Volume Iii Part 35 (2/2)
Sandricourt now saw with rapture the numerous s.h.i.+elds of the a.s.sailants placed on the sides of his portals, and corresponding with those of the challengers which hung above them. Ancient lords were elected judges of the feats of the knights, accompanied by the ladies, for whose honour only the combatants declared they engaged.
The herald of Orleans tells the history in no very intelligible verse; but the burthen of his stanza is still
_Du pas d'armes du chasteau Sandricourt._
He sings, or says,
Oncques, depuis le tempts du roi Artus, Ne furent tant les armes exaulcees-- Maint chevaliers et preux entreprenans-- Princes plusieurs ont terres deplacees Pour y venir donner coups et poussees Qui out ete la tenus si de court Que par force n'ont prises et pa.s.sees Les barriers, entrees, et pa.s.sees Du pas des armes du chasteau Sandricourt.
Doubtless there many a Roland met with his Oliver, and could not pa.s.s the barriers. Cased as they were in steel, _de pied en cap_, we presume that they could not materially injure themselves; yet, when on foot, the ancient judges discovered such symptoms of peril, that on the following day they advised our knights to satisfy themselves by fighting on horseback. Against this prudential counsel for some time they protested, as an inferior sort of glory. However, on the next day, the horse combat was appointed in the _carrefour_, by the pine-tree. On the following day they tried their lances in the meadow of the Thorn; but, though on horseback, the judges deemed their attacks were so fierce that this a.s.sault was likewise not without peril; for some horses were killed, and some knights were thrown, and lay bruised by their own mail; but the barbed horses, wearing only _des chamfreins_, head-pieces magnificently caparisoned, found no protection in their ornaments. The last days were pa.s.sed in combats of two to two, or in a single encounter, a-foot, in the _foret devoyable_. These jousts pa.s.sed without any accident, and the prizes were awarded in a manner equally gratifying to the claimants. The last day of the festival was concluded with a most sumptuous banquet.
Two n.o.ble knights had undertaken the humble office of _maitres-d'hotel_; and while the knights were parading in the _foret devoyable_ seeking adventures, a hundred servants were seen at all points, carrying white and red hypocras, and juleps, and _sirop de violars_, sweetmeats, and other spiceries, to comfort these wanderers, who, on returning to the _chasteau_, found a grand and plenteous banquet. The tables were crowded in the court apartment, where some held one hundred and twelve gentlemen, not including the _dames_ and the _demoiselles_. In the halls, and outside of the _chasteau_, were other tables. At that festival more than two thousand persons were magnificently entertained free of every expense; their attendants, their armourers, their _pluma.s.siers_, and others, were also present. _La Dame de Sandricourt_, ”fut moult aise d'avoir donne dans son chasteau si belle, si magnifique, et gorgia.s.se fete.” Historians are apt to describe their personages as they appear, not as they are: if the lady of the Sieur Sandricourt really was ”moult aise” during these gorgeous days, one cannot but sympathise with the lady, when her loyal knight and spouse confessed to her, after the departure of the mob of two thousand visitors, neighbours, soldiers, and courtiers,--the knights challengers, and the knights a.s.sailants, and the fine scenes at the pine-tree; the barrier in the meadow of the Thorn; and the horse-combat at the _carrefour_; and the jousts in the _foret devoyable_; the carousals in the castle halls; the jollity of the banquet tables; the morescoes danced till they were reminded ”how the waning night grew old!”--in a word, when the costly dream had vanished,--that he was a ruined man for ever, by immortalising his name in one grand chivalric festival! The Sieur de Sandricourt, like a great torch, had consumed himself in his own brightness; and the very land on which the famous _Pas de Sandricourt_ was held--had pa.s.sed away with it! Thus one man sinks generations by that wastefulness, which a political economist would a.s.sure us was committing no injury to society!
The moral evil goes for nothing in financial statements.
Similar instances of ruinous luxury we may find in the prodigal costliness of dress through the reigns of Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the First. Not only in their ma.s.sy grandeur they outweighed us, but the acc.u.mulation and variety of their wardrobe displayed such a gaiety of fancy in their colours and their ornaments, that the drawing-room in those days must have blazed at their presence, and changed colours as the crowd moved. But if we may trust to royal proclamations, the ruin was general among some cla.s.ses. Elizabeth issued more than one proclamation against ”the excess of apparel!” and among other evils which the government imagined this pa.s.sion for dress occasioned, it notices ”the wasting and undoing of a great number of young gentlemen, otherwise serviceable; and that others, seeking by show of apparel to be esteemed as gentlemen, and allured by the vain show of these things, not only consume their goods and lands, but also run into such debts and s.h.i.+fts, as they cannot live out of danger of laws without attempting of unlawful acts.” The queen bids her own household ”to look unto it for good example to the realm; and all n.o.blemen, archbishops and bishops, all mayors, justices of peace, &c., should see them executed in their private households.” The greatest difficulty which occurred to regulate the wear of apparel was ascertaining the incomes of persons, or in the words of the proclamation, ”finding that it is very hard for any man's state of living and value to be truly understood by other persons.” They were to be regulated as they appear ”sessed in the subsidy books.” But if persons chose to be more magnificent in their dress, they were allowed to justify their means: in that case, if allowed, her majesty would not be the loser; for they were to be rated in the subsidy books according to such values as they themselves offered as a qualification for the splendour of their dress!
In my researches among ma.n.u.script letters of the times, I have had frequent occasion to discover how persons of considerable rank appear to have carried their acres on their backs, and with their ruinous and fantastical luxuries sadly pinched their hospitality. It was this which so frequently cast them into the nets of the ”goldsmiths,” and other trading usurers. At the coronation of James the First, I find a simple knight whose cloak cost him five hundred pounds; but this was not uncommon.[260] At the marriage of Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First, ”Lady Wotton had a gown of which the embroidery cost fifty pounds a yard. The Lady Arabella made four gowns, one of which cost 1500_l._ The Lord Montacute (Montague) bestowed 1500_l._ in apparel for his two daughters. One lady, under the rank of baroness, was furnished with jewels exceeding one hundred thousand pounds; ”and the Lady Arabella goes beyond her,” says the letter-writer. ”All this extreme costs and riches makes us all poor,” as he imagined![261] I have been amused in observing grave writers of state-dispatches jocular on any mischance or mortification to which persons are liable whose happiness entirely depends on their dress. Sir Dudley Carleton, our minister at Venice, communicates, as an article worth transmitting, the great disappointment incurred by Sir Thomas Glover, ”who was just come hither, and had appeared one day like a comet, all in crimson velvet and beaten gold, but had all his expectations marred on a sudden by the news of Prince Henry's death.” A similar mischance, from a different cause, was the lot of Lord Hay, who made great preparations for his emba.s.sy to France, which, however, were chiefly confined to his dress. He was to remain there twenty days; and the letter-writer maliciously observes, that ”He goes with twenty special suits of apparel for so many days' abode, besides his travelling robes; but news is very lately come that the French have lately altered their fas.h.i.+on, whereby he must needs be out of countenance, if he be not set out after the last edition!” To find himself out of fas.h.i.+on, with twenty suits for twenty days, was a mischance his lords.h.i.+p had no right to count on!
”The gla.s.s of fas.h.i.+on” was unquestionably held up by two very eminent characters, Rawleigh and Buckingham; and the authentic facts recorded of their dress will sufficiently account for the frequent ”Proclamations”
to control that servile herd of imitators--the smaller gentry!
There is a remarkable picture of Sir Walter, which will at least serve to convey an idea of the gaiety and splendour of his dress. It is a white satin pinked vest, close sleeved to the wrist; over the body a brown doublet, finely flowered and embroidered with pearl. In the feather of his hat a large ruby and pearl drop at the bottom of the sprig, in place of a b.u.t.ton; his trunk or breeches, with his stockings and riband garters, fringed at the end, all white, and buff shoes with white riband. Oldys, who saw this picture, has thus described the dress of Rawleigh. But I have some important additions; for I find that Rawleigh's shoes on great court days were so gorgeously covered with precious stones, as to have exceeded the value of six thousand six hundred pounds: and that he had a suit of armour of solid silver, with sword and belt blazing with diamonds, rubies, and pearls, whose value was not so easily calculated. Rawleigh had no patrimonial inheritance; at this moment he had on his back a good portion of a Spanish galleon, and the profits of a monopoly of trade he was carrying on with the newly discovered Virginia. Probably he placed all his hopes in his dress! The virgin queen, when she issued proclamations against ”the excess of apparel,” pardoned, by her looks, that promise of a mine which blazed in Rawleigh's; and, parsimonious as she was, forgot the three thousand changes of dresses which she herself left in the royal wardrobe.
Buckingham could afford to have his diamonds tacked so loosely on, that when he chose to shake a few off on the ground, he obtained all the fame he desired from the pickers-up, who were generally _les dames de la cour_; for our duke never condescended to accept what he himself had dropped. His cloaks were trimmed with great diamond b.u.t.tons, and diamond hatbands, c.o.c.kades, and ear-rings yoked with great ropes and knots of pearls. This was, however, but for ordinary dances. ”He had twenty-seven suits of clothes made, the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold, and gems could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat, and spurs.”[262] In the masques and banquets with which Buckingham entertained the court, he usually expended, for the evening, from one to five thousand pounds. To others I leave to calculate the value of money: the sums of this gorgeous wastefulness, it must be recollected, occurred before this million age of ours.
If, to provide the means for such enormous expenditure, Buckingham multiplied the grievances of monopolies; if he pillaged the treasury for his eighty thousand pounds' coat; if Rawleigh was at length driven to his last desperate enterprise to relieve himself of his creditors for a pair of six thousand pounds' shoes--in both these cases, as in that of the chivalric Sandricourt, the political economist may perhaps acknowledge that _there is a sort of luxury highly criminal_. All the arguments he may urge, all the statistical accounts he may calculate, and the healthful state of his circulating medium among ”the merchants, embroiderers, silkmen, and jewellers”--will not alter such a moral evil, which leaves an eternal taint on ”the wealth of nations!” It is the principle that ”private vices are public benefits,” and that men may be allowed to ruin their generations without committing any injury to society.
FOOTNOTES:
[260] The famous Puritanic writer, Philip Stubbes, who published his ”Anatomie of Abuses” in 1593, declares that he ”has heard of s.h.i.+rtes that have cost some ten s.h.i.+llings, some twentie, some fortie, some five pound, some twentie n.o.bles, and (which is horrible to heare) some tenne pounde a peece.” His book is filled with similar denunciations of abuses; in which he is followed by other satirists.
They appear to have produced little effect in the way of reformation; for in the days of James I, John Taylor, the Water poet, similarly laments the wastefulness of those who--
Wear a farm in shoe-strings edged with gold, And spangled garters worth a copyhold; A hose and doublet which a lords.h.i.+p cost; A gaudy cloak, three manors' price almost; A beaver band and feather for the head Priced at the church's tythe, the poor man's bread.
[261] It is not unusual to find in inventories of this era, the household effects rated at much less than the wearing apparel, of the person whose property is thus valued.
[262] The Jesuit Drexelius, in one of his Religious Dialogues, notices the fact; but I am referring to an Harleian ma.n.u.script, which confirms the information of the Jesuit.
DISCOVERIES OF SECLUDED MEN.
Those who are unaccustomed to the labours of the closet are unacquainted with the secret and silent triumphs obtained in the pursuits of studious men. That apt.i.tude, which in poetry is sometimes called _inspiration_, in knowledge we may call _sagacity_; and it is probable that the vehemence of the one does not excite more pleasure than the still tranquillity of the other: they are both, according to the strict signification of the Latin term from whence we have borrowed ours of _invention_, a finding out, the result of a combination which no other has formed but ourselves.
I will produce several remarkable instances of the felicity of this apt.i.tude of the learned in making discoveries which could only have been effectuated by an uninterrupted intercourse with the objects of their studies, making things remote and dispersed familiar and present.[263]
One of ancient date is better known to the reader than those I am preparing for him. When the magistrates of Syracuse were showing to Cicero the curiosities of the place, he desired to visit the tomb of Archimedes; but, to his surprise, they acknowledged that they knew nothing of any such tomb, and denied that it ever existed. The learned Cicero, convinced by the authorities of ancient writers, by the verses of the inscription which he remembered, and the circ.u.mstance of a sphere with a cylinder being engraven on it, requested them to a.s.sist him in the search. They conducted the ill.u.s.trious but obstinate stranger to their most ancient burying-ground: amidst the number of sepulchres, they observed a small column overhung with brambles--Cicero, looking on while they were clearing away the rubbish, suddenly exclaimed, ”Here is the thing we are looking for!” His eye had caught the geometrical figures on the tomb, and the inscription soon confirmed his conjecture. Cicero long after exulted in the triumph of this discovery. ”Thus!” he says, ”one of the n.o.blest cities of Greece, and once the most learned, had known nothing of the monument of its most deserving and ingenious citizen, had it not been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum!”
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