Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/280

 26o Hi/lory of Dojnejlic Manners vifitor on his arrival from a journey; and, Avhat feems ftill more fingular, in the numerous ftories of amorous intrigues, the two lovers ufually begin their interviews by bathing together. Our cut No, 185, from another volume of the manufcript laft quoted (AIS. Addit. No. 10,293, fol. 266), reprefents a lady at her toilette. It is a fubject on which our information at this period is net very abundant. The round mirror of metal which the is em- ploying M'as the common form during the /[{( "^AXST ' '=^l rP V! I middle ages, and was no doubt derived / / vCN-^^^A. x^aO^-^ from the ancients. The details of the ii^r>l£L_ — -~_„;:::i2I^^^?5'S ladies' toilette are not often defcribed, but No. Y%t„ Lady at her ToUetu. ^j^g contemporary moralifts and fatirifts condemn, in rather general terms, and evidently with more bitternefs than was called for, the pains taken by the ladies to adorn their perfons. They are accufed of turning their bodies from their natural form by artificial means, alluding to the ufe of flays, which appear to have been firft employed by the Anglo-Norman ladies in the twelfth century. They are further accufed of plucking out fuperfluous hairs from their faces and eyebrows, of dyeing their hair, and of painting their faces. The chevalier de la Tour-Landry (chap. 76) tells his daughters that the whole intrigue between king David and the wife of Uriah arofe out of the circumftance of the lady combing her hair at an open window where llie could be feen from without, and fays that it was a punilliment for the too great attention flie gave to the adornment of her head. The toilette of the day feems to have been completed at the firft rifing from bed in the morning. There are fome pidurefque lines in the Englifh metrical romance of " Alifaunder," which defcribe the morning thus: — In a rnoretyde (morrow-tide) hit ivai j Theo dropes hongyn on the gras ; Theo maydenei lokyn in the glas, For to tyffcn (adorn) heare fas. — Weber, i. IG'J. The chamber, as it has been already intimated, was properly fpeaking the women's apartment, though it was very acceliible to the other fex. It