Part 2

Of the age of Louis XIV. we have three remarkable boots with funnel tops--imperious, adventurous, impressive. One is an example of the bellows boot, the _botte à soufflet_; another of the cauldron boot, the _botte à chaudron_ (19). The latter has a singular appendage round the ankle. The piece which held the spur is a sort of double flap, apparently very inconvenient for riding or walking. The former is a handsome boot, the leg being made square rather than round. The third (20) is carefully made, with a top so enormous that a man could hardly wear a pair without straddling. This is the more likely as the foot is remarkably small. Evidently it belonged to some _petit maître_ of the court of the Grand Monarque. Compare it with our next, of the same period (21), and you have a vivid idea of what it cost humanity to produce the pretty little furbelowed Louis Quatorze seigneurs.

The Louis Treize boot (22), included in our first group, differed little from the _botte à soufflet_ just described, except that the heel was higher, and that the upper part fell back more upon the leg. Of the same period is an historical shoe (23) which belonged to the godson of Henri IV., the unfortunate Henri de Montmorenci, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632. It is of ordinary leather, very long, with a square flat toe; the upper is adorned with a _fleur-de-lis_, and on the band are the initials of the duke, surrounded by arabesques. It is interesting as showing the fashion of the courts of Louis XIII. and Charles I. Among other very singular shapes of the Seventeenth Century is one described as of Flemish origin. Perhaps the others are of the same fashion. Whether they are simply bootmakers’ freaks (28), or appertain to any particular class, I cannot say. They appear unique, and they may possibly be dated two or three centuries after their time. They are dated 1752; and as they are more easily pictured than described, I shall return to them on a future occasion. Of the Sixteenth Century we have a tall pair of military boots of the reign of Henri III. (25), fitting close to the leg, and having a low heel and rounded toe. A similar boot is the great Spanish boot of the age of Philip II. (26). It is made in three distinct parts, and nearly covers the whole leg; the heel is wedge-shaped. It reminds us that one who was often arrayed in such foot-gear, the victor of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, was believed by some to have been poisoned by means of his boots. Brantôme, who tells the story, says, “It is generally held that he (Juan d’Autriche) died poisoned _par des bottines parfumées_.”

A Bohemian legend represents the illustrious dynasty of the Przemysl, which for six centuries reigned in that land, as founded by a labouring man whom Queen Libussa took from the plough that he might be her husband and the chief of the people. That her descendants should not forget their rustic origin and the duties it imposed, she caused the great peasant-shoes their father had worn to be preserved; and they were bequeathed to the son who succeeded him on the throne. Certain it is that there is no article of dress so intimately associated with a wearer’s personality as his shoes. Those frightful _souliers à vilain_ (21) of which I spoke in a previous part of this paper threw a light on the old _régime_. The spirit of the gaunt and wretched peasant who for long ages bore the burdens of royal and aristocratic France peered grimly at us through their eyelets.

The four oldest examples of European foot-gear at Cluny are boots and shoes worn by the _bourgeoisie_, or poorer classes. A Flemish shoe depicted in the third illustration (24) belongs to the Sixteenth Century. It was found in the storehouses of the hospital at Ghent, and dates from 1530. It affords an example of the foot-gear worn by the martyrs of religious liberty and social equality in the great struggle of which Motley has recounted the partial victory. Perhaps one of the most curious examples of foot-gear is a carefully made specimen of German shoe of the Sixteenth Century (27). The toe seems intended as an emphatic protest against the long peaks; it is in the fashion of a turnover, and spreads out on both sides far beyond the width of the foot. The outside is stamped with a lozenge pattern, the inside with flowers and threads. From two specimens at Cluny (28 and 29), it would seem as if the broad-toed German shoe ran at times into the extravagances of the pointed shoe. The wear numbered 28 appears at Cluny in two materials: in leather and in wood. In a previous reference to this extraordinary shoe, I suggested that it was perhaps only a bootmaker’s freak; but I have since met with a shoe similarly shaped, minus the heel, on the foot of a German court-jester of the Sixteenth Century. The other quaintness (29) is dated 1752, and is said to be Flemish. The heel and hind-quarters are of the same fashion as the foot-gear of the time of the Regency in France; the extraordinary elongation is in harmony with the tendency of the fashion of the middle of the last century, but is too extreme to permit us to believe that it was made for serious wear. A still older specimen (30) is a little German shoe of the first half of the Sixteenth Century, which proves that the _chaussure à poulaine_ had not then died out in Germany. The beak rises and curves backward; the ankle is adorned with an engraved copper ring. This prepares us for the oldest specimen of all (31), a _chaussure à poulaine_ of the Fifteenth Century, of which nothing remains but the sole and the heel leather. This shoe, of which the hinder part is made of red morocco, may be completed from a figure given in Fairholt’s “Book of Costume” (p. 450), depicting one of the “long-peaked shoon” found in a mediæval rubbish-heap upon which some excavators came while digging deep in Whitefriars. This, with the exception of the long toe, was very like the cloth boots lacing at the sides which ladies wore not many years ago.

The first obvious impression produced by the Cluny collection is that Boots and Shoes, occupying to the rest of the human apparel much the same relation that the labouring classes do in society, are, like their human antitypes, extremely tenacious of old forms, and never alter except under the energising influence of Christian civilisation, and even then only repeat through various stages the changes between the pointed and square toe. This impression would be sustained by any other collection of foot-gear, special or general. There is, for example, a case of Roman shoes in the Guildhall Museum, in which there is a woman’s half-boot so nearly resembling those worn in our own times, that it would be very easy at the first glance to doubt its authenticity, and to imagine it nothing more than an English roadside relic, the cast wear of a modern tramp.

Mediæval chroniclers trace back the peaked shoes to individual necessity, or the whims of an impious court; but we have found the twisted pointed toe as early as the Ninth Century, and existing both in Italy and Germany long before Fulk suffered from bunions, or the Red King’s courtiers indulged in base and worthless eccentricities. It is less doubtful that the pointed shoe turned back on the instep is a fashion universal throughout the East and Northern Africa, and that it has been so from ancient times. I have grouped on Fig. VI. (page 8) a number of specimens shown at Cluny: from India, ancient and modern, Persia, Africa, China, Annam, Albania, and Lapland, showing how general the fashion is, and how similar are the forms it takes in lands remote and strange. From these examples it will be seen how very slight is the difference in form between the shoes worn by the ladies of the court of Louis XV. and those of Algeria and the far East, the advantage in true beauty and grace being entirely in favour of the latter.

The epithets of pretty and piquant are appropriate enough to some of the shoes in the European collection; but for pure elegance we must go to Hindoo and Mohammedan lands. In the small case of Indian shoes at Cluny there is more than one pair of shoes that will tell us why the story of the Glass Slipper took such a hold on the Oriental imagination. The exquisite form of one (32) suggests Cinderella; the pure and beautiful lines of another (33) render it worthy of the foot of that noblest among the types of female character, brave Seventee Bai. The first has a linen upper, embroidered with silver thread and spangles; the second is embroidered with gold, except the curious little tongue on the instep, which is minutely ornamented with gold and silver, mingling with the glittering shards of insects. A boat-like slipper (34) from Northern Africa is also extremely elegant and delicate, and looks light as an eggshell, which it nearly resembles in colour. This appearance of lightness is enhanced by an ornamentation of puffs in white and rose-coloured silks. Boots are little used in India; even the native soldiery wear shoes. In Mohammedan countries, however, boots are women’s wear. Thus at Cluny there is a pair of women’s half-boots of yellow leather finely cut, and so arranged that the toe-piece and sole look like an over-shoe. This recalls the description in “Eothen” of those “coffin-shaped” bundles which stand for a Mohammedan lady taking a walk with her servants. “Painfully struggling against the obstacles to progression interposed by the many folds of her clumsy drapery, by her _big mud boots_, and especially by her two pair of slippers, she works her way full awkwardly enough, closely followed by her women-slaves.”

The use of the boot marks a conquering race. In mediæval Germany it was forbidden to the serfs; and this explains why, when they rose for justice after ages of oppression, they chose for their cognisance and standard of defiance a great peasant’s shoe, whence their Confederation was known as the Bundschuh.

It has been suggested to me that the origin of the pointed shoe is to be found in the mediæval horror of witchcraft. Thus, a writer on Bavarian superstitions says: “As the twelfth hour struck came the witch, but she could do nothing against the servant, who had taken the precaution to have shoes with the points upwards.” I have a more utilitarian theory. Of the Indian shoes at Cluny two have been engraved. In the modern Indian wear (35) the peak has become merely an ornament, but in the older fashions (36) its use is plain. The point is so long, and of so soft a material that it must have been attached by some means to the instep. A shoe from the Punjaub (37) and one from Persia (38) suggest that it was designed to prevent the foot from kicking up the dust, peculiarly unpleasant in hot countries. The name given in the Middle Ages in France to the peaked shoe was suggested, as I have said, by its resemblance to the prow of a boat; but here in Persia we get shoes which look like little models of boats. Our example only wants a mast and sail, and you might imagine it lying in some Oriental river. The pointed toe, then, comes from the East, and its origin was a simple necessity of common life. Fashion, ever ignorant and careless, elongated it into an ornament beautiful or barbarous, or reduced it to a mere rat’s tail, as it appears in some Persian boots (39). Or, doing away entirely with the strap, Fashion left it a curved point, as in the Chinese military boot (40); the curious shoe from Southern Albania (41); the pretty slipper from Cochin-China or Annam (42), and the comfortable shoe from Lapland (43).

Shoes in India are only worn by the higher classes, and among a few of the lower castes. This habit of going shoeless seems to render the toes of the Hindoo foot almost as lissom as fingers. A blacksmith with a piece of iron to file fixes it between the jaws of a small pair of tongs, grasps them between the toes of both feet, and holds them so firmly that he is able to file with all the strength of his arms. As he works sitting on the ground, he occasionally stretches out a leg, and picks up some article which happens to be beyond the reach of his arm. Such a workman’s foot tends to assume the character of a hand; not only does the great toe become prehensile, but there is an actual enlargement of the distance between it and the other toes.

To go barefooted in India must at times be a positive luxury. The higher classes in some parts wear no stockings, only covering their feet with white embroidered slippers. The colour of Oriental shoes appears to be of importance, indicating, I suppose, the rank and caste of the owner. Red and yellow are the favourite hues, the sole being often red, or black tipped with red. Yellow is the Mohammedan colour. An old writer tells a story which seems to show that it was jealously protected as the distinctive mark of a Turk. Some charitable persons having given a Christian beggar an old pair of yellow slippers, the unfortunate man’s feet caught the Sultan’s eye: his explanation could not save his life. While the Turks of that day wore yellow slippers, the Janissaries were obliged to wear red shoes. Another Oriental traveller in the early part of the Seventeenth Century expresses surprise at finding green the favourite colour for boots and shoes in Persia, inasmuch as in Turkey it was quite unlawful. This is the colour of the great Persian boot (39) in my engraving.

I have remarked upon the formless square-toed shoes of the Empire. We meet the same uncomely shapes in the shoes worn by the women of Manilla in the Philippines, and in those which come from Mexico. The latter are entirely in open-work, and made of vegetable silk. It would be interesting to notice how far a flat broad-toed shoe is indicative of societies formed or existing under repressive rule, religious or political, and how far the pointed shoe bears witness to a state of things tending towards dissolution and social anarchy. From Mexico we pass naturally to the shoes of the Red Men. The mocassin is the simplest form of shoe, being a wrapping of leather or cloth fitted to the foot, and more or less beautifully ornamented. These shoemakers did not expect the foot to suit itself to the shoe, but modelled the shoe to the foot. This is as much as to say that they had the idea of rights and lefts. The early ornaments are simple forms embroidered on the leather; but in some the work is very pretty, and the designs are laboriously worked on cloth in silk or in beads. The nearest approach to the simplicity of American-Indian cordwainery is to be found in the sacerdotal shoe. There are several gorgeous specimens at Cluny, one of which belonged to the excellent pontiff Clement XIV. (1765–1773). Of crimson velvet, or red or white satin, embroidered with gold, the shapes of these shoes take us back to the time when the first bishops and deacons of Rome wore the _carbatina_, the shoe of the ordinary citizen. It consisted of a piece of ox-hide which did duty as a sole, and was then raised at the sides and over the toes, and tied upon the instep and round the lower part of the leg by straps which pass through holes made for the purpose. This form of foot-gear is still that of the peasants of the Roman Campagna.

The Papal _mula_ is thought by some to have a grander origin. Its name suggests that it is the representative of the _mullens_, a form of shoe worn by the highest Roman authorities, to whom it had come down from the kings of Alba. It is to be noted that the priests of all religions have made a point of wearing the simplest foot-gear, and have therefore longest adhered to that most primitive form of shoe, the sandal. The Egyptian priests wore sandals of papyrus or palm. In the British Museum is a fine collection of Egyptian sandals, many of them of tasteful workmanship. Such were the wear of Rhodope, the Cinderella of old Nile. Rhodope had the loveliest foot in Egypt. One day she was bathing, when an eagle stooped from heaven and carried off her sandal. She watched him soar with his treasure, and presently he vanished with it into space. When at last he let it drop, it fell at the feet of King Psammeticus, as he sat in the open air administering justice. He was charmed with its beauty, and commanded a search to be made for its owner. Rhodope was quickly discovered, and became the Queen of Egypt.

At Cluny there are not only examples of Egyptian sandals, but specimens of those worn in various parts of Africa, by the negroes on the Gambia and by the Malagasy; with some of Arab origin, and some from India. One pair of Indian sandals of antique make, in black leather cut into innumerable thongs, have such a diabolical appearance that they might well be the foot-gear of a Rakshah--an ogre.

The collection at Cluny would hardly be representative of French foot-gear if it did not contain several examples of the sabot. There are some which date from the Seventeenth Century. Sabots do not appear to be an ancient wear; nevertheless their origin is involved in obscurity. A specimen in elaborate open-work suggests long periods of forced leisure; and it is not unlikely that the sabot originated in those great forests of Germany and France, where, during the winter, the people are compelled to cease their ordinary work, and to take up with some in-door employment. What more natural than that wood-cutters should carve for themselves and for their children shoes that should be proof against mud and briars alike? Now, sabots are shapen by machinery.

A number of pattens are exhibited at Cluny. This old-fashioned wet-weather wear, like the modern goloshe, derives its name from the French _patin_, and not as Gay writes:--

“The patten now supports each frugal dame, Which from the blue-ey’d Patty takes its name.”

One, of the Fifteenth Century, is a contemporary of the long-peaked shoe, a specimen of the last expiring burst of the folly of mediæval fashion in the Middle Ages, the clog (44). Fairholt has reproduced a ludicrous picture of a king of England in foot-gear of this sort. It is taken from one of the Cotton MSS., where an able artist has represented, in the costume of the reign of Henry VI., the line of English kings from the Conqueror downwards. Richard III. and Buckingham clumping about on the Tower walls in abominable clogs, made doubly maleficent by the protruding toe, and clad in “rotten armour,” must indeed have looked a “marvellous ill-favoured” pair; nor could it have been difficult for Buckingham to counterfeit suspicion, “pry on every side, tremble and start at wagging of a straw.”

There are also several examples of goloshes belonging to the time of Louis XIV.; but the most curious pattens are those worn by the Sixteenth Century Venetian ladies. The shoe is of white leather, stamped with an ornamentation, the stand of wood being also covered with white leather (45). Another is of such enormous length as to almost be a stilt. Tom Coryate, in his “Crudities” (1611), says that these “chapineys,” as he calls them, were so common in Venice, that no woman ventured out of her house without them, and that some were half a yard high. And this is corroborated by the statement of Raymond, who, in his journey in Italy in 1648, speaks of “shoes elevated as high as a man’s leg.” The Venetian ladies had in consequence to be assisted when they took their walks abroad, otherwise they ran the risk of taking a fall. Thus the “tottering willows” of China have had their parallel at their antipodes in Christian Italy. The fashion was still in vogue in the days of Evelyn, who describes the Venetian ladies as stalking about in their “choppines,” and notes the ridiculous figures they cut in attempting to crawl out of their gondolas.

But wisdom or folly--all comes from the East. These Venetian chopines were of Oriental origin. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, George Sandys, an old traveller, saw them on the feet of Turkish ladies; and here at Cluny are several examples of a patten made for the baths of Constantinople and Damascus. The Mohammedan patten, however, has nothing of the ugliness which marks the Venetian imitation. It is simply a good piece of cabinet-work, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Another patten of Venetian origin (46), decorated in a Moorish style, and evidently intended for gala days when the road was stainless and not a puddle to be seen, recalls the old-fashioned patten of our grandmothers. But perhaps the most curious pattens of all come from India. One pair are shaped like epaulettes, and richly ornamented with satin of various colours. Others are formed of soles made of wood, and mounted on stands, with a button between the great and second toe to keep it on the foot. This make is also found in Java. In some Indian specimens (47) there is a spring in the heel, which, communicating with a red lotus flower which acts as the maintaining button, causes it at every step the wearer makes to open its six lobes and display its corolla.

IV.

On the wax figures in Westminster Abbey, which can be seen by an order from the Dean, and which were said to have been carried at the funeral of the person dressed in their clothes, on Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of Marlborough the large-heeled shoes can be seen, but so covered with dust, that beyond being the colour of the dress, with a large round rosette fastened in the centre with a round button, nothing could be made of them. Shoes can also be seen in portraits, but seldom in a distinct form. Evelyn mentions shoes constantly in his diary.