of ruffs is laid before her. As the tire-woman is displaying the ruffs
she talks to the Queen, and tells her that peculiar story, then
current, of the Lady of Antwerp, who was in a great way because she
could not get her ruff to set aright, and when in a passion she
called upon the devil to take it, as if in answer to the summons a
young and handsome gentleman appeared. Together they tried the ruff,
and the young gentleman suddenly strangled the lady and vanished. Now
when they came to carry away the coffin of the lady some days later,
it was found that no one could lift it, so, in the end, it was opened,
and there, to the surprise of everybody, sat a great black cat setting
a ruff. The Queen's eyes twinkle on this story, for she has a great
fund of dry humour--and so, to the business of the ruffs. First one
and then another is discarded; and finally the choice falls between
one of great size, shaped like a catherine-wheel and starched blue,
and the other of three depths but not of such great circumference,
starched yellow, after the receipt of Mrs. Turner, afterwards hung at
Tyburn in a ruff of the same colour.
The Queen wavers, and the tire-woman recommends the smaller bands:
'This, madame, is one of those ruffs made by Mr. Higgins, the tailor
near to St. James's, where he has set up an establishment for the
making of such affairs--it is a picadillie, and would----'
The Queen stops her and chooses the ruff; it is very much purled into
folds, and it bristles with points.
The women approach with a crimson over-gown and slips it over the
Queen's head--it is open in front to show the rich petticoat, and it
has great stuffed wings, epaulettes, or mahoitres on the shoulders.
The tight-fitting bodice of the gown is buttoned up to the throat, and
is stuffed out in front to meet the fall of the hoops; it has falling
sleeves, but the real sleeves are now brought and tied to the points
attached to the shoulders of the gown. They are puffed sleeves of the
same material as the under-gown, and the falling sleeves of the upper
gown are now tied with one or two bows across them so that the effect
of the sleeves is much the same as the effect of the skirts; an
embroidered stuff showing in the opening of a plain material. These
are called virago sleeves.
This done, the strings of pearls are placed around the Queen's neck,
and then the underpropper or supportasse of wire and holland is
fastened on her neck, and the picadillie ruff laid over it. The Queen
exchanges her slippers for cork-soled shoes, stands while her girdle
is knotted, sees that the looking-glass, fan, and pomander are hung
upon it, and then, after a final survey of herself in the glass, she
calls for her muckinder or handkerchief, and--Queen Elizabeth is
dressed.
So in this manner the Queen struts down to posterity, a wonderful
woman in ridiculous clothes, and in her train we may dimly see Mr.
Higgins, the tailor, who named a street without knowing it, a street
known in every part of the civilized world; but, nowadays, one hardly
thinks of connecting Piccadilly with a lace ruff....
SHAKESPEARE AND CLOTHES
There are not so many allusions to Elizabethan dress in the plays of
Shakespeare as one might suppose upon first thought. One has grown so
accustomed to Shakespeare put on the stage in elaborate dresses that
one imagines, or one is apt to imagine, that there is a warrant for
some of the dresses in the plays. In some cases he confounds the
producer and the illustrator by introducing garments of his own date
into historical plays, as, for example, Coriolanus. Here are the
clothes allusions in that play:
'When you cast your stinking greasy caps,
You have made good work,
You and your apron-men.'
'Go to them with this bonnet in your hand.'
'Enter Coriolanus in a gown of humility.'
'Matrons fling gloves, ladies and maids their scarfs and
handkerchers.'
'The kitchen malkin pins her richest lockram[A] 'bout
her reechy neck.'
[A] 'Lockram' is coarse linen.
'Our veiled dames.'
'Commit the war of white and damask in their nicely
gawded cheeks to the wanton and spoil of Phoebus'
burning kisses.'
'Doublets that hangmen would bury with these that wore
them.'
I have not kept the lines in verse, but in a convenient way to show
their allusions.
In 'Pericles' we have mention of ruffs and bases. Pericles says:
'I am provided of a pair of bases.'
Certainly the bases might be made to appear Roman, if one accepts the
long slips of cloth or leather in Roman military dress as being
bases; but Shakespeare is really--as in the case of the
ruffs--alluding to the petticoats of the doublet of his time worn by
grave persons. Bases also apply to silk hose.
In 'Titus Andronicus' we have:
'An idiot holds his bauble for his God.'
Julius Caesar is mentioned as an Elizabethan:
'He plucked ope his doublet.'
The Carpenter in 'Julius Caesar' is asked:
'Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?'
The mob have 'sweaty night-caps.'
Cleopatra, in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' says:
'I'll give thee an armour all of gold.'
The 'Winter's Tale,' the action of which occurs in Pagan times, is
full of anachronisms. As, for instance, Whitsun pastorals, Christian
burial, an Emperor of Russia, and an Italian fifteenth-century
painter. Also:
'Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cyprus[B] black as ere was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces and for noses;
Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady's chamber;
Golden quoifs and stomachers,
Pins and polking-sticks of steel.'
[B] Thin stuff for women's veils.
So, you see, Autolycus, the pedlar of these early times, is spoken of
as carrying polking-sticks with which to stiffen ruffs.
Shylock, in 'The Merchant of Venice,' should wear an orange-tawny
bonnet lined with black taffeta, for in this way were the Jews of
Venice distinguished in 1581.
In 'The Tempest' one may hear of rye-straw hats, of gaberdines,
rapiers, and a pied fool's costume.
In 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' we hear:
'Why, then, your ladyship must cut your hair.'
'No, girl; I'll tie it up in silken strings
With twenty odd conceited true-love knot;
To be fantastic may become a youth
Of greater time than I shall show to be.'
Also:
'Since she did neglect her looking-glass,
And threw her sun-expelling mask away.'
Many ladies at this time wore velvet masks. 'The Merry Wives of
Windsor' gives us a thrummed hat, a muffler or linen to hide part of
the face, gloves, fans. Falstaff says:
'When Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan,
I took it up my honour thou had'st it not.'
Also:
'The firm fashion of thy foot would give an excellent
motion to thy fait in a semicircled farthingale.'
'Twelfth Night' is celebrated for us by Malvolio's cross garters. Sir
Toby, who considers his clothes good enough to drink in, says:
'So be these boots too: an they be not, let them hang
themselves in their own straps.'
Sir Toby also remarks to Sir Andrew upon the excellent constitution of
his leg, and Sir Andrew replied that:
'It does indifferent well in a flame-coloured stock.'
The Clown says:
'A sentence is but a cheveril[C] glove to a good wit.'
[C] 'Cheveril' is kid leather.
In 'Much Ado About Nothing' we learn of one who lies awake ten nights,
'carving the fashion of his doublet.' Also of one who is
'in the shape of two countries at once, as a German from
the waist downwards all slops, and a Spaniard from the
hip upward, no doublet.'
Again of a gown:
'Cloth of gold, and cuts, and laced with silver set with
pearls down sides, side sleeves, and skirts, round under
borne with a bluish tinsel.'
In 'As You Like It' one may show a careless desolation by ungartered
hose, unbanded bonnet, unbuttoned sleeve, and untied shoe.
'The Taming of the Shrew' tells of serving-men:
'In their new fustian and their white jackets.... Let
their blue coats be brushed, and their garters of an
indifferent knit.'
Also we have a cap 'moulded on a porringer.'
'Love's Labour's Lost' tells of:
'Your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes;
with your arms crossed on your thin belly doublet like a
rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a
man after the old painting.'
'All's Well that Ends Well':
'Why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fashion? Dost
make a hose of thy sleeves?'
'Yonder's my lord your son with a patch of velvet on's
face: whether there be a scar under't or no, the velvet
knows.... There's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine
hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and
nod at every man.'
In 'Henry IV.,' Part II., there is an allusion to the blue dress of
Beadles. Also:
'About the satin for my short cloak and slops.'
'The smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes,
and bunches of keys at their girdles.'
'To take notice how many pair of silk stockings thou
hast, or to bear the inventory of thy shirts.'
There are small and unimportant remarks upon dress in other plays, as
dancing-shoes in 'Romeo and Juliet' and in 'Henry VIII.':
'The remains of fool and feather that they got in France.'
'Tennis and tall stockings,
Short blistered breeches and those types of travel.'
But in 'Hamlet' we find more allusions than in the rest. Hamlet is
ever before us in his black:
''Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black.'
'Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-goes to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt.'
'Your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you
last, by the altitude of a chopine.'[D]
[D] Shoes with very high soles.
'O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion into tatters.'
'With two provincial roses on my ragged shoes,
My sea-gown scarfed about me.'
Having read this, I think it will be seen that there is no such great
difficulty in costuming any play, except perhaps this last. There have
been many attempts to put 'Hamlet' into the clothes of the date of his
story, but even when the rest of the characters are dressed in skins
and cross-gartered trousers, when the Viking element is strongly
insisted upon, still there remains the absolutely Elizabethan figure
in inky black, with his very Elizabethan thoughts, the central figure,
almost the great symbol of his age.
JAMES THE FIRST
Reigned twenty-two years: 1603-1625.
Born 1566. Married 1589, Anne of Denmark.
THE MEN
This couplet may give a little sketch of the man we should now see
before us:
'His ruffe is set, his head set in his ruff;
His reverend trunks become him well enough.'
We are still in the times of the upstanding ruff; we are watching,
like sartorial gardeners, for the droop of this linen flower.
Presently this pride of man, and of woman too, will lose its
bristling, super-starched air, and will hang down about the necks of
the cavaliers; indeed, if we look very carefully, we see towards the
end of the reign the first fruits of elegance born out of Elizabethan
precision.
Now in such a matter lies the difficulty of presenting an age or a
reign in an isolated chapter. In the first place, one must endeavour
to show how a Carolean gentleman, meeting a man in the street, might
say immediately, 'Here comes one who still affects Jacobean clothes.'
Or how an Elizabethan lady might come to life, and, meeting the same
man, might exclaim, 'Ah! these are evidently the new fashions.' The
Carolean gentleman would notice at first a certain air of stiffness, a
certain padded arrangement, a stiff hat, a crisp ornament of feathers.
He would see that the doublet varied from his own in being more
slashed, or slashed in many more degrees. He would see that it was
stiffened into an artificial figure, that the little skirt of it was
very orderly, that the cut of the sleeves was tight. He would notice
also that the man's hair was only half long, giving an appearance not
of being grown long for beauty, but merely that it had not been cut
for some time. He would be struck with the preciseness, the correct
air of the man. He would see, unless the stranger happened to be an
exquisite fellow, that his shoes were plain, that the 'roses' on them
were small and neat. His trunks, he would observe, were wide and full,
but stiff. Mind you, he would be regarding this man with
seventeenth-century eyes--eyes which told him that he was himself an
elegant, careless fellow, dressed in the best of taste and
comfort--eyes which showed him that the Jacobean was a nice enough
person in his dress, but old-fashioned, grandfatherly.
To us, meeting the pair of them, I am afraid that a certain notion we
possess nowadays of cleanliness and such habits would oppress us in
the company of both, despite the fact that they changed their linen on
Sundays, or were supposed to do so. And we, in our absurd clothes,
with hard hats on our heads, and stiff collars tight about our necks,
creases in our trousers, and some patent invention of the devil on our
feet, might feel that the Jacobean gentleman looked and was untidy, to
say the least of it, and had better be viewed from a distance.
To the Elizabethan lady the case would be reversed. The man would show
her that the fashions for men had been modified since her day; she
would see that his hair was not kept in, what she would consider,
order; she would see that his ruff was smaller, and his hat brim was
larger. She would, I venture to think, disapprove of him, thinking
that he did not look so 'smart.'
For ourselves, I think we should distinguish him at once as a man who
wore very large knickerbockers tied at the knee, and, in looking at a
company of men of this time, we should be struck by the padding of
these garments to a preposterous size.
[Illustration: {Three men of the time of James I.; three types of
shoe; one type of boot}]
There has come into fashion a form of ruff cut square in front and
tied under the chin, which can be seen in the drawings better than it
can be described; indeed, the alterations in clothes are not easy to
describe, except that they follow the general movement towards
looseness. The trunks have become less like pumpkins and more like
loose, wide bags. The hats, some of them stiff and hard, show in
other forms an inclination to slouch. Doublets are often made loose,
and little sets of slashes appear inside the elbow of the sleeves,
which will presently become one long slash in Cavalier costumes.
We have still:
'Morisco gowns, Barbarian sleeves,
Polonian shoes, with divers far fetcht trifles;
Such as the wandering English galant rifles
Strange countries for.'
But we have not, for all that, the wild extravaganza of fashions that
marked the foregoing reign. Indeed, says another writer, giving us a
neat picture of a man:
'His doublet is
So close and pent as if he feared one prison
Would not be strong enough to keep his soul in,
But his taylor makes another;
And trust me (for I knew it when I loved Cupid)
He does endure much pain for poor praise
Of a neat fitting suit.'
To wear something abnormally tight seems to be the condition of the
world in love, from James I. to David Copperfield.
Naturally, a man of the time might be riding down the street across a
Scotch plaid saddle cloth and pass by a beggar dressed in clothes of
Henry VIII.'s time, or pass a friend looking truly Elizabethan--but he
would find generally that the short, swollen trunks were very little
worn, and also--another point--that a number of men had taken to
walking in boots, tall boots, instead of shoes.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of James I.; a variation of
breeches}]
As he rides along in his velvet cloak, his puffed and slashed doublet,
his silken hose, his hands gloved with embroidered gloves, or bared to
show his rings, smelling of scents, a chain about his neck, he will
hear the many street cries about him:
'Will you buy any sand, mistress?'
'Brooms, brooms for old shoes! Pouch-rings, boots, or
buskings! Will ye buy any new brooms?'
'New oysters, new oysters! New, new cockles!'
'Fresh herrings, cockels nye!'
'Will you buy any straw?'
'Hay yee any kitchen stuff, maids?'
'Pippins fine! Cherrie ripe, ripe, ripe!'
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF JAMES I. (1603-1625)
He shows the merging of the Elizabethan fashion into the fashion
of Charles I. The stiff doublet and the loose breeches, the plain
collar, and the ribbons at the knees. On his hawking glove is a
hawk, hooded and jessed.]
[Illustration: {Four men of the time of James I.; the bottom of a
doublet; an alternative collar; shoe and stocking}]
And he will pass apprentices, most of them still in flat caps, blue
doublets, and white cloth breeches and stockings, sewn all in one
piece, with daggers on their backs or at their sides. And then,
travelling with his man, he will come to his inn. For the life of me,
though it has little to do with dress, I must give this picture of an
inn from Fynes Moryson, which will do no harm, despite the fact that
Sir Walter Besant quoted some of it.
'As soon as a passenger comes to an Inn, the servants
run to him' (these would be in doublet and hose of some
plain colour, with shirt-collars to the doublets turned
down loose; the trunks would be wide and to the knee,
and there buttoned), 'and one takes his horse and walks
him till he be cool, then rubs him and gives him meat,
yet I must say that they are not much to be trusted in
this last point, without the eye of the Master or his
servant to oversee them. Another servant gives the
passenger his private chamber, and kindles his fire, the
third pulls off his boots and makes them clean' (these
two servants would be wearing aprons). 'Then the Host or
Hostess visits him, and if he will eat with the Host, or
at a common table with the others, his meal will cost
him sixpence, or in some places but fourpence, yet this
course is less honourable and not used by Gentlemen; but
if he will eat in his chamber' (he will retain his hat
within the house), 'he commands what meats he will
according to his appetite, and as much as he thinks fit
for him and his company, yea, the kitchen is open to
him, to command the meat to be dressed as he likes best;
and when he sits at table, the Host or Hostess will
accompany him, if they have many guests, will at least
visit him, taking it for courtesy to be bid sit down;
while he eats, if he have company especially, he shall
be offered music, which he may freely take or refuse,
and if he be solitary the musicians will give him good
day with music in the morning.
'It is the custom and in no way disgraceful to set up
part of supper for his breakfast.
'Lastly, a Man cannot more freely command at home in his
own house than he may do in his Inn, and at parting if
he give some few pence to the Chamberlin and Ostler they
wish him a happy journey.'
Beyond this and the drawings I need say no more.
The drawings will show how the points of a doublet may be varied, the
epaulette left or taken away, the little skirts cut or left plain.
They show you how a hat may be feathered and the correct shape of the
hat; how breeches may be left loose at the knee, or tied, or buttoned;
of the frills at the wrist and the ruffs at the neck--of everything, I
hope, that is necessary and useful.
[Illustration: {A man of the time of James I.}]
THE WOMEN
'What fashion will make a woman have the best body,
tailor?'
'A short Dutch waist, with a round Catherine-wheel
fardingale, a close sleeve, with a cartoose collar, or a
pickadell.'
I think, with a little imagination, we can see the lady: add to our
picture a feather fan, a man's beaver hat with a fine band round it
stuck with a rose or a feather, shoes with ribbons or roses, and
jewels in the hair--and I think the lady walks. Yet so difficult do I
find it to lead her tripping out of the wardrobe into the world, I
would remind myself of the laws for servants in this time:
'And no servant may toy with the maids under pain of
fourpence.'
It is a salutary warning, and one that must be kept in the mind's eye,
and as I pluck the lady from the old print, hold her by the Dutch
waist, and twirl her round until the Catherine-wheel fardingale is a
blurred circle, and the pickadell a mist of white linen, I feel, for
my prying, like one who has toyed under pain of fourpence.
[Illustration: {High collar and head-dress for a woman}]
There are many excellent people with the true historical mind who
would pick up my lady and strip her in so passionless a way as to
leave her but a mass of Latin names--so many bones, tissues, and
nerves--and who would then label and classify her wardrobe under so
many old English and French, Dutch and Spanish names, bringing to bear
weighty arguments several pages long over the derivation of the word
'cartoose' or 'pickadell,' write in notebooks of her little secret
fineries, bear down on one another with thundering eloquence upon the
relation of St. Catherine and her wheel upon seventeenth-century
dressmaking, and so confuse and bewilder the more simple and less
learned folk that we should turn away from the Eve of the seventeenth
century and from the heap of clothes upon the floor no whit the wiser
for all their pains.
Not that I would laugh, even smile, at the diligence of these learned
men who in their day puzzled the father of Tristram Shandy over the
question of breeches, but, as it is in my mind impossible to
disassociate the clothes and the woman, I find it difficult to follow
their dissertations, however enlightening, upon Early English
cross-stitch. And now, after I have said all this, I find myself doing
very nearly the same thing.
You will find, if you look into the lady's wardrobe, that she has
other fashions than the close sleeve: she has a close sleeve as an
under sleeve, with a long hanging sleeve falling from the elbow; she
has ruffs at her wrist of pointed lace, more cuffs than ruffs, indeed.
She does not always follow the fashion of the short Dutch waist as she
has, we can see, a dress with a long waist and a tapering front to
the bodice. Some dresses of hers are divided in the skirts to show a
barred petticoat, or a petticoat with a broad border of embroidery.
Sometimes she is covered with little bows, and at others with much
gold lacing; and now and again she wears a narrow sash round her waist
tied with a bow in front.
She is taking more readily to the man's hat, feathered and banded, and
in so doing is forced to dress her hair more simply and do away with
jewellery on her forehead; but, as is often the case, she dresses her
hair with plumes and jewels and little linen or lace ruffs, and atop
of all wears a linen cap with side wings to it and a peak in the
centre.
Her ruff is now, most generally, in the form of an upstanding collar
to her dress, open in front, finishing on her shoulders with some neat
bow or other ornament. It is of lace of very fine workmanship, edged
plain and square, or in all manner of fancy scallops, circles, and
points.
Sometimes she will wear both ruff and collar, the ruff underneath to
prop up her collar at the back to the required modish angle.
Sometimes her bodice will finish off in a double Catherine-wheel.
Her maid is a deal more simple; her hair is dressed very plainly, a
loop by the ears, a twist at the nape of the neck. She has a shawl
over her shoulders, or a broad falling collar of white linen. She has
no fardingale, but her skirts are full. Her bodice fits, but is not
stiffened artificially; her sleeves are tight and neat, and her cuffs
plain. Upon her head is a broad-brimmed plain hat.
[Illustration: {Comparison of head-dress between a lady and a maid}]
She has a piece of gossip for her mistress: at Chelsea they are making
a satin dress for the Princess of Wales from Chinese silkworm's silk.
On another day comes the news that the Constable of Castile when at
Whitehall subscribed very handsomely to the English fashion, and
kissed the Queen's hands and the cheeks of twenty ladies of honour.
The fashion for dresses of pure white, either in silk, cloth, or
velvet has affected both men and women; and the countries which gave a
name to the cuts of the garments are evidenced in the literature of
the time. How a man's breeches or slops are Spanish; his waist, like
the lady's, Dutch; his doublet French; his and her sleeves and wings
on the shoulders French; their boots Polonian, cloaks German, hose
Venetian, hats from everywhere. These spruce coxcombs, with
looking-glasses set in their tobacco boxes, so that they may privately
confer with them to see--
'How his band jumpeth with his piccadilly,
Whether his band-strings balence equally,
Which way his feather wags,'
strut along on their high-heeled shoes, and ogle any lady as she
passes.
Another fashion common to those in the high mode was to have the
bodice below the ruff cut so low as to show all the breast bare, and
this, together with the painting of the face, gave great offence to
the more sober-minded.