Gloves, Past and Present

by Willard M. Smith

At the same time, the fingered gloves also had come to be used for a practical protection. Pliny, the younger, speaking of the private secretary of his illustrious uncle, writes: “His amanuensis” (who accompanied him on his notable journey to Mount Vesuvius) “wore gloves upon his hands that winter, lest the severity of the weather should make him lose any time” (from his duties as scribe). It is to gloves, then, that we are indebted in part for some of the most remarkable passages in the works of the celebrated Roman naturalist, whose scientific enthusiasm eventually cost him his life in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 A.D.

Not until the age of Musonious, the philosopher, who lived near the close of the first century of the Christian era, do we find gloves among the Romans falling into disrepute. Musonious ejaculates: “It is shameful that persons in perfect health should clothe their hands with soft and hairy coverings!” The denunciation of the dress-reformers of those days, however, seems to have had as little effect in stemming the tide of fashion as in our times.

A truly revolting use to which gloves are said to have put—if we may believe certain tales of the famous story-teller, Athenæus (200 A.D.)—is described in a bit of ancient fiction in which he relates that “a well-known glutton,” one of his own contemporaries, “always came to the table with gloves upon his hands, that he might be able to handle and eat the meat while it was hot, and devour more than the rest of the company.” No wonder the early Fathers of the Church looked upon gloves as vicious and corrupting! But their biting invective was directed principally against the effeminancy of those who fell victim to the pleasurable practice, and about the beginning of the ninth century ecclesiastical authority forbade the monks from wearing any gloves save those made of the tough, unyielding sheepskin. Such, it was thought, could not possibly afford the brethren any sensuous enjoyment, nor tempt them into love of luxuries.

There is an ancient story of Saint Gudula, patroness of Brussels, which well illustrates the early Christian distrust of gloves. In Butler’s Legends of the Saints, it is related of this holy woman—who died in 712 A.D.—that one day, kneeling at prayers barefooted, one of the monks, moved to compassion, “put his gloves upon her feet” to protect them from the cold stones of the floor. St. Gudula, however, snatched off the offending articles and contemptuously tossed them ceiling high. And there they remained, says the legend, miraculously suspended in midair for one hour.

The first legal enactment concerning gloves occurs in the records of France. About 790, Emperor Charlemagne granted unlimited rights of hunting to the abbots and monks of Sithin for the purpose of procuring deer skins for making covers for their books, and also for gloves and girdles. The bishops, however, grew to feel that theirs should be the exclusive privilege of wearing gloves of such fine quality; and by the Council of Aix, in the reign of Louis, Le Debonnaire, the inferior clergy were ordered to abstain from deer skin and to wear only sheep skin, as was formerly deemed fitting for monks.

In England gloves virtually “came over with the Conqueror.” The French importation—which several centuries later was to be the cause of such intense commercial rivalry between the two countries—was the mailed glove of stout deer or sheep skin, with joined plates of metal affixed to the back and fingers. The early Saxons, however, wore gloves of a rude sort, for the derivation of the word from gluf is distinctly Saxon, and they are mentioned in the epic of Beowulf, composed in the seventh century, A.D. William S. Beck thinks that the early Britons may have been quick to appreciate the comfort afforded by the gloves worn by their Roman conquerors. It is known for a fact that the Britons of that age wore boots of untanned leather, and it should be no tax upon the imagination to suppose that if they protected one extremity they probably did the other.

But Professor Boyd Dawkins, without a doubt, has pushed the history of the glove farthest back of any antiquarian. Professor Dawkins assures us that the cavemen wore gloves. He actually defines their style; they were “not of ordinary size,” he tells us, “but reaching even to the elbows, anticipating by untold ages the multi-button gloves of the Victorian era.” Now just when did these pre-historic, glove-wearing men live? Another eminent geologist holds that they inhabited the south of France before they were driven forth by the excruciating cold of the glacial period. It is impossible accurately to fix the date of the great ice age; Dr. Croll, however, and other celebrated scientists, appear to agree that it began about 240,000 years ago, that it lasted about 160,000 years and ended somewhat over 80,000 years since.

Here, then, is an antiquity for gloves which should satisfy our fondest ambitions! This theory also restores to France with a vengeance the original prestige for glove-making of which that country is so jealous. Theory, should we say? The cavemen’s gloves, as we are distinctly told, were made of roughly dressed skins, sewn with elaborate bone needles; and an unmistakable drawing of such a glove was discovered by Professor Dawkins, rudely etched upon a bone, found among pre-glacial relics.

The glove, accordingly, dates from the twilight of mankind. The ancient peoples wore gloves; and by the tenth century in Europe we find them in fairly general use—to some degree as a practical protection and hand-covering, but, more strikingly, as the badge of royal or ecclesiastical authority and dignity.

The gentler sex, however, at that time had by no means come into their own, so far as gloves were concerned. Among the early nations men seem to have enjoyed the monopoly of this article of dress, and the reason is plain to see, when we remember that gloves, in those days, were worn almost exclusively as part of the regalia of public office. The daughters of Israel, and the ladies of Persia, Greece, Rome and mediæval Europe, adopted the voluminous sleeve which came down over the hand and rendered gloves, for practical purposes, unnecessary. A manuscript of the tenth century, however, describes a hand-covering worn by an Anglo-Saxon lady which resembled a muffler provided with a separate division for the thumb. This was reproduced by Planché in his History of British Costume, and is colored blue. But the long, flowing sleeves were customary, and were even worn by both sexes—men in the ordinary walks of life, apparently, being compelled to content themselves with sharing the feminine expediency for keeping the hands warmly covered. For a man to be gloveless at that period certainly spelled humiliation!