The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages Part 33

The following notices from her own letters, though trifling, are interesting memorials of this melancholy part of her life:--

"July 9, 1574.--I pray you send me some pigeons, red partridges, and Barbary fowls. I mean to try to rear them in this country, or keep them in cages: it is an amus.e.m.e.nt for a prisoner, and I do so with all the little birds I can obtain.

"July 18, 1574.--Always bear in mind that my will in all things be strictly followed; and send me, if it be possible, some one with my accounts. He must bring me patterns of dresses and samples of cloths, gold and silver, stuffs and silks, the most costly and new now worn at court. Order for me at Poissy a couple of coifs, with gold and silver crowns, such as they have made for me before. Remind Breton of his promise to send me from Italy the newest kind of head-dress, veils, and ribands, wrought with gold and silver, and I will repay him.

"September 22.--Deliver to my uncle the cardinal the two cus.h.i.+ons of my work which I send herewith. Should he be gone to Lyons, he will doubtless send me a couple of beautiful little dogs; and you likewise may procure a couple for me; for, except in reading and working, I take pleasure solely in all the little animals I can obtain. You must send them hither very comfortably put up in baskets.

"February 12, 1576.--I send the king of France some poodle-dogs (barbets), but can only answer for the beauty of the dogs, as I am not allowed either to hunt or to ride."[130]

It is said that one of the articles which in its preparation beguiled her, perchance, of some melancholy thoughts, was a waistcoat which, having richly and beautifully embroidered, she sent to her son; and that this selfish prince was heartless enough to reject the offering because his mother (still surely Queen of Scotland in his eyes) addressed it to him as prince.

The poet so often quoted wrote the subjoined sonnet in Queen Elizabeth's praise, whose skill with her needle was remarkable. She was especially an adept in the embroidering with gold and silver, and practised it much in the early part of her life, though perhaps few specimens of her notability now exist:--

"When this great queene, whose memory shall not By any terme of time be overcast; For when the world and all therein shall rot, Yet shall her glorious fame for ever last.

When she a maid had many troubles past, From jayle to jayle by Maries angry spleene: And Woodstocke, and the Tower in prison fast, And after all was England's peerelesse queene.

Yet howsoever sorrow came or went, She made the needle her companion still, And in that exercise her time she spent, As many living yet doe know her skill.

Thus shee was still, a captive, or else crown'd, A needlewoman royall and renown'd."

Of Mary II., the wife of the Prince of Orange, Bishop Fowler writes thus:--"What an enemy she was to idleness! even in ladies, those who had the honour to serve her are living instances. It is well known how great a part of the day they were employed at their needles and several ingenuities; the queen herself, when more important business would give her leave, working with them. And, that their minds might be well employed at the same time, it was her custom to order one to read to them, while they were at work, either divinity or some profitable history."

And Burnet thus:--"When her eyes were endangered by reading too much, she found out the amus.e.m.e.nt of work; and in all those hours that were not given to better employment she wrought with her own hands, and that sometimes with so constant a diligence as if she had been to earn her bread by it. It was a new thing, and looked like a sight, to see a queen working so many hours a day."

Her taste and industry in embroidery are testified by chairs yet remaining at Hampton Court.

The beautiful and unfortunate Marie Antoinette, lively as was her disposition, and fond as she was of gaiety, did not find either the duties or gaieties of a court inconsistent with the labours of the needle. She was extremely fond of needlework, and during her happiest and gayest years was daily to be found at her embroidery-frame. Her approach to this was a signal that other ladies might equally amuse themselves with their various occupations of embroidery, of knitting, or of _untwisting_--the profitable occupation of that day; and which was so fas.h.i.+onable, such a "rage," that the ladies of the court hardly stirred anywhere without two little workbags each--one filled with gold fringes, laces, ta.s.sels, or any _golden_ trumpery they could pick up, the other to contain the gold they unravelled, which they sold to Jews.

It is said to be a fact that d.u.c.h.esses--nay, princesses--have been known to go about from Jew to Jew in order to obtain the highest price for their gold. Dolls and all sorts of toys were made and covered with gold brocades; and the gentlemen never failed rendering themselves agreeable to their fair acquaintance by presenting them with these toys!

Every one knows that the court costume of the French n.o.blemen at that period was most expensive; this absurd custom rendered it doubly, trebly so; and was carried to such an excess, that frequently the moment a gentleman appeared in a new coat the ladies crowded round him and soon divested it of all its gold ornaments.

The following is an instance:--"The Duke de Coigny one night appeared in a new and most expensive coat: suddenly a lady in the company remarked that its gold bindings would be excellent for untwisting. In an instant he was surrounded--all the scissors in the room were at work; in short, in a few moments the coat was stripped of its laces, its galoons, its ta.s.sels, its fringes; and the poor duke, notwithstanding his vexation, was forced by _politeness_ to laugh and praise the dexterity of the fair hands that robbed him."

But what a solace did that pa.s.sion for needlework, which the queen indulged in herself and encouraged in others, become to her during her fearful captivity. This unhappy princess was born on the day of the Lisbon earthquake, which seemed to stamp a fatal mark on the era of her birth; and many circ.u.mstances occurred during her life which have since been considered as portentous.

"'Tis certain that the soul hath oft foretaste Of matters which beyond its ken are placed."

One circ.u.mstance, simple in itself and easily explained, is recorded by Madame Campan as having impressed Marie with shuddering antic.i.p.ations of evil:--

"One evening, about the latter end of May, she was sitting in the middle of her room, relating several remarkable occurrences of the day. Four wax candles were placed upon her toilet; the first went out of itself--I relighted it; shortly afterwards the second, and then the third, went out also: upon which the queen, squeezing my hand with an emotion of terror, said to me, 'Misfortune has power to make us superst.i.tious; if the fourth taper go out like the first, nothing can prevent my looking upon it as a fatal omen!'--The fourth taper went out."

At an earlier period Goethe seems, with somewhat of a poet's inspiration, to have read a melancholy fate for her. When young he was completing his studies at Strasburg. In an isle in the middle of the Rhine a pavilion had been erected, intended to receive Marie Antoinette and her suite, on her way to the French court.

"I was admitted into it," says Goethe, in his Memoirs: "on my entrance I was struck with the subject depicted in the tapestry with which the princ.i.p.al pavilion was hung, in which were seen Jason, Creusa, and Medea; that is to say, a representation of the most fatal union commemorated in history. On the left of the throne the bride, surrounded by friends and distracted attendants, was struggling with a dreadful death; Jason, on the other side, was starting back, struck with horror at the sight of his murdered children; and the Fury was soaring into the air in her chariot drawn by dragons. Superst.i.tion apart, this strange coincidence was really striking. The husband, the bride, and the children, were victims in both cases: the fatal omen seemed accomplished in every point."

The following notices of her imprisonment would but be spoiled by any alteration of language. We shall perceive that one of her greatest troubles in prison, before her separation from the king and the dauphin, was the being deprived of her sewing implements.

"During the early part of Louis XVI.'s imprisonment, and while the treatment of him and his family was still human, his majesty employed himself in educating his son; while the queen, on her part, educated her daughter. Then they pa.s.sed some time in needlework, knitting, or tapestry-work.

"At this time the royal family were in great want of clothes, insomuch that the princesses were employed in mending them every day; and Madame Elizabeth was often obliged to wait till the king was gone to bed, in order to have his to repair. The linen they brought to the Tower had been lent them by friends, some by the Countess of Sutherland, who found means to convey linen and other things for the use of the dauphin. The queen wished to write a letter to the countess expressive of her thanks, and to return some of these articles, but her majesty was debarred from pen and ink; and the clothes she returned were stolen by her jailors, and never found their way to their right owner.

"After many applications a little new linen was obtained; but the sempstress having marked it with crowns, the munic.i.p.al officers insisted on the princesses picking the marks _out_, and they were forced to obey.

"_Dec. 7._--An officer, at the head of a deputation from the commune, came to the king and read a decree, ordering that the persons in confinement should be deprived of all scissors, razors, knives--instruments usually taken from criminals; and that the strictest search should be made for the same, as well on their persons as in their apartments. The king took out of his pocket a knife and a small morocco pocket-book, from which he gave the pen-knife and scissors. The officer searched every corner of the apartments, and carried off the razors, the curling-irons, the powder-sc.r.a.per, instruments for the teeth, and many articles of gold and silver. They took away from the princesses their knitting-needles and all the little articles they used for their embroidery. The unhappy queen and princesses were the more sensible of the loss of the little instruments taken from them, as they were in consequence forced to give up all the feminine handiworks which till then had served to beguile prison hours. At this time the king's coat became ragged, and as the Princess Elizabeth, his sister, was mending it, as she had no scissors, the king observed that she had to bite off the thread with her teeth--'What a reverse!' said the king, looking tenderly upon her; 'you were in want of nothing at your pretty house at Montreuil.' 'Ah, brother!' she replied, 'can I feel a regret of any kind while I share your misfortunes?'"

The Empress Josephine is said to have played and sung with exquisite feeling: her dancing is said to have been perfect. She exercised her pencil, and--though such be not now antiquated for an _elegante_--her needle and embroidery-frame, with beautiful address.

Towards the close of her eventful career, when, after her divorce from Bonaparte, she kept a sort of domestic court at Navarre or Malmaison, she and her ladies worked daily at tapestry or embroidery--one reading aloud whilst the others were thus occupied; and the hangings of the saloon at Malmaison were entirely her own work. They must have been elegant; the material was white silk, the embroidery roses, in which at intervals were entwined her own initials.

An interesting circ.u.mstance is related of a conversation between one of those ministering spirits a _soeur de la charite_ and Josephine, in a time of peculiar excitement and trouble. At the conclusion of it, the _soeur_, having discovered with whom she was conversing, added, "Since I am addressing the mother of the afflicted, I no longer fear my being indiscreet in any demand I may make for suffering humanity.

We are in great want of lint; if your majesty would condescend"----"I promise you shall have some; we will make it ourselves."

From that moment the evenings were employed at Malmaison in making lint, and the empress yielded to none in activity at this work.

Few of my readers will have accompanied me to this point without antic.i.p.ating the name with which these slight notices of royal needlewomen must conclude--a name which all know, and which, knowing, all reverence as that of a dignified princess, a n.o.ble and admirable matron--Adelaide, our Dowager Queen. It was hers to reform the morals of a court which, to our shame, had become licentious; it was hers to render its charmed circle as pure and virtuous as the domestic hearth of the most scrupulous British matron; it was hers to combine with the chilling etiquette of regal state the winning virtues of private life, and to weave a wreath of domestic virtues, social charities, and beguiling though simple occupations, round the stately majesty of England's throne.

The days are past when it would be either pleasurable or profitable for the Queen of the British empire to spend her days, like Matilda or Katharine, "in poring over the interminable mazes of tapestry;" but it is well known that Queen Adelaide, and, in consequence of her Majesty's example, those around her, habitually occupied their leisure moments in ornamental needlework; and there have been, of late years, few Bazaars throughout the kingdom, for really beneficent purposes, which have not been enriched by the contributions of the Queen Dowager--contributions ever gladly purchased at a high price, not for their intrinsic worth, but because they had been wrought by a hand which every Englishwoman had learnt to respect and love.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] This sacred standard was taken by the Saxons in Devons.h.i.+re, in a fortunate onset, in which they slew one of the Sea-kings with eight hundred of his followers. So superst.i.tious a reverence was attached to this ensign that its loss is said to have broken the spirit of even these ruthless plunderers. It was woven by the sisters of Inguar and Ubba, who divined by it. If the Raven (which was worked on it) moved briskly in the wind, it was a sign of victory, but if it drooped and hung heavily, it was supposed to prognosticate discomfiture.

[130] Von Raumer's Contributions.

CHAPTER XXV.

ON MODERN NEEDLEWORK.

"Our Country everywhere is fild With Ladies, and with Gentlewomen, skild In this rare Art."

Taylor.

"For here the needle plies its busy task, The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn, Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs, And curling tendrils gracefully dispos'd, Follow the nimble fingers of the fair; A wreath that cannot fade."

Cowper.

"The great variety of needleworks which the ingenious women of other countries, as well as of our own, have invented, will furnish us with constant and amusing employment; and though our labours may not equal a Mineron's or an Aylesbury's, yet, if they unbend the mind, by fixing its attention on the progress of any elegant or imitative art, they answer the purpose of domestic amus.e.m.e.nt; and, when the higher duties of our station do not call forth our exertions, we may feel the satisfaction of knowing that we are, at least, innocently employed."--Mrs. Griffiths.

The triumph of modern art in needlework is probably within our own sh.o.r.es, achieved by our own countrywoman,--Miss Linwood. "Miss Linwood's Exhibition" used to be one of the lions of London, and fully deserves to be so now. To women it must always be an interesting sight; and the "n.o.bler gender" cannot but consider it as a curious one, and not unworthy even of their notice as an achievement of art.

Many of these pictures are most beautiful; and it is not without great difficulty that you can a.s.sure yourself that they are _bona fide_ needlework. Full demonstration, however, is given you by the facility of close approach to some of the pieces.

Perhaps the most beautiful of the whole collection--a collection consisting of nearly a hundred pieces of all sizes--is the picture of Miss Linwood herself, copied from a painting by Russell, taken in about her nineteenth year. She must have been a beautiful creature; and as to this copy being done with a needle and worsted,--n.o.body would suppose such a thing. It is a perfect painting. In the catalogue which accompanies these works she refers to her own portrait with the somewhat touching expression, (from Shakspeare,)

"Have I lived thus long----"

This lady is now in her eighty-fifth year. Her life has been devoted to the pursuit of which she has given so many beautiful testimonies.