have the fine fellow, the dandy--he to whom dress is a religion, to
whom stuffs are sonnets, cuts are lyrical, and tailors are the poets
of their age. Such a man will have his tunic neatly pleated, rejecting
the chance folds of the easy-fitting houppelande, the folds of which
were determined by the buckling of the belt. His folds will be regular
and precise, his collar will be very stiff, with a rolled top; his
hose will be of two colours, one to each leg, or parti-coloured. His
shoes will match his hose, and be of two colours; his turban hat will
be cocked at a jaunty angle; his sleeves will be of a monstrous length
and width. He will hang a chain about his neck, and load his
fingers with rings. A fellow to him, one of his own kidney, will wear
the skirt of his tunic a little longer, and will cause it to be cut up
the middle; his sleeves will not be pendant, like drooping wings, but
will be swollen like full-blown bagpipes. An inner sleeve, very finely
embroidered, will peep under the upper cuff. His collar is done away
with, but he wears a little hood with cut edges about his neck; his
hair is cropped in the new manner, like a priest's without a tonsure;
his hat is of the queer sugar-bag shape, and it flops in a drowsy
elegance over the stuffed brim. As for his shoes, they are two fingers
long beyond his toes.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY V. (1413-1422)
Notice the bag cap with a jewel stuck in it.]
We shall see the fashions of the two past reigns hopelessly garbled,
cobbled, and stitched together; a sleeve from one, a skirt from
another. Men-at-arms in short tunics of leather and quilted waistcoats
to wear under their half-armour; beggars in fashions dating from the
eleventh century; a great mass of people in undistinguishable attire,
looking mostly like voluminous cloaks on spindle legs, or mere bundles
of drapery; here and there a sober gentleman in a houppelande of the
simplest kind, with wide skirts reaching to his feet, and the belt
with the long tongue about his middle.
The patterns upon the dresses of these people are heraldry
contortions--heraldic beasts intertwined in screws and twists of
conventional foliage, griffins and black dogs held by floral chains to
architectural branches, martlets and salamanders struggling in
grotesque bushes, or very elaborate geometrical patterned stuffs.
There is a picture of the Middle Ages which was written by Langland in
'Piers the Plowman'--a picture of an alehouse, where Peronelle of
Flanders and Clarice of Cockeslane sit with the hangman of Tyburn and
a dozen others. It is a picture of the fourteenth century, but it
holds good until the time of Henry VIII., when Skelton, his tutor,
describes just such another tavern on the highroad, where some bring
wedding-rings to pay their scot of ale, and
'Some bryngeth her husband's hood
Because the ale is good.'
Both accounts are gems of description, both full of that rich, happy,
Gothic flavour, that sense of impressionist portraiture, of broad
humour, which distinguishes the drawings in the Loutrell Psalter.
[Illustration: The Sugar-bag Cap.]
[Illustration: A Hood.]
I feel now as if I might be accused of being interesting and of
overlaying my history with too much side comment, and I am well aware
that convention demands that such books as this shall be as dull as
possible; then shall the vulgar rejoice, because they have been
trained to believe that dullness and knowledge snore in each other's
arms.
However wholeheartedly you may set about writing a list of clothes
attributable to certain dates, there will crop up spirits of the age,
who blur the edges of the dates, and give a lifelike semblance to them
which carries the facts into the sphere of fiction, and fiction was
ever on the side of truth. No story has ever been invented by man but
it has been beaten out of time by Nature and the police-courts; no
romance has been penned so intricate but fact will supply a more
surprising twist to life. But, whereas facts are of necessity bald
and naked things, fiction, which is the wardrobe of fact, will clothe
truth in more accustomed guise.
I put before you some true facts of the clothes of this time, clothed
in a little coat of facts put fictionally. I write the word 'cloak';
describe to you that such people wore circular cloaks split at one or
both sides, on one side to the neck, on the other below the shoulder;
of semicircular cloaks, of square cloaks, of oblong cloaks, all of
which were worn (I speak of these, and you may cut them out with some
thought); but I wish to do more than that--I wish to give you a gleam
of the spirit in which the cloaks were worn. A cloak will partake of
the very soul and conscience of its owner; become draggle-tailed,
flaunting, effeminate, masterful, pompous, or dignified. Trousers, I
think, of all the garments of men, fail most to show the state of his
soul; they merely proclaim the qualities of his purse. Cloaks give
most the true man, and after that there is much in the cock of a hat
and the conduct of a cane.
In later days one might tell what manner of man had called to find you
away if he chanced to leave his snuff-box behind. This reasoning is
not finicky, but very profound; accept it in the right spirit.
Now, one more picture of the age.
The rich man at home, dressed, as I say, in his father's finery, with
some vague additions of his own, has acquired a sense of luxury. He
prefers to dine alone, in a room with a chimney and a fire in it. He
can see through a window in the wall by his side into the hall, where
his more patriarchal forebears loved to take their meals. The soiled
rushes are being swept away, and fresh herbs and rushes strewn in
their place; on these mattresses will in their turn be placed, on
which his household presently will lay them down to sleep.
THE WOMEN
Every time I write the heading 'The Women' to such chapters as these,
I feel that such threadbare cloak of chivalry as I may pin about my
shoulders is in danger of slipping off.
Should I write 'The Ladies'? But although all ladies are women, not
all women are ladies, and as it is far finer to be a sweet woman than
a great dame, I will adhere to my original heading, 'The Women.'
However, in the remote ages of which I now write, the ladies were
dressed and the women wore clothes, which is a subtle distinction. I
dare not bring my reasoning up to the present day.
As I said in my last chapter, this was an age of medley--of this and
that wardrobe flung open, and old fashions renovated or carried on.
Fashion, that elusive goddess, changes her moods and modes with such a
quiet swiftness that she leaves us breathless and far behind, with a
bundle of silks and velvets in our arms.
How is a fashion born? Who mothers it? Who nurses it to fame, and in
whose arms does it die? High collar, low collar, short hair, long
hair, boot, buskin, shoe--who wore you first? Who last condemned you
to the World's Great Rag Market of Forgotten Fads?
Now this, I have said, was a transitional age, but I cannot begin to
say who was the first great dame to crown her head with horns, and who
the last to forsake the jewelled caul. It is only on rare occasions
that the decisive step can be traced to any one person or group of
persons: Charles II. and his frock-coat, Brummell and his starched
stock, are finger-posts on Fashion's highroad, but they are not quite
true guides. Charles was recommended to the coat, and I think the mist
of soap and warm water that enshrines Brummell as the Apostle of
Cleanliness blurs also the mirror of truth. It does not much matter.
No doubt--and here there will be readers the first to correct me and
the last to see my point--there are persons living full of curious
knowledge who, diving yet more deeply into the dusty crevices of
history, could point a finger at the man who first cut his hair in the
early fifteenth-century manner, and could write you the name and the
dignities of the lady who first crowned her fair head with horns.
For myself, I begin with certainty at Adam and the fig-leaf, and after
that I plunge into the world's wardrobe in hopes.
Certain it is that in this reign the close caul grew out of all decent
proportions, and swelled into every form of excrescence and
protuberance, until in the reign of Henry VI. it towered above the
heads of the ladies, and dwarfed the stature of the men.
This curious head-gear, the caul, after a modest appearance, as a mere
close, gold-work cap, in the time of Edward III., grew into a stiffer
affair in the time of Richard II., but still was little more than a
stiff sponge-bag of gold wire and stuff and a little padding; grew
still more in the time of Henry IV., and took squarer shapes and
stiffer padding; and in the reign of Henry V. it became like a great
orange, with a hole cut in it for the face--an orange which covered
the ears, was cut straight across the forehead, and bound all round
with a stiff jewelled band.
Then came the idea of the horn. Whether some superstitious lady
thought that the wearing of horns would keep away the evil eye, or
whether it was a mere frivol of some vain Duchess, I do not know.
As this fashion came most vividly into prominence in the following
reign, I shall leave a more detailed description of it until that
time, letting myself give but a short notice of its more simple forms.
We see the caul grow from its circular shape into two box forms on
either side of the head; the uppermost points of the boxes are
arranged in horns, whose points are of any length from 4 to 14 inches.
The top of this head-dress is covered with a wimple, which is
sometimes stiffened with wires.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY V. (1413-1422)
Her surcoat is stiffened in front with fur and shaped with a band of
metal. Her belt is low on the hips of the under-dress. The horns on
her head carry the large linen wimple.]
There is also a shape something like a fez or a flower-pot, over which
a heavy wimple is hung, attached to this shape; outside the wimple are
two horns of silk, linen, or stuff--that is, silk bags stuffed to the
likeness of horns.
I should say that a true picture of this time would give but few of
these very elaborate horn head-dresses, and the mass of women would be
wearing the round caul.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry V.}]
The surcoat over the cotehardie is the general wear, but it has more
fit about it than formerly; the form of the waist and bust are
accentuated by means of a band of heavy gold embroidery, shaped to the
figure. The edges of the surcoat are furred somewhat heavily, and the
skirt often has a deep border of fur. Sometimes a band of metal
ornament runs across the top of the breast and down the centre of the
surcoat, coming below the fur edging. The belt over the hips of the
cotehardie holds the purse, and often a ballade or a rondel.
You will see a few of the old houppelandes, with their varieties of
sleeve, and in particular that long, loose double sleeve, or, rather,
the very long under-sleeve, falling over the hand. This under-sleeve
is part of the houppelande.
All the dresses have trains, very full trains, which sweep the ground,
and those readers who wish to make such garments must remember to be
very generous over the material.
The women commonly wear the semicircular mantle, which they fasten
across them by cords running through ornamental brooches.
They wear very rich metal and enamel belts round their hips, the exact
ornamentation of which cannot be described here; but it was the
ornament of the age, which can easily be discovered.
In the country, of course, simpler garments prevail, and plain
surcoats and cotehardies are wrapped in cloaks and mantles of homespun
material. The hood has not fallen out of use for women, and the peaked
hat surmounts it for riding or rough weather. Ladies wear wooden clogs
or sandals besides their shoes, and they have not yet taken to the
horns upon their heads; some few of them, the great dames of the
counties whose lords have been to London on King's business, or
returned from France with new ideas, have donned the elaborate
business of head-boxes and wires and great wimples.
As one of the ladies rides in the country lanes, she may pass that
Augustine convent where Dame Petronilla is spiritual Mother to so
many, and may see her in Agincourt year keeping her pig-tally with
Nicholas Swon, the swineherd. They may see some of the labourers she
hires dressed in the blood-red cloth she has given them, for the
dyeing of which she paid 7s. 8d. for 27 ells. The good dame's nuns are
very neat; they have an allowance of 6s. 8d. a year for dress.
This is in 1415. No doubt next year my lady, riding through the lanes,
will meet some sturdy beggar, who will whine for alms, pleading that
he is an old soldier lately from the field of Agincourt.
NOTE
As there is so little real change, for drawings of women's dress see
the numerous drawings in previous chapter.
HENRY THE SIXTH
Reigned thirty-nine years: 1422-1461.
Born 1421. Dethroned 1461. Died 1471. Married, 1446,
Margaret of Anjou.
THE MEN
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.; two types of sleeve}]
What a reign! Was history ever better dressed?
I never waver between the cardboard figures of the great Elizabethan
time and this reign as a monument to lavish display, but if any time
should beat this for quaintness, colour, and variety, it is the time
of Henry VIII.
Look at the scenes and characters to be dressed: John, Duke of
Bedford, the Protector, Joan of Arc, Jack Cade, a hundred other
people; Crevant, Verneuil, Orleans, London Bridge, Ludlow, St.
Albans, and a hundred other historical backgrounds.
Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of the fact that Joan of Arc is
one of the world's personalities, it is difficult to pick our people
out of the tapestries.
Now, you may have noticed that in trying to recreate a period in your
mind certain things immediately swing into your vision: it is
difficult to think of the Conquest without the Bayeux tapestry; it is
difficult to think of the dawn of the sixteenth century without the
dreamy, romantic landscapes which back the figures of Giorgione; and
it is not easy to think of these people of the Henry VI. period
without placing them against conventional tapestry trees, yellow-white
castles with red, pepper-pot roofs, grass luxuriant with needlework
flowers, and all the other accessories of the art.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}]
The early times are easily imagined in rough surroundings or in open
air; knights in armour ride quite comfortably down modern English
lanes. Alfred may burn his cakes realistically, and Canute rebuke his
courtiers on the beach--these one may see in the round. Elizabeth
rides to Tilbury, Charles II. casts his horoscope, and George rings
the bell, each in their proper atmosphere, but the Dark Ages are dark,
not only in modes of thought, but in being ages of grotesque, of
ornamentation, of anything but realism.
One has, I think, a conventional mind's eye for the times from Edward
I. to Richard III., from 1272 to 1485, and it is really more easy for
a Chinaman to call up a vision of 604 A.D., when Laot-sen, the Chinese
philosopher, was born. Laot-sen, the child-old man, he who was born
with white hair, lived till he was eighty-one, and, having had five
million followers, went up to heaven on a black buffalo. In China
things have changed very little: the costume is much the same, the
customs are the same, the attitude towards life has not changed. But
here the semicivilized, superstitious, rather dirty, fourteenth and
fifteenth century person has gone. Scratch a Russian, they say, and
you will see a Tartar; do the same office by an Englishman, and you
may find a hint of the Renaissance under his skin, but no more. The
Middle Ages are dead and dust.
We will proceed with that congenial paradox which states that the seat
of learning lies in the head, and so discuss the most distinctive
costumery of this time, the roundlet.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.; two types of
head-gear}]
Now, the roundlet is one of those things which delight the
clothes-hunter or the costume expert. It is the natural result of a
long series of fashions for the head, and its pedigree is free from
any impediment or hindrance; it is the great-grandson of the hood,
which is derived from a fold in a cloak, which is the beginning of all
things.
I am about to run the risk of displeasure in repeating to some extent
what I have already written about the chaperon, the hood, and the
other ancestors and descendants of the roundlet.
A fashion is born, not made. Necessity is the mother of Art, and Art
is the father of Invention. A man must cover his head, and if he has a
cloak, it is an easy thing in rain or sunshine to pull the folds of
the cloak over his head. An ingenious fellow in the East has an idea:
he takes his 8 feet--or more--of material; he folds it in half, and
at about a foot and a half, or some such convenient length, he puts
several neat and strong stitches joining one point of the folded
material. When he wraps this garment about him, leaving the sewn point
in the centre of his neck at the back, he finds that he has directed
the folds of his coat in such a manner as to form a hood, which he may
place on or off his head more conveniently than the plain unsewn
length of stuff. The morning sun rises on the sands of Sahara and
lights upon the first burnoose. By a simple process in tailoring, some
man, who did not care that the peak of his hood should be attached to
his cloak, cut his cloth so that the cloak had a hood, the peak of
which was separate and so looser, and yet more easy to pull on or off.
Now comes a man who was taken by the shape of the hood, but did not
require to wear a cloak, so he cut his cloth in such a way that he had
a hood and shoulder-cape only. From this to the man who closed the
front of the hood from the neck to the edge of the cape is but a quick
and quiet step. By now necessity was satisfied and had given birth to
art. Man, having admired his face in the still waters of a pool,
seeing how the oval framed in the hood vastly became him, sought
to tickle his vanity and win the approbation of the other sex, so,
taking some shears, cut the edge of his cape in scallops and leaves. A
more dandified fellow, distressed at the success of his brother's
plumage, caused the peak of his hood to be made long.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VI. (1422-1461)
His hair is cropped over his ears and has a thick fringe on his
forehead. Upon the ground is his roundlet, a hat derived from the
twisted chaperon of Richard II.'s day. This hat is worn to-day, in
miniature, on the shoulder of the Garter robes.]
Need one say more? The long peak grew and grew into the preposterous
liripipe which hung down the back from the head to the feet. The dandy
spirit of another age, seeing that the liripipe can grow no more, and
that the shape of the hood is common and not in the true dandiacal
spirit, whips off his hood, and, placing the top of his head where his
face was, he twists the liripipe about his head, imprisons part of the
cape, and, after a fixing twist, slips the liripipe through part of
its twined self and lets the end hang down on one side of his face,
while the jagged end of the hood rises or falls like a cockscomb on
the other. Cockscomb! there's food for discussion in that--fops,
beaux, dandies, coxcombs--surely.
I shall not go into the matter of the hood with two peaks, which was
not, I take it, a true child of fashion in the direct line, but a mere
cousin--a junior branch at that.
As to the dates on this family tree, the vague, mysterious beginnings
B.C.--goodness knows when--in a general way the Fall, the Flood, and
the First Crusade, until the time of the First Edward; the end of the
thirteenth century, when the liripipe budded, the time of the Second
Edward; the first third of the fourteenth century, when the liripipe
was in full flower, the time of the Third Edward; the middle of the
fourteenth century, when the liripipe as a liripipe was dying, the
time of the Second Richard; the end of the century, when the chaperon
became the twisted cockscomb turban. Then, after that, until the
twenty-second year of the fifteenth century, when the roundlet was
born--those are the dates.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}]
We have arrived by now, quite naturally, at the roundlet. I left you
interested at the last phase of the hood, the chaperon so called,
twisted up in a fantastical shape on man's head. You must see that the
mere process of tying and retying, twisting, coiling and arranging,
was tedious in the extreme, especially in stirring times with the
trumpets sounding in England and France. Now what more likely for the
artist of the tied hood than to puzzle his brains in order to reach a
means by which he could get at the effect without so much labour!
Enter invention--enter invention and exit art. With invention, the
made-up chaperon sewn so as to look as if it had been tied. There was
the twist round the head, the cockscomb, the hanging piece of
liripipe. Again this was to be simplified: the twist made into a
smooth roll, the skull to be covered by an ordinary cap attached to
the roll, the cockscomb converted into a plain piece of cloth or silk,
the liripipe to become broader. And the end of this, a little round
hat with a heavily-rolled and stuffed brim, pleated drapery hanging
over one side and streamer of broad stuff over the other; just such a
hat did these people wear, on their heads or slung over their
shoulder, being held in the left hand by means of the streamer. There
the honourable family of hood came to a green old age, and was, at the
end of the fifteenth century, allowed to retire from the world of
fashion, and was given a pension and a home, in which home you may
still see it--on the shoulders of the Garter robe. Also it has two
more places of honourable distinction--the roundlet is on the Garter
robe; the chaperon, with the cut edge, rests as a cockade in the hats
of liveried servants, and the minutest member of the family remains in
the foreign buttons of honourable Orders.
[Illustration: {Six types of head-gear}]
We have the roundlet, then, for principal head-gear in this reign, but
we must not forget that the hood is not dead; it is out of the strict
realms of fashion, but it is now a practical country garment, or is
used for riding in towns. There are also other forms of
head-wear--tall, conical hats with tall brims of fur, some brims cut
or scooped out in places; again, the hood may have a furred edge
showing round the face opening; then we see a cap which fits the head,
has a long, loose back falling over the neck, and over this is worn a
roll or hoop of twisted stuff. Then there is the sugar-loaf hat, like
a circus clown's, and there is a broad, flat-brimmed hat with a round
top, like Noah's hat in the popular representations of the Ark.
[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry VI.}]
Besides these, we have the jester's three-peaked hood and one-peaked
hood, the cape of which came, divided into points, to the knees, and
had arms with bell sleeves.
Let us see what manner of man we have under such hats: almost without
exception among the gentlemen we have the priestly hair--that queer,
shaved, tonsure-like cut, but without the circular piece cut away from
the crown of the head.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VI.}]
The cut of the tunic in the body has little variation; it may be
longer or shorter, an inch above or an inch below the knee, but it is
on one main principle. It is a loose tunic with a wide neck open in
front about a couple or three inches; the skirt is full, and may be
cut up on one or both sides; it may be edged with fur or some stuff
different to the body of the garment, or it may be jagged, either in
regular small scoops or in long fringe-like jags. The tunic is always
belted very low, giving an odd appearance to the men of this time, as
it made them look very short in the leg.
The great desire for variety is displayed in the forms of sleeve for
this tunic: you may have the ordinary balloon sleeve ending in a stuff
roll or fur edge for cuff, or you may have a half-sleeve, very wide
indeed, like shoulder-capes, and terminated in the same manner as the
bottom of the tunics--that is, fur-edged tunic, fur-edged sleeve, and
so on, as described; under this shows the tight sleeve of an
undergarment, the collar of which shows above the tunic collar at the
neck. The length of these shoulder-cape sleeves varies according to
the owner's taste, from small epaulettes to heavy capes below the
elbow. There is also a sleeve tight from wrist to below the elbow, and
at that point very big and wide, tapering gradually to the shoulder.
You will still see one or two high collars rolled over, and there is a
distinct continuance of the fashion for long-pointed shoes.
There is an almost new form of overcoat which is really a tunic of the
time, unbelted, and with the sleeves cut out; also one with short, but
very full, sleeves, the body very loose; and besides the ordinary
forms of square, oblong, and round cloak, there is a circular cloak
split up the right side to the base of the biceps, with a round hole
in the centre, edged with fur, for the passage of the head.
[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry VI.}]