Horrible !
An " Instruction pour les jeunes dames " throws a light upon the composition of these 'ointments,' or rather deplorable messes, in which turpentine, lily-roots, honey, eggs, eggshells, camphor, etc., were mixed up, and the whole boiled in the inside of a pigeon, then mashed, and distilled together.
The ' touret de nez ' seem to have been indispensable after that.
René, the Florentine who was brought to France by Catherine, and maliciously styled " The Queen's Poisoner," supplied the fair court ladies with paints, perfumes, and cosmetics, besides concocting for the Queen-Mother the more deadly medicaments which she used for— in a manner at once discreet and refined—the suppression of troublesome persons.
What a time it was ! From one end of the kingdom to the other the strife of parties raged ; men hated, disputed with, and fought each other.
During a period of thirty years everything was confusion, the Catholic and Huguenot armies chased each other through the provinces, each in its turn sacking the towns, burning the castles, waging a merciless war in which neither women nor children were spared, a war of ambushes and massacre.
Stuff witli raised designs.
The towns were besieged, the country was ravaged by the Catholic ' argoulets ' and argue-busiers, and by the Protestant 'reiters/ castles and manors Avere carried by assault. They who were the weaker had to fly, or to perish.
It is ensy to see that in such a time as this the dress of womeu must ueccssarily assume a somewhat mascuhne chaiacter. In moments of peril the poor women were frequently forced to escape on horse or mule-back, sitting like men.
Condé, being surprised in an interval of peace (in 1568), and forced to fly from his castle of Noyers near Auxerre, and make for Rochelle in order to escape from Catherine's troops, was obliged to cross the Loire with his pregnant wife carried in a litter, three infants in the cradle, the families of Coligny and Andelot, and a number of children and nurses.
The women adopted a kind of doublet, with upper-hose, to be worn under the gown. These 'caleçons' (drawers), as they were called, enabled them to sit on men's saddles and use the stirrups more easily, notwithstanding their wide skirts.
In spite of everything, the farthingale flourished and increased in ma^rnitude.
" Et les clames ne sont pas bien accommodées Si leur vertugadin n'est large dix coudées."
We find tins couplet in a satire of the period, entitled Discours sur la mode.
lu the time of ' the Reform.'
The Valois head-dress and collar.
V.
HENRY THE THIRD,
The court of the Woman-King—Large ruffs, pleated, goffered or in 'horns'—Bell-women—Large sleeves —Dreadful doings of the corset—Queen Margot and her fair-haired pages.
No vital change in the situation was brought about by the reign of Henry the Third. The times were perhaps more gloomy, and the country was more disturbed. In spite of the Holy League, however, and notwithstanding the spread of the Civil War, and the blood that was flowing everywhere, Henry the Third, king of torn and tormented France, laid his hand on the sceptre of fashion.
After the melancholy Charles, who regarded luxury in dress with disdain, came a foppish king, curled, ruffed, scented, rouged, who, while he renewed the sumptuary edicts of his late brother, led the Court, and, after the Court, all who had it in their power to follow the fashion, into every kind of luxurious folly and eccentric extravagance.
Disorder reigned at tlie Court of this "Kinçf of the Island of the Hermaphrodites," as the pamphleteers called him, d'Aubigne's " King-woman and man-queen."
" Son visage de blanc et de ronge empâté, Son chef tout empoudré nous montrèrent l'idée En la place d'nn roi d'une fille fardée."
" Such are the luxury and the license," says the Chroniqihc de V Etoile, " that the most chaste of Lucretias would turn into a Faustina there."
The kingdom of fashion itself was disturbed, its natural frontiers were obliterated, and the distinctions of costume for the two sexes were disregarded. The King, whose taste was singular, made his own dress as feminine as possible, seeking what he might borrow from the attire of women, from the head-dress to the fan.
Like the ladies of the Court, the King and his ' mignons ' took to wearing pearl necklaces, ear-rings, Venetian lace, and large ruffs. Also like the ladies of the Court, and others, he painted his face, and used cosmetics in the most ridiculous manner, even wearing a mask and gloves steeped in pomade at night. These were strange effeminate ways for a time of unsheathed dagger and constant peril. The ' mignons ' and the ' popelirots ' wore a sort of corset to give tliem slim waists, the busked doublet, coming down low to a sharp point, speedily became the absurd doublet with a padded front forming a kind of Punch-like protuberance. The 'mignons' and 'popehrots ' also adopted the feminine ' toque,' adorned with feathers and precious stones.
Women borrowed nothing from male costume, but they made up for this by considerably exaggerating the dimensions and the ornamentation of the component parts of their own, by wearing the most sumptuous stuffs, and loading themselves with jewellery.
Marguerite de Valois, the King's sister, the Queen Margot of Henri Quatre, led the fashion. In all except his absurdity, from which her feminine grace preserved her, she was a match for that astounding prince her brother, the curled, painted, and musk-scented satrap who starched and goffered his own ruffs and the Queen's, and took his walks abroad with several little dogs in his arms or a cup-and-ball in his hand.
Ruffs assumed fantastic proportions; they became immense, widened-out horns stretched on brass wire of magnificent lace or A^enetian-point embroidery, wliicli rose from the bodice, while showing the shoulders, to above the back
Court dress.
of the liead, indeed to the summit of the head-dress. The painted face thus framed in sharp-edged lace was like a brilliant flower or fruit, or rather like that of an idol, over-coloured and laden with jewellery and tinsel.
The bodice was actually covered with jewels, and what with gold, gems, beads, necklaces, earrings, and diamonds and pearls in their head-
The Mask.
dresses, princesses and great ladies shone and twinkled all over. Head-dresses were very low, the hair was arranged in a point on the forehead and raised in rouleaus on the temples, forming the shape of a heart surrounded by a circlet set with jewels and pearls.
Rows of pearls formed square or lozenge-sliaped designs on the bodices and skirts. The girdle, with very long ends, was also of jeweller's work ; at one extremity hung a small mirror, richly set, which the wearer had in her hand constantly, so that she might inspect the condition of her precious but troublesome attire, and especially the immense ruff, which was a serious inconvenience, with all its majestic elegance, on social occasions, and at the crowded Court entertainments.
It is easy to estimate what the burden of the costume of the period must have been, by merely looking at a picture in the Louvre which represents a Court Ball given on the marriaçje of the Due de Joveuse with the King's sister-in-law. This was a famous wedding, celebrated with unexampled splendour by twenty-five or thirty days' festivities, jousts and masquerades, during which the entire Court, jorinces and princesses, lords and ladies, vied with each other in the fantastic sumptuousness of their daily-changed costumes.