No. 313. Birds and Birdcage.

With the multiplicity of new fashions in dress now introduced, the work of the toilette became much greater and more varied, and many customs were introduced from France, from Italy, and from the East. Among customs derived from the latter quarter, was the introduction of the eastern hot and sweating baths, which became for a considerable period common in England. They were usually known by the plain English name of hothouses, but their eastern origin was also sometimes indicated by the preservation of their Persian name of hummums. This name is still retained by the two modern hotels which occupy the sites of establishments of this description in Covent Garden. Sweating in hothouses is spoken of by Ben Jonson; and a character in the old play of “The Puritan,” speaking of a laborious undertaking, says, “Marry, it will take me much sweat; I were better go to sixteen hothouses.” They seem to have been mostly frequented by women, and became, as in the East, favourite places of rendezvous for gossip and company. They were soon used to such an extent for illicit intrigues, that the name of a hothouse or bagnio became equivalent to that of a brothel; and this circumstance probably led eventually to their disuse. A very rare and curious broadside woodcut of the reign of James I., entitled “Tittle-tattle, or the several branches of gossipping,” which in different compartments represents pictorially the way in which the women of that age idled away their time, gives in one part a sketch of the interior of a hothouse, which is copied in our cut No. 314. In one division of the hothouse the ladies are bathing in tubs, while they are indulging themselves with an abundance of very substantial dainties; in the other, they appear to be still more busily engaged in gossip. The whole broadside is a singularly interesting illustration of contemporary manners. A copy of it will be found in the print-room of the British Museum; and it may be remarked (which I think has not been observed before), that it is copied from a large French etching of about the same period, a copy of which is in the print department of the Imperial Library in Paris.

No. 314. A Hothouse.

This is sufficient to show the close resemblance at this time between manners in France and in England. In the former country, the resort of women in company to the hot-baths is not unfrequently alluded to, and their behaviour and conversation there are described in terms of satire which cannot always be transferred to our modern pages. In these popular satires, the bathers are sometimes chambrières, and at others good bourgeoises. The pic-nics, which had formerly taken place at the tavern, were now transferred to the hot-bath, each of a party of bathers carrying some contribution to the feast, which they shared in common. Thus, in the popular piece entitled “Le Banquet des Chambrières fait aux Estuves,” printed in 1541, it is the chamber-maidens who go to the bath, and they begin immediately to produce their contributions, one exclaiming— —j’ay du porc frais,
 Une andouille et quatre saulcices.
 To which a second adds,— —j’aye une cottelette,
 Qui le ventre quasi m’eschaulde.
 And a third,— Moy, un pasté à sauce chaulde.
 The women are seen eating their pic-nic feast in one compartment of our cut. This practice soon passed from the servant maids of the bourgeoisie to their mistresses, and from the burghers’ wives to ladies of higher condition. Our word pic-nic, representing the French piquenique, the origin or derivation of which word seems not to be clearly known, appears to have come into use at the latter end of the last century, when people of rank formed evening parties at which they joined in such pic-nic suppers, to which each brought his or her contribution. The term is now applied almost solely to such collations in the fields, or in the open air.

We have already seen how, at an earlier period, men of a superior rank in London, and probably in at least the larger country towns, lived much in the taverns and cooks’ shops or eating-houses. This practice continued, and underwent various modifications, the principal of which was the establishment of houses where a public table was served at fixed hours, at which a gentleman could take his place on payment of a certain sum, much in the same style as our modern tables d’hôte. Gradually these establishments became gambling-houses, and men settled down after dinner to cards, dice, and other games. They were called ordinaries, and in the reign of Elizabeth they had become an important part of the social system. It was here that people went to hear the news of the day, or the talk of the town, and to frequent the ordinary became gradually considered as a necessary part of the education of a gentleman of fashion. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the usual price of an ordinary appears to have been two shillings; but there were ordinaries at eighteen-pence, and at some fashionable ordinaries the price was much higher.

No. 315. Swaddling a Child.

The general treatment of children, their costume, and their amusements, remained much as formerly, and closely resembled those of France and Germany as they were then, and as they have existed in some parts even to our own days. The pernicious practice of swathing or swaddling the child as soon as it was born prevailed everywhere, and the infant was kept in this condition until it became necessary to teach it the use of its limbs. The process of swaddling is shown in our cut No. 315, taken from one of the prints by Bosse, published in 1633, which furnish such abundant illustration of contemporary manners. The period during which boys were kept in petticoats was very short, for at a very early age they were dressed in the same dress as up-grown people, like little miniature men. Our only representatives of the appearance of little boys in the sixteenth century, is found in one or two educational establishments, such as the Blue-Coat School in London. The costume of a child during the short transition period between his swathes and his breeches is represented in our cut No. 316, of a boy riding upon his wooden horse. It is taken from a German woodcut of the date of 1549.

No. 316. A Boy a-cock-horse.

In the sixteenth century little improvement had taken place in the means of locomotion, which was still performed generally on horseback. Coaches, by that name, are said to have been introduced into England only towards the middle of the sixteenth century. They were made in various forms and sizes, according to fashion or caprice, and towards the end of the century they were divided into two classes, known by the foreign names of coaches and caroches. The latter appear to have been larger and clumsier than the former, but to have been considered more stately; and from the old play of “Tu Quoque,” by Green (a drama of Elizabeth’s reign), we learn that it was considered more appropriate to the town (and probably to the court), while the coach was left to the country:—

Nay, for a need, out of his easy nature,
 May’st draw him to the keeping of a coach
 For country, and carroch for London.

Ben Jonson, in his comedy of “The Devil is an Ass,” gives us a great notion of the bustle attending a caroch:— Have with them for the great caroch, six horses,
 And the two coachmen, with my ambler bare,
 And my three women.
 Coaches of any kind, however, were evidently not in very common use until after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Women in general, at least those who were not skilful horsewomen, when the distance or any other circumstance precluded their going on foot, rode on a pillion or side-saddle behind a man, one of her relatives or friends, or sometimes a servant. The accompanying cut (No. 317) represents a couple thus mounted, the lady holding in her hand the kind of fan which was used at the period. From a comparison of the figure of the Anglo-Saxon ladies on horseback, who were evidently seated in the saddle as in a chair, sideways to the horse, we are led to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon lady’s saddle, and probably the saddle for females in general during the middle ages, was the same as that which was known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the name of a pillion. The rider placed her feet usually on a narrow board, which was called in French the planchette. It is evident that a woman could not be very solidly seated in this manner, and not only did she want the command over the horse which would enable her to take part in any very active exercises, but it was considered almost necessary to place a man on a saddle before her. We have, accordingly, seen that, from a very early period, when engaged in hunting and in any sort of active riding, the lady used a saddle, as at present, in which she raised one leg over a part of the saddle-bow, made for that purpose, and placed the other foot in the stirrup, by which she obtained a firm seat, and a command over the horse. Different writers have ascribed, without any reason, the introduction of this mode of riding for ladies to various individuals, and Brantôme seems to have thought that this practice was first brought into fashion by Catherine de Medicis. The last cut is taken from a drawing in the curious Album of Charles de Bousy, containing dates from 1608 to 1638, and now preserved among the Sloane manuscripts (No. 3415) in the British Museum; and the same manuscript has also furnished us with the annexed cut (No. 318) of a lady of rank carried in her chair, with her chair-bearers and attendants. Ladies, and especially persons suffering from illness, were often carried in horse-litters, and there are instances of chairs mounted somewhat like the one here represented, and carried by horses. The first attempt towards the modern gig or cabriolet appears to have been a chair fixed in a cart, something in the style of that represented in our cut No. 319, which in its ornamentation has a very mediæval character, although it is given as from a manuscript in the Imperial Library in Paris (No. 6808), of the beginning of the sixteenth century.

No. 317. Riding on a Pillion.

No. 318. A Lady carried in her Chair.

The close of the period of which we are here speaking introduces us to one in which the manners and customs of our forefathers were less widely different from those of our own days; and the history of domestic manners since that time, characterised less by broad outline of the general features in its revolutions than by a gradual succession of minute changes, and fashions which must be traced from day to day, is less capable of being treated in the comprehensive style of these pages. Having now, therefore, brought down our sketch of the History of the Domestic Manners of our forefathers to the middle of the seventeenth century, we shall here, for the reason just stated, conclude it, and leave to some worthier labourer, or to some future occasion, the task of tracing more minutely the history of domestic manners and sentiments during the period which followed the middle ages.

No. 319. A Mediæval Cabriolet.

INDEX.