CHAPTER I

.

NEEDLEWORK.

"As ladies wont To finger the fine needle and nyse thread."--_Faerie Queene._

The art of lace-making has from the earliest times been so interwoven with the art of needlework that it would be impossible to enter on the subject of the present work without giving some mention of the latter.

With the Egyptians the art of embroidery was general, and at Beni Hassan figures are represented making a sort of net--"they that work in flax, and they that weave network."[1] Examples of elaborate netting have been found in Egyptian tombs, and mummy wrappings are ornamented with drawn-work, cut-work, and other open ornamentation. The outer tunics of the robes of state of important personages appear to be fashioned of network darned round the hem with gold and silver and coloured silks. Amasis, King of Egypt, according to Herodotus,[2] sent to Athene of Lindus a corslet with figures interwoven with gold and cotton, and to judge from a passage of Ezekiel, the Egyptians even embroidered the sails of their galleys which they exported to Tyre.[3]

{2}The Jewish embroiderers, even in early times, seem to have carried their art to a high standard of execution. The curtains of the Tabernacle were of "fine twined linen wrought with needlework, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work."[4] Again, the robe of the ephod was of gold and blue and purple and scarlet, and fine twined linen, and in Isaiah we have mention of women's cauls and nets of checker-work. Aholiab is specially recorded as a cunning workman, and chief embroiderer in blue, and in purple, and in scarlet, and in fine linen,[5] and the description of the virtuous woman in the Proverbs, who "layeth her hands to the spindle" and clotheth herself in tapestry, and that of the king's daughter in the Psalms, who shall be "brought unto the king in a raiment of needlework," all plainly show how much the art was appreciated amongst the Jews.[6] Finally Josephus, in his _Wars of the Jews_, mentions the veil presented to the Temple by Herod (B.C. 19), a Babylonian curtain fifty cubits high, and sixteen broad, embroidered in blue and red, "of marvellous texture, representing the universe, the stars, and the elements."

In the English Bible, _lace_ is frequently mentioned, but its meaning must be qualified by the reserve due to the use of such a word in James I.'s time. It is pretty evident that the translators used it to indicate a small cord, since lace for decoration would be more commonly known at that time as _purls_, _points_, or _cut-works_.[7]

"Of lace amongst the Greeks we seem to have no evidence. Upon the well-known red and black vases are all kinds of figures clad in costumes which are bordered with ornamental patterns, but these were painted upon, woven into, or embroidered upon the fabric. They were not lace. Many centuries elapsed before a marked and elaborately ornamental character infused itself into twisted, plaited, or looped thread-work. During such a period the fashion of ornamenting borders of costumes and hangings existed, and underwent a few phases, as, for instance, in the Elgin marbles, where crimped {3}edges appear along the flowing Grecian dresses." Embroidered garments, cloaks, veils and cauls, and networks of gold are frequently mentioned in Homer and other early authors.[8]

The countries of the Euphrates were renowned in classical times for the beauty of their embroidered and painted stuffs which they manufactured.[9] Nothing has come down to us of these Babylonian times, of which Greek and Latin writers extolled the magnificence; but we may form some idea, from the statues and figures engraved on cylinders, of what the weavers and embroiderers of this ancient time were capable.[10] A fine stone in the British Museum is engraved with the figure of a Babylonian king, Merodach-Idin-Abkey, in embroidered robes, which speak of the art as practised eleven hundred years B.C.[11] Josephus writes that the veils given by Herod for the Temple were of Babylonian work ([Greek: peplos babylônios])--the women excelling, according to Apollonius, in executing designs of varied colours.

The Sidonian women brought by Paris to Troy embroidered veils of such rich work that Hecuba deemed them worthy of being offered to Athene; and Lucan speaks of the Sidonian veil worn by Cleopatra at a feast in her Alexandrine palace, in honour of Cæsar.[12]

Phrygia was also renowned for its needlework, and from the shores of Phrygia Asiatic and Babylonian embroideries were shipped to Greece and Italy. The _toga picta_, worked with Phrygian embroidery, was worn by Roman generals at their triumphs and by the consuls when they celebrated the games; hence embroidery itself is styled "Phrygian,"[13] {4}and the Romans knew it under no other name (_opus Phrygianum_).[14]

Gold needles and other working implements have been discovered in Scandinavian tumuli. In the _London Chronicle_ of 1767 will be found a curious account of the opening of a Scandinavian barrow near Wareham, in Dorsetshire. Within the hollow trunk of an oak were discovered many bones wrapped in a covering of deerskins neatly sewn together. There were also the remains of a piece of gold lace, four inches long and two and a half broad. This lace was black and much decayed, of the old lozenge pattern,[15] that most ancient and universal of all designs, again found depicted on the coats of ancient Danes, where the borders are edged with an open or net-work of the same pattern.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.

GOLD LACE FOUND IN A BARROW.]

Passing to the first ages of the Christian era, we find the pontifical ornaments, the altar and liturgical cloths, and the draperies then in common use for hanging between the colonnades and porches of churches all worked with holy images and histories from the Holy Writ. Rich men chose sacred subjects to be embroidered on their dress, and one senator wore 600 figures worked upon his robes of state. Asterius, Bishop of Amasus, thunders against those Christians "who wore the Gospels upon their backs instead of in their hearts."[16]

In the Middle Ages spinning and needlework were the occupation of women of all degrees. As early as the sixth {5}century the nuns in the diocese of St. Césaire, Bishop of Arles, were forbidden to embroider robes enriched with paintings, flowers, and precious stones. This prohibition, however, was not general. Near Ely, an Anglo-Saxon lady brought together a number of maidens to work for the monastery, and in the seventh century an Abbess of Bourges, St. Eustadiole, made vestments and enriched the altar with the work of her nuns. At the beginning of the ninth century St. Viborade, of St. Gall, worked coverings for the sacred books of the monastery, for it was the custom then to wrap in silk and carry in a linen cloth the Gospels used for the offices of the Church.[17] Judith of Bavaria, mother of Charles the Bold, stood sponsor for the Queen of Harold, King of Denmark, who came to Ingelheim to be baptised with all his family, and gave her a robe she had worked with her own hands and studded with precious stones.

"Berthe aux grands pieds," the mother of Charlemagne, was celebrated for her skill in needlework,[18]

"à ouvrer si com je vous dirai N'avoit meillor ouvriere de Tours jusqu'à Cambrai;"

while Charlemagne[19]--

"Ses filles fist bien doctriner, Et aprendre keudre et filer."

Queen Adelhaïs, wife of Hugh Capet (987-996), presented to the Church of St. Martin at Tours a cope, on the back of which she had embroidered the Deity, surrounded by seraphim and cherubim, the front being worked with an Adoration of the Lamb of God.[20]

Long before the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon women were skilled with the needle, and gorgeous are the accounts of the gold-starred and scarlet-embroidered tunics and violet sacks worked by the nuns. St. Dunstan himself designed the ornaments of a stole worked by the hands of a noble Anglo-Saxon lady, Ethelwynne, and sat daily in her bower with her maidens, directing the work. The four daughters of {6}Edward the Elder are all praised for their needle's skill. Their father, says William of Malmesbury, had caused them in childhood "to give their whole attention to letters, and afterwards employed them in the labours of the distaff and the needle." In 800 Denbert, Bishop of Durham, granted the lease of a farm of 200 acres for life to an embroideress named Eanswitha for the charge of scouring, repairing, and renewing the vestments of the priests of his diocese.[21] The Anglo-Saxon Godric, Sheriff of Buckingham, granted to Alcuid half a hide of land as long as he should be sheriff on condition she taught his daughter the art of embroidery. In the tenth century Ælfleda, a high-born Saxon lady, offered to the church at Ely a curtain on which she had wrought the deeds of her husband, Brithnoth, slain by the Danes; and Edgitha, Queen of Edward the Confessor, was "perfect mistress of her needle."

The famous Bayeux Tapestry or embroidery, said to have been worked by Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, is of great historical interest.[22] It is, according to the chroniclers, "Une tente très longue et estroite de telle a broderies de ymages et escriptaux faisant représentation du Conquest de l'Angleterre"; a needle-wrought epic of the Norman Conquest, worked on a narrow band of stout linen over 200 feet long, and containing 1,255 figures worked on worsted threads.[23] Mr. Fowke gives the Abbé Rue's doubts as to the accepted period of the Bayeux tapestry, which he assigns to the Empress Matilda. Mr. Collingwood Bruce is of opinion that the work is coeval with the events it records, as the primitive furniture, buildings, etc., are all of the eleventh century. That the tapestry is not found in any catalogue before 1369 is only a piece of presumptive evidence against the earlier date, and must be weighed with the internal evidence in its favour.

After the Battle of Hastings William of Normandy, on {7}his first appearance in public, clad himself in a richly-wrought cloak of Anglo-Saxon embroidery, and his secretary, William of Poictiers, states that "the English women are eminently skilful with the needle and in weaving."

The excellence of the English work was maintained as time went on, and a proof of this is found in an anecdote preserved by Matthew of Paris.[24] "About this time (1246) the Lord Pope (Innocent IV.) having observed the ecclesiastical ornaments of some Englishmen, such as choristers' copes and mitres, were embroidered in gold thread after a very desirable fashion, asked where these works were made, and received in answer, in England. 'Then,' said the Pope, 'England is surely a garden of delights for us. It is truly a never-failing spring, and there, where many things abound, much may be extracted.' Accordingly, the same Lord Pope sent sacred and sealed briefs to nearly all the abbots of the Cistercian order established in England, requesting them to have forthwith forwarded to him those embroideries in gold which he preferred to all others, and with which he wished to adorn his chasuble and choral cope, as if these objects cost them nothing," an order which, adds the chronicler, "was sufficiently pleasing to the merchants, but the cause of many persons detesting him for his covetousness."

Perhaps the finest examples of the _opus anglicanum_ extant are the cope and maniple of St. Cuthbert, taken from his coffin in the Cathedral of Durham, and now preserved in the Chapter library. One side of the maniple is of gold lace stitched on, worked apparently on a parchment pattern. The Syon Monastery cope, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an invaluable example of English needlework of the thirteenth century. "The greater portion of its design is worked in a chain-stitch (modern tambour or crochet), especially in the faces of the figures, where the stitch begins in the centre, say, of a cheek, and is then worked in a spiral, thus forming a series of circular lines. The texture so obtained is then, by means of a hot, small and round-knobbed iron, pressed into indentations at the centre of each spiral, and an effect of relief imparted to it. The general {8}practice was to work the draperies in feather-stitch (_opus plumarium_)."[25]

In the tenth century the art of pictorial embroidery had become universally spread. The inventory of the Holy See (in 1293) mentions the embroideries of Florence, Milan, Lucca, France, England, Germany, and Spain, and throughout the Middle Ages embroidery was treated as a fine art, a serious branch of painting.[26] In France the fashion continued, as in England, of producing groups, figures and portraits, but a new development was given to floral and elaborate arabesque ornament.[27]

It was the custom in feudal times[28] for knightly families to send their daughters to the castles of their suzerain lords, there to be trained to spin, weave and embroider under the eye of the lady châtelaine, a custom which, in the more primitive countries, continued even to the French Revolution. In the French romances these young ladies are termed "chambrières," in our English, simply "the maidens." Great ladies prided themselves upon the number of their attendants, and passed their mornings at work, their labours beguiled by singing the "chansons à toile," as the ballads written for those occasions were termed.[29]

{9}In the wardrobe accounts of our kings appear constant entries of working materials purchased for the royal ladies.[30] There is preserved in the cathedral at Prague an altar-cloth of embroidery and cut-work worked by Anne of Bohemia, Queen of Richard II.

During the Wars of the Roses, when a duke of the blood royal is related to have begged alms in the streets of the rich Flemish towns, ladies of rank, more fortunate in their education, gained, like the French emigrants of more modern days, their subsistence by the products of their needle.[31]

Without wishing to detract from the industry of mediæval ladies, it must be owned that the swampy state of the country, the absence of all roads, save those to be traversed in the fine season by pack-horses, and the deficiency of all suitable outdoor amusement but that of hawking, caused them to while away their time within doors the best way they could. Not twenty years since, in the more remote provinces of France, a lady who quitted her house daily would be remarked on. "Elle sort beaucoup," folks would say, as though she were guilty of dissipation.

So queens and great ladies sewed on. We hear much of works of adornment, more still of piety, when Katharine of Aragon appears on the scene. She had learned much in her youth from her mother, Queen Isabella, and had probably {10}assisted at those "trials" of needlework[32] established by that virtuous queen among the Spanish ladies:--

"Her days did pass In working with the needle curiously."[33]

It is recorded how, when Wolsey, with the papal legate Campeggio, going to Bridewell, begged an audience of Queen Katharine, on the subject of her divorce, they found her at work, like Penelope of old, with her maids, and she came to them with a skein of red silk about her neck.[34]

Queen Mary Tudor is supposed, by her admirers, to have followed the example of her illustrious mother, though all we find among the entries is a charge "to working materials for Jane the Fole, one shilling."

No one would suspect Queen Elizabeth of solacing herself with the needle. Every woman, however, had to make one shirt in her lifetime, and the "Lady Elizabeth's grace," on the second anniversary of Prince Edward's birth, when only six years of age, presented her brother with a cambric smock wrought by her own hands.

The works of Scotland's Mary, who early studied all female accomplishments under her governess, Lady Fleming, {11}are too well known to require notice. In her letters are constant demands for silk and other working materials wherewith to solace her long captivity. She had also studied under Catherine de Médicis, herself an unrivalled needlewoman, who had brought over in her train from Florence the designer for embroidery, Frederick Vinciolo. Assembling her daughters, Claude, Elizabeth and Margaret, with Mary Stuart, and her Guise cousins, "elle passoit," says Brantôme, "fort son temps les apres-disnées à besogner apres ses ouvrages de soye, où elle estoit tant parfaicte qu'il estoit possible."[35] The ability of Reine Margot[36] is sung by Ronsard, who exalts her as imitating Pallas in the art.[37]

Many of the great houses in England are storehouses of old needlework. Hatfield, Penshurst, and Knole are all filled with the handiwork of their ladies. The Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as "Building Bess," Bess of Hardwick, found time to embroider furniture for her palaces, and her samplar patterns hang to this day on their walls.

Needlework was the daily employment of the convent. As early as the fourteenth century[38] it was termed "nun's work"; and even now, in secluded parts of the kingdom, ancient lace is styled by that name.[39]

Nor does the occupation appear to have been solely {12}confined to women. We find monks commended for their skill in embroidery,[40] and in the frontispieces of some of the early pattern books of the sixteenth century, men are represented working at frames, and these books are stated to have been written "for the profit of men as well as of women."[41] Many were composed by monks,[42] and in the library[43] of St. Geneviève at Paris, are several works of this class, inherited from the monastery of that name. As these books contain little or no letterpress, they could scarcely have been collected by the monks unless with a view to using them.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, the ladies of the great Roman Catholic families came to the rescue. Of the widow of the ill-fated Earl of Arundel it is recorded: "Her gentlewomen and chambermaids she ever busied in works ordained for the service of the Church. She permitted none to be idle at any time."[44]

Instructions in the art of embroidery were now at a premium. The old nuns had died out, and there were none to replace them.

Mrs. Hutchinson, in her _Memoirs_, enumerates, among the eight tutors she had at seven years of age, one for needlework, while Hannah Senior, about the same period, entered the service of the Earl of Thomond, to teach his daughters the use of their needle, with the salary of £200 a year. The money, however, was never paid; so she petitions the Privy Council for leave to sue him.[45]

When, in 1614, the King of Siam applied to King James for an English wife, a gentleman of "honourable parentage" offers his daughter, whom he describes of excellent parts for "music, her needle, and good discourse."[46] And these are the sole accomplishments he mentions. The bishops, however, shocked at the proceeding, interfered, and put an end to the projected alliance.

[Illustration: PLATE I.

ARGENTAN.--Showing buttonhole stitched réseau and "brides bouclées."

CIRCULAR BOBBIN RÉSEAU.--Variety of Mechlin.

VENETIAN NEEDLE-POINT. Portions of lace very much enlarged to show details of stitches.]

[Illustration: VENETIAN NEEDLE-POINT.]

{13}No ecclesiastical objection, however, was made to the epitaph of Catherine Sloper--she sleeps in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, 1620:--

"Exquisite at her needle."

Till a very late date, we have ample record of the esteem in which this art was held.

In the days of the Commonwealth, Mrs. Walker is described to have been as well skilled in needlework "as if she had been brought up in a convent." She kept, however, a gentlewoman for teaching her daughters.

Evelyn, again, praises the talent of his daughter, Mrs. Draper. "She had," writes he, "an extraordinary genius for whatever hands could do with a needle."

The queen of Charles I. and the wives of the younger Stuarts seem to have changed the simple habits of their royal predecessors, for when Queen Mary, in her Dutch simplicity, sat for hours at the knotted fringe, her favourite employment, Bishop Burnet, her biographer, adds, "It was a strange thing to see a queen work for so many hours a day," and her homely habits formed a never-ending subject of ridicule for the wit of Sir Charles Sedley.[47]

From the middle of the last century, or rather apparently from the French Revolution, the more artistic style of needlework and embroidery fell into decadence. The simplicity of male costume rendered it a less necessary adjunct to female or, indeed, male education. However, two of the greatest generals of the Republic, Hoche and Moreau, followed the employment of embroidering satin waistcoats long after they had entered the military service. We may look upon the art now as almost at an end.

{14}