Part 5

The good old man, kindled by his enthusiasm, became transformed; he seemed desirous to take upon himself the whole history of the Glove, which he embroidered at once with fancy and the most varied anecdote that his wonderful memory could supply. After having distinguished, in the Middle Ages, many sorts of Gloves, such as the /usual/ Glove, the /falconer's/ Glove, the /workman's/ Glove, the /feminine/ Glove, the /military/ Glove, the /seignorial/ Glove, and the /liturgical/ Glove, he attacked with a zest bordering on frenzy the part of the Glove of the knights and men in armour of the heroic battles of the past, at a time when individual prowess could still display itself; he quoted the Chronicles of Du Guesclin and De Guigneville:--

"Rich basinets he ordered to be brought, And Gloves with iron spikes with horror fraught."

He showed me, without recourse to aught but his own erudition, the transformation of these iron gauntlets, first into mail, like the coat, then into movable plates of flat iron, adapted to the movements of the hand; he explained to me the lining, where the palm was of leather or stuff, and at last, exhuming the ordinances of 1311, he made me penetrate into the details of the manufacture:--

"That no one should make Gloves of plates, except the plates are tinned or varnished, or beaten, or covered with black leather, red leather, or samite, and that under the head of every nail should be set a rivet of gold."

Ah, my fair friend, if you could have seen this strange man so suddenly taken by my subject, you would have regarded me with pity, for I could not help pouting a little at this old dean, and felt myself attacked by a sudden cowardice, at the mere announcement of the formidable researches which were to be undergone.

I took my humble leave of my most learned master, humiliated, floored by the extent of his knowledge, his laborious zeal, his powerful faith, his stubborn will. I saw that in giving you my word for a poor Glove, I had given it to a demon, who showed me a Glove of an immense shagreen skin, containing the world and its history--fantastic as a nightmare, which weighed me down. Then I swore to sacrifice a part for the rest, and not to build a cathedral when a simple cushion at your feet would suffice me for my heedless chatter. Accept then favourably this act of contrition, and let me be fully pardoned, if, /à propos/ of the Glove, I bound along madly like a young kid, without pity for the history of costume and historic documents, which I trample under my feet, rather than see myself buried under their pyramidal bundles.

That which my old friend had probably neglected is the Legend, and to that I run.

A charming poet and a charmer, Jean Godard, a Parisian, the worthy rival of Ronsard, published towards 1580 a piece entitled /The Glove/. This witty nursling of the Muses pretends to show us the origin of the Glove in the burning passion which Venus cherished for Adonis. According to our poet--

"The young Adonis ever loved the field, Now hunting the swift stag with branching head, And now the tusked wild boar, just cause of dread. Venus, fierce burning with his love alway, Would never leave him neither night nor day, But running after his sweet eyes and face, Sought young Adonis, when he sought the chase: Deep into forests full of gloomy fear, The goddess followed him she held so dear. One day, as she pursued him, bursting through A bramble thicket, which by ill chance grew Athwart her path, a cruel, hardy thorn Pierced her white hand, and lo! the rose was born From her red blood. But Venus, vexed with pain, Lest any hurt should touch her hand again, Bade all at once her unclad Graces sew A leathern shelter for her hand of snow. The lovely Graces, draped in floating hair, No longer left their own hands free and bare, But bound and covered them as Venus did. And now the Glove's true origin is hid No longer. This is it. Fair girls alone Wore on their hands what now is common grown. Then came the Emperor, and then his court, And then at last the folk of every sort."

Charming in its /naïveté/, is it not, my dear friend, this fable which gives the Glove the same origin as the rose!

The use of Gloves was widely spread in the Middle Ages. They covered the wrist entirely, even with women. "The Gloves of the common people," says M. Charles Louandre, "were of sheep-skin, of doe skin, or of fur; those of bishops were made in chain-stitch of silk with gold thread; those of simple priests were of black leather." But what will surprise you is that, contrary to the present custom, it was absolutely forbidden to appear gloved before great personages.

In a manuscript lately published, /The Sayings of the Merchants/, a merchant cries, with an engaging air--

"I have pretty little bands, And for damsels dainty Gloves, Furred to warm their snowy hands, These I sell to those sweet loves."

But what were the furred Gloves of sweet loves or gentle ladies compared to those which the fair Venetians showed on the grand days of ceremonies, when the Doge prepared to mount the Bucentaur for the purpose of espousing the sea? These, according to M. Feuillet de Conches, were Gloves of silk marvellously embroidered, embossed with gold and pearls; some of them were of lace of an incomparable richness, well worthy to be offered as a present, and to figure in the budget of handsome acknowledgments. But the most wonderful were the Gloves of painted skin, like the water-colours on Fans.

Here were country scenes, sheepfolds, pictures of ravishing gallantry, miniatures beyond price. "And even," observes M. Feuillet de Conches, "the heels of the shoes of dandies were decorated by Watteau or by Parrocel."

The Valois doted, you know, on perfumed Gloves; this taste was fatal to Jeanne d'Albret, who found her death in trying a pair of Gloves dexterously prepared by some Italian quack, a friend of the sombre Catherine. Consider, my friend, that with my romantic instinct, and my temperament full of love for the drama, I might find here an easy transition, and tell you, in long excited phrases, of the exploits of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, and the grim Gaudin de Sainte-Croix; show you these sinister poisoners preparing by night their infamous Glove stock; then in a tale fantastic as the /Olivier Brusson/ of Hoffmann, evoke the famous trial of the Marchioness, the torture, the various punishments, the burning chamber, up to the final stake. All this /à propos/ of the Glove--who can say if such simple history would not be worth more than all the cock-and-bull stories which I am about to tell you, by compulsion, concerning the Glove and the Mittens? In very truth, I would prefer, as your /vis-à-vis/, to show myself a romancist, not an historian, for I should be sure of being less of a bore, more personal, and, above all--shall I avow it?--not in any degree common-place. But, as Miguel de Cervantes said, "Our desires are extremely seditious servants." I will be then reactionary, and will close the door against these socialists of sentiment.

All this fine rigmarole has made me think of presenting you with a letter of Antonio Perez to Lady Rich, sister of Lord Essex, who had asked him for some dogskin Gloves:--

"I have experienced," he writes, "so much affliction in not having by me the dogskin Gloves desired by your ladyship, that, waiting their arrival, I have resolved to flay a little skin on the most delicate part of my own body--if, indeed, any delicate part can be found upon my rude self. Love and devotion to a lady's service may surely make a man flay himself for her, and cut her a pair of Gloves out of his own skin. But how can I pride myself on this with your ladyship, when it is my custom to flay even my very soul for those I love? Could mine be seen as clearly as my body, it would appear full of tatters, the most lamentable sort of soul in the world;--the Gloves are of dog's skin, madam, and yet of my own, for I hold myself as a dog, and supplicate your ladyship to hold me in like regard, in requital of my faith and my passion in your service."

What think you of this out-and-out gallant, of this "dying" passionate lover? Here it seems to me, /à propos/ of scented Gloves, we have a Castilian gentleman exceedingly well skilled in the delicate art of offering them to ladies.

Spanish Gloves are reproached with too strong a smell; the French ladies suffer strangely from their too heady odour: Antonio Perez would certainly have been an excellent manufacturer of perfumed Gloves--discreet in his scents, distinguished in his form.

The Gloves most in vogue after the time of La Fronde were the Gloves of Rome, of Grenoble, of Blois, of Esla, and of Paris. M. de Chanteloup charged Poussin to buy him Roman Gloves, and the latter wrote back on 7th October, 1646: "Here are a dozen pairs of Gloves, half men's, half women's. They cost half-a-pistole a pair, which makes eighteen crowns for the whole." The 18th October, 1649, another purchase; but this time they are Gloves scented with Frangipane, with which Poussin provided himself for M. de Chanteloup; and these he bought at la Signora Maddelena's, "a woman famous for her perfumes." In Paris, according to /The Convenient Address Book/ of Nicolas de Blegny--the Bottin of 1692--there were a certain number of manufacturers of perfumed Gloves in the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec and the Rue Saint-Honoré. "There are," says the editor of this commercial almanac, "Glove-merchants very well stocked; for instance, M. Remy, opposite Saint-Méderic, who is famous for his excellent buck-skin Gloves; Arsan, hard by the Abbey Saint-Germain; Richard, Rue Saint-Denis, /at the little St. John/, well known for his Gloves of /Fowl-skin/; and Richard, Rue Galande, at /the Great King/, whose commerce is in doeskin Gloves."

The name of fowl-skin Glove doubtless astonishes you--another name was outer lamb skin; they were made for the use of ladies during the summer. The pretended fowl-skin was nothing but the epidermis of kid-skin, and the preparation of this epidermis was the real triumph of the Glove-merchants of Paris and Rome. Gloves of /Canepin/, or outer lamb's-skin, were made, it is said, so delicate and thin, that a pair of them could be easily enclosed in a walnut shell.

The buck-skin or buffalo-skin Glove was specially made for falconers; it covered the right hand half up the arm, thus completely protecting it against the claws, or rather the talons, of the bird, falcon, gerfalcon, or sparrow-hawk, when it came to settle on their fist.

Hawking existed even under Louis XIII., but it was no longer the grand and splendid epoch of this aristocratic sport, so profoundly interesting. In one of his ancient legends, André le Chapelain, of whom Stendhal wrote a short biographical notice, speaks of a sparrow-hawk, to gain which the magic Glove was necessary. This Glove could only be obtained by a victory in the lists over two of the most formidable champions of Christendom. It was suspended to a golden column, and very carefully guarded. But when the knight had by his skill gained the Glove, he saw the beautiful sparrow-hawk so much desired swoop down immediately upon his fist.

Up to the age of Louis XIV., the skin Glove was destined rather for the use of men, and it was only under this Prince that Gloves mounting a long way up the arm, and long Mittens of silk netting to set off the hands of women, were generally adopted by them.

Gloves /à l'occasion/, /à la Cadenet/, /à la Phyllis/, /à la Frangipane/, /à la Néroli/, Gloves /of the last cut/ worn awhile by the /Précieuses/, ceased to be fashionable about 1680. The custom, of which Tallemant speaks, of presenting ladies, after the banquet, with basins of Spanish Gloves, was only vulgarised in passing from the Court to the town.

Dangeau, in his /Memoirs/, has written a chapter on the /Etiquette of Gloves and the Ceremonial of Mittens/. I refer you to it without ceremony.

Under Louis XV., in the eighteenth century, so full of the rustle of silk, so enchanting that I fear to stop on it in your company, lest I should never leave it, the wearing of Gloves quickly became an enormous luxury. All those fair coquettes, whom you have seen at their toilets, or their /petit lever/, after Nattier, Pater, or Moreau, surrounded by their "/filles de modes/," caused a greater massacre of Gloves at the time of trying them on, than our richest worldlings of to-day. These Gloves were of kid, of thread, and of silk; the most celebrated came from Vendôme, from Blois, from Grenoble, and from Paris; they were generally made of white skin, wretchedly sewn, but the cut was extremely graceful, with its cuff falling from the wrist over the hand, and small ribbons and fine rosettes of carnation interlaced on this cuff.

Gloves sewn after the English fashion were highly appreciated. It became a proverb, that for a Glove to be good, three realms must have contributed to it: "Spain to prepare the skin and make it supple, France to cut it, and England to sew it."

Caraccioli maintains that a woman of fashion, about the middle of the eighteenth century, would not dispense with changing her Gloves four or five times a day. "The /petits-maîtres/," he adds, "never fail to put on, in the morning, Gloves of rose or /jonquil/, perfumed by the celebrated Dulac." As to Mittens, the same observer of the century notices them as specially belonging to women. "Nevertheless," he says, "in winter the manufacturers make furred Mittens, and men now wear them when they travel."

Madame de Genlis has this curious observation in her /Dictionary of Etiquette/: "If you have anything to present to a princess, and have your Glove on, you must needs take it off."

How many anecdotes, how many literary souvenirs, the Glove of the eighteenth century summons to the thought!

You remember, I am quite sure, that pretty chapter consecrated by Sterne, in his /Sentimental Journey/, to the beautiful Grisette who sold Gloves, into whose shop he entered to ask his way. The pretty Glove-seller coquets with the stranger, shows herself extremely complaisant, and the sentimental traveller, to prove his gratitude for her kindness, asks for some Gloves, and tries on several pairs without finding one to suit him. But he takes two or three pairs all the same before he goes.

The story leaves a fresh feature in the mind: an English artist has fixed it with much delicacy on a remarkable canvas, which figures in the National Gallery. The authors of the /Vie Parisienne/ were surely inspired by it a little later in their joyous libretto, when they wrote the well-known couplets of the lady who sold Gloves and the Brazilian.

Permit me also to relate to you an anecdote, rather slight in texture, of which Duclos is the hero, and which has all the flavour of his roguish age:--

The author of /Manners/ was bathing on the flowery borders of the Seine, and giving himself up to skilled /hand-over-hand/, when he suddenly heard piercing cries of distress. He rushes out of the water, runs up the bank without taking time to slip on his "indispensables," and finds a young and charming woman, whose carriage had just been overturned in a rut. He hastens to beauty in tears, lying on the ground, and making a gracious bow, in his academic nudity, "Madam," says he, in offering her his hand to assist her to rise, "pardon my want of Gloves."

Here we have at once the expression of a scoffing sceptic, and a giddy philosopher, full of a particular charm. Do not believe, my gentle friend, that if I remain in your company so short a time in the beginning of the eighteenth century--the only one which has, you cannot deny it, all its perfumed quintessence--do not believe that I intend to linger in the Revolution, and conduct you to the house of Mademoiselle Lange, Madame Talien, Madame Récamier, and all the fashionable drawing-rooms of the First Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire; to take ceremoniously the hand of the marvellous Beauties, the Nymphs, and Muses of those troubled times, in order the better to show you what extravagant Gloves, what prodigious Mittens, were then worn. The /Ladies' Journal/, and all the small journals of fashion, will surely teach you more about the Gloves worn by these worldly Calypsos and Eucharises than six hundred monotonous pages of varied descriptions. There is no Museum, however, preserving the objects of art which the Revolution marked deeply with its seal; and this fact will make me insist on a model of a special Glove, destined for a representative of the people despatched to the army, of which an erudite archæologist of the Revolution, and at the same time a remarkable humourist, Champfleury, has been good enough to communicate to me a design. This Glove of doe-skin, manufactured according to order, and broidered with arabesques about the slopings of the thumb, bears on the back of the hand a vignette in the form of a seal, which represents Liberty holding in her hand the pike, the Phrygian cap, and the scales of justice--a Liberty, you will say, by no means at liberty . . . . in her movements:--on the right is crouched a lion, the sign of force; on the left a cat, a sign of independence.

I will not lose my time in paraphrasing for you this symbolic vignette; and, with a long historic stride, I will conduct you into the quietude of some chateau, under the Restoration, and, in the evening twilight, to the terrace before a great park. I will there show you two lovers warbling a serenade--the timid young girl touching a guitar, the young man deeply moved, putting a world of passion into his baritone voice. On the hands of the singer, behold, pearly grey gloves fastening with a single button; on the dainty little fingers supporting the guitar, examine those Mittens of black silk lace, open worked, like those which, according to tradition, are worn by the heroine of that charming comedy, the /Marriageable Maid/.

There rises on my lips a song of the time which the /Almanac of the Muses/ has bequeathed us, to the air of /The Little Sailor/. It will perhaps add a spice of interest to my story. "Now, listen, my friend," as they used to say in the noble ages of chivalry. Title of the song: /The Gloves/.

I love the Glove, that covers quite The rounded arm it rests upon; I take it off, with what delight, With what delight I put it on! If true it is through mystery, A lover's bliss will higher move, How dear that little hand should be Which hides itself beneath a Glove!

But there's another Glove, whose use Will every swaggerer displease; A Glove correcting all abuse, Which brings the braggart to his knees; How many boasting folk I've known, Who would, and wisely, rather prove A flight from out the window thrown, Than see before them that same Glove!

The Gloves are useful when we seek The fair, the great ones, as we know; When unto those with Gloves we speak, Easy at once their favours grow. They for intriguers wealth have won, No fools their uses are above; Of what another man has done They boast, and give themselves the Glove.

One last couplet, I pray you, and the authoress, Madame Perrier, will bow herself out:--

The Gloveless man can ne'er afford To dance, no step he makes with grace; The servant wishes that his lord Should put on Gloves in many a case. When the police are wide awake, To cheat those eyes they hardly love, How many thieves will wisely take The greatest care to wear the Glove?

The song is not so bad, truly; and if the Muse gloves the author a little tightly, the tone of his strophes is none the less strictly respectable and proper.

Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. long Gloves were very costly; still, no coquette hesitated to change them every day, for it was necessary for them to be of extreme freshness of colour, which was either buff, gridelin, or white. Some years later, the fashion tended to maize, straw, or nut colour for the evening and morning toilet, and to palisander, burnt bread, cedar, fawn, for afternoon visits. Yellow Gloves had an infinite scale of tones, from a soft and delicate unbleached lawn colour to the glaring yellow of a stage-coach. White doe-skin was only used by men when riding.

It was about this epoch, if I mistake not, that the denunciation of /Gant jaune/ (yellow glove) became synonymous with /petit-maître/ (dandy). In London, the disciples of Brummel--of the most refined elegance--constituted a society, and formed the Club of the /Fringed Glove/. This club no longer existed doubtless in 1839, when d'Orsay established thus despotically the rules of the perfect gentleman:

"An English gentleman of fashion," said he, "ought to use six pair of Gloves a day:

"In the morning to drive a britzska to the hunt: Gloves of reindeer.

"At the hunt, to follow a fox: Gloves of shammy leather.

"To return to London in a Tilbury, after a drive at Richmond in the morning: Gloves of beaver.

"To go later for a walk in Hyde Park, or to conduct a lady to pay her visits or make her purchases in London, and /to offer her your hand in descending from the carriage/: coloured kid Gloves braided.

"To go to a dinner-party: yellow dog's skin Gloves--and in the evening for a ball or rout: Gloves of white lamb-skin embroidered with silk."

What odious tyranny is so exacting a fashion! And how sensible was Balzac when he wrote: "Dandyism is a heresy of fashion; in making himself a dandy, a man becomes a piece of furniture of the boudoir, an extremely ingenious puppet, which can pose on a horse, or on a sofa, which sucks habitually the end of a walking-stick, but a reasonable being--never!"

It is, however, with some dandy of the school of Rubempré and Rastignac, that often, on quitting the ball, an author shows us a romantic young lady in love, whose jealousy gnaws at her heart, who re-reads the letters of old times, and with wandering looks, like one overwhelmed, nervously tearing with her teeth a finger of her Glove, sadly dreams that the lover who is no longer all, is nothing, and that the moralist much deceived himself who wrote: "Woman is a charming creature, who puts off her love as easily as her Glove."

How many things are there, look you, in a Glove!

In the novel /The Lion in Love/ of Frédéric Soulié, Léonce signs the register of marriages at the mayoralty with a gloved hand; and when Lise's turn comes, the young girl stops, saying in a voice tinged with just a touch of mockery, "Pardon me, let me remove my Glove."

"Léonce understood," then says the author, "that he had signed with his gloved hand." Sign an act of marriage with a Glove! Léonce meditated a little, and said to himself: "These people have certain delicacies. What difference makes a Glove more or less to the holiness of an oath, or the signature of a document? Nothing assuredly; and yet it seems that there is more sincerity in a naked hand, which affixes the signature of a man in testimony of the truth. It is one of those imperceptible sentiments of which we are unable to give an exact account, but which nevertheless exist."

The fact is, that the Glove is not really, as has been said, a tyrant of which the hand is the slave, but quite the contrary--it is the hand's servant; and with the hand, as Montaigne wrote, "We request, promise, call, dismiss, menace, pray, supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent, fear, shame, double, instruct, command, incite, encourage, swear, witness, accuse, condemn, absolve, injure, contemn, distrust, track, flatter, applaud, bless, humiliate, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt, feast, rejoice, complain, sadden, discomfort, despair, astonish, write, suppress," &c.