HOW GLOVES CAME TO GRENOBLE
“A French town ... in which the product of successive ages, not
without lively touches of the present, are blended together
harmoniously, with a beauty _specific_—a beauty cisalpine and
northern—and of which Turner has found the ideal in certain of his
studies of the rivers of France, a perfectly happy conjunction of
river and town being of the essence of its physiognomy.”—_Deny L’
Auxerrois_: _Walter Pater._
Many centuries ago, certain chieftains of the Allobroges were inspired
to plant their little village of Cularo at the supremely strategic point
of all southern Gaul. They built it a trifle to the East of the meeting
place of two rivers, the Isère and the torrent of the Drac; north of
them stretched the high, unbroken wall of the lower Alps. And there in
the sheltered valley they lived and were protected against incursions of
other more warlike tribes—until the great conqueror of the world poured
its invincible legions over the mountain barriers, and Rome seized the
little Allobrogian defence town to be a colonial outpost of considerable
military importance. On the site of Cularo sprang up the strongly
fortified Gratianopolis, thus called in honor of the Emperor Gratian who
reinforced the walls begun by Diocletian and Maximian. Later, with the
decline of the Roman power and the development of the Frankish nation,
the Latin name was abbreviated to Grenoble—by which the modern city is
known to-day as the chef-lieu of the department of the Isère in France.
The town, from its birth to the end of the sixteenth century, was
familiarly styled “_la ville du pont_,” the city of the bridge. For more
than a thousand years it commanded the only point where it was possible
to cross the river Isère. It was also designated “the old Roman route
town,” for it lay on the natural highroad which linked Italy on the
north with the country of France, the valley of the Po with that of the
Rhone. The quaint, turreted bridge which spanned the river in mediæval
days provided passage to the Alps from French soil, and was the gateway
to France for strangers approaching over the mountains. While its
strategic position in time of war must be apparent, the site of the city
was no less vital to trade and to later industrial development. As early
as 1615 Grenoble was known, far and wide, as “the city of glovers.”
The earliest records of the consuls of Grenoble, which have been
preserved almost intact since 1244, tell us only of “drapers, tailors,
apothecaries and shoeing-smiths” in the city; and in 1489 they mention
in addition sailors, pastry cooks, carpenters, barbers—but not glovers.
Only the weavers, tanners and curriers of wool and hemp presage the
industrial future. There seems to be some question of a lone glover in
1328 who gave his services to the dauphin. But probably this workman
made numerous things for his fellow-citizens, gloves included,
and at the same time was a dealer in furs and perfumes. In
the statutes of the glovers of Paris, dating from 1190,
they are styled “_marchands-maîtres-gantiers-parfumeurs_,”
mastermerchants-of-gloves-and-perfumes, and are accorded the exclusive
right to prepare and sell these luxuries. Furs were usually added to
their stock in trade. But the solitary glove-maker of 1328 was in no
sense a pioneer of the glove guild in Grenoble, else had he apprenticed
to himself other workmen, and the town been filled with glovers fully a
hundred years earlier than it was.
The latter part of the sixteenth century was a period of war and
domestic upheaval for Grenoble, during which the city government was
tossed back and forth among predatory barons until, in 1590,
Lesdiguières, “the King of the Mountains,” took the town by siege in the
name of Henry IV. Under Lesdiguières’ remarkably public-spirited
governorship, peace returned, commerce was resumed, and natural
resources, scarcely recognized before, were drawn upon for the
development of new crafts, whose products, now for the first time, were
to be exported to all parts of France and even into other countries.
Among these new crafts glove-making instantly sprang into prominence.
For the raw materials were everywhere at hand. On the slopes of the
mountains, enclosing like the tiers of a vast amphitheatre the city
seemingly chosen by Nature to become the mis-en-scène of the glove
drama, millions of wild goats fed. Already the tanners and tawers had
tested the admirable quality of their skins, and those of the females in
particular were found to be of the fine, soft variety, peculiarly free
from flaws, so admirably adapted to the making of gloves. For the
process of tawing the skins, moreover, the waters of the Isère, because
of their singular purity, were incomparable. And in the city itself—its
population now greatly increased by prosperity and peace—lived scores of
skilled artisans and their sons, well fitted for the careful cutting and
shaping of gloves; while the women, equipped with three-cornered
needles, quickly became adepts in sewing gloves by hand.
Other occupations, which now received special impetus in mediæval
Grenoble, were the weaving of hemp textiles—for hemp was the most
prolific crop of the alluvial river valleys—paper-making, and the
manufacture of playing-cards; about 1630, the fruit of the vineyards on
the mountain slopes, was turned into wine for exportation, and beautiful
pottery and tiles were made of the rich clay deposits of the Drac. But
of all these crafts, the one taking first rank from the very start, and
the one which quickly identified itself with the town, was gloves. In
the municipal acts, glovers often appear after 1606. In 1619 Claude
Honoré, a master glover, was elected consul. And in 1664 a certain
skilled workman, Jean Charpel, an artist in his line, proclaims himself
glover to the king.
“One sees the glovers,” observes a noted traveller of those times,
“filling all the streets after 1610, and especially the _rues_
Saint-Laurent, Perrière, Très-Cloître, and the suburb, together with the
curriers, tanners and tawers, and the combers of hemp.”
Although most historians date the close of the Middle Ages and the
beginnings of modern Europe from the era of the Protestant Reformation,
spanning the period from 1517 to about 1560, Grenoble remained for a
hundred years longer a mediæval city in every sense of the word. France
continued a Catholic country, and Grenoble, sequestered in a southern
province, scarcely felt the disquieting breath of the great religious
revolution which was sweeping mid-Europe. Its ideas and its civilization
changed little, even while fresh consciousness of its natural powers and
material resources was impregnating the city with new industries. The
spirit of craftsmanship—that joyous love of perfection, not only in the
fine but also in the useful arts, which characterized the
Renaissance—was still the ruling temper of its citizens; and the guild
of glovers, the most numerous and influential of all the artisans,
particularly personified this civic character. If we would gain some
notion of the part glove-making actually played in the lives of these
people, and the status of the glove-craft as it first appeared in
mediæval Europe, we have only to journey in imagination to Grenoble in
the middle of the seventeenth century, on the occasion of the great
annual festival of the glovers.
It is a clear, tranquil morning in the latter part of July, 1650, and
the sun, scarcely an hour’s march above the mountains, is flooding with
almost tropic brilliancy the matchless paradise of the Dauphiné. In its
confluence of rivers and fair valleys, the ancient capital city,
Grenoble, shines in the midst of the green plain of Grésivaudan.
Impossible to describe the ever-changing charm of the horizons!—as, from
the city itself, the eye sweeps eastward, northward, westward, over
range upon range of snow-crowned mountains, under a sky so pure, so
glowing, that distant peaks apparently loom near, and the cool breath of
Alpine heights gently smites the cheek.
Eastward, the prongs, the pinnacles, the clear-cut outlines of a sierra;
it is the chain of Belledonne. From the devastation of its summits and
terraced slopes, one divines beneath its summer cloak of verdure
concealing only its lower descent, the adamantine rock moulded for all
time by the glaciers of the ice age. It is indeed the advance guard of
those massive crystal formations, the veritable backbone of the Alps,
which penetrate into France from Mont Blanc. On a morning like this, the
Swiss peak itself can be seen, cleaving the far-away heavens which
overhang Savoy.
In the west the spectacle changes. Beyond the vast plain of the Drac
appears a long, white cliff, little carved out—a rigid line of limestone
falling sheer to the valley where lies Grenoble. This is the compact
mass of Vercors, almost impassable. Yet, suddenly, the cliff makes way;
the vale of Furon leaps through the chasm in the mountain wall. An
ancient road, winding ribbonwise to westward, puts into communication
the valley of the Isère with the wooded brows, the vast grassy hollows,
of the Vercors countryside.
Northward, the limestone reappears in the Chartreuse. But these
mountains, unlike Vercors, are twisted and broken, resembling a half
demolished castle with great apertures and rents in its once impregnable
sides. Their countless little vales and fertile levels glow with
stream-fed pasturage and with billowy forests. And everywhere, among the
foothills of the encircling ranges, roam herds of goats and cattle,
without suspicion of the fate which awaits them with the coming of the
great Fair of the autumn at Grenoble.
On this July morning the old town gleams like a strange jewel, set in
the spacious, lush meadow lands, stretching league on league, to the
mountains. Vast gardens of hemp wave to its very walls. Vineyards veil
the nearer hills, and the mulberry dots the plains of the southeast. The
Isère, restless, ever seeking new outlet, interlaces with a network of
sparkling tributaries the great expanse of Grésivaudan. All the richness
of the region, all the amazing variety and beauty with which nature has
surrounded this ancient city, seems concentrated, in the early hush and
radiance, in an act of worship.
Now the sun has penetrated the shadows below the city walls, and is
stealing through the sinuous, crowded streets, peculiar to towns which
long have been cramped within the precincts of strong fortifications.
The tiled eaves lean so close one upon another, as in some places
actually to shut out the sky. If we might fly up like a bird and look
down over the Grenoble of 1650, we would be gazing upon a confusion of
multi-colored roofs, set at every conceivable angle of picturesqueness,
and upon a bewildering congregation of chimneys and chimney-pots. Also,
we would note that the town lay on both banks of the Isère, connected by
a tower bridge, and protected on the north by the fortress of the
Bastille.
Down in the roughly paved _rue Saint-Laurent_ the clatter of sabots on
the stones announces that the townspeople are astir. Shutters are thrown
open. Bursts of song herald the holiday. Crowds of goats, driven through
the streets, are being milked at the house doors. Then, from the
Cathedral of Notre Dame—whose foundations, it is said, were laid by
Charlemagne—the bells proclaim with sweet solemnity the call to early
mass. Out of the houses pour the people in gaily embroidered holiday
dress, group joining group with merry exchange of salutations, until,
trooping through the narrow streets, the colorful procession appears
like a wandering rainbow threading the grey mazes of the old town.
House after house they pass and shop after shop, each bearing above the
portal a shield emblazened with the selfsame coat-of-arms—the heraldic
device of the guild of the glovers. Their occupants, gayest of the gay,
fast swell the throng, with masters and their families and
apprentices—the young boys in the retinues stealing shy glances at the
pretty daughters of their masters, the maidens covertly returning their
admirers’ bashful looks.
And now the multitude melts into the tender gloom of the ancient
cathedral; their voices are hushed in the sweet fluting of the choir.
Above the heads of the kneeling populace glows the shrine of Saint Anne,
lit with innumerable candles and smothered in exotic, summer flowers.
For this is the annual fête-day of the mother of the Virgin, the patron
saint of _les gantiers_, revered by all good glovers throughout France.
At Grenoble, however, the feast is observed with greater magnificence
than anywhere else, for the glovers constitute by far the most numerous
body, and the most prosperous, of its citizens, and theirs is the
crowning festivity of the whole year.
According to monkish legend, the good Saint Anne made a livelihood while
on earth by knitting gloves. “The knitting saint,” in homely terms of
affection the people liked to call her. They were wont to regard her as
one like themselves—only holier far, for the great honor God saw fit to
confer upon her—fulfilling her simple task from day to day, the needles
always busy in her fingers. Their love for her was so strong, indeed,
and so enduring, that early in the nineteenth century the glovers
ordered a statue of their saint set up in a public square of Grenoble,
where it may be seen to-day. It represents the mother of Mary, knitting,
with a half-finished glove in her hand and a basket of gloves at her
feet.
Mass celebrated, the long summer day is given over to street
festivities, to feasting, dancing and pageantry. The doors of the
glovers’ guild-hall, converted into a flower-adorned banqueting room,
stand wide open. The glovers’ shops and houses overflow with
hospitality. As at a great fair, popular arts and pastimes occupy the
squares and spaces before the public buildings; several such
distractions begin at once and continue simultaneously. Mountebanks and
musicians, folk dances, Columbines and Pierrots, flower-girls, venders
of bon-bons and _petits joujoux_ of every description, all commingle in
a laughing, jabbering, singing, whirling, shimmering, merry-making
throng. A wheeled street-stage, drawn by donkeys, with bells jingling
about their necks and on their trappings, makes the rounds of the town.
Wherever it stops, the gay curtains of the miniature theatre are parted
to disclose the play-actors who give a mediæval burlesque of Don Juan,
amid the noisy applause and high-pitched laughter of the onlookers.
But the great feature of the day is the pageant of the glovers, in which
each master, with his apprentices and family, has his special part. This
takes the form of a procession of carnival vans, or floats, drawn by
gorgeously caparisoned horses, and followed by crowds of young
apprentices and workmen and workmaidens on foot, who enact in pantomime
the various processes of glove-making as it was practiced in mediæval
days. Beautiful kids and chamois from the mountains, wreathed with
blossoms as though for sacrifice, are led by troops of peasant _garçons_
in blue smocks. The cutters advance, rhythmically jingling their shears;
and the needlewomen move by more slowly, drawing their shining
implements in perfect unison through the unfinished gloves they carry in
their hands. A spice of rivalry enlivens the exhibition, for every
master-glover has taken pains that his own personal retinue shall be as
large and as brilliant as possible. Every apprentice is fired with the
desire to so comport himself as to be an honor to his master—and,
incidentally, to attract the admiration of the maiden of the house he
hopes to win.
Angelus finds the merry-makers still romping, singing, dancing; a little
wearily the couples break apart, and the townsfolk once more flock
through the streets, transformed in the afterglow to running rivers of
gold, and are lost in the stilly dusk of the cathedral. And now the
tapers gleam like stars upon the altar of Saint Anne, and the fading
flowers send forth a sweet, benumbing perfume, as heads are bowed to
receive the evening benediction. On the rough, uneven stones of the
floor they kneel, imploring in their hearts the good saint who protects
and prospers all devout glovers, that the craft may wax stronger with
every year in the city of Grenoble.
So we see an entire community uniting in a great religious, civic,
industrial and social festival to celebrate and re-consecrate the craft
of glove-making. The place of honor this calling held in former times is
unique and striking. In the chapters which follow we shall observe how
gloves—and especially the gloves of Grenoble—have sustained their early
tradition through three hundred years of political vicissitude and
commercial struggle.