Ninon de l’Enclos.
There were three generations of English heralds named Holme, all genealogists, and all artists; they have added much to our knowledge of old English dress. Randle Holme, the Chester herald, lived in the reign of Charles II, and increased a collection of manuscript begun by his grandfather and now forming part of the Harleian Collection in the British Museum. He wrote also the Academy of Armoury, published in 1688, and made a vast number of drawings for it, as well as for his other works. His note-books of drawings are preserved. In one of them he gives drawings of the sleeve which is found on every seventeenth-century portrait of American women which I have ever seen. He calls this a virago-sleeve. It was worn in Queen Elizabeth’s day, but was a French fashion. It is gathered very full in the shoulder and again at the wrist, or at the forearm. At intervals between, it is drawn in by gathering-strings of narrow ribbons, or ferret, which are tied in a pretty knot or rose on the upper part of the sleeve. One from a French portrait is given [here]. Madam Ninon de l’Enclos also wears one. This gathering may be at the elbow, forming thus two puffs, or there may be several such drawing-strings. I have seen a virago-sleeve with five puffs. It is a fine decorative sleeve, not always shapely, perhaps, but affording in the pretty knots of ribbon some relief to the severity of the rest of the dress.
Stubbes wrote, “Some have sleeves cut up the arm, drawn out with sundry colours, pointed with silk ribbands, and very gallantly tied with love knotts.” It was at first a convention of fashion, and it lingered long in some modification, that wherever there was a slash there was a knot of ribbon or a bunch of tags or aglets. This in its origin was really that the slash might be tied together. Ribbon knots were much worn; the early days of the great court of Louis XIV saw an infinite use of ribbons for men and women. When, in the closing years of the century, rows of these knots were placed on either side of the stiff busk with bars of ribbon forming a stomacher, they were called echelles, ladders. The Ladies’ Dictionary (1694) says they were “much in request.”
This virago-sleeve was worn by women of all ages and by children, both boys and girls. A virago-sleeve is worn by Rebecca Rawson ([here]), and by Mrs. Simeon Stoddard ([here]), by Madam Padishal and by her little girl, and by the Gibbes child shown later in the book.
A carved figure of Anne Stotevill (1631) is in Westminster Abbey. Her dress is a rich gown slightly open in front at the foot. It has ornamental hooks, or frogs, with a button at each end—these are in groups of three, from chin to toe. Four groups of three frogs each, on both sides, make twenty-four, thus giving forty-eight buttons. A stiff ruff is at the neck, and similar smaller ones at the wrist. She wears a French hood with a loose scarf over it. She has a very graceful virago-sleeve with handsome knots of ribbon.
It is certain that men’s sleeves and women’s sleeves kept ever close company. Neither followed the other; they walked abreast. If a woman’s sleeves were broad and scalloped, so was the man’s. If the man had a tight and narrow sleeve, so did his wife. When women had virago-sleeves, so did men. Even in the nineteenth century, at the first coming of leg-of-mutton sleeves in 1830 et seq., dandies’ sleeves were gathered full at the armhole. In the second reign of these vast sleeves a few years ago, man had emancipated himself from the reign of woman’s fashions, and his sleeves remained severely plain.
Small invoices of fashionable clothing were constantly being sent across seas. There were sent to and from England and other countries “ventures,” which were either small lots of goods sent on speculation to be sold in the New World, or a small sum given by a private individual as a “venture,” with instructions to purchase abroad anything of interest or value that was salable. To take charge of these petty commercial transactions, there existed an officer, now obsolete, known as a supercargo. It is told that one Providence ship went out with the ventures of one hundred and fifty neighbors on board—that is, one hundred and fifty persons had some money or property at stake on the trip. Three hundred ventures were placed with another supercargo. Sometimes women sent sage from their gardens, or ginseng if they could get it. A bunch of sage paid in China for a porcelain tea-set. Along the coast, women ventured food-supplies,—cheese, eggs, butter, dried apples, pickles, even hard gingerbread; another sent a barrel of cider vinegar. Clothes in small lots were constantly being bought and sold on a venture. From London, in November, 1667, Walter Banesely sent as a venture to William Pitkin in Hartford these articles of clothing with their prices:—
| £ | s. | |
| “1 Paire Pinck Colour’d mens hose | 1 | 6 |
| 10 Paire Mens Silke Hose, 17s per pair | 8 | 10 |
| 10 Paire Womens Silke Hose, 16s per pair | 1 | 12 |
| 10 Paire Womens Green Hose | 6 | 10 |
| 1 Pinck Colour’d Stomacher made of Knotts | 3 | 10 |
| 1 Pinck Colour’d Wastcote | ||
| A Black Sute of Padisuay. Hatt, | ||
| Hatt band, Shoo knots &; trunk. | ||
| The wastcote and stomacher are a | ||
| Venture of my wife’s; the Silke Stockens mine own.” |