HABITS AND MEN.




                             HABITS AND MEN,
                                   WITH
                            Remnants of Record
                                 TOUCHING
                           THE MAKERS OF BOTH.

                                    BY
                                DR. DORAN,
      AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS,’ ‘HISTORY OF READING,’ ‘LIFE OF DR.
                              YOUNG,’ ETC.

                                  “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. Westwood._

                             _THIRD EDITION._

                                 LONDON:
                 RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
                  Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
                                  1855.

                                PRINTED BY
                 JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, LITTLE QUEEN STREET,
                          LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.




                      THESE “TRIVIAL, FOND RECORDS”
                                 TOUCHING
                              Habits and Men
               ARE INSCRIBED TO A GOOD MAN, OF GOOD HABITS,
                                    TO
                       HENRY HOLDEN FRANKUM, ESQ.,
        IN TESTIMONY OF THE ESTEEM AND REGARD ENTERTAINED FOR HIM
                        BY HIS VERY SINCERE FRIEND

                                                               THE AUTHOR.




CONTENTS.


                                                                PAGE

    BETWEEN YOU AND ME                                             1

    MAN, MANNERS, AND A STORY WITH A MORAL TO IT                   9

    ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD, PART I.                            26

    ADONIS AT HOME AND ABROAD, PART II.                           40

    REMNANTS OF STAGE DRESSES                                     60

    THREE ACTS AND AN EPILOGUE                                    67

    THE TIRING-BOWERS OF QUEENS                                   88

    “LA MODE” IN HER BIRTHPLACE                                  114

    HATS                                                         129

    WIGS AND THEIR WEARERS                                       141

    BEARDS AND THEIR BEARERS                                     158

    SWORDS                                                       168

    GLOVES, B⸺S, AND BUTTONS                                     185

    STOCKINGS                                                    200

    “MASKS AND FACES”                                            204

    PUPPETS FOR GROWN GENTLEMEN                                  212

    TOUCHING TAILORS                                             227

    WHY DID THE TAILORS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM FOR THEIR PATRON?     229

    THE TAILORS MEASURED BY THE POETS                            240

    SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD, THE HEROIC TAILOR                         261

    GEORGE DÖRFLING, THE MARTIAL TAILOR                          275

    ADMIRAL HOBSON, THE NAVAL TAILOR                             283

    JOHN STOW, THE ANTIQUARIAN TAILOR                            285

    JOHN SPEED, THE ANTIQUARIAN TAILOR                           296

    SAMUEL PEPYS, THE OFFICIAL TAILOR                            300

    RICHARD RYAN, THE THEATRICAL TAILOR                          309

    PAUL WHITEHEAD, THE POET TAILOR                              315

    MEMS. OF “MERCHANT TAILORS”                                  322

    CHAPTERS ON BEAUX                                            337

    THE BEAUX OF THE OLDEN TIME                                  337

    BEAU FIELDING                                                347

    BEAU NASH                                                    356

    THE PRINCE DE LIGNE                                          370

    BEAU BRUMMELL                                                378

    DOCTORS READY DRESSED                                        395

    ODD FASHIONS                                                 402




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 PLAY.


It is remarked by Mr. T. C. Grattan, in his ‘Jacqueline of Holland,’
that the “suitableness of raiment and the becomingness of manners are
links in the chain of social life, which harmonize with and beautify the
whole. There is infinitely more wisdom,” he adds “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
temptation, or follow the example, in my illustrations of ‘Habits and
Men.’ And when I say “Men,” I would imply _man_ in its general sense,—a
sense in which “woman” has the better and more perfect half; for, as the
poet sings of Nature,—

        “Her ’prentice han’
        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 Rhodope, as story tells,
    The bright, unearthly nymph who dwells
    ’Mid sunless gold and jewels hid,
    The Lady of the Pyramid.”

Rhodope 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 Rhodope 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 in 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:—“Quæ enim lota
erat corde, non necesse erat ut lavabatur corpore” (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 married to the Irish
Saint Angus Keledeus (_Kele De_, “God 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. Romnald, “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 Ethelreda 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 profane 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 completed, all the inhabitants
were compelled to celebrate the event by a voluntary illumination.

Certainly, Ethelreda did not sit for the original of Cowley’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-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 wave, 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 airy 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.”

Göthe, 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.”

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 _soirées_ in Tempe, and a _Longchamps_ in Arcadia. Thus
Chénier’s Naïs 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 calculating nymph, is the
Madeline of Endymion Keats. The English poet undresses his young maiden
with a “niceness” 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 Naïs, thinks less 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!

    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 cavalier had not
been a superbly dressed cavalier, the little maiden would have forgotten
her vow; and in the south of Spain, when a man is inclined to become
heedless of external 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,—

    The sweetest rose that ever eye
      Yet smiled upon I plucked but now;
    Pure as the stars in yon blue 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 his 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 blush’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.

Between the days when Psyche blushed on the rose, and the age when
Delamira bought her blushes at fifteen shillings 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,
coachmaker and chairmaker of the Liberty of Westminster, invented 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 connected
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 hommes font les lois, les femmes font les mœurs.”—DE SÉGUE.


“L’homme est un animal!” said a French orator, by way of peroration to
his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies; “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 _nugæ_, and plod on foot
to give golden instruction for small thanks and a few pence. _Their_
device, if they are ever so ennobled as to be thought worthy of one,
might be that of the patriotic 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, “_Ich gab
Gold um Eisen_,”—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 how 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 Stobæus, “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 altogether
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
Raleigh 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 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 history, 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 effect:—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 became 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 Lernæan 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 gentleman. 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 Iole, and was vain of his
appearance, she sent the gay garment 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 Olympus. 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 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 _beaux
yeux_ of Iole; 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 Iole, 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 “the tottle 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 sewing came in with
sin; or rather, it was one of the first consequences of the first crime.
Perhaps, for this reason, has a certain degree of contempt been inherited
by the professors 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 refined. 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
precedence of mere sedentary callings. The French, indeed, as becomes
a nation which prides itself as being the most particular touching the
external dressing of a man, has always confessed to a sort of tender
regard for the tailor. The vocation against which Gallic wits direct
their light-winged shafts, is that of the grocer. The _épicier_ 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 heroism 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 “_maréchal
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 own _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 vestiarius_ 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, followed 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 riverside 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 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
name 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 unpretending 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
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 Celsus, I may call as hurtful to the body as it is profitable or
necessary to the mind (“Literarum disciplina, ut animo præcipue omnium
necessaria, sic corpori inimica est”), there is some illiberality in
his declaring that the various occupations 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 intends 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
to the glory and praise of Damon and Dolly, rather 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 Rovigo, 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 believed; 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 quantities.” Savary is especially,
and naturally, astonished that the supreme Pontiff preferred his amateur
tailoring to enjoying the books in the great library of Fontainebleau.
Poor man! he did not like reading, but he did like killing 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. Reverting 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 Palestine cannot be accepted as
authority when 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 material 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 especially recommend
my fair readers to remember the sacred record, which ennobles labour,
where it says:—“All the 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 up 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 neighbour’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 representations of men
who are supposed to be the counterfeit 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 described 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
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 remembers 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 Highlanders, with
nothing on but kilts kept down about the knees by leaded bunches of
ribbons,—a fashion not unknown to modern Ballerinas, who wear “very thin
clothing, and but little of it.” The captives, however, have probably
been stripped of their upper garments, which the conquerors 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 original form of Adam,
and the peculiar dress made for him and Eve before the Fall. Bartolozzi,
in his ‘Bibliotheca Rabbinica,’ 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
adopting primeval colours, that the original hue of the father of man is
said to have been a bottle-green. When Stulz furnished 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 Foote 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 jealousy. 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 Regent at Valladolid, in the
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
together fulminated a decree, in the name of the infant monarch, 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
materials, 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 to 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 forfeited the
suit, and was sent home in his shirt. For a second offence, he forfeited
his entire wardrobe; but Justice kept him warm by administering to him
a hundred lashes, vigorously applied by the hand of an executioner, who
imagined 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 gracious Queen Regent, “it is my pleasure
that, if the Jews choose, they may make coats and cloaks of the clothes
which 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 colleges 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 expelled 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 resurrection? 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 _père_ was to a tailor, of whom he ordered an outfit of sackcloth.
The honest man was disgusted with his customer’s taste, and valued below
cost-price a philosopher who declared that his logic was always more
conclusive 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
president 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 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 liberality 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 respective 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,
and 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 premised 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, 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-turning. 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
between 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 garments 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 remarked, 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 God.”

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 Archange!” 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 wanton’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 actions 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 exquisite 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 remarked:—

“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.

PART I.

    “L’habit est une partie intégrante de l’homme; il agit sur nos
    sens, et détermine notre jugement.”—LA BRUYERE.


Our 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 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.

Strabo 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 Rotten Row during the “season.” But I suppose 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 indicative of what the colour might have stood
for,—a verdant knowledge of the science. When the Romans planted their
conquering eagles on our soil, the old British chieftains resisted them
and their fashions. Tacitus says that it was 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
without their _braccæ_, and sporting the tunic before whose presence
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 these 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
objectionable than that of the young ladies and gentlemen of Gaul, who
washed theirs in a chalky solution, in order to make it a more fiery red
than it had been rendered by nature. I 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; but 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 sçaurais voir:
    A de tels objets les yeux sont blessés,
    Et cela fait venir de coupables pensées.”

Though it be necessary to consider climate and temperature 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
increasing severity, that clothing afforded no warmth to the frame, and
the people were widely smitten by paralysis. They suffered 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 appear 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, 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!

If the nuns of the Anglo-Saxon times were given to gorgeousness, the
clergy were not at all uninclined to dandyism. 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 original “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 manners. 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 frequently 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 Ragner 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
illustrious 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” 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 circumstances 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 circumstance 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 fashions 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 common enough in the
period of the Norman Kings, wearing 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 _bliaus_. 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 in question, he will be as little like to
Norman cavalier “as I to Hercules.”

I have said that the Normans generally were remarkable 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 remarkably 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 practical 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’Yprès), Bayonet, and many others. The general love of
dress, and the wealth manifested by the grandeur of the latter, made
Innocent IV. to speak of England as a “garden of delights,” 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 adopting 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 Cardinals
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 present fashion that Mr. Bright, who loves Russia and hates the
press, has such respect for Rome 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 I 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 departures 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 magnificent distribution of purple robes, fine linen
garments, and mantles woven with gold. The two latter were furnished 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
expense for the benefit of trade. There are many younger sons who would
be as rejoiced thereat as the tailors themselves.

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
accustomed to such profanity; but as the conquerors, and particularly
the kings, swore whenever they spoke, why to use oaths was to put on the
air of a conqueror and gentleman, and so a species of Norman pride kept
oaths in vigour among the _élite_ 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 progressed through execratory terms
until this consummation was arrived at, is very tersely told in an old
epigram of Sir John Harrington’s:—

    “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 detestable,—not to say “devilish.”
These were the “Effeminati.” 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 continual succession of varying
fashions, turned the heads of the young with delight, and of the old with
disgust. Douglas, the monk of Glastonbury, is especially denunciative
and satirical on this point. He says that in the horrible variety of
costume,—“now long, now large, now wide, now 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 clothing, 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 becoming 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 for the
Commons themselves, they could put on nothing better than unadorned
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 Bordeaux. 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
scarleteen,—cut work and brodwar, was all,” as the Chronicler 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 Richard 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 Gaunt); and they who wore these garments,
sometimes of half-a-dozen colours in each, why they looked, says an old
writer, “as though the fire of St. Anthony, 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 _crackowes_, the fashion
thereof coming from Cracow in Poland. The not less significant 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 position 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 allowed by More in
his Utopia. “All the island over,” he says, “they make their own clothes,
without any other distinction than that which is necessary for marking
the difference between the two sexes, and the married and unmarried.
The fashion never alters; and as it is not ungrateful 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 processes; 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 wholesome 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 announcement 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 thermometer, 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 “retroussé
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 behind,” as well as
beards before, the ladies were not behind them in extravagance—in tails;
and indeed in other matters. For a lady to ride on a palfrey, and not on
a charger, would have been considered as derogatory as for a bridesmaid,
in our days, to “spoil her prospects” by going to a 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 Normandy, 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.

PART II.

    “La modestie, la plus touchante des vertus, est encore la plus
    séduisante des parures.”—MAD. COTTIN: _Mathilde_.


The Jews were undoubtedly an ill-fated people. In London, in the
olden time, whenever any class had a grievance, the work of redress
was commenced by slaying the Hebrews. In the reign of Henry III. the
municipality of London and a portion of the nobility were dreadfully
incensed against Queen Eleanor; and to show their indignation, 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. Certainly, 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 Rothschild.

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 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, Goldschmidts, 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 admirer, the gallant and
loud-laughing Division X. would hardly know which victim to succour
first. Such a _cortège_ however would probably bring into fashion the
“_bonnets de nuit à 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
Richard 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 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 servants, “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 proprietary 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_for_, 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 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 “honourable 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 Seigneur, from James I.,
his lady accompanied him to Constantinople, 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 vardingales, 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 convince 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 Marchioness 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 Cromwell,” 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 gentleman speaking whom I
knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, 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 content 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 rejoinder 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 might be pretty
well alike, but that there was a deal of difference 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 maître, tel
valet._ See what he says of an occurrence 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 transgressor 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 feelings 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
“Russian Embassador,”—“in the richest suit for pearl and tissue that ever
I did see.” The envoy appears to have been an exceedingly well-dressed
barbarian; and the Muscovite officials of our own day are in no respect
behind him. Felony and mendacity would seem to be accounted of as
_péchés 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 Russ
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 however 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 señoras were of no
more costly material than white flannel. Thereupon English and Dutch
handicraftsmen repaired to Madrid, in order to establish a manufactory
of these articles. The men engaged were sober, religious men; and they
had with them Psalters and Testaments, 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 workmen. 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 bodily 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 inventor of the “vest dress.” It consisted
of a long cassock which fitted close to the body, of black cloth,
“pinked” with white silk under it, and a coat over all; the legs were
ruffled 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 costume, the mode
was adopted in France, and English nankeens threatened to drive all
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 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 Rag 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 excites 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 penalty 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 Rowland 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 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
phœnix-like from the flames of that fire or another. For a time however,
these exaggerated head-dresses were excommunicated; 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
Monsieur 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 witnessed 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 ridiculous to see the numbers of old
ladies, who, from having 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 resolution.”

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. One 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 protracted. 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 rampant 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 Shaftesbury Admiral Gambier, Baptist Noel, and Dr. M’Neil engaged
in settling Miss Martineau, Catherine Sinclair, the “Authoress 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 colours; 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 declared they would have more willingly
pardoned their daughters had they married lacqueys rather than players.
A daughter of the Earl of Abingdon married Gallini the ballet-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 Rockingham, transacted
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.

It is characteristic of the manners of this period, that Lady Harriet
Wentworth, in marrying her footman, was not considered as having so
terribly _dérogé_ 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
Read’s, the artist;—that is, Catherine Read, who painted whole bevies
of our grandmothers, and whose portraits of young Queen Charlotte and
of that dreadful woman Mrs. Macauley (represented as a Roman matron
weeping over the lost liberties of her country) were the delight of both
connoisseurs and amateurs.

The meetings of the lovers became known to the lady’s proud sire, and
terrible was the scene which ensued between the “père noble” and the
“ingénue.” The latter however promised to break off all intercourse,
provided she were permitted 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 footman, said she was
going to breakfast with Lady Sarah, but would call at Miss Read’s; in the
street, pretended to recollect a particular cap in which she was to be
drawn; sent the footman back for it, whipped into a hackney chair, was
married at Covent Garden 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 favourite footman rather suddenly in Paris, she had
him embalmed, 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, gratiâ 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 Royal 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 distinguished 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 Russian confraternity made little fortunes through a
well-timed joke perpetrated by Count Rostopchin. And the joke was cut
after the following fashion. The Emperor Paul had an undisguised contempt
for Russian princes, and loved to lower their dignity. He was one day
surrounded by a glittering crowd of them, attired in gold lace and dirty
shirts, when he carelessly asked his favourite Count Rostopchin, how
it happened that he 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 mid-winter 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 Rostopchin’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 the
“couleur Isabelle,” and this was its origin. A short time after the
siege of Ostend commenced in 1601, Isabella Eugenia, Gouvernante 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 before 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 expedient
of wearing dresses of the presumed colour finally attained by the
garment which clung to the Imperial Archduchess by force of religious
obstinacy—and something else.

Mrs. Sherwood offers us, in her posthumous ‘Life,’ a fair picture of
the fashion and simplicity of the good old country rector in the last
century, as regards the adorning of the outer man. Her father, the Rev.
Dr. Butt, was Rector 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
prepared 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 stockings, 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
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 subject; 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 prosperously 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
angry with me, I must tell it.’ And then out came the whole story, to
the great delight of the whole noble 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 execrable. 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 live, 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 better off in that respect
than the Italians of the last century, 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 Bucharest, 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 wonder at varieties of costume; but the _beau monde_ of Bucharest
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 Room in Bath, Charing-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 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 shockingly 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 _mélange_ are curious and infinitely 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 rigueur_. 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
walked into a London drawing-room in top-boots. Nor must you go about the
town on foot; a _birtcha_, or two-horse open hackney carriage or calèche,
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 ‘BUSBY 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 considerable 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 politician 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. Reformers however sought to amend it;
and Paul Whitehead, the tailor-poet, used to say that the taste of the
nation depended upon Garrick! Davy’s own taste was very questionable 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 Rosse
at a distance, exclaimed, “My countryman!” he was quite right to exclaim,
on seeing an English recruiting sergeant advance, “and yet I know him
not!” But Rosse 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-petticoated, 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 “gentleman”
whose Othello “will be new dressed, after the manner of his country.”
Mr. Wright would now play the character 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 ‘Marriage à la
Mode.’ “Bring the tea-kettle and lamp!” was Quin’s exclamation, when he
saw Garrick 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 audience, whatever
confusion might reign in the house. He was said to be not dressed. Austin
never so much offended Garrick as when he bought a cast-off dress, the
exact counterpart of that worn by Garrick himself in Lothario, and in
which Austin intended to accompany Roscius 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 Austin’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 ‘Richard 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 buste_, 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,—mediæval 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 Richard could not have looked more frantically hysterical had the
deceased 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 exception of some small details, was
dressed as little like Elizabeth 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 coronation 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
originally 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 himself 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 Goodman 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 alternately. 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
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 particularly 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 eminent critic, writing of this actor in 1729, says:—“Whatever he did
on the stage, let it be ever so trifling,—whether it consisted in putting
on his gloves, or taking out his watch, lolling on his cane, or taking
snuff,—every movement was marked by such an ease of breeding and manner,
everything told so strongly the involuntary motion of a gentleman,
that it was impossible to consider the character he represented in any
other light than that of reality; but what was still more surprising,
that person who could thus delight an audience from the gaiety and
sprightliness of his manner, I met the next day in the street hobbling
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 daughters 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 entertainment 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 however 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 were not enjoyed by a partner, _à la_ Box
and Cox. Nor was this all. The appointments of the entire house were of
the same character. 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 Cibber, 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. The performances were announced as for the benefit of a certain
actor _and his 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 Lincoln’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 DIVERTISEMENT,
               played at Merchant Tailors’, 1678._


ACT I.

“Balthazar,” said a fine-looking lad in the prison of Orléans, “you are a
brute!”

By way of reply to this testimonial to character, the gaoler struck
the boy with his heavy bunch of 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
ferocious. From the old Briton gentleman, Pantin de la Guerre, to little
Edmond Thierry, there was not one whom 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
allowed 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 to honour the
tribunal with your presence tonight; and the _faucheuse_ with the broad
knife will send you an invitation to another party tomorrow.”

“Be it so,” said the young beauty, without apparent emotion. “In the
meantime, _vive le Roi_! And now, my little King Edmond, let us leave
citizen Balthazar to his reflections, and come with me to the _soirée_ 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 off 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 Orléans. 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 officiel_.

It was a singular world that, which Balthazar held in durance within his
stronghold of Orléans. It was an aristocratic, pleasure-seeking world:
within one confined gallery 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 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 themselves. 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
ribbons. 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 d’Espagne_ 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_.

At Orléans 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 Virtue, _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
considered every fellow-captive exposed to death, but none was without
hope for himself. Like the selfish Neapolitans, who, when they see a
neighbour borne to the grave, shrug their shoulders, and cry, “Salute
a noi!” so did the Orléans 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 Charry, with Edmond,
entered the cell whose oldest occupant and recognized proprietor was
the Countess de Bohun, a lady who had once borne the honoured name of
De Girardin. A large party was assembled, and, save the locality, the
hour, and the absence of lights, there was little to distinguish it from
a party in the Chaussée d’Antin. Some were at cards, some were looking
at pictures, some were circulating scandal, and a few were sipping _eau
sucrée_, heightened as to flavour with a little capillaire. François
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 procured 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 Roi_ 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 Republican 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, corroboratively, “and yet short
of the truth: he had one arm withdrawn 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
advanced towards Madame de Charry and whispered something in her ear.
With all her courage, the fair creature slightly trembled; but she arose,
begged the Chevalier Fabien to play out her cards, and promised speedily
to return. An inquiring look was directed to her by all the company,
but she gave it no reply, either by word or gesture. 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.
The wicket was locked upon him, but from the window he beheld her rudely
pushed into a building in which the revolutionary 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 Charry 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 window,
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 boy, uttered
the words, “Espérance! 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 tribunal 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 à la guillotine_, for I have had a relative
who has been beheaded.”

“Poor Madame de Charry!” 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’Rourke’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 interrupted their dance indeed.

Among the most useful of the personages who figured at Vienna during
the celebrated period of 1814-15 there was 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 circulated
to the effect that in the days of the exile of the French nobility, he
had earned a livelihood in London by application 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 prison of Orléans, “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 memories 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 husband’s “Garter” as an ornament round her head, and _Honi soit qui
mal y pense_ glittered in diamonds upon her radiant brow.

“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 _dénouement_.”

The Baron had scarcely uttered the words when the lovely and childless
Czarina of Russia 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 appearing 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,
Monsieur 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 imperial palace
of Austria. In a small room adjoining the great gallery was assembled
a strange group. A very handsome young man, in the costume and with
the attributes of Jupiter, was walking to and fro, eating a slice of
pine-apple, and declaring that the Count de Wurbna was mad. A somewhat
older but a fine-looking personage, easily recognizable as Mars, was
lying recumbent on a sofa, repeating the declaration 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 Phœbus 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 Corybassides, who disputed the dominion of Crete
with Jupiter himself, 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 Viennese Apollo, whose transcendent beauty
had designated him as the only man who could fittingly represent the
graceful god, strictly refused to sacrifice his cherished moustache.
Madame de Wilhelm, 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 Fleur de Marie), declared that the
suggestion lacked wisdom, and that, if adopted, Miss Smith, the daughter
of the Admiral Sir Sidney, would spoil her Juno, and laugh outright, 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 reasonable.”

Apollo caressed his very objectionable hirsutory adornment, humming as he
did so, “Du, du liegst mir im Herzen.” 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 indefatigable
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
audience, 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 luxurious
green-room, when an officer of the Imperial Guard appeared at the door,
and summoned De Wurbna to the imperial presence. The latter flung a cloak
over his shoulders 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 suspect a mystification.

“Because of this morning’s general order, which commands 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.”

“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
remodelling 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 issued an order that the Guard
should be shaved; De Wurbna 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 _éclat_. The only persons
among the spectators who were not enraptured with the spectacle, were the
obese King of Würtemberg, 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 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 patronized 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 Christophe and his house;
and he witnessed the abject submission 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, common 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
sentence 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 return for teaching them some useful matters
touching the fashion of garments, and for profitable exercise of his
medical 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 ceremony. 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 political 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
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, considering 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 engineer, 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 before, for twenty tomahawks! What
did he do at Hokianga?”

“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 personage, 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 knuckles.
They had not long to wait; the board was removed 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 believed 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. “Kätchen,”
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 hospitality 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’orchestre_, who would
tolerate no commentaries during the interpretation of so splendid a text.
The duet was finished 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 subdued 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 modesty, 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 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 dominions, religious
toleration, the rights of man, and the duties 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 responsibilities to oppress him. Beyond his musical instruments, 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 incontestably his own.

As the party of travellers, after sleeping in the hut, proceeded on the
following morning to their boat, they were accompanied 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 locality, 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.”

“And Thierry and his wife?” asked the astounded engineer.

“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 Government 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 Orléans; of the
_costumier_ of the court masquerades at the Congress of Vienna; and of
the wandering 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.”

                                             SHIRLEY.


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 testatrix, “to the Abbey of the Holy
Trinity my tunic, worked at Winchester, by Alderet’s wife; and the mantle
embroidered 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 nuns connected therewith came in for all Matilda’s
petticoats,—no indifferent legacy, for they were stiff with gold and
dust. She was an elegant dresser, as far as outside show was concerned.

Rufus was a bachelor, and the ladies who frequented his uproarious court
were remarkable for their adoption of garments 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.

The third Matilda, she of Boulogne, wife of 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
benevolence, 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 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 Angoulême 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 however 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 belonging 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 unnecessary knowledge
as any Belgian _petit-maître_ 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 and 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 difficulties, and
descended to the commission 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 established 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
servants, 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 yourself 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 compensation 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 with linen for their royal persons. Had _I_ 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 confound 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 from 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 Westminster
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 sempiternal grief, and in a
week or two, took to flirting. Ultimately he espoused Marguerite of
France; and the match was so happy a one that the two consorts bore
their respective 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 goldsmith, 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 consented to be Queen without a coronation, as the then present
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 mortal 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,
determined that when another night arrived, her head should wear nothing
less than a “_coiffe de nuit à la Reine_.”

Philippa of Hainault, Queen of Edward III., ranks among the reasonable as
well as the glorious ladies. She was 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 her 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 tongue. This was perhaps in the Bohemian tongue; for Bohemia
possessed a translation long before England.

Richard’s second wife, Isabella of Valois, was as inordinately fond
of dress as her husband was; and never, perhaps, 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 infirmity:
even her mourning for the King was calculated like 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 pair,
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 chroniclers. 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 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 unceremoniously swept off, too, into the general dust-hole
covered by Westminster Abbey.

When old King René 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 _mésalliance_ 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 Westminster Hall,
where the King was a spectator 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 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, Robert 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 Hôtel de
Cluny, where, clothed in white, and confined in a darkened apartment
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 quality. 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 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 recognized 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 according 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. Katherine 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 Protestant Queen of England and
preserver of Cambridge University 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
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_s._, at the shop of Lady Gresham, the actual 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, _à la Française_, 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 notoriety 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 antiquarian 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 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 wardrobe, 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 daughter 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 divines. 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 soberness, 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 apparel which she used
in King Edward’s time, made the noblemen’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 properly 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 fame 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 crown’d,
    A needlewoman royal and renowned.”

She grew in love with costly suits when she became independent 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 Russian 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 altered 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 all, it is questionable if she was a
better “dresser” than the fair Gabrielle, of whom the chivalrous Unton
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 Fénelon, 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 arose; and there, according
to the reports 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 propitiate 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 Elizabeth did Sir Matthew Arundel’s embroidery. I believe our
Gracious Sovereign never went further in this direction than to laugh
good-humouredly at the Duke of Wellington’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 déshabille_. 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 tempestiva_, 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-stuff” at
sunrise,—no Gyges would have thanked Candaules for letting his eye rest
on so questionable a 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 herself,—as
decaying matter puts on variety of colour. “She imagined,” says Bacon,
“that the people, who are much influenced by externals, would be
diverted, by the glitter of her jewels, from noticing the decay of her
personal attractions.” 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 farthingales, high behind, low before, and swelling
out into unlimited 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 contentedly 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 household for
ever.

When Katherine of Braganza landed in England as Queen Consort of Charles
II., she excited mirth by the stiff outlandish 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 remarkable 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 confessor
gave an impudent stare of horror when he beheld it; and as she murmured
something about the paleness of her complexion, he exclaimed,—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 Alderson’s
light puns, with which he cuts short heavy suits.

This is almost the only trait of interest told in connection with her
toilet. It was simply observed that in England she dressed as became her
state; and in exile, as became a lady whose dower was stolen by William
III. and appropriated 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 themselves to benefit their boys, the gift
profited neither the recipient nor the giver. The splendour of the silver
ornaments 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, the unfilial romp
was, at least, a _private_ bit of ingratitude. 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 the _fontanges_, 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 accordingly 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 occasion, 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 attended 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 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 Maintenon) 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 married the son of the Bishop of Ely.
And _such_ 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 dinner 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
used 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 _soirées_ 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 indeed 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 _al fresco_, were the usual entertainments; and to witness them
the wealthy public were admitted, on condition of their appearing 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 liberality, more than they deserved. Nay, she so well distributed
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 victory 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 Ludgate-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 whose valour had won the victory. The Queen, for
once, was not an iota less vituperatively eloquent than her Mistress
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 disregarded by others. When Eugene
of Savoy came over here in 1712, to uphold, as well as he could 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, 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.
Mourning, 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 “Reines 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
Königsmark to kiss her hand, her jealous 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 appearance, 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
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
the 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 saying 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 separate centuries. The
little lady lacked taste; and though she set the fashion to loyal maids
and matrons, seldom became 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.

Except for a few days, Queen Victoria has 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 εἴδωλον of an heiress, and captivate whole legions
of male _poupées_, 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 disappeared 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 unhappily 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 contemplating 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 something 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, uncontrollable fun,—that duchess, princess, old
lady, and the few spectators of the scene, broke into as much laughter
as _bienséance_ would permit; and some of them, no doubt, “exclaimed
_mentally_,” as well-bred people do in novels, that there was a royal
English girl, who had most unquestionably a heart and a will of her
own,—and may God bless both!

I have noticed above how queens of foreign birth introduced 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.

    Chacun à sa mode, et les ânes à l’ancienne.—MODISH PROVERB.


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 _maître 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 another.”

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 you, Sir,
a French noise is agreeable to the air, and therefore not unagreeable,
and therefore not prejudicial to the hearing; 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 carried on against towering plumes.

In Paris, feathers and head-dress extended so outrageously, 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 galleries. 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 overcome 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.

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 universal laughter
by appearing on the stage, not with the usual rabbit’s tail in his
harlequin’s cap, but with a peacock’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 Antoinette 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 molested.

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 Antoinette 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 transforming 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 centre of her bed-chamber, 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 princess of the blood entered the room (for French Queens
both dressed and dined in public), the right of putting 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 Reine_ as it was passing down the royal back, adroitly
whipped it off, and, presenting it to the “première dame,” that noble
lady transferred it to the princess of the blood. Madame Campan had once
to give it up to the Duchess of Orléans, 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 Orléans, 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 awkwardly, 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 à bonnes
fortunes,” its “petits-maîtres,” its “importuns,” its “élégans,” and
last of all, its “lions.” 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 themselves.

It was otherwise with our neighbours. The “hommes à 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 Duc de Beaufort for their Magnus
Apollo, and the “petits-maîtres,” who swore by their great master, the
Prince de Condé, were simply harmless fops.

The “elegant” was the first of the butterfly race who exhibited a
calmness of bearing. He smiled rather than answered, when spoken to;
never gazed at his reflection in a glass, but concentrated his looks upon
his own proper person. 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 proclaims 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 imperceptible 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 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 difficulty 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 young
old man could hold himself erect, could bow like a judge, and was kept
lean by late hours. He had, in the common acceptation 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
embrace the youthful Briton, the latter skips off, with the exclamation,
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
prescribes 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 devoting 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. You 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 encyclopædia.”

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
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 bearing
that bespoke much more the Venus Pandemia than the Venus Ourania. And
there too were the abbés, 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 conception.
Reputations were made and unmade at these morning toilets; and as for the
detail of the dressing, while the _coquet_ 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. Parenthetically may I say that the custom of kissing
the Pontiff’s slipper arose from the time when one of the Leos, having
been offended by an act of one of his fingers, cut it off, 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 of visiting _en blanc_, as it was called;
that is by leaving a card. The old ladies and gentlemen who loved to show
their costume, 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 Barmécides” 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 à la Barmécide.” La Harpe rapturously summoned
him to the carriage-door, at the request of the Duchess, who wished to
make him a present of a walking-stick _à la Barmécide_, in celebration
of the success achieved by his tragedy. “But why do you call your canes
_à la Barmécide_?” 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 profited by it, and sporting vests with a
little pocket to carry a whistle, were immediately named “vestes à la
Barmécide.”

What the Bourse and Royal Exchange are to the magnates of the commercial
world, the Temple in Paris is (and Rag Fair and Houndsditch in London are
or have been) to the dealers in the cast-off skins, if we may so speak,
of glittering metropolitan and other snakes. It is especially at Paris
that the commerce of renovated ancient garments (_dix-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 _roués_ 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 sacred 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 bargains in dilapidated habits. The Paris
class of such dealers 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
Ambassador 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 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
delicate 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 Astræa 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 modesty,” 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’d lions;
    While pretty young Israelites dance round the prophet,
    In very 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 about eleven in the morning.
All the _marchands d’habits_ 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 Empire was General
Dorsenne. “Look at Dorsenne,” Napoleon would say, “on the day of battle;
he looks like the true type of a French general, while Murat has the air
of a rider from Franconi’s.”

Dorsenne was about to set out for the campaign in Prussia. He was the
possessor of a tasteful but brilliant uniform, 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 Théâtre de la Gaîté, 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 general. Dorsenne
was astonished; he put up his glass, recognized his property on Tautain’s
back, and, exploding with wrath, 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 Tautain to the
neighbouring “poste,” and there stood the General as scarlet as Major
Bagstock.

“Where did you steal that coat, you wretched mountebank?” 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.”

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 epaulettes 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 transformation 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
Exchange. It is from him we learn that when a coat has passed through
all its degrees of descent,—when it has been transferred 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 manufacturers who make “l’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’Anglemont, 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 waistcoat from the hand of Blanc, and
trousers whose incomparable cut declares them to have proceeded from
the genius and shears of Morbach; in a word, the costume complete of
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 Russian prince, and was the means
of rendering him irresistible in the eyes of a _danseuse_ of the Grande
Chaumière. 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 a
_figurante_ from the little Théâtre des Délassemens, who mistook him for
his master. The coat has come to us immediately from this last possessor,
the extravagance of whose Dulcinea compelled him to part from it. Well,
gentlemen, notwithstanding all these glorious souvenirs, 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 _fête_ 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 Mère Moskow” drives her own trade by the side of the Meurt-de-Soifs.
She is an ex-vivandière 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 Mère Moskow might have been worn,
without scruple, at Lord O’Grady’s by the Reverend Ozias Polyglot, or the
better-endowed Reverend 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 devoted 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 substitute 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 taste of his quality.
Whereupon the champion placed his 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 accorded 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 sufficient 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
among so many nobles?” said the rustic, as he rode _en croupe_ behind
the sovereign, of whose identity he was ignorant. “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 _mal
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 with 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 Parliament; but such is the fact.
As soon as Cromwell had declared that assembly non-existent, he flung
on his hat, and paced up and down the Parliament Chamber. The members,
however, were piqued by such truly cavalier swagger, and would not budge
an inch. Cromwell called in Major Harrison and the guard. The Major saw
how matters stood, and he felt at once that he could get the ex-deputies
out much sooner by courtesy than carbines. Accordingly 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 gentle 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 Parliament 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 assembly 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 victim. “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 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. Besides,” 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 this,
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
inveterate gambler. He was a libertine both as to morals and religion,
and the slanderer _par excellence_ of his age. Richelieu 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!” exclaimed 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 Royale 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 Rambouillet. 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 _him_ 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 Rambouillet; and the lords and
ladies both laughed and screamed at seeing Voiture cover their heads with
the hats of two of the company, 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 Hôtel de
Rambouillet, at midnight. Voiture sat with his hat on to listen to the
discourse, but when it was concluded, he uncovered, and making a low bow
to the young orator,—“Sir,” said he, “I never heard a man preach at once
so early and so late!” and the gallants 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 Royale. 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 striking anecdotes respecting passing modes. These
are more plentifully furnished by the household chronicles of the more
worldly people. The Marchioness de Sablé 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 sick, and thereupon the Marchioness resolved
to pay her a visit of condolence, in state. She was poor and proud, and
her pride and poverty were displayed in the circumstance of ceremony, 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 descended 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 uncovered 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 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 beholders. 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 inclination 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 incorporated with the boxes, but
a graduated building was erected on the stage for the superflux of
audience. The consequences were sometimes ridiculous enough; _exempli
gratiâ_:—

When Holland, the Chiswick baker, played Hamlet, at his first benefit at
Drury Lane (1762), the little tillage 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 Rev. 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 amphitheatre, 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 Chiswick that she gently stepped
forward, picked up the hat, 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, becomingly 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 contemplated his own counterfeit and highly
ridiculous presentment.

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 whisper, which said, “Take off your
hats; you are in the presence of the king.” “And what of that?” roared
high-reaching Buckingham, 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 corrected.

In old days there was not only a fashion in the hat, but also in the cock
of it. The famous battle of Ramilies introduced the Ramilies cock of the
hat. In No. 526 of the ‘Spectator,’ “John Sly, a haberdasher of hats,
and tobacconist,” is directed to take down the names of such country
gentlemen 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 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-mentioned 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 _Kevenhüller_ came on
about the accession of George III. They were as tasteless as those French
_chapeaux à 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 Nivernois 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 Revolution, all the young wearers of them (and there were, at
first, no others) were denounced as “blackguards” and “highwaymen.” The
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 purpose 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 originally 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 remember
everything he reads. I would eschew French velvet, 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 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 lbs. 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 Cæsar.

As for the origin of wigs, the honour of the invention is attributed to
the luxurious Iapygians, 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 déchevelera les têtes des filles de
Sion; et le Seigneur découvrira 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 periwigs.” 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 Nola, and thus had
respectable warrant for their singular mistake.

Allusions to wigs are frequently made both by the historians 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 supremely
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 degradation became the very pink of Lycian fashion.

Hannibal was a stout soldier, but on the article of perukes he was as
finical as Jessamy in ‘Lionel and Clarissa,’ and as particular as Dr.
Hoadley’s Ranger,—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 gentleman 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 particular 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 human 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 respecting 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 Gorgonia, 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 unbecoming 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 or preached in
wigs could not be said to worship or to teach the Word of God “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 formæ, non
præcepta virtutis_.” The ladies smiled. It was to some such obdurate and
beautiful rebels that Cyprian once gravely preached, saying: “Give heed
to me, O ye women! Adultery 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 say of me what you please; you may
charge me with breaking 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 Prætexta as a warning to all ladies addicted to the
fashion of the world. Prætexta was a very respectable lady, married to
a somewhat paganish husband, Hymetius. Their niece, Eustochia, resided
with them. At the instigation of the husband, Prætexta took the shy
Eustochia in hand, attired her in a splendid dress, and covered her
fair neck with ringlets. Having enjoyed the sight of the modest maiden
so attired, Prætexta 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 daughter 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 assurance, 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 wearing one single hair combed up above its fellows. The well-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 (Gregory II.), which says:—“Cuicumque ex clericis
comam relaxaverit, anathema sit!”

“All personal disguise,” says Tertullian, “is adultery before God. All
perukes, paint, and powder are such disguises, and inventions of the
devil;” _ergo_, etc. This zealous individual appeals to personal as often
as to religious feeling. “If you will not fling away your false hair,”
says he, “as hateful to Heaven, cannot I make it hateful to yourselves,
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 Alexandria. The latter informed the
astounded wig-wearers that, when they knelt at church to receive the
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 syllogism 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. Your _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 blind, but he had so fine
a nose that he was able to distinguish 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 acquainted 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 tonsure; and of this they
seem to have been partly ashamed, for they concealed it, to the best of
their ability, by brushing 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 ecclesiastical 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, decreed 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 consequence 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 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 suspect 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 consigned to its present safe custody in the British Museum.

English _ladies_ (despite the fact that English lords cherished 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 Comâ,’ 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 catch very
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 _coifas_ vocant,” except when they were travelling. If a
coif even was profane, a wig to this Council would have taken the guise
of the unpardonable sin. It is, however, well known that although Rome
forbade a priest to officiate with covered head, permission to do so
was purchaseable. In fact, the rule of Rome was not founded, as it was
asserted to be, on Scripture. Permission was readily granted to the
Romish 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 submitted 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 Henry I. of England was in France, Sirron, Bishop of Séez, 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 mulierum 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, 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 Monarque_.

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 Whitehall. On the
contrary, he withstood it. He forbade the members of the University to
wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, 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
my hair clean is so great. He trimmed me, and at last I parted; but my
mind was almost altered from my first purpose, 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 September, 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 Westminster 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, with 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 “Mercer’s.” There, on the 14th of August, 1666, the
thanksgiving day for the recent naval victory, after “hearing a piece of
the Dean of Westminster’s sermon,” dining merrily, enjoying the sport at
the Bear Garden, and letting off fireworks, 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 extravagant in his
outlay for such adornments; and he who had been content to wear a wig at
23_s._ buys now a pair for £4. 10_s._,—“mighty fine; indeed too fine,
I thought, for me.” And yet, amazingly proud was the macaroni of his
purchase, 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 periwigs, 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 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 Ramilies wig, with its peculiar,
gradually diminishing, plaited tail, and tie, consisting of a great bow
at top, and a smaller one at the bottom. This wig survived till the reign
of George III. The macaronis 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 remains to remind us of by-gone 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 with the fiery antagonism which blazed
in France. 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 abbés. 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 Abbé de la Rivière, who died Bishop of Langres, as being
the ecclesiastical innovator on whose head first rested a wig, with
all the consequences of such guilty outrage of canonical discipline.
The indignation of strict churchmen was extreme; and as the fashion
began to spread amongst prelates, canons, and curés, 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 intended when zealous,
close-cropped, and bareheaded ecclesiastics 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
himself in a priest under a wig.

Nor was this feeling confined to the Romish 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 Riviers, Protestant Professor of
Theology at Leyden, wrote his ‘Libertas Christiana circa Usum Capillitii
Defensa’ in behalf of perukes, the ultra-orthodox in both churches
turned to gore him. The Romanists 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 Romanist. 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 curé 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 scandalized, when the
Popes granted to certain dukes the privilege of wearing the mitre; but
when the like favour was granted to abbots of a peculiar class, the
prelatic execration was uttered with a jealous warmth that was perfectly
astounding.

When the moderns brought the question back to its simple 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
“mediæval” 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 God? 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 ambassador, M. d’Oppeville, found much difficulty in obtaining
an audience at Rome. He wore a wig _à calotte_,—that is, a wig with a
_coif_, as though the tonsure had been regularly performed, and that the
wig was natural hair. The officials declared he could not be introduced
unless he took off the _calotte_. He could not do this without taking off
the wig also, as he showed the sticklers of court etiquette, and stood
before 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 chivalresque
as “Jean Batiste Thiers, Docteur en Théologie et Curé 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 invokes 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. 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 tonsure 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 excitement 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
primitively-minded prelate would license a curé 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.
Terrible 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 Rheims fondly thought he
had clearly settled the dispute by decreeing, that wigs might or might
not be worn, according 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 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 full-bottomed periwig, you
will find less wisdom in bald pates than you are aware of.” The Curé of
Champrond says that the French priests, who yearly spent their thirty
or forty pistoles in wigs, were so irreligious 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 addition of two tails, it
sometimes passed as a major.”

In France wigs ended by assuming the appearance of nature. In the Reign
of Terror, the modish blonde perukes worn by females were made of hair
purchased from the executioner, 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 PRINCE D’AMOUR. (1650.)


Whoever invented wigs, proud as he may be of the achievement, 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 remembrance 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_ confidently 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 created without a beard, and that the latter appendage was
suddenly 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 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 daughters 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 questions which are supposed by those
who put them to determine 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 extremely 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. François 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 Jesuitical 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 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 cacodæmonize the Eudæmon.” So it may be said,
that a monk with a fine polished 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 monitorism 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 thousands 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
mirror, that he was as well-looking a fop as ever wasted morning 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 Rui 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 outrage; 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
promised hour. They would have forfeited all claim to be honoured 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
mendacious 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 Russian 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 process.
Taxes were laid upon them, which had their weight upon every hair;
and when the recalcitrant were encountered in the street, they were
seized, and their beards either torn from them, or shaved off with an
oyster-knife, whereby half the chin went with the entire beard. The
loyal nobility compromised the matter by preserving their beards in their
cabinets, to be buried with them. They conjectured 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 detestable, that hue having been, according
to tradition, that of the beard of the traitor Judas. The famous Count
Brühl, 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
obstinate in this respect; and they and the Tartars waged bloody 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 ruminate 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 universal 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 conquerors; 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 Fitzherbert 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 him and
the King, and he would not lay out any capital on it till the cause had
been decided.

Raleigh’s wit reminds me of something still more witty, and quite as
germane to the subject.

A few years prior to the Revolution, 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 displeased 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; _puisque vous êtes 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, the _familiar_ 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
inferior 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 reverential regard by all Moslems, for the reason that
their prophet never allowed instrument to diminish his own. An Arab
would be as much horror-stricken now as ever Lacedemonian 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 Duc 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, Timoléon de Cossé, 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 Cossés 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
answered indignantly, “Am I not a De Cossé? and what should my Christian
name be but Timoléon?”—and he added an exclamatory “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 opportunity to follow in the wake of
the philosophers. Chrysippus 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, πώγωνα μέγαν ἔχων ηὔλει: and how sweetly does that last
word interpret the flute’s sweet sound—ηὔλει! it dies away like a cadence
beneath the lips of as great a flutist as Timotheus, our own modest and
able Richardson.

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 Rhodes 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 tolerated.
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 pontiff, 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 reverend 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 Λονδονικός, “in this case I have no doubt. The use of scissors is
imperative; 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 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 superstition 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 accounted superior
to the Prime Minister, as in our own country French _coiffeurs_ are
infinitely better paid than English curates; so to be shaved by a Prince
is to be exalted 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 acquire 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, Ætolians, and Acarnanians, 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 custom,” continues the writer, “of wearing weapons,
once prevailed 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 continuance still in some parts of Greece of these
manners, which were once with uniformity general to all. The Athenians
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.

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 generally, 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 abandoned 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 considerable 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 Normans, who came among
us under a banner blessed by the Pope, held his method of consecration
in scorn and abomination. 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 look
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
Göttingen, have penned their Latin thesis, and maintained its statements
against all adversaries, and who have won their honours,—in short, by
earning and deserving them.

They were godless fellows, those Normans, though they did come with a
papal benediction. Previous to their appearance no deed was legal that
was not marked by golden crosses and other sacred signs. The Northmen
_changèrent 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 witnesses 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 swordsmen, 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 _Monast. 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 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 Châlons, Rochefort, 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 antiquity 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 Norman 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
invocation 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 especially went
to the making of a gallant—the ruff and the rapier. He whose ruff was the
deepest and rapier the longest was the most unquestionable 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 clipping 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 Beverley. 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 Crœsus.
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 support 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 sword was once
more hung upon 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 marrying merchants’ daughters, whose dowries they as profligately
squander as though they had inherited them from their own fathers.

I have, in my ‘TABLE TRAITS,’ alluded to the use and abuse of the sword,
and therefore will not repeat here incidents 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 lawyer.
This hero, ever ready to draw his blade with or without 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 exhibiting 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 Captain Cusack, who was a better swordsman
than Orlando and who stopped the lawyer’s triumphs by straightway slaying
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
became stringent, and judges merciless upon this point. This was made
sufficiently clear in 1726, when Major Oneby killed Mr. Gower 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. Gower, who however declared that
he had fallen in fair combat. A jury, nevertheless, found Oneby guilty
of murder; the judges acquiesced 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 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 pensioner 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 last _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 circumstances 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 costume, a caricature on
the already sufficiently absurd dress of the French, so delighted the
celebrated Duke of Monmouth, that the latter took his own sword and belt
from his side, and buckled it with his own semi-royal hands about the
person of the player. We should be somewhat startled in these days if
we were to hear of Lord Augustus 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
barbarian; 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 caricaturing 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
unimpeachable character and of very refined manners, named Smith, had
a discussion behind the scenes with a young nobleman, 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.
Verbruggen’s, with the sword always ready to leap from the scabbard to
defend her. Mrs. Verbruggen 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 wife_, yet
nobody shall affront her;’ and his sword was drawn on the least occasion,
which 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, worshiped 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,” said
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_.” Four times that amount
was raised, and with it the nobles, with their swords in their hands,
waited on Mrs. Bracegirdle, who accepted their testimonial, as it was
intended in honour of her virtue. What should we think now if⸺? but this
is a delicate matter, and I _might_ make a mistake. I will only add,
therefore, that had Mrs. Bracegirdle been rewarded for her charity, the
recompense 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. Rogers, who not only objected to act any
but virtuous 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 destruction 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 performance 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 accomplished harlequin. The drunken lord’s drunken companions
immediately drew, and solemnly devoted Rich 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 _mêlée_ 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 penniless
“disbanded,” who used to pitch their tent at Derby’s Coffee-house in
Covent-garden, and who were sanguinary in their cups. The “H. P.’s” who
now meet in Ryder-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. Garrick received
from them this questionable support when he brought out the ‘Chinese
Festival,’ with Noverre and other foreign dancers from the neighbourhood
of “Zurich’s fair waters.” A war with France had just broken out, and the
mob were like Foote’s patriot gingerbread-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 they not only damaged the
theatre and many illustrious heads, but they pretty nearly destroyed
Garrick’s own private 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 mention, as it is connected with a
matter of dress. The charming George 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 overcome 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 off 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, 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
boy_.” 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
endured 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, whipping 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 Woffington, with her pointed dagger, punched
the ribs of the exquisite Bellamy; a similar, 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 Clive’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 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 injunctions 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 interruption,
“if I _had_ read him, I should not have understood him; for I am but a
fool at the best of times.” Benedict himself had a respect for swordsmen;
and it was said of him and that other pleasant fellow, his contemporary,
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 difference; 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 existed 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 something better
worth remembering than mere gossip. Toledo, Damascus, and Milan have
been especially renowned for the excellence of the swords manufactured
in those respective 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 Cæsar
was master of the empire, Iberian tailors (and ladies) worked only with
Toledo 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 Spanish 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 famous 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 hollow 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 portion
of the last century, our sword-blades were “regular bricks,” quite as
blunt, but not half so dangerous. An English 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 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 bending 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 uncomplaining 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 on 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 Ruth 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 worn by the Chaldeans; and that in the Chaldee
paraphrase of the book of Ruth, the word which we render as _shoe_ or
_sandal_, is explained 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. Ramsbottom, 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
Edomites, for to loose the sandal was the office of a slave; and in
Egypt, especially, we find paintings of slaves who are carrying 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 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-handkerchiefs. 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 noblemen, 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 Athenæus 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 Rome, in spite of the philosophers who affected 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 sheep-skin. 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.

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, no 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
himself, contributed a remarkable poetical work to the libraries of
1653, namely, the ‘Pelecanicidium, or the Christian Adviser against
Self-murder; together with a Guide, and a Pilgrim’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 rank and quality, inhabiting within and about so eminent a city
as late-famed London, that have made away and murdered 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 Ethelred 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 persons with rapidly
progressing ideas, had donned an imperfect 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. Ramsbottom made the observation I quoted in
the first paragraph, of “having had much walking on her hands lately,”
she may have had these very mufflers 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 Château
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 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 subsequent decree of the Council of Aix, in the
time of Louis le Débonnaire, 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 gentlewoman’s new-year’s gift, and I accept the gloves. The
_lining_ you will elsewhere bestow.”

It will be remembered that St. Gudule had the faculty of being able, when
her candle was extinguished, to blow it in again. Many among us enjoy
the same faculty, and schoolboys often practise the miracle,—the only
one ever performed by St. Gudule. 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 immediately 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 England, 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 though the devil had
invented them. Good Bernard Gilpin 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 became 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 Persian 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 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
Ambassadress, not very many years ago, in England. She used to import
huge cases of gloves under the name of “despatches,” and these she
condescended to sell to English ladies who were mean enough to buy
them. But the custom-house officers became tired of being accomplices
in this contraband trade, and they put a stop to it by a very ingenious
contrivance. Having duly ascertained that a case directed 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 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 Orléans 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 keeping 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!” 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 descendant—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 Yeovil, are the
great seats of the leather-glove manufacture 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 besides hat and gloves.
I will not put one part of the necessary 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 “à la femme altière, méchante,
impérieuse, on est tenté d’offrir une culotte.” 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
married philosopher, “ne peut marcher longtemps sans tomber.” And now to
my promised anecdotes.

A gentleman once said, in defence of Shakspeare, that 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 derrière 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-reputable actress, Miss Maria
Macklin. She was famous for her male characters, and for her taste in
dressing them; Dejazet has not a better taste in this respect. But Miss
Macklin unfortunately had not only worn the male garment 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 scruples too,—that 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 disgust.
Perhaps however Maximilian hated shirts, because they were not of German
invention. Like the old gentleman in the ‘Wasps’ of Aristophanes, who,
being desired to put on a pair of Lacedæmonian boots, excuses himself
on the plea that one of his toes is πάνυ μισολάκωυ—altogether hostile
to the Lacedæmonians; 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 expression
is decidedly a plagiarism from the admirable low-comedy scene in the
‘Wasps,’ where good Master Bdelycleon 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 attached to the astronomical service in Captain
Cook’s expedition to observe the transit of Venus, and whose name was
conferred by the great navigator on “Gilbert’s Island,” resided 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 ordered 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 intimated that she wished him to measure her for
a pair of “leathers,” for, as she remarked, the wet weather was coming,
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, “I never in
my life measured a lady; I⸺” and there he paused. “Are you not a lady’s
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. Gilbert.” The young lady became perplexed too, but she
recovered 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 especially, 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 poverty of the
goods, nor yet their cheapness. A distinguished 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 Reformation 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 residence in Hounsditch, where their great enemy, the Spanish
Ambassador, had previously had a residence. Their locality 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 kinsmen, 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 glorious flag and tightly-encased legs the battle ever raged
with greatest fury, and where victory was most hotly contended for. The
tight parti-coloured legs of the tall Piantaleone 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 delight
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” interpolated, 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 keep it
together, very much resembles, in my candid opinion, a pair of ill-mended
breeches.”

The article of _braccæ_ is suggestive of _buttons_; and touching 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.,—perfectly 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 Birmingham 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 buttons on the garment supplied having been made of cloth, or bone
covered with cloth, instead of gay and glittering brass, as the law
directs. The judge allowed the plea; and the defendant having thus gained
a double suit without 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 admitted 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 Encyclopædia 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 however 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 PLAY.


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 stockings were first known in Europe, a Spanish grandee manifested
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 sovereign lady. The Minister was shocked at the
grandee’s assurance 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 Majesty discarded hot cloth for ever. She found double comfort 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 Rider, apprentice
to Thomas Burdett, at the Bridge foot, opposite 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 nonsense 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 himself, and then taught his squire-brothers, and his
gentle relations; 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. 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 followed upon
the assassination of Henri IV.; and the inventor 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
reputation, the most skilful darning will hardly repair, and can never
conceal, the permanent injury.

And _à 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 advised 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 Ambassador “an extraordinary idea of his magnificence!”

This idea would never have entered the head of his great predecessor
Henry VIII., of whom Stowe, the tailor, says:—“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 Duc 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 human 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 annually to deck foreign legs, and about half that
amount of worsted,—the latter being generally sold by weight. Finally, 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 excite 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.”

    “Il faut ôter les masques des choses aussi bien que des
    personnes.”—MONTAIGNE.


Francis Bacon somewhere remarks that politeness veils vice just as
dress masks wrinkles. Perhaps this saying of his was founded on the
circumstance, that Queen Elizabeth not only wore dresses of increasing
splendour with increasing 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 imagination.” Among the company were Viscount Falkenberg, or
Falconbridge, with his wife, the third daughter of Cromwell. “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 temptation,—“So to the Exchange, to buy things, with
my wife; among others a vizard for herself.”

Certainly that pretty precisian, Mary Cromwell, in a 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 English 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 Blanfort (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.”

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 gallants 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 Etherege’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 ceremony which may not have been unusual, was
already considered as a stale device. Congreve winds up two of his
comedies, ‘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 grandmothers 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 savoury uncleanness, but so modest
that they could not bear any one to see that they did _not_ blush at
it. “Such incidents 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
something 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 Haines said to his masked audience,
in the concluding lines of the prologue to the very play just named—

    “All 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. It is
in a letter on “Boxing Day,” and in it occurs the following 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 medley 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 Westminster justices, _to their immortal
honour_, entered the constables 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 Ranelagh parties, where powdered “bloods” percolated their dreadfully
luscious nonsense through the filter on the faces of the masked “belles.”
And besides, masking at holiday-time had long been a privilege of the
people. In ‘Vox Graculi’ (1623), above a century 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 grandmothers used to
resort to the theatres with covered faces instead of stopped-up ears.
The ears of the public did however rise angrily at last; the palled
appetite loathed the long-served food. A society was formed “for the
reformation 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 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 professional missionaries of the _pavé_, who steal
spoons from chop-houses, and have as many wives as Rugantino. 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
Revels “the special care that nothing be acted in either of the theatres
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 Revels the care of suppressing revelry on
the stage, was very much like entrusting to Satan the suppression of sin.
However, so it was; but her Majesty tore the masks off herself, or rather
threatened 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 contrary to
religion and good manners? Well, I really do not know; but I _do_ know
that, in the very year of the decree, 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 mistress 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 without
the marital sanction, but in November we find him saying, “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 of
Charles I.) at court, on the occasion of a visit she paid to her brother
Charles II., as Duchess of Orléans, he remarks: “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 “forcing 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
honest 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 killing 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: _Bartholomew Fair_.


Madame de Puysieux 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 motion. These are but modern
illustrations. We shall however 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 people.”

Surely there is dignity in a subject treating even of toys that have
been in fashion for three thousand years, and 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 undoubted 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 admiration. It lived
in a wood, and ruled savages. As civilization 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 influence
over the part whereon the image was laid. I believe 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 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 however 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
joyous 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 dissented. 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 employed 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 celebrated visit to Vulcan, she found him
engaged in the manufacture of tripods, which moved about and performed
their office with a bustling air of the most zealous assiduity.

    “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 held in extreme reverence. In the last-named city, Ptolemy
Philadelphus manifested his veneration for the god, by honouring the
deity’s great festival after a pleasing fashion. The King had a figure of
the joyous divinity made expressly 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, Dædalus 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
quicksilver into figures, and by this process he lent a sort of
Chinese-tumbling motion to a wooden image of Venus. 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 continued running about without intermission.

All the Greek puppets belong to the Dædalus school; they were generally
of wood or baked clay, were set in motion 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 representations by puppets.
There is however not a word touching puppets throughout the lively
narrative of the learned and gallant Greek. The Syracusan showman therein
introduced 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 children 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 inventor 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 unpronounceable 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, Dædalus, who 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 Macedonian 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 permanence 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 _Apodidascinda_ 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 opponents 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 Præneste, 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 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 desert
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 to the people
the direction in which resided 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 wonted _éclat_. M. Magnin
holds that the French _Polichinelle_ is not a descendant of the puppet
with the Phrygian bonnet, but an image caricaturing some old boasting
cuirassed captain of Gascony. The breast protuberance he considers to be
merely an exaggeration of the bowed 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 nevertheless prevailed, and allegorical
figures became common. The Fish, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and similar
representations 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. By the end of the seventh century,
we meet with the sacred figure in slight relief carved on the wooden
cross. It required 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 ‘Gentleman’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 difficult 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 several 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, attending 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 necromantiæ 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 Magnus has 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 discomfort to its opponents.
Thomas Aquinas, when young, ventured to enter upon a discussion with this
figure; when the _androide_ so perplexed the priest with his shower of
syllogisms, 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, us 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 Ptolemaïs, 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 showman 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 _éclat_ 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 puppets
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, 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 noticeable 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 immodesty 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 allusions, to
the delight of an audience invited for the express purpose of enjoying
satirical allusions against the Government. 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
invariably a native of Turin; while among the Piedmontese puppets, the
fool of the farce and the villain of the melodrama are of course of
Lombard origin.

The Spanish puppets are of Italian derivation. Torriani invented many in
order to amuse Charles V. in his retirement 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 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 native of Cordova, is a great
favourite. His history is faithfully 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 canonized him to boot, in spite of the
remonstrance of the astounded College of Cardinals.

Although Punch was not originally French, he has always been greatly
esteemed in France. He was a highly honoured puppet, as the registers
of the royal treasury certify; _ex. gr._, “Paid to Brioché, the
puppet-player, for sojourning at St. Germain-en-Laye, during September,
October, 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 particularly, who had already had two
months of puppet-playing before Brioché came, as is shown by the same
registry:—“Paid to François 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. Brioché himself was
suppressed; but he 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 represented 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 Orléans,
with his company of _roués_, 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-d’œuvre_ of the French stage were immediately 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 hostility. The puppet-players took every
opportunity of ridiculing 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 puppets availed themselves of the
opportunity for caricaturing. “Le compère pressait Polichinelle de
lui faire entendre une de ses œuvres; et après avoir reçu une réponse
très-incongrue, le compère s’empressait de demander l’auteur! l’auteur!
satisfaction que s’empressait de lui donner Polichinelle, aux grands
éclats de rire de l’assemblée.”

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 exhibited 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 surface. To their ancient shows
on the Boulevard du Temple has succeeded a line of theatres; and the
chief resulting difference 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 abolished 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_ 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, interludes, and pageants. The names
of the puppet masters have come down to us, from Pad, Cookley, Powell,
and the _daughter_ of Colley Cibber, 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 actors 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 fashion 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 I 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 Castlemaine 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 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” received at the hands of Lantern’s puppets
in Jonson’s comedy. 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 indulgence 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 reverently, let us inquire what
influenced the ancient corporation in their selection of a protecting
Saint.




TOUCHING TAILORS.


    “Rem 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 Saint’s Chaplain._




WHY DID THE TAILORS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM FOR THEIR PATRON?

    “King David’s confessor is worth a whole calendar of
    Williams.”—LUTHERAN TAILOR.


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 furnishing answers to such questions.

I can understand why St. Nicholas is the patron of children. 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 neglected their
children, knowing that Nicholas was their commissioned curator.

I can comprehend why “St. John Colombine” is the patron 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 insanely 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 dipped into
the same, devoured chapter after chapter, and fed so largely on the
well-attested facts, that he lost all appetite for aught besides. He
thenceforth so comported himself 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 nothing disrespectful
to that sincere but seemingly unhappy man, when I say that so startling
was the story as introduced 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 digression 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 applications, and a
disregard of upper appearance or under comfort, have decidedly descended
to the brotherhood of tailors from William of Monte Vergine.

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 centuries 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
Gulielmites 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—

    “There were two who loved their neighbours’ wives,
      And one who loved his own.”

The well-known gallantry of the tailors therefore is an heirloom 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 further 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 unaccustomed 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 blackberries. There
is an eighth, the Abbot of Eskille, who no more liked to play sub-prior
to a superior than Garrick liked to play an unapplauded Falconbridge
to Sheridan’s 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 comfort
of clean linen.” I question if even modern tailors have succeeded in
attaining to this extent of saintly uncleanliness, 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’Eskille_ was the highest possible compliment that could be
paid him; and so the phrase fell to other _camaraderies_, 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 Gulielme! 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
cordially as though the former had made the latter’s hair-shirt too tight
to comfortably breathe in after supper.

Our tenth example is the St. William who was bishop of St. Brieux, in
Brittany, who often pawned his robes to purchase 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 staff 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 mentioned eleven
Williams, there are only _nine_ of them who really rank among the
canonized saints. Is not _that_ suggestive? The fraternity, of whom it
takes nine members to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would
take nine 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 acknowledgments; 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 excelled 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 well-earned dignity in
the Church, there was nothing wonderful 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 Rev. 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.”

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 sincerity dragging after his faults, the whole town, ay, and the
court too, cried out _shame_! The wisdom of our ancestors 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 (possibly) 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 êtes orfèvre, 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 Molière’s Monsieur Josse was discovered 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 “cabbage.”
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 Croyland to that intent, Ingulph thus exultingly records
what took place:—“Those persons showed a kind and benevolent 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 attentive 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, “Render
unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”

Till a very recent period it was the invariable custom, whenever a
Frenchman appeared on our stage, to represent him ridiculously attired.
This was originally done out of revenge for an affront put upon us by
Catherine de’ Medici; who, instigated by the Duc de Guise, had dressed up
her buffoons at a court entertainment, and called them English _milords_.
Elizabeth made a capital remark 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 Ambassador, Lord
North, to be English noblemen, that envoy ought to have told those who
witnessed the unseemly entertainment, that the tailors of France who had
so mimicked 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 successful, tailor
of very recent times, was Mr. Brunskill, whose seat of operations
was at Exeter. No provincial, and not above one metropolitan, tailor
ever realized such 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 actively 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
Brunskill’s 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 century 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 dressing 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
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 mori.”—HORACE.


Oh, Thersites, good friend, how scurvily hast thou been dealt with at the
hands of man! Thou art emphatically _un homme incompris_, but thou art
not therefore _un homme méprisable_. 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 Commissioner.
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 purpose, 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 Thersites,
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 atrocities, 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 Re Vestiariâ.” 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 variously 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 handicraftsman 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;
    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 embattlèd and rank’d in Kent.”

It is clear that nothing less than an invasion had driven this
hard-working artisan from his shop-board to talk of politics 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 ‘Reisebilder’ there
is an admirably graphic account of how the Elector John William fled
from Düsseldorf, and left his _ci-devant_ subjects to render allegiance
to Murat, the grand and well-curled Duke of Berg; and how, of the
proclamations posted in the night, the earliest 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 wayward 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 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 Grumio 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 bullies; 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
containing 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 worship 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 conclusiveness, “you can have no more.” Well might Sir John
enthusiastically hail him as “courageous Feeble,” and compare 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
recruits. 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 curious 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 from running the risk of getting decorated with a bloody
coxcomb. No such jeremiade is chanted by Titanic Francis. “By my troth,”
gallantly swears that lion-like soul,—“by my troth, _I_ care not!” _He_,
the tailor, cares not! neither subterfuge, lie, nor excuse will _he_
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 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 immortalized. Compared
with him, Starveling, in the ‘Midsummer 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 person. Sketon, like the great Duke of Guise, is
full of dashing hope, when all his fellows are sunk in dull despair.
While so august a personage as John à 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 Richard 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
Sallust says thereupon. And I beseech you to mark one thing more. You
know that when the foolish Roman Emperor 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 mention 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
respecters 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 men of mettle to proclaim
at Bodnam, Richard IV. “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 compelled upon him;
and when swift death is to be the doom of himself and companions, he
does not object to the philosophical 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 fever’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.

Massinger’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,” says the grateful
builder of doublets and trunkhose 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 English 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 Ferabosco the mountebank, is very apt to the matter.
He has travelled, 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 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 Rome, 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-plumed 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 lawyers and
tailors put those shreds, of which Lisauro 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 perpetrating a witticism, and the
young gentleman remarks thereupon:—

                              “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 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-legg’d knights_,
    Famed for their faith.”

And then are we told, with rich Hudibrastic humour, that Ralph, the
ex-tailor, was like Æneas 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 described as
being the place where tailors deposit their perquisites.

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 constable,—a contempt in the
entertaining of which he is so well justified by the logical remark of
Blacksnout:—

                    “A constable’s
    An ass. I’ve been a constable myself.”

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 soldier. 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 resisted.

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 quintessence 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 payable at sight!

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 asserts 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 her.”

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 constructed his garment out of the money due for
its fashioning, 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 ancestors. 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,
    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 Pinnacia 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,
    Then must I put it on and be his ‘Countess,’
    Before he 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 reproachfully of tailors, is to bring down ruin upon his head!
This deductive process is borrowed from Cardinal Wiseman; 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 were a knave, it was because for years he
had had an evil example before his eyes in the persons of men better
off than himself, who had not _his_ plea of small means and long credit
as an excuse for bettering his condition at the public cost. If the
fashioners of clothes were sometimes not so careful as they might be in
the application 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 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 incorporate 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 therefore 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.”

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 enthusiastically 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 responsible for
this illustration, which has been made by some adapter, who has had the
temerity to do for the heroic tragedy in question what Cibber 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 anonymous. 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 sartorian
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,
touching 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 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 characters 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 appreciation
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 personæ_ ridiculous, he
cannot do it. He is like the prophet who was compelled to vaticinate
against his inclinations; and the deity of dramatic poetry and tailors
compels 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.

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 name 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 operatives of the “Bury,” moreover, look as much like poets
as tailors,—so abstract are they of air, so romantically heedless of
personal appearance, and so unromantically and really “half-starved.” Not
of them can be said what Titillinda says of Abrahamides—

    “Whose form might claim attention even 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 Cœur de Lion.
When the former was being crowned at York, he heard such an uproar in
the streets, caused by the massacre of the inhabitants 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 tinselled 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 threatened 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.

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

                    Evening.

                  BY A TAILOR.

    “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
    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 their wonted fashion.”

To conclude: the poets have been quite as guilty of petty larceny as
ever was poor tailor. Pope stole from Pascal, and Addison from Pope; and
Churchill’s line in his Rosciad, 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, than 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 HEROIC TAILOR.

    “The dew of grace bless our new knight today.”

        BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _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 amicably, 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_s._ 4_d._ 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
Merchant 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 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 instruction, 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 master’s daughter, Dorinda. But Dorinda
had a soul above buttons, and having given up her heart unasked to
Impolite, a young, foolish heir, she cut the thread of Hawkwood’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 undoubtedly have
rendered a sane man mad, but he prattled so respectfully of medicines to
the doctor, that the latter dismissed 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 punishment 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
gallant 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 mistress, 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 historical romance,
exhibits a merry trait of originality by suddenly 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
respectable 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 Gaspero, 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 supposed 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.

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 commonplace. 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 received 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 husband 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 only add, that the illustrating
artist has been so hard put to it, that he frequently makes one design
represent two different 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 redoubtable husband.

The true story of John Hawkwood needs no romance to lend it brightness,
or season it with wonders. It has marvels 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 Cornelius 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, 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 heroes 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 Général 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 content with singing, like
the pleasant gentleman in the ‘Dame Blanche,’—“Ah! quel plaisir d’être
soldat!” He was resolved 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.
Accordingly, 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 abundance 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-field, the
royal Edward dubbed the tailor knight. “Thou art the bravest knight,”
said he, “in all the army.” “Umph!” 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 hesitate 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 indisposed 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 apologetically 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 chaplains, 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 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 Erle remarked the
other day, we shall soon have thieves pleading the custom of Hounslow
Heath.

Hawkwood was 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 renowned 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 France; 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 disgusted; but privately he signalled the freebooter with a “Well
done, Hawkwood!”

“John of the Needle” did not fail to prick his way according 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 _had_ 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.

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 stripping the person of a bishop. This kind of gentle
amusement 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. Sometimes a single baron, having a quarrel with another
baron, and wishing to get possession of his goods, engaged Hawkwood 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 _à l’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 carrying it on, will
suffice to show of what metal our Essex needle was fashioned.

One of the most creditable pieces of work ever accomplished by Sir John,
was in the course of the war which 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 occasion,
and Florence deemed the cause safe that was entrusted 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 doubtful and spongy
sort of land 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 conquering 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 defeat 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 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 fortified by the foe; the stream of the river too was
broad and rapid, and when Hawkwood had surmounted all other obstacles he
was terribly puzzled as to how he was to overcome 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
beheld 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 satisfied, 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 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 not dare to follow him in this hazardous undertaking,
which had, as it deserved, so successful an issue. But even that enemy
acknowledged that there was not a commander in Italy who, for bravery and
for resources in moments of difficulty, could for a moment compare with
Hawkwood the Tailor.

If Florence enjoyed an unusually lengthened term of peace and prosperity,
the happy result was chiefly owing to the gallantry of Hawkwood and his
men. The value which the State set upon his services was exemplified when
Florence disbanded all her foreign mercenaries, save John of the Needle
and one thousand men, the Macedonian phalanx of the land.

His unwonted ease however was not to the taste of the active soldier. He
had ever been in turmoil, and could not exist without it. What says the
old naval captain in the French song?—

    “A présent, que je suis en retraite,
    Je me vois forcé de végéter;
    Et bien souvent tout seul je tempête
    De n’avoir jamais à tempêter.
    Un vieux compagnon de lame,
    Aussi folâtre que moi,
    Me dit de prendre une femme;
    Eh! mais pas si mal, ma foi!
            Car j’aime le tapage—
              Et je suis tapageur.”

Just so with honest John. He had passed the best years of his life in
war, and he could not do without at least a little healthy skirmishing;
and he provided that which he had hitherto lacked, by taking a wife,
and that wife a dark-eyed, lightning-tongued Italian. The lady, Bianca
Sforza, and domestic controversy, kept him from “growing pursy,” like Sir
Giles; and there was ever a very hot fire at the hearth of the tanner’s
gallant son of Sible Hedingham.

In his later days he did what retired veterans are apt to do, and are
wise in their aptness. He took to meditation, and, not to attending Bible
societies, as hearty old admirals do now, but to not less praiseworthy
service, a sample of which may be seen in his foundation of the English
hospital at Rome for the reception of poor travellers. The funds,
I believe, still exist, though they are diverted from the purpose
contemplated by the founder.

It would serve, he thought, to balance much of a heavy account with
Heaven; and he was comforted in that direction by those most skilful
drawers of wills, the Romish priests. Having settled this matter, and
feeling, like the Irish gentleman on his death-bed, that he had nothing
to lay to his charge, for he had never denied himself anything, he
calmly died in the Strada Pulverosa, in Florence, in the year 1393. He
was buried with a magnificence that perhaps has never been surpassed.
The very details of it dazzle the mental vision; and I will therefore
leave my readers to conceive of it under the shadow of imagination. He
was finally laid to rest in the Church of the _Reparata_, beneath a tomb
in which there is metal enough to make thimbles for all the tailors in
Christendom.

There is a cenotaph in honour of the hero in Sible Hedingham church. It
is a profusely ornamented memorial, with the pretty conceit of the sort
so dear to our forefathers, of _hawks_ flying through a _wood_. It is due
to him in whose honour it was erected, to say that if friends declared
his almost superhuman courage and ability, hostile writers conceded with
alacrity to the eulogy flung upon him in showers.

There is in Essex a manor of Hawkwood, which is supposed to owe its
name to the gallant tailor-soldier; and the house on which, was reputed
to have been built by his heirs. It is ascertained, however, that this
manor of Hawkwood was so known in the reign of King John; and perhaps the
renowned John’s ancestors originally came from its vicinity, and took its
name for a surname, when surnames were rare, and they hardly knew what to
call themselves. One author indeed has suggested that the received story
of the lowly origin of Hawkwood is all fiction, and that he was really of
gentle blood. But I protest against any such suggestion, for in that case
what would become of all this history I have been telling?

In sober seriousness, the main facts are doubtless as they have been
told. They are not mere romantic details of romantic times. In much later
days we have heard of tailors turning out heroes. There is no worthier
illustration of this fact that I can remember, than “daring Dörfling;”
and his little story I will briefly tell, if my readers will only
vouchsafe me ear and patience; as Crispin says, “Cela ne sera pas long.”




GEORGE DÖRFLING, THE MARTIAL TAILOR.

    “Of stature tall, and straightly fashion’d;
    Like his desire, lift upwards, and divine.”

                        MARLOWE: _Tamburlaine_.


George Dörfling was born in Bohemia, in the year 1606. It is popularly
said in that country, that when a child is born there, a fairy presents
herself at his side and offers him a purse and a violin, leaving to
him to choose which gift most pleases him. According as he makes his
selection, is his future character determined. If he takes the fiddle, he
turns out a musician. If he grasps at the purse, he invariably becomes a
thief. Every Bohemian is declared to be either the one or the other. I
may add, that under the shadow of the Hradschin, I have met with “Czeks”
who were both, and with very many who were neither.

I fancy that at Dörfling’s birth there was much confusion, both in
the domestic and the magic circle. In the former there must have been
something peculiarly wrong. George could make no Shandean calculations
touching his birth, for he never knew his parents’ names; and as he
turned out neither player nor robber, except on a very heroic scale,
the fairies do not appear to have afforded him the usual exercise of
judgement which they commonly permitted to discriminating infants.

There _was_ one thing, however, of which young George would _not_ doubt.
He felt quite sure that he was born. He had no hesitation upon that
question; and he was a philosopher of the Descartes school, without ever
having heard anything of the Cartesian philosophy. He soon gave himself,
or had given to him, a name. He had first seen light in a village; and
he was accordingly called George Villager, or Little Villager. “Dorf”
implies _village_, and “Dörfling,” _villager_; and accordingly the little
Bohemian took that humble name,—nobody having the slightest idea that he
would ever make it famous, and upon it place a baron’s coronet.

The village authorities had no coronets wherewith to grace his head, and
in place thereof they put a thimble on his finger and a needle in his
hand. Greatness could hardly have begun with smaller pretensions. The boy
was apprenticed to a tailor, and a very excellent tailor he made.

But what he did _not_ make was money. In his village he could acquire
little cash and no fame. The boy was ambitious, and he declared that he
would walk to Berlin, and build wide-skirted coats for the army generals.
The villagers thought him mad; and the melancholy sexton’s laughing
daughter ceased to laugh when the handsome lad spoke of his resolve. He
was not to be turned from his resolution by Katinka the fair; and so,
with a light bundle, a lighter heart, and a purse lighter than all, he
kissed his Ariadne, with the easy air of a dragoon leaving garrison, and
with hope in his heart, turned his face towards Berlin.

He walked on uninterruptedly until he reached the banks of the Elbe;
there he found the waters out, and his purse in the same condition. And
yet not in the same condition; for the waters had overflowed, and his
purse had not. He had reckoned upon fording the stream, but if he would
cross he must needs ferry it. The Styx itself is not to be traversed
without a fee, and in that respect the Elbe was like the Styx. Charon
was inflexible. Dörfling solicited aid from a group of young officers.
Like Lieutenant Perry, he was called “a fool for his pains.” The police
standing near, finding him penniless, deemed him disreputable. They
asked for his papers; and when one little official, a mere starveling,
read aloud that the stalwart lad was only a tailor, the crowd pushed him
aside with contempt, and bade him stand out of the way of better men.

One of the officers nevertheless approached him, with more of a seductive
than a contemptuous look about him. “At your age,” said he, “a handsome
fellow like yourself should have handsome clothes to help his looks, and
a well-furnished purse to give dignity to his clothes. If you want to
starve, by all means continue tailoring; but if you would become a man,
and a gay one too, throw away that accursed bundle of rags, and cross the
ferry in a better service.”

“Well,” said Dörfling, “here have I been dreaming of nothing more than
sewing button-holes in Berlin, and now have I a prospect of a marshal’s
_bâton_. It’s a long road however from a recruit’s barracks to a
marshal’s saddle. I doubt I had better stick to the needle.”

The fact however was that he had little or no doubt about the matter. He
did not fling his bundle away, as he was enjoined to do. He turned its
contents into a knapsack that was offered to him, and in five minutes
he was crossing the ferry, a recruited soldier in the service of the
Elector of Brandenburg. He was quick-witted, docile, and zealous; and
the handsome and able recruit was not only speedily noticed, but he made
himself worthy of the observation devoted to him. He performed every duty
of his station without a demur; was the first on parade after _réveillé_,
and the last in the military class of instruction as long as teaching
was going on there. That he was the neatest man of his corps was his
least merit, for his old habit helped him to keep tidiness in his new.
Therewith was his good humour unimpeachable and unruffled. Like all truly
brave men, he was of a sunny disposition, loved children and music, and,
if he had a somewhat dangerous tongue and rather too winning ways on
some occasions, why the Fräuleins never complained of either; and if they
who were the most concerned did not, I do not know that any one else has
a right to reproach him.

Promotion was rapid, and with promotion he gained celebrity. He was
talked about near other watchfires than those of Brandenburg, and in
other camps than the one in which the once private soldier now served
as captain. His merit may be judged of when I say that the great Count
Thurn solicited his co-operation; and that, under that renowned leader,
the ex-tailor in epaulettes fought like a lion at Prague, and won golden
opinions, not only from friends who witnessed, but from foes who suffered
by his bravery.

He was not a mere fire-eater; he had a clear head as well as a heavy
hand, and was as apt in planning enterprises sure of success, as he was
ready to serve in the enterprises projected by others. There was a spice
of Major Dalgetty about him too. He loved, next to a good cause, touching
which the major was indifferent, good living; and knowing that he should
find the one, and hoping to enjoy the other, under the banner of the
great Gustavus, he served as “General-Major” in the Swedish army, in
1642, and never once sheathed his sword during the Thirty Years’ War.

At that time he certainly possessed the advantage of shedding his blood
on the righteous side of the quarrel; but, as for good living, why,
if by that be meant light diet, he had that daily. Visionary theories
he said he could endure well enough, but visionary dinners were an
abhorrence. It often happened that in his own quarters there was not
even the _vision_ of a dinner: in that case he had no objection to head
a species of _razzia_, and carry off the supplies from the commissariat
of the enemy. On one of these occasions the hungry foragers encountered
strong opposition, and in the struggle which ensued Dörfling’s lieutenant
was shot dead by an arquebusier. He was the most nearly famished of the
lot, and had contended for the meal with all the ardour which appetite
can give. “Young Naumann is dead,” remarked an aide to Dörfling. “Poor
fellow!” rejoined Dörfling, “he would have cared for it less had it only
been after he had dined.”

The swiftly slain got but scanty epitaphs and shallow graves in those
times; and if any mourned the loss of the lieutenant, they found
consolation in the fact that his absence from the mess left one share
more to be divided among the hungry members. They drank out of the
enemies’ flasks to the memory of their ill-fated comrade, who had
perished before dinner; and that done, they hurried to a work the issues
of which prevented several of them from ever again seeing supper-time.
Dörfling however was not among the missing. _He_ was ever active, happy,
and energetic; most at home where the fire was thickest and the fray
hottest, and too busy to be unhappy, until the Peace of Westphalia, which
put so many notched swords that need never have been drawn back into
their scabbards, and laid down temporary arrangements, which might have
been permanent had the parties concerned used reason before resorting to
ramrods.

In rusty inaction however neither could Dörfling nor his sword
ingloriously lie. To cut throats was accounted a more honourable
occupation than to cut cloth, and the “General” was not at all disposed
to retire as yet from business; particularly as his renown increased
with the number of his fields. He was absent from scarcely one, if from
one, of Frederick William’s great battles, fought up to the year 1695,
against Swedes, Poles, and French. As he grew old He grew less nice as
to the complexion of the quarrel in which he was engaged; nor would
the circumstances of the time admit of this. At the best a soldier is
but a legalized and hired _bravo_, bound to sustain all the quarrels
of the master whose livery he wears. Such servants must serve and be
silent; strike hard, and speak little, except to the purpose in hand.
To do Dörfling justice, he performed this sort of duty after a most
exemplary fashion. He preferred feeling that the cause in which he fought
was a good one; and if it were not, he threw the responsibility on his
employers, and took his share of the plunder with an easy conscience.
His share was often to a very considerable amount; and long before he
died, he was accounted as rich as all the retired tailors and living
field-marshals in Europe put together.

As morality then went, he had fairly earned it all; and truth to
tell, it had not all been won on the battle-field, or in towns given
up to plunder, or at hearths devoted to devastation. He gained no
inconsiderable portion by diplomacy; that is, not by mendacity in
courteous phrases and elegant circumventing of the truth, but by serving
the monarch by whom he was accredited with honest fidelity, irrespective
of how he might offend those _to_ whom he was commissioned.

Not that he ever gave offence to man or woman, prince or peasant girl,
willingly or knowingly. The gentle tailor lad of the remote Bohemian
village was ever gentle, yet not undetermined, at the council boards and
levées of kings. Never was there man more gallant. It is said of the late
Duke of Wellington that, at past fourscore, he, in one day, attended
early morning prayer, gave away two brides, transacted business at the
Horse Guards, took his usual rides, made his ordinary visits, was present
at a council and a “Drawing-room,” looked in at one or two exhibitions,
entertained forty people at dinner, gave a ball after it, and escorted
the last of the fair dancers to her carriage, gallantly saluting her as
she stepped therein at sunrise! This was a well-spent day for a veteran;
and it was just such a day as Dörfling loved to pass, full of mingled
pastime and business. For it was his maxim, as it was the Duke’s, that
a man must be _doing_ something, unless he wished to become the devil’s
man. And so, at various courts, the gallant old Dörfling was an example
of activity courteously performed, to all who cared to profit by it. As
ambassador, he was highly welcome whithersoever his credentials took
him; and it was said of him that his suavity was such, that an unwelcome
missive delivered by him fell less harshly on the ears, than a compliment
from the lips of messengers not so exquisitely trained in the school
of _bienséance_. Not that Dörfling lacked language to apply properly
to acts which displeased him. Had the Czar stolen his “carpet-bag,” as
that stupendous felon did Sir G. H. Seymour’s, the German soldier would
have called him an arrant knave, and not a “gracious sovereign,” as the
British diplomatist did, in his excessive good-nature.

Dörfling lived to enter his ninetieth year! When he passed from the
shop-board to the barracks, people accounted of him as a man who, in
abandoning a peaceful calling for a perilous vocation, had committed a
sort of early suicide. There were plenty of old tailors, it was said,
but very few aged soldiers,—at least, sound ones. It may be doubted
however, humanly speaking, whether he would have lived half so long as a
quiet, meditative tailor, as he did by exposing himself to be shot at,
moderately computated, once an hour during nearly three-quarters of a
century of his subsequent life.

During that term he never met reproach but once. It was at the hands of
the officer who had induced him to enter the army, and who could never
forgive the recruit for rising to a very superior greatness to that
achieved by the recruiter. They were both old men, when the officer in
question sneeringly alluded to Dörfling’s origin. “True!” roared the
hearty veteran, not a bit ashamed of the fact (the less perhaps that it
was known to everybody),—“True! I have been a tailor, and have cut cloth;
but harkye, the sword at my side is the instrument with which I shall cut
the ears of those who are audacious enough to make of that fact a ground
for mockery or reproach!”

Well said, brave tailor! nobody raised a sneer at thy expense after that,
I warrant! No wonder that at thy grave tailors, soldiers, and honest men
yet repair, as to the shrine of a saint whose memory is worthy of respect.

But if Germany has one, we have a hundred of such heroes. When the
Spanish Armada was threatening our shores, the tailors were among the
first to enrol themselves among the patriotic defenders of the country.
They are said to have been mounted on mules, and, when intelligence was
once brought to Queen Elizabeth,—intelligence as false as though it had
come by Electric Telegraph,—that a brigade of tailors and their mules had
been destroyed, “Let us be consoled,” said the royal lady, “we have lost
neither man nor horse.”

I may also again notice the fact, that, at the siege of Gibraltar, the
brigade which did Elliott best service against the enemy consisted almost
exclusively of tailors from London. Really the profession is overdone
with heroes! It has its one in the navy, and of him I will now speak,
though more briefly than of his predecessors.




ADMIRAL HOBSON, THE NAVAL TAILOR.

    “Commend us to the Admiral, and say,
    The King will visit him, and bring health.”

                             SHIRLEY: _Chabot_.


In the reign of Queen Anne, in the pleasant village of Bonchurch, in
the Isle of Wight, there lived an honest villager, whose son he had
apprenticed to a tailor in the not less pleasant insular locality of
Niton.

Young Hobson was here engaged at his humble craft, when he heard that a
British fleet was passing the back of the Wight; and he went with his
fellow-workmen to view that goodly sight. It was a spectacle which fired
his youthful breast with naval ardour; and, abandoning his articles of
indenture to serve the Queen under the articles of war, he proclaimed
himself a volunteer, jumped into a boat, and was taken on board one of
the ships of the fleet, where likely lads, such as he was, met with warm
welcome and hard usage.

The youthful volunteer rejoiced at the first, and defied the second. He
was just of the stuff of which sailors should be made; and when, the
day after he joined, they fell in with a French squadron, the Niton
tailor exhibited such undaunted valour, such self-possession, and such
joyousness of spirit, that his promotion was at once commenced, nor did
it stop until he had attained the rank of admiral.

He was an upright and gallant English sailor. Less actively employed
than the other brave ocean chiefs of this stirring period, his name
is less familiar to us; but he was never wanting when called upon, and
was always rejoiced to find his services were required. The Company of
Cordwainers however, it must be confessed, have more fair reason to be
proud of their admiral than the tailors of estimable Hobson. The latter
had not the chance, like Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the son of a shoemaker,
to whom the future admiral was bound apprentice, to take Gibraltar in
bold companionship with such a comrade as Rooke; and accordingly his
effigy is not to be found in Westminster Abbey like that of Shovel. Not
that the shoemaking admiral has much to boast of. Addison truly remarks
of the figure of the latter, that “instead of the brave rough English
Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant
man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in
a long periwig, and reposing himself on velvet cushions under a canopy
of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument; for, instead of
celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service
of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in
which it was impossible for him to reap any honour.” Horace Walpole,
in alluding to the tailoring and upholstering spirit of the statuary,
remarks that “Bird bestowed busts and bas-reliefs on those he decorated;
but Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s, and other monuments by him, made men of
taste dread such honours.”

I have dealt with the naval tailor here, in order that he might not be
separated from his gallant brethren ashore. We will now pass to the
civilians; and first, of a brace of worthies who wore their honours
meekly, but whose labours deserve no less eulogy than posterity has
awarded to them: I allude to the tailors and antiquarians, Stow and
Speed.




JOHN STOW, THE ANTIQUARIAN TAILOR.

                              “Such a man
    Might be a copy to these younger times.”

                 ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.


It has been well said of John Stow, that he was, in his way, a sort of
Hebrew of the Hebrews; a citizen born of a citizen; like his father, a
tailor; but he was in himself a tailor, “and something more.”

He was born in Cornhill, the year that the gossips there were admiringly
eloquent on the glories of the royal tournament and ball at Greenwich,
where Henry VIII. helped to break three hundred lances before supper; and
then, attired as a Venetian nobleman, led out Anne Boleyn to dance, and
set all present calculating on the coming events shadowed forth beneath
the lights, by such a pair of dancers. The year was that not uneventful
one of 1527.

It was a jovial place, that Cornhill, at the time I speak of; less so,
perhaps, than some dozen years before, when Chantry priests lounged
at the open stalls and talked as familiarly with the tailors’ wives,
as French abbés of later days with jocund lady duchesses. The Chantry
priests were the Giovannis of the district,—the abhorrence of grave
husbands, and the especial favourites of their wives. In 1527 something
of this had ceased, but Cornhill was still the emporium of jokes as
well as jackets; and many were the witticisms which the apprentices,
from their unfronted shops, exchanged with the passers-by, and more
particularly with the damsels.

The household of our ancient friend John must necessarily have been a
jovial one; for when the female head thereof was at the point of death,
leaving four sons, three daughters, and an ex-husband to follow her to
St. Michael’s, Cornhill, she made a bequest which tends to show the
predilections of her family,—perhaps the fashion of the time. She left
them ten shillings to be spent in drink, on the day of her funeral; while
she bequeathed but half that sum to be laid out in the purchase of bread
for the poor.

These were only incidental bequests. John Stow, the father, was, like
John Gilpin, a citizen of credit and renown; and if he had a place of
business in Cornhill, he did not sleep there, as vulgar tailors might.
Not he! he had his country house, Sir, and that where you now might look
for one in vain—“at the backside of Throgmorton-street.” It was then
a rural district, and the old tailor tabernacled with gentility. His
immediate neighbour was no less a man than the minister Cromwell. John
had a garden forty-four feet long, for which he paid “six and eightpence”
annual rent; but Cromwell forcibly took possession of a portion of it,
and refused to pay for what he had stolen. Honest John submitted, for the
reason that he knew he could get no redress; and perhaps he was residing
in dudgeon in Cornhill when his eminent son was compensatingly sent to
shed a halo round his name.

There is an establishment in the City, drafts on which are not so much
coveted as on Jones, Lloyd, and Co. I allude to the venerable Aldgate
Pump. Adjacent to the well, to which the “one-arm’d City cow” is now the
crown, Stowe, the son, was driving his double trade of hopeful student
and rather indifferent tailor, in 1549. A stirring little incident took
place in front of his house, which caused him to deeply reflect as to the
way in which men wrote history.

There had been an insurrection in Norfolk and Suffolk. It was the
chronic malady of our constitution at that time to be always suffering
from “breakings-out.” As many lying reports thereof reached the
City, as if London enjoyed, as we do now, electric telegraphs, “own
correspondents,” and unpurchasable newspapers rather interested in the
stocks. Indeed, truth was as perilous as gunpowder. Thus, the Bailiff of
Rumford had kissed his wife in the morning ere he came to London market.
He was standing at his stall in the latter place, running his fingers
through samples of corn, when “Sir Stephen,” a priest, asked, “What
news?” “Well,” said the Bailiff, “men are rising, even in Essex. Thank
God, all is quiet however, my way.”

Now Sir Stephen was a casuist; and he had a case and an accident, by
which he argufied a conclusion in no time that the Bailiff was a traitor.
“Men are rising even in Essex, thank God!—be that thy speech, then,
naughty traitor? Have him away to the Sheriff!” The market having been
dull, the standers-by were delighted to find something wherewith to
enliven it. They would not listen to the offered explanations of the
bewildered Bailiff; he _must_ be a rebel; and they hoped for a fine day
for the hanging. The poor fellow was examined, tried, pronounced guilty
upon the deposition of the priest, and sentenced to be hanged, opposite
Stow’s house. The convict entered a meek protest against being put in so
painful a state of suspense, which they promised to attend to after the
ceremony.

Well, the man was put to death, and it was a most fortunate thing that
Stow, the tailor, was there to see it. He beheld the composure of the
victim, believed his denial of guilt; and when he heard him proclaimed
as a traitor, he was struck with the fact, that, if such proclamations
were the documentary ground-work of history, the latter was very pretty
reading indeed for those who loved fiction. He forthwith removed to
Lime-street Ward, where he undertook to repair records as well as what
he had hitherto put his hand to. For nearly half a century he passed
his days, and good portion of his nights, in the search after that most
ticklish of virgins to catch—historical truth. The natural consequences
ensued. He did not make money as an author, and he starved as a tailor.
Tailor and author! double the ordinary woe of men! The little he made
at his trade he devoted to the purchase of books useful to him in his
profession.

Now honest John was of a Romish family, albeit the _gaillardise_ of the
Chantry priests had helped to make a convert of him. But he had a respect
for the antiquity of things, if not of facts, connected with the old
faith; and when mention was made of a tailor who worked little, but who
studied much, who professed a reverence for truth, and yet who spoke
almost lovingly of antiquated ceremonies, he was at once suspected of
being suspicious. The suspicion was heightened by the false accusations
of a younger brother; and down came Ecclesiastical Commissioners upon his
little library, to see if out of it they could not prove him a Papist and
rebel, worthy the scourge and the stake. They made sad havoc among his
dearly-beloved books; and were more than once on the point of committing
him to prison, when a volume with an incomprehensible title came under
their thumb. But John answered so wisely and so well, that they could
find no guile in him; and they left him in some little peace, and up to
his ears in papers.

He was thus visited more than once, and always at the instigation of
his vagabond brother. It was after one of these harassing, and to him
perilous perquisitions, that he happened to be reading an account of some
sorry knave who was hanged at the Elms in Smithfield; the comment which
he himself hung upon the text was significant, and to this effect:—“God
amend, or send like end to, all such false brothers!” But he was rewarded
for many of his vexations by the honour which he reaped out of the
harvest of criticism which sprang out of the publication of his first
great work, the ‘Chronicles’ of England from the coming of that uncertain
gentleman Brute, to the accession of his certain descendant, bluff Harry
the Eighth. John did not hurry over this work; he took his time; thought
over it when making liveries for the corporation, walked miles for it,
read libraries for it, and spent all the cash thereon which he possessed,
could beg, or could borrow. O ye gentlemen literateurs, who turn out
successive volumes of history faster than John Stow could make jerkins,
think of a plodding forty years spent in perfecting this one work!

The author was poorer when he completed his novel, painfully elaborate,
yet clear and useful book, than he was when he commenced it. He was
not a better tailor than before; and altogether his prospects were
not brilliant. But he wore a stout heart, lived upon hope, and fondly
thought, good old man! (I trust that no “d—d good-natured friend”
disturbed that thought), that every phrase he wrote was rich in truth.
Now some of it is as true as Robinson Crusoe, and yet quite as veracious
as much with which we trouble ourselves under the venerated name of
“history.”

Towards the end of the sixteenth century the now feeble old tailor, but
cheerful scholar, produced his ‘Annals of England,’ the dedication of
which had been accepted by Archbishop Whitgift. He had asked the City,
proud to call him her “Chronicler,” to help him in his heavy charges, by
bestowing on him two freedoms. I do not remember that the application
was successful, but I do retain in my memory how truth-loving John was
treated by the Vintners’ Company. The modest author, to support his
petition for some slight favour prayed of them, read to those jolly
fellows in court assembled some sheets of his great work. They were bored
to death, and treated him like a beggar. They would neither help him, nor
let him help himself by examining the records in their possession.

He kept a cheerful heart through it all. He winced indeed under the
ignorant additions made to his works by other editors, but he not the
less cordially aided them in perfecting their own contributions to
antiquarian history; and when he met with crosses in either his literary
or his sartorial aspect, the old man calmed his irritation by reading and
by annotating ‘Chaucer.’ But he was growing old and helpless. Although he
was called the City’s fee’d Chronicler, it is not certain whether this
was or was not a mere “façon de parler.” Of one thing there is no doubt
whatever. That ill-dressed king, James I., contemplating Stow rather as a
tailor than an author, granted him a license whereby he was empowered to
go about and collect charity,—gather benevolences, a chartered Bedesman.
But as he happened to be so afflicted with gout in the feet that he could
not perambulate with his petition, the license was next to useless. Stow
looked at his willing but helpless legs, and said with a melancholy smile
that he was maimed in the members wherewith he had most offended; for
that no man had walked as many miles as he had in search of material
for his books. Nevertheless, strengthened by the royal license, he set
up for a weary day or two as a beggar; and all that he gained was seven
and sixpence from St. Mary’s Wolnoth. Magnificent alms for a veteran
antiquary!

And yet the fourscore years which had just passed from the day of his
birth, when he was finally deposited in the consecrated ground of St.
Andrew Undershaft, were not unhappy years. Under trial, next to trust in
God, I do not know of any better anodyne, more potent balm, than literary
occupation; and of that, Stow, that tall, thin, cheerful, pleasant,
bright-eyed, strong-memoried, sober, mild, courteous, truth-loving tailor
and antiquary, had his fill.

He loved truth above everything, and quite as intense was his hatred of
quacks, pretenders, and those stupendous “shams” which have so often made
eloquent and bilious the energetic Carlyle. He loved one thing with as
strong a love as he felt for truth,—antiquarian pursuits. If ever old
times should come round again, the Society of Antiquaries should feel
themselves in duty bound to adopt him, properly authorized, as a patron
saint; and appeal to him at much-perplexed meetings with a “Sancte
Johanne de Stow, ora pro nobis!” to which he will doubtless answer “Sto,
adjutorius!”

What a sifter he was of old legends! And what truths he, after all, did
save from much rubbish! How well he proved that the sword in the City
arms was not there because of the Lord Mayor’s having struck down Jack
Straw or Wat Tyler, but that it stood there as the Sword of St. Paul,
in honour of the apostle. He swept away the fables of old London with
herculean power, clearing them away as Niebuhr has those of ancient Rome,
yet leaving nothing half so pretty in their place. He was the first who
insisted that Richard the Third was by no means such a deformed fiend as
he was painted by those who had written under his enemy Henry VII. and
his successors.

James IV. of Scotland owes it to Stow that his head found a burial-place,
after a world of adventure quite enough to turn it. James the Fourth, as
my readers doubtless remember, was slain in the fatal fight at Flodden
Field. At the end of the day of bloody arbitrement there brought to a
close, the body of the unlucky monarch was found among a heap of the
fallen. The discoverers made prize of the corpse, wrapped it up in
lead, and transmitted it as a thanksgiving offering to the monastery
at Sheen, in Surrey. It was well taken care of by the honest people
there as long as the monastery stood; but when the dissolution of these
religious establishments took place, and the edifice was converted into
a mansion for the Duke of Suffolk and his warm-hearted spouse, Mary, the
sister of Henry VIII. and the widow of Louis XII. of France, the new
occupants put their royal cousin’s body into a fresh wrapping of lead,
and unceremoniously rolled it into an upper lumber-room. There it served
for sundry vile purposes, until some rude workmen engaged in the house
lopped off its head out of sheer wantonness. Their master, a glazier
of Wood-street, Cheapside, anxious for as much of a king’s company as
a glazier could possibly get, carried the head with him into the City.
There, on the man of putty’s sideboard, the dried remnant of a crowned
king, with its red hair and beard, and a “sweet savour” thence springing,
was long the admiration of the glazier’s evening parties, and a
never-ending subject of conversation for his guests. There Stow saw this
skull of the anointed James, but at a time when the savour had ceased to
be sweet, and when it had become a too familiar bore at the _soirées_ of
its proprietor.

The soul of the honest and refined tailor, the sentiment of the zealous
antiquary, was shocked at the spectacle of gallants, emancipated
apprentices, and giggling City girls, knocking about the mazzard of the
gallant king, as they sipped their muscadel or tasted their cakes and
ale. John Stow expostulated, and the glazier consented to ransom the
royal sconce. The tailor quietly and decently interred it within the old
Church of St. Michael’s, Wood-street, the site of which is now occupied
by Wren’s edifice; and the dust of the once-crowned brow of James of
Scotland forms a portion of a path daily trodden by the unconscious
lieges of Wood-street.

I have already noticed what incident induced our literary tailor to
meditate upon the delusions of history. Another incident taught him that
appeals to the passions are destructive in their results, and confirmed
him in his opinion that gentleness has more real power for good than
violence.

Nearly opposite the East India House stands the Church of St. Andrew
Undershaft, “because that of old time, every year,” says Stow in that
admirable ‘Survey of London’ with which his name is associated, “on
May-day in the morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or
May-pole was set up there before the south door of the said church.”
The church was not so high as the pole or shaft, and it received, in
consequence, its name of “Undershaft,” to distinguish it from other
edifices dedicated to St. Andrew. Chaucer, describing a lofty braggart,
says he “bears his head as high as the great shaft of Cornhill.” The
pride of the shaft fell, and the shaft too, on the evil May-day of the
year 1517.

Edward III. had confirmed the enactment of Edward I., permissory to
the unrestrained settlement of foreigners in this country. The first
monarch especially encouraged the Flemish cloth-workers, whose looms were
shortly equal to the manufacture of the whole wool England could produce.
Thereupon the exportation of English wool, and the importation of foreign
woollen cloths, were alike prohibited; and Cornhill and tailors had a
paradisiacal time of it. But in course of years, foreigners poured in
to traffic in this country, and as they took no English wares away with
them, but heaps of English gold and silver, a very general discontent
was engendered, gradually grew, and had reached its height in 1517. In
the Lent of that year, John Lincoln, a citizen and demagogue, called
upon Dr. Bell, who was engaged to preach the Spital sermon at Easter,
and so worked upon him, that Bell denounced the foreigners from the
pulpit, with a fanatic fervour that might be envied by Dr. Cahill, when
descanting on the never-to-be-forgotten “glorious idea” of massacring
English Protestants. “The heavens,” thus rang the Bell, “belong to the
Lord of Heaven, but the earth he hath given to the children of men.
England is the spot which he has given to Englishmen; and as birds defend
their nests, so ought Englishmen to defend their soil from the intrusion
of aliens. Yea, even as the swallow repelleth the usurper from her
ancient abode, should they drive out those who would divide with them
the inheritance of their fathers.” On this hint, the valiant tailors’
apprentices, and others of like kidney, began to insult all foreigners
whom they encountered in the streets; and on the eve of May-day, an
encounter, foolishly brought about by the authorities and some lads
playing at bucklers in Cheapside, and who objected to disperse at rude
bidding, swelled to a tumult, in which the foreigners’ dwellings were
plundered and burned; but no personal hurt inflicted. Down descended
the troops upon the rioters; some hundreds were captured; Lincoln, the
leader, was hanged; and the King was reconciled to the City at a banquet
of grace, given in Guildhall. Two-and-thirty years elapsed before the
May-poles were again erected, as signals for those light of foot and of
heart to come and dance and be merry.

When the old pole was once more erected, decked with ribbons and spring
flowers, in front of St. Andrew’s, the holy wrath of a curate, “Sir
Stephen” of old, was fired against it. He flew into the stone pulpit
at Paul’s Cross, and he denounced the parishioners of St. Andrew’s as
accursed idolaters, inasmuch as they had set up an idol, and by naming
their church “under the shaft,” they had done honour to the pole as well
as to the apostle. Stow, who appears to have been ubiquitous, was among
the listeners, but not among that portion of them who were subsequently
actors, and who rushed from beneath the pulpit, swept along St. Mary
Axe, and seizing the idolatrous shaft, righteously hewed the same into
fragments, and then religiously burnt the whole at the very church door.
Ah, thought honest John with a sigh, if they thus destroy what was old
yet lovely, I will take more pains than ever to preserve the memory of
what perishes;—and he faithfully did so.

It was the over-zeal of members of adverse parties that made of this
learned tailor a Christian, rather than a Romanist or a Reformer; and
he was too gentle of heart to feel unlimited wrath against any but the
defacers of monuments: his own was as little free from assault however
as his own stall had been, when he was alive. The idle deboshed fellows
about Cornhill used foully to assail him and his apprentices, for no
better reason than that he would not share in their naughtiness. He
received the battery of their heavy tongues without reply, and even bade
his loving helpmate to be quiet when the queans on the _pavé_ mocked her
as the spouse of a poor scholar. For be it said, Cornhill was frequented
by the lowest as well as the highest in the land, and its prison “Tun”
for night-brawlers, and its pillory for other offenders, bespoke a
neighbouring lawless population; and this is further proved by Lydgate,
who says, in his ‘London Lick-Penny:’—

    “Then into Corn Hil anon I rode,
    Where was much stolen gear among;
    I saw where hung mine own fair hood,
    That I had lost among the throng.
    To buy my own hood, I thought it wrong;
    I knew it well, as I did my creed,
    But for lack of money I could not speed.”

Stow’s monument was ostensibly raised to his memory by his widow, but
there is no doubt that it was by subscription. It is of terra cotta;
and the figure, once painted to represent life, is seen as the original
used to be seen, seated at a table, engaged with pen and book. Maitland
states that the remains were disturbed, and even removed, but he does not
say whither nor wherefore, in the year 1732. Like the mortal remains of
Fernand Cortes, no man can speak decisively of their resting-place.

Leaving those who love such research to make due inquiry after them, we
will now hold brief converse touching another celebrated “John of the
Needle,” the Chronicler Speed.




JOHN SPEED, THE ANTIQUARIAN TAILOR.

    “Summus et eruditus Antiquarius.”—SHERINGHAM.


So said a learned antiquary of a humble, but also learned, and a
pains-taking brother. Far more reluctant was Nicolson to give praise
where praise was due. The latter person does indeed say of the laborious
John, that he had a head the best disposed towards history of any of
our writers. “Speed,” says Nicolson, “would certainly have outdone
himself, as far as he has gone, beyond the rest of his profession, if the
advantages of his education had been answerable to those of his natural
genius. But what,” he adds most impertinently, “what could be expected
from a tailor? However,” reluctantly continues this costive eulogist,
“we may boldly say that his chronicle is the largest and best we have
hitherto extant;”—nay, he even adds that Sheringham was right in speaking
of honest John Speed as “summus et eruditus antiquarius.”

So, go on, little Farington, in pleasant Cheshire, to be proud of your
son. Just three centuries have dissolved in the abyss of Time, since his
father, on his shop-board, heard the boy’s first cry from an inner room;
and if any one could have _then_ asked, “What could be expected from a
tailor?” he might have pointed to the little stranger, and exclaimed,
_Ecce filius!_

Stow was an indifferent tailor, yet excellent author. Speed was both;
and he was more fortunate than his brother antiquary and tailor. After
he had _served_ in Cheshire, he settled in London as master, and he
had Sir Fulke Greville for a customer. The men, wide as they were apart
socially, were brothers intellectually; and both loved and comprehended
literature. Sir Fulke paid his tailor after a better fashion than that
of most fine gentlemen of his day. He took the artisan from his board,
and set him a student at his books. The result was profitable not only to
those then present living, but also to posterity. Speed nobly inaugurated
the opening years of the seventeenth century by producing his ‘Theatre
of Great Britain,’ wherein the three kingdoms of our own empire are
presented in their exact geography, and there is an elaborate detail not
only of counties, but of county towns. The maps were designed by the
author, who applied to his use, in the text, much scattered matter from
other sources.

Some few years after, he published his ‘History of Great Britain under
the Conquests of the Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans; their originals,
manners, wars, coins, and seals, with the successions, lives, acts, and
issues of the English Monarchs, from Julius Cæsar to our most gracious
Sovereign King James.’ In this work, he judiciously borrowed from Camden,
and was supplied with materials by Sir Henry Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton,
and other eminent antiquarians. The book very much raised a reputation
that was already of no mean height.

Nor did he confine himself to antiquities. Two years had scarcely elapsed
since the appearance of his last work, when he produced his octavo volume
on a religious subject:—‘The Cloud of Witnesses, or the Genealogies of
Scripture, confirming the truth of holy history and humanity of Christ.’
For many a long year was this essay prefixed to the English translation
of the Bible and King James vested the copyright of it in the author and
his heirs _for ever_;—we emphatically say “for ever,” as a hint to the
pirate publishers.

“What could be expected from a tailor, Master Nicolson?” Well, were you
yourself a better man? Did you live half a century and seven years in
harmony with your wife? and did eighteen children—twelve sons and six
daughters—call you father? What could be expected from a tailor? Why,
thou sorry slanderer, John Speed excelled thee in all things. A dozen
and a half of his children stood at his grave-side, in St. Giles’s,
Cripplegate, in 1629; and above that grave his name lives, whereas thine
is forgotten.

“What could be expected of a tailor?” Whatever might be expected, he
performed much. The most famous of his many sons was that Dr. John
Speed, who was patronized by Laud; and from him, through Colonel Speed,
descended that Countess de Viri, wife of a Sardinian ambassador in
London, whom Lord Cobham adopted as his child, after the death of her
own father the Colonel. To her visit to Gray we owe that charming ‘Long
Story’ narrated by Gray, and which consequently would never have been
written but for John Speed, the tailor and antiquary, of Farington. The
ladies are described as

    “A brace of warriors not in buff,
    But rustling in their silks and tissues.”

Of Speed’s fair descendant the poet sings:—

    “The other Amazon, kind Heaven
      Had arm’d with spirit, wit, and satire;
    But Cobham had the polish given,
      And tipp’d her arrows with good-nature.”

Being on the subject of dress, I may add, that Speed’s
great-granddaughter was attired “in bonnet blue and capuchine;” and
I may further and finally remark, that to have written history and
divinity with a learned pen, and to have been remotely the cause of
the authorship of Gray’s ‘Long Story,’ may fairly save Speed, and
indeed the fellow-craftsmen who should hold him in honour, from such
a _nez-retroussé_ sort of sarcasm as “What could be expected from a
tailor?”

Speed the tailor is remembered when Bishop Nicolson is forgotten. We will
pass from him to consider a tailor’s son of another kidney,—garrulous,
vain, rakish, clever, and ever-welcome Samuel Pepys.




SAMUEL PEPYS, THE OFFICIAL TAILOR.

                      “All gentlemen
    That love society, love me; all purses
    That wit and pleasure opens, are my tenants.”

                   FLETCHER: _Wit without Money_.


Samuel Pepys was the son of a tailor of the city of London; and although
he affected much gentility when he himself prospered, he was honest
enough to confess, in cipher and short-hand which he thought nobody could
read, that let others say of his family what they might, he for his
own part did not believe that it was of anything like gentle descent.
Notwithstanding this confession, our friend Samuel had something within
him of the aristocratic cobbler who, in the ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ makes
inebriate boast that “the Slys came in with Richard Conqueror!”

As Pepys was born in 1632, and his sartorial sire did not retire from his
useful occupation until 1660, Samuel, the elder surviving son of a family
which reckoned of offspring a dozen save one, must have had considerable
homely experience of a humble life. The elder Pepys, having inherited a
small landed property at Brampton, near Huntingdon, of some forty pounds
a year, enjoyed his condition of modified squireship for the liberal term
of twenty years. It was but a poor condition after all, and the retired
tailor was often compelled to have recourse to his son, who sometimes
gave him money, now and then bestowed upon him an innutritive compassion,
and on one occasion magnifically endowed him with a pair of old shoes!

Old Pepys was still a tailor in the City when Samuel was a sizar at
Cambridge, at which seat of learning he obtained the distinction of
being reprimanded for being “scandalously overserved with drink yᵉ night
before.” It is further remarkable that while his sire was still behind
his counter or upon it, the ambitious son, at the age of twenty-three,
married a portionless girl of fifteen, with no other possession than the
pride of being descended, on the mother’s side, from the Cliffords of
Cumberland, and consequently from Henry VII., whose daughter Mary, after
being Queen of France, espoused the Duke of Brandon, and from the latter
union had issue those two daughters, one of whom became mother of Lady
Jane Grey, and the other became wife and mother in the honoured household
of the great Cumberland Cliffords. When Aladdin, the tailor’s son of
Bagdad, married that sweet princess with the never-to-be-remembered
name, two wider extremes scarcely met than when Samuel joined hands with
Elizabeth de St. Michael, who brought the blood of Tudor to mingle with
that of Pepys.

After all, Pepys the tailor was allied to good blood before, in spite
of the self-denying modesty of the son. Sir Edward Montague, afterwards
Lord Sandwich, was the cousin of Samuel, and a kinsman worth having;
for he lifted young Pepys from his father’s shop-board to the Board
of Admiralty. In our own days it would be difficult to find an Earl
at the West End who had for his cousin a tailor, or tailor’s son, in
the East; and if such relationship did now exist, the occidental noble
would show scant alacrity in benefiting his oriental and hard-working
kinsman,—unless indeed the latter were an illegitimate son: then the
illicit relative would be sure of a post in a public office. It is
wonderful how legitimately in some of those offices the interests of
England are now served by illegitimate gentlemen,—gentlemen who owe
nothing to their scampish sires but the disgrace of their birth, and the
good luck of a very desirable appointment.

The career of the old tailor’s son was a remarkable one. He left a yet
quiet home, and a not yet jealous wife, to attend Sir Edward Montague
upon his expedition to the Sound, in March, 1658.

On his return from this expedition he became a clerk in the Army Pay
Office, and commenced keeping his incomparable Diary,—the record of
his profitable toil, his immoderate vanity, and his little rogueries.
As secretary to the two “generals” of the fleet, he was on board the
flag-ship which brought back Charles II., and which bestowed on England a
gift for which the Church is annually thankful. In 1660 he was promoted
to the office of Clerk of the Acts of the Navy; and if to the scenes of
his labour, like Charles Lamb at the South Sea Office, he repaired very
late in the morning, but compensated for _that_ by retiring very early in
the afternoon, it must be also confessed that he accomplished much useful
work in a short time, and achieved objects for which his superiors got
all the honour.

In the time of a disastrous war, this tailor’s son continued to exercise
hope and energy when all around him was despair. Samuel Pepys then
stood amid desponding officials, like the great Guise amid the sullen
French officers in Italy ere victory had consented to sit upon their
helms. In the time of the Plague too, the little man (he was as tall as
Epaminondas) ungrudgingly took his turn of the pestilence as others had
done of the sword; and when nine-tenths of the healthy but craven people
had fled from town, he remained at his office and daily stood face to
face with grimmest death.

He held temporarily the appointment of Treasurer to the Commissioners
for the Affairs of Tangier, and also that of Surveyor-General of the
Victualling Department. He had been passively engaged during the Great
Plague; he was actively and usefully so during the Great Fire; and when
the Officers of the Navy Board were summoned to answer before Parliament
for the enterprise of De Ruyter against Chatham in 1668, his bold
eloquence procured an acquittal for himself and colleagues. He occupied
a seat in Parliament, where he, at different times, represented Castle
Rising and Harwich; and when excess of toil induced him to undertake a
tour through Holland and France, he devoted much of his time to making
collections respecting the affairs of the navies of those countries.
Pepys was a widower, when his powerful enemies, envying the greatness
achieved by a tailor’s son, twice endeavoured unsuccessfully to bring him
into grievous trouble on the alleged ground of his being a Papist. The
accusation did him no disservice in the eyes of Charles, who appointed
him Secretary for the Affairs of the Navy; which appointment he retained
from 1673 until the constitution of the Admiralty was changed in 1680.
Three years after, he accompanied Lord Dartmouth on the expedition for
demolishing Tangier; and shortly after his return was appointed Secretary
of the Admiralty, with a salary of £500 per annum,—an appointment which
he retained till the period of the accession of William and Mary, when
he suffered temporary imprisonment in the Tower, and subsequent brief
captivity in the Gatehouse, on the charge of being attached to the
royal family of the Stuarts, and especially to the ex-King James II.,
at whose coronation he had served as one of the Barons of the Cinque
Ports. In his dignified retirement at Clapham he led a life of some
luxury and considerable usefulness. Christ’s Hospital reckons him among
its benefactors, and the Royal Society among its honoured Presidents. He
died in 1703, leaving behind him more books than money-bags; but yet,
as he bade his heirs remember, “more than what either myself or they
were born to.” He best deserves to live in our grateful memories as
the renovator of the navy of England. James II. long got for this the
credit that was due to the gay yet efficient secretary; but we now know
that to a tailor’s son is due the merit of once more raising the naval
bulwarks of Britain to be a defence for those at home, and a terror to
her assailants. When the Company of Clothworkers drink “the memory of
Samuel Pepys” out of the splendid cup which he conferred on that Company
in honour of his father’s calling, let them never forget why that memory
especially deserves to be honoured. When the elder Pepys refused to bind
his son to his own vocation, he was unconsciously helping his country to
achieve future naval victories. Of such a man then the profession may
be proud; and we will now proceed to collect from the son’s diary some
evidences as to how tailors lived, moved, and had their being some two
centuries agone.

The first glimpse we have of Pepys and his father is pleasant enough. On
the 26th January, 1659-60, he writes:—“Home from my office to my Lord’s
lodgings, where my wife had got ready a very fine dinner, viz. a dish
of marrow-bones, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, a dish of fowl, three
pullets, and a dozen of larks all in a dish; a great tart, a neat’s
tongue, a dish of anchovies, a dish of prawns, and cheese. My company
was my father, my uncle Fenner, his two sons, Mr. Pierse, and all their
wives, and my brother Tom.” The old man was still a tailor in the City,
when his son, on the 12th of the following February, records:—“Walking
with Mr. Kirton’s apprentice during evening church, and looking for
a tavern to drink at, but not finding any we durst not knock: to my
father’s,”—whom he found rejoicing that “the boys had last night broke
Barebones’ windows.” Pepys was not ashamed of the old tailor, but, a
fortnight later, took him with him “to Mr. Weddrington, at Christ’s
College, who received me very civilly, and caused my brother to be
admitted.” And indeed the old tailor saw very good company at home. In
June, 1660, while yet in business, Pepys and his wife, on repairing
thither, found “Sir Thomas Honeywood and his family were come of a
sudden, and so we forced to be altogether in a little chamber, three
stories high.” The old tailor moreover was a match-maker, in his way,
for in August we find him “propounding Mr. John Pickering for Sir Thomas
Honeywood’s daughter;” a propounding that was certainly made by one of
the most singular of agents that ever undertook the business of the
old firm of Cupid, Hymen, and Co. The father too appears to have been
employed by the son; the latter got him to make “a black cloth coat out
of a short cloak, to walk up and down in,” when London was in mourning,
in September, for the Duke of Gloucester; and in October we find him
again patronizing the paternal establishment, where he calls on a Sunday
“to change my long black cloak for a short one (long cloaks being now
quite out), but, he being gone to church, I could not get one.” When the
old house was broken up, Pepys consented to take his sister from off the
now ex-tailor’s hands. “I told him plainly,” he says, “that my mind was
to take her not as a sister, but as a servant, which she promised me
that she would, and with many thanks did weep for joy,” though it may
have been for something else. Pepys was more generous to the old man
himself. “My father,” he writes in December of this year, “did offer me
six pieces of gold in lieu of six pounds that he borrowed of me the other
day, but it went against me to take of him, and therefore did not.” He
seems to have occasionally had a joyous dinner or two out of his ancient
sire to compensate for the sacrifice. The death of Uncle Robert in the
following year made a sort of country gentleman of our tailor, who needed
the advancement, for the son, on balancing his father’s affairs as a
tradesman, found £45 due to him, with debts to the same amount, and the
balance of _zero_ showing all that he possessed of his own in the world;
and yet the good old workman had sent his sons to college, and _that_
may account for his poverty. In his retirement the elder Pepys exercised
his taste on alterations of his house at Brampton,—changes which his
son speaks of as being “very handsome:” in other respects he was like
great men in their retirement, and amused himself by writing letters,
which appear to have been real “letters of news:” having his crosses
however, as country gentlemen will have, and those chiefly from legal
disputes touching his inheritance, which happily came, nevertheless, to
a favourable conclusion. Pepys the junior warned Pepys senior against
the sin of extravagance, and that with such unction that both counsellor
and counselled and domestic listeners were melted to tears. The end of
the advice thus given was that the sartorius emeritus should keep the
expenses of himself and family “within the compass of £50 a year,”—no
very princely income, it must be confessed, and one that ought to have
saved them from the subsequent reproach of the official son, or rather
of his lady wife, touching “the ill, improvident, disquiet, and sluttish
manner that my father, and mother, and Poll do live in the country, which
troubles me mightily, and I must seek to remedy it.” The remedy adopted
to restore gentility to the hearth of the old tailor was one of some
singularity. “All the morning,” says Pepys, under the date of September
4, 1664, “all the morning looking over my old wardrobe, and laying by
things for my brother John and my father, by which I shall leave myself
very bare of clothes, but yet as much as I need, and the rest could but
spoil in the keeping.” Magnificent benevolence! But the old man doubtless
looked modish in the son’s cast-off suit, and the influence it had on
the locality is perhaps seen in the subsequent offer of marriage made
to “Poll,” the tailor’s daughter, by one who had “seven score and odd
pounds land per annum in possession, and expects £1000 in money upon the
death of an old aunt.” This expectation was, I suppose, never realized,
for “old aunts” are proverbially immortal, or given to cheat, after
tormenting, their heirs, when they do condescend to pay the long-standing
debt of nature. The wooer had however some positive advantages, for he
possessed neither father, mother, sister, nor brother; and the value
of such a man cannot be too strongly impressed upon speculating young
ladies. To balance these advantages he had the slight drawback of being
“a drunken, ill-favoured, ill-bred country fellow.” On the strength
of a prospect of increased gentility, the elder Pepys, now half-blind
and parcel-deaf, rode up to town on horseback, and saw the glories of
the city, and had his picture taken, to hang in the dining-room of his
illustrious son, who enthusiastically records of him that he loved
that son, “and hath ever done so, and is at this day one of the most
careful and innocent men in the world.” Pepys sent him back on a new
horse, and with £20 for the general use of the family. “It rejoiceth my
heart,” says the journalist, “that I am in a condition to do anything to
comfort him,—he is such innocent company.” The old house of business in
Fleet-street perished in the Great Fire; and up rode the ancient occupier
of it on his new horse, to view the spot where he had long toiled and
which he could no longer recognize. The journey was too much for the man
of fine feeling, and he returned home only to wrestle with long illness;
but we find him again in town in the following year, where, with his son
and daughter-in-law, he dined at no less a table than “Sir W. Pen’s,
which they invited us to out of respect to my father, as a stranger,
though I know them as false as the devil himself.” By which remark we may
see that society, two centuries ago, was not better than it is now, which
must be a vast comfort to all who make the reflection. As Pepys records
of his father that he was the simplest of men, we may fairly wonder that
in the year of troubles, present and expectant, 1667, he entrusted the
old gentleman and his own wife with the mission of privately burying his
gold. “My father’s method made me mad,” says the son. “My father and my
wife did it on Sunday, when they were gone to church, in open daylight,
in the midst of the garden, where, for aught they knew, many eyes might
see them.” But Pepys found remedy for this exquisite process; and he
afterwards spent some happy hours in the low-roofed cottage at Brampton,
wherein the secretary expected to pass his own days of retirement, and
therefore loved to adorn it and to see it growing in prettiness.

Finally, the honest old tailor made a will, in which he wrote himself
“Gentⁿ,” as though he were too modest to make the assertion in the full
dignity of the complete word. And in this will, which could not have
been drawn up by a lawyer, for it is easily understood and leaves no
openings for legal objections, he bequeaths the lands and goods to which
he succeeded at Brampton, to his son “Samuel Pepys, Esqʳᵉ.” He left seven
pounds to the poor; ten pounds to each of his two grandsons; his largest
silver tankard to Pauline,—an appropriate legacy, for “Pall” married the
toper; a gold seal-ring to his son John; and if anything remained over
and above these bequests, he left the same to be divided among his three
children, amicably. He left no debts; and on that score, the honest old
tailor of Brampton may rank before many a baron, who neither paid his
tailor’s bills when living, nor left wherewith to honestly discharge
them, after his decease.

If there was one thing Pepys loved best, next to good wine and good
company, it was the stage. Let us see if we cannot find him a brother
among the actors.




RICHARD RYAN, THE THEATRICAL TAILOR.

                        “Honest man;
    Here’s all the words that thou art worth.”

               DAVENPORT: _The City Nightcap_.


Dignum and Moses Kean, the latter the uncle of Edmund Kean, were one day
standing employed in jovial converse under the Piazza in Covent Garden,
when Charles Bannister passed by with a friend. Dignum and Moses had been
but indifferent tailors, before the one turned vocalist and the other
mimic. “I never see those two fellows together,” said Charles, “without
thinking of one of Shakspeare’s plays.” “And which is that?” inquired his
friend. “_Measure for Measure_,” said Charles.

It is a custom with some Arab tribes for a man, when he becomes a father,
to take his name from his son. Thus the bachelor Mahmoud ben Youssef,
or Mahmoud son of Joseph, if he marries, no sooner has a boy, whom we
will call Taleb, then he becomes Mahmoud Abu Taleb, or Mahmoud father of
Taleb. In some such fashion the poor tailor Aaron Kean has no other name
in history than that of the father of Edmund,—the greatest of our actors
since the days of Garrick. The family of the Trees has, from as humble a
source, been as bountiful, in its way, to the stage.

The ever-youthful Harley,—who looks almost as young now as he did when
in 1815 he first appeared in London, at the Lyceum, as Marcelli in ‘The
Devil’s Bridge,’—is not far removed from the profession on which I have
been touching. His sire was a draper, and he himself is said to have
been initiated into the mysteries of stay-making, and to have tried those
of physic and the law, ere he settled down to comic acting and delighting
the town.

But I must go further back than this, for my illustration of one who
passed from a humble calling to add dignity to and gain credit in the
exercise of a difficult vocation. When the manager was busy “casting” a
new tragedy called ‘Cato,’ written by a gentleman about town, whose name
is connected with the ‘Spectator,’ and lives in the “Addison” roads and
terraces about Kensington, there was some hesitation as to the actor who
should represent Marcus. A youthful and aspiring player looked blushingly
on as the hesitation occurred. “There is hope, ay, and promise too, in
that blush,” said Addison; “Dick Ryan shall be my lover.” “Why, a year
ago he was only a tailor,” whispered Booth, who played the principal
character. “A London tailor,” said the manager, Syphax Cibber. “And a
present pretty fellow,” murmured Maria Oldfield. “And _my_ Marcus,” said
Addison, “or I do not make over the profits to the house.” And it was so.
It may be a legitimate boast for the profession, that Addison selected a
young tailor to play Marcus in his tragedy of ‘Cato,’ and that Garrick
took from the same source some hints for the improvement of his Richard.

In the latter case, Garrick and Woodward went together to see Ryan’s
Richard, thinking to be merry at witnessing such a character played by
such a person. Ryan was then ungraceful in carriage, slovenly in style,
and exceedingly ill-dressed; but Garrick discerned, in spite of all, some
original ideas, to which he gave development, and therewith he struck out
new beauties which he perhaps fairly claimed as his own. Foote alluded to
this in a prologue spoke by him at Ryan’s benefit in 1754, in which he
said, in allusion to Ryan himself,

    “From him succeeding Richard took the cue;
    And hence the style, if not the colour, drew.”

Garrick, however, was not generous enough to allow of the young tailor’s
excellence; and in Bayes he used to caricature Ryan’s manner by
delivering the passage beginning with

    “Your bed of love from dangers will I free,”

in a sharp tone and lengthened, hesitating manner. Quin showed more
regard for the ex-tailor, by giving his farewell performance on the
Bath stage (in ‘Falstaff:’ Henry IV.), not for his own, but for Ryan’s
benefit. This was in 1752. The receipts were so great, that Ryan applied
to Quin, in a subsequent year, to repeat the performance. “I would play
for you, if I could,” wrote the generous old fellow in reply, “but I will
not _whistle_ Falstaff for you. I have willed you £1000. If you want
money, you may have that; and so save my executors trouble.”

Ryan had years before this met with an accident, which is so
characteristic of the times that I may here recount it without apology.
It was an accident which made such services as those rendered him by
Quin highly acceptable. He had been playing Scipio, in ‘Sophonisba,’ at
Covent Garden, and was passing down Great Queen-street, about midnight,
when one from among a group of footmen stepped off the pavement, followed
him into the road, and, as the actor turned round, discharged a pistol
close to his face, bidding him at the same time “Stand and deliver!” The
robber plundered the player only of his sword, and _that_ he dropped in
the street. As he was unbuckling it from Ryan’s side, the latter said,
“Friend, you have killed me, but I forgive you.” The watch, too polite
to intrude upon the pleasures of the thieves, picked up their victim,
and conveyed him to the house of a neighbouring surgeon, who found that
his patient had half his teeth shot out, and his face and jawbone much
shattered. Of course, he was incapable of playing Loveless, in ‘Love’s
Last Shift,’ as he was announced to do, on the 17th of the same month.

A benefit was got up for the wounded ex-tailor on the 19th. Everybody
loved him, and public and players exerted themselves in his behalf. The
play was ‘The Provoked Husband.’ Royalty patronized it; and many who
could not attend, sent cheques on their bankers as their representatives.
Ryan lay for some little time in a deplorable state, and it was very much
doubted whether he would ever be able to articulate again. The public
looked with sympathy upon their favourite actor; and when, on the 26th of
the following month, April, he made his appearance in a new part, that of
Bellair, in the ‘Double Deceit,’ great was the delight of the playgoers
to find that “their esteemed Ryan,” as he was called, was little, if any,
the worse in speech, spirits, or gracefulness, and that the footpad’s
pistol had not destroyed the man for whom Garrick himself had shown
respect, by at once imitating and caricaturing him. Ryan however never
did perfectly recover, although he retained his position on the stage for
many years longer.

It was probably more necessity than inclination that kept him on the
stage till 1760, in which year he died, after playing the lovers in
Tragedy and the fine gentlemen in Comedy for more than thirty years. The
line which he took was subsequently ably filled by Charles Kemble, and
for something like the same period. But Charles Kemble had, naturally,
advantages which Ryan did not at first possess, and which he only slowly
acquired. The former however was the subject of much critical ridicule
when he first appeared, so awkward was he in spite of his natural
advantages. If Ryan never became thoroughly graceful, he was always
perfectly easy; and, notwithstanding a harsh and dissonant voice, he
could, like Edmund Kean, so manage that organ as to create good effect
out of its very defects. He had, with some slight extravagance, excellent
judgement, sense, and feeling; and Johnson could not have said to the
honest tailor turned actor, as he did sneeringly to Garrick, that Punch
had _no_ feeling. In scenes where Comedy trenched upon the domain of the
sister Muse by the exhibition of profound emotion, Ryan was very great;
and probably no actor has so nearly resembled him in this respect as Mr.
Robson, whose origin is as modestly respectable as Ryan’s was. They who
can recollect Elliston, as he played, in his latter days, the genial
Rover, may have some idea of what Ryan was, when he grew old, in Captain
Plume,—namely, defiant of age, and full of the natural assumption of a
spirit that seemed backed by the strength which was not there, but which
had a substitute in irresistible goodwill.

The gay and graceful Woodward was a contemporary of Ryan’s; and though he
was not originally a tailor, he was a pupil of “Merchant Tailors’,” and,
if I mistake not, head scholar there in his youth. One good consequence
resulting therefrom was, that Woodward never had a benefit without
active and liberal patronage on the part of that establishment, which
felt itself honoured at ranking so distinguished an actor among its
celebrities; and distinguished indeed was Harry Woodward. Since his time
the part of Bobadil has never been justly represented; it may be said
to have died with him. At a period when correct costume was not cared
for, he was ever careful regarding the proprieties of dress; and, more
fortunate than Ryan, he sustained the assaults of Time without letting
the consequent ravages be seen. Charles Mathews is, in many respects,
exactly what Woodward is said to have been; but Woodward could play a
far wider range of characters. His scamps were perfect for their cool
impudence; his modern fops, for their brazen impertinence; his fops of
earlier days, for their elegant rascality; his every-day simpletons, for
their vulgar stolidity; his mock-brave heroes, for their stupendous but
ever-suspected courage; and his Shakspearian light characters, for their
truly Shakspearian spirit. He was gracefully shaped, and bore a serious
dignity of countenance, but he was no sooner before the foot-lights than
a ripple of funny emotion seemed to roll over his face; and this, with
the tones of a capital stage voice, never failed to arouse a laughter
which was inextinguishable until the green curtain separated the old
pupil of Merchant Tailors’ from his ecstatic audience.

The younger Rich used, like Foote, to ridicule actors who had abandoned
other professions for the stage, and generally on the ground of their
ignorance. But neither Ryan the actual tailor, nor Woodward the “Merchant
Tailor,” ever exhibited so much ignorance as Rich and Foote themselves.
Rich always confounded the words _turbot_ and _turban_; and he was once
heard to insist upon the necessity of “laying the _empharsis_ on the
_adjutant_.” Foote had more wit than Rich, but not more wisdom. “I almost
forget my own name,” said the latter, by way of apology for calling Foote
by no other appellation than “Mr.” “Well,” remarked Foote, “I knew you
couldn’t write your name, but I didn’t suppose you could forget it.” The
latter displayed his own ignorance when he laughed at the idea of a ghost
taking a corporal oath. He forgot that such an oath was so called because
it was taken on the _corporale_, or cloth which covers the elements in
the Sacrament.

But even tailors on the stage would be nothing if the poets did not write
for them; and here is a poet-tailor to our hand, doing honour to two
crafts.




PAUL WHITEHEAD, THE POET TAILOR.

                  “He lived a poet in this town
    (If we may term our modern writers poets),
    Sharp-witted, bitter-tongued, his pen of steel.
    His ink was temper’d with the biting juice,
    And extracts of the bitterest weeds that grew.
    He never wrote but when the elements
    Of fire and water tilted in his brain.”

              HEYWOOD: _Fair Maid of the Exchange_.


Among the tailors who have been authors, Paul Whitehead takes a very
respectable rank; which is more, I am sorry to say, than he does among
men. The career of the two Whiteheads has a moral in it. William, the
son of a Cambridge baker, was, like Paul, the tailor’s son, a most
successful tuft-hunter; but then he hunted chiefly after patricians of
principle,—of good principle. William was a gentle lad; he walked through
the university of his native city with quiet credit, and passed into
Lord Grey’s family as private tutor; where he taught mildly, and wrote
classical tragedies of so soporific a nature, that the reading of them
might safely be recommended to the sleepless by hypnologists. William
the baker was a highly respectable and never-too-soon-to-be-forgotten
individual.

It is otherwise with roystering Paul the tailor. Chapel-yard, Holborn,
was the cradle (in 1709) of this boisterous and biting poet. His father
would have been content to see him take measures to follow his example;
but as Hervagault, the first pseudo-Dauphin, quitted his father’s board
to make assault upon the throne of Capet, so Paul, backed by his friends,
aimed at the realm of rhyme, and would wear his father’s coats, but would
not make them. His sire apprenticed him to a mercer; the ambitious son
went and entered himself at the Temple.

Paul was one of those daring wits whom profane men most admire; and as
the young tailor’s style was one which had respect for neither Olympus
nor the mortals, he became a laureate, like William the Baker, but not,
like him, poet-laureate to the King.

Paul of Castle-yard was laureate to the “Bucks.” He was a member of the
most reprobate clubs of the day. He was a member of the brotherhood of
Medenham Abbey,—not of the pious and pot-heaving Cistercians, who gurgled
their throats with good old wine, but of the God-denying and profligate
crew that had Sir Francis Dashwood for their prior. Paul was the Parny
of this and similar sets; and when his patrons required a lay against
loyalty, a rhyme against royalty, a metrical kick at kings, songs against
statesmen, or diatribes against dunces, the Muse of the tailor’s clever
boy was ever ready for the nonce. For clever he was, despite the abuse
of Churchill—himself very far from immaculate. If Paul was a reprobate,
Churchill was that, and a parson to boot,—two professions which should
never be united in one and the same individual. And yet Churchill wrote—

    “May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)
    Be born a Whitehead, and baptized a Paul!”

The man who wrote these lines was in every way inferior to him against
whom they were levelled; certainly inferior to him in talent, though it
perhaps may be conceded that he excelled him in vice, power of abuse, and
ill-nature.

Paul the tailor was to Churchill, the reverend bruiser, what Cobbett
was to Hunt. The first had argument in his assertions; the latter had
as little logic as humanity. Paul, too, had taste, and imitated only
models of the rarest beauty; and this imitation was better than a low
originality without taste at all. His thoughts were marked by a manly
strength, and his phrases abound in a rich vein of poetical expression.
His quarry was folly wherever found, and particularly “the big, rich,
mighty dunces of the State.” Not that dunces, as he said, were to be
found there only:—

    “Dulness no more roosts only near the sky,
    But senates, drawing-rooms, with garrets vie;
    Plump Peers and breadless bards alike are dull,
    St. James’s and Rag Fair club fool for fool.”

And here is a pattern of the fashion after which Paul laid his yard about
the ears of one who was “by birth a senator, by fate a fool:”—

    “Full placed and pension’d, see Horatio stands!
    Begrimed his face, unpurified his hands.
    To decency he scorns all nice pretence,
    And reigns firm foe to cleanliness and sense.
    How did Horatio Britain’s cause advance!
    How shines the sloven and buffoon of France!
    In senates now, how scold, how rave, how roar,
    Of treaties run the tedious train-trow o’er!
    How blunder out whate’er should be conceal’d,
    And how keep secret what should be reveal’d!
    True child of dulness! see him, Goddess, claim
    Power next thyself, as next in birth and fame.”

The author was a persecuted man, rather that he was considered a tailor,
who had no authority to sit at home and comment on what was done “i’ the
Capitol,” than that he was a satirist. Pope was more severe; but Pope
was a gentleman, and was held unassailable. If Paul was prosecuted, it
was that Pope, in the penalties inflicted on the humbler bard, might see
the perils which did himself environ. Poor Paul nevertheless grumbled at
being thus made a scapegoat, and he said thereupon:—

    “Pope writes unhurt; but know ’tis different quite
    To beard the lion, and to crush the mite.
    Safe may he dash the statesman in each line;
    Those dread his satire who dare punish mine!”

So wrote the Tory tailor who abused the Whigs, who were at that time
most flourishing at court, and most arrogant in drawing-rooms. The day
came when the Tories took root at court, and swaggered in saloons: and
then, sooth to say, court life and lounging in boudoirs seemed no longer
reprehensible in the eyes of the satirist. When he abused the throne,
he never expected to be allowed to make a _congé_ at the foot of it.
Benedick, in a similar style, when he abused matrimony, never expected to
be a married man. And, besides, we may allow in well-abused Paul,—once
pillowed on his sire’s sleeve-board,—the tergiversation of principle
which was so coolly practised by such mighty fine gentlemen as Dryden,
and that insufferably impudent and dishonest fop, Waller.

One at least of Paul’s works led to a public demonstration of some
importance; and I may as well notice it here as where it would otherwise
as naturally come—under the head of “Masks.” Walpole, writing to Sir
Horace Mann, in November, 1741, says:—“I believe I told you that Vernon’s
birthday passed quietly; but it was not designed to be pacific, for at
twelve at night, eight gentlemen, dressed like sailors, _and masked_,
went round Covent Garden with a drum, beating for a volunteer mob; but
it did not take, and they retired to a great supper, that was prepared
for them at the Bedford Head, and ordered by Whitehead, the author of
‘Manners.’”

In this last piece the author had committed onslaught on some members
of the House of Lords; the latter assembly summoned and imprisoned
Dodsley the publisher, Whitehead himself having absconded. The publisher
confessed that he had not read the tailor’s strains, but that, as the
work was a satire, he had compelled the author to affix his name to the
title-page, and take the responsibility. One of the libelled Lords,
Essex, moved the discharge of Dodsley; and not only Whitehead, but Pope,
was kept quiet by fear of prosecution.

Whitehead had already known what imprisonment was. He had, like many a
foolish youth, been ambitious of maintaining an acquaintance with the
actors, and he was particularly intimate with Fleetwood the manager. He
had not read the admonitory remark of the Wise King, that he who goeth
security for his neighbour shall smart for it; and the consequence of
putting his name to a bond ultimately placed his person in bonds also,
and he expiated in the Fleet his act of generous folly.

But he soon recovered from the effects of this. He was something of a
beau, and he did what beaux were wont to do,—married an heiress. The lady
was Anne Dyer, daughter of an Essex baronet, Sir Swinnerton Dyer. She
was homely and somewhat imbecile, but she had ten thousand pounds,—“dix
milles vertus en louis bien comptés,”—and Paul always regarded her as
a woman who had rendered him some little service. As duty was then
accounted of, this was acting with most singular uprightness.

He now took to what Mrs. Partington calls his “opium cum digitalis,” and
ceased to publish, though not to write. His republican friends attacked
him as a renegade; his royalist foes assailed him as an atheist; and Paul
laughed at both. To show however that he had strength if he chose to
exert it, he wrote his ‘Gymnasiad,’ a punching philippic against boxing;
and he dedicated it to Boughton the “bruiser,”—and all this in the face
of fashion, which then took prize-fighters by the arm, and walked with
them in the Mall, proud of the acquaintance.

The atheistical gentleman who turned his satire from the Cabinet to the
“ropes,” was well rewarded by Ministers; and Lord le Despenser gave
Paul the post of Deputy-Treasurer of the Chamber, with £800 a year to
reconcile the patriot to becoming a placeman. He now took his annual
tours like a nobleman, and in the course of one of them he found himself
at Deal. There, in a little literary circle, Mrs. Carter met him, to
that pious and learned lady’s profound horror. She had scarcely patience
to hear him read one of his productions; and she who had translated
‘Epictetus,’ in order to gain consolation from his philosophy for being
the native of a place so dull, dreary, dirty, dear, and dismal as Deal,
could hardly recall a maxim or two to her mind to fortify her against
the annoyance of playing second fiddle to the atheistical son of an old
London tailor!

Yet Paul was one of the finest of gentlemen in his way, and associated
with the very finest of the same class. He not only had his country-house
at Twickenham, but a coruscant circle about him of wits whose brilliancy
was not considered as tarnished by the most mouldy blasphemy. He was, as
I have said, the choice spirit of that club which met at Medenham Abbey.
We are struck with a species of horror when we contemplate Augustus and
his friends reclining at a banquet dressed out as, and named after, the
gods whom they professed to adore. It was a thousand times worse with
the atheistical wits who met at Medenham to drown themselves in drink,
to wallow in every inconceivable extravagance of vice, and amid it all
to laugh at Heaven’s lightning. To crown the horror, these exemplary
individuals took the guise and names of the Apostles; and nude Marthas
and Marys held the bowl to the lips of Simon Peter and of Jude. But
enough of this awful habit of the day. Suffice it to say, that Paul
Whitehead and Wilkes, the immaculate patriot, were the most licentious of
these pseudo-apostles, and gloried in their shame.

The hour in which the former was called to answer for the crime, struck
in 1774. Paul was then residing in Henrietta-street, Covent-garden;
and, when he felt the hand of the Inevitable upon him, he burned all his
erotic and infidel poetry, as if _that_ could hide his sins from the
eye of his Judge. He added to this the heathenish folly of bequeathing
his heart to Lord le Despenser. That exemplary nobleman accepted the
legacy; and the precious bequest, solemnly inurned, was pompously borne
to West Wycombe Church, attended by a procession of minstrels, singers,
and admiring friends. As to the quality of the clergy present, it may
be judged of by the fact that they stood unprotestingly by while the
vocalists, engaged by the Medenham apostles, sang, with rapt expression,
the following strophe:—

    “From earth to heaven Whitehead’s soul is fled;
    Refulgent glories beam about his head;
    His Muse, concording with resounding strings,
    Gives angels words to praise the King of Kings.”

When such things were sung of a Medenham apostle, in presence of an
unprotesting clergy, we need not wonder that there were a few serious
men, with a certain John Wesley at the head of them, anxiously seeking
for a “method” to remedy the enormous evils of the times.

We perhaps have deferred too long to notice the establishment of which
such men as Stow and Speed were members, and which has furnished many a
scholar or gallant gentleman to illustrate arts or arms. Let us then say
a word of honoured “Merchant Tailors’.”




MEMS. OF “MERCHANT TAILORS.”

                              “My heart is yours,
    And you shall see it spring, and shoot forth leaves
    Worthy your eye; and the oppressed sap
    Ascend to ev’ry part, to make it green
    And pay your love with fruit, when harvest comes.”

           LOVE TRICKS, _by Shirley, a pupil of M. T._


I regret to say it, but the Rev. H. B. Wilson, the reverend author of
that half-hundredweight quarto which gives the history of the Merchant
Tailors, and which the author hoped would find its way into our villages,
is ashamed of the origin of his heroes. He has even enough of false pride
to beg that writers will spell Merchant Ta_y_lors with a _y_, and not
with an _i_! Tailors with an _i_, he says, may be mistaken for a trade;
while Taylors with a _y_ may be taken for a name! So was Sir Piercie
Shafton ever blushing at the idea of his father’s calling; and so do the
Smiths with an _i_, fancy that they glide into gentility and euphony by
becoming Smyths with a _y_.

How long the City guild of tailors has sustained a corporate dignity
it would be hard to say; we know however that Edward I. confirmed the
guild under their old name of “Merchant Tailors and Linen Armourers.”
Their symbolic shield bore a tent between two mantles, denoting that the
honest men of the guild made cloaks for all customers, and tents for
the royal army. Many a marquis has not half so delicate a device; and
the _Mercatores Scissores_ have been worthily translated by those far
less useful gentlemen,—the members of the College of Arms. The oath of
the livery bound the new brother to the utmost possible respectability
of life; but the oath was not broken when the taker of it, in a fit of
enthusiastic pride, broke the head of a “Merchant Skinner” who dared
claim precedency over the “Tailor.” A “bloody coxcomb” was too often the
crest of the valiant Mercatores Scissores.

Of the members of the company, in the olden time, the most illustrious
was Hawkwood, to whom I have assigned a chapter, as becoming his
super-sartorial dignity. Here I will only briefly speak of the school,
and the more illustrious men whom it has furnished to the public service.
The latter are bound to drink the immortal memory of the royal founder of
the “Merchant Tailors and Linen Armourers.”

The school was established by the company in 1560-1, “for children of
all nations and countries indifferently;” a liberal provision, which
was contracted in 1731 by an order of court, whereby express exclusion
was made of the children of Jews. Among the statutes, there is especial
injunction that, “in the schoole, at noe time of the yere, they shall
use tallow candle in noe wise, but wax candles only;” an injunction
which shows less regard for grammar than gentility. The school rather
tripped at the beginning; for though Mulcaster, the head master, was an
accomplished scholar, the ushers brought with them from the north such a
Bœotian accent, that the boys went home talking “broad Yorkshire!”

Mulcaster, the master, too could occasionally indulge in very harsh
English of the vulgar tongue, abusing the “visitors” roundly,—a rudeness
that ought not to have been seen at a school lit only with wax candles,
and having six or seven and thirty scholarships at St. John’s. Mulcaster
was a choleric man; but in his mastership of a quarter of a century he
“turned out” four bishops. These, when boys, had been the widest awake,
while the master slept; for, as Fuller tells us, “he slept his hour
(custom made him critical to proportion it) in his desk in the school,
but woe be to the scholar that slept the while. Awaking, he heard them
accurately; and Atropos might be persuaded to pity, as soon as he to
pardon. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as
the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his
severity on their offending children.” In our days, Dr. Hessey can make
good scholars by a more merciful and dignified process.

Wilkinson, the successor of Mulcaster, had the famous Whitelock for a
pupil; and under the third master, Smith, we find at the school a boy
named Juxon, who afterwards stood on the scaffold with Charles I., and
smoothed the sovereign’s path from time into eternity. Boyle and Dee
were also at this time young “Merchant Tailors,” whose subsequent manly
merits reflected lustre on the old foundation. Smith’s successor, Haynes,
was, like Mulcaster, rather ready with his tongue and heavy with his
hand. He chastised unmercifully; and, on being menaced with complaint
to the wardens, he was so audacious as to declare that he did not care
a “phillip” for them. His ushers, too, appear to have been rough of
speech; and “Bridewell rogue” was the tutorial epithet for a rebellious
pupil. Haynes too was accused of encouraging little lotteries for his
own profit, and not for the recreation of the pupils. “For,” says the
complaint, “you suffer none to drawe any one lott, but those that bring
xiiᵈ. or above. Your biggest lot is one grammer of xᵈ. which is the
greate lott; the rest are ink-hornes, hobby-horses, gingerbread, paints,
and puddings of very small value.” The master of Merchant Tailors’ is
indignant thereat, and protests that not only is the matter one of
pure entertainment, but that he makes nothing by it, and that he finds
the drawers in “dyett bread, comfitts of all sorts, ffiggs, raysonnes,
allmonds, stewed prunes, wiggs, beare, and some wine, and all kinds of
ffrute, which the season of the yeare affordes.”

A story is told of one of Haynes’s pupils, which, like many other
stories, has had different individuals for its hero. It is to this
effect. A very proud and an intolerably ignorant gentleman was constantly
boasting that he enjoyed the advantage of having been a member of both
Universities. “You remind me,” said the old Merchant Tailors’ pupil, “of
a circumstance worth narrating. I have two cows at home which calved
at the same time. One calf died, but I let the other calf suck both
the cows.” “Well,” said the member of two Universities, “what was the
consequence?” “A prodigiously great calf indeed, Sir.”

For many years the scholastic portion of Merchant Tailors’ appears to
have suffered by repeated visitations of the Plague. Then came the Great
Rebellion, with a modifying of the rules, which were made excessively
stringent, and under which the pupils were converted to as sour a series
of classes as if they were enrolled in Dotheboys Hall. But then came the
Restoration, and therewith relaxation; and the young “tailors” pushed
up their beavers from off their eyes, turned up their lank hair into
seductive curls, put their hands on their hips, and looked saucily at the
maids of Cheapside. In the midst of it all burst forth the Great Fire;
and the “tailors,” for a time houseless, got their lessons by fits and
starts, till they were once more tabernacled, in high spirits, within a
comfortable dwelling.

One would have thought that all would have been harmony in the new
house; but such was not the case. For some time, indeed, nobody could
discover a grievance; but having looked everywhere to find one, and all
in vain, recourse was had to religion, and of course a few were created
_instanter_. Good, the master, continued to pray as heretofore in Latin.
The boys roared out for plain English precations. The City took various
sides of the question,—for, against, and a little of both languages. The
Latinists at last prevailed, and the orthodox declared that the heel of
the Apocalyptic Beast was on the brow of the scholars, and that the
sun of England had set for ever. It is a sun however that hitherto has
exhibited a great alacrity in rising again.

Of course the zealous party ousted Good in time. The members of it
held that daily prayers and much devotion after a ceremonious manner
savoured of Popery, and poor Good was turned out as a Papist; the boys
marvellously improved, and became very remarkable for their habits of
“profane swearing and debauchery, and misdemeanours.” St. Lawrence
Pountney was imitating Whitehall. A good deal of irregularity prevailed
throughout the periods of James II. and William and Mary. One instance
may be cited, namely, that of treating the boys who missed their election
to St. John’s College with canary and cake. It was like teaching them
that drink was a solace for disappointment. To be sure they had a sermon
first from the chaplain; but chaplains in those days were particularly
addicted to punch.

See the consequence! The school-kitchen was enlarged; the boys were
divided into the “table” and the “bench;” and, as an illustration of
these jolly juvenile “tailors,” it may be stated that Sam Phillips, a
“tailor” of the “table,” seduced little Will Nash, a “tailor” of the
“bench,” and took him to taverns, and playhouses, and gaming-houses,
and was tried for the same before the school authorities, who found him
guilty indeed, but construed mild of human frailty, and condoned him
on promise of his mending his naughty ways,—which he, like a gallant
“tailor,” scorned to do, and turned out a reprobate accordingly.

Not that the pupils were generally reprobate, but the masters unwise,
and regardless of their own regulations. Thus, when young Buckingham,
who was a very worthy juvenile “Merchant Tailor,” wrote the play of
Scipio Africanus, and had it represented, the masters, who denounced
stage representations, suspended the duties of the school, and sent all
the boys into the pit to clap the piece. It was like the British Senate
solemnly adjourning, as both Houses once did, in order to see Master
Betty play Hamlet.

But let me do all justice to the masters. If they turned their Christian
pupils into the pit of a very licentious theatre (Lincoln’s Inn Fields),
they exhibited their anxiety for pure morality by again turning all the
Jewish pupils out of the school. Israel was their scapegoat.

Quin’s ‘Scipio’ inoculated the boys and masters too with a scenic furor;
and the latter individuals consistently upheld the morals of the _alumni_
by permitting them to perform the most beastly of the beastly pieces of
Terence,—the ‘Eunuchus.’ Thus Merchant Tailors’ sank or rose to the nasty
practice of Westminster; and again I say, “See the consequence!” Garrick,
who used to patronize the performances, enticed Silvester, who played
in the epilogue to the ‘Phormio,’ to a wider stage; and Silvester’s
readiness to play anything, from Hamlet to harlequin, was subsequently
immortalized by Bannister, Junior, in the character of Sylvester
Daggerwood.

Nor can excuse be taken under the plea that the masters only patronized
the classic drama in a tongue defunct. One of the masters, himself a
clergyman, the Rev. P. Townley, wrote one of the most lively farces in
the English language, namely, ‘High Life below Stairs.’ This, too, was
long before the Terence period of the Merchant Tailor plays. It has had
two very lively results. Mrs. Abington’s Lady Bab fired many a “tailor”
youth, and the whole piece caused an insurrection among the liveried
gentlemen in the free list who waited for their masters in the Edinburgh
gallery. As for Dublin, when _the_ Abington went there and played Kitty,
the fashion of her cap set the whole town in a fever; and nothing else
was seen on fashionable heads but one made after that illustrious fashion.

The matter was not mended at Merchant Tailors’ when musical performances
were subsequently introduced, and the satires in Ruggles’s ‘Ignoramus’
were sung by the boys to sacred airs by Soper, by Hasse, and by Handel.
The mothers of some of these lads had to regret, like Niobe, that
the gods had made their children vocal. These operatic displays were
ultimately suppressed.

Finally, under the mastership of Cherry, Townley’s successor, a scene
of another description took place, which caused infinite commotion.
When the French Revolution broke out, the “Tailors” became infected;
and inscriptions scrawled on the walls of the school-passages proved
how disloyalty pervaded the breasts of the youthful writers. But from
writing they proceeded to action. On the 13th of January, 1796, the
Queen’s birthday, a tricoloured flag was hoisted on the Tower Walls,
where, strange enough, it was allowed to remain for three hours, side
by side with the royal standard. The City burst forth into a tumult of
indignation or delight. When the authorities, acting on information,
proceeded to the fortress, the insulting emblem had disappeared; but it
was traced to a hiding-place beneath the bed of the son of the Rev. Mr.
Grose, assistant chaplain at Merchant Tailors’. The horrified sire burnt
the rag of rebellion to ashes, while his son confessed his guilt, and
implicated in the raising of the insurrectionary standard a fellow-pupil
named Hayward, under whose suggestions young Grose professed to have
acted. Their fellow-pupils showed the vigour of _their_ loyalty by
nearly pounding Hayward to a pulpy consistence like that of the men whom
Professor Whewell, as I have elsewhere noticed, concedes as possibly
existing in the wide plane of Jupiter. The offenders were solemnly
expelled; and since that period, the establishment has flourished in
usefulness to the public and credit to its conductors.

It is an establishment which, despite some drawbacks, has produced not
a few eminent “Merchant Tailors.” I can cite but a few, and, among the
many, name the good and modest Bishop Andrews, and the learned Dove, who
in the reign of James preached the funeral sermon of Mary Queen of Scots,
at Peterborough. Spenser the Greek scholar, and the three virtuous sons
of the virtuous Sandys, Bishop of London; Fox, the son and biographer
of the Martyrologist; Heth, who logically tranquillized the public in
1582, when Harvey of Cambridge informed the world that it was coming to
an end; the pious Bowsfield and Gwinne, who renewed a love for Church
music after the Reformation, were all “Merchant Tailors.” So too were
those eminent Oxford men, Searchfield and Perin; Paddin, the physician at
James’s death-bed; Ravens and Buckridge, Latewar, Whitelocke, and Boyle;
Price, Tomson, and Lymby, Rawlinson, Rainsbee, Sansbury, Lauson, and
Tuer; with Wren and Campin, who upheld the honour of Merchant Tailors’
at Cambridge. What they did in general learning, in divinity, poetry,
or law, in the Hampton Court Conference, in the student’s closet, in
ambassadorial councils or the tented field, behold, is it not written in
the dictionaries of biographers?

To them may be added Hutton the controversialist, and the clever and
profligate Hill, who lived an Epicurean and died a Romanist, and to whose
opinions Ben Jonson alludes when he says:—

                “Thou Atomi ridiculous,
    Whereof old Democrite and Hill Nicholas,
    One said, the other swore, the world consists.”

Glancing our eye adown the long roll, we distinguish the name of
Whitelocke, who was indebted for much of his education to Laud, and who,
when that prelate was in difficulty, refused to act on the committee
whose members had determined to push that difficulty to death. Pious
Juxon, the poetic Lodge, and honest Foster, the country clergyman,—who
wrote a treatise called ‘_Hoplocrissma Spongus_, or a sponge to wipe away
the weapon-salve, wherein is proved that the cure taken up among us by
applying the salve to the weapon is magical and unlawful,’—these follow;
and, not less honoured, succeed the names of Sutton and Buckland,—the
first, zealous Reformer; the second, as zealous Romanist. To these
may be added Wilde, the dramatist; Jones, the ornament of the English
Benedictines; tuneful Shirley, a greater dramatist than Wilde; and
Hutton, who was distinguished for his learning in French and Italian as
well as in classical literature. Further we find Dr. Speed, the son of
the chronologist; William Meaux or Meuse, who is described as having
“entered in the physick line;” the loyal divines Walwyn, Good, and
Edwards; and a host of men less known to fame, and who were expelled the
University for being consistent in their political opinions. Calamy is
a name not to be omitted; and Archdeacon Layfield is remembered as the
clergyman who was punished for having the letters I. H. S. in his church,
by being dragged in his surplice through the City, and who refused to pay
either fifteen hundred pounds or five to save himself from being sold to
the Algerines or the Plantations.

Snelling, the tragic writer; Howe, the naturalist; Frank Goldsmith, who
wrote for love and not for hire; Gayten, pleasant author of ‘Pleasant
Notes upon Don Quixote;’ Hewit, the clergyman, executed for loyalty to
the cause of Charles, and whom his old schoolfellow Wilde attended on the
scaffold; and perhaps greater than all, Davenant the commentator, brother
to the laureate, and son to Shakspeare’s melancholic host at Oxford, were
others of the _alumni_ of our house.

Nor must I omit the name of Will Quarles; Calamy and Shirley, men even
more noted, I have already incidentally mentioned: they both died
within the same week, of fright caused by the Great Fire of London,
a catastrophe which made a poet of another “Merchant Tailor,” the
well-known Markland. Indeed a great many of the pupils became at least
respectable poets, which is, after all, no great praise, as applied to
the sons of song.

Pepys and Evelyn record no more interesting incidents connected with the
Great Fire than are to be found in the reports, given by other writers,
of the deaths of these two distinguished pupils of Merchant Tailors’.
Shirley had exceeded by two years the allotted aggregate of “threescore
years and ten” when he and his second wife, Frances, were driven from
their habitation in Fleet-street. They took refuge from the flames in the
neighbouring parish of St. Giles’s in the Fields. But so overcome were
this much-tried and ancient pair, that they both died on the same day,
and within a month of the great calamity. The hapless couple were buried
in one grave in St. Giles’s, and became the associates of a goodly but
silent company,—among others, Chapman, the poet, and translator of Homer,
and Lord Herbert of Cherbury; a company that was afterwards enlarged
by the mute presence of Charles the Second’s “Dick Penderell,” Andrew
Marvell, the infamous Countess of Shrewsbury, who held Buckingham’s horse
while the Duke slew her husband in a duel, and Sir Roger L’Estrange, who
is called “the wit,” upon the principle of naming ill-painted animals
on village sign-boards,—you would not have made the necessary discovery
without the explanatory ‘legend.’

As for poor Calamy, he too died of the Fire. He was driven through the
burning ruins, and so shocked was he at the sight of the destruction that
had fallen on the great theatre of his popularity, that he never again
quitted the room at Enfield, whither he was conveyed, but died on the day
that Shirley and his wife were buried. Thus perished two of the greatest
of the _alumni_ of whom Merchant Tailors’ can boast. To the roll of those
pupils we will again resort.

First among them we find handsome Ezekiel Hopkins, with whom all the
women were in love,—in love both with his preaching and his person.
Oh, happy Ezekiel! cunning Hopkins! Presbyterian when Presbytery was
in power; Independent when to be so was to be “No. 1;” and winning all
hearts from the episcopal pulpit of St Mary’s, Exeter, and subsequently
St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, when Episcopacy and Royalty walked hand-in-hand
among the lieges. Excellent Ezekiel! But, if he had his conceits, his
schoolfellow Webb had his hobby; and nothing could convince _him_ that
the Chinese language was not the language spoken by Adam and Eve before
the Fall.

Moreover there was the penniless and threadbare student Bonwicke; and the
well-paid Bernard, tutor to the Dukes of Grafton and Northumberland, sons
of Charles II. and the Duchess of Cleveland; but for his employers he was
too pure and grave a man. And there was Wells, the Nonconformist and, sad
blot in the school escutcheon, Titus Oates, who was also a nonconformist
to morality and religion; and Needler, fit name for pupil of such house,
and who wrote in defence of the Trinity when half England had more
delight in the argument than the end for which the argument was raised.
Several others of the pupils, now grown men, in the reign of James II.,
were hanging over their pulpits, half Romanists, half Reformers. Like
the tomb of the old prelate at Canterbury, they were neither in the
Church nor out of it, but a little of both. Indeed many of these men
were singularly constituted; and we may cite as an instance the case of
young Dawes, who began his poetical career by composing a poem, which I
should not like to read, entitled the ‘Anatomy of Atheism.’ Nevertheless
Merchant Tailors’ School boasted of Dawes, and of Boulter and Wilcox,
whose election to Magdalen was called by Dr. Hough, the President, the
“Golden Election,” as the Charterhouse boasted of Addison. The “small
change” here hardly represented the value of the larger piece.

Sayer and Oliver, two fellow-pupils of the school, were successive
Archdeacons of Surrey; Joshua Barnes and Peter Heylin were also of the
“Table” or the “Bench;” and Wright, Vicar of Okeham, was of the latter,
and not less famed for his steady refusal of all preferment. Like ‘Silver
Penny,’ so named for his pure eloquence, though it might have been
also for his liberality, and who has made so exquisite a restoration
of Mongeham Church, near Deal, he loved the temple of which he was the
priest too well to wish to change his office. Then there were botanical
Sherrard; Torriano, of Italian blood; Dee, descended from that Dr. Dee
who fooled Elizabeth so “consumedly;” and William Bridge, himself the son
of a tailor and draper, and who contributed a Threnodia to the cairn of
melodious mourning heaped upon the dead body of William the Third.

Merchant Tailors’ had peculiar joy in the accession of Anne, for it was
through one of the pupils that the succession of this sovereign lady
was undisputed. Crowther had married her mother, Anne Hyde, to the Duke
of York; and he did this so cautiously and entirely according to law,
with ample proof to support it, that James strove in vain to procure an
annulling of the marriage, and Merchant Tailors’ looked on the position
of the female monarch as one which had been achieved for her by one of
the popular scholars of the house. It was expected that she would have
shown her royal gratitude by conferring the Bishopric of Lincoln on
little Doctor Dawes, another scholar; but Dawes preached unpalatable
truths to her, and Anne would not move him from an honorary chaplaincy.
“You have lost a bishopric by your preaching,” said a good-natured friend
to him. “I do not know how that may be,” said Dawes, “but I certainly
never mean to try to gain one by preaching.” Divinely well said, O
doughty Dawes! You well deserved what you afterwards attained, the See of
Chester.

Among the pupils who _were_ raised to the Bench, Mews, of Winchester,
was perhaps as remarkable as any. His death certainly was so. He was
subject to fainting fits, from which he was used to recover by smelling
hartshorn. He was once in conversation with a clerical friend, when
he was suddenly attacked by one of these fits. He was speechless,
but he pointed to the bottle of hartshorn on his table. The friend
seized the bottle, and, opening the prelate’s mouth, poured the whole
of the contents down his throat, by which the bishop was suffocated.
Notwithstanding this neat achievement, the zealous clerical friend did
not succeed to the vacant see.

I could name many more “prelates” and “parsons,” who were all good men
and true, and who did honour to the establishment wherein they had
received their earlier education; but the glory of all these pales
before the brighter reputation of Ambrose Bonwicke, that “pattern for
a student,” who was ever so mild, save when he helped his father, the
schoolmaster, to flog the boys; so loyal, save when he refused to read
the prayer for the prosperity of the House of Hanover; and so wise, save
when, in honour of religion, he brought on death by his austerities. He
lacked no eulogists after his decease; and it is suggestive as to what
was considered early rising in the days of the first George, when we find
young Bonwicke praised for getting up at half-past six! Merchant Tailors’
School was prouder of him than it ever was of the greatly intellectual
Lowth. On the other hand, it was ashamed of Tooley, of St. John’s, who
edited Tully’s ‘Offices,’ for the good reason that he was a namesake
of the author; and this, his poor qualification, was also his solitary
one. He effected one other deed,—the seducing of Amhurst to such bad
ways, that the latter ex-alumnus of Merchant Tailors’ was expelled the
University. Amhurst, in a preface to his poems, declared that he was so
punished because he was said to “love foreign turnips and Presbyterian
bishops; and to believe that steeples and organs were not necessary to
salvation.”

Amhurst was among the “odd fellows” of the school. So was Leigh, who died
at Gravelines, and whom the Roman Catholics proved to have died in their
faith, by burying him within the church in that lively locality. Duncan
Dee belongs rather to the bold than the odd fellows. He will ever be
remembered as the intrepid defender of Sacheverel. Among the worthiest
fellows was Wheatly, for ever famous for his immortal illustration of
the Book of Common Prayer. Among the stout-hearted fellows was that
paradoxical Dr. Byrom, of short-hand notoriety, who was loved for his
wit and worth, and whose diary has lately been published by the Chetham
Society. He was the son of a linendraper; married for love; struggled
for life at his leisure; earned a decent maintenance by teaching and
practising the system of short-hand which he had invented; spent his last
days in well-earned ease; and is famous for his epigrammatic epitaph on
that irregular and chemical genius and jolly fellow, Dr. Byfield, who
invented the _sal volatile oleosum_, and who was thus celebrated by Byrom
over a flask at the Rainbow:—

    “Hic jacet Dr. Byfield, diu volatilis, tandem fixus!”

I may add, as being worthy to be classed among the clever fellows,
Derham, whose ability was honoured by a sneer from Voltaire; and finally,
among the audacious fellows was Zinzano, a conscientious clergyman, who
thought to make Milton be forgotten by writing “an entirely new poem
entitled ‘Paradise Regained,’” which turned out to be a treatise on the
art of gardening! But the pupil whose name conferred most glory (so it
is alleged) upon the records of the school during the Georgian days, was
Clive,—that young hero who began by climbing church-spouts, and ended
so miserably after he had added a wide empire to our little kingdom. If
the celebrated Cline, another “Merchant Tailor,” killed more men in the
practice of his profession, Clive, who was by no means contemptible as
a slayer of legions, added millions of living subjects to our imperial
sway. The only pupil who has been “distinguished from the crowd by being
remembered to his infamy,” is Luke Milbourne, the antagonist of Dryden.

It has been said that Dr. South was a pupil of Merchant Tailors’, but
this is not the case. He was however appointed chaplain to the Company;
and he showed how he appreciated the honour, by taking for the text of
his inauguration sermon the words, “A _remnant_ shall be saved!”

The greater portion of the men of whom the Merchant Tailors are proud,
are men who made themselves, so to speak, and were not indebted in
any way for fortune to their tailors. There was another class of men
however, of whom the contrary may rather be said,—men who assumed the
poor vocation of the beau, and found it a bankrupt calling. They have
existed in all ages, and we will go back to those of old times. _Seniores
priores._




Chapters on Beaux.




THE BEAUX OF THE OLDEN TIME.

    “Le Beau ne plaît qu’un jour, si le Beau n’est utile.”—ST. LAMBERT.


Dress, like all other things, has been amply used and abused in all ages;
but there is this to be said for man, that he is the only animal born
without being provided with a necessary costume. This shows that he is a
migratory animal; and if he be not naturally covered so as to suit all
climates and himself, he has reason given him to meet all exigencies, and
it is only a pity that he exhibits so little taste in the application of
it. His storehouse, or rough wardrobe, is in the vegetable and animal
kingdom; and plants die that man may live, and animals are skinned that
the lord of creation may be covered.

The passion for fine dressing commenced undoubtedly with the ladies.
When the Tyrian Alcides was one night loitering by the sea-side, his
arm encircling one of those nymphs whom demigods and boatswains’ mates
find in every port, and their eyes, when not looking into each other,
were fixed on the shadowy splendour of the western star, his dog, a
lank and hungry hound, came upon a shell, which he immediately began
crunching. Thereupon there issued a liquid from the expiring fish
within, so exquisite in colour that it attracted the eyes of the lady,
who immediately declared that never again should she know peace of
mind until she had a dress of that self-same hue. She bade the hero
never to appear in her presence again until the garment was procured;
and poor Hercules, who appears to have had as much perplexity about
ladies’ petticoats as lions’ hides, was sadly puzzled before he and an
eminent firm succeeded in procuring a dye which produced a garment of
the hue required, and would have made the fortune of the discoverers,
had they not been accustomed to the same sort of extravagances which
make bankrupts of London tradesmen. In spite of this, the Tyrian purple
long held on Fashion’s throne an undisputed sway; and no beau of old
appeared in the world without a mantle of this colour hanging from his
ivory shoulders. Agesilaus was one of this fashion-determining class;
but unlike modern followers of the philosophy of the mode, he turned
his ideas of dress to good account. For instance, when he was combating
in Pontus against the barbarians, as the finely-clad and tender-hearted
gentlemen there were called by their enemies, Agesilaus saw that they
were most superbly attired, but that they also were very delicate of
body. He accordingly gave orders that all the captains should be brought
in naked, and be sold by the public crier; but that their garments should
be sold separately. And this he did that the allies might know that they
had to fight for rich spoils with a poor enemy, and so might rush to the
attack with greater ardour. He had the picking of the spoil for his own
wardrobe.

Alexander and his friends were probably the best-dressed men of all
the Greeks at any period. Of one of these friends, Agnon, it is said
he wore gold nails in both his slippers and sandals,—a piece of pride
which was like that of the English farmer during the late war, who went
to a market-dinner in a coat garnished with gold buttons. The vanity of
the farmer was wounded at finding that they attracted no notice; and he
clumsily tried to feed his pride and win observation by remarking, that
“it certainly weer very warm work to wear goold buttons in the dog-days!”

Alexander of course slept on a couch of gold. Great Ammon’s son
deserved no less a bed; but I can hardly credit the assertion that
the sovereign’s tent contained a hundred such beds, and that the tent
itself was supported by fifty columns of gold. The beds however may
not have been for one individual’s use, and the tent was as vast as a
barracks: the couches may therefore have been for the general officers.
Five hundred Persians kept guard therein. These were the _Melophores_,
the “apple-bearers,” who carried a golden apple on the points of their
lances, and who were the admiration of all the maid-servants of the
district, attired as the Melophores were in uniforms of purple and
yellow. These were surpassed by the thousand archers, in their mantles
of flame-colour, violet, or celestial blue. These were irresistible; the
ladies at least said so, if the enemy did _not_; but even they achieved
fewer conquests (I allude less to the field than the bower) than the five
hundred Macedonian Argyraspides, the corps of “silver bucklers,” behind
whose shields however beat hearts more easily reached by the feathered
shafts of Dan Cupido than by the javelins of the foe.

The purple-robed guard of Alexander was his chosen troop, his
_cent-garde_, charged with watching over his personal safety, and seeing
that he got safely to bed when his divinity was exceedingly drunk. They
were terrible coxcombs, were these guards, and would condescend to the
folly of flinging eggs at the passers-by, as though they knew no better
than military gentlemen returning from Epsom, or a wrathful curate of the
district of St. Barnabas pelting an anti-puseyite. These men cared little
whether Alexander were a god or not, but they had a firmly fixed idea
that their tailor had a family claim upon Olympus.

But what were these to Alcisthenes the Sybarite, who has been
immortalized by Aristotle? This rather fast individual had a coat of
such magnificent material,—the coat worn by Prince Esterhazy, and which
that magnate never put on without losing I really _do not_ know how many
hundred pounds’ worth of pearls and diamonds, was, in comparison, a
coat for the Sybarite’s valet,—Alcisthenes had a habit, I say, of such
richness, that, on the day of the festival of Juno, it was exposed on
Mount Lacinium, to the veneration of the crowds who annually repaired
thither from all parts of Italy. It became the most attractive feature
of the festival; and the shrines were passed by, that the pilgrims might
fall into ecstasy in presence of Alcisthenes’ coat. It subsequently fell
into the hands of old Dionysius,—a Jew in his way, as we all know,—and he
sold it for one hundred and twenty talents to the Carthaginians: it was
the highest price ever realized for such a garment.

But it was not the only coat exalted, like the serpent of old, to win
insane worship from imbecile idolators. Gibbon smiles with warrantable
contempt upon the Roman priests who, behind the altar, were preparing
miracles wherewith to astound the people. A deeper contempt attaches to
the several priests who compelled two poor honest tailors, or weavers
rather, to produce the duplicate coats, without a seam, each warranted to
have been worn by the Great Victim ere He passed to Calvary, and before
each of which, as the only one genuine, thousands, ay millions, have
flung themselves down in speechless ecstasy.

There is _the_ one Holy Coat at Treves, and _the_ one Holy Coat at
Moscow; and the priests at either place will tell you that there were
never two. The Empress Helena discovered that of Treves, says the legend.
A Shah of Persia made a present of the Moscow garment to the Czar. Its
genuineness was warranted by a Russian archbishop, who declared that, in
a church in Georgia, a golden box placed upon a column had long contained
this coat, and that it was doubtless the seamless coat of our Lord. A
Muscovite monk standing by clinched the lie, by adding, that when the
soldiers cast lots for the possession of the coat, it fell to one who
lived in Georgia, and that this was the identical garment. Really, when
we think seriously of these things, we must not be too hard upon those
who reverenced the coat of the Sybarite.

To return to Alexander: he was the despair of all men who, desirous
of following the fashion as he gave it, lacked means to realize the
desire. He was to his generals, what very rich Hussar colonels are to
the younger and poorer officers; or what Count D’Orsay used to be to the
counter-dandies of the Metropolis.

Ephippus lived in the time of Commodus; and in allusion to that Emperor,
who used to dress himself as Hercules, and go out daily in his car with
the hero’s club, like a gold-headed cane, between his legs, he says:—“Is
it extraordinary that in our days Commodus does this, when Alexander, a
pupil of Aristotle, did worse in the olden time?”

Certainly, in the article of dress, the son of Philip was as different
from the simplicity of his father, as the Prince Regent from George III.
Not only did he wear the lion’s skin, and call himself Hercules, but,
in private intercourse with his friends, he put on the winged cap and
the ankle-pinions of Mercury. If I may say so without profanity, I would
remark, that if Prince Albert were to walk through Kensington Gardens
attired like David, with a sling and a stone in his hand to fling at the
first fat gentleman he might encounter, he would not be committing a more
unseemly act than Alexander was doing when he decked himself out to look
like Mercury.

But when this wretched madman, the Macedonian I mean, rode out in his
chariot, and forgetful of his wry neck—for he _had_ a wry neck, and
limped to boot,—and despite his very red nose and his blood-shot eyes,
dressed like Diana, the goddess of Chastity, a Persian purple robe about
him, and over his naked shoulder a bow and a quiver,—he must have looked
as ridiculous in the eyes of the beholders, as if the late Sir William
Curtis, who was so solemnly ridiculous in kilts, had exhibited himself
daily in front of the Mansion-house in the dress and attitude of the
Magdalene of Correggio.

In more modern days, we _have_ had the gods and goddesses assumed by
mortal men; but then it has been to amuse, and not to awe the multitude.
They were often introduced in the mediæval shows when Burgundy exulted in
her Dukes. I may cite, as an instance, the solemnity of the first entry
into Lille of Charles the Bold, in his character of Duke of Burgundy.
The delicate citizens got up a “mystery” whereby to do honour to the
refined prince, which excited great amusement. It was “The Judgement of
Paris.” To represent Venus, a tall and enormous woman had been selected,
who weighed some twenty stone; Juno was as tall as Venus, but she was
withered and lean; Minerva bore a hump both before and behind; while all
three goddesses were naked, only wearing rich crowns upon their heads.
Charles the Bold must have been as much pleased with pastime like this,
as Dr. Pusey would doubtless be were he, in company with Father Newman,
to take advantage of an order for two, and go and see Mr. Paul Bedford in
the part of Norma.

Mark Antony was, despite his habit of getting drunk by daylight, so
careful a dresser that he may be ranked among the _beaux_. Indeed he was
specially fantastic in some of his fashions; and, by way of proof that
he was the very “first fine gentleman” of his day, it is only necessary
to cite what Textor says of him in the preface to the ‘Cornucopia,’
namely, “M. Antonius, Triumvir, corporis excrementa non nisi vasis aureis
excipiebat.”

The Scandinavian _beaux_ were as fantastically nice in some of _their_
fashions. Rough as they were, there were many who wasted some amount
of thought on the adornment of their persons. Such an individual was
the pride of his relatives, and by these he was called, not the flower,
but the _leek_ of the family: he generally smelt a good deal stronger.
Of such a dandy, his kindred were as proud as the “blood” of Caffarelli
was of that smartly-dressed singer. But Caffarelli was a vocal beau who
sang to some tune. He lived in a palace of his own building. Over the
gate was this inscription:—“Amphion Thebas, ego domum;” and he purchased
for his nephew and heir the Dukedom of Sante Dorato. That _was_ a
well-dressed uncle, of whom his nephew might well be—what he was not, of
course—gratefully proud. Scandinavia reminds me of the great Gustavus
Adolphus. He was not indeed himself a _beau_, but he was the first who
made modern soldiers such. It was a consequence of his insisting on the
necessity of the men being well clothed, and kept clean and warm. Except
among Pompey’s cohort, this was not the custom of the ancients, with
whom prevailed the maxim, “horridum militem esse decet.” So too thought
Tilly, whose doctrine on the matter was comprised in the phrase, “A
ragged soldier and a bright musket.” Some of Gustavus’s officers became
the tightest-laced “exquisites” of suffering humanity, and reduced
their outward surface to such a degree, that, had they lived in remoter
times, they might have passed for those unhappy persons who had entered
the temple of Jupiter in Arcadia, despite prohibition. The well-known
consequence of such an act was, that the offender became for ever
shadowless.

There is a race of men, not at all thin, and as rich dressers as
Gustavus’s captains; I mean the Cardinals. There is a _reason_ for their
wearing red garments. Persons of early Church days used to draw Christian
zodiacs and solar systems. In the former, the saints took the place of
the old signs. In the latter, the planets were allotted to different
religions. The sun belongs to Christianity; _ergo_, _Sunday_ is the
sabbath. Rome is the solar, and therefore the holy city; and accordingly
the Cardinals wear red, because it is the colour of the sun.

To revert once more to the pupil of Aristotle, there remains but to be
said that it was only on state occasions that he appeared in the mantle,
sandals, and horns of Ammon. His ordinary dress was a chlamys of purple,
a striped tunic (white on a coloured ground), and a wide-flapped hat or
cap, with the royal diadem girt around it. He was in fact King of Fashion
as well as King of Men; and, like Count D’Orsay, he not only patronized
tailors, but, unlike the Count, paid their bills. The two men, in all
other respects, were very different; and it cannot be said of them, as
of Mr. Hunt’s ‘Light of the World,’ and his fast man in the ‘Awakened
Conscience,’ that they are one and the same person in two costumes.

The Greeks generally were remarkable for possessing tailors who worked
more according to the locality of their birth than to their merits;
thus, Xenophon tells us, in his Life of Socrates, that Demeas, being a
Collytensean, supported his household by making cassocks; while Menon,
whose birthplace is not given, effected the same object by making
cloaks. The custom however is more clearly defined when he adds that
the Megarensians supported _their_ families by making short jackets.
Aristophanes, in his ‘Acharnians,’ alludes to this fashion when he
makes the jovial Dicaopolis say, “Certain rascally fellows, base coin,
unfranchised, and counterfeit, and alien citizens, were in the habit of
informing against the small cloaks of the Megarians.” Between “cloak” and
“jacket,” we may conclude that the article was a vest, or an “almaviva,”
or mantle, and that it was no more lawful to wear it in Athens when the
state was at war with Megara than it was in accordance with our “customs”
a century ago to wear garments embroidered with gold-lace from France.
This barbarous habit of denouncing the employment of an article, simply
because it is the production of, or named from, an enemy, is still
prevalent in the dominions of the Czar. _If_ the thing be used, the name
must be changed. Were we to follow the same fashion, no Englishman would
condescend to put on a pair of “Russia ducks.”

But I have fallen into modern illustrations of the beau. When that
superb animal is being treated of by Dryden, the poet names the various
characteristics of divers beaux, from whom Sir Fopling Flutter had
derived his own united excellences, which made of him the recognized “Man
of Mode.” These are among them:—

    “His various modes from various fathers follow:
    One taught the toss, and one the new French wallow;
    His sword-knot, this; his cravat, this design’d;
    And this, the yard-long snake he twirls behind.
    From one the sacred periwig he gain’d,
    Which wind ne’er blew, nor touch of hat profaned.
    Another’s diving bow he did adore,
    Which, with a bag, casts all the hair before;—
    Till he with full decorum brings it back,
    And rises with a water-spaniel shake.”

I have elsewhere noticed that for a “beau” to comb his peruke was a
matter of serious business; but it was even more. To do so in presence
of a “belle” was to behave to her as became the very pink of politeness.
“A wit’s wig,” says Wycherly’s ‘Ranger,’ “has the privilege of being
uncombed in the very playhouse, or in the presence⸺” “Ay,” interrupts
Dapperwit, “but not in the presence of his mistress; ’tis a greater
neglect of her than himself. If she has smugg’d herself up for me, let
me plume and flounce my peruke a little for her; there’s ne’er a young
fellow in town but will do as much for a mere stranger in the playhouse.
Pray lend me your comb.” “Well,” says Ranger, “I would not have men of
wit and courage make use of every fop’s mean arts to keep or gain a
mistress.” _Dapperwit_. “But don’t you see every day, though a man have
ne’er so much wit and courage, his mistress will revolt to those fops
who wear and comb perukes well? She comes! she comes! pray, your comb!”
and thereupon, snatching Ranger’s comb, he commences drawing it through
the wavy honours of his wig, in order to do honour to, and be seen
doing it by, his “dear Miss Lucy.” In such wise did Wycherly hold the
mirror up to nature, as I find it in his Comedies, published by Richard
Bentley, not of New Burlington-street, but by his good ancestor, who,
in 1694, tabernacled “at the Post House, in Russell-street, in Covent
Garden, near the _Piazza’s_,” as it is written; and who delighted the
then novel-reading world with such delectable novels as ‘Zelinda,’ ‘Count
Brion,’ ‘The Happy Slave,’ ‘The Disorders of Love,’ ‘The Pilgrim,’ in
two parts, and ‘The Princess of Montferrat.’ And I can only express my
admiration at the courage of our great-grandmothers, who learned what was
unprofitable and not amusing at so vast an outlay of most patient labour.

To one or two modern “beaux” of great celebrity I will now introduce
you. Here is a jaunty, impudent, over-dressed gentleman approaching, who
will admirably suit our purpose. Pray allow me:—“Gentle Reader, Beau
Fielding.” “Beau Fielding, Gentle Reader.”




BEAU FIELDING.

    “He pass’d his easy hours, instead of prayer,
    In madrigals and Philising the fair.”—GARTH’S _Dispensary_.


Goldsmith once shed tears from his simple, unsophisticated eyes, as
he passed through a village at night, and thought that the sleeping
inhabitants were unconscious how great a man was journeying that way. I
fancy that most people who pass the Reigate station are in a similarly
ignorant state of unconsciousness, and are not at all aware that they are
close upon the cradle of Orlando the Fair.

I have heard the pleasant author of that pleasant story, ‘Crewe Rise,’
remark that the worthies of Suffolk count in greater numbers than the
worthies of any other county. If worthiness be “greatness,” in the sense
of Jonathan Wild, Suffolk may envy Surrey such a son as Robert Fielding.

The father of this incomparable youth was a cavalier squire, with
something like £500 per annum to nourish his dignity. “Bob” was early
entered at the Temple, where he behaved like a Templar; was too idle to
study the constitution of England, but very actively worked at the ruin
of his own. He thought Fleet-street vulgar, and removed to Scotland-yard,
next door to the court, which then rioted at Whitehall.

The “beauty” of his neighbour attracted the notice of that other scamp,
Charles II.; and as Fielding was too handsome for anything, the King only
made him a Justice of the Peace.

The women however left him none; and their importunities induced him
to abandon justice, and devote himself to wine, love-making, and living
upon pensions from female purses. In a succeeding reign he gave up the
Church, as he had before surrendered justice; and when James II. was
King, Fielding assumed Romanism as a good speculation, and was especially
zealous not only in protecting Popish chapels from the populace, but in
giving asylum to the prettiest devotees of that faith who flew to his
bosom for refuge.

He stuck to his profession under William III.; that is, he made none
at all; and as he was accounted of no religion, his friends had no
difficulty in getting him nominated Major-General. I think this must have
been in the Horse Marines. The gallant officer was, at all events, never
in fray more serious than with sleepy watchmen and slip-shod waiters,
whom he ran through (he was an excellent runner, when peril pursued) with
the most astonishing alacrity.

He was the handsomest man and the most extravagantly splendid dresser of
his day. When he passed down the Mall at the fashionable hour, there was
a universal flutter and sensation. “O’Carroll,” he would then say to his
servant, “does my sword touch my right heel? Do the ladies ogle me?”

“It does, Sir. They do, Sir.”

“Then, O’Carroll,” would the beau exclaim aloud, “let them die of love,
and be d—d!”

“What a perfect gentleman! what a delicious creature!” chorused the
ladies.

“Ay, ay,” said the beau, “look and die! look and die!”

He was not kicked off the public promenade, but he was occasionally so
ejected from the public stage. It was the habit or the fashion then
for a portion of the audience to stand upon the stage, and the actors
played, like mountebanks, in a crowd. It was further the habit of this
superlative _beau_ to make remarks aloud upon the ladies in the boxes.
The latter,—not the boxes, but the ladies,—were not slow in flinging back
retorts; and the players, enraged at being unheeded, would then fairly
turn upon Fielding and turn him out, with the ceremony, or want of it,
observed in ejecting ill-bred curs.

But the beau was amply compensated for such treatment as this by the
favour dealt to him by “officers and gentlemen.” He was once being
pursued by bailiffs sent after him by tailors whom he had ruined. As hare
and hounds approached St. James’s Palace, the officers on guard turned
out, attacked the myrmidons of the law, pinked them all over till they
looked like ribbed peppermint, and finally bore Fielding in triumph into
the Palace!

The equipage of “Orlando” was not less singular than he was himself.
He kept a hired chariot, drawn by his own horses, and attended by two
footmen in bright yellow coats and black sarsnet sashes. Maidens sighed
as he rode by, and murmured “Adonis!” Admiring widows looked at him and
exclaimed, “Handsome as Hercules!” He really did unite the most exquisite
beauty both of feature and stature, with the most gigantic strength. Boys
followed him in crowds, and hailed him _father_. He showered among them
as many curses as blessings. “Did you never see a man before?” he once
asked the foremost urchin of a youthful mob. “Never such a one as you,
noble general,” answered the lad, an embryo beau from Westminster School.
“Sirrah, I believe thee; there is a crown for thy wit.”

Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff states that the beau called himself an
antediluvian, in respect of the insects which appeared in the world as
men; and the ‘Tatler’ further says, that “he sometimes rode in an open
tumbril of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs
and the grandeur of his personage to the greater advantage. At other
seasons all his appointments had a magnificence, as if it were formed by
the genius of Trimalchio of old, which showed itself in doing ordinary
things with an air of pomp and grandeur. Orlando therefore called for tea
by beat of drum; his valet got ready to shave him by a trumpet to horse;
and water was brought for his teeth when the sound was changed to boot
and saddle.”

Amid all this, the prince of beaux was speculatively looking abroad. At
Doctors’ Commons he had seen the will of a Mr. Deleau, who left to his
widow a town residence in Copthall-court, a country mansion at Waddon,
in Surrey, and sixty thousand pounds, at the lady’s absolute disposal.
Fielding resolved to woo, and of course to win her.

His first application was made through an agent, to a Mrs. Villars, who
used to act as hair-dresser to the much-sought-after widow. Her services
were asked for, under promise of great reward, to bring matters about so
that Mrs. Deleau should see Fielding, if it were only, as it were, by
accident. The beau thought that if the widow saw, _he_ would conquer.
Were a marriage to follow, Fielding promised hundreds out of his wife’s
money.

The worthy agents failed to do their hirer’s bidding. He even called at
Waddon, under the name of Major-General Villars, and was allowed to see
the gardens. He mistook a lady at a window of the house for _the_ lady
of whom he was in search, and as she smiled when he put his hand to the
left side of his laced waistcoat, and made a bow till his vertebra was
horizontal, he concluded that his fortune was made; and the next day he
sent letters in his own name, which the servants, knowing the writer, and
having their orders, dropped into the fire,—after reading them in the
servants’ hall.

The next move was an application to see the grounds at Waddon,
professedly from the famous or infamous Duchess of Cleveland, Fielding’s
chief patroness,—so low had fallen the mother of dukes and the concubine
of a king. Permission was granted, but nothing came of the concession.

In the meantime Mrs. Villars, by no means disposed to lose the promised
recompense, persuaded Fielding that the widow had yielded, and would pay
him a visit. He was in a state of delight at the intelligence. The lady,
however, who was to pass as Mrs. Deleau, was a “Mistress Mary Wadsworth,”
who was ready for any joke, and thought the one proposed the best she had
ever shared in,—and she had been an actress in many. These two sensitive
creatures accordingly repaired to Fielding’s lodgings one soft autumnal
eve. The beau was in a flutter of ecstasy, was continually on his knees,
and devoted himself to the lowest position in hades if he ever had loved
any woman before. The assumed Mrs. Deleau was coy, as became a widow with
sixty thousand pounds and no encumbrances. The lover pressed her to be
married that night, if she would not have him perish; but she playfully
touched his cheek with her fan, and bade him wait and hope,—sad, naughty
fellow that he was!

After two more such visits, the soft and tender creature was seduced
to sacrifice her scruples, and consented to a private marriage at
her lover’s chambers. The party supped joyously together, and then
the bridegroom sallied forth in search of a priest. He found one at
the Emperor of Germany’s ambassador’s; and his reverence having been
introduced to the lady, satisfied her of the reality of his vocation,
and in a twinkling buckled beau and belle together in a way, he said,
that defied undoing. All the after-ceremonies religiously observed in
those refined days ensued; indeed the marriage would not have been
half a marriage without them, and so all parties but the dupers were
satisfied,—and in fact even _they_ did not complain.

The bride left for home next morning unattended; for family reasons, she
averred, it was necessary to keep the union unrevealed, and accordingly
she only repaired now and then to see “the Count,” as her husband styled
himself, and to eat toasted cheese and drink port and vat-ale with a man
who had married her, as he exclaimed at the sacred ceremony, “with all
his heart, soul, blood, and everything else!”

There is no comedy of the last century, however absurd the plot, and
coarse and ridiculous the incidents, that is more absurd, coarse, and
ridiculous than this comedy in which Fielding was the hero and Mistress
Wadsworth and the Duchess of Cleveland the heroines. The beau was
convinced he had married a widow with a jointure of a golden character.
The letters he addressed to the residence of Mrs. Deleau must have
caused infinite astonishment to that calm relict of the citizen of
Copthall-court; but she held the writer as mad, and thought little more
of the matter. In the meantime Fielding, who had patronized half-a-dozen
tailors on the strength of his expectations, mysteriously alluded to,
acted the strangest of parts. He married her Grace the noble Barbara
within three weeks of his union with Mary Wadsworth. He provided himself
with two stools for the support of his dignity; and in the very fashion
of the proverb, he got very terribly bruised indeed.

The wretched duper turned out to be the dupe. He had expended his cake
and wine, his _petit soupers_, wax-lights, and sconces all to no purpose;
he had run in debt for a ring with a posy of his own choosing, “_Tibi
Soli_;” and he had paid an Italian singer Margaretta to come and sing to
his beloved, “Ianthe the lovely,” translated by himself from the Greek.
He had looked for threescore thousand pounds, and had been deluded into
the idea that he was about to be the sire of a little “Lord Tunbridge,”
and at the end of all, the bride proves a common jilt; goes boldly to
Fielding’s lodgings in Whitehall, claims him, as he walks into the
street, by the title of “lawful wife,” and gets an unsavoury name by way
of reply, and a thorough thrashing into the bargain.

The affair soon came into the courts. Fielding, a few weeks after his
union with Mistress Mary Wadsworth, had espoused _les beaux restes_ of
Barbara Duchess of Cleveland. Till he began to beat the Duchess as well
as the Dulcinea, he appears to have transferred his “green nightcap
and slippers” by the hands of a servant from the bower of one beauty
to the boudoir of another. The Duchess, at length, offered the first
wife £200 down and £100 annually for fifteen years, if she succeeded
in establishing the first marriage. Accordingly, the Beau was indicted
for bigamy at the Old Bailey. He endeavoured to prove that his supposed
widow had been married to one Brady, who was living at the time of her
marriage with Fielding, and something like a forged certificate in
the Fleet Register was produced to support it. But with Montague for
opposing counsel (Fielding was his own) and Powell for a judge, the
Beau could make nothing of a very bad case; and, being found guilty, he
was sentenced to be burnt in the hand,—a sentence which he escaped by
producing Queen Anne’s warrant to stay execution. He was accordingly set
free; and the Duchess of Cleveland, being now also freed from him and
his very heavy hand, the ex-beauty, but now be-rouged old flirt, lived
unmolested by anything more unpleasant than a very gentle remorse for her
_péchés mignons_.

The Beau soon fell into dire distress; and a sketch of the complexion of
this phasis of life will be found in Bulwer’s ‘Devereux.’ He is there
described as “terribly fallen, as to fortune, since the day when he
drove about in a car like a sea-shell, with a dozen tall fellows in the
Austrian livery, black and yellow, running before and behind him. You
know he claims relationship to the House of Hapsburg. As for the present,
he writes poems, makes love, is still good-natured, humorous, and odd;
is rather unhappily addicted to wine and borrowing, and rigidly keeps
the oath of the Carthusians, which never suffers them to carry any money
about them.”

The Austrian livery however had disappeared after the break with the
Duchess. The Beau’s den is probably more correct in its details. “The
chamber looked like a place in the other world, set apart for the ghosts
of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and colourless; the chairs
and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial; the mirrors reflected all
things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge picture of Mr. Fielding
himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed like the apparition of a
portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect
and damp. On a huge, tomb-like table in the middle of the room lay two
pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a pair of ruffles, a very little
muff, an immense broadsword, a Wycherly comb, a jack-boot, and an old
plumed hat; to these were added, a cracked pomatum pot, containing ink,
and a scrap of paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and
torches. Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or
three well-thumbed books of songs.” The Beau himself, half bully, half
fribble, a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, is described as wearing an
old morning dressing-gown of once gorgeous material; a little velvet cap
with tarnished gold tassel, military boots, and with a coarse and florid
complexion as the remains of a beauty, the expression of which “had
settled into a broad, hardy, farcical mixture of effrontery, humour, and
conceit.”

But all his effrontery could not keep him afloat, and he finally
disappeared altogether from the “world;” and so little was known of his
end that men disputed of his burial-place, as of another Atala, and it
was quite undetermined whether he died in Hampshire or in Holland. The
estimation, however, in which he was held is amply demonstrated in the
annexed epitaph by a friend:—

    “If Fielding is dead,
      And rests under this stone,
    Then he is not alive,
      You may bet two to one.
    But if he’s alive,
      And does not lie here,
    Let him live till he’s hang’d,
      For which no man will care.”

In the 113th number of the ‘Tatler,’ under the motto of “Ecce iterum
Crispinus,” the catalogue is given of the effects of a defunct beau:
and probably with some allusion to Fielding. Among the articles cited
are “A very rich tweezer case, containing twelve instruments for the
use of each hour in the day.” To this succeed gilt snuff-boxes, with
looking-glasses in the lid, or portraits of equivocal ladies; “a sword
with a steel-diamond hilt, never drawn but once at May Fair;” eyebrow
brushes, a “pocket perspective,” a dozen pair of red-heeled shoes, three
pair of red silk stockings, and an amber-headed cane. The beau’s “strong
box” contains “five billets-doux, a Bath shilling, a crooked sixpence,
a silk garter, a lock of hair, and three broken fans.” His book-case is
instructive: on the upper shelf there are three bottles of diet-drink,
two boxes of pills, a syringe, and _other_ mathematical instruments;
on the second, there is a miscellaneous collection of lampoons, plays,
tailors’ bills, and an almanack for the year 1700; the third shelf holds
a bundle of unopened letters, indorsed “from the old gentleman,” with
Toland’s ‘Christianity not Mysterious,’ and a paper of “patterns of
several fashionable stuffs,”—Toland’s ‘Christianity’ being _stuff_ that
was very fashionable at _that_ time. The lowest shelf of all reveals an
odd shoe, a pair of snuffers, a French grammar, a mourning hatband, and
half a bottle of usquebagh. These “effects” paint the beau of a by-gone
time; and Fielding was the grand master of the _petits-maîtres_, who were
the proprietors of this very varied property.

There was however as great, as impudent, and as renowned a beau as he. He
comes this way in a white hat, and his name is Nash.




BEAU NASH.

    “N’achetez pas vos principes chez ce _Gentis homo_, homme de la
    nation.”—DE BONALD.


The gaudiest flies spring from the most unsavoury of cradles, and Beau
Nash was born in ill-odoured Swansea. He used to say, he “could not help
it.” Like Liston, it had been his own intention to be born in Shropshire;
but he and the grotesque comedian possessed not the privilege of the
embryo saint, whose prayers procured his birth in the locality and at
the period which best suited himself. Accordingly, Richard Nash was born
at Swansea in the stirring year 1674. His very boyhood was brassy, as
befitted so metallic a locality.

In after years, when Nash was at the most brilliant epoch of his
butterfly period, and it had for some time been remarked that, much as
the Beau talked of other people, he never mentioned his own father, the
Duchess of Queensberry, in her Grace’s usual familiar style, asked the
meek Richard if he were ashamed of his sire, that he never mentioned
him. “Nay, madam,” said Nash, “if I never name him, it is because he has
reason to be ashamed of _me_.” It was the only humble speech which Nash
ever uttered, and it had truth for its foundation.

The sire of the gay Richard was a quiet individual, a partner in one
of the Bristol glass-houses. He had more ambition than wisdom; and he
commenced blowing his son into a gentleman by sending him to Jesus
College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen. “I hope, Dick,” said the honest
man, “you will distinguish yourself before you are a year older.” “Dad,”
replied Dick, “I will astonish you _within_ that period.” And he kept
his word. Before a year had expired he had taken first-class honours
in puppyism, had become the terror or temptation of half the women in
Oxford, made an offer of marriage to a young lady as modest as himself;
and had got expelled. He _did_ astonish his father!

The good man, on recovering from his surprise, began to perceive that
his first attempt at making Dick a gentleman had failed; but he was a
determined individual, and had resolved to succeed. Accordingly he bought
for young Master Hopeful an ensign’s commission. “Now, Dick,” said he,
“the thing is done; you are ‘an officer and a gentleman’ by right of your
commission.” Poor old citizen! he might as well have said that the zenith
was also the nadir by power of astronomy.

I believe Nash entered the 46th. I am inclined to think so, from the
circumstance that he seemed to have lost his memory as soon as he
“joined.” He certainly forgot everything but what he had done well not
to remember. He forgot to get up to parade; could never remember, when
he did rise, the events of the preceding night; even what the chaplain
had said to him, over the punch, had gone out of his memory, as it had
from that of the reverend gentleman. He was oblivious of every point
of duty, never recollected to pay his bills, and was in all things a
consummate scamp. The colonel, who might have endured a young fellow who
was a more unprincipled scamp than himself, could not tolerate one who
was a greater wit. He made the ensign’s life miserable; and as the ensign
had determined that his life should not be of that quality, he sold his
commission, and, having spent the money, did his father the honour of
returning home.

“Go to the devil!” said his sire; and Dick accordingly came up to town,
and entered at the Temple. Having done this, he went to the gaming table.
It was impossible for son to show more alacrity in setting out on the
journey whither his father had sent him.

The ancient gentleman to whom his sire had consigned him must have been
proud of his young friend. The latter was at dice one half the night, at
balls and assemblies the other half; and he was in bed all day. His gains
were devoted not to the comfort of his appetite or the nourishment of his
intellect, but almost exclusively to dress. He eclipsed every beau of
whatever rank: the women adored, the men hated him, but all acknowledged
that a spirited young fellow, who had been expelled college, had found it
convenient to withdraw from the army, who was a Templar “for the fun of
the thing,” and who was all gold lace and gallantry, was worthy of being
the leader of the “_ton_;” and for that matter they were perfectly right.

He was the conductor of the entertainments given by the Middle Temple
to William the Third. The Monarch was so pleased with the Master of the
Ceremonies that he offered to make him a knight. “That depends,” said the
impudent beau, “upon what sort of a chevalier your Majesty would make of
me. If it were a ‘poor knight of Windsor,’ I should be rich at once, and
well content.” The King shook his head, and Nash lost the honour.

He made up for it by gaining them at whist; and he was so good-tempered
a player that even his adversaries bore his triumphs without cursing
him—much. The truth is, that he was a terrible rake; but he was not a
dishonourable fellow, according to the then existing code of honour. The
Templars entrusted him with some portion of their funds. His accounts
were once ten pounds short of correctness, and he accounted for its
deficit by saying, that he had heard a poor fellow say that ten pounds
would make him happy, and he could not resist giving him that sum.
The charity was something like that of Mrs. Haller, who gave away her
master’s wine to the sick, and got a character for generosity thereby.
However, the Templar auditors passed the accounts. The beau’s story was
probably true, for he was quick to feel for others, and the readiest man
at a lie of his own or any other period.

Nash never frittered away his money in paying his debts. “Doing that
vulgar sort of thing,” said he, “never procures you a friend; lending
money _does_!” and he was ready to lend to the great when the dice
favoured him. The young gentleman’s maxim was quite worthy of one whose
“indignant parient” had constituted him a ward of the devil.

His relaxations from town and Temple studies further showed the respect
he had for his eminent guardian. During a country excursion he stood in a
blanket at the door of York Minster. He professed to be doing penance for
his sins, and the clergy cut jokes with him as they passed. He performed
this pretty trick for a poor wager of half-a-dozen guineas, and he
performed a worse for a bet more trifling; he rode stark-naked through a
quiet and astonished village,—an achievement in which he was subsequently
imitated by the father of Louis Philippe. But these were little foibles
the most readily forgiven by the ladies: how could they be angry with a
fine gentleman, whose gallantry was so great that when he sat next one at
table he made love to her then and there, and swore with the most liberal
parade of oaths that he never drank any wine but such as had been “first
strained through his mistress’s smock!”

And then the pretty process was gone through, amid a world of wild talk
that would nowadays somewhat ruffle even the Vestas of Cremorne; but the
fair creatures of William’s age declared him to be “a dear, delicate,”
and some Lady Bettys added, in their grapy enthusiasm, “a d—d gallant
fellow.” His friend Satan must have chuckled at the word.

It is quite possible that after some one of these orgies, he was, by
way of a good practical joke, carried off, by a captain as drunk as
himself, on board a ship to the Mediterranean. It is quite certain that
he disappeared for a considerable period; and when he turned up again,
he not only told the tale of his abduction, but averred that he had been
in a naval battle, and had received a ball in the leg. He was one night
repeating the oft-told tale in the Bath rooms, when a countess boldly
expressed her disbelief of the alleged fact. Nash imprecated upon her
the disease which very fine people who quarrelled used to fling at one
another, and then said, as he put up his leg on her lap, “The ball is
there, Madam; and if you will, you may feel it!”

Such was the Beau in the Bath rooms; but at that period, the women went
thither in aprons, the squires in top-boots, with pipes in their mouths.
The longer they kept them there the better, for they were no sooner out
than forth flowed a torrent of filthiness. But all Bath, from the days
of the farewell to it of the Romans, down to a later period than this of
which I am speaking, was a mere _cloaca_; and they who resorted thither
were too often as dirty as the place. Its unsavouriness elicited some
very stringent remarks from Queen Elizabeth, and a contribution from the
royal purse for constructing a common sewer.

It is the custom to look upon Nash as the first of the dynasty of the
Bath Masters of the Ceremonies. The true founder of that highly august
dynasty however was the Duke of Beaufort himself. For the invalids who
resorted to the healing springs, there were but two houses fitted for the
reception of a “respectable,” that is, a _moneyed_ class of visitors;
namely, the Abbey House and Westgate House. It was not till long after
that there was either a ball-room, or any place of public amusement in
the city. Sometimes a convivial party of invalids, or their friends, got
up a dance on the open bowling-green. But such inconveniences attended
this, that the Duke of Beaufort gave up the town-hall for both the
dancers and gamblers. His Grace placed the conduct of the amusements
under the superintendence of Captain Webster; and that gentleman having
respectably inaugurated them, the sceptre of Master was made over to Nash.

The passion for play was long the ruling passion here, among the sick, as
well as among the sound. The passion is well illustrated in the epigram,
written when subscription books were opened for providing for the
expenses of Church service, and for opening a new card-room:—

    “The books were open’d t’other day,
    At all the shops, for Church and Play.
    The Church got _six_; Hoyle _sixty-seven_:
    How great the chance for Hell ’gainst Heaven!”

Nash’s great enemy he found in the doctors. They disliked him for helping
to cure invalids too quickly, by the general cheerfulness and gaiety
which he essayed to establish in the city. They moreover bore him little
love for his abolition of the sword, a general and not too deadly use of
which was wont to procure for them endless patients, and continual profit.

The profession pursued its vocation at Bath at this period with little
delicacy. The carriages of invalids, and the public stage-coach, which
reached the city on the third day after its departure from town, were
assailed at the outskirts by hosts of “touters,” who were engaged by
the physicians to publish their respective merits (they now do that for
themselves, thus saving expense), and to carry off as many patients as
they could respectively secure. For these the doctors paid the touters a
percentage; and as the touters were, in most cases, the husbands of the
nurses, all parties played into each other’s hands.

    “And so, as I grew ev’ry day worse and worse,
    The doctor advised me to send for a nurse;
    And the nurse was so willing my health to restore,
    She begg’d me to send for a few doctors more.”

As the vivacity which Nash put into the place very much injured the
latter gentlemen, one, more angry than the rest, threatened to “throw a
toad into the spring,” by writing against the waters. “Fling away!” cried
Nash; “we’ll charm him out again by an additional band of music!” And
he dealt another blow at them, by decreeing that, in future, the balls
should commence at six, and terminate at eleven, instead of lasting, as
heretofore, till daybreak.

His code of laws for these balls was the code of a terrible despot, and
I can hardly account for the ready obedience which was paid to it. His
force of impudence and blaze of dress, with some superiority of mind,
perhaps awed the sensual and stupid peers, peeresses, squires, and dames.
One of the articles of the code was to the effect, that “very young, and
also the ‘elder ladies,’ be content with the second benches at the balls,
the one not yet having arrived at, the other being past, perfection.” The
rule was obeyed!

Precisely at six the magnificent fellow gave the signal, and the couple
present highest in rank, advanced submissively, and walked a minuet.
After every couple had gone through the same solemnity, the splendid
“Master” gave the word for country-dances. How the ladies and gentlemen
went at it in those days, may be seen from what took place when the dial
showed eleven o’clock. The jewelled finger of Nash was then raised in
the air, the music ceased, and, “Now,” said he, “let the ladies sit down
_to cool_, before they go to their chairs!” On one occasion the Princess
Amelia begged for another dance after eleven had struck. Nash shook all
the powder out of his hair in mute horror at the bare idea of such a
solecism.

The Duchess of Queensberry was also once daring enough to infringe his
rules by appearing in the rooms in a laced apron. He tore it off, and
threw it among the servants; and to the richest squire of the county,
who presumed to appear, contrary to Nash’s own decree, in boots, he
exclaimed, “Holloa, Hog’s Norton, haven’t you forgot to bring your
horse?” The squire talked of swords. “No, no,” replied Nash, “I have put
an end to duels; and thereby, Squire, I have prevented people from doing
what they have no mind to.”

This sort of coarseness was refinement in Elizabethan days. I may cite in
proof thereof, that when the valiant Welsh commander, Sir Roger Williams,
knelt to Queen Elizabeth, in his rough untanned leather boots, to present
a petition she was determined not to grant, she only remarked, “Williams,
how your boots stink!” “Tut, Madam!” answered the Welshman, “it is my
suit, and not my boots, that stink!” So did she affect to annoy Cecil,
by wearing his portrait for a day tied to her shoe. On another occasion
she admitted to her presence a whole bevy of country-cousins named Brown.
They were of the kindred of Anne Boleyn; but when Elizabeth saw them in
their queer old-fashioned dresses, she fairly frightened them by her
coarse remarks, from ever coming to court again. Perhaps hence is derived
the popular saying, in which allusion is made to “_astonishing the
Browns_.” It is an Elizabethan phrase!

In the recess, Nash used to cross the country to Tunbridge. His
equipage was a flaming carriage, drawn by six greys; with outriders all
embroidery, and French horns all brass and bluster. He wore a white hat,
of which he was the introducer; and he did so, he said, that, it being
the only one of the sort, his hat might never be stolen.

In his dress he combined the fashions of two centuries; and, thanks to
his luck at play, he lived as grandly as half-a-dozen kings. But none
knew better than he the folly of gambling. He once lost a considerable
sum to an Oxford lad who had just come into a large fortune. “Boy,” said
he, “take my advice. You are a young Crœsus; play no more.” Nash himself
would not play with him, but the _millionnaire_ collegian found men less
scrupulous; and the prodigal, ere he had attained his twenty-fifth year,
could, like the gentleman in Shakspeare, “Thank Heaven that he was not
worth a ducat.”

Nash was the same sort of Mentor to the gambling Duke of Bedford; and
the Duke entered with the Beau into a gambling compact, whereby he bound
himself to put restraint upon his spirit of gambling. Nash gave him £100,
to receive £1000 whenever the Duke lost the latter sum at one sitting.
Nash came upon his Grace a month after, just as he had lost £8000, and
was about to throw for £3000 more. Nash reminded him of the compact.
The Duke paid the forfeit, threw his main, and lost. Perhaps the Beau
expected some such profitable result of his little investment.

He may not however have deserved this remark; for Nash could be most
romantically generous. Thus, Lord Townsend lost to him a sum which he
could not conveniently pay; the Beau forgave the debt, some £20,000, on
condition that the Peer should give him £5000 whenever asked to do so.
Nash never troubled Lord Townsend further; but, after the Lord’s decease,
when the Beau had fallen into adversity, he applied to the Peer’s
representatives, exhibited his vouchers, and was paid his claim. This is
honourable to both parties.

The Peers and the Parliament generally were a singularly inconsistent
set of people at this time. They passed a law which suppressed gambling
everywhere, _except in the royal palace_, under a penalty of £50; and
they no sooner passed this law than they hurried to many places, and
to Bath especially, to break it. Nash said _he_ was King of Bath, and
that playing in his palace was _not_ infringing the ordinances; but
the Parliament was too much even for him in the long run, and, by the
ultimate suppression of all “tables,” in whatsoever locality, they
deprived the Beau of much of his power to put gold lace on his coat, and
guineas in his pocket.

Still he was the despot of the rooms; and again I say, that the secret of
his power almost defies conjecture. He was indeed a splendid decker of
his person; but that person was clumsy, large, and awkward. His features
were harsh. It is to be remembered however, that he not only had fine
clothes, but a stupendous gift of “flattering;” and he had, besides, more
wit than most of the ladies he cajoled. “Richard,” said a modest young
creature to him one day (and it is painful to think that she might have
been our grandmother;—that is, yours, reader, or mine): “Richard, you
have a tongue that would debauch a nunnery!”

He assumed an airy sort of “indifference” in his method of gallantry,
and the ladies found this deliciously provoking. It set the fashion; and
it became the characteristic of the Georgian beaux. It was a contrast,
much welcomed, after the smartness and pertness of the beaux of the
reign of Queen Anne; and it was preferable to the slimy solemnity of the
beaux of the age of King Charles. And Dick, be it said for him, always
kept hold of a rag of dignity, whereby to help himself; and when he
found that he could not be a seducer, he became a champion. He loved to
rescue damsels from the suit of adventurers, and he _did_ save many. He
chastised scandal; would not tolerate it even in the elder ladies who
sat on his sacred benches. The King of Bath made a royal monopoly of the
article, as the King of France did of tobacco. He had capital opportunity
of indulging in his favourite dish, when he used to consult with the old
Duchess of Marlborough upon the fashion of her liveries.

Like Florian, who used to hunt out distressed subjects for his patron,
the Duc de Penthièvre, to relieve, he took a praiseworthy delight in
discovering worth in adversity, and then compelling the wealthy to do
something to lighten that adversity. It is perfectly true that, having
gained £200 at picquet, and hearing a bystander remark, “How happy that
sum would make me!” Nash threw him the money, saying, “There, then, go
and be happy!”

Among the poor patients at the springs, the Beau once discovered a poor
curate, named Cullender. He had a wife, of course six children, and
naturally only thirty pounds a year. Nash donned his best suit, polished
up the persuasive end of his irresistible tongue, went to a “patron” who
had a living to give, and did not leave him till he had given it to Dr.
Cullender. It was worth £160 per annum. “There, Doctor,” said Nash, “I’ve
brought you half Potosi.” “By G—d!” said the divine, “so you have!” Such
was patronage, pity, and piety, in the days of Beau Nash.

It is not to be supposed that so general a wooer escaped altogether
heart-free. He had a heart; as good a one (as was said in Fontenelle’s
case) as could be made out of brains; and he once proposed marriage to
the lady of his transitory affections. The lady pleaded her devotion to
another lover, and even asked for Nash’s mediation with her father to
consent to the marriage. The honest fellow consented, and went through
infinite trouble before he succeeded. He himself joined the hands of the
affianced pair, and gave them his blessing. Six months afterwards, the
lady eloped with her footman!

Nash ought not to have been disgusted with human nature, for ladies
occasionally were given, in his time, to the observance of this little
fashion; but it did disgust Nash. He turned misogynist, and gave himself
more to philanthropy in its restricted sense. He hated women, he said,
but still had charity for men; and accordingly he was foremost in
founding the Bath Hospital, and alone in raising obelisks to rheumatic
princes,—obelisks for which Pope furnished very inferior superscriptions.

Chesterfield exhibited a “statuary wit” which Pope despised, when the
statue of Nash was placed, a full length, between the busts of Newton
and Pope himself. The epigram is well known, but it is worth repeating:—

    “This statue placed the busts between,
      Adds to the satire strength;
    Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
      But Folly at full length.”

This is neat, and also original. The idea was applied by the Paris wits
in an epigram on the group in Paris which represented the equestrian
figure of Louis XV. on a pedestal, the angles of the upper slab of which
were supported by bronze caryatides, representing Faith, Temperance,
Prudence, and Justice. The cardinal virtues thus placed gave good point
to the epigram, which said:—

    “Oh, la belle statue! le beau piédestal!
    Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!”

As long as Nash exhibited splendour in his outward man, the public homage
never failed him. Literary musicians, literary cooks, and biographical
highwaymen dedicated their works to him. Was he sick? the entire army
of poetasters invoked the Muse to give him ease. For all of which they
looked for their respective guineas.

He had too another set of worshipers, who used to congregate about him
at his favourite tavern, to listen to his favourite stories,—few and not
well told,—to which they had listened till they could themselves have
narrated them backwards. He recounted them ever _à propos des bottes_,
and he was the hero of every one of them. Therein he shows as outdoing
Fortunatus and all his servants. He was the swiftest runner, the most
expert swimmer, the best swordsman, and—“Upon my soul, it’s true! D—n me!
hem! egad!”

He really had more wit than his stories would authorize us to suppose.
Witness his suggestion at a county-town ball. The county ladies refused
to dance in the same set with the town ladies. The rich tradesmen were
indignant at the slight put upon their spouses, but the suggestive wit
of Nash saved them. They made it known that if the county ladies and
squires would not dance with the town wives and traders, the latter would
refuse all further credit, and would call in their debts. The proud party
immediately yielded, and a grand country-dance of reconciliation followed
to the tune of ‘Money Musk.’

Still, despite his wit and his dazzling dress, Nash was naturally
coarse. Fancy a modern master of the ceremonies saying aloud to a lady
somewhat misshapen, and who, in reply to a question from him, had stated
that she had come to Bath straight from London,—fancy such a dignitary
exclaiming, “You may have come ‘straight’ from London, Madam, but you
have got d—nably warped by the way!” The squires were bigger brutes than
he, and so did not kick him; nay, they only laughed when this glittering
potentate used to ask the ladies who declined to dance, “If by chance
they had bandy legs, and were afraid of showing them?”

The truth is, he feared nobody. He had refused knighthood at the hands
of King William; and he did the same at the hands of Queen Anne. “I will
have none of it, most gracious Madam,” said Nash, as if he were refusing
to grant a favour; “but there is Sir William Read, the mountebank, whom
your Majesty has knighted,—I shall be very happy to call him ‘brother.’”
The Queen smiled, and passed on.

This species of rudeness, which came over him in his later days, helped
to empty the rooms. He no longer could boast of seventeen duchesses and
countesses standing up in his first country-dance. He sometimes too got
vexatiously repulsed, as in the case of a young lady whom he met in the
Grove, leading a spaniel, and whom he asked if she knew the name of
Tobit’s dog. “I know it well enough,” said the lady; “his name is Nash,
and a very impudent dog he is.”

And at length came the “end of an auld sang;” old-age, and with
it infirmity and distress. He could still talk of not following
prescriptions, because he had thrown them out of window; but the clergy
at length took possession of the Beau, and so belaboured him with
pamphlets, visits, exhortations to repentance, and menaces of the devil,
that Nash, who, like Gallio, had cared for none of these things, became
fairly bewildered, and feared death more than ever he had done. He was an
awful coward in presence of that especial antagonist of beaux; but his
cowardice of course was not respected, and he died in abject terror of
dying.

The year was that of 1761, and his age was then hard upon the patriarchal
one of ninety years. He had few of the patriarchal virtues; but Bath,
to whose corporation he bequeathed a “fifty pounds,” which I very much
wish they may have got, honoured him with a public funeral, with more
circumstantial pomp about it than if he had been an incarnation of all
virtue, patriarchal, princely, and of every other degree. The multitude
gazed weepingly, as though another dead Tasso were passing by to cold
obstruction, and had left them a legacy of intellectual worth. The poor
wretch had little to leave, save some _gaillard_ books, and some women’s
toys and trinkets,—the relics of his beauhood, and the testimonies of
his past power. As for the poets, they spoke of the defunct dandy as the
“constellation of a heavenly sphere;” and he had epitaphs enough to make
the very earth lie heavy upon the breast of Beau Nash.

And now, good reader, having sojourned with two exclusively English
beaux, like Fielding and Nash, we will, if you please, to Vienna, and
tarry awhile with a sparkling beau of European reputation. “Place pour le
Prince de Ligne!”




THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.

                      “This chub-faced fop
    Shines sleek with full cramm’d fat of happiness.”

                   JOHN MARSTON: _Antonio’s Revenge_.


The Prince de Ligne has, at least, the merit of being not only a “beau,”
but a “brave.” The two professions are seldom united, but they were
certainly to be found in this gallant coxcomb.

The Prince, although ever faithful to the fortunes of the House of
Hapsburg, was not himself of Austrian lineage. His patrimonial house,
the Castle of Belveil, still stands in quaint supremacy over the modest
village of Ligne, about six miles from Alt, in Belgium. It has endured
seven centuries of change; and its gothic peculiarities, with its
old-world garden, and its ancient hornbeam hedges, yet answer to the
prolix description thereof given in the Prince’s published letters, as
well as to the concise, if little majestic, line of Delille, who says of
it in his ‘Jardins,’

    “Belveil, tout à la fois magnifique et champêtre.”

Here, in 1734, the Prince first saw the light; and the soldiers of his
father’s regiment ‘de Ligne,’ loved to carry the infant son of their
prince-colonel in their arms. The lengthened life of this once celebrated
dandy, author, diplomatist, and soldier, made him the contemporary of
men of many generations. The man who once fraternally embraced our own
Wellington, Prince of Waterloo, had sat on the knee of the famous Prince
Eugene, and had looked upon the matured greatness of Marlborough. Thus
he was contemporary with men who had been born under the son of James I.,
and with others now living under Queen Victoria, whom God preserve!

After, as a boy, carrying the colours of his father’s regiment with
honour, he entered the dragoons of Ligne, and won distinction at
the point of his sword. He was practically a noble soldier, and he
slaughtered as courteously as Bayard. His day was not the day of
carpet-knights, for Europe was then given to settle all her quarrels in
the field; and when cabinets cooled, warriors looked to their corslets.
Theoretically, the Prince does not shine. Nobody reads his ‘Commentaries
on the Art of War;’ and I have no doubt that the martial portion of
his departed spirit is sorely vexed, at seeing his own highly-prized
instructions for infantry manœuvres less cared for by posterity than the
old Greek’s dissertation upon the forming of the phalanx.

For more than half a century he lived in camps, and was daily familiar
with every dread circumstance of war. He bore himself bravely at the
bloody siege of fatal Ismael, and was among the most active at that
taking of Belgrade, which Storace put so pleasantly to music for the
delight of our fathers. In the fields of death, whereon, with varied
fortune, the Great Frederick and the crafty Maria Theresa fought out
their envenomed quarrels, there he was ever present, the finest, the
foremost, and the fiercest in the fray. And most of all, on that famous
day at Maxen, when the Austrian Daun caught Frederick’s general, Finck,
in the defiles, and took bloody advantage of the opportunity,—on that day
of untold horrors, courage and murder reigned supreme. Ere night came on,
the Black Eagle of Brandenburg had yielded to his double-necked cousin
from the Danube. Every Prussian who survived the fight, surrendered.
The _matériel_ for a hundred such fields passed into the hands of the
Austrians, and the museums of Vienna still hold the countless trophies of
that day.

It was a day on which compensation was taken for the adverse fields of
Stringau, Reichemberg, and Johr; for the defeats at Pirna, Rosbach, and
Lissa. The women of Berlin were rendered widows and childless, while
the flaunting dames of Vienna shouted “_Hoch!_” and declared that their
victorious lovers at Maxen had surpassed all the glories connected with
old triumphs at Kolin, Gabel, and Zittau; at Liegnitz, Schweidnitz, and
Hochkirchen.

Maria Theresa dubbed the young Prince knight of that order of chivalry
which bore her name,—an Order into which no aspirant could find
admittance unless he had achieved some conquest which he had no positive
order to undertake. She further honoured him by despatching him to France
with the news of the great victory; and there he became the intimate
friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cavalier of the basely brilliant Du
Barry, and the cynosure of all the hooped ladies and red-heeled gallants
who killed Time on the verdant lawns of the Trianon or in the gilded
saloons of Versailles. He became at once the King of Fashion, as he _was_
the favourite of a dozen kings. Two Louises named him “friend;” and he
sat, a gallant servitor, at the feet of Marie Antoinette. The great
Frederick showed his affection for him by bestowing on him that very
bad pen with which the King wrote very bad poetry, and the Prince still
worse. The great Catherine he served in many acceptable offices. She
loved the man and his humour. Once, when accompanying the imperial mother
of All the Russias in a progress through her southern dominions, they
skirted, in a yacht, the coast of Old Tauris. On passing the promontory
of Iphigenia, the Empress made present of it to the Prince, who thereon,
accoutred as he was, leaped overboard, and, with sword drawn, swam
ashore, to take formal possession of the territorial gift. He was indeed
a sort of cousin to the living heads of kingly houses; and, at one time,
was looked upon as the probable occupant of the uneasy throne of Poland.
Like many a kingly contemporary, he might for a long time have thanked
Heaven that he was without a crown. But he was equal to the difficulties
consequent upon a light purse. On one occasion he wished to proceed from
Paris to Brussels; but, prince as he was, he lacked the means. Hearing
that the Duke d’Aremberg was about to travel that way, he presented
himself at the post-house as his courier, rode the journey through in
that character, and so got to his destination—_gratis_.

Such, in his early days, was the gay gentleman who, at the last Congress
of Vienna, bore still gaily the weight of eighty summers. His lean horses
used to gallop through that city with his ancient carriage behind them,
on which was inscribed the punning device—“Quo res cumque cadunt, stat
_linea_ recta.” This vehicle was almost as large as his house. The latter
was of the smallest dimensions; and in that small dwelling, he gave small
dinners to small parties. The dishes served were in strict keeping with
the size of the table, and he generally ate four-fifths of what they
contained. This superbly-dressed Amphitryon actually expected that his
guests would let their hunger be appeased on the supply he liberally
poured forth of brilliant but unsubstantial wit.

According to Johnson, who says that quotation is the watchword of
literary men, he was a literary man, for he had ever ready a magazine of
citations adapted to all purposes. The variety was some warrant of wide
reading; and the Prince was, at all events, not like Pozzo di Borgo,
who made the same triad of quotations endure a three-months’ duty. At
the side of the Prince’s little bed, in the very least of libraries,
his little commonplace book, on an almost invisible desk, received the
brief record of ideas that visited his gossamer brain. All around this
room were strewn, in most admired disorder, a mountain of manuscripts,
and a wilderness of works on love, philosophy, poetry, and war. Amidst
this mass, the old Prince would leap about with the agility of a monkey.
Fatigue he never acknowledged, and sleep he little cared for. He would
sit up whole nights, half a week through, to read dry works on strategy;
and then fall asleep over erotic songs, of which he commenced many, and
finished few. Those that he did terminate have as little of the echo of
nature as Watteau’s shepherdesses have of its aspect. One of the most
innocent of his pursuits was to attend at the Opera, and applaud Frederic
Venua’s pretty music to the pretty ballet of ‘Flore et Zéphyre.’

The once young leader of fashion would not lay down his sceptre when he
grew old; and as an octogenarian he played, in the eyes of Vienna, an
airier “ci-devant jeune homme” than was ever conceived or executed by the
inimitable Potier. He could be a boy with the boys; and the old gentleman
played heartily at soldiers with the little King of Rome, before that
shadow of a monarch grew up to welcome those other favourites, one of
whom especially was as fatal to him as the Fornarina to the gifted
Raphael.

But the Prince loved to be with young men, and to be thought of by
them; and did not love to be reminded either of old-age or of death.
His little summer residence at the Kalemberg was the locality whence
Sobieski departed to save Austria from the infidel, and to earn for it,
what Austria has ever paid to her benefactors, eternal ingratitude. The
spirit of the heroic no longer resided there at the period of which I
am treating. The walls of the house were covered with the portraits
of ladies whose hearts, or what they called such, had yielded to the
assaults of De Ligne; and above the portal was inscribed this motto of
mingled impiety, mendacity, and impudence:—

    “Sans remords, sans regret, sans crainte, sans envie.”

The slippered soldier who, in his decrepitude, flung out his banner with
this device upon it, belied at least a portion thereof. He caught cold,
by keeping an assignation near the bastion, on one of the coldest nights
of the Congress-winter, and while waiting vainly for the _innamorata_
who had fooled him. The consequent symptoms soon assumed a fatal aspect;
and straightway “this god did shake,” and made his motto pointless, save
against himself. His remorse might have been small, and doubtless no
one envied a dying dandy; but the latter was himself no longer without
fear or regret. He feared the slow approach of death; and his regret
was not that life had been misspent, but that it had come to its limit.
He aggravated his malady by defying it, and appearing at a ball. It was
the last occasion on which he was seen in public, and it killed him.
He took to his couch, and, in ignoble prostration, he bewailed that he
could not die like Petronius Arbiter, that accomplished _roué_, base as
man and great as consul, who played with death; now pricked a vein, and
now bandaged it; now whipped a slave, and now freed one; now listened
to gay music, now trilled a gay song; anon, cursed the whole world, and
forthwith fell dead, like a dog in his uncleanness.

“After all,” said the Prince, “I shall be better off than Petronius; and
friends and dear ones will receive my last sigh. Not,” said poor fearful
nature, speaking through the Prince,—“not that I am going to die just
yet. There is no cause for fear. Let us banish sadness. I am living,
and I _will_ live!” And then the moribund beau made puns, as if death
could be delayed by playing upon words. Or he called up old souvenirs,
and gossiped about the famous “fine eyes” of the Countess de Witt. “You
should have seen her,” said the dying Prince; “her eyes were so bepraised
that she at length never spoke of them but as her ‘fine eyes.’” Once
the admirable Marie Antoinette expressed regret at her looking unwell,
and asked from what she suffered. “May it please your Majesty,” answered
the simple Countess, “I am suffering from cold _in my fine eyes!_”—and
then the dying prater laughed, and they who stood around him smiled in
melancholy accord.

At length, the arrow of the Inevitable Angel was poised, but the sinking
Prince still formed projects for the future. He would see the Czar
Alexander upon affairs of state; and many a gay day, he averred, should
yet make glad the gardens of Belveil. His medical attendant, Malfati,
came in for a share of observation; and the whole profession of which
Malfati was a member was made subject for satire. “When he was with
the great Catherine,” he remarked, “he could do more for himself than
the doctors were then doing for him.” Malfati inquired, “In what way?”
“Whenever I was well,” said the son of fashion, “I used to invite Ségur
and Cobentzel to my quarters. I gave medicine to one, and bled the other;
and thereupon I got well!” And as the sinking octogenarian laughed, Death
steadied his javelin for the throw.

Malfati delicately hinted that age opposed greater difficulties now than
before; and in gentle spirit, he essayed to prepare the Prince for the
coming and irresistible change. But no! the Prince had work yet to do,
and must live to do it. “I have no intention yet,” he said, “nor shall
have for a long time to come, to make use of the epitaph written for me
by my old friend, the Marquis de Bonney:—

    “‘Ci gît le Prince de Ligne,
    Il est tout de son long couché.
    Jadis il a beaucoup _péché_,—
    Mais ce n’etait pas à la ligne!’”

We may excuse Malfati for smiling at the refined wit of the once famous
_jeu d’esprit_; but it did not restrain him from making the Prince aware
of the danger of his position. The latter received the intelligence with
disgust, ill-concealed under a few light words; and with the assurance
that, like Adrian, he had verses to write to his soul, but that he had
not time just then!

It was true; for Death, at that moment, laid upon him that hand which
mortal may not resist. The Prince not only felt, but he beheld, the
terrible and unconquerable aggressor. The hour was dull midnight when
the old warrior and “macaroni” frantically fought his last battle,
and succumbed ingloriously. He sprang from a recumbent into a sitting
position, shrieked aloud, ordered the door to be closed; and as Death
pressed upon him, he struggled and wrestled with the calm, strong
phantom, as though a substantial foe was before him, who might be
strangled by bodily effort. But it was fruitless, for the decree had
gone forth, and doom had come. In the midst of cries for help, and
writhing efforts to get free, the stroke was given, and the Prince fell
dead. The day was the 13th of December, 1814. What was mortal of him was
magnificently entombed, and the terms of his epitaph were more poetical
than veracious. But, beneath it all,—brass, marble, and mendacity,—the
dandy of two centuries was left to sleep as undisturbedly as the curses
of unpaid tailors would allow him to do.

On the day of the Prince’s decease, a very fine gentleman indeed was
sunning himself on the Steyne at Brighton. He was the cynosure of all
observers, and his magnificent shadow glides this way. Do not mistake him
for Romeo Coates. It is the famous Mr. Brummell. _Chapeau bas_ at that
illustrious name!




BEAU BRUMMELL.

    “I scorn’d to crowd among the muddy throng
    Of the rank multitude, whose thicken’d breath
    (Like to condensed fogs) do choke that beauty
    Which else would dwell in every kingdom’s cheek.
    No: I still boldly stepp’d into kings’ courts,
    For there to live is rare.”

                               DECKER’S _Fortunatus_.


The distinction of Nash was his impertinence; the characteristic of
Orlando the Fair, his affectation. To make a third, Jove joined the other
two; and George Bryan Brummell was, as the elder Mr. Weller says, “the
consikence of the manœuvre.” Had he only possessed intellect rightly
directed, and even an infinitesimal degree of principle, he might have
achieved a better reputation. The Greek sage who declared that man needed
but three things whereby to prosper,—first, impudence; second, impudence;
third, impudence,—rather overrated his ἀυαδεια. It is true that a modest
man runs great risk of being overwhelmed in this mortal “passage of the
Beresina,” but he usually has principle to float him; whereas the knave
who swims or struggles near him, be he never so impudent, ultimately
exhibits an alacrity in sinking. It is in the immortal fitness of things
that it should be so ordained.

I think Brummell must have been a descendant of the little tailor who
is said by another tailor, Stow, to have whined himself to death for
the love of Queen Elizabeth. I mean him of whom Lord Charles Cavendish
wrote:—

            “I would not willingly
    Be pointed at in every company,
    As was the little tailor that to death
    Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth.”

Brummell, like that audacious _schneider_, had a soul that was at once
given to the “confectioning of costume,” and consorting with the great.

Brummell, like many a steward’s son, was partly the victim of his
father’s ambition. His sire was smitten with more desire to see him
a gentleman than an honest man. The lad was brought up with as much
reference to his future condition of gentility, as Miss Killmansegge
was with respect to her present and future prospects of Pactolian hue.
Brummell was not a baby to suck a coral of less aristocratic value than
that old mouthpiece of the unfortunate Monmouth which for years has given
solace to the gums of the babies of Buccleuch. He was a lad who had an
aversion for steel forks long before silver implements were familiar
furniture at the tables of the middle classes, of which his father was a
member; and scarcely was he a youth _ex ephebis_, and felt himself free
from home restraints in gentle Henry’s shades at Eton, when he not only
modernized the white cravat or stock which marks the Eton boy, but he put
a gold buckle to it; and all the school “confessed the present god.”

The _condiscipuli_ of that time and place have as much realized Hood’s as
Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.’ The most rollicking
tumbled into discretion, and became bishops; the most gentle were drafted
into the army, and became blackguards. Some took to the stage, and some
took portraits. A few achieved greatness; the majority have died away
and are forgotten. “Blithe Carew was hung,” and Brummell “went up like a
rocket and came down like the stick.”

Brummell was like Goldsmith. Do not smile: I do not mean that he had
the great writer’s simplicity, industry, or goodness of heart. He was,
nevertheless, like him in one respect. Poor Oliver, at Trinity College,
Dublin, went in for honours, and failed. So Brummell, who, in 1793, was
an undergraduate at Oxford, was a competitor for the Newdegate Prize,
and lost it. From that hour he abhorred books and bookish men. He had
condescended to exert himself so far as to faintly run for the laurel.
When he saw it awarded to a better man, he declared that he would never
run again, but walk over the course of the world and win his prizes
without effort. He had already indicated the paths by which he meant to
gain the honours dimly alluded to. His example at college had already
abolished cotton stockings, and made dingy cravats vulgar. Even D.D.’s
looked at the audacious innovator, and ceased to be, what the initials
designated, “deucedly dirty.”

The unsuccessful student was soon in possession of what he considered
far better than “book learning,” a third of £65,000. It was no great
inheritance for a cornet in the 10th Hussars. That illustrious regiment
had not yet achieved that renown of folly and of shame for which Croly
pilloried it nightly, to the delight of assembled thousands, in his
‘Pride shall have a Fall.’ It was however the aspiration and the terror
of all young heroes who longed to be enrolled in the sacred cohort,
and who dreaded the fabulous cost of the luxury. The officers, like
their ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, wore their estates
upon their backs,—some of them before they had inherited the paternal
acres. If the gorgeous costume and its never-ending variations did not
effect this consummation, the expenses of the mess, where the mild
warriors banqueted like barbaric sovereigns, and the cost of the delicate
amusements of those perfumed knights, rarely failed to accomplish it.
At the head of all, glittering example of the “gentleman,” careful of
carriage, courteous of speech, not ungenerous by impulse, but icy-cold
of heart, was the Prince-Colonel, George, afterwards Fourth of the name.
The Prince’s chief intimate was Lord James Murray, subsequently Lord
Glenlyon; at whose house at Datchet, old Queen Charlotte “did _never_
counsel take, _but_ sometimes tea.”

The new cornet superseded the old friend. The latter was a mild,
gentleman-like man, popular with everybody but his creditors, _quorum
pars fui_; and I may add, that he is pleasantly and gratefully remembered
by _one_ at least of them. Brummell however took the Regent by storm.
There was no resisting him. The Prince was fascinated. Brummell might
be absent from parade, neglect duties even more important, and laugh at
all suggestion and reproach,—“our general’s friend was now the general.”
He did precisely what he pleased, nothing that he ought; and in three
years he was full captain, to the as full disgust of older officers, who
enviously admired while they deeply cursed him.

Never probably was the Beau in such full-blown glory as at this period of
his gold-lace, best jokes, and increasing sway. He was in the very height
of his ecstatic enjoyment, luxuriating in the gentility of a “gentil
Hussard,” and mastering his profession, not exactly after the fashion
of Marlborough;—he was in the very paradisiacal state of aristocratic
soldiership, when the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Brummell
nearly fainted at the idea of such vulgarity, and he left the regiment
in infinite disgust. The step gained for him an immense increase of
reputation—among fools!

The world had not been to him hitherto as to our old friend, Pistol,—an
oyster, which he with sword could open. He may be said to have failed,
both by book and blade. He was now to really soar by other means. Now
came the period when he evinced his disgust of vegetables by confessing
that he had once eaten—a pea. Then was the funny time when his slavish
hearers laughed at the joke wherein he wrapped an excuse for being
hoarse, on the ground, that he had slept in a house with a damp stranger.
It was not half so excellent a joke as that enunciated, unwittingly, by
the poor old Irishwoman suffering from catarrh, and who accounted for
the same by stating that she “slept last night in a field and forgot to
shut the gate.” However, it was good enough for a man who really fancied
that he manifested humour when he expressed unconsciousness of there
being such a place as Bloomsbury-square; and we may add, that it was good
enough for his hearers also.

It was at this period that he patronized the late George Lane Fox, of
Bramham Park, Yorkshire; and the patronage cost the latter a superb gold
box, set with diamonds,—a present, if I remember rightly,—for I have
heard Mr. Fox tell the story as often as Diggory heard Mr. Hardcastle
tell his one story, from the Czar Alexander. Mr. Fox and Brummell had
been seriously engaged, for some hours, on matters of dress, after which
they discussed the not less serious question of dinner. At the banquet,
the first-named gentleman showed his golden and glittering gift to the
select company, who were loud in their praise, and unbounded in their
admiration. As the party were to adjourn to the Opera, to hear Ambrogetti
and Camporese, Mr. Fox announced his intention of depositing his box,
by the way, at his house in Albemarle-street. “The whole court,” said
he, “will be at the Opera, and I may get robbed of my _souvenir_!” The
company laughed at the _saillie_, and the wine span round.

After a _sederunt_ of some continuance, the select society departed for
“the old house in the Haymarket.” Mr. Fox and Brummell rode together.
The carriage stopped in Albemarle-street, according to directions given
to the coachman; but what with the wine, and a new dispute touching the
depth of cravats and the height of collars, the gentlemen had forgotten
why they had ordered the driver to pull up; and after striving for some
time, in vain, to remember, they grew tired of conjecturing, and sped
away to hear “Fin ch’ han del Vino!”

They had been perhaps an hour in the house, when Brummell, in the
very middle of “Il mio tesoro,” came to the end of a dissertation on
pantaloons. The gentlemen with thin legs, and no calves to them, were
great patrons of what had not hitherto been admitted into the category of
“dress,”—namely, trousers. Conservatives and Irish gentlemen advocated
pantaloons. Brummell had given his judgement with the sententious
elaboration of Dr. Chalmers on a question of Erastianism; and to refresh
himself after the fatigue of the process, he begged of Fox to furnish him
with a “_prise de tabac!_”

The request for a pinch of snuff reminded the then heir of Bramham Park
of the fact, that it was his much-prized box which he had designed to
leave in Albemarle-street. He proceeded however to perform the required
act of hospitality; but on putting his hand to his pocket he found the
latter empty, and the box gone. In two minutes he was in the passage
below, recounting his loss to Leadbitter and Townsend, and asking from
them what hope existed of his recovering the abstracted property.
When they learned that an hour had elapsed since it had been stolen,
Leadbitter gave the opinion of himself and brother that the loss was
irreparable.

“By this time,” said Townsend, “it’s in the melting-pot of Slack Sam, the
Jew _Gonoff_.”

“What’s a _Gonoff_?” asked Mr. Fox.

“Oh!” said Townsend, with an air of learning and superiority, “_Gonoff_
is Hebrew for a ‘thief.’ Did you pass any suspicious character on going
upstairs?”

“I passed nobody but Lady Cork,” said Mr. Fox.

“And Lady Cork, George,” said that vivacious lady, who was coming out,
“does not pick gentlemen’s pockets of snuff-boxes.”

“No,” replied the young Yorkshire squire, “Lady Cork is only a _voleuse
de cœurs_. In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of knowing that my
gold box is gone to a _Gonoff_.”

“And that _Gonoff_,” said Townsend, with his familiar laugh, “is Hebrew
for ‘thief.’”

       *       *       *       *       *

Captain Jesse has limned Brummell at elaborate full length, and the
gallant artist has done his spiriting very impartially, considering the
Cruikshank sort of portraiture with which the beau once affected to
represent the captain. “My dear Jesse,” said the dandy once to him,—“My
dear Jesse, excuse me, but you look very much like a magpie!”

This impertinence was not met in a vindictive spirit. The biographer of
Brummell describes him as a _beau_, but not a beau of the Sir Fopling
Flutter or Fieldingschool, That is, he was not so nastily nice as the
first, nor so irretrievably nasty as the second. The captain thinks
that _his_ beau would not have been guilty, like Charles James Fox, of
wearing red-heeled shoes. I am not so sure of this. Fox was, like all
democrats, proud of spirit, and he wore red heels, because these were the
distinctive marks of nobility in the galleries of Versailles. Brummell
was more original, and he would not have adopted the _talons rouges_,
simply because they were the productions of the inventive genius of
another. He had at first a taste that was not unimpeachable. There was
too much _variety_ about him. He dealt in contrasts, and he was given to
jewellery. His example in the latter way was seized, not by the young
aristocracy of England, so unlike their Elizabethan ancestors, who not
only covered themselves with gold and jewellery, but took gold-dust,
liquid pearls, and coral draughts for their medicine; Brummel’s example
was not adopted by these, but it was by their men-cooks. These latter
blazed in the pit of the Opera like the caballeros at a Chilian theatre
when the chief magistrate retires to the back of his box; and flint,
steel, _allumettes_, and cigars are all in a glow, or helping to produce
it. I have heard abundant wonder expressed at the amount of jewellery and
precious stones which were then worn by culinary artists who loved music
and patronized the Opera. It was, however, all borrowed finery. The pins
and brooches, the chains, the breloques, the virgin gold and the diamonds
pure, were the property of Ude, who realized a good share of the thirty
thousand pounds he bequeathed to his disconsolate widow, by letting the
finery out nightly, at sums varying from two to five shillings!

Brummell, with his usually acute perception,—that is, acute in one
direction,—saw that fame was to be achieved by simplicity; and, as
Captain Jesse remarks, “scorning to share his fame with his tailor, he
soon shunned all external peculiarity, and trusted alone to that ease
and grace of manner which he possessed in a remarkable degree. His chief
aim,” adds the biographer, “was to avoid anything marked: one of his
aphorisms being, that the severest mortification a gentleman could incur,
was to attract observation in the street by his outward appearance.
He exercised the most correct taste in the selection of each article
of apparel of a form and colour harmonious with all the rest, for the
purpose of producing a perfectly elegant general effect; and no doubt he
spent much time and pains in the attainment of his object.” This is no
doubt true. Brummell put in practice, he hardly knew why, the principles
of harmony and contrast of colours, long before Monsieur Chevreul wrote
his theory and explanation of those principles.

He had quite as correct an eye with regard to harmony of shape as to that
of colour. The highest in the land were not ashamed to seek a sort of
professional opinion from this man as to the propriety of their costume.
The Duke of Bedford once did this touching a coat. Brummell examined his
Grace with the cool impertinence which was his Grace’s due. He turned him
about, scanned him with scrutinizing, contemptuous eye, and then taking
the lappel between his dainty finger and thumb, he exclaimed in a tone of
pitying wonder, “Bedford! do you call this thing a coat?”

But he did not spare his own relations. He was one day standing in the
bow-window at White’s, amid a knot of well-dressed admirers, when one
of them remarked, “Brummell, your brother William is in town. Is he
not coming here?” “Yes,” said Brummell, “in a day or two; but I have
recommended him to walk the back streets till his new clothes come home.”

Brummell however may be excused if he became vain of his power. For a
season he was undoubtedly the very King of Fashion, and a terrible despot
he was; but he was flattered by kings, or by their representatives. The
Prince of Wales passed long matutinal hours in Brummell’s dressing-room
in Chesterfield-street, watching the progress of his friend’s toilet. The
progress was occasionally so extended that the Prince would dismiss his
equipage, invite himself to dinner, and the master and pupil, _Arcades
ambo_, set to; and “fore gad, they made a night of it!”

Never had tailor two such patrons as these two. The young lord, who
numbered among what the “Clerical Tap-Tub”—as the clergy call a certain
“religious” print, famous for its nasty advertisements—styles “perverts,”
was nothing to these illustrious two. When the young lord of whom I
speak was at Oxford, and got, as young lords sometimes _will_, into
difficulties,—on the overhauling of his wardrobe, it was found that
he had ordered, in seven months, upwards of three hundred and seventy
waistcoats! The youthful aristocrat however was a follower of the two
Georges, only “longo intervallo.” George Brummell’s wardrobe, indeed,
dwindled down to the suit in which he died; but the wardrobe of the other
George sold, after his death, for upwards of fifteen thousand pounds. How
many a poor man might have been warmed beneath the cloth the Sovereign
never used! The original cost of the wardrobe would not have surprised
Alexander, but we do not live in the days of the Macedonian; and in the
era of high-priced bread, England was half-appalled at the thought that a
hundred thousand pounds had scarcely purchased what was sold for fifteen.
Among it all was a celebrated cloak, the sable lining of which alone
had originally cost eight hundred pounds. Lord Chesterfield, as little
nice about wearing a cheap cast-off garment as one of his own lacqueys,
procured this mantle for little more than a fourth of the original price
of the lining.

Brummell never recovered the effects of the wager which he won by telling
“Wales” to “ring the bell,” and which order, although obeyed, was
followed by another for “Mr. Brummell’s carriage.” He struggled indeed
long, and not unsuccessfully, to retain his place among dandies and wits;
but his _prestige_ gradually failed, play went against him, liabilities
increased, and creditors were clamorous. He put a bold face on his ugly
position, and was never more brilliant or at his ease than the last night
he appeared at the Opera,—one Saturday night, when, with the Sunday
before him, he had determined to fly leisurely to the Continent, and
leave his creditors to regret their confidence in him.

He was eloquent that night with an anecdote having reference to Weston,
the famous tailor of Bond-street. “That fellow Weston,” said Brummell,
“is an inimitable fellow,—a little defective perhaps in his ‘linings,’
but irreproachable for principle and button-holes. He came to London,
Sir, without a shilling; and he counts more realized thousands than
our fat friend does ‘frogs’ on his Brandenburg. He is not only rich,
but brave; not only brave, but courteous; and not alone courteous, but
candid. The other day he was coming up from some d—d place on the coast,
by that thing, the—the—stage-coach.” (It was Brummell’s boast,—not a
true one, as it was with the last Marquis of Bath, who died full of
years,—that he had never ridden by a “public” conveyance of any kind,
whether by sea or land.) But to resume: “There were two women in the
coach,” said Brummell, “two deucedly pretty women, and an over-dressed
fellow, who was of course an ass; and who was so over-civil to the
prettier of the two, that the persecuted creature appealed to quiet
little Weston for protection. Weston, Sir, talked to the fellow with
an _aplomb_ that would have done honour to either of my friends the
Lord Primate or the Lord Chancellor. The brute,—not the tailor, but the
‘gentleman,’—was deaf to remonstrance, and ruder than ever. Thereupon,
Weston, without losing his self-possession, stopped the coach, dragged
the astonished fellow out, explained to the outside passengers the state
of the case, and found his challenge to fight received with acclamations
by everybody but his designated opponent. He compelled his unwilling
adversary, however, to stand upon the defensive, and a most terrible
thrashing he gave him. But his _coup de grâce_, Sir,” said Brummell, “was
the most finished thing I ever heard of. Weston, Sir, picked him up from
the ground, held him at arm’s length, and in a cruel loud voice exclaimed
to him, ‘Now, Sir, it may be a pleasure to you and to your friends, to
know that you have not only been well licked, but you have been licked by
a tailor! ’

“From this time forth,” continued Brummell, after the generally excited
laugh had subsided, “I shall religiously pay my tailors’ bills. The act
of Weston has heroified the profession.”

Alas! poor fallen potentate! he could not have paid his share of the
_table d’hôte_, had he sat down at that at which Candide encountered
half-a-dozen dethroned kings in Venice. A few hours after he was an
Adullamite in Calais, warming the poor palette afterwards to be occupied
by Romeo Coates.

Some half-century to come, the grandson of Mr. Millais perhaps may limn
the scene when George IV., on his Hanover trip, suddenly observing at
Calais his ex-friend making his way, pale and serious, through the crowd,
sank back in his carriage with a “Good God,—Brummell!” and almost fainted
at the recognition.

During fourteen years did the fallen dandy impatiently support his
exile, and very patiently endure the disgrace of living on the charity
of his friends and on that of compassionate and, too often, insulted
acquaintances. He abused the fare set before him with delicate courtesy,
and ridiculed the hosts who had gone to some expense to make his misery
tolerable. He never learned modesty; never had a heart; not even one
made out of brains, as in the case of Fontenelle. In his fallen state
he annoyed his hearers with repetitions of abuse, levied against those
he had known in the period of his spangled vanity. He was particularly
bitter against the Duke of Clarence, whom he described as “a man who did
very well to wear a cocked hat and walk about the quarter-deck crying
‘luff!’” and who was so rough and uncivilized, according to the narrator,
that the latter was compelled to “cut” him!

Destitute, idle, and in debt, his position at Calais was one that would
have appalled any honest and industrious man. It simply annoyed our hero,
because he was no longer imperious master. His impudence however did
not forsake him, but his independence _did_; and when he accepted the
consulship at Caen, with its poor £80 per annum set apart to provide for
his necessities, the remainder to be devoted to the liquidation of his
Calais debts, he was as much a pensioned slave as the veriest lacquey
_could_ be.

His pride was wounded, but his arrogance flourished. This too was shaken
when the consulship was suppressed; and pride and arrogance were crushed
when his friends had died off, contributions ceased, debts increased,
and the solid door of the gloomiest of prisons stood barred and locked
between him and the world.

Retributive justice fell upon this splendidly-useless human being. He
had been proud of two things, his extreme refinement and his mental
qualifications. He was terribly smitten in both directions. After his
release from prison he fell into the tender keeping of the Sisters of
Charity of the “Bon Sauveur” at Caen. He was an abject pauper, and worse.
His infirmities were of that sort at which a nice and healthy nature
is repelled; and he who had detected vulgarity in the odour of a rose
became, in his degraded hours, ere death relieved him, offensive to a
degree that turned sick and disgusted the charity of all but of the
Sisters who nursed him.

There was something again awful in the direction in which his mind
“drove,” while his soul itself was fast drifting over the turbulent
cataracts of time into the boundless lake of calm eternity. He was for
ever imagining himself among the scenes and companions of his days
of noisy but empty triumph. It was his custom of an afternoon, when
convalescent and clean, to arrange the furniture of his little room as
for expected company. There all alone sat the spectral fop waiting for
spectres; and as to his mind’s diseased eye these glided in, and to his
deceived ear were duly announced, that ghastly shattered beau arose and
went into mock raptures: he received his “dear duchess” with delight;
and favoured shadowy countesses were led by him to the visionary sofa;
and intangible lords were touched familiarly upon their non-existent
shoulders; and the whole phantom _soirée_ was gone through with a solemn
trifling, till the shadows which came had as shadows departed, leaving
with the solitary host just sufficient reason to enable him to appreciate
the utter nothingness of all the scene, and to burst into childish tears
at the recollection of the stupendous folly.

The flattered guest of princes died in a workhouse. He who had sat at
palace-banquets would have died of starvation and uncleanness but for the
alms and the hearts of the charitable Sisters, to whom, rare occurrence!
he was not ungrateful. At the period of his decease, in the month of
March, 1840, he was in his sixty-second year; and the “old man” had
not died within him ere he breathed his last. After his death, we are
told that several packets of letters,—tied up with different-coloured
ribbons, and carefully numbered,—a miniature, a silver shaving-dish, a
gold ring, and a few silver spoons, were found in a trunk at the hôtel.
The miniature and letters were taken possession of by the vice-consul,
and the remaining effects by the landlord, in liquidation of an account
which had only been partially cancelled. This person said, that in the
same parcel with the letters was another containing a great many locks
of hair. Oh, poor human nature! what demoniacal vanity was here! But let
us be just to this once-glittering simpleton. If he kept letters, he at
least kept them sacred. He never published one to injure even a living
enemy. Vain as he was, he was not revengeful; and no provocation could
have worked upon him as a fancied provocation did upon “the Right Hon.
John Wilson Croker,” who red-taped the open-hearted notes of Moore, and
produced them as _petards_ to blow to pieces the poet’s reputation when
that once gayest of bards lay mute and defenceless in his grave.

Hugh Miller, in his excellent Autobiography, remarks that the _Loligo
vulgaris_, or cuttle-fish, swims with its feet foremost,—in other words,
_follows its tail_, and often gets “gravelled,” by darting blindly
ashore, whence it cannot regain its home within the waters. Something
like this has ever been the fate of the “beau;” for he who follows rather
the animal than the intellectual propensities, is sure to rush, sooner or
later, upon his own destruction.

Besides, how great is the outlay required to make a “beau,”—well-scented
and useless, though perhaps temporarily agreeable! The sacrifices are
greater than I have space to enumerate; the result in proportion is
infinitesimally small. It reminds me of the six hundred pounds’ weight of
rose-leaves required to produce a single ounce of the _attar_. Sad waste
of many values in order to achieve a fashionable smell!

Not that a man should be indifferent to dress or to personal appearance.
Dr. Chalmers himself illustrates the fact that some care about costume
is consistent with the occupations of the mightiest intellect. In his
‘Journal’ (July, 1824), he says:—“Dressed for dinner. Have got a new way
of folding up my coat, which I shall teach you when I get home, as it is
of great use to a traveller. I am about as fond of it as I was of the new
method of washing my hands.” From Chalmers to Chifney is perhaps going
a long way for another illustration. They however who remember the late
celebrated jockey in the days of his retirement will admit its propriety.
How glossily patriarchal the old rider used to look, when, turned
pedestrian, he was wont to pace Regent-street, in broad-brimmed hat and a
clerical-looking surtout! Had he only been less grave of aspect, and more
frolicsome of action, one might have taken him for Wilberforce.

It is really pleasant to trace how celebrated men in other climes
than that of England make of costume a means to an end. I am reminded
of this by a passage in one of the late Lord Metcalfe’s letters, in
which he records his visit to the camp of Holkar, and notices one of
that chief’s dandy captains, Ameer Khan. “Ameer Khan,” he says, “is
blackguard in his looks, and affected on the occasion of my reception
to be particularly fierce, by rubbing his coat over with gunpowder,
and assuming in every way the air of a common soldier.” This was only
Brummell “with a difference;” the Beau used to anoint himself with the
oil of impudence in order to impose on the world, as Ameer Khan rubbed
his coat with gunpowder that he might excite admiration in the breast of
the civilian-soldier of Deeg.

For the reason that induced Miss Agnes Strickland to close her record
of the Queens with the reign of Queen Anne, so do I close that of the
beaux with the biography of Brummell. D’Orsay was indeed a greater
than he; but he has too recently shuffled off this mortal coil to be
strictly dealt with, and the truth concerning him might hurt the feelings
of those of his followers who continue to wear deep stocks with long
ends. His career only furnished a further proof that the profession of
a “beau” is not a paying one. He was _great_ in a Fielding-ian sense,
and according to the poet’s maxim which says, “Base is the slave that
pays.” Mere generosity does not make a gentleman; and even generosity
that is oblivious of justice is of no value. There was really nothing
to admire in him. A recent “friend and acquaintance” indeed has been so
hard put to it to find out a virtue in D’Orsay, that he has fixed upon
his neglect of paying his creditors as one; and the “friend” thinks that
it was sufficient honour for tradesmen to have him for their debtor! He
resided at Gore House; gave dinners to Louis Napoleon, which cost the
giver nothing in money, and the hungry recipient as little in gratitude;
he drew caricature portraits of his “familiars;” proposed a public
subscription for the polluting Paul de Kock; and was the author of a
portrait or figure of our Saviour, the idea of which seemed to be taken
from that of Decker in the old comedy, who dared to say of Him that He
was—

    “The first true gentleman that ever breathed.”

Finally, the worst thing that could happen for the reputation of the
deceased Count is, that he should have so mistaken an advocate as the
author of ‘Friends and Acquaintances.’ Better would it have been for the
irreproachably-dressed D’Orsay, if he could have said as the Psalmist
did:—“My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me, and hid mine
acquaintance out of my sight.”

In the annals of dress however, the doctors of the olden time claim as
much notice as the beaux. If my readers be sick of the latter, here are a
few medical gentlemen, in full costume, ready to be consulted.




DOCTORS READY DRESSED.

                          “These, Sir,
    Are Death’s Masters of the Ceremonies;
    More strangely-clad officials never yet
    Usher’d the way to Death’s cold festival.”

                                    OLD PLAY.


Of all the doctors on the learned _rota_, there may have been more
famous, but none more deserving, than Freake. He was regardless of
nothing but dress; and he had a capital appreciation of fun, and a strong
predilection for matters of fantasy.

Dr. Freake of St. Bartholomew’s, and his cousin the Justice, were not
only given to dreaming, but to publish their dreams. They deemed their
visions not only important to themselves and the public generally,
but to the sovereigns of Europe especially. The dreams were wildly
unintelligible, and the interpretations unintelligibly wild. But the
Justice had active common-sense about him when he was awake. He was a
careful dresser, which is more than can be said for the Doctor, and he
presented the Bodleian Library with a collection of medals. Their tricksy
spirits added the word _freak_ to the vocabulary of the English language.

The Doctor’s cousin, like the Doctor, was not a fop; and as much could
scarcely be said of the profession generally. Granger says indeed of Dr.
Col that he was _not_ a coxcomb. This was at a time when the physicians
_were_ coxcombs; and the apothecaries, who followed and copied the more
dignified brethren, were coxcombs and _meta_-physicians. The medical
coxcomb of the day has thus been dressed up by a popular poet:—

    “Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,
    Had on a large, grave, decent, three-tail’d wig;
    His clothes full-trimm’d, with button-holes behind;
    Stiff were the skirts with buckram stoutly lined;
    The cloth, cut velvet, or more reverend black,
    Full made, and powder’d, half-way down his back;
    Large decent cuffs, which near the ground did reach,
    With half-a-dozen buttons fix’d on each.
    Grave were their faces, fix’d in solemn state!
    These men struck awe, their presence carried weight;
    In reverend wigs, old heads young shoulders bore,
    And twenty-five or thirty seem’d threescore.”

Such was the learned and able individual by whose help we became the
heirs of our forefathers,—helping the one into life, the other out
of it. I will add a sketch of a German doctor, and then of a French
doctor of some celebrity, both for his costume and his professional and
personal qualities. And first, of the professional dress of the _Medicus
Germanicus_.

Madame Schopenhauer says of the German doctors of the last century that
they were all aged—not so much by weight of years as of preconceived
opinions. She could not imagine that any of them had ever been young, or
had ever condescended to the sports of the young. For many years of her
life she never either saw or heard of a young physician. These vice-lords
of human life, incomparably clever at guessing, were addressed by the
style and title of “Excellency;” and even as Falstaff was “Jack Falstaff”
only with his familiars, so he must have been a very intimate friend
indeed who ventured to call a German physician “Herr Doctor.”

He who has seen Bundle in the ‘Waterman’ may have a very good idea of a
German medico’s wig:—snow white, thickly powdered, and excruciatingly
curled. It had further the distinction of resting, one portion on the
back and two descending in front of the shoulders. A scarlet cloth coat
adorned with gold lace, ruffles deeper plaited than Lord Ogilvie’s,
a shirt-frill as wide as a mainsail, silk stockings, knee-breeches,
and an acre of buckles on the shoes enriched with gold and gems, a
low-crowned cocked hat under the arm, too small for the head, and a stout
walking-stick or fancy cane, with clouded or carved head-pieces,—and ever
applied to prop the chin in cases where it was necessary to let it be
thought that the physician was thinking,—it was thus attired that these
patented murderers went forth to slay. What should we think _now_ of Dr.
Locock in a gold-laced scarlet coat, like Lablache in ‘Dulcamara’?

The ‘Connoisseur,’ speaking of the medical dress in England, says:—“When
we see a snuff-coloured suit of ditto, with bolus-buttons, a metal-headed
cane, and an enormous bushy grizzle, we as readily know the wearer to be
a dispenser of life and death, as if we had seen him pounding a mortar
or⸺, etc.”

In France, the medical costume of the last century and of the preceding
one was quite as singular. At an earlier period the dress of the
“mire,” that primitive healer of the people, was a familiar sight to
the Parisians, especially in the neighbourhood of the Rue de la Harpe.
A long black robe covered the dirt, and stood for dignity in this once
remarkable personage, who traversed the streets, vending dreadful
unctions. He was always escorted by a boy bearing a monkey, and this
monkey was bled a dozen times a day by the learned gentleman, to satisfy
the passers-by that he, the professor, and not the monkey, was a skilful
hand at phlebotomy.

In a street adjacent to the Rue de la Harpe resided, during a portion of
the troubled reign of Louis XVI., the celebrated Dr. Audry. He had lived
there for twenty years without being able to achieve any of the renown
which he subsequently acquired. He had fallen in love, but _that_ did
not help him. He lacked one indispensable thing, wanting which nobody
trusted him. He wore no wig. He had a magnificent head of hair of his
own; but to retain that was only wearing a testimonial of incapacity.
The fair lady, who was his heart’s familiar friend, resided in a house
opposite his own; and when she heard that her Samson was about to be
shorn, she burst into tears, and reproached him with infidelity. “Such
splendid curls!” sobbed the damsel.

“My colleagues do not wear them!” said Audry.

“You in a peruke!” exclaimed the lady, hardly knowing whether to laugh or
to cry at the idea of her lover in a wig.

“It is the symbol and livery of science. Without it, it appears, I cannot
be a doctor.”

The lady insisted, by way of compromise, that she should be permitted to
select the wig; and she expressly made choice of one of such colossal
dimensions and of so easy a fit, that poor Audry looked more like a
fool than a physician in it. But it helped to bring him into fashion.
He was considered as an old gentleman; and young ladies admitted him to
their circles and _causeries_, from which they affected to banish youth
of aspect less mature. His popularity was on the increase, just as an
adventure happened to him, which might have shaken a reputation more
firmly established.

He was one evening summoned to attend a wealthy English Peer, whose
mansion was in the Rue Tournon. His way thither led him beneath the
window of his fair friend, who had been rather piqued by his success
among the ladies, and who had previously resolved to overthrow both cause
and effect connected therewith. She was a pretty, sparkling, and joyously
mischievous girl of some three-and-twenty years; and her father loved her
nearly as much as he did fishing, which, for an enthusiastic angler as he
was, was no small proof of paternal affection. The damsel contrived so
well that, as the doctor passed, she flung her line, with the paternal
fish-hook at the end of it, and caught up the wig therewith as lightly
as her father would have picked up a trout.

Dr. Audry looked up in astonishment, and prayed for his professional
peruke in vain. Being hurried, moreover, he passed on his way, and
repaired to his patient with a head like Mr. Buckstone’s in Scrub.

When Lord A⸺ beheld him he exclaimed, “What! waited upon by the
assistant, when I sent for the principal?—by a student, when I needed a
practitioner?—but perhaps you are Doctor Audry’s nephew:—well, my groom
has the same sort of rheumatism that I have; be kind enough to go and
look after him.”

Audry, in his memoirs, in telling the tale, does not forget the sequel.
Thus insulted, he rushed, in a rage, to the offending lady, who met him
with open arms and laughing eyes. “My dear doctor,” said she, “do not
storm; Papa was just on the point of securing to you something better
than a peruke,—a fortune!”

“You are a light—”

“Thing to be loved, as you love me: I know it,” said the lady archly,
“but St. Severin is our parish nevertheless.”

“St. Severin our parish? I do not comprehend; unless I am authorized to
go there and arrange for our marriage.”

“Take all that papa prescribes upon that head; and, talking of heads, you
shall have your peruke again after the honeymoon.” Audry was content;
and the wedding went off as merrily as though it had been the last act
in an old comedy; though the newly-espoused couple did not lead quite so
angelical a life afterwards, as either St. Severin of Cologne, or his
namesake of Bordeaux. But it was neither to be expected nor required of
them. They would not have been half as profitable to the state if they
had followed, throughout, the example set them by the saint whose name
graced the church wherein they were united.

A Dacota doctor is perhaps, neither in costume nor practice, more absurd
than his European brethren of the early part of the last century. His fee
is a blanket, a buffalo robe, or a pipe; his dress is chiefly composed of
the first two articles; and his cunning lies in his sacred rattle, which
he shakes as Christian doctors do their heads, and there is no doubt as
much in one as in the other. Wherever he goes he carries with him his
medicine-bag; and to ask him what that mysterious article contains, and
upon what grounds he applies its contents, would be an insult as profound
as if you asked your own medical man for the reasons of his practice, and
expected that he would (or could) give you an answer. The Winnebagoes are
attired like their learned brethren among the Dacotas; but dress is not
thought so much of by them as possession of the medicine-bag: to lose
this is to lose reputation. But, savages as these are, they have some
very wise observances. The chief of these is the medicine-dance. This
is a grand solemnity, given by the doctors, for two reasons: one, for
the increase of practice, just as we find the fashion to be at home; the
other reason is, in order to appease the dead who have died under medical
treatment. And perhaps _that_ is also the reason why our own medicine-men
give such neat dinners, such splendid balls, or such enjoyable quadrilles
on the carpet and _soirées dansantes_. These entertainments are born
of remorse; and when next you join the saltatory throng at the house
of your medical friend, ponder gravely, good reader, on the solemnity
of the occasion, and impress upon that fair girl, with her hair _à
l’Impératrice_, that the object for which you mutually point the light
fantastic toe, is to rescue the medical master of the house from the
revengeful visits of the unskilfully slain at his hands. That understood,
plunge with frantic velocity into the _valse à deux temps_. The sacred
rattles of the Dacotas and Winnebagoes are always shaken with maddening
rapidity on these occasions, and you are the rattles by which doctors
live. The more you are shaken, the better they live; and should you have
the honour of perishing by their prescription, find comfort in knowing
that other waltzers will perform, not in your memory, but that you may be
peacefully forgotten, the “medicine-dance” of the medically murdered.

It will be found only another division of this subject to treat of odd
dressers and dresses, after touching upon doctors and costume,—doctors
who so often looked like the Laird of Cockpen, of whom we are told that

    “His wig was well powther’d and as good as new,
    His jacket was red, and his hose they were blue;
    He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat;
    Ah, who could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?”

If the doctors were sometimes queerly costumed, their matches might be
occasionally found among the laity. For these I open the last scene, and
“Enter mob variously attired.”




ODD FASHIONS.

    “Avec ceci finit la comédie; allez-vous-en, gens de la noce, et
    dites du bien de l’auteur.”—_Crispin à la Foire._


The fashion of tattooing has a singular origin. We are indebted for our
knowledge thereof to Clearchus, who tells us that the women of Scythia,
having seized upon some Thracian women who dwelt in their vicinity,
traced on their bodies, by means of needles, certain marks, which the
latter could not contemplate without being made very angry. The lady who
went down Regent-street the other day with the shop-ticket affixed to
her new shawl, and which contained the announcement, “Very chaste, £1.
5_s._,” was not half so ridiculous as these poor Thracian ladies, with
the etchings about them drawn by their dear Scythian cousins. It does not
seem ever to have entered the heads of the victims that they might have
concealed their annoyance beneath a garment. They did not wear garments
at that time. They however hit upon a device not unworthy of that page of
the Duke de Vendôme who, losing his shoulder-knot of ribbons, on being
pursued as he was leaving the boudoir of a maid of honour, hurried to
the room where his fellow-pages were sleeping and cut the knots off from
every laced coat in the apartment, and so escaped detection.

The Thracian women fixed upon as happy an expedient. They so mixed up
the tattooed marks with other designs, that the original drawings were
entirely lost in the embellishments, like Handel’s airs in a certain
lady’s cadences. By this means the characteristic sign of their shame and
ignominy was no longer discernible, and the mode of tattooing became a
mode indeed in Thrace. A young lady there could not have had a greater
compliment paid to her at a ball than to be told that, front and back,
her tattooing was in the true style of the Thracian improvement on the
Scythian design. The dear creature might blush, but she would feel
happily sure that she had made a conquest, and would make all her young
friends savage by telling them the secret.

Among the odd dressers of the last century was the celebrated French
philosopher and poet, Monsieur de la Condamine. Like George Selwyn, he
was an indefatigable attendant at executions. He of course did not forget
that of Damiens, the most horrible butchery ever enacted on the Grève,
and at which French ladies were present with opera glasses, the better to
enjoy the spectacle. Even so wits, philosophers, and “females” honoured
the Mannings with their presence, in front of Horsemonger-lane gaol.

Condamine went for ever in search of truth, like Diogenes looking for a
man. At the execution of Damiens, he pushed his way close to the dread
officers of the law, and there, with his trumpet fastened to his ear (for
he was “as deaf as a post”), and his pencil and tablets in his hands,
he watched and recorded progress. At each tearing of the flesh by the
pincers, or at each blow dealt by the bar which crushed the limbs on
which it fell, Condamine exclaimed, “What does he say now? what does he
say now?” The satellites of Charlot, the hangman, wished to drive him
away as a troublesome fellow, but the executioner civilly remarked that
“the gentleman was an amateur, and might stay if he liked.” With all
this, De la Condamine was a simple-minded and humane man. In our London
streets he produced a great effect; there he walked, dressed as laxly as
Sir Simon Slack, and carrying with him a huge umbrella, almost as huge
an ear-trumpet, a telescope, a compass, and a map of London permanently
unfolded. He questioned everybody he met, but as he did this in English,
as he thought, of which he did not comprehend a word, he was exceedingly
like a metaphysician, who necessarily does not understand either what
he says or what is said to him. His singular appearance in the streets
speedily brought a counterfeit presentment of him on the stage, and, from
King downwards, all the English actors who played Frenchmen dressed them
after the pattern of M. De la Condamine.

As I have above noticed the Paris executioner,—“Monsieur de Paris,”
as he used to be called,—I may further remark that the personage who
filled that office some twenty years ago was one of the best-dressed
and best-informed men I ever met with. He might have been taken for a
reverend abbé, who did not deem that the dignity of priest was hurt by
uniting with it the joviality of man. He was a man indeed of bloody
hands, but he had gentle affections too; and he loved his children, ay,
reader, as well as thou lovest thine own.

The Earl of Ferrers, who murdered his steward in 1760, was condemned to
be executed for his crime. He had been originally married in a suit of
white kerseymere and silver; and he chose to be hung in the same suit,
it being as appropriate to one occasion, he said, as the other. Walpole,
discerning the effect this might have on fashion, remarks, “I suppose
every highwayman will preserve the blue handkerchief he has about his
neck when he is married, that he may die like a lord.”

The Earl dated his misfortunes from the day on which he married the
sister of Sir William Meredith. He accused the lady of having _met_ him
drunk at an assembly, and having kept him so till the ceremony was over.
Had he charged her with making him drunk, the lady, who was a faithful
wife, might have been more to blame; and as for keeping him drunk
afterwards, he was seldom subsequently sober, and had only himself to
blame.

This coroneted brute, who was remarkable for his taste in dress, was at
once fond and faithless. He kept his Countess in continual fear of her
life, beating her by day and threatening to shoot her at night. They
were separated; and it was because Johnson, his steward, advanced her
some portion of her allowance without the knowledge of the Earl, that
the latter shot him at three o’clock in the afternoon, and continued
tormenting him till one in the morning, rejoicing to kill him slowly!

After being sentenced by a unanimous vote of the House of Lords, he
passed his time in the Tower in playing picquet with the warders; and,
like Jerome Cardan, he would not play for pastime, but for money. He
drank as much wine as he could get, and then took to beer, for want of
something better.

In the procession, which moved from the Tower to Tyburn, this doomed
man, in his wedding clothes, was the only person who did not appear
affected. His coachman blubbered and the officials looked grave, but the
indifferent Lord made comments on the crowd, alluded now and then to the
purpose in hand, and had the condescension to acknowledge that he _did_
believe in a God.

As connected with fashion, it may be noticed that the Earl was the first
man who suffered by the “new drop.” To travel to the other world by the
“Ferrers’ Stage,” of course had its popular and peculiar signification.
Let me add, that while he was hanging in white, the sheriffs, in mourning
and robes of office, were coolly standing on the scaffold, eating
and drinking, and helping up their friends to drink with them. The
executioners fought for the rope, and he who lost it cried; “but,” says
Walpole, who was not there to see, “the universal crowd behaved with
great decency and admiration.”

There is another act to this tragedy. Lady Ferrers subsequently married
Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle, at whose seat,
Combe Bank, Kent, she was unfortunately burnt to death.

There was about this time another celebrated personage remarkable for
her style of dress. We have all heard of “Sappho’s diamonds on her dirty
smock,” and Pope’s line does not seem overcharged. “I have seen Lady Mary
Wortley Montague,” writes Walpole in 1762; “I think her avarice, her
dirt, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her languages,
is a _galimatias_ of several countries; the ground-work rags, and the
embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no
petticoat, no shoes. An old black-lace hood represents the first; the fur
of a horseman’s coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a
dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers
act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she was expected
there, we drew _Sortes Virgilianas_ for her; we literally drew

    ‘Insanam vatem aspicies.’

It would have been a stronger prophecy now even than it was then.”

I think it was said of Lady Mary, that, on being once at the French
Opera, some one remarked to her, “Mon dieu, Miladi, que vous avez les
mains sales!” “Ah!” exclaimed the dirty lady with a conscious pride, “si
vous voyiez mes pieds!” This story however is something apocryphal.

The worst feature in Lady Mary was that she was not only dirty as an
elderly woman, but had been so as a young one. Two-and-twenty years
before Walpole wrote the above account of her, he thus photographed the
nymph whom Pope had transiently adored. Walpole met her at Florence in
1740, and there, he says, she was “laughed at by the whole town. Her
dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never
heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does not cover her greasy
black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine
blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face
swelled violently on one side, with the remains of a ⸺ partly covered
with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which, for cheapness, she
has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to wash a chimney.”

Spence, who saw this clever and eccentric lady during the following
year at Rome, describes her as brilliant, irregular, and erratic as a
comet; at once wise and imprudent, “the loveliest, most disagreeable,
best-natured, cruellest woman in the world; all things by turns, and
nothing long.”

Three foreign travellers in England have pleasantly remarked upon an old
custom which would now be considered more honoured in the breach than
the observance. The custom alluded to is that of kissing. Chalcondyles,
the Greek, who visited our respected ancestors between four and five
centuries ago, was highly surprised, delighted, and edified with this
novel mode. He says of it:—“As for English females and children, their
customs are liberal in the extreme. For instance, when a visitor calls
at a friend’s house, his first act is to kiss his friend’s wife; he is
then a duly installed guest. Persons meeting in the street follow the
same custom, and no one sees anything improper in the action.” Nicander
Nucius, another Greek traveller, of a century later, also adverts to this
oscillatory fashion. “The English,” he says, “manifest much simplicity
and lack of jealousy in their habits and customs as regards females; for
not only do members of the same family and household kiss them on the
lips with complimentary salutations and enfolding of the arms round the
waist, but even strangers when introduced follow the same mode; and it is
one which does not appear to them in any degree unbecoming.”

The third commentator is Erasmus, and it is astonishing how lively the
Dutchman becomes when expatiating on this ticklish subject. Writing from
England to Andrelinus in 1499, he says unctuously:—“They have a custom
too which can never be sufficiently commended. On your arrival, you are
welcomed with kisses. On your departure, you are sent off with kisses. If
you return, the embraces are repeated. Do you receive a visit, your first
entertainment is of kisses. Do your guests depart, you distribute kisses
amongst them. Wherever you meet them they greet you with a kiss. In
short, whichever way you turn, there is nothing but kissing. Ah! Faustus,
if you had once tasted the tenderness, the fragrance of these kisses, you
would wish to stay in England, not for a ten years’ voyage, like Solon’s,
but as long as you lived.”

I leave to the bachelors to pronounce upon the merits of this
custom—which must have had its disadvantages too;—a qualified remark
which I the more feel bound to make, as, were I to join in the ecstatic
laudation of the grave Dutchman,—why, to use Hood’s words,

    “I have my fears about my ears, I’m not a single man!”

Let us now turn from English fashions to French incidents. Some years
ago, the summer evening _habitués_ of the Champs Elysées used to find
amusement in listening to an open-air entertainment of some singularity.
A pale, thin, fragile, but bright-eyed and intellectual-looking girl of
perhaps ten or twelve years of age used to appear in the most crowded
part of the walk, an hour or so before sunset, attended by an old woman
who carried a violin, a tin cup, and a carpet. While the girl stood apart
for a moment, with something of a rapt look, the old woman spread the
carpet, put down the cup at one corner, and scraped a preliminary air
upon the violin. The air was not always appropriate to the drama that was
to follow, for the favourite overture of the performer was “Ma’m’selle
Pinson est une blonde!”—and that was like making “Yankee Doodle” or
“Nancy Dawson” pass as introductory symphonies to ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Macbeth.’

However, the orchestra having terminated the prelude, the girl stepped
on to the carpet, with the air of a little tragedy queen, and recited
long tirades from Racine and Corneille. But then she recited them
superbly; and despite her air of suffering and her exceedingly poor
attire, she produced such an effect upon her hearers that while she
rested, the audience were never weary of filling the cup carried round
by the old woman, with sous and half-franc pieces, in order to encourage
her to new efforts. The collection was always a large one; and when the
delicate-looking child retired, all palpitating and with a flush upon
her cheek, of which it were difficult to say whether it were the flush
of her own triumph or that of death destined to triumph over her, the
acclamations and cordial compliments of her hearers greeted her as she
passed.

Well, a winter had gone, and a summer had come, but with it did not come
to the loiterers in the Elysian fields the Tragic Muse whom they were
disposed and eager to welcome. But during the year a marvellous child
appeared on the stage of the Gymnase Dramatique. She came like a meteor
and so departed. The truth was, that her friends saw at once that she
was too good for that stage, and she was withdrawn, in order to appear
on one more classical. Well do I remember that we loiterers in the shady
avenues that lead to Neuilly used to dispute, and we youths the loudest
of all, as to whether the _débutante_ of the Gymnase was or was not the
inspired nymph that used in the public highway to create as much delight
as Duchesnois herself before the critical pit of the “Français.”

The dispute was not to be determined by us, and in the meantime we spoke
of our absent delight as of a lost Pleiad, and so the year wore away.
And then came the eventful night on which a girl, of whom no one had
previously heard by the name which she now wore, glided on to the stage
of the Théâtre Français, and in a moment awoke French Tragedy out of
the shroud in which she had been decently enveloped since Duchesnois
had laid her down to die. The name of the girl was RACHEL; and so pale
and unearthly was she, yet so inspired in her look, so commanding, so
irresistible, that every one was not only ready to acknowledge the new
sovereign of the tragic throne, but all Paris declared that the Rachel
who was now famous for ever was no other than the poor girl who used to
stand on a carpet in the Champs Elysées and recite Racine for sous and
half-franc pieces.

The lady most concerned maintained a discreet silence, and various were
opinions as to the identity. In course of time, however, she seems
herself to have cleared up the mystery by one of the prettiest possible
and most practical of confessions. As this is a question of evidence, I
think it better to let my witness speak rather than myself condense the
testimony, and here is the deposition—_ce dont il s’agit_. I have only
first to premise that it is given by Madame Colmache in one of those
pleasant Paris letters which used to appear in the ‘Atlas,’ to the great
amusement and edification of the readers. The following is a portion of a
letter which appeared in February, 1851.

“Rachel’s hôtel in the Rue Trudon is gradually growing into the most
exquisite little palace in the world. The long-talked of _fête_, which
was to have been given by the Tragedian upon the occasion of the Mardi
Gras, and to which all Paris was intriguing and disputing to get invited,
has been postponed _sine die_, and a literary and poetical festival was
offered to her friends instead, on Sunday last. The inauguration of the
hôtel took place under the most brilliant auspices. The vast number of
rooms contained in the hôtel excited some surprise; the more so as it is
formally announced that the fair owner intends for the future to reside
entirely alone. ‘By whom will all these apartments be occupied?’ said
Alexandre Dumas to Viennet, as they strolled through the long suite of
saloons and boudoirs. ‘By the owner’s _souvenirs_, of course,’ replied
the latter. ‘Oh! then I fear they will be terribly crowded,’ replied
Alexandre laughing. To those who complain of the sadness of the times
and of the sad neglect of art manifested by the public of our own day, a
walk through that exquisitely adorned temple, which certainly may rival,
both in elegance and richness, the dwelling of Aspasia and the villa of
Lais, would be productive of an immediate change of opinion. No expense
has been spared upon the decoration of the hôtel; some of the artists
who stand highest have not disdained to furnish some of the designs for
the moulding; the ceilings are all painted by the greatest masters; and
the rich draperies which conceal the walls have all been taught to hang,
according to the strictest rules of symmetry, by the great master hand.”

The _fête_, says the writer, was concluded by an epilogue of great
interest; and it is this epilogue which connects the Tragédienne of the
“Français,” with the little Thespian of the Champs Elysées. The epilogue
is truly described as one displaying a strange and singular aspect of the
human heart.

“The _soirée_ had been accepted as one of a purely literary character,
and every celebrity appertaining to every branch of literature came,
of course. The fair hostess recited in costume every one of her
principal _tirades_, from all the great tragedies wherein she has
acquired undying fame, and then withdrew amid the hearty applause
and unfeigned expressions of delight of the whole company. Presently
she returned before them in a new character to them, but of an old
one to herself,—that of a street-singer, her head bound by a Madras
handkerchief, her shoulders enveloped in an old Tartan shawl, a cotton
petticoat descending just below the knee, and an old guitar slung across
her bosom. Her appearance caused an almost painful interest. There
was poetry in the whole scene—in the very clatter of her sabots as she
passed up the splendid gallery, all hung with looking-glass, and adorned
with gilt tripods—in the wooden bowl with the sou at the bottom, which
she rattled as she stepped forward with a melancholy smile. She walked
straight to the head of the gallery, and standing motionless for a
moment, began the ballad which she had sung the last of all before she
was summoned from the street to the stage, from rags and poverty, to
glory, influence, and riches. By a singular coincidence, this ballad
happened to be the same formerly sung in ‘Fanchon la Veilleuse,’—‘Elle
a quitté,’—relating how Fanchon had left her humble home for wealth
and grandeur, and how she was gradually pining amidst the splendour of
her lot for the love and liberty she had once enjoyed. The voice of
the singer, perhaps from fatigue, perhaps from emotion, was low and
faltering, and produced an effect such as not the most powerful of her
_tirades_ from Racine or Corneille has ever been able to produce,—_tears_
from her audience. This incident will long be remembered by those who
witnessed it.”

No doubt; and the writer might have added a closing incident which is
said to have followed the song, namely, that the singer, or reciter,
for even her songs were recited, as every one will remember who has
witnessed her ‘Lycisca’ in the high-coloured tragedy of ‘Valeria,’—having
terminated her song, carried round the little cup or bowl, as of yore,
only this time intimating to those to whom her trembling hand extended
it—“It is for the poor!” But to revert to older, as well as odder
fashions.

The consequences of the treaty which the Colophonians made with
the Lydians, will serve to show that alliances are not necessarily
advantageous to the weaker party. The Colophonians were an austere
people. They were the Quakers of antiquity, and Mr. Bright himself
might admire them. But no sooner were they united with the Lydians than
Colophon became full of Lydian milliners, tailors, jewellers, and
hairdressers, and the reign of simplicity was over for ever. Prior to
this a Colophonian woman no more thought about her dress than did Maria
Theresa, who, on being told that she was a grandmother, rushed into the
neighbouring Opera-house, in her flannel nightdress and huge nightcap, in
which she looked like Mrs. Gamp, and announced to the ecstatic audience
that an heir was born to the greatness of Hapsburg Lorraine.

The Colophonians were once as careless of appearances, but now, men and
women, they all adopted Lydian fashions. In one day, a thousand of the
former, who had never known what a mantle was before, were seen on the
public place, as proud of their jaunty purple cloaks as Rubini of his
‘Almaviva.’ Men and women alike had a gold ornament at the end of every
lock of hair; and as for perfume, it was used to such an extent that for
miles round the air was full of it, and the Lydian Atkinsons toiled in
vain to meet the demand by supply.

Extravagance in dress has brought many a family to two-and-sixpence in
the pound, but it ruined Miletus outright. The rich people there not
only impoverished themselves by their incredible extravagance in finery,
worse than our ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, who wore
whole estates upon their backs, but they despised the poor, who were
offensive to them for their homely fashions and rough tongues. Well,
these extravagant persons became insolent and helpless, or what we should
now call so; and the poor then sued them after the fashion of men who
knew not of Bankruptcy Courts. They expelled the old oppressors, but
they seized their children; and confining them in different granges,
caused them to be trodden to death by the oxen used for treading out
the corn. The rich however returned in strength, and seizing the poor
men, women, and children, they covered them with pitch and put light to
them,—so leaving them to perish. The sacred olive-tree in the Temple
was so disgusted at both parties that it set fire to itself, and died
of spontaneous combustion. The colour of its crackling leaves became a
favourite one with religious persons; and a “robe feuille-morte” was as
much in vogue in the district as it more recently was in Paris and the
provinces.

There are some very odd “habits” about some of the swarthy potentates
of torrid Africa. Of these I can however mention but the following:—The
territory of Damagram, in Central Africa, is inhabited by the wildest
of the African races. The method of supplying the slave-market there is
truly nefarious. If the Sultan of Zinder wants goar nuts for his dessert,
or calico to make what the good King Dagobert had so much difficulty in
adjusting to his royal person, and if he has no money to purchase them,
he sends his officials to a neighbouring village, in open day, to steal
two or three families and bring them to the Sultan. These families are
immediately exchanged for the goar nuts or the calico, and the swarthy
tailor who makes up the royal suit perhaps reflects, as he sews, that
the stuff has cost two or three living cousins, whose fate it is to be
sent beyond the Atlantic to raise more cotton, that shall find its way
again to the African tailors’ hands, after it has been paid for with
more human flesh. It is not _all_ the African chiefs that care to be
dressed in calico. The Marghi, for instance, give little employment for
tailors: their dress consists of a simple band of leather passed between
their loins and fixed round their girdle. When this and a profusion of
neatly-made rings of iron and ivory are fixed on the arms and legs, the
Marghi gentlemen are dressed for the day.

The oddest of fashions or dresses was one which was once adopted by the
rich but parsimonious Fountayn Wilson, the wealthy but thrifty landowner
of Yorkshire. When loyal gentlemen were raising militia companies
during the late war, Mr. Wilson not only followed the fashion, but he
bought, at a low rate, a quantity of grey cloth, in the expectation that
Government would purchase it at an advanced price, and so put a profit
into Fountayn’s pocket. He was disappointed, but he consoled himself by
wearing nothing for years but dresses made out of this coarse militia
grey. But London once saw him in a stranger dress than this.

Mr. Wilson, having accepted an invitation to dinner on a day whereon he
had to attend as member of a committee of the House of Commons, ordered
his servant to bring down to the house at six o’clock, a change of dress,
and a hackney coach, in which he said he would effect the change as he
rode in it. Ablution he did not think about; but if his old black coat
would do to dine in, he felt bound to change his nether garment. He had
just reached the Horse Guards, and he had just taken off his trousers,
and was about to put his legs into the other pair, when _crack!_ went
the axle-tree, and down came the coach! An officious mob assembled to
lend help; but when they beheld an embarrassed gentleman with two pairs
of trousers, and neither of them on, great was their astonishment,
and loudly did they publish the fact. Poor Fountayn sat helpless and
victimized, till a good-natured officer who was passing, and knew the
eccentric M.P., released him, by claiming him as a relative; and as he
led him covered with a cloak through the shrieking crowd, he calmed the
laughers into silence by significantly pointing with his finger to his
forehead,—which seemed to imply that they ought to have compassion on the
infirmity of an imbecile gentleman, so well provided with garments and so
apparently indifferent as to their use.

If Oliver Goldsmith went up in red plush breeches to be ordained by a
bishop, the celebrated Daniel Webster once appeared in as singular a
costume, considering the occasion on which he wore it. The time had
come when he was required to leave his old home at Elms Farm, to visit
Dartmouth College, for the purpose of being matriculated. A neighbour,
in honest zeal for his credit, made for him a complete new suit of
clothes,—all of homespun cloth,—the colour “deeply, darkly, beautifully
blue.” Thus attired, he set off on horseback; and he had not got far on
his way when a storm suddenly overtook him, to which he was exposed for
many hours. The river in his way became swollen, the bridge was destroyed
by the freshet, and he was obliged to ride many miles round ere he could
again strike into a direct path. The rain descended in ceaseless torrents
during the whole time. The homespun suit was not made of fast colour. The
rain sank into the cloth, and the indigo-blue, politely making way for
it, soaked off into the shirt and skin of the young student. His features
too partook of the general hue, and when the scholar reached Hanover, he
was dyed blue from head to foot. Like Essex, when he came travel-soiled
from Ireland, and proceeded to an interview with Queen Elizabeth, he
went straight before the college authorities; without wiping—indeed he
could _not_ wipe the now fixed cerulean from his face, neck, and hands.
Every shade of blue, and all moist, could be seen upon his clothes, the
darker deposit upon his flesh. “Who is he?” asked one. “At home,” said
he, laughing, “they call me _black_ Dan; here I appear as _blue_ Dan!—and
trouble enough have I had to arrive among you; but you see me as I am, in
a condition which, if it does not entitle me to your approbation, should
at least secure for me your sympathy.” Daniel suffered no disparagement
by appearing before his grave seniors like a man who had been dyeing all
his life. He passed the dreaded ordeal with honour, and the wits said
that he had no reason to be discontented with the storm which _blew_ him
into a port where honour and welcome attended him; at the same time they
advised him not to stick to the colour, and proposed to him a thesis,
which should have for its device, “Nimium ne fide colori.” “Ne fide
colori!” I hear re-echoed by my readers; “‘Ne fide nimium patientiæ,’
Sirrah; do not super-abuse our patience.” Be it so, ever-courteous
Public. _Pauca verba_, as Pistol has it, is a good maxim, particularly
when one has nothing more to say. I will conclude, not only with the
sentiment I promised, but also with something more valuable,—a recipe to
keep you from ever getting wet through. A barrister was once bewailing to
Mr. Cresswell, when the latter was also at the Bar, that on going down
to Salisbury, outside the mail, he had got his clothes completely wet
through. “That calamity need never befall a man, however exposed,” said
Mr. Cresswell. “Why,” said the other, “what is he to do?” “Do!” exclaimed
the elder practitioner, “why, he has nothing in the world to do but to
take off his clothes and sit upon them!”

And now for the sentiment, in which my readers will find a value greater
than that which attaches to the recipe for keeping a suit dry. Hear what
Cowper says:—

    “We sacrifice to dress, till household joys
    And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellars dry,
    And keeps our larder bare; puts out our fires,
    And introduces hunger, frost, and woe,
    Where peace and hospitality might reign.”

Well, I will not moralize upon this truth. I should become more unwelcome
than Joseph Surface himself; but I will say this, that Cowper’s lines
are as applicable now as they were of old, and in that they are so do I
distinguish the cause why on many careers joyously begun, there descends
so dismal and so dreary a


FINIS.


                       JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, PRINTER,
                LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.




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