“La modestie, la plus touchante des vertus, est encore la plus séduisante des parures.”—Mad. Cottin: Mathilde.
The Jews were undoubtedly an ill-fated people. In London, in the olden time, whenever any class had a grievance, the work of redress was commenced by slaying the Hebrews. In the reign of Henry III. the municipality of London and a portion of the nobility were dreadfully incensed against Queen Eleanor; and to show their indignation, they not only plundered and murdered scores of common Israelites, but the City Marshal and Baron Fitz-John repaired to the residence of Kok ben Abraham, the wealthiest Hebrew in the city, where the noble lord ran his sword through the body of the child of the synagogue, laughing the while as if the jest were a good one. Certainly, this was a strange method of showing a political bias; and it would be no jest now if Lord Winchelsea, for instance, angry at the desire of the Crown to admit Jews into Parliament, were to rush down to the city and plunge his paper-cutter into the diaphragm of poor Baron Rothschild.
In the case above alluded to, not only were some four hundred of the devoted race robbed and killed, but the mob, satiated with savagery, determined to wind up their well-spent evening with a frolic. Accordingly they turned out of their beds all the Jews, of various ages and both sexes, and compelled them to walk the streets throughout the entire night, with nothing on but their “bed-gowns.” This was scant dress enough in those times, and there was no active police to afford the victims protection. I notice this incident, because it comes fairly under the head of costume. I think, moreover, that all the police in the city at the present time would be puzzled what to do, were the last night of an election, returning “Sir Solomon” at the head of the poll, to be signalled out by a riot, the climax of which presented all the Levys, Goldschmidts, Isaacs, and Marx, of “Simmery Axe,”—wives and husbands, sons and daughters,—compulsorily parading through Cheapside in their night-gear. Between the blushes of Miss Tryphena Levy, and the indignation of Mr. Penuel Isaacs her admirer, the gallant and loud-laughing Division X. would hardly know which victim to succour first. Such a cortège however would probably bring into fashion the “bonnets de nuit à la Juive.”
Our gallant knights of old thought it no degradation to receive clothes at the hands of the king. When Henry IV. dubbed some four dozen the day before his coronation, he made presents to all of long green coats, with tight sleeves, furred, and verdant hoods: the cavaliers must have looked like cucumbers. The sumptuary laws of this reign had this additional severity in them, that they decreed imprisonment during the King’s pleasure against any tailor who should dare to make for a commoner a costume above his degree. The tailors, like wise men, did not ask their customers whether they were gentle or simple; and burghers dressed as before, more splendidly than barons.
There was this difference between the two wretched monarchs, John and Richard III. John was curious about his wife’s dress, and careless touching his own; whereas Richard (who was not half so bad as history and Mr. C. Kean represent him) was perhaps the most superbly royal dandy that ever sat on an English throne: George IV. was the mere Dandini to that Prince Ramiro. Henry VII., again, was utterly void of taste, and seems to have wanted a nurse more than a valet.
The author of the ‘Boke of Kervynge’ says to the “proper officer” of this king, in a sort of advice to servants, “Warme your soveregne his petticotte, his doublet, and his stomacher, and then put on hys hozen, and then hys schose or slyppers; then stryten up hys hozen mannerly, tye them up, and lace his doublet hole by hole.”
We have an illustration of the national feeling with regard to dress in Henry VIII.’s time, in the story of Drake, the cordwainer.
John Drake, the Norwich shoemaker, was resolved to dress, for once, like a knight; and accordingly he betook himself to Sir Philip Calthrop’s tailor, and seeing some fine French tawney cloth lying there, which the cavalier had sent to have made into a gown,—gentlemen then, as now, it seems, sometimes found “their own materials,”—the aspiring Crispin ordered a gown of the same stuff and fashion. The knight, on calling at the tailor’s, saw the two parcels of “materials,” and inquired as to the proprietary of the second. “The stuff,” said the master, “is John Drake’s, the Norwich shoemaker, who will have a gown of the same fashion as your valiant worship.” “Will he so?” asked proud Sir Philip; “then fashion mine as full of cuts as thy shears can make it, and let the two be alike, as ordered.” He was obeyed; but when John Drake looked wonderingly upon his aristocratic garment, and saw the peculiar mode thereof, and was moreover told the reason therefor, he rubbed his bullet-head vexedly, and remarked, “By my latchet, an it be so John Drake will never ask for gentleman’s fashion again.”
I have spoken in my ‘Table Traits’ of how a French knight gained a livelihood by making salads; I may notice here that a Flemish frau, Dingham van der Plafze, did the same by starching ruffs in London, in Queen Elizabeth’s time. She gave lessons to the nobility at four or five pounds the course for each pupil, and an additional pound for showing them how to make the starch. The nobility of course patronized her; being a foreigner, the duchesses accounted her “divine.” People of the commonalty, with as much wisdom, esteemed her as a devil; and starch itself was looked upon as a sort of devil’s broth. The women who wore ruffs were looked upon as anything but respectable; and the men who placed around the neck the “monstrous ruff, of twelve, yea sixteen, lengths apiece, set three or four times double,” were accounted of as having made “three steps and a half to the gallows.”
James I., and his subjects who wished to clothe themselves loyally, wore stupendous breeches. Of course the “honourable gentlemen” of the House of Commons were necessarily followers of the fashion. But it led to inconveniences in the course of their senatorial duties. It was an old mode revived; and at an earlier day, when these nether garments were ample enough to have covered the lower man of Boanerges, the comfort of the popular representatives was thus cared for:—“Over the seats in the parliament-house, there were certain holes, some two inches square, in the walls, in which were placed posts to uphold a scaffold round about the house within, for them to sit upon who used the wearing of great breeches stuffed with hair like wool-sacks, which fashion being left the eighth year of Elizabeth, the scaffolds were taken down, and never since put up.” So says Strutt; but doubtless the comforts of the members were not less cared for when the old fashion again prevailed. The honourable gentlemen must have looked as if they were worshipping Cloacina rather than propitiating the god of Eloquence.