The shoes of Bernard, king of Italy, found in his tomb, were “right and left:” the soles were of wood, the upper part red leather, laced with thongs, and they fitted so closely, that the order of the toes, terminating in a point at the great toe, might easily be discovered.[114] Stubbs, the satirist in Shakspeare’s time, describes cork shoes or pantofles, (slippers) as bearing up their wearers two inches or more from the ground; as of various colours, and raised, carved, cut, or stitched; as frequently made of velvet, embroidered with the precious metals; and when fastened with strings, covered with enormous and valuable roses of ribband curiously ornamented. “It is remarkable that, as in the present age, both shoes and slippers were worn shaped after the right and left foot. Shakespeare describes his smith as
‘Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet:—’
and Scott, in his ‘Discoverie of Witchcraft,’ observes, that he who receiveth a mischance ‘will consider, whether he put not on his shirt wrong side outwards, or his left shoe on his right foot.’”[115]
Some light may be thrown on the [engraving] by an extract from an heraldic writer: “He beareth or, two sandals sable, buckles or tyes argent. This was the ancient way of securing the feet of travellers from the hardness of the country passage; and consisted of nothing else but a sole, (either of leather or wood) to which was made fast 2 or 3 tyes or latches which was buckled on the top of the foot; the better sort adorned these latches with imbrauthered (embroidered) work, and set them with stones.” Whence it appears that the [engraving] represents such a sandal “of the better sort.” The same author mentions three sandals sable, buckled and adorned or, on a field azure “borne by Palmer.”[116] Ladies may be amused by looking at the [form], as placed before his readers, of a shoe which the author just cited says was “of the gentest (genteelest) fashion” of his time.
This was the fashion that beautified the feet of the fair in the reign of king William and queen Mary. The old “Deputy for the kings of arms” is minutely diffuse on the “gentle craft:” he engraves the form of “a pair of wedges,” which he says “is to raise up a shooe in the instep when it is too straight for the top of the foot;” and thus compassionates ladies’ sufferings.—“Shoomakers love to put ladies in their stocks; but these wedges, like merciful justices upon complaint, soon do ease and deliver them.” If the eye turns to the cut—to the cut of the sole, with the “line of beauty” adapted by the cunning workman’s skill to stilt the female foot—if the reader behold that association, let wonder cease, that a venerable master in coat-armour should bend his quarterings to the quartering of a lady’s shoe, and forgetful of heraldic forms, condescend from his “high estate” to the use of similitudes.
EASTER.
The difference of opinion respecting the true time of Easter, in the year 1825, and the explanation at [p. 416] of the error at [p. 190], as to the rule for finding this feast have occasioned various letters to the editor, from which he selects three, in order to further elucidate and close the subject. The first is a lively introduction.