CHAPTER II.
NEEDLEWOMEN ROYAL AND RENOWNED.
After the time of Adelicia of Louvaine there seems to have been a period wherein little or no special needlework was done by great and royal ladies, though its practice was kept up in what were called "The Schools." In these, young gentlewomen were taught fine needlework and embroidery to qualify them to beguile in a becoming manner the many enforced hours of leisure in their lives, brought about by the lack of outdoor amusements for women.
Many a rich and sumptuous vestment was made in these schools for the service of the Church, and some of the beautiful work done there found its way to the Palace of Westminster.
But towards the end of the 13th century, when Eleanor of Castille was queen of Edward I., needlework came to the front again with enthusiasm. She herself was a wonderful needlewoman, and her example made it the fashion in every class of life.
Before accompanying her husband on a crusade to the Holy Land, she embroidered a beautiful altar-cloth with her own hands, and gave it to the church at Dunstable.
It is to this queen we owe the use of needlework tapestry-hangings as furniture for walls. Up to this time tapestry had been used solely for the decoration of altars and other parts of churches.
Tapestry hangings were worked originally entirely with the needle, and they were found to be worth all the trouble and time bestowed upon them in the increase of comfort they brought into the palaces and castles of the great people of the land. At first they were rude in design, but those introduced by Queen Eleanor were in very superior workmanship. To her they must have been very welcome, for she felt the change from the sunny south to the damp, bleak English climate greatly.
Tapestries never remained permanently hanging on the walls of a special hall or castle, but accompanied the great people, when travelling from one residence to another, under the care of the grooms of the Chamber, whose special office it was to hang them.
The history of tapestry is full of romance, but can only be touched upon here when worked by special royal seamstresses.
Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., was a very good needlewoman, although the troublous times in which she lived prevented her devoting much time to the art. It was she, however, who formed the first band of women needle-workers, known in history as the Sisterhood of the Silk Women.
Needlewomen found a very valuable patron in Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry of Lancaster. She and her ladies spent much time in needlework of all kinds.
"How oft with needle, when denied the pen,
Has she on canvas traced the blessed name
Of Henry, or expressed it with her loom
In silken threads, or 'broidered it with gold."
During the "Wars of the Roses" ladies of high rank were often compelled to earn their bread and that of their children by the use of the needle. The Countess of Oxford in the reign of Elizabeth of York was an example of this. She was the first peeress who is said to have earned her living by the use of the needle. Edward IV. had deprived her of her dower, and she and her little children would have starved had she not been a skilful needlewoman. She lived dependent on the work of her hands for fifteen years, until her husband's rank and fortune were restored.
Katherine of Arragon, the first wife of Henry VIII., was very skilful with her needle, having learned the art from her mother, Isabella of Spain, and it is more than likely that in her early days she took part in the trials of needlework established by Isabella among Spanish ladies.
She was in the habit of employing the ladies of her Court in needlework, working with them and encouraging them.
Her work with the needle has been celebrated both in Latin and English verse.
"(Although a queene), yet she her days did pass
In working with the needle curiously;
As in the Tower, and places more beside,
Her excellent memorials may be seen;
Whereby the needle's prayse is dignifide
By her faire ladies, and herselfe, a queene."
In a letter to Wolsey she writes, "I am horribly busy, making standards, banners and badges."
It is a matter of history that when Wolsey and the Pope's Legate went to Bridewell to visit Queen Katherine on the subject of her divorce, they found her and her maids at work, and she came to them with a skein of red silk round her neck.
Katherine of Arragon's successor, Anne Boleyn, could not help being a good needlewoman, for she had been educated at the Court of Francis I., under the superintendence of Anne of Bretagne who made needlework the business and the pleasure of her life. It was her habit to collect the children of the nobility within her Court daily and teach them tapestry, embroidery and plain sewing till they became accomplished seamstresses.
As wife of Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn and the ladies of her Court spent much time in making garments for the poor in plain sewing as well as in embroidery and tapestry—much of the last may still be seen in Hampton Court. All this notwithstanding, she did not love needlework and never resorted to it for solace or amusement.
Katharine Howard, another wife of Henry VIII., was skilful in making pretty kerchiefs and other dainty articles of the toilette, some of which she once made out of an old shirt of fine holland which had been given her by her lover Derham. She is said, in return for the shirt, to have worked for him with her own hand a band and a pair of finely embroidered shirt sleeves.
She and her maidens made a great many shirts and smocks for the poor.
Katharine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII., was almost as skilled a needlewoman as his first. When young she objected strongly to learning needlework; this was probably because it had been foretold by an astrologer that "she should sit in the highest seat of imperial majesty." At all events history reports her as saying—
"My hands are ordered to touch crowns and sceptres, not needles and spindles."
She must have thought better of it, however, for there are some beautiful specimens of her work preserved in Westmoreland; specially a counterpane and toilet cover.
Lady Jane Grey is said to have been a clever needlewoman, and that "instead of skill in drawing she cultivated the art of painting with the needle." There is still preserved at Zurich a toilet cover beautifully ornamented by her own hands and presented by her to Bullinger.
About this time the dress of the nobles was gorgeous and beautiful in the extreme; not that the materials themselves were so costly, but because of the exquisite work and embroidery bestowed upon them by ladies of high rank.
The beds also at this period owed their rich beauty to women's work; they were not at that time excluded from the day apartments and were frequently among the richest ornaments of the sitting-room, so much taste and expense were bestowed upon them.
The curtains of the bed were often of rich material adorned with embroidery.
"Her bed-chamber was hanged
With tapestry of silk and silver."
Shakespeare.
Royal seamstresses at this time worked rich needlework borders and belts for their dresses, but they put their richest work on the pouches or purses suspended from the waist of the dress.
Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. and Katherine of Arragon, must have had fame as a needlewoman, otherwise John Taylor the historian would not have written of her—
"Her greatness held it no dis-reputation
To take the needle in her Royal hand,
Which was a good example to our Nation
To banish idleness from out her Land."
Indeed she seems to have been skilled in all sorts of embroidery, and beguiled the time after her mother's divorce peaceably and laudably with needlework. Some of her work is in the Tower. She was clever in embroidering the covers of books.
The book called St. Mary's Psalter contained the history of the Old Testament in a series of small paintings, with a very richly worked cover which is supposed to have been embroidered by Mary herself. The embroidery as far as one can see was done on fine canvas or coarse linen put on crimson velvet.
It never occurs to us to think of Queen Elizabeth as a needlewoman, yet to a certain extent she must have been one, for history tells us of a cambric smock which she made and presented to her brother Edward when he was six years old. She seems to have excelled however in embroidering the backs of books. Needlework although not enthusiastically practised in Elizabeth's reign was by no means despised.
But of all royal seamstresses, Mary Queen of Scots carries off the palm both for beauty, quantity and variety.
"She wrought so well in needlework, that she
Nor yet her workes shall ere forgotten be."—John Taylor.
Her teachers in the art were Lady Fleming—her governess—and Catherine de Medicis whose needlework was unrivalled. During the time the young Queen of Scots was at the French Court she and the French Princesses assembled every afternoon in the private apartments of Queen Catherine, where for two or three hours all were occupied in needlework.
At no time of her life were her hands idle; she plied her needle even while listening to the discussions of her ministers. Needlework was to her a source of real pleasure.
While under the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Tulbury Castle she, with the help of Bess of Hardwick, her guardian's wife, worked a pair of curtains, a counterpane, and a vallance on green velvet.
In describing her daily life here, she said that all the day she wrought with her needle, and that the variety of the work made it seem less tedious.
In the drawing-room at Hardwick there are several pieces of her work well preserved, and in Scotland there are parts of certain bed-hangings in which M. S. is worked in very frequently.
Her tapestry work proved a blessing to her, as in the year 1586 she writes, "My residence is a place enclosed with walls situated on an eminence and consequently exposed to all the winds and storms of heaven.... I have for my own accommodation only wretched little rooms, and so cold that were it not for the protection of the curtains and tapestries which I have put up, I could not endure it by day and still less by night."
In the execution of all this work Mary Queen of Scots beguiled many a weary hour at Chatsworth, Buxton and Sheffield, while brooding over the plots for her escape and the intrigues and jealousies of Bess of Hardwick.
She made a vest for her only son but he ungraciously refused it because she addressed him as Prince and not as King of Scotland. She worked also with her own hands an altar-piece, and presented it to the church of the convent where she had been educated. She was the first, I believe, to do the raised work in crewels.
We now come to a very remarkable needlewoman, whose work is considered not only equal to that of Matilda, wife of the Conqueror, but superior to it, because it was all done with her own hands. Her name was Jean or Joan D'Albret, better known as the mother of Henry IV. of Navarre.
Her needlework which was the amusement and solace of her leisure hours was designed by her to commemorate her love for the Reformed faith which she publicly professed on Christmas Day, 1562. She worked several large pieces of tapestry, among which was a suite of hangings consisting of a dozen or fifteen pieces which were called "The Prisons Opened," on which she represented that she had broken the pope's bonds and shaken off his yoke. She had a great sense of satire and humour which showed itself in her work.
The Duc de Sully, when sent by King Henry IV. to receive the Cardinal of Florence at Paris in grand style, ordered the keeper of the castle at St. German-en-Laze to hang the walls and chambers with the finest tapestry of the Crown. This he did, but, unfortunately, for the Legate's own chamber he chose a suite of hangings made by the Queen Joan D'Albret herself. They were very rich, it is true, but they represented nothing but emblems and mottoes against the pope and the Roman Court, as satirical as they were ingenious. Fortunately the mistake was rectified by Sully before the Cardinal's arrival.
This clever needlewoman died suddenly at the Court of France in 1572.
(To be continued.)
[IN THE TWILIGHT SIDE BY SIDE.]
By RUTH LAMB.