Gloves, Past and Present

by Willard M. Smith

In the west the spectacle changes. Beyond the vast plain of the Drac appears a long, white cliff, little carved out—a rigid line of limestone falling sheer to the valley where lies Grenoble. This is the compact mass of Vercors, almost impassable. Yet, suddenly, the cliff makes way; the vale of Furon leaps through the chasm in the mountain wall. An ancient road, winding ribbonwise to westward, puts into communication the valley of the Isère with the wooded brows, the vast grassy hollows, of the Vercors countryside.

Northward, the limestone reappears in the Chartreuse. But these mountains, unlike Vercors, are twisted and broken, resembling a half demolished castle with great apertures and rents in its once impregnable sides. Their countless little vales and fertile levels glow with stream-fed pasturage and with billowy forests. And everywhere, among the foothills of the encircling ranges, roam herds of goats and cattle, without suspicion of the fate which awaits them with the coming of the great Fair of the autumn at Grenoble.

On this July morning the old town gleams like a strange jewel, set in the spacious, lush meadow lands, stretching league on league, to the mountains. Vast gardens of hemp wave to its very walls. Vineyards veil the nearer hills, and the mulberry dots the plains of the southeast. The Isère, restless, ever seeking new outlet, interlaces with a network of sparkling tributaries the great expanse of Grésivaudan. All the richness of the region, all the amazing variety and beauty with which nature has surrounded this ancient city, seems concentrated, in the early hush and radiance, in an act of worship.

Now the sun has penetrated the shadows below the city walls, and is stealing through the sinuous, crowded streets, peculiar to towns which long have been cramped within the precincts of strong fortifications. The tiled eaves lean so close one upon another, as in some places actually to shut out the sky. If we might fly up like a bird and look down over the Grenoble of 1650, we would be gazing upon a confusion of multi-colored roofs, set at every conceivable angle of picturesqueness, and upon a bewildering congregation of chimneys and chimney-pots. Also, we would note that the town lay on both banks of the Isère, connected by a tower bridge, and protected on the north by the fortress of the Bastille.

Down in the roughly paved rue Saint-Laurent the clatter of sabots on the stones announces that the townspeople are astir. Shutters are thrown open. Bursts of song herald the holiday. Crowds of goats, driven through the streets, are being milked at the house doors. Then, from the Cathedral of Notre Dame—whose foundations, it is said, were laid by Charlemagne—the bells proclaim with sweet solemnity the call to early mass. Out of the houses pour the people in gaily embroidered holiday dress, group joining group with merry exchange of salutations, until, trooping through the narrow streets, the colorful procession appears like a wandering rainbow threading the grey mazes of the old town.

House after house they pass and shop after shop, each bearing above the portal a shield emblazened with the selfsame coat-of-arms—the heraldic device of the guild of the glovers. Their occupants, gayest of the gay, fast swell the throng, with masters and their families and apprentices—the young boys in the retinues stealing shy glances at the pretty daughters of their masters, the maidens covertly returning their admirers’ bashful looks.

And now the multitude melts into the tender gloom of the ancient cathedral; their voices are hushed in the sweet fluting of the choir. Above the heads of the kneeling populace glows the shrine of Saint Anne, lit with innumerable candles and smothered in exotic, summer flowers. For this is the annual fête-day of the mother of the Virgin, the patron saint of les gantiers, revered by all good glovers throughout France. At Grenoble, however, the feast is observed with greater magnificence than anywhere else, for the glovers constitute by far the most numerous body, and the most prosperous, of its citizens, and theirs is the crowning festivity of the whole year.

According to monkish legend, the good Saint Anne made a livelihood while on earth by knitting gloves. “The knitting saint,” in homely terms of affection the people liked to call her. They were wont to regard her as one like themselves—only holier far, for the great honor God saw fit to confer upon her—fulfilling her simple task from day to day, the needles always busy in her fingers. Their love for her was so strong, indeed, and so enduring, that early in the nineteenth century the glovers ordered a statue of their saint set up in a public square of Grenoble, where it may be seen to-day. It represents the mother of Mary, knitting, with a half-finished glove in her hand and a basket of gloves at her feet.

Mass celebrated, the long summer day is given over to street festivities, to feasting, dancing and pageantry. The doors of the glovers’ guild-hall, converted into a flower-adorned banqueting room, stand wide open. The glovers’ shops and houses overflow with hospitality. As at a great fair, popular arts and pastimes occupy the squares and spaces before the public buildings; several such distractions begin at once and continue simultaneously. Mountebanks and musicians, folk dances, Columbines and Pierrots, flower-girls, venders of bon-bons and petits joujoux of every description, all commingle in a laughing, jabbering, singing, whirling, shimmering, merry-making throng. A wheeled street-stage, drawn by donkeys, with bells jingling about their necks and on their trappings, makes the rounds of the town. Wherever it stops, the gay curtains of the miniature theatre are parted to disclose the play-actors who give a mediæval burlesque of Don Juan, amid the noisy applause and high-pitched laughter of the onlookers.

But the great feature of the day is the pageant of the glovers, in which each master, with his apprentices and family, has his special part. This takes the form of a procession of carnival vans, or floats, drawn by gorgeously caparisoned horses, and followed by crowds of young apprentices and workmen and workmaidens on foot, who enact in pantomime the various processes of glove-making as it was practiced in mediæval days. Beautiful kids and chamois from the mountains, wreathed with blossoms as though for sacrifice, are led by troops of peasant garçons in blue smocks. The cutters advance, rhythmically jingling their shears; and the needlewomen move by more slowly, drawing their shining implements in perfect unison through the unfinished gloves they carry in their hands. A spice of rivalry enlivens the exhibition, for every master-glover has taken pains that his own personal retinue shall be as large and as brilliant as possible. Every apprentice is fired with the desire to so comport himself as to be an honor to his master—and, incidentally, to attract the admiration of the maiden of the house he hopes to win.