Chapter IX: Act III (4)

When Alexander ordered the Macedonian soldiers to shave, lest their beards should be handles whereby their enemies might capture them, smooth chins become a universal Greek fashion. It so continued to the reign of Justinian, but when the Turks took Byzantium, they would allow of beards only on the chins of the conquerors; and the Normans treated the Anglo-Saxons according to the same rule. Subsequently, in the year 1200, the Council of Lateran swept off the beards of the monks, “lest in the ceremony of receiving the sacrament, the beard might touch the bread and wine, or crumbs and drops fall and stick upon it.” The monks then were, like the Emperors, _utraquists_. Of course dispensation was to be obtained by paying for it, and it was probably _therefore_ that the decree was issued; but some wore their beards, in despite of the Church and her chancery, for the same reason that Fitzherbert Longbeard did in the Norman times, to show his independence of all superiors and their orders.

If there has really been wisdom in the wig, there has been wit in the beard, or its owner. More, on the scaffold, put it out of reach of the axe, because, as he said, it had committed no treason. Raleigh, when visited by the barber of the Tower, declined to have his beard trimmed, on the ground that there was a lawsuit pending about it, between him and the King, and he would not lay out any capital on it till the cause had been decided.

Raleigh’s wit reminds me of something still more witty, and quite as germane to the subject.

A few years prior to the Revolution, the witty but rather too fiery Linguet was committed to the Bastille. It is seldom that confinement calms the bile of the confined; and accordingly Linguet, the next morning, was engaged in writing _ab irato_ an article against his incarcerators; when he was interrupted by the entrance into his room of a tall, thin, pale, personage, whose appearance very much displeased the celebrated advocate.

“What is your business?” said the latter, in a marked tone of ill-humour.

“Sir,” answered the other, “I come—”

“I see you are come!” interrupted the impatient lawyer, “but you are not wel-come.”

“Possibly, Sir; but I am the Bastille barber, and I have come—”

Here the Figaro of state-prisoners burst into a laugh, and rubbing his chin significantly with his hand, exclaimed, “Ho! ho! my good Sir, that is a different matter; _puisque vous êtes le barbier de la Bastille, rasez-la_;” and after so capital a pun, he addressed himself in better humour to the cutting up of his adversaries.

The last barber who held something more than barber’s office under a Christian king was Olivier le Dain, the _familiar_ of Louis XI. In Persia, it has been common for the monarch’s barber to be a prince over the people. The Khasterash, or “personal shaver,” is reverenced by all inferior citizens; and they see nothing incongruous in the fact that a palace and slaves are part of the rewards of a man who makes of the beard of the Shah an eighth wonder of the world. The beard, in fact, has ever been held in reverential regard by all Moslems, for the reason that their prophet never allowed instrument to diminish his own. An Arab would be as much horror-stricken now as ever Lacedemonian fugitive was of old, if in punishment for offence he were condemned to lose, by shaving, the half of his beard. He would infinitely prefer to lose half his family.

The wit of Linguet, mentioned above, recalls to my memory a _trait_ of a Duc de Brissac. This nobleman was frequently heard saying, as he was at his matutinal toilet, and was about to raise his razor to the surface of his ducal chin:—“Now then, Timoléon de Cossé, God hath made thee a gentleman, and the King hath made thee a duke; nevertheless, it is right and proper that thou shouldst have something to do—therefore thou shalt shave thyself.” I may add that it was the fashion of the De Cossés to have one general Christian name; and I think it is Bungener who remarks, in his ‘Julian,’ that on a gentleman of this house being brought before the revolutionary tribunal, and asked what his baptismal name was, he answered indignantly, “Am I not a De Cossé? and what should my Christian name be but Timoléon?”—and he added an exclamatory “de par Dieu!” to show that though he was in danger of death, he could swear as recklessly as though he had still been in the galleries of Versailles.

I have said that philosophers have not disdained to write upon the beard, and I may be honestly proud of an opportunity to follow in the wake of the philosophers. Chrysippus has chronologized its history, and it is from him we know that it was not before the reign of Alexander that shaving became a fashion in the East. Timotheus, that renowned musician, long stuck to the olden mode, and played the flute in a beard as long as his instrument, πώγωνα μέγαν ἔχων ηὔλει: and how sweetly does that last word interpret the flute’s sweet sound—ηὔλει! it dies away like a cadence beneath the lips of as great a flutist as Timotheus, our own modest and able Richardson.

The first man who shaved himself at Athens acquired a name by the act. He was called _Korses_, the shaven, or clipped. Diogenes despised fashion, and therefore kept his beard. Not only that; he abused all who dispensed with it. “Ah!” he exclaimed with that mouth which lay behind a portion of his own hirsute dirtiness,—for Diogenes had a contempt for soap;—“Ah!” cried he, on encountering a friend newly mown, “art thou inclined then to reproach Nature? Wouldst thou insinuate that she had done better to have made thee a woman rather than a man?”

At Rhodes all shaving was forbidden; but the Rhodians loved to display their independence of the law, and every man did what seemed best to his own chin. The same unruly sort of liberty was taken by the Byzantine barbers. The law expressly denounced razors, but scissors were tolerated. Clipping was permitted, but shaving was pronounced irreligious. Some priests shaved in spite of the decree. It was made a diocesan-court matter of; and the chief pontiff, a sort of bishop in his way, rendered an admirable judgement on the occasion. He regretted his limited powers, but he said his course was clear. Scissors were lawful, razors illegal; but the priests had first used the former, and the law did not say that razors should _not_ be used after the scissors had been applied. For his own part, he did not well know which to adopt; but he thought his reverend gentlemen would be justified in keeping razors, but not in using them—themselves. They might shave each other! One poor priest inquired what _he_ was required to do, seeing that he had no beard. “Oh,” said Λονδονικός, “in this case I have no doubt. The use of scissors is imperative; and if you do not obey the law, I will clap you into the Ecclesiastical Court.”

The Mahometans are very superstitious touching the beard. They bury the hairs which come off in combing it, and break them first, because they believe that angels have charge of every hair, and that they gain them their dismissal by breaking it. Selim I. was the first Sultan who shaved his beard, contrary to the law of the Koran. “I do it,” said he apologetically to the scandalized and orthodox mufti, “to prevent my vizier leading me by it.” He cared less for it than some of our ancestors, two centuries ago, did for their own. They used to wear pasteboard covers over them in the night, lest they should turn upon them and rumple them in their sleep!

The famous Raskolniki schismatics had a similar superstition to the Mahometan one mentioned above. They considered the divine image in man to reside in the beard.

Not only have the shavers of barbaric kings been accounted superior to the Prime Minister, as in our own country French _coiffeurs_ are infinitely better paid than English curates; so to be shaved by a Prince is to be exalted to ecstatic honours. Hoskins, the traveller, was so operated on by the heir apparent of the Shaghes. His royal highness used a threepenny razor, and at every stroke carried away as much chin as beard; the honour was too much for the traveller, especially when it was cut out with a blunt razor.

Rogers is said to have once asked Talleyrand if Napoleon shaved himself. “Yes,” said the latter; “one who is born to be a king has some one to shave him, but they who acquire kingdoms shave themselves.” He might have added, “And the people too, pretty closely!”

But I am pulling the beard to a greater extent than my readers’ patience will be inclined to bear with it. I have only to add, that the beard was a symbol of bravery as well as of wisdom; and he who had a good one on his chin was usually able to grasp a sword to some purpose in his hand. Let us therefore draw the sword too, and see what can be made of it.

SWORDS.

“I love an enemy, I was born a soldier;
And he that at the head of his troop defies me,
Binding my manly body with his sword
I make my mistress.”—BONDUCA.

In the first book of the Peloponnesian War, it is stated by Thucydides that “the people of the Continent exercised robberies upon one another; and to this very day,” he adds, “the people of Greece are supported by the same practices.” The great historian especially names the Ozolian Locrians, Ætolians, and Acarnanians, and their neighbours on the continent; among whom, as he informs his readers, the custom of wearing their swords, or other weapons required by their old life of rapine, was still retained. “This custom,” continues the writer, “of wearing weapons, once prevailed throughout Greece, as the houses had no manner of defence, as travelling was full of hazard, and the whole lives of the people were passed in armour, like barbarians. A proof of this,” says the civilized Thucydides, “is the continuance still in some parts of Greece of these manners, which were once with uniformity general to all. The Athenians were the first who discontinued the custom of wearing their swords, and who passed from the dissolute life into more polite and elegant manners.”

What the Athenians did so long ago was not accomplished in our own metropolis until the end of the first quarter, or rather the beginning of the second half, of the last century. The example, slowly set by London, was soon enforced at Bath. I say “enforced,” because there was a pleasant despot there, who ruled so supreme that the very “Baths of Bath” seemed only to flow at his permission.

It was in presence of “Beau Nash” that fell the swords and top-boots of the squires and the aprons of the ladies. The results thereof, at least of the putting aside the sword, at Bath and in London, and throughout the country generally, where gallant submitted to be disarmed in obedience to law or to custom, may be described in the language of Thucydides, as applied to the Athenians when they abandoned ruffianism and adopted refinement:—“Men passed from the dissolute life into more polite and elegant manners.”

In the simple old Saxon days the sword played a considerable part in the making of a knight. The candidate for chivalry was required, the day before his consecration, to confess; and then pass the night in the church, in prayer and fasting. On the following day he was to hear mass, and during the service he placed his sword upon the altar; the priest, after the Gospel, took the weapon, blessed it, and then, with benison on the warrior, laid the blade on the neck of the knight, who however was not a knight complete until he had received the Sacrament as a complement of the blessing.

Thus the Church made her own cavaliers: but the Normans, who came among us under a banner blessed by the Pope, held his method of consecration in scorn and abomination. The knights so made they accounted of as no knights at all, but as mere “tardy troopers and degenerate plebeians.” So, in modern times, a militia ensign with a Norman name affects to look with contempt on a “captain” who may have fought his way to his title in Spain or South America; and the young noble who at Oxford has taken a degree, not conferred by right of knowledge, but seized by right of nobility, pretends to look down upon men who, at Bonn, at Marburg, or at Göttingen, have penned their Latin thesis, and maintained its statements against all adversaries, and who have won their honours,—in short, by earning and deserving them.

They were godless fellows, those Normans, though they did come with a papal benediction. Previous to their appearance no deed was legal that was not marked by golden crosses and other sacred signs. The Northmen _changèrent tout cela_: they transferred estates simply by word of mouth, without writing or charter, and only with the sword, helmet, horn, or cup of the owner. Tenements, we are told, were conveyed with a spur, a bow, an arrow, or even a “body-scraper.” But this was soon found to be inconvenient; and then the conquerors introduced the custom of confirming deeds by wax impressions, made by the especial seal of each person, with the subscription thereto of three or four witnesses present. Now many a Norman had no other seal than the end of the pommel of his sword, and by such an instrument many a Saxon was pommelled out of his estate.

And what were these Normans, from whom so many amongst us are proud to trace their descent? They were—at least good numbers of them were—unbaptized thieves. Such certainly were the Mandevilles and Dandevilles, the Mohuns and Bohuns, the Bissets and Bassets. These were fellows who had converted themselves to Christianity fifty times in the course of the year, for the sake of the garment given each time to every convert. Those renowned swordsmen, the Dagotes, Bastards, Talbots, Laceys, Percys,—what were they but so many robbers who came hither penniless, and were very much astonished at the superabundance of their own good fortune?

Still lower in the scale must have been those Norman swordsmen whose names translated signify Bull-head, Ox-eye, Dirty-villain, Breechless, and the like. Nay, Wim (the) Carter, Hugh (the) Tailor, and Wim (the) Drummer stand recorded in the _Monast. Anglic._ as having been made Norman knights and noble by right of conquest. The ancestor of one of our proudest dukes was a plundering scoundrel, who, having no name at all, was known by that of the town in which he had been recruited,—St. Maur; and the ladies of the Somerset family do not appear ashamed of the descent, since they, not long ago, adopted the old name in preference to that of Seymour, which some of the branches of the family still retain.

Our Chaloners, Rochfords, and Chaworths can boast of no more honourable ancestry: they all spring from the sword-begirt loins of vagabonds, born or recruited in Châlons, Rochefort, and Cahors; and the honourable house of Sacheverele has no more glorious founder than a limping brigand, known by the name of “Saute Chevreau,” or “Saut de Chevreau,” because he hopped like a goat. Why, if antiquity of name be a thing to boast of, that of John Adams should be most admired among men; and Winnifred Jenkins is, in such case, more truly noble than the proudest Norman of them all.

I have noticed how possession was sometimes given with the sword. It was perhaps in allusion to that old custom that Jack Cade touched with his weapon that ancient piece of mystery, “London Stone.” He felt that his title was not good until that ceremony was performed; and, that done, “Now!” exclaimed that popular hater of national schools, “now is Mortimer Lord of London city!” His worship the Mayor carries, by his deputy, a similar weapon, as emblem of his sovereignty. The sword in the City shield has another signification. Some have supposed it was placed there in memory of the gallant chief magistrate who so summarily despatched Wat Tyler; but the sword was in the City shield long before that period. It was called the Sword of St. Paul; and the _Domine dirige nos_ is an invocation that the magistracy may be taught to bear such sword like gentlemen and Christians. Is it because the prayer has been ineffectual that a new legend was constructed to account for the emblazoned weapon?

In the reign of Elizabeth there were two adjuncts which especially went to the making of a gallant—the ruff and the rapier. He whose ruff was the deepest and rapier the longest was the most unquestionable gallant; the consequence was, that apprentices robbed their masters in order to look like gallants. The vigorous Queen looked to it, however; and she placed grave citizens at the gates, with orders to cut off all ruffs of above a nail in depth, and break the points of all rapiers that were above a yard long. The scenes at the City gates must have been turbulent enough at those times, for it is not to be supposed that a “ruffian” would submit quietly to the cutting of his collar or the clipping of his sword.

In earlier times, in England, the sword and poniard too had something of sacredness attached to them: thus, when Athelstan was marching against the Danes and Scots, he paid a visit by the way to the shrine of St. John of Beverley. Upon the altar of the church there he deposited his poniard, vowing that if Heaven and the Saint would help him to a victory, he would redeem the arm at a suitable price. He gained the victory, and observed his vow; and for years the monks there blessed the good Athelstan for not only putting them above the law, but making them as rich as Crœsus. If he had not, they were men who would have taken their revenge; and they would not have scrupled, as the member of the Peace Society says in one of the comedies of Aristophanes, “to take his measure for a suit of Sardian scarlet,” or to have served his body as the heralds have the arms of the Duke of Buccleuch, which, as we all know, are “bruised by a baton sinister.”

The readers of Sterne will not need to be reminded that in ancient days in Brittany a nobleman, too poor to support his dignity, was allowed to make temporary sacrifice of the same by turning to commercial pursuits, after first surrendering his sword to the keeping of the magistracy. When fortune was achieved by honest industry, the old sword was once more hung upon the thigh. It was a wise custom, superior to that I have heard of in another country, where pauper aristocrats condescend to get rich by marrying merchants’ daughters, whose dowries they as profligately squander as though they had inherited them from their own fathers.

I have, in my ‘TABLE TRAITS,’ alluded to the use and abuse of the sword, and therefore will not repeat here incidents already related therein; I will merely remark that the best exemplification of the career of a mere swordsman is to be found in the history of fighting Fulwood, the lawyer. This hero, ever ready to draw his blade with or without reason, while _standing_ (one night in the year of 1720), as was the custom of the pit, to see Mrs. Oldfield in ‘The Scornful Lady,’ remonstrated roughly with Beau Fielding for pushing against him. “Orlando the Fair” straightway clapped his hand to his sword; and the pugnacious lawyer, determined not to be behindhand, drew his blade, and passed it into the body of the Beau. While the latter, who was a mature gentleman of some half-century old, was exhibiting his wound, in order to excite the sympathy which he could _not_ arouse in the breasts of the laughing ladies, Fulwood, flushed by victory, hastened to the playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where he picked a quarrel with Captain Cusack, who was a better swordsman than Orlando and who stopped the lawyer’s triumphs by straightway slaying him.

The sword-clubs were suppressed by royal proclamation in 1724. They had been denounced as unlawful three years previously. The object of the proclamation was to banish from civilized society the sword itself, in order thereby to check the practice of duelling, which was, at that period, exercised exclusively by means of the sword. The law became stringent, and judges merciless upon this point. This was made sufficiently clear in 1726, when Major Oneby killed Mr. Gower in a duel with swords, fought in a tavern, after a dispute over a game at hazard. The adversaries had fought without witnesses, in a room the door of which was closed. The Major, who had been both the aggressor and the challenger, mortally wounded Mr. Gower, who however declared that he had fallen in fair combat. A jury, nevertheless, found Oneby guilty of murder; the judges acquiesced in the verdict, but the Major escaped public execution by committing suicide.

The law had not long to wait before other offenders were summoned for too freely using the sword. On a night in November, 1727, Savage the poet, with two companions, named Gregory and Merchant, entered a coffee-house near Charing-cross. Merchant insulted the company, a quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and a Mr. Sinclair was slain by a thrust,—it is said, but not proved, from the sword of Savage. The result of the trial that followed is well known. The verdict of _guilty of murder_ against Savage and Gregory, and of _manslaughter_ against Merchant (who was the most culpable of the three), was exacted by a villanously partial judge, evidently under pressure of the proclamation against swords.

Merchant was at once burned in the hand in open court; he was also fined, compelled to give security for future good behaviour, and discharged. His associates had a narrow escape of an ignominious death, for which they were assiduously prepared by that Dr. Edward Young, who had not then achieved a reputation for ‘Night Thoughts,’ but who was establishing a reputation by the publication of those ‘Satires’ which so faithfully portray the social crimes and errors of the day.

Johnson’s Life of Savage does not notice Merchant’s sentence, nor does it state upon what terms Savage and Gregory obtained their liberty. They were liberated upon condition of their withdrawing to the Colonies for the space of three years, and giving security to keep the peace. The conditions appear to have been evaded. Gregory indeed did proceed to Antigua, where he obtained an appointment in the customs; but the wayward Savage sat down as a pensioner at the hearth of Lord Tyrconnell, whose benevolence, it is hardly necessary to add, he most shamefully abused.

I think that the last duel, certainly the last _fatal_ duel, fought with swords, was between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, in January, 1762. They had quarrelled at the Star and Garter, Pall Mall, upon a question touching manors and game-preserves; they fought in a closed room of the tavern, and Mr. Chaworth was slain. The circumstances of the killing looked much more like murder than in the case of Major Oneby and Mr. Gower. The Peers, however, acquitted Lord Byron of the capital crime, but they found him guilty of manslaughter. His lordship claimed the benefit of the statute of Edward VI., and he was discharged on paying his fees. A bitter mockery of justice!

The sword appears to have been drawn in as hot wrath at the playhouse as in the park; and sometimes to have figured by way of ridicule. I may cite, as an example of the latter, an incident of the time of Charles II. The court was at Dover, whither the King had gone to receive his sister, and the mistress which that sister brought in her hand as a bribe whereby to make of Charles the enemy of his people! At this time, the French courtiers wore laced coats, of various colours, but all ridiculously short. The shortness of the front part was made up for by the breadth of the waistbelt. Nokes, the Keeley of his day, was dressed to play Sir Arthur Addle, in ‘Sir Solomon;’ and his costume, a caricature on the already sufficiently absurd dress of the French, so delighted the celebrated Duke of Monmouth, that the latter took his own sword and belt from his side, and buckled it with his own semi-royal hands about the person of the player. We should be somewhat startled in these days if we were to hear of Lord Augustus Fitzclarence fastening a cutlass upon the thigh of Mr. Keeley, when acting in the ‘Thirst for Gold:’ but in Charles’s days such freaks were very mildly construed of. The appearance of Nokes, in his short coat and long sword, elicited a roar from King and court, all the louder that the French originals were present. The latter must have taken our most religious and gracious King for a sorry barbarian; and, as chivalrous ideas went, it was very well that they did not surround Nokes as he was going home, and “pink” him into an everlasting incapability of ever caricaturing them again.

James II. was unquestionably more of a true gentleman in outward bearing than his brother Charles. I have an instance of this appropriate to this very subject of swords and actors. In the reign of James, an actor of unimpeachable character and of very refined manners, named Smith, had a discussion behind the scenes with a young nobleman, who, losing his temper with getting the worst of the argument, drew his sword and struck Smith,—for want of logic to confute him. The King forbade the courtier to appear in his presence; and by this means proclaimed his opinion that the nobleman was less of a gentleman than the player. But such a manifestation of opinion roused all the so-called _gentlemen_ against the so-called vagabond players; and the next time Smith played they resorted to the theatre, sword in hand and catcall between their lips, and so plied both, that, despite the royal protection, he was driven from the stage for ever. Luckily for him, the “vagabond” was better off, on two points, than the “noble gentlemen,” his antagonists: he had a considerable fortune, and he was in debt to no man, not even to his tailor.

Smith’s story of the swords drawn against him, reminds me of Mrs. Verbruggen’s, with the sword always ready to leap from the scabbard to defend her. Mrs. Verbruggen was the Mrs. Sterling of her period,—that is, the cleverest of artificial actresses. It would be pertinent to my subject of ‘Habits’ to speak of her as she appeared in what is called “breeches parts;” but I am afraid if I were to describe her, as old Anthony Aston does, who so often saw and wondered, it would be considered very _impertinent_ indeed. I _may_ tell however what he says of her face. “It was of a fine smooth oval,” says Anthony, “full of beautiful and well-disposed moles, as were her neck and breast.” He afterwards adds:—“She was the best conversation possible,—never captious or displeased at anything but what was gross or indecent. For she was cautious, lest fiery Jack should so resent it as to breed a quarrel; for he would often say, ‘Damme! though _I don’t much value my wife_, yet nobody shall affront her;’ and his sword was drawn on the least occasion, which was much in fashion at the latter end of King William’s reign.”

It is a funny trait of the sword-wearers, that they could extol the virtue which they had ineffectually endeavoured to destroy. We see this in the case of Mrs. Bracegirdle, that Diana of the stage before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshiped in vain. The noblest of the troop,—and it reckoned the Dukes of Devonshire and Dorset, the Earl of Halifax, and half-a-dozen delegates from each rank of the peerage among its members,—were wont, at the coffee-house, and over a bottle, to extol the Gibraltar-like virtue, if I may so speak, of this incomparable woman. “Come,” said Halifax, “you are always praising the virtue; why don’t you reward the lady who will not sell it? I propose a subscription, and there are two hundred guineas, _pour encourager les autres_.” Four times that amount was raised, and with it the nobles, with their swords in their hands, waited on Mrs. Bracegirdle, who accepted their testimonial, as it was intended in honour of her virtue. What should we think now if⸺? but this is a delicate matter, and I _might_ make a mistake. I will only add, therefore, that had Mrs. Bracegirdle been rewarded for her charity, the recompense would have been, at least, as appropriate. For it is true of her that when the poor saw her they blessed her,—and, we may add, she richly merited the well-earned benedictions. She was, at all events, not quite so prudish as Mrs. Rogers, who not only objected to act any but virtuous characters, but made a public vow of chastity,—in an epilogue,—and broke it, out of good-nature.

It must be understood that the players wore swords in the streets, and used them, like gentlemen, for the destruction of one another. Thus Quin killed Will Bowen, in 1717. The former had declared that Ben Jonson acted Jacomo, in the ‘Libertine,’ better than Bowen. The latter pursued Quin to a tavern, shut the door of the room in which he found him, placed his back against the door, and threatened to pin Quin to the wainscot if he did not immediately draw. Quin remonstrated, but drew and kept on the defensive; while the impetuous Bowen so pressed upon his adversary that he actually fell upon that adversary’s sword and died, after acknowledging his own rashness. Quin was tried and acquitted.

The actors however had need to wear swords to defend themselves from their noble assailants. The latter used to crowd between the side-scenes, and often interrupt the performance by crossing the stage and conversing aloud with one another. On one occasion, at the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, an earl, who was said to have been drunk for six years continuously, was guilty of this rudeness; and Rich, enraged thereat, threatened never to allow him to be admitted again, whatever he might offer for it. The Peer replied by slapping Rich in the face; and Rich returned the salute with all the vigour and rapidity that belonged to him as an accomplished harlequin. The drunken lord’s drunken companions immediately drew, and solemnly devoted Rich to death. The comrades of the latter, headed by Ryan, the ex-tailor, whipped out their swords too (some of them wore them with their court suits in Macbeth), charged the nobles, and after a bloody _mêlée_ drove them into the streets. The illustrious drunkards, brandishing their weapons, attacked the front of the house, fought their way into the boxes, proceeded to destroy the interior adornments, and would have set fire to the theatre but for the arrival of the “watch,” who captured the whole of the rioters. Justice was both lame and blind in those days, and the peers compromised the matter with the managers; but George I. was as much disgusted with the conduct of his “noble” subjects as a quiet scamp _could_ be at the peccadilloes of noisy ones. The _only_ men, not nobles, who were as great nuisances with their swords, were the Darby Captains. These were old “half-pays” or penniless “disbanded,” who used to pitch their tent at Derby’s Coffee-house in Covent-garden, and who were sanguinary in their cups. The “H. P.’s” who now meet in Ryder-street have little idea of the truculency of their predecessors, who most did congregate at the hostelrie whence they derived their name, and some pretenders their rank.

I have alluded to the proclamation against swords in 1724. It appears to have been made in vain, for in 1755 I find the aristocrats still ruling the theatre by power of naked weapons and impudence. Garrick received from them this questionable support when he brought out the ‘Chinese Festival,’ with Noverre and other foreign dancers from the neighbourhood of “Zurich’s fair waters.” A war with France had just broken out, and the mob were like Foote’s patriot gingerbread-maker in the Borough, who would not tolerate three dancers from Switzerland because he hated the French. The ochlocracy hissed; the aristocracy drew their swords to silence the villains; the latter welcomed the battle, and they not only damaged the theatre and many illustrious heads, but they pretty nearly destroyed Garrick’s own private residence. Roscius lost nearly £4000 in this quarrel, wherein swords were drawn and blood spilt that was of no value to the manager; and the present Mr. Noverre, of Norwich (I believe), can hardly make even a faint guess of the dire storm which greeted his great-grandsire when he first cut an _entrechat_ on the boards of Old Drury.

But actors had bloody frays of their own, and that too among the gentler part of the profession. One I may mention, as it is connected with a matter of dress. The charming George Anne Bellamy had procured from Paris two gorgeous dresses, wherein to enact Statira in the ‘Rival Queens.’ Roxana was played by Peg Woffington; and she was so overcome with malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, when she saw herself eclipsed by the dazzling glories of the resplendent Bellamy, that Peg at length attempted to drive her off the stage, and with upheld dagger had wellnigh stabbed her at the side-scenes. Alexander and a posse of chiefs with hard names were at hand, but the less brilliantly-clad Roxana rolled Statira and her spangled sack in the dust, pommelling her the while with the handle of her dagger, and screaming aloud—

“Nor he, nor Heaven, shall shield thee from my justice;
Die, sorceress, die! and all my wrongs die with thee!”

Poor Madge! Not many weeks afterwards she was playing Rosalind, when she was, at the age of forty-four, struck with the fit that slowly conducted her to the grave. Her last words were, “If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me.” The stroke followed, then a scream, and she who had charmed multitudes was for ever charmless. I will only add here that it is said of O’Brien, of whom I have spoken elsewhere as having married an earl’s daughter, that “in the drawing of his sword he threw all other performers at a wonderful distance by his swiftness, grace, and superior elegance.” But O’Brien was the son of a fencing-master, and his brother actors were as jealous of him as Pepys of his friend Pen, as illustrated by the entry which says (May, 1662), “Walked with my wife to my brother Tom’s; our boy waiting on us with his sword, which this day he begins to wear, _to outdo Sir W. Pen’s boy_.” From which it would appear that gentlemen and footmen once had fashions, if not vices, in common; and that our ancestors, with regard to pride, were as great fools as ourselves; and _that_ is eminently, nay, pre-eminently consoling.

The players were not scared from using swords as well as displaying them. When Garrick played Bayes in the ‘Rehearsal,’ in 1741-2, he gave imitations of Hall, Delaney, Ryan (the ex-tailor), Bridgewater, and of Gifford. The first four bore the ridicule better than Roscius would have endured the like of himself; but Gifford was so dreadfully enraged at the liberty taken with him that he sent Davy a challenge, and the two mimes fought until Gifford, whipping his rapier through the fleshy part of Garrick’s arm, laid him up for a fortnight, and cured him of mere mimicry.

I have noticed above how Peg Woffington, with her pointed dagger, punched the ribs of the exquisite Bellamy; a similar, but more disagreeable sort of excitement, once seized on Woodward, the old pupil of Merchant Tailors’, who had turned actor. He was playing Petruchio to Kitty Clive’s Catherine, when, borne away by his towering rage, he not only threw the lady down, but ran a fork into her finger; and as he had no love for Kitty, it is said that there was more design than accident in the matter. But this I do not believe. More credit, I fancy, is to be attached to the story which says, that when Pasta played Otello to Sontag’s Desdemona, the former was so excited by the superabundant applause gained by her rival, that in the killing scene Otello twisted a strong hand into Desdemona’s luxuriant hair, and gave it a series of such hearty tugs, that the gentle lady, married to the Moor, screamed with all her might, _au naturel_!

When the most pleasant and reasonable of Popes was Legate at Bologna, a circumstance connected with swords came under his observation. Two senators had fallen into a deadly quarrel touching the pre-eminence of Tasso and Ariosto. A duel ensued, in which the champion of Ariosto was mortally wounded. The future Pope visited the dying man, whose sole observation to his visitor’s religious injunctions was—“What an ass I am, to get run through the body in the very flower of my age, for the sake of Ariosto, of whom I have never read a line.” “But—” interrupted the priest. “And if,” exclaimed the dying man, not heeding the interruption, “if I _had_ read him, I should not have understood him; for I am but a fool at the best of times.” Benedict himself had a respect for swordsmen; and it was said of him and that other pleasant fellow, his contemporary, the Sultan Mahmoud, that if they were made to change places, the Holy Father becoming Grand Seigneur, and the Sultan becoming Pope, nobody would be sensible of any consequent difference; except, perhaps, the most intimate portion of the Sultan’s household. Benedict was, at all events, wiser than that celebrated Capuchin, who, preaching repentance to a party about to resort to the arbitration of the sword, exclaimed, “Brethren, admire and bless Divine Providence, who has placed death at the close of life, in order that we might have the more time to be prepared for it.” This confusion of ideas reminds me of that which existed in the mind of the soldier who remarked, that people nowadays did not live to such a lengthened age as when he was young. “Not that there are not old people now,” said he, “but then _they_ were born a very long time ago!”

Finally, let me conclude the subject of swords with something better worth remembering than mere gossip. Toledo, Damascus, and Milan have been especially renowned for the excellence of the swords manufactured in those respective places. The quality of the Spanish blade is said to have been given it by the cunning of Arab workmen; but the fact is, that Spanish blades were famous for their power of letting daylight into the soul’s tabernacle as early as the old Roman time. When the first Cæsar was master of the empire, Iberian tailors (and ladies) worked only with Toledo needles; while Iberian officers and gentlemen (for the characters were distinct in those heathen times: as for the matter of that, they sometimes are now) fought only with Toledo blades. Virgil alludes to the excellence of the Spanish steel in his first Georgic: “At Chalybes nudi ferrum (mittunt).” Justin says the Chalybes were Spaniards; and the _nudi_, no doubt, refers to the fashion in which they worked at the forge. Dryden translates the line—“And naked Spaniards temper steel for war.” Further, Diodorus Siculus states, “that the Celtiberians so tempered their steel, that no helmet could resist the stroke of the sword.”

The temper of the Damascus blade was of another sort. It was so fine that the sword passed through the lightest object floating in the air. The merits of the two methods will be found admirably illustrated in Scott’s story of ‘The Talisman.’

The English blade, I am sorry to say, has never been famous for _excellence_ of temper. Some two centuries ago, an attempt was made to improve the home-manufactured sword, by incorporating a company of sword-cutlers for making hollow sword-blades, in Cumberland and the adjacent counties. The project failed, owing to the parsimony of the principals and the ignorance of the workmen. During the greater portion of the last century, our sword-blades were “regular bricks,” quite as blunt, but not half so dangerous. An English officer was as safe with one in his hand as if he had bought it at a toyshop; but he never met the enemy with a native-manufactured weapon. This state of things, and a mixed idea of profit and patriotism, fired Mr. Gill of Birmingham into experiments which became realities; and the English weapon was turned out as well calculated to help its wearer to cut through the sixth commandment as any foreign blade of them all.

A sword is only perfectly tempered at a heat of 550° Fahrenheit. The testing is by means of a process of bending and twisting almost torturing to read of. I only wish that all monarchs who unjustly draw the sword, were first subjected to the tempering and testing which the weapon itself undergoes. Could such a course have been applied to that miscreant Nicholas, what a relief it would have been to the world! An exposure, during ten minutes in an oven, to a heat of 550°, would have been followed by uncomplaining acquiescence on the part of the Czar; and there would not have been added to his account so many murders as those for which, as Heaven is just as well as merciful, he will be held responsible, at the tribunal which that gigantic criminal can _not_ avoid.

The sword was grasped by hand, or mailed or gloved; and to the question of gloves we will now direct attention.

GLOVES, B⸺S, AND BUTTONS.

“He said he had his gloves from France;
The Queen said, ‘That can’t be;
If you go there for glove-making,
It is without the _g_.’”—FAIR ROSAMOND.

The elder D’Israeli, in his sketch on the history of gloves, sets out by observing, that in the 108th Psalm, where the royal prophet declares he will cast his shoe over Edom, and in Ruth iv. 7, where the custom is noticed of a man taking off his shoe and giving it to a neighbour, as a pledge for redeeming or exchanging anything, the word _shoe_ may in the latter, if not in both cases, mean _glove_. He adds, that Casaubon is of opinion that gloves were worn by the Chaldeans; and that in the Chaldee paraphrase of the book of Ruth, the word which we render as _shoe_ or _sandal_, is explained in the Talmud lexicon as “the clothing of the hand.” Here is a sad confusion of hands and feet, as much so as in the celebrated observation by Mrs. Ramsbottom, that she “had had a great deal of walking on her hands, lately.”

The flinging down of a sandal upon a territory was a symbol of occupancy or possession. “Upon the land of Edom do I cast my shoe” (sandal), says the Psalmist, in the 9th Psalm. And this was a symbol of slavery to the Edomites, for to loose the sandal was the office of a slave; and in Egypt, especially, we find paintings of slaves who are carrying their master’s sandals. On the sole of the latter was sometimes represented a captive, whom the wearer had the pleasure of thus pictorially treading underfoot. When an old shoe is thrown after a newly married couple, it does not so much imply that they have probably been put in possession of felicity, as that they have certainly lost their liberty.

Xenophon remarks that the Persians wore coarse clothes, fought bareheaded, and never required pocket-handkerchiefs. He laughs at them however for using gloves, and for effeminately covering their heads, when the latter might best dispense with the protection. Laertes, the Greek, wore gloves when he was gardening, in order to protect his fingers from the thorns;—and this shows that young Greek noblemen, in remote times, could occupy themselves usefully and innocently. _Our_ youths, with much time, heavy purses, and a lordship of self, would find considerable profit in “putting on the gloves” for no worse purposes.

Gloves were not common among the Romans, but they were not entirely unknown. Varro says that to pluck olives without them was to spoil the olive; and Athenæus tells of a glutton who used to dine out in gloves, and so be enabled to dispose of the hot things quicker than the guests who were less prepared for the handling them. The fashion of gloves made its way however in Rome, in spite of the philosophers who affected to despise comfort, and did assuredly decline cleanliness. They were worn, for instance, by the secretary of the elder Pliny.

The mode seems to have been adopted in some excess by the monks, until a decree of the Council of Aix ordered that they should wear none but gloves of sheep-skin. Had they turned their cilices into gloves, and made flesh-brushes of them, it would have been more profitable to themselves, and to all who stood near them. In France, the use of gloves was allowed only to bishops. They were sometimes used in great formalities of the “Church,” and indeed of the State also; for bishops received investiture by presentation of a glove, and kings were not half crowned who did not receive a pair, with an episcopal blessing to enhance the gift.

Among the early English, the Anglo-Saxons, we find that ladies, before they knew the use of the glove, or applied their knowledge to its most convenient conclusion, had the ends of their mantles shaped into gloves, and these were worn over the hand, under the name of mufflers. Gloves were worn by females before the Reformation, despite what Gough says to the contrary. A dishonoured knight was deprived not only of his spurs, but of his gloves also. It was right that the symbol for or gage of battle should be taken from him whose office it had been to carry arms, but who was no longer accounted as worthy of wielding them.

In Germany, he who entered a prince’s stables, or was present at the killing of a stag, without taking off his gloves, had to pay his footing or fine; in the first case to the grooms, in the second to the huntsmen,—and for this reason, because they could not mingle among grooms and huntsmen, and yet retain their dignity (asserted by keeping on the glove), without paying for it.

Gloves are distributed at funerals,—perhaps originally as a challenge from the doctor, defying all who shall dare say that he had committed murder contrary to the rules of art. But they were acceptable presents on other occasions; and when gloves were rare, and James I. and Elizabeth gave those rich and rare articles as gifts to various members of the Denny family, no doubt the fingers of the latter felt the honour deeply. When these gloves were sold, some two centuries and a half later, a single pair fetched a price for which a man with judgment and taste might purchase a select library. One of this family, Sir William Denny himself, contributed a remarkable poetical work to the libraries of 1653, namely, the ‘Pelecanicidium, or the Christian Adviser against Self-murder; together with a Guide, and a Pilgrim’s Pass to the Land of the Living.’ In the preface he says, “Mine ears do tingle to hear so many sad relations, as ever since March last, concerning several persons, of divers rank and quality, inhabiting within and about so eminent a city as late-famed London, that have made away and murdered themselves.”

In England gloves came in about the time the Heptarchy went out. The exact period is not known; but we _do_ know that when a society of German merchants sought protection for the trade which they carried on between their own country and England, they propitiated King Ethelred II. by presenting him with five pairs of gloves: their not being able to muster the half-dozen shows the rarity of the article. In the case mentioned the gloves were probably not so much a gift or bribe, as a portion of duty paid in kind. Prior to this period the hands of both sexes were covered, as I before observed, by the mantles; and some persons with rapidly progressing ideas, had donned an imperfect structure which presented a stall for the thumb, and a sort of stocking-foot for the rest of the fingers. They were like the mufflers which we place on the digits of young England; and when Mrs. Ramsbottom made the observation I quoted in the first paragraph, of “having had much walking on her hands lately,” she may have had these very mufflers in her eye.

Gloves soon became fashionable among the higher classes; at least, Ordericus Vitalis tells us that when the Bishop of Durham escaped from the Tower, during the reign of Henry I., he had to slide down a rope; and as the bishop, in his hurry, had “forgotten his gloves,” he rubbed the skin off his hands to the bone, in descending from the window. Duke Charles of Guise, when he escaped in a similar manner, from the Château at Tours, in the days of Henri III., had better fortune; he descended more leisurely than the bishop, being lighter, and with no further detriment than a rent in his hose.

Long before the period referred to by Ordericus, the French monks were the authorized glove-makers. They especially loved hunting, but respectability required that they should not love the sport merely for the sport’s sake. Accordingly, Charlemagne granted to the monks of Sithin especially, unlimited right of hunting, because of the skins of the deer killed by them they made gloves and girdles, and covers for books. I have before noticed, that by a subsequent decree of the Council of Aix, in the time of Louis le Débonnaire, monks were forbidden to wear any gloves but those made of sheep-skin.

Gloves were popular new-year’s gifts, or sometimes “glove-money” in place of them; occasionally, these gloves carried gold pieces in them. When Sir Thomas More was Chancellor, he decided a case in favour of Mrs. Croaker against Lord Arundel; the former, on the following new-year’s day, gratefully presented the judge with a pair of gloves with forty angels in them. “It would be against good manners,” said the Chancellor, “to forsake a gentlewoman’s new-year’s gift, and I accept the gloves. The _lining_ you will elsewhere bestow.”

It will be remembered that St. Gudule had the faculty of being able, when her candle was extinguished, to blow it in again. Many among us enjoy the same faculty, and schoolboys often practise the miracle,—the only one ever performed by St. Gudule. It is said however that when the saint prayed, barefooted, in church, the attendant priest, moved by compassion, put his gloves under her feet. They immediately rose, and hung in the air for a whole hour;—but what that proves, I really do not know.

But we have had gloves suspended in our own churches. When Bernard Gilpin was preaching in the North of England, he observed, on entering one of the churches there, a glove suspended from the roof; and having learned that it was a challenge placed there by a Borderer, in defiance of some other Borderer, he tore it down, to the great disgust of the sexton, who had a respect for established usages, even though the devil had invented them. Good Bernard Gilpin gave a challenge of his own from the pulpit: he flung down the Gospel before the rather angry people, who were highly civilized, and therefore averse to innovation; and he told them so defiantly of the difficulties in the way of their salvation, that they determined to surmount them and became a Christian people; and _that_, under correction, is a better glove, and a greater miracle, than those of St. Gudule.

I have spoken, in another page, of our old English custom of kissing. It is one which is not likely to decay. We still kiss persons caught napping,—that is, if they be worth the kissing,—and exact as forfeit the price of a new pair of gloves. In old days, he who first saw the new moon could, by kissing a maiden, and proclaiming the fact,—that is, the lunar fact,—claim a pair of gloves for his service. The Persian habit was to kiss only relatives, which must have been highly proper, but uncommonly insipid,—a perfect waste of good things, except among cousins.