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

by Dr. Doran

THE TIRING-BOWERS OF QUEENS.

“I could accuse the gaiety of your wardrobe

And prodigal embroideries, under which

Rich satins, plushes, cloth of silver, dare

Not show their own complexions; your jewels,

Able to burn out the spectators’ eyes,

And show like bonfires on you, by the tapers:

Something might here be spared, with safety of

Your birth and honour, since the truest wealth

Shines from the soul, and draws up just admirers.”

Shirley.

Let us not presume to look into the primitive boudoirs of the Queens before the Conquest, and only reverently into those of the sovereign ladies who succeeded. “Tread lightly, this is sacred ground!” is an injunction not to be forgotten in this locality.

The first Queen after the Norman invasion, Matilda of Flanders, who was pummelled into loving her ungallant wooer William, had a costly wardrobe. Before her death she disposed of the most valuable of her garments by will, and named therein the dressmaker who had provided them for her, a species of advertisement that ought to have made Madame Alderet’s fortune. “I give,” says the royal testatrix, “to the Abbey of the Holy Trinity my tunic, worked at Winchester, by Alderet’s wife; and the mantle embroidered with gold, which is in my chamber, to make a cope. Of my two golden girdles, I give that which is ornamented with emblems, for the purpose of suspending the lamp before the great altar.” The abbey named was at Caen, and the nuns connected therewith came in for all Matilda’s petticoats,—no indifferent legacy, for they were stiff with gold and dust. She was an elegant dresser, as far as outside show was concerned.

Rufus was a bachelor, and the ladies who frequented his uproarious court were remarkable for their adoption of garments which very much disgusted the sober ladies of Saxon times. Matilda of Scotland, wife of Henry I., being graceful of form, was given to wear tight kirtles, and may be said to have brought in tight lacing. Henry’s second wife, Adalicia of Louvaine, imitated the fashion set by her predecessor. On the King’s death, she espoused the hereditary cupbearer, William de Albini, surnamed Fortembras; and if she dressed a trifle less gloriously in her bower at Arundel Castle, she at least became there the mother of a numerous progeny, who grew up and gave the fashions to the entire county of Sussex.

The third Matilda, she of Boulogne, wife of Stephen, was the first of our Queens who introduced simplicity of dress. On ordinary occasions she was perhaps less plainly dressed than the very elegant inmates of that very elegant “St. Katherine’s College,” which still commemorates her benevolence, and whose inmates are doubtless a cause of some astonishment to the spirit of that gentle lady.

Eleanora of Aquitaine, ex-wife of Louis XI. of France, and consort of Henry II. of England, was extravagant in the article of dress, and loved to see her ladies around her splendidly attired. She ran their purses hard, for, like Marie Antoinette, she was exceedingly fond of private theatricals; and the barons who groaned over the cost of their own armour, looked grim at the bill of outlay for materials which, be it said for the honour of the parties concerned, were made up for the most part by the young ladies themselves. In those days, people used to resort to the pleasant and sweet-smelling village of Bermondsey, to see the well-dressed Eleanor walk in the quaint gardens there. The idea of Bermondsey being pleasant and sweet-smelling is one now to smile at. It is in these times the seat of ill odours, amid which however many a quean still walks and keeps her state,—and a very sad state it is.

Berengaria, the spouse of the first Richard, is one of the two Queens of England who never were in England. Her tiring maidens found in her a gentle lady who gave grace to, rather than borrowed it from, what she wore. It may be added that she wore nothing that was not wet with her tears; for her royal spouse was like most knights of his day, ready to make and ready to break all vows of fidelity, and indeed all promises, of whatsoever quality. But Richard was not parsimonious, like his brother John, who kept poor Isabella of Angoulême as poorly dressed as a scrivener’s wife; and who wrote down what cloth she was to have for her garments, and on what allowance of shoes she was to stand, all with the shopkeeping sort of correctness which is to be found in no king save Louis Philippe. Isabella however had some rich appurtenances in her wardrobe, for we find that when her son, the little Henry III., was crowned, the royal circlet not being procurable for the purpose, the boy was at length crowned with the gold throat-collar belonging to his mother’s gala suit.

That same Henry III. was as gorgeous a dresser as his father, but he loved to see not only his wife, the fair Eleanor of Provence, whom he gallantly married without a dower, but also her ladies, as gorgeously attired as himself. Had he been as careful of paying for their dresses as he was in the selection of them (he was a dreadful fop, and would discuss lace and frippery with a lady with as much unnecessary knowledge as any Belgian petit-maître of modern days), he might have passed reproachless. But he was one of those men who, after squandering their own money, squander that which they hold in trust: and then cheat their own tailors and their ladies’ milliners with a composition of five shillings in the pound. Henry, his Queen, and court glittered like dragon-flies, thought nothing of “settling day,” and turned up their noses at their more honest and less gaily-dressed kindred. The result was what might be expected. They got into pecuniary difficulties, and descended to the commission of intense meanness. They invited themselves out daily to dine with the wealthy aristocracy of London, whose dinners they ate and whose plate they carried away with them as a gift or a loan. In fact, Henry and Eleanor established a fashion which is far from being obsolete, so great is the authority for its observance. The extravagant are always mean,—mean and dishonest; they first cheat their creditors, and then would cheat their more judicious relatives, were the latter weak enough to be persuaded that the very attempt is a compliment. I could not of course, but you, good reader, can put your finger on a score of people who are like Henry and Eleanor in this,—living beyond their means, and looking to their more honest friends for aid to relieve them from the consequences of their knavery. Exactly; I see you smile as your eye falls on that pair of cousins of yours,—the lady all flounce, and the cavalier irreproachable in dress, and in nought besides! He has just asked you, a man with eight children, four hundred a year, and two servants, to put your name to that little bill. But you have been singed at that fire before, and you now decline. My dear Sir, if you will not allow yourself to be cheated by your extravagant relations, you cannot expect to be on good terms with that part of your family. But you will find compensation for the loss of such a luxury at your own hearth and in your own heart. Why should you wrong those who cluster about both to help worthless people, who, if they could, would further do as Henry and Eleanor did, pawn the “Virgin Mary” to pay their jewellers’ bills. That precious couple compelled the sheriffs of various counties to furnish them with linen for their royal persons. Had I been a sheriff at the time, they should have had huckaback, compared with which they would have found a hair-shirt a positive luxury!

And let me hope, young ladies, that you will not confound this Eleanora with her of the following reign, that Eleanora of Castile, who was surnamed the “faithful,” and who was the glorious first wife of Edward I. She showed what an excellent eye she had to comfort, by introducing into the cold, damp dwellings of the day, tapestry hangings to protect the inmates from chill and moisture. She was the royal mother of all good English housewives; although she did a little scandalize the sober matrons by wearing long curls adown her peerless neck, after she was married.

There were some, too, who did not complacently admire her habit of dressing in public; but it was only a public of ladies. It was for Elizabeth, in later days, to attire herself in presence of men. In Eleanor’s oriel at Caernarvon Castle, ladies were presented to the daughter of Castile, while her tirewomen combed and braided her renowned long tresses. A contemporary poet thus describes the scene:—

“In her oriel there she was,

Closed well with royal glass;

Filled it was with imagery,

Every window by and by;”—

the poetry of which is of as poor a quality as was probably the glass in the oriel. We must not forget to add, that there was as much sewing as romping, and an abundance of both among the young princesses (of whom there was a noisy abundance too) in the “Maiden’s Hall” at Westminster Palace; and that Eleanor is immortalized as the only sovereign who bequeathed “a legacy to William, her tailor.”

When she died, Edward made solemn oath of sempiternal grief, and in a week or two, took to flirting. Ultimately he espoused Marguerite of France; and the match was so happy a one that the two consorts bore their respective arms in one scutcheon, in testimony of their entente cordiale. Those particular gentlemen, the heralds, were in a sort of delirium tremens at this innovation; but they were almost as little cared for then as now. Marguerite and Edward were a worthy couple. Edward, indeed, slaughtered all the inhabitants of Berwick for calling him “Longshanks;” but nobody thought the worse of him for that. As for Marguerite, she is distinguished for her taste,—her double taste, in dressing becomingly, and paying regularly. She never omitted acquitting a debt at proper time, but once; and this so alarmed John of Cheam, her creditor and goldsmith, that out of fear that the fashion of long credit was coming in again, he besought the king, “for God’s sake, and the soul of his father, King Henry, to order payment.” The prayer was heeded; and I may further notice, as creditable to Marguerite especially, that she willingly consented to be Queen without a coronation, as the then present poverty of the finances offered an obstacle to the ceremony.

Isabelle of France, the consort of Edward II., was a lady of another quality. Her outfit, when it was displayed in London, perfectly astounded the beholders. The Queen of Fairyland could have had nothing more splendid; and mortal wives could not have been more usefully endowed. The ladies of households, as they talked the matter over at their own chimneys, expatiated on the hundreds of yards of linen for the bath, and the six dozen French nightcaps. These were pronounced “loves;” and every unmarried daughter, whose heart wore the figure of a bachelor knight, determined that when another night arrived, her head should wear nothing less than a “coiffe de nuit à la Reine.”

Philippa of Hainault, Queen of Edward III., ranks among the reasonable as well as the glorious ladies. She was simple in her dress and gentle to the maids who decked her. While she dressed not beneath her dignity, she was mindful that a plain dignity suited best a Queen whose crown had been pawned, for the same reason that less noble persons pawn their spoons. In her later days, she fell into dropsy and a loose style of covering it.

Richard II. pledged half his own jewels to pay for his bride and bridal,—the former was Anne of Bohemia. This lady was not only a member of the Order of the Garter, but she was attended by ladies who were also associates of that noble company,—pleasanter associates there could not have been; and I wish that the fashion were still observed, and that I could enumerate some of my fair friends on the roll; and then we might ride double to the festival, for

“This riding double was no crime

In the great King Edward’s time.

No brave man thought himself disgraced

By two fair arms about his waist;

Nor did the lady blush vermilion,

Dancing on the lover’s pillion.

Why? Because all modes and actions

Bow’d not then to Vulgar Fractions;

Nor were tested all resources

By the power to purchase horses.”

There is little said about Anne’s style of dressing; but two things are told of her, better worth the telling. She ruled her husband without his ever suspecting it, and she did this by a soft voice and gentle ways;—this to the newly-espoused ladies. The second circumstance was not publicly known until after her death. It was told at her grave-side at Westminster, by Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, who stated, that this good Queen passed her leisure hours in reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. This was perhaps in the Bohemian tongue; for Bohemia possessed a translation long before England.

Richard’s second wife, Isabella of Valois, was as inordinately fond of dress as her husband was; and never, perhaps, were royal couple so profusely provided with means whereby to look well in the eyes of men. But she was but a little child, and he, man-grown, treated her as a daughter. Little did Isabella have cause to wear in England but the trappings of woe; and the gems of tears, ever set in her eyes, were brighter than the jewels in her famous casket, and about which, the two Crowns ultimately quarrelled with no more dignity than a couple of Abigails.

Queen Joanna of Navarre, spouse of Henry IV., and her ladies, appear to have been attired at her coronation after much the same fashion as was observed at the crowning of Queen Victoria. In after-days Joanna, who was terribly “near,” dressed as ladies do who labour under that infirmity: even her mourning for the King was calculated like a widow of small means; and a black cloth gown at seven shillings and eightpence per yard, with one and sixpence for the making, and shoes at sevenpence per pair, tend to show that the royal widow furnished herself at what may be called the “mitigated affliction department.”

How Katherine of Valois was wooed by Henry V. may be seen in Shakspeare. The record is probably as true as much that is penned down by those other poets, the chroniclers. She is the second Queen of England who passed from the couch of a king to that of a soldier; and Katherine founded a new line of sovereigns when she gave her hand to Owen Tudor. Like all Frenchwomen, she dressed with taste; and she deserved a better fate than to be left, as her body was, during so many years, a spectacle for sightseers in Westminster Abbey. Her corpse, removed from her tomb during repairs, in the reign of her grandson, Henry VII., was never restored. It became mummified, and, in a coffin with a loose lid, was open to the eye and touch. People kissed it for twopence, until the year in which Louis XVI. was beheaded, and thrones began to tumble. The Revolution showing to what complexion royalty might come, the body of Katherine was deemed no longer profitable as a morsel, nor indeed as an investment, to those self-denying men, the Dean and Chapter. At the end of the last century, when it became the fashion to sweep away kings and queens, and nobody would pay to see their wretchedly-dressed mummies, the body of Katherine of France was unceremoniously swept off, too, into the general dust-hole covered by Westminster Abbey.

When old King René married his daughter Margaret of Anjou to Henry VI., he did what many modern fathers do, and spent upon the festival a sum which would have served the bride and bridegroom for household expenses for a year. Margaret possessed little but the clothes in which she stood; and she remains known as the most indifferently clad and the worst-fated of all our sovereign ladies. But she was a woman of too much heart and intellect to care more about coifs and kirtles than they deserved.

It was one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth Woodville, who shared the throne of Edward IV.,—a mésalliance in every respect, and unfortunate to all parties. She however astonished the good people of Reading by the “bravery” of her attire, when she first appeared there as England’s Queen.

Anne of Warwick’s whole reign with Richard III. was one of almost uninterrupted sickness, and she more often wore the garb of the invalid than the costume of a queen. The daughter of Elizabeth Woodville, the good Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII., was a lady who was never better dressed than at her coronation banquet in Westminster Hall, where the King was a spectator and not a guest. She sat in a kirtle of purple velvet, furred with ermine bands in front; and the Lady Katherine Gray and Mistress Ditton went under the table, and sat at the Queen’s feet; while the Countesses of Oxford and Rivers knelt on each side, and now and then “held a kerchief before her Grace.” The milliners especially prayed for benison on this Queen, and justly; for never had the dressmakers so fair and so faithful a patroness. She was provident of what she well paid for; and Elizabeth did not think it beneath her to pay sixteen pence to her tailor, Robert Addington, “for mending eight gowns of divers colours, for the Queen’s Grace, at 2d. apiece.” She also occasionally pawned her plate, when she was pressed for money; but altogether she was not an improvident Queen.

Elizabeth’s young daughter, Mary, sometime Queen of France, but who ultimately died Duchess of Suffolk, was a sportive child in a cumbrous dress. At four years of age she was provided, according to a warrant still existing, with kirtles of tawny damask and black satin; gowns of green and crimson velvet, edged with purple tinsel; and, as if to show that only outside appearance was cared for, lined with nothing more costly than simple black buckram. She was the widow, almost as soon as she was the wife, of Louis XII.; and, after a marriage of some two months’ duration, she expressed her grief by retiring to the Hôtel de Cluny, where, clothed in white, and confined in a darkened apartment lighted by wax tapers, she kept mourning state during six long, heavy weeks.

Of the wives of Henry VIII. it is told that Katherine of Arragon entered London wearing “a broad round hat.” She rose at five, and she used to say that dressing-time was murdered time; and she wore the habit of St. Francis of the third order, of which she was a member, beneath her ordinary attire. Anne of Boleyn was a lady of another quality. She was as long at her mirror as any modern maiden of them all; and, when arrayed for conquest, perhaps no woman was ever more decidedly armed against the peace of mankind. Her costume was almost daily varied, the only permanent fashion being the hanging sleeve, to conceal the double tip of the little finger of her left hand; and the kerchief over the neck, on which was a slight mark, which she had worn from her birth. Of course, kerchief collar-bands and hanging sleeves were adopted by all who recognized in Anne the undisputed Queen of Fashion.

Jane Seymour, who married Anne’s husband the day after he had beheaded Anne herself, was far from having the taste of her predecessor. She enjoyed the better fortune of dying a natural death, and Henry wept for her, poor man! because he lost the opportunity of otherwise disposing of her. When Anne of Cleves first presented herself to him, she was attired in abundance of petticoats, “after the Dutch fashion.” The King was horrified at such fashion, but sturdy Anne wore more petticoats, in the same national mode, on her wedding-day; nor was it till the morrow that she put off her national dress and assumed one shaped according to the English mode, and which, we are told, made her look more tolerable than she was before. She had the most splendid wardrobe of all Henry’s Queens, with the worst taste in dress. She was fonder of experimental cooking than of dress,—was more made for a buxom hostess than a Queen, and was most fortunate as Queen when she laid down her dignity and retired with a pension, and a neck secured against the King’s violent affection for it. Katherine Howard was in most things her very opposite, in taste for dress as well as in observance of duty; and Katherine Parr, the sixth wife, was superior to both. The first Protestant Queen of England and preserver of Cambridge University was not only a scholar but a “very woman,”—in which phrase I recognize one with a whole string of virtues and accomplishments. She was a perfect mistress of the needle (Queen Adelaide herself was not a greater); and her taste in dress was shown by her uniting magnificence of material with simplicity of form. She was the third of our Queens who descended from royalty to wed with a “mere nobleman;” but as Lady Seymour, good Queen Katherine was still the Queen of Hearts, and when the ivy peered into her coffin at Sudeley Chapel, and wound a wreath about her unconscious head, she gained a crown which caused her less uneasiness than that she had worn as living Queen.

It is a trait worth noticing, both in Mary Tudor and in the times, that she purchased six bonnets at £1 apiece, and two frontlets at 10s., at the shop of Lady Gresham, the actual Lady Mayoress, who was a near relation of the Boleyns. So that Mary was not ashamed of humble relations, nor a Lady Mayoress too proud to keep a shop. This was when Mary was only the “Lady Mary,” or Princess. When she became Queen she was not disinclined to wrap her dignity in all the glory, gold and brocade could give it. Her taste was not always of the best, and young ladies will shudder as they hear that when Mary was married, she marred a superb wedding costume, à la Française, by wearing a black scarf and scarlet shoes! True, young ladies, this was worse than burning Protestants;—which, after all, she sanctioned less from inclination than that she had bloody men around her, who put compulsory strain upon her tastes and feelings. For one Dr. Cahill, who gloats over the “glorious idea” of massacring Protestants, there were a score then, not only with the inclination but the power to give it effect; which, fortunately, our friend of gloomy notoriety does not possess.

I have above said, the “shop” of Lady Gresham. Until the 10th or 12th of Elizabeth there were but few silk-shops at all in London, and those were invariably kept, or served, by females. The supply too was very scanty. Stowe, the antiquarian tailor, says that citizens’ wives in general were then constrained to wear knit caps of woollen yarn; silver thread, lace, and silk being very scarce, and only the very wealthy being able to purchase garments of which these materials formed a part; and even then, the husbands of ladies who desired to deck themselves in costly apparel, were obliged to prove that they were “gentlemen by descent.”

When the Princess Elizabeth lost her mother, her wardrobe, which was none of the most brilliant before, became of very mean condition. Lady Bryan wrote to Cromwell that “she hath neither gown nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen, nor forsmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails (night-dresses), nor body stichets, nor handkerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor mufflers, nor biggins” (the last two signifying day caps and night caps), and the whole list showing that the little lady was as ill provided for as any villein’s daughter in the land. No wonder that she was at an early period smartly touched by rheumatism. When she came to the court of Edward VI. she was remarkable for the simplicity of her dress; it was religiously grave, as prescribed by the polemical ‘Journaux des Modes’ edited by Calvinistic divines. Dr. Aylmer, in his ‘Harbour for Faithful Subjects,’ says:—“The King, her father, left her rich clothes and jewels; and I know it to be true, that in seven years after his death she never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will; and that there never came gold or stone upon her head till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness; and then she so bore it that all might see that her body carried what her heart disliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in King Edward’s time, made the noblemen’s wives and daughters ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks, being more moved with her most virtuous example than all that ever Paul or Peter wrote touching the matter.”

The needle was the solace of Elizabeth in her captivity in the Tower and at Woodstock, and the instrument of her pastime in the days of her greatness. Taylor, a very properly named poet to have sung the praise of the needle, says of her in his poem:—

“When this great Queen, whose memory shall not

By any turn of time be overcast,—

For when the world and all therein shall rot,

Yet shall her glorious fame for ever last,—

When she a maid had many troubles past,

From gaol to gaol by Marie’s angry spleen,

And Woodstock and the Tower in prison fast,

And after all was England’s peerless Queen;

Yet howsoever sorrow came or went,

She made the needle her companion still,

And in that exercise her time she spent,

As many living yet do know her skill.

Thus she was still, a captive or else crown’d,

A needlewoman royal and renowned.”

She grew in love with costly suits when she became independent of church and grave churchmen; and the officers of her wardrobe were continually recording in their journals that there were “lost from her Majesty’s back” gold enamelled acorns, buttons, aylets or eylets, with which her dresses were sprinkled; or rubies from her hat, or diamonds, pearls, and tassels of gold; but always from the royal back, whence they were cut by the over-loyal, as the Russian princess the other day stole the great jewel from the Moscow “Virgin,” out of piety and a taste for gems. She kissed the figure, and carried away the precious stone in her mouth. When the Scottish Queen, Mary of Lorraine, came to visit Edward VI., she deluged the court with new French fashions; “so that all the ladies went with their hair frowsed, curled, and double-curled, except the Princess Elizabeth, who altered nothing,” says Aylmer, “but kept her old maiden shamefacedness.” In latter days Elizabeth had other ways; and we read with astonishment of her never-to-be-forgotten eighty wigs, with her “weeds (costume) of every civilized country,” and her appearing in a fresh one every day. After all, it is questionable if she was a better “dresser” than the fair Gabrielle, of whom the chivalrous Unton writes to Elizabeth that she was “very silly, very unbecomingly dressed, and grossly painted.” But this was a courtier speaking of one woman to another, and his testimony is to be taken with reserve. Elizabeth was in another respect more like Marie Antoinette, for she had a dairy at Barn-Elmes, where she played the milkmaid, as the poor Queen of France used at Trianon.

If we may trust La Mothe Fénelon, Leicester was as much the Queen’s “maid” as her Master of the Horse. The French Ambassador says, that the public was displeased with the familiar offices he rendered at her toilet. He was in her bed-chamber ere she arose; and there, according to the reports of men who denounced his privileges merely because they were not their own, he would hand to her a garment which did not become the hands of a Master of the Horse, and would dare to “kiss her Majesty when he was not even invited thereto,” but when, as he very well knew, “he was right welcome.” For Elizabeth took all she could get, even “nightcaps,” which were among the presents sent to propitiate her by the Queen of Scots. She took with both hands; and gave, as she herself truly said, only with the little finger. She ever graciously received new-year’s gifts that enriched her wardrobe; and was especially wroth with the Bishop of London for preaching too strictly against vanity of attire. When she saw Harrington in a frieze jerkin, she declared that the cut liked her well, and she would have one like it for her own wear; but she spat on Sir Matthew Arundel’s fringed suit, with the remark,—“The fool’s wit is gone to rags. Heaven spare me from such gibing!” A queen of later days would not think of assuming the fashion of Lord Palmerston’s paletot, nor spoil the uniform of a bran-new deputy-lieutenant, as Elizabeth did Sir Matthew Arundel’s embroidery. I believe our Gracious Sovereign never went further in this direction than to laugh good-humouredly at the Duke of Wellington’s hair when he had had it newly cropped, as was his wont, into the appearance of short bristles on a scrubbing-brush.

If it be true that Leicester helped her at her toilet, he was the only happy individual who enjoyed the privilege. At least, in her mature years she had a horror of being seen en déshabille. Essex once came upon her unexpectedly in the hands of her tiring-maids, and hardly escaped with his ears. Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s son, also once beheld her in her night-gear, as she stood at a window to look out at a May morning. The Virgo, magis quam tempestiva, hurried away with such blushes as she could call up at forty-five. Twenty years before she would have shown less haste and more discretion; at forty-five, in her “night-stuff” at sunrise,—no Gyges would have thanked Candaules for letting his eye rest on so questionable a vision.

Even in her midday glories, she was no attractive sight as she grew in years. See her going to prayers, when her threescore years had thrice as many nobles to honour them, and she walking amid all, wrinkled, small-eyed, with teeth that made her smile hideous, and with not only false hair, but that hair red. Hurtzner, who saw her on one of these occasions, says:—“Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels.... She was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans; and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness; the ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white.”

The older she grew, the more splendidly she bedizened herself,—as decaying matter puts on variety of colour. “She imagined,” says Bacon, “that the people, who are much influenced by externals, would be diverted, by the glitter of her jewels, from noticing the decay of her personal attractions.” The people were not such simpletons, and they saw plainly enough that she was dying, in spite of the majesty of her exquisitely braided periwig.

Anne of Denmark, the next Queen of England, did not look queenly even in Elizabeth’s robes. Her taste in dress was extremely bad. She patronized especially the huge farthingales, high behind, low before, and swelling out into unlimited space on all sides. These monstrous dresses were kept in countenance by the as monstrous padded costumes of the courtiers; and it was not very unusual for a bevy of the bearers of them to stick fast in the narrow passages, whence only dexterity could decently disentangle them. The King issued a proclamation against the farthingales; but the ladies, to show their contempt for his authority in matters of fashion, continued to wear them till he died,—and then left them off. Spirited women!

King Charles wore a white mantle at his coronation, and when his poor hearse, poorly attended, crossed the yard of Windsor Castle, the snow descended upon it, and covered the coffin as it was taken out with its silently-falling flakes; and so, from crown to grave, Charles was, as his servants used to call him, “the White King.” His consort, Henrietta Maria, was fond of the colour,—that in which Mary Tudor had mourned. But poor Henrietta, less fortunate than the sister of Henry VIII., gay and graceful as she was at her husband’s court, was too ill-conditioned in France to dress becomingly even in weeds. She was one of the founders of good taste in England; and in her exile she wore contentedly the coarsest stuffs. But then Louis XIV. buried her splendidly at his own cost; and Charles II. and his people spent twice as much in a six months’ mourning for her as would have sufficed to have kept her and her household for ever.

When Katherine of Braganza landed in England as Queen Consort of Charles II., she excited mirth by the stiff outlandish fashion in which her luxuriant tresses were done up by her Majesty’s “barber,” and her exceedingly ugly maids of honour. Indeed she had as little taste for dress as she had for the fine arts; though she had a taste for music. In full court dress, however, she looked a handsome woman,—without studying how she might best become so. Pepys has recorded that he saw her and the King dining together once, on which occasion she wore a loose white wrapping gown, as was supposed to become her imaginary condition; and Pepys adds, that she looked handsomer in it than in her robes of state and ceremony.

Mary Beatrice of Modena, the wife of James II., is remarkable for her detestation of rouge, and for her wearing it in obedience to her husband’s wishes. Ladies will be pleased to make a note, not so much of the fact as of the motive. Father Seraphine, her Capuchin confessor gave an impudent stare of horror when he beheld it; and as she murmured something about the paleness of her complexion, he exclaimed,—and in the very face of the King too,—“Madam, I would rather see your Majesty yellow or green than rouged;” at which the good lady fell a laughing, as servilely as a barrister at a judicial bad joke, such as Baron Alderson’s light puns, with which he cuts short heavy suits.

This is almost the only trait of interest told in connection with her toilet. It was simply observed that in England she dressed as became her state; and in exile, as became a lady whose dower was stolen by William III. and appropriated to his own use. Apply it as he would, he could never look so well as the owner. She cared little for that of which Elizabeth thought so much; and when, in after-days, it was remarked that she dressed as plainly as a citizen’s wife, and wore no jewels, it was known that she had sold her jewels, to profit her son. As often happens with mothers who despoil themselves to benefit their boys, the gift profited neither the recipient nor the giver. The splendour of the silver ornaments of her toilet was well known; and the ladies of France could well appreciate the sacrifice, which was in truth no sacrifice to her who made it.

Queen Mary II., if she rolled joyously over the couches from which her affectionate father had just before been rolled off, the unfilial romp was, at least, a private bit of ingratitude. She did not, like her sister Anne, go to the play in a dress covered with orange ribbons.

Mary, in her later days, patronized the cornette head-dresses of monumental elevation, and the fontanges, of which she was desirous to deprive, by royal decree too, the “city minxes;” but the ladies beyond Temple Bar would neither heed her decrees nor wear the high-crowned hat, which had fallen into disuse save by the pagani, and they continued to “flaunt in cornettes and top-knots, after her own gracious example.”

Anne was too lame to walk at her coronation, and accordingly she was carried in a low sedan chair; and as she could not take her huge train with her, the same was as gravely carried by the privileged bearers behind the chair, as though it had been hanging from the back of her most sacred person. She was indifferently dressed for the occasion, but there were two figures present whose appearance compensated for whatever lacked. The Queen, being “Queen of France” as well as of England, must necessarily be attended by her French nobility; but as the real article was not to be had, a spurious one was invented, and two men, named Clarke and Andrews, were dressed up to represent the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine. They stood at the foot of the throne, answered to their fictitious titles, and looked, like all shams, very much embarrassed and supremely ridiculous. If this Queen was not a very splendid dresser, the makers and washers of her dresses had profitable places under her. Mrs. Abrahal enjoyed a pension of one hundred a year, in return for having “washed and starched the Queen’s heads (triple-tiered caps, brought into fashion by Maintenon) when she was princess, for twenty pounds a year.” The Queen’s sempstress came off more fortunately still; for Mrs. Ravensford pricked the heart of a gallant as easily as she could pierce her own pincushion, and ultimately married the son of the Bishop of Ely. And such lawn sleeves she made for her father-in-law!

But it was a reign in which the devisers of garments had a lucky time of it. I may instance John Duddlestone, the bodice-maker of Bristol, who asked Prince George to dinner when none of the Bristol merchants had the hospitality to do so. The Prince accepted the invitation, kissed Dame Duddlestone, ate his beef and pudding with more appetite after such a grace, and ultimately presented the pair to the Queen at Windsor. Anne not only invited them to dine with her, but, like the French lady who used to find all her male visitors in black velvet breeches, attired him in a suit of violet velvet at her own cost; and when the bottle had gone a round or two, drew her husband’s sword, and laying it on the bodice-maker’s shoulder, bade him “stand up, Sir John!”

The full dress of Queen Anne’s time was perhaps never seen to more advantage than at the grand soirées which the obese lady gave in that conservatory at Kensington which, as Defoe says, she was afterwards pleased to turn into a summer supper-room. The well-known old building was indeed divided into three rooms,—a ball-room, with a drawing and music-room on either side. The Corinthian pillars, the elegant friezes, and the niches for statues bearing girandoles, are yet to be seen. The Queen came to the parties given in this modest Trianon in a chair, by the gate on the north-west of the palace. Concerts, balls, and illuminated galas al fresco, were the usual entertainments; and to witness them the wealthy public were admitted, on condition of their appearing in full dress;—the ladies patched, feathered, sacked, or hooped; the gentlemen in three-cornered hats, velvet coats with stupendous skirts, powder on the head, a bodkin across the loins, and two inches of heel to give increase of dignity. Where the Broad Walk now exists there was then a railing; and through this the mobility,—worse dressed, but probably not less washed, than their betters,—looked on at the genteel people who glided about the gardens in brocaded robes, hoops, fly-caps, and fans.

Indifferent as Anne’s clothing was, there were terrible squabbles, touching the cast-off garments, between the Duchess of Marlborough, who was Mistress of the Robes, and the bed-chamber women and dressers. These complained that they only received very old mantuas, and sacks, and gowns, petticoats, commodes, head-clothes, and mantes, from the Duchess, who kept all the best of the old clothes, they said, for her own wear. Her Grace, in return, rated them as hussies; told them that she had a right to all, and that they could claim none, although she gave, out of her liberality, more than they deserved. Nay, she so well distributed the cast-off garments among the subaltern ladies, that of petticoats and other habits left, she had, as she protested, “only two or three for my own service.” Such was the delicacy of a ducal Mistress of the Robes in the palmy days of Queen Anne.

“Mistress” indeed she was, and what a virago to boot! Witness the incident when Anne was entering St. Paul’s, the Duchess at her side, to render thanks for the great victory achieved at Oudenarde. The Duchess of Marlborough had had the royal jewels newly set for that especial day; and sublime was her horror, as the royal carriage ascended Ludgate-hill, at observing that the Queen had no jewels at all about her. The vicinity to Billingsgate lent power to the vituperative eloquence of the offended wife of the General whose valour had won the victory. The Queen, for once, was not an iota less vituperatively eloquent than her Mistress of the Robes. As they mounted the steps, and entered the cathedral, they flew at one another with winged words, that fly swiftly, and wound where’er they fall. Anne’s voice was by far the louder; and for every thrust of the Duchess’s tongue, she fired a volley of asseverations that made the lieges long to tear the “Mistress’s” robes from her own back. That lady saw as much herself, and became alarmed; but, like a skilful general, she had the last shot, and fairly battered the Queen into silence, as she attempted to renew the contest in the royal pew, by the imperative order to “hold your tongue!”—“don’t answer me!”—and poor Anne obeyed.

But if Anne claimed the privilege of dressing as she pleased, she was angry if the necessary etiquette was disregarded by others. When Eugene of Savoy came over here in 1712, to uphold, as well as he could with his one hand, the war-faction against the Queen, he marvellously offended her by appearing in her august presence in a tie-wig. Mr. Secretary St. John, who presented him, wore a periwig so huge that he perfectly extinguished therewith the illustrious stranger whom he held by the hand. Eugene had been forewarned that the Queen could not bear to look upon a man unless he were covered with a full-bottomed periwig. Eugene carelessly, and not truthfully, answered, as he stood in the royal antechamber, “I don’t know what to do; I never had a long periwig in my life; and I have sent to all my valets and footmen to know if any of them have one, that I might borrow it; but no one has such a thing.” And so the Prince was conducted to the Queen, who thought more of the tie-wig on his head than she did of the gallant heart that beat within his “plaguy yellow and literally ugly” person.

Queen Anne, on the death of Prince George of Denmark, wore black and white, with a mixture of purple in some part of her dress. The precedent was taken from that worn by Mary Queen of Scots for the Earl of Darnley. Mourning, with such variety in it, was, after all, better than none. The Pope’s nieces, for instance, never wear mourning, not even for their nearest relatives. The Romans account it so great a happiness for a family to have a Pope in it, that they think no calamity whatever ought to be permitted to afflict his Holiness’s kindred! On the other hand, the dowager Empresses of Germany were accustomed never to leave off their mourning, and even their apartments were hung with black till their death. I will just add, that the French Queens, previous to the era of Charles VIII., wore white upon the decease of the King. They were thence called “Reines blanches.” In later days, the state mourning of the French court was purple. Consequently, when Anne wore white, black, and purple, in mourning for her departed lord, she put on the suits of woe sanctioned by the practice of three different courts.

Sophia Dorothea, the wife of George I., was the second of the royal consorts of England who never visited our shores. For allowing Count Königsmark to kiss her hand, her jealous husband murdered the Count, and shut the lady up in prison for more than thirty years. In her youth she was a charming person, charmingly dressed. The most touching circumstance of her long captivity was her weekly appearance, all clad in white, at the communion-table of the chapel of her prison-house, the Castle of Alden, where she partook of the sacrament, made solemn asseveration of her innocence, and forgave her enemies.

The process of dressing Marie Antoinette, it will be seen in another page, was at times a splendid misery. That of Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., was a splendid mockery. Horace Walpole describes a scene as having taken place in Queen Anne’s tiring-room, which really occurred in that of the sovereign lady of the second George. This exemplary Queen dressed and transacted her early worship at one and the same moment. She and her nymphs were in one room, the chaplain solus in another. Occasionally these nymphs, in their discretion, closed the door. Whenever this occurred, the chaplain, liberal Whiston, ceased to pray, and meditated on the mysteries proceeding within. This observance nettled the Queen, and did not please her ladies. One of the latter, on re-opening the door one morning, and finding the chaplain had not progressed in his duties while he had been shut out, angrily inquired, “Why did you stop?” “I stopped,” said Whiston, “because I do not choose to whistle the word of God through the key-hole.”

It is not to be wondered at, since queens afforded such examples of laxity, that fine ladies followed with alacrity the unseemly fashion. Miss Strickland notices the fact, that great ladies had, in the days upon which we are treating, a bad custom of proceeding with the affairs of the toilet during prayers; which was severely satirized, says the fair historian, in one of the old plays of that era, “where the fashionable belle is described preparing for her morning toilet, by saying her prayers in bed to save time, while one maid put on her stockings, and the other read aloud the play-bill.”

The consort of George III., the “good” Queen Charlotte, lived in a transition time, and wore the costumes of two separate centuries. The little lady lacked taste; and though she set the fashion to loyal maids and matrons, seldom became the robes she wore. But at the worst of these periods she displayed more taste, and, what is better than taste, more personal cleanliness, than her daughter-in-law, the coarse wife of the heartless George IV. Queen Adelaide was simply a lady. Expensive dresses were her abhorrence; and she never put on a robe of state without a sigh at the cost. In any sphere of life she would have been a thoroughly tidy, honest, careful housewife.

Except for a few days, Queen Victoria has not resided at Anne’s favourite Kensington since her accession. In her early days, the then little princess,—clad so simply that it is wonderful the middle classes did not avail themselves of the example, and dress their darlings less tawdrily,—might be seen of a bright morning in the enclosure in front of the palace, her mother at her side. On one of these occasions I remember seeing a footman, after due instruction given, bringing out to the lively daughter of the Duke of Kent a doll most splendidly attired,—sufficiently so to pass for the εἴδωλον of an heiress, and captivate whole legions of male poupées, all gold without, and sawdust within. The brilliant effigy, however, had no other effect upon the little princess but to put her in a passion. She stamped her little foot and shook her lustrous curls, and evidently the liveried Mercury had unwittingly disobeyed her bidding. He disappeared for a minute or two, but returned, bearing with him a very torso of a doll. A marine-store dealer would not have hung up such an image, even to denote that he dealt in stolen goods, and “no questions asked.” But the unhappily deformed image was the loadstone of the youthful affections of the princess. She seized it with frantic delight, skipped with it over the grass, gambolled with it, laughed over it, and finally, in the very exuberance of joy, thrust it so suddenly up to the face of a short old lady, who was contemplating the scene from the low iron fence, that the stranger started back and knew not well what to make of it; thereupon the maternal Mentor advanced, and something like an apology appeared to be offered, but this was done with such a shower of saucy “curtsies,”—so droll, so rapid, so “audacious,” and so full of hearty, innocent, uncontrollable fun,—that duchess, princess, old lady, and the few spectators of the scene, broke into as much laughter as bienséance would permit; and some of them, no doubt, “exclaimed mentally,” as well-bred people do in novels, that there was a royal English girl, who had most unquestionably a heart and a will of her own,—and may God bless both!

I have noticed above how queens of foreign birth introduced to our ancestresses fashions of which their young imaginations had never dreamed. The origin of all fashion then, as now, was in France; and thitherward we now will take our way.