Part 10
See Caxton, in a sober-coloured gown, long, and laced in the front, showing a plain vest under the lacing, talking to some of his great customers. The Duchess of Somerset has just lent him 'Blanchardine and Eglantine'; Earl Rivers, the Queen's brother, talks over his own translation of 'The Sayings of the Philosophers'; and Caxton is extolling that worshipful man Geoffrey Chaucer, and singing praises in reverence 'for that noble poet and great clerke, Vergyl.'
Edward himself has been to the shop and has consented to become patron of an edition of Tully--Edward, with his very subtle face, his tall, handsome appearance, his cold, elegant manners. He is dressed in a velvet gown edged with fur; the neck of the gown is low, and the silk vest shows above it. Across his chest are gold laces tapering to his waist; these are straight across the front of his gown-opening. His hair is straight, and falls to the nape of his neck; he wears a black velvet cap upon his head. The skirts of his gown reach to his knees, and are fur-edged; his sleeves are full at the elbows and tight over his wrists; he is wearing red Spanish leather tall boots, turned over at the top.
As he stands talking to Caxton, one or two gentlemen, who have also dismounted, stand about him. Three of them are in the height of the fashion. The first wears a velvet tunic, with fur edges. The tunic is pleated before and behind, and is full and slightly pursed in front; the sleeves are long, and are cut from shoulder to wrist, where they are sewn together again; cuff and border of the cut or opening are both edged with fur. The neck is high, but there is no collar. The length of the tunic is quite short; it comes well above the knees. His under-sleeves are full, and are of rich silk; his shoes are certainly over the allowed length; his tights are well cut. His peaked hat has gold bands round the crown.
The second gentleman is also in a very short tunic, with very wide sleeves; this tunic is pleated into large even folds, and has a belt of its own material. His hair is long, and bushed behind; his tights are in two colours, and he wears an eighteen-penny pair of black leather slops or shoes. His hat is black, tall, but without a peak; a long feather is brooched into one side of it.
The third man is wearing a low black cap, with a little close brim; a jagged piece of stuff, about 3 feet long, hangs from under the brim of his hat. He is wearing long, straight hair. This man is wearing a little short tunic, which is loose at the waist, and comes but an inch or two below it; the sleeves are very loose and wide, and are not fastened at the wrist; the tunic has a little collar. The shortness of his tunic shows the whole of his tights, and also the ribbon-fastened cod-piece in front. His shoes are split at the sides, and come into a peak before and behind.
Now, our gentlemen of this time, having cut open their baggy sleeves, and made them to hang down and expose all the under-sleeve, must now needs lace them up again very loosely. Then, by way of change, the tight sleeve was split at the elbow to show a white shirt. Then came the broad shoulders, when the sleeves were swelled out at the top to give an air of great breadth to the shoulders and a more elegant taper to the waist. Some men had patterns sewn on one leg of their tights. The gown, or whatever top garment was being worn, was sometimes cut into a low, V shape behind at the neck to show the undergarment, above which showed a piece of white shirt.
A long gown, in shape like a monk's habit, wide sleeves, the same width all the way down, a loose neck--a garment indeed to put on over the head, to slip on for comfort and warmth--was quite a marked fashion in the streets--as marked as the little tunic.
If you are remembering Caxton's shop and a crowd of gentlemen, notice one in a big fur hat, which comes over his eyes; and see also a man who has wound a strip of cloth about his neck and over his head, then, letting one end hang down, has clapped his round, steeple-crowned hat over it.
You will see high collars, low collars, and absence of collar, long gown open to the waist, long gown without opening, short-skirted tunic, tunic without any skirt, long, short, and medium shoes, and, at the end of the reign, one or two broad-toed shoes. Many of these men would be carrying sticks; most of them would have their fingers covered with rings.
Among the group of gentlemen about Edward some merchants have pressed closer to see the King, and a girl or two has stolen into the front row. The King, turning to make a laughing remark to one of his courtiers, will see a roguish, pretty face behind him--the face of a merchant's wife; he will smile at her in a meaning way.
THE WOMEN
France, at this date, shows us a sartorial Savonarola, by name Thomas Conecte, a preaching friar, who held an Anti-Hennin Crusade, which ended in a bonfire of these steeple head-dresses. The flames of these peculiar hats lit up the inspired devotees, and showed their heads wrapped in plain linen wimples or some little unaffected caps. But the ashes were hardly cold before the gray light of the next day showed the figure of the dreaded preacher small upon the horizon, and lit upon the sewing-maids as they sat making fresh steeples for the adornment of their ladies' heads.
Joan of Arc is dead, and another very different apparition of womankind looms out of the mists of history. Whilst Joan of Arc is hymned and numbered among the happy company of saints triumphant, Jane Shore is roared in drinking-songs and ballads of a disreputable order, and is held up as an awful example. She has for years been represented upon the boards of West End and Surrey-side theatres--in her prime as the mistress of Edward IV., in her penance before the church door, and in her poverty and starvation, hounded from house to house in a Christian country where bread was denied to her. I myself have seen her through the person of a stout, melancholy, and h-less lady, who, dressed in a sort of burlesque fish-wife costume, has lain dying on the prompt-side of the stage, in a whirl of paper snow, while, to the edification of the twopenny gallery, she has bewailed her evil life, and has been allowed, by a munificent management, to die in the arms of white-clad angels. There is a gleam of truth in the representation, and you may see the real Jane Shore in a high steeple head-dress, with a thin veil thrown over it, with a frontlet or little loop of black velvet over her forehead; in a high-waisted dress, open in a V shape from shoulder to waist, the opening laced over the square-cut under-gown, the upper gown having a collar of fur or silk, a long train, broad cuffs, perhaps 7 inches long from the base of her fingers, with a broad, coloured band about her waist, a broader trimming of the same colour round the hem of her shirt, and in long peaked shoes. In person of mean stature, her hair dark yellow, her face round and full, her eyes gray, and her countenance as cheerful as herself. The second real picture of her shows you a haggard woman, with her hair unbound and falling about her shoulders, shivering in a shift, which she clutches about her with one hand, while the other holds a dripping candle; and the third picture shows an old woman in dirty wimple and untidy rags.
There are many ways of making the steeple head-dress. For the most part they are long, black-covered steeples, resting at an angle of forty-five degrees to the head, the broad end having a deep velvet band round it, with hanging sides, which come to the level of the chin; the point end has a long veil attached to it, which floats lightly down, or is carried on to one shoulder. Sometimes this steeple hat is worn over a hood, the cape of which is tucked into the dress. Some of these hats have a jutting, upturned piece in front, and they are also covered with all manner of coloured stuffs, but not commonly so. All persons having an income of L10 a year and over will have that black velvet loop, the frontlet, sewn into their hats. There is another new shape for hats, varying in height from 8 to 18 inches. It is a cylinder, broader at the top than the bottom, the crown sometimes flat and sometimes rounded into the hat itself; this hat is generally jewelled, and covered with rich material. The veils are attached to these hats in several ways; either they float down behind from the centre of the crown of the hat, or they are sewn on to the base of the hat, and are supported on wires, so as to shade the face, making a roof over it, pointed in front and behind, or flat across the front and bent into a point behind, or circular. Take two circles of wire, one the size of the base of your hat and the other larger, and dress your linen or thin silk upon them; then you may pinch the wire into any variations of squares and circles you please.
The veil was sometimes worn all over the steeple hat, coming down over the face, but stiff enough to stand away from it. Towards the end of the reign the hats were not so high or so erect.
Remember, also, that the horned head-dress of the previous reign is not by any means extinct.
There remain two more forms of making the human face hideous: one is the head-dress closely resembling an enormous sponge bag, which for some unknown reason lasted well into the reign of Henry VII. as a variety to the fashionable head-gear of that time, and the other is very simple, being a wimple kept on the head by a circular stuffed hoop of material, which showed, plain and severe across the forehead. The simple folk wore a hood of linen, with a liripipe and wide ear-flaps.
The dresses are plain in cut; they are all short-waisted if at all fashionable. The most of them have a broad waist-belt, and very deep borders to their skirts; they have broad, turned-back cuffs, often of black. These cuffs, on being turned down over the hand, show the same colour as the dress; they are, in fact, the old long cuff over the fingers turned back for comfort.
It is by the variety of openings at the necks of the gowns that you may get change. First, let me take the most ordinary--that is, an opening of a V shape from shoulders to waist, the foot of the V at the waist, the points on the top of the shoulders at the join of the arm. Across this opening is seen, cut square and coming up to the base of the bosom, the under-gown. You may now proceed to vary this by lacing the V across, but not drawing it together, by having the V fur-edged, or made to turn over in a collar of black upon light material, or its opposite, by showing a vest of stuff other than that of the under-gown, which will then make a variety of colour when the skirt is held up over the arm. Or you may have your dress so cut that it is high in front and square cut, and over this you may sew a false V collar wither to or above the waist. I have said that the whole neck-opening may be covered by a gorget of cloth, which was pinned up to the steeple hat, or by a hood of thin stuff or silk, the cape of which was tucked into the dress.
The lady, I think, is now complete down to her long-pointed shoes, her necklet of stones or gold chain, with cross or heraldic pendant, and it remains to show that the countrywoman dressed very plainly, in a decent-fitting dress, with her waist in its proper place, her skirt full, the sleeves of her dress turned back like my lady's, her head wrapped in a wimple or warmed in a hood, her feet in plain, foot-shaped shoes, and wooden clogs strapped on to them for outdoor use or kitchen work; in fact, she looked much like any old body to-day who has lived in a village, except that the wimple and the hood then worn are out of place to-day, more's the pity!
No doubt ladies were just human in those days, and fussed and frittered over an inch or so of hennin, or a yard or two of train. One cut her dress too low to please the others, and another wore her horned head-dress despite the dictates of Fashion, which said, 'Away with horns, and into steeples.' No doubt the tall hennins, with their floating veils, looked like black masts with silken sails, and the ladies like a crowd of shipping, with velvet trains for waves about their feet; no doubt the steeples swayed and the silks rustled when the heads turned to look at the fine men in the days when hump-shouldered Richard was a dandy.
EDWARD THE FIFTH
Reigned two months: April and June, 1487.
RICHARD THE THIRD
Reigned two years: 1483-1485.
Born 1450. Married, 1473, Anne Neville.
THE MEN
Fashion's pulse beat very weak in the spring of 1483. More attune to the pipes of Fate were the black cloaks of conspirators and a measured tread of soft-shoed feet than lute and dance of airy millinery. The axe of the executioner soiled many white shirts, and dreadful forebodings fluttered the dovecots of high-hennined ladies.
The old order was dying; Medievalism, which made a last spluttering flame in the next reign, was now burnt low, and was saving for that last effort. When Richard married Anne Neville, in the same year was Raphael born in Italy; literature was beginning, thought was beginning; many of the great spirits of the Renaissance were alive and working in Italy; the very trend of clothes showed something vaguely different, something which shows, however, that the foundations of the world were being shaken--so shaken that men and women, coming out of the gloom of the fourteenth century through the half-light of the fifteenth, saw the first signs of a new day, the first show of spring, and, with a perversity or an eagerness to meet the coming day, they began to change their clothes.
It is in this reign of Richard III. that we get, for the men, a hint of the peculiar magnificence of the first years of the sixteenth century; we get the first flush of those wonderful patterns which are used by Memline and Holbein, those variations of the pine-apple pattern, and of that peculiar convention which is traceable in the outline of the Tudor rose.
The men, at first sight, do not appear very different to the men of Edward IV.'s time; they have the long hair, the general clean-shaven faces, open-breasted tunics, and full-pleated skirts. But, as a rule, the man, peculiar to his time, the clothes-post of his age, has discarded the tall peaked hat, and is almost always dressed in the black velvet, stiff-brimmed hat. The pleated skirt to his tunic has grown longer, and his purse has grown larger; the sleeves are tighter, and the old tunic with the split, hanging sleeves has grown fuller, longer, and has become an overcoat, being now open all the way down. You will see that the neck of the tunic is cut very low, and that you may see above it, above the black velvet with which it is so often bound, the rich colour or fine material of an undergarment, a sort of waistcoat, and yet again above that the straight top of a finely-pleated white shirt. Sometimes the sleeves of the tunic will be wide, and when the arm is flung up in gesticulation, the baggy white shirt, tight-buttoned at the wrist, will show. Instead of the overcoat with the hanging sleeves, you will find a very plain-cut overcoat, with sleeves comfortably wide, and with little plain lapels to the collar. It is cut wide enough in the back to allow for the spread of the tunic. Black velvet is becoming a very fashionable trimming, and will be seen as a border or as under-vest to show between the shirt and the tunic. No clothes of the last reign will be incongruous in this; the very short tunics which expose the cod-piece, the split-sleeve tunic, all the variations, I have described. Judges walk about, looking like gentlemen of the time of Richard II.: a judge wears a long loose gown, with wide sleeves, from out of which appear the sleeves of his under-tunic, buttoned from elbow to wrist; he wears a cloak with a hood, the cloak split up the right side, and fastened by three buttons upon the right shoulder. A doctor is in very plain, ample gown, with a cape over his shoulders and a small round cap on his head. His gown is not bound at the waist.
The blunt shoes have come into fashion, and with this the old long-peaked shoe dies for ever. Common-sense will show you that the gentlemen who had leisure to hunt in these times did not wear their most foppish garments, that the tunics were plain, the boots high, the cloaks of strong material. They wore a hunting-hat, with a long peak over the eyes and a little peak over the neck at the back; a broad band passed under the chin, and, buttoning on to either side of the hat, kept it in place. The peasant wore a loose tunic, often open-breasted and laced across; he had a belt about his waist, a hood over his head, and often a broad-brimmed Noah's Ark hat over the hood; his slops, or loose trousers, were tied below the knee and at the ankles. A shepherd would stick his pipe in his belt, so that he might march before his flock, piping them into the fold.
To sum up, you must picture a man in a dress of Edward IV.'s time, modified, or, rather, expanded or expanding into the costume of Henry VII.'s time--a reign, in fact, which hardly has a distinct costume to itself--that is, for the men--but has a hand stretched out to two centuries, the fifteenth and the sixteenth; yet, if I have shown the man to you as I myself can see him, he is different from his father in 1461, and will change a great deal before 1500.
THE WOMEN
Here we are at the end of an epoch, at the close of a costume period, at one of those curious final dates in a history of clothes which says that within a year or so the women of one time will look hopelessly old-fashioned and queer to the modern woman. Except for the peculiar sponge-bag turban, which had a few years of life in it, the woman in Henry VII.'s reign would look back at this time and smile, and the young woman would laugh at the old ideas of beauty. The River of Time runs under many bridges, and it would seem that the arches were low to the Bridge of Fashion in 1483, and the steeple hat was lowered to prevent contact with them. The correct angle of forty-five degrees changed into a right angle, the steeple hat, the hennin, came toppling down, and an embroidered bonnet, perched right on the back of the head, came into vogue. It is this bonnet which gives, from our point of view, distinction to the reign. It was a definite fashion, a distinct halt. It had travelled along the years of the fourteenth century, from the wimple and the horns, and the stiff turbans, and the boxes of stiffened cloth of gold; it had languished in the caul and blossomed in the huge wimple-covered horns; it had shot up in the hennin; and now it gave, as its last transformation, this bonnet at the back of the head, with the stiff wimple stretched upon wires. Soon was to come the diamond-shaped head-dress, and after that the birth of hair as a beauty.
In this case the hair was drawn as tightly as possible away from the forehead, and at the forehead the smaller hairs were plucked away; even eyebrows were a little out of fashion. Then this cylindrical bonnet was placed at the back of the head, with its wings of thin linen stiffly sewn or propped on wires. These wires were generally of a V shape, the V point at the forehead. On some occasions two straight wires came out on either side of the face in addition to the V, and so made two wings on either side of the face and two wings over the back of the head. It is more easy to describe through means of the drawings, and the reader will soon see what bend to give to the wires in order that the wings may be properly held out.
Beyond this head-dress there was very little alteration in the lady's dress since the previous reign. The skirts were full; the waist was high, but not absurdly so; the band round the dress was broad; the sleeves were tight; and the cuffs, often of fur, were folded back to a good depth.
The neck opening of the dress varied, as did that of the previous reign, but whereas the most fashionable opening was then from neck to waist, this reign gave more liking to a higher corsage, over the top of which a narrow piece of stuff showed, often of black velvet. We may safely assume that the ladies followed the men in the matter of broad shoes. For a time the old fashion of the long-tongued belt came in, and we see instances of such belts being worn with the tongue reaching nearly to the feet, tipped with a metal ornament.
Not until night did these ladies discard their winged head erections; not until the streets were dark, and the brass basins swinging from the barbers' poles shone but dimly, and the tailors no longer sat, cross-legged, on the benches in their shop-fronts--then might my lady uncover her head and talk, in company with my lord, over the strange new stories of Prester John and of the Wandering Jew; then, at her proper time, she will go to her rest and sleep soundly beneath her embroidered quilt, under the protection of the saints whose pictures she has sewn into the corners of it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that she lies on.
So we come to an end of a second series of dates, from the First Edward to the Third Richard, and we leave them to come to the Tudors and their follies and fantastics; we leave an age that is quaint, rich, and yet fairly simple, to come to an age of padded hips and farthingales, monstrous ruffs, knee-breeks, rag-stuffed trunks, and high-heeled shoes.
With the drawings and text you should be able to people a vast world of figures, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, 1272, to nearly the end of the fifteenth, 1485, and if you allow ordinary horse-sense to have play, you will be able to people your world with correctly-dressed figures in the true inspiration of their time. You cannot disassociate the man from his tailor; his clothes must appeal to you, historically and soulfully, as an outward and visible sign to the graces and vices of his age and times.
HENRY THE SEVENTH
Reigned 24 years: 1485-1509.
Born, 1456. Married, 1486, Elizabeth of York.
THE MEN
Everyone has felt that curious faint aroma, that sensation of lifting, which proclaims the first day of Spring and the burial of Winter. Although nothing tangible has taken place, there is in the atmosphere a full-charged suggestion of promise, of green-sickness; there is a quickening of the pulse, a thrumming of the heart, and many an eager, quick glance around for the first buds of the new order of things.