To add further to the interest of this volume, we have selected a few pages of anecdotes, and other miscellaneous matters, tending to elucidate this History and account of the “gentle craft;” the members of which may well be proud of such names as their Sherman, Drew, Bloomfield, Gifford, Lee, Sheffey, Worcester, and others, whose memory will long live, as having adorned the various pursuits in which they became eminent.
While this work will prove useful and instructive as presenting, in the biographical sketches, a body of examples showing, how the most unpropitious circumstances have been unable to subdue an ardent desire for the acquisition of knowledge, and the cultivation of a refined taste; the lover of antiquities, and the votary of fashion, will here have their curiosity gratified, in a history of the varied changes which have taken place in an important article of dress, from the pyramidal ages of ancient Egypt, long ere Greece or Rome occupied a space in history, to the present time, when the beauty, taste, and convenience, of modern boots and shoes, combine to establish the superiority of the cordwainers of Europe and America, compared with their predecessors of any nation or age.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE. | |
| [Chap. I.]—On the most ancient Covering of the Feet | [7] |
| [Chap. II.]—The History of Boots and Shoes in England | [30] |
| [Chap. III.]—On the more modern Forms of foreign Boots and Shoes | [58] |
| [Chap. IV.]—Commencement of the Trade | [75] |
| [Chap. V.]—The Structure of the Human Foot, making Lasts, Curing Corns, etc. | [96] |
| [Chap. VI.]—The Poetry of the Feet, etc. | [112] |
| [Chap. VII.]—History of Boots and Shoes in the United States | [135] |
| [Chap. VIII.]—Biographical Sketches of Eminent Shoemakers | [147] |
| Roger Sherman, [147].—Daniel Sheffey, [155].—GideonLee, [156].—Samuel Drew, [163].—Robert Bloomfield,176.—Nathaniel Bloomfield, [181].—William Gifford,183.—Noah Worcester, [192].—James Lackington, [196].—JosephPendrell, [198].—Thomas Holcroft, [199].—Rev.William Carey, D. D., [200].—George Fox, [202].—Rev.James Nichol, [202].—Rev. William Huntington, [203]. | |
| [Chap. IX.]—Crispin Anecdotes, etc. | [204] |
| Patron Saints of Shoemakers.—St. Crispin’s Day.—Cordwainers’Hall.—Incorporated Shoemakers.—Proverbs.—Anecdotes. |
HISTORY OF BOOTS AND SHOES.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE MOST ANCIENT COVERINGS FOR THE FEET.
IF we investigate the monuments of the remotest nations of antiquity, we shall find that the earliest form of protection for the feet, partook of the nature of sandals. The most ancient representations we possess of scenes in ordinary life, are the sculptures and paintings of early Egypt, and these the investigations of travelled scholars from most modern civilized countries have, by their descriptions and delineations, made familiar to us, so that the habits and manners, as well as the costume of this ancient people, have been handed down to the present time, by the work of their own hands, with so vivid a truthfulness, that we feel as conversant with their domestic manners and customs, as with those of any modern nation to which the book of the traveller would introduce us. Not only do their pictured relics remain to give us an insight into their mode of life, but a vast quantity of articles of all kinds, from the tools of the workmen, to the elegant fabrics which once decorated the boudoir of the fair ladies of Memphis and Carnac three thousand years ago, are treasured up in the museums, both public and private, of this and other countries.
With these materials, it is in no wise difficult to carry our history of shoemaking back to the earliest times, and even to look upon the shoemaker at his work, in the early days of Thothmes the third, who ascended the throne of Egypt, according to Wilkinson, 1495 years before Christ, and during whose reign, the Exodus of the Israelites occurred. The first of our plates contains a copy of this very curious painting, as it existed upon the walls of Thebes, when the Italian scholar Rossellini copied it for his great work on Egypt. The shoemakers are both seated upon low stools (real specimens of such articles may be seen in the British Museum), and are both busily employed, in the formation of the sandals then usually worn in Egypt, the first workman is piercing with his awl the leather thong, at the side of the sole, through which the straps were passed, which secured the sandal to the foot;
