Chats on Costume. G. Woolliscroft Rhead

       WILLIAM III.

      It was the same with the satirists, whether of horned head-dresses or other extravagances; Monk Lydgate might rave, might shout himself hoarse, but the women would have their horns.

      It was indeed inevitable that the vagaries of fashion and the love of fine feathers should become the favourite butt of the satirists, purists, and other persons who assumed the character of mentor. Among the most insistent of these were the priesthood. St. Bernard thus admonishes his sister, perhaps with greater candour than politeness, on her visiting him, "well arraied with riche clothing, with perles and precious stones":—

      "Suster, yet ye love youre bodi, by reson ye shuld beter love youre soule: wene ye not that ye displese God and his aungels to see in you suche pompe and pride to adorn suche a carion as is youre body. … Whi thenke ye not that the pore peple that deyen for hungir and colde, that for the sixte part of youre gay arraye xl persones might be clothed, refresshed, and kepte from the colde? … And thanne the ladi wepte, and solde awey her clothes, and levid after an holy lyff, and had love of God, aungeles, and holy seintes, the whiche is beter thanne of the worldely pepille" ("Knight of La Tour Landry," 1371).

      The sister of St. Bernard, however, evidently lacked the power of repartee of St. Edith, daughter of King Edgar, who, though brought up in a convent at Wilton, and destined to the life of the cloister, nevertheless had a weakness for clothes which seemed too fine and gay for a nun. St. Ethelwold, who, it is clear, must have shared the opinions of St. Bernard upon the subject of finery, and ventured to upbraid her, received this crushing reply: "God's doom, that may not fail, is pleased only with conscience. Therefore I trow that as clean a soul may be under those clothes that are arrayed with gold as under thy slight fur-skins." He was reminded also that St. Augustine had said that pride could lurk even in rags. This latter sally calls to mind the story of Diogenes spitting upon the floor of Plato's house and exclaiming, "Thus I trample on the pride of Plato." "With greater pride, O Diogenes," was the quiet rejoinder.

      Dowglas, the monk of Glastonbury, writing against the extravagances which were rife during the latter half of the reign of Edward III., says: "The English haunted so much unto the foly of strangers, that every year they changed them in diverse shapes and disguisings of clothing, now long, now large, now wide, now strait, and every day clothingges, new and destitute, and devest from all honesty of old arraye or good usage; and another time in short clothes, and so strait waisted, with full sleeves and tapetes of surcoats and hodes, over long and large, all so ragged and knib on every side, and all so shattered, and also buttoned, that I with truth shall say, they seem more like to tormentors or devils in their clothing, and also in their shoying and other arraye than they seemed to be like men."

      The authors of the "Roman de la Rose," William de Lorris, who died in 1260, and John de Meun, who continued and finished the poem about 1304, are amongst the most severe of these satirists. In alluding to the unnecessary length of their trains, the author advises the ladies, if their legs be not handsome, nor their feet small and delicate, to wear long robes trailing on the pavement to hide them; those having pretty feet are counselled to elevate their robes, as if for air and convenience, that all who are passing may see and admire. This has been imitated by Ben Jonson, who in his "Silent Woman" makes Truewit say:—

      "I love a good dressing before any beauty o' the world. Oh, a woman is then like a delicate garden; nor is there one kind of it; she may vary every hour; take often counsel of her glass, and choose the best. If she have good ears, show them; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, discover it often; practise any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, repair eyebrows, paint, and profess it."