Habits and men, with remnants of record touching the makers of both

The Jews were undoubtedly an ill-fated people. In London, in the olden time, whenever any class had a grievance, the work of redress was commenced by slaying the Hebrews. In the reign of Henry III. the municipality of London and a portion of the nobility were dreadfully incensed against Queen Eleanor; and to show their indignation, they not only plundered and murdered scores of common Israelites, but the City Marshal and Baron Fitz-John repaired to the residence of Kok ben Abraham, the wealthiest Hebrew in the city, where the noble lord ran his sword through the body of the child of the synagogue, laughing the while as if the jest were a good one. Certainly, this was a strange method of showing a political bias; and it would be no jest now if Lord Winchelsea, for instance, angry at the desire of the Crown to admit Jews into Parliament, were to rush down to the city and plunge his paper-cutter into the diaphragm of poor Baron Rothschild.

In the case above alluded to, not only were some four hundred of the devoted race robbed and killed, but the mob, satiated with savagery, determined to wind up their well-spent evening with a frolic. Accordingly they turned out of their beds all the Jews, of various ages and both sexes, and compelled them to walk the streets throughout the entire night, with nothing on but their “bed-gowns.” This was scant dress enough in those times, and there was no active police to afford the victims protection. I notice this incident, because it comes fairly under the head of costume. I think, moreover, that all the police in the city at the present time would be puzzled what to do, were the last night of an election, returning “Sir Solomon” at the head of the poll, to be signalled out by a riot, the climax of which presented all the Levys, Goldschmidts, Isaacs, and Marx, of “Simmery Axe,”—wives and husbands, sons and daughters,—compulsorily parading through Cheapside in their night-gear. Between the blushes of Miss Tryphena Levy, and the indignation of Mr. Penuel Isaacs her admirer, the gallant and loud-laughing Division X. would hardly know which victim to succour first. Such a cortège however would probably bring into fashion the “bonnets de nuit à la Juive.”

Our gallant knights of old thought it no degradation to receive clothes at the hands of the king. When Henry IV. dubbed some four dozen the day before his coronation, he made presents to all of long green coats, with tight sleeves, furred, and verdant hoods: the cavaliers must have looked like cucumbers. The sumptuary laws of this reign had this additional severity in them, that they decreed imprisonment during the King’s pleasure against any tailor who should dare to make for a commoner a costume above his degree. The tailors, like wise men, did not ask their customers whether they were gentle or simple; and burghers dressed as before, more splendidly than barons.

There was this difference between the two wretched monarchs, John and Richard III. John was curious about his wife’s dress, and careless touching his own; whereas Richard (who was not half so bad as history and Mr. C. Kean represent him) was perhaps the most superbly royal dandy that ever sat on an English throne: George IV. was the mere Dandini to that Prince Ramiro. Henry VII., again, was utterly void of taste, and seems to have wanted a nurse more than a valet.

The author of the ‘Boke of Kervynge’ says to the “proper officer” of this king, in a sort of advice to servants, “Warme your soveregne his petticotte, his doublet, and his stomacher, and then put on hys hozen, and then hys schose or slyppers; then stryten up hys hozen mannerly, tye them up, and lace his doublet hole by hole.”

We have an illustration of the national feeling with regard to dress in Henry VIII.’s time, in the story of Drake, the cordwainer.

John Drake, the Norwich shoemaker, was resolved to dress, for once, like a knight; and accordingly he betook himself to Sir Philip Calthrop’s tailor, and seeing some fine French tawney cloth lying there, which the cavalier had sent to have made into a gown,—gentlemen then, as now, it seems, sometimes found “their own materials,”—the aspiring Crispin ordered a gown of the same stuff and fashion. The knight, on calling at the tailor’s, saw the two parcels of “materials,” and inquired as to the proprietary of the second. “The stuff,” said the master, “is John Drake’s, the Norwich shoemaker, who will have a gown of the same fashion as your valiant worship.” “Will he so?” asked proud Sir Philip; “then fashion mine as full of cuts as thy shears can make it, and let the two be alike, as ordered.” He was obeyed; but when John Drake looked wonderingly upon his aristocratic garment, and saw the peculiar mode thereof, and was moreover told the reason therefor, he rubbed his bullet-head vexedly, and remarked, “By my latchet, an it be so John Drake will never ask for gentleman’s fashion again.”

I have spoken in my ‘Table Traits’ of how a French knight gained a livelihood by making salads; I may notice here that a Flemish frau, Dingham van der Plafze, did the same by starching ruffs in London, in Queen Elizabeth’s time. She gave lessons to the nobility at four or five pounds the course for each pupil, and an additional pound for showing them how to make the starch. The nobility of course patronized her; being a foreigner, the duchesses accounted her “divine.” People of the commonalty, with as much wisdom, esteemed her as a devil; and starch itself was looked upon as a sort of devil’s broth. The women who wore ruffs were looked upon as anything but respectable; and the men who placed around the neck the “monstrous ruff, of twelve, yea sixteen, lengths apiece, set three or four times double,” were accounted of as having made “three steps and a half to the gallows.”

James I., and his subjects who wished to clothe themselves loyally, wore stupendous breeches. Of course the “honourable gentlemen” of the House of Commons were necessarily followers of the fashion. But it led to inconveniences in the course of their senatorial duties. It was an old mode revived; and at an earlier day, when these nether garments were ample enough to have covered the lower man of Boanerges, the comfort of the popular representatives was thus cared for:—“Over the seats in the parliament-house, there were certain holes, some two inches square, in the walls, in which were placed posts to uphold a scaffold round about the house within, for them to sit upon who used the wearing of great breeches stuffed with hair like wool-sacks, which fashion being left the eighth year of Elizabeth, the scaffolds were taken down, and never since put up.” So says Strutt; but doubtless the comforts of the members were not less cared for when the old fashion again prevailed. The honourable gentlemen must have looked as if they were worshipping Cloacina rather than propitiating the god of Eloquence.

“When Sir Peter Wych,” says Bulwer, in his ‘Pedigree of an English Gallant,’ “was sent ambassador to the Grand Seigneur, from James I., his lady accompanied him to Constantinople, and the Sultaness having heard much of her, desired to see her; whereupon Lady Wych, attended by her waiting-women, all of them dressed in their great vardingales, which was the court dress of the English ladies of that time, waited upon her highness. The Sultaness received her visitors with great respect; but, struck with the extraordinary extension of the hips of the whole party, seriously inquired if that shape was peculiar to the natural formation of Englishwomen; and Lady Wych was obliged to explain the whole mystery of the dress, in order to convince her that she and her companions were not really so deformed as they appeared to be.” Lady Wych probably did not look more astounding to the Turks than the Marchioness of Londonderry did to those of some thirty years ago, when she traversed the courts of the Sultan’s palace in the full undress of a lady of the “Regent’s Drawing Room.” Both these ladies were ambassadresses, and they remind me of the English nobleman in the reign of Anne, who was informed that he had been appointed representative of his sovereign at the court of the Sultan. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “I can never undertake it, I should look so absurd and awkward in women’s clothes!” He seriously thought that to represent his mistress he must be dressed as she was! But I shall say more of Anne hereafter. I have here to exhibit Oliver; Charles, as we all know, was a gentleman, at all events in dress. In that respect Cromwell differed from him.

“The first time that I ever took notice of Oliver Cromwell,” says Sir Philip Warwick, “was in the beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman, for we courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes. I came one morning into the house well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar. His hat was without a hatband; his stature was of good size; his sword stuck close to his side.” Altogether it is clear that Oliver was a trifle slovenly, and sometimes unsteady enough of hand to cut himself when shaving.

About the year 1660-1, we find our old friend Mr. Pepys gradually soaring in the sky of fashion. He had been content with camlet, then he gets him a suit of cloth with broad skirts, and adds the unheard-of atrocity of rakish buckles to his shoes. Subsequently he enshrines his little person in silk; ultimately rises to the dignity of a velvet coat; and on a “Lord’s Day,” in February, he writes down that “this day I first began to go forth in my coate and sword, as the manner now among gentlemen is.” “Among gentlemen!” quotha; and his sire the tailor was yet alive, and his cousin Tom Pepys was an honest turner, and sold mousetraps!

A velvet coat was not for every-day wear by a clerk in the Admiralty, and Pepys had his by him a full half-year before he had the heart to surprise the world and gratify himself by the wearing of it. Nor could Peers walk every day in velvet and embroidery in Coleman-street, seeing that the cost of a suit was not under £200. They were content to go occasionally like the King at the Council Board—in a plain common riding-suit and a velvet cap;—not half so fine as the livery of Pepys’s own boy, “which is very handsome, and I do think to keep the black and gold lace upon grey, being the colour of my arms, for ever.” The “colour of his arms!” This reminds me of the rejoinder of Russell, the porter at the old Piazza, who, on being asked if his coat-of-arms was the same as that of the Duke of Bedford, replied that as for their arms they might be pretty well alike, but that there was a deal of difference between their coats!

Pepys was however as proud as a popinjay, as the manner then among gentlemen was; and his man Will imitated his master. Tel maître, tel valet. See what he says of an occurrence which he notices on “Lord’s Day,” June 8, 1662. “Home, and observe my man Will to walk with his cloak flung over his shoulder, which, whether it was that he might not be seen to walk along with the footboy, I knew not, but I was vexed at it; and coming home, and after prayers, I did ask him where he learned that immodest garb; and he answered me that it was not immodest, or some such slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the eares, which I never did before.” But the transgressor forgot his fault, in his gratification a few Sundays after in going to church with his wife,—“who this day put on her green petticoate of flowred sattin, with the white and black gimp lace of her own putting on, which is very pretty.” I fear that our ancestors thought as much upon matters of dress at church as any of their descendants. To what an extent this feeling was carried may be seen in the case of Pepys, who, seeing Captain Holmes in his pew in a new gold-laced suit, was so chagrined that a disquisition upon damnation failed to put him into spirits. The feelings of both husband and wife were very sensitive touching costume; for does he not tell us, on one occasion, that on a certain visit being paid them, they “were ashamed that she should be seen in a taffeta gown when all the world wears moyre”?

The gentleman’s eyes indeed had just been regaled by a sight of the “Russian Embassador,”—“in the richest suit for pearl and tissue that ever I did see.” The envoy appears to have been an exceedingly well-dressed barbarian; and the Muscovite officials of our own day are in no respect behind him. Felony and mendacity would seem to be accounted of as péchés mignons by those gentlemen who wear polished boots and profess honest principles, with coats like Count d’Orsay’s, and hearts beneath them like Jack Sheppard’s. After all, the pearl and tissue of the Russ was not half so tasteful as Lord Sandwich’s “gold-buttoned suit, as the mode is;” and Pepys took to the fashion, buying fine clothes, and half afraid to wear them, yet rejoicing that he is not now “for want of them, forced to sneak like a beggar.” A camlet suit for common wear then cost him four-and-twenty pounds! But Pepys had fits of extravagance as well as economy. The former however were generally born of patriotism: witness his buying “a coloured silk ferrandin suit, for joy of the good news we have lately had of our victory over the Dutch.”

About the time above specified, the Court of Spain was remarkable for its gravity of dress. The king and grandees wore simple mantles of Colchester baize; and in winter, the mantles of the señoras were of no more costly material than white flannel. Thereupon English and Dutch handicraftsmen repaired to Madrid, in order to establish a manufactory of these articles. The men engaged were sober, religious men; and they had with them Psalters and Testaments, and they were given to be glad in spiritual songs, and to solace their weariness with a refreshing draught from the Gospels. Thereupon the Inquisition fell upon them, destroyed their houses, and imprisoned the workmen. Had these been Atheists, the “Holy Office” would not have molested them in their manufactory of baizes and flannels; but as they dared to worship God in sincerity of heart and independence of mind, the Cahills and Wisemans of the pure and enlightened Peninsula ruined them in bodily estate, and sent their souls to Gehenna.

Louis XIV. was quite as arbitrary and absurd on a matter of fashion. Charles II. of England was the inventor of the “vest dress.” It consisted of a long cassock which fitted close to the body, of black cloth, “pinked” with white silk under it, and a coat over all; the legs were ruffled with black ribbon, like a pigeon’s leg; and the white silk piercing the black made the wearers look, as Charles himself confessed, very much like magpies. But all the world put it on, because it had been fashioned by a monarch; and gay men thought it exquisite, and grave men pronounced it “comely and manly.” Charles declared he would never alter it, while his courtiers “gave him gold by way of wagers, that he would not persist in his resolution.” Louis XIV. showed his contempt for the new mode and the maker of it, by ordering all his footmen to be put into vests. This caused great indignation in England, but it had a marked effect in another way: for Charles and our aristocracy, not caring to look like French footmen, soon abandoned the new costume.

This reminds me of a foolish interference of Louis XVI. in a matter of dress. In the days of our grandfathers there was nothing so fashionable for summer wear as nankeen. No gentleman would be seen abroad or at home in a dress of which this material did not go to the making of a portion; and as we ever fixed the fashion on questions of male costume, the mode was adopted in France, and English nankeens threatened to drive all French manufactured articles of summer wear out of the market. The king however surmounted the difficulty: he ordered all the executioners and their assistants to perform their terrible office in no other dress but one of nankeen. This rendered the material “infamous;” and many a man who deserved to be hanged, discarded the suit because a similar one was worn by the man who did the hanging. So Mrs. Turner, the poisoner, being executed in the reign of James I. in a yellow starched ruff, put to death the fashion of wearing them.

Picturesqueness of costume went out with chivalry; and few things could be uglier than an Englishman of James the Second’s or of William and Mary’s days, except an Englishman of our own tight and buttoned period.

A hundred years ago it would have been unsafe to have sold a plaid waistcoat in either Rag Fair or Houndsditch. In 1752 Mr. Thornton said in the House of Commons, that “he believed it true, plaid waistcoats had been worn by some wrong heads in the country; but in the parts where he lived he saw no occasion for an army to correct them” (he was speaking against a standing army), “for some that had attempted to wear them had been heartily thrashed for doing so.” In the same year it is worthy of remark that we were exporting gold and silver bullion to the Continent; not indeed at the rate at which we are now importing it, especially the former, but still in quantities that seem almost incredible. The metal-import question as it stood then excites a smile in those who read it now. For example, among the current news given by our juvenile friend, Sylvanus Urban, in his volume for 1752, we learn that “a parcel of waistcoats embroidered with foreign gold and silver (which were lately seized at a tailor’s house, who must pay the penalty of £100, pursuant to Act of Parliament), were publicly burnt in presence of the custom-house officers and others.”

The steeple head-dresses of Anne and the first George’s days came under the notice of Addison, in the ‘Spectator.’ He compares them with the commodes, or towers, of his time. Speaking of the former, he tells us that the women would have carried their head-structures much higher had it not been for the preaching of a monk named Concete. The good and zealous man preached with more effect than Rowland Hill did, when he inveighed from the pulpit against Mrs. Hill’s top-knots. So logically did he prove that steeple head-dresses were devices of the devil, that they who wore them were the devil’s daughters, and that after this life the everlasting home of the latter would be with their father, that the ladies, in a fit of religious enthusiasm, cast off the denounced decorations during the summer, and made a bonfire of them after it was over. It must have been a pretty fire in which pride was burned, for the congregation amounted to something like ten thousand women, with as many male hearers; from which it is to be supposed that the preaching took place in the open air. If only half the ladies committed their caps to the flames, it was, no doubt, a glad sight to the makers of the caps. They were sure that if fashion went out in one blaze, it would rise phœnix-like from the flames of that fire or another. For a time however, these exaggerated head-dresses were excommunicated; and it was as unsafe for a lady to appear in one in public, as it would be for a lady to make a tour through the liberty of Dublin on the 12th of July, clad entirely in materials of Orange hue, and singing at the top of her voice the exasperating song of ‘Boyne Water.’ She would assuredly be pelted, as they were pelted by the religious and unfashionable rabble, who, years ago, if they could tolerate sin, were shocked at the sight of tall gay caps, which had been denounced by a short grave friar. But the milliners had not long to wait unemployed. As soon as the monk had turned his back, the needlewomen were again set to work; and “countless ’prentices expired” in the efforts made to execute the orders. “The women,” says Monsieur Paradin, “who had, like snails in a fright, drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over.”

When Walpole had been to King George the Second’s Levee and Drawing-room, in 1742, he wrote of what he witnessed in this lively fashion:—“There were so many new faces that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken it for Carleton House, or my Lady Mayoress’s visiting day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted to see the King dine in public. ’Tis quite ridiculous to see the numbers of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years; out they come, in all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne’s days. Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is inexpressible. They titter, and wherever you meet them, they are always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow: they seem to have said to themselves twenty years ago, ‘Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver;’ and they keep their resolution.”

Walpole is quite right in designating the gaiety of the women as an awkward jollity. Rough enjoyment was a fashion at this time with the fair. Mrs. Sherwood, in her pleasant Autobiography, adverts to this subject in speaking of her mother’s early days, when undignified amusements were not declined by ladies of any age. One of these she describes as consisting of the following sort of violent fun. A large strong table-cloth was spread on the upper steps of the staircase, and upon this cloth the ladies inclined to the frolic seated themselves in rows upon the steps. Then the gentlemen, or the men, took hold of the lower end of the cloth, attempting to pull it downstairs; the ladies resisted this with all their might, and the greater the number of these delicate creatures the longer the struggle was protracted. The contest, however, invariably ended by the cloth and the ladies being pulled down to the bottom of the stairs, when everything was found bruised, except modesty. ‘High Life below Stairs’ could hardly have been too rampant in its exposition, if it really reflected what was going on above. We can hardly realize the matter. We hardly do so in merely fancying we see good Lord Shaftesbury Admiral Gambier, Baptist Noel, and Dr. M’Neil engaged in settling Miss Martineau, Catherine Sinclair, the “Authoress of Amy Herbert,” and Mrs. Fry on a table-cloth upon the stairs, and hauling them down in a heap to the bottom. It would be highly indecorous; but, I am almost ashamed to say, I should like to see it.

In 1748 George II. happened to see that gallant French equestrian, the Duchess of Bedford, on horseback, in a riding-habit of blue turned up with white. At that time there was a discussion on foot, touching a general uniform for the navy: the appearance of the Duchess settled the question. George II. was so delighted with her Grace’s appearance, that he commanded the adoption of those colours; and that accounts perhaps for the fact, that sailors on a spree are ever given to getting upon horseback, where they do not at all look like the Duchess whose colours they wear.

Taste was undoubtedly terribly perverted in this century. Some ladies took their footmen with them into their box at the play; others married actors, and their noble fathers declared they would have more willingly pardoned their daughters had they married lacqueys rather than players. A daughter of the Earl of Abingdon married Gallini the ballet-master, of whom George III. made a “Sir John”; and Lady Harriet Wentworth did actually commit the madness of marrying her footman,—a madness that had much method in it. This lady, the daughter of Lord Rockingham, transacted this matter in the most business-like way imaginable. She settled a hundred a year for life on her husband, but directed her whole fortune besides to pass to her children, should she have any; otherwise, to her own family. She moreover “provided for a separation, and ensured the same pin-money to Damon, in case they part.” She gave away all her fine clothes, and surrendered her titles: “linen and gowns,” she said, “were properest for a footman’s wife;” and she went to her husband’s family in Ireland as plain Mrs. Henrietta Sturgeon.

It is characteristic of the manners of this period, that Lady Harriet Wentworth, in marrying her footman, was not considered as having so terribly dérogé as Lady Susan Fox, Lord Ilchester’s daughter, who in the same year, 1764, married O’Brien the actor, a man well to do, and who owned a villa at Dunstable. The actor had contrived something of the spirit of farce in carrying out his plot. He succeeded so well in imitating the handwriting of Lady Susan’s dearest friend, Lady Sarah Bunbury, that Lord Ilchester delivered the letters to his daughter with his own hand, and without suspicion. The couple used to meet at Miss Read’s, the artist;—that is, Catherine Read, who painted whole bevies of our grandmothers, and whose portraits of young Queen Charlotte and of that dreadful woman Mrs. Macauley (represented as a Roman matron weeping over the lost liberties of her country) were the delight of both connoisseurs and amateurs.

The meetings of the lovers became known to the lady’s proud sire, and terrible was the scene which ensued between the “père noble” and the “ingénue.” The latter however promised to break off all intercourse, provided she were permitted to take one last farewell. She waited a day or two, till she was of age; and then, “instead of being under lock and key in the country, walked downstairs, took her footman, said she was going to breakfast with Lady Sarah, but would call at Miss Read’s; in the street, pretended to recollect a particular cap in which she was to be drawn; sent the footman back for it, whipped into a hackney chair, was married at Covent Garden Church, and set out for Mr. O’Brien’s villa at Dunstable.”

This marriage was, as I have said, thought worse of than if the bridegroom had been a lacquey. The latter appear to have been in singular esteem, dead or living. Thus we read that the Duchess of Douglas, in 1765, having lost a favourite footman rather suddenly in Paris, she had him embalmed, and went to England, with the body of “Jeames” tied on in front of her chaise. “A droll way of being chief mourner,” says Walpole, who adds some droll things upon the English whom he encountered in journeying through France. When half a mile from Amiens, he met a coach and four with an equipage of French, and a lady in pea-green and silver, a smart hat and feather, and two suivantes. “My reason told me,” says the lively Horace, “it was the Archbishop’s concubine; but luckily my heart whispered that it was Lady Mary Coke. I jumped out of my chaise, fell on my knees, and said my first Ave Maria, gratiâ plena!”

The esteem of the ladies for their liveried servitors does not appear to have been in all cases reciprocal, if we may believe a circumstance which took place at Leicester House, the residence of the Prince of Wales, in 1743, when one of his Royal Highness’s coachmen, who used to drive the maids of honour, was so sick of them, that he left his son three hundred pounds upon condition that he never married a maid of honour!

There was laxity both of manners and dress as time went on; and as we were an ill-dressed, so were we an ill-washed people. In the latter half of the last century we were distinguished as the only people in Europe who sat down to dinner without “dressing” or washing of hands. Indeed we were for a long time “not at all particular.”

Fashions, cleanly or otherwise, often come by the clever exercise of wit. Thus the Russian confraternity made little fortunes through a well-timed joke perpetrated by Count Rostopchin. And the joke was cut after the following fashion. The Emperor Paul had an undisguised contempt for Russian princes, and loved to lower their dignity. He was one day surrounded by a glittering crowd of them, attired in gold lace and dirty shirts, when he carelessly asked his favourite Count Rostopchin, how it happened that he had never gained the slight distinction of being created a prince. “Well, your Majesty,” said the Count, “it arises entirely from the circumstance that my ancestors, who were originally Tartars, came to settle in Russia just as winter was setting in.” “And what of that?” asked Paul. “Why,” answered the Count, “whenever a Tartar chief appeared at court for the first time, the sovereign left it to his option either to be made a prince or to receive the gift of a pelisse. Now as it was hard mid-winter when my grandfather arrived at court, he had sense enough to prefer the pelisse to the princeship.” This satire gave the fashion to the Rostopchin cloaks, of which our grandfathers who travelled in Russia used to tell long stories, that were not half so good as Rostopchin’s brief wit.

Here was a fashion arising from a joke; but they have been as often “set” by very serious causes. Some two hundred and fifty years ago, the prevailing colour in all dresses was that shade of brown called the “couleur Isabelle,” and this was its origin. A short time after the siege of Ostend commenced in 1601, Isabella Eugenia, Gouvernante of the Netherlands, incensed at the obstinate bravery of the defenders, is said to have made a vow that she would not change her chemise till the town surrendered. It was a marvellously inconvenient vow, for the siege, according to the precise historians thereof, lasted three years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours; and her highness’s garment had wonderfully changed its colour before twelve months of the time had expired. The ladies and gentlemen of the court resolved to keep their mistress in countenance, and after a struggle between their loyalty and their cleanliness, they hit upon the compromising expedient of wearing dresses of the presumed colour finally attained by the garment which clung to the Imperial Archduchess by force of religious obstinacy—and something else.

Mrs. Sherwood offers us, in her posthumous ‘Life,’ a fair picture of the fashion and simplicity of the good old country rector in the last century, as regards the adorning of the outer man. Her father, the Rev. Dr. Butt, was Rector of Kidderminster; he is the hero of the story, which Mrs. Sherwood shall tell herself.

“My father was invited to dine at Lord Stamford’s, at his seat at Enville, not very distant from Kidderminster.

“It was the custom, when he was to go out, for some competent person to arrange his best cloth suit on a sofa in his study, his linen and stockings being in a wardrobe in the same room. On this day he was very much engaged in writing. However, thinking that he would be quite prepared when apprised that John and the horses were ready, he laid down his pen at an early hour, and dressed himself, laying his old black suit, neatly folded, as was his wont, on the sofa, from whence he had taken the best one; this being done, to make the best of his time, he sat down to write again, till admonished that the horses were waiting. ‘Bless me!’ he cried, ‘and I not dressed!’ and he hurried himself to put on again fresh linen and another pair of silk stockings, whilst, as his old coat and waistcoat, which lay where the new ones ought to have been, came most naturally to hand, they were put on, and a great coat over all concealed the mischief from John and my mother; and away he drove, reaching Enville but a little time before dinner. My father happened to know Lord Stamford’s butler, an old and valued servant; and as he stopped in the hall to take off his great coat, Mr. Johnson, having looked hard at his attire, said, ‘My dear Sir, you have a large hole in your elbow, and the white lining is visible.’ ‘Indeed!’ said my father; ‘how can that be?’—and, after some reflection, he made out the truth as it really had happened. ‘Well!’ said Mr. Johnson, not a little amazed with the story, ‘come to my room, and we will see what is to be done.’ So he took my father, who was in high glee at the joke, into his own precincts, and brushed him, and inked his elbow, and put him into better order than the case at first seemed possible (sic). When all was complete, he said, ‘Now, Sir, go into the drawing-room; set a good face on the matter; say not a word on the subject; and my life for it, not a lady or gentleman will find you out.’ My father promised to be vastly prudent; and as he was always equally at home in every company, on the principle of feeling that every man was his brother, he was not in the least disturbed by the consciousness of his old coat and inked elbow. Thus everything went on prosperously until dinner was nearly over. My dear father, having probably, as usual, found the means of putting everybody in good humour about him, he turned towards the butler, and said, ‘Johnson, it must not be lost!’ The good man frowned and shook his head, but all in vain. ‘It is much too good, Johnson,’ he added; ‘though you are ever so angry with me, I must tell it.’ And then out came the whole story, to the great delight of the whole noble party present, and to the lasting gratification of my father himself; for he never failed to be highly pleased whenever he told the story; and it was no small addition to the tale, to tell of the scolding he got, before he came away, from the honest butler, whose punctilio he had most barbarously wounded.”

Since the beginning of the present century, the laws of fashion have been more stringent, those of taste ever execrable. Taste, in its true sense, and as applied to costume, has never of late been

Even George IV. and his favourites could not bless or curse the nation with a taste for dress. After all, we are better off in that respect than the Italians of the last century, who were accustomed to walk abroad without hats, and with parasols and fans; and we do not desire to see Kensington Gardens like that at Schesmedscher, near Bucharest, of the figures on which gay stage the correspondent of the ‘Daily News’ thus graphically speaks:—

“From three o’clock in the afternoon till an hour after sunset the place is crowded with boyards, boyardines, and the sons and daughters of the same, shopkeepers, peasants, gipsies, officers, and cadets, without any distinction of rank, but all dressed regardless of expense, and swaggering in thoroughly peacock pride. We have matter-of-fact people, practical people, go-ahead people, ingenious people, etc., but without exception this is the ‘dressiest’ people of Europe. To see the manner in which the young people fig themselves out here, one might imagine that millinery, hosiery, and tailors’ goods were a profitable investment of capital. When one has been awhile in the East one generally ceases to wonder at varieties of costume; but the beau monde of Bucharest in holiday attire might well rouse the most nonchalant or phlegmatic into surprise and attention. Fashions of dress seldom remain long in one’s memory. The man who this year enters the Park with a terribly broad-brimmed hat does not remember for a moment that twelve months previously he would have been miserable had he worn one with a brim more than an eighth of an inch wide. It needs engravings to call up really vivid recollections of what one’s-self, as well as every one else, wore ten, twenty, or thirty years ago; and Bucharest recalls very vividly a certain class of engravings. Every one is familiar with those splendid works of art which represent his Majesty George III. reviewing the Middlesex Volunteers in Hyde Park, the Pump Room in Bath, Charing-cross at the period of the erection of Nelson’s Column, or any other remarkable scene as it appeared in the days of that illustrious individual, Mr. Brummell. Your readers well remember the broad-crowned Caroline hats, the short-waisted coats, the long-tailed surtouts, the ‘pumps’ and Hessian boots, in which fashionables strutted at that period. All this, and more, is to be seen here. Young men walk about in sky-blue cutaway coats with brass buttons and shockingly short skirts, trousers almost as tight as the ancient pantaloons, and cream-coloured kid gloves. Others appear on promenade with coats whose tails descend to their heels, and others again in all the brilliancy of the latest Paris fashions. The contrast and mélange are curious and infinitely amusing, and the display of jewellery is immense. In short, in London I would take the proudest man in the place for a linendraper’s shopman in his Sunday clothes. It is in the article of gloves however that most extravagance is displayed. White or cream-coloured is the colour de rigueur. Present yourself to a Wallachian lady to pay a visit, with your hands cased in anything more durable, and you excite as great a sensation as if you walked into a London drawing-room in top-boots. Nor must you go about the town on foot; a birtcha, or two-horse open hackney carriage or calèche, at two zwanzigers an hour, is indispensable. The vehicles are however generally very good and clean, and the drivers civil; disputes about fares are unknown.”

A portion of the above looks like a scene in a pantomime, and this induces me to offer a remnant or two of remark connected with stage costumes.