APPAREL OF THE PURITAN AND PILGRIM FATHERS
I
t is difficult to discover the reasons, to trace the influences which
have resulted in the production in the modern mind of that composite
figure which serves to the everyday reader, the heedless observer, as
the counterfeit presentment of the New England colonist,—the Boston
Puritan or Plymouth Pilgrim. We have a very respectable notion, a
fairly true picture, of Dutch patroon, Pennsylvania Quaker, and
Virginia planter; but we see a very unreal New Englishman. This “gray
old Gospeller, sour as midwinter,” appears with goodwife or dame in the
hastily drawn illustrations of our daily press; we find him outlined
with greater care but equal inaccuracy in our choicer periodical
literature; we have him depicted by artists in our handsome books and
on the walls of our art museums; he is cut in stone and cast in bronze
for our halls and parks; he is dressed by actors for a part in some
historical play; he is furbished up with conglomerate and makeshift
garments by enthusiastic and confident young folk in tableau and
fancy-dress party; he is richly and amply attired by portly,
self-satisfied members of our patriotic-hereditary societies; we
constantly see these figures garbed in semblance in some details, yet
never in verisimilitude as a whole figure.
We are wont to think of our Puritan forbears, indeed we are determined
to think of them, garbed in sombre sad-colored garments, in a life
devoid of color, warmth, or fragrance. But sad color was not dismal and
dull save in name; it was brown in tone, and brown is warm, and being a
primitive color is, like many primitive things, cheerful. Old England
was garbed in hearty honest russet, even in the days of our
colonization. Read the list of the garments of any master of the manor,
of the honest English yeoman, of our own sturdy English emigrants from
manor and farm in Suffolk and Essex. What did they wear across seas?
What did they wear in the New World? What they wore in England, namely:
Doublets of leathers, all brown in tint; breeches of various tanned
skins and hides; untanned leather shoes; jerkins of “filomot” or
“phillymort” (feuille morte), dead-leaf color; buff-coats of fine buff
leather; tawny camlet cloaks and jackets of “du Boys” (which was wood
color); russet hose; horseman’s coats of tan-colored linsey-woolsey or
homespun ginger-lyne or brown perpetuana; fawn-colored mandillions and
deer-colored cassocks—all brown; and sometimes a hat of natural beaver.
Here is a “falding” doublet of “treen color”—and what is treen but
wooden and wood color is brown again.
It was a fitting dress for their conditions of life. The colonists
lived close to nature—they touched the beginnings of things; and we are
close to nature when all dress in russet. The homely “butternuts” of
the Kentucky mountains express this; so too does khaki, a good, simple
native dye and stuff; so eagerly welcomed, so closely cherished, as all
good and primitive things should be.
[Illustration: Governor John Endicott]
So when I think of my sturdy Puritan forbears in the summer planting of
Salem and of Boston, I see them in “honest russet kersey”; gay too with
the bright stamell-red of their waistcoats and the grain-red linings of
mandillions; scarlet-capped are they, and enlivened with many a great
scarlet-hooded cloak. I see them in this attire on shipboard, where
they were greeted off Salem with “a smell from the shore like the smell
of a garden”; I see them landing in happy June amid “sweet wild
strawberries and fair single roses.” I see them walking along the
little lanes and half-streets in which for many years bayberry and
sweet-fern lingered in dusty fragrant clumps by the roadside.
“Scented with Cædar and Sweet Fern
From Heats reflection dry,”
wrote of that welcoming shore one colonist who came on the first ship,
and noted in rhyme what he found and saw and felt and smelt. And I see
the forefathers standing under the hot little cedar trees of the
Massachusetts coast, not sober in sad color, but cheery in russet and
scarlet; and sweetbrier and strawberries, bayberry and cedar, smell
sweetly and glow genially in that summer sunlight which shines down on
us through all these two centuries.
We have ample sources from which to learn precisely what was worn by
these first colonists—men and women—gentle and simple. We have minute
“Lists of Apparell” furnished by the Colonization Companies to the male
colonists; we have also ample lists of apparel supplied to individual
emigrants of varied degree; we have inventories in detail of the
personal estates of all those who died in the colonies even in the
earliest years—inventories wherein even a half-worn pair of gloves is
gravely set down, appraised in value, sworn to, and entered in the town
records; we have wills giving equal minuteness; we have even the
articles of dress themselves preserved from moth and rust and mildew;
we have private letters asking that supplies of clothing be sent across
seas—clothing substantial and clothing fashionable; we have ships’
bills of lading showing that these orders were carried out; we have
curiously minute private letters giving quaint descriptions and hints
of new and modish wearing apparel; we have sumptuary laws telling what
articles of clothing must not be worn by those of mean estate; we have
court records showing trials under these laws; we have ministers’
sermons denouncing excessive details of fashion, enumerating and almost
describing the offences; and we have also a goodly number of portraits
of men and a few of women. I give in this chapter excellent portraits
of the first governors, Endicott, Winthrop, Bradstreet, Winslow; and
others could be added. Having all these, do we need fashion-plates or
magazines of the modes? We have also for the early years great
instruction through comparison and inference in knowing the English
fashions of those dates as revealed through inventories, compotuses,
accounts, diaries, letters, portraits, prints, carvings, and effigies;
and American fashions varied little from English ones.
[Illustration: Governor Edward Winslow]
It is impossible to disassociate the history of costume from the
general history of the country where such dress is worn. Nor could any
one write upon dress with discrimination and balance unless he knew
thoroughly the dress of all countries and likewise the history of all
countries. Of the special country, he must know more than general
history, for the relations of small things to great things are too
close. Influences apparently remote prove vital. At no time was history
told in dress, and at no period was dress influenced by historical
events more than during the seventeenth century and in the dress of
English-speaking folk. The writer on dress should know the temperament
and character of the dress wearer; this was of special bearing in the
seventeenth century. It would be thought by any one ignorant of the
character of the first Puritan settlers, and indifferent to or ignorant
of historical facts, that in a new world with all the hardships,
restraints, lacks, and inconveniences, no one, even the vainest woman,
would think much upon dress, save that it should be warm, comfortable,
ample, and durable. But, in truth, such was not the case. Even in the
first years the settlers paid close attention to their attire, to its
richness, its elegance, its modishness, and watched narrowly also the
attire of their neighbors, not only from a distinct liking for dress,
but from a careful regard of social distinctions and from a regard for
the proprieties and relations of life. Dress was a badge of rank, of
social standing and dignity; and class distinctions were just as
zealously guarded in America, the land of liberty, as in England. The
Puritan church preached simplicity of dress; but the church attendants
never followed that preaching. All believed, too, that dress had a
moral effect, as it certainly does; that to dress orderly and well and
convenable to the existing fashions helped to preserve the morals of
the individual and general welfare of the community. Eagerly did the
settlers seek every year, every season, by every incoming ship, by
every traveller, to learn the changes of fashions in Europe. The first
native-born poet, Benjamin Tompson, is quoted in the heading of this
chapter in a wail over thus following new fashions, a wail for the
“good old times,” as has been the cry of “old fogy” poets and
philosophers since the days of the ancient classics.
We have ample proof of the love of dignity, of form, of state, which
dominated even in the first struggling days; we can see the governor of
Virginia when he landed, turning out his entire force in most formal
attire and with full company of forty halberdiers in scarlet cloaks to
attend in imposing procession the church services in the poor little
church edifice—this when the settlement at Jamestown was scarce more
than an encampment.
We can read the words of Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, in
which he recounts his mortification at the undignified condition of
affairs when the governor of the French province, the courtly La Tour,
landed unexpectedly in Boston and caught the governor picnicking
peacefully with his family on an island in the harbor, with no
attendants, no soldiers, no dignitaries. Nor was there any force in the
fort, and therefore no salute could be given to the distinguished
visitors; and still more mortifying was the sole announcement of this
important arrival through the hurried sail across the bay, and the
running to the governor of a badly scared woman neighbor. We see
Winthrop trying to recover his dignity in La Tour’s eyes (and in his
own) by bourgeoning throughout the remainder of the French governor’s
stay with an imposing guard of soldiers in formal attendance at every
step he took abroad; ordering them to wear, I am sure, their very
fullest stuffed doublets and shiniest armor, while he displayed his
best black velvet suit of garments. Fortunately for New England’s
appearance, Winthrop was a man of such aristocratic bearing and feature
that no dress or lack of dress could lower his dignity.
Governor John Winthrop. Governor John Winthrop.
Our forbears did not change their dress by emigrating; they may have
worn heavier clothing in New England, more furs, stronger shoes, but I
cannot find that they adopted simpler or less costly clothing; any
change that may have been made through Puritan belief and teaching had
been made in England. All the colonists
“ ... studied after nyce array,
And made greet cost in clothing.”
Many persons preferred to keep their property in the form of what they
quaintly called “duds.” The fashion did not wear out more apparel than
the man; for clothing, no matter what its cut, was worn as long as it
lasted, doing service frequently through three generations. For
instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, when she was
over fifty years old, receiving this bequest by will: “If she desire to
have the suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother,
let her have it upon appraisement.” I have traced a certain flowered
satin gown and “manto” in four wills; a dame to her daughter; she to
her sister; then to the child of the last-named who was a granddaughter
of the first owner. And it was a proud possession to the last. The
fashions and shapes then did not change yearly. The Boston gentlewoman
of 1660 would not have been ill dressed or out of the mode in the dress
worn by her grandmother when she landed in 1625.
Petty details were altered in woman’s dress—though but slightly; the
change of a cap, a band, a scarf, a ruffle, meant much to the wearer,
though it seems unimportant to us to-day. Men’s dress, we know from
portraits, was unaltered for a time save in neckwear and hair-dressing,
both being of such importance in costume that they must be written upon
at length.
Let us fix in our minds the limit of reign of each ruler during the
early years of colonization, and the dates of settlement of each
colony. When Elizabeth died in 1603, the Brownist Puritans or
Separatists were well established in Holland; they had been there
twenty years. They were dissatisfied with their Dutch home, however,
and had had internal quarrels—one, of petty cause, namely, a “topish
Hatt,” a “Schowish Hood,” a “garish spitz-fashioned Stomacher,” the
vain garments of one woman; but the strife over these “abhominations”
lasted eleven years.
James I was king when the Pilgrims came to America in 1620; but Charles
I was on the throne in 1630 when John Winthrop arrived with his band of
friends and followers and settled in Salem and Boston.
The settlement of Portsmouth and Dover in New Hampshire was in 1623,
and in Maine the same year. The settlements of the Dutch in New
Netherland were in 1614; while Virginia, named for Elizabeth, the
Virgin Queen, and discovered in her day, was settled first of all at
Jamestown in 1607. The Plymouth colony was poor. It came poor from
Holland, and grew poorer through various misfortunes and set-backs—one
being the condition of the land near Plymouth. The Massachusetts Bay
Company was different. It came with properties estimated to be worth a
million dollars, and it had prospered wonderfully after an opening year
of want and distress. The relative social condition and means of the
settlers of Jamestown, of Plymouth, of Boston, were carefully
investigated from English sources by a thoughtful and fair authority,
the historian Green. He says of the Boston settlers in his _Short
History of the English People_:—
“Those Massachusetts settlers were not like the earlier colonists of
the South; broken men, adventurers, bankrupts, criminals; or simply
poor men and artisans like the Pilgrim Fathers of the _Mayflower_. They
were in great part men of the professional and middle classes, some of
them men of large landed estate, some zealous clergymen, some shrewd
London lawyers or young scholars from Oxford. The bulk were God-fearing
farmers from Lincolnshire and the Eastern counties.”
A full comprehension of these differences in the colonies will make us
understand certain conditions, certain surprises, as to dress; for
instance, why so little of the extreme Puritan is found in the dress of
the first Boston colonists.
There lived in England, near the close of Elizabeth’s reign, a Puritan
named Philip Stubbes, to whom we are infinitely indebted for our
knowledge of English dress of his times. It was also the dress of the
colonists; for details of attire, especially of men’s wear, had not
changed to any extent since the years in which and of which Philip
Stubbes wrote.
He published in 1586 a book called _An Anatomie of Abuses_, in which he
described in full the excesses of England in his day. He wrote with
spirited, vivid pen, and in plain speech, leaving nothing unspoken lest
it offend, and he used strong, racy English words and sentences. In his
later editions he even took pains to change certain “strange, inkhorn
terms” or complicate words of his first writing into simpler ones. Thus
he changed _preter time_ to _former ages; auditory_ to _hearers;
prostrated_ to _humbled; consummate_ to _ended_; and of course this was
to the book’s advantage. Unusual words still linger, however, but we
must believe they are not intentionally “outlandish” as was the term of
the day for such words.
The attitude of Stubbes toward dress and dress wearers is of great
interest, for he was certainly one of the most severe, most determined,
most conscientious of Puritans; yet his hatred of “corruptions desiring
reformation” did not lead him to a hatred of dress in itself. He is
careful to state in detail in the body of his book and in his preface
that his attack is not upon the dress of people of wealth and station;
that he approves of rich dress for the rich. His hatred is for the
pretentious dress of the many men of low birth or of mean estate who
lavish their all in dress ill suited to their station; and also his
reproof is for swindling in dress materials and dress-making; against
false weights and measures, adulterations and profits; in short,
against abuses, not uses.
Governor Simon Bradstreet. Governor Simon Bradstreet.
His words run thus explicitly:—
“Whereas I have spoken of the excesse in apparell, and of the Abuse of
the same as wel in Men as in Women, generally I would not be so
understood as though my speaches extended to any either noble honorable
or worshipful; for I am farre from once thinking that any kind of
sumptuous or gorgeous Attire is not to be worn of them; as I suppose
them rather Ornaments in them than otherwise. And therefore when I
speak of excesse of Apparel my meaning is of the inferiour sorte only
who for the most parte do farre surpasse either noble honorable or
worshipful, ruffling in Silks Velvets, Satens, Damaske, Taffeties, Gold
Silver and what not; these bee the Abuses I speak of, these bee the
Evills that I lament, and these bee the Persons my wordes doe concern.”
There was ample room for reformation from Stubbes’s point of view.
“There is such a confuse mingle mangle of apparell and such
preponderous excess thereof, as every one is permitted to flaunt it out
in what apparell he has himself or can get by anie kind of means. So
that it is verie hard to know who is noble, who is worshipful, who is a
gentleman, who is not; for you shall have those who are neither of the
nobilytie, gentilitie, nor yeomanrie goe daylie in silks velvets satens
damasks taffeties notwithstanding they be base by byrth, meane by
estate and servyle by calling. This a great confusion, a general
disorder. God bee mercyfull unto us.”
This regard of dress was, I take it, the regard of the Puritan reformer
in general; it was only excess in dress that was hated. This was
certainly the estimate of the best of the Puritans, and it was
certainly the belief of the New England Puritan. It would be thought,
and was thought by some men, that in the New World liberty of religious
belief and liberty of dress would be given to all. Not at all!—the
Puritan magistrates at once set to work to show, by means of sumptuary
laws, rules of town settlement, and laws as to Sunday observance and
religious services, that nothing of the kind was expected or intended,
or would be permitted willingly. No religious sects and denominations
were welcome save the Puritans and allied forms—Brownists,
Presbyterians, Congregationalists. For a time none other were permitted
to hold services; no one could wear rich dress save gentlefolk, and
folk of wealth or some distinction—as Stubbes said, “by being in some
sort of office”
We shall find in the early pages of this book frequent references to
Stubbes’s descriptions of articles of dress, but his own life has some
bearing on his utterances; so let me bear testimony as to his character
and to the absolute truth of his descriptions. He was held up in his
own day to contempt by that miserable Thomas Nashe who plagiarized his
title and helped his own dull book into popularity by calling it _The
Anatomie of Absurdities_; and who further ran on against him in a still
duller book, _An Almand for a Parrat_. He called Stubbes “A MarPrelate
Zealot and Hypocrite” and Stubbes has been held up by others as a
morose man having no family ties and no social instincts. He was in
reality the tenderest of husbands to a modest, gentle, pious girl whom
he married when she was but fourteen, and with whom he lived in ideal
happiness until her death in child-birth when eighteen years old. He
bore testimony to his happiness and her goodness in a loving but sad
and trying book “intituled” _A Christiall Glasse for Christian Women_.
It is a record of a life which was indeed pure as crystal; a life so
retiring, so quiet, so composed, so unvarying, a life so remote from
any gentlewoman’s life to day that it seems of another ether, another
planet, as well as of another century. But it is useful for us to know
it, notwithstanding its background of gloomy religionism and its air of
unreality; for it helps us to understand the character of Puritan women
and of Philip Stubbes. This fair young wife died in an ecstasy, her
voice triumphant, her face radiant with visions of another and a
glorious life. And yet she was not wholly happy in death; for she had a
Puritan conscience, and she thought she _must_ have offended God in
some way. She had to search far indeed for the offence; and this was
it—it would be absurd if it were not so true and so deep in its
sentiment of regret. She and her husband had set their hearts too much
in affection upon a little dog that they had loved well, and she found
now that “it was a vanitye”; and she repented of it, and bade them bear
the dog from her bedside. Knowing Stubbes’s love for this little dog
(and knowing it must have been a spaniel, for they were then being well
known and beloved and were called “Spaniel-gentles or comforters”—a
wonderfully appropriate name), I do not much mind the fierce words with
which he stigmatizes the vanity and extravagance of women. I have a
strong belief too that if we knew the dress of his child-wife, we would
find that he liked her bravely even richly attired, and that he
acquired his wonderful mastery of every term and detail of women’s
dress, every term of description, through a very uxorious regard of his
wife’s apparel.
Sir Richard Saltonstall. Sir Richard Saltonstall.
Of the absolute truth of every word in Stubbes’s accounts we have ample
corroborative proof. He wrote in real earnest, in true zeal, for the
reform of the foolery and extravagance he saw around him, not against
imaginary evils. There is ample proof in the writings of his
contemporaries—in Shakespere’s comparisons, in Harrison’s sensible
_Description of England_, in Tom Coryat’s _Crudities_—and oddities—of
the existence of this foolishness and extravagance. There is likewise
ample proof in the sumptuary laws of Elizabeth’s day.
It would have been the last thing the solemn Stubbes could have liked
or have imagined, that he should have afforded important help to future
writers upon costume, yet such is the case. For he described the dress
of English men and women with as much precision as a modern reporter of
the modes. No casual survey of dress could have furnished to him the
detail of his description. It required much examination and inquiry,
especially as to the minutiae of women’s dress. Therefore when I read
his bitter pages (if I can forget the little pet spaniel) I have always
a comic picture in my mind of a sour, morose, shocked old Puritan, “a
meer, bitter, narrow-sould Puritan” clad in cloak and doublet, with
great horn spectacles on nose, and ample note-book, penner, and
ink-horn in hand, agonizingly though eagerly surveying the figure of
one of his fashion-clad women neighbors, walking around her slowly,
asking as he walked the name of this jupe, the price of that pinner,
the stuff of this sleeve, the cut of this cap, groaning as he wrote it
all down, yet never turning to squire or knight till every detail of
her extravagance and “greet cost” is recorded. In spite of all his
moralizing his quill pen had too sharp a point, his scowling forehead
and fierce eyes too keen a power of vision ever to render to us a dull
page; even the author of _Wimples and Crisping Pins_ might envy his
powers of perception and description.
The bravery of the Jacobean gallant did not differ in the main from his
dress under Elizabeth; but in details he found some extravagances. The
love-locks became more prominent, and shoe-roses and garters both grew
in size. Pomanders were carried by men and women, and
“casting-bottles.” Gloves and pockets were perfumed. As musk was the
favorite scent this perfume-wearing is not over-alluring. As a
preventive of the plague all perfumes were valued.
Since a hatred and revolt against this excess was one of the conditions
which positively led to the formation of the Puritan political party if
not of the Separatist religious faith, and as a consequence to the
settlement of the English colonies in America, let us recount the
conditions of dress in England when America was settled. Let us regard
first the dress of a courtier whose name is connected closely and
warmly in history and romance with the colonization of America; a man
who was hated by the Pilgrim and Puritan fathers but whose dress in
some degree and likeness, though modified and simplified, must have
been worn by the first emigrants to Virginia across seas—let us look at
the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a hero and a scholar, but he
was also a courtier; and of a court, too, where every court-attendant
had to bethink himself much and ever of dress, for dress occupied
vastly the thought and almost wholly the public conversation of his
queen and her successor.
Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh.
To understand Raleigh’s dress, you must know the man and his life; to
comprehend its absurdities and forgive its follies and see whence it
originated, you must know Elizabeth and her dress; you must see her
with “oblong face, eyes small, yet black; her nose a little hooked, her
lips narrow, her teeth black; false hair and that red,”—these are the
striking and plain words of the German ambassador to her court. You
must look at this queen with her colorless meagre person lost in a
dress monstrous in size, yet hung, even in its enormous expanse of many
square yards, with crowded ornaments, tags, jewels, laces,
embroideries, gimp, feathers, knobs, knots, and aglets, with these
bedizened rankly, embellished richly. You must see her talking in
public of buskins and gowns, love-locks and virginals, anything but
matters of seriousness or of state; you must note her at a formal
ceremonial tickling handsome Dudley in the neck; watch her dancing,
“most high and disposedly” when in great age; you must see her giving
Essex a hearty boxing of the ear; hear her swearing at her ministers.
You must remember, too, her parents, her heritage. From King Henry VIII
came her love of popularity, her great activity, her extraordinary
self-confidence, her indomitable will, her outbursts of anger, her
cruelty, just as came her harsh, mannish voice. From her mother, Anne
Boleyn, came her sensuous love of pleasure, of dress, of flattery, of
gayety and laughter. Her nature came from her mother, her temper from
her father. The familiarity with Robert Dudley was but a piece with her
boisterous romps in her girlhood, and her flap in the face of young
Talbot when he saw her “unready in my night-stuff.” But she had more in
her than came from Henry and Anne; she had her own individuality, which
made her as hard as steel, made her resolute, made her live frugally
and work hard, and, above all, made her know her limitations. The
woman, be she queen or the plainest mortal, who can estimate accurately
her own limitations, who is proof against enthusiasm, proof against
ambition, and, at a climax, proof against flattery, who knows what she
can _not_ do, in that very thing finds success. Elizabeth was and ever
will be a wonderful character-study; I never weary of reading or
thinking of her.
The settlement of Massachusetts was under James I; but costume varied
little, save that it became more cumbersome. This may be attributed
directly to the cowardice of the king, who wore quilted and
padded—dagger-proof—clothing; and thus gave to his courtiers an example
of stuffing and padding which exceeded even that of the men of
Elizabeth’s day. “A great, round, abominable breech,” did the satirists
call it. Stays had to be worn beneath the long-waisted,
peascod-bellied, stuffed doublet to keep it in shape; thus a man’s
attire had scarcely a single natural outline.
We have this description of Raleigh, courtier and “servant” of
Elizabeth and victim of James, given by a contemporary, Aubrey:—
“He looked like a Knave with his gogling eyes. He could transform
himself into any shape. He was a tall, handsome, bold man; but his
naeve was that he was damnably proud. A good piece of him is in a white
satin doublet all embroidered with rich pearls, and a mighty told me
that the true pearls were nigh as big as the painted ones. He had a
most remarkable aspect, an exceeding high forehead, long faced, and
sour eie-lidded, a kind of pigge-eie.”
We leave the choice of belief between one sentence of this personal
description, that he was handsome, and the later plain-spoken details
to the judgment of the reader. Certainly both statements cannot be
true. As I look at his portrait, the “good piece of him” here, I wholly
disbelieve the former.
Sir Walter Raleigh and Son. Sir Walter Raleigh and Son.
His laced-in, stiffened waist, his absurd breeches, his ruffs and
sashes and knots, his great shoe-roses, his jewelled hatband, make this
a fantastic picture, one of little dignity, though of vast cost. The
jewels on his shoes were said to have cost thirty thousand pounds; and
the perfect pearls in his ear, as seen in another portrait, must have
been an inch and a half long. He had doublets entirely covered with a
pattern of jewels. In another portrait (here) his little son, poor
child, stands by his side in similar stiff attire. The famous portrait
of Sir Philip Sidney and his brother is equally comic in its absurdity
of costume for young lads.
Read these words descriptive of another courtier, of the reign of
James; his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham:—
“With great buttons of diamonds, and with diamond hat bands, cockades
and ear-rings, yoked with great and manifold knots of pearls. At his
going over to Paris in 1625 he had twenty-seven suits of clothes made
the richest that embroidery, gems, lace, silk, velvet, gold and stones
could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet set all over
suit and cloak with diamonds valued at £14,000 besides a great feather
stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat-band
and spurs.”
These were all courtiers, but we should in general think of an English
merchant as dressed richly but plainly; yet here is the dress of
Marmaduke Rawdon, a merchant of that day:—
“The apparell he rid in, with his chaine of gold and hat band was
vallued in a thousand Spanish ducats; being two hundred and seventy and
five pounds sterling. His hatband was of esmeralds set in gold; his
suite was of a fine cloth trim’d with a small silke and gold fringe;
the buttons of his suite fine gold—goldsmith’s work; his rapier and
dagger richly hatcht with gold.”
The white velvet dress of Buckingham showed one of the extreme fashions
of the day, the wearing of pure white. Horace Walpole had a full-length
painting of Lord Falkland all in white save his black gloves. Another
of Sir Godfrey Hart, 1600, is all in white save scarlet heels to the
shoes. These scarlet heels were worn long in every court. Who will ever
forget their clatter in the pages of Saint Simon, as they ran in
frantic haste through hall and corridor—in terror, in cupidity, in
satisfaction, in zeal to curry favor, in desire to herald the news, in
hope to obtain office, in every mean and detestable spirit—ran from the
bedside of the dying king? We can still hear, after two centuries, the
noisy, heartless tapping of those hurrying red heels.
Robert Devereux Earle of Essex His Excellency & Generall of y° Army.
Pub April 1. 1799 by W Richardson York House N° 31 Strand Robert
Devereux
Look at the portrait of another courtier, Sir Robert Dudley, who died
in 1639; not the Robert Dudley who was tickled in the neck by Queen
Elizabeth while he was being dubbed earl; not the Dudley who murdered
Amy Robsart, but his disowned son by a noble lady whom he secretly
married and dishonored. This son was a brave sailor and a learned man.
He wrote the _Arcana del Mare_, and he was a sportsman; “the first of
all that taught a dog to sit in order to catch partridges.” His
portrait shows clumsy armor and showy rings, a great jewel and a vast
tie of gauze ribbon on one arm; on the other a cord with many aglets;
he wears marvellously embroidered, slashed, and bombasted breeches,
tight hose, a heavily jewelled, broad belt; and a richly fringed scarf
over one shoulder, and ridiculous garters at his calf. It is so absurd,
so vain a dress one cannot wonder that sensible gentlemen turned away
in disgust to so-called Puritan plainness, even if it went to the
extreme of Puritan ugliness.
But in truth the eccentrics and extremes of Puritan dress were adopted
by zealots; the best of that dress only was worn by the best men of the
party. All Puritans were not like Philip Stubbes, the moralist; nor did
all Royalists dress like Buckingham, the courtier.
I have spoken of the influence of the word “sad-color.” I believe that
our notion of the gloom of Puritan dress, of the dress certainly of the
New England colonist, comes to us through it, for the term was
certainly much used. A Puritan lover in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in
1645, wrote to his lass that he had chosen for her a sad-colored gown.
Winthrop wrote, “Bring the coarsest woolen cloth, so it be not flocks,
and of sad colours and some red;” and he ordered a “grave gown” for his
wife, “not black, but sad-colour.” But while sad-colored meant a quiet
tint, it did not mean either a dull stone color or a dingy grayish
brown—nor even a dark brown. We read distinctly in an English list of
dyes of the year 1638 of these tints in these words, “Sadd-colours the
following; liver colour, De Boys, tawney, russet, purple, French green,
ginger-lyne, deere colour, orange colour.” Of these nine tints, five,
namely, “De Boys,” tawny, russet, ginger-lyne, and deer color, were all
browns. Other colors in this list of dyes were called “light colours”
and “graine colours.” Light colors were named plainly as those which
are now termed by shopmen “evening shades”; that is, pale blue, pink,
lemon, sulphur, lavender, pale green, ecru, and cream color. Grain
colors were shades of scarlet, and were worn as much as russet. When
dress in sad colors ranged from purple and French green through the
various tints of brown to orange, it was certainly not a _dull_-colored
dress.
Let us see precisely what were the colors of the apparel of the first
colonists. Let us read the details of russet and scarlet. We find them
in _The Record of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in
New England_, one of the incontrovertible sources which are a delight
to every true historian. These records are in the handwriting of the
first secretary, Washburn, and contain lists of the articles sent on
the ships _Talbot, George, Lion’s Whelp, Four Sisters_, and _Mayflower_
for the use of the plantation at Naumkeag (Salem) and later at Boston.
They give the amount of iron, coal, and bricks sent as ballast; the red
lead, sail-cloth, and copper; and in 1629, at some month and day
previous to 16th of March, give the order for the “Apparell for 100
men.” We learn that each colonist had this attire:—
“4 Pair Shoes.
2 Pair Irish Stockings about 13d. a pair.
1 Pair knit Stockings about 2s. 4d. a pair.
1 Pair Norwich Garters about 5s. a dozen.
4 Shirts.
2 Suits of Doublet and Hose; of leather lined with oiled skin leather,
the hose and doublet with hooks and eyes.
1 Suit of Northern Dussens or Hampshire Kerseys lined, the hose with
skins, the doublet with linen of Guildford or Gedleyman serges, 2s.
10d. a yard, 4-1/2 to 5 yards a suit.
4 Bands.
2 Plain falling bands.
1 Standing band.
1 Waistcoat of green cotton bound about with red tape.
1 Leather Girdle.
2 Monmouth Cap, about 2s. apiece.
1 Black Hat lined at the brim with leather.
5 Red knit caps milled; about 5d. apiece.
2 Dozen Hooks and eyes and small hooks and eyes for mandillions.
1 Pair Calfs Leather gloves (and some odd pairs of knit and sheeps
leather gloves).
A number of Ells Sheer Linen for Handkerchiefs.”
On March 16th was added to this list a mandillion lined with cotton at
12d. a yard. Also breeches and waistcoats; a leather suit of doublet
and breeches of oiled leather; a pair of breeches of leather, “the
drawers to serve to wear with both their other suits.” There was also
full, yes, generous for the day, provision of rugs, bedticks, bolsters,
mats, blankets, and sheets for the berths, and table linen. There were
fifty beds; evidently two men occupied each bed. Folk, even of wealth
and refinement, were not at all sensitive as to their mode of sleeping
or their bedfellows. The pages of Pepys’s _Diary_ give ample examples
of this carelessness.
Arms and armor were also furnished, as will be explained in a later
chapter.
A private letter written by an engineer, one Master Graves, the
following year (1630), giving a list of “such needful things as every
planter ought to provide,” affords a more curt and much less expensive
list, though this has three full suits, two being of wool stuffs:—
“1 Monmouth Cap.
3 Falling Bands.
3 Shirts.
1 Waistcoat.
1 Suit Canvass.
1 Suit Frieze.
1 Suit of Cloth.
3 Pair of Stockings.
4 Pair of Shoes.
Armour complete.
Sword &; Belt.”
The underclothing in this outfit seems very scanty.
I am sure that to some of the emigrants on these ships either outfit
afforded an ampler wardrobe than they had known theretofore in England,
though English folk of that day were well dressed. With a little
consideration we can see that the Massachusetts Bay apparel was
adequate for all occasions, but it was far different from a man’s dress
to-day. The colonist “hadn’t a coat to his back”; nor had he a pair of
trousers. Some had not even a pair of breeches. It was a time when
great changes in dress were taking place. The ancient gown had just
been abandoned for doublet and long hose, which were still in high
esteem, especially among “the elder sort,” with garters or points for
the knees. These doublets were both of leather and wool. And there were
also doublets to be worn by younger men with breeches and stockings.
When doublet and hose were worn, the latter were, of course, the long,
Florentine hose, somewhat like our modern tights.
The jerkin of other lists varied little from the doublet; both were
often sleeveless, and the cassock in turn was different only in being
longer; buff-coat and horseman’s coat were slightly changed. The
evolution of doublet, jerkin, and cassock into a man’s coat is a long
enough story for a special chapter, and one which took place just while
America was being settled. Let me explain here that, while the general
arrangement of this book is naturally chronological, we halt upon our
progress at times, to review a certain aspect of dress, as, for
instance, the riding-dress of women, or the dress of the Quakers, or to
review the description of certain details of dress in a consecutive
account. We thus run on ahead of our story sometimes; and other times,
topics have to be resumed and reviewed near the close of the book.
The breeches worn by the early planters were fulled at the waist and
knee, after the Dutch fashion, somewhat like our modern knickerbockers
or the English bag-breeches.
The four pairs of shoes furnished to the colonists were the best. In
another entry the specifications of their make are given thus:—
“Welt Neats Leather shoes crossed on the out-side with a seam. To be
substantial good over-leather of the best, and two soles; the under
sole of Neats-leather, the outer sole of tallowed backs.”
They were to be of ample size, some thirteen inches long; each
reference to them insisted upon good quality.
There is plentiful head-gear named in these inventories,—six caps and a
hat for each man, at a time when Englishmen thought much and deeply
upon what they wore to cover their heads, and at a time when hats were
very costly. I give due honor to those hats in an entire chapter, as I
do to the ruffs and bands supplied in such adequate and dignified
numbers. There was an unusually liberal supply of shirts, and there
were drawers which are believed to have been draw-strings for the
breeches.
In _New England’s First Fruits_ we read instructions to bring over
“good Irish stockings, which if they are good are much more serviceable
than knit ones.” There appears to have been much variety in shape as
well as in material. John Usher, writing in 1675 to England, says,
“your sherrups stockings and your turn down stocking are not salable
here.” Nevertheless, stirrup stockings and socks were advertised in the
Boston News Letter as late as January 30, 1731. Stirrup-hose are
described in 1658 as being very wide at the top—two yards wide—and
edged with points or eyelet holes by which they were made fast to the
girdle or bag-breeches. Sometimes they were allowed to bag down over
the garter. They are said to have been worn on horseback to protect the
other garments.
Stockings at that time were made of cotton and woollen cloth more than
they were knitted. Calico stockings are found in inventories, and often
stockings as well as hose with calico linings. In the clothing of
William Wright of Plymouth, at his death in 1633, were
“2 Pair Old Knit Stockins.
2 Pair Old Yrish Stockins.
2 Pair Cloth Stockins.
2 Pair Wadmoll Stockins.
4 Pair Linnen Stockins,”
which would indicate that Goodman Wright had stockings for all
weathers, or, as said a list of that day, “of all denominations.” He
had also two pair of boot-hose and two pair of boot-briches; evidently
he was a seafaring man. I must note that he had more ample
underclothing than many “plain citizens,” having cotton drawers and
linen drawers and dimity waistcoats.
That petty details of propriety and dignity of dress were not
forgotten; that the articles serving to such dignity were furnished to
the colonists, and the use of these articles was expected of them, is
shown by the supply of such additions to dress as Norwich garters.
Garters had been a decorative and elegant ornament to dress, as may be
seen by glancing at the portraits of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Robert
Orchard, and the _English Antick_, in this book. And they might well
have been decried as offensive luxuries unmeet for any Puritan and
unnecessary for any colonist; yet here they are. The settlers in one of
the closely following ships had points for the knee as well as garters.
From all this cheerful and ample dress, this might well be a Cavalier
emigration; in truth, the apparel supplied as an outfit to the Virginia
planters (who are generally supposed to be far more given over to rich
dress) is not as full nor as costly as this apparel of Massachusetts
Bay. In this as in every comparison I make, I find little to indicate
any difference between Puritan and Cavalier in quantity of garments, in
quality, or cost—or, indeed, in form. The differences in England were
much exaggerated in print; in America they often existed wholly in
men’s notions of what a Puritan must be.
At first the English Puritan reformers made marked alterations in
dress; and there were also distinct changes in the soldiers of
Cromwell’s army, but in neither case did rigid reforms prove permanent,
nor were they ever as great or as sweeping as the changes which came to
the Cavalier dress. Many of the extremes preached in Elizabeth’s day
had disappeared before New England was settled; they had been abandoned
as unwise or unnecessary; others had been adopted by Cavaliers, so that
equalized all differences. I find it difficult to pick out with
accuracy Puritan or Cavalier in any picture of a large gathering. Let
us glance at the Puritan Roundhead, at Cromwell himself. His picture is
given here, cut from a famous print of his day, which represents
Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament. He and his three friends, all
Puritan leaders, are dressed in clothes as distinctly Cavalier as the
attire of the king himself. The graceful hats with sweeping ostrich
feathers are precisely like the Cavalier hats still preserved in
England; like one in the South Kensington Museum. Cromwell’s wide boots
and his short cape all have a Cavalier aspect.
Cromwell dissolving Parliament. Be gone you rogues/You have Sate long
enough. Cromwell dissolving Parliament.
While Cromwell was steadily working for power, the fashion of plain
attire was being more talked about than at any other time; so he
appeared in studiously simple dress—the plainest apparel, indeed, of
any man prominent in affairs in English history. This is a description
of his appearance at a time before his name was in all Englishmen’s
mouths. It was written by Sir Philip Warwick:—
“The first time I ever took notice of him (Cromwell) was in the
beginning of Parliament, November, 1640. I came into the house one
morning, well-clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not,
very ordinary apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to
have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain and not
very clean, and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his band which
was not much larger than his collar; his hat was without a hat-band;
his stature was of good size; his sword stuck close to his side.”
Lowell has written of what he terms verbal magic; the power of certain
words and sentences, apparently simple, and without any recognizable
quality, which will, nevertheless, fix themselves in our memory, or
will picture a scene to us which we can never forget. This description
of Cromwell has this magic. There is no apparent reason why these
plain, commonplace words should fix in my mind this simple, rough-hewn
form; yet I never can think of Cromwell otherwise than in this attire,
and whatever portrait I see of him, I instinctively look for the spot
of blood on his band. I know of his rich dress after he was in power;
of that splendid purple velvet suit in which he lay majestic in death;
but they never seem to me to be Cromwell—he wears forever an ill-cut,
clumsy cloth suit, a close sword, and rumpled linen.
The noble portraits of Cromwell by the miniaturist, Samuel Cooper,
especially the one which is at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, are
held to be the truest likenesses. They show a narrow band, but the hair
curls softly on the shoulders. The wonderful portrait of the Puritan
General Ireton, in the National Portrait Gallery, has beautiful, long
hair, and a velvet suit much slashed, and with many loops and buttons
at the slashes. He wears mustache and imperial. We expect we may find
that friend of Puritanism, Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, in rich dress;
and we find him in the richest of dress; namely, a doublet made, as to
its body and large full sleeves, wholly of bands an inch or two wide of
embroidery and gold lace, opening like long slashes from throat to
waist, and from arm-scye to wrist over fine white lawn, and with extra
slashes at various spots, with the full white lawn of his “habit-shirt”
pulled out in pretty puffs. His hair is long and curling. General
Waller of Cromwell’s army, here shown, is the very figure of a
Cavalier, as handsome a face, with as flowing hair and careful
mustache, as the Duke of Buckingham, or Mr. Endymion Porter,—that
courtier of courtiers,—gentleman of the bed-chamber to Charles I.
Cornet Joyce, the sturdy personal custodian of the king in captivity,
came the closest to being a Roundhead; but even his hair covers his ear
and hangs over his collar—it would be deemed over-long to-day.
Sir William Waller. Sir William Waller.
Here is Lord Fairfax in plain buff coat slightly laced and slashed with
white satin. Fanshawe dressed—so his wife tells us—in “phillamot
brocade with 9 Laces every one as broad as my hand, a little gold and
silver lace between and both of curious workmanship.” And his suit was
gay with scarlet knots of ribbon; and his legs were cased in white silk
hose over scarlet ones; and he wore black shoes with scarlet shoe
strings and scarlet roses and garters; and his gloves were trimmed with
scarlet ribbon—a fine “gaybeseen”—to use Chaucer’s words.
Surprising to all must be the portrait of that Puritan figurehead, the
Earl of Leicester; for he wears an affected double-peaked beard, a
great ruff, feathered hat, richly jewelled hatband and collar, and an
ear-ring. Shown here is the dress he wore when masquerading in Holland
as general during the Netherland insurrection against Philip II.
It is strange to find even writers of intelligence calling Winthrop and
Endicott Roundheads. A recent magazine article calls Myles Standish a
Roundhead captain. That term was not invented till a score of years
after Myles Standish landed at Plymouth. A political song printed in
1641 is entitled _The Character of a Roundhead_. It begins:—
“What creature’s this with his short hairs
His little band and huge long ears
That this new faith hath founded?
“The Puritans were never such,
The saints themselves had ne’er as much.
Oh, such a knave’s a Roundhead.”
The right Honourable Ferdinand Lord Fairfax. The right Honourable
Ferdinand—Lord Fairfax.
Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson was the wife of a Puritan gentleman, who was
colonel in Cromwell’s army, and one of the regicide judges. She wrote a
history of her husband’s life, which is one of the most valuable
sources of information of the period wherein he lived, the day when
Cromwell and Hampden acted, when Laud and Strafford suffered. In this
history she tells explicitly of the early use of the word Roundhead:—
“The name of Roundhead coming so opportunely, I shall make a little
digression to show how it came up: When Puritanism grew a faction, the
Zealots distinguished themselves by several affectations of habit,
looks and words, which had it been a real forsaking of vanity would
have been most commendable. Among other affected habits, few of the
Puritans, what degree soever they were, wore their hair long enough to
cover their ears; and the ministers and many others cut it close around
their heads with so many little peaks—as was something ridiculous to
behold. From this custom that name of Roundhead became the scornful
term given to the whole Parliament Party, whose army indeed marched out
as if they had only been sent out till their hair was grown. Two or
three years later any stranger that had seen them would have inquired
the meaning of that name.”
It is a pleasure to point out Colonel Hutchinson as a Puritan, though
there was little in his dress to indicate the significance of such a
name for him, and certainly he was not a Roundhead, with his light
brown hair “softer than the finest silk and curling in great loose
rings at the ends—a very fine, thick-set head of hair.” He loved
dancing, fencing, shooting, and hawking; he was a charming musician; he
had judgment in painting, sculpture, architecture, and the “liberal
arts.” He delighted in books and in gardening and in all rarities; in
fact, he seemed to care for everything that was “lovely and of good
report.” “He was wonderfully neat, cleanly and genteel in his habit,
and had a very good fancy in it, but he left off very early the wearing
of anything very costly, yet in his plainest habit appeared very much a
gentleman.” Such dress was the _best_ of Puritan dress; just as he was
the best type of a Puritan. He was cheerful, witty, happy, eager,
earnest, vivacious—a bit quick in temper, but kind, generous, and good.
He was, in truth, what is best of all,—a noble, consistent, Christian
gentleman.
Those who have not acquired from accurate modern portrayal and
representation their whole notion of the dress of the early colonists
have, I find, a figure in their mind’s eye something like that of
Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder. Hogarth’s illustrations of Hudibras
give similar Puritans. Others have figures, dull and plainly dressed,
from the pictures in some book of saints and martyrs of the Puritan
church, such as were found in many an old New England home. _My_
Puritan is reproduced here. I have found in later years that this
Alderman Abel of my old print was quite a character in English history;
having been given with Cousin Kilvert the monopoly of the sale of wines
at retail, one of those vastly lucrative privileges which brought forth
the bitterest denunciations from Sir John Eliot, who regarded them as
an infamous imposition upon the English people. The site of Abel’s
house had once belonged to Cardinal Wolsey; and it was popularly
believed that Abel found and used treasure of the cardinal which had
been hidden in his cellar. He was called the “Main Projector and
Patentee for the Raising of Wines.” Unfortunately for my theory that
Abel was a typical Puritan, he was under the protection of King Charles
I; and Cromwell’s Parliament put an end to his monopoly in 1641, and
his dress was simply that of any dull, uninteresting, commonplace, and
common Englishman of his day.
Alderman Abell and Richard Kilvert, the two maine Projectors for Wine,
1641. Mr. Alderman Abell and Richard Kilvert, the two maine Projectors
for Wine, 1641.
Another New England man who is constantly called a Roundhead is Cotton
Mather; with equal inconsequence and inaccuracy he is often referred
to, and often stigmatized, as “the typical Puritan colonist,” a narrow,
bigoted Gospeller. I have open before me an editorial from a reputable
newspaper which speaks of Cotton Mather dressed in dingy, skimped,
sad-colored garments “shivering in the icy air of Plymouth as he
uncovered his close-clipped Round-head when he landed on the Rock from
the _Mayflower_.” He was in fact born in America; he was not a Plymouth
man, and did not die till more than a century after the landing of the
_Mayflower_, and, of course, he was not a Roundhead. Another drawing of
Cotton Mather, in a respectable magazine, depicts him with clipped
hair, emaciated, clad in clumsy garments, mean and haggard in
countenance, raising a bundle of rods over a cowering Indian child.
Now, Cotton Mather was distinctly handsome, as may be seen from his
picture here, which displays plainly the full, sensual features of the
Cotton family, shown in John Cotton’s portrait. And the Roundhead is in
an elegant, richly curled periwig, such as was fashionable a hundred
years after the _Mayflower_. And though he had the tormenting Puritan
conscience he was not wholly a Puritan, for the world, the flesh, and
the devil were strong in him. He was much more gentle and tender than
men of that day were in general; especially with all children, white
and Indian, and was most conscientious in his relations both to Indians
and negroes. And in those days of universal whippings by English and
American schoolmasters and parents, he spoke in no uncertain voice his
horror and disapproval of the rod for children, and never countenanced
or permitted any whippings.
Reverend John Cotton. Reverend John Cotton.
Reverend Cotton Mather. Reverend Cotton Mather.
There was certainly great diversity in dress among those who called
themselves Puritans. Some amusing stories are told of that strange,
restless, brilliant creature, the major-general of Cromwell’s
army,—Harrison. When the first-accredited ambassador sent by any great
nation to the new republic came to London, there was naturally some
stir as to the wisdom of certain details of demeanor and dress. It was
a ticklish time. The new Commonwealth must command due honor, and the
day before the audience a group of Parliament gentlemen, among them
Colonel Hutchinson and one who was afterwards the Earl of Warwick, were
seated together when Harrison came in and spoke of the coming audience,
and admonished them all—and Hutchinson in particular, “who was in a
habit pretty rich but grave and none other than he usually wore”—that,
now nations sent to them, they must “shine in wisdom and piety, not in
gold and silver and worldly bravery which did not become saints.” And
he asked them not to appear before the ambassador in “gorgeous habits.”
So the colonel—though he was not “convinced of any misbecoming bravery
in a suit of sad-coloured cloth trimmed with gold and with silver
points and buttons”—still conformed to his comrade’s opinion, and
appeared as did all the other gentlemen in solemn, handsome black. When
who should come in, “all in red and gold-a,”—in scarlet coat and cloak
laden with gold and silver, “the coat so covered with clinquant one
could scarcely discern the ground,” and in this gorgeous and glittering
habit seat himself alone just under the speaker’s chair and receive the
specially low respects and salutes of all in the ambassador’s
train,—who should thus blazon and brazon and bourgeon forth but
Harrison! I presume, though Hutchinson was a Puritan and a saint, he
was a bit chagrined at his black suit of garments, and a bit angered at
being thus decoyed; and it touched Madam Hutchinson deeply.
But Hutchinson had his turn to wear gay clothes. A great funeral was to
be given to Ireton, who was his distant kinsman; yet Cromwell, from
jealousy, sent no bidding or mourning suit to him. A general invitation
and notice was given to the whole assembly, and on the hour of the
funeral, within the great, gloomy state-chamber, hung in funereal
black, and filled with men in trappings of woe, covered with great
black cloaks with long, weeping hatbands drooping to the ground, in
strode Hutchinson; this time he was in scarlet and cliquante, “such as
he usually wore,”—so wrote his wife,—astonishing the eyes of all,
especially the diplomats and ambassadors who were present, who probably
deemed him of so great station as to be exempt from wearing black. The
master of ceremonies timidly regretted to him, in hesitating words,
that no mourning had been sent—it had been in some way overlooked; the
General could not, thus unsuitably dressed, follow the coffin in the
funeral procession—it would not look well; the master of ceremonies
would be rebuked—all which proved he did not know Hutchinson, for
follow he could, and would, and did, in this rich dress. And he walked
through the streets and stood in the Abbey, with his scarlet cloak
flaunting and fluttering like a gay tropical bird in the midst of a
slowly flying, sagging flock of depressed black crows,—you have seen
their dragging, heavy flight,—and was looked upon with admiration and
love by the people as a splendid and soldierly figure.
We must not forget that the years which saw the settlement of Salem and
Boston were not under the riot of dress countenanced by James. Charles
I was then on the throne; and the rich and beautiful dress worn by that
king had already taken shape.
There has been an endeavor made to attribute this dress to the
stimulus, to the influence, of Puritan feeling. Possibly some of the
reaction against the absurdities of Elizabeth and James may have helped
in the establishment of this costume; but I think the excellent taste
of Charles and especially of his queen, Henrietta Maria, who succeeded
in making women’s dress wholly beautiful, may be thanked largely for
it. And we may be grateful to the painter Van Dyck; for he had not only
great taste as to dress, and genius in presenting his taste to the
public, but he had a singular appreciation of the pictorial quality of
dress and a power of making dress appropriate to the wearer. And he
fully understood its value in indicating character.
Since Van Dyck formed and painted these fine and elegant modes, they
are known by his name,—it is the Van Dyck costume. We have ample
exposition of it, for his portraits are many. It is told that he
painted forty portraits of the king and thirty of the queen, and many
of the royal children. There are nine portraits by his hand of the Earl
of Strafford, the king’s friend. He painted the Earl of Arundel seven
times. Venetia, Lady Digby, had four portraits in one year. He painted
all persons of fashion, many of distinction and dignity, and some with
no special reason for consideration or portrayal.
The Van Dyck dress is a gallant dress, one fitted for a court, not for
everyday life, nor for a strenuous life, though men of such aims wore
it. The absurdity of Elizabeth’s day is lacking; the richness remains.
It is a dress distinctly expressive of dignity. The doublet is of some
rich, silken stuff, usually satin or velvet. The sleeves are loose and
graceful; at one time they were slashed liberally to show the fine,
full, linen shirt-sleeve. Here are a number of slashed sleeves, from
portraits of the day, painted by Van Dyck. The cuffs of the doublet are
often turned back deeply to show embroidered shirt cuffs or lace
ruffles, or even linen undersleeves. The collar of the doublet was
wholly covered with a band or collar of rich lace and lawn, or all
lace; this usually with the pointed edges now termed Vandykes. Band
strings of ribbon or “snake-bone” were worn. These often had jewelled
tassels. Rich tassels of pearl were the favorite. A short cloak was
thrown gracefully on one shoulder or hung at the back. Knee-breeches
edged with points or fringes or ribbons met the tops of wide, high
boots of Spanish leather, which often also turned over with ruffles of
leather or lace. Within-doors silken hose and shoes with rich
shoe-roses of lace or ribbon were worn. A great hat, broad-leafed,
often of Flemish beaver, had a splendid feather and jewelled hatband. A
rich sword-belt and gauntleted and fringed gloves were added. A peaked
beard with small upturned mustache formed a triangle, with the mouth in
the centre, as in the portrait of General Waller. The hair curled
loosely in the neck, and was rarely, I think, powdered.
Slashed Sleeves Slashed Sleeves, _temp_. Charles I.
Other great painters besides Van Dyck were fortunately in England at
the time this dress was worn, and the king was a patron and appreciator
of art. Hence they were encouraged in their work; and every form and
detail of this beautiful costume is fully depicted for us.