THE EVOLUTION OF COATS AND WAISTCOATS
B
oth word and garment—coat—are of curious interest, one as a
philological study, the other as an evolution. A singular transfer of
meaning from cot or cote, a house and shelter, to the word coat, used
for a garment, is duplicated in some degree in chasuble, casule, and
cassock; the words body, and bodice; and corse or corpse, and corselet
and corset. The word coat, meaning a garment for men for covering the
upper part of the body, has been in use for centuries; but of very
changeable and confusing usage, for it also constantly meant petticoat.
The garment itself was a puzzle, for many years; most bewildering of
all the attire which was worn by the first colonists was the elusive,
coatlike over-garment called in shipping-lists, tailors’ orders,
household inventories, and other legal and domestic records a doublet,
a jerkin, a jacket, a cassock, a paltock, a coat, a horseman’s coat, an
upper-coat, and a buff-coat. All these garments resembled each other;
all closed with a single row of buttons or points or hooks and eyes.
There was not a double-breasted coat in the _Mayflower_, nor on any man
in any of the colonies for many years; they hadn’t been invented. Let
me attempt to define these several coatlike garments.
A Plain Jerkin. A Plain Jerkin.
In 1697 a jerkin was described by Randle Holme as “a kind of jacket or
upper doublet, with four skirts or laps.” These laps were made by slits
up from the hem to the belt-line, and varied in number, but four on
each side was a usual number, or there might be a slit up the back, and
one on each hip, which would afford four laps in all. Mr. Knight, in
his notes on Shakespere’s use of the word, conjectures that the jerkin
was generally worn over the doublet; but one guess is as good as
another, and I guess it was not. I agree, however, with his surmise
that the two garments were constantly confounded; in truth it is not a
surmise, it is a fact. Shakespere expressed the situation when he said
in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, “My jerkin is a doublet;” and I fancy
there was slight difference in the garments, save that in the beginning
the doublet was always of two thicknesses, as its name indicates; and
it was wadded.
As the jerkin was often minutely slashed, it could scarcely have been
wadded; though it may have had a lining for special display through the
slashes.
A jerkin had no skirts in our modern sense of the word,—a piece set on
at the waist-line,—nor could it on that account be what we term a coat,
nor was it a coat, nor was it what the colonists deemed a coat.
The old Dutch word is _jurkken_, and it was often thus spelt, which has
led some to deem it a Dutch name and article of dress. But then it was
also spelt _irkin, ircken, jorken, jorgen, erkyn_, and _ergoin_—which
are not Dutch nor any other tongue. Indeed, under the name _ergoin_ I
wonder that we recognize it or that it knew itself. A jerkin was often
of leather like a buff-coat, but not always so.
Sir Richard Saltonstall wears a buff-coat, with handsome sword-belt, or
trooping-belt, and rich gloves. His portrait is shown here. As we look
at his fine countenance we think of Hawthorne’s words:—
“What dignitary is this crossing to greet the Governor. A stately
personage in velvet cloak—with ample beard and a gold band across his
breast. He has the authoritative port of one who has filled the highest
civic position in the first of cities. Of all men in the world, we
should least expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London—as Sir Richard
Saltonstall has been once and again—in a forest-bordered settlement in
the western wilderness.”
A fine buff-coat and a buff-coat sleeve are given in the chapter upon
Armor.
All the early colonial inventories of wearing-apparel contain doublets.
Richard Sawyer died in 1648 in Windsor, Connecticut; he was a plain
average “Goodman Citizen.” A part of his apparel was thus inventoried:—
£; s. d. 1 musck-colour’d cloth doublitt &; breeches 1 1
bucks leather doublitt 12 1 calves leather doublitt 6 1
liver-colour’d doublitt &; jacket &; breeches 7 1 haire-colour’d
doublitt &; jackett &; breeches 5 1 paire canvas
drawers 1 6 1 olde coate. 1 paire old gray breeches 5
1 stuffe jackett 2 6
William Kempe of “Duxborrow,” a settler of importance, died in 1641.
His wardrobe was more varied, and ample and rich. He left two
buff-coats and leather doublets with silver buttons; cloth doublets,
three horsemen’s coats, “frize jerkines,” three cassocks, two cloaks.
Of course we turn to Stubbes to see what he can say for or against
doublets. His outcry here is against their size; and those who know the
“great pease-cod-bellied doublets” of Elizabeth’s day will agree with
him that they look as if a man were wholly gone to “gourmandice and
gluttonie.”
A Doublet. A Doublet.
Stubbes has a very good list of coats and jerkins in which he gives
incidentally an excellent description by which we may know a
mandillion:—
“Their coates and jerkins as they be diuers in colours so be they
diuers in fashions; for some be made with collars, some without, some
close to the body, some loose, which they call mandilians, couering the
whole body down to the thigh, like bags or sacks, that were drawne ouer
them, hiding the dimensions and lineaments of the body. Some are
buttoned down the breast, some vnder the arme, and some down the backe,
some with flaps over the brest, some without, some with great sleeves,
some with small, some with none at all, some pleated and crested behind
and curiously gathered and some not.”
An old satirical print, dated 1644, gives drawings of men of all the
new varieties of religious belief and practices which “pestered
Christians” at the beginning of the century. With the exception of the
Adamite, whose garb is that of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all ten wear
doublets. These vary slightly, much less than in Stubbes’s list of
jerkins. One is open up the back with buttons and button-loops. Another
has the “four laps on a side,” showing it is a jerkin. Another is
opened on the hips; one is slit at back and hips. All save one from
neck to hem are buttoned in front with a single row of buttons, with no
lapells, collar, or cuffs, and no “flaps,” no ornaments or trimming. A
linen shirt-cuff and a plain band finish sleeves and neck of all save
the Arminian, who wears a small ruff. Not one of these doublets is a
graceful or an elegant garment. All are shapeless and over-plain; and
have none of the French smartness that came from the spreading
coat-skirts of men’s later wear.
The welts or wings named in the early sumptuary laws were the pieces of
cloth set at the shoulder over the arm-hole where body and sleeves
meet. The welt was at first a sort of epaulet, but grew longer and
often set out, thus deserving its title of wings.
A dress of the times is thus described:—
“His doublet was of a strange cut, the collar of it was up so high and
sharp as it would cut his throat. His wings according to the fashion
now were as little and diminutive as a Puritan’s ruff.”
A note to this says that “wings were lateral projections, extending
from each shoulder”—a good round sentence that by itself really means
nothing. Ben Jonson calls them “puff-wings.”
There is one positive rule in the shape of doublets; they were always
welted at the arm-hole. Possibly the sleeves were sometimes sewn in,
but even then there was always a cap, a welt or a hanging sleeve or
some edging. In the illustrations of the _Roxburghe Ballads_ there is
not a doublet or jerkin on man, woman, or child but is thus welted.
Some trimming around the arm-hole was a law. This lasted until the coat
was wholly evolved. This had sleeves, and the shoulder-welt vanished.
These welts were often turreted or cut in squares. You will note this
turreted shoulder in some form on nearly all the doublets given in the
portraits displayed in this book—both on men and women. For doublets
were also worn by women. Stubbes says, “Though this be a kind of attire
proper only to a man, yet they blush not to wear it.” The old print of
the infamous Mrs. Turner given here shows her in a doublet.
The high borne Prince Iames Dvke of Yorke borne October = the 13.1633
James, Duke of York.
Another author complains:—
“If Men get up French standing collars Women will have the French
standing collar too: if Dublets with little thick skirts, so short none
are able to sit upon them, women’s foreparts are thick skirted too.”
Children also had doublets and this same shoulder-cap at the arm-hole;
their little doublets were made precisely like those of their parents.
Look at the childish portrait of Lady Arabella Stuart, the portrait
with the doll. Her fat little figure is squeezed in a doublet which has
turreted welts like those worn by Anne Boleyn and by Pocahontas (shown
here). Often a button was set between each square of the welt, and the
sleeve loops or points could be tied to these buttons and thus hold up
the detached undersleeves. The portrait of Sir Richard Saltonstall
vaguely shows these buttons. Nearly all these garments-jerkins,
jackets, doublets, buff-coats, paltocks, were sleeveless, especially
when worn as the uppermost or outer garment. Holinshed tells of
“doublets full of jagges and cuts and sleeves of sundry colours.” These
welts were “embroidered, indented, waved, furred, chisel-punched,
dagged,” as well as turreted. On one sleeve the turreted welt varied,
the middle square or turret was long, the others each two inches
shorter. Thus the sleeve-welt had a “crow-step” shape. A charming
doublet sleeve of Elizabeth’s day displayed a short hanging sleeve that
was scarce more than a hanging welt. This was edged around with crystal
balls or buttons. Other welts were scalloped, with an eyelet-hole in
each scallop, like the edge of old ladies’ flannel petticoats.
Othersome welts were a round stuffed roll. This roll also had its day
around the petticoat edge, as may be seen in the petticoat of the child
Henry Gibbes. This roll still appears on Japanese kimonos.
We are constantly finding complaints of the unsuitably ambitious attire
of laboring folk in such sentences as this:—
“The plowman, in times past content in russet, must now-a-daies have
his doublett of the fashion with wide cuts; his fine garters of
Granada, to meet his Sis on Sunday. The fair one in russet frock and
mockaldo sleeves now sells a cow against Easter to buy her silken
gear.”
Velvet jerkins and damask doublets were for men of dignity and estate.
Governor Winthrop had two tufted velvet jerkins.
Jerkins and doublets varied much in shape and detail:—
“These doublets were this day short-waisted, anon, long-bellied;
by-and-by-after great-buttoned, straight-after plain-laced, or else
your buttons as strange for smallness as were before for bigness.”
An Embroidered Jerkin. An Embroidered Jerkin.
In Charles II’s time at the May-pole dances still appear the old,
welted doublets. Jack may have worn Cicily’s doublet, and Peg may have
borrowed Will’s for all the difference that can be seen. The man’s
doublet did not ever have long, hanging sleeves, however, in the
seventeenth century, while women wore such sleeves.
Sometimes the sleeves were very large, as in the Bowdoin portrait
(here). The great puffs were held out by whalebones and rolls of
cotton, and “tiring-sleeves” of wires, a fashion which has obtained for
women at least seven times in the history of English costume. Gosson
describes the vast sleeves of English doublets thus;—
“This Cloth of Price all cut in ragges,
These monstrous bones that compass arms,
These buttons, pinches, fringes, jagges,
With them he (the Devil) weaveth woeful harms.”
We have seen how bitterly the slashing of good cloth exercised good
men. The “cutting in rags” was slashing.
A favorite pattern of slashing is in small, narrow slits as shown in
the portrait here of James Douglas. These jerkins are of leather, and
the slashes are of course ornamental, and are also for health and
comfort, as those know who wear chamois jackets with perforated holes
throughout them, or slashes if we choose to call them so. They permit a
circulation of the skin and a natural condition. These jerkins are
slashed in curious little cuts, “carved of very good intail,” as was
said of King Henry’s jerkin, which means, in modern English, cut in
very good designs. And I presume, being of buff leather, the slashes
were simply cut, not overcast or embroidered as were some wool stuffs.
The guard was literally a guard to the seam, a strip of galloon, silk,
lace, velvet, put on over the seam to protect and strengthen it.
The large openings or slashes were called panes. Fynes Mayson says,
“Lord Mountjoy wore jerkins and round hose with laced panes of russet
cloth.” The Swiss dress was painted by Coryat as doublet and hose of
panes intermingled of red and yellow, trimmed with long puffs of blue
and yellow rising up between the panes. It was necessarily a costly
dress. Of course this is the same word with the same meaning as when
used in the term a “pane of glass.”
The word “pinches” refers to an elaborate pleating which was worn for
years; it lingered in America till 1750, and we have revived it in what
we term “accordion pleating.” The seventeenth-century pinching was
usually applied to lawn or some washable stuff; and there must have
been a pinching, a goffering machine by which the pinching was done to
the washed garment by means of a heated iron.
John Lilburne. John Lilburne.
Pinched sleeves, pinched partlets, pinched shirts, pinched wimples,
pinched ruffs, are often referred to, all washable garments. The good
wife of Bath wore a wimple which was “y-pinched full seemly.” Henry
VIII wore a pinched habit-shirt of finest lawn, and his fine, healthy
skin glowed pink through the folds of the lawn after his hearty
exercise at tennis and all kinds of athletic sports, for which he had
thrown off his doublet. We are taught to deem him “a spot of grease and
blood on England’s page.” There was more muscle than fat in him; he
could not be restrained from constant, violent, dangerous exercise;
this was one of the causes of the admiration of his subjects.
The pinched partlet made a fine undergarment for the slashed doublet.
So full, so close, were these “pinchings,” that one author complained
that men wearing them could not draw their bowstrings well. It was said
that the “pinched partlet and puffed sleeves” of a courtier would
easily make a lad a doublet and cloak.
In my chapter on Children’s Dress I tell of the pinched shirt worn by
Governor Bradford when an infant, and give an illustration of it.
Aglets or tags were a pretty fashion revived for women’s wear three
years ago. Under Stuart reign, these aglets were of gold or silver, and
set with precious stones such as pear-shaped pearls. For ordinary wear
they were of metal, silk, or leather. They secured from untwisting or
ravelling the points which were worn for over a century; these were
ties or laces of ribbon, or woollen yarn or leather, decorated with
tags or aglets at one end. Points were often home-woven, and were
deemed a pretty gift to a friend. They were employed instead of buttons
in securing clothes, and were used by the earliest settlers, chiefly, I
think, as ornaments at the knee or for holding up the stockings in the
place of garters. They were regarded as but foolish vanities, and were
one of the articles of finery tabooed in early sumptuary laws. In 1651
the general court of Massachusetts expressed its “utter detestation and
dislike that men of meane condition, education and calling should take
upon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of poynts at the
knees.” Fashion was more powerful than law; the richly trimmed,
sashlike garters quickly displaced the modest points.
The Earl of Southampton, friend of Shakespere and of Virginia, as
pictured on a later page, wears a doublet with agletted points around
his belt, by which breeches and doublet are tied together. This is a
striking portrait. The face is very noble. A similar belt was the
favorite wear of Charles I.
Martin Frobisher, the hero of the Armada, wears a jerkin fastened down
the front with buttons and aigletted points. (See here.) I suppose,
when the fronts of the jerkin were thoroughly joined, each button had a
point twisted or tied around it. Frobisher’s lawn ruff is a modest and
becoming one. This portrait in the original is full length. The
remainder of the costume is very plain; it has no garters, no
knee-points, no ribbons, no shoe-roses. The foot-covering is Turkish
slippers precisely like the Oriental slippers which are imported
to-day.
The Earl of Morton (here) wore a jerkin of buff leather curiously
pinked and slashed. Fulke Greville’s doublet (here) has a singular puff
around the waist, like a farthingale.Here is shown a doublet of the
commonest form; this is worn by Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire.
The portrait is painted by Sir Antonio More—the portrait of one artist
by another, and a very fine one, too.
Another garment, which is constantly named in lists of clothing, was
the cassock. Steevens says a cassock “signifies a horseman’s loose
coat, and is used in that sense by the writers of the age of
Shakespere.” It was apparently a garment much like a doublet or jerkin,
and the names were used interchangeably. I think the cassock was longer
than the doublet, and without “laps.” The straight, long coats shown on
the gentlemen in the picture here were cassocks. The name finally
became applied only to the coat or gown of the clergy. In the will of
Robert Saltonstall, made in 1650, he names a “Plush Cassock,” but cloth
cassocks were the commonest wear.
There were other names for the doublet which are now difficult to place
precisely. In the reign of Henry VIII a law was passed as to men’s wear
of velvet in their sleeveless cotes, jackets, and jupes. This word jupe
and its ally jupon were more frequently heard in women’s lists; but
jump, a derivative, was man’s wear. Randle Holme said: “A jump
extendeth to the thighs; is open and buttoned before, and may have a
slit half way behind.” It might be with or without sleeves—all this
being likewise true of the doublet. From this jump descended the modern
jumper and the eighteenth century jumps—what Dr. Johnson defined in one
of his delightsome struggles with the names of women’s attire, “Jumps:
a kind of loose or limber stays worn by sickly ladies.”
Colonel William Legge. Colonel William Legge.
Coats were not furnished to the Massachusetts or Plymouth planters, but
those of Piscataquay in New Hampshire had “lined coats,” which were
simply doublets like all the rest.
In 1633 we find that Governor Winthrop had several dozen scarlet coats
sent from England to “the Bay.” The consigner wrote, “I could not find
any Bridgwater cloth but Red; so all the coats sent are red lined with
blew, and lace suitable; which red is the choise color of all.” These
coats of double thickness were evidently doublets.
The word “coat” in the earliest lists must often refer to a waistcoat.
I infer this from the small cost of the garments, the small amount of
stuff it took to make them, and because they were worn with “Vper
coats”—upper coats. Raccoon-skin and deerskin coats were many; these
were likewise waistcoats, and the first lace coats were also
waistcoats. Robert Keayne of Boston had costly lace coats in 1640,
which he wore with doublets—these likewise were waistcoats.
As years go on, the use of the word becomes constant. There were
“moose-coats” of mooseskin. Josselyn says mooseskin made excellent
coats for martial men. Then come papous coats and pappous coats. These
I inferred—since they were used in Indian trading—were for pappooses’
wear, pappoose being the Indian word for child. But I had a painful
shock in finding in the _Traders’ Table of Values_ that “3 Pappous
Skins equal 1 Beaver”—so I must not believe that pappoose here means
Indian baby. Match-coats were originally of skins dressed with the fur
on, shaped in a coat like the hunting-shirt. The “Duffield Match-coat”
was made of duffels, a woollen stuff, in the same shape. Duffels was
called match-cloth. The word “coat” here is not really an English word;
it is matchigode, the Chippewa Indian name for this garment.
[Illustration: Sir Thomas Orchard, Knight]
We have in old-time letters and accounts occasional proof that the coat
of the Puritan fathers was not at all like the shapely coat of our day.
We have also many words to prove that the coat was a doublet which, as
old Stubbes said, could be “pleated, or crested behind and curiously
gathered.”
The tailor of the Winthrop family was one John Smith; he made garments
for them all, father, mother, children, and children’s wives, and
husband’s sisters, nieces, cousins, and aunts. He was a good Puritan,
and seems to have been much esteemed by Winthrop. One letter
accompanying a coat runs: “Good Mr. Winthrop, I have, by Mr. Downing’s
direction sent you a coat, a sad foulding colour without lace. For the
fittness I am a little vncerteyne, but if it be too bigg or too little
it is esie to amend, vnder the arme to take in or let out the lyning;
the outside may be let out in the gathering or taken in also without
any prejudice.” This instruction would appear to prove not only that
the coat was a doublet, “curiously gathered” but that the “fittness”
was more than “uncerteyne” of the coats of the Fathers. Since even such
wildly broad directions could not “prejudice” the coat, we may assume
that Governor Winthrop was more easily suited as to the cut of his
apparel, than would have been Sir Walter Raleigh or Sir Philip Sidney.
Though Puritan influence on dress simplified much of the flippery and
finery of the days of Elizabeth and James, and the refining elegance of
Van Dyck gave additional simplicity as well as beauty to women’s
attire, which it retained for many years, still there lingered
throughout the seventeenth century, ready to spring into fresh life at
a breath of encouragement, many grotesqueries of fashion in men’s dress
which, in the picturesque sneer of the day, were deemed meet only for
“a changeable-silk-gallant.” At the restoration of the crown, courtiers
seemed to love to flaunt frivolity in the faces of the Puritans.
One of these trumperies came through the excessive use of ribbons, a
use which gave much charm to women’s dress, but which ever gave to
men’s garments a finicky look. Beribboned doublets came in the
butterfly period, between worm and chrysalis, between doublet and coat;
beribboned breeches were eagerly adopted.
Shown here is the copy of an old print, which shows the dress of an
estimable and sensible gentleman, Sir Thomas Orchard, with ribbon-edged
garments and much galloon or laces. It is far too much trimmed to be
rich or elegant. See also _The English Antick_ on this page, from a
rare broadside. His tall hat is beribboned and befeathered; his face is
patched, ribbons knot his love-locks, his breeches are edged with
agletted ribbons, and “on either side are two great bunches of ribbons
of several colors.” Similar knots are at wrists and belt. His boots are
fringed with lace, and so wide that he “straddled as he went along
singing.”
The English Antick. The English Antick.
Ribboned sleeves like those of Colonel Legge, here, were a pretty
fashion, but more suited to women’s wear than to men’s.
George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, tells us what he thought of such
attire. He wrote satirically:—
“If one have store of ribands hanging about his waist or his knees and
in his hat; of divers colours red, white black or yellow, O! then he is
a brave man. He hath ribands on his back, belly and knees, and his hair
powdered, this is the array of the world. Are not these that have got
ribands hanging about their arms, hands, back, waist, knees, hats, like
fiddlers’ boys? And further if one get a pair of breeches like a coat
and hang them about with points, and tied up almost to the middle, a
pair of double cuffs on his hands, and a feather in his cap, here is a
gentleman!”
These beribboned garments were a French mode. The breeches were the
“rhingraves” of the French court, which were breeches made wholly of
loops of ribbons—like two ribboned petticoats. They caught the eye of
seafaring men; we know that Jack ashore loves finery. We are told of
sea-captains wearing beribboned breeches as they came into quiet little
American ports, and of one English gallant landing from a ship in sober
Boston, wearing breeches made wholly from waist to knee of overlapping
loops of gay varicolored ribbon. It is recorded that “the boys did
wonder and call out thereat,” and they “were chided therefor.” It is
easy to picture the scene: the staring boys, born in Boston, of Puritan
parents, of dignified dress, and more familiar with fringes on the
garments of savage Indians than on the breeches of English gentlemen;
we can see the soberly reproving minister or schoolmaster looking with
equal disapproval on the foppish visitor and the mannerless boys; and
the gayly dressed ship’s captain, armed with self-satisfaction and
masculine vanity, swaggering along the narrow streets of the little
town. It mattered not what he wore or what he did, a seafaring man was
welcome. I wonder what the governor thought of those beribboned
breeches! Perhaps he ordered a pair from London for himself,—of
sad-colored ribbons,—offering the color as a compromise for the
over-gayety of the ribbons. Randle Holme gave in 1658 three
descriptions of the first petticoat-breeches, with drawings of each.
One had the lining lower than the breeches, and tied in about the
knees; ribbons extended halfway up the breeches, and ribbons hung out
from the doublet all about the waistband. The second had a single row
of pointed ribbons hanging all around the lower edge of the breeches;
these were worn with stirrup-hose two yards wide at the top, tied by
points and eyelet-holes to the breeches. The third had stirrup-hose
tied to the breeches, and another pair of hose over them turned down at
the calf of the leg, and the ribbons edged the stirrup-hose. His
drawings of them are foolish things—not even pretty. He says ribbons
were worn first at the knees, then at the waist at the doublet edge,
then around the neck, then on the wrists and sleeves. These
knee-ribbons formed what Dryden called in 1674 “a dangling
knee-fringe.” It is difficult for me to think of Dryden living at that
period of history. He seems to me infinitely modern in comparison with
it. Evelyn describes the wearer of such a suit as “a fine silken
thing”; and tells that the ribbons were of “well-chosen colours of red,
orange, and blew, of well-gummed satin, which augured a happy fancy.”
In 1672 a suit of men’s clothes was made for the beautiful Duchess of
Portsmouth to wear to a masquerade; this was with “Rhingrave breeches
and cannons.” The suit was of dove-colored silk brocade trimmed with
scarlet and silver lace and ribbons.
The ten yards of brocade for this beautiful suit cost £;14. The
Rhingrave breeches were trimmed with thirty-six yards of figured
scarlet ribbon and thirty-six yards of plain satin ribbon and
thirty-six of scarlet taffeta ribbon; this made one hundred and eight
yards of ribbon—a great amount—an unusable amount. I fear the tailor
was not honest. There were also as trimmings twenty-two yards of
scarlet and silver vellum lace for guards; six dozen scarlet and silver
vellum buttons, smaller breast buttons, narrow laces for the waistcoat,
and silver twist for buttonholes. The suit was lined with lutestring.
There was a black beaver hat with scarlet and silver edging, and lace
embroidered scarlet stockings, a rich belt and lace garters, and point
lace ruffles for the neck, sleeves, and knees. This suit had an
interlining of scarlet camlet; and lutestring drawers seamed with
scarlet and silver lace. The total bill of £;59 would be represented
to-day by $1400,—a goodly sum,—but it was a goodly suit. There is a
portrait of the Duchess of Richmond in a similar suit, now at
Buckingham Palace. Portraits of the Duke of Bedford, and of George I,
painted by Kneller, are almost equally beribboned. The one of the king
is given facing this page to show his ribbons and also the
extraordinary shoes, which were fashionable at this date.
George I. George I.
“Indians gowns,” or banyans, were for a century worn in England and
America, and are of enough importance to receive a separate chapter in
this book. The graceful folds allured all men and all portrait
painters, just as the fashionable new china allured all women. The
banyan was not the only Oriental garment which had become of interest
to Englishmen. John Evelyn described in his _Tyrannus or the Mode_ the
“comeliness and usefulnesse” of all Persian clothing; and he noted with
justifiable gratification that the new attire which had recently been
adopted by King Charles II was “a comely dress after ye Persian mode.”
He says modestly, “I do not impute to this my discourse the change
which soone happened; but it was an identity I could not but take
notice of.”
Rugge in his _Diurnal_ describes the novel dress which was assumed by
King Charles and the whole court, due notice of a subject of so much
importance having been given to the council the previous month; and
notice of the king’s determination “never to change it,” which he kept
like many another of his promises and resolutions.
“It is a close coat of cloth pinkt with a white taffety under the
cutts. This in length reached the calf of the leg; and upon that a
sercoat cutt at the breast, which hung loose and shorter than the vest
six inches. The breeches the Spanish cutt; and buskins some of cloth,
some of leather but of the same colour as the vest or garment; of never
the like garment since William the Conqueror.”
Three Cassock Sleeves and a Buff-coat Sleeve. Three Cassock Sleeves and
a Buff-coat Sleeve.
Pepys we have seen further explained that it was all black and white,
the black cassock being close to the body. “The legs ruffled with black
ribands like a pigeon’s leg, and I wish the King may keep it for it is
a fine and handsome garment.” The news which came to the English court
a month later that the king of France had put all his footmen and
servants in this same dress as a livery made Pepys “mightie merry, it
being an ingenious kind of affront, and yet makes me angry,” which is
as curious a frame of mind as even curious Pepys could record. Planché
doubts this act of the king of France; but in _The Character of a
Trimmer_ the story is told _in extenso_—that the “vests were put on at
first by the King to make Englishmen look unlike Frenchmen; but at the
first laughing at it all ran back to the dress of French gentlemen.”
The king had already taken out the white linings as “’tis like a
magpie;” and was glad to quit it I do not doubt. Dr. Holmes—and the
rest of us—have looked askance at the word “vest” as allied in usage to
that unutterable contraction, pants. But here we find that vest is a
more classic name than waistcoat for this dull garment—a garment with
too little form or significance to be elegant or interesting or
attractive.
Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington. Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington.
Though this dress was adopted by the whole court, and though it was an
age of portrait painting,—and surely no more delicate flattery to the
king’s taste could be given than to have one’s portrait painted in the
king’s chosen vestments,—yet but one portrait remains which is stated
to display this dress. This is the portrait of Henry Bennet, Earl of
Arlington—it is shown on this page. This was painted by the king’s own
painter, Sir Peter Lely. I must say that I cannot find much resemblance
to Pepys’s or Rugge’s description, unless the word “pinked” means cut
out in an all-over pattern like Italian cut-work; then this inner vest
might be of “cloth pinkt with a white taffeta under the coat.” The
surcoat is of black lined with white. Of course the sash is present,
but not in any way distinctive. It was a characteristic act in the Earl
to be painted in this dress, for he was a courtier of courtiers,
perhaps the most rigid follower of court rules in England. He was “by
nature of a pleasant and agreeable humour,” but after a diplomatic
journey on the continent he assumed an absurd formality of manner which
was much ridiculed by his contemporaries. His letters show him to be
exceeding nice in his phraseology; and he prided himself upon being the
best-bred man in court. He was a trimmer, “the chief trickster of the
court,” a member of the Cabal, the first _a_ in the word; and he was
heartily hated as well as ridiculed. When a young man he received a cut
on the nose in a skirmish in Ireland; he never let his prowess be
forgotten, but ever after wore a black patch over the scar—it may be
seen in his portrait. When his fellow courtiers wished to gibe at him,
they stuck black patches on their noses and with long white staves
strutted around the court in imitation of his pompous manner. He is a
handsome fellow, but too fat—which was not a curse of his day as of the
present.
Figures from Funeral Procession of the Duke of Albemarle, 1670. Figures
from Funeral Procession of the Duke of Albemarle, 1670.
Of course the king changed his dress many times after this solemn
assumption of a lifelong garment. It was a restless, uncertain, trying
time in men’s dress. They had lost the doublet, and had not found the
skirted coat, and stood like the Englishman of Andrew Borde—ready to
take a covering from any nation of the earth. I wonder the coat ever
survived—that it did is proof of an inherent worth. Knowing the nature
of mankind and the modes, the surprise really is that the descendants
of Charles and all English folk are not now wearing shawls or peplums
or anything save a coat and waistcoat.
Some of the sturdy rich members of the governors’ cabinets and the
assemblies and some of our American officers who had been in his
Majesty’s army, or had served a term in the provincial militia, and had
had a hot skirmish or two with marauding Indians on the Connecticut
River frontier, and some very worthy American gentlemen who were not
widely renowned either in military or diplomatic circles and had never
worn armor save in the artist’s studio,—these were all painted by Sir
Godfrey Kneller and by Sir Peter Lely, and by lesser lights in art,
dressed in a steel corselet of the artist, and wearing their own good
Flanders necktie and their own full well-buckled wig. There were some
brave soldiers, too, who were thus painted, but there were far more in
armor than had ever smelt smoke of powder. It was a good comfortable
fashion for the busy artist. It must have been much easier when you had
painted a certain corselet a hundred times to paint it again than to
have to paint all kinds of new colors and stuffs. And the portrait in
armor was almost always kitcat, and that disposed of the legs, ever a
nuisance in portrait-painting.
While the virago-sleeves were growing more and more ornamental, and
engageants were being more and more worn by women, men’s sleeves
assumed a most interesting form. The long coat, or cassock, had sleeves
which were cut off at the elbow with great cuffs and were worn over
enormous ruffled undersleeves; and they were even cut midway between
shoulder and elbow, were slashed and pointed and beribboned to a
wonderful degree. This lasted but a few years, the years when the
cassock was shaping itself definitely into a skirted coat. Perhaps the
height of ornamentation in sleeves was in the closing years of the
reign of Charles II, though fancy sleeves lingered till the time of
George I.
Earl of Southampton. Earl of Southampton.
In an account of the funeral of George Monck, the Duke of Albemarle, in
the year 1670, the dress is very carefully drawn of those who walked in
the procession. (Some of them are given here.) It may be noted, first,
that all the hats are lower crowned and straight crowned, not like a
cone or a truncated cone, as crowns had been. The _Poor Men_ are in
robes with beards and flowing natural hair; they wear square bands, and
carry staves. The _Clergymen_ wear trailing surplices; but these are
over a sort of cassock and breeches, and they all have high-heeled
shoes with great roses. They also have their own hair. The _Doctors of
Physic_ are dressed like the _Gentlemen and Earls_, save that they wear
a rich robe with bands at the upper arm, over the other fine dress. The
gentlemen wear a cassock, or coat, which reaches to the knee; the
pockets are nearly as low as the knee. These cassocks have lapels from
neck to hem, with a long row of gold buttons which are wholly for
ornament, the cassock never being fastened with the buttons. The
sleeves reach only to the elbow and turn back in a spreading cuff; and
from the elbow hang heavy ruffles and under-sleeves, some of rich lace,
others of embroidery. The gentlemen and earls wear great wigs.
This coat was called a surcoat or tunic. The under-coat, or waistcoat,
was also called a vest, as by Charles the king.
From this vest, or surcoat, was developed a coat, with skirts, such as
had become, ere the year 1700, the universal wear of English and
American men. Its first form was adopted about at the close of the
reign of Charles II. By 1688 Quaker teachers warned their younger sort
against “cross-pockets on men’s coats, side slopes, over-full skirted
coats.”
In an old play a man threatens a country lad, “I’ll make your buttons
fly.” The lad replies, “All my buttons is loops.” Some garments,
especially leather ones, like doublets, which were cumbersome to
button, were secured by loops. For instance, in spatterdashes, a row of
holes was set on one side, and of loops on the other. To fasten them,
one must begin at the lower loop, pass this through the first hole,
then put the second loop through that first loop and the second hole,
and so on till the last loop was fastened to the breeches by buckle and
strap or large single button. From these loops were developed frogs and
loops.
Major John Pyncheon had, in 1703, a “light coulour’d cape-coat with
Frogs on it.” In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of 1736 “New
Fashion’d Frogs” are named; and later, “Spangled Scalloped &; Brocaded
Frogs.”
Though these jerkins and mandillions and doublets which were furnished
to the Bay colonists were fastened with hooks and eyes, buttons were
worn also, as old portraits and old letters prove. John Eliot ordered
for traffic with the Indians, in 1651, three gross of pewter buttons;
and Robert Keayne, of Boston, writing in 1653, said bitterly that a
“haynous offence” of his had been selling buttons at too large
profit—that they were gold buttons and he had sold them for two
shillings ninepence a dozen in Boston, when they had cost but two
shillings a dozen in London (which does not seem, in the light of our
modern profits on imported goods, a very “haynous” offence). He also
added with acerbity that “they were never payd for by those that
complayned.”
Buttonholes were a matter of ornament more than of use; in fact, they
were never used for closing the garment after coats came to be worn.
They were carefully cut and “laid around” in gay colors, embroidered
with silver and gold thread, bound with vellum, with kid, with velvet.
We find in old-time letters directions about modish buttonholes, and
drawings even, in order that the shape may be exactly as wished. An
English contemporary of John Winthrop’s has tasselled buttonholes on
his doublet.
Various are the reasons given for the placing of the two buttons on the
back of a man’s coat. One is that they are a survival of buttons which
were used on the eighteenth-century riding-coat. The coat-tails were
thus buttoned up when the wearer was on horseback. Another is that they
were used for looping back the skirts of the coats; it is said that
loops of cord were placed at the corners of the said skirts.
A curious anecdote about these two buttons on the back of the coat is
that a tribe of North American Indians, deep believers in the value of
symbolism, refused to heed a missionary because he could not explain to
them the significance of these two buttons.