in the place of blankets. It was made in all kinds of beautiful
designs, diapered, and raised over a ground of gold or silk, or
double-piled, one pile on another of the same colour making the
pattern known by the relief.
The massed effect of well-dressed crowds must have been fine and rich
in colour--here and there a very rich lady or a magnificent gentleman
in pall (the beautiful gold or crimson web, known also as bandekin),
the velvets, the silks of marvellous colours, and none too fresh or
new. I think that such a gathering differed most strongly from a
gathering of to-day by the fact that one is impressed to-day with the
new, almost tinny newness, of the people's clothes, and that these
other people were not so extravagant in the number of their dresses
as in the quality, so that then one would have seen many old and
beautifully-faded velvets and sun-licked silks and rain-improved
cloths.
Among all this crowd would pass, in a plain tunic and short shoes,
Henry, the ascetic King.
THE WOMEN
[Illustration: {Six types of head-dress for women}]
One is almost disappointed to find nothing upon the curious subject of
horns in 'Sartor Resartus.' Such a flaunting, Jovian spirit, and
poetry of abuse as might have been expected from the illustrious and
iconoclastic author would have suited me, at this present date, most
admirably.
I feel the need of a few thundering German words, or a brass band at
the end of my pen, or purple ink in my inkwell, or some fantastic and
wholly arresting piece of sensationalism by which to convey to you
that you have now stepped into the same world as the Duchess out of
'Alice in Wonderland.'
[Illustration: {A head-dress for a woman}]
Look out of your window and see upon the flower-enamelled turf a
hundred bundles of vanity taking the air. The heads of these ladies
are carried very erect, as are all heads bearing weights. The waists
of these ladies are apparently under their bosoms; their feet seem to
be an ell long. An assembly hour is, after the manner of Lydgate's
poem, a dream of delicious faces surmounted by minarets, towers,
horns, excrescences of every shape--enormous, fat, heart-shaped
erections, covered with rich, falling drapery, or snow-white linen, or
gold tissue; gold-wire boxes sewn with pearls and blazing with
colours; round, flat-topped caps, from under which girls' hair escapes
in a river of colour; crown shapes, circular shapes, mitre shapes,
turbans, and shovel-shaped linen erections, wired into place.
Oh, my lady, my lady! how did you ever hear the soft speeches of
gallantry? How did the gentle whispers of love ever penetrate those
bosses of millinery?
[Illustration: {Two types of head-dress for women}]
And the moralists, among whom Heaven forbid that I should be found,
painted lurid pictures for you of hell and purgatory, in which such
head-dresses turned into instruments of torture; you lifted your
long-fingered, medieval hand and shook the finger with the toad-stone
upon it, as if to dispel the poison of their words.
I think it is beyond me to describe in understandable terms the proper
contortions of your towered heads, for I have little use for archaic
words, for crespine, henk, and jacque, for herygouds with honginde
sleeves, for all the blank cartridges of antiquarianism. I cannot
convey the triple-curved crown, the ear buttress, the magnet-shaped
roll in adequate language, but I can draw them for you.
[Illustration: {Two women of the time of Henry VI.}]
I will attempt the most popular of the roll head-dresses and the
simpler of the stiff-wired box. Take a roll, stuffed with hemp or tow,
of some rich material and twist it into the form of a heart in front
and a V shape behind, where join the ends, or, better, make a circle
or hoop of your rolled stuff and bend it in this way. Then make a cap
that will fit the head and come over the ears, and make it so that
this cap shall join the heart-shaped roll at all points and cause it
to appear without any open spaces between the head and the roll; the
point of the heart in front will be round, and will come over the
centre of the face. By joining cap and roll you will have one complete
affair; over this you may brooch a linen wimple or a fine piece of
jagged silk. In fact, you may twist your circle of stuff in any
manner, providing you keep a vague U shape in front and completely
cover the hair behind.
For the box pattern it is necessary to make a box, let us say of
octagonal shape, flat before and behind, or slightly curved; cut away
the side under the face, or leave but a thin strip of it to go under
the chin. Now stuff your box on either side of the face and cut away
the central square, except for 3 inches at the top, on the forehead;
here, in this cut-away piece, the face shows. You will have made your
box of buckram and stuffed the wings of it with tow; now you must fit
your box to a head and sew linen between the sides of the head and the
tow to hold it firm and make it good to wear. You have now finished
the rough shape, and you must ornament it. Take a piece of thin gold
web and cover your box, then get some gold braid and make a diaper or
criss-cross pattern all over the box, leaving fair sized lozenges; in
these put, at regular intervals as a plain check, small squares of
crimson silk so that they fit across the lozenge and so make a double
pattern. Now take some gold wire or brass wire and knot it at neat
intervals, and then stitch it on to the edges of the gold braid, after
which pearl beads may be arranged on the crimson squares and at the
cross of the braid; then you will have your box-patterned head-dress
complete.
It remains for you to enlarge upon this, if you wish, in the following
manner: take a stiff piece of wire and curve it into the segment of a
circle, so that you may bend the horns as much or as little as you
will, fasten the centre of this to the band across the forehead, or on
to the side-boxes, and over it place a large wimple with the front
edge cut. Again, for further enhancement of this delectable piece of
goods, you may fix a low gold crown above all--a crown of an
elliptical shape--and there you will have as much magnificence as ever
graced lady of the fifteenth century.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VI. (1422-1461)
Her head-dress is very high, and over it is a coloured and jagged
silk wimple, a new innovation, being a change from the centuries of
white linen wimples. Her waist is high, after a long period of low
waists.]
September 28, 1443, Margaret Paston writes to her husband in London
'I would ye were at home, if it were your ease, and your
sore might be as well looked to here as it is where ye
be now, liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet.'
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]
My dear diplomatist, I have forgotten if you got both your husband and
the gown, or the gown only, but it was a sweetly pretty letter, and
worded in such a way as must have caused your good knight to smile,
despite his sore. And what had you in your mind's eye when you wrote
'liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet'? It was one of those
new gowns with the high waist and the bodice opening very low, the
collar quite over your shoulders, and the thick fur edge on your
shoulders and tapering into a point at your bosom. You wanted sleeves
like wings, and a fur edge to the bottom of the gown, besides the fur
upon the edges of the sleeves--those quaint sleeves, thin to your
elbows, and then great and wide, like a foresail. I suppose you had
an under-gown of some wonderful diapered silk which you thought would
go well with scarlet, because, as you knew, the under-gown would show
at your neck, and its long train would trail behind you, and its skirt
would fall about your feet and show very bravely when you bunched up
the short upper gown--all the mode--and so you hinted at scarlet.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]
Now I come to think of it, the sleeve must have been hard to arrive
at, the fashions were so many. To have had them tight would have
minimized the use of your undergarment; to have had them of the same
width from elbow to wrist would not have given you the newest of the
new ideas to show in Norfolk; then, for some reason, you rejected the
bag sleeve, which was also in the fashion.
No doubt you had a cotehardie with well-fitting sleeves and good full
skirts, and a surcoat with a wide fur edge, or perhaps, in the latest
fashion of these garments, with an entire fur bodice to it. You may
have had also one of those rather ugly little jackets, very full, with
very full sleeves which came tight at the wrist, long-waisted, with a
little skirt an inch or so below the belt. A mantle, with cords to
keep it on, I know you had. Possibly--I have just thought of it--the
sleeves of your under-gown, the tight sleeves, were laced together
from elbow to wrist, in place of the old-fashioned buttons.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]
I wonder if you ever saw the great metal-worker, William Austin, one
of the first among English artists to leave a great name behind him--I
mean the Austin who modelled the effigy of Earl Richard Beauchamp, at
Warwick.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]
You must have heard the leper use his rattle to warn you of his
proximity. You, too, may have thought that Joan of Arc was a sorceress
and Friar Bungay a magician. You may have--I have not your wonderful
letter here for reference--heard all about Eleanor of Cobham, and how
she did penance in a shift in the London streets for magic against the
King's person.
Some ladies, I notice, wore the long-tongued belt--buckled it in
front, and then pushed it round until the buckle came into the centre
of the back and the tongue hung down like a tail; but these ladies
were not wearing the high-waisted gown, but a gown with a normal
waist, and with no train, but a skirt of even fulness and of the same
length all the way round.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]
There were striped stuffs, piled velvet, rich-patterned silks, and
homespun cloths and wool to choose from. Long-peaked shoes, of course,
and wooden clogs out of doors.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]
The town and country maids, the merchants' wives, and the poor
generally, each and all according to purse and pride, dressed in
humbler imitation of the cut of the clothes of the high-born, in quite
simple dresses, with purse, girdle, and apron, with heads in hoods, or
twisted wimples of coarse linen.
Well, there you lie, ladies, on the tops of cold tombs, stiff and
sedate, your hands uplifted in prayer, your noses as often as not
knocked off by later-day schoolboys, crop-headed Puritans, or Henry
VIII.'s sacrilegious hirelings. Lie still in your huge head-dresses
and your neat-folded gowns--a moral, in marble or bronze, of the pomps
and vanities of this wicked world.
EDWARD THE FOURTH
Reigned twenty-two years: 1461-1483.
Born 1441. Married, 1464, Elizabeth Woodville.
THE MEN
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.}]
I invite you to call up this reign by a picture of Caxton's shop: you
may imagine yourself in the almonry at Westminster, where, in a small
enclosure by the west front of the church, there is a chapel and some
almshouses. You will be able to see the rich come to look at Mr.
Caxton's wares and the poor slinking in to receive alms.
'If it please any man, spiritual or temporal, to buy any
pyes of two or three commemorations of Salisbury use
emprynted after the form of this present letter, which
be well and truly correct, let him come to Westminster
into the Almonry at the red pale, and he shall have them
good cheap.'
This was Caxton's advertisement.
As you watch the people going and coming about the small enclosure,
you will notice that the tonsured hair has gone out of fashion, and
that whereas the merchants, citizens, and such people wear the
roundlet hat, the nobles and fine gentlemen are in black velvet caps,
or tall hats with long-peaked brims, or in round high hats with fur
brim close to the crown of the hat, or in caps with little rolled
brims with a button at the top, over which two laces pass from back to
front, and from under the brim there falls the last sign, the dying
gasp of the liripipe, now jagged and now with tasselled ends.
We have arrived at the generally accepted vague idea of 'medieval
costume,' which means really a hazy notion of the dress of this date:
a steeple head-dress for ladies, a short waist, and a train; a tall,
sugar-loaf hat with a flat top for the men, long hair, very short and
very long tunics, long-pointed shoes, and wide sleeves--this, I think,
is the amateur's idea of 'costume in the Middle Ages.'
You will notice that all, or nearly all, the passers-by Caxton's have
long hair; that the dandies have extra-long hair brushed out in a
cloud at the back; that the older men wear long, very simple gowns,
which they belt in at the waist with a stuff or leather belt, on which
is hung a bag-purse; that these plain gowns are laced across the front
to the waist over a vest of some coloured stuff other than the gown.
[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Edward IV.}]
You will see that the poor are in very simple tunics--just a loose,
stuff shirt with sleeves about 8 inches wide, and with the skirts
reaching to the knees, a belt about their middle--rough, shapeless
leather shoes, and woollen tights.
You will remember in the early part of the reign, before the heraldic
shield with the red pale, Caxton's sign, caught your eye, that the
fashionable wore very wide sleeves, great swollen bags fitting only at
shoulder and wrist, and you may recall the fact that a tailor was
fined twenty shillings in 1463 for making such wide sleeves.
Poulaines, the very long shoes, are now forbidden, except that an
esquire and anyone over that rank might wear them 2 inches beyond the
toes; but I think the dandies wore the shoes and paid the fine if
it were enforced.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD IV. (1461-1483)
Notice the jagged ribbon falling from the brim of his hat; this is
the last of the liripipe.]
See Caxton, in a sober-coloured gown, long, and laced in the front,
showing a plain vest under the lacing, talking to some of his great
customers. The Duchess of Somerset has just lent him 'Blanchardine and
Eglantine'; Earl Rivers, the Queen's brother, talks over his own
translation of 'The Sayings of the Philosophers'; and Caxton is
extolling that worshipful man Geoffrey Chaucer, and singing praises in
reverence 'for that noble poet and great clerke, Vergyl.'
Edward himself has been to the shop and has consented to become patron
of an edition of Tully--Edward, with his very subtle face, his tall,
handsome appearance, his cold, elegant manners. He is dressed in a
velvet gown edged with fur; the neck of the gown is low, and the silk
vest shows above it. Across his chest are gold laces tapering to his
waist; these are straight across the front of his gown-opening. His
hair is straight, and falls to the nape of his neck; he wears a black
velvet cap upon his head. The skirts of his gown reach to his knees,
and are fur-edged; his sleeves are full at the elbows and tight over
his wrists; he is wearing red Spanish leather tall boots, turned
over at the top.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.; lacing on a cut
sleeve}]
As he stands talking to Caxton, one or two gentlemen, who have also
dismounted, stand about him. Three of them are in the height of the
fashion. The first wears a velvet tunic, with fur edges. The tunic is
pleated before and behind, and is full and slightly pursed in front;
the sleeves are long, and are cut from shoulder to wrist, where they
are sewn together again; cuff and border of the cut or opening are
both edged with fur. The neck is high, but there is no collar. The
length of the tunic is quite short; it comes well above the knees. His
under-sleeves are full, and are of rich silk; his shoes are certainly
over the allowed length; his tights are well cut. His peaked hat has
gold bands round the crown.
The second gentleman is also in a very short tunic, with very wide
sleeves; this tunic is pleated into large even folds, and has a belt
of its own material. His hair is long, and bushed behind; his tights
are in two colours, and he wears an eighteen-penny pair of black
leather slops or shoes. His hat is black, tall, but without a peak; a
long feather is brooched into one side of it.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.; three types of boot}]
The third man is wearing a low black cap, with a little close brim; a
jagged piece of stuff, about 3 feet long, hangs from under the brim of
his hat. He is wearing long, straight hair. This man is wearing a
little short tunic, which is loose at the waist, and comes but an inch
or two below it; the sleeves are very loose and wide, and are not
fastened at the wrist; the tunic has a little collar. The shortness of
his tunic shows the whole of his tights, and also the ribbon-fastened
cod-piece in front. His shoes are split at the sides, and come into a
peak before and behind.
Now, our gentlemen of this time, having cut open their baggy sleeves,
and made them to hang down and expose all the under-sleeve, must now
needs lace them up again very loosely. Then, by way of change, the
tight sleeve was split at the elbow to show a white shirt. Then came
the broad shoulders, when the sleeves were swelled out at the top to
give an air of great breadth to the shoulders and a more elegant taper
to the waist. Some men had patterns sewn on one leg of their tights.
The gown, or whatever top garment was being worn, was sometimes cut
into a low, V shape behind at the neck to show the undergarment, above
which showed a piece of white shirt.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward IV.}]
A long gown, in shape like a monk's habit, wide sleeves, the same
width all the way down, a loose neck--a garment indeed to put on over
the head, to slip on for comfort and warmth--was quite a marked
fashion in the streets--as marked as the little tunic.
[Illustration: {Twelve types of head-gear for men}]
If you are remembering Caxton's shop and a crowd of gentlemen, notice
one in a big fur hat, which comes over his eyes; and see also a man
who has wound a strip of cloth about his neck and over his head, then,
letting one end hang down, has clapped his round, steeple-crowned hat
over it.
You will see high collars, low collars, and absence of collar, long
gown open to the waist, long gown without opening, short-skirted
tunic, tunic without any skirt, long, short, and medium shoes, and, at
the end of the reign, one or two broad-toed shoes. Many of these men
would be carrying sticks; most of them would have their fingers
covered with rings.
Among the group of gentlemen about Edward some merchants have pressed
closer to see the King, and a girl or two has stolen into the front
row. The King, turning to make a laughing remark to one of his
courtiers, will see a roguish, pretty face behind him--the face of a
merchant's wife; he will smile at her in a meaning way.
THE WOMEN
[Illustration: {A head-dress for a woman}]
France, at this date, shows us a sartorial Savonarola, by name Thomas
Conecte, a preaching friar, who held an Anti-Hennin Crusade, which
ended in a bonfire of these steeple head-dresses. The flames of these
peculiar hats lit up the inspired devotees, and showed their heads
wrapped in plain linen wimples or some little unaffected caps. But the
ashes were hardly cold before the gray light of the next day showed
the figure of the dreaded preacher small upon the horizon, and lit
upon the sewing-maids as they sat making fresh steeples for the
adornment of their ladies' heads.
Joan of Arc is dead, and another very different apparition of
womankind looms out of the mists of history. Whilst Joan of Arc is
hymned and numbered among the happy company of saints triumphant, Jane
Shore is roared in drinking-songs and ballads of a disreputable order,
and is held up as an awful example. She has for years been represented
upon the boards of West End and Surrey-side theatres--in her prime as
the mistress of Edward IV., in her penance before the church door, and
in her poverty and starvation, hounded from house to house in a
Christian country where bread was denied to her. I myself have seen
her through the person of a stout, melancholy, and h-less lady, who,
dressed in a sort of burlesque fish-wife costume, has lain dying on
the prompt-side of the stage, in a whirl of paper snow, while, to the
edification of the twopenny gallery, she has bewailed her evil life,
and has been allowed, by a munificent management, to die in the arms
of white-clad angels. There is a gleam of truth in the representation,
and you may see the real Jane Shore in a high steeple head-dress, with
a thin veil thrown over it, with a frontlet or little loop of black
velvet over her forehead; in a high-waisted dress, open in a V shape
from shoulder to waist, the opening laced over the square-cut
under-gown, the upper gown having a collar of fur or silk, a long
train, broad cuffs, perhaps 7 inches long from the base of her
fingers, with a broad, coloured band about her waist, a broader
trimming of the same colour round the hem of her shirt, and in long
peaked shoes. In person of mean stature, her hair dark yellow, her
face round and full, her eyes gray, and her countenance as cheerful as
herself. The second real picture of her shows you a haggard woman,
with her hair unbound and falling about her shoulders, shivering in a
shift, which she clutches about her with one hand, while the other
holds a dripping candle; and the third picture shows an old woman in
dirty wimple and untidy rags.
[Illustration: {Six types of head-dress for women}]
There are many ways of making the steeple head-dress. For the most
part they are long, black-covered steeples, resting at an angle of
forty-five degrees to the head, the broad end having a deep velvet
band round it, with hanging sides, which come to the level of the
chin; the point end has a long veil attached to it, which floats
lightly down, or is carried on to one shoulder. Sometimes this steeple
hat is worn over a hood, the cape of which is tucked into the dress.
Some of these hats have a jutting, upturned piece in front, and they
are also covered with all manner of coloured stuffs, but not commonly
so. All persons having an income of L10 a year and over will have that
black velvet loop, the frontlet, sewn into their hats. There is
another new shape for hats, varying in height from 8 to 18 inches. It
is a cylinder, broader at the top than the bottom, the crown sometimes
flat and sometimes rounded into the hat itself; this hat is generally
jewelled, and covered with rich material. The veils are attached to
these hats in several ways; either they float down behind from the
centre of the crown of the hat, or they are sewn on to the base
of the hat, and are supported on wires, so as to shade the face,
making a roof over it, pointed in front and behind, or flat across the
front and bent into a point behind, or circular. Take two circles of
wire, one the size of the base of your hat and the other larger, and
dress your linen or thin silk upon them; then you may pinch the wire
into any variations of squares and circles you please.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD IV. (1461-1483)
She wears the high hennin from which hangs a wisp of linen. On her
forehead is the velvet frontlet, and across her forehead is a veil
stretched on wires.]
The veil was sometimes worn all over the steeple hat, coming down over
the face, but stiff enough to stand away from it. Towards the end of
the reign the hats were not so high or so erect.
Remember, also, that the horned head-dress of the previous reign is
not by any means extinct.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}]
There remain two more forms of making the human face hideous: one is
the head-dress closely resembling an enormous sponge bag, which for
some unknown reason lasted well into the reign of Henry VII. as a
variety to the fashionable head-gear of that time, and the other is
very simple, being a wimple kept on the head by a circular stuffed
hoop of material, which showed, plain and severe across the forehead.
The simple folk wore a hood of linen, with a liripipe and wide
ear-flaps.
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}]