Part 5

"There were great abundance of people of all ranks, multitudes of the nobility of England, France, and Scotland, with crowds of Knights and military Officers, the whole of them pompously adorned with garments of silk, and so transformed with excess of Ornaments that it would be impossible to describe their dresses without being tiresome to the reader, though it would excite his astonishment. Upwards of one thousand Knights on the part of the King of England attended the nuptials in vestments of silk, curiously wrought in embroidery; and these vestments on the morrow were laid aside; and the same Knights appeared in new robes of still more magnificent decoration. The nobles of Scotland and of France did not fall a whit below those of England in their show and parade. The Barons and the Knights were habited in robes of divers colours; sometimes they appeared in green, sometimes in blue, then again in grey, and afterwards in scarlet, varying the colours according to their fancies, or the wills of the ladies to whom they had dedicated their amorous vows. Their breasts were adorned with fibulæ, or brooches of gold; and their shoulders with precious stones of great magnitude, such as emeralds, sapphires, jacinths, pearls, rubies, and other rich ornaments. The ladies who attended had rings of gold, set with topaz stones and diamonds, upon their fingers; their heads were adorned with elegant crests or garlands; and their wimples were composed of the richest stuffs, embroidered with pure gold, and embellished with the rarest jewellery."

In an inventory of the wardrobe and jewels of Henry V., taken in 1423 at his decease, mention is made of _heukes_ of scarlet cloth and camlet, and _pilches_ of grey fur. The word _pilche_ is a corruption of the Latin _pelliceus_, or the Saxon _pylce_, and represented a coat of fur worn during cold weather. The modern word _pelisse_ used to describe a child's coat is derived from the same source.[10]

"After grete hete comith colde, No man cast his pilche away."

CHAUCER.

A farewell letter of Bishop Ridley (Foxe's "Book of Martyrs"), describing the sufferings of Christ's true soldiers, says:--

"They were stoned, hewn asunder, tempted, fell, and were slain upon the edge of the sword; some wandered to and fro in sheep's pilches, in goats' pilches, forsaken, oppressed, afflicted."

In the inventory above referred to are mentioned, "gounes de noier damask, furrez de sides de foynes et marterons." The cost of these furs is also given--"iii pares de foyns, chascun cont' c. bestes, pris le pec' x_d._ xii_li._ x_s._," the marteron being more costly.

The foyne appears to have been the same as the polecat or fitchet.

The pylce was in common use during the Anglo-Saxon period, and worn by all classes. In Michel's "Chroniques Anglo-Normandes," _c._ 1185, is described a meeting on a little bridge near Westminster between Tosti, Earl of Huntingdon, and Siward, Earl of Northumberland. "The said Earl approached so near to Siward on the bridge that he dirtied his pelisse (_pelles_) with his miry feet; for it was then customary for noblemen to use skins without cloth." This evidently referring to a long mantle or cloak.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions the great gifts and many treasures of skins decked with purple, pelisses of marten skin, weasel skin, and ermine skin, which King Malcolm of Scotland and his sister Margaret gave to the Conqueror in 1074.

During the general change which came about in costume in the reign of Richard II. a shorter mantle or cloak began to be worn, which continued at intervals and under various forms until the universal adoption of coats at the close of the reign of Charles II.

In the tempera painting of the miracle of St. Bernard by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo in the Pinacoteca at Perugia, a young man is wearing a short cloak or mantle, hanging in very formal folds from the shoulder and reaching a little below the middle. The mantle is buttoned upon the right shoulder, thus repeating the principle of the Roman toga, which leaves the right arm free. A similar short cloak is figured in a copy of Froissart's Chronicles in the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. There was a reason for the mantle being fastened upon the right shoulder; it was that the right arm is the sword-arm. This, however, does not apply to the toga, which is the last garment that a man would fight in. Two other figures in the picture above mentioned are habited in long cloaks reaching to the feet, with full sleeves; the cloak of the dark figure lined and bordered with miniver, and the other of a different fur.

These long robes with ample sleeves constantly occur in Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, either flowing loosely or confined by a girdle, and generally lined and bordered with miniver, which appears to be a favourite enrichment with Benozzo. These garments are worn usually by more elderly persons.

In a small but extremely elaborate and beautiful picture by Fra Angelico, in the Convent of San Marco at Florence, a figure appears habited in one of these long robes, having openings for the sleeves of the under garment, which are of a different material, to pass through. The dress is confined by a rich girdle.

During the reign of Elizabeth the short cloak, or cape cloak, continued to be worn. It reached scarcely below the waistbelt, was provided with a collar, which was often deep, and was lined with silk or satin of a different colour to the outside, often extremely rich.

"Here is a cloke cost fifty pound, wife, Which I can sell for thirty when I have seen All London in't, and London has seen me."

BEN JONSON, _The Devil is an Ass_.

The Spanish cloak was thrown loosely over the shoulders somewhat after the manner of the toga. It was customary to wrap it around the left arm to serve as a shield in duels.

In the portrait of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. (p. 103), the Prince is figured as wearing a long mantle reaching to the knees. It has a collar, a richly jewelled border, and is lined with silk damask.

The Puritan cloak did not differ materially in shape from that worn by the Cavaliers, but, like the rest of Puritan dress, was entirely bare of ornament:--

"He was tall and fair, and had plain but very good cloaths on his back" (Bunyan, "Life of Mr. Badman").

There are a number of references to dress in Pepys's "Diary," which covers a period of ten years, 1659-69.

Under date July 1, 1660, he writes: "This morning came home my fine camlett cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it."

About this time a shorter cloak, reaching to a little below the waist, came into fashion. On October 7th (Lord's Day) of the same year, 1660, occurs the entry: "To Whitehall on foot, calling at my father's to change my long black cloake for a short one, (long cloakes being now quite out), but he being gone to church, I could not get one."

Under date October 22, 1663, occurs an entry which refers to the _material_ of the cloak. The Queen was ill of the spotted fever, and, upon hearing that she had grown worse, he sends to his tailor to stop the making of his velvet cloak (presumably coloured) "till I see whether she lives or dies."

The velvet, however, referred to the lining of the cloak, which was often richer than the outside. On the 29th of the following month (the Queen had recovered and was about again) he dons his best black cloth suit, trimmed with scarlet ribbon, very neat, and his "cloak lined with velvet, and a new beaver, which altogether is very noble."

In the reign of William III. the long skirted coats of the men, with waistcoats reaching to the knees, rendered any outer clothing unnecessary, except for the coldest weather, when long cloaks were worn, together with muffs, by the beaux.

Muffs were at this period worn as commonly by men as by women, and this fashion continued for nearly a century.

The beau with his muff is thus satirised in the comic opera "Lionel and Clarissa," by Isaac Bickerstaff, _c._ 1768:--

"A coxcomb, a fop, a dainty milk-sop; Who, essenc'd and dizen'd from bottom to top, Looks just like a doll for a milliner's shop. A thing full of prate, and pride and conceit; All fashion, no weight; Who shrugs and takes snuff; and carries a muff; A minnikin, finicking, French powder-puff!"

The mantle does not appear to have particularly excited the wrath of the satirists. It is, indeed, so entirely reasonable a garment both for men and women, that it is difficult to see how it could possibly provide material for satire.

Broadly speaking, there are three conditions necessary to beautiful dress, namely, beauty of material, excellence of workmanship, and variety of fold. If ornament be introduced, it should be of a good character, and employed rather in accordance with those well understood laws of contrast than an indiscriminate covering of the whole field; in fact, this defeats its own purpose, as richness of effect depends upon concentration, as a painter focusses light, colour, or other interest in a particular part of his work and allows nothing to detract from it. As a general rule, plain spaces are best adapted for ornamentation, although in the rich brocades of the fine periods the foldings of the material give an added richness and variety to the patterning.

The mantle, therefore, is usually bare of ornament or simply bordered, except for occasions of high ceremony; certainly plain if worn loosely, and many foldings ensue; and any richness of ornament is confined to the more closely fitting portions of the dress. In a word, the decorative conditions of dress are as well defined, as absolute, as in any other of the ornamental arts.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Scott's "Kenilworth."

[8] "The Four Sons of Aymon," Caxton's version.

[9] This chivalrous monarch not only founded the Order of the Garter, but even contemplated the revival of the Round Table.

[10] Pilch or pilcher, a scabbard, a _covering_ for the sword.

IV

THE DOUBLET AND HOSE

"Monsieur, the King's elder brother, has set up for a kind of wit; and leans towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d'Artois pulls the mask from a fair impertinent; fights a duel in consequence,--almost drawing blood. He has breeches of a kind new in this world;--a fabulous kind, 'four tall lackeys,' says Mercier, as if he had seen it, 'hold him in the air, that he may fall into the garment without vestige of wrinkle; from which rigorous encasement the same four, in the same way, and with more effort, have to deliver him at night.'"--CARLYLE, _French Revolution_, Book II., Chap. I.

IV

THE DOUBLET AND HOSE

The absence of wrinkle or fold, alluded to in the above quotation, is commonly suggestive of the modern spirit in dress. The first thing an artist does in painting a figure in hose is to indicate the little wrinkles or folds at the knee and ankle. This, as serving two purposes, first as a decorative enrichment to the limb, and secondly as indicating, together with the colour of the material, the fact that the limb is clothed. There are, however, such things as "fleshings," which are made of some material possessing elasticity, and so reducing the wrinkles and folds to a minimum; but if there is one thing more than another which is characteristic of clothing or drapery, it is its _folds_--their constant and endless change varying with every movement. The ideal of modern tailoring appears to be something which shall have as near as possible the appearance of a deal board, to eliminate as far as possible the foldings of drapery with their infinite variety and almost endless play of light and shade.

With the doublet and hose we deal with a comparatively recent period, when dress generally assumed a more formal character, and the loose tunic gave place to the more closely fitting doublet.

Long before this, however, the sleeves had developed in various ways, in strange and fantastic shapes. In the reign of Richard II.--

"Cut worke was great both in Court and townes, Bothe in men's hoodes and also in their gownes, Broudur[11] and furre and goldsmith's worke all newe In many a wyse each day they did renewe."

HARDING'S _Chronicle_.

The tight sleeves of the reigns of the three Edwards had given place to a sleeve of more ample proportions. The monk of Evesham speaks of "pokys" shaped like a bagpipe: "The devil's receptacles, for whatever was stolen could be popped into them."

The "cut work" above alluded to was extremely fantastic, the jagged edgings of the sleeves, and, indeed, the rest of the costume, taking the shape of the serrations of leaves, as well as other ornamental devices.

In the reign of Edward IV. the short jackets, doublets, or pourpoints, were provided with closely fitting sleeves, which were divided at the elbow and shoulder, allowing the shirt or under-garment to appear as puffing, tied with ribbons at these points, and laced underneath up the whole length of the arm.

Another development of the sleeve, which lasted for a long period, was the addition of an outer sleeve with a slit in the middle to allow of the arm with its tight sleeve being passed through, the rest of the sleeve hanging down. This was ornamented in a variety of ways, either by edgings of fur or by embroidery.

Hose, that is, the more or less tightly fitting nether garments, be they breche, hosen, or what not, have been worn from a very early period. An illustration is given, from Hope's "Costume of the Ancients," of Paris on Mount Ida, in which he is figured as wearing a closely fitting garment which covers the whole body and limbs, being buttoned all the way up the legs and arms; a short tunic, also buttoned up the front, being worn over this dress. A similar tightly fitting dress was, in fact, worn by the Amazonian women.

The cross-gartering, worn by the Goths, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and other nations, is referred to under the "shoe," of which it usually formed a part. Some kind of hose, stockings, or bandages was invariably worn underneath the gartering, which often extended the whole length of the leg. This cross-gartering probably originated with the practice among the peasants of enswathing the legs with hay-bands.

The short trouser of the Normans, or tunic and trouser in one, with short sleeves attached, of which so many examples occur in the Bayeux tapestry, is a garment which has puzzled many writers, on account of the apparent difficulty of putting it on. It appears to have been put on from below upwards, by being drawn on the thighs, and afterwards putting the arms in the sleeves. In the illustration given of a similar dress (p. 116), the metal plates or pieces of leather which serve as armour are added to the front of the dress only. The cross-gartering in this instance would probably not reach above the knees.

From the Norman period onwards, tight hose continued to be worn, and presented little variation except in the matter of colour and material. The parti-coloured hose of the Plantagenet period and later called forth many strictures from the satirists and moralists, chiefly clerical, of the time. "The red side of a gentleman, they declared, gave them the idea of his having been half roasted, or that he and his dress were afflicted by _St. Anthony's fire_!"[12]

This parti-colouring presented many variations. The legs were either plain, dark and light alternately, of various colours, black and red, black and yellow; or a variation of one colour, red, yellow, or grey, as the case may be; or one leg was striped in various ways; or the parti-colouring would assume various forms, as a zig-zag on the thigh, or calf, or both; in fact, the leg was regarded as a field for the dress designer to exercise his ingenuity in the matter of contrast, upon the principle of what is known in ornament as counterchange.

In Field's play of "A Woman is a Weathercock," 1612, one of the characters exclaims, "Indeed, there's reason there should be some difference in my legs, for one cost me twenty pounds more than the other."

At the beginning of the sixteenth century a new development appears, which began as an upper garment reaching only to the knees, also at this period called hose, upper stocks, and "trawses," which were puffed, slashed, and embroidered in various ways; this was the precursor of the _breeches_, or trunk-hose, which by the end of the century had developed to such enormous proportions.

Numerous examples of the "slashed" period will be found in the drawings by Holbein and Durer, and the engravings by Hans Burgkmair. The "slashings," which may be regarded as ornament _in relief_, presented as many variations as did the flat ornament of the earlier period on the plain surface of the leg. The garment was either slashed downwards, horizontally, or diagonally, and occasionally slashed to such an extent that it appeared merely as a system of ribbons. Variety of colour was arrived at either by the under-garment, stocking, or hose being of a different hue to the upper; or by a system of puffing, in which another or third colour was introduced. The puffing was also of a different material, either of silk or other light material, while the upper or slashing was of cloth or velvet.

It was an exceedingly rich, ornate, and fantastic period; the _jerkin_, or body garment, together with the sleeves, were also cut and slashed on the same principle as the lower garment, or _vice versâ_, the slashings on the body usually appearing diagonally on either side. In two female portraits, however, by Holbein at Basle, the slashings appear perpendicularly underneath the breast, the sleeve being slashed on the same principle.

The greatest richness of slashing always appears in the sleeve, a common form being to slash the sleeve in ribbons, which hang loose from the shoulder to the elbow. In the instances of several of the foot soldiers in Hans Burgkmair's "Triumphs of Maximilian," the outer sleeve is simply cut to ribbons, which stream loosely from the shoulder; and it seems, indeed, a little curious that at present, when all sorts of devices are employed for the purpose of producing variety, that some fashion of this sort has not been adopted for women. It represents, however, the most extreme development of the slash; it would be impossible to carry the principle farther.

We now arrive at the period of the enormous trunk-hose, _temp._ Elizabeth and James I., of which an example of their highest development appears in the illustration of "Knightly Pastimes--Hawking, 1575," and in which the middle of the body appears inflated like a balloon, the "bombasting" of the breeches being carried to its utmost limit. Their gipcieres are well in evidence in each instance. This article of costume was, no doubt, originally a game bag, but was afterwards generally used as a pocket or pouch--

"An anlas and a gipser al of silke Heng at his gerdul white as morne mylke."

CHAUCER.

The trunk-hose are, according to Stubbes ("Anatomy of Abuse"), of three kinds--the French, the Gallic, and the Venetian hosen. The French hose "are of two divers making; the common sort contain length, breadth, and sideness sufficient, and they are made very round; the other sort contain neither length, breadth, nor sideness proportionable, being not past a quarter of a yard on the side, whereof some be paned or striped, cut and drawn out with costly ornaments, with _canions_ adjoined, reaching down beneath the knees.

"The Gallic hosen are made very large and wide, reaching down to the knees only, with three or four gardes apiece laid down along the thigh of either hose. The Venetian hosen reach beneath the knee to the gartering-place of the leg, where they are tied finely with silken points, and laid on also with rows or gardes, as the other before. And yet notwithstanding, all this is not sufficient, except they be made of silk, velvet, satin, damask, and other precious stuffs besides; so that it is a small matter to bestow twenty nobles, ten pounds, twenty pounds, forty pounds, yea, an hundred pounds, upon one pair of breeches; and yet this is thought no abuse neither."

It has been stated by various writers that silk hose, _i.e._, stockings of silk, were unknown in England prior to the middle of the sixteenth century. However this may be, silk stockings were, in the reign of Edward VI., considered as a gift worthy of a king's acceptance; it is recorded that Sir Thomas Gresham (whose portrait appears on p. 121) presented this monarch with a pair of long Spanish silk hose.

In the inventory of the wardrobe of Henry VIII., taken after his decease, appears: "One pair of short hose, of black silk and gold woven together; one pair of hose, of purple silk and Venice gold, woven like unto a cawl, and lined with blue silver sarsenet, edged with a passemain of purple silk and of gold, wrought at Milan; one pair of hose of white silk and gold knit, bought of Christopher Millener; six pair of black silk hose knit."

We learn from Stow that Mistress Montague, the Queen's silk-woman, presented Elizabeth with "a pair of black knit silk stockings, which pleased her so well, that she would never wear any cloth hose afterwards."

The "bombasting" of the trunk-hose (the word is usually applied to the doublet, but may be applied equally well to the trunk-hose) was effected by means of a stuffing of rags, wool, tow, hair, and even bran. Holinshed relates a story of a man "who is said to have exhibited the whole of his bed and table furniture, taken from these extensive receptacles." The name trunk-hose would seem a peculiarly appropriate one! The story is probably apocryphal (although quite plausible) of the young man who, engaged in animated, and apparently rather excited conversation with several ladies, caught his trunk-hose in a nail, and let out the bran, the hose collapsing suddenly, to the consternation of their wearer and the corresponding amusement of the ladies.