th; yet, if I have shown the
man to you as I myself can see him, he is different from his father in
1461, and will change a great deal before 1500.

THE WOMEN

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Edward V. and Richard III.}]

Here we are at the end of an epoch, at the close of a costume period,
at one of those curious final dates in a history of clothes which says
that within a year or so the women of one time will look hopelessly
old-fashioned and queer to the modern woman. Except for the peculiar
sponge-bag turban, which had a few years of life in it, the woman in
Henry VII.'s reign would look back at this time and smile, and the
young woman would laugh at the old ideas of beauty. The River of Time
runs under many bridges, and it would seem that the arches were low to
the Bridge of Fashion in 1483, and the steeple hat was lowered to
prevent contact with them. The correct angle of forty-five degrees
changed into a right angle, the steeple hat, the hennin, came toppling
down, and an embroidered bonnet, perched right on the back of the
head, came into vogue. It is this bonnet which gives, from our point
of view, distinction to the reign. It was a definite fashion, a
distinct halt. It had travelled along the years of the fourteenth
century, from the wimple and the horns, and the stiff turbans, and the
boxes of stiffened cloth of gold; it had languished in the caul and
blossomed in the huge wimple-covered horns; it had shot up in the
hennin; and now it gave, as its last transformation, this bonnet at
the back of the head, with the stiff wimple stretched upon wires. Soon
was to come the diamond-shaped head-dress, and after that the birth of
hair as a beauty.

In this case the hair was drawn as tightly as possible away from the
forehead, and at the forehead the smaller hairs were plucked away;
even eyebrows were a little out of fashion. Then this cylindrical
bonnet was placed at the back of the head, with its wings of thin
linen stiffly sewn or propped on wires. These wires were generally of
a V shape, the V point at the forehead. On some occasions two straight
wires came out on either side of the face in addition to the V, and so
made two wings on either side of the face and two wings over the back
of the head. It is more easy to describe through means of the
drawings, and the reader will soon see what bend to give to the wires
in order that the wings may be properly held out.

Beyond this head-dress there was