Garters And Stockings - The Elaboration Of Feminine Mystery III

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

When Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587, she wore blue worsted stockings, clocked and edged at the top with silver. Under these she wore another pair of white. The Professor spins quite a yarn about Marjorie's stockings. Those that Rabelais found on her may not have been of yarn, but of taffeta, or satin, or even of velvet.

Although in society the gentlemen could not see the ladies' stockings, when the heroes came back from the Crusades and took off their long chemises, the ladies had an unobstructed view of their behosed legs—in the fifteenth century straight up to the top of the thigh. Thus the gentlemen got the idea of making his legs as attractive as possible to the opposite sex. And being a bird of gay plumage, he accomplished some splendid effects which, doubtless, were not in vain.

By the end of the fifteenth century the long hose, tight below the knee, became slightly puffed above that useful joint and even took on a different color in the upper part. Pretty soon, by the accession of Henry VIII, the hose had come to be divided, at the knee, into two parts. In great Eliza's gallant day this upper part—the trunk hose or breeches—acquired much stuffing and padding in order to stand puffed outward. With men of rank they assumed such prodigious proportions that legend has it that extra bleachers had to be erected in the House of Parliament to accommodate the haughty lords in outsizes.

In the time of Charles II, the swains dazzled Marjorie by coming out in furbelowed petticoat breeches, with stockings visible to the knee and with jeweled garters.

Concerning Henry VIII's celebrated courtships, a modern biographer remarks that he carried them on, among other ways, "in the sartorial." He had been doing a considerable amount of wooing in stockings; of purple and of crimson, made for him of yard-wide taffeta, when, "by a singular occurrence," there came to him from Spain a pair of knitted silk stockings. Henry wins the sartorial palm for being the first sovereign of England who ever wore a pair of knitted silk stockings.

As Henry ceased wooing forever in 1553, knitted silk stockings apparently arrived in England some time before they appeared in France. A French historian of costume states : "The first hand-knitted silk stockings were worn by King Henri II, at the wedding of Marguerite of France with Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, in the month of June, 1559. The common people, and even the well-to-do classes, continued for a long time to wear stockings made of cloth."

To be able to make a present of a pair of knitted silk stockings was apparently something faintly like giving away a limousine today. It was considered a donation worthy of a monarch's acceptance. Accordingly, it is related, Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, won the favor of Edward VI by a "grand present" of a "payre of long Spanish silke stockings, a luxurious article of raiment."

At last the ladies come in—that is, into knitted silk stockings. In the third year of the reign of Elizabeth, when she was twenty-eight, her silk woman, Mistress Montague, presented this redoubtable daughter of Henry VIII with a pair of black silk knit stockings for a New Year's gift. After a few days' wearing, these articles pleased her so well that she sent for Mistress Montague and asked her where she got them and if she could help her to any more. The enthralling conversation which ensued is thus set down in Stow's Chronicle:

"Mistress Montague answered, saying, `I made them very carefully of purpose only for your Majesty, and seeing these please you so well, I will presently get more in hand.'

" `Do,' said the Queen, `for indeed I like silk stockings so well, because they are pleasant, fine and delicate, that hence-forth I will wear no more cloth stockings.' "

It was three years after this event that another humble soul, like the alert Mistress Montague, imprinted his name upon the history of stockings. In 1564 one William Rider, "then apprentice to Thomas Burdelt, at the Bridge foot opposite to the church of St. Magnus," seeing a pair of knit worsted stockings "brought from Mantua" at an Italian merchant's, borrowed them and, "having made a pair like unto them, presented the same to the Earl of Pembroke." A thrifty genius, Master Rider! This production was probably the first pair of worsted stockings knit in England.

Despite these human interest stories concerning knitted stockings from afar, tradition says the knitting of stockings was invented in Scotland in the fifteenth century, and from there the art was carried to the Continent. A curious fact is that, when a stocking-knitters' guild was formed in France in the sixteenth century, they chose St. Fiacre, a French monk born in Ireland some eight hundred years earlier, as their patron.

In the reign of Elizabeth, at any rate, knitting by hand entered the home life of all classes in England. Indeed, many thousands of young woman in this little country took up spinning worsted yarn and knitting stockings, just as they take up typewriting today. Cloth stockings disappeared gradually as the popularity of knitting spread over Europe.

In the latter quarter of the sixteenth century we hear of Marjorie in sheer stockings. The information comes to us not through a friend of her fine hosiery, but from a cantankerous individual whose name was Philip Stubbs. In 1583 this historic killjoy published a tirade, entitled the Anatomie of Abuses, against nearly everything going. Amid the rest, he lit into the "impudent insolency and shameful outrage" of the age in the matter 0f stockings.

"It is now grown," he says in his torrential onrush, "that every one almost, though otherwise very poor, having scarcely forty shillings of wages by the year, will not stick to have two or three pair of these silk nether-stocks, or else of the finest yarn that can be got, though the price of them be a royal, or twenty shillings, or more, as commonly it is; for how long can they be less, whenas the very knitting of them is worth a noble or a royal, and some much more ? The time hath been when one might have clothed all his body well from top to toe for less than a pair of these nether-socks will cost." "Socks," this time! A surprisingly early use of that term.

Castigating the women in particular, the ferocious Stubbs says: "Their stockings in like manner are either of silk, Jarnsey, worsted, cruel, or at least of fine yarn thread or cloth as is possible to be had; yes, they are not ashamed to wear hose of all kinds of changeable colours, as green, red, white, russet, tawny, and else what not. These thin delicate hosen must be cunningly knit and curiously indented in every point with quirks, clocks, open seams, and everything else accordingly."

The silk stockings which pleased Queen Elizabeth so much have apparently not been further described. However, Marie de' Medici, second wife of Henri IV of France, delighted in silk stockings, which she had imported from Italy and Spain. She favored purple, red, and orange and had her stockings decorated with the French lilies or the Medici coat of arms. Anne of Austria preferred black stockings knitted around the tops with gold thread. These were made in Spain by a master craftsman who worked exclusively for her, and for quality and exquisite design are said to have exceeded all others. For a considerable period, the Spanish knitters excelled all others in Europe. At length, however, the French became the masters. During the reign of Louis XV, French stockings were in great demand at all the courts. But this is anticipating... .

Until nearly the end of the sixteenth century, all stockings were hand-knit. And for some considerable time after that knitting by hand was the means most widely employed in making hosiery. Later still, when stockings had come to be generally knitted on a machine, clocking remained a mark of the highest luxury; the most elaborate embroidery, in gold, silver, and colored threads of the finest quality, was done by hand with infinite patience and exquisite skill.

Around the invention of the first knitting-frame hangs a mist of romantic apocrypha. Twenty-three accounts, wildly contradictory, are extant. Some writers claim the honor for the French. Though the majority of early historians agree in giving the credit to England, their narratives range through the gamut of human motives in finding the inspiration for its invention.

At any rate, the knitting machine as a tangible contrivance and the recognizable source of a revolutionary industry had its inception in England. At the close of the sixteenth century a certain Reverend William Lee of Nottingham, Master of Arts and Fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, was in love. A clergyman at Calverton, not far from Nottingham, his "living" was a poor one. Maybe he lacked compensating qualities to commend him to the feminine heart. At any rate, the particular young lady 0f his devotion did not return his passion. She, too, was of limited means and got her livelihood by knitting stockings.

The man of God was of dark and vengeful nature. When the young woman rejected his suit, in retaliation and with the base object of destroying the poor girl's. employment, he invented a machine that would do knitting—the stocking frame, which has been called "the most perfect of primary inventions." A man, it would appear, of remarkably quick intellect. But for his spiteful motives he was penalized by destiny. Driven by circumstances into a foreign land, subsequent troubles brought him ruin, and he died at Paris of a broken heart, "an end well deserved," says the chronicler Stow, "for the cruel and mean revenge he had taken on a woman he professed to love."

There is a variant of this story. Dire necessity was the mother of the great invention. This same William Lee, a valiant youth, married before he was out of college. An ardent spirit, he found the world hard. In anguish he contemplated the deprivations of his wife and child. With no training as an engineer, he conceived a marvel of engineering. For three years he labored on his invention and longed for the solace of some reward.

What we definitely know is that the marvel worked. Word of the miracle spread. No less illustrious a fancier of fine stockings than Queen Elizabeth, it is said, was induced to go to Lee's humble quarters to see it. The stocking knitters be-came generally alarmed and sought to bring the invention into disrepute. Apparently they succeeded. A handicraft postponed the advent of the Machine Age! Lee was refused a patent by Elizabeth. The Queen wrote to a lord of the realm, "Had Mr. Lee made a machine that would have made silk stockings, I should, I think, have been somewhat justified in granting him a patent for that monoply, which would have effected only a small number of my subjects, but to enjoy the exclusive privilege of making stockings for the whole of my subjects, is too important to be granted to any individual."

Lee's first machine was not capable of knitting more than eight loops to an inch of width—too coarse for silk. Only a comparatively small proportion of the knitters, and those the more well-to-do, made silk stockings. But silk stockings were what was wanted. In a book published in 1611 entitled The Hog hash lost his Pearl, we read, "Good parts without the habiliments of gallantry are no more set by in these days than a good leg in a woollen stocking."

The Reverend Mr. Lee could take it on the chin. After grappling for nine years with his machine, he was around again at the palace with a fabric two and a half times as fine as he had been able to make at first. He presented the Queen with a pair of silk stockings comparable to those of four centuries later. If Elizabeth had exercised sound statescraft be-fore, it is difficult to see wisdom in her action this time. She passed up the chance to grab off the machine-knitted hosiery industry for England. Lee was again refused aid and protection.

The humble cleric rubbed his chin and decided that the thing to do was to outlive the Queen and apply again to her successor. In the meantime he might as well make still finer machines. He made nine. Five years later, shortly after the funeral was over, he was around again with his latest samples of silk stockings.

When James VI of Scotland, a land traditionally associated with the invention of knitting, became King of England, he took no interest in William Lee. After all, hadn't his mother been beheaded in fancy worsted stockings ? The astute minister of Henri IV of France, however, the Duc de Sully, whose activities were trebling the income of the state, took a look at the invention and invited Lee to France. There he was personally welcomed by the King and, with his brother, eight workmen, and eight machines, set up the new business in Rouen. On the day he was to receive his patent the King was murdered. His patron gone, his religion, he feared correctly, was against him. That fancier of purple, red, and orange silk stockings imported from Italy and Spain, Marie de' Medici, notoriously an obstinate and stupid woman, withdrew the royal protection. Lee could not again take it on the chin. He took the count. Where he was buried in France is not known.