Chapter XI: Act III (6)

The command was but slowly complied with. In the fourth century artists had not got beyond the bust of Jesus. By the end of the seventh century, we meet with the sacred figure in slight relief carved on the wooden cross. It required full another century before the reluctant or incapable artists achieved the complete anatomical figure hanging _from_ the cross. But when this was once accomplished, progress was soon made beyond it; and images of the Saviour and the Madonna, with movable limbs, set in motion by strings, became common throughout Europe. We hear of one gravely moving through Lucca on foot, and gravely blessing the people as he passed along: this was the counterpart of the Bacchus at Nysa.

The Boxley Madonna was long the glory of Kent. It not only moved the head, but opened and closed the eyes; and I would tell its story here, as apt to the subject, but that I have already narrated it at some length in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’

The Rimini Madonna is but a poor plagiarism of Our Lady of Boxley. Maundrill, at the end of the seventeenth century, saw an image of Christ, so flexible, that it was difficult to distinguish, at a distance, between it and a dead body. These figures were so often used to deceive the people, that the employment of them was forbidden by several Councils; but in vain. Some of them were of such exquisite workmanship, that their makers were taxed with having the devil for an ally; and the figure-makers generally were consigned to infamy.

One day, in the year 1086, the holy Abbot Thergius, attending at Cluny to give investiture to some half hundred novices, refused conferring the benediction upon one of them, under the plea, “Mechanicum ilium esse et necromantiæ deditum.” And yet the abbot artists were among the priests themselves; nay, were sometimes to be found among the Popes. Sylvester II. is said to have constructed a brazen head. Roger Bacon and Robert Greathead were celebrated for the same achievement; while Albertus Magnus has the reputation of having constructed an _android_ or semblance of a man, of such perfection, that it would support an argument with satisfaction to itself and discomfort to its opponents. Thomas Aquinas, when young, ventured to enter upon a discussion with this figure; when the _androide_ so perplexed the priest with his shower of syllogisms, that the latter broke his head for his pains, and ruined his argumentative powers for ever.

The ecclesiastical puppets were probably productions with more than mere pretensions to rank among objects of art and science. The semi-religious and popular puppets were too gross to deceive; and yet the great dragon of Paris, slain by St. Marcel, whose _simulacrum_ dragged itself through the city during the Rogation Days, was probably contemplated with as much awe by the youthful beholders, us the sacred dragon of Minerva was at Athens, by such of the citizens as lived before the innovating period of the free-thinking Anaxagoras.

Galen speaks of puppets so anatomically perfect, that Heaven might have taken a hint therefrom. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, too, referring to effects following at long intervals, the impelling cause divinely given, stumbles upon an unprofitable simile, and compares such effects to the motion in the limbs of the puppet long after the showman has ceased to pull the strings.

If our little actors fell into disuse from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, it was only to reappear in Italy with an _éclat_ which they never previously enjoyed. Of modern puppets, Italy is the birthplace and permanent home. In front of a puppet-show exists an equality of all classes, who fraternize for the moment to enjoy the liberty which puppets alone in the peninsula appear to possess. These imitate nature with such perfection as to confer on their constructors the name of _artists_. In the regular puppet-theatre, where none but wooden actors appear on the stage, the scenery and accessories are in such due proportion with the performers, that the eye yields ready consent to the illusion. Burlettas, sparkling extravaganzas, melodramas, and even grand operas are represented. In the latter case, the mute _prima donna_ on the stage invariably answers by her expressive pantomime to the voice which is uttered for her behind the scenes. And when a bouquet is flung to her, her grateful emotion is, as Mr. Carlyle would say, “a noticeable thing.”

The puppet ballet-dancers are even more wonderful than their vocal brethren. Rome extends to them the privilege of playing in the capital, even in solemn seasons. Church-censorship is however strict, as might be expected; and it evidences its care for the proprieties by requiring that no female puppet shall appear on the stage without a pair of light blue silk drawers! This is something to smile at; for morality at Rome is not of a high character, and female immodesty there is almost as disgustingly offensive as it is on our Ramsgate sands at the height of the bathing season. Even Rome cannot beat _that_.

The private puppet-actors in Italy indulge in political allusions, to the delight of an audience invited for the express purpose of enjoying satirical allusions against the Government. In Florence, the private companies are remarkable for their coarseness, to which they who pay for the same do not object. In Milan, the fool of the puppet-stage is invariably a native of Turin; while among the Piedmontese puppets, the fool of the farce and the villain of the melodrama are of course of Lombard origin.

The Spanish puppets are of Italian derivation. Torriani invented many in order to amuse Charles V. in his retirement among the monks of St. Just. These were so clever that the brotherhood suspected the artist of being leagued with evil powers; but the uses to be drawn from these figures were so apparent, that the Church of Spain employed them largely in the working of miracles. The modern prince of puppets, our friend Punch, never got thoroughly naturalized in Spain. The fact is, the unscrupulous fellow is of Neapolitan descent; and since Naples revolted against the Spanish government, _Pulcinello_ is looked upon as a very dangerous person. Seneca, on the other hand, being a native of Cordova, is a great favourite. His history is faithfully represented, with an addition that reminds one of the new act put by the modest M. Dumas to one William Shakspeare’s tragedy of Hamlet. This addition consists in the ascent of the heathen philosopher to heaven; where, at the feet of the figure of the Saviour, he recites the creed, and professes himself a Christian.

After all, this is not more absurd than the act of that Pope who converted Trajan to Christianity three hundred years after that Emperor’s death; and who had nearly canonized him to boot, in spite of the remonstrance of the astounded College of Cardinals.

Although Punch was not originally French, he has always been greatly esteemed in France. He was a highly honoured puppet, as the registers of the royal treasury certify; _ex. gr._, “Paid to Brioché, the puppet-player, for sojourning at St. Germain-en-Laye, during September, October, and November, 1669, to divert the royal children, 1365 livres.” The royal children of France must have had enough of this sort of amusement, the Dauphin particularly, who had already had two months of puppet-playing before Brioché came, as is shown by the same registry:—“Paid to François Daitelin, puppet-player, for the fifty-six days he remained at St. Germain, to amuse Monseigneur le Dauphin (July and August, 1669), 820 livres.”

Bossuet, the Dauphin’s tutor, persecuted both puppets and Protestants, which, and especially the latter, were reckoned for a time among the things that were reprobate and abominable. Brioché himself was suppressed; but he had friends at court; and the King, who would execute a Protestant for preaching, signed a decree which authorized the mountebank to continue playing. Due gratitude was shown in return; and among the favourite pieces represented at the famous fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent, was ‘The Destruction of the Huguenots.’

The puppet-plays at the fairs in Paris were got up with much magnificence, and were wittily written,—but with as much indecency as wit; particularly during the last years of Louis XIV. and the time of the Regent. The puppets alone had full liberty of speech, when every other sort of liberty was extinct. Le Sage and Piron, as I have said, wrote pieces expressly for them. And while plays in France were acted in puppet-shows, puppet-shows in England were introduced into plays. Of this the ‘Bartholomew Fair’ of Jonson is a sufficient example. The _vogue_ of the French puppets is proved by the fact that the Regent Duke of Orléans, with his company of _roués_, often remained in the fair till long after midnight, to witness representations where the coarser the wit the more it was enjoyed.

All the _chefs-d’œuvre_ of the French stage were immediately parodied on the puppet-boards; and saving the license of speech, the parody was often superior to the original. It was so attractive that the regular actors complained, and sought for the suppression of their wooden rivals. But Punch and his brethren pleaded for their ancient privilege, “de parler et de p⸺r.” The plea was held good, and the puppets triumphed over the Thespians. The quarrel being a family one, it was of course carried on with undying hostility. The puppet-players took every opportunity of ridiculing the extravagances of the more serious stage. When the custom of calling for “the author” of a successful new piece was established, upon the example set of calling for Voltaire after the first representation of ‘Merope,’ the puppets availed themselves of the opportunity for caricaturing. “Le compère pressait Polichinelle de lui faire entendre une de ses œuvres; et après avoir reçu une réponse très-incongrue, le compère s’empressait de demander l’auteur! l’auteur! satisfaction que s’empressait de lui donner Polichinelle, aux grands éclats de rire de l’assemblée.”

The contrast with this will call up but a ghastly smile when we find that while the crowd on the Place Louis XV. was waiting to witness the execution of the King, Punch was being serio-comically guillotined in one corner of the square, to the great delight of the spectators. Indeed the ‘Vieux Cordelier’ tells us, that Punch daily filled up the intervals of executions; and so varied the pleasures of the humane but impatient multitude. But what neither the ‘Vieux Cordelier,’ nor M. Magnin tells us, is the fate of this very Punch, or rather of the man and his wife who exhibited the popular puppet. Their fate is recorded by the Marquis de Custine. Punch, it appears, ventured on some jokes against the Terrorists. His master and mistress were thereupon seized. They bore their brief imprisonment with heroism, and they were executed on the spot whereon had perished their sovereign and queen.

The puppets went down in the general hurricane of the Revolution, and they only partially came again to the surface. To their ancient shows on the Boulevard du Temple has succeeded a line of theatres; and the chief resulting difference is, that very awkward men and women now enact the most sacred subjects where puppets once did the same office less revoltingly.

If a popular movement finally declared that the puppet dynasty had ceased to reign, it was a despotic will that abolished the use of such effigies in church spectacles. Louis XIV., on witnessing one of those sights at Dieppe, was so shocked thereat that he ordered their general suppression. The French word for puppet, _Marionnette_, applied originally only to figures of the Virgin Mary; but, like the _Catrinette_ of the little Savoyard, it has ceased to have an exclusive application.

With regard to puppets in England, those wooden ladies and gentlemen once figured largely in our church-shows, interludes, and pageants. The names of the puppet masters have come down to us, from Pad, Cookley, Powell, and the _daughter_ of Colley Cibber, to no less a man than Curran, who, taking upon himself, in sport, the charge of a show for one night, found it so easy when speaking for the mute actors to maintain both sides of an argument that he was _therefore_ convinced of his excellent aptitude for the law.

Pepys, as usual, affords us again illustrations of the fashion which attached to puppets in his day. From his brief journalizing we obtain a world of information on this matter. Thus we find him recording:—“12th Nov. 1661. My wife and I to Bartholomew Fayre, with puppets (which I had seen once before, and the play without puppets often); but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening of it.” On the 9th May, in the following year, we find him in Covent Garden, “to see an Italian puppet-play, that is within the rayles there,—the best that ever I saw, and great resort of gallants.” In a fortnight he takes poor Mrs. Pepys to the same play. In October, he says:—“Lord Sandwich is at Whitehall, with the King, before whom the puppet-plays I saw this summer in Covent Garden are acted this night.” On the 30th August, 1667, being with a merry party at Walthamstow, he left his wife to get home as well as she could; _he_ “to Bartholomew Fayre, to walk up and down, and there, among other things, find my Lady Castlemaine at a puppet-play, ‘Patient Grizell,’ and the street full of people expecting her coming out. I confess I did wonder at her courage to come abroad, thinking the people would abuse her; but they, silly people, do not know the work she makes; and therefore suffered her with great respect to take coach, and so away without any trouble at all.”

The last allusion made by Pepys on this subject forms an admirable commentary on the approving ecstasy expressed by the royalists at the lashing which the “Precisians” received at the hands of Lantern’s puppets in Jonson’s comedy. On the 5th September, 1668, Pepys is again on the old ground, “to see the play ‘Bartholomew Faire,’ and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; _only_” (he adds) “the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest.”

I began this chapter with a quotation from Puysieux—I may end it with that just cited from Pepys; and therewith, lowering the curtain of my little theatre, I beg the indulgence of my audience for the succeeding portions of what I have respectfully to bring before them; something more especially touching Tailors, and the Man whose making is to Tailors due! First, however, to treat the matter reverently, let us inquire what influenced the ancient corporation in their selection of a protecting Saint.

TOUCHING TAILORS.

“Rem acu tetigisti.”—HORACE.

“You have treated of a matter about the needle.”—_Translated by
a Merchant Tailors’ Pupil._

“Sit merita Laus!”—ST. WILLIAM, ABP.

“Sit, merry Tailors.”—_Freely rendered by the Saint’s Chaplain._

WHY DID THE TAILORS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM FOR THEIR PATRON?

“King David’s confessor is worth a whole calendar of
Williams.”—LUTHERAN TAILOR.

Why did the tailors choose St. William for their patron? Ah, _why_? I confess it puzzles me to furnish a reply; and I would not be editor of that pleasant paper ‘Notes and Queries,’ if my official hours were to be passed in furnishing answers to such questions.

I can understand why St. Nicholas is the patron of children. The Saint once came upon a dozen or two in a tub, cut up, pickled, and ready for home consumption or foreign exportation, and he restored them all to life by a wave of his wand,—of his hand, I should say, but I was thinking of Harlequin; and thenceforth parents very properly neglected their children, knowing that Nicholas was their commissioned curator.

I can comprehend why “St. John Colombine” is the patron saint of honest workmen. I heard Dr. Manning, the other day, tell _his_ story from that thimble of a pulpit in the Roman Catholic Chapel at Brook Green. This John was a journeyman tailor (or of some as honest vocation) given to strong drink and hot wrath. He was one day made insanely furious because his real Colombine, his wife, had not got his dinner ready according to order. The good housewife bethought her for a moment, and thereupon, after turning aside, placed before him, not bread, but biography; not a loaf and a salad, but the ‘Lives of the Saints.’ John dipped into the same, devoured chapter after chapter, and fed so largely on the well-attested facts, that he lost all appetite for aught besides. He thenceforth so comported himself that future editors gave him a place in the catalogue of the canonized; and the story, as told by that pale and care-worn-looking Dr. Manning, is worth the shilling which you _must_ disburse if you would hear it. Certainly, I mean nothing disrespectful to that sincere but seemingly unhappy man, when I say that so startling was the story as introduced into a discourse upon the Spirit of the Lord and they who are led by such Spirit, that I could not have been more startled if, in the days of my youth, the Bleeding Nun in ‘The Travellers Benighted’ had, in the midst of her most tremendous scene, tripped down to the foot-lights and sung a comic song.

But this will not answer the query, “Why did the tailors choose St. William for their patron?” Indeed, the digression I have made may be taken for proof that I do not know how to answer the question. But let us at least inquire.

First, there was the Savoyard Saint William, who, when an orphan, abandoned the friends who would have protected him; and after wandering barefooted to the shrine of that Saint whom English boys unwittingly celebrate by their grottoes, “only once a year,” St. James of Compostella, proceeded to the kingdom of Naples, where he withdrew to a desert mountain, and passed his time in contemplating the prospect before him. He lacerated his skin instead of washing it, and he patched his own garments when he might have earned new ones by honest labour. But he founded a community of monks and friars, and _ergo_ he is celebrated by the hagiographers. A contempt for saponaceous applications, and a disregard of upper appearance or under comfort, have decidedly descended to the brotherhood of tailors from William of Monte Vergine.

Secondly, there was William of Champeaux, who founded the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris. This William was a man of large learning and small means; and he was well content to dine daily on a lettuce, a pinch of salt, and a mouthful of bread. The shadows of dinners which form the substance of tailors’ repasts, are reflections from the board of William of Champeaux.

Thirdly, there was William of Paris, the familiar friend of St. Louis, King of France. This bishop, next to piety, was famed for his knowledge of politics; and as tailors have ever been renowned for knowing what is going on “i’ the capitol,” and for discussing such goings on with uncommon freedom, I think we may trace this characteristic of the race to the news-loving and loquacious prelate of eight centuries ago.

Fourthly, there was St. William of Maleval, of sufficiently ignoble birth to have been a tailor; and who did, in his youth and his cups, what modern young tailors frequently offer to do under similar circumstances, namely, enlist. If our useful friends have not imitated the latter example set them by the Saint, we may trace their love of the pot, at least, to the early model they found in their patron of Maleval; and if often they find themselves in the station-house, lying upon no softer bed than the bare ground, they doubtless find the reflection as feathers to their bruised sides, that it was even thus that the founder of the Gulielmites lay in a cave of the Evil Valley to which he gave a name (Male Val), and which before was known by no better than the Stable of Rhodes.

Fifthly, there was William of Gelone, Duke of Aquitaine, whom it took St. Bernard twice to convert before he made a Christian of him; and who had such gallant propensities that he might have been one of the couple sung of in the ‘Bridal of Triermain,’ where of three personages it is said that—

“There were two who loved their neighbours’ wives,
And one who loved his own.”

The well-known gallantry of the tailors therefore is an heirloom from William of Aquitaine.

Sixthly, there was William sometime Archbishop of Bourges, who left to the guild of whom we are treating the example which is followed by so many of its members, and which consisted in utterly dispensing with a shirt. He further never added to his costume in winter, nor diminished anything in it in summer; and they who have taken St. William for a patron are known, though not for the same reasons, to be followers of the same fashion.

Then there was, seventhly, St. William of Norwich, whose father, after hesitating whether to bind him apprentice to a tailor or a tanner, had just placed him with the latter when the lad was seized upon by the Jews, and by them tortured and crucified, in derision of Christ. On Easter Day they put the body into a sack, and carried it into Thorpe Wood, where it was afterwards discovered, and buried, with many miraculous incidents to illustrate the funeral; and where was afterwards erected the chapel of St. William in the Wood. Now, at first sight, it would appear difficult to decide as to what the tailors’ guild derived from William of Norwich. But it is only at first sight, and to those unaccustomed to follow a trail, and not determined to find what they are looking for. In allusion to what had befallen the body of St. William, or rather in memory of how that body was conveyed away, after life had been expelled from it, the Norwich tailors first adopted that now consecrated phrase of “getting the sack,” and which phrase implies a loss of position, to the detriment of the loser.

But I have not done; Williams are as plentiful as blackberries. There is an eighth, the Abbot of Eskille, who no more liked to play sub-prior to a superior than Garrick liked to play an unapplauded Falconbridge to Sheridan’s King John. William of Eskille was a great reformer of slothful convents, by whose inmates he was as much detested as an honest and vigilant foreman is by operatives who work by the day. One thing deemed worthy of mention by his biographers consists in the dreary fact that he wore the same shirt for thirty years. At the end of that time he turned it, and then piously blessed the saints for “the comfort of clean linen.” I question if even modern tailors have succeeded in attaining to this extent of saintly uncleanliness, but I would not be too certain of that fact. As for what they may further have derived from this excellent person, it is well known that for an abbot to be called an _Abbot d’Eskille_ was the highest possible compliment that could be paid him; and so the phrase fell to other _camaraderies_, and a _Tailleur d’Eskille_ was the origin of a tailor of skill. But this is confidential, reader,—between you and me. If you are related to an etymologist, or on friendly terms with a lexicographer, I earnestly beg that you will not mention it, even “after dinner.”

Under the mystic number “nine,” I come to that William Archbishop of York, who was the nephew of Stephen King of England, and whom old St. Bernard belaboured with as many hard words as ever Sir Richard Birnie hurled, on a Monday morning, on ex-inebriated tailors captured on the preceding Saturday night. I do not believe a word of what the irate St. Bernard says against St. William, whom he accuses of the most horrible crimes. The slightest charge in the bill of indictment drawn up by him, whom Hurden calls a wicked old impostor, is love of good living. St. William, like honest Archiepiscopus Wilfred, had a tender inclination for roast goose! Oh, benedicte Gulielme! may you have found the bird ever as your inclination,—tender! The sacred goose is an appanage of the tailors, and it dates from that jovial St. William whom St. Bernard hated as cordially as though the former had made the latter’s hair-shirt too tight to comfortably breathe in after supper.

Our tenth example is the St. William who was bishop of St. Brieux, in Brittany, who often pawned his robes to purchase corn for the poor. Here we see whence the society of tailors borrow their authority for depositing pledges, in order to purchase distillations from corn, and for the poor also,—their poor selves. This is highly satisfactory.

There was one more William, namely, he who, English by birth, was the introducer of Christianity into Denmark, and who was of such good repute when living that he was buried in the mausoleum of the Danish kings, at Roeskild, after death. It was remarked of him that when he was reproving “drunken Denmark,” he invariably held his pastoral staff as though he were taking measure, as he probably was of the royal bad habits; and perhaps on this account he has come in for a share of the patronage exercised over the guild whose members take measure of men.

And now let it be observed, that although I have mentioned eleven Williams, there are only _nine_ of them who really rank among the canonized saints. Is not _that_ suggestive? The fraternity, of whom it takes nine members to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would take nine saints to make one patron. It is clear, then, that it is not to _one_ William, but to _nine_ combined, that the guild address, or did in olden times address, their vows and acknowledgments; and exactly for the reason that there are nine Saint Williams have the English tailors chosen them, in a mass, for their one consolidated patron. _Quod erat demonstrandum!_

And now, having seen how the tailors took their patron, let us consider them generally. There have been many of note, either of themselves or in their sons. Church, bar, army, navy, poetry, and the stage,—they have by turns excelled in all.

If Barrow rose from his father’s shop, where he was early initiated in the mysteries of mercer and draper, to wear his well-earned dignity in the Church, there was nothing wonderful in the elevation. The father of our present Archbishop of York kept, at Cambridge, a shop like that of Barrow’s father. One of the most active and useful of the Yorkshire rectors was himself in early life of the craft; and there is no more zealous or efficient missionary in Ireland than the Rev. Mr. Doudney, the brother of the well-known London tailor of that name.

In the olden times,—that is, some two centuries ago,—the boy who passed from his father’s shop-board to enter, as a man, the pulpit, was of very High Church principles, if we may take Shadwell’s portrait of Smirk in the ‘Lancashire Witches’ as a faithful portraiture. Smirk is a little given, as Brother Ignatius advises all Roman Catholic servants in Protestant families to be, to inquire into the family secrets, for which his patron, Sir Edward Harfort, to whom he is chaplain, reproves him. The following sharp dialogue then ensues:—

“_Smirk._ Consider, Sir, the dignity of my function.

_Sir Ed._ Your father is my tailor. You are _my servant_;
And do you think a cassock and a girdle
Can alter you so much as to enable
You (who before were but a coxcomb, Sir)
To teach me?

_Smirk._ My orders give me authority to speak.
A power legantine I have from Heaven.

_Sir Ed._ _Show your credentials._
The indiscretion of such paltry fellows
Are scandals to the Church and cause they preach for.
With furious zeal you press for discipline,
With fire and blood maintain your great Diana,
Foam at the mouth when a Dissenter’s named,
And damn them if they do not love a surplice.

_Smirk._ Had I the power I’d make them wear pitcht surplices.

_Sir Ed._ Such firebrands as you but hurt the cause.
The learned’st and the wisest of your tribe
Strive by good life and meekness to o’ercome them.”

It is worth recording that this rather high-toned chaplain Smirk, son of Smirk the Tailor, came under the censure and the scissors of the scrupulous Master of the Revels. This delicate official could tolerate the Smirks of Etherege, but when Shadwell exhibited one with something like sincerity dragging after his faults, the whole town, ay, and the court too, cried out _shame_! The wisdom of our ancestors does not appear to match with the assurance which affects to give warranty of it.

To turn from poetry to prose, I have to remark that Ingulph, the Abbot of Croyland, who wrote the pleasant story of his monastery, appears to me to have been (possibly) a tailor’s son. The good old man does not indeed say as much, but he intimates that he was a cockney of humble origin; and, if “vous êtes orfèvre, Monsieur Josse,” have a significance, why something of the same sort may be detected in the phrases and, I may add, in the deeds of the Chronicler of Croyland.

Ingulph was a Westminster boy and an Oxford scholar. Speaking of his studies at the latter place, he says:—“After I had made progress beyond most of my fellows in mastering Aristotle, I also _clothed myself down to the heels_ with the first and second rhetoric of Tully. On growing to be a young man, I loathed the narrow means of my parents, and daily longed with the most ardent desire to leave my paternal home, and sighed for the palaces of kings and princes, to clothe myself in soft or pompous raiment.” If Molière’s Monsieur Josse was discovered to be a goldsmith by the setting of his criticism, we may say that Ingulph was of a tailorish origin by the cut of his phrases. And so, as I have said, of his acts: in these there is a strong _redolence_ of what the vulgar call “cabbage.” For instance, when “trustworthy reports” were made by local valuers of land and property, in order that the same should be taxed, and the said valuers visited Croyland to that intent, Ingulph thus exultingly records what took place:—“Those persons showed a kind and benevolent feeling towards our monastery, and _did not value the monastery at its true revenue_, nor yet _at its exact extent_; and thus, in their compassion, took due precautions against the future exactions of the kings, as well as other burdens, and with the most attentive benevolence made provision for our welfare.” It is curious to see how robbing the king’s exchequer in favour of a monastery is called attentive benevolence; how fraudulent returns are spoken of as “trustworthy reports;” and how the Lord Abbot of Croyland, the personal favourite of William the Conqueror, cheated the master who confided in him, and practically illustrated the text, “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”

Till a very recent period it was the invariable custom, whenever a Frenchman appeared on our stage, to represent him ridiculously attired. This was originally done out of revenge for an affront put upon us by Catherine de’ Medici; who, instigated by the Duc de Guise, had dressed up her buffoons at a court entertainment, and called them English _milords_. Elizabeth made a capital remark when she was told of this insult. She called aloud, in full court, to the French Ambassador, that when these French buffoons were declared in presence of her own Ambassador, Lord North, to be English noblemen, that envoy ought to have told those who witnessed the unseemly entertainment, that the tailors of France who had so mimicked the costume of her great sire Henry VIII. should have better remembered the habiliments of that great King, since he had crossed the sea more than once with warlike engines displayed, and had some concern with the people there.

The most fortunate, perhaps I ought to say the most successful, tailor of very recent times, was Mr. Brunskill, whose seat of operations was at Exeter. No provincial, and not above one metropolitan, tailor ever realized such a fortune as he did: it was realized not by luck, but by labour. For the first seven years that he was in business on his own account he worked seventeen hours a day. And if he went to church on Sundays, he plied his needle none the less actively during the other hours of that day. This is the worst feature in the case; but he probably entertained a religious respect for that maxim of St. Augustine which tells us, “qui laborat, orat.” It was his boast that he was the only man in Exeter who could ride forty miles a day and cut out work for forty journeymen besides. This assiduity had its reward, and Brunskill’s business soon returned above £25,000 annually. Of course young heirs and youths rich only in present hopes resorted to him for loans; and Brunskill was as successful as a money-broker as he was in his other vocation. Cent. upon cent. reared the structure of his edifice of fortune; and long before a quarter of a century had elapsed since he commenced his career, he was proprietor of Polsloe Park, and, if not a ’squire himself, training his three lads to take station with ’squires. In the meantime, constant labour was his dear delight, and he was ever at his board or his bank, making men by a double process,—some, by dressing their persons; some, by dressing their credit,—and, in either case, with good security for prompt payment. He was thus hard at work up to one Monday night not many months ago, and on the following Thursday morning he was a dead man. Corporal Trim himself might here have found a theme whereon to deeply philosophize. Leaving that profitable occupation to our old friend the Corporal, let us look at the half pleasant, half stern realities of the case. Brunskill left three sons: to the two younger he bequeathed £10,000 apiece; to the eldest, £200,000 and Polsloe Park. The younger may wear their crape with satisfaction, and the eldest heir may bless the needle which pricked him out so pretty a condition. His sire has made him first gentleman of a future race of county ’squires; and I beg to assure heirs to come in after times from this peculiar source, that they will have less to be ashamed of than have those noble gentlemen and ladies who descend from concubines of kings, and who exist upon the wages of their first mother’s pollution.

We have now considered both the patron and his flock; let us now see how the latter have been treated by the lively poets who have “fine-drawn” them in immortal verse.

THE TAILORS MEASURED BY THE POETS.

“Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori.”—HORACE.

Oh, Thersites, good friend, how scurvily hast thou been dealt with at the hands of man! Thou art emphatically _un homme incompris_, but thou art not therefore _un homme méprisable_. The poets have comprehended thee better than the people; and Homer himself has no desire to prove thee the coward and boaster for which thou art taken by the world on Homeric authority. I think that Ulysses, with whom, in the ‘Iliad,’ Thersites is brought in contact, is by far the greater brute of the two. The husband of Penelope is cringing to the great, and cruel to the lowly. He appears much less fitted for a king than for a Poor-law Commissioner. He unmercifully smites the deformed Thersites with his sceptre; but why?—because the latter, so far from being a coward, had had the courage to attack Agamemnon himself before the whole assembled Greeks. He is ridiculed for the tears extorted from him by pain and shame; and yet weeping, among the heroes of Greek epic and tragic poetry, is indulged in on all occasions by the bravest of the brave. There is nothing that these copper-captains do more readily or more frequently, except lying, for which they exhibit an alacrity that is perfectly astounding. The soft infection will run through two whole armies, and then the universal, solemn shower rises into the majesty of poetry; but when our poor, ill-treated friend drops a scalding tear, in his own solitary person, it is then _bathos_! I concede that he talked too much; but it was generally close to the purpose, and fearless of results. His last act was one of courage. The semi-deified bully Achilles, having slain Penthesilea, cried like a school-boy at his self-inflicted loss; and Thersites, having laughed at him for his folly, paid for his bold presumption with his life. There is another version of his death, which says that, the invincible son of Thetis having visited the dead body of the Amazon with unnatural atrocities, the decent Thersites reproached him for his unmanly conduct, and was slain by him in rage at the well-merited rebuke. Shakspeare, who did all things perfectly, makes of Thersites a bold and witty jester, who entertains a good measure of scorn for the valiant ignorance of Achilles. The wit of the latter, with that of his brother chiefs, lies in their sinews; and their talk is of such a skim-milk complexion that we are ready to exclaim, with bold Thersites himself, “I will see you hanged like clotpoles ere I come any more to your tents; I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.”

As it has been with our poor friend Thersites, so has it been with our useful friends whose faculties are ever given to a consideration of the important matter “De Re Vestiariâ.” The poets however do not partake of the popular fallacy; and the builders of lofty rhyme are not unjust, as we shall see, to a race whose mission it is to take measures in order to save godlike man from looking ridiculous.

Shakspeare of course has rendered this full justice to the tailor. In his illustrations we see our ancient friend variously depicted, as industrious, intelligent, honest, and full of courage, without vapouring. The tailor in ‘King John’ is represented as the retailer of news, and the strong handicraftsman listens with respect to the budget of the weakly intelligencer.

“I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The while his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news;
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet),
Told of a many thousand warlike French
That were embattlèd and rank’d in Kent.”

It is clear that nothing less than an invasion had driven this hard-working artisan from his shop-board to talk of politics and perils with his friend at the smithy. The German poet Heyne has something of a similar description of the tailor, in prose: in his ‘Reisebilder’ there is an admirably graphic account of how the Elector John William fled from Düsseldorf, and left his _ci-devant_ subjects to render allegiance to Murat, the grand and well-curled Duke of Berg; and how, of the proclamations posted in the night, the earliest readers in the grey morning were an old soldier and a valiant tailor, Killian,—the latter attired as loosely as his predecessor in ‘King John,’ and with the same patriotic sentimentality in the heart which beat beneath his lightly burdened ribs.

But, to revert to “Sweet Will,” how modestly dignified, assured, and self-possessed is the tailor in ‘Katherine and Petruchio!’ The wayward bridegroom had ridiculed the gown brought home by the “woman’s tailor” for the wayward bride. He had laughed at the “masking-stuff,” sneered at the demi-cannon of a sleeve, and profanely pronounced its vandyking (if that term be here admissible) as

“carved like an apple-tart.
Here’s snip and nip, and cut, and slish and slash,
Like to a censer in a barber’s shop.”

To all which profanity against divine fashion, the tailor modestly remarks that he had made the gown, as he had been bidden,

“orderly and well,
According to the fashion and the time.”

And when Petruchio, who is not half so much of a gentleman in this scene as Sartorius, calls the latter “thimble,” “flea,” “skein of thread,” “remnant,” and flings at him a whole vocabulary of vituperation, the gentle _schneider_ still simply asserts that the gown was made according to direction, and that the latter came from Grumio himself. Now Grumio, being a household servant, lies according to the manner of his vocation; and where he does not lie, he equivocates most basely; and where he neither lies nor equivocates, he bullies; and finally, he falls into an argument, which has not the logical conclusion of annihilating his adversary. The latter, with quiet triumph, produces Grumio’s note containing the order; but it costs the valet no breath, and as little hesitation, to pronounce the note a liar too. But a worm will turn; and the tailor, touched to the quick on a point of honour, brings his bold heart upon his lips, and valiantly declares, “This is true that I say; an I had thee in place where, thou shouldst know it;” and thereupon Grumio falls into bravado and uncleanness, and the tailor is finally dismissed with scant courtesy, and the very poor security of Hortensio’s promise to pay for what Petruchio owed. The breach of contract was flagrant, and the only honest man in the party was the tailor.

So much for honesty; as for bravery, commend me to forcible Francis Feeble. He too was but a “woman’s tailor;” but what an heroic soul was in that transparent frame! He reminds me of Sir Charles Napier. When the latter hero was complimented by the Mayor of Portsmouth, he simply undertook to do his best, and counselled his worship not to expect too much. Sir Charles must have taken the idea of his speech from Francis Feeble; and what an honour is that for the entire profession, not of sailors, but of tailors! “Wilt thou make me,” asks Falstaff, “as many holes in an enemy’s battle, as thou hast done in a woman’s petticoat?” “I will do my good will, Sir,” answereth gallant Feeble, adding, with true conclusiveness, “you can have no more.” Well might Sir John enthusiastically hail him as “courageous Feeble,” and compare his valour to that of the wrathful dove and most magnanimous mouse,—two animals gentle by nature, but being worked upon not void of spirit. Indeed, Feeble is the only gallant man of the entire squad of famished recruits. Bullcalf offers “good master corporate Bardolph” a bribe of “four Harry ten shillings in French crowns,” to be let off. Not that Bullcalf is afraid! Not he, the knave; he simply does not care to go! He is not curious in things strategic; he seeth no attraction in stricken fields; but he would fain be out of harm’s way, because, in his own words,—“because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, Sir, I did not care, for mine own part, so much.” To no such craven tune runneth the song of stupendous Feeble! Mouldy urges affection for his old dame as ground of exemption from running the risk of getting decorated with a bloody coxcomb. No such jeremiade is chanted by Titanic Francis. “By my troth,” gallantly swears that lion-like soul,—“by my troth, _I_ care not!” _He_, the tailor, cares not! neither subterfuge, lie, nor excuse will _he_ condescend to! Moreover, he is not only courageous, but Christian-like and philosophical; as, for example:—“A man can die but once;—we owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base mind; an it be my destiny, so; an it be not, so; no man’s too good to serve his prince; and, let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.” This was not a man to march with whom through Coventry a captain need to be ashamed. So valiant, and yet so modest! So conscious of peril, and yet so bold in the encountering of it! So clear in his logic, so profound in his philosophy, so loyal of heart, and so prepared in the latter to entertain any fate, whatever might be its aspect, or the hour of its coming! Surely, if the prompter’s book be correct, the _exit_ of this tailor must be directed to be marked with music, to the air of ‘_A man’s a man for a’ that_.’ Anything less appropriate would fail to do justice to the situation.

In Francis Feeble then the spirit of the tailor is immortalized. Compared with him, Starveling, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ is simply tender-hearted. He is one of the actors in the play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ and he is the most ready to second the motion that the sword of Pyramus should not be drawn, nor the lion be permitted to roar, lest the ladies, dear souls, should be affrighted. Starveling is more of the carpet knight than Feeble. The one is gallant in stricken fields, the other airs his gallantry in ladies’ bower.

It was right that the race of Feebles should not expire. It was said of old, that to be the sire of sons was no great achievement, but that he was a man indeed who was the father of daughters. Such no doubt was Feeble, one of whose spirited girls married a Sketon; and their eldest son it is, as I would fondly think, who figures so bravely among the followers of Perkin Warbeck, in John Ford’s tragedy of that name. Sketon is the most daring of the company, and the blood of the Feebles suffers no disgrace in his person. Sketon, like the great Duke of Guise, is full of dashing hope, when all his fellows are sunk in dull despair. While so august a personage as John à Water, Mayor of Cork, is thinking twice ere he acts once, Sketon thus boldly and tailor-like cuts out the habit of invasion, and prepares the garb of victory:—“’Tis but going to sea, and leaping ashore,” saith he; “cut ten or twelve thousand unnecessary throats, fire seven or eight towns, take half-a-dozen cities, get him into the market-place, crown him Richard the Fourth, and the business is finished!” Is not this a man whom Nature intended for a commander-in-chief? He is not only quick of resolution, but of action; and yet, I dare be sworn, Sketon had read nothing of what Caius Crispus Sallust says thereupon. And I beseech you to mark one thing more. You know that when the foolish Roman Emperor would not permit the statue of Brutus to be borne in the funeral procession of Britannicus, lest the people should think too much upon that imperatoricide, the obstinate and vulgar rogues thought all the more upon him and his deeds, for the very reason that his statue did not figure among those of other heroes. So in the above heart-stirring speech of valiant Sketon, we miss something which reveals to us how chaste and chivalrous a soldier was the grandson of Feeble. His views go to bold invasion, to the burning of towns, and the sacking of cities, and to splendid victory, built upon the cutting of throats, which he nicely, and as it were apologetically for the act, describes as “_unnecessary_ throats.” A taste of the quality of the roystering soldier is perhaps to be found in this speech; but you are entreated to remark, that all the vengeance of the tailor is directed solely against his enemy, _man_. The women, it is evident, have nothing to fear at the hands of Sketon. He does not mention rudeness to them, just as the ancient legislator did not provide against parricide, simply because, judging from his own heart, he deemed the crime impossible. Sketon and Scipio deserve to go down to posterity hand in hand, as respecters of timid beauty. There was a Persian victor, too, who would not look upon the faces of his fair captives, lest he should be tempted to violate the principles of propriety. Sketon was bolder, and not less virtuous. To my thinking, he is the Bayard of tailors. It would wrong him to compare him even with Joseph Andrews; and I will only add that if old Tilly, at Magdeburg, had been influenced by the virtue of Sketon, there might not have been less weeping for lost lovers, but there would have been more maidens left to sit down in cypress, and mourn for them.

Sketon, foremost in fight, is first to hail the man whom he takes for prince, when victory has induced the Cornish men of mettle to proclaim at Bodnam, Richard IV. “monarch of England, and king of hearts.” Jubilant in success, he does not complain when Fortune veils her face. Defeat and captivity are accepted with dignity when they are compelled upon him; and when swift death is to be the doom of himself and companions, he does not object to the philosophical disquisition of his old leader and fellow-sufferer, Perkin, that death by the sword, whereby the “pain is past ere sensibly ’tis felt,” is far preferable to being slowly slain at home by the doctors. For he says:—

“To tumble
From bed to bed, be massacred alive
By some physicians, for a month or two,
In hope of freedom from a fever’s torments,
Might stagger manhood.”

And accordingly Sketon follows Warbeck to death without a remnant of fear; and I _must_ add, that Henry VII. showed little generosity when he remarked upon their executions, as he sat comfortably at home,

“That public states,
As our particular bodies, taste most good
In health, when purged of corrupted blood.”

Ford, the dramatic poet, offers indirect testimony to the morality of the English tailor, by his introduction of a French member of the fraternity in ‘The Sun’s Darling.’ The author calls his piece a moral masque; but Monsieur le Tailleur utters some very immoral matter in it, such, it may fairly be supposed, as he could not have put into the mouth of a kinsman of Starveling.

Massinger’s tailors again show that they were as much the victims of their customers as their descendants are now; and the “Who suffers?”—the facetious query of Mr. Pierce Egan’s ‘Tom and Jerry,’—would have been quite as appropriate a way of asking the name of a “Corinthian’s” tailor two centuries ago. “I am bound t’ye, gentlemen,” says the grateful builder of doublets and trunkhose to his lordly customers. “You are deceived,” is the comment of the page; “_they’ll_ be bound to you; you must remember to trust them none.” The scene here, it is true, is in Dijon; but Massinger, like Plautus, portrayed his country’s manner in scenes and personages drawn from other climes. This is easily to be discerned in the former author’s play of ‘The Old Law.’ The scene is laid in Epirus. A tailor waits upon the young Simonides, who has just joyfully inherited the paternal estate; but the youthful courtier despises the operative employed by his sire.

“Thou mad’st my father’s clothes,”

he says.—

“That I confess.
But what son and heir will have his father’s tailor,
Unless he have a mind to be well laugh’d at?
Thou hast been so used to wide long-side things, that, when
I come to truss, I shall have the waist of my doublet
Lie on my buttocks;—a sweet sight!”

This is purely descriptive, not of Epirote, but of old English costume. The former never changed; our fashions have constantly varied; and the very long-waisted doublet scorned by Simonides, who talks like the rakish heir of an old Cheapside drysalter, has descended from the saloon to the stables. It was once worn by lords; it is now carried by grooms.

But perhaps, on the question of fashions, the remark of the simple-minded tailor in Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Fair Maid of the Inn,’ who is duped so consumedly by Ferabosco the mountebank, is very apt to the matter. He has travelled, and is willing even to go to the moon, in search of strange and exquisite new fashions; but, as he says, “all we can see or invent are but old ones with new names to ’em.” The poets I have last mentioned exhibit quite as great a contempt for chronology as any of their harmonious fellows. Thus, Blacksnout, the Roman blacksmith, in the ‘Faithful Friends,’ living when Titus Martius was King of Rome, tells Snipsnap, the Latin tailor, that he had not only been in battle, but had been shot “with a bullet as big as a penny loaf;” he adds, with much circumstance:—

“’Twas at the siege of Bunnill, passing the straits
’Twixt Mayor’s-lane and Tierra del Fuego,
The fiery isle!”