Part 8

You may see the image of Gower for yourself in St. Mary Overies Church, now called St. Saviour's, on the Southwark side of London Bridge. He is dressed in his sober black, his head resting upon his three books.

In 1397 Gower retired from active life, and resigned his Rectory of Great Braxted, Essex; he was seventy years of age, and at that age he married Agnes Groundolf in a chapel of his own under the rooms where he lived in the Priory of St. Mary Overies.

In 1400 his friend Chaucer died and Gower went blind. He died in 1408.

Chaucer, whose eyes saw England in her greatness after the Battle of Crecy in 1346, and in her pitiful state at the downfall of Richard II., saw such a pageant of clothes pass before him that, in describing those wonderful national types, his Canterbury Pilgrims, he marks each one with some hint of array that we may know what manner of habit was proper to them. Here, then, is a list of the clothes he pictured them as wearing:

[Illustration {The knight}]

THE KNIGHT

wears a fustian doublet, all rust-stained by his coat of mail. It is interesting to note how old-fashioned is the character of this 'verray parfit gentil knight,' for he belongs more rightly to the chivalrous time of the first half of Edward III.'s reign rather than to the less gentle time of Richard.

[Illustration: {The squire}]

THE SQUIRE.

His locks were curled, 'as they were leyed in presse.' His short gown with wide sleeves was covered with embroidery of red and white flowers.

THE YEOMAN

is in a coat and hood of green. He has a sheaf of peacock arrows in his belt; across his shoulder is a green baldrick to carry a horn. There is a figure of St. Christopher in silver hanging on his breast.

THE PRIORESS

is in a handsome cloak; she wears coral beads gauded with green, and a brooch of gold--

'On which was first write a-crowned A, And after, "Amor vincit omnia."'

THE MONK

wears his gown, but has his sleeves trimmed with gray squirrel. To fasten his hood he has a curious gold pin, wrought at the greater end with a love-knot.

THE FRIAR

has his cape stuck full of knives and pins 'for to yeven faire wyves.'

THE MERCHANT

is in a motley of colours--parti-coloured. His beard is forked; upon his head is a Flaunderish beaver hat. His boots are elegantly clasped.

THE CLERK

wears a threadbare tunic.

[Illustration: {The man of law}]

THE MAN OF LAW

is in a coat of parti-colours, his belt of silk with small metal bars on it.

THE FRANKELEYN OR COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

has a white silk purse and a two-edged dagger, or akelace, at his girdle.

'Then come the HABERDASHER, the CARPENTER, the WEAVER, the DYER, and the TAPESTRY WORKER, all in the livery of their companies. They all carry pouches, girdles, and knives, mounted in silver.'

THE SHIPMAN

is in a gown of falding (a coarse cloth), reaching to his knees. A dagger is under his arm, on a lace hanging round his neck.

THE DOCTOR

wears a gown of red and blue (pers was a blue cloth) lined with taffeta and sendal.

[Illustration: {The wife of Bath}]

THE WIFE OF BATH.

Her wimples of fine linen--

'I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound That on a Sonday were upon hir heed.'

Her hose was of fine scarlet red; her shoes were moist and new. Her hat was as broad as a buckler, and she wore a foot-mantle about her hips.

THE PLOUGHMAN

wears a tabard, a loose smock without sleeves.

THE REVE OR STEWARD

wears a long surcoat of blue cloth (pers).

THE SOMNOUR

(an officer who summoned persons before the ecclesiastical courts) wears on his head a garland--'as greet as it were for an ale-stake.'

[Illustration: {The pardoner}]

THE PARDONER

has long yellow hair falling about his shoulders; his hood is turned back, and he wears a tall cap, on which is sewn a Vernicle. This is the handkerchief of St. Veronica on which there was an impression of our Lord's face.

This completes the list of Pilgrims, but it will be useful to give a few more descriptions of dress as described by Chaucer. The Carpenter's wife in the Miller's Tale is described:

'Fair was this yonge wyf, and ther-with-al As any wesele hir body gent (slim) and small. A ceynt (belt) she werede barred al of silk, A barneclooth (apron) eek as whyt as morne milk Upon hir lendes (loins), ful of many a gore. Whyt was hir smok and brouded al before And eek behinde, on hir coler aboute, Of col-blak silk, within and eek withoute. The tapes of his whyte voluper (a cap) Were of the same suyte--of hir coler; Hir filet broad of silk, and set ful hye.

* * * * *

And by hir girdel heeng a purs of lether Tasseld with silk and perked with latoun (a compound of copper and zinc).

* * * * *

A brooch she bare upon hir lowe coler, As broad as is the bos of a buckler. Her shoes were laced on hir legges hye.'

Here also, from the Parson's Tale, is a sermon against the vain clothing of his time, that will serve to show how you may best paint this age, and to what excess of imagination you may run. I have reduced the wording into more modern English:

'As to the first sin, that is in superfluitee of clothing, which that maketh it so dere, to the harm of the people; not only the cost of embroidering, the elaborate endenting or barring, ornamenting with waved lines, paling, winding, or bending, and semblable waste of cloth in vanity; but there is also costly furring in their gowns, so muche pounching of chisels to make holes, so much dagging of shears; forthwith the superfluity in the length of the foresaid gowns, trailing in the dung and the mire, on horse and eek on foot, as well of man as of woman, that all this trailing is verily as in effect wasted, consumed, threadbare, and rotten with dung, rather than it is given to the poor; to great damage of the aforesaid poor folk.

'Upon the other side, to speak of the horrible disordinate scantiness of clothing, as be this cutted sloppes or hainselins (short jackets), that through their shortness do not cover the shameful members of man, to wicked intent.'

After this, the good Parson, rising to a magnificent torrent of wrathful words, makes use of such homely expressions that should move the hearts of his hearers--words which, in our day, are not seemly to our artificial and refined palates.

Further, Chaucer remarks upon the devices of love-knots upon clothes, which he calls 'amorettes'; on trimmed clothes, as being 'apyked'; on nearly all the fads and fashions of his time.

It is to Chaucer, and such pictures as he presents, that our minds turn when we think vaguely of the Middle Ages, and it is worth our careful study, if we wish to appreciate the times to the full, to read, no matter the hard spelling, the 'Vision of Piers the Plowman,' by Langland.

I have drawn a few of the Pilgrims, in order to show that they may be reconstructed by reading the chapters on the fourteenth century.

HENRY THE FOURTH

Reigned fourteen years: 1399-1413.

Born 1366. Married, 1380, Mary de Bohun; 1403, Joan of Navarre.

THE MEN AND WOMEN

The reign opens sombrely enough--Richard in prison, and twenty-five suits of cloth of gold left, among other of his butterfly raiment, in Haverford Castle.

We are still in the age of the houppelande, the time of cut edges, jagging, big sleeves and trailing gowns. Our fine gentlemen take the air in the long loose gown, or the short edition of the same with the skirts cut from it. They have invented, or the tailor has invented, or necessity has contrived, a new sleeve. It is a bag sleeve, very full and fine, enormous at the elbow, tight at the wrist, where it may fall over the hand in a wide cuff with dagged edges, or it may end in a plain band.

[Illustration: A MAN AND WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY IV. (1399-1413)

Very little change in dress; the man in the loose gown called the houppelande. The woman also in a houppelande.]

Let us take six gentlemen met together to learn the old thirteenth-century part-song, the round entitled 'Sumer is icumen in.'

[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry IV.}]

The first, maybe, is in the high-collared houppelande with the long skirts; his sleeves are of a different colour to his gown, and are fastened to it under cut epaulettes at his shoulders; he wears a baldrick, hung with bells, over his shoulder; his houppelande is split on one side to show his parti-coloured hose beyond his knee; his shoes are long and very pointed; his hair is cut short, and he wears a twisted roll of stuff round his head.

The second is in the latest mode; he wears the voluminous sleeves which end in a plain band at his wrist, and these sleeves are of a different colour to his houppelande, the skirts of which are cut short at the knee, and then are cut into neat dags. This garment is not so full as that of the first gentleman, which is gathered in at the waist by a long-tongued belt, but is buttoned down the front to the waist and is full in the skirt; also it has no collar. This man wears his hair long and curled at the nape of his neck.

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

A third of these gentlemen, a big burly man, is in a very short tunic with wide sleeves; his tights are of two colours, his left leg red, his right blue. Over his tunic he wears a quilted waistcoat, the collar and armholes of which are trimmed with fur.

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

A fourth wears a loose houppelande, one half of which is blue and the other half black; it is buttoned from throat to foot; the sleeves are wide. His hair is long, and his beard is brushed into two points.

[Illustration: {Four men of the time of Henry IV.; five types of hat; a pouch}]

[Illustration: {Two men of the time of Henry IV.}]

The fifth gentleman wears a houppelande of middle length, with a very high collar buttoned up the neck, the two top buttons being undone; the top of the collar rolls over. He has the epaulette, but instead of showing the very full bag sleeves he shows a little loose sleeve to the elbow, and a tight sleeve from the elbow to the hand, where it forms a cuff. He wears a very new-fashioned cap like a stiff sugar-bag, with the top lopping over.

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

The sixth and last of this group is wearing an unbound houppelande--that is, he wears no belt. He wears a plain hood which is over his head, and a soft, loose, peaked hat.

'Sumer is icumen in,' the six sing out, and the shepherd, who can hear them from outside, is considering whether he can play the air upon his pipe. He is dressed in a loose tunic, a hood, and a wide-brimmed straw hat; his pipe is stuck in his belt.

Let us suppose that the wives of the six gentlemen are seated listening to the manly voices of their lords.

The first wears a dress of blue, which is laced from the opening to the waist, where the laces are tied in a neat bow and hang down. Her dress is cut fairly low; it has tight sleeves which come over her hands to the knuckles in tight cuffs. There is a wide border, about a foot and a half, of ermine on the skirt of her dress. She wears a mantle over her shoulders. Her hair is enclosed in a stiff square caul of gold wire over cloth of gold.

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

The second lady is wearing a houppelande with wide, hanging sleeves all cut at the edge; the cut of this gown is loose, except that it fits across her shoulders; she also wears a caul, from the back of which emerges a linen wimple.

The third lady is in surcoat and cotehardie; the surcoat has a pleated skirt, and the borders of it are edged thickly with fur; it is cut low enough at the sides to show a belt over the hips. The cotehardie, of a different colour to the surcoat, has tight sleeves with buttons from elbow to little finger. This lady has her hair cut short at the nape of her neck, and bound about the brows with a golden circlet.

[Illustration: {Three women of the time of Henry IV.}]

A fourth wears a very loose houppelande, encircled about the waist with a broad belt, the tongue of which hangs down and has an ornamented end. This houppelande falls in great folds from the neck to the feet, and is gathered into the neck; it has loose, but not wide, sleeves, falling just below the elbow. The gown is worn over a cotehardie, the sleeves of which show through the other sleeves, and the skirt of which shows when the gown skirt is gathered up.

[Illustration: {Two women of the time of Henry IV.}]

The fifth lady also wears a cotehardie with a skirt to it; she wears over it a circular mantle, buttoned by three buttons on the right shoulder, and split from there to the edge on both sides, showing the dress; the front semicircle of the cloak is held to the waist by a belt so that the back hangs loose. Her hair is in a caul.

The sixth is in a very plain dress, tight-fitting, buttoned in front, with full skirts. She wears a white linen hood which shows the shape of the caul in which her hair is imprisoned.

So is this queer old round sung, 'Sumer is icumen in.'

Afterwards, perhaps one of these ladies, wishing to get some spite against one of the gentlemen, will ride away in a heavy riding-cloak, the hood over her head and a peaked hat on that, and she will call upon a witch. The witch will answer the rapping at her humble door, and will come out, dressed in a country dress--just an ill-fitting gown and hood, with some attempt at classical ornament on the gown, or a cloak sewn with the sacred initials thrown over her back. These two will bargain awhile for the price of a leaden image to be made in the likeness of the ill-fated gentleman, or, rather, a rough figure, on which his name will be scratched; then the puppet will be cast into the fire and melted while certain evil charms are spoken, and the malicious accident required to befall him will be spoken aloud for the Devil's private ear. Possibly some woman sought a witch near Evesham in the year 1410, and bought certain intentions against a tailor of that place, Badby by name; for this much is certain: that the tailor was burnt for Lollardy ten years after the first victim for Lollard heresy, William Sawtre.

HENRY THE FIFTH

Reigned nine years: 1413-1422.

Born 1388. Married, 1420, Katherine of France.

THE MEN

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

I think I may call this a transitional period of clothes, for it contains the ragged ends of the time of Richard II. and the old clothes of the time of Henry IV., and it contains the germs of a definite fashion, a marked change which came out of the chrysalis stage, and showed itself in the prosperous butterflies of the sixth Henry's time.

We retain the houppelande, its curtailments, its exaggerations, its high and low collar, its plain or jagged sleeves. We retain the long hair, which 'busheth pleasauntlie,' and the short hair of the previous reign. Also we see the new ideas for the priest-cropped hair and the roundlet hat.

I speak of the men only.

It was as if, in the press of French affairs, man had but time to ransack his grandfather's and his father's chests, and from thence to pull out a garment or two at a venture. If the garment was a little worn in the upper part of the sleeve, he had a slash made there, and embroidered it round. If the baldrick hung with bells was worn out in parts, he cut those pieces away and turned the baldrick into a belt. If the skirts of the houppelande were sadly frayed at the edge, enter Scissors again to cut them off short; perhaps the sleeves were good--well, leave them on; perhaps the skirts were good and the sleeves soiled--well, cut out the sleeves and pop in some of his father's bag sleeves. Mind you, my honest gentleman had trouble brewing: no sooner had he left the wars in Normandy and Guienne than the siege of Harfleur loomed to his vision, and after that Agincourt--Agincourt, where unarmoured men prevailed over mailed knights at the odds of six to one; Agincourt, where archers beat the great knights of France on open ground! Hear them hammer on the French armour with their steel mallets, while the Frenchmen, weighed down with their armour, sank knee-deep in the mud--where we lost 100 men, against the French loss of 10,000!

[Illustration: A Belt with Bells.]

See the port of Le Havre, with the English army landed there--Henry in his full-sleeved gown, his hair cropped close and shaven round his head from his neck to an inch above his ears, buskins on his feet, for he wore buskins in preference to long boots or pointed shoes. The ships in the harbour are painted in gay colours--red, blue, in stripes, in squares; the sails are sewn with armorial bearings or some device. Some of our gentlemen are wearing open houppelandes over their armour; some wear the stuffed turban on their heads, with a jewelled brooch stuck in it; some wear the sugar-bag cap, which falls to one side; some are hooded, others wear peaked hats. One hears, 'By halidom!' I wonder if all the many, many people who have hastily written historical novels of this age, and have peppered them with 'By halidoms,' knew that 'By halidom' means 'By the relics of the saints,' and that an 'harlote' means a man who was a buffoon who told ribald stories?

[Illustration: The Turban.]

Still, among all these gentlemen, clothed, as it were, second-hand, we have the fine fellow, the dandy--he to whom dress is a religion, to whom stuffs are sonnets, cuts are lyrical, and tailors are the poets of their age. Such a man will have his tunic neatly pleated, rejecting the chance folds of the easy-fitting houppelande, the folds of which were determined by the buckling of the belt. His folds will be regular and precise, his collar will be very stiff, with a rolled top; his hose will be of two colours, one to each leg, or parti-coloured. His shoes will match his hose, and be of two colours; his turban hat will be cocked at a jaunty angle; his sleeves will be of a monstrous length and width. He will hang a chain about his neck, and load his fingers with rings. A fellow to him, one of his own kidney, will wear the skirt of his tunic a little longer, and will cause it to be cut up the middle; his sleeves will not be pendant, like drooping wings, but will be swollen like full-blown bagpipes. An inner sleeve, very finely embroidered, will peep under the upper cuff. His collar is done away with, but he wears a little hood with cut edges about his neck; his hair is cropped in the new manner, like a priest's without a tonsure; his hat is of the queer sugar-bag shape, and it flops in a drowsy elegance over the stuffed brim. As for his shoes, they are two fingers long beyond his toes.

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY V. (1413-1422)

Notice the bag cap with a jewel stuck in it.]

We shall see the fashions of the two past reigns hopelessly garbled, cobbled, and stitched together; a sleeve from one, a skirt from another. Men-at-arms in short tunics of leather and quilted waistcoats to wear under their half-armour; beggars in fashions dating from the eleventh century; a great mass of people in undistinguishable attire, looking mostly like voluminous cloaks on spindle legs, or mere bundles of drapery; here and there a sober gentleman in a houppelande of the simplest kind, with wide skirts reaching to his feet, and the belt with the long tongue about his middle.

The patterns upon the dresses of these people are heraldry contortions--heraldic beasts intertwined in screws and twists of conventional foliage, griffins and black dogs held by floral chains to architectural branches, martlets and salamanders struggling in grotesque bushes, or very elaborate geometrical patterned stuffs.

There is a picture of the Middle Ages which was written by Langland in 'Piers the Plowman'--a picture of an alehouse, where Peronelle of Flanders and Clarice of Cockeslane sit with the hangman of Tyburn and a dozen others. It is a picture of the fourteenth century, but it holds good until the time of Henry VIII., when Skelton, his tutor, describes just such another tavern on the highroad, where some bring wedding-rings to pay their scot of ale, and

'Some bryngeth her husband's hood Because the ale is good.'

Both accounts are gems of description, both full of that rich, happy, Gothic flavour, that sense of impressionist portraiture, of broad humour, which distinguishes the drawings in the Loutrell Psalter.

[Illustration: The Sugar-bag Cap.]

[Illustration: A Hood.]

I feel now as if I might be accused of being interesting and of overlaying my history with too much side comment, and I am well aware that convention demands that such books as this shall be as dull as possible; then shall the vulgar rejoice, because they have been trained to believe that dullness and knowledge snore in each other's arms.

However wholeheartedly you may set about writing a list of clothes attributable to certain dates, there will crop up spirits of the age, who blur the edges of the dates, and give a lifelike semblance to them which carries the facts into the sphere of fiction, and fiction was ever on the side of truth. No story has ever been invented by man but it has been beaten out of time by Nature and the police-courts; no romance has been penned so intricate but fact will supply a more surprising twist to life. But, whereas facts are of necessity bald and naked things, fiction, which is the wardrobe of fact, will clothe truth in more accustomed guise.