To the Italian influences of the sixteenth century France owes the fashion for points coupés and lace.[[393]] It was under the Valois and the Médicis that the luxury of embroidery, laces of gold, silver, and thread, attained its greatest height, and point coupé was as much worn at that epoch, as were subsequently the points of Italy and Flanders.
Ruffs and cuffs, according to Quicherat, first appeared in France in 1540. The ruff or fraise, as it was termed from its fancied resemblance to the caul[[394]] or frill of the calf, first adopted by Henry II. to conceal a scar, continued in favour with his sons. The Queen-mother herself wore mourning from the day of the King's death; no decoration therefore appears upon her wire-mounted ruff,[[395]] but the fraises of her family and the escadron volante are profusely trimmed with the geometric work of the period, and the making of laces and point coupé was the favourite employment of her court. It is recorded that the girls and servants of her household consumed much time in making squares of réseuil, and Catherine de Médicis had a bed draped with these squares of réseuil or lacis. Catherine encouraged dress and extravagance, and sought by brilliant fêtes to turn people's minds from politics. In this she was little seconded either by her husband or gloomy son, King Charles; but Henry III. and his "mignons frisés et fraisés" were tricked out in garments of the brightest colours—toques and toquets, pearl necklaces and earrings. The ruff was the especial object of royal interest. With his own hand he used the poking-sticks and adjusted the plaits. "Gaudronneur des collets de sa femme" was the soubriquet bestowed on him by the satirists of the day.[[396]]
By 1579 the ruffs of the French court had attained such an outrageous size, "un tiers d'aulne,"[[397]] in depth that the wearers could scarcely turn their heads.[[398]] "Both men and women wore them intolerably large, being a quarter of a yard deep and twelve lengths in a ruff," writes Stone. In London the fashion was termed the "French ruff"; in France, on the other hand, it was the "English monster." Blaise de Viginière describes them as "gadrooned like organ-pipes, contorted or crinkled like cabbages, and as big as the sails of a windmill." So absurd was the effect, the journalist of Henry III.[[399]] declares "they looked like the head of John the Baptist in a charger."
Nor could they eat so encumbered. It is told how Reine Margot one day, when seated at dinner, was compelled to send for a spoon with a handle two feet in length wherewith to eat her soup.[[400]] These monstrosities, "so stiffened that they cracked like paper,"[[401]] found little favour beyond the precincts of the Louvre. They were caricatured by the writers of the day; and when, in 1579, Henry III. appeared thus attired at the fair of St. Germain, he was met by a band of students decked out in large paper cuffs, shouting, "À la fraise on connoit le veau"—for which impertinence the King sent them to prison.[[402]] Suddenly, at the Court of Henry, the fraise gave way to the rabat, or turn-down collar.[[403]] In vain were sumptuary edicts issued against luxury.[[404]] The court set a bad example; and in 1577, at the meeting of the States of Blois, Henry wore on his own dress four thousand yards of pure gold lace. His successor, Henry IV., issued several fresh ordinances[[405]] against "clinquants [[406]] et dorures." Touching the last, Regnier, the satirist, writes:—
"A propos, on m'a dit
Que contre les clinquants le roy faict un edict."[[407]]
Better still, the King tried the effect of example: he wore a coat of grey cloth with a doublet of taffety, without either trimming or lace—a piece of economy little appreciated by the public. His dress, says an author, "sentait des misères de la Ligue." Sully, anxious to emulate the simplicity of the King, laughed at those "qui portoient leurs moulins et leurs bois de haute futaie sur leurs dos."[[408]] "It is necessary," said he, "to rid ourselves of our neighbours' goods, which deluge the country." So he prohibited, under pain of corporal punishment, any more dealings with the Flemish merchants.
But edicts failed to put down point coupé; Reine Margot, Madame Gabrielle, and Bassompierre were too strong for him.
The Wardrobe Accounts of Henry's first queen are filled with entries of point coupé and "passements à l'aiguille";[[409]] and though Henry usually wore the silk-wrought shirts of the day,[[410]] we find in the inventory of his wife one entered as trimmed with cut-work.[[411]] Wraxall declares to have seen exhibited at a booth on the Boulevart de Bondy, the shirt worn by Henry when assassinated. "It is ornamented," he writes, "with a broad lace round the collar and breast. The two wounds inflicted by the assassin's knife are plainly visible."[[412]]
Plate XLVI.