CHAPTER VI

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THE MONKEY IN BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.--TOURNAMENTS AND SINGLE COMBATS.--MONSTROUS COMBINATIONS OF ANIMAL FORMS.--CARICATURES ON COSTUME.--THE HAT.--THE HELMET.--LADIES' HEAD-DRESSES.--THE GOWN, AND ITS LONG SLEEVES.

The fox, the wolf, and their companions, were introduced as instruments of satire, on account of their peculiar characters; but there were other animals which were also favourites with the satirist, because they displayed an innate inclination to imitate; they formed, as it were, natural parodies upon mankind. I need hardly say that of these the principal and most remarkable was the monkey. This animal must have been known to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers from a remote period, for they had a word for it in their own language--_apa_, our _ape_. Monkey is a more modern name, and seems to be equivalent with maniken, or a little man. The earliest _Bestiaries_, or popular treatises on natural history, give anecdotes illustrative of the aptness of this animal for imitating the actions of men, and ascribe to it a degree of understanding which would almost raise it above the level of the brute creation. Philip de Thaun, an Anglo-Norman poet of the reign of Henry I., in his _Bestiary_, tells us that "the monkey, by imitation, as books say, counterfeits what it sees, and mocks people:"--

_Li singe par figure, si cum dit escripture, Ceo que il vait contrefait, de gent escar hait._[32]

He goes on to inform us, as a proof of the extraordinary instinct of this animal, that it has more affection for some of its cubs than for others, and that, when running away, it carried those which it liked before it, and those it disliked behind its back. The sketch from the illuminated manuscript of the Romance of the Comte d'Artois, of the fifteenth century, which forms our cut No. 61, represents the monkey, carrying, of course, its favourite child before it in its flight, and what is more, it is taking that flight mounted on a donkey. A monkey on horseback appears not to have been a novelty, as we shall see in the sequel.

[32] See my "Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle Ages," p. 107.

[Illustration: _No. 61. A Monkey Mounted._]

Alexander Neckam, a very celebrated English scholar of the latter part of the twelfth century, and one of the most interesting of the early mediæval writers on natural history, gives us many anecdotes, which show us how much attached our mediæval forefathers were to domesticated animals, and how common a practice it was to keep them in their houses. The baronial castle appears often to have presented the appearance of a menagerie of animals, among which some were of that strong and ferocious character that rendered it necessary to keep them in close confinement, while others, such as monkeys, roamed about the buildings at will. One of Neckam's stories is very curious in regard to our subject, for it shows that the people in those days exercised their tamed animals in practically caricaturing contemporary weaknesses and fashions. This writer remarks that "the nature of the ape is so ready at acting, by ridiculous gesticulations, the representations of things it has seen, and thus gratifying the vain curiosity of worldly men in public exhibitions, that it will even dare to imitate a military conflict. A jougleur (_histrio_) was in the habit of constantly taking two monkeys to the military exercises which are commonly called tournaments, that the labour of teaching might be diminished by frequent inspection. He afterwards taught two dogs to carry these apes, who sat on their backs, furnished with proper arms. Nor did they want spurs, with which they strenuously urged on the dogs. Having broken their lances, they drew out their swords, with which they spent many blows on each other's shields. Who at this sight could refrain from laughter?"[33]

[33] Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, lib. ii. c. 129.

[Illustration: _No. 62. A Tournament._]

Such contemporary caricatures of the mediæval tournament, which was in its greatest fashion during the period from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, appear to have been extremely popular, and are not unfrequently represented in the borders of illuminated manuscripts. The manuscript now so well known as "Queen Mary's Psalter" (MS. Reg. 2 B vii.), and written and illuminated very early in the fourteenth century, contains not a few illustrations of this description. One of these, which forms our cut No. 62, represents a tournament not much unlike that described by Alexander Neckam, except that the monkeys are here riding upon other monkeys, and not upon dogs. In fact, all the individuals here engaged are monkeys, and the parody is completed by the introduction of the trumpeter on one side, and of minstrelsy, represented by a monkey playing on the tabor, on the other; or, perhaps, the two monkeys are simply playing on the pipe and tabor, which were looked upon as the lowest description of minstrelsy, and are therefore the more aptly introduced into the scene.

The same manuscript has furnished us with the cut No. 63. Here the combat takes place between a monkey and a stag, the latter having the claws of a griffin. They are mounted, too, on rather nondescript animals--one having the head and body of a lion, with the forefeet of an eagle; the other having a head somewhat like that of a lion, on a lion's body, with the hind parts of a bear. This subject may, perhaps, be intended as a burlesque on the mediæval romances, filled with combats between the Christians and the Saracens; for the ape--who, in the moralisations which accompany the _Bestiaries_, is said to represent the devil--is here armed with what are evidently intended for the sabre and shield of a Saracen, while the flag carries the shield and lance of a Christian knight.

[Illustration: _No. 63. A Feat of Arms._]

The love of the mediæval artists for monstrous figures of animals, and for mixtures of animals and men, has been alluded to in a former chapter. The combatants in the accompanying cut (No. 64), taken from the same manuscript, present a sort of combination of the rider and the animal, and they again seem to be intended for a Saracen and a Christian. The figure to the right, which is composed of the body of a satyr, with the feet of a goose and the wings of a dragon, is armed with a similar Saracenic sabre; while that to the left, which is on the whole less monstrous, wields a Norman sword. Both have human faces below the navel as well as above, which was a favourite idea in the grotesque of the middle ages. Our mediæval forefathers appear to have had a decided taste for monstrosities of every description, and especially for mixtures of different kinds of animals, and of animals and men. There is no doubt, to judge by the anecdotes recorded by such writers as Giraldus Cambrensis, that a belief in the existence of such unnatural creatures was widely entertained. In his account of Ireland, this writer tells us of animals which were half ox and half man, half stag and half cow, and half dog and half monkey.[34] It is certain that there was a general belief in such animals, and nobody could be more credulous than Giraldus himself.

[34] See Girald. Cambr., Topog. Hiberniæ, dist. ii. cc. 21, 22; and the Itinerary of Wales, lib. ii. c. 11.

[Illustration: _No. 64. A Terrible Combat._]

[Illustration: _No. 65. Fashionable Dress._]

The design to caricature, which is tolerably evident in the subjects just given, is still more apparent in other grotesques that adorn the borders of the mediæval manuscripts, as well as in some of the mediæval carvings and sculpture. Thus, in our cut No. 65, taken from one of the borders in the Romance of the Comte d'Artois, a manuscript of the fifteenth century, we cannot fail to recognise an attempt at turning to ridicule the contemporary fashions in dress. The hat is only an exaggerated form of one which appears to have been commonly used in France in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and which appears frequently in illuminated manuscripts executed in Burgundy; and the boot also belongs to the same period. The latter reappeared at different times, until at length it became developed into the modern top-boots. In cut No. 66, from the same manuscript, where it forms the letter T, we have the same form of hat, still more exaggerated, and combined at the same time with grotesque faces.

[Illustration: _No. 66. Heads and Hats._]

Caricatures on costume are by no means uncommon among the artistic remains of the middle ages, and are not confined to illuminated manuscripts. The fashionable dresses of those days went into far more ridiculous excesses of shape than anything we see in our times--at least, so far as we can believe the drawings in the manuscripts; but these, however seriously intended, were constantly degenerating into caricature, from circumstances which are easily explained, and which have, in fact, been explained already in their influence on other parts of our subject. The mediæval artists in general were not very good delineators of form, and their outlines are much inferior to their finish. Conscious of this, though perhaps unknowingly, they sought to remedy the defect in a spirit which has always been adopted in the early stages of art-progress--they aimed at making themselves understood by giving a special prominence to the peculiar characteristics of the objects they wished to represent. These were the points which naturally attracted people's first attention, and the resemblance was felt most by people in general when these points were put forward in excessive prominence in the picture. The dresses, perhaps, hardly existed in the exact forms in which we see them in the illuminations, or at least those were only exceptions to the generally more moderate forms; and hence, in using these pictorial records as materials for the history of costume, we ought to make a certain allowance for exaggeration--we ought, indeed, to treat them almost as caricatures. In fact, much of what we now call caricature, was then characteristic of serious art, and of what was considered its high development. Many of the attempts which have been made of late years to introduce ancient costume on the stage, would probably be regarded by the people who lived in the age which they were intended to represent, as a mere design to turn them into ridicule. Nevertheless, the fashions in dress were, especially from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, carried to a great degree of extravagance, and were not only the objects of satire and caricature, but drew forth the indignant declamations of the Church, and furnished a continuous theme to the preachers. The contemporary chronicles abound with bitter reflections on the extravagance in costume, which was considered as one of the outward signs of the great corruption of particular periods; and they give us not unfrequent examples of the coarse manner in which the clergy discussed them in their sermons. The readers of Chaucer will remember the manner in which this subject is treated in the "Parson's Tale." In this respect the satirists of the Church went hand in hand with the pictorial caricaturists of the illuminated manuscripts, and of the sculptures with which we sometimes meet in contemporary architectural ornamentation. In the latter, this class of caricature is perhaps less frequent, but it is sometimes very expressive. The very curious _misereres_ in the church of Ludlow, in Shropshire, present the caricature reproduced in our cut No. 67. It represents an ugly, and, to judge by the expression of the countenance, an ill-tempered old woman, wearing the fashionable head-dress of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, which seems to have been carried to its greatest extravagance in the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. It is the style of coiffure known especially as the horned head-dress, and the very name carries with it a sort of relationship to an individual who was notoriously horned--the spirit of evil. This dashing dame of the olden time appears to have struck terror into two unfortunates who have fallen within her influence, one of whom, as though he took her for a new Gorgon, is attempting to cover himself with his buckler, while the other, apprehending danger of another kind, is prepared to defend himself with his sword. The details of the head-dress in this figure are interesting for the history of costume.

[Illustration: _No. 67. A Fashionable Beauty._]

[Illustration: _No. 68. A Man of War._]

Our next cut, No. 68, is taken from a manuscript in private possession, which is now rather well known among antiquaries by the name of the "Luttrell Psalter," and which belongs to the fourteenth century. It seems to involve a satire on the aristocratic order of society--on the knight who was distinguished by his helmet, his shield, and his armour. The individual here represented presents a type which is anything but aristocratic. While he holds a helmet in his hand to show the meaning of the satire, his own helmet, which he wears on his head, is simply a bellows. He may be a knight of the kitchen, or perhaps a mere _quistron_, or kitchen lad.

[Illustration: _No. 69. A Lady's Head-dress._]

We have just seen a caricature of one of the ladies' head-dresses of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, and our cut No. 69, from an illuminated manuscript in the British Museum of the latter half of the same century (MS. Harl., No. 4379), furnishes us with a caricature of a head-dress of a different character, which came into fashion in the reign of our Edward IV. The horned head-dress of the previous generation had been entirely laid aside, and the ladies adopted in its place a sort of steeple-shaped head-dress, or rather of the form of a spire, made by rolling a piece of linen into the form of a long cone. Over this lofty cap was thrown a piece of fine lawn or muslin, which descended almost to the ground, and formed, as it were, two wings. A short transparent veil was thrown over the face, and reached not quite to the chin, resembling rather closely the veils in use among our ladies of the present day (1864). The whole head-dress, indeed, has been preserved by the Norman peasantry; for it may be observed that, during the feudal ages, the fashions in France and England were always identical. These steeple head-dresses greatly provoked the indignation of the clergy, and zealous preachers attacked them roughly in their sermons. A French monk, named Thomas Conecte, distinguished himself especially in this crusade, and inveighed against the head-dress with such effect, that we are assured that many of the women threw down their head-dresses in the middle of the sermon, and made a bonfire of them at its conclusion. The zeal of the preacher soon extended itself to the populace, and, for a while, when ladies appeared in this head-dress in public, they were exposed to be pelted by the rabble. Under such a double persecution it disappeared for a moment, but when the preacher was no longer present, it returned again, and, to use the words of the old writer who has preserved this anecdote, "the women who, like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over." The caricaturist would hardly overlook so extravagant a fashion, and accordingly the manuscript in the British Museum, just mentioned, furnishes us with the subject of our cut No. 69. In those times, when the passions were subjected to no restraint, the fine ladies indulged in such luxury and licentiousness, that the caricaturist has chosen as their fit representative a sow, who wears the objectionable head-dress in full fashion. The original forms one of the illustrations of a copy of the historian Froissart, and was, therefore, executed in France, or, more probably, in Burgundy.

The sermons and satires against extravagance in costume began at an early period. The Anglo-Norman ladies, in the earlier part of the twelfth century, first brought in vogue in our island this extravagance in fashion, which quickly fell under the lash of satirist and caricaturist. It was first exhibited in the robes rather than in the head-dress. These Anglo-Norman ladies are understood to have first introduced stays, in order to give an artificial appearance of slenderness to their waists; but the greatest extravagance appeared in the forms of their sleeves. The robe, or gown, instead of being loose, as among the Anglo-Saxons, was laced close round the body, and the sleeves, which fitted the arm tightly till they reached the elbows, or sometimes nearly to the wrist, then suddenly became larger, and hung down to an extravagant length, often trailing on the ground, and sometimes shortened by means of a knot. The gown, also, was itself worn very long. The clergy preached against these extravagances in fashion, and at times, it is said, with effect; and they fell under the vigorous lash of the satirist. In a class of satires which became extremely popular in the twelfth century, and which produced in the thirteenth the immortal poem of Dante--the visions of purgatory and of hell--these contemporary extravagances in fashion are held up to public detestation, and are made the subject of severe punishment. They were looked upon as among the outward forms of pride. It arose, no doubt, from this taste--from the darker shade which spread over men's minds in the twelfth century--that demons, instead of animals, were introduced to personify the evil-doers of the time. Such is the figure (cut No. 70) which we take from a very interesting manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Nero, C iv.). The demon is here dressed in the fashionable gown with its long sleeves, of which one appears to have been usually much longer than the other. Both the gown and sleeve are shortened by means of knots, while the former is brought close round the waist by tight lacing. It is a picture of the use of stays made at the time of their first introduction.

[Illustration: _No. 70. Sin in Satins._]

This superfluity of length in the different parts of the dress was a subject of complaint and satire at various and very distant periods, and contemporary illuminations of a perfectly serious character show that these complaints were not without foundation.

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