Chapter VI: Act III (1)

The “Corsican” however had run out his brief second imperial career, when one of the many who had hoped to profit by his rise was prostrated by his fall. The name of this one was Thierry. With the world before him where to choose, he turned his steps to South America, and went in search of a people who might happen to be in want of a king. It was always his fortune, or misfortune, wherever such a servant of the people was required, to present his credentials only after the situation was filled up. He was at Poyais just a week subsequent to the attainment of the caciqueship of that pseudo El Dorado by Gregor M’Gregor. He was in Hayti when the garrison of St. Marc revolted against Christophe the king, and when the citizens and troops of Cape Haytien invited Boyer to relieve them of royalty and the Marquises of Marmalade. He heard the pistol shot at Sans Souci which terminated the career of Christophe and his house; and he witnessed the abject submission of the sable heir-apparent, who has not only since honoured Great Britain with his presence, but who has, at the invitation of the law, submitted (some six or seven years ago) to the rotatory penalties and the weak gruel of Brixton, for forgetting his royal dignity, and, with it, common humanity.

The Haytians were resolved upon enjoying a republic and new rum; and they declined a proposal to accept Thierry, and a promise of French protection. The crown-seeker, disgusted with the bad taste of the dingy republicans, passed over to Mexico. Things were promising there to all adventurers but himself, and Iturbide snatched an imperial crown from his hopes, if not from his hands: the wanderer, nevertheless, continued to look about him, and the opening revolt at Soto la Marina, against this same Iturbide, was hailed in his secret thoughts as an avenue to a throne. He saw the fallen potentate, under the escort of General Bowo, embark at Antiguo, near Vera Cruz, and, with his family and followers, sail in an English ship for Leghorn. With all his throne-mania, however, when Iturbide returned in the following year (1824) to Mexico, to be shot the night after his landing at Padilla, Thierry could not help thinking that if the Mexican republican government had awarded _him_ twenty-five thousand dollars _per annum_, he would rather, with such a revenue, have risked European fevers at Leghorn, than have reigned in that quarter of the world where the bark grows that cures them.

He wandered further abroad, but the Indian tribes of South America deeply declined him as a prince. The islanders of the Southern Ocean laughed a negative in his face, and sent him away with a lapful of yams and a sentence of perpetual banishment. At length the erratic king-player fell among the Marquesas. The good-natured people were willing to make him whatever he desired; and in return for teaching them some useful matters touching the fashion of garments, and for profitable exercise of his medical experience, they really constituted him king of one of their smallest islands, called Nebuhwa.

But, see what is human nature! The new king became speedily tired of his new dignity; and after a brief but not inglorious reign, he abdicated with but little outlay of ceremony. He embarked one night in a French vessel, one of those political appliances which is always sure to find itself by accident wherever it has been ordered by design. His Majesty’s subjects bore their loss with philosophy, and cared so little for dynasties that they did not seek for a successor. Some old South Sea whalers however shook their heads portentously, vowed that the fellow was a political agent, and that he would turn up again somewhere for the benefit of himself and his employers.

Well! in the summer of 1839, a weary party of New Zealand travellers were on their way from Hokianga to the Bay of Islands. They were one night proceeding up the river in a canoe, to a native settlement, where the foot-track to the Bay of Islands then commenced. They were drenched through with rain, and were desirous of finding food and shelter.

“There is a light on that eminence,” said one of the party, an English medical man, to the natives in the boat; “does any one live there?”

The natives laughed, and intimated that the light came from King Edmond’s palace.

“Who is King Edmond?”

“Not know. Frenchman. Not Wesleyan; not Bishop’s man. Come from Sydney;” were the four distinct replies received from the natives.

“From Sydney?” said the Doctor; “then it is no other than Thierry; the fellow was there in ’35. He proclaimed himself, ‘by the grace of God King of Nebuhwa and sovereign chief of New Zealand,’ and he showed documents to prove that he had the support of Louis Philippe and his Government. He drew upon the same French Government, and raised a considerable sum of money by the sale of the bills, which were discounted by some queer people, considering they came from so far north as Aberdeen; and which, on being forwarded to their destination, were, as might be expected, returned dishonoured. Nevertheless, with the proceeds he got together a body of retainers, chartered a ship, and came over to Hokianga.”

“What did the resident say to it?” asked a young engineer, of a native at his side.

“What resident speak, Mister Chalton? He no speak! he go mad! Church missionaries go madder; and chiefs maddest of all. Write to Queen Victoria; Queen speak:—‘New Zealand chiefs all independent. King Thierry no king.’ Church missionaries almost mad like chiefs, cause Thierry speak Hokianga land belong to him.”

“No wonder!” said the doctor, “for his Majesty declared that the Church missionaries had sold it to him, years before, for twenty tomahawks! What did he do at Hokianga?”

“Make fine coat for naked Zealander,” said one of the natives, with a grin.

“A royal tailor, by Jove!” exclaimed the medicus.

After some further discussion upon this strange personage, the travellers agreed to make for his island palace, and ask hospitality. Leaving two natives in charge of the boat and luggage, under the guidance of the other two the English travellers made their way, with difficulty, over stumps of trees and decayed logs, to the royal residence. On reaching the palace, they found, to their dismay, that it had nothing to distinguish it from the huts of the natives, save one solitary glazed window. At the back there was a hole, which served for a door; a Kawri board was fixed against it, and to this the four travellers applied their knuckles. They had not long to wait; the board was removed by an ill-dressed man, of perhaps fifty years of age, who welcomed them into a tolerably neat kitchen, well-warmed by a blazing fire. To an inquiry as to whether they could see the Baron, he announced himself as Baron, and Sovereign Chief of New Zealand. He reiterated his welcome; introduced them to his wife, who confidently believed that her husband was a sovereign, because he had told her so twenty times a day for the last three years; and he finally asked them if they were fond of music.

The guests pleaded guilty to the taste, but they also honestly confessed that they were exceedingly hungry.

“You shall have all we possess,” said the ex-King of Nebuhwa. “Kätchen,” added he to his consort, “get the bread, and bring out the Beethoven.”

The Queen took the loaf and the duet out of a large fish-kettle which lay in one corner of the apartment. The King placed upon the table a guitar, four pewter plates, a violin, and a piece of cheese. Their Majesties dispensed their hospitality with much grace, a quality that is seldom wanting where there is goodwill. They apologized for the absence of wine, spirits, and beer, but they praised the virtues of the water of Hokianga. The beverage having been poured into horns, and each guest supplied with cheese and bread, her Majesty, at a signal from the King, who had assumed the violin, took up the guitar, and in a minute they were deep in the melodious mysteries of Beethoven. That Titan’s music on the guitar was something of an anomaly; but the truth is, that the lady’s copy was written for the piano, and it was her German ingenuity that adapted it to the only instrument she possessed. The guests had long terminated their repast, and ventured, as the duet proceeded, to make an occasional remark, which was speedily hushed by the _chef d’orchestre_, who would tolerate no commentaries during the interpretation of so splendid a text. The duet was finished only to be recommenced; detached passages were repeated over and over again; and the guests meanwhile were awed into absolute silence by the look, speech, and action of their host. It was a singular exhibition in a singular locality:—Beethoven in New Zealand, and free-born Englishmen subdued at Hokianga by the despotism of a French monarch in a foreign territory.

“You play superbly, Baron,” at length said one of the four travellers.

“Sir,” said the sovereign chief, “it is impossible to play ill on such an instrument as this. I adore my wife; I love my subjects, whom I would dress like Parisians if they would only heed me; but I venerate my violin.”

“He has caught heathenism, and worships his fiddle,” whispered Chalton to a missionary on his right hand.

“This violin, Sir,” resumed the Baron, “has seen as many lands as the Wandering Jew. It had been all over the world before it got into the hands of Platt; and it has been all over the world since it left them.”

“And who is Platt?” said the missionary.

“Platt, Sir,” answered the Baron, “was one of the first violin-players in England; but he was afflicted with modesty, and consequently was only known to his friends. He led your Duke of Cumberland’s private band at Kew,—and what a well-dressed band that was! it did honour to its tailor; and it had a European reputation for excellence. I wish I were as rich as a duke, and possessed so great a _maestro di capella_.”

The Baron then proceeded to enlarge upon his position and prospects, entered into discussion on his rights, and pronounced himself a sterling king, in spite of Lord Stanley, the British Queen, or the English Ministry. “I would make these islanders,” said he, “the best-dressed people out of France,—and if they could but acknowledge my principles, I would myself furnish them with paletots; but they denounce my tyranny, and laugh at me when I offer to put them into the dignity of trousers.”

To hear this mock potentate speak of his people, his dominions, religious toleration, the rights of man, and the duties of monarchs, one might have concluded that he really was a recognized sovereign, with an actual kingdom, a people to protect, parties to reconcile, a faith to uphold, and responsibilities to oppress him. Beyond his musical instruments, his solitary instrumental duet, his fish-kettle, an old ‘Journal des Modes,’ and some needles, he can scarcely be said to have had at this moment a single possession incontestably his own.

As the party of travellers, after sleeping in the hut, proceeded on the following morning to their boat, they were accompanied to the beach by their entertainer, who expressed his hopes of meeting with them again. But this was not to be.

THE EPILOGUE.

Four years afterwards, a solitary English traveller, named Chalton, was standing in the centre of a wide district, near to where the last-mentioned guests had spent a summer night in 1839. He was apparently in search of some locality, and two chiefs were closely watching him. A couple of Wesleyan natives were not far off. They were assisting him in making a survey for a road.

“There used to be a hut on that hill in the distance,” said he to one of the chiefs.

“King Thierry’s hut,” answered both the chiefs at once.

“True,” rejoined the inquirer; “why is it no longer there?”

“Zealanders’ gods are not sleeping,” replied one of the chiefs. “Thierry and his priests were cruel to his people. The island spirits told us, in our dreams, to punish him. We burned the hut down last moon.”

“And Thierry and his wife?” asked the astounded engineer.

“The good lady perished in the flames. The people from the other side of the island saved King Thierry.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Chalton, partly relieved; “what are they going to do with him?”

“Oh, nothing!” cried the chiefs, somewhat eagerly.

“The Government will not let the people keep him a captive.”

“The Government can’t get him,” said one of the chiefs.

“And the tribe haven’t got him,” said the other.

“Why, what have they done to him?”

“Hem!” growled somewhat unctuously the elder chief of the two, “they have eaten him!”

Such is said to have been really the fate of the little prisoner who used to mend the garments of M. de Bohun in the prison of Orléans; of the _costumier_ of the court masquerades at the Congress of Vienna; and of the wandering adventurer in distant seas, where he could find no one who would either acknowledge his fiats or accept his fashions. He was unable to establish himself in the world either as monarch of men or as makers of their habits.

And having thus spoken of a mock king, let us consider now our English liege ladies at their respective toilets.

THE TIRING-BOWERS OF QUEENS.

“I could accuse the gaiety of your wardrobe
And prodigal embroideries, under which
Rich satins, plushes, cloth of silver, dare
Not show their own complexions; your jewels,
Able to burn out the spectators’ eyes,
And show like bonfires on you, by the tapers:
Something might here be spared, with safety of
Your birth and honour, since the truest wealth
Shines from the soul, and draws up just admirers.”

SHIRLEY.

Let us not presume to look into the primitive boudoirs of the Queens before the Conquest, and only reverently into those of the sovereign ladies who succeeded. “Tread lightly, this is sacred ground!” is an injunction not to be forgotten in this locality.

The first Queen after the Norman invasion, Matilda of Flanders, who was pummelled into loving her ungallant wooer William, had a costly wardrobe. Before her death she disposed of the most valuable of her garments by will, and named therein the dressmaker who had provided them for her, a species of advertisement that ought to have made Madame Alderet’s fortune. “I give,” says the royal testatrix, “to the Abbey of the Holy Trinity my tunic, worked at Winchester, by Alderet’s wife; and the mantle embroidered with gold, which is in my chamber, to make a cope. Of my two golden girdles, I give that which is ornamented with emblems, for the purpose of suspending the lamp before the great altar.” The abbey named was at Caen, and the nuns connected therewith came in for all Matilda’s petticoats,—no indifferent legacy, for they were stiff with gold and dust. She was an elegant dresser, as far as outside show was concerned.

Rufus was a bachelor, and the ladies who frequented his uproarious court were remarkable for their adoption of garments which very much disgusted the sober ladies of Saxon times. Matilda of Scotland, wife of Henry I., being graceful of form, was given to wear tight kirtles, and may be said to have brought in tight lacing. Henry’s second wife, Adalicia of Louvaine, imitated the fashion set by her predecessor. On the King’s death, she espoused the hereditary cupbearer, William de Albini, surnamed Fortembras; and if she dressed a trifle less gloriously in her bower at Arundel Castle, she at least became there the mother of a numerous progeny, who grew up and gave the fashions to the entire county of Sussex.

The third Matilda, she of Boulogne, wife of Stephen, was the first of our Queens who introduced simplicity of dress. On ordinary occasions she was perhaps less plainly dressed than the very elegant inmates of that very elegant “St. Katherine’s College,” which still commemorates her benevolence, and whose inmates are doubtless a cause of some astonishment to the spirit of that gentle lady.

Eleanora of Aquitaine, ex-wife of Louis XI. of France, and consort of Henry II. of England, was extravagant in the article of dress, and loved to see her ladies around her splendidly attired. She ran their purses hard, for, like Marie Antoinette, she was exceedingly fond of private theatricals; and the barons who groaned over the cost of their own armour, looked grim at the bill of outlay for materials which, be it said for the honour of the parties concerned, were made up for the most part by the young ladies themselves. In those days, people used to resort to the pleasant and sweet-smelling village of Bermondsey, to see the well-dressed Eleanor walk in the quaint gardens there. The idea of Bermondsey being pleasant and sweet-smelling is one now to smile at. It is in these times the seat of ill odours, amid which however many a quean still walks and keeps her state,—and a very sad state it is.

Berengaria, the spouse of the first Richard, is one of the two Queens of England who never _were_ in England. Her tiring maidens found in her a gentle lady who gave grace to, rather than borrowed it from, what she wore. It may be added that she wore nothing that was not wet with her tears; for her royal spouse was like most knights of his day, ready to make and ready to break all vows of fidelity, and indeed all promises, of whatsoever quality. But Richard was not parsimonious, like his brother John, who kept poor Isabella of Angoulême as poorly dressed as a scrivener’s wife; and who wrote down what cloth she was to have for her garments, and on what allowance of shoes she was to stand, all with the shopkeeping sort of correctness which is to be found in no king save Louis Philippe. Isabella however had some rich appurtenances in her wardrobe, for we find that when her son, the little Henry III., was crowned, the royal circlet not being procurable for the purpose, the boy was at length crowned with the gold throat-collar belonging to his mother’s gala suit.

That same Henry III. was as gorgeous a dresser as his father, but he loved to see not only his wife, the fair Eleanor of Provence, whom he gallantly married without a dower, but also her ladies, as gorgeously attired as himself. Had he been as careful of paying for their dresses as he was in the selection of them (he was a dreadful fop, and would discuss lace and frippery with a lady with as much unnecessary knowledge as any Belgian _petit-maître_ of modern days), he might have passed reproachless. But he was one of those men who, after squandering their own money, squander that which they hold in trust: and then cheat their own tailors and their ladies’ milliners with a composition of five shillings in the pound. Henry, his Queen, and court glittered like dragon-flies, thought nothing of “settling day,” and turned up their noses at their more honest and less gaily-dressed kindred. The result was what might be expected. They got into pecuniary difficulties, and descended to the commission of intense meanness. They invited themselves out daily to dine with the wealthy aristocracy of London, whose dinners they ate and whose plate they carried away with them as a gift or a loan. In fact, Henry and Eleanor established a fashion which is far from being obsolete, so great is the authority for its observance. The extravagant are always mean,—mean and dishonest; they first cheat their creditors, and then _would_ cheat their more judicious relatives, were the latter weak enough to be persuaded that the very attempt is a compliment. I could not of course, but you, good reader, _can_ put your finger on a score of people who are like Henry and Eleanor in this,—living beyond their means, and looking to their more honest friends for aid to relieve them from the consequences of their knavery. Exactly; I see you smile as your eye falls on that pair of cousins of yours,—the lady all flounce, and the cavalier irreproachable in dress, and in nought besides! He has just asked you, a man with eight children, four hundred a year, and two servants, to put your name to that little bill. But you have been singed at that fire before, and you now decline. My dear Sir, if you will not allow yourself to be cheated by your extravagant relations, you cannot expect to be on good terms with _that_ part of your family. But you will find compensation for the loss of such a luxury at your own hearth and in your own heart. Why should you wrong those who cluster about both to help worthless people, who, if they could, would further do as Henry and Eleanor did, pawn the “Virgin Mary” to pay their jewellers’ bills. That precious couple compelled the sheriffs of various counties to furnish them with linen for their royal persons. Had _I_ been a sheriff at the time, they should have had huckaback, compared with which they would have found a hair-shirt a positive luxury!

And let me hope, young ladies, that you will not confound this Eleanora with her of the following reign, that Eleanora of Castile, who was surnamed the “faithful,” and who was the glorious first wife of Edward I. She showed what an excellent eye she had to comfort, by introducing into the cold, damp dwellings of the day, tapestry hangings to protect the inmates from chill and moisture. She was the royal mother of all good English housewives; although she did a little scandalize the sober matrons by wearing long curls adown her peerless neck, _after_ she was married.

There were some, too, who did not complacently admire her habit of dressing in public; but it was only a public of ladies. It was for Elizabeth, in later days, to attire herself in presence of men. In Eleanor’s oriel at Caernarvon Castle, ladies were presented to the daughter of Castile, while her tirewomen combed and braided her renowned long tresses. A contemporary poet thus describes the scene:—

“In her oriel there she was,
Closed well with royal glass;
Filled it was with imagery,
Every window by and by;”—

the poetry of which is of as poor a quality as was probably the glass in the oriel. We must not forget to add, that there was as much sewing as romping, and an abundance of both among the young princesses (of whom there was a noisy abundance too) in the “Maiden’s Hall” at Westminster Palace; and that Eleanor is immortalized as the only sovereign who bequeathed “a legacy to William, her tailor.”

When she died, Edward made solemn oath of sempiternal grief, and in a week or two, took to flirting. Ultimately he espoused Marguerite of France; and the match was so happy a one that the two consorts bore their respective arms in one scutcheon, in testimony of their _entente cordiale_. Those particular gentlemen, the heralds, were in a sort of _delirium tremens_ at this innovation; but they were almost as little cared for then as now. Marguerite and Edward were a worthy couple. Edward, indeed, slaughtered all the inhabitants of Berwick for calling him “Longshanks;” but nobody thought the worse of him for _that_. As for Marguerite, she is distinguished for her taste,—her double taste, in dressing becomingly, and paying regularly. She never omitted acquitting a debt at proper time, but once; and this so alarmed John of Cheam, her creditor and goldsmith, that out of fear that the fashion of long credit was coming in again, he besought the king, “for God’s sake, and the soul of his father, King Henry, to order payment.” The prayer was heeded; and I may further notice, as creditable to Marguerite especially, that she willingly consented to be Queen without a coronation, as the then present poverty of the finances offered an obstacle to the ceremony.

Isabelle of France, the consort of Edward II., was a lady of another quality. Her outfit, when it was displayed in London, perfectly astounded the beholders. The Queen of Fairyland could have had nothing more splendid; and mortal wives could not have been more usefully endowed. The ladies of households, as they talked the matter over at their own chimneys, expatiated on the hundreds of yards of linen for the bath, and the six dozen French nightcaps. These were pronounced “loves;” and every unmarried daughter, whose heart wore the figure of a bachelor knight, determined that when another night arrived, her head should wear nothing less than a “_coiffe de nuit à la Reine_.”

Philippa of Hainault, Queen of Edward III., ranks among the reasonable as well as the glorious ladies. She was simple in her dress and gentle to the maids who decked her. While she dressed not beneath her dignity, she was mindful that a plain dignity suited best a Queen whose crown had been pawned, for the same reason that less noble persons pawn their spoons. In her later days, she fell into dropsy and a loose style of covering it.

Richard II. pledged half his own jewels to pay for his bride and bridal,—the former was Anne of Bohemia. This lady was not only a member of the Order of the Garter, but she was attended by ladies who were also associates of that noble company,—pleasanter associates there could not have been; and I wish that the fashion were still observed, and that I could enumerate some of my fair friends on the roll; and then we might ride double to the festival, for

“This riding double was no crime
In the great King Edward’s time.
No brave man thought himself disgraced
By two fair arms about his waist;
Nor did the lady blush vermilion,
Dancing on the lover’s pillion.
Why? Because all modes and actions
Bow’d not then to Vulgar Fractions;
Nor were tested all resources
By the power to purchase horses.”

There is little said about Anne’s style of dressing; but two things are told of her, better worth the telling. She ruled her husband without his ever suspecting it, and she did this by a soft voice and gentle ways;—this to the newly-espoused ladies. The second circumstance was not publicly known until after her death. It was told at her grave-side at Westminster, by Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, who stated, that this good Queen passed her leisure hours in reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. This was perhaps in the Bohemian tongue; for Bohemia possessed a translation long before England.

Richard’s second wife, Isabella of Valois, was as inordinately fond of dress as her husband was; and never, perhaps, were royal couple so profusely provided with means whereby to look well in the eyes of men. But she was but a little child, and he, man-grown, treated her as a daughter. Little did Isabella have cause to wear in England but the trappings of woe; and the gems of tears, ever set in her eyes, were brighter than the jewels in her famous casket, and about which, the two Crowns ultimately quarrelled with no more dignity than a couple of Abigails.

Queen Joanna of Navarre, spouse of Henry IV., and her ladies, appear to have been attired at her coronation after much the same fashion as was observed at the crowning of Queen Victoria. In after-days Joanna, who was terribly “near,” dressed as ladies do who labour under that infirmity: even her mourning for the King was calculated like a widow of small means; and a black cloth gown at seven shillings and eightpence per yard, with one and sixpence for the making, and shoes at sevenpence per pair, tend to show that the royal widow furnished herself at what may be called the “mitigated affliction department.”

How Katherine of Valois was wooed by Henry V. may be seen in Shakspeare. The record is probably as true as much that is penned down by those other poets, the chroniclers. She is the second Queen of England who passed from the couch of a king to that of a soldier; and Katherine founded a new line of sovereigns when she gave her hand to Owen Tudor. Like all Frenchwomen, she dressed with taste; and she deserved a better fate than to be left, as her body was, during so many years, a spectacle for sightseers in Westminster Abbey. Her corpse, removed from her tomb during repairs, in the reign of her grandson, Henry VII., was never restored. It became mummified, and, in a coffin with a loose lid, was open to the eye and touch. People kissed it for twopence, until the year in which Louis XVI. was beheaded, and thrones began to tumble. The Revolution showing to what complexion royalty might come, the body of Katherine was deemed no longer profitable as a morsel, nor indeed as an investment, to those self-denying men, the Dean and Chapter. At the end of the last century, when it became the fashion to sweep away kings and queens, and nobody would pay to see their wretchedly-dressed mummies, the body of Katherine of France was unceremoniously swept off, too, into the general dust-hole covered by Westminster Abbey.

When old King René married his daughter Margaret of Anjou to Henry VI., he did what many modern fathers do, and spent upon the festival a sum which would have served the bride and bridegroom for household expenses for a year. Margaret possessed little but the clothes in which she stood; and she remains known as the most indifferently clad and the worst-fated of all our sovereign ladies. But she was a woman of too much heart and intellect to care more about coifs and kirtles than they deserved.

It was one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth Woodville, who shared the throne of Edward IV.,—a _mésalliance_ in every respect, and unfortunate to all parties. She however astonished the good people of Reading by the “bravery” of her attire, when she first appeared there as England’s Queen.

Anne of Warwick’s whole reign with Richard III. was one of almost uninterrupted sickness, and she more often wore the garb of the invalid than the costume of a queen. The daughter of Elizabeth Woodville, the good Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII., was a lady who was never better dressed than at her coronation banquet in Westminster Hall, where the King was a spectator and not a guest. She sat in a kirtle of purple velvet, furred with ermine bands in front; and the Lady Katherine Gray and Mistress Ditton went under the table, and sat at the Queen’s feet; while the Countesses of Oxford and Rivers knelt on each side, and now and then “held a kerchief before her Grace.” The milliners especially prayed for benison on this Queen, and justly; for never had the dressmakers so fair and so faithful a patroness. She was provident of what she well paid for; and Elizabeth did not think it beneath her to pay sixteen pence to her tailor, Robert Addington, “for _mending_ eight gowns of divers colours, for the Queen’s Grace, at 2d. apiece.” She also occasionally pawned her plate, when she was pressed for money; but altogether she was not an improvident Queen.

Elizabeth’s young daughter, Mary, sometime Queen of France, but who ultimately died Duchess of Suffolk, was a sportive child in a cumbrous dress. At four years of age she was provided, according to a warrant still existing, with kirtles of tawny damask and black satin; gowns of green and crimson velvet, edged with purple tinsel; and, as if to show that only outside appearance was cared for, lined with nothing more costly than simple black buckram. She was the widow, almost as soon as she was the wife, of Louis XII.; and, after a marriage of some two months’ duration, she expressed her grief by retiring to the Hôtel de Cluny, where, clothed in white, and confined in a darkened apartment lighted by wax tapers, she kept mourning state during six long, heavy weeks.

Of the wives of Henry VIII. it is told that Katherine of Arragon entered London wearing “a broad round hat.” She rose at five, and she used to say that dressing-time was murdered time; and she wore the habit of St. Francis of the third order, of which she was a member, beneath her ordinary attire. Anne of Boleyn was a lady of another quality. She was as long at her mirror as any modern maiden of them all; and, when arrayed for conquest, perhaps no woman was ever more decidedly armed against the peace of mankind. Her costume was almost daily varied, the only permanent fashion being the hanging sleeve, to conceal the double tip of the little finger of her left hand; and the kerchief over the neck, on which was a slight mark, which she had worn from her birth. Of course, kerchief collar-bands and hanging sleeves were adopted by all who recognized in Anne the undisputed Queen of Fashion.

Jane Seymour, who married Anne’s husband the day after he had beheaded Anne herself, was far from having the taste of her predecessor. She enjoyed the better fortune of dying a natural death, and Henry wept for her, poor man! because he lost the opportunity of otherwise disposing of her. When Anne of Cleves first presented herself to him, she was attired in abundance of petticoats, “after the Dutch fashion.” The King was horrified at such fashion, but sturdy Anne wore more petticoats, in the same national mode, on her wedding-day; nor was it till the morrow that she put off her national dress and assumed one shaped according to the English mode, and which, we are told, made her look more tolerable than she was before. She had the most splendid wardrobe of all Henry’s Queens, with the worst taste in dress. She was fonder of experimental cooking than of dress,—was more made for a buxom hostess than a Queen, and was most fortunate _as_ Queen when she laid down her dignity and retired with a pension, and a neck secured against the King’s violent affection for it. Katherine Howard was in most things her very opposite, in taste for dress as well as in observance of duty; and Katherine Parr, the sixth wife, was superior to both. The first Protestant Queen of England and preserver of Cambridge University was not only a scholar but a “very woman,”—in which phrase I recognize one with a whole string of virtues and accomplishments. She was a perfect mistress of the needle (Queen Adelaide herself was not a greater); and her taste in dress was shown by her uniting magnificence of material with simplicity of form. She was the third of our Queens who descended from royalty to wed with a “mere nobleman;” but as Lady Seymour, good Queen Katherine was still the Queen of Hearts, and when the ivy peered into her coffin at Sudeley Chapel, and wound a wreath about her unconscious head, she gained a crown which caused her less uneasiness than that she had worn as living Queen.

It is a trait worth noticing, both in Mary Tudor and in the times, that she purchased six bonnets at £1 apiece, and two frontlets at 10_s._, at the shop of Lady Gresham, the actual Lady Mayoress, who was a near relation of the Boleyns. So that Mary was not ashamed of humble relations, nor a Lady Mayoress too proud to keep a shop. This was when Mary was only the “Lady Mary,” or Princess. When she became Queen she was not disinclined to wrap her dignity in all the glory, gold and brocade could give it. Her taste was not always of the best, and young ladies will shudder as they hear that when Mary was married, she marred a superb wedding costume, _à la Française_, by wearing a black scarf and scarlet shoes! True, young ladies, this was worse than burning Protestants;—which, after all, she sanctioned less from inclination than that she had bloody men around her, who put compulsory strain upon her tastes and feelings. For one Dr. Cahill, who gloats over the “glorious idea” of massacring Protestants, there were a score then, not only with the inclination but the power to give it effect; which, fortunately, _our_ friend of gloomy notoriety does _not_ possess.

I have above said, the “shop” of Lady Gresham. Until the 10th or 12th of Elizabeth there were but few silk-shops at all in London, and those were invariably kept, or served, by females. The supply too was very scanty. Stowe, the antiquarian tailor, says that citizens’ wives in general were then constrained to wear knit caps of woollen yarn; silver thread, lace, and silk being very scarce, and only the very wealthy being able to purchase garments of which these materials formed a part; and even then, the husbands of ladies who desired to deck themselves in costly apparel, were obliged to prove that they were “gentlemen by descent.”

When the Princess Elizabeth lost her mother, her wardrobe, which was none of the most brilliant before, became of very mean condition. Lady Bryan wrote to Cromwell that “she hath neither gown nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen, nor forsmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails (night-dresses), nor body stichets, nor handkerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor mufflers, nor biggins” (the last two signifying day caps and night caps), and the whole list showing that the little lady was as ill provided for as any villein’s daughter in the land. No wonder that she was at an early period smartly touched by rheumatism. When she came to the court of Edward VI. she was remarkable for the simplicity of her dress; it was religiously grave, as prescribed by the polemical ‘Journaux des Modes’ edited by Calvinistic divines. Dr. Aylmer, in his ‘Harbour for Faithful Subjects,’ says:—“The King, her father, left her rich clothes and jewels; and I know it to be true, that in seven years after his death she never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and _that_ against her will; and that there never came gold or stone upon her head till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness; and then she so bore it that all might see that her body carried what her heart disliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in King Edward’s time, made the noblemen’s wives and daughters ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks, being more moved with her most virtuous example than all that ever Paul or Peter wrote touching the matter.”

The needle was the solace of Elizabeth in her captivity in the Tower and at Woodstock, and the instrument of her pastime in the days of her greatness. Taylor, a very properly named poet to have sung the praise of the needle, says of her in his poem:—

“When this great Queen, whose memory shall not
By any turn of time be overcast,—
For when the world and all therein shall rot,
Yet shall her glorious fame for ever last,—
When she a maid had many troubles past,
From gaol to gaol by Marie’s angry spleen,
And Woodstock and the Tower in prison fast,
And after all was England’s peerless Queen;
Yet howsoever sorrow came or went,
She made the needle her companion still,
And in that exercise her time she spent,
As many living yet do know her skill.
Thus she was still, a captive or else crown’d,
A needlewoman royal and renowned.”

She grew in love with costly suits when she became independent of church and grave churchmen; and the officers of her wardrobe were continually recording in their journals that there were “lost from her Majesty’s back” gold enamelled acorns, buttons, aylets or eylets, with which her dresses were sprinkled; or rubies from her hat, or diamonds, pearls, and tassels of gold; but always from the royal back, whence they were cut by the over-loyal, as the Russian princess the other day stole the great jewel from the Moscow “Virgin,” out of piety and a taste for gems. She kissed the figure, and carried away the precious stone in her mouth. When the Scottish Queen, Mary of Lorraine, came to visit Edward VI., she deluged the court with new French fashions; “so that all the ladies went with their hair frowsed, curled, and double-curled, except the Princess Elizabeth, who altered nothing,” says Aylmer, “but kept her old maiden shamefacedness.” In latter days Elizabeth had other ways; and we read with astonishment of her never-to-be-forgotten eighty wigs, with her “weeds (costume) of every civilized country,” and her appearing in a fresh one every day. After all, it is questionable if she was a better “dresser” than the fair Gabrielle, of whom the chivalrous Unton writes to Elizabeth that she was “very silly, very unbecomingly dressed, and grossly painted.” But this was a courtier speaking of one woman to another, and his testimony is to be taken with reserve. Elizabeth was in another respect more like Marie Antoinette, for she had a dairy at Barn-Elmes, where she played the milkmaid, as the poor Queen of France used at Trianon.

If we may trust La Mothe Fénelon, Leicester was as much the Queen’s “maid” as her Master of the Horse. The French Ambassador says, that the public was displeased with the familiar offices he rendered at her toilet. He was in her bed-chamber ere she arose; and there, according to the reports of men who denounced his privileges merely because they were not their own, he would hand to her a garment which did not become the hands of a Master of the Horse, and would dare to “kiss her Majesty when he was not even invited thereto,” but when, as he very well knew, “he was right welcome.” For Elizabeth took all she could get, even “nightcaps,” which were among the presents sent to propitiate her by the Queen of Scots. She took with both hands; and gave, as she herself truly said, only with the little finger. She ever graciously received new-year’s gifts that enriched her wardrobe; and was especially wroth with the Bishop of London for preaching too strictly against vanity of attire. When she saw Harrington in a frieze jerkin, she declared that the cut liked her well, and she would have one like it for her own wear; but she spat on Sir Matthew Arundel’s fringed suit, with the remark,—“The fool’s wit is gone to rags. Heaven spare me from such gibing!” A queen of later days would not think of assuming the fashion of Lord Palmerston’s paletot, nor spoil the uniform of a bran-new deputy-lieutenant, as Elizabeth did Sir Matthew Arundel’s embroidery. I believe our Gracious Sovereign never went further in this direction than to laugh good-humouredly at the Duke of Wellington’s hair when he had had it newly cropped, as was his wont, into the appearance of short bristles on a scrubbing-brush.

If it be true that Leicester helped her at her toilet, he was the only happy individual who enjoyed the privilege. At least, in her mature years she had a horror of being seen _en déshabille_. Essex once came upon her unexpectedly in the hands of her tiring-maids, and hardly escaped with his ears. Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s son, also once beheld her in her night-gear, as she stood at a window to look out at a May morning. The _Virgo, magis quam tempestiva_, hurried away with such blushes as she could call up at forty-five. Twenty years before she would have shown less haste and more discretion; at forty-five, in her “night-stuff” at sunrise,—no Gyges would have thanked Candaules for letting his eye rest on so questionable a vision.

Even in her midday glories, she was no attractive sight as she grew in years. See her going to prayers, when her threescore years had thrice as many nobles to honour them, and _she_ walking amid all, wrinkled, small-eyed, with teeth that made her smile hideous, and with not only false hair, but that hair red. Hurtzner, who saw her on one of these occasions, says:—“Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels.... She was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans; and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness; the ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white.”

The older she grew, the more splendidly she bedizened herself,—as decaying matter puts on variety of colour. “She imagined,” says Bacon, “that the people, who are much influenced by externals, would be diverted, by the glitter of her jewels, from noticing the decay of her personal attractions.” The people were not such simpletons, and they saw plainly enough that she was dying, in spite of the majesty of her exquisitely braided periwig.

Anne of Denmark, the next Queen of England, did not look queenly even in Elizabeth’s robes. Her taste in dress was extremely bad. She patronized especially the huge farthingales, high behind, low before, and swelling out into unlimited space on all sides. These monstrous dresses were kept in countenance by the as monstrous padded costumes of the courtiers; and it was not very unusual for a bevy of the bearers of them to stick fast in the narrow passages, whence only dexterity could decently disentangle them. The King issued a proclamation against the farthingales; but the ladies, to show their contempt for his authority in matters of fashion, continued to wear them till he died,—and _then_ left them off. Spirited women!

King Charles wore a white mantle at his coronation, and when his poor hearse, poorly attended, crossed the yard of Windsor Castle, the snow descended upon it, and covered the coffin as it was taken out with its silently-falling flakes; and so, from crown to grave, Charles was, as his servants used to call him, “the White King.” His consort, Henrietta Maria, was fond of the colour,—that in which Mary Tudor had mourned. But poor Henrietta, less fortunate than the sister of Henry VIII., gay and graceful as she was at her husband’s court, was too ill-conditioned in France to dress becomingly even in weeds. She was one of the founders of good taste in England; and in her exile she wore contentedly the coarsest stuffs. But then Louis XIV. buried her splendidly at his own cost; and Charles II. and his people spent twice as much in a six months’ mourning for her as would have sufficed to have kept her and her household for ever.

When Katherine of Braganza landed in England as Queen Consort of Charles II., she excited mirth by the stiff outlandish fashion in which her luxuriant tresses were done up by her Majesty’s “barber,” and her exceedingly ugly maids of honour. Indeed she had as little taste for dress as she had for the fine arts; though she _had_ a taste for music. In full court dress, however, she looked a handsome woman,—without studying how she might best become so. Pepys has recorded that he saw her and the King dining together once, on which occasion she wore a loose white wrapping gown, as was supposed to become her imaginary condition; and Pepys adds, that she looked handsomer in it than in her robes of state and ceremony.

Mary Beatrice of Modena, the wife of James II., is remarkable for her detestation of _rouge_, and for her wearing it in obedience to her husband’s wishes. Ladies will be pleased to make a note, not so much of the fact as of the motive. Father Seraphine, her Capuchin confessor gave an impudent stare of horror when he beheld it; and as she murmured something about the paleness of her complexion, he exclaimed,—and in the very face of the King too,—“Madam, I would rather see your Majesty yellow or green than rouged;” at which the good lady fell a laughing, as servilely as a barrister at a judicial bad joke, such as Baron Alderson’s light puns, with which he cuts short heavy suits.

This is almost the only trait of interest told in connection with her toilet. It was simply observed that in England she dressed as became her state; and in exile, as became a lady whose dower was stolen by William III. and appropriated to his own use. Apply it as he would, he could never look so well as the owner. She cared little for that of which Elizabeth thought so much; and when, in after-days, it was remarked that she dressed as plainly as a citizen’s wife, and wore no jewels, it was known that she had sold her jewels, to profit her son. As often happens with mothers who despoil themselves to benefit their boys, the gift profited neither the recipient nor the giver. The splendour of the silver ornaments of her toilet was well known; and the ladies of France could well appreciate the sacrifice, which was in truth no sacrifice to her who made it.

Queen Mary II., if she rolled joyously over the couches from which her affectionate father had just before been rolled off, the unfilial romp was, at least, a _private_ bit of ingratitude. She did not, like her sister Anne, go to the play in a dress covered with orange ribbons.

Mary, in her later days, patronized the cornette head-dresses of monumental elevation, and the _fontanges_, of which she was desirous to deprive, by royal decree too, the “city minxes;” but the ladies beyond Temple Bar would neither heed her decrees nor wear the high-crowned hat, which had fallen into disuse save by the _pagani_, and they continued to “flaunt in cornettes and top-knots, after her own gracious example.”

Anne was too lame to walk at her coronation, and accordingly she was carried in a low sedan chair; and as she could not take her huge train with her, the same was as gravely carried by the privileged bearers behind the chair, as though it had been hanging from the back of her most sacred person. She was indifferently dressed for the occasion, but there were two figures present whose appearance compensated for whatever lacked. The Queen, being “Queen of France” as well as of England, must necessarily be attended by her French nobility; but as the real article was not to be had, a spurious one was invented, and two men, named Clarke and Andrews, were dressed up to represent the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine. They stood at the foot of the throne, answered to their fictitious titles, and looked, like all shams, very much embarrassed and supremely ridiculous. If this Queen was not a very splendid dresser, the makers and washers of her dresses had profitable places under her. Mrs. Abrahal enjoyed a pension of one hundred a year, in return for having “washed and starched the Queen’s heads (triple-tiered caps, brought into fashion by Maintenon) when she was princess, for twenty pounds a year.” The Queen’s sempstress came off more fortunately still; for Mrs. Ravensford pricked the heart of a gallant as easily as she could pierce her own pincushion, and ultimately married the son of the Bishop of Ely. And _such_ lawn sleeves she made for her father-in-law!

But it was a reign in which the devisers of garments had a lucky time of it. I may instance John Duddlestone, the bodice-maker of Bristol, who asked Prince George to dinner when none of the Bristol merchants had the hospitality to do so. The Prince accepted the invitation, kissed Dame Duddlestone, ate his beef and pudding with more appetite after such a grace, and ultimately presented the pair to the Queen at Windsor. Anne not only invited them to dine with her, but, like the French lady who used to find all her male visitors in black velvet breeches, attired him in a suit of violet velvet at her own cost; and when the bottle had gone a round or two, drew her husband’s sword, and laying it on the bodice-maker’s shoulder, bade him “stand up, Sir John!”