CHAPTER XVII
ROYALTY AND FASHION
Some two hundred and fifty years ago, a fashionable colour was a peculiar shade of brown known as the “couleur Isabelle,” and this was its origin: Soon after the siege of Ostend commenced at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Isabella Eugenia, Gouvernante of the Netherlands, is said to have made a vow that she would not change her chemise till the town surrendered. Despite the fact that the siege lasted over three years, the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, in no way dismayed, resolved to keep their mistress in countenance, and hit upon the expedient of wearing garments of the presumed colour finally attained by that which clung to the imperial Archduchess by force of religious obstinacy.
This is only one of many instances in which royalty has been responsible for inaugurating silly and eccentric fashions from some circumstance of an untoward nature. Thus when Francis I., owing to a wound he received in his head, was obliged to wear his hair short, this became a Court fashion. Charles V. suffered so intensely from headache that he had his hair cut close, and thence arose the mode of wearing it short. Charles VII. of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs, and full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, named Duviller, to conceal an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Tradition, too, tells how Queen Blanche provided her consort, Louis IX., with a wig to hide his baldness, for, said she, “our bald kings have never been lucky, and it ill befits a sovereign that he should not be better provided with flowing locks than a mendicant at the gates of Notre Dame. It shall never be said that Louis, our well-beloved consort, went about with as little hair on his crown as a monarch retired from his vocation, and shut up in a cloister.” By this incident the perruque was popularised in France, and Louis became the patron of “artists in hair.”
When Louis XIII. succeeded Henry IV. at the age of nine years, the courtiers, because “the new king could have no beard, resolved that they would have none themselves; and every wrinkled face appeared at Court as beardless as possible,” with the exception of the honest Sully, who, although jeered at for his old-fashioned appearance, made no change.
Shoes with very long points were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet, whereas the charming Isabella of Bavaria introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered to show off her beautiful skin. The reign of Charles II., it has been remarked, “was the dominion of French fashions,” and the custom of baring the bosom was made the subject of frequent comment by the moralists of the day. Catherine of Braganza, it is said, “exposed her breast and shoulders without even the gloss of the lightest gauze,” and in one of her portraits “the tucker instead of standing up on her bosom, is with licentious boldness turned down, and lies upon her stays.”[117] Anne Boleyn is said to have had on her throat a large mole, which she carefully concealed with an ornamental collar-band, a fashion which was imitated by the ladies of the Court, who had never thought of wearing anything of the kind before. Nor was this her Majesty’s only defect, for it appears she had a malformation of the little finger of her left hand, on which there was a double nail, with something like an indication of a sixth finger. “But that,” says Wyatt, “which in others might be regarded as a defect, was to her an occasion of additional grace, by the skilful manner in which she concealed it from observation.” On account of this peculiarity she wore the hanging sleeves mentioned as her peculiar fashion when in France, a practice which was quickly followed by the ladies of the Court in this country. It may be mentioned, too, that Anne Boleyn had great taste and skill in dress, and we are told that “she was unrivalled in the gracefulness of her attire and the fertility of her invention in devising new patterns, which were imitated by all the Court belles, by whom she was regarded as the glass of fashion.”
Some sovereigns attended to the dress of their subjects, as the Emperor Paul of Russia, whose instructions were regulated by the police. It was ordered that ordinary dress should consist of a cocked hat, or for want of one a round hat pinned up with three corners, a single-breasted coat and waistcoat, knee-buckles instead of strings, and buckles in the shoes. A lady at Court, it is said, wearing her hair rather lower in her neck than was consistent with the decree, was ordered into close confinement, to be fed on bread and water.
Similarly, it seems that James regulated the dress of his subjects in Scotland, for in 1621 he enacted that the fashion of clothes in use be not changed by man or woman “under the pain of forfeiture of the cloths, and an hundred pounds to be paid by the wearer, and as much by the maker of the said cloths.” According to the fashion in use, no person could wear lawns or cambrics, or cloth trimmed with gold, or feathers on their heads, or pearls and precious stones, &c. But, to make this law more arbitrary and invidious, it exempted from its operation “noblemen, prelates, lords of session, barons of quality, their wives, sons, and daughters, as also heralds, trumpeters, and minstrels.” And, it may be remembered, short and tight breeches were so much the rage in France that Charles V. was compelled to banish this fashion by edict.
Louis XI. greatly disliked finery, and on one occasion dismissed a gendarme from his service for appearing before him in a velvet doublet; and his Majesty had an open quarrel with the Duke of Cleves by showing his disapprobation of his extravagance in dress. Similarly, Ferdinand V., the Catholic, is reported one day to have turned to a gallant of the Court noted for his finery, and, laying his hand on his own doublet, to have exclaimed, “Excellent stuff this; it has lasted me three pair of sleeves!” But this spirit of economy was carried so far as to bring on him the reproach of parsimony.[118] Henry IV. of France curtailed as much as possible his wardrobe expenses, usually wearing a plain grey habit, with a doublet of either satin or taffeta, without any ornament. Oftentimes, when he saw a courtier in his costly apparel, he would humorously remark that he “carried his castle and his wood on his shoulders.”
During the closing years of his life Charles V. was singularly indifferent to his apparel, and, according to a contemporary account, “when he rode into the towns, amidst a brilliant escort of courtiers and cavaliers, the Emperor’s person was easy to be distinguished among the crowd by the plainness of his attire.” In the latter part of his reign he dressed wholly in black. Roger Ascham, who was admitted to an audience by him some years before his abdication, says that his Majesty “had on a gown of black taffety, and looked somewhat like the parson of Epurstone.” His natural parsimony came in aid of his taste. It is told of him that once being overtaken by a storm in the neighbourhood of Naumburg, he took off his new velvet cap and remained uncovered whilst he sent into the town for an old one. “Poor Emperor,” thought one of the company, who tells the anecdote, “spending tons of gold on his wars and standing bareheaded in the rain for the sake of his velvet bonnet.” But his Majesty had not always shown this disregard of dress, having been inordinately fond of finery, especially of jewellery. At one time, writes Dr. Doran, “his toilet-table was covered with miscellaneous articles, like that of Charles of Burgundy, and there was as much variety in its drawers.”