No. 306. Ladies at Work.
During the period at which we are now arrived, almost all the relations of domestic life underwent a great change, and nothing hardly could produce a wider difference than that between the manners and sentiments of the reign of Henry VII., and those of Charles II. This was especially observable in the occupations of the female sex, which were becoming more and more frivolous. At the earlier portion of the period referred to, women in general were confined closely to their domestic labours, in spinning, weaving, embroidering, and other work of a similar kind. A hand-loom was almost a necessary article of furniture in a well regulated household, and spinning was so universal an occupation, that we read sometimes of an apartment in the house set apart for it—a family spinning room. Even to this present day, in legal language, the only occupation acknowledged, as that of an unmarried woman, is that of a spinster. Our cut ([No. 306]) represents a party of ladies at their domestic labours; it is taken from Israel van Mechelin’s print of “The Virgin Ascending the Steps of the Temple,” where this domestic scene is introduced in a side compartment. Two are engaged at the distaff, the old poetical emblem of the sex. Another is cutting out the cloth for working, with a pair of shears of very antiquated form. The shape of the three-cornered joined chair in this group is worthy of remark. The female in our cut [No. 307] is also seated in a chair of rather peculiar construction, though it has occurred before at an earlier period (cut [No. 245], p. 375), and we meet with it again in our next cut ([No. 308]). It is what was sometimes called a folding chair. This cut is taken from one of the illustrations to the English edition of Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” printed in 1676, but it is a copy of the earlier originals. The great weaving establishments in England appear to have commenced in the sixteenth century, with the Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands.
No. 307. A Lady at the Loom.
The old domestic games continued to be practised in the middle and upper classes of society, although they were rather extensively superseded by the pernicious rage for gambling which now prevailed throughout English society. This practice had been extending itself ever since the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had been accompanied with another evil practice among the ladies, that of drinking. It need hardly be observed that these two vices furnished constant themes to the dramatists and satirists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the example set by the court under James I. caused them to increase greatly, and they rose to the highest pitch of extravagance under Charles II. Barclay’s “Ship of Fools” (the early English edition) has furnished us with the group of female gamesters, represented in our cut [No. 308]. It will be seen that the ladies are playing with cards and dice, and that the ale jug is introduced as an accompaniment. In fact we must look upon it as a tavern party, and the round table, as far as we can judge, appears to be fixed in the ground. The same book furnishes us with an illustration (cut [No. 309]), in which two gamblers are quarrelling over a game at backgammon. A child is here the jug-bearer or guardian of the liquor. Our cut [No. 310] represents a gambling scene of a rather later period, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” printed in 1586; dice are here the implements of play.
No. 308. A Party of Ladies.
No. 309. A Gamblers’ Dispute.