head, a Holland shift with a tucker of double ruffles, and a pair of new
kid gloves." Previous to her interment in Westminster Abbey she lay in
state in the Jerusalem Chamber.[1087] For Mrs. Oldfield in her lifetime was
a great judge of lace, and treasured a statuette of the Earl of Stratford,
finely carved in ivory by Grinling Gibbons, more, it is supposed, for the
beauty of its lace Vandyke collar[1088] than any other sentiment.
In 1763 another instance is recorded in the _London Magazine_ of a young
lady buried in her wedding clothes, point lace tucker, handkerchief,
ruffles and apron; also a fine point lappet head. From this period we
happily hear no more of such extravagances.
Passing from interments and shrouds to more lively matters, we must quote
the opinion of that Colossus of the eighteenth century, Dr. Johnson, who
was too apt to talk on matters of taste and art, of which he was no
competent judge. "A Brussels trimming," he declaims to Mrs. Piozzi, "is
like bread sauce; it takes away the glow of colour from the gown, and gives
you nothing instead of it: but sauce was invented to heighten the flavour
of our food, and trimming is an ornament to the manteau or it is
nothing."[1089] A man whose culinary ideas did not soar higher than bread
sauce could scarcely pronounce on the relative effect and beauty of point
lace.
If England had leant towards the products of France, in {368}1788, an
Anglomania ran riot at Paris. Ladies wore a cap of mixed lace, English and
French, which they styled the "Union of France and England." On the
appearance of the French Revolution, the classic style of dress--its India
muslins and transparent gauzes--caused the ancient points to fall into
neglect. From this time dates the decline of the lace fabric throughout
Europe.
Point still appeared at court and on state occasions, such as on the
marriage of the Princess Caroline of Wales, 1795, but as an article of
daily use it gradually disappeared from the wardrobes of all classes. A
scrupulous feeling also arose in ladies' minds as to the propriety of
wearing articles of so costly a nature, forgetting how many thousands of
women gained a livelihood by its manufacture. Mrs. Hannah More, among the
first, in her _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_, alludes to the frivolity of
the taste, when the little child exclaiming "at the beautiful lace with
which the frock of another was trimmed, and which she was sure her mamma
had given her for being good," remarks, "A profitable and, doubtless,
lasting and inseparable association was thus formed in the child's mind
between lace and goodness."
Whether in consequence of the French Revolution, or from the caprice of
fashion, "real" lace--worse off than the passements and points of 1634,
when in revolt--now underwent the most degrading vicissitudes. Indeed, so
thoroughly was the taste for lace at this epoch gone by, that in many
families collections of great value were, at the death of their respective
owners, handed over as rubbish to the waiting maid.[1090] Many ladies
recollect in their youth to have tricked out their dolls in the finest
Alençon point, which would now sell at a price far beyond their purses.
Among the few who, in England, unseduced by frippery blonde, never
neglected to preserve their collections entire, was the Duchess of
{369}Gloucester, whose lace was esteemed among the most magnificent in
Europe.
When the taste of the age again turned towards the rich fabrics of the
preceding centuries, much lace, both black and white, was found in the
country farm-houses, preserved as remembrances of deceased patrons by old
family dependants. Sometimes the hoard had been forgotten, and was again
routed out from old wardrobes and chests, where it had lain unheeded for
years. Much was recovered from theatrical wardrobes and the masquerade
shops, and the Church, no longer in its temporal glory, both in Italy,
Spain and Germany, gladly parted with what, to them, was of small value
compared with the high price given for it by amateurs. In Italy perhaps the
finest fabrics of Milan, Genoa, and Venice had fared best, from the custom
which prevailed of sewing up family lace in rolls of linen to ensure its
preservation.
After years of neglect lace became a "mania." In England the literary
ladies were the first to take it up. Sydney Lady Morgan and Lady Stepney
quarrelled weekly on the respective value and richness of their points. The
former at one time commenced a history of the lace fabric, though what was
the ultimate fate of the MS. the author is unable to state. The Countess of
Blessington, at her death, left several chests filled with the finest
antique lace of all descriptions.
The "dames du grand monde," both in England and France, now began to wear
lace. But, strange as it may seem, never at any period did they appear to
so little advantage as during the counter-revolution of the lace period.
Lace was the fashion, and wear it somehow they would, though that somehow
often gave them an appearance, as the French say, _du dernier ridicule_,
simply from an ignorance displayed in the manner of arranging it. That lace
was old seemed sufficient to satisfy all parties. They covered their
dresses with odds and ends of all fabrics, without attention either to date
or texture. One English lady appeared at a ball given by the French Embassy
at Rome, boasting that she wore on the tablier of her dress every
description of lace, from point coupé of the fifteenth to Alençon of the
eighteenth century. The Count of Syracuse was accustomed to say: "The
English ladies buy a scrap {370}of lace as a souvenir of every town they
pass through, till they reach Naples, then sew it on their dresses, and
make one grande toilette of the whole to honour our first ball at the
Academia Nobile."
The taste for lace has again become universal, and the quality now produced
renders it within the reach of all classes of society; and though by some
the taste may be condemned, it gives employment to thousands and ten
thousands of women, who find it more profitable and better adapted to their
strength than the field labour which forms the occupation of the women in
agricultural districts. To these last, in a general point of view, the
lace-maker of our southern counties, who works at home in her own cottage,
is superior, both in education, refinement, and morality:--
"Here the needle plies its busy task;
The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower,
Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn,
Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs,
And curling tendrils, gracefully dispos'd,
Follow the nimble fingers of the fair--
A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that blow
With most success when all besides decay."[1091]
{371}CHAPTER XXIX.
THE LACE MANUFACTURERS OF ENGLAND.
"Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store;
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,
Shuffling her threads about the livelong day:
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light."--Cowper.
The bone lace manufactures of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries appear to have extended over a much wider area than they occupy
in the present day. From Cambridge to the adjacent counties of Northampton
and Hertfordshire, by Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire, the
trade spread over the southern counties[1092] of Wiltshire,
Somersetshire,[1093] Hampshire, and Dorset, to the more secluded valleys of
Devon--the county which still sustains the ancient reputation of "English
point"--terminating at Launceston, on the Cornish coast.
Various offsets from these fabrics were established in Wales.[1094]
Ripon,[1095] an isolated manufactory, represented the {372}lace industry of
York; while the dependent islands of Man,[1096] Wight[1097] and
Jersey,[1098] may be supposed to have derived their learning from the
smugglers who frequented their coast, rather than from the teaching of the
Protestant refugees[1099] who sought an asylum on the shores of Britain.
Many of these fabrics now belong to the past, consigned to oblivion even in
the very counties where they once flourished. In describing, therefore, the
lace manufactures of the United Kingdom, we shall confine ourselves to
those which still remain, alluding only slightly to such as were {373}once
of note, and of which the existence is confirmed by the testimony of
contemporary writers.
The "women of the mystery of thread-working" would appear to have made lace
in London,[1100] and of their complaints and grievances our public records
bear goodly evidence. Of the products of their needle we know little or
nothing.
Various Flemings and Burgundians established themselves in the City; and
though the emigrants, for the most part, betook themselves to the adjoining
counties, the craft, till the end of the eighteenth century, may be said to
have held fair commerce in the capital.
[Illustration: Fig. 132.
RIPON.]
The London fabric can scarcely be looked upon as a staple trade in itself,
mixed up as it was with lace-cleaning and lace-washing--an occupation first
established by the ejected nuns.[1101] Much point, too, was made by poor
gentlewomen, as the records of the Anti-Gallican Society testify. "A
strange infatuation," says a writer of the eighteenth century, "prevailed
in the capital for many years among the class called demi-fashionables of
sending their daughters to convents in France for education, if that could
be so termed which amounted to a learning to work in lace. The Revolution,
however, put {374}an end to this practice." It is owing to this French
education that the fine needle points were so extensively made in England;
though this occupation, however, did not seem to belong to any one county
in particular; for the reader who runs his eye over the proceedings of the
Anti-Gallican Society will find prizes to have been awarded to gentlewomen
from all parts--from the town of Leominster in Herefordshire to Broughton
in Leicestershire, or Stourton in Gloucester.[1102] Needle point, in
contradistinction to bone lace, was an occupation confined to no special
locality.
In 1764 the attention of the nobility seems to have been first directed
towards the employment of the indigent poor, and, indeed, the better
classes in the metropolis, in the making of bone lace and point;[1103] and
in 1775, sanctioned by the patronage of Queen Charlotte, the Princesses,
the Princess Amelia, and various members of the aristocracy, an institution
was formed in Marylebone Lane, and also in James Street, Westminster, "for
employing the female infants of the poor in the blond and black silk
lace-making and thread laces." More than 300 girls attended the school.
"They gave," says the _Annual Register_, "such a proof of their capacity
that many who had not been there more than six months carried home to their
parents from 5s. to 7s. a month, with expectation of getting more as they
improve."
From this time we hear no more of the making of lace, either point or bone,
in the metropolis.
PLATE LXXXV.
[Illustration: ENGLISH, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. BOBBIN LACE.--First half of
nineteenth century. Widths: 3, 3, 3, 4 in. The property of Mrs. Ellis, The
Vicarage, Much Wenlock.]
_To face page 374._
{375}CHAPTER XXX.
BEDFORDSHIRE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, AND NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.[1104]
----
BEDFORDSHIRE.
"He wears a stuff whose thread is coarse and round
But trimmed with curious lace."--Herbert.
It would be a difficult matter now to determine when and by whom
lace-making was first introduced into the counties of Bedfordshire and
Buckingham. Authors, for the most part, have been glad to assign its
introduction to the Flemings,[1105] a nation to whose successive
emigrations England owes much of her manufacturing greatness. Originally
the laces were of old, wavy, graceful Flemish designs.
On the other hand, certain traditions handed down in the county villages of
a good Queen who protected their craft, the annual festival of the
workers--in the palmy days of the trade a matter of great moment--combined
with the residence of that unhappy Queen, for the space of two years[1106]
at her jointure manor of Ampthill,[1107] lead us rather to infer {376}that
the art of lace-making, as it then existed, was first imparted to the
peasantry of Bedfordshire, as a means of subsistence, through the charity
of Queen Katherine of Aragon. In the chapter devoted to needlework we have
already alluded to the proficiency of this Queen in all arts connected with
the needle, to the "trials of needlework" established by her mother, Queen
Isabella, at which she, as a girl, had assisted. It is related, also, that
during her[1108] sojourn at Ampthill, "she passed her time, when not at her
devotions, with her gentlewomen, working with her own hands something
wrought in needlework, costly and artificially, which she intended for the
honour of God to bestow on some of the churches."[1109]
"The country people," continues her contemporary, "began to love her
exceedingly. They visited her out of pure respect, and she received the
tokens of regard they daily showed her most sweetly and graciously." The
love borne by the peasantry to the Queen, the sympathy shown to her in her
days of trouble and disgrace, most likely met with its reward; and we
believe Katherine to have taught them an art which, aided no doubt by the
later introduction of the pillow and the improvements of the refugees, has
now, for the space of nigh three centuries, been the staple employment of
the female population of Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties. Until the
latter half of the nineteenth century--though, like all such festivals in
the present age, gradually dying out--the lace-makers still held "Cattern's
day,"[1110] November 25th, as the holiday of their craft, kept, they say,
"in memory of good Queen Katherine, who, when the trade was dull, burnt all
her lace and ordered new to be made. The ladies of the court {377}followed
her example, and the fabric once more revived." "Ainsi s'écrit l'histoire";
and this garbled version may rest on as much foundation as most of the
folk-lore current throughout the provinces.
Speaking of Bedfordshire, Defoe writes: "Thro' the whole south part of this
country, as far as the borders of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, the
people are taken up with the manufacture of bone lace, in which they are
wonderfully exercised and improved within these few years
past"[1111]--probably since the arrival of the French settlers after the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. At the same period the author of the
_Magna Britannia_[1112] states that at Woburn "lace of a high price is made
in considerable quantities." Savary and Peuchet both declare the town of
Bedford alone to have contained 500 lace-workers.
In 1863, as Mrs. Palliser wrote: "The lace schools of Bedfordshire are far
more considerable than those in Devonshire. Four or five may frequently be
found in the same village, numbering from twenty to thirty children each,
and they are considered sufficiently important to be visited by Government
inspectors. Their work is mostly purchased by large dealers, who make their
arrangements with the instructress: the children are not bound for a term,
as in the southern counties. Boys formerly attended the lace schools, but
now they go at an early age to the fields."
These lace-schools are now things of the past. In some cases, however, in
the lace counties, the County Council Technical Education Committee have
supplemented private efforts with grants for classes to teach the lace
industry.
The wages of a lace-worker average a shilling a day; under press of
business, caused by the demand for some fashionable article, they sometimes
rise to one shilling and sixpence.
{378}BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
Though the first establishment of the fabric may have been in the sister
county, the workers of Buckingham appear early to have gained the lion's
share of public estimation for the produce of their pillows, and the
manufacture flourished, till, suffering from the monopolies of James I., we
read how--In the year 1623, April 8th, a petition was addressed from Great
Marlow to the High Sheriff of Bucks, representing the distress of the
people from "the bone-lace making being much decayed."[1113]
Three years later, 1626, Sir Henry Borlase founds and endows the free
school of Great Marlow for twenty-four boys to read, write, and cast
accounts; and for twenty-four girls "to knit, spin, and make bone lace";
and here at Great Marlow the trade flourished, all English, and even French
authors[1114] citing its "manufactures de dentelles au fuseau" as the
staple produce of the town, and its surrounding villages, which sold lace,
however, they pronounce as "inférieure à celle de Flandres."
During the seventeenth century the trade continued to advance, and Fuller
testifies to its once more prosperous condition in Bucks, towards the year
1640. "No handicrafts of note," he writes, "(save what are common to other
countries) are used therein, except any will instance in bone lace, much
thereof being made about Owldney, in this county, though more, I believe,
in Devonshire, where we shall meet more properly therewith."[1115] Olney,
as it is now written, a small market town, for many years the residence of
Cowper, known by its twenty-four-arched bridge, now no more, "of wearisome
but needful length" spanning the Ouse--Olney, together with the fellow
towns of Newport-Pagnel and Aylesbury, are much quoted by the authorities
of the last century, though, as is too often the case in books of travels
and statistics, one writer copies from another the information derived from
a preceding author. Defoe, however, who visited each county in detail,
quotes "Ouldney as possessing a considerable manufacture of bone lace";
{379}while a letter from the poet Cowper to the Rev. John Newton, in 1780,
enclosing a petition to Lord Dartmouth in favour of the lace-makers,
declares that "hundreds in this little town are upon the point of starving,
and that the most unremitting industry is barely sufficient to keep them
from it." A distress caused, we may infer, by some caprice of fashion.
"The lace manufacture is still carried on," says Lysons,[1116] "to a great
extent in and about Olney, where veils and other lace of the finer sorts
are made, and great fortunes are said to be acquired by the factors.
Lace-making is in no part of the country so general as at Hanslape and in
its immediate vicinity; but it prevails from fifteen to twenty miles round
in every direction. At Hanslape not fewer than 800 out of a population of
1275 were employed in it in the year 1801. Children are put to the
lace-schools at, or soon after, five years of age. At eleven or twelve
years of age they are all able to maintain themselves without any
assistance; both girls and boys are taught to make it, and some men when
grown up follow no other employment; others, when out of work, find it a
good resource, and can earn as much as the generality of day labourers. The
lace made in Hanslape is from sixpence to two guineas a yard in value. It
is calculated that from £8000 to £9000 net profit is annually brought into
the parish by the lace manufacture."
The bone lace of Stoney Stratford[1117] and Aylesbury are both quoted by
Defoe, and the produce of the latter city is mentioned with praise. He
writes: "Many of the poor here are employed in making lace for edgings, not
much inferior to those from Flanders; but it is some pleasure to us to
observe that the English are not the only nation in the world which admires
foreign manufactures above its own, since the French, who gave fashions to
most nations, buy and sell the finest laces at Paris under the name of
'dentelles d'Angleterre' or 'English laces.'"[1118]
In the southern part of Buckinghamshire the hundreds of Burnham and
Desborough were especially noted for the {380}art, the lace-workers
producing handsome lace of the finest quality, and about the year 1680
lace-making was one of the principal employments in High Wycombe.[1119]
But Newport-Pagnel, whether from its more central position, or being of
greater commercial importance, is the town which receives most praise from
all contemporary authors. "This town," says the _Magna Britannia_ in 1720,
"is a sort of staple for bone lace, of which more is thought to be made
here than any town in England; that commodity is brought to as great
perfection almost as in Flanders." "Newport-Pagnel," writes Defoe, "carries
on a great trade in bone lace, and the same manufacture employs all the
neighbouring villages"; while Don Manuel Gonzales,[1120] in 1730, speaks of
its lace as little inferior to that of Flanders, which assertion he may
have probably copied from previous writers.
{381}[Illustration: Fig. 133.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE TROLLY.]
At one of the earliest meetings of the Anti-Gallican Society, 1752, Admiral
Vernon in the chair, the first prize to the maker of the best piece of
English bone lace was awarded to Mr. William Marriott, of Newport-Pagnel,
Bucks. The principal lace-dealers in London were invited to give their
opinion, and they allowed it to be the best ever made in England.
Emboldened by this success, we read how, in 1761, Earl Temple, Lord
Lieutenant of Bucks, having been requested by Richard Lowndes, Esq., one of
the Knights of the Shire, on behalf of the lace-makers, to present to the
King a pair of fine lace ruffles, made by Messrs. Milward and Company, at
Newport-Pagnel, in the same county, his Majesty, after looking at them and
asking many questions respecting this branch of trade, was most graciously
pleased to express himself that the inclination of his own heart naturally
led him to set a high value on every endeavour to further English
manufactures, and whatever had such recommendation would be preferred by
him to works of possibly higher perfection made in any other country.[1121]
From this period Newport-Pagnel is cited as {382}one of the most noted
towns in the kingdom for making bone lace.[1122]
As in other places, much complaint was made of the unhealthy state of the
lace-working population, and of the injury sustained by long sitting in the
vitiated air of the cottages.[1123]
[Illustration: Fig. 134.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE "POINT."]
In Pennant's _Journey from Chester to London_ (in 1782), he notices in
Towcester that, "this town is supported by the great concourse of
passengers, and by a manufacture of lace, and a small one of silk
stockings. The first was {383}imported from Flanders, and carried on with
much success in this place, and still more in the neighbouring county"
(Buckinghamshire).
[Illustration: Fig. 135.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE "POINT."]
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Revolution again drove many of
the poorer French to seek refuge on our shores, as they had done a century
before; and we find stated in the _Annual Register_ of 1794: "A number of
ingenious French emigrants have found employment in Bucks, Bedfordshire,
and the adjacent counties, in the manufacturing of lace, and it is
expected, through the means of these artificers, considerable improvements
will be introduced into the method of making English lace."
Figs. 134 and 135 represent the "point" ground, which won the laces of the
midland counties their reputation. (See NORTHAMPTONSHIRE for additional
matter.)
{384}NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
The laces of Northampton do not appear to have attracted the notice of the
writers of the eighteenth century so much as those of the sister counties.