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.
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.
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.
The ruffs and collars of lace were starched in many colours—purple, goose-green, red and blue, yellow being completely out of the fashion since the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury by Mrs. Anne Turner, the friend of the Countess of Somerset; and this because Mrs. Turner elected to appear at the gallows in a yellow ruff.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF JAMES I. (1603-1625)
Here is seen the wide fardingale, or farthingale, the elaborate under-skirt, and the long hanging sleeves of the gown. Also, the very tall upstanding ruff or collar of lace.
As for the fardingale, it was having its last fling. This absurd garment had its uses once—so they say who write scandal of a Spanish Princess, and served to conceal her state upon a certain time; but when ladies forsook the fashion, they wore a loose, almost shapeless, gown, open from the waist to the feet, and a plain, unstiffened jerkin or jacket underneath.
Such a conglomeration is needed (if you remember we are looking over a lady’s wardrobe) to make a lady of the time: such stuffs as rash, taffeta paropa, novats, shagge, filizetta, damask, mochado. Rash is silk and stuff, taffeta is thin silk, mochado is mock velvet. There, again, one may fall into an antiquarian trap; whereas mochado is a manufacture of silk to imitate velvet, mokkadoe is a woollen cloth, and so on; there is no end to it. Still, some may read and ask themselves what is a rebatoe. It is the collar-like ruff worn at this time. In this medley of things we shall see purles, falles, squares, buskes, tires, fans, palisadoes (this is a wire to hold the hair next to the first or duchess knot), puffs, ruffs, partlets, frislets, fillets, pendulets, bracelets, busk-points, shoe-ties, shoe roses, bongrace bonnets, and whalebone wheels—Eve!
All this, for what purpose? To turn out one of those extraordinary creatures with a cart-wheel round the middle of their persons.
As the reign died, so did its fashions die also: padded breeches lost some of their bombast, ruffs much of their starch, and fardingales much of their circumference, and the lady became more Elizabethan in appearance, wore a roll under her hair in front, and a small hood with a jewelled frontlet on her forehead. It was the last of the Tudor dress, and came, as the last flicker of a candle, before the new mode, Fashion’s next footstep.