The young generation prefers to face life with their gloves off
PAUL JOHNSON Istudied with interest the recent photo of Prince William and Prince Harry attending a military occasion in mufti. For officers in the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry, the sartorial drill is, or used to be, strict. Here is my report on the two young men. Bowlers: all right but nothing spectacular. Harry's better than William's. Indeed, the latter's, worn a bit fore and after, might have inspired his great-greatgrandfather's scathing comment: 'Hello, William, goin' rattin'?' Dark suits: oh dear, and no weskits so far as I can see. Who's your tailor, William? Oh yes? Change him Tightly rolled umbrellas: just passable. Shoes: well, it's a democratic age. But — no gloves. No gloves? I can hardly believe my eyes.
When I was a young man, nearly 60 years ago, a smart pair of tight brown leather gloves was as much a part of an officer's uniform as his Sam Browne — and always worn or carried with civvies too. If you went to see the CO without them, you'd be rebuked, 'Come back properly dressed!' In the anterooms of an officers' mess, the big table would be covered with pairs of gloves each neatly placed in their owner's service hat. By what authority, and when, was this iron rule scrapped? Do I detect the sacrilegious hand of New Labour? Certainly, I never remember Tony Blair wearing gloves (or a tie, either, if the choice was left to him). I wore these kind of leather gloves for all remotely formal outdoor occasions from my last year at school, at Oxford and, of course, throughout my army service.
What I don't recall is the decision to abandon them. Such garments were worn or carried not for warmth — for that you had 'woollies' or mittens — but for reasons of fashion. When did I decide fashion had changed? I recall the morning I arrived for my first job in Paris. It was on a big French monthly magazine which had an international edition. By the curious workings of the Gallic mind, the staff of four had to consist of the editor and his assistant (me), both of whom had to be English, and two secretaries, who had to be American. On reaching the office, in the rue SaintGeorges, I was given a surreptitious but pretty thorough visual appraisal by the two handsome young ladies, both New Englanders, of course. Eventually one of them remarked, 'We love your gloves.' It was then that I grasped, for the first time, that the wearing or carrying of smart leather gloves was not necessarily a sine qua non of young masculine existence, at least in the eyes of some portions of humanity; that, in short, it was noticeable. Soon after that, I suspect, the gloves were put away; or even given to a clochard. They certainly did not fit into the Left-Bank bohemian existence I began to lead with relish. I have never worn leather gloves since and doubt if I now possess a pair.
Now if I were really learned, as I sometimes pretend to be, I would continue this essay with a brief discourse on the origins of glove-wearing. Alas, I don't actually know when gloves came in. Alan Gardiner's ancient Egyptian dictionary gives no hieroglyphic word for gloves. The pharaohs and their deities had all kinds of complex and symbolic headgear, but I don't recall any gloves in the iconography. Not so long ago I went into the stuff worn by both Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar for my book Heroes, but gloves did not figure in either's wardrobe. I have a vague memory that Darius and Xerxes are shown with gloves on, and maybe a Hittite or two. The Byzantine emperors wore them, ceremonially. From the 10th century they were a compulsory part of the vestments of Christian bishops, with an embroidered cross and a silk tassel on the back. If you want to know what they looked like (none has survived, I think, from before the 16th century), go to Canterbury Cathedral, where Archbishop Chichele's effigy shows one, tassel and all.
Armoured gloves were standard for knights from the early Middle Ages; the French called them iron mittens, mitaines de fer. Thence began the elaborate bellicose symbolism associated with gloves: throwing down, or picking up, the gauntlet etc. To hand over a glove was also a sign that a sovereign invested a tenant-in-chief with his feudal property. In the days when the French still had the sense to run a monarchy, a glove played a key part in the coronation ceremony at Rheims (Victor Hugo has much to say on this). There is a lot of slang about gloves in betting, a subject on which I am ill informed: 'To go to the gloves' was to bet recklessly, in Surtees's day anyway, and I recall the late Sir James Goldsmith threatening to 'glove up the bookies'.
But gloves were, above all, a sexual symbol in the interchange between gentlemen and ladies, from the 14th-century tournament onwards. A maid could win gloves from a suitor in a variety of ways, without scandal (garters were another matter). It seems shocking to us (me at least) that if a lady caught a man sleeping and kissed him, she got gloves as a forfeit. The poet Gay made the point early in the 18th century: Cic'ly, brisk maid, steps forth before the rout, And kissed with smacking lips the snoring lout.
For custom says, Who'er this venture proves, For such a kiss demands a pair of gloves.'
Long gloves for ladies could be expensive if made of ultra-thin, soft leather, as we know from the household accounts of Queen Elizabeth I. She bought lots of pairs. The one part of her body she was really proud of was her hands, and in public she drew attention to them by slowly peeling off, then putting on, her gloves. The eroticism of gloves was something Toulouse-Lautrec never tired of, when doing posters or pastels of Jane Avril, La Gouloue and, above all, Yvette Guilbert. I suspect Jane Austen felt the same. There is a lot of fussing about gloves involving Harriet at Mrs Ford's shop in Emma, and Jane herself was always on the lookout for smart gloves at low prices. Some shops sold nothing but gloves for ladies. A letter to Cassandra, 20 May 1813, says of Guildford: 'I was very lucky in my gloves, got them at the first shop I went to, though I went to it rather because it was near than because it looked at all like a glove shop, & gave only four shillings for them — upon hearing which, everybody at Chawton will be hoping & predicting that they cannot be good for anything, & their worth certainly remains to be proved, but I think they look very well.'
What would Jane have had to say about the princes not wearing gloves? Her avid reader, the Prince Regent, would not have liked it. On the other hand, I suspect that the Duke of Wellington would not have cared tuppence. The only picture I have been able to find of him wearing gloves is when he appeared as Chancellor of Oxford University, in cap with gold tassel, giltembroidered gown and black gloves. He looks odd and embarrassed. Maybe the princes were right.
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