FAIRHOLT'S COSTUME IN ENGLAND. * TIME and the author's industry have
made this book as good as new. The fourteen years which have elapsed since its first edition was printed have raised for it a new generation of readers, and its old admirers will find that it has half outgrown their recollections, so much has it been enlarged and improved. It is now a hand- some volume of more than six hundred pages, with as many illus- trations ; and these are no fancy sketches, but every one authen- tic. They have evidently been got together with no small care and research, and from very various sources, none of which are second- ary ; for Mr. Fairholt does not follow the common practice of mo- dern compilers who copy one from the other, each repeating the errors of his predecessors, and probably adding some of his own. For all his illustrations he has relied solely on ancient delineations and ancient authorities. The body of the work presents a con- tinuous account of the changes of dress in England during ten successive periods into which the history naturally divides itself, and in each period the costume and accoutrements of the several classes, royal, noble, middle, and common, clerical and military, are separately described. Details which could not be conveniently treated in the body of the work are explained in a glossary, which occupies nearly half the volume, and consists for the most part of illustrated historical essays on various minor articles of costume. The whole arrangement strikes us as being very happily contrived to facilitate reference, and enable the author to compress the most matter into his pages with the least overcrowding. The work is clearly and succinctly written, and altogether is entitled to hold a permanent place in our literature among the best popular expo- nents of archeological knowledge. The student of English his- tory who foregoes its aid is much to be pitied, and it ought to be in the possession of every man who owns a copy of Shakspeare. To him it is as indispensable as Dr. Smith's classical dictionaries are to the student of Greek and Roman literature.
For example, some knowledge of the history of costume would
have prevented Dr. Johnson from making himself ridiculous by noticing, as one of the many proofs of Shakspeare's ignorance or carelessness, his description, in King John, of the tailor, who was so eager to acquaint his friend the smith with the prodigies he had just seen in the skies, and whom Hubert saw,
" Standing on slippers which his eager baste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet."
Dr. Johnson was not aware how extravagantly " right and left" boots, shoes, and slippers were made in England four cen- tunes before his own day, and so he says, with ludicrous solem- nity, " Shakspeare seems to have confounded the man's shoes
• Costume in England. A History of Dress from the Earliest Period until the close of the Eighteenth Century. To which is appended an Illustrated Glossary of Terms for all articles of use or ornament worn about the person. By F. W. Pairholt, F.8.A., &c. Published by Chapman and Hall. with his gloves. He that is frighted or hurried may put his hand into the wrong glove ; but either shoe will equally admit either foot. The author seems to be disturbed by the disorder he de- scribes." Dr. Johnson wore straight shoes ; therefore he knew better than Shakspeare that the tailor's slippers were made to fit either foot. But they were certainly right and left, and if they were of the remarkably twisted form which was common during the fourteenth century, Hubert, or any other casual observer, could not fail to be struck by their appearance when worn con- versely. Mr. Fairholt remarks, very pertinently, that an artist, who indulges in criticism of the same off-hand kind as Dr. John- son's, may easily fall into the mistake of altering the form of an article of costume because it clashes with modern ideas of taste, which may be no sounder than those prevailing in an earlier time. " That which tells most upon the eye in an ancient picture or sculpture, as a quaint or peculiar bit of costume, and which may occasionally be taken as bad drawing, is not unfrequently the most accurate delineation of a real peculiarity." Mr. Fairholt's being essentially a book of pictorial detail, it is impossible to do justice to it in a review which wants the aid. of wood-cuts, and can, therefore, deal only in generalities. On ex- amining his chronological series of illustrations, the dress of each of his ten periods is seen to be thoroughly distinctive, and a great difference is found to have been made in Eng- lish costume by every fifty years. Of the civil garb of the ancient Britons, we have but few delineations, but the impression they make is favourable. After the Roman Con- quest, the natives adopted the dress of the conquerors. That of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes was simple, convenient, and not
i unbecoming ; but caprice and ugliness came in with the Normans. The Bayeux Tapestry shows that the followers of William differed little from the Saxons in the form of their clothes, but their sin- gular fashion of shaving the back of the head, as well as the entire face was an earnest of the grotesque extravagance so profusely to be displayed in the attire of their descendants. One striking ex- ample of this was the fashion which began under the Plantagenets of wearing boots and shoes with toe-pieces so enormously long that they were fastened to the knees or the girdle with chains of gold and silver-
" During the troublesome period that succeeded the death of Henry V., until peace was again established by that of Richard HI., it would appear as if the minds of the English nobility and gentry sought. relief in the in- vention of all that was absurd in apparel, as a counter-excitement to the feverish spirit engendered by civil war. All that was monstrous in the past was resuscitated, and its ugliness added to by the invention of the day, until ladies and gentlemen appear like mere caricatures of humanity. ' To detail or depict one-half of their doings, would be impossible in thrice the space I have to devote to the subject. It has been done, however, by a contem- porary. hand ; and any person who can obtain a sight of a very curious vo- lume in the Harleian Collection, marked 2278, may see enough to convince him of the length to which the votaries of fashion now carried their whims. The voluble is a small quarto, full of splendidly-coloured and richly-gilt, illuminations, and is the very volume given to Henry VI., when he passed his Christmas at St. Edmundsbury, by William Gorton who was then Ab- bot of the Monastery there. The volume is a life of St. Edmund, by the famous John Lydgate, written in tedious rhymes, for his Majesty's especial gratification." The pertinacity and ingenuity with which fashion has waged war in England for eight centuries against nature, grace, and convenience, constitute one of the most curious phenomena iu the history of civilization, and might well engage the attention of phi- losophical inquirers. We commend the subject to the considera- tion of the associated investigators of social science. Our own day manifests some hopeful symptoms of a return to rational piinciples in the matter of dress ; but our progress in that direction is yet too slight to give us much reason for boasting. The aesthetic cultuie and mechanical capacity of all Europe have not yet succeeded'in devising a covering for men's heads, that shall supersede the odious chimney-pot-hat ; and the Tudor farthingale, and the hoops of the Georges have returned to us in what Miss Nightingale justly calls an " absurd and hideous custom." Heartily do we join in her wish " that people who wear crinoline could see the indecency of their own dress as other people see it."
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