Ups And Downs Of Underwear In The Middle Ages II

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

Anglo-Saxon ladies were highly commended by Strutt for being "much less capricious" in the fashion of their garments than the men. He found that from the eighth to the close of the eleventh century, the women were wearing a rather short dress tucked in at the girdle to show a thick woolen chemise underneath—an addition, it is guilelessly expounded, dictated by the cold and foggy climate. The climate has remained the same, but in different epochs Marjorie's petticoats have been decidedly changeable.

The Saxon feminine undergarment of the eleventh century does not appear to have been ornamented even with the simple decorations of needlework often found on other parts of the "habits." By the ninth century the outer tunic of both sexes was frequently ornamented with a band called a fichu, which was sometimes set with gems and showed Byzantine influence. Incidentally, though nothing is known about the underwear of Byzantium, it is hardly likely that their peculiarly elaborate and stiff clothes were worn next to the skin.

It is a safe bet that the Byzantine lady had decorative under-clothes.

Apparently it did not occur to Anglo-Saxon "females" (the worthy Strutt's term) to decorate their undies until toward the end of the tenth century. Then we begin to find instances of ornamentation at the, bottom—borders of different colors probably worked with the needle. Later, if the estate of the wearer justified such elegance, the collar and cuffs of this in-most linen garment, which extended from chin to foot, were embroidered with gold, the long sleeves being pushed back over the wrist.

It is an interesting point that, as Marjorie's "gentil" knight rides away on the noblest of all pilgrimages, the Crusade, he wears over his mail what he calls his chemise. Although what he has on is a long white tunic reaching to the feet, the gentlemen apparently beat the ladies to it in applying to a garment the term eventually used to connote universally a piece of women's wear—and centuries later was corrupted into the humorous word shimmy. Thus Marjorie's mighty lord and master went forth to "shake the shimmy" long ages before anybody ever heard of Gilda Gray, the "shimmy queen" of 1923.

The romances of Chivalry in which Marjorie appears speak of bathing almost as often as Homer does. She has not forgotten her classical fondness for water. In a tower of the castle is the mediaeval bathroom, served by its crude plumbing. The bath, as with the Greeks and the Romans, still prevails as a common custom. Now, fragrant from her bath, perfumed or medicated with herbs, Marjorie as the Lady of the Castle draws on her long chemise, fresh as a meadow flower. Over this she puts her pelisson, a garment lined with linen and covered with silk, having a fur substrate which may be withdrawn in summer. Outside, she dons her bliaud, the dress of innumerable saints in stained glass windows. Sometimes she lets the costume fall in straight and simple lines, sometimes a broad cuirass defines her breast and hips. A girdle, loosely enfolding the waist and falling to the bottom of the bliaud, is an important feature.

Marjorie, in the chivalrous romances and in her portraits by the Venetians Gentile Bellini and Bernardo Zenale, is always fair-haired, with white skin, grey eyes, rosy cheeks, and scarlet lips. That evidently is the type in high favor. There are, however, arts to achieve blonde hair, practised either by tingeing or dyeing it with liquids prepared for the purpose according to ancient Eastern recipes or by powders of the requisite hue.

Among the needs of the supreme patron of art in the Middle Ages—the Church—is brilliantly colored glass to grace the lofty windows of its buildings. Glass painting is in its glory. As the temper of the age and the nature of the religious monuments which sculpture and painting are commanded to adorn almost absolutely forbid the representation of the nude, the art of the Middle Ages, where it concerns itself with the human form, is essentially an art of draped figures. Marjorie, as the representative mediaeval lady, in purple and scarlet, green and blue, shot with gold, is a Stained Glass Lady.

But is the enchantment of the lines of Marjorie's body of no consequence to Fashion? Can nothing be done to compensate for compulsory full drapery? The "importance" of the girdle has been mentioned. The girdles appropriated to queens, princesses, and other ladies of high rank are richly adorned with gold, pearls, and precious stones. Their brilliancy accents the lines of Marjorie's body and calls attention to every movement as she walks. Seldom, indeed, is Fashion caught napping in regard to one of the prime functions of clothes.

Despite the modest draperies of the Middle Ages, there is altogether a surprising number of references in its literature to the feminine undergarment variously called kirtle, smock, sherte, camise, chemise.

Fine Holland and, presumably, Irish linen were used in making shifts for those who could afford such fine materials. In the old romances shifts of chainsil or chaisil, which also appears to have been a delicate species of linen, are often mentioned. One of these had "embellished borders, and laced on both sides." Another romancer says of a lady that "in a chaysel smock she lay."

At the time this poet wrote Marjorie evidently had begun to sleep in her chemise—the affluent lady probably had a special smock for night wear. The earliest reference to special sleeping garments was made by Isidor, Bishop of Seville, who died in 636. He reports that nightshirts had begun to be worn by those of the upper crust around the opening of the seventh century.

Before then Medieval Marjorie slept in the raw. If it were a cold night, she pulled the bedclothes over her; if not, she didn't. Mediaeval illuminations frequently portray ladies and gentlemen placidly sleeping with their heads carefully covered, but otherwise without a stitch on them. Early in the Middle Ages, at least everywhere outside of the voluptuous East, such was the general custom, for rich and poor, gentle and simple.

In the book of etiquette current in 1400, the Book of Curtasye, we find "bryngis he forthe nyght-gown also." When, well into the fifteenth century, it became generally the swank thing to affect a nightshirt, the nightshirt evidently was a very swank affair indeed. The account book for 1488 of Charles VIII of France reveals that scarlet silk was purchased for the construction of the royal nightshirts. Of Marjorie's nightie at this period we know naught.

Underwear in the Middle Ages was not possessed in quantities. In the tenth century Charles the Simple, though a king, had but three shirts to his illustrious name. And even in the fourteenth century, when the notorious beauty, Isabeau de Baviere, married Charles VI, she was supposed to reach the heights of luxury by including three dozen chemises in her trousseau. Until her day, French gentlewomen had worn undergarments of coarse stuff or serge.

Chaucer's Carpenter's Wife, though not one of the company traveling to Canterbury, is the heroine of the Miller's Tale, and her dress is partially described. Curiously enough, the outer garment is not specified. "The father of all our poets" and "the grandfather of all our hundred million novelists," as Mr. G. K. Chesterton terms him, thus describes the dress of this fashionable housewife:

White was her smocke, embrouded all before
And eke behynde, on her colore aboute,
Of tole black sylke, within and eke without.

A couple of centuries later, in a production of Beaumont and Fletcher Four Plays in One, is an allusion to "smockes seamed through with cut-works." And in Rare Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass may be found "smocks faced with broad seaming laces." An "Irish smock" (presumably of Irish linen) wrought with gold and silk, said to have been found in the secret wardrobe of Henry VIII in Westminister after his death, probably belonged to one of his queens. And in another wardrobe was deposited "a waste smock wrought with silver." The shift was an expensive article of dress even at the beginning of the seventeenth century. We hear of a damsel of the time who spoke of those that cost three pounds apiece, adding, "They may be born withall." "Hempen smocks" were worn by the country lasses and those of low degree.

The fine ladies of the fifteenth century naturally imitated the luxurious Isabeau de Baviere and, to show that they wore linen undergarments, made openings in the sleeves of their gown that the chemise might be seen. Further, they opened their skirts on the hips in order to display the length of the chemise. Then the idea occurred to them of having these garments made of fine linen only in the parts visible to the public, the rest being of woolen material. Linen chemises were regarded as luxuries until the time of Louis XI.

Now Marjorie's garters, sometimes fastened by a buckle and sometimes simply tied, were ornamented with mottoes or initials.