English Costume Part 41

MS. C. C. C., Camb., xvi.

MS. Cott., Nero, D. 1.

MS. Cott., Nero, C. iv. Full of drawings.

MS. Roy., 14, C. vii.

Lansdowne MS., British Museum.

Macklin's 'Monumental Bra.s.ses.'

_Journal of the Archaeological a.s.sociation._

MS. Roy., 2, B. vii.

MS. Roy., 10, E. iv. Good marginal drawings.

The Loutrell Psalter. Invaluable for costume.

MS. Bodl. Misc., 264. 1338-1344. Very full of useful drawings.

Dr. Furnivall's edition of the Ellesmere MS. of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.'

Boutell's 'Monumental Bra.s.ses.'

MS. Harl., 1819. Metrical history of the close of Richard II.'s reign. Good drawings for costume.

MS. Harl., 1892.

MS. Harl., 2278.

Lydgate's 'Life of St. Edmund.'

MS. Roy., 15, E. vi. Fine miniatures.

The Bedford Missal, MS. Add., 18850.

MS. Harl., 2982. A Book of Hours. Many good drawings.

MS. Harl., 4425. The Romance of the Rose. Fine and useful drawings.

MS. Lambeth, 265.

MS. Roy., 19, C. viii.

MS. Roy., 16, F. ii.

Turberville's 'Book of Falconrie' and 'Book of Hunting.'

Shaw's 'Dresses and Decorations.'

Jusserand's 'English Novel' and 'Wayfaring Life.' Very excellent books, full of reproductions from illuminated books, prints, and pictures.

The Shepherd's Calendar, 1579, British Museum.

Harding's 'Historical Portraits.'

Nichols's 'Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.'

Stubbes's 'Anatomie of Abuses,' 1583.

Braun's 'Civitates...o...b..s terrarum.'

'Vestusta Monumenta.'

Hollar's 'Ornatus Muliebris Anglica.n.u.s.'

Hollar's 'Aula Veneris.'

Pepys's Diary.

Evelyn's Diary.

Tempest's 'Cries of London.' Fifty plates.

Atkinson's 'Costumes of Great Britain.'

In addition to these, there are, of course, many other books, prints, engravings, sets of pictures, and heaps of caricatures. The excellent labours of the Society of Antiquaries and the Archaeological a.s.sociation have helped me enormously; these, with wills, wardrobe accounts, 'Satires' by Hall and others, 'Anatomies of Abuses,'

broadsides, and other works on the same subject, French, German, and English, have made my task easier than it might have been.

It was no use to spin out my list of ma.n.u.scripts with the numbers--endless numbers--of those which proved dry ground, so I have given those only which have yielded a rich harvest.

BEAU BRUMMELL AND CLOTHES

_'A person, my dear, who will probably come and speak to us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to give him a favourable impression of you, for,' and she sunk her voice to a whisper, 'he is the celebrated Mr.

Brummell.'_--'Life of Beau Brummell,' Captain Jesse.

Those who care to make the melancholy pilgrimage may see, in the Protestant Cemetery at Caen, the tomb of George Bryan Brummell. He died, at the age of sixty-two, in 1840.

It is indeed a melancholy pilgrimage to view the tomb of that once resplendent figure, to think, before the hideous grave, of the witty, clever, foolish procession from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford; from thence to a captaincy in the 10th Hussars, from No. 4 Chesterfield Street to No. 13 Chapel Street, Park Lane; from Chapel Street a flight to Calais; from Calais to Paris; and then, at last, to Caen, and the bitter, bitter end, mumbling and mad, to die in the Bon Sauveur.

Place him beside the man who once pretended to be his friend, the man of whom Thackeray spoke so truly: 'But a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur coat, a star and a blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty-brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing.'

Nothing! Thackeray is right; absolutely nothing remains of this King George of ours but a sale list of his wardrobe, a wardrobe which fetched 15,000 second-hand--a wardrobe that had been a man. He invented a shoe-buckle 1 inch long and 5 inches broad. He wore a pink silk coat with white cuffs. He had 5,000 steel beads on his hat. He was a coward, a good-natured, contemptible voluptuary. Beside him, in our eyes, walks for a time the elegant figure of Beau Brummell. I have said that Brummell was the inventor of modern dress: it is true. He was the Beau who raised the level of dress from the slovenly, dirty linen, the greasy hair, the filthy neckcloth, the crumbled collar, to a position, ever since held by Englishmen, of quiet, un.o.btrusive cleanliness, decent linen, an abhorrence of striking forms of dress.

He made clean linen and was.h.i.+ng daily a part of English life.