PUNCH’S BOOK OF BRITISH COSTUMES.
CHAPTER I. – THE ANCIENT BRITISH PERIOD.
Under this head, we purpose to write the history of Costume from the earliest British period down to a time which is within the memory of men, who are still living. We shall recount the follies which from age to age have alienated thoughtful minds from following the fashion. We shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between periwigs and pigtails. We shall relate how the old shoe-buckle was during many troubled years successfully defended against the newer bootlace: how to the stiffened ruffs and frills of a past period have succeeded the “all-rounder” and starched “grills” of the present time: how the modern “pegtops” sprang from the bracae of antiquity: ho from the inauspicious union of the vilest breeds of brain-cover came the hard black “tile” or “chimney-pot,” in which so many hundred headaches have had birth.
Nor will it be less our duty faithfully to record disasters mingled with triumphs, in the fashionable struggles of the fairer sex. It will be seen that the dear creatures, whom in gallantry and hustice we account as our chief blessings, have in expenditure of pin-money been not without alloy. It will be seen how, on the earlier simplicities of clothing, fashions fruitful of marvels have been gradually established. It will be seen that, being cursed by the domination of the dressmakers, Lovely Woman has been blighted and distorted in her beauty, and pointed at reproachfully by critics, satirists, and cynics: that in an evil time she learned to deform herself with stays, and has been made consumptive by small bonnets and thin boots; that for years she tottered out beneath a head-dress so gigantic that, compared with it, the Pyramids sank into insignificance; and that by other means she has grown monstrous in men’s eyes, and still disfigures her fair from with the wide, street-sweeping petticoat, which is descended, crinolineally, from the ancient hoop.
As to the course which we intend to pursue with former writers, we shall use them or not use them precisely as we please, and quote them or misquote them exactly as we like. We shall, when so disposed, take down the ablest of historians, and get up as much or little of their books as we think proper. But while consulting, when we choose, the learnedest opinions, we shall stick at all times to that which is our own; and as we don’t feel bound to believe the best authorities, we shall, where we think fit, give credence to the worst.
But instead of wearying the reader with derailing what we mean to do, our better plan perhaps will be to go to work and do it. Beginning, then, at the beginning, or as near to it as history enables us to get, we commence with the costume of those old ancestors of ours, to whom not without irreverence, we moderns have applied the name of “Ancient Britons.” Now, where the Ancient Britons came from, and at what period they came from it, is a point on which historians seem rather in the dark, and even Punch himself cannot say much to enlighten them. But since it is not probable that they were born of rainbows, or were dropped out of a water-spout like a reporter’s shower of frogs, we may reasonably conjecture, that they must have come from somewhere; * and it is scarcely more presumptuous, in a gifted mind like ours, to suppose that when they came they brought their wardrobes with them. It is probable, however, that their clothes’ hags did not from a very bulky baggage; for when Julius Caesar landed he found the native, as he says, “in puris naturalibus,” which an elegant translator renders, “being dressed in bake skin.” To tell the naked truth, in fact, they showed the Roman Wellington their figures in the nude, except so far as they were covered by a bit or two of hide, which as that ass Asser saith, “dyddle notte saue yth fromme a bydyngge.”
Both Caesar and Herodian say the Britons were tattooed, and the former talks about their “caeruleum colorem,” which he says they wore to make themselves look fearful frights in fighting (“horribiliori sunt in pugna adspectu.”) Ovid, however, writes of them as “virides Britabbi;” so that from the pictures of our ancestors, which these old painters have left us, a doubt seems to arise if they were pained green or blue.** We think, had we to arbitrate, we should give judgment in the matter, in the sage manner adopted in the ease of the chameleon; there being colourable grounds for thinking both colours were worn, and believing that at times green was as fashionable as blue. We have little doubt the natives wore the bluest of blue looks when Caesar came and saw and conquered them; and when, after he had peppered them, he found how strong they mustered, there is no question he regarded them as being precious green.
Be this point as it may, there is plainly no disputing that our ancestors wore paint; and barbarians though they were (in this matter especially), they set a fashion which their feminine posterity have followed, however much their masculine descendants may have blushed at it. To the inquiring mind, indeed, it seems as clear as mud, that an Ancient Briton’s dressing-case consisted of a paint-pot: and doubtless the sole care that he took about his toilette was, as a Celtic bard informa us-
“To lage ytte onne soe thucke
Chatte some mote sureine stucke.”
*This conjecture is supported by the learnedest authorities. Herodotus and Plutarch say the Cimbrians and Celts were the first colonists of England; and this dictum, if estabilished, would suffice to prove our point.
** Not to interrupt ourselves, it may be noted in a note, that these colours were adopted by the poets and toe priests, Of the latter, some, who doubtless were the Puseyites of the period, “wore vestments of bright green,” like their descendants in St. George’s, who certainly are “green,” although they may not be thought “bright:” while the bards, Cynddelw informs us, were partial to “sky blue.” that colour being viewed as “emblematical of peace:” so that the lacteal liquid sold to Londoners may in truth as well as poetry be called, not cow’s but dove’s milk.
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