of Queen Katharine, on the subject of her divorce, they found her at work, like Penelope of old, with her maids, and she came to them with a skein of red silk about her neck.[34]
Queen Mary Tudor is supposed, by her admirers, to have followed the example of her illustrious mother, though all we find among the entries is a charge "to working materials for Jane the Fole, one shilling."
No one would suspect Queen Elizabeth of solacing herself with the needle. Every woman, however, had to make one shirt in her lifetime, and the "Lady Elizabeth's grace," on the second anniversary of Prince Edward's birth, when only six years of age, presented her brother with a cambric smock wrought by her own hands.
The works of Scotland's Mary, who early studied all female accomplishments under her governess, Lady Fleming, are too well known to require notice. In her letters are constant demands for silk and other working materials wherewith to solace her long captivity. She had also studied under Catherine de Médicis, herself an unrivalled needlewoman, who had brought over in her train from Florence the designer for embroidery, Frederick Vinciolo. Assembling her daughters, Claude, Elizabeth and Margaret, with Mary Stuart, and her Guise cousins, "elle passoit," says Brantôme, "fort son temps les apres-disnées à besogner apres ses ouvrages de soye, où elle estoit tant parfaicte qu'il estoit possible."[35] The ability of Reine Margot[36] is sung by Ronsard, who exalts her as imitating Pallas in the art.[37]
Many of the great houses in England are storehouses of old needlework. Hatfield, Penshurst, and Knole are all filled with the handiwork of their ladies. The Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as "Building Bess," Bess of Hardwick, found time to embroider furniture for her palaces, and her samplar patterns hang to this day on their walls.
Needlework was the daily employment of the convent. As early as the fourteenth century[38] it was termed "nun's work"; and even now, in secluded parts of the kingdom, ancient lace is styled by that name.[39]
Nor does the occupation appear to have been solely confined to women. We find monks commended for their skill in embroidery,[40] and in the frontispieces of some of the early pattern books of the sixteenth century, men are represented working at frames, and these books are stated to have been written "for the profit of men as well as of women."[41] Many were composed by monks,[42] and in the library[43] of St. Geneviève at Paris, are several works of this class, inherited from the monastery of that name. As these books contain little or no letterpress, they could scarcely have been collected by the monks unless with a view to using them.
At the dissolution of the monasteries, the ladies of the great Roman Catholic families came to the rescue. Of the widow of the ill-fated Earl of Arundel it is recorded: "Her gentlewomen and chambermaids she ever busied in works ordained for the service of the Church. She permitted none to be idle at any time."[44]
Instructions in the art of embroidery were now at a premium. The old nuns had died out, and there were none to replace them.
Mrs. Hutchinson, in her Memoirs, enumerates, among the eight tutors she had at seven years of age, one for needlework, while Hannah Senior, about the same period, entered the service of the Earl of Thomond, to teach his daughters the use of their needle, with the salary of £200 a year. The money, however, was never paid; so she petitions the Privy Council for leave to sue him.[45]
When, in 1614, the King of Siam applied to King James for an English wife, a gentleman of "honourable parentage" offers his daughter, whom he describes of excellent parts for "music, her needle, and good discourse."[46] And these are the sole accomplishments he mentions. The bishops, however, shocked at the proceeding, interfered, and put an end to the projected alliance.
| Plate I. | |
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| Argentan.—Showing buttonhole stitched réseau and "brides bouclées." | Circular Bobbin Réseau.—Variety of Mechlin. |
Venetian Needle-point.
No ecclesiastical objection, however, was made to the epitaph of Catherine Sloper—she sleeps in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, 1620:—
"Exquisite at her needle."
Till a very late date, we have ample record of the esteem in which this art was held.
In the days of the Commonwealth, Mrs. Walker is described to have been as well skilled in needlework "as if she had been brought up in a convent." She kept, however, a gentlewoman for teaching her daughters.
Evelyn, again, praises the talent of his daughter, Mrs. Draper. "She had," writes he, "an extraordinary genius for whatever hands could do with a needle."
The queen of Charles I. and the wives of the younger Stuarts seem to have changed the simple habits of their royal predecessors, for when Queen Mary, in her Dutch simplicity, sat for hours at the knotted fringe, her favourite employment, Bishop Burnet, her biographer, adds, "It was a strange thing to see a queen work for so many hours a day," and her homely habits formed a never-ending subject of ridicule for the wit of Sir Charles Sedley.[47]
From the middle of the last century, or rather apparently from the French Revolution, the more artistic style of needlework and embroidery fell into decadence. The simplicity of male costume rendered it a less necessary adjunct to female or, indeed, male education. However, two of the greatest generals of the Republic, Hoche and Moreau, followed the employment of embroidering satin waistcoats long after they had entered the military service. We may look upon the art now as almost at an end.
CHAPTER II.
CUT-WORK.
"These workes belong chiefly to gentlewomen to passe away their time in vertuous exercises."
"Et lors, sous vos lacis à mille fenestrages
Raiseuls et poinct couppés et tous vos clairs ouvrages."
—Jean Godard, 1588.
It is from that open-work embroidery which in the sixteenth century came into such universal use that we must derive the origin of lace, and, in order to work out the subject, trace it through all its gradations.
This embroidery, though comprising a wide variety of decoration, went by the general name of cut-work.
The fashion of adorning linen has prevailed from the earliest times. Either the edges were worked with close embroidery—the threads drawn and fashioned with a needle in various forms—or the ends of the cloth unravelled and plaited with geometric precision.
To judge from the description of the linen grave-clothes of St. Cuthbert,[48] as given by an eye-witness to his disinterment in the twelfth century, they were ornamented in a manner similar to that we have described. "There had been," says the chronicler, "put over him a sheet … this sheet had a fringe of linen thread of a finger's length; upon its sides and ends were woven a border of projecting workmanship fabricated of the thread itself, bearing the figures of birds and beasts so arranged that between every two pairs there were interwoven among them the representation of a branching tree which divides the figures. This tree, so tastefully depicted, appears to be putting forth its leaves," etc. There can be no doubt that this sheet, for many centuries preserved in the cathedral church of Durham, was a specimen