Part 11

There are many ways of making the steeple head-dress. For the most part they are long, black-covered steeples, resting at an angle of forty-five degrees to the head, the broad end having a deep velvet band round it, with hanging sides, which come to the level of the chin; the point end has a long veil attached to it, which floats lightly down, or is carried on to one shoulder. Sometimes this steeple hat is worn over a hood, the cape of which is tucked into the dress. Some of these hats have a jutting, upturned piece in front, and they are also covered with all manner of coloured stuffs, but not commonly so. All persons having an income of L10 a year and over will have that black velvet loop, the frontlet, sewn into their hats. There is another new shape for hats, varying in height from 8 to 18 inches. It is a cylinder, broader at the top than the bottom, the crown sometimes flat and sometimes rounded into the hat itself; this hat is generally jewelled, and covered with rich material. The veils are attached to these hats in several ways; either they float down behind from the centre of the crown of the hat, or they are sewn on to the base of the hat, and are supported on wires, so as to shade the face, making a roof over it, pointed in front and behind, or flat across the front and bent into a point behind, or circular. Take two circles of wire, one the size of the base of your hat and the other larger, and dress your linen or thin silk upon them; then you may pinch the wire into any variations of squares and circles you please.

[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD IV. (1461-1483)

She wears the high hennin from which hangs a wisp of linen. On her forehead is the velvet frontlet, and across her forehead is a veil stretched on wires.]

The veil was sometimes worn all over the steeple hat, coming down over the face, but stiff enough to stand away from it. Towards the end of the reign the hats were not so high or so erect.

Remember, also, that the horned head-dress of the previous reign is not by any means extinct.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}]

There remain two more forms of making the human face hideous: one is the head-dress closely resembling an enormous sponge bag, which for some unknown reason lasted well into the reign of Henry VII. as a variety to the fashionable head-gear of that time, and the other is very simple, being a wimple kept on the head by a circular stuffed hoop of material, which showed, plain and severe across the forehead. The simple folk wore a hood of linen, with a liripipe and wide ear-flaps.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}]

The dresses are plain in cut; they are all short-waisted if at all fashionable. The most of them have a broad waist-belt, and very deep borders to their skirts; they have broad, turned-back cuffs, often of black. These cuffs, on being turned down over the hand, show the same colour as the dress; they are, in fact, the old long cuff over the fingers turned back for comfort.

It is by the variety of openings at the necks of the gowns that you may get change. First, let me take the most ordinary--that is, an opening of a V shape from shoulders to waist, the foot of the V at the waist, the points on the top of the shoulders at the join of the arm. Across this opening is seen, cut square and coming up to the base of the bosom, the under-gown. You may now proceed to vary this by lacing the V across, but not drawing it together, by having the V fur-edged, or made to turn over in a collar of black upon light material, or its opposite, by showing a vest of stuff other than that of the under-gown, which will then make a variety of colour when the skirt is held up over the arm. Or you may have your dress so cut that it is high in front and square cut, and over this you may sew a false V collar wither to or above the waist. I have said that the whole neck-opening may be covered by a gorget of cloth, which was pinned up to the steeple hat, or by a hood of thin stuff or silk, the cape of which was tucked into the dress.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward IV.}]

The lady, I think, is now complete down to her long-pointed shoes, her necklet of stones or gold chain, with cross or heraldic pendant, and it remains to show that the countrywoman dressed very plainly, in a decent-fitting dress, with her waist in its proper place, her skirt full, the sleeves of her dress turned back like my lady's, her head wrapped in a wimple or warmed in a hood, her feet in plain, foot-shaped shoes, and wooden clogs strapped on to them for outdoor use or kitchen work; in fact, she looked much like any old body to-day who has lived in a village, except that the wimple and the hood then worn are out of place to-day, more's the pity!

No doubt ladies were just human in those days, and fussed and frittered over an inch or so of hennin, or a yard or two of train. One cut her dress too low to please the others, and another wore her horned head-dress despite the dictates of Fashion, which said, 'Away with horns, and into steeples.' No doubt the tall hennins, with their floating veils, looked like black masts with silken sails, and the ladies like a crowd of shipping, with velvet trains for waves about their feet; no doubt the steeples swayed and the silks rustled when the heads turned to look at the fine men in the days when hump-shouldered Richard was a dandy.

EDWARD THE FIFTH

Reigned two months: April and June, 1487.

RICHARD THE THIRD

Reigned two years: 1483-1485.

Born 1450. Married, 1473, Anne Neville.

THE MEN

[Illustration: {Three men of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.}]

Fashion's pulse beat very weak in the spring of 1483. More attune to the pipes of Fate were the black cloaks of conspirators and a measured tread of soft-shoed feet than lute and dance of airy millinery. The axe of the executioner soiled many white shirts, and dreadful forebodings fluttered the dovecots of high-hennined ladies.

The old order was dying; Medievalism, which made a last spluttering flame in the next reign, was now burnt low, and was saving for that last effort. When Richard married Anne Neville, in the same year was Raphael born in Italy; literature was beginning, thought was beginning; many of the great spirits of the Renaissance were alive and working in Italy; the very trend of clothes showed something vaguely different, something which shows, however, that the foundations of the world were being shaken--so shaken that men and women, coming out of the gloom of the fourteenth century through the half-light of the fifteenth, saw the first signs of a new day, the first show of spring, and, with a perversity or an eagerness to meet the coming day, they began to change their clothes.

It is in this reign of Richard III. that we get, for the men, a hint of the peculiar magnificence of the first years of the sixteenth century; we get the first flush of those wonderful patterns which are used by Memline and Holbein, those variations of the pine-apple pattern, and of that peculiar convention which is traceable in the outline of the Tudor rose.

The men, at first sight, do not appear very different to the men of Edward IV.'s time; they have the long hair, the general clean-shaven faces, open-breasted tunics, and full-pleated skirts. But, as a rule, the man, peculiar to his time, the clothes-post of his age, has discarded the tall peaked hat, and is almost always dressed in the black velvet, stiff-brimmed hat. The pleated skirt to his tunic has grown longer, and his purse has grown larger; the sleeves are tighter, and the old tunic with the split, hanging sleeves has grown fuller, longer, and has become an overcoat, being now open all the way down. You will see that the neck of the tunic is cut very low, and that you may see above it, above the black velvet with which it is so often bound, the rich colour or fine material of an undergarment, a sort of waistcoat, and yet again above that the straight top of a finely-pleated white shirt. Sometimes the sleeves of the tunic will be wide, and when the arm is flung up in gesticulation, the baggy white shirt, tight-buttoned at the wrist, will show. Instead of the overcoat with the hanging sleeves, you will find a very plain-cut overcoat, with sleeves comfortably wide, and with little plain lapels to the collar. It is cut wide enough in the back to allow for the spread of the tunic. Black velvet is becoming a very fashionable trimming, and will be seen as a border or as under-vest to show between the shirt and the tunic. No clothes of the last reign will be incongruous in this; the very short tunics which expose the cod-piece, the split-sleeve tunic, all the variations, I have described. Judges walk about, looking like gentlemen of the time of Richard II.: a judge wears a long loose gown, with wide sleeves, from out of which appear the sleeves of his under-tunic, buttoned from elbow to wrist; he wears a cloak with a hood, the cloak split up the right side, and fastened by three buttons upon the right shoulder. A doctor is in very plain, ample gown, with a cape over his shoulders and a small round cap on his head. His gown is not bound at the waist.

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD III. (1483-1485)

Here one sees the first of the broad-toed shoes and the birth of the Tudor costume--the full pleated skirts and the prominence of white shirt.]

The blunt shoes have come into fashion, and with this the old long-peaked shoe dies for ever. Common-sense will show you that the gentlemen who had leisure to hunt in these times did not wear their most foppish garments, that the tunics were plain, the boots high, the cloaks of strong material. They wore a hunting-hat, with a long peak over the eyes and a little peak over the neck at the back; a broad band passed under the chin, and, buttoning on to either side of the hat, kept it in place. The peasant wore a loose tunic, often open-breasted and laced across; he had a belt about his waist, a hood over his head, and often a broad-brimmed Noah's Ark hat over the hood; his slops, or loose trousers, were tied below the knee and at the ankles. A shepherd would stick his pipe in his belt, so that he might march before his flock, piping them into the fold.

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.; a hat}]

To sum up, you must picture a man in a dress of Edward IV.'s time, modified, or, rather, expanded or expanding into the costume of Henry VII.'s time--a reign, in fact, which hardly has a distinct costume to itself--that is, for the men--but has a hand stretched out to two centuries, the fifteenth and the sixteenth; yet, if I have shown the man to you as I myself can see him, he is different from his father in 1461, and will change a great deal before 1500.

THE WOMEN

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.}]

Here we are at the end of an epoch, at the close of a costume period, at one of those curious final dates in a history of clothes which says that within a year or so the women of one time will look hopelessly old-fashioned and queer to the modern woman. Except for the peculiar sponge-bag turban, which had a few years of life in it, the woman in Henry VII.'s reign would look back at this time and smile, and the young woman would laugh at the old ideas of beauty. The River of Time runs under many bridges, and it would seem that the arches were low to the Bridge of Fashion in 1483, and the steeple hat was lowered to prevent contact with them. The correct angle of forty-five degrees changed into a right angle, the steeple hat, the hennin, came toppling down, and an embroidered bonnet, perched right on the back of the head, came into vogue. It is this bonnet which gives, from our point of view, distinction to the reign. It was a definite fashion, a distinct halt. It had travelled along the years of the fourteenth century, from the wimple and the horns, and the stiff turbans, and the boxes of stiffened cloth of gold; it had languished in the caul and blossomed in the huge wimple-covered horns; it had shot up in the hennin; and now it gave, as its last transformation, this bonnet at the back of the head, with the stiff wimple stretched upon wires. Soon was to come the diamond-shaped head-dress, and after that the birth of hair as a beauty.

In this case the hair was drawn as tightly as possible away from the forehead, and at the forehead the smaller hairs were plucked away; even eyebrows were a little out of fashion. Then this cylindrical bonnet was placed at the back of the head, with its wings of thin linen stiffly sewn or propped on wires. These wires were generally of a V shape, the V point at the forehead. On some occasions two straight wires came out on either side of the face in addition to the V, and so made two wings on either side of the face and two wings over the back of the head. It is more easy to describe through means of the drawings, and the reader will soon see what bend to give to the wires in order that the wings may be properly held out.

Beyond this head-dress there was very little alteration in the lady's dress since the previous reign. The skirts were full; the waist was high, but not absurdly so; the band round the dress was broad; the sleeves were tight; and the cuffs, often of fur, were folded back to a good depth.

The neck opening of the dress varied, as did that of the previous reign, but whereas the most fashionable opening was then from neck to waist, this reign gave more liking to a higher corsage, over the top of which a narrow piece of stuff showed, often of black velvet. We may safely assume that the ladies followed the men in the matter of broad shoes. For a time the old fashion of the long-tongued belt came in, and we see instances of such belts being worn with the tongue reaching nearly to the feet, tipped with a metal ornament.

[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD III. (1483-1485)

The great erection on her head is made of thin linen stretched upon wires; through this one may see her jewelled cap.]

Not until night did these ladies discard their winged head erections; not until the streets were dark, and the brass basins swinging from the barbers' poles shone but dimly, and the tailors no longer sat, cross-legged, on the benches in their shop-fronts--then might my lady uncover her head and talk, in company with my lord, over the strange new stories of Prester John and of the Wandering Jew; then, at her proper time, she will go to her rest and sleep soundly beneath her embroidered quilt, under the protection of the saints whose pictures she has sewn into the corners of it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that she lies on.

So we come to an end of a second series of dates, from the First Edward to the Third Richard, and we leave them to come to the Tudors and their follies and fantastics; we leave an age that is quaint, rich, and yet fairly simple, to come to an age of padded hips and farthingales, monstrous ruffs, knee-breeks, rag-stuffed trunks, and high-heeled shoes.

With the drawings and text you should be able to people a vast world of figures, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, 1272, to nearly the end of the fifteenth, 1485, and if you allow ordinary horse-sense to have play, you will be able to people your world with correctly-dressed figures in the true inspiration of their time. You cannot disassociate the man from his tailor; his clothes must appeal to you, historically and soulfully, as an outward and visible sign to the graces and vices of his age and times.

HENRY THE SEVENTH

Reigned 24 years: 1485-1509.

Born, 1456. Married, 1486, Elizabeth of York.

THE MEN

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VII.; hose}]

Everyone has felt that curious faint aroma, that sensation of lifting, which proclaims the first day of Spring and the burial of Winter. Although nothing tangible has taken place, there is in the atmosphere a full-charged suggestion of promise, of green-sickness; there is a quickening of the pulse, a thrumming of the heart, and many an eager, quick glance around for the first buds of the new order of things.

England's winter was buried on Bosworth Field: England's spring, as if by magic, commenced with Henry's entry into London.

The first picture of the reign shows the mayor, the sheriffs, and the aldermen, clothed in violet, waiting at Shoreditch for the coming of the victor. The same day shows Henry in St. Paul's, hearing a _Te Deum_; in the Cathedral church, packed to its limit, three new banners waved, one bearing a figure of St. George, another a dragon of red on white and green sarcenet, and the third showed a dun cow on yellow tarterne.

Spring, of course, does not, except in a poetic sense, burst forth in a day, there are long months of preparation, hints, signs in the air, new notes from the throats of birds.

The springtime of a country takes more than the preparation of months. Nine years before Henry came to the throne Caxton was learning to print in the little room of Collard Mansion--he was to print his 'Facts of Arms,' joyous tales and pleasant histories of chivalry, by especial desire of Henry himself.

Later still, towards the end of the reign, the first book of travel in the West began to go from hand to hand--it was written by Amerigo Vespucci, cousin to La Bella Simonetta.

Great thoughts were abroad, new ideas were constantly under discussion, the Arts rose to the occasion and put forth flowers of beauty on many stems long supposed to be dead or dormant and incapable of improvement. It was the great age of individual English expression in every form but that of literature and painting, both these arts being but in their cradles; Chaucer and Gower and Langland had written, but they lay in their graves long before new great minds arose.

The clouds of the Middle Ages were dispersed, and the sun shone.

The costume was at once dignified and magnificent--not that one can call the little coats great ideals of dignity, but even they, by their richness and by the splendour of the persons they adorned, come into the category.

The long gowns of both men and women were rich beyond words in colour, texture, and design, they were imposing, exact, and gorgeous. Upon a fine day the streets must have glittered when a gentleman or lady passed by.

The fashions of the time have survived for us in the Court cards: take the jacks, knaves, valets--call them as you will, and you will see the costume of this reign but slightly modified into a design, the cards of to-day and the cards of that day are almost identical. Some years ago the modification was less noticeable; I can remember playing Pope Joan with cards printed with full-length figures, just as the illustrations to 'Alice in Wonderland' are drawn. In the knave you will see the peculiar square hat which came in at this time, and the petti-cote, the long coat, the big sleeve, and the broad-toed shoes. You will see the long hair, undressed and flowing over the shoulders (the professional classes, as the lawyer, cut their hair close, so also did the peasant). Over this flowing hair a dandy would wear a little cap with a narrow, rolled-up brim, and over this, on occasions, an enormous hat of felt, ornamented with a prodigious quantity of feathers.

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VII.}]

There was, indeed, quite a choice of hats: the berretino--a square hat pinched in at the corners; many round hats, some with a high, tight brim, some with the least brim possible; into these brims, or into a band round the hat, one might stick feathers or pin a brooch.

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VII. (1485-1509)]

The chaperon, before described, was still worn by Garter Knights at times, and by official, legal, civic, and college persons.

What a choice of coats the gentlemen had, and still might be in the fashion! Most common among these was the long coat like a dressing-gown, hanging upon the ground all round, with a wide collar, square behind, and turning back in the front down to the waist--this was the general shape of the collar, and you may vary it on this idea in every way: turn it back and show the stuff to the feet, close it up nearly to the neck, cut it off completely. Now for the sleeves of such a coat. I have shown in the illustrations many varieties, the most common was the wide sleeve, narrow at the shoulder, and hanging over the hand in folds. The slashes, which show the white shirt, are usual, and of every order. The shirt itself was often ornamented with fine gathers and fancy stitching, and was gathered about the neck by a ribbon. As the years went on it is easy to see that the shirt was worn nearer to the neck, the gathers became higher and higher, became more ornamented, and finally rose, in all extravagant finery, to behind the ears--and we have the Elizabethan ruff.

[Illustration: COATS--HATS]

Next to the shirt a waistcoat, or stomacher, of the most gorgeous patterned stuff, laced across the breast sometimes, more often fastened behind. This reached to the waist where it met long hose of every scheme of colour--striped, dotted, divided in bands--everything--displaying the indelicate but universal pouch in front, tied with coloured ribbons.

On the feet, shoes of all materials, from cloth and velvet to leather beautifully worked, and of the most absurd length; these also were slashed with puffs of white stuff. Many of these shoes were but a sole and a toe, and were tied on by thongs passing through the sole.

Of course the long coat would not alone satisfy the dandy, but he must needs cut it off into a short jacket, or petti-cote, and leave it open to better display his marvellous vest. Here we have the origin of the use of the word 'petticoat'--now wrongly applied; in Scotland, to this day, a woman's skirts are called her 'coats.'