The Biggest Curiosities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ volume on this subject might be made very curious and entertaining, for our ancestors were not less vacillating, and perhaps more capriciously grotesque, though with infinitely less taste, than the present generation. Were a philosopher and an artist, as well as an antiquary, to compose such a work, much diversified entertainment, and some curious investigation of the progress of the arts and taste, would doubtless be the result; the subject otherwise appears of trifling value; the very farthing pieces of history.

      The origin of many fashions was in the endeavour to conceal some deformity of the inventor: hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip, those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false rump which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI. by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII. of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis I. was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the contrary, adapted fashions to set off their peculiar beauties: as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered.

      Fashions have frequently originated from circumstances as silly as the following one. Isabella, daughter of Philip II. and wife of the Archduke Albert, vowed not to change her linen till Ostend was taken; this siege, unluckily for her comfort, lasted three years; and the supposed colour of the archduchess's linen gave rise to a fashionable colour, hence called l'Isabeau, or the Isabella; a kind of whitish-yellow-dingy. Sometimes they originate in some temporary event; as after the battle of Steenkirk, where the allies wore large cravats, by which the French frequently seized hold of them, a circumstance perpetuated on the medals of Louis XIV., cravats were called Steenkirks; and after the battle of Ramilies, wigs received that denomination.

      The court, in all ages and in every country, are the modellers of fashions; so that all the ridicule, of which these are so susceptible, must fall on them, and not upon their servile imitators the citizens. This complaint is made even so far back as in 1586, by Jean des Caures, an old French moralist, who, in declaiming against the fashions of his day, notices one, of the ladies carrying mirrors fixed to their waists, which seemed to employ their eyes in perpetual activity. From this mode will result, according to honest Des Caures, their eternal damnation. "Alas! (he exclaims) in what an age do we live: to see such depravity which we see, that induces them even to bring into church these scandalous mirrors hanging about their waists! Let all histories, divine, human, and profane, be consulted; never will it be found that these objects of vanity were ever thus brought into public by the most meretricious of the sex. It is true, at present none but the ladies of the court venture to wear them; but long it will not be before every citizen's daughter and every female servant, will have them!" Such in all times has been the rise and decline of fashion; and the absurd mimicry of the citizens, even of the lowest classes, to their very ruin, in straining to rival the newest fashion, has mortified and galled the courtier.

      On this subject old Camden, in his Remains, relates a story of a trick played off on a citizen, which I give in the plainness of his own venerable style. Sir Philip Calthrop purged John Drakes, the shoemaker of Norwich, in the time of King Henry VIII. of the proud humour which our people have to be of the gentlemen's cut. This knight bought on a time as much fine French tawny cloth as should make him a gown, and sent it to the taylor's to be made. John Drakes, a shoemaker of that town, coming to this said taylor's, and seeing the knight's gown cloth lying there, liking it well, caused the taylor to buy him as much of the same cloth and price to the same intent, and further bade him to make it of the same fashion that the knight would have his made of. Not long after, the knight coming to the taylor's to take measure of his gown, perceiving the like cloth lying there, asked of the taylor whose it was? Quoth the taylor, it is John Drakes' the shoemaker, who will have it made of the self-same fashion that yours is made of! 'Well!' said the knight, 'in good time be it! I will have mine made as full of cuts as thy shears can make it.' 'It shall be done!' said the taylor; whereupon, because the time drew near, he made haste to finish both their garments. John Drakes had no time to go to the taylor's till Christmas-day, for serving his customers, when he hoped to have worn his gown; perceiving the same to be full of cuts began to swear at the taylor, for the making his gown after that sort. 'I have done nothing,' quoth the taylor, 'but that you bid me; for as Sir Philip Calthrop's garment is, even so I have made yours!' 'By my latchet!' quoth John Drakes, 'I will never wear gentlemen's fashions again!'

      Sometimes fashions are quite reversed in their use in one age from another. Bags, when first in fashion in France, were only worn en déshabillé; in visits of ceremony, the hair was tied by a riband and floated over the shoulders, which is exactly reversed in the present fashion. In the year 1735 the men had no hats but a little chapeau de bras; in 1745 they wore a very small hat; in 1755 they wore an enormous one, as may be seen in Jeffrey's curious "Collection of Habits in all Nations." Old Puttenham, in "The Art of Poesie," p. 239, on the present topic gives some curious information. "Henry VIII. caused his own head, and all his courtiers, to be polled and his beard to be cut short; before that time it was thought more decent, both for old men and young, to be all shaven, and weare long haire, either rounded or square. Now again at this time (Elizabeth's reign), the young gentlemen of the court have taken up the long haire trayling on their shoulders, and think this more decent; for what respect I would be glad to know."

      When the fair sex were accustomed to behold their lovers with beards, the sight of a shaved chin excited feelings of horror and aversion; as much indeed as, in this less heroic age, would a gallant whose luxuriant beard should

      "Stream like a meteor to the troubled air."

      When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his hair, and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, found him, with this unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and soon very contemptible. She revenged herself as she thought proper, and the poor shaved king obtained a divorce. She then married the Count of Anjou, afterwards our Henry II. She had for her marriage dower the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars which for three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the French three millions of men. All which, probably, had never occurred had Louis VII. not been so rash as to crop his head and shave his beard, by which he became so disgustful in the eyes of our Queen Eleanor.

      We cannot perhaps sympathise with the feelings of her majesty, though at Constantinople she might not have been considered unreasonable. There must be something more powerful in beards and mustachios than we are quite aware of; for when these were in fashion—and long after this was written—the fashion has returned on us—with what enthusiasm were they not contemplated! When mustachios were in general use, an author, in his Elements of Education, published in 1640, thinks that "hairy excrement," as Armado in "Love's Labour Lost" calls it, contributed to make men valorous. He says, "I have a favourable opinion of that young gentleman who is curious in fine mustachios. The time he employs in adjusting, dressing, and curling them, is no lost time; for the more he contemplates his mustachios, the more his mind will cherish and be animated by masculine and courageous notions." The best reason that could be given for wearing the longest and largest beard of any Englishman was that of a worthy clergyman in Elizabeth's reign, "that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance."

      The grandfather of Mrs. Thomas, the Corinna of Cromwell, the literary friend of Pope, by her account, "was very nice in the mode of that age, his valet being some hours every morning in starching his beard and curling his whiskers; СКАЧАТЬ