These revivals in pageantry are a great history lesson, and as improving to the adult mind as the picture-book is to the child. We realise so much quicker what we see than what we hear or read.
Poor Elizabeth. Stout-hearted as any man when large matters of State called for her decision, and yet essentially feminine in her love of dress, her vanity, and coquetry. Dress became a truly serious burden of expense in her day, and she wisely regulated it by sumptuary laws to encourage thrift and common-sense among the masses. Costumes were ill-adapted for outdoor use, and if we could see again any of those splendid fêtes in the Royal Park of which the Queen was the central figure, surrounded by her gallants and grand dames, we should probably smile at the preposterous awkwardness of everybody in that brilliant company, despite their magnificence. There is a wonderful picture of Elizabeth at the Lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge, the residence of the Master (Dr. Butler), wherein she appears so tightly laced as to have no interior organs at all, and her voluminous hoops, ruff, and sleeves cover all the canvas.
Largely it was outward show. Elizabeth has come down to us as a Queen possessing three thousand silken gowns and one chemise. She did not own a pair of silk stockings until 1560, when, after receiving some as a gift, she insisted on always wearing silken hose, and they became universal. Both ladies and gentlemen wore high-heeled shoes, and sometimes the heels measured over four inches. Fans were much used, people of rank having the handles inlaid with diamonds and precious stones, while those of the middle class adopted silver and ivory handles. Perfume was in great vogue.
Here is a vision of the Queen as we may imagine her at one of the fashionable crushes of the time:
“The ruff was profusely laced, plaited, and apparently divergent from a centre on the back of her neck; it was very broad, extending on each side of her face, with the extremities reposing on her bosom, from which rose two wings of lawn edged with jewels, stiffened with wire, and reaching to the top of her hair, which was moulded in the shape of a cushion and richly covered with gems. The stomacher was strait and broad, and though leaving the bosom bare, still formed a long waist by extending downwards; it was loaded with jewels and embossed gold, and was preposterously stiff and formal.”
Men’s ruffs never reached the extravagant size of the ladies’ attire, but they grew to such an extent that Elizabeth considered it necessary to order that any beyond “a nayle of a yard in depth” should be clipped. The edge of the ruff was called a “piccadilly,” as may be seen in several of the earlier dictionaries, hence the name of the fashionable street abutting on Hyde Park to-day. When there were practically no houses there, a ruff shop kept by a man named Higgins existed, and was called a “piccadilly.” Higgins is said to have made money, and built a row of houses to which he handed on the name. The term “Pickadilla” is applied to this district in Gerarde’s Herbal, where it is mentioned that “the small wild buglosse” was growing on the banks of the dry ditches “about Pickadilla.”
Queen Elizabeth was so anxious that she should not be surpassed in the beauty of her own dress, that in addition to her sumptuary laws regulating the clothes worn by the different classes of society, young and old alike, she personally snubbed anyone who she thought wore too rich a gown or too high a ruff. It is told of Lady Mary Howard that she appeared at Court in a velvet suit richly trimmed, Her Majesty looked at it carefully, and the next day sent privately for the robe, and, donning it herself, entered the room where Lady Mary and her other ladies were sitting. She then asked what they thought of her “new-fancied suit,” further inquiring of the owner if it were not too short. That chagrined lady delightedly answered in the affirmative. Whereupon the Sovereign gave a sharp retort that if it was too short for her, it was certainly too fine for Lady Mary, and she must never wear it more.
Of course, as Queen Elizabeth had sandy-coloured hair, that also became the fashion, and ladies dyed their tresses and painted their faces. This curious old Queen, with her enamelled complexion and darkened eyes, her love of dress, her endless admirers, her hard-hearted and level-headed administration, is reported to have danced an Irish jig only a few days before her death.
Pinched and old, and yet rouged to the eyes—for she was vain to the last—Elizabeth disappears from the scene she had so adorned, and James VI. of Scotland rides into London—in hunting costume, “a doublet, green as the grass he stood on, with a feather in his cap, and horn by his side”—to claim the English throne. On the way he had delayed his progress to make two or three sporting expeditions from the great houses at which he stayed. Clearly this was a type of monarch under whom Hyde Park would be put to other uses than the shows and fêtes and fashionable dallyings of Elizabeth. So it quickly proved. His first act of authority over the Royal demesne was to appoint Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Keeper of Hyde Park for life, with significant instructions. The Queen, his predecessor, being a woman, had been too lenient; he now wished closer supervision, more careful preservation of the game, and a smart eye to be kept on poachers.