In one instance William himself is STOCKINGS, AND THEIR ANTI- represented wearing red chaussés, with QUITY. BY MRS. WHITE. STOCKINGS! it is an unpromising title, and we half fear lest the fair readers of the Family Friend should be tempted with an involuntary à bas! to close the page upon our homely subject. But if the shoe could be made interesting, we do not see why its legitimate companion, the stocking, may not; for, though it lacks the antiquity of that article, and has neither scriptural nor classic associations attached to it, there are sufficiently curious and amusing circumstances connected with its history in our own country to tempt us with the belief that, however commonplace it has become in the present, it is not incapable of some touch of interest from the past. men In the most ancient delineations which the Anglo-Saxons have left us of themselves (though the poorer folks went naked legged and bare-footed), we find the of the richer classes wearing a straight stocking which reached above the knee, while others have the leg covered half-way with a kind of bandage bound round it, or crossed diagonally with bands of cloth; so that the cloth hose of the Normans were by no means a novel introduction, though the short ones, worn by the eldest son of the Conqueror, and which procured him the sobriquet of Robert Court-hose, might have been. In the representation of Canute, copied by Fairholt from the MS. register of Hyde Abbey, formerly in the collection at Stow, and which was executed in the 11th century, we find that monarch wearing stockings which nearly reach the knees, and which appear to be of two colours, horizontally striped, and finished with a band at the top, not unlike the fashion of those worn by Highlanders. These stockings are shaped to the limbs, but in general the Saxon hose sat loose upon the leg, like a groom's buskin, while the chaussés of the Normans (which had the advantage of being hose and drawers in one), were tight; and over these they wore the cross garters of various colours with which our Saxon ancestors had previously adorned the naked limb. blue garters and gold tassels; a fashion which had prevailed in France ever since the reign of Charlemagne, who appears in "Herbe's Costumes François " wearing this portion of his dress identical with the above description, save that his crossgarters are of gold. When Henry I. dubbed Geoffrey of Anjou a knight at Rouen, velvet hose were worn; for Dugdale quotes the ceremony from a monkish historian of the period, and Strutt gives the knight's dress in his "Manners and Customs of the English." Upon coming out of the bath he was clothed in fine linen, over which he wore a gown of gold tissue, with a tunic of purple upon that, furred with furs of a blood-colour, with velvet hose, and shoes wrought with gold upon his feet; and henceforth we find that hose of this rich material were frequently worn on occasions of state and ceremony. Scarlet chaussés appear to have continued in favour with the Plantagenets, as well as garters of gold stuff; though these last articles were worn of whatever colours best contrasted with the stocking beneath. Nor was this fashion, which Shakspere subsequently made Malvolio re-introduce (for all ages), wholly abandoned till after the reign of Charles the Wise in France, the exquisites of whose court, not content with wearing a red stocking on one leg and a white or blue one on the other, further distinguished the right from the left by encircling it spirally with a garter of quite an opposite colour. 66 We find no mention of this extraordinary fashion with ourselves till the reign of the effeminate and foppish Richard II., when the churchmen and wits at once assailed it; and Stow, amongst other articles of dress, inveighs against the party-coloured hosen, white and red, and red and black, and so forth ;" and by this we are not to imagine chequered stockings, but the singular contrast presented by a pair of odd ones (if we may be allowed the use of so palpable an Irishism), one leg appearing in blue, while its fellow was cased in white; or it might be that one wore black and the other yellow. All this while we have been wondering how these harlequin-stockings, which ap T pear to have fitted the limbs as closely as the spangled suit of that prince of pantomime, were put on, composed as they were of cloth, silk, velvet, and other stuffs; they must have wanted all the elasticity of modern hose; but the author of the "Book of Kervyinge" in the office of the Chaumberlyne, "has outlined the manner of this procedure.” 66 First," says this authority, "warm your soverayne hys pettycoate, hys doublet, and hys stomachere, and then put on hys hosen, and then hys schoone, or slyppers, then stryke up his hosen mannerly, and tye them, &c.;" directions which give a pretty clear idea that the stockings of those days, in their clumsy magnificence, were neither laced nor buttoned to the shape of the limb, but put on exactly as they are at present. In the reign of Edward I. we find the fashion of embroidering the stocking in coloured silk, and threads of gold and silver, first introduced; but at the gorgeous, though fantastic court of Edward III., and the fair, brave Philippa of Hainault, the vary-coloured stocking again called forth the severe remonstrances of the clergy and the bitter ridicule of the satirists. One writer, describing the dress of the period, finishes a furious philippic by declaring that the wearers of it look more like devils and tormentors than men and women; and another, that the red side of a gentleman affects him uncomfortably, and gives him the idea of his being either half roasted or, at least, a sufferer from St. Anthony's fire. One would have thought that the extreme length of the ladies' dresses in those days would have left them no temptation for indulging in the vanity of stockings of different colours; but we find that they not only wore them, but cross-garters also. With the accession of Henry IV. a change of fashion followed, and hose were once more made to match; then came the white ones of the time of Henry VI., but not to the exclusion of other colours. All this while stockings had continued to be made on the old Norman type, the haute chaussés of William the Conqueror; but in the reign of Henry VII. they began to form a separate article from the upper garment of which they had hitherto made a part, and were designated netherstocks and stockings. This separation has possibly caused the confusion we find with regard to our subject in the next reign, in reference to the introduction of silk-stockings,-the first of which are commonly, but erroneously, said to have been worn by Elizabeth. Stow indeed, who tells the story of Mrs. Montague's New Year's gift of a pair of knit silk stockings to her royal mistress, which pleased her so much that, after a few days' wear, she declared she would never more wear cloth hose, continues, "for you shall understand that King Henry VIII. did wear only cloth hose, or hose cut out of ell broad taffaty, or by great chance there came from Spain a pair of silk stockings;” but in the inventory of that monarch's wardrobe we find one pair of black silk and gold woven together, one of purple silk and Venice gold woven like unto a cawl, and lined with blue sarcenet, edged with passement; one of purple silk and gold, wrought at Milan; one of white and gold hose, knit; and six pair of black silk knit. And earlier we find hose of velvet and satin mentioned; so that, if we take the word hose in the sense of stockings, the chances Stow talks of must have been of pretty frequent occurrence. But some authors imagine that this list refers to the upper covering of the leg, and not to the stocking. In the mean time this latter article was worn of various colours, in the richest materials, often of gold and silver stuffs, and attached by points or laces to the upper part of the dress; thus John Newchombe, the famous clothier of Newby, in the reign of Henry VIII., is described, when he went forth to meet the king, wearing stockings of the same piece sewed to his slops; and a law enacted by this monarch (a tyrant even in the article of dress) ordains that no shepherd or husbandman, or common labourer to any artificer, having no goods of his own above the value of £10, were to wear any hose above the price of twelve pence the yard, upon pain of imprisonment in the stocks for three days! The reign of Elizabeth brought about a perfect revolution in the make and ma *A thin kind of silk. terial of our subject; the silk stockings of Mrs. Montague-copied, no doubt, from a pair of Spanish or Italian hose-were soon followed by worsted ones, knitted by "one William Rider, near the foot of London-bridge,"- -some say a city apprentice, but from the above address, and his interest with the Mantuan merchant from whom he borrowed the worsted hose which served him for a model, we are fain to imagine him a craftsman on his own account, perhaps one of the Company of Cappers, whose knitted woollen head-coverings every person above seven years of age was compelled to wear (by law) on Sundays; except women, "lords, knights, and gentlemen of twenty marks of land, or such as had borne office of worship in any city, town, or place, and the wardens of the London Companies." The experience of lady knitters will prove how easily the art of shaping a stocking is acquired by any one conversant with the use of knitting-needles, so that the first pair fashioned became the type of thousands; and while the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke, who is said to have been the first individual who wore worsted stockings in England, brought them into fashion with noblemen, the commoners so much approved of them that their sale became very great, and in a short time spread all over the kingdom. A portrait of Sir William Russell represents him wearing knitted stockings of black yarn; and the visitors to Penshurst will remember one of the favourite Leicester, which exhibits him wearing them of a bright scarlet. With these stockings came the necessity for garters; and in the time of Elizabeth, How, in his continuation of Stow's Chronicle, tells us, that no person whatsoever wore them above the price of six shillings a pair, but that in the next reign men of rank wore garters and shoe roses at more than £5 each! An old play of 1616, speaks of garters at four-score pounds a pair! and in the curious ballad of "Green Sleeves,"—the air of which was so popular when Shakspere wrote, that he mentions it twice in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," and which contains many curious particulars of female dress in the sixteenth century, we find the slighted lover reminding the lady, who appears to have accepted his gifts, though indifferent to the giver, amongst many other things, of "Crimson stockings all of silk, With gold all wrought above the knee." And immediately afterwards, referring thus to the former article: "Thy garters fringed with the gold And silver aiglets* hanging by, Which made thee blythe for to behold And yet thou wouldest not love me." It is hardly possible that in the reign of Elizabeth, that patroness of starched ruffs, stomachers that look like breastplates, and petticoats resembling towers,that the end of the garter should have appeared beneath the dress, as it does in that of an Andalusian; and yet the verse above quoted seems to have reference to some such fashion. This ballad seconds the assertion of Stubbes, that in this reign "netherstocks," of Grenada silk, were worn, curiously knitted, with open seams down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankle, and sometimes interlaced with silver and gold thread. From these luxurious innovations, the melancholy prophets of the period took occasion to prognosticate the downfall of England, whose ruin seemed to them a natural result of these silken elegances; and from the lamentations of one of these, who seems to regard knitted stockings as webs of destruction, and silken garters as bonds and chains, we learn that, previous to the introduction of silk and worsted stockings, black kersey † had been women's wear, and that those who now affected silk garters had formerly been content with list. Shakspere has left us some curious particulars connected with our subject. In the "Taming of the Shrew" we learn that even in his days serving-men wore white stockings, possibly of linen, like the odd one Biondello speaks of in his description of the appearance of Petruchio's lackey, "with a linen stock on one leg, and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list." Grumio speaks of the wife-breaker's servants wearing garters of "indifferent a native of Woodbourne, in Nottinghamshire, whom he loved, but who discarded him; while the more poetical version is, that having married the fair knitter, against the rules of his College, and being expelled knit;" so that in all probability these articles in the Elizabethan period, whether of silk or worsted, were similar to those on which aspirants in the art of knitting generally make their first essay in the present, but that the ends were vary--poverty, that pale, fierce, famished godcoloured, or finished, like those of the lady "Green Sleeves" (before alluded to), with a fringe of gold or bunchof aiglets. Vincentio, in the same play, speaks of velvet hose as a piece of extravagance on the part of his son; so that the wearing of them was still fashionable. Ben Jonson, too, abounds in allusions to our theme, in the play of " Every Man out of his Humour." Fastidio, the beau, describing the disasters which had befallen his dress in a duel between him and another, observes, that not having time to take off his silver spurs, "one of the rowels catched hold of the ruffle of my boot, which being of Spanish leather, and subject to tear, overthrew me, and rends me two pair of silk stockings which I had put on (being a raw morning), of a peachcolour and another." And Bobadil, in the same Comedy, takes off his silk stockings to pawn them, for the payment of a warrant against Downright. This play was acted in 1599; so that one scarcely understands why Sir Thomas Gresham's gift of a pair of long Spanish silk stockings to Edward VI. should have been so much noticed, as it is remarked they were, unless there was some peculiarity in this length to distinguish them from ordinary silk hose, of which Fastidio wears two pairs. dess, whom the ancients worshipped (but so as to discover more fear than love or reverence), because they regarded her as the mother of industry and the useful arts, became in his case his inspiration; and while watching the busy fingers of his wife, unequal, with all her industry, to the task of their support, he is said to have conceived the stocking-frame. Nearly three hundred years have passed, but Nottingham still continues to be famous for the manufacture of stockings; and thousands of families are maintained, and half the world supplied with them, by the application of the poor clergyman's invention. In the time of the Commonwealth, the coloured and embroidered stockings of the two previous reigns were replaced by hose of sober black; but on the restoration of the "man, Charles Stuart," the laxity of morals had its type in the dress, and loose stockings came into vogue. These were worn in folds upon the leg, and were gartered below the knee with silken scarfs, tied behind or at the side, in a bow, with flowing ends finished with fringe or embroidery. In the autumn of the same year 1658, men wore what were called stirrup-hose, two yards round at the top, and fastened to the petticoat breeches by points of ribbon. with another pair drawn over them to the bottom of the knee, which were worn either bagging over the garter, or fell down like a flounce, in which case the top was usually ornamented with embroidery or some fanciful pattern. All we learn from these absurd and unbecoming modes, is the fact that Charles possessed a very ill-shaped leg, and sought by these contrivances to Nothing (considering how generally they were worn by ladies and courtiers) gives us a more perfect conception of the poverty of James I.'s wardrobe, than the anecdote of his borrowing a pair from one of the gentlemen of his court, and finding them such marvellously pleasant wear that he danced them into holes. But this was on his accession to the throne; a little later in his reign, the wearing of silk hose had become so common that no one pretending to gen-hide it. tility could make a decent appearance without them. In the mean time, the manufacture of worsted stockings was no longer confined to the knitters. William Lee, M.A., of Cambridge, had constructed his ingenious frame for weaving them, some say from the unworthy motive of injuring a townswoman, After this period, we find the stocking in its natural shape,-which, indeed, the Roundheads had never abandoned, so that tight hose were one of their distinguishing peculiarities; and except as regards material and quality, with certain improvements in the shaping, no alteration has occurred in the fashion of them since. In William III. and George II.'s time, silk stockings with gold clocks were worn, as well as ones wrought with silks of various colours; a fashion which obtained even as late as 1777, when gold and silver threads wrought into clocks and staring flowers were very much affected by the beaux. Ladies' stockings were also adorned in the same manner; and this tradition of a past mode lingers with us, but in very modest guise, at the present, the better class of hosiery being generally ornamented with an open-work or silken clock. The introduction of cotton into this country, and its application to the manufacture of stockings, has been of important benefit both to the vendors and wearers of this article; previously no choice existed between the expense of silk and the (to many) discomfort of worsted hose, but at present this material affords every shade of fineness and price, from the exquisite fabric at a guinea a pair to full-sized stockings at one shilling. But the numbers engaged in weaving them, and the competition in the trade, keeps the wages of the frame-work knitters (as they were anciently called) very low,-8s. a week being their average earnings. We would fain follow one of these home, and see the process of stocking weaving, but that we have already occupied too much space, and must take farewell of a supject which we trust may not have proved uninteresting to the reader. BIRDS IN WINTER.-In winter a complete change takes place in the kinds of birds which are seen flying about in country places. The swallows and martins have disappeared; and fieldfares, redwings, and other birds of the thrush kind, supply their places; with woodcocks and snipes on marshy ground. In London the change is not so striking. There the eternal sparrow is heard chirping all the year; and blackbirds and thrushes are hatched, and live and die in the thick ivy of the suburban gardens. The tomtits, the robin redbreasts, and the wrens, are, it is true, only seen at certain seasons; but their appearance seems to depend more on accidental circumstances than on regular periodical migrations. STORIES FOR THE YOUNG. MY PETS. III. ROBIN REDBREAST. I must now, dear children, pass over a few years of my life, in which I had no pets in whose history you would be likely to be interested. At the time of my possessing my wonderful Robin, we had left our country home, my brothers were most of them abroad in the world, and I was living with my parents in the pleasant city of RI was a school-girl, between fifteen and sixteen years of age. That spring, I commenced the study of French, and, as I was never a remarkably bright scholar, I was obliged to apply myself with great diligence to my books. I used to take my grammar and phrase-book to my chamber, at night, and study as long as I could possibly keep my eyes open. In consequence of this, as you may suppose, I was very sleepy in the morning, and it usually took a prodigious noise and something of a shaking to waken me. But one summer morning I was roused early, not by the breakfast-bell, nor by calling, or shaking, but by a glad gush of sweetest singing. I opened my eyes, and right on the footboard of my bed was perched a pretty redbreasted robin, pouring out all his little soul in a merry morning song. I stole out of bed softly, and shut down the window through which he had come; then, as soon as I was dressed, caught him, carried him down-stairs, and put him into a cage which had hung empty ever since the cat made way with my last Canary. I soon found that I had a rare treasure in my Robin, who was very tame, and had evidently been carefully trained, for before the afternoon was over he surprised and delighted us all by singing the air of "Buy a Broom" quite through, touching on every note with wonderful precision. We saw that it was a valuable bird, who had probably escaped, and for some days we made inquiries for its owner, but without success. At night I always took Robin's cage into my chamber, and he was sure to waken me early with his loud, but delicious, singing. So passed on a month, in which I had great happiness in my inter |
