“When Sir Peter Wych,” says Bulwer, in his ‘Pedigree of an English Gallant,’ “was sent ambassador to the Grand Seigneur, from James I., his lady accompanied him to Constantinople, and the Sultaness having heard much of her, desired to see her; whereupon Lady Wych, attended by her waiting-women, all of them dressed in their great vardingales, which was the court dress of the English ladies of that time, waited upon her highness. The Sultaness received her visitors with great respect; but, struck with the extraordinary extension of the hips of the whole party, seriously inquired if that shape was peculiar to the natural formation of Englishwomen; and Lady Wych was obliged to explain the whole mystery of the dress, in order to convince her that she and her companions were not really so deformed as they appeared to be.” Lady Wych probably did not look more astounding to the Turks than the Marchioness of Londonderry did to those of some thirty years ago, when she traversed the courts of the Sultan’s palace in the full undress of a lady of the “Regent’s Drawing Room.” Both these ladies were ambassadresses, and they remind me of the English nobleman in the reign of Anne, who was informed that he had been appointed representative of his sovereign at the court of the Sultan. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “I can never undertake it, I should look so absurd and awkward in women’s clothes!” He seriously thought that to represent his mistress he must be dressed as she was! But I shall say more of Anne hereafter. I have here to exhibit Oliver; Charles, as we all know, was a gentleman, at all events in dress. In that respect Cromwell differed from him.
“The first time that I ever took notice of Oliver Cromwell,” says Sir Philip Warwick, “was in the beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman, for we courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes. I came one morning into the house well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar. His hat was without a hatband; his stature was of good size; his sword stuck close to his side.” Altogether it is clear that Oliver was a trifle slovenly, and sometimes unsteady enough of hand to cut himself when shaving.
About the year 1660-1, we find our old friend Mr. Pepys gradually soaring in the sky of fashion. He had been content with camlet, then he gets him a suit of cloth with broad skirts, and adds the unheard-of atrocity of rakish buckles to his shoes. Subsequently he enshrines his little person in silk; ultimately rises to the dignity of a velvet coat; and on a “Lord’s Day,” in February, he writes down that “this day I first began to go forth in my coate and sword, as the manner now among gentlemen is.” “Among gentlemen!” quotha; and his sire the tailor was yet alive, and his cousin Tom Pepys was an honest turner, and sold mousetraps!
A velvet coat was not for every-day wear by a clerk in the Admiralty, and Pepys had his by him a full half-year before he had the heart to surprise the world and gratify himself by the wearing of it. Nor could Peers walk every day in velvet and embroidery in Coleman-street, seeing that the cost of a suit was not under £200. They were content to go occasionally like the King at the Council Board—in a plain common riding-suit and a velvet cap;—not half so fine as the livery of Pepys’s own boy, “which is very handsome, and I do think to keep the black and gold lace upon grey, being the colour of my arms, for ever.” The “colour of his arms!” This reminds me of the rejoinder of Russell, the porter at the old Piazza, who, on being asked if his coat-of-arms was the same as that of the Duke of Bedford, replied that as for their arms they might be pretty well alike, but that there was a deal of difference between their coats!
Pepys was however as proud as a popinjay, as the manner then among gentlemen was; and his man Will imitated his master. Tel maître, tel valet. See what he says of an occurrence which he notices on “Lord’s Day,” June 8, 1662. “Home, and observe my man Will to walk with his cloak flung over his shoulder, which, whether it was that he might not be seen to walk along with the footboy, I knew not, but I was vexed at it; and coming home, and after prayers, I did ask him where he learned that immodest garb; and he answered me that it was not immodest, or some such slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the eares, which I never did before.” But the transgressor forgot his fault, in his gratification a few Sundays after in going to church with his wife,—“who this day put on her green petticoate of flowred sattin, with the white and black gimp lace of her own putting on, which is very pretty.” I fear that our ancestors thought as much upon matters of dress at church as any of their descendants. To what an extent this feeling was carried may be seen in the case of Pepys, who, seeing Captain Holmes in his pew in a new gold-laced suit, was so chagrined that a disquisition upon damnation failed to put him into spirits. The feelings of both husband and wife were very sensitive touching costume; for does he not tell us, on one occasion, that on a certain visit being paid them, they “were ashamed that she should be seen in a taffeta gown when all the world wears moyre”?
The gentleman’s eyes indeed had just been regaled by a sight of the “Russian Embassador,”—“in the richest suit for pearl and tissue that ever I did see.” The envoy appears to have been an exceedingly well-dressed barbarian; and the Muscovite officials of our own day are in no respect behind him. Felony and mendacity would seem to be accounted of as péchés mignons by those gentlemen who wear polished boots and profess honest principles, with coats like Count d’Orsay’s, and hearts beneath them like Jack Sheppard’s. After all, the pearl and tissue of the Russ was not half so tasteful as Lord Sandwich’s “gold-buttoned suit, as the mode is;” and Pepys took to the fashion, buying fine clothes, and half afraid to wear them, yet rejoicing that he is not now “for want of them, forced to sneak like a beggar.” A camlet suit for common wear then cost him four-and-twenty pounds! But Pepys had fits of extravagance as well as economy. The former however were generally born of patriotism: witness his buying “a coloured silk ferrandin suit, for joy of the good news we have lately had of our victory over the Dutch.”
About the time above specified, the Court of Spain was remarkable for its gravity of dress. The king and grandees wore simple mantles of Colchester baize; and in winter, the mantles of the señoras were of no more costly material than white flannel. Thereupon English and Dutch handicraftsmen repaired to Madrid, in order to establish a manufactory of these articles. The men engaged were sober, religious men; and they had with them Psalters and Testaments, and they were given to be glad in spiritual songs, and to solace their weariness with a refreshing draught from the Gospels. Thereupon the Inquisition fell upon them, destroyed their houses, and imprisoned the workmen. Had these been Atheists, the “Holy Office” would not have molested them in their manufactory of baizes and flannels; but as they dared to worship God in sincerity of heart and independence of mind, the Cahills and Wisemans of the pure and enlightened Peninsula ruined them in bodily estate, and sent their souls to Gehenna.
Louis XIV. was quite as arbitrary and absurd on a matter of fashion. Charles II. of England was the inventor of the “vest dress.” It consisted of a long cassock which fitted close to the body, of black cloth, “pinked” with white silk under it, and a coat over all; the legs were ruffled with black ribbon, like a pigeon’s leg; and the white silk piercing the black made the wearers look, as Charles himself confessed, very much like magpies. But all the world put it on, because it had been fashioned by a monarch; and gay men thought it exquisite, and grave men pronounced it “comely and manly.” Charles declared he would never alter it, while his courtiers “gave him gold by way of wagers, that he would not persist in his resolution.” Louis XIV. showed his contempt for the new mode and the maker of it, by ordering all his footmen to be put into vests. This caused great indignation in England, but it had a marked effect in another way: for Charles and our aristocracy, not caring to look like French footmen, soon abandoned the new costume.
This reminds me of a foolish interference of Louis XVI. in a matter of dress. In the days of our grandfathers there was nothing so fashionable for summer wear as nankeen. No gentleman would be seen abroad or at home in a dress of which this material did not go to the making of a portion; and as we ever fixed the fashion on questions of male costume, the mode was adopted in France, and English nankeens threatened to drive all French manufactured articles of summer wear out of the market. The king however surmounted the difficulty: he ordered all the executioners and their assistants to perform their terrible office in no other dress but one of nankeen. This rendered the material “infamous;” and many a man who deserved to be hanged, discarded the suit because a similar one was worn by the man who did the hanging. So Mrs. Turner, the poisoner, being executed in the reign of James I. in a yellow starched ruff, put to death the fashion of wearing them.
Picturesqueness of costume went out with chivalry; and few things could be uglier than an Englishman of James the Second’s or of William and Mary’s days, except an Englishman of our own tight and buttoned period.