Part 3

In a letter preserved in the Record Office (_circa_ 1505) to Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, from his steward Killingworth (De la Pole had been indicted of homicide and murder, "for slaying of a mean person in his rage and fury," and had fled to Flanders), conveying excuses from some person un-named, mentioned only as "your friend," for not having communicated with De la Pole earlier, as he had hoped, to send him news from England, the writer continues:--

"For your gown he axked me howe many elles velvet wold serve you. I told hym xiiij Englishe yerdis, and then he saied, 'What lynyng thereunto?' I answerde 'Sarcenet' by cause of the lest coste to helpe it forward. And he saide to me, 'Wel, I shal see what I can doo therin.' Soo, sir, if it please you to write to him in Duche, and thank him, and geve but oon worde therin towching your gown, I doubte not ye shal have hyt."

The patternings of woven brocades, damasks and other textiles afford an interest quite apart from mere utility, or the purpose for which they were intended to serve as an ornamental adjunct to dress, since by their means we are able to trace the great ornamental traditions to their original source in the East.

The history of the art of weaving in China is lost in obscurity, but we may reasonably infer from our knowledge of the character of its people that neither their methods nor the character of the ornamentation have materially changed during a period of as much as two thousand years. Dionysius Periegetes informs us that the Seres "make precious figured garments resembling in colour the flowers of the field, and rivalling in fineness the work of spiders."

It is certain that the Egyptians practised the art of weaving from very early times, although the earliest ornamental fabrics found in Egypt are of the sixth century A.D. In later times, however, their woven fabrics were exceedingly sumptuous. Shakespeare's description of the barge of Cleopatra will be familiar to all--

"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne Burned on the water: Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; she did lie In her pavilion--cloth of gold, of tissue," &c.

The Sicilian brocades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the finest in the world. The character of their ornamentation betrays their Eastern origin, and we may trace in them the various influences which were brought to bear upon them by their successive conquerors, and which left a lasting mark upon their art. The earliest ornamental influence was that of Byzantium, which followed upon the conquest of the island by Belisarius in 535. The patternings are made up of grotesque animals, birds, griffins, chimeras, &c., intertwined with conventional foliage or ornament of a purely abstract character. After the Saracen conquest, resultant upon the preaching of Muhammad, we find Arabic inscriptions freely introduced as part of the general decorative motive. Gold thread is lavishly used, and, together with an admixture of colour, usually forms the pattern, upon a coloured ground, dark or light, as the case may be.

The tradition spread to the mainland of Italy, and looms were set up in Lucca, Florence, Venice, Genoa, and elsewhere; the character of the ornamentation gradually changing, however, as the Renascence influence began to make itself felt. Even the most cursory study of Italian painting will serve to give an idea of the splendour of the dresses of the Italian Gothic and Renascence periods.

It was Louis XI. who introduced the art of silk weaving into France, and looms were established at Tours in 1480. In 1520 looms were set up in Lyons by Francis I.

In England also the art of weaving flourished, and was employed for ecclesiastical vestments, hangings, furniture, and other purposes, as well as for civil dress. In the wardrobe accounts of Edward II. occurs the item: "To a mercer in London for a green hanging of wool with figures of Kings and Earls upon it, for the King's service in this hall on solemn feasts at London," &c.

For the "mantell of the Garter" of Henry VII. "a pound and a half of gold of Venys" was employed "aboute the making of a lace and boton."

Instances of the splendour of the costume at the different periods of the past might be multiplied indefinitely.

The monk of Malmesbury describes the banner under which Harold fought at Hastings as having been "embroidered in gold with the figure of a man in the act of fighting, studded with precious stones, woven sumptuously."

Chaucer describes the King's daughter in the "Squire of Low Degree" as having--

"Mantell of ryche degre Purple palle and armyne fre."

In the "Romaunt of the Rose" the dress of Mirth is described as follows:--

"Full yong he was, and merry of thought, And in samette, with birdes wrought, And with gold beten full fetously His bodie was clad full richely."

. . . . .

"A coronell on hur hedd sett, Hur clothys wyth bestes and byrdes wer bete, All abowte for pryde."

And now contrast all this with the extreme poverty of the dress of the present day, and turn our thoughts for a moment to those terrible cylindrical enormities the pot-hat and trousers.

Dress? we don't dress--we simply cover our nakedness--as in architecture we are content if we keep out wind and wet. We have forgotten how to dress as we have forgotten how to build, and beauty has forsaken dress as it has forsaken the rest of the decorative arts. Dress is, or should be, one of the decorative arts; the adornment of a "human," assuming that Nature's marvel must be covered, is, to say the very least, as important as the adornment of a brick wall. What is the explanation of the wave of Philistinism which swept not only England but the rest of the world at the beginning of the nineteenth century? Can it be the rise of science, which, bringing in its wake the mechanical fiend, has reduced everything to rule and compass, and thus brought about the death of the æsthetic sense? No other period of the world's history but some country forged ahead and kept alight the sacred lamp of beauty.

* * * * *

Trousers are apparently eternal; they date from the beginning, and will endure, one fears, to the end of sublunary time. Of late there has been a tendency, especially amongst middle-aged and elderly men, to affect the knickerbocker, although whether the æsthetic principle is the mainspring of this tendency, coupled with a natural and pardonable desire to exhibit a well-developed calf, or whether, peradventure, the "too old at twenty" cry is at the bottom of it, is a question which provides food for reflection.

What, then, in view of this eternity of the trouser, can be done to bring it abreast of modern taste and thought? because we _do_ move in matters of taste, although almost imperceptibly. Speaking as a designer, it seems only possible to develop the trouser in one of two different directions--that of the peg-top or the bell-bottom. Bell-bottoms may at once be ruled out of the running, since they have become so identified with the coster fraternity that no man of fashion would dream of adopting them. These, then, are the two extremes or opposite poles. There is, however, as the late Mr. Gladstone would have said, a third and middle course--_their columnar character might be retained, and even emphasised_. The shafts might be fluted, as in the Corinthian Order, or festooned, as in the "Prentice pillar."

In all seriousness, however, the trouser is an absurdity even from the point of view of mere comfort. A man cannot sit down without first hitching himself up at the knee. The knee is the natural place for the garment to be drawn in, as a certain degree of looseness is necessary at that point in order to allow of the free movement of the limb. Nature herself rebels against the trouser, and does her level best to produce variety of fold, which makes for beauty. Philistine man, however, decides otherwise, and that singular invention the trouser-stretcher--true emblem of the modern spirit of incongruity--is called into play, to undo during the night Nature's doings of the previous day.

The late Lord Salisbury, in his speech at the Royal Academy Banquet on April 30, 1887, is reported as saying: "Then consider the costume of the period. Dresses seem to have been selected by the existing English generation with a special desire to flout and gibe at and repudiate all possibility of compliance with any sense of beauty. I am taxing my memory, but I cannot remember any sculptor who has been bold enough to give a life statue of any English notability in the evening dress of the period. I am quite sure that if that man exists he must be strongly tempted to commit suicide the moment his work appears."

The _Tailor and Cutter_--delightfully fascinating print!--has thrown out many dark hints lately of impending startling changes in men's attire. By the way, _who_ are the Rhadamanthine spirits who sit mysteriously in judgment upon these high matters, issuing their fateful decrees, regulating the delicate and subtle curves of the brim of a pot-hat or the turn of a coat collar? Perhaps the _Tailor and Cutter_ knows, but, upon the principle that knowledge is power, declines to say; anyway, whatever changes the immediate future may have in store for us, we may take comfort from the fact that they must necessarily be in the direction of betterment, since, having recently emerged from that bottomless pit of all that is æsthetically terrible--the Victorian era: the era of the crinoline, the antimacassar, and of wax flowers under glass--we could not possibly strike a lower depth.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Gen. iii. 7, 21.

[2] This fable is so quaintly told in Lyly's "Euphues" (1580), that it may be worth while to repeat it. "A gentleman walking abroard, the Winde thought to blowe of(f) his cloake, which with great blastes and blustering striving to vnloose it, made it to stick faster to his backe, for the more the winde encreased the closer his cloake clapt to his body, then the Sunne, shining with his hoat beames began to warme this gentleman, who waxing som(e)what faint in this faire weather, did not on(e)ly put of(f) his cloake but his coate, which the Wynde perceiuing, yeelded the conquest to the Sunne."

[3] Carlyle, "Sartor Resartus."

[4] Stephen Gosson, "The School of Abuse."

[5] Exodus xxviii. 6-8.

II

THE TUNIC

"Where were the variegated robes, works of Sidonian women, which god-like Paris himself brought from Sidon, sailing over the wide sea, along the course by which he conveyed high-born Helen?"--_Iliad_, vi. 289.

II

THE TUNIC

The earliest made-up garment, that in which the art of the tailor was called into play, was doubtless a simple bag, more or less closely fitting to the body and of varying length, with holes for the arms and an opening for the neck. Such a primitive garment has been worn in varying forms at all periods of the world's history, and is in use at the present time in the form of the ordinary singlet. The modern singlet is, in fact, the simple, primeval type of the tunic.

The coat of many colours which Israel made for his son Joseph was unquestionably an embroidered tunic, although probably made loose and ample. The little coat which the mother of Samuel made for her child when he was dedicated to the priesthood, and brought to him from year to year, was doubtless of the same character.

Sir Henry Layard, describing the dresses of the Assyrians, says "many are represented naked, but the greater number are dressed in short chequered tunics with a long fringe attached to the girdle."

Some remarkable discoveries have been made during the last thirty years in different portions of Scandinavia, which serve to give us a very clear idea of the dress of both men and women of the remote period of the Bronze Age. The dresses were found in coffins made of an oak-tree split in two and hollowed out, the bodies having been buried completely dressed. An illustration is given of a simple woollen tunic with short sleeves and a petticoat with girdle. This was found at Borum, in the neighbourhood of Aarhus, Jutland.

The tunic was worn by the Egyptians. It is seen in their sculptures, paintings, and papyri, and may be said to have formed their principal garment, after the mere loin cloth. The illustrations given are taken from the papyrus of Hunefer, or "Book of the Dead," in the British Museum. The first cut discovers Hunefer, "overseer of the palace of the lord of two lands, Men-maât-Rā (Seti I., King of Egypt about B.C. 1370), and overseer of the cattle of the lord of the two lands, the royal scribe," and his wife Nasha, a lady of the college of the god Amen-Rā at Thebes, in the attitude of adoration.

Hunefer wears a long tunic with sleeves, ornamented at the throat and neck, with a broad sash around the waist. His wife also wears a long tunic with sleeves, probably tied in with a band underneath the breasts; it is not clear in the drawing. The material is of a light tissue, semi-transparent.

The second illustration shows a priest wearing nothing but a loin cloth and a leopard skin.

In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a child's tunic, discovered in a tomb at Alkmîm (Panopolis), Upper Egypt. It is of unbleached linen, dyed blue, with a pattern produced by means of what is called "a reserve," the design being first stamped on the fabric by means of a waxy substance which protected those portions of the dress from the dye into which it was afterwards dipped. The "reserve" was then removed by a second bath, leaving the pattern in the original colour of the fabric.

With the Greeks the tunic was the principal article of attire. It was worn next to the skin, and was of a light tissue. In the earlier time it was composed of wool, in later periods of flax, and in the latest periods it was either of flax mixed with silk or of pure silk. The illustration given will serve to show its construction. It was a simple square bag, open at the two ends, made sufficiently wide to admit of the folds being ample, and sufficiently long to allow of its being gathered up about the waist and breasts. It was kept in its place by various means, either by a simple girdle round the waist or by cords drawn crosswise between the breasts, over the shoulders, looped at the back, and again drawn round the waist, or by an arrangement of cords or ribbons drawn over each shoulder and attached to the girdle.

Over the tunic was a second garment, intended to afford additional protection to the upper part of the body. This was a kind of bib or super-tunic, and was composed of a square or rather oblong piece of stuff, suspended round the chest and back and secured at the shoulders by means of fibulæ or buttons. In some cases the bib was made deeper under the arms, so as to allow the garment to fall in regular zigzag folds, ending in a point, which was weighted with little pellets of lead in order to ensure a better falling of the folds.

The tunic, as well as the super-tunic, was often ornamented with rich borders and diapered with sprigs, spots, stars, &c. The tunic of the Roman women reached to the feet, with the exception of that worn by the Lacedemonian girls, which was short, and also divided at the sides so as to show their thighs; and "this indecency," says Strutt, was countenanced by the laws of Lycurgus.

Horace, in his twenty-fifth Ode, addressing an old woman affecting youth--"flaunting wife of the indigent Ibycus"--exclaims--

"What becomes thee best is a warm woollen dress; Get thee fleeces from famous Luceria."

Broadly speaking, classic dress consisted of but two elements--the tunic and mantle, both being worn of a thicker material during cold weather. Ulysses exclaims, in the "Odyssey"--

"I have no cloak; the fates have cheated me, And left alone my tunic."

Dion Cassius has given us an account of the dress of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. He says she wore a tunic woven chequerwise in purple, red and blue, and over it a shorter garment open on the bosom. Her yellow hair floated in the wind, and upon her shoulders was a mantle fastened by a fibula. It was, in fact, a variation of the Roman dress of tunic and mantle or toga. This was the dress which was common to all nations, both Gaul, Goth, Visigoth, and Vandal, from the Roman period to the time of Charlemagne, varied, however, according to climatic conditions, and ornamented in the manner peculiar to the particular country.

Mr. Planché ("Cyclopædia of Costume") says: "That in this chequered cloth we see the original _breacan feile_, the garb of old Gaul, still the national dress of the Scotch Highlanders, there can be no doubt; and that it was at this time the common habit of every Keltic tribe, though now abandoned by all their descendants except the hardy and unsophisticated Gaelic mountaineers, is admitted, I believe, by every antiquary who has made public his opinion on the subject."

Eginhart, a writer of the ninth century, has left us a detailed description of the dress of Charlemagne. It consisted of the following parts: The shirt, the drawers, the tunic, the stockings, the leg bandages, the shoes, the sword-belt, and sword. In the winter he added the mantle and the _thorax_, which was, as its name implies, a covering for the chest and throat. It was made of otter's skin, and was probably worn underneath the tunic, as no pictured or other representation of this garment is available.

His tunic was ornamented with a _border of silk_. The material of the tunic itself is not mentioned, but Strutt thinks that, according to the custom of the time, it was made of linen. It was the _short_ tunic, as the historian positively asserts that he wore the longer tunic but twice in his life.[6]

Another French writer quoted by Strutt mentions stockings and _trowsers_, the latter of linen, but ornamented with precious workmanship, _i.e._, embroidery as forming part of the dress of the Franks.

Fortunately, we are able to form a very complete idea of Frankish dress from the sculptured effigies of Clovis and his Queen Clothilde on the façade of the Cathedral of Chartres, and other records which have come down to us. The pencil, or the sculptor's chisel, must necessarily be more eloquent and convincing than any written description can possibly be. The general appearance of the Queen may, however, be described as follows: She wears a long loose tunic of soft material, reaching to the ground, confined by a falling girdle with an oval clasp in front, in which emeralds, amethysts and rubies vie with each other in their brilliance. The sleeves are long and ample, the edges serrated in the form of leaves. The long flowing embroidered mantle is fastened by a gold fibula at the throat. Her flaxen hair falls in two long double plaits in front of her person, reaching almost to the ground; the plaits being first bound singly by a dark ribbon, and each pair bound together by a lighter ribbon. A thin gauze veil covers the head, which is surmounted by a crown of exquisite workmanship.

The dress of the Byzantine women, at the time of the dismemberment of the Roman Empire in 395, was still the loose or semi-loose tunic, with sleeves added, elaborately ornamented in the rich diapered patterns peculiar to that period and nation, and confined at the waist by a girdle. This costume, with variations, obtained until the Norman Conquest, when costume began to be more complex. The long loose gown is variously described in documents of the period by the names of the tunic, the _gunna_ or gown, and the kirtle. There was a short tunic, with sleeves reaching only to the elbows, and there was a long tunic, with tight sleeves, worn underneath. The kirtle, such as we are familiarised with in the dress of a later period, had not come into being. As a matter of fact, the term "kirtle" is indiscriminately used in the description of various garments. Tyrwhitt describes it as "a tunic or waistcoat."

In the "Romaunt of the Rose" the "damoselles right young" are arrayed--

"In kirtles and noon other wede,"

evidently here intended for a long gown or tunic.

The dress of the twenty young squires chosen by Guy of Warwick is thus described:--

"Kyrtyls they had oon of sylke Also whyte, as any mylke. Of gode sylke and of purpull palle Mantels above they caste all. Hosys they had uppon, but no schone; Barefote they were everychone."

Both Strutt and some other writers on the subject of costume appear to be puzzled by the _colouring_ of the earlier illuminators, principally, however, with respect to the colour of the hair and beard, but also in regard to the various details of costume. They remark the curious circumstance of the hair and beard being painted _blue_. "In representations of old men this might be considered only to indicate _grey hair_; but even the flowing locks of Eve are painted blue in one MS., and the heads of youth and age exhibit the same cerulean tint." Strutt argues from this that some art of tinting or dyeing was practised. A writer who quotes Strutt says: "The hair being painted sometimes _green_ and _orange_ is in favour of this argument, but such instances are very rare, and may have arisen from the idleness of the illuminator, who daubed it, perhaps, with the nearest colour at hand." This, however, was not in the least so. The explanation is, as any _educated_ artist knows (artists are not _all_ educated), that with the old illuminator _the decoration of the page_ was his first consideration--rightly so; and the colour of the hair and beard, together with the precise tint of the gown, would incline to either blue, red, or yellow, accordingly as the exigencies of the general colour scheme demanded. This fact should always be kept in mind in considering the colour of any illuminated MS.

This colouring is amusingly parodied by Mr. Punch in his book of British costumes (1860). He gives a fragment of a love song, "commonly believed to have been written by King Vortigern, who was inveigled into marriage with the daughter of old Hengist":--

"Rowena is my ladye-love, Her robe itte is a gunna; Shee wears blewe haire her ears above, O is shee notte a stunna!"

He adds: "Critics disagree as to the meaning of the word 'stunna,' but we incline, ourselves, to think it was a bit of Saxon slang, and from the context we imagine it was used by way of compliment."

A development of the super-tunic was the surcoat, which was worn by either sex during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It assumed a variety of forms, and was either a long loose outer garment, variously shaped and sleeveless, or, as during the reign of Richard II., was a shorter, closely-fitting jacket or coat with sleeves, and usually trimmed with miniver or other fur.