. 221
the scenery and accessories are in such due proportion with
the performers, that the eye yields ready consent to the
illusion. Burlettas, sparkling extravaganzas, melodramas,
and even grand operas are represented. In the latter case,
the mute prima donna on the stage invariably answers by
her expressive pantomime to the voice which is uttered for
her behind the scenes. And when a bouquet is flung to her,
her grateful emotion is, as Mr. Carlyle would say, " a notice-
able thing."
The puppet ballet-dancers are even more wonderful than
their vocal brethren. Rome extends to them the privilege
of playing in the capital, even in solemn seasons. Church-
censorship is however strict, as might be expected ; and
it evidences its care for the proprieties by requiring that no
female puppet shall appear on the stage without a pair of
light blue silk drawers ! This is something to smile at ; for
morality at Rome is not of a high character, and female im-
modesty there is almost as disgustingly offensive as it is on
our Ramsgate sands at the height of the bathing season.
Even Rome cannot beat that.
The private puppet-actors in Italy indulge in political al-
lusions, to the delight of an audience invited for the express
purpose of enjoying satirical allusions against the Govern-
ment. In Florence, the private companies are remarkable
for their coarseness, to which they who pay for the same do
not object. In Milan, the fool of the puppet-stage is in-
variably a native of Turin ; while among the Piedmontese
puppets, the fool of the farce and the villain of the melo-
drama are of course of Lombard origin.
The Spanish puppets are of Italian derivation. Torriani
invented many in order to amuse Charles V. in his retire-
ment among the monks of St. Just. These were so clever
that the brotherhood suspected the artist of being leagued
with evil powers ; but the uses to be drawn from these
figures were so apparent, that the Church of Spain employed
222 HABITS AND HEN.
them largely in the working of miracles. The modern
prince of puppets, our friend Punch, never got thoroughly
naturalized in Spain. The fact is, the unscrupulous fellow
is of Neapolitan descent ; and since Naples revolted against
the Spanish government, Pulcinello is looked upon as a very
dangerous person. Seneca, on the other hand, being a na-
tive of Cordova, is a great favourite. His history is faith-
fully represented, with an addition that reminds one of the
new act put by the modest M. Dumas to one William
Shakspeare*s tragedy of Hamlet. This addition consists in
the ascent of the heathen philosopher to heaven ; where, at
the feet of the figure of the Saviour, he recites the creed,
and professes himself a Christian.
After all, this is not more absurd than the act of that
Pope who converted Trajan to Christianity three hundred
years after that Emperor's death ; and who had nearly ca-
nonized him to boot, in spite of the remonstrance of the
astounded College of Cardinals.
Although Punch was not originally French, he has al-
ways been greatly esteemed in France. He was a highly
honoured puppet, as the registers of the royal treasury
certify ; ex. gr., " Paid to Brioche, the puppet-player, for
sojourning at St. Grermain-en-Laye, during September, Oc-
tober, and November, 1669, to divert the royal children,
1365 livres." The royal children of France must have had
enough of this sort of amusement, the Dauphin particu-
larly, who had already had two months of puppet-playing
before Brioche came, as is shown by the same registry :
" Paid to Fran9ois Daitelin, puppet-player, for the fifty-six
days he remained at St. Germain, to amuse Monseigneur le
Dauphin (July and August, 1669), 820 livres."
Bossuet, the Dauphin's tutor, persecuted both puppets
and Protestants, which, and especially the latter, were
reckoned for a time among the things that were reprobate
and abominable. Brioche himself was suppressed ; but he
PUPPETS FOR GROWN" GENTLEMEN. 223
had friends at court ; and the King, who would execute a
Protestant for preaching, signed a decree which authorized
the mountebank to continue playing. Due gratitude was
shown in return ; and among the favourite pieces repre-
sented at the famous fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent,
was ' The Destruction of the Huguenots.'
The puppet-plays at the fairs in Paris were got up with
much magnificence, and were wittily written, but with as
much indecency as wit ; particularly during the last years of
Louis XIV. and the time of the Regent. The puppets alone
had full liberty of speech, when every other sort of liberty
was extinct. Le Sage and Piron, as I have said, wrote pieces
expressly for them. And while plays in France were acted
in puppet-shows, puppet-shows in England were introduced
into plays. Of this the ' Bartholomew Fair' of Jonson is
a sufficient example. The vogue of the French puppets is
proved by the fact that the Regent Duke of Orleans, with
his company of roues, often remained in the fair till long
after midnight, to witness representations where the coarser
the wit the more it was enjoyed.
All the chefs-^osume of the French stage were immedi-
ately parodied on the puppet-boards; and saving the license
of speech, the parody was often superior to the original. It
was so attractive that the regular actors complained, and
sought for the suppression of their wooden rivals. But
Punch and his brethren pleaded for their ancient privilege,
" de parler et de p r." The plea was held good, and the
puppets triumphed over the Thespians. The quarrel being
a family one, it was of course carried on with undying hos-
tility. The puppet-players took every opportunity of ridi-
culing the extravagances of the more serious stage. When
the custom of calling for " the author" of a successful new
piece was established, upon the example set of calling for
Voltaire after the first representation of ' Merope,' the pup-
pets availed themselves of the opportunity for caricaturing.
224 HABITS AND MEN.
" Le compere pressait Polichinelle de lui faire entendre une
de ses oeuvres ; et apres avoir recu une reponse tres-incon-
grue, le compere s'empressait de demander 1'auteur! 1'auteur!
satisfaction que s'empressait de lui donner Polichinelle, aux
grands eclats de rire de 1'assemblee."
The contrast with this will call up but a ghastly smile
when we find that while the crowd on the Place Louis XV.
was waiting to witness the execution of the King, Punch
was being serio-comically guillotined in one corner of the
square, to the great delight of the spectators. Indeed the
' Vieux Cordelier' tells us, that Punch daily filled up the
intervals of executions ; and so varied the pleasures of the
humane but impatient multitude. But what neither the
' Vieux Cordelier,' nor M. Magnin tells us, is the fate of
this very Punch, or rather of the man and his wife who ex-
hibited the popular puppet. Their fate is recorded by the
Marquis de Custine. Punch, it appears, ventured on some
jokes against the Terrorists. His master and mistress were
thereupon seized. They bore their brief imprisonment with
heroism, and they were executed on the spot whereon had
perished their sovereign and queen.
The puppets went down in the general hurricane of the
Revolution, and they only partially came again to the sur-
face. To their ancient shows on the Boulevard du Temple
has succeeded a line of theatres ; and the chief resulting dif-
ference is, that very awkward men and women now enact
the most sacred subjects where puppets once did the same
office less revoltingly.
If a popular movement finally declared that the puppet
dynasty had ceased to reign, it was a despotic will that abo-
lished the use of such effigies in church spectacles. Louis
XIV., on witnessing one of those sights at Dieppe, was so
shocked thereat that he ordered their general suppression.
The French word for puppet, Marionnette, applied originally
only to figures of the Virgin Mary ; but, like the Catrinette
PUPPETS FOR GBOWX GEXTLEMEN. 225
of the little Savoyard, it has ceased to have an exclusive
application.
"With regard to puppets in England, those wooden ladies
and gentlemen once figured largely in our church-shows, in-
terludes, and pageants. The names of the puppet masters
have come down to us, from Pad, Cookley, Powell, and the
daughter of Colley Gibber, to no less a man than Curran,
who, taking upon himself, in sport, the charge of a show for
one night, found it so easy when speaking for the mute ac-
tors to maintain both sides of an argument that he was
therefore convinced of his excellent aptitude for the law.
Pepys, as usual, affords us again illustrations of the fa-
shion which attached to puppets in his day. From his brief
journalizing we obtain a world of information on this matter.
Thus we find him recording : " 12th Nov. 1661. My wife
and I to Bartholomew Fayre, with puppets (which I had
seen once before, and the play without puppets often); but
though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet 1 do not
like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening of
it." On the 9th May, in the following year, we find him
in Covent Garden, " to see an Italian puppet-play, that is
within the rayles there, the best that ever I saw, and great
resort of gallants." In a fortnight he takes poor Mrs. Pepys
to the same play. In October, he says : " Lord Sandwich
is at Whitehall, with the King, before whom the puppet-
plays I saw this summer in Covent Garden are acted this
night." On the 30th August, 1667, being with a merry
party at Walthamstow, he left his wife to get home as well
as she could ; he " to Bartholomew Fayre, to walk up and
down, and there, among other things, find my Lady Castle-
maine at a puppet-play, ' Patient Grizell,' and the street
full of people expecting her coming out. I confess I did
wonder at her courage to come abroad, thinking the people
would abuse her ; but they, silly people, do not know the
work she makes ; and therefore suffered her with great
L 3
226 HABITS AND MEN.
respect to take coach, and so away without any trouble
at all."
The last allusion made by Pepys on this subject forms
an admirable commentary on the approving ecstasy expressed
by the royalists at the lashing which the " Precisians" re-
ceived at the hands of Lantern's puppets in Jonson's co-
medy. On the 5th September, 1668, Pepys is again on the
old ground, " to see the play ' Bartholomew Faire,' and it
is an excellent play ; the more I see it, the more I love
the wit of it ; only" (he adds) " the business of abusing the
Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the
people that at last will be found the wisest."
I began this chapter with a quotation from Puysieux I
may end it with that just cited from Pepys ; and therewith,
lowering the curtain of my little theatre, I beg the indul-
gence of my audience for the succeeding portions of what
I have respectfully to bring before them ; something more
especially touching Tailors, and the Man whose making is
to Tailors due ! First, however, to treat the matter reve-
rently, let us inquire what influenced the ancient corpora-
tion in their selection of a protecting Saint.
TOUCHING TAILORS.
" Reru acu tetigisti." HORACE.
"You have treated of a matter about the needle."
Translated by a Merchant Tailors' Pupil,
" Sit merita Laus !" ST. WILLIAM, ABP.
" Sit, merry Tailors."
Freely rendered by the Sainfs Chaplain.
WHY DID THE TAILORS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM
FOR THEIR PATRON?
" King David's confessor is worth a whole calendar of Williams."
LTTTHEBAN TAILOE.
WHY did the tailors choose St. "William for their patron ?
Ah, why ? I confess it puzzles me to furnish a reply ; and
I would not be editor of that pleasant paper ' Notes and
Queries,' if my official hours were to be passed in furnish-
ing answers to such questions.
I can understand why St. Nicholas is the patron of chil-
dren. The Saint once came upon a dozen or two in a tub,
cut up, pickled, and ready for home consumption or foreign
exportation, and he restored them all to life by a wave of
his wand, of his hand, I should say, but I was thinking
of Harlequin ; and thenceforth parents very properly neg-
lected their children, knowing that Nicholas was their com-
missioned curator.
I can comprehend why " St. John Colombine" is the pa-
tron saint of honest workmen. I heard Dr. Manning, the
other day, tell his story from that thimble of a pulpit in the
Roman Catholic Chapel at Brook Green. This John was
a journeyman tailor (or of some as honest vocation) given
to strong drink and hot wrath. He was one day made in-
sanely furious because his real Colombine, his wife, had
not got his dinner ready according to order. The good
housewife bethought her for a moment, and thereupon, after
turning aside, placed before him, not bread, but biography ;
not a loaf and a salad, but the ' Lives of the Saints.' John
230 HABITS AND MEN.
dipped into the same, devoured chapter after chapter, and
fed so largely on the well-attested facts, that he lost all ap-
petite for aught besides. He thenceforth so comported him-
self that future editors gave him a place in the catalogue of
the canonized ; and the story, as told by that pale and care-
worn-looking Dr. Manning, is worth the shilling which you
must disburse if you would hear it. ' Certainly, I mean no-
thing disrespectful to that sincere but seemingly unhappy
man, when I say that so startling was the story as intro-
duced into a discourse upon the Spirit of the Lord and
they who are led by such Spirit, that I could not have been
more startled if, in the days of my youth, the Bleeding
Nun in 'The Travellers Benighted' had, in the midst of
her most tremendous scene, tripped down to the foot-lights
and sung a comic song.
But this will not answer the query, " Why did the tailors
choose St. William for their patron ?" Indeed, the digres-
sion I have made may be taken for proof that I do not
know how to answer the question. But let us at least
inquire.
First, there was the Savoyard Saint William, who, when
an orphan, abandoned the friends who would have protected
.him ; and after wandering barefooted to the shrine of that
Saint whom English boys unwittingly celebrate by their
grottoes, " only once a year," St. James of Compostella,
proceeded to the kingdom of Naples, where he withdrew to
a desert mountain, and passed his time in contemplating
the prospect before him. He lacerated his skin instead of
washing it, and he patched his own garments when he might
have earned new ones by honest labour. But he founded a
community of monks and friars, and ergo he is celebrated
by the hagiographers. A contempt for saponaceous appli-
cations, and a disregard of upper appearance or under com-
fort, have decidedly descended to the brotherhood of tailors
from William of Monte Vergine.
THE TAILOBS' PATRON SAINT. 231
Secondly, there was "William of Champeaux, who founded
the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris. This William was a man
of large learning and small means ; and he was well content
to dine daily on a lettuce, a pinch of salt, and a mouthful of
bread. The shadows of dinners which form the substance
of tailors' repasts, are reflections from the board of William
of Champeaux.
Thirdly, there was William of Paris, the familiar friend of
St. Louis, King of France. This bishop, next to piety, was
famed for his knowledge of politics; and as tailors have
ever been renowned for knowing what is going on " i' the
capitol," and for discussing such goings on with uncommon
freedom, I think we may trace this characteristic of the
race to the news-loving and loquacious prelate of eight cen-
turies ago.
Fourthly, there was St. William of Maleval, of, sufficiently
ignoble birth to have been a tailor; and who did, in his
youth and his cups, what modern young tailors frequently
offer to do under similar circumstances, namely, enlist. If
our useful friends have not imitated the latter example set
them by the Saint, we may trace their love of the pot, at
least, to the early model they found in their patron of
Maleval ; and if often they find themselves in the station-
house, lying upon no softer bed than the bare ground, they
doubtless find the reflection as feathers to their bruised
sides, that it was even thus that the founder of the Guliel-
mites lay in a cave of the Evil Valley to which he gave a
name (Male Val), and which before was known by no better
than the Stable of Rhodes.
Fifthly, there was William of Gelone, Duke of Aquitaine,
whom it took St. Bernard twice to convert before he made
a Christian of him ; and who had such gallant propensities
that he might have been one of the couple sung of in the
' Bridal of Triermain,' where of three personages it is said
that
232 HABITS AND MEN.
" There were two who loved their neighbours' wives,
And one who loved his own."
The well-known gallantry of the tailors therefore is an heir-
loom from William of Aquitaine.
Sixthly, there was "William sometime Archbishop of
Bourges, who left to the guild of whom we are treating the
example which is followed by so many of its members, and
which consisted in utterly dispensing with a shirt. He fur-
ther never added to his costume in winter, nor diminished
anything in it in summer; and they who have taken St.
William for a patron are known, though not for the same
reasons, to be followers of the same fashion.
Then there was, seventhly, St. William of Norwich, whose
father, after hesitating whether to bind him apprentice to a
tailor or a tanner, had just placed him with the latter when
the lad was seized upon by the Jews, and by them tortured
and crucified, in derision of Christ. On Easter Day they
put the body into a sack, and carried it into Thorpe Wood,
where it was afterwards discovered, and buried, with many
miraculous incidents to illustrate the funeral; and where
was afterwards erected the chapel of St. William in the
Wood. Now, at first sight, it would appear difficult to
decide as to what the tailors' guild derived from William
of Norwich. But it is only at first sight, and to those un-
accustomed to follow a trail, and not determined to find
what they are looking for. In allusion to what had befallen
the body of St. William, or rather in memory of how that
body was conveyed away, after life had been expelled from
it, the Norwich tailors first adopted that now consecrated
phrase of "getting the sack," and which phrase implies a
loss of position, to the detriment of the loser.
But I have not done ; Williams are as plentiful as black-
berries. There is an eighth, the Abbot of Eskille, who no
more liked to play sub-prior to a superior than Grarrick
liked to play an unapplauded Falconbridge to Sheridan's
THE TAILORS' PATRON SAINT. 233
King John. William of Eskille was a great reformer of
slothful convents, by whose inmates he was as much detested
as an honest and vigilant foreman is by operatives who work
by the day. One thing deemed worthy of mention by his
biographers consists in the dreary fact that he wore the
same shirt for thirty years. At the end of that time he
turned it, and then piously blessed the saints for " the com-
fort of clean linen." I question if even modern tailors
have succeeded in attaining to this extent of saintly un-
cleanliness, but I would not be too certain of that fact. As
for what they may further have derived from this excellent
person, it is well known that for an abbot to be called an
Abbot d 1 Eskille was the highest possible compliment that
could be paid him ; and so the phrase fell to other camara-
deries, and a Tailleur d' Eskille was the origin of a tailor" of
skill. But this is confidential, reader, between you and
me. If you are related to an etymologist, or on friendly
terms with a lexicographer, I earnestly beg that you will not
mention it, even " after dinner."
Under the mystic number " nine," I come to that William
Archbishop of York, who was the nephew of Stephen King
of England, and whom old St. Bernard belaboured with as
many hard words as ever Sir Richard Birnie hurled, on a
Monday morning, on ex-inebriated tailors captured on the
preceding Saturday night. I do not believe a word of
what the irate St. Bernard says against St. William, whom
he accuses of the most horrible crimes. The slightest
charge in the bill of indictment drawn up by him, whom
Hurden calls a wicked old impostor, is love of good living.
St. William, like honest Archiepiscopus Wilfred, had a tender
inclination for roast goose ! Oh, benedicte Gulielnie ! may
you have found the bird ever as your inclination, tender !
The sacred goose is an appanage of the tailors, and it dates
from that jovial St. William whom St. Bernard hated as cor-
dially as though the former had made the latter' s hair-shirt
too tight to comfortably breathe in after supper.
234 HABITS AND MEN.
Our tenth example is the St. William who was bishop of
St. Brieux, in Brittany, who often pawned his robes to pur-
chase corn for the poor. Here we see whence the society
of tailors borrow their authority for depositing pledges, in
order to purchase distillations from corn, and for the poor
also, their poor selves. This is highly satisfactory.
There was one more William, namely, he who, English by
birth, was the introducer of Christianity into Denmark, and
who was of such good repute when living that he was buried
in the mausoleum of the Danish kings, at Roeskild, after
death. It was remarked of him that when he was reproving
" drunken Denmark," he invariably held his pastoral statf
as though he were taking measure, as he probably was of
the royal bad habits ; and perhaps on this account he has
come in for a share of the patronage exercised over the guild
whose members take measure of men.
And now let it be observed, that although I have men-
tioned eleven Williams, there are only nine of them who
really rank among the canonized saints. Is not that sug-
gestive ? The fraternity, of whom it takes nine members
to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would take
liine saints to make one patron. It is clear, then, that it
is not to one William, but to nine combined, that the guild
address, or did in olden times address, their vows and ac-
knowledgments ; and exactly for the reason that there are
nine Saint Williams have the English tailors chosen them,
in a mass, for their one consolidated patron. Quod erat
demonstrandum !
And now, having seen how the tailors took their patron,
let us consider them generally. There have been many of
note, either of themselves or in their sons. Church, bar,
army, navy, poetry, and the stage, they have by turns ex-
celled in all.
If Barrow rose from his father's shop, where he was early
initiated in the mysteries of mercer and draper, to wear his
THE TAILOBS' PATRON SAINT. 235
well-earned dignity in the Church, there was nothing won-
derful in the elevation. The father of our present Archbishop
of York kept, at Cambridge, a shop like that of Barrow's
father. One of the most active and useful of the Yorkshire
rectors was himself in early life of the craft ; and there is no
more zealous or efficient missionary in Ireland than the Kev.
Mr. Doudney, the brother of the well-known London tailor
of that name.
In the olden times, that is, some two centuries ago, the
boy who passed from his father's shop-board to enter, as a
man, the pulpit, was of very High Church principles, if we
may take Shadwell's portrait of Smirk in the ' Lancashire
Witches' as a faithful portraiture. Smirk is a little given,
as Brother Ignatius advises all Roman Catholic servants in
Protestant families to be, to inquire into the family secrets,
for which his patron, Sir Edward Harfort, to whom he is
chaplain, reproves him. The following sharp dialogue then
ensues :
" Smirk. Consider, Sir, the dignity of my function.
Sir Ed. Your father is my tailor. You are my servant;
And do you think a cassock and a girdle
Can alter you so much as to enable
You (who before were but a coxcomb, Sir)
To teach me ?
Smirk. My orders give me authority to speak.
A power legantine I have from Heaven.
Sir Ed. Show your credentials.
. The indiscretion of such paltry fellows
Are scandals to the Church and cause they preach for.
With furious zeal you press for discipline,
With fire and blood maintain your great Diana,
Foam at the mouth when a Dissenter's named,
And damn them if they do not love a surplice.
Smirk. Had I the power I'd make them wear pitcht surplices.
Sir Ed. Such firebrands as you but hurt the cause.
The learned' st and the wisest of your tribe
Strive by good life and meekness to o'ercome them."
236 HABITS AXD MEN.
It is worth recording that this rather high-toned chaplain
Smirk, son of Smirk the Tailor, came under the censure
and the scissors of the scrupulous Master of the Revels.
This delicate official could tolerate the Smirks of Etherege,
but when Shadwell exhibited one with something like sin-
cerity dragging after his faults, the whole town, ay, and
the court too, cried out shame ! The wisdom of our ances-
tors does not appear to match with the assurance which
affects to give warranty of it.
To turn from poetry to prose, I have to remark that
Ingulph, the Abbot of Croyland, who wrote the pleasant
story of his monastery, appears to me to have been (pos-
sibly) a tailor's son. The good old man does not indeed
say as much, but he intimates that he was a cockney of
humble origin ; and, if " vous etes orfevre, Monsieur Josse,"
have a significance, why something of the same sort may
be detected in the phrases and, I may add, in the deeds of
the Chronicler of Croyland.
Ingulph was a Westminster boy and an Oxford scholar.
Speaking of his studies at the latter place, he says:
" After I had made progress beyond most of my fellows
in mastering Aristotle, I also clothed myself down to the
heels with the first and second rhetoric of Tully. On
growing to be a young man, I loathed the narrow means
of my parents, and daily longed with the most ardent
desire to leave my paternal home, and sighed for the
palaces of kings and princes, to clothe myself in soft or
pompous raiment." If Moliere's Monsieur Josse was dis-
covered to be a goldsmith by the setting of his criticism,
we may say that Ingulph was of a tailorish origin by the cut
of his phrases. And so, as I have said, of his acts : in these
there is a strong redolence of what the vulgar call " cab-
bage." For instance, when "trustworthy reports" were
made by local valuers of land and property, in order that
the same should be taxed, and the said valuers visited
THE TAILOE8' PATRON SAINT. 237
Croyland to that intent, Ingulph thus exultingly records
what took place : " Those persons showed a kind and be-
nevolent feeling towards our monastery, and did not value
the monastery at its true revenue, nor yet at its exact extent ;
and thus, in their compassion, took due precautions against
the future exactions of the kings, as well as other burdens,
and with the most attentive benevolence made provision
for our welfare." It is curious to see how robbing the
king's exchequer in favour of a monastery is called atten-
tive benevolence ; how fraudulent returns are spoken of
as " trustworthy reports ;" and how the Lord Abbot of
Croyland, the personal favourite of William the Conqueror,
cheated the master who confided in him, and practically
illustrated the text, " Bender unto Caesar the things which
are Caesar's."
Till a very recent period it was the invariable custom,
whenever a Frenchman appeared on our stage, to repre-
sent him ridiculously attired. This was originally done
out of revenge for an affront put upon us by Catherine
de' Medici ; who,i nstigated by the Due de Guise, had
dressed up her buffoons at a court entertainment, and
called them English milords. Elizabeth made a capital re-
mark when she was told of this insult. She called aloud,
in full court, to the French Ambassador, that when these
French buffoons were declared in presence of her own Am-
bassador, Lord North, to be English noblemen, that envoy
ought to have told those who witnessed the unseemly en-
tertainment, that the tailors of France who had so mi-
micked the costume of her great sire Henry VIII. should
have better remembered the habiliments of that great King,
since he had crossed the sea more than once with warlike
engines displayed, and had some concern with the people
there.
The most fortunate, perhaps I ought to say the most suc-
cessful, tailor of very recent times, was Mr. Brunskill, whose
238 HABITS AND HEN.
seat of operations was at Exeter. Ko provincial, and not
above one metropolitan, tailor ever realized sucli a fortune
as he did : it was realized not by luck, but by labour. For
the first seven years that he was in business on his own
account he worked seventeen hours a day. And if he went
to church on Sundays, he plied his needle none the less ac-
tively during the other hours of that day. This is the worst
feature in the case ; but he probably entertained a religious
respect for that maxim of St. Augustine which tells us, " qui
laborat, orat." It was his boast that he was the only man
in Exeter who could ride forty miles a day and cut out
work for forty journeymen besides. This assiduity had
its reward, and BrunskUTs business soon returned above
25,000 annually. Of course young heirs and youths
rich only in present hopes resorted to him for loans ; and
Brunskill was as successful as a money-broker as he was in
his other vocation. Cent, upon cent, reared the structure of
his edifice of fortune ; and long before a quarter of a cen-
tury had elapsed since he commenced his career, he was
proprietor of Polsloe Park, and, if not a 'squire himself,
training his three lads to take station with 'squires. In
the meantime, constant labour was his dear delight, and he
was ever at his board or his bank, making men by a double
process, some, by dressing their persons ; some, by dress-
ing their credit, and, in either case, with good security for
prompt payment. He was thus hard at work up to one
Monday night not many months ago, and on the following
Thursday morning he was a dead man. Corporal Trim
himself might here have found a theme whereon to deeply
philosophize. Leaving that profitable occupation to our old
friend the Corporal, let us look at the half pleasant, half
stern realities of the case. Brunskill left three sons : to
the two younger he bequeathed 10,000 apiece ; to the
eldest, 200,000 and Polsloe Park. The younger may
wear their crape with satisfaction, and the eldest heir may
THE TAILOBS' PATRON SAINT. 239
bless the needle which pricked him out so pretty a condition.
His sire has made him first gentleman of a future race of
county 'squires ; and I beg to assure heirs to come in after
times from this peculiar source, that they will have less to
be ashamed of than have those noble gentlemen and ladies
who descend from concubines of kings, and who exist upon
the wages of their first mother's pollution.
We have now considered both the patron and his flock ;
let us now see how the latter have been treated by the lively
poets who have "fine-drawn" them in immortal verse.
THE TAILORS MEASURED BY THE POETS.
" Dignum laude virum Musa vetat raori." HORACE.
OH, Thersites, good friend, how scurvily hast thou been
dealt with at the hands of man ! Thou art emphatically un
Jiomme incompris, but thou art not therefore un Jiomme me-
prisdble. The poets have comprehended thee better than
the people ; and Homer himself has no desire to prove thee
the coward and boaster for which thou art taken by the
world on Homeric authority. I think that Ulysses, with
whom, in the ' Iliad,' Thersites is brought in contact, is by
far the greater brute of the two. The husband of Penelope
is cringing to the great, and cruel to the lowly. He appears
much less fitted for a king than for a Poor-law Commis-
sioner. He unmercifully smites the deformed Thersites
with his sceptre; but why? because the latter, so far from
being a coward, had had the courage to attack Agamemnon
himself before the whole assembled Greeks. He is ridiculed
for the tears extorted from him by pain and shame ; and
yet weeping, among the heroes of Greek epic and tragic
poetry, is indulged in on all occasions by the bravest of
the brave. There is nothing that these copper-captains do
more readily or more frequently, except lying, for which they
exhibit an alacrity that is perfectly astounding. The soft
infection will run through two whole armies, and then the
universal, solemn shower rises into the majesty of poetry ;
but when our poor, ill-treated friend drops a scalding tear,
in his own solitary person, it is then bathos ! I concede that
he talked too much ; but it was generally close to the pur-
THE TAILOES MEASUEED BY THE POETS. 241
pose, and fearless of results. His last act was one of courage.
The semi-deified bully Achilles, having slain Penthesilea,
cried like a school-boy at his self-inflicted loss ; and Ther-
sites, having laughed at him for his folly, paid for his bold
presumption with his life. There is another version of his
death, which says that, the invincible son of Thetis having
visited the dead body of the Amazon with unnatural atroci-
ties, the decent Thersites reproached him for his unmanly
conduct, and was slain by him in rage at the well-merited
rebuke. Shakspeare, who did all things perfectly, makes of
Thersites a bold and witty jester, who entertains a good
measure of scorn for the valiant ignorance of Achilles. The
wit of the latter, with that of his brother chiefs, lies in their
sinews ; and their talk is of such a skim-milk complexion
that we are ready to exclaim, with bold Thersites himself,
" I will see you hanged like clotpoles ere I come any more
to your tents ; I will keep where there is wit stirring, and
leave the faction of fools."
As it has been with our poor friend Thersites, so has it
been with our useful friends whose faculties are ever given to
a consideration of the important matter " De He Vestiaria."
The poets however do not partake of the popular fallacy ;
and the builders of lofty rhyme are not unjust, as we shall
see, to a race whose mission it is to take measures in order
to save godlike man from looking ridiculous.
Shakspeare of course has rendered this full justice to the
tailor. In his illustrations we see our ancient friend vari-
ously depicted, as industrious, intelligent, honest, and full of
courage, without vapouring. The tailor in ' King John ' is
represented as the retailer of news, and the strong handi-
craftsman listens with respect to the budget of the weakly
intelligencer.
" I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The while his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news ;
M
242 HABITS AST) MBIT.
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet),
Told of a many thousand warlike French
That were embattled and rank'd in Kent."
It is clear that nothing less than an invasion had driven
this hardworking artisan from his shopboard to talk of poli-
tics and perils with his friend at the smithy. The German
poet Heyne has something of a similar description of the
tailor, in prose : in his ' Keisebilder ' there is an admirably
graphic account of how the Elector John William fled from
Diisseldorf, and left his ci-devant subjects to render allegi-
ance to Murat, the grand and well-curled Duke of Berg ;
and how, of the proclamations posted in the night, the earli-
est readers in the grey morning were an old soldier and a
valiant tailor, Killian, the latter attired as loosely as his
predecessor in ' King John,' and with the same patriotic
sentimentality in the heart which beat beneath his lightly
burdened ribs.
But, to revert to " Sweet "Will," how modestly dignified,
assured, and self-possessed is the tailor in ' Katherine and
Petruchio ! ' The wayward bridegroom had ridiculed the
gown brought home by the "woman's tailor" for the way-
ward bride. He had laughed at the " masking-stuff," sneered
at the demi-cannon of a sleeve, and profanely pronounced
its vandyking (if that term be here admissible) as
" carved like an apple-tart.
Here's snip and nip, and cut, and slish and slash,
Like to a censer in a barber's shop."
To all which profanity against divine fashion, the tailor
modestly remarks that he had made the gown, as he had
been bidden,
" orderly and well,
According to the fashion and the time."
And when Petruchio, who is not half so much of a gentleman
THE TAILOBS MEASTTBED BY THE POETS. 243
in this scene as Sartorius, calls the latter " thimble," " flea,"
" skein of thread," "remnant," and flings at him a whole
vocabulary of vituperation, the gentle Schneider still simply
asserts that the gown was made according to direction, and
that the latter came from G-rumio himself. Now Grumio,
being a household servant, lies according to the manner of
his vocation ; and where he does not lie, he equivocates most
basely ; and where he neither lies nor equivocates, he bul-
lies ; and finally, he falls into an argument, which has not
the logical conclusion of annihilating his adversary. The
latter, with quiet triumph, produces Grumio' s note con-
taining the order ; but it costs the valet no breath, and as
little hesitation, to pronounce the note a liar too. But a
worm will turn ; and the tailor, touched to the quick on a
point of honour, brings his bold heart upon his lips, and
valiantly declares, " This is true that I say ; an I had thee
in place where, thou shouldst know it ;" and thereupon
Grumio falls into bravado and uncleanness, and the tailor
is finally dismissed with scant courtesy, and the very poor
security of Hortensio's promise to pay. for what Petruchio
owed. The breach of contract was flagrant, and the only
honest man in the party was the tailor.
So much for honesty ; as for bravery, commend me to
forcible Francis Feeble. He too was but a " woman's
tailor ;" but what an heroic soul was in that transparent
frame ! He reminds me of Sir Charles Napier. When the
latter hero was complimented by the Mayor of Portsmouth,
he simply undertook to do his best, and counselled his wor-
ship not to expect too much. Sir Charles must have taken
the idea of his speech from Francis Feeble ; and what an
honour is that for the entire profession, not of sailors,
but of tailors! " Wilt thou make me," asks FalstafF, "as
many holes in an enemy's battle, as thou hast done in a
woman's petticoat ?" " I will do my good will, Sir,"
answereth gallant Feeble, adding, with true conclusive-
M 2
HABITS AND MEN.
" ness, you can have no more." "Well might Sir John en-
thusiastically hail him as " courageous Feeble," and com-
pare his valour to that of the wrathful dove and most
magnanimous mouse, two animals gentle by nature, but
being worked upon not void of spirit. Indeed, Feeble is
the only gallant man of the entire squad of famished re-
cruits. Bullcalf offers " good master corporate Bardolph"
a bribe of " four Harry ten shillings in French crowns,"
to be let off. Not that Bullcalf is afraid! Not he,
the knave ; he simply does not care to go ! He is not cu-
rious in things strategic ; he seeth no attraction in stricken
fields ; but he would fain be out of harm's way, because, in
his own words, " because I am unwilling, and, for mine own
part, have a desire to stay with my friends ; else, Sir, I did
not care, for mine own part, so much." To no such craven
tune runneth the song of stupendous Feeble! Mouldy
urges affection for his old dame as ground of exemption
Irom running the risk of getting decorated with a bloody
coxcomb. No such jeremiade is chanted by Titanic Fran-
cis. " By my troth," gallantly swears that lion-like soul,
"by my troth, I care not!" Re, the tailor, cares not!
neither subterfuge, lie, nor excuse will Tie condescend to !
Moreover, he is not only courageous, but Christian-like and
philosophical; as, for example: " A man can die but once;
we owe God a death. I'll ne'er bear a base mind ; an it be
my destiny, so; an it be not, so; no man's too good to
serve his prince ; and, let it go which way it will, he that
dies this year is quit for the next." This was not a man
to march with whom through Coventry a captain need to be
ashamed. So valiant, and yet so modest ! So conscious of
peril, and yet so bold in the encountering of it ! So clear
in his logic, so profound in his philosophy, so loyal of heart,
,and so prepared in the latter to entertain any fate, whatever
might be its aspect, or the hour of its coming ! Surely, if
the prompter's book be correct, the exit of this tailor must
THE TAILOSS MEA.SUEED BY THE POETS. 245
be directed to be marked with music, to the air of ' A man's
a man for a' that? Anything less appropriate would fail to
do justice to the situation.
In Francis Feeble then the spirit of the tailor is immor-
talized. Compared with him, Starveling, in the ' Midsum-
mer Night's Dream,' is simply tender-hearted. He is one
of the actors in the play of ' Pyramus and Thisbe,' and he
is the most ready to second the motion that the sword of
Pyramus should not be drawn, nor the lion be permitted
to roar, lest the ladies, dear souls, should be affrighted.
Starveling is more of the carpet knight than Feeble. The
one is gallant in stricken fields, the other airs his gallantry
in ladies' bower.
It was right that the race of Feebles should not expire.
It was said of old, that to be the sire of sons was no great
achievement, but that he was a man indeed who was the
father of daughters. Such no doubt was Feeble, one of
whose spirited girls married a Sketon ; and their eldest son
it is, as I would fondly think, who figures so bravely among
the followers of Perkin Warbeck, in John Ford's tragedy
of that name. Sketon is the most daring of the company,
and the blood of the Feebles suffers no disgrace in his per-
son. Sketon, like the great Duke of Cruise, is full of dash-
ing hope, when all his fellows are sunk in dull despair.
While so august a personage as John a Water, Mayor of
Cork, is thinking twice ere he acts once, Sketon thus boldly
and tailor-like cuts out the habit of invasion, and prepares
the garb of victory : " 'Tis but going to sea, and leaping
ashore," saith he ; " cut ten or twelve thousand unnecessary
throats, fire seven or eight towns, take half-a-dozen cities,
get him into the market-place, crown him Bichard the
Fourth, and the business is finished!" Is not this a man
whom Nature intended for a commander-in-chief ? He is
not only quick of resolution, but of action ; and yet, I dare
be sworn, Sketon had read nothing of what Caius Crispus
246 HABITS AND MEN.
Sallust says thereupon. And I beseech you to mark one
thing more. You know that when the foolish Roman Em-
peror would not permit the statue of Brutus to be borne in
the funeral procession of Britannicus, lest the people should
think too much upon that imperatoricide, the obstinate
and vulgar rogues thought all the more upon him and his
deeds, for the very reason that his statue did not figure
among those of other heroes. So in the above heart-stirring
speech of valiant Sketon, we miss something which reveals
to us how chaste and chivalrous a soldier was the grandson
of Feeble. His views go to bold invasion, to the burning of
towns, and the sacking of cities, and to splendid victory,
built upon the cutting of throats, which he nicely, and as it
were apologetically for the act, describes as "unnecessary
throats." A taste of the quality of the roystering soldier is
perhaps to be found in this speech ; but you are entreated to
remark, that all the vengeance of the tailor is directed solely
against his enemy, man. The women, it is evident, have
nothing to fear at the hands of Sketon. He does not men-
tion rudeness to them, just as the ancient legislator did not
provide against parricide, simply because, judging from his
own heart, he deemed the crime impossible. Sketon and
Scipio deserve to go down to posterity hand in hand, as re-
specters of timid beauty. There was a Persian victor, too,
who would not look upon the faces of his fair captives, lest
he should be tempted to violate the principles of propriety.
Sketon was bolder, and not less virtuous. To my thinking,
he is the Bayard of tailors. It would wrong him to compare
him even with Joseph Andrews ; and I will only add that if
old Tilly, at Magdeburg, had been influenced by the virtue
of Sketon, there might not have been less weeping for lost
lovers, but there would have been more maidens left to sit
down in cypress, and mourn for them.
Sketon, foremost in fight, is first to hail the man whom
he takes for prince, when victory has induced the Cornish
THE TAILOES MEASURED BY THE POETS. 247
men of mettle to proclaim at Bodnam,BicliardIV. " monarch
of England, and king of hearts." Jubilant in success, he
does not complain when Fortune veils her face. Defeat
and captivity are accepted with dignity when they are com-
pelled upon him ; and when swift death is to be the doom
of himself and companions, he does not object to the philo-
sophical disquisition of his old leader and fellow-sufferer,
Perkin, that death by the sword, whereby the " pain is past
ere sensibly 'tis felt," is far preferable to being slowly slain
at home by the doctors. For he says :
" To tumble
From bed to bed, be massacred alive
By some physicians, for a month or two,
In hope of freedom from a foyer's torments,
Might stagger manhood."
And accordingly Sketon follows Warbeck to death without
a remnant of fear ; and I must add, that Henry VII. showed
little generosity when he remarked upon their executions,
as he sat comfortably at home,
" That public states,
As our particular bodies, taste most good
In health, when purged of corrupted blood."
Ford, the dramatic poet, offers indirect testimony to the
morality of the English tailor, by his introduction of a
French member of the fraternity in 'The Sun's Darling.''
The author calls his piece a moral masque ; but Monsieur
le Tailleur utters some very immoral matter in it, such, it
may fairly be supposed, as he could not have put into the
mouth of a kinsman of Starveling.
Mas singer's tailors again show that they were as much
the victims of their customers as their descendants are
now ; and the " Who suffers ?" the facetious query of Mr.
Pierce Egan's ' Tom and Jerry,' would have been quite
as appropriate a way of asking the name of a " Corinthian's"
tailor two centuries ago. " I am bound t'ye, gentlemen,"
248 HABITS AIH) MEN.
says the grateful builder of doublets and trunkliose to his
lordly customers. "You are deceived," is the comment of the
page ; they'll be bound to you ; you must remember to trust
them none." The scene here, it is true, is in Dijon ; but
Massinger, like Plautus, portrayed his country's manner in
scenes and personages drawn from other climes. This is
easily to be discerned in the former author's play of ' The
Old Law.' The scene is laid in Epirus. A tailor waits
upon the young Simonides, who has just joyfully inherited
the paternal estate ; but the youthful courtier despises the
operative employed by his sire.
" Thou mad'st my father's clothes,"
he says.
" That I confess.
But what son and heir will have his father's tailor,
Unless he have a mind to be well laugh'd at ?
Thou hast been so used to wide long-side things, that, when
I come to truss, I shall have the waist of my doublet
Lie on my buttocks ; a sweet sight ! "
This is purely descriptive, not of Epirote, but of old Eng-
lish costume. The former never changed; our fashions
have constantly varied ; and the very long-waisted doublet
scorned by Simonides, who talks like the rakish heir of an
old Cheapside drysalter, has descended from the saloon to
the stables. It was once worn by lords ; it is now carried
by grooms.
But perhaps, on the question of fashions, the remark of
the simple-minded tailor in Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Fair
Maid of the Inn,' who is duped so consumedly by Perabosco
the mountebank, is very apt to the matter. He has tra-
velled, and is willing even to go to the moon, in search of
strange and exquisite new fashions ; but, as he says, " all
we can see or invent are but old ones with new names to
'em." The poets I have last mentioned exhibit quite as
THE TAILORS MEASURED BY THE POETS. 249
great a contempt for chronology as any of their harmonious
fellows. Thus, Blacksnout, the Roman blacksmith, in the
' Faithful Friends,' living when Titus Martius was King of
Borne, tells Snipsnap, the Latin tailor, that he had not
only been in battle, but had been shot " with a bullet as
big as a penny loaf;" he adds, with much circumstance :
" 'Twas at the siege of Bunnill, passing the straits
'Twixt Mayor' s-lane and Tierra del Fuego,
The fiery isle!"
Snipsnap is the tailor of the poets' own period. He calls
for drink with the airy freedom of a be-phuned gallant,
pays magnanimously, as be-plumed gallants did not, cuts
jokes like a court-jester, and boasts that he can "finish
more suits in a year than any two lawyers in the town."
Blacksnout' s remark in reply, that " lawyers and tailors have
their several hells," is rather complimentary than otherwise
to the last-named gentle craft ; for it places the tailor, who
exercises the time-honoured observance of " cabbage," on a
level with the lawyer, who purchases his luxuries through
the process of partially stripping. his clients. The "hell"
here named is supposed to be the place wherein both law-
yers and tailors put those shreds, of which Ljsauro speaks
in the ' Maid in the Mill : '
" The shreds of what he steals from us, believe it,
Make him a mighty man."
Ben Jonson alludes to this particular locality in ' The Staple
of News.' Fashioner waiting past the appointed time upon
Pennyboy, Jun., compensates for his dilatoriness by perpe-
trating a witticism, and the young gentleman remarks there-
upon :
"That jest
Has gain'd thy pardon ; thou hadst lived condemn'd
To thine own hell else."
Fashioner was like Mr. Joy, the Cambridge tailor of an
250 HABITS AXD MEN.
olden time. If that hilarious craftsman had promised a
suit to be ready for a ball, and did not bring it home till
the next morning at breakfast, his stereotyped phrase ever
took the form of " Sorrow endureth for a night, but 'Joy'
cometh with the morning!" But, to return to the hades
of tailors. The reader will doubtless remember that Ralph,
the doughty squire of Hudibras, had been originally of the
following of the needle, and
" An equal stock of wit and valour
He had laid in, by birth a tailor."
Ralph dated his ancestry from the immediate heir of Dido,
from whom
" descended cross-legged knights,
Famed for their faith."
And then are we told, with rich Hudibrastic humour, that
Ealph, the ex-tailor, was like ^Eneas the Pious, for
" This sturdy squire, he had, as well
As the bold Trojan knight, seen hell ;"
which locality, as connected with the handicraftsman, is de-
scribed as being the place where tailors deposit their per-
quisites.
We have digressed a little from Snipsnap, the English
tailor, whom Beaumont and Fletcher have placed with other
thoroughly English artisans in the piece already named,
' The Faithful Friends.' Snipsnap holds his profession to
be above that of a soldier, but yet modestly excuses himself
from fighting, on the score that, although a tailor, he is not
a gentleman. Being provoked, however, he knocks down
the rude offender, and has a thorough contempt for the con-
stable, a contempt in the entertaining of which he is so
well justified by the logical remark of Blacksnout :
" A constable 's
An ass. I'ye been a constable myself."
THE TAILORS MEASUBED BY THE POETS. 251
The bravery of Snipsnap is a true bravery : he is conscious
of the peril in which he stands as a soldier, and, ere going
into action, bethinks him of old prophecies that he should
be slain ; but when he pictures to himself the public scorn
that ever follows cowardice, and that, if he and his fellows
be poltroons, every wench in Rome will fling dirt at them
as they pass by, saying, " There are the soldiers who durst
not draw their blades," then is the heroic soul fired, and
Snipsnap exclaims :
" But they shall find we dare, and strike home too :
I am now resolved, and will be valiant ;
This bodkin quilts their skin as full of holes
As e'er was canvas doublet."
"Spoke like a bold man, Snip!" says Bellario, the old sol-
dier. Ay, and like a discreet and thinking man. There is
no foolhardiness and rash action in Snipsnap ; but, like the
greatest of heroes, he looks his peril calmly in the face, and
then encounters it with a gallantry that is not to be re-
sisted.
And it is to be observed that the tailors of the poets are
as generous as they are brave. Witness Vertigo in ' The
Maid in the Mill ;' the lords among whom he stands owe
him money, and yet affect to have forgotten his name. One
of them ventures, indeed, to hope that he has not come to
press his claims ; and what says this very pearl and quint-
essence of tailors ?
" Good faith, the least thought in my heart ; your love, gentlemen,
Your love's enough for me. Money ? hang money!
Let me preserve your love !"
Incomparable Vertigo ! What a trade might he drive in
London upon those terms ! A waistcoat for a good opinion,
a fashionable coat for esteem, and a full-dress suit to be paid
for with the wearer's love, in a promissory note made pay-
able at sight !
252 HABITS AND MEN.
Vertigo understands the dignity of his profession ; indeed,
he wears a double dignity, for he is a " woman's tailor," as
well as " man's ;" and when he is about to measure Florimel,
how bravely does he bid the lords " stand out o' th' light!"
How gallantly does he promise the lady when he swears or
asserts rather (for the tailors of the poets never swear, that
is, never swear profanely ; they are like the nun in Chaucer,
whose prettiest oath was but " by St. Eloy ! ") when he as-
serts then that she has " the neatest body in Spain this day;"
and further, when Otrante, the Spanish Count, in love with
Florimel, remarks that happily his wardrobe, with the tailor's
help, may fit her instantly, what self-dignity in the first line
of the reply, and what philosophy in the second !
" If I fit her not, your wardrobe cannot ;
And if the fashion be not there, you mar hen"
Ben Jonson does the trade full justice with regard to their
possession of generosity ; thus, in ' Every Man Out of his
Humour,' Fungoso not only flatters the tailor who con-
structed his garment out Of the money due for its fashion-
ing, but he borrows some ready cash of him besides. Upon
this hint did Sheridan often act ; and thus posterity suffers
through the vices as through the weaknesses of our ances-
tors. But the philosophical spirit of the true artistic tailor
has been as little neglected by rare Ben, " the Canary-bird,"
as the same artist's generosity. The true philosophy of
dress is to be found in a speech of Fashioner's, in the ' Staple
of News,' and which speech is in reply to the remark of
young Pennyboy, that the new clothes he has on make him
feel wittier than usual : " Believe it, Sir," says Fashioner,
" That clothes do much upon the wit, as weather
Does on the brain ; and thence, Sir, comes your proverb,
The tailor makes the man. I speak by experience
Of my own customers. I have had gallants,
Both court and country would have fool'd you up,
THE TAILOBS MEASUBED BY THE POETS. 253
In a new suit, with the best wits in being,
And kept their speed as long as their clothes lasted,
Handsome and neat ; but then as they grew out
At the elbows again, or had a stain or spot,
They have sunk most wretchedly."
The policy of the tailor is as good as his philosophy, and
has the same end in view, for Pennyboy exultingly says :
" I wonder gentlemen
And men of means will not maintain themselves
Fresher in wit, I mean in clothes, to the highest ;
For he that's out of clothes is out of fashion;
And out of fashion is out of countenance ;
And out of countenance is out of wit."
And the moral of all is, that if a man would prosper in the
world, he should, at all events, not neglect his tailor.
Of all the poets yet named, Ben Jonson is the only one
who introduces a somewhat dishonest tailor, Nick Stuff,
in ' The New Inn ; ' but Apollo was angry at the liberty,
and visited the poet with the retributive damnation of the
piece. Stuff is a "woman's tailor;" we have none such
now in England, except as makers of ladies' riding habits.
They are rare in France, but there are as many women's
tailors as female dressmakers in Vienna; and the latter
often order the tailors to take measure for and cut out the
dresses, which the female sewers then, to use a French
term, confection. Nick Stuff used to attire his wife Pin-
nacia in all the new gowns he made ; and in ever-changing
and gallant bravery Pinnacia but let her describe Nick's
ways of vanity after her own fashion :
" It is a foolish trick, madam, he has ;
For though he be your tailor, he is my beast ;
I may be bold with him, and tell his story.
When he makes any fine garment will fit me,
Or any rich thing that he thinks of price,
254 HABITS AND MEN.
Then must I put it on and be bis ' Countess,'
Before be carry it home unto the owners.
A coach is hired and four horse ; he runs
In his velvet jacket thus, to Romford, Croydon,
Hounslow, or Barnet."
Pinnacia proceeds to portray further excesses, but I think
there must be some exaggeration in this ; and for this the
poet was punished by the condemnation of his piece. The
thing is as clear as logical deduction can make it. The 'New
Inn' contained great reproach against the tailors : the ' New
Inn' was hissed off the stage : argal, for a poet to speak re-
proachfully of tailors, is to bring down ruin upon his head !
This deductive process is borrowed from Cardinal "Wise-
man; and if it be found defective, I beg to shield myself
under that gentleman's eminent authority. It is something
like accounting for Tenterden steeple by Goodwin Sands ;
but of course I cannot help that. Let the candidate for the
tiara look to it !
Taking Nick Stuff as a true sample of those of his craft,
who formed the exception to the general rule of professional
honesty, I must say for such as he, that if he wei^e a knave,
it was because for years he had had an evil example before
his eyes in the persons of men better off than him self, who
had not Ms plea of small means and long credit as an excuse
for bettering his condition at the public cost. If the fa-
shioners of clothes were sometimes not so careful as they
might be in the appb'cation of the principle of honesty, the
makers of the cloth were infinitely worse. They lay under
the imputation of being universally fraudulent. We have
no better, and need no better, proof on this matter, than
what is afforded us by the testimony of good old Latimer,
who had a sharp eye to detect vice, and a bold tongue to
denounce it. In his third sermon preached before King
Edward VI., there is the following graphic passage : " I
hear say that there is a certain cunning come up in the
THE TAILOES MEASURED BY THE POETS. 255
mixing of wares. How say you ? were it not a wonder to
hear that clothmakers should become 'pothecaries, yea, and
as I hear say, in such a place whereat they have professed
the Gospel and the word of God most earnestly of a long
time." And then the preacher, after some animadversions
on the devil, whom he styles in another sermon as the only
prelate he knows who is never absent from his diocese,
nor idle when in it, thus proceeds : " If his cloth be
seventeen yards long, he will set it on a rack, and stretch it
out with ropes, and rack it till the sinews shrink again, till
he hath brought it to eighteen yards. When they have
brought it to that perfection, they have a pretty feat to
thick it again. He makes me a powder for it, and plays the
'pothecary. They call it flock-powder. They do so incor-
porate it to the cloth, that it is wonderful to consider.
Truly, a good invention ! Oh that so goodly wits should be
so ill applied ! they may well deceive the people, but they
cannot deceive God. They were wont to make beds of
flock, and it was a good bed, too ; now they have turned
the flock into powder, to play the false thieves with it.
These mixtures come of covetousness. They are plain
theft." From this singular passage it is apparent that what
is popularly known at Manchester as " devil's dust," was
an invention which the cotton lords of today have inherited
from their fathers in Mammon, the cloth lords of some three
centuries ago. That ever-active prelate, the devil, is there-
fore as busily engaged in his diocese now as he was in the
days whose doings are condemned by Latimer. In some
respects however there is improvement, if we may believe
the assertion made by Mr. Thackeray, in his ' Essays on the
Essayists,' to the effect that even hermits out at elbows
would lose their respectability now if they were to attempt
to cheat their tailors. Other men succeed in doing so,
without forfeiting the privilege conceded by Mark Antony
to Brutus of being "an honourable man."
256 HABITS AND MEN.
Charles Lamb remarks, in his ' Essay on the Melancholy
of Tailors,' that " drink itself does not seem to elevate him."
This assertion seems contrary to that in the acting tragedy
of ' Tom Thumb,' wherein Queen Dolalolla so enthusiasti-
cally exclaims :
" Perdition catch the railers !
We'll have a row, and get as drunk as tailors."
It is to be observed, however, that Fielding is not respon-
sible for this illustration, which has been made by some
adapter, who has had the temerity to do for the heroic tra-
gedy in question what Gibber did for ' Richard,' and Tate
for old 'King Lear.' The lines however were delicious
when Wilkinson played Queen Dolalolla in the tragedy-
style of Peg Woffington.
The illustration is insulting ; and therefore is it anony-
mous. The poets generally have, as I have shown, been
complimentary to the tailors. Few of the sons of song have
reviled the true " makers of men." When they have done
so, they have not dared to expose themselves to the sarto-
rian wrath by boldly avowing their name. None ever did
so on so extensive a scale as the author of the three-act
piece, called ' The Tailors : a Tragedy for Warm Weather ;'
and no author has remained so utterly uncomeatable by the
public curiosity. What is the mystery about Junius, touch-
ing whom there are a thousand guesses, compared with the
greater impenetrability of this secret author, about whom
no man ever heard a conjecture.?
It is now nearly ninety years ago since a manuscript
was sent from Dodsley's shop to Foote, the manager of
the " Little Haymarket." The manuscript was that of the
Warm Weather Tragedy, and Foote was requested to return
the copy if it were not approved of. The great comedian
knew better. The burlesque play of the anonymous author
was acted with a strong cast. Foote himself was the
Francesco ; Shuter played Abrahamides, the Flint ; Western
THE TAILOBS MEASTJEED BY THE POETS. 257
did justice to Jackides ; old Bannister was ponderous as
Campbello ; and gay Jack Palmer was just the man to enact
that Lothario of stage-tailors, the seductive Isaacos. Mrs.
Jeffries represented the false wife Dorothea, and Mrs.
Gardner the faithful maid Titillinda. It was said by the
critics of the period, that the radical fault of this burlesque
play was, that " in burlesque, the character's ought to be
persons of consequence, instead of which they are here
tailors ;" but the truth is, that the fault lies in the fact, that
the tailors talk as correctly as persons of consequence, and
are not half so bombastic as Nat Lee's kings and queens.
The profession exhibited much unnecessary susceptibility in
being offended at this piece. Its tendency, if it have any
at all, is rather to elevate than depress the public apprecia-
tion for the tailor, whether in his aspect of master or of
" Flint" out upon strike. The entire action is devoted to
the history of a strike for wages, with a supplemental love-
plot annexed. The head master-tailor is a highly respectable
individual, who has our sympathy because he is betrayed by
his wife ; and the chief Flint wins admiration, because he
gets hanged and is cheated out of his mistress. The strike
ends unfavourably for those who make it ; but though the
author sets out with the determination to render all his
dramatis persons ridiculous, he cannot do it. He is like
the prophet who was compelled to vaticinate against his in-
clinations ; and the deity of dramatic poetry and tailors com-
pels him to reverence where he would fain have committed
desecration. The very first sentence in this play contains
an allusion to Elliott's brigade, that famous band of warriors
made up almost entirely of tailors. I must refer my readers
to the piece itself, if they be curious to see how the subject
is treated in evident contrariety to the author's own design ;
he makes all the characters utter commonplace common
sense, when his intention was to make them lose themselves
upon stilts in a sea of tropes, tirades, and thunderings
against tyranny.
258 HABITS AND MEN
The antiquarian will not fail to notice that Bedfordbury
is a locality set down in this piece as a place where tailors'
men did congregate some century ago. They still much do
congregate on the same spot. A century before the period
of the piece, Frank Kynaston, the poet, resided in a house
adjacent to the " Bury," and the memory thereof is still kept
up in the namfi Kynaston-alley, which is within that same
"Bury" of classical associations. Thus do tailoring and
the belles lettres continue to be in close connection ; and
where Kynaston' s muse kept itself warm, the sacred goose
of the Schneider still glows with fervid heat. The opera-
tives of the " Bury," moreover, look as much like poets as
tailors, so abstract are they of air, so romantically heed-
less of personal appearance, and so unromantically and
really "half-starved." Not of them can be said what Titil-
linda says of Abrahamides
" Whose form might claim attention eren from queens."
Finally : want of space, and not of material, brings that
troublesome adverb upon me. If it be objected, that the
tailors of the poets do sometimes waver in critical situations,
and condescend to tremble in presence of emergency, I
have to answer, that such facts prove their heroism, as being
akin to that of the Conqueror and Cceur de Lion. "When
the former was being crowned at York, -he heard such an
uproar in the streets, caused by the massacre of the inhabi-
tants by the amiable Normans, that he sat upon his throne
shaking with affright ; " vehementer tremens," says Orderic
Vitalis, and he is very good authority. As for that tin-
selled bully, Richard, nobody doubts his single virtue
courage; but bold as he was, we all know that when in
Sicily, he discreetly ran away from a bumpkin who threat-
ened to cudgel him for attempting a matter of petty larceny.
Francis Feeble and his brethren may, therefore, not be
ashamed if they have foibles in common with William of
Normandy and Richard of Bordeaux.
THE TAILOES HEASTTBED BY THE POETS. 259
Dr. O. Wendell Holmes has cleverly conjectured what a
tailor, poetically given, might say of the beauties that cluster
about the closing day ; and he has thus described
BY A TAILOB.
" Day hath put on his jacket, and around
His burning bosom button'd it with stars.
Here will I lay me on the velvet grass,
That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs,
And hold communion with the things about me.
Ah me ! how lovely is the golden braid
That binds the skirt of night's descending robe !
The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads,
Do make a music like to rustling satin,
As the light breezes smooth their downy nap.
" Ha ! what is this that rises to my touch,
So like a cushion ? Can it be a cabbage ?
It is ; it is that deeply-injured flower
Which boys do flout us with ; but yet I love thee,
Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout.
Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright
As these, thy puny brethren ; and thy breath
Sweeten' d the fragrance of her spicy air ;
But now, thou seemest like a bankrupt beau
Stripp'd of his gaudy hues and essences,
And growing portly in his sober garments.
" Is that a swan that rides upon the water ?
Oh no ! it is that other gentle bird,
Which is the patron of our noble calling.
I well remember, in my early years,
When these young hands first closed upon a goose ;
I have a scar upon my thimble-finger,
Which chronicles the hour of young ambition.
My father was a tailor, and his father,
And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors ;
They had an ancient goose, it was an heirloom
From some remoter tailor of our race.
It happen' d I did see it on a time
260 HABITS AND MEN.
When none was near, and I did deal with it,
And it did burn me, oh, most fearfully !
" It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs,
And leap elastic from the level counter,
Leaving the petty grievances of earth,
The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears,
And all the needles that do wound the spirit,
For such an hour of soothing silence.
Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress,
Lays bare her shady bosom ; I can feel
With all around me ; I can hail the flowers
That sprig earth's mantle ; and yon quiet bird,
That rides the stream, is to me as a brother.
The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets,
Where Nature stows away her loveliness.
But this unnatural posture of the legs
Cramps my extended calves, and I must go
Where I can coil them in then" wonted fashion."
To conclude : the poets have been quite as guilty of petty
larceny as ever was poor tailor. Pope stole from Pascal,
and Addisonfrom Pope ; and Churchill's line in his Eosciad,
to the effect that
" Common sense stood trembling at the door,"
is a plagiarism from George Alexander Stevens' s ' Distress
upon Distress ; or Tragedy in True Taste.' This is more
of "cabbage," and less of coincidence, tnan the line in one
of the 'Roxburgh Ballads' anent tailors, wherein we find
an allusion in the phrase " turn up my ten toes," which is,
as nearly as possible, a translation of part of the ladies'
threat in the ' Lysistra' of Aristophanes. Altogether a
volume might be filled with examples to prove that poetry
and tailoring have one spirit in common.
But it is time to turn from poetry to prose, and come
more nearly to our subject " touching tailors." We will
take individually those whose great deeds have shed glory
on the craft. First on the roll of fame is noble Hawkwood.
SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD,
THE HEEOIC TAILOE,
" The dew of grace bless our new knight today."
BBATTMONT AND FMITCHEB : Knight of Malta.
ON the 10th day of August, 1668, Mr. Samuel Pepys passed
a portion of his morning at Goring House, the mansion of
Lord Arlington, a nobleman who conversed with him ami-
cably, and introduced him to other lords, with whom the
gallant secretary prattled after his fashion, to say nothing
of the flattery and compliments paid him by Lord Orrery.
In the afternoon we find him at Cooper's, the miniature
painter's, who was painting the portrait of that excellent
lady Mrs. Pepys. The portrait was excellent in every way,
save that it was not like Mr. Pepys' s wife, and that she
wore a blue garment, which he could not bear. However,
the courteous husband paid 38. 3*. 4d. for the picture,
crystal, and case, that he might, as he prudently says, be
out of the painter's debt ; and thereupon he adds : " Home
to supper, and my wife to read a ridiculous book I bought
today of the History of the Taylors' Company."
The title of the book which Mrs. Pepys read aloud to her
husband, and which is a book that a lady might well blush
to read either aloud or to herself, runs as follows : ' The
Honour of the Merchant Taylors ; wherein is set forth, the
noble arts, valiant deeds, and heroic performances of Mer-
chant Taylors in former ages ; their honourable loves and
knightly adventures, their combating of foreign enemies,
and glorious successes in honour of the English nation ;
together with their pious acts and large benevolences, their
262 HABITS AND MEN.
building of publick structures, especially that of Blackwell
Hall, to be a market-place for the selling of woollen cloaths.
Written by William Winstanley. London, 1668, 8vo. With
the head of Sir Ralph Blackwell, with a gold chain, arms of
London on the right, and of the Merchant Taylors on the
left.'
Just twenty years later another volume was printed with
nearly a similar title. The alleged object was to give a
biography of the renowned tailor and soldier, Sir John
Hawkwood ; and for this reason we will give the later work
priority of notice. There will be amusement, if not instruc-
tion, in remarking how exquisitely our ancestors wrote
biographical works in the days of dark King James.
This black-letter biography describes Hawkwood as a
modest tailor lad who fell honestly in love with his mas-
ter's daughter, Dorinda. But Dorinda had a soul above
buttons, and having given up her heart unasked to Impo-
lite, 'a young, foolish heir, she cut the thread of Hawk-
wood's desire with the shears of cruelty, and tore away
from his protestations in a heat that even the paternal
goose had never known.
Hawkwood, for a gallant man, committed an ungallant
action ; he discovered the lover of Dorinda by reading the
correspondence locked up in the lady's cabinet, and he
avenged himself by writing a note in the lady's name which
brought poor Impolite to a meeting, whereat he was seized
and led to a madhouse as incurably insane through the
sweet passion of love.
The victim was subjected to a treatment which would un-
doubtedly have rendered a sane man mad, but he prattled so
respectfully of medicines to the doctor, that the latter dis-
missed him as " cured." In the meantime Dorinda refused
to ratify her bond with a discharged lunatic ; and the uncle of
Impolite, a sort of melodramatic Gaspero, hired two ruffians,
Bragwell and Daniel, to mutilate Hawkwood, as a punish-
SIB JOHN HAWKWOOD. 263
ment for his having been the cause of the breaking off of
the match.
These gentlemen fell upon the bold young tailor as, " ever
frolic and gay," he was returning from Green-Goose Fair,
held at Bow, on St. "Wilielmus's day, " so much honoured
by the tailors as their patron." But the ruffians found a
Tartar, and Hawkwood incontinently slew both. The gal-
lant apprentice, having slept upon the matter, resolved to
go abroad, in order to avoid unpleasant inquiries ; and
having composed a score of execrable verses to his mis-
tress, wherein he committed worse murder upon the Muses
than before upon the ruffians, and having thrust the same
under the bedroom-door of the cruel Dorinda, he went his
solitary way with a heavy heart and a small bundle under
his arm.
Winstanley, the author of this delectable bit of histo-
rical romance, exhibits a merry trait of originality by sud-
denly announcing that the murdered ruffians were, after
all, like our friend Mr. John Robinson in the song, " not
dead at all ;" and delicately does he narrate how those re-
spectable individuals, by coming to themselves, found that
they were in the very worst possible society. Forthwith
they slew a sheep, and having cut out the heart thereof,
they exhibited the same to Graspero, as the heart of the
valiant tailor, and received from their employer not only
their wages of sin, but an invitation to stay and dine and
spend the night at his house.
The ruffians having been soon after got out of the way,
Gaspero took to seeing ghosts and other unpleasant things,
by way of showing his remorse for having been accessory
to the murder of a tailor. But in the meantime his sup-
posed victim was mirthfully passing from inn to inn ; and
as those establishments were ever furnished with a haunted
room, it was his humour to sleep in the same, and lay the
ghosts and other spirits which he found there.
264 .HABITS AND MEN.
Soon, weary of this life ashore, Hawkwood took to the
sea, accompanied by Lovewell, another young tailor, and
another victim of the gentle vision, who had unsuccessfully
endeavoured to sun himself in a Lamira's eyes. At the
conclusion of the voyage, the adventurous youths landed
in Ireland, and became 'squires of dames, taking up their
quarrels, fighting in their behalf against any odds, and
performing wonderful actions, such as could only have been
imagined by the most unscrupulous of liars. When Pelion
has been mounted upon Ossa, and the heap of mendacity is
reared to a sufficiently stupendous height, the author grows
tired of romantic fibbing, and descends to the lie common-
place. He brings his heroes to England, and with them
two pages, who had joined their slim selves to the heroic
tailor-knights' fortunes ; and who of course turn out, as is
perfectly natural, to be Dorinda and Lamira in disguise.
Then, at the end of the first act of the drama, there is a
double wedding, a dance of characters, and an elaborate
detail of after circumstances which I will not pause to
relate.
Such was the treatment which Hawkwood and history re-
ceived at the hands of an anonymous author in the year 1687.
The volume in question, of which there are two copies in the
British Museum, is, in fact, a coarsely printed black-letter
tract ; the paper such as even a modern grocer would turn
up his nose at ; and the woodcuts violating every propriety,
regardless at once of perspective and humanity.
The volume however which Mrs. Pepys read to her hus-
band is worse in every respect. There is a copy in the
Guildhall Library ; and I have to thank the most courteous
of librarians, Mr. Allchin, for the opportunity I have enjoyed
of perusing it. Perhaps the second edition, of which I have
spoken above, was prepared expressly for the benefit of the
youthful mind. The first is certainly bad enough to pollute
the minds of all who read or listened to the reader. I will
SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD. 265
only add, that the illustrating artist has been so hard put to
it, that he frequently makes one design represent two dif-
ferent events, the scenes of which are wide apart. He might
have alleged one thing in favour of his so doing ; namely, that
the illustration in question quite as truthfully represented
one scene with the actors therein, as it did the other. Of
this there can be no doubt; and I may further add, in behalf of
the pictorial illustrations, that they assuredly did not offend
against the second commandment, for there is nothing in
them that is a likeness of anything in heaven above, or in
the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth ; and if
it be an old joke to say so, it is, at all events, better than
any of the jokes to be found in the volume which Mrs. Pepys
read with complacency to that wicked little man, her re-
doubtable husband.
The true story of John Hawkwood needs no romance to
lend it brightness, or season it with wonders. It has mar-
vels enough of its own ; and these, redolent of romance, are,
in fact, sober and incontrovertible truth.
If Essex has been famous for calves, it has also had its
share of heroes ; heroes (if one may say so) in evil as in
good ; with its very villages producing them, and that in the
humblest localities. If Frinton rejoices because of Corne-
lius and Tilbury, the poison swallowers, Sible Hedingham
is glad because of John Hawkwood, the tailor and soldier.
In the village last-named, and in the reign of Edward the
Second, there lived a tanner called Gilbert Hawkwood. His
vocation not being a profitable one, he resolved that it should
not be followed by his son. The latter, instead of tanning
hides of brutes, was taught the mystery of covering those of
men. In simple, honest English, he was apprenticed to a
tailor ; and did not at all like it.
Cornhill was at that time the stage whereon tailors most
did congregate ; and as troops were constantly passing that
way, to and from the vicinity of the tower, John Hawkwood,
266 HABITS AND MEN.
wherever he met with them, sighed as he contrasted their
jolly swash-buckler sort of air with his own melancholy
look, gait, and calling. The King, Edward the Third, was
then waging a most unjust war with France, and needed
soldiers to champion his bad cause. Hawkwood recked little
of the merits of the quarrel, but when a roving party of he-
roes pressed him to join, he met them more than half-way ;
and never was he more jubilant than when he changed his
'prentice muffin-cap for a peaked morrion, his dark rags for
a gay suit, and a sword and a shield were the implements of
his work, instead of a needle and thimble.
Now young Hawkwood was not a lad to be satisfied with
being simply a " man-at-arms." Michel, in the French play,
when he recounts how he was pressed into the service, says,
"Mon General me nomma soldat; mais ma nomination
n'a pas eu de suite." The boy from Sible Hedingham was
made of other stuff than that which could make him be con-
tent with singing, like the pleasant gentleman in the ' Dame
Blanche,' "Ah! quel plaisir d'etre soldat!" He was re-
solved to lead as well as serve ; and he served well, to give
him the better chance of leading. It is the only policy that
permanently succeeds.
Officers were not dainty in those days, either of speech or
anything else. Difficult as they were to satisfy, Hawkwood
accomplished it. The man who laid on his blows with such
good heart, and thwacked the foe so lustily and to excellent
purpose, albeit in anything but an excellent cause, was a man
whose sword was sure to carve out fortune for him. Accord-
ingly, he soon passed from poor private to plumed captain.
His purse was not much the better filled because of his
brighter corslet and his new feathers ; and as the foe he had
to encounter was as badly furnished as himself, he got abun-
dance of honour, but few pistoles. The King beheld him
mowing down adversaries, as though he had been expressly
engaged by Death to gather in his harvest. On the battle-
SIB JOHN HAWK.WOOD. 267
field, the royal Edward dubbed the tailor knight. " Thou
art the bravest knight," said he, "in all the army." " TJmph! "
murmured the cavalier of the needle, "and the poorest too!"
But he had what to a brave man was better than bezants,
dearer than dollars, and above marks and moidores, he had
praise from the Black Prince. That chivalric personage was
perfectly ecstatic at witnessing the deeds which Hawkwood
enacted on the bloody, but glorious, day at Poitiers. The
praise enriched him as though it had been pistoles. What
baron, standing in need of a gentleman cut-throat, would he-
sitate to engage, at any cost (it was only promising and
breaking a pledge), a man with a sharp sword and a stout
arm, who had a verbal character from such a master as he
whose sword is now rusting in peace above the time-honoured
tomb at Canterbury?
Hawkwood needed some such testimony. The Peace of
Bretigny had been ratified in 1360 ; and they who before
had not had leisure to be ill, were all becoming seriously in-
disposed for want of action. As employment did not come,
they made it for themselves. If kings could be stupendous
scamps, why not commoner men ? They waited long enough,
as they thought, for hire for their swords, till at last they
put the latter to private use. A band was formed, and called
" Les Tards Venus," the " Come-at-Lasts," as if apolo-
getically and modestly expressive of their patience. Some
people would have been the better pleased had the self-styled
tardy gentlemen been content to "wait a little longer."
The more learned members of the society, perhaps the chap-
lains, called the band the " Magna Comitiva," or " Great
Band." A greater band of brigands certainly never existed,
the chaplains included !
When it is thus said of those worthy gentlemen, of course
the expression is based upon the principles, and measured
by the standard, of these our own later and degenerate days.
Hawkwood and his truculent friends thought they had a
N 2
268 HABITS AND MEN.
vested right to remain in undisturbed possession of every
castle, their ownership of which was founded on their having
murdered the last proprietor at his own hearth. "We have
foolish ideas on such matters ; and we must only judge of
these perfect gentlemen, so at least historians tell us, not
by the criterion of that Christianity which they professed,
but by the customs which they observed. As Mr. Justice
Erie remarked the other day, we shall soon have thieves
pleading the custom of Hounslow Heath .
Hawkwoodwas one of the most terrible of those men who
either made war on their own account, or let out their swords
and sinews in the service of any party who promised to pay
them, and guaranteed the plunder. He became awfully re-
nowned under the not very menacing title of " John of the
Needle." But his needle was four feet long ; and if to " sew
up" a person means to slay him, the phrase probably had its
origin from the times and the actions of this most ruthless
of tailors. He swept, with his English followers, the south
of Prance ; where the sound of his bugle and the flutter of
his pennon always heralded devastation or death. England
and France were at peace at that time, and the King of
France complained to his brother of England. The gracious
Edward, who thought as little of lying as the Czar Nicholas,
gave his "parole de gentilhomme" that he was highly dis-
gusted ; but privately he signalled the freebooter with a " Well
done, Hawkwood !"
" John of the Needle" did not fail to prick his way accord-
ing to his fancy and profit after this hint. He was captain
of the most famous and most successful "horde" that ever
sang, "Stand and deliver!" Not that he acted in rough
highwayman fashion, not he ! Meek tailor as he Tiad been,
he had become too much of a gentleman and soldier for
that. He robbed and murdered only in accordance with the
rules of chivalry ; and he would have hung a common thief
who had dared to hint that he was a brother by profession.
SIE JOHN HAWKWOOD. 269
His black-mail produced him tons of " red gold," and his
forays now extended to the banks of the Po. There was
something of the spirit of Merry Sherwood in him, for he
had a sort of jolly delight in attacking the palace and strip-
ping the person of a bishop. This kind of gentle amuse-
ment however was not at all to the taste of the Bishop of
bishops at Rome ; and the appeal made by the Vatican to
the King of England had better success than that which had
been made by the King of France.
Hawkwood submitted both to his own sovereign and to
the Church. From the latter he purchased peace, making
large gifts, which were thought nothing the worse of that
they were the product of robbery. John thereupon took to
regular service : he first entered that of the Pisans, in 1364,
and those roystering individuals soon furnished him with as
much fighting as he could reasonably have stomach for:
when they were not inclined to fight, he hired out his sword
and person to powers willing to fight against them. Some-
times a single baron, having a quarrel with another baron,
and wishing to get possession of his goods, engaged Hawk-
wood to transact the little business for him. He of the
needle went at it with a will; and when he had secured the
castle and property of the fallen noble, he generally defied
the other to take them from him, with a " Come, if you dare ! "
This system was never objected to : an arrangement a
I 'amiable was entered into, and Hawkwood was accounted
as honest a man as before. In twenty-three years' service
in Italy he thus fought on any and every side. It was only
when he got satiated with variety that he settled down to
constancy, and swore stable allegiance to the Florentines.
One incident of the style of warfare, and his skill in carry-
ing it on, will suffice to show of what metal our Essex needle
was fashioned,
One of the most creditable pieces of work ever accom-
plished by Sir John, was in the course of the war which
270
HABITS AND MEN
Florence carried on against Milan in 1391. No one of the
Condottiere captains hired to lead mercenaries to battle
ever achieved such glory as our old Essex tailor on this oc-
casion, and Florence deemed the cause safe that was en-
trusted to his management. In the present case, Milan
was to be assailed on two opposite sides. The noble Count
d'Armagnac attacked it from the west, and got thoroughly
beaten ere Hawkwood had sufficiently advanced to make his
onslaught by the east. The latter with his army was about
five leagues from the city when he heard that his colleague
had been routed : he became thoughtful, but not dismayed.
The country in which he found himself was like one of the
pattern-books once so. well-known to him. It was all patches
of land, and between those patches intersections of streams.
Indeed, the country had nothing of the regularity of a
tailor's pattern-book, for the patches were of various shapes,
and the intersecting streams running in all directions : the
country between the Alps and the Po has ever been a doubt-
ful and spongy sort of laud whereon to struggle for the
award of victory.
Hawkwood was retreating, but the Adige, the Mincio,
and the Oglio were yet to be crossed when the Governor
of Milan, Giacopo del Verme, came upon him with his con-
quering legions. He sat mute and observant : the hazard
was extreme. He could not cross the rivers without first
beating a vastly superior enemy : to attempt it after a de-
feat would have been utter destruction. He therefore did
nothing but bide his time ; and when the enemy had become
weary of looking on at him, and had learned to despise him,
he suddenly fell upon them with a power against which
there was so little preparation that, having thrashed his foe
into a condition that made immediate pursuit impossible, he
struck his tents and crossed the Oglio, under no worse fire
than the sarcasms of his sore and helpless antagonists.
He went on, picking his way, until he reached a plain
SIB JOHN HAWKWOOD. 271
which was surrounded by the dykes of the Po, the Mincio,
and the Adige, and lying below the level of those rivers.
The dykes of the last river had been pre-occupied and forti-
fied by the foe ; the stream of the river too was broad and
rapid, and when Hawkwood had surmounted all other ob-
stacles he was terribly puzzled as to how he was to over-
come this. The puzzle was not made easier to him when,
from the little eminence on which he and his little army were
stationed, like rats upon a brick in a flooded sewer, he be-
held the entire plain turning into a lake. The progress of
the change worked like a dissolving view at the Polytechnic ;
and, when the ex-tailor felt the water percolating through
the lower chinks of his leg-armour, he was thoroughly sa-
tisfied, or rather dissatisfied, that his opponent was playing
him a sorry joke. "Nay," cried he, on second thoughts,
" it is not so ; the men shall not catch so much as a cold ! "
The dykes had been cut, and he forthwith began himself
to cut out a plan of triumph. He would neither be starved,
nor beaten, nor moistened into submission. So he averred ;
and he had just declared as much when a messenger from
the hostile leader, who occupied the only strip of land on
which a man could walk dry-shod, sent by that road and
messenger a present, which was delivered into Hawkwood' s
own hands: it was a fox shut up in a cage! "Umph!"
lowed the Essex calf, " it may be that I am a bit of a fox,
and Reynard may know a trail that will take him safe home,
and may spoil the sport of his pursuers by a ' stole away.'"
He at all events went boldly in the darkness of that same
night to look for one. He and his men plunged into the
water, and waded through it in a direction parallel to the
dykes of the Adige. Through mud and water up to the
horse-girths, and across trenches, which engulfed the
heavier men, who could not clear them, they all waded on ;
and, when the second night had nearly been spent, and
numbers had been lost by cold, fatigue, and hunger, the
272 HABITS AND MEN.
survivors the almost despairing infantry clinging on to
the tails of the horses which floundered before them, at
length emerged again on to dry ground, upon the Paduan
frontier.
The enemy did 
