Chapter I: Needlework (10)

And a traveller, in 1691,[1001] speaking of Paris, writes:--"You shall see here the finer sort of people flaunting it in tawdry gauze or Colbertine, a parcel of coarse staring ribbons; but ten of their holyday habits shall not amount to what a citizen's wife of London wears on her head every day."

{340}JAMES II.

The reign of James II., short and troubled, brought but little change in the fashion of the day; more prominence, however, was given to the lace cravats, which were worn loosely round the throat, and with their ends hanging down over the upper part of the vest.

Charles II., in the last year of his reign, spends £20 12s. for a new cravat to be worn "on the birthday of his dear brother,"[1002] and James expends £29 upon one of Venice point to appear in on that of his queen. Frequent entries of lace for the attendants of the Chapel Royal form items in the Royal Wardrobe Accounts.

Ruffles, night-rails, and cravats of point d'Espagne and de Venise now figure in Gazettes,[1003] but "Flanders lace is still in high estimation," writes somebody, in 1668, "and even fans are made of it."

Then James II. fled, and years after we find him dying at St. Germains in--a laced nightcap. "This cap was called a 'toquet,' and put on when the king was in extremis, as a compliment to Louis XIV." "It was the court etiquette for all the Royals," writes Madame, in her _Memoirs_, "to die with a nightcap on." The toquet of King James may still be seen by the curious, adorning a wax model of the king's head, preserved as a relic in the Museum of Dunkirk.[1004]

Out of mingled gratitude, we suppose, for the hospitality she had received at the French court, and the protection of the angels, which, she writes, "I experienced once when I {341}set fire to my lace night cornet, which was burned to the very head without singeing a single hair"--good Queen Mary of Modena, who shone so brightly in her days of adversity, died, _selon les règles_, coeffed in like fashion.

With this notice we finish the St. Germains reign of King James the Second.

WILLIAM III.

"Long wigs,
Steinkirk cravats."
--Congreve. _Love for Love._

In William III.'s reign, the full shirt-sleeves, with their lace ruffles, were shown at the wrists, and the loose neckcloths had long pendent ends terminating in lace, if they were not entirely made of that material. The hat, too, was edged with gold lace, and for summer wear the gloves were edged with lace.

Women's sleeves, at first short, wide and lace-edged, showing the delicate sleeves of the under garment, soon became tight, and were prolonged to the wrists, where they terminated in deep and wide upturned cuffs, whence drooped a profusion of lace lappets and ruffles.

The hair, combed up, and with an inclination backwards from the forehead, was surmounted by a strata of ribbon and lace, sometimes intermingled with feathers, and a kerchief or scarf of some very light material was permitted to hang down to the waist, or below it.

In 1698 the English Parliament passed another Act "for rendering the laws more effectual for preventing the importation of foreign Bone lace, Loom lace, Needlework Point, and Cutwork,"[1005] with a penalty of 20s. per yard, and forfeiture. This Act caused such excitement among the convents and béguinages of Flanders that the Government, at that time under the dominion of Spain, prohibited, by way of retaliation, the importation of English wool. In consequence of the general distress occasioned by this edict {342}among the woolstaplers of England, the Act prohibiting the importation of foreign lace into England was repealed,[1006] so far as related to the Spanish Low Countries. England was the loser by this Custom-House war.[1007]

Dress, after the Revolution, partook of the stately sobriety of the House of Nassau, but lace was extensively worn. Queen Mary favoured that wonderful erection, already spoken of in our chapter on France,[1008] the tower or fontange, more generally called, certainly not from its convenience, the "commode," with its piled tiers of lace and ribbon, and the long hanging pinners, celebrated by Prior in his "Tale of the Widow and her Cat":--

"He scratch'd the maid, he stole the cream,
He tore her best lac'd pinner."

Their Flanders lace heads, with the engageantes[1009] or ruffles, and the dress covered with lace frills and flounces--"every part of the garment in curl"--caused a lady, says the _Spectator_, to resemble "a Friesland hen."[1010]

Never yet were such sums expended on lace as in the days of William and Mary. The lace bill of the Queen, signed by Lady Derby, Mistress of the Robes, for the year 1694, amounts to the enormous sum of £1,918.[1011] Among the most extravagant entries we find:--

£. s. d.
21 yards of lace for 12 pillow beres, at 52s. 54 12 0
16 yards of lace for 2 toylights (toilets), at £12 192 0 0
24 yards for 6 handkerchiefs, at £4 10s. 108 0 0
30 yards for 6 night shifts, at 62s. 93 0 0
6 yards for 2 combing cloths, at £14 84 0 0
3½ yards for a combing cloth at £17 53 2 6 {343}
3-1/8 do. at £14 42 0 0
An apron of lace 17 0 0

None of the lace furnished by Mr. Bampton, thread lace provider and milliner to the court, for the Queen's engageantes and ruffles, however, seems to have exceeded £5 10_s_. the yard. There is little new in this account. The lace is entered as scalloped,[1012] ruffled, loopt: lace purle[1013] still lingers on; catgut, too, appears for the first time,[1014] as well as raised point[1015] and needlework.[1016] The Queen's pinners are mentioned as Mazzarined;[1017] some fashion named in honour of the once fair Hortense, who ended her exiled life in England.

"What do you lack, ladies fair, Mazzarine hoods, Fontanges,
girdles?"[1018]

King William himself, early imbued with the Dutch taste for lace, exceeded, we may say, his wife in the extravagance of his lace bills; for though the lace account for 1690 is noted only at £1,603, it increases annually until the year 1695-6, when the entries amount to the astonishing sum of £2,459 19s.[1019] Among the items charged will be found:--

£. s. d.

To six point cravats 158 0 0
To eight do. for hunting 85 0 0
54 yds. for 6 barbing cloths 270 0 0
63 yds. for 6 combing cloths 283 10 0
117 yards of "scissæ teniæ" (cut-work)
for trimming 12 pockethandfs 485 14 3
78 yds. for 24 cravats, at £8 10s. 663 0 0

{344}In this right royal account of expenditure we find mention of "cockscombe laciniæ," of which the King consumes 344 yards.[1020] What this may be we cannot say, as it is described as "green and white"; otherwise we might have supposed it some kind of Venice point, the little pearl-edged raised patterns of which are designated by Randle Holme as "cockscombs." More coquet than a woman, we find an exchange effected with Henry Furness, "Mercatori," of various laces, purchased for his handkerchiefs and razor cloths, which, laid by during the two years of "lugubris" for his beloved consort, the Queen--during which period he had used razor cloths with broad hems and no lace--had become "obsolete"--quite out of fashion. To effect this exchange the King pays the sum of £178 12s. 6d., the lace purchased for the six new razor cloths amounting to £270. In the same page we find him, now out of mourning, expending £499 10s. for lace to trim his twenty-four new nightshirts, "indusiis nocturnis."

With such royal patronage, no wonder the lace trade prospered, and that, within ten years of William's death, Defoe should quote the point lace of Blandford as selling at £30 the yard.

PLATE LXXXIII.

Photo by Walker and Cockerell.]

_To face page 344._

{345}We have already told how the fashion of the laced Steinkirk found as much favour in England[1021] as in France. Many people still possess, among their family relics, long oval-shaped brooches of topaz or Bristol stones, and wonder what they were used for. These old-fashioned articles of jewellery were worn to fasten (when not passed through the button-hole) the lace Steinkirk, so prevalent not only among the nobility, but worn by all classes. If the dialogue between Sir Nicholas Dainty and Major-General Blunt, as given in Shadwell's play, be correct, the volunteers of King William's day were not behind the military in elegance:--

"SIR NICHOLAS.--I must make great haste, I shall ne'er get my Points and
Laces done up time enough.

"MAJ. GEN. B.--What say'st, young fellow? Points and Laces for camps?

"SIR NICH.--Yes, Points and Laces; why, I carry two laundresses on
purpose.... Would you have a gentleman go undress'd in a camp? Do you
think I would see a camp if there was no dressing? Why, I have two
campaign suits, one trimmed with Flanders lace, and the other with rich
Point.

"MAJ. GEN. B.--Campaign suits with lace and Point!"[1022]

In Westminster Abbey, where, as somewhat disrespectfully, say the Brothers Popplewell,[1023] the images of William and Mary

"Stand upright in a press, with their bodies made of wax,
A globe and a wand in either hand and their robes upon their backs"--

the lace tucker and double sleeves of Queen Mary are of the finest raised Venice point, resembling Fig. 29; King William likewise wears a rich lace cravat and ruffles.[1024]

In a memorandum (carta d'informazione) given to the Venetian ambassadors about to proceed to England, 1696, they are to be provided with very handsome collars of the finest Venetian point, which, it is added, is also the best present to make.[1025]

Before concluding the subject of the lace-bearing heroes, we may as well state here that the English soldiers rivalled the cavaliers of France in the richness of their points till the extinction of hair-powder (the wearing of which in the army consumes, says some indignant writer, flour enough to feed 600,000 persons per annum), when the lace cravat was replaced by the stiff and cumbersome stock. Speaking of {346}these military dandies, writes the _World_: "Nor can I behold the lace and the waste of finery in their clothing but in the same light as the silver plates and ornaments on a coffin; indeed, I am apt to impute their going to battle so trimmed and adorned to the same reason a once fine lady painted her cheeks just before she expired, that she might not look frightful when she was dead."

"To war the troops advance,
Adorned and trim like females for the dance.
Down sinks Lothario, sent by one dire blow,
A well-dress'd hero to the shades below."

As the justice's daughter says to her mamma, in Sheridan's _St. Patrick's Day_:--

"Dear; to think how the sweet fellows sleep on the ground, and fight in
silk stockings and lace ruffles."

Lace had now become an article worthy the attention of the light-fingered gentry. The jewels worn by our great-grandmothers of the eighteenth century, though mounted in the most exquisite taste, were for the most part false--Bristol or Alençon "diamonds," paste, or "Strass." Lace, on the other hand, was a sure commodity and easily disposed of. At the robbery of Lady Anderson's house in Red Lion Square during a fire, in 1700, the family of George Heneage, Esq., on a visit, are recorded to have lost--"A head with fine loopt lace, of very great value; a Flanders lace hood; a pair of double ruffles and tuckers; two laced aprons, one point, the other Flanders lace; and a large black lace scarf embroidered in gold."

Again, at an opera row some years later, the number of caps, ruffles, and heads enumerated as stolen by the pickpockets is quite fabulous. So expert had they become, that when first the ladies took to wearing powdered wigs, they dexterously cut open the leather backs of the hack coaches and carried off wig, head and all, before the rifled occupant had the slightest idea of their attack.[1026] To remedy the evil, the police request all ladies for the future to sit with their backs to the horses.[1027]

{347}QUEEN ANNE.

"PARLEY.--Oh, Sir, there's the prettiest fashion lately come over! so
airy, so French, and all that! The Pinners are double ruffled with twelve
plaits of a side, and open all from the face; the hair is frizzled up all
round head, and stands as stiff as a bodkin. Then the Favourites hang
loose upon the temple with a languishing lock in the middle. Then the
Caule is extremely wide, and over all is a Cornet rais'd very high and
all the Lappets behind."--Farquhar. _Sir Harry Wildair._

Queen Anne, though less extravagant than her sister, was scarcely more patriotic. The point purchased for her coronation,[1028] though it cost but £64 13s. 9d., was of Flanders growth. The bill is made out to the royal laceman of King William's day, now Sir Henry Furnesse, knight and merchant.

The Queen, too, in her gratitude, conferred a pension of £100 upon one Mrs. Abrahat, the royal clear-starcher; "because," writes the Duchess of Marlborough, "she had washed the Queen's heads for twenty pounds a year when she was princess."

In 1706 Anne again repeals the Acts which prohibit Flanders lace, with the clear understanding that nothing be construed into allowing the importation of lace made in "the dominions of the French King";[1029] an edict in itself sufficient to bring the points of France into the highest fashion.[1030]

"France," writes an essayist, "is the wardrobe of the world;" nay, "the English have so great an esteem for the workmanship of the French refugees, that hardly a thing vends without a Gallic name."[1031]

To the refugees from Alençon and elsewhere, expelled by the cruel edict of Louis XIV., we owe the visible improvement of our laces in the eighteenth century.

Up to the present time we have had mention only of {348}"Flanders lace" in general. In the reign of Queen Anne the points of "Macklin" and Brussels are first noted down in the Royal Wardrobe Accounts. In 1710 her Majesty pays for 26 yards of fine edged Brussels lace £151.[1032] "Mais, l'appétit vient en mangeant." The bill of Margareta Jolly, for the year 1712, for the furnishing of Mechlin and Brussels lace alone, amounts to the somewhat extravagant sum of £1,418 14_s_. Taking the average price of the "Lace chanter on Ludgate Hill," articles of daily use were costly enough. "One Brussels head is valued at £40; a grounded Brussels head, £30; one looped Brussels, £30." These objects, high as the price may seem, lasted a woman's life. People in the last century did not care for variety, they contented themselves with a few good articles; hence among the objects given in 1719, as necessary to a lady of fashion, we merely find:--

£ s. d.

A French point or Flanders head and ruffles 80 0 0
A ditto handkerchief 10 0 0
A black French laced hood 5 5 0

When the Princess Mary, daughter of George II., married, she had but four fine laced Brussels heads, two loopt and two grounded, two extremely fine point ones, with ruffles and lappets, six French caps and ruffles.[1033]

Two point lace cravats were considered as a full supply for any gentleman. Even young extravagant Lord Bedford, who, at eighteen years of age, found he could not spend less than £6,000 a year at Rome, when on the grand tour, only charges his mother, Rachel Lady Russell, with that number.[1034]

The high commode,[1035] with its lace rising tier upon tier, which made the wits about town declare the ladies "carried Bow steeple upon their heads," of a sudden collapsed in Queen Anne's reign. It had shot up to a most extravagant height, "insomuch that the female part of our species were {349}much taller than the men. We appeared," says the _Spectator_,[1036] "as grasshoppers before them."[1037]

In 1711 Anne forbade the entry of gold and silver lace,[1038] of which the consumption had become most preposterous,[1039] under pain of forfeiture and the fine of £100. Ladies wore even cherry-coloured stays trimmed with the forbidden fabric.[1040] The point of Spain had the preference over thread lace for state garments, heads and ruffles excepted; and as late as 1763, when the Dowager Lady Effingham was robbed of her coronation robes, among the wonderful finery detailed there is no mention of thread lace.

The commerce of Flanders, notwithstanding the French taste, seemed now on a comfortable footing. "The Flander-kins," writes the _British Merchant_ in 1713, "are gone off from wool, which we have got, to lace and linen.... We have learned better, I hope, by our unsuccessful attempt to prohibit the Flanders laces, which made the Flemings retaliate upon us, and lessened our exportation of woollen manufactures by several £100,000 per annum."[1041]

Men looked upon lace as a necessary article to their wives' equipment. Addison declares that when the China mania first came in, women exchanged their Flanders point for punch-bowls and mandarins, thus picking their husbands' pockets, who is often purchasing a huge china vase when he fancies that he is buying a fine head for his wife.[1042] Indeed, they could scarcely grumble, as a good wig cost from forty to fifty guineas--to say nothing of their own lace ties and {350}ruffles. Only an old antiquary like Sir Thomas Clayton could note down in his accounts:--"Lace and fal-lalls,[1043] and a large looking-glass to see her old ugly face in--frivolous expenses to please my proud lady."

{351}CHAPTER XXVI.

GEORGE I. AND II.

----

GEORGE I.

"Wisdom with periwigs, with cassocks grace,
Courage with swords, gentility with lace."--_Connoisseur._

The accession of the House of Hanover brought but little change either in the fashions or the fabrics. In 1717 the King published an edict regarding the hawking of lace, but the world was too much taken up with the Old Pretender and the court of St. Germains; the King, too, was often absent, preferring greatly his German dominions.

We now hear a great deal of lace ruffles; they were worn long and falling. Lord Bolingbroke, who enraged Queen Anne by his untidy dress--"she supposed, forsooth, he would some day come to court in his nightcap"--is described as having his cravat of point lace, and his hands hidden by exaggerated ruffles of the same material. In good old Jacobite times, these weeping ruffles served as well to conceal notes--"poulets"--passed from one wary politician to another, as they did the French sharpers to juggle and cheat at cards.

Lace continued the mania of the day. "Since your fantastical geers came in with wires, ribbons, and laces, and your furbelows with three hundred yards in a gown and petticoat, there has not been a good housewife in the nation,"[1044] writes an indignant dramatist. The lover was made to bribe the Abigail of his mistress with a piece of Flanders lace[1045]--an offering not to be resisted. Lace appeared {352}at baptisms,[1046] at marriages, as well as at burials, of which more hereafter--even at the Old Bailey, where one Miss Margaret Caroline Rudd, a beauty of the day, tried for forgery, quite moved her jurors to tears, and nigh gained her acquittal by the taste of her elegantly-laced stomacher, the lace robings of her dress, and single lace flounce, her long pendulous ruffles, hanging from the elbow, heard, fluttering in her agitation, by the court; but, in spite of these allurements, Margaret Caroline Rudd was hanged.

Every woman, writes Swift,[1047] is

"In choosing lace a critic nice,
Knows to a groat the lowest price."

Together, they

"Of caps and ruffles hold the grave debate,
As of their lives they would decide the fate."

Again, he says:--

"And when you are among yourselves, how naturally, after the first compliments, do you entertain yourselves with the price and choice of lace, apply your hands to each other's lappets and ruffles, as if the whole business of your life and the public concern depended on the cut of your petticoats."[1048]

Even wise Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, who wrote epistles about the ancients, and instead of going to a ball, sat at home and read Sophocles, exclaims to her sister--"Surely your heroic spirit will prefer a beau's hand in Brussels lace to a stubborn Scævola without an arm."

PLATE LXXXIV.

Photo by Walker and Cockerell.]

_To face page 352._

{353}In the middle of the nineteenth century it was the fashion that no young lady should wear lace previous to her marriage. In the reign of George II. etiquette was different, for we find the Duchess of Portland presenting Mrs. Montague, then a girl, with a lace head and ruffles.

Wrathfully do the satirists of the day rail against the expense of

"The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribbon, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things
That make up all their magazines,"[1049]

and the consequent distress of the lace merchants, to whom ladies are indebted for thousands. After a drawing-room, in which the fair population appeared in "borrowed," _i.e._, unpaid lace,[1050] one of the chief lacemen became well-nigh bankrupt. Duns besieged the houses of the great:--

"By mercers, lacemen, mantua-makers press'd;
But most for ready cash, for play distress'd,
Where can she turn?"[1051]

The _Connoisseur_, describing the reckless extravagance of one of these ladies, writes:--"The lady played till all her ready money was gone, staked her cap and lost it, afterwards her handkerchief. He then staked both cap and handkerchief against her tucker, which, to his pique, she gained." When enumerating the various causes of suicide, he proposes "that an annual bill or report should be made out, giving the different causes which have led to the act." Among others, in his proposed "Bill of Suicide," he gives French claret, French lace, French cooks, etc.

The men, though scarcely coming up to the standard of Sir Courtly Nice,[1052] who has all his bands and linen made in Holland and washed at Haarlem, were just as extravagant as the ladies.

{354}GEORGE II.

"'How well this ribband's glass becomes your face,'
She cries in rapture; 'then so sweet a lace!
How charmingly you look!'"
--Lady M. W. Montagu. _Town Eclogues._

For court and state occasions Brussels lace still held its sway.

In the reign of George II. we read how, at the drawing-room of 1735, fine escalloped Brussels laced heads, triple ditto laced ruffles,[1053] lappets hooked up with diamond solitaires, found favour. At the next the ladies wore heads dressed English, _i.e._, bow of fine Brussels lace of exceeding rich patterns, with the same amount of laced ruffles and lappets. Gold flounces were also worn.

Speaking of the passion for Brussels lace, Postlethwait indignantly observes:--"'Tis but a few years since England expended upon foreign lace and linen not less than two millions yearly. As lace in particular is the manufacture of nuns, our British ladies may as well endow monasteries as wear Flanders lace, for these Popish nuns are maintained by Protestant contributions."[1054]

Patriotism, it would appear, did come into vogue in the year 1736, when at the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the bride is described as wearing a night-dress of superb lace, the bridegroom a cap of similar material. All the laces worn by the court on this occasion are announced to have been of English manufacture, with the exception of that of the Duke of Marlborough, who appeared in point d'Espagne. The bride, however, does not profit by this high example, for shortly after we read, in the _Memoirs of Madame Palatine_, of the secretary of Sir Luke Schaub being drugged at Paris by an impostor, and robbed of some money sent to defray the purchase of some French lace ruffles for the Princess of Wales.

{355}It was of native-made laces, we may infer, Mrs. Delany writes in the same year:--"Thanks for your apron. Brussels nor Mechlin ever produced anything prettier."

It appears somewhat strange that patriotism, as regards native manufactures, should have received an impulse during the reign of that most uninteresting though gallant little monarch, the second George of Brunswick.[1055] But patriotism has its evils, for, writes an essayist, "some ladies now squander away all their money in fine laces, because it sets a great many poor people to work."[1056]

Ten years previous to the death of King George II. was founded, with a view to correct the prevalent taste for foreign manufactures,[1057] the Society of Anti-Gallicans, who held their quarterly meetings, and distributed prizes for bone, point lace, and other articles of English manufacture.[1058]

This society, which continued in great activity for many years, proved most beneficial to the lace-making trade. It excited also a spirit of emulation among gentlewomen of the middle class, who were glad in the course of the year to add to a small income by making the finer kinds of needle-point, which, on account of their elaborate workmanship, could be produced only in foreign convents or by {356}persons whose maintenance did not entirely depend upon the work of their hands.

Towards the year 1756 certain changes in the fashion of the day now again mark the period, for--

"Dress still varying, most to form confined,
Shifts like the sands, the sport of every wind."

"Long lappets, the horse-shoe cap, the Brussels head, and the prudish mob pinned under the chin, have all had their day," says the _Connoisseur_ in 1754. Now we have first mention of lace cardinals; trollopies or slammerkins[1059] come in at the same period, with treble ruffles to the cuffs; writers talk, too, of a "gentle dame in blonde lace," blonde being as yet a newly-introduced manufacture.

Though history may only be all false,[1060] as Sir Robert Walpole said to that "cynic in lace ruffles," his son Horace, yet the newspapers are to be depended upon for the fashion of the day, or, as Lady Mary would say, "for what new whim adorns the ruffle."[1061]

The lace apron,[1062] worn since the days of Queen Elizabeth, continued to hold its own till the end of the eighteenth century, though some considered it an appendage scarcely consistent with the dignity of polite society. The anecdote of Beau Nash, who held these articles in the strongest aversion, has been often related. "He absolutely excluded," says his biographer, "all who ventured to appear at the Assembly Room at Bath so attired. I have known him at a ball night strip the Duchess of Queensberry, and throw her apron on one of the hinder benches among the ladies' women, observing that none but Abigails appeared in white aprons; though that apron was of the costliest point, and cost two hundred guineas."[1063]

{357}George II. did his best to promote the fabrics of his country, but at this period smuggling increased with fearful rapidity. It was a war to the knife between the revenue officer and society at large: all classes combined, town ladies of high degree with waiting-maids and the common sailor, to avoid the obnoxious duties and cheat the Government. To this subject we devote the following chapter.

{358}CHAPTER XXVII.

SMUGGLING.

"May that mistaken taste be starv'd to reason,
That does not think French fashions--English treason.
Souse their cook's talent, and cut short their tailors;
Wear your own lace; eat beef like Vernon's sailors."
--Aaron Hill. 1754.

We have had occasional mention of this kindly-looked-upon offence, in the carrying out of which many a reckless seaman paid the penalty of his life in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

From 1700 downwards, though the edicts prohibiting the entry of Flanders lace were repealed, the points of France, Spain and Venice, with other fabrics of note, were still excluded from our ports. "England," writes Anderson,[1064] "brings home in a smuggling way from France much fine lace and other prohibited fopperies." Prohibition went for nothing; foreign lace ladies would have, and if they could not smuggle it themselves, the smuggler brought it to them. It was not till 1751 that the Customs appear to have used undue severity as regards the entries, prying into people's houses, and exercising a surveillance of so strict a nature as to render the chance to evade their watchfulness a very madness on the part of all degrees. In short, there was not a female within ten miles of a seaport, writes an essayist, that was in possession of a Mechlin lace cap or pinner but they examined her title to it.

Lord Chesterfield, whose opinion that "dress is a very silly thing, but it is much more silly not to be dressed according to your station," was more than acted up to, referring to the strictness of the Customs, writes to his son {359}in 1751, when coming over on a short visit: "Bring only two or three of your laced shirts, and the rest plain ones."

The revenue officers made frequent visits to the tailors' shops, and confiscated whatever articles they found of foreign manufacture.

On January 19th, 1752, a considerable quantity of foreign lace, gold and silver, seized at a tailor's, who paid the penalty of £100, was publicly burnt.[1065]

George III., who really from his coming to the throne endeavoured to protect English manufactures, ordered, in 1764, all the stuffs and laces worn at the marriage of his sister, the Princess Augusta, to the Duke of Brunswick, to be of English manufacture. To this decree the nobility paid little attention. Three days previous to the marriage a descent was made by the Customs on the court milliner of the day, and nearly the whole of the clothes, silver, gold stuffs and lace, carried off, to the dismay of the modiste, as well as of the ladies deprived of their finery. The disgusted French milliner retired with a fortune of £11,000 to Versailles, where she purchased a villa, which, in base ingratitude to the English court, she called "La Folie des Dames Anglaises." In May of the same year three wedding garments, together with a large seizure of French lace, weighing nearly 100 lbs., were burnt at Mr. Coxe's refinery, conformably to the Act of Parliament. The following birthday, warned by the foregoing mischances, the nobility appeared in clothes and laces entirely of British manufacture.

Every paper tells how lace and ruffles of great value, sold on the previous day, had been seized in a hackney coach, between St. Paul's and Covent Garden; how a lady of rank was stopped in her chair and relieved of French lace to a large amount; or how a poor woman, carelessly picking a quartern loaf as she walked along, was arrested, and the loaf found to contain £200 worth of lace. Even ladies when walking had their black lace mittens cut off their hands, the officers supposing them to be of French manufacture; and lastly, a Turk's turban, of most Mameluke dimensions, was found, containing a stuffing of £90 worth of lace. Books, {360}bottles, babies, false-bottomed boxes, umbrellas, daily poured out their treasures to the lynx-eyed officers.

In May, 1765, the lace-makers joined the procession of the silk-workers of Spitalfields to Westminster, bearing flags and banners, to which were attached long floating pieces of French lace, demanding of the Lords redress, and the total exclusion of foreign goods. On receiving an answer that it was too late, they must wait till next Session, the assemblage declared that they would not be put off by promises; they broke the Duke of Bedford's palings on their way home, and threatened to burn the premises of Mr. Carr, an obnoxious draper. At the next levée they once more assembled before St. James's, but, finding the dresses of the nobility to be all of right English stuff, retired satisfied, without further clamour.

The papers of the year 1764 teem with accounts of seizures made by the Customs. Among the confiscated effects of a person of the highest quality are enumerated: "16 black à-la-mode cloaks, trimmed with lace; 44 French lace caps; 11 black laced handkerchiefs; 6 lace hats; 6 ditto aprons; 10 pairs of ruffles; 6 pairs of ladies' blonde ditto, and 25 gentlemen's." Eleven yards of edging and 6 pairs of ruffles are extracted from the pocket of the footman. Everybody smuggled. A gentleman attached to the Spanish Embassy is unloaded of 36 dozen shirts, with fine Dresden ruffles and jabots, and endless lace, in pieces, for ladies' wear. These articles had escaped the vigilance of the officers at Dover, but were seized on his arrival by the coach at Southwark. Though Prime Ministers in those days accepted bribes, the Custom-house officers seem to have done their duty.[1066]

When the body of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire was brought over from France, where he died, the officers, to the anger of his servants, not content with opening and searching the coffin, poked the corpse with a stick to ascertain if it was a real body; but the trick of smuggling in coffins was too {361}old to be attempted. Forty years before, when a deceased clergyman was conveyed from the Low Countries for interment, the body of the corpse was found to have disappeared, and to have been replaced by Flanders lace of immense value--the head and hands and feet alone remaining. This discovery did not, however, prevent the High Sheriff of Westminster from running--and that successfully--£6,000 worth of French lace in the coffin of Bishop Atterbury,[1067] when his body was brought over from Calais for interment.

Towards the close of the French war, in the nineteenth century, smuggling of lace again became more rife than ever. It was in vain the authorities stopped the travelling carriages on their road from seaport towns to London, rifled the baggage of the unfortunate passengers by the mail at Rochester and Canterbury; they were generally outwitted, though spies in the pay of the Customs were ever on the watch.

Mrs. Palliser had in her possession a Brussels veil of great beauty, which narrowly escaped seizure. It belonged to a lady who was in the habit of accompanying her husband, for many years member for one of the Cinque Ports. The day after the election she was about to leave for London, somewhat nervous as to the fate of a Brussels veil she had purchased of a smuggler for a hundred guineas; when, at a dinner-party, it was announced that Lady Ellenborough, wife of the Lord Chief Justice, had been stopped near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable lace seized concealed in the lining of her carriage. Dismayed at the news, the lady imparted her trouble to a gentleman at her side, who immediately offered to take charge of the lace and convey it to London, remarking that "no one would suspect him, as he was a bachelor." Turning round suddenly, she observed one of the hired waiters to smile, and at once settling him to be a spy, she loudly accepted the offer; but that night, before going to bed, secretly caused the veil to be sewn up in the waistcoat of the newly-elected M.P., in such a manner that it filled the hollow of his back. Next morning they started, and reached London in safety, while her friend, who remained two days later, was stopped, and underwent {362}a rigorous but unsuccessful examination from the Customhouse officers.

The free trade principles of the nineteenth century put a more effectual stop to smuggling than all the activity of revenue officers, spies, and informers, or even laws framed for the punishment of the offenders.

{363}CHAPTER XXVIII.

GEORGE III.

"In clothes, cheap handsomeness doth bear the bell,
Wisdome's a trimmer thing than shop e'er gave.
Say not then, This with that lace will do well;
But, This with my discretion will be brave.
Much curiousnesse is a perpetual wooing,
Nothing with labour, fully long a doing."
--Herbert, "The Church Porch."

In 1760 commences the reign of George III. The King was patriotic, and did his best to encourage the fabrics of his country.

From the year 1761 various Acts were passed for the benefit of the lace-makers: the last, that of 1806, "increases the duties on foreign laces."[1068]

Queen Charlotte, on her first landing in England, wore, in compliment to the subjects of her royal consort, a fly cap richly trimmed, with lappets of British lace, and a dress of similar manufacture.

The Englishman, however, regardless of the Anti-Gallicans, preferred his "Macklin" and his Brussels to all the finest productions of Devonshire or Newport-Pagnel.

Ruffles,[1069] according to the fashion of Tavistock Street and St. James's, in May, 1773, still continued long, dipped in the sauce alike by clown and cavalier.[1070]

"The beau,
A critic styled in point of dress,
Harangues on fashion, point, and lace."

{364}A man was known by his "points"; he collected lace, as, in these more athletic days, a gentleman prides himself on his pointers or his horses. We read in the journals of the time how, on the day after Lord George Gordon's riots, a report ran through London that the Earl of Effingham, having joined the rioters, had been mortally wounded, and his body thrown into the Thames. He had been recognised, folks declared, by his point lace ruffles.[1071]

Mr. Damer, less known than his wife, the talented sculptor and friend of Horace Walpole, appeared three times a day in a new suit, and at his death[1072] left a wardrobe which sold for £15,000.[1073] Well might it have been said of him--

"We sacrifice to dress, till household joys
And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellars dry,
And keeps our larder bare; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and woe,
Where peace and hospitality might reign."[1074]

There was "no difference between the nobleman and city 'prentice, except that the latter was sometimes the greater beau," writes the _Female Spectator_.[1075]

"His hands must be covered with fine Brussels lace."[1076]

Painters of the eighteenth century loved to adorn their portraits with the finest fabrics of Venice and Flanders; modern artists consider such decorations as far too much trouble. "Over the chimney-piece," writes one of the essayists, describing a citizen's country box, "was my friend's portrait, which was drawn bolt upright in a full-bottomed periwig, a laced cravat, with the fringed ends appearing through the button-hole (Steinkirk fashion). Indeed, one would almost wonder how and where people managed to afford so rich a selection of laces in their days, did it not call to mind the demand of the Vicaress of Wakefield 'to have as many pearls and diamonds put into her picture as could be given for the money.'"

{365}Ruffles were equally worn by the ladies:--[1077]

"Frizzle your elbows with ruffles sixteen;
Furl off your lawn apron with flounces in rows."[1078]

Indeed, if we may judge by the intellectual conversation overheard and accurately noted down by Miss Burney,[1079] at Miss Monckton's (Lady Cork) party, court ruffles were inconvenient to wear:--

"'You can't think how I am encumbered with these nasty ruffles,' said Mrs. Hampden.

"'And I dined in them,' says the other. 'Only think!'

"'Oh!' answered Mrs. Hampden, 'it really puts me out of spirits.'"

Both ladies were dressed for a party at Cumberland House, and ill at ease in the costume prescribed by etiquette.

About 1770 the sleeves of the ladies' dresses were tight on the upper arm, where they suddenly became very large, and, drooping at the elbow, they terminated in rich fringes of lace ruffles. A few years later the sleeves expanded from the shoulders till they became a succession of constantly enlarging ruffles and lappets, and again, before 1780, they became tight throughout, with small cuffs and no lace at the elbows, when they were worn with long gloves.

Our history of English lace is now drawing to a close; but, before quitting the subject, we must, however, make some allusion to the custom prevalent here, as in all countries, of using lace as a decoration to grave-clothes. In the chapter devoted to Greece, we have mentioned how much lace is still taken from the tombs of the Ionian Islands, washed, mended, or, more often, as a proof of its authenticity, sold in a most disgusting state to the purchaser. The custom was prevalent at Malta, as the lines of Beaumont and Fletcher testify:--

"In her best habit, as the custom is,
You know, in Malta, with all ceremonies,
She's buried in the family monument,
I' the temple of St. John."[1080]

{366}At Palermo you may see the mummies thus adorned in the celebrated catacombs of the Capuchin convent.[1081]

In Denmark,[1082] Sweden, and the north of Europe[1083] the custom was general. The mass of lace in the tomb of the once fair Aurora Königsmarck, at Quedlenburg, would in itself be a fortune. She sleeps clad in the richest point d'Angleterre, Malines, and guipure. Setting aside the jewels which still glitter around her parchment form, no daughter of Pharaoh was ever so richly swathed.[1084]

In Spain it is related as the privilege of a grandee: all people of a lower rank are interred in the habit of some religious order.[1085]

Taking the grave-clothes of St. Cuthbert as an example, we believe the same custom to have prevailed in England from the earliest times.[1086]

{367}Mrs. Oldfield, the celebrated actress, who died in 1730, caused herself to be thus interred. The lines of Pope have long since immortalised the story:--

"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!
(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.)
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face;
One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead--
And--Betty--give this cheek a little red."

"She was laid in her coffin," says her maid, "in a very fine Brussels lace head, a Holland shift with a tucker of double ruffles, and a pair of new kid gloves." Previous to her interment in Westminster Abbey she lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber.[1087] For Mrs. Oldfield in her lifetime was a great judge of lace, and treasured a statuette of the Earl of Stratford, finely carved in ivory by Grinling Gibbons, more, it is supposed, for the beauty of its lace Vandyke collar[1088] than any other sentiment.

In 1763 another instance is recorded in the _London Magazine_ of a young lady buried in her wedding clothes, point lace tucker, handkerchief, ruffles and apron; also a fine point lappet head. From this period we happily hear no more of such extravagances.

Passing from interments and shrouds to more lively matters, we must quote the opinion of that Colossus of the eighteenth century, Dr. Johnson, who was too apt to talk on matters of taste and art, of which he was no competent judge. "A Brussels trimming," he declaims to Mrs. Piozzi, "is like bread sauce; it takes away the glow of colour from the gown, and gives you nothing instead of it: but sauce was invented to heighten the flavour of our food, and trimming is an ornament to the manteau or it is nothing."[1089] A man whose culinary ideas did not soar higher than bread sauce could scarcely pronounce on the relative effect and beauty of point lace.

If England had leant towards the products of France, in {368}1788, an Anglomania ran riot at Paris. Ladies wore a cap of mixed lace, English and French, which they styled the "Union of France and England." On the appearance of the French Revolution, the classic style of dress--its India muslins and transparent gauzes--caused the ancient points to fall into neglect. From this time dates the decline of the lace fabric throughout Europe.

Point still appeared at court and on state occasions, such as on the marriage of the Princess Caroline of Wales, 1795, but as an article of daily use it gradually disappeared from the wardrobes of all classes. A scrupulous feeling also arose in ladies' minds as to the propriety of wearing articles of so costly a nature, forgetting how many thousands of women gained a livelihood by its manufacture. Mrs. Hannah More, among the first, in her _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_, alludes to the frivolity of the taste, when the little child exclaiming "at the beautiful lace with which the frock of another was trimmed, and which she was sure her mamma had given her for being good," remarks, "A profitable and, doubtless, lasting and inseparable association was thus formed in the child's mind between lace and goodness."

Whether in consequence of the French Revolution, or from the caprice of fashion, "real" lace--worse off than the passements and points of 1634, when in revolt--now underwent the most degrading vicissitudes. Indeed, so thoroughly was the taste for lace at this epoch gone by, that in many families collections of great value were, at the death of their respective owners, handed over as rubbish to the waiting maid.[1090] Many ladies recollect in their youth to have tricked out their dolls in the finest Alençon point, which would now sell at a price far beyond their purses. Among the few who, in England, unseduced by frippery blonde, never neglected to preserve their collections entire, was the Duchess of {369}Gloucester, whose lace was esteemed among the most magnificent in Europe.

When the taste of the age again turned towards the rich fabrics of the preceding centuries, much lace, both black and white, was found in the country farm-houses, preserved as remembrances of deceased patrons by old family dependants. Sometimes the hoard had been forgotten, and was again routed out from old wardrobes and chests, where it had lain unheeded for years. Much was recovered from theatrical wardrobes and the masquerade shops, and the Church, no longer in its temporal glory, both in Italy, Spain and Germany, gladly parted with what, to them, was of small value compared with the high price given for it by amateurs. In Italy perhaps the finest fabrics of Milan, Genoa, and Venice had fared best, from the custom which prevailed of sewing up family lace in rolls of linen to ensure its preservation.

After years of neglect lace became a "mania." In England the literary ladies were the first to take it up. Sydney Lady Morgan and Lady Stepney quarrelled weekly on the respective value and richness of their points. The former at one time commenced a history of the lace fabric, though what was the ultimate fate of the MS. the author is unable to state. The Countess of Blessington, at her death, left several chests filled with the finest antique lace of all descriptions.

The "dames du grand monde," both in England and France, now began to wear lace. But, strange as it may seem, never at any period did they appear to so little advantage as during the counter-revolution of the lace period. Lace was the fashion, and wear it somehow they would, though that somehow often gave them an appearance, as the French say, _du dernier ridicule_, simply from an ignorance displayed in the manner of arranging it. That lace was old seemed sufficient to satisfy all parties. They covered their dresses with odds and ends of all fabrics, without attention either to date or texture. One English lady appeared at a ball given by the French Embassy at Rome, boasting that she wore on the tablier of her dress every description of lace, from point coupé of the fifteenth to Alençon of the eighteenth century. The Count of Syracuse was accustomed to say: "The English ladies buy a scrap {370}of lace as a souvenir of every town they pass through, till they reach Naples, then sew it on their dresses, and make one grande toilette of the whole to honour our first ball at the Academia Nobile."

The taste for lace has again become universal, and the quality now produced renders it within the reach of all classes of society; and though by some the taste may be condemned, it gives employment to thousands and ten thousands of women, who find it more profitable and better adapted to their strength than the field labour which forms the occupation of the women in agricultural districts. To these last, in a general point of view, the lace-maker of our southern counties, who works at home in her own cottage, is superior, both in education, refinement, and morality:--

"Here the needle plies its busy task;
The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower,
Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn,
Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs,
And curling tendrils, gracefully dispos'd,
Follow the nimble fingers of the fair--
A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that blow
With most success when all besides decay."[1091]

{371}CHAPTER XXIX.

THE LACE MANUFACTURERS OF ENGLAND.

"Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store;
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,
Shuffling her threads about the livelong day:
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light."--Cowper.

The bone lace manufactures of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have extended over a much wider area than they occupy in the present day. From Cambridge to the adjacent counties of Northampton and Hertfordshire, by Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire, the trade spread over the southern counties[1092] of Wiltshire, Somersetshire,[1093] Hampshire, and Dorset, to the more secluded valleys of Devon--the county which still sustains the ancient reputation of "English point"--terminating at Launceston, on the Cornish coast.

Various offsets from these fabrics were established in Wales.[1094] Ripon,[1095] an isolated manufactory, represented the {372}lace industry of York; while the dependent islands of Man,[1096] Wight[1097] and Jersey,[1098] may be supposed to have derived their learning from the smugglers who frequented their coast, rather than from the teaching of the Protestant refugees[1099] who sought an asylum on the shores of Britain.

Many of these fabrics now belong to the past, consigned to oblivion even in the very counties where they once flourished. In describing, therefore, the lace manufactures of the United Kingdom, we shall confine ourselves to those which still remain, alluding only slightly to such as were {373}once of note, and of which the existence is confirmed by the testimony of contemporary writers.

The "women of the mystery of thread-working" would appear to have made lace in London,[1100] and of their complaints and grievances our public records bear goodly evidence. Of the products of their needle we know little or nothing.

Various Flemings and Burgundians established themselves in the City; and though the emigrants, for the most part, betook themselves to the adjoining counties, the craft, till the end of the eighteenth century, may be said to have held fair commerce in the capital.

RIPON.]

The London fabric can scarcely be looked upon as a staple trade in itself, mixed up as it was with lace-cleaning and lace-washing--an occupation first established by the ejected nuns.[1101] Much point, too, was made by poor gentlewomen, as the records of the Anti-Gallican Society testify. "A strange infatuation," says a writer of the eighteenth century, "prevailed in the capital for many years among the class called demi-fashionables of sending their daughters to convents in France for education, if that could be so termed which amounted to a learning to work in lace. The Revolution, however, put {374}an end to this practice." It is owing to this French education that the fine needle points were so extensively made in England; though this occupation, however, did not seem to belong to any one county in particular; for the reader who runs his eye over the proceedings of the Anti-Gallican Society will find prizes to have been awarded to gentlewomen from all parts--from the town of Leominster in Herefordshire to Broughton in Leicestershire, or Stourton in Gloucester.[1102] Needle point, in contradistinction to bone lace, was an occupation confined to no special locality.

In 1764 the attention of the nobility seems to have been first directed towards the employment of the indigent poor, and, indeed, the better classes in the metropolis, in the making of bone lace and point;[1103] and in 1775, sanctioned by the patronage of Queen Charlotte, the Princesses, the Princess Amelia, and various members of the aristocracy, an institution was formed in Marylebone Lane, and also in James Street, Westminster, "for employing the female infants of the poor in the blond and black silk lace-making and thread laces." More than 300 girls attended the school. "They gave," says the _Annual Register_, "such a proof of their capacity that many who had not been there more than six months carried home to their parents from 5s. to 7s. a month, with expectation of getting more as they improve."

From this time we hear no more of the making of lace, either point or bone, in the metropolis.

PLATE LXXXV.

_To face page 374._

{375}CHAPTER XXX.

BEDFORDSHIRE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, AND NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.[1104]

----

BEDFORDSHIRE.

"He wears a stuff whose thread is coarse and round
But trimmed with curious lace."--Herbert.

It would be a difficult matter now to determine when and by whom lace-making was first introduced into the counties of Bedfordshire and Buckingham. Authors, for the most part, have been glad to assign its introduction to the Flemings,[1105] a nation to whose successive emigrations England owes much of her manufacturing greatness. Originally the laces were of old, wavy, graceful Flemish designs.