IN EARLY MEDIÆVAL TIMES
From the days of the early Britons to the twelfth century is a long
jump, but in many countries the growth of new fashions was so slow that
to attempt to describe it would mean much wearying repetition and an
unnecessary extension of these pages.
For example, the dress worn by the men and women of Italy during the
twelfth century was very similar to the old Roman styles, while in
Southern Italy the Norman dress found favour as well as the Byzantine. In
Sicily Arab costume predominated, and in Northern Italy the German and
the Norman fashions shared popularity. Italian women, who all aspired to
express their exalted birth by their dress, wore in the house a tunic
or stola drawn up under a belt to show the feet, fitting closely to the
figure and bearing long or short sleeves, as fancy dictated, and over
this a palla, developed into a rectangular piece of cloth, passed under
the right armpit with the ends knotted on the left shoulder.
Until the close of the tenth century, costume in England bore more
resemblance to that worn in ancient Rome than to any chosen by the
Danes. Though the Normans were greatly influenced by the Saracenic and
Byzantine fashions prevailing in Southern Europe, an English lady of the
twelfth century could scarcely have been distinguished by her attire from
a lady of the Lower Empire, or even a modern maid of Athens; and no doubt
a contemporary wit of flippant habit would have excused her simplicity by
declaring that the study of costume was Greek to her.
[Illustration: A DRESS LACED IN THE FRONT.]
[Illustration: A DRESS LACED AT THE BACK.]
The prevailing note in dress in the twelfth century was costliness.
The king set the fashion of rich apparel, and his example was followed
by both clergy and people, though the former exercised their didactic
privileges by inveighing against the most popular eccentricities. The
women's dress at this period showed a strong tendency to exaggerated
length, and the veils and kerchiefs were so long that the fair wearers
were forced to knot them to avoid treading on them, while the skirts lay
in great folds on the ground. Much significance might be attached to that
precious old MS. where the illuminator depicts the devil in a woman's
_surcoat_ with a sleeve and skirts tied up in knots! Robes were laced
up in front, and the cuffs of the sleeves embroidered or fur-trimmed,
and over the long robe or tunic appeared a shorter garment resembling
the _sur côte_, which was chequered and spotted, presumably to represent
embroidery, and finished with an indented border termed "dagged," in a
fashion condemned by Henry II. Norman ladies wore their hair plaited, the
braids often incased in silk or bound round with ribbon and finished off
with three curls; but towards the end of the twelfth century the hair was
frequently held in a network of gold set with stones.
The clergy had much to say on the subject of the long beards which
reappeared during the reign of Henry I.; and that one, more forcible
than elegant in his denunciations, who described the men of his time as
"filthy goats," has for the solecism gone down to posterity with the
priest who, preaching such a moving sermon on the subject that king and
courtiers wept, took advantage of the impression he had made, drew out a
large pair of scissors that he had concealed in his sleeve, and cropped
the entire assemblage.
[Illustration: IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.]
During the latter half of the twelfth century a change for the better
came over the spirit of dress, which was now marked by a greater
reticence. The extravagant cuff disappeared, and sleeves were worn
tight and fastened at the wrist. An effigy of Queen Berengaria, in the
Abbey of l'Espan, shows the queen with flowing locks partly covered by a
kerchief, surmounted by a gold crown; her robe is held together at the
neck by a large circular brooch set with precious stones, her mantle
hanging almost to her feet behind, while a small aumônière is pendent
from a beautiful girdle. For just so much detail and no more would I pin
my faith to a monumental sculptor as a fashion historian. Green was the
favourite colour of the robe in the reign of John, and there is a king's
warrant for two green robes for the queen, each to consist of two ells
of cloth, while there exists a register showing that a green robe lined
with condal cost sixty shillings; so common, in fact, was the wearing of
the green that Longchamp, the arrogant Bishop of Ely, when he was forced
to fly the kingdom to escape John's rage, disguised himself in a woman's
green tunic and Norman mantle and hood of the same colour.
It was the harvest-time for the embroiderers, or at least it ought to
have been, but it is not on record that their services were rewarded with
any magnificent generosity. Embroidery was rampant: all state garments
were traced with gold, and vivid colours would adorn robes and mantles
alike, a favourite design being a series of circles.
[Illustration: A CORONET.]
[Illustration: A BROOCH.]
The pelisse now came into existence; in form it was a close-fitting
dress, a prototype of the garment which bears the same title to-day. Fur
was a modish trimming, and nine bars of fur are mentioned as a trimming
of some special grey pelisse which King John bestowed upon Isabella of
Angoulême. Obviously the sealskin paletot and the sable cape were not
amongst the possibilities of that hour, or His Majesty would not have
been let off so cheaply.
[Illustration: A PLAIN WIMPLE.]
But to the enthusiastic chronicler of fashion there was one fact of King
John's reign which was pre-eminently worthy and admirable. This was
the introduction of the wimple, of all attributes to feminine beauty
surely the most becoming ever conceived or accomplished! It was made
either in silk or linen, a covering for the neck, chin, and forehead at
once disguiseful and provocative, coquettish and demure. At times the
wimple was little more than an elaborated veil or kerchief, but in its
most alluring form it was a separate article worn under the veil, as
in a nun's dress of to-day, which, in fact, in all but colour, bears a
striking resemblance to the thirteenth-century dress. Indeed Chaucer
distinguishes the two when he says--
Wering a vaile insted of wimple,
As nonnes don in ther abbey.
The wimple was wrapped round the head and chin, and ladies of wealth
bound it on the forehead by a golden or jewelled fillet, while their
poorer sisters used plain silk. Silken wimples were forbidden to the
nuns, who were then as now devoted to white linen. It is not unlikely
that the wimple originated with the fashion of wearing the coverchief
about the neck, and it was towards the end of the twelfth century that
the coverchief underwent transformation, growing smaller and being tied
under the chin like a modern cap or bonnet.
[Illustration: A SHOE.]
Boots and shoes formed an important portion of dress in the twelfth
century, and here again the interfering cleric played his favourite rôle
of denunciator. The monks, who were denied their wear, abused with vigour
the peak-toed boots and shoes, which indeed reached a point exquisitely
ridiculous when a courtier could choose to stuff the points of his shoes
with tow, so that they might curl up like ram's horns. Dispassionately,
I recognise as much wit as wisdom in the notion.
Women wore short boots as well as shoes, but the dresses were so long
that only the tips of the toes could be seen, and they were content to
embroider these in gold with fanciful or circular devices.
Gloves, jewelled at the back, were chosen by the richer classes, and
coarsely-made warm gloves without fingers received a mild patronage from
the poor. But women wore gloves very rarely; they were not amongst the
trifles which attracted feminine attention, though there was much general
love for variety, and a vast amount of money, care, and thought was
bestowed on personal adornment.
[Illustration: DAGGED COSTUME IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.]
In the early part of the thirteenth century many beautiful fabrics put
in an appearance. Velvet, and silk interwoven with gold, and cloth with
many colours were fashionable, while it became a very popular practice
to ornament hems of garments by cutting them into indented tabs or
leaves, a fashion to which I have referred previously as "dagged," the
contemporary expression. How pretty the dagged costume may be is easily
realised by glancing at the picture on page 16, which shows it entirely
made in cloth, crowned by a white linen turban with a band of linen under
the chin.
The turban adorned many a fair and dark head, the Spanish women wearing
it exclusively, drawing their inspiration for this, and for their
trailing robes and funnel-shaped sleeves, from the Arab fashions.
Frenchwomen asserted themselves as pioneers with the closely-fitting
garment that allowed the lines of the figure to be seen, a legitimate
ancestress to our princess gown. Sleeves established their right to
exist in more than one form, some being wide at the top, others narrow,
close-fitting, and fastened at the wrists, and others again narrow at the
top and to the middle of the forearm, where they widened and fell almost
to the ground.
The cuirass dress was often slightly open at the neck in order to show
the under-garment, and a long girdle embroidered in gold was passed
round the waist, crossed behind and brought round again to the front a
little lower down, where it was tied so that the ends fell loosely. In
the twelfth century this style of gown was frequently draped on the hips
and worn without the embroidered bodice or the girdle, and a favoured
long robe was open from top to bottom and fastened with buttons. Mantles
were semicircular in cut and held in divers ways, and their borders were
adorned with rectangular metal plaques, each pierced with five holes, a
double cord being passed through these holes and fastened behind.
[Illustration: A CLASPED AND JEWELLED GIRDLE.]
An affection for jewels, rings and collars of pearls, diadems and clasps,
was common to all the nobles of all the nations, while caps, wimples,
and veils crowned the fair with grace, and permitted some diversity of
expression.
[Illustration: A CLOAK-FASTENER.]
In the twelfth century the English historian declares that in France
fashion danced the gayest tunes and was uproarious in her demand
for extravagance, and, if French chroniclers are to be believed,
moderation marked the footsteps of the native mondaine, whose shoes were
comparatively low and bore small points. But I doubt not that, then as
now, each woman was a profit to her own country, and did her duty to
commerce by practising prodigality with unswerving enthusiasm.