Long before the period referred to by Ordericus, the French monks were the authorized glove-makers. They especially loved hunting, but respectability required that they should not love the sport merely for the sport’s sake. Accordingly, Charlemagne granted to the monks of Sithin especially, unlimited right of hunting, because of the skins of the deer killed by them they made gloves and girdles, and covers for books. I have before noticed, that by a subsequent decree of the Council of Aix, in the time of Louis le Débonnaire, monks were forbidden to wear any gloves but those made of sheep-skin.
Gloves were popular new-year’s gifts, or sometimes “glove-money” in place of them; occasionally, these gloves carried gold pieces in them. When Sir Thomas More was Chancellor, he decided a case in favour of Mrs. Croaker against Lord Arundel; the former, on the following new-year’s day, gratefully presented the judge with a pair of gloves with forty angels in them. “It would be against good manners,” said the Chancellor, “to forsake a gentlewoman’s new-year’s gift, and I accept the gloves. The lining you will elsewhere bestow.”
It will be remembered that St. Gudule had the faculty of being able, when her candle was extinguished, to blow it in again. Many among us enjoy the same faculty, and schoolboys often practise the miracle,—the only one ever performed by St. Gudule. It is said however that when the saint prayed, barefooted, in church, the attendant priest, moved by compassion, put his gloves under her feet. They immediately rose, and hung in the air for a whole hour;—but what that proves, I really do not know.
But we have had gloves suspended in our own churches. When Bernard Gilpin was preaching in the North of England, he observed, on entering one of the churches there, a glove suspended from the roof; and having learned that it was a challenge placed there by a Borderer, in defiance of some other Borderer, he tore it down, to the great disgust of the sexton, who had a respect for established usages, even though the devil had invented them. Good Bernard Gilpin gave a challenge of his own from the pulpit: he flung down the Gospel before the rather angry people, who were highly civilized, and therefore averse to innovation; and he told them so defiantly of the difficulties in the way of their salvation, that they determined to surmount them and became a Christian people; and that, under correction, is a better glove, and a greater miracle, than those of St. Gudule.
I have spoken, in another page, of our old English custom of kissing. It is one which is not likely to decay. We still kiss persons caught napping,—that is, if they be worth the kissing,—and exact as forfeit the price of a new pair of gloves. In old days, he who first saw the new moon could, by kissing a maiden, and proclaiming the fact,—that is, the lunar fact,—claim a pair of gloves for his service. The Persian habit was to kiss only relatives, which must have been highly proper, but uncommonly insipid,—a perfect waste of good things, except among cousins.
Our Queen Elizabeth was a wearer of gloves that are said to have been of a very costly description. Shakspeare was once acting in her presence the part of a king—one of his own making; and so careful was he of the illusion of the scene, that he forgot all other things beside. The Virgin Queen resolved to put him to the proof; and as the mimic king passed before her, she dropped one of her gloves. Shakspeare, faithful subject as well as actor, immediately paused, and with the words that, “although bent on this high embassy, yet stoop we to pick up our cousin’s glove,” he presented it to the real queen, and then passed on. This anecdote is often cited to prove that nothing could induce the poet-actor to depart from the business of the stage; and it proves exactly the contrary; but as an illustration of gloves I have found it handy to my purpose.
Elizabeth treated Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, more generously than she did Shakspeare. The Queen gave him her glove, which, she having dropped it, he had picked up to return to her. He immediately adorned it with jewels, and placed it in his cap, where he displayed it at all jousts and tournaments. Chivalrous gentlemen at Donnybrook Fair follow something of this fashion when they draw a chalk line round their hat, and knock down every one bold enough to declare that it is not silver lace. Elizabeth, I may add, received as well as gave gloves. The first embroidered pair ever worn in England were presented to her by Vere, Earl of Oxford, when he returned from a mission abroad. The Queen had her portrait taken with the gloves introduced.
And speaking of embassies, recalls to my memory another story connected with gloves and legations. Ambassadors’ effects are passed without examination,—not by law, but out of courtesy. This courtesy has made smuggleresses of many an envoy’s wife; of none more than of a French Ambassadress, not very many years ago, in England. She used to import huge cases of gloves under the name of “despatches,” and these she condescended to sell to English ladies who were mean enough to buy them. But the custom-house officers became tired of being accomplices in this contraband trade, and they put a stop to it by a very ingenious contrivance. Having duly ascertained that a case directed to the Embassy contained nothing but ladies’ gloves, they affected to treat it as a letter which had been sent through the Customs by mistake, and which they made over to the Post-office. The authorities of the latter delivered the same in due course; the postage-fee of something like £250 was paid without a remark; and the Ambassadress stopped all further correspondence of that sort by declining to deal any longer in gloves.
But even the Customs get defeated occasionally, in spite of their cleverness. Some years ago a celebrated exporter of contraband goods, residing at Calais, sent on the same day, to two different parts of England, two cases of gloves, one containing gloves only for the right, the other case, gloves only for the left hand. The “left hands” got safely to their destination, but the “rights” were seized. The Customs however could find no purchaser at the usual sales for single gloves, but they were at last bought by an individual at the rate of a penny a dozen; this individual happened to be the possessor of the other single gloves, and he reaped a rich profit by the trick over the fair and honest dealer.
This was a more successful trick with the gloves than that practised by the lady who, flinging her pretty gauntlet on to the arena where some wild beasts were struggling, bade her knight descend and bring it back to her. The cavalier accomplished the task, but he smote the cruel damsel in the face with the glove ere he threw it at her feet; and, turning on his heel, he left her for ever. She of course lived on in single sullenness; and I warrant that she never saw white gloves and a wedding without a twinge at her heart.