Our ancestors, in early days, had what may be called early ways. They were in no respect superior to New Zealanders in a savage state. Civilization has however copied some of their customs, and old ladies who paint their cheeks and necks are not much further advanced than their ancestors, who coloured themselves all over, and that not out of vanity.
Strabo says that the people in the west of England shaved their chins, but cherished mustachios, wore black garments, and carried a stick. This description might serve for half the gentlemen who are to be seen in Regent Street and Rotten Row during the “season.” But I suppose one may take the liberty to doubt that the Cradocks of today really resemble so closely as the description would seem to warrant, their progenitors the Caradocs of other times, who “looked like furies,” says Strabo, “but were in fact quiet and inoffensive people.”
The early Welsh bards, we are told, dressed in sky-blue; the modern bards of the million are content to breakfast on it: the British astronomers wore green, which was not indicative of what the colour might have stood for,—a verdant knowledge of the science. When the Romans planted their conquering eagles on our soil, the old British chieftains resisted them and their fashions. Tacitus says that it was the sons of the chieftains who first adopted the Roman mode; and no doubt the old gentlemen were disgusted when they beheld their unpatriotic young heirs wandering about without their braccæ, and sporting the tunic before whose presence liberty and trousers had disappeared, but not for ever.
The Saxons brought in their own fashions, and some of these still prevail; the smock-frock, for instance, is the old Saxon tunic without the belt. Such a dress was never known in Ireland nor in Scotland: the Saxons kept for whole centuries to a fixed fashion, as may be seen in any illustrated work on costume. In this respect they were only less tenacious than the Persians, whose garments passed from father to son as long as they could hold together. It would be difficult, I fancy, to persuade any modern young Anglo-Saxon to draw on the scanc-beorg, or shank-coverers, of his respected and deceased “governor.” It is only the mantles of our Peers that descend hereditarily upon the shoulders of succeeding generations; and some of these mantles look dingy enough to date their origin from the time when Henry III. established Tothill-fields Fair, in order to spite the Londoners. The latter, it will be remembered, were compelled to close their shops for an entire fortnight during the holding of the fair in Westminster; and the man on Tower Hill who wanted to furnish his outward or inward person with the smallest article was compelled to resort for it to the neighbourhood of the Abbey, or to do without till the fair was raised.
The taste of the Anglo-Saxons was rather of a splendid character, but sometimes questionable. A lady with blue hair, for instance, could not have been half so pleasant to look at as a lady with blue eyes; though the custom of dyeing the hair blue was perhaps scarcely more objectionable than that of the young ladies and gentlemen of Gaul, who washed theirs in a chalky solution, in order to make it a more fiery red than it had been rendered by nature. I may add that, of the tasteful Anglo-Saxons, the nuns were the most especially tasteful; and the gorgeous attire of the sisters, with other attractions, seems to have stirred the very hearts of some of the most stony of prelates.
Many of the latter however were rigidly severe in their censures against the luxurious dressing of lively Saxon nuns; but their objurgations take very much the form of that delivered by Tartuffe when he handed his kerchief to Dorine:—
“Couvrez ce sein que je ne sçaurais voir:
A de tels objets les yeux sont blessés,
Et cela fait venir de coupables pensées.”
Though it be necessary to consider climate and temperature in the matter of dress, we have had weather, even in England, from the severity of which no dress could protect the wearer. Thus, in the year 851, the winter became so suddenly cold and inclement, and went on with such increasing severity, that clothing afforded no warmth to the frame, and the people were widely smitten by paralysis. They suffered excruciating anguish in the limbs; generally the arms and hands were first seized upon by the disease, and those limbs usually became altogether withered and useless. The paralysis respected neither rank, age, nor sex; the highest dignitaries of the Church did not escape, though, of course, they miraculously recovered. The clothiers of the period appear to have been as much puzzled to discover a material for useful wear that would meet the contingency, as a modern tailor would find it difficult to take measure of the pulpy, shapeless, boneless being which Professor Whewell, in his ‘Plurality of Worlds,’ thinks may be existing in Jupiter. And he has a right to think so; for, on our own earth, have we not had animals whose bones were on the outside, and whose inward parts were all of cartilage? They would have been pretty playthings for Jupiter’s emphatically soft nymphs and unvertebrated swains!