The clothes of Punch were plain, and illustrations made in 1630 are similar to others made a hundred years later (see Figures 149 and 150).

Originally, also, Punch does not seem to have had a long nose. The exaggerated nose is, however, found on the representative of Punch which flourished in Calabria, and which went by the name of “Giangurgolo” (see Figure 150).

The French Punch is called Guignol, of which the derivation cannot be directly traced, but Mr. Heppel has made an interesting suggestion that in the name of this character is to be found that of Giangurgolo in a contracted form.

As may have been surmised, we got our Punch and Judy by way of France, but as a human actor Punch himself came direct to England.

An ancient statuette which is figured by Ficorroni (see Figure 151) is supposed by antiquarians to represent Punch, and if the individual whom it represents did not go by that name, he must certainly have been one of Punch’s ancestors, for the likeness to our modern hero is exceedingly great. References are made by a number of classical authors to puppet-shows, and these were also known in China as long ago as a thousand years before the Christian era.

The method also of exhibiting the puppets is not very modern, for a very interesting figure of a show embellishes the celebrated MS. of the “Roman d’Alexandre” (see Figure 152) which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and was executed between the years 1338 and 1344. The figures were evidently worked by the hands as in Punch and Judy, and that it was intended to amuse children is shown by three little girls who are represented as looking on.

Though sticks are not strictly a part of dress, unless we consider the canes of the dandies as being so, yet their usefulness in puppet-shows is so great that we are tempted to digress for a moment to give the comments of M. Lemercier de Neuville on the subject:—

“The stick! that is the great argument of Guignol, as well as of Polichinelle. The stick settles everything. It puts an end to disputes, it pays debts, it sends away troublesome people, it disciplines wives, it takes vengeance on men, it is the ‘Deus ex machina’ of all this Lilliputian world. What a marvellous dramatic resource it is. If a situation becomes difficult to manage, settle it with a blow of the stick. If a dénouement seems to hang fire, hasten its progress by a thrashing. The stick is above all criticism; it checkmates it, it destroys it, for it is in the right, in spite of everybody, because it is the strongest. The stick has no respect of persons. With it Guignol beats his creditors, his friends, his wife, the constable, the judge, the hangman, and the more he strikes the more he makes people laugh. There is no spoken joke that is as good as this. And yet the stick is not beautiful, nor is it new. One sees that it has done duty for a long time, for it is worn out and cracked.”

We have, in fact, a record of Italian players coming to act their farces in this country in 1577, but as Punch in the capacity of a person is now obsolete with us, we shall only incidentally refer to him as a living actor, though perhaps we might recall the fact that Molière introduced him into his play Le Malade Imaginaire.

We have spoken already of Punch’s hump in front, and it may be interesting in this connection to give the opinion of a Frenchman on the subject of Punch’s bodily characteristics. M. Magnin says that with a sufficient amount of exaggeration and caricature to set aside the suspicion of disloyalty, the Punch figure recalls the appearance of some Gascon officer imitating the walk and demeanour of Henri IV in the Guard Chamber of St. Germain or in the Louvre. The hump in front, he says, was derived from the protuberance of the heavy cuirass. This is much the same explanation as that which we have already given, though the cuirass probably stuck out in front of its wearer even more than did the doublet.

There is no doubt but that the French like gayer dresses than the Italians, and we have seen that even in 1630 the clothes of Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Scaramouch in Italy were, like those of Punch, plain and simple; but in order to be popular in France the Pulicinella had to dress in a new style, and it is known that already in 1649 the puppet-show of which he is the hero had set up on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre. When Punch got to England it was at a time when gay clothes were worn, and some relics of these he has retained to the present day.

Red and yellow play a considerable part in the dress of the Punch figures used by Mr. W. H. Jesson, the members of whose family have for generations been performers of Punch and Judy, and who is one of the few that are still left. Punch has a very high cap of antique appearance, with turned-up brim and a bow of ribbon on the top. The hump on his back is almost horn-like, and forms a complete circle. It seems unlikely that this appendage was developed from any part of costume unless it were perhaps the liripipe; but we may rather imagine that in the past Pulicinella may have been represented as being a hunchback, and certainly Figure 151, taken from the statuette mentioned previously, suggests an individual suffering from such a deformity.

Punch also wears a ruff (see Figure 153), though it is not a separate part of his costume, as in Judy’s case, where it is of lace and its character is well shown, as it consists of more than one thickness. Judy’s head-dress is the mob cap which was fashionable in the time of George III. (See Figure 154.)

The beadle, with his three-cornered hat and his brightly trimmed coat and cape, has survived for a century or so after his clothes first became fashionable, and no doubt in the puppet-show he will persist for many years when every living representative of his kind has passed away. (See Figure 155.) Of two more characters we have a word to say,—in the first place, of the doctor, who is brought before us in clothes of almost clerical cut, which remind us of the fact that the members of the medical profession were once more easily recognized by their dress than they are now (see Figure 156); in the second, of Toby, whose sole costume consists of a ruff, that once more takes us back to the time of Good Queen Bess.

Though Punch has donned new clothes and altered his habits to suit not only the countries in which he sojourned, but the times in which he has performed, yet despite these and other changes that have gone on since he set foot on these islands, there is one thing that has always been his special characteristic. This is his squeaky voice, which he retained even in Molière’s play, and it is from the peculiarity of his voice that he gained his name. Pulicinella means a “hen-chicken,” which might well be expected to have a squeaky voice.

With regard to the changes in Punch’s behaviour we have a word to say. Originally he was somewhat of a composite character, the constituent elements being derived from several of the personages of the larger theatre. At first, to the amorous and intriguing ways of Pulicinella there was added the roguery of Scaramouch, as well as the dash and braggadocio of the Spanish captain who was a member of the comedy company, akin to the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus and the Bobadil of Ben Jonson.

As time went on there was less love-making and trickery and more knocking about, but Mr. Heppel will not allow that the French writers are right in ascribing the whole of this to English influence. For the fact that the puppets are not alive gives an opportunity for dealing blows with a reality that could not be tolerated if the actors were living, and when we remember the way in which dog Toby seizes Punch by the nose, we cannot help feeling that the effect could hardly be so realistically produced on the actual stage.

In France, Punch is a bachelor, or if he is married he is not very much married, while in England Punch always runs in double harness. Another alteration has taken place. Polly, who was one of the characters that have disappeared, has departed for the reasons put into the showman’s mouth by Mr. Henry Mayhew in 1861. “Miss Polly was left out, because it wasn’t exactly moral. Opinions has changed. We ain’t better, I fancy. Such things goes on, but people don’t like to let it be seen now; that’s the difference. Judy’s dress, you see, is far different, bless you, than Miss Polly’s. Judy’s, you see, is bed-furniture stuff, and Polly’s is all silk and satin. Yes, that’s the way of the world; the wife comes off second best.”

As in old times, there was much buffoonery introduced even into religious plays, and the characters which have been separated from the other performers to take part in the special harlequinade of the modern pantomime used, together with Punch, to appear side by side with those who took the part of religious personages. To uneducated people there seemed nothing profane about this; but as time went on men and women came to look at matters in a different light. For reasons somewhat similar, the devil and the ghost are now left out, and in the performances that are given in drawing-rooms even the coffin, in some cases.

The connection, however, of Punch with religious plays probably accounts for the name by which his wife now goes. Those who mistakenly supposed that the word Punch was derived from Pontius Pilate looked upon Judy as representing Judas Iscariot. We have already pointed out the origin of the former appellation, which ante-dates the Christian era, while a difficulty is met with in the fact that the wife of Punch for many years was known as Joan. Mr. Heppel says that of the miracle plays some of the most popular were taken from the Apocrypha, and a very favourite subject was the tale of Judith and Holofernes. If we cannot find an instance recorded of Punch furnishing the amusement in this story, we can, at any rate, find an advertisement of a play in which Harlequin and Judith were together, and the comic business was sometimes entrusted to Punch and sometimes to Harlequin. Hence Punch and Judy may not improbably have come from Punch and Judith, while Toby naturally suggests the dog in the book of Tobit.

With regard to Toby, it may be said that he is represented in France by a cat, and that until the nineteenth century he was only a stuffed figure. In China, where Punch beats his wife to the music of the clarionette instead of Pandæan pipes held in a muffler, Toby is replaced by a wooden dragon with jaws that snap, and this figure is also now introduced in England. Hector the horse has quite disappeared. We might mention here that in the English version a clown is brought in with very considerable effect.

There is another connection of dolls with costume rather than of costume with dolls which we may mention at this point. In the fourteenth century, when there were no fashion plates, and written descriptions would hardly do their duty effectively, model costumes were put upon dolls and sent from country to country. It is, moreover, a curious and interesting fact that it was principally from Paris that these fashions were sent out.

Examples of national costumes sometimes survive on the bodies of dolls. The figure of St. Nicholas, in Belgium, shows an old dress, and the costume dolls of Holland, France, and Switzerland are excellent records of native dress now seldom seen in everyday life. Mr. Edward Lovett bought a little doll in Lucerne which is in a cradle, and shows excellently well the swaddling clothes that were formerly in use. Ancient Greek and Roman dolls, taken from children’s graves, were similarly dressed, and a modern Russian doll, which is also in possession of Mr. Lovett, is shown with the swathing band in situ. The only dolls that are to be found in Malta represent ancient saints, and it is said that they are dressed as such.

The long garments of Noah and his sons in the toy Noah’s Ark are worthy of mention and are an interesting survival.

The wrappings that were placed round mummies in ancient Egypt are shown on figures which were found in the tombs, and which are often seen as curiosities in this country. They were carved out of wood or modelled out of clay, while some of them were made out of the well-known glazed faïence. They were put into the tombs in order that they might do the work of the deceased in his after life, and their origin is exceedingly interesting. Many barbarous nations have in the past sacrificed the servants of a chief at his funeral, and the Egyptians, who were humane people, contented themselves with a make-believe, and replaced the actual persons with the figures that we call “ushabti,” or, in modern parlance, “shabbies.”

XXVIII
THE CLOWN AND PAINTING THE BODY

THE CLOWN’S DRESS—SAVAGE PAINTING AND SURVIVALS OF IT—TATTOOING—PATCHES AND FALSE COMPLEXIONS—MASKS

No costume is perhaps more characteristic or better known than that of the clown; and it is of special interest, for while the hat was fashionable at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the dress, generally speaking, is a caricature of that which was in vogue in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The same remarks apply to the method of hair-dressing, and we shall see, when dealing with the other characters that appear in the harlequinade, that the pantaloon in his dress illustrates that of the same time in our history.

Unlike the other heroes of the pantomime, the clown is essentially English, and he is to be found also in the circus of to-day, at all times of the year, as well as on the stage at Christmas.

As to the clown’s clothes, first of all there is the ruff, which is, however, not stiffened out. He has trunk hose or wide breeches which do not reach to his knee, his stockings are well ornamented with clocks; and lastly, there is the paint on his face, which brings us to a custom that seems nearly as old as man himself. (See Figure 157 and Plate X, Figure A.)

The Egyptians still follow the practice of blackening the edge of the eyelid, both below and above the eye, with a black powder called kohl. The material is prepared either from burning an aromatic resin or the shells of almonds. The custom prevailed among both sexes in Egypt far back in its history, and long before the historic period, painting the eyes was already practised by the people whom Professor Petrie called the “New Race” (until he determined that they preceded the dynastic Egyptians).

It may be well to point out that these prehistoric people lived about 6000 years B.C.: they had little or no metal, though they made most beautiful flint knives and stone vases. They buried their dead lying on one side with the knees towards the chin, instead of making mummies. Among the contents of their tombs have been found curious slate palettes of all shapes and sizes, similar to some which had previously been known for many years, but the origin of which was undetermined. It has been shown that these palettes were used for grinding up malachite to form a green colour with which to paint the eye. The idea was, it is supposed, to mitigate the glare of the sun, and is similar to that which leads Anglo-Indians to have the under sides of the brims of their hats coloured green.

Another kind of temporary ornamentation is produced in Egypt to-day by staining the feet and hands with the juice of the leaves of henna. The result is that the part to which it is applied becomes a yellowish red or deep orange colour. The most common practice is to dye the tips of the fingers and toes so far as the first joint, the whole of the inside of the hand and the sole of the foot, and there are other and more fanciful modes of applying the henna, which is said to have an agreeable effect upon the skin, particularly in the way of preventing it from becoming too tender. The dyeing has to be renewed every fortnight or three weeks, and the stain is brighter and more permanent on the nails than on the fingers.

Among many native races in a low stage of civilization there are few who do not decorate their body by painting it in some way. We have already mentioned that painting takes away the appearance of nakedness, and that many nations would be as much ashamed to be seen without their paint, as Europeans would be to walk about without their clothes. On special occasions, however, particularly striking colours are put on—for instance, by the Australians when about to dance a corroboree, and Professor Moseley40 has pointed out that they have breast stripes and leg stripes such as those which are seen on European uniforms. At first sight these, as Professor Moseley, indeed, points out, would appear to have quite a different origin, but it will be remembered that when speaking of the Hussar uniform and the Dutch skeleton dress (see pages 145-6) it was suggested that the ornamentation might be intended to follow the lines of the chief bones of the body, and it is possible that the same idea may have underlain the painting carried out by savages.

In this case what in one instance was effected by paint was in the other done by means of trimmings.

Paint plays a great part in savage warfare, and no doubt the intention very often was to terrify the adversary. It is apparently this idea which actuated the old inhabitants of this country, who, as Cæsar says, stained themselves with woad in order to be of horrider aspect in battle; but Dr. Tylor has pointed out the error into which many historians have fallen through considering as savages races who, while having attained to considerable civilization, still kept up the practice of colouring their bodies in time of war. To the instances which we have mentioned of modern races staining themselves, we may add that of the Hindu women in India, who colour their teeth black and paint their feet scarlet. Japanese women blacken their teeth upon marriage.

In certain Japanese plays the actors have bright streaks of red paint made on their faces, usually on each side of the eyes (see Plate X, Figure B).

Professor Moseley41 records that the same form of painting is to be seen in the case of Japanese children on festive occasions, for after they have been elaborately dressed by their parents they are further adorned with one or two transverse and narrow streaks of bright red paint, leading outwards from the outer corners of their eyes, or placed near to that position. The style is the same as that which survives in the case of adults on the stage. Professor Moseley brings forward a further case showing that such a form of painting possibly existed in ancient times in China. When a man of distinction died in China in former times, a certain number of servants were sacrificed at his burial. Now, figures made of pasteboard and paper, about three feet or so high, are burnt instead at the funeral service in small furnaces provided for the purpose in the temples, together with cartloads of similar pasteboard gifts which are sent by the survivors for the use of the dead in the next world. Earthenware figures were similarly buried with great men in old times in Japan, and we may compare with these customs that of the Egyptians who buried models of servants, as mentioned on page 268, in the graves of their dead.

The pasteboard heads of these funeral servants and retainers are painted with streaks, some of which are put on in almost exactly the same style, at the angles of the eyes, as those of modern Japanese actors. It seems a fair conjecture that the streaks on these heads are a direct survival of an actual former savage form of painting which was once in vogue in China, and probably used to make fighting men hideous.

It is well known that primitive customs survive in connection with funerals all over the world with extreme tenacity. The numerous interesting survivals existing in the case of English funerals are familiar.

We give a figure taken from the head of a Chinese servant, which Professor Moseley bought at a manufactory of funeral properties in Hong Kong. (See Plate X, Figure C.)

With regard to the ordinary use of paint by women in China and Japan, Professor Moseley points out that it is entirely different in principle from that in vogue in Europe. He says: “The use of paint as an ornament in China and Japan seems to me to be of considerable interest. In both countries the women regularly paint their faces when in full dress, of which the paint is a necessary part.

“The paint is not put on with any idea of simulating a beauty of complexion, which might be present naturally, or which has been lost by age. The painted face is utterly unlike the appearance of any natural beauty.

“An even layer of white is put on over the whole face and neck, with the exception, in Japan, of two or three angular points of natural brown skin, which are left bare at the back of the neck as a contrast. After the face is whitened, a dab of red is rubbed in on the cheeks, below each eye. The lips are then coloured pink with magenta, and in Japan this colour is put on so thickly that it ceases to appear red, but takes on the iridescent metallic green tint of the crystallized aniline colour.

“In modern Japanese picture books, the lips of girls may sometimes be seen to be represented thus green. I suppose the idea is that such application of paint shows a meritorious disregard for expense. It is curious that the use of aniline colour should have so rapidly spread in China and Japan. In China, at least, such was not to be expected; but it seems to have supplanted the old rouge, and it is sold spread on folding cards, with Chinese characters on them, at Canton and in Japan. This form of painting the face seems to be exactly of the same nature as savage painting.”

The likeness of this painting to that of our clowns is of course quite obvious.

Sometimes the painting of the body has a practical advantage. The Andaman Islanders plaster themselves with a mixture of lard and coloured earth, which protects their skin from the heat and mosquitoes; but, as Dr. Tylor points out, they go off into love of display when they proceed to draw lines on the paint with their fingers, or when a dandy will colour one side of his face red and the other olive-green, and make an ornamental border-line where the two colours meet down his chest and abdomen.

Fashions in paint were quite as slavishly followed as any other, and, as we see, have died hard. It is not a very far cry from painting to tattooing. Of savages, Théophile Gautier has said that, having no clothes to embroider, they embroider themselves. Scar tattooing is connected with various rites such as are followed when a brave arrives at manhood, and certainly tattooing serves to indicate the family or tribe to which the ornamented person belongs. There is no doubt, however, that the intention of much tattooing is to increase individual beauty. Excellent examples of this are to be found in the case of the Maoris, whose faces were most elaborately covered with designs. We are kindly permitted to reproduce some of the drawings which General Robley has made from specimens in his magnificent collection (see Plate X, Figure D). The practice now, however, is dying out. Of the Formosans it is said that their skins are covered with flower patterns until they look like damask.

Tattooing was practised by the old inhabitants of this country, by the Jews and the earliest Egyptians: it is still carried on in modern Egypt, chiefly on the chin, on the back of the hands, the arms and feet, the middle of the bosom, and the forehead. It survives principally in the case of the women of the lower classes and in the country. Among European sailors and among the lower classes, and even occasionally those up in high social scale, we find tattooing carried on, though the original idea of ornamentation is lost when the decoration is covered by clothing.

We have seen occasionally at shows—such as that organized by Barnum—white people who have been tattooed to a very great extent, and even in the case of Europeans the patterns tend to take off the bare look even of the white skin. No doubt the desire to make permanent such ornamentation as that obtained by painting, led to the introduction of tattooing, and just as some marks suggest that they are copied from amulets, so some amulets show traces of having been derived from tattoo patterns. Mr. Lovett has pointed out to us that possibly the floral designs worked on the backs of the bodices of the women of Marken, in Holland, may have originated from tattooing, but no doubt careful research would show some other and undoubted instances.

The painting of the face, which is intended to heighten its beauty and hide the ravages of time, is quite another matter. It survives to the present day, but luckily it is much less common in this country than it was a few years ago. It does not, however, seem to have been at all in vogue in England until the Middle Ages, though cosmetics and false complexions were made use of by ladies in Roman times.

Fairholt42 quotes from an old French poem of the thirteenth century which describes the wares of a mercer who declares, “I have cotton with which they rouge, and whitening with which they whiten themselves.” The cotton took the place of the hare’s foot that is now used in making up, to rub colour on the cheeks.

At this point we might consider patches, the use of which made it possible to ornament the skin with patterns that could be removed at will. These patches came into fashion in Charles I’s reign, but were banned by the Puritans. As soon, however, as Charles II came into his own again, they made their appearance once more, and took various fantastic shapes: owls, rings, crescents, and crowns; a coach and horses was particularly fashionable, and in the time of Queen Anne it was possible to tell the political views of fashionable ladies by their faces and their fans. Party feeling ran very high at this time, and those who were neutral wore patches on both cheeks, a Whig lady on the right side only, while a High Church Tory dame only adorned the left, and she wore suspended from her wrist a fan on which was depicted a scene from the trial of Dr. Sacheverell at Westminster Hall.

Red and white paint was at the same time universally employed by women of fashion, who, as Miss Helen Gordon43 says, had perforce to keep their lovers at a respectful distance, lest a kiss “snatched by a forward one might transfer the complexion of the mistress to the admirer.” The untimely decease of more than one famous beauty was attributed to the paint with which she besmeared her countenance, a notable instance being the death of Lady Coventry, whose husband had been wont to chase her round the dinner-table in his determined efforts to remove the deleterious compound from her face with his serviette. According to Walpole, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu used the cheapest white paint obtainable, and left it so long on her skin that it had literally to be scraped off. It may be inferred that these fine ladies rarely washed; but “the age was careless in that respect, personal cleanliness at a discount, and the essence pot consequently in great demand.”

We spoke just now of fans, which can, perhaps, be considered an article of dress as they are very often fastened to the person. There seems no doubt but that at first fans did not close, and were made of feathers like those still in use in the East from whence they are derived. Probably in the beginning, leaves were used as fans, and palm-leaf fans are still to be seen. Fans were in general use in the sixteenth century, and the folding one appeared in the next.

Sometimes, as at the end of the eighteenth century, large green fans, called sunshades, were used out of doors in the same way as a modern parasol now is. There is another use of the fan still to be noted in China, namely, for blowing up a fire, and from this we no doubt get the expression of “fanning the flame.”

Painting apparently was not only practised by women, for male courtiers at the end of the sixteenth century occasionally coloured their faces. If we are to believe some of the writers in the newspapers of to-day, men of leisure are not a whit better nor less foolish now.

Of masks as an ordinary everyday addition to costume we have no survivals, except in connection with some balls and an occasional burglary; but masks such as we see on the 5th of November will remind us, like the face of the clown, of primitive face-painting, and also of the many curious head-dresses and masks which savages wear at certain ceremonies and dances. It is easy to produce grotesque effects by means of masks, and the discomfort that would arise from the paint is thereby avoided.

The practice of wearing masks, and indeed dominoes, by private individuals came from Venice. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries masks made of black satin and velvet often formed part of the toilet of society ladies. At one period the wearing of them was restricted to the times of carnivals; at another, the nobility alone were allowed to use them, and now we only see masks at fancy-dress balls. Of the unwritten laws that rule the wearing of the mask, Mrs. Aria says44: “Whether worn privately or in public, its disguise has at all times and in all countries been respected as inviolably sacred. To the masked the greatest extravagance of language and gesture is permitted. He is allowed to indulge in acrid personalities and proclaim scathing truths, which, even if addressed to the monarch himself, go unrebuked. To strike a mask is a serious offence, while in no class of society, however degraded, would any one dare to unmask a woman. Yet another prerogative entitles the masked to invite any woman present, whether masked or not, to dance with him, etiquette decreeing that the queen of the land may not claim exemption from this rule. Dear to romance is the masked highwayman, who flourished until the advent of railways robbed him of his occupation; and a grim figure is ever the masked headsman.”

XXIX
STAGE COSTUMES

THE HARLEQUIN, PANTALOON, COLUMBINE, AND ACROBAT

While Punch has left the stage and is now a puppet, some of his coadjutors are with us, for the harlequinade is still introduced into many pantomimes at Christmas, and special plays have been written in which these characters appear. The harlequin, who gives his name to what is now an interlude, was some thousand or two years back one of the important personages in the old Italian comedy which gave us Punch, and which we have already mentioned in a previous chapter.

Harlequin was versatile and many-sided, and he still keeps up his slap-dash character. It is true that harlequin does not now speak, any more than does the columbine, and we may trace the evolution of the Italian Mimi, or buffoons, into the Pantomimi, who were tragic actors. They, by means of certain well-understood signs and gestures, were able to play tragedies in the open air under conditions which would have prevented their voices from being heard. In some theatres also the actors were not allowed by the authorities to speak. Originally the harlequin was a mime. He had a shaven head, a sooty face—for the mimi blackened their faces like our modern niggers—he had flat, unshod feet and a patched coat of many colours which he derived from the ancient peasants of Italy.

Some have seen in the wand of the harlequin a descendant of the rod of Mercury, and have sought for a prototype of the modern pantomime in pagan mysteries. In England, however, we have turned the harlequin into a magician, and his wand is perhaps the gilt wooden sword which belonged to the clown or fool all the world over. Now also we have the character in what Mr. Calthrop terms his tight-fitting lizard-skin of flashing golden colours, for the patches on his rags have now given place to a symmetrical pattern (see Figure 158).

There have been many celebrated harlequins who have devoted their lives to the development of this character, and there is an interesting case which Disraeli45 gives in his “Curiosities of Literature,” in which, as part of a quit-rent or feudal tenure—whenever the Abbot of Figéac entered this town—the Lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin’s coat, with one of his legs bare, has to lead the prelate’s horse by its bridle to the abbey.

In the clown and the pantaloon we still have the dress of Elizabethan times (see Figures 157 and 159). The paint on the former, as we have seen, will carry us back to times of remote antiquity. His hat is of a shape well known in early English history, and he himself is English all through. The pantaloon, again, is Italian. Both he and his Venetian breeches get their names from St. Pantaleone, one of the patron saints of Venice. Pantaleone was by no means an uncommon patronymic in that place. In order to reconcile the statements that the dress of the pantaloon is Elizabethan and his nether garments are Venetian, which might appear to be mutually contradictory, it must be pointed out that the Venetian breeches had been introduced in the days of earlier Tudors, and were still in vogue when Elizabeth was on the throne. The pantaloon’s red and green colours and his red heels are also, as we have indicated, Elizabethan.

The columbine, who, like the harlequin, does not speak, and so keeps up the pantomime character, wears the ballet dress of early Victorian times. Originally she was a female harlequin, or harlequinne, and her dress of spangles is still sometimes used in fancy-dress dances. Of the other characters, who once assisted those that we have described, we have none left. Scaramouch persisted for some time, and was, like the harlequin and columbine, a pantomimist. He has gone even from Punch and Judy, though the doctor still remains.

Though not strictly a theatrical performer, but seen in the circus, the music-hall, and still also as a wandering mountebank, we have the acrobat. His dress is simple and eminently suitable for the work which he has to do; it consists of a vest, of very short trunk hose or breeches, and long Florentine hose, or, as we now call them, tights. Though such a costume was worn in the reigns of the early Tudors, in detail the breeches are very much like those which were worn by Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Doubtless also in the tights which are so familiar on the stage we have a survival similar to that seen in the acrobat, the clown, and the knights of the older orders.

XXX
NIGHTDRESS

BANDS ON NIGHTGOWNS—NIGHTCAPS—NIGHT ATTIRE WORN IN THE STREET

Going to bed can hardly be called a ceremony; but the dress in which the bulk of humanity now sleeps can claim to be a special one. There are, of course, many people, who are not mere casual tramps, who sleep in their everyday clothes. Drovers who have to go to out-of-the-way places with cattle, where they can never be sure of getting a lodging, will sleep possibly after merely removing their outer coat, and it stands to reason that men engaged in this business can hardly be bothered to carry luggage with them. Any survivals that we may have to deal with in the case of our airiest dresses will not take us very far back into history, because our ancestors, from all accounts, went to an extreme which is the opposite to that which we have just been mentioning, and instead of keeping on all their clothes at night, they took them all off and put on no others. Mr. Calthrop46 graphically describes a scene which he supposes to be taking place in the reign of William Rufus. A lady is disturbed while getting ready for bed by a cry of “sanctuary,” and watches from her window until the fugitive is let into the church by the monks. In concluding his story, Mr. Calthrop says, “The night is cold. The lady pulls a curtain across the window, and then, stripping herself of her chemise, she gets into bed.”

A man’s nightshirt is severe in cut like that which he wears in the day, and the sides are slit up in both garments as they are in the dalmatic and the tunics worn by the Anglo-Saxons, which were like a day shirt, longer behind than in front. A survival of the latter as an outer garment is to be seen in the short smocks worn by labourers who dig drains and do similar work. The lady’s nightgown may be elegantly ornamented with lace in the same way as are the linen garments which she wears in the daytime; but very often we find a large collar edged with lace, which recalls the falling band which we have had so often to mention. (See Figure 160.)

To a great extent sleeping suits of a coat and trousers, which are known by the name of pyjamas, have taken the place of the man’s nightshirt. These have the merit of making a man look more presentable if called up on an emergency. We shall see, if we contrast male and female fashions, that it has always been customary for the costume of women to follow that of men, though most ladies draw the line at adopting trousers. We have heard, however, of one young lady at least who does by night what she will not do by day, for she has given up her nightgown in favour of pyjamas.