WHY DID THE TAILORS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM FOR THEIR PATRON?
“King David’s confessor is worth a whole calendar of Williams.”—Lutheran Tailor.
Why did the tailors choose St. William for their patron? Ah, why? I confess it puzzles me to furnish a reply; and I would not be editor of that pleasant paper ‘Notes and Queries,’ if my official hours were to be passed in furnishing answers to such questions.
I can understand why St. Nicholas is the patron of children. The Saint once came upon a dozen or two in a tub, cut up, pickled, and ready for home consumption or foreign exportation, and he restored them all to life by a wave of his wand,—of his hand, I should say, but I was thinking of Harlequin; and thenceforth parents very properly neglected their children, knowing that Nicholas was their commissioned curator.
I can comprehend why “St. John Colombine” is the patron saint of honest workmen. I heard Dr. Manning, the other day, tell his story from that thimble of a pulpit in the Roman Catholic Chapel at Brook Green. This John was a journeyman tailor (or of some as honest vocation) given to strong drink and hot wrath. He was one day made insanely furious because his real Colombine, his wife, had not got his dinner ready according to order. The good housewife bethought her for a moment, and thereupon, after turning aside, placed before him, not bread, but biography; not a loaf and a salad, but the ‘Lives of the Saints.’ John dipped into the same, devoured chapter after chapter, and fed so largely on the well-attested facts, that he lost all appetite for aught besides. He thenceforth so comported himself that future editors gave him a place in the catalogue of the canonized; and the story, as told by that pale and care-worn-looking Dr. Manning, is worth the shilling which you must disburse if you would hear it. Certainly, I mean nothing disrespectful to that sincere but seemingly unhappy man, when I say that so startling was the story as introduced into a discourse upon the Spirit of the Lord and they who are led by such Spirit, that I could not have been more startled if, in the days of my youth, the Bleeding Nun in ‘The Travellers Benighted’ had, in the midst of her most tremendous scene, tripped down to the foot-lights and sung a comic song.
But this will not answer the query, “Why did the tailors choose St. William for their patron?” Indeed, the digression I have made may be taken for proof that I do not know how to answer the question. But let us at least inquire.
First, there was the Savoyard Saint William, who, when an orphan, abandoned the friends who would have protected him; and after wandering barefooted to the shrine of that Saint whom English boys unwittingly celebrate by their grottoes, “only once a year,” St. James of Compostella, proceeded to the kingdom of Naples, where he withdrew to a desert mountain, and passed his time in contemplating the prospect before him. He lacerated his skin instead of washing it, and he patched his own garments when he might have earned new ones by honest labour. But he founded a community of monks and friars, and ergo he is celebrated by the hagiographers. A contempt for saponaceous applications, and a disregard of upper appearance or under comfort, have decidedly descended to the brotherhood of tailors from William of Monte Vergine.
Secondly, there was William of Champeaux, who founded the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris. This William was a man of large learning and small means; and he was well content to dine daily on a lettuce, a pinch of salt, and a mouthful of bread. The shadows of dinners which form the substance of tailors’ repasts, are reflections from the board of William of Champeaux.
Thirdly, there was William of Paris, the familiar friend of St. Louis, King of France. This bishop, next to piety, was famed for his knowledge of politics; and as tailors have ever been renowned for knowing what is going on “i’ the capitol,” and for discussing such goings on with uncommon freedom, I think we may trace this characteristic of the race to the news-loving and loquacious prelate of eight centuries ago.
Fourthly, there was St. William of Maleval, of sufficiently ignoble birth to have been a tailor; and who did, in his youth and his cups, what modern young tailors frequently offer to do under similar circumstances, namely, enlist. If our useful friends have not imitated the latter example set them by the Saint, we may trace their love of the pot, at least, to the early model they found in their patron of Maleval; and if often they find themselves in the station-house, lying upon no softer bed than the bare ground, they doubtless find the reflection as feathers to their bruised sides, that it was even thus that the founder of the Gulielmites lay in a cave of the Evil Valley to which he gave a name (Male Val), and which before was known by no better than the Stable of Rhodes.
Fifthly, there was William of Gelone, Duke of Aquitaine, whom it took St. Bernard twice to convert before he made a Christian of him; and who had such gallant propensities that he might have been one of the couple sung of in the ‘Bridal of Triermain,’ where of three personages it is said that—
“There were two who loved their neighbours’ wives,
And one who loved his own.”
The well-known gallantry of the tailors therefore is an heirloom from William of Aquitaine.
Sixthly, there was William sometime Archbishop of Bourges, who left to the guild of whom we are treating the example which is followed by so many of its members, and which consisted in utterly dispensing with a shirt. He further never added to his costume in winter, nor diminished anything in it in summer; and they who have taken St. William for a patron are known, though not for the same reasons, to be followers of the same fashion.
Then there was, seventhly, St. William of Norwich, whose father, after hesitating whether to bind him apprentice to a tailor or a tanner, had just placed him with the latter when the lad was seized upon by the Jews, and by them tortured and crucified, in derision of Christ. On Easter Day they put the body into a sack, and carried it into Thorpe Wood, where it was afterwards discovered, and buried, with many miraculous incidents to illustrate the funeral; and where was afterwards erected the chapel of St. William in the Wood. Now, at first sight, it would appear difficult to decide as to what the tailors’ guild derived from William of Norwich. But it is only at first sight, and to those unaccustomed to follow a trail, and not determined to find what they are looking for. In allusion to what had befallen the body of St. William, or rather in memory of how that body was conveyed away, after life had been expelled from it, the Norwich tailors first adopted that now consecrated phrase of “getting the sack,” and which phrase implies a loss of position, to the detriment of the loser.
But I have not done; Williams are as plentiful as blackberries. There is an eighth, the Abbot of Eskille, who no more liked to play sub-prior to a superior than Garrick liked to play an unapplauded Falconbridge to Sheridan’s King John. William of Eskille was a great reformer of slothful convents, by whose inmates he was as much detested as an honest and vigilant foreman is by operatives who work by the day. One thing deemed worthy of mention by his biographers consists in the dreary fact that he wore the same shirt for thirty years. At the end of that time he turned it, and then piously blessed the saints for “the comfort of clean linen.” I question if even modern tailors have succeeded in attaining to this extent of saintly uncleanliness, but I would not be too certain of that fact. As for what they may further have derived from this excellent person, it is well known that for an abbot to be called an Abbot d’Eskille was the highest possible compliment that could be paid him; and so the phrase fell to other camaraderies, and a Tailleur d’Eskille was the origin of a tailor of skill. But this is confidential, reader,—between you and me. If you are related to an etymologist, or on friendly terms with a lexicographer, I earnestly beg that you will not mention it, even “after dinner.”
Under the mystic number “nine,” I come to that William Archbishop of York, who was the nephew of Stephen King of England, and whom old St. Bernard belaboured with as many hard words as ever Sir Richard Birnie hurled, on a Monday morning, on ex-inebriated tailors captured on the preceding Saturday night. I do not believe a word of what the irate St. Bernard says against St. William, whom he accuses of the most horrible crimes. The slightest charge in the bill of indictment drawn up by him, whom Hurden calls a wicked old impostor, is love of good living. St. William, like honest Archiepiscopus Wilfred, had a tender inclination for roast goose! Oh, benedicte Gulielme! may you have found the bird ever as your inclination,—tender! The sacred goose is an appanage of the tailors, and it dates from that jovial St. William whom St. Bernard hated as cordially as though the former had made the latter’s hair-shirt too tight to comfortably breathe in after supper.
Our tenth example is the St. William who was bishop of St. Brieux, in Brittany, who often pawned his robes to purchase corn for the poor. Here we see whence the society of tailors borrow their authority for depositing pledges, in order to purchase distillations from corn, and for the poor also,—their poor selves. This is highly satisfactory.
There was one more William, namely, he who, English by birth, was the introducer of Christianity into Denmark, and who was of such good repute when living that he was buried in the mausoleum of the Danish kings, at Roeskild, after death. It was remarked of him that when he was reproving “drunken Denmark,” he invariably held his pastoral staff as though he were taking measure, as he probably was of the royal bad habits; and perhaps on this account he has come in for a share of the patronage exercised over the guild whose members take measure of men.
And now let it be observed, that although I have mentioned eleven Williams, there are only nine of them who really rank among the canonized saints. Is not that suggestive? The fraternity, of whom it takes nine members to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would take nine saints to make one patron. It is clear, then, that it is not to one William, but to nine combined, that the guild address, or did in olden times address, their vows and acknowledgments; and exactly for the reason that there are nine Saint Williams have the English tailors chosen them, in a mass, for their one consolidated patron. Quod erat demonstrandum!
And now, having seen how the tailors took their patron, let us consider them generally. There have been many of note, either of themselves or in their sons. Church, bar, army, navy, poetry, and the stage,—they have by turns excelled in all.
If Barrow rose from his father’s shop, where he was early initiated in the mysteries of mercer and draper, to wear his well-earned dignity in the Church, there was nothing wonderful in the elevation. The father of our present Archbishop of York kept, at Cambridge, a shop like that of Barrow’s father. One of the most active and useful of the Yorkshire rectors was himself in early life of the craft; and there is no more zealous or efficient missionary in Ireland than the Rev. Mr. Doudney, the brother of the well-known London tailor of that name.
In the olden times,—that is, some two centuries ago,—the boy who passed from his father’s shop-board to enter, as a man, the pulpit, was of very High Church principles, if we may take Shadwell’s portrait of Smirk in the ‘Lancashire Witches’ as a faithful portraiture. Smirk is a little given, as Brother Ignatius advises all Roman Catholic servants in Protestant families to be, to inquire into the family secrets, for which his patron, Sir Edward Harfort, to whom he is chaplain, reproves him. The following sharp dialogue then ensues:—
“Smirk. Consider, Sir, the dignity of my function.
Sir Ed. Your father is my tailor. You are my servant;
And do you think a cassock and a girdle
Can alter you so much as to enable
You (who before were but a coxcomb, Sir)
To teach me?
Smirk. My orders give me authority to speak.
A power legantine I have from Heaven.
Sir Ed. Show your credentials.
The indiscretion of such paltry fellows
Are scandals to the Church and cause they preach for.
With furious zeal you press for discipline,
With fire and blood maintain your great Diana,
Foam at the mouth when a Dissenter’s named,
And damn them if they do not love a surplice.
Smirk. Had I the power I’d make them wear pitcht surplices.
Sir Ed. Such firebrands as you but hurt the cause.
The learned’st and the wisest of your tribe
Strive by good life and meekness to o’ercome them.”
It is worth recording that this rather high-toned chaplain Smirk, son of Smirk the Tailor, came under the censure and the scissors of the scrupulous Master of the Revels. This delicate official could tolerate the Smirks of Etherege, but when Shadwell exhibited one with something like sincerity dragging after his faults, the whole town, ay, and the court too, cried out shame! The wisdom of our ancestors does not appear to match with the assurance which affects to give warranty of it.
To turn from poetry to prose, I have to remark that Ingulph, the Abbot of Croyland, who wrote the pleasant story of his monastery, appears to me to have been (possibly) a tailor’s son. The good old man does not indeed say as much, but he intimates that he was a cockney of humble origin; and, if “vous êtes orfèvre, Monsieur Josse,” have a significance, why something of the same sort may be detected in the phrases and, I may add, in the deeds of the Chronicler of Croyland.
Ingulph was a Westminster boy and an Oxford scholar. Speaking of his studies at the latter place, he says:—“After I had made progress beyond most of my fellows in mastering Aristotle, I also clothed myself down to the heels with the first and second rhetoric of Tully. On growing to be a young man, I loathed the narrow means of my parents, and daily longed with the most ardent desire to leave my paternal home, and sighed for the palaces of kings and princes, to clothe myself in soft or pompous raiment.” If Molière’s Monsieur Josse was discovered to be a goldsmith by the setting of his criticism, we may say that Ingulph was of a tailorish origin by the cut of his phrases. And so, as I have said, of his acts: in these there is a strong redolence of what the vulgar call “cabbage.” For instance, when “trustworthy reports” were made by local valuers of land and property, in order that the same should be taxed, and the said valuers visited Croyland to that intent, Ingulph thus exultingly records what took place:—“Those persons showed a kind and benevolent feeling towards our monastery, and did not value the monastery at its true revenue, nor yet at its exact extent; and thus, in their compassion, took due precautions against the future exactions of the kings, as well as other burdens, and with the most attentive benevolence made provision for our welfare.” It is curious to see how robbing the king’s exchequer in favour of a monastery is called attentive benevolence; how fraudulent returns are spoken of as “trustworthy reports;” and how the Lord Abbot of Croyland, the personal favourite of William the Conqueror, cheated the master who confided in him, and practically illustrated the text, “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”
Till a very recent period it was the invariable custom, whenever a Frenchman appeared on our stage, to represent him ridiculously attired. This was originally done out of revenge for an affront put upon us by Catherine de’ Medici; who, instigated by the Duc de Guise, had dressed up her buffoons at a court entertainment, and called them English milords. Elizabeth made a capital remark when she was told of this insult. She called aloud, in full court, to the French Ambassador, that when these French buffoons were declared in presence of her own Ambassador, Lord North, to be English noblemen, that envoy ought to have told those who witnessed the unseemly entertainment, that the tailors of France who had so mimicked the costume of her great sire Henry VIII. should have better remembered the habiliments of that great King, since he had crossed the sea more than once with warlike engines displayed, and had some concern with the people there.
The most fortunate, perhaps I ought to say the most successful, tailor of very recent times, was Mr. Brunskill, whose seat of operations was at Exeter. No provincial, and not above one metropolitan, tailor ever realized such a fortune as he did: it was realized not by luck, but by labour. For the first seven years that he was in business on his own account he worked seventeen hours a day. And if he went to church on Sundays, he plied his needle none the less actively during the other hours of that day. This is the worst feature in the case; but he probably entertained a religious respect for that maxim of St. Augustine which tells us, “qui laborat, orat.” It was his boast that he was the only man in Exeter who could ride forty miles a day and cut out work for forty journeymen besides. This assiduity had its reward, and Brunskill’s business soon returned above £25,000 annually. Of course young heirs and youths rich only in present hopes resorted to him for loans; and Brunskill was as successful as a money-broker as he was in his other vocation. Cent. upon cent. reared the structure of his edifice of fortune; and long before a quarter of a century had elapsed since he commenced his career, he was proprietor of Polsloe Park, and, if not a ’squire himself, training his three lads to take station with ’squires. In the meantime, constant labour was his dear delight, and he was ever at his board or his bank, making men by a double process,—some, by dressing their persons; some, by dressing their credit,—and, in either case, with good security for prompt payment. He was thus hard at work up to one Monday night not many months ago, and on the following Thursday morning he was a dead man. Corporal Trim himself might here have found a theme whereon to deeply philosophize. Leaving that profitable occupation to our old friend the Corporal, let us look at the half pleasant, half stern realities of the case. Brunskill left three sons: to the two younger he bequeathed £10,000 apiece; to the eldest, £200,000 and Polsloe Park. The younger may wear their crape with satisfaction, and the eldest heir may bless the needle which pricked him out so pretty a condition. His sire has made him first gentleman of a future race of county ’squires; and I beg to assure heirs to come in after times from this peculiar source, that they will have less to be ashamed of than have those noble gentlemen and ladies who descend from concubines of kings, and who exist upon the wages of their first mother’s pollution.
We have now considered both the patron and his flock; let us now see how the latter have been treated by the lively poets who have “fine-drawn” them in immortal verse.