Part 16 (1/2)

This high bonnet had been worn, under various modifications, ever since the fas.h.i.+on was brought from the East in the time of the Crusades. Some were of a sugar-loaf form, three feet in height; and some cylindrical, but still very high. The French modistes of that day called this formidable head-gear _bonnet a la Syrienne_. But our author says, if female vanity be violently restrained in one point, it is sure to break out in another; and Romish anathemas having abolished curls from shading fair brows, so much the more attention was paid to head-gear, that the bonnets and caps increased every year most awfully in height and size, and were made in the form of crescents, pyramids, and horns of such tremendous dimensions, that the old chronicler Juvenal des Ursins makes this pathetic lamentation in his History of Charles VI.:--

”Et avoient les dames et damoyselles de chacun coste, deux grandes oreilles si larges, que quand elles vouloient pa.s.ser par l'huis d'une chambre il fallait qu'elles se tourna.s.sent de coste et baisa.s.sent, ou elles n'eussent pu pa.s.ser:” that is, ”on every side old ladies and young ladies were seen with such high and monstrous ears (or horns), that when they wanted to enter a room they were obliged perforce to stoop and crouch sideways, or they could not pa.s.s.” At last a regular attack was made on the high head-gear of the fifteenth century by a popular monk, in his sermons at Notre Dame, in which he so pathetically lamented the sinfulness and enormities of such a fas.h.i.+on, that the ladies, to show their contrition, made _auto da fes_ of their Syrian bonnets in the public squares and market-places; and as the Church fulminated against them all over Europe, the example of Paris was universally followed.

Many attempts had previously been made by zealous preachers to effect this alteration. In the previous century a Carmelite in the province of Bretagne preached against this fas.h.i.+on, without the power to annihilate it: all that the ladies did was to change the particular shape of the huge coiffures after every sermon. ”No sooner,” says the chronicler, ”had he departed from one district, than the dames and damoyselles, who, like frightened snails, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again longer than ever; for nowhere were the _hennins_ (so called, abbreviated from _gehinnin_, incommodious,) larger, more pompous or proud, than in the cities through which the Carmelite had pa.s.sed.

”All the world was totally reversed and disordered by these fas.h.i.+ons, and above all things by the strange accoutrements on the heads of the ladies. It was a portentous time, for some carried huge towers on their foreheads an ell high; others still higher caps, with sharp points, like staples, from the top of which streamed long c.r.a.pes, fringed with gold, like banners. Alas, alas! ladies, dames, and demoiselles were of importance in those days! When do we hear, in the present times, of Church and State interfering to regulate the patterns of their bonnets?”[95]

It is no wonder that fas.h.i.+ons so very extreme and absurd should call forth animadversion from various quarters. Thus wrote Petrarch in 1366:--

”Who can see with patience the monstrous, fantastical inventions which the people of our times have invented to deform, rather than adorn, their persons? Who can behold without indignation their long pointed shoes; their caps with feathers; their hair twisted and hanging down like tails; the foreheads of young men, as well as women, formed into a kind of furrows with ivory-headed pins; their bellies so cruelly squeezed with cords, that they suffer as much pain from vanity as the martyrs suffered for religion? Our ancestors would not have believed, and I know not if posterity will believe, that it was possible for the wit of this vain generation of ours to invent so many base, barbarous, horrid, ridiculous fas.h.i.+ons (besides those already mentioned) to disfigure and disgrace itself, as we have the mortification to see every day.”

And thus Chaucer, a few years later:--

”Ala.s.s! may not a man see as in our daies the sinnefull costlew array of clothing, and namely in too much superfluite, or else in too disordinate scantinese: as to the first, not only the cost of embraudering, the disguysed indenting, or barring, ounding, playting, wynding, or bending, and semblable waste of clothe in vanitie.” The common people also ”were besotted in excesse of apparell, in wide surcoats reaching to their loines, some in a garment reaching to their heels, close before and strowting out on the sides, so that on the back they make men seem women, and this they called by a ridiculous name, _gowne_,” &c. &c.

Before this time the legislature had interfered, though with little success: they pa.s.sed laws at Westminster, which were said to be made ”to prevent that destruction and poverty with which the whole kingdom was threatened, by the outrageous, excessive expenses of many persons in their apparel, above their ranks and fortunes.”

Sumptuary edicts, however, are of little avail, if not supported in ”influential quarters.” King Richard II. affected the utmost splendour of attire, and he had one coat alone which was valued at 30,000 marks: it was richly embroidered and inwrought with gold and precious stones.

It is not in human nature, at least in human nature of the ”more honourable” gender, to be outdone, even by a king. Gorgeous and glittering was the raiment adopted by the satellites of the court, and, heedless of ”that destruction and poverty with which the whole kingdom was threatened,” they revelled in magnificence. Of one alone, Sir John Arundel, it is recorded, that he had at one time fifty-two suits of cloth of gold tissue. At this time, says the old Chronicle,

”Cut werke was great bothe in court and tounes, Bothe in mens hoddes, and also in their gounes, Brouder and furres, and gold smith werke ay newe, In many a wyse, eche day they did renewe.”

Unaccountable as it may seem, this rage of expense and show in apparel reached even the (then) poverty-stricken sister country Scotland; and in 1457 laws were enacted to suppress it.

It is told of William Rufus, that one morning while putting on his new boots he asked his chamberlain what they cost; and when he replied ”three s.h.i.+llings,” indignantly and in a rage he cried out, ”you--how long has the king worn boots of so paltry a price? Go, and bring me a pair worth a mark of silver.” He went, and bringing him a much cheaper pair, told him falsely that they cost as much as he had ordered: ”Ay,” said the king, ”these are suitable to royal majesty.”

This is merely a specimen of the monarch's shallow-headed extravagance; but the costume of his time and that immediately preceding it was infinitely superior in grace and dignity to that of the fantastical period we have been describing. The English at this period were admired by all other nations, and especially _by the French_, from whom in subsequent periods _we_ have copied so servilely, for the richness and elegance of their attire. With a tunic simply confined at the waist, over this, when occasion required, a full and flowing mantle, with a veil confined to the back of the head with a golden circlet, her dark hair simply braided over her beautiful and intelligent brow and waving on her fair throat, the wife of the Conqueror looked every inch a queen, and what was more, she looked a modest, a dignified, and a beautiful woman.

The male attire was of the same flowing and majestic description: and the ”brutal” Anglo-Saxons and the ”barbarous” Normans had more delicacy than to display every division of limb or muscle which nature formed, and more taste than to invent divisions where, Heaven knows, nature never meant them to be. The simple _coiffure_ required little care and attendance, but if a fastening did happen to give way, the Anglo-Norman lady could raise her hand to fasten it if she chose. The arm was not pinioned by the fiat of a _modiste_.

And the material of a dress of those days was as rich as the mode was elegant. Silk indeed was not common; the first that was seen in the country was in 780, when Charlemagne sent Offa, King of Mercia, a belt and two vests of that beautiful material; but from the particular record made of silk mantles worn by two ladies at a ball at Kenilworth in 1286, we may fairly infer that till this period silk was not often used but as

”------a robe pontifical, Ne'er seen but wonder'd at.”

Occasionally indeed it was used, but only by persons of the highest rank and wealth. But the woollens were of beautiful texture, and Britain was early famous in the art of producing the richest dyes. The Welsh are still remarkable for extracting beautiful tints from the commonest plants, such most probably as were used by the Britons anciently; and it is worthy of note that the South Sea cloths, manufactured from the inner bark of trees, have the same stripes and chequers, and indeed the identical patterns of the Welsh, and, as supposed, of the ancient Britons. Linen was fine and beautiful; and if it had not been so, the rich and varied embroidery with which it was decorated would have set off a coa.r.s.er material.

Furs of all sorts were in great request, and a mantle of regal hue, lined throughout with vair or sable, and decorated with bands of gold lace and flowers of the richest embroidery, interspersed with pearls, clasped on the shoulder with the most precious gems, and looped, if requisite, with golden ta.s.sels, was a garment at which a n.o.bleman, even of these days, need not look askance.

Robert Bloet, second bishop of Lincoln, made a present to Henry I. of a cloak of exquisitely fine cloth, lined with black sables with white spots, which cost a sum equivalent to 1500 of our money. The robes of females of rank were always bordered with a belt of rich needlework; their embroidered girdles were inlaid, or rather inwrought, with gold, pearls, and precious stones, and from them was usually suspended a large purse or pouch, on which the skill of the most accomplished needlewomen was usually expended.

This rich and becoming mode of dress was gradually innovated upon until caprice reigned paramount over the national wardrobe. For ”fas.h.i.+on is essentially caprice; and fas.h.i.+on in dress the caprice of milliners and tailors, with whom _recherche_ and exaggeration supply the place of education and principle.” That this modern definition applied as accurately to former times as these, an instance may suffice to show. Richard I. had a cloak made, at enormous cost, with precious and s.h.i.+ning metals inlaid _in imitation of the heavenly bodies_; and Henry V. wore, on a very memorable occasion, when Prince of Wales, a mantle or gown of rich blue satin, full of small eyelet-holes, as thickly as they could be put, and a needle hanging by a silk thread _from every hole_.

The following incident, quoted from Miss Strickland's Life of Berengaria, will show the esteem in which a rich, and especially a furred garment was held. Richard I. quarrelled with the virtuous St.

Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, on the old ground of exacting a simoniacal tribute on the installation of the prelate into his see. Willing to evade the direct charge of selling the see, King Richard intimated that a present of a fur mantle worth a thousand marks might be a composition. St. Hugh said he was no judge of such gauds, and therefore sent the king a thousand marks, declaring, if he would devour the revenue devoted to the poor, he must have his wilful way.

But as soon as Richard had pocketed the money he sent for the fur mantle. St. Hugh set out for Normandy to remonstrate with the king on this double extortion. His friends antic.i.p.ated that he would be killed; but St. Hugh said, ”I fear him not,” and boldly entered the chapel where Richard was at ma.s.s, when the following scene took place:--

”Give me the embrace of peace, my son,” said St. Hugh.

”That you have not deserved,” replied the king.