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Written by Tancred
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Sunday, 05 August 2007 |
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Page 3 of 3
Henry VIII and the Six Chocolate Hats by Ann Colet
This article is inspired, and I recommend should be accompanied by the after dinner mints sold by Past Times and other places. These are Holbein's standard court pictures of Henry VIII's queens, and whether it actually shows a historical development, or merely the ladies' personal preferences, it is fascinating to compare their various headdresses
First, let me dispose of Henry himself. Henry found a hat he liked and stuck with it. He flattened out the hat his father wore, wore it for the rest of his life and passed it on to his son. You may now eat Henry VIII.
But, although he never changed his hat, he did change his wives. Frequently. If you know the picture of his mother, Elizabeth of York, you will see that she started it all. Suddenly, after the fairytale floateries of hennins, she has a doll's house on her head with black stage curtains all round; the earliest form of gable hood. Her first daughter-in-law, Katharine of Aragon, tightened it up. Her gable seems stiff and boxy, the under cap starched to curve out over the shoulders and the lappets (the front hanging bits) turned up to avoid any hint of softness, and there are vast amounts of black velvet on the back.
Henry obviously felt comfortable with women in gables - he was married to Katharine for 24 years, until it became clear that she would not now give him an heir, and the next wife who wore one was Jane Seymour, the one he really loved. (Or the one that gave him an heir, or maybe it comes to the same thing.) Jane's hat is better, although she still looks rather pudgy and matronly. The lighter colours help, as does shortening the ends of the undercap and lowering the peak. It starts to look more like millinery and less like carpentry. But the most important change is that one side of the back drapery is twisted up into a shell shape and the end flapped over onto the top of the head. This develops into a feature called a "bongrace", which is worn with various Tudor hats.
Now, just before you eat Katharine and Jane, look at Anne Boleyn. She was educated in France and she is chic. She has cheekbones. This is a French hood, and if you look at Catherine Howard as well (all hussies wear them) you will see that it has the magical power of allowing the wearer the magical power of looking straight at the camera. The simple stiffened curve is much lighter than the padded layers of the gable, although it does still have the velvet drape at the back, and wearing it at the back of the head means that the wearer's own hair is allowed to frame the face, for the first time in three centuries or more. This must have been as exciting in it's time as a lady's ankle to a Victorian gentleman! As a queen, Anne Boleyn has a pleat of gold tissue at the front of the hood, but in most versions this would be white linen: a glimpse of underwear. Five years later, although she is the next flirtatious young thing, Catherine Howard has given the French hood a much more respectable English look. The billiments (the jewelled borders are chunkier, the main part of the hood between them is larger, making the whole thing more ponderous, and the curve comes in more tightly around the ears, which rather spoils the line. This trend continues with Mary I's favourite hat, a flattened, almost gable-cornered hood, which comes forward to once again cover nearly all the hair. (Share out Katharine, Anne, Jane and Catherine, otherwise you'll be sick).
Now, what are Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr wearing? Anne was a political match, attractive enough, but a real hausfrau, with little musical or literary education. We could therefore excuse her some foreign eccentricities, but in fact this hat has many similarities to the gable hood. The pillow-like part at the back comes from the typical Flemish doughnut look, and the diaphanous veil of the hennin is starched into the angles and jaw-level flare of Jane Seymour's gable.
Catherine Parr, known as a very sensible, intelligent and politically astute young woman, is wearing the real oddity. The very masculine look of the hat and padded doublet is contradicted by the proliferation of linen underneath. She seems to have a tight coif over her hair, covered by another linen undercap which has a band around the back of the head, gathering it into a bag, and some type of stiffening at the front to hold it out in a curve like the later French hoods, or Mary Stuart's best hat. All of this with Henry's own flat hat on the top. Maybe it is a special design to keep the axe from her neck.
Henry seems to have had a pattern in wives: one for political purposes, who was acceptable until something cuter came on the scene in a French hood, and when that one continued to look other men directly in the eye and he had to kill her, he at last chose a good, sensible, well read companion. Anne of Cleves lives out her life with the title of "the King's sister" and Catherine Parr made a calm and happy home for her and the King's children until after Henry's death. Keep Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr for later.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 05 August 2007 )
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