Part 16 (2/2)

X

THE WILLIAM AND MARY EMBROIDERIES

Queen Mary ”a born needlewoman”--The Hampton Court Embroideries--Revival of pet.i.t point--Jacobean hangings.

One of the most convincing facts in arguments that there _is_ a revival in the gentle art of needlecraft is that it has become the fas.h.i.+on to drape our windows, cover our furniture, and panel our walls with printed copies of the Old Jacobean needlework. Many people, knowing nothing whatever about the history of needlework, wonder where the designs for the printed linens which line the windows of Messrs. Liberty, Goodall and Burnett's colossal frontages in Regent Street have been found. In time amazement gives way to admiration for these quaint blues and greens, roses and pale yellows, worked in great scrolls with exotic flowers and still more exotic birds, and the funny little hillocks with delightful little paG.o.da-like cottages nestling amongst them, and many and various little animals which seem to keep perpetual holiday under the everlasting blooms. The designs are taken bodily from the historical hangings of the later seventeenth century. After the abdication and flight of James II. to St. Germains, his daughter Mary came over with her Dutch husband, William the Stadtholder--or, rather, William came over and brought his wife, the daughter of the late king, for William had no intention of a.s.suming the style and life of Prince Consort, but came well to the front, and kept there. It was not ”VICTORIA _and Albert_” in those days, but WILLIAM and MARY, who ruled England, and ruled it well. William III. must have been a man of strong personality, and he managed to quell all the rebellions of his reign, and during the time he ruled over us the country settled down to a peaceful state that has remained to the present time.

Queen Mary had quite sufficient employment in settling herself and her household, and generally managing the domestic matters pertaining to the new kingdom she had come into. She apparently had a very free hand in rebuilding Hampton Court, which she particularly made her home, absolutely pulling the interior down, and rebuilding and redecorating it according to her own taste, which was not that of the Stuart persuasion with its gorgeous magnificence, but the more homely and solid Dutch.

Very little of the original Hampton Court _interior_, built and furnished by Cardinal Wolsey, exists. Just here and there we find delightfully dark little dens with the original linen-fold panellings and ceilings that are a ravishment to look upon; but mostly the rooms are high, plain-panelled, and with the quaint ingle-nook fireplaces, with shelves above, upon which Mary placed her lovely ”blue and white”

porcelain which had been brought to her by the Dutch merchants who at that time were the great traders of the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENLARGEMENT OF ”JACOBEAN” SPRAY.

(_S.K.M. Collection._)]

Queen Mary ought to be regarded as the patron saint of English needlewomen. She was happiest when employed furnis.h.i.+ng every bed-covering, every chair and stool, and supplying the hangings for her favourite home. It is said that she spent her days over her embroidery frame, knowing full well that affairs of State were in the capable hands of her husband.

There are few relics left of her handiwork outside Hampton Court. She left no dainty little book-covers, bags, or boxes, as her ideas were fixed on larger pieces of embroidery. Had she lived in the Berlin-wool picture days, she would have filled every nook and cranny with these atrocities, as many humbler devotees to the needle have done to our own knowledge. Needlework can become a _pa.s.sion_, and certainly Queen Mary must have possessed it.

After the complete collapse of the Stuart stump pictures, when every vestige of loyalty seems to have been swept away with the hated James II., the ancient Pet.i.t Point pictures came back into fas.h.i.+on. Very clever work was put into them, but, alas! their scope was purely to depict religious scenes of the rigorous kind. No dainty fairy-like little people now ruled in pictured story, but actual representations of Bible history.

The ill.u.s.tration of ”The Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch by St. Philip”

is a fair sample of the needlework picture of this time. The picture is a strange mixture of the early Stuart Pet.i.t Point, the Jacobean wall-hanging, and the newly revived religious spirit. The duck-pond, the swans and the water-plants might have been copied bodily from James I.'s time. The paroquet and the flying bird, and the immense leaves and blossoms, are direct from the wall-hangings, while the figures only too surely foretell the coming dark days of needlecraft, when a Scripture picture and a coa.r.s.ely worked sampler were part of every girl's liberal education. The work in this picture is extremely good, and it is excruciatingly funny without intending to be so. The pretty little equipage with its diminutive ponies surely was never intended to carry either St. Philip or the Eunuch! The open book, with Hebraic inscription, is very delightful. It brings to mind the Tables of the Law rather than the light reading that the charming little Cinderella coach should carry.

These pictures are not common, and we scarcely know whether to be thankful for them or not. Unlike the early pet.i.t point, they were worked in _worsteds_, whereas the early pictures were wrought in silk. The moth has a natural affinity for wool, as we all know, and his tribe has cleared off many hundreds of examples. Why so many of the old Jacobean hangings remain is that they were worked for _use_, and not ornament, and even after they ceased to be fas.h.i.+onable ornaments for sitting and bed rooms, they were either relegated to the servants' quarters, or given to dependants, who used them constantly, shaking and keeping them in repair, as the eighteenth-century housewives liked to keep their homes swept and garnished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEEDLEWORK PICTURE OF QUEEN ANNE PERIOD.

(_S.K.M. Collection._)]

It is strange to see these old Jacobean hangings (perhaps the drapery of the now tabooed four-post bedstead), which might some thirty years ago have been carried off for the asking, sell at Christie's for 800, as happened in the dispersal of the Ma.s.sey-Mainwaring sale last year. Even a panel of no use except to frame as a picture, say 4 feet by 3 feet, will fetch 30 and a full-sized bed-cover can only be bought for over 100. The reason is not far to seek. The colouring and the drawing of this fine old Crewel-work are exquisite (even though the design savours of the grotesque), and Time has dealt very leniently with the dyes. I endeavoured to match some of these old worsteds a little time ago, and though able to find the colours, could not get the tone. After much tribulation I was advised to hang the skeins of worsted on the trees in the garden and _forget all about them_, and certainly wind and weather have softened the somewhat garish worsteds to the soft, _fade_ colours of the old work.

The same cla.s.s of embroidery was executed during the reign of Queen Anne, though she herself did little of it. Costly silks and brocades and Venetian laces were the dress of the day, and no little dainty accessories appear to have been made.

XI

PICTORIAL NEEDLEWORK OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FINE ”PAINTED FACE” SILK-EMBROIDERED PICTURE.

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