A few books were on the list,—a Greek Lexicon ordered as a gift for a student; a very costly Bible, bound in velvet, with silver clasps, the expense of which was carefully detailed down to the Indian silk for the inner-end leaves; “Dod on Commandments—my Ant Jane said you had a fancie for it, and I have bound it in green plush for you.” Fancy any one having a fancy for Dod on anything! and fancy Dod in green plush covers!
CHAPTER V
THE EVOLUTION OF COATS AND WAISTCOATS
This day the King began to put on his vest; and I did see several persons of the House of Lords and Commons too, great courtiers who are in it, being a long cassock close to the body, of long cloth, pinked with white silk under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with white ribbon like a pigeon’s leg; and upon the whole I wish the King may keep it, for it is a very fine and handsome garment.
—“Diary,” SAMUEL PEPYS, October 8, 1666.
Fashion then was counted a disease and horses died of it.
—“The Gulls Hornbook,” ANDREW DEKKER, 1609.
CHAPTER V
THE EVOLUTION OF COATS AND WAISTCOATS
oth word and garment—coat—are of curious interest, one as a philological study, the other as an evolution. A singular transfer of meaning from cot or cote, a house and shelter, to the word coat, used for a garment, is duplicated in some degree in chasuble, casule, and cassock; the words body, and bodice; and corse or corpse, and corselet and corset. The word coat, meaning a garment for men for covering the upper part of the body, has been in use for centuries; but of very changeable and confusing usage, for it also constantly meant petticoat. The garment itself was a puzzle, for many years; most bewildering of all the attire which was worn by the first colonists was the elusive, coatlike over-garment called in shipping-lists, tailors’ orders, household inventories, and other legal and domestic records a doublet, a jerkin, a jacket, a cassock, a paltock, a coat, a horseman’s coat, an upper-coat, and a buff-coat. All these garments resembled each other; all closed with a single row of buttons or points or hooks and eyes. There was not a double-breasted coat in the Mayflower, nor on any man in any of the colonies for many years; they hadn’t been invented. Let me attempt to define these several coatlike garments.