Under the old dispensation, sewing, as I have said, followed sin; and he who forged a bill-hook or a brand was in higher esteem than he who lived by the exercise of the needle. Under a later dispensation we find examples of this order of precedency being reversed. Lydia of Thyatira was among the first who joined Paul in prayer, by the riverside at Philippi. Her office was to make up into garments the purple cloth for which Lydia itself was famous. With this proselyte Paul dwelt, and on her he left a blessing. It was not so with a certain strong handicraftsman. When Paul was once at the point of death he bethought him of an old vicious adversary, and said, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works!” And by this we not only see that he who taught so wisely could sometimes err against his own instructions, but we may even make this strange circumstance profitable to us by viewing in it the proof that even the nearest to heaven are not entirely free from the stains of earth; and that the spirit truly worthy of immortality has never yet been found in aught that was mortal.
And this reminds me, that while every Jew learned some trade, there is none recorded as having learned that of a tailor. The coppersmiths endeavour to disconnect their calling from the excommunication of Paul, by asserting that the Alexander who did evil to Paul, by maligning him and by broaching heresies upon the resurrection, was really a philosopher, who was only a coppersmith for his amusement. This however is not likely, for it was not usual to designate learned men by the name of their adopted trades. And however this may be, it was Lydia the maker of purple vests who obtained the blessing, while Alexander the coppersmith inherited the curse.
And may I here remark,—for I hope to be permitted to indulge in a good deal of “cross stitch” in these unpretending sketches,—that the best of men of modern times can, like St. Paul, be vigorously minded against their opponents. I will only cite Cowper, who was more wrathful than the Apostle, without the provocation by which the latter was judicially moved.
Cowper is certainly the sweetest of our didactic poets. He is elevated in his ‘Table Talk;’ acute in detailing the ‘Progress of Error;’ and he chants the praises of ‘Truth’ in more dulcet notes than were ever sounded by the fairest swan in Cayster. His ‘Expostulation’ is made in the tones of a benevolent sage. His ‘Hope’ and his ‘Charity’ are proofs of his pure Christian-like feeling;—a feeling which also pervades his ‘Conversation’ and his ‘Retirement,’ and which barbs the shafts of his satire without taking away from their strength. The same praise is due to the six books of the ‘Task,’ of which perhaps the Garden is the least successful portion. If however we be disposed to find fault at all with anything in his sentiment or expression, it would be in this,—that while he celebrates in warm praises the delights of his own peaceful and retired life—a life which, on the respectable authority of the old medical writer Celsus, I may call as hurtful to the body as it is profitable or necessary to the mind (“Literarum disciplina, ut animo præcipue omnium necessaria, sic corpori inimica est”), there is some illiberality in his declaring that the various occupations of other and more active men are either frivolous or criminal. Cowper patiently enjoys holding the ravelled thread for ladies to wind it on to their bobbins, but he sneers at the party who sits down to chess or stands up to billiards. He will praise air and exercise, if you will only take them in company with him, in covered walks where there is what he so well and quaintly calls
“An obsolete prolixity of shade.”
But if you enjoy your air and exercise in field sports, you are more ignoble than your groom, and a greater brute than the victim you pursue. Again: he acknowledges change of scene to be beneficial to the animal economy; but he intends thereby a change from one parish to another. You must not go to France for change, without being undeniably anything but a gentleman and a Christian. He is ready too to eat game and dine on venison, but he would not, for the world, be so guilty as to course a hare or shoot a buck. Finally, he would listen with all imaginable pleasure and rapture to the strains of Handel, were they only composed to the glory and praise of Damon and Dolly, rather than, as they are, to the eulogy of the Messiah and in illustration of His sacrifice.
But why, it may be asked, this piece of patchwork with Cowper’s name thereon? Well, Cowper was something of a tailor in his way, and could sew a button on his sleeve as adroitly, if not as any tailor in town, at least as any sailor in the fleet. And in this he was something akin to Pope Pius VII. when prisoner at Fontainebleau.
What a heavy captivity was that!—not so much for the prisoner, as for those who were compelled to listen to the long and dreary and pointless stories of the good-natured and weak old man. When the officers who had this Pope in charge, were conducting him from Rome to Paris, they on one occasion shut him up in a coach-house, where he remained seated in his carriage, while his captors dined. Cardinal Pacca says of this Pope, who was an admirable tailor when necessity pressed him, that, during the eighteen months he was resident at Fontainebleau, he could never be prevailed upon to quit his own suite of apartments. He, and the Cardinals who accompanied him, were employed in conjugating the verb s’ennuyer. He loved a little gossip, and hated books; but the captive had a solace—one worthy of the dignity of Diocletian, when he cultivated cabbages. Savary, Duke de Rovigo, who was chief gaoler over the chief Pontiff, says, of the latter, that “he did not open a book the livelong day; and he occupied himself in things which, if I had not myself seen, I never should have believed; stitching and mending, for instance, holes and rents in his clothes, sewing a button on his breeches, and washing with his own hands his dressing-gown, on which he had a habit of allowing his snuff to fall in large quantities.” Savary is especially, and naturally, astonished that the supreme Pontiff preferred his amateur tailoring to enjoying the books in the great library of Fontainebleau. Poor man! he did not like reading, but he did like killing time at the point of the needle. The tailors of his community are doubtless proud of such a patron. The story rests on Savary’s authority; and while Cardinal Pacca abuses him for telling it, his Eminence does not deny its authenticity.
But we must not allow the Pope and his pursuits to take us away from the consideration of sacred things. Reverting therefore to the Jews, it may be said of them that if they did not possess the tailor as a professor, they had a sufficient variety of dress to perplex the domestic ministers of fashion. There is quite as much perplexity for those who have to write about it. The Jews, like the modern children of the Prophet, would not tolerate the representation of any living figure, and the antiquary has therefore no chance of consulting a Hebrew ‘Journal des Modes.’ The monuments of nations distant from Palestine cannot be accepted as authority when they are said to represent the Jewish people, for we have no assurance that the people are thereon represented; or if they be Jews, that they are, in slavery, wearing a national costume.
Of one thing however there is a certainty. The Jews had a national costume; and, except in ceremonial dresses and some female appendages, it had very little resemblance indeed to the costume of the Egyptians. The material of Jewish garments was manufactured at home; the skilful hands of the women spinning and weaving the raw material afforded by the flocks. Not all the women appear to have been given to the useful work. There were some fine ladies among the multitude that came out of Egypt, and these had an aristocratically foolish contempt for the spinners and tailoresses of the tribes. But I would especially recommend my fair readers to remember the sacred record, which ennobles labour, where it says:—“All the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen;” and again it is said,—and it sounds like God’s blessing upon the daughters of toil,—“And all the women whose hearts stirred them up in wisdom spun goats’ hair.” No doubt these women, whose hearts were the thrones of wisdom, were primeval tailoresses. And much value was set upon the habits which they made, the shaping of which, I may add, presented little difficulty. The principal article of dress was an ample woollen garment,—a cloak by day, and a couch by night. It served two purposes, like Goldsmith’s stocking, which, at night, he drew from his feet to place on his head. Much value, I have said, was attached to this garment; as, for instance: “If thou at all take thy neighbour’s raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it to him by that the sun goeth down. For that is his covering only; it is the raiment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? And it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto Me, that I will hear; for I am gracious.”