Habits and men, with remnants of record touching the makers of both

by Dr. Doran

THE TAILORS MEASURED BY THE POETS.

“Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori.”—Horace.

Oh, Thersites, good friend, how scurvily hast thou been dealt with at the hands of man! Thou art emphatically un homme incompris, but thou art not therefore un homme méprisable. The poets have comprehended thee better than the people; and Homer himself has no desire to prove thee the coward and boaster for which thou art taken by the world on Homeric authority. I think that Ulysses, with whom, in the ‘Iliad,’ Thersites is brought in contact, is by far the greater brute of the two. The husband of Penelope is cringing to the great, and cruel to the lowly. He appears much less fitted for a king than for a Poor-law Commissioner. He unmercifully smites the deformed Thersites with his sceptre; but why?—because the latter, so far from being a coward, had had the courage to attack Agamemnon himself before the whole assembled Greeks. He is ridiculed for the tears extorted from him by pain and shame; and yet weeping, among the heroes of Greek epic and tragic poetry, is indulged in on all occasions by the bravest of the brave. There is nothing that these copper-captains do more readily or more frequently, except lying, for which they exhibit an alacrity that is perfectly astounding. The soft infection will run through two whole armies, and then the universal, solemn shower rises into the majesty of poetry; but when our poor, ill-treated friend drops a scalding tear, in his own solitary person, it is then bathos! I concede that he talked too much; but it was generally close to the purpose, and fearless of results. His last act was one of courage. The semi-deified bully Achilles, having slain Penthesilea, cried like a school-boy at his self-inflicted loss; and Thersites, having laughed at him for his folly, paid for his bold presumption with his life. There is another version of his death, which says that, the invincible son of Thetis having visited the dead body of the Amazon with unnatural atrocities, the decent Thersites reproached him for his unmanly conduct, and was slain by him in rage at the well-merited rebuke. Shakspeare, who did all things perfectly, makes of Thersites a bold and witty jester, who entertains a good measure of scorn for the valiant ignorance of Achilles. The wit of the latter, with that of his brother chiefs, lies in their sinews; and their talk is of such a skim-milk complexion that we are ready to exclaim, with bold Thersites himself, “I will see you hanged like clotpoles ere I come any more to your tents; I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.”

As it has been with our poor friend Thersites, so has it been with our useful friends whose faculties are ever given to a consideration of the important matter “De Re Vestiariâ.” The poets however do not partake of the popular fallacy; and the builders of lofty rhyme are not unjust, as we shall see, to a race whose mission it is to take measures in order to save godlike man from looking ridiculous.

Shakspeare of course has rendered this full justice to the tailor. In his illustrations we see our ancient friend variously depicted, as industrious, intelligent, honest, and full of courage, without vapouring. The tailor in ‘King John’ is represented as the retailer of news, and the strong handicraftsman listens with respect to the budget of the weakly intelligencer.

“I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,

The while his iron did on the anvil cool,

With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news;

Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,

Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste

Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet),

Told of a many thousand warlike French

That were embattlèd and rank’d in Kent.”

It is clear that nothing less than an invasion had driven this hard-working artisan from his shop-board to talk of politics and perils with his friend at the smithy. The German poet Heyne has something of a similar description of the tailor, in prose: in his ‘Reisebilder’ there is an admirably graphic account of how the Elector John William fled from Düsseldorf, and left his ci-devant subjects to render allegiance to Murat, the grand and well-curled Duke of Berg; and how, of the proclamations posted in the night, the earliest readers in the grey morning were an old soldier and a valiant tailor, Killian,—the latter attired as loosely as his predecessor in ‘King John,’ and with the same patriotic sentimentality in the heart which beat beneath his lightly burdened ribs.

But, to revert to “Sweet Will,” how modestly dignified, assured, and self-possessed is the tailor in ‘Katherine and Petruchio!’ The wayward bridegroom had ridiculed the gown brought home by the “woman’s tailor” for the wayward bride. He had laughed at the “masking-stuff,” sneered at the demi-cannon of a sleeve, and profanely pronounced its vandyking (if that term be here admissible) as

“carved like an apple-tart.

Here’s snip and nip, and cut, and slish and slash,

Like to a censer in a barber’s shop.”

To all which profanity against divine fashion, the tailor modestly remarks that he had made the gown, as he had been bidden,

“orderly and well,

According to the fashion and the time.”

And when Petruchio, who is not half so much of a gentleman in this scene as Sartorius, calls the latter “thimble,” “flea,” “skein of thread,” “remnant,” and flings at him a whole vocabulary of vituperation, the gentle schneider still simply asserts that the gown was made according to direction, and that the latter came from Grumio himself. Now Grumio, being a household servant, lies according to the manner of his vocation; and where he does not lie, he equivocates most basely; and where he neither lies nor equivocates, he bullies; and finally, he falls into an argument, which has not the logical conclusion of annihilating his adversary. The latter, with quiet triumph, produces Grumio’s note containing the order; but it costs the valet no breath, and as little hesitation, to pronounce the note a liar too. But a worm will turn; and the tailor, touched to the quick on a point of honour, brings his bold heart upon his lips, and valiantly declares, “This is true that I say; an I had thee in place where, thou shouldst know it;” and thereupon Grumio falls into bravado and uncleanness, and the tailor is finally dismissed with scant courtesy, and the very poor security of Hortensio’s promise to pay for what Petruchio owed. The breach of contract was flagrant, and the only honest man in the party was the tailor.

So much for honesty; as for bravery, commend me to forcible Francis Feeble. He too was but a “woman’s tailor;” but what an heroic soul was in that transparent frame! He reminds me of Sir Charles Napier. When the latter hero was complimented by the Mayor of Portsmouth, he simply undertook to do his best, and counselled his worship not to expect too much. Sir Charles must have taken the idea of his speech from Francis Feeble; and what an honour is that for the entire profession, not of sailors, but of tailors! “Wilt thou make me,” asks Falstaff, “as many holes in an enemy’s battle, as thou hast done in a woman’s petticoat?” “I will do my good will, Sir,” answereth gallant Feeble, adding, with true conclusiveness, “you can have no more.” Well might Sir John enthusiastically hail him as “courageous Feeble,” and compare his valour to that of the wrathful dove and most magnanimous mouse,—two animals gentle by nature, but being worked upon not void of spirit. Indeed, Feeble is the only gallant man of the entire squad of famished recruits. Bullcalf offers “good master corporate Bardolph” a bribe of “four Harry ten shillings in French crowns,” to be let off. Not that Bullcalf is afraid! Not he, the knave; he simply does not care to go! He is not curious in things strategic; he seeth no attraction in stricken fields; but he would fain be out of harm’s way, because, in his own words,—“because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, Sir, I did not care, for mine own part, so much.” To no such craven tune runneth the song of stupendous Feeble! Mouldy urges affection for his old dame as ground of exemption from running the risk of getting decorated with a bloody coxcomb. No such jeremiade is chanted by Titanic Francis. “By my troth,” gallantly swears that lion-like soul,—“by my troth, I care not!” He, the tailor, cares not! neither subterfuge, lie, nor excuse will he condescend to! Moreover, he is not only courageous, but Christian-like and philosophical; as, for example:—“A man can die but once;—we owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base mind; an it be my destiny, so; an it be not, so; no man’s too good to serve his prince; and, let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.” This was not a man to march with whom through Coventry a captain need to be ashamed. So valiant, and yet so modest! So conscious of peril, and yet so bold in the encountering of it! So clear in his logic, so profound in his philosophy, so loyal of heart, and so prepared in the latter to entertain any fate, whatever might be its aspect, or the hour of its coming! Surely, if the prompter’s book be correct, the exit of this tailor must be directed to be marked with music, to the air of ‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’ Anything less appropriate would fail to do justice to the situation.

In Francis Feeble then the spirit of the tailor is immortalized. Compared with him, Starveling, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ is simply tender-hearted. He is one of the actors in the play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ and he is the most ready to second the motion that the sword of Pyramus should not be drawn, nor the lion be permitted to roar, lest the ladies, dear souls, should be affrighted. Starveling is more of the carpet knight than Feeble. The one is gallant in stricken fields, the other airs his gallantry in ladies’ bower.

It was right that the race of Feebles should not expire. It was said of old, that to be the sire of sons was no great achievement, but that he was a man indeed who was the father of daughters. Such no doubt was Feeble, one of whose spirited girls married a Sketon; and their eldest son it is, as I would fondly think, who figures so bravely among the followers of Perkin Warbeck, in John Ford’s tragedy of that name. Sketon is the most daring of the company, and the blood of the Feebles suffers no disgrace in his person. Sketon, like the great Duke of Guise, is full of dashing hope, when all his fellows are sunk in dull despair. While so august a personage as John à Water, Mayor of Cork, is thinking twice ere he acts once, Sketon thus boldly and tailor-like cuts out the habit of invasion, and prepares the garb of victory:—“’Tis but going to sea, and leaping ashore,” saith he; “cut ten or twelve thousand unnecessary throats, fire seven or eight towns, take half-a-dozen cities, get him into the market-place, crown him Richard the Fourth, and the business is finished!” Is not this a man whom Nature intended for a commander-in-chief? He is not only quick of resolution, but of action; and yet, I dare be sworn, Sketon had read nothing of what Caius Crispus Sallust says thereupon. And I beseech you to mark one thing more. You know that when the foolish Roman Emperor would not permit the statue of Brutus to be borne in the funeral procession of Britannicus, lest the people should think too much upon that imperatoricide, the obstinate and vulgar rogues thought all the more upon him and his deeds, for the very reason that his statue did not figure among those of other heroes. So in the above heart-stirring speech of valiant Sketon, we miss something which reveals to us how chaste and chivalrous a soldier was the grandson of Feeble. His views go to bold invasion, to the burning of towns, and the sacking of cities, and to splendid victory, built upon the cutting of throats, which he nicely, and as it were apologetically for the act, describes as “unnecessary throats.” A taste of the quality of the roystering soldier is perhaps to be found in this speech; but you are entreated to remark, that all the vengeance of the tailor is directed solely against his enemy, man. The women, it is evident, have nothing to fear at the hands of Sketon. He does not mention rudeness to them, just as the ancient legislator did not provide against parricide, simply because, judging from his own heart, he deemed the crime impossible. Sketon and Scipio deserve to go down to posterity hand in hand, as respecters of timid beauty. There was a Persian victor, too, who would not look upon the faces of his fair captives, lest he should be tempted to violate the principles of propriety. Sketon was bolder, and not less virtuous. To my thinking, he is the Bayard of tailors. It would wrong him to compare him even with Joseph Andrews; and I will only add that if old Tilly, at Magdeburg, had been influenced by the virtue of Sketon, there might not have been less weeping for lost lovers, but there would have been more maidens left to sit down in cypress, and mourn for them.

Sketon, foremost in fight, is first to hail the man whom he takes for prince, when victory has induced the Cornish men of mettle to proclaim at Bodnam, Richard IV. “monarch of England, and king of hearts.” Jubilant in success, he does not complain when Fortune veils her face. Defeat and captivity are accepted with dignity when they are compelled upon him; and when swift death is to be the doom of himself and companions, he does not object to the philosophical disquisition of his old leader and fellow-sufferer, Perkin, that death by the sword, whereby the “pain is past ere sensibly ’tis felt,” is far preferable to being slowly slain at home by the doctors. For he says:—

“To tumble

From bed to bed, be massacred alive

By some physicians, for a month or two,

In hope of freedom from a fever’s torments,

Might stagger manhood.”

And accordingly Sketon follows Warbeck to death without a remnant of fear; and I must add, that Henry VII. showed little generosity when he remarked upon their executions, as he sat comfortably at home,

“That public states,

As our particular bodies, taste most good

In health, when purged of corrupted blood.”

Ford, the dramatic poet, offers indirect testimony to the morality of the English tailor, by his introduction of a French member of the fraternity in ‘The Sun’s Darling.’ The author calls his piece a moral masque; but Monsieur le Tailleur utters some very immoral matter in it, such, it may fairly be supposed, as he could not have put into the mouth of a kinsman of Starveling.

Massinger’s tailors again show that they were as much the victims of their customers as their descendants are now; and the “Who suffers?”—the facetious query of Mr. Pierce Egan’s ‘Tom and Jerry,’—would have been quite as appropriate a way of asking the name of a “Corinthian’s” tailor two centuries ago. “I am bound t’ye, gentlemen,” says the grateful builder of doublets and trunkhose to his lordly customers. “You are deceived,” is the comment of the page; “they’ll be bound to you; you must remember to trust them none.” The scene here, it is true, is in Dijon; but Massinger, like Plautus, portrayed his country’s manner in scenes and personages drawn from other climes. This is easily to be discerned in the former author’s play of ‘The Old Law.’ The scene is laid in Epirus. A tailor waits upon the young Simonides, who has just joyfully inherited the paternal estate; but the youthful courtier despises the operative employed by his sire.

“Thou mad’st my father’s clothes,”

he says.—

“That I confess.

But what son and heir will have his father’s tailor,

Unless he have a mind to be well laugh’d at?

Thou hast been so used to wide long-side things, that, when

I come to truss, I shall have the waist of my doublet

Lie on my buttocks;—a sweet sight!”

This is purely descriptive, not of Epirote, but of old English costume. The former never changed; our fashions have constantly varied; and the very long-waisted doublet scorned by Simonides, who talks like the rakish heir of an old Cheapside drysalter, has descended from the saloon to the stables. It was once worn by lords; it is now carried by grooms.

But perhaps, on the question of fashions, the remark of the simple-minded tailor in Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Fair Maid of the Inn,’ who is duped so consumedly by Ferabosco the mountebank, is very apt to the matter. He has travelled, and is willing even to go to the moon, in search of strange and exquisite new fashions; but, as he says, “all we can see or invent are but old ones with new names to ’em.” The poets I have last mentioned exhibit quite as great a contempt for chronology as any of their harmonious fellows. Thus, Blacksnout, the Roman blacksmith, in the ‘Faithful Friends,’ living when Titus Martius was King of Rome, tells Snipsnap, the Latin tailor, that he had not only been in battle, but had been shot “with a bullet as big as a penny loaf;” he adds, with much circumstance:—

“’Twas at the siege of Bunnill, passing the straits

’Twixt Mayor’s-lane and Tierra del Fuego,

The fiery isle!”

Snipsnap is the tailor of the poets’ own period. He calls for drink with the airy freedom of a be-plumed gallant, pays magnanimously, as be-plumed gallants did not, cuts jokes like a court-jester, and boasts that he can “finish more suits in a year than any two lawyers in the town.” Blacksnout’s remark in reply, that “lawyers and tailors have their several hells,” is rather complimentary than otherwise to the last-named gentle craft; for it places the tailor, who exercises the time-honoured observance of “cabbage,” on a level with the lawyer, who purchases his luxuries through the process of partially stripping his clients. The “hell” here named is supposed to be the place wherein both lawyers and tailors put those shreds, of which Lisauro speaks in the ‘Maid in the Mill:’—

“The shreds of what he steals from us, believe it,

Make him a mighty man.”

Ben Jonson alludes to this particular locality in ‘The Staple of News.’ Fashioner waiting past the appointed time upon Pennyboy, Jun., compensates for his dilatoriness by perpetrating a witticism, and the young gentleman remarks thereupon:—

“That jest

Has gain’d thy pardon; thou hadst lived condemn’d

To thine own hell else.”

Fashioner was like Mr. Joy, the Cambridge tailor of an olden time. If that hilarious craftsman had promised a suit to be ready for a ball, and did not bring it home till the next morning at breakfast, his stereotyped phrase ever took the form of—“Sorrow endureth for a night, but ‘Joy’ cometh with the morning!” But, to return to the hades of tailors. The reader will doubtless remember that Ralph, the doughty squire of Hudibras, had been originally of the following of the needle, and—

“An equal stock of wit and valour

He had laid in, by birth a tailor.”

Ralph dated his ancestry from the immediate heir of Dido, from whom

“descended cross-legg’d knights,

Famed for their faith.”

And then are we told, with rich Hudibrastic humour, that Ralph, the ex-tailor, was like Æneas the Pious, for—

“This sturdy squire, he had, as well

As the bold Trojan knight, seen hell;”

which locality, as connected with the handicraftsman, is described as being the place where tailors deposit their perquisites.

We have digressed a little from Snipsnap, the English tailor, whom Beaumont and Fletcher have placed with other thoroughly English artisans in the piece already named, ‘The Faithful Friends.’ Snipsnap holds his profession to be above that of a soldier, but yet modestly excuses himself from fighting, on the score that, although a tailor, he is not a gentleman. Being provoked, however, he knocks down the rude offender, and has a thorough contempt for the constable,—a contempt in the entertaining of which he is so well justified by the logical remark of Blacksnout:—

“A constable’s

An ass. I’ve been a constable myself.”

The bravery of Snipsnap is a true bravery: he is conscious of the peril in which he stands as a soldier, and, ere going into action, bethinks him of old prophecies that he should be slain; but when he pictures to himself the public scorn that ever follows cowardice, and that, if he and his fellows be poltroons, every wench in Rome will fling dirt at them as they pass by, saying, “There are the soldiers who durst not draw their blades,” then is the heroic soul fired, and Snipsnap exclaims:—

“But they shall find we dare, and strike home too:

I am now resolved, and will be valiant;

This bodkin quilts their skin as full of holes

As e’er was canvas doublet.”

“Spoke like a bold man, Snip!” says Bellario, the old soldier. Ay, and like a discreet and thinking man. There is no foolhardiness and rash action in Snipsnap; but, like the greatest of heroes, he looks his peril calmly in the face, and then encounters it with a gallantry that is not to be resisted.

And it is to be observed that the tailors of the poets are as generous as they are brave. Witness Vertigo in ‘The Maid in the Mill;’ the lords among whom he stands owe him money, and yet affect to have forgotten his name. One of them ventures, indeed, to hope that he has not come to press his claims; and what says this very pearl and quintessence of tailors?

“Good faith, the least thought in my heart; your love, gentlemen,

Your love’s enough for me. Money? hang money!

Let me preserve your love!”

Incomparable Vertigo! What a trade might he drive in London upon those terms! A waistcoat for a good opinion, a fashionable coat for esteem, and a full-dress suit to be paid for with the wearer’s love, in a promissory note made payable at sight!

Vertigo understands the dignity of his profession; indeed, he wears a double dignity, for he is a “woman’s tailor,” as well as “man’s;” and when he is about to measure Florimel, how bravely does he bid the lords “stand out o’ th’ light!” How gallantly does he promise the lady when he swears—or asserts rather (for the tailors of the poets never swear,—that is, never swear profanely; they are like the nun in Chaucer, whose prettiest oath was but “by St. Eloy!”)—when he asserts then that she has “the neatest body in Spain this day;” and further, when Otrante, the Spanish Count, in love with Florimel, remarks that happily his wardrobe, with the tailor’s help, may fit her instantly, what self-dignity in the first line of the reply, and what philosophy in the second!—

“If I fit her not, your wardrobe cannot;

And if the fashion be not there, you mar her.”

Ben Jonson does the trade full justice with regard to their possession of generosity; thus, in ‘Every Man Out of his Humour,’ Fungoso not only flatters the tailor who constructed his garment out of the money due for its fashioning, but he borrows some ready cash of him besides. Upon this hint did Sheridan often act; and thus posterity suffers through the vices as through the weaknesses of our ancestors. But the philosophical spirit of the true artistic tailor has been as little neglected by rare Ben, “the Canary-bird,” as the same artist’s generosity. The true philosophy of dress is to be found in a speech of Fashioner’s, in the ‘Staple of News,’ and which speech is in reply to the remark of young Pennyboy, that the new clothes he has on make him feel wittier than usual: “Believe it, Sir,” says Fashioner,

“That clothes do much upon the wit, as weather

Does on the brain; and thence, Sir, comes your proverb,

The tailor makes the man. I speak by experience

Of my own customers. I have had gallants,

Both court and country would have fool’d you up,

In a new suit, with the best wits in being,

And kept their speed as long as their clothes lasted,

Handsome and neat; but then as they grew out

At the elbows again, or had a stain or spot,

They have sunk most wretchedly.”

The policy of the tailor is as good as his philosophy, and has the same end in view, for Pennyboy exultingly says:—

“I wonder gentlemen

And men of means will not maintain themselves

Fresher in wit, I mean in clothes, to the highest;

For he that’s out of clothes is out of fashion;

And out of fashion is out of countenance;

And out of countenance is out of wit.”

And the moral of all is, that if a man would prosper in the world, he should, at all events, not neglect his tailor.

Of all the poets yet named, Ben Jonson is the only one who introduces a somewhat dishonest tailor, Nick Stuff, in ‘The New Inn;’ but Apollo was angry at the liberty, and visited the poet with the retributive damnation of the piece. Stuff is a “woman’s tailor;” we have none such now in England, except as makers of ladies’ riding habits. They are rare in France, but there are as many women’s tailors as female dressmakers in Vienna; and the latter often order the tailors to take measure for and cut out the dresses, which the female sewers then, to use a French term, confection. Nick Stuff used to attire his wife Pinnacia in all the new gowns he made; and in ever-changing and gallant bravery Pinnacia—but let her describe Nick’s ways of vanity after her own fashion:—

“It is a foolish trick, madam, he has;

For though he be your tailor, he is my beast;

I may be bold with him, and tell his story.

When he makes any fine garment will fit me,

Or any rich thing that he thinks of price,

Then must I put it on and be his ‘Countess,’

Before he carry it home unto the owners.

A coach is hired and four horse; he runs

In his velvet jacket thus, to Romford, Croydon,

Hounslow, or Barnet.”

Pinnacia proceeds to portray further excesses, but I think there must be some exaggeration in this; and for this the poet was punished by the condemnation of his piece. The thing is as clear as logical deduction can make it. The ‘New Inn’ contained great reproach against the tailors: the ‘New Inn’ was hissed off the stage: argal, for a poet to speak reproachfully of tailors, is to bring down ruin upon his head! This deductive process is borrowed from Cardinal Wiseman; and if it be found defective, I beg to shield myself under that gentleman’s eminent authority. It is something like accounting for Tenterden steeple by Goodwin Sands; but of course I cannot help that. Let the candidate for the tiara look to it!

Taking Nick Stuff as a true sample of those of his craft, who formed the exception to the general rule of professional honesty, I must say for such as he, that if he were a knave, it was because for years he had had an evil example before his eyes in the persons of men better off than himself, who had not his plea of small means and long credit as an excuse for bettering his condition at the public cost. If the fashioners of clothes were sometimes not so careful as they might be in the application of the principle of honesty, the makers of the cloth were infinitely worse. They lay under the imputation of being universally fraudulent. We have no better, and need no better, proof on this matter, than what is afforded us by the testimony of good old Latimer, who had a sharp eye to detect vice, and a bold tongue to denounce it. In his third sermon preached before King Edward VI., there is the following graphic passage:—“I hear say that there is a certain cunning come up in the mixing of wares. How say you?—were it not a wonder to hear that clothmakers should become ’pothecaries, yea, and as I hear say, in such a place whereat they have professed the Gospel and the word of God most earnestly of a long time.” And then the preacher, after some animadversions on the devil,—whom he styles in another sermon as the only prelate he knows who is never absent from his diocese, nor idle when in it,—thus proceeds:—“If his cloth be seventeen yards long, he will set it on a rack, and stretch it out with ropes, and rack it till the sinews shrink again, till he hath brought it to eighteen yards. When they have brought it to that perfection, they have a pretty feat to thick it again. He makes me a powder for it, and plays the ’pothecary. They call it flock-powder. They do so incorporate it to the cloth, that it is wonderful to consider. Truly, a good invention! Oh that so goodly wits should be so ill applied! they may well deceive the people, but they cannot deceive God. They were wont to make beds of flock, and it was a good bed, too; now they have turned the flock into powder, to play the false thieves with it. These mixtures come of covetousness. They are plain theft.” From this singular passage it is apparent that what is popularly known at Manchester as “devil’s dust,” was an invention which the cotton lords of today have inherited from their fathers in Mammon, the cloth lords of some three centuries ago. That ever-active prelate, the devil, is therefore as busily engaged in his diocese now as he was in the days whose doings are condemned by Latimer. In some respects however there is improvement, if we may believe the assertion made by Mr. Thackeray, in his ‘Essays on the Essayists,’ to the effect that even hermits out at elbows would lose their respectability now if they were to attempt to cheat their tailors. Other men succeed in doing so, without forfeiting the privilege conceded by Mark Antony to Brutus of being “an honourable man.”

Charles Lamb remarks, in his ‘Essay on the Melancholy of Tailors,’ that “drink itself does not seem to elevate him.” This assertion seems contrary to that in the acting tragedy of ‘Tom Thumb,’ wherein Queen Dolalolla so enthusiastically exclaims:—

“Perdition catch the railers!

We’ll have a row, and get as drunk as tailors.”

It is to be observed, however, that Fielding is not responsible for this illustration, which has been made by some adapter, who has had the temerity to do for the heroic tragedy in question what Cibber did for ‘Richard,’ and Tate for old ‘King Lear.’ The lines however were delicious when Wilkinson played Queen Dolalolla in the tragedy-style of Peg Woffington.

The illustration is insulting; and therefore is it anonymous. The poets generally have, as I have shown, been complimentary to the tailors. Few of the sons of song have reviled the true “makers of men.” When they have done so, they have not dared to expose themselves to the sartorian wrath by boldly avowing their name. None ever did so on so extensive a scale as the author of the three-act piece, called ‘The Tailors: a Tragedy for Warm Weather;’ and no author has remained so utterly uncomeatable by the public curiosity. What is the mystery about Junius, touching whom there are a thousand guesses, compared with the greater impenetrability of this secret author, about whom no man ever heard a conjecture?

It is now nearly ninety years ago since a manuscript was sent from Dodsley’s shop to Foote, the manager of the “Little Haymarket.” The manuscript was that of the Warm Weather Tragedy, and Foote was requested to return the copy if it were not approved of. The great comedian knew better. The burlesque play of the anonymous author was acted with a strong cast. Foote himself was the Francesco; Shuter played Abrahamides, the Flint; Western did justice to Jackides; old Bannister was ponderous as Campbello; and gay Jack Palmer was just the man to enact that Lothario of stage-tailors, the seductive Isaacos. Mrs. Jeffries represented the false wife Dorothea, and Mrs. Gardner the faithful maid Titillinda. It was said by the critics of the period, that the radical fault of this burlesque play was, that “in burlesque, the characters ought to be persons of consequence, instead of which they are here tailors;” but the truth is, that the fault lies in the fact, that the tailors talk as correctly as persons of consequence, and are not half so bombastic as Nat Lee’s kings and queens. The profession exhibited much unnecessary susceptibility in being offended at this piece. Its tendency, if it have any at all, is rather to elevate than depress the public appreciation for the tailor, whether in his aspect of master or of “Flint” out upon strike. The entire action is devoted to the history of a strike for wages, with a supplemental love-plot annexed. The head master-tailor is a highly respectable individual, who has our sympathy because he is betrayed by his wife; and the chief Flint wins admiration, because he gets hanged and is cheated out of his mistress. The strike ends unfavourably for those who make it; but though the author sets out with the determination to render all his dramatis personæ ridiculous, he cannot do it. He is like the prophet who was compelled to vaticinate against his inclinations; and the deity of dramatic poetry and tailors compels him to reverence where he would fain have committed desecration. The very first sentence in this play contains an allusion to Elliott’s brigade, that famous band of warriors made up almost entirely of tailors. I must refer my readers to the piece itself, if they be curious to see how the subject is treated in evident contrariety to the author’s own design; he makes all the characters utter commonplace common sense, when his intention was to make them lose themselves upon stilts in a sea of tropes, tirades, and thunderings against tyranny.

The antiquarian will not fail to notice that Bedfordbury is a locality set down in this piece as a place where tailors’ men did congregate some century ago. They still much do congregate on the same spot. A century before the period of the piece, Frank Kynaston, the poet, resided in a house adjacent to the “Bury,” and the memory thereof is still kept up in the name Kynaston-alley, which is within that same “Bury” of classical associations. Thus do tailoring and the belles lettres continue to be in close connection; and where Kynaston’s muse kept itself warm, the sacred goose of the schneider still glows with fervid heat. The operatives of the “Bury,” moreover, look as much like poets as tailors,—so abstract are they of air, so romantically heedless of personal appearance, and so unromantically and really “half-starved.” Not of them can be said what Titillinda says of Abrahamides—

“Whose form might claim attention even from queens.”

Finally: want of space, and not of material, brings that troublesome adverb upon me. If it be objected, that the tailors of the poets do sometimes waver in critical situations, and condescend to tremble in presence of emergency, I have to answer, that such facts prove their heroism, as being akin to that of the Conqueror and Cœur de Lion. When the former was being crowned at York, he heard such an uproar in the streets, caused by the massacre of the inhabitants by the amiable Normans, that he sat upon his throne shaking with affright; “vehementer tremens,” says Orderic Vitalis, and he is very good authority. As for that tinselled bully, Richard, nobody doubts his single virtue—courage; but bold as he was, we all know that when in Sicily, he discreetly ran away from a bumpkin who threatened to cudgel him for attempting a matter of petty larceny. Francis Feeble and his brethren may, therefore, not be ashamed if they have foibles in common with William of Normandy and Richard of Bordeaux.

Dr. O. Wendell Holmes has cleverly conjectured what a tailor, poetically given, might say of the beauties that cluster about the closing day; and he has thus described

Evening.

BY A TAILOR.

“Day hath put on his jacket, and around

His burning bosom button’d it with stars.

Here will I lay me on the velvet grass,

That is like padding to earth’s meagre ribs,

And hold communion with the things about me.

Ah me! how lovely is the golden braid

That binds the skirt of night’s descending robe!

The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads,

Do make a music like to rustling satin,

As the light breezes smooth their downy nap.

“Ha! what is this that rises to my touch,

So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage?

It is; it is that deeply-injured flower

Which boys do flout us with;—but yet I love thee,

Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout.

Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright

As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath

Sweeten’d the fragrance of her spicy air;

But now, thou seemest like a bankrupt beau

Stripp’d of his gaudy hues and essences,

And growing portly in his sober garments.

“Is that a swan that rides upon the water?

Oh no! it is that other gentle bird,

Which is the patron of our noble calling.

I well remember, in my early years,

When these young hands first closed upon a goose;

I have a scar upon my thimble-finger,

Which chronicles the hour of young ambition.

My father was a tailor, and his father,

And my sire’s grandsire,—all of them were tailors;

They had an ancient goose,—it was an heirloom

From some remoter tailor of our race.

It happen’d I did see it on a time

When none was near, and I did deal with it,

And it did burn me,—oh, most fearfully!

“It is a joy to straighten out one’s limbs,

And leap elastic from the level counter,

Leaving the petty grievances of earth,

The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears,

And all the needles that do wound the spirit,

For such an hour of soothing silence.

Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress,

Lays bare her shady bosom; I can feel

With all around me; I can hail the flowers

That sprig earth’s mantle; and yon quiet bird,

That rides the stream, is to me as a brother.

The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets,

Where Nature stows away her loveliness.—

But this unnatural posture of the legs

Cramps my extended calves, and I must go

Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion.”

To conclude: the poets have been quite as guilty of petty larceny as ever was poor tailor. Pope stole from Pascal, and Addison from Pope; and Churchill’s line in his Rosciad, to the effect that

“Common sense stood trembling at the door,”

is a plagiarism from George Alexander Stevens’s ‘Distress upon Distress; or Tragedy in True Taste.’ This is more of “cabbage,” and less of coincidence, than the line in one of the ‘Roxburgh Ballads’ anent tailors, wherein we find an allusion in the phrase “turn up my ten toes,” which is, as nearly as possible, a translation of part of the ladies’ threat in the ‘Lysistra’ of Aristophanes. Altogether a volume might be filled with examples to prove that poetry and tailoring have one spirit in common.

But it is time to turn from poetry to prose, and come more nearly to our subject “touching tailors.” We will take individually those whose great deeds have shed glory on the craft. First on the roll of fame is noble Hawkwood.