180

HISTORY OL*' LACE.

CHAPTER XVI.

NORMANDY.

“ Dangling thy hands like bobbins before thoi .”

Congreve, Way of the World.

SEINE-INFfilUEURE.

Lace forms an essential part of the costume of the Normandy|>easants. The wondrous “ bourgoin,” 1 with its long lappets of richlace, descended from generation to generation, but little varied fromthe cornettes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Fig. 87).The countrywomen wore their lace at all times, when it was notreplaced by the cotton nightcap, without much regard to thegeneral effect of their daily clothes. “ Madame the hostess,” writesa traveller in 1739, “made her appearance in long lappets of bonelace, with a sack of linsey wolsey.”

The manufactures of the Pays de Caux date from the beginningof the sixteenth century. Lace-making was the principal occupationof the wives and daughters of the mariners and fishermen. In1692, M. de Sainte-Aignan, governor of Havre, found it employed20,000 women. 2 _

1 “ The bourgoin is formed of white,stiffly starched muslin, covering a paste-board shape, and rises to a great heightabove the head, frequently diminishingin size towards the top, where it finishesin a circular form. Two long lappetsbang from either side towards the back,composed often of the finest lace. Thebourgoins throughout Normandy are notalike”— Mrs. Stnihard's Tour in Nor-mandy.

1 This must have included Honfleurand other surrounding localities.

By a paper on tho lace trade (“ Mem.concemant lo Commerce des Dentellcs,”1704; Bib. Nat. MSS. F. Fr. 14,294},wc find that the making of “ dentelles de

bus prix,” employed at Rouen, Dieppe,Le Havre, and throughout the Pays deCuux, the Bailliage of Caen, at Lyons, LePuy, and other parts of France, onequarter of the population of all classesand ages from six to seventy years. Theseluces were all made of Haarlem thread.See Holland.

• The lace-makers of Havre,” writesPeuchet, “ work both in black and whitepoints, from 5 sous to 30 francs the ell.They are all employed by a certainnumber of dealers, who purchase thoproduce of their pillows. Much is trans-ported to foreign countries, even to thoEast Indies, the Southern Seas, and thoislands of Americu.”