LIVERY. When the Greeks used the proverbial saying—ἱμάτιον ἀνδρῶν, "the dress shows the man"—they applied the pithy "saw" as much to the social condition as to the moral character of the individual. The "livery" has, accordingly, ever been taken to mark rather than distinguish the menial or the mercenary. The latter, however, resists the term, and claims for his dress the name of "uniform." When Cænomaus clothed his circus troops in green or blue costumes, he did not, as many have asserted, introduce the fashion of liveries; he simply decked his mimic warriors in fancy dresses. The custom of livery is really derived from the term liberata or liberatio, a term applied to the delivery or distribution (made by the kings of the Merovingian and Carlovingian races) of particular sets of clothes to the servants throughout the palace, and at the sovereign's expense. In common phrase, this was called a livrée, and it was ordinarily performed in the plenary courts of France.
A term of similar signification was given to the distribution made by the early German emperors, and which consisted of uniform dresses and wages delivered into the hands of the servants of the imperial household.
In the days of chivalry, livery, in the proper sense of the word, often covered noble backs, without bringing disgrace thereon. The duke's son, as page to a prince, wore the prince's livery. The earl's second son, serving a duke, donned his master's coat and colours. The knight's second son was in a similar condition as an earl's servant. The esquire's son joyfully wore the livery of the knight whom he served; and the gentleman's son performed, in a similar dress, the duty of servant to the esquire. More than this, the younger brother of a nobleman has been known to serve his elder brother, and to wear, with all humility, the older kinsman's coat and badge.
This badge was formerly the indispensable accompaniment to the coat. "Livery and badge" are as old as the time of Edward IV. The badge was a cloth or silver circle, borne on the left arm, and carrying the crest of the wearer's master. It is still retained by a few noble families; and, as a fashion, it yet lingers on the coat sleeves of corporation watermen and the fraternity of firemen. At first, however, the mode was so general—the habit itself being blue, and the badge affixed to it—that the proverb arose, applicable to things or persons lacking ordinary appendages,—"Like a blue coat without a badge."
The silver badge was probably peculiar to England, as it appears, in the time of Elizabeth at least, to have excited the astonishment of most foreign travellers. Laced cloaks
were delivered to servants, in the reign of James I., according to the assertion of the gossiping Fynes Moryson, who further informs us that, sixty or seventy years before he was writing, A.D. 1617, coaches were very rare; but that at the date just mentioned, there was scarcely an elder brother who was without one; and that these cumbrous vehicles, with their liveried coachmen, continually "stopped the way." We get at an additional social trait connected with the wearers of livery, in the remark, that "Londoners say woe to him that taketh a servant from St Paul's church"—in one of the aisles of which they walked about, waiting to be hired.
During a very considerable period, livery was worn by other common men besides salaried menials. The men alluded to were the "retainers" of noblemen. These retainers served for a year, and wore their hirer's livery. Their service was that of the strong hand, which was ever ready to be raised, and prompt to descend, in their masters' quarrels. They wore a full suit, and were a formidable body; so formidable that, without license, no noble could at last retain such followers. The law ordained, with some singularity, that a master was permitted to give livery only to his own household servants, officers, and counsel learned in the law! The act was evaded, and then the penalty of imprisonment which it awarded was increased by a fine of £5 per month for every retainer kept without license.
Henry VII. was, of all English sovereigns, the one who looked most sharply after the means of increasing his revenues; and, on one occasion, he applied this matter of unlicensed liveried retainers to that particular object. The king had been the guest of his old and faithful servant, the Earl of Oxford, at Henningham. Hospitality to a monarch was a heavy charge to the moderately wealthy earl, who, however, displayed a princely liberality. The king, at parting, told him that, much as his hospitality had been spoken of, his munificence exceeded report; and, as he spoke, Henry pointed to the long double row of liveried servants who lined each side of the way by which he passed. A man who could keep so many menial servants must be of princely means indeed. The earl, however, hastened to reply, that, in that sense, he was not their master. They were, he said, simply retainers of his who attended there to do him service, and partly out of curiosity "to see his grace." "Now, by my faith!" exclaimed Henry, "I may thank you, my lord, for your good cheer; but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight. My attorney must speak with you." The threatened colloquy was a costly one, for the poor earl was mulcted in the enormous sum, for the period, of £10,000, only for putting his livery on a few scores of backs, contrary to the statute of Henry's first parliament.
It has been observed of Queen Mary, that she granted more licenses by half, for permission to maintain liveried retainers, in five years, than her sister Elizabeth did in thirteen. In the briefer time, Mary granted thirty-nine licenses, while in the more extended period, Elizabeth signed only fifteen. Mary, too, sometimes gave permission to one man to maintain two hundred retainers; but Elizabeth never consented to allow more than one hundred to the same individual. Mary's bishop, Gardiner, had not less than two hundred of these liveried soldiers, rather than servants, while Elizabeth's archbishop, Parker, was permitted to raise only forty. The license to the latter, which is printed in the volume of the correspondence of the prelate, edited for the Parker Society by Mr Bruce and the Rev. T. T. Brown, is addressed by Elizabeth "To all men," to whom it says, "Know ye this, of our special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, and by the advice of our council, we have given and granted full authority, power, and license, unto the most reverend Father in God, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury, full authority
Livery. that he during his life; may lawfully, and without question, loss, damage, forfeiture, or other penalty, retain and keep in his service, from time to time, by way of retainers, over and besides all such persons as daily attend upon him in his household, and to whom he giveth meat, drink, livery, fee, or wages, and also over and besides all such persons as shall be under him in any office, of any stewardship, under-stewardship, bailiffrick, keeper of park-houses, warrens, or other games of venery, pheasants, partridges, and other fowls of what kind soever, &c., the number of forty persons, gentlemen, or yeomen, though they be tenants to us, or resident within our honours, &c.; to give, at his pleasure, his livery, badge, or cognisance, &c., to do unto him their service, &c.; the said persons to be reputed, taken, and accepted, by virtue of this our grant and license, to all instructions, constructions, and intents, as of the daily attendants of the said archbishop in his household. Provided that this our grant shall not extend unto him to take or retain into his service any of our servants being named in our cheque roll, nor any other being sworn or retained to serve us as our said servant. And furthermore, we have pardoned and released to the archbishop all and every trespass, or acts of retainer heretofore had, or any contempt, violation, or forfeiture, &c., perpetrated or done since the first of January last past, contrary to any act of retainers, &c. In witness, &c., the 16th day of May, in the 5th year of our reign."
Licenses and retainers were alike abolished in the reign of Charles II. Since that period, livery has only been worn by the lower class of male household servants. While a servant wears livery, he is addressed by his Christian name, but when he is promoted from the servants' hall to the steward's room company, he drops his baptismal, and is thenceforward distinguished by his surname. The coachman is the recognised chief of the liveried corps; and at meals he presides at the head of the table, by right of his office, in establishments where the unliveried gentlemen take their repasts at a separate table. Many of the appendages of livery may be traced to fashions in dress once patronized by nobles. The long waistcoat of the groom is the old undercoat of the esquire, and the three-cornered hat of the coachman once figured at sovereign courts on aristocratic brows. It was driven out of fashion by being stigmatized as "an Egham, Staines, and Windsor," from the triangular direction-post to these places which it was said to resemble. There is one instance of waiters at a tavern wearing livery. It is noticed by Walpole, who describes the "drawers" at the King's Arms as being dressed in brown frocks with blue aprons. This seemed too poor for Sir Ralph Gore, who gave them laced clothes. In France, where the fashion of liveries was occasionally of extravagant splendour, and wealthy men delighted in feeling helpless, and maintaining a crowd of Frontins and Germaines to minister to them, the fashion and the word so betokened a menial, that liveries were abolished by the Constituent National Assembly, as incompatible with a republican system founded on the imaginary tripod of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
In France, however, the laced brotherhood may boast of having had Rousseau for a member. It will be remembered that, when waiting at table, he corrected his master's faults in grammar. In England, Doddsley, the once well-known author and publisher in Pall Mall, commenced life in the same menial condition. He was footman in the service of the honourable Mrs. Lowther when he published his first poetical work, "The Muse in Livery," with a long list of subscribers. The modest volume bore this epigraph:—
"You laugh, and think 'twould be a jest
To see a Muse in livery drest;
But when I mount behind the coach,
And bear aloft a flaming torch,
Methinks on Pegasus I fly,
With fire poetic blazing through the sky."
"What can be expected," he asks, "from the pen of a poor footman,—a character that expresseth want both of friends, fortune, and all the advantages of a liberal education, or a polite converse." The liveried poet speaks of his natural genius as "depressed by the sense of his low condition; a condition," he adds, "from which he never hopes to rise, but by the goodness of Providence influencing some generous mind to support an honest and a grateful heart." His description of a liveried servant's daily life is portrayed with some spirit; and the following lines will serve to show how he made of the dinner hour a time for improving himself:—
"This is the only pleasant hour
Which I have in the twenty-four;
For whilst I unregarded stand,
With ready salver in my hand,
And seem to understand no more
Than just what's call'd for out to pour;
I hear, and mark the courtly phrases,
And all the elegance that praises;
Disputes maintained without digression,
With ready wit and fine expression;
The laws of true politeness stated,
And what good breeding is, debated;
Where all unanimously exclude
The vain coquet, the formal prude,
The ceremonious and the rude;
The flattering, fawning, praising train;
The fluttering, empty, noisy, vain;
Distruction, smut, and what's profane."
Such was the footman who shared with Stephen Duck the patronage of the great; who wrote the Cleone, which gave immortality to the glittering beauty, Bellamy; who was the author of the once famous Economy of Human Life, which had the honour of being attributed to the pen of Chesterfield; and whose book-shop in Pall Mall was the resort of wits, statesmen, poets, philosophers, and fine gentlemen.
Doddsley lived and died in a century when footmen especially claimed and enjoyed a certain distinction. It was a century in which Lady Harriet Wentworth married Sturgeon, the favourite footman of her father, the Marquis of Rockingham. It was these favourite footmen who at the theatre occupied the seats retained in the boxes till the arrival of their mistresses. Their very crimes but took the guise of foibles; and Lady Mary Wortley Montague made a hero of a liveried Tarquin, named Arthur Gray. If they were esteemed living, they were sometimes honoured after death; and Walpole informs us how the old Duchess of Douglas, having lost her favourite footman in Paris, had his body embalmed, packed up in the front part of her own travelling carriage, and brought to England, under her personal escort, for interment! The dignity of the office was signified on one occasion by the state coachman of George II., who left a fortune to a son in plush,—a portion of which he was to forfeit, in the event of his condescending to marry a maid of honour. So pulled up, indeed, was this class of retainers by their fancied importance, that when the Rev. Mr. Townley's farce of High Life Below Stairs was first represented, the exposure of these mock pretensions of the brotherhood was met, in the London and Edinburgh theatres, by such serious riots on the part of the "gentlemen's gentlemen," as to cause the abolition of their free admission to the gallery, and to bring upon them a hurricane of ridicule, beneath which their dignity and pretensions were wrecked for ever. The latter did not even revive when the late eccentric Lord Harrington "cut out" those shapeless livery coats for his own men, which, for a time, elicited more surprise than admiration on the part of
all beholders. Many instances might be cited from the histories of the South Sea and Mississippi schemes, of footmen speculating into large fortunes, and occasionally, through forgetfulness, getting up behind, instead of into, the carriages which fortune had enabled them to set up. But the most striking example of the two extremes is in the case of "Baron Ward," who commenced life as a livery servant, and who ended his public career as prime minister of the late Duke of Parma.
The poets have made ample use of the menial word, and with poetic power have conferred on it a real dignity of application. One speaks of wearing the "virtuous livery" of his mistress; another puts "April's livery" on spring; Milton makes of twilight the "sober livery" of evening; and of a tropical complexion the "shadowed livery of the burnished sun." Hood has, with his usual happy facetiousness, described the livery of earth as "grass-green turned up with brown;" and a French moralist places two parties on the same level by stating that "les ambitieux et les laquais portent indifféremment toutes les livrées."
The word "livery" is further applied to the 91 companies of the city of London. The members of these companies originally wore habiliments in form and colour resembling those of the lord mayor and sheriffs. The wardens of companies were accustomed annually to deliver to the Lord Mayor certain sums, twenty shillings of which were given to individuals who petitioned for the money, to enable them to procure sufficient cloth for a suit. When the companies thus wore their liveries, the splendour of the civic train was the pride of all good citizens.
There remains only to notice the word "livery" as a legal term. In this sense it implies to give and take possession. It also signifies a release from wardship; and, before written deeds were common, it was applied to that form of conveyance of copyhold estates, when the seller delivered a rod or wand to the lord, which the latter placed in the hands of the purchaser, in the presence of tenants, who were called upon to witness this act of "livery."
Finally, and to return to the earlier division of our subject, the reader is referred to Fielding's Joseph Andrews for a brief sketch of what the liveried footman of the last century was. He aped all the fashionable vices of the day; wore his hair in papers in the morning, and curled in the afternoon; criticised new operas, was riotous at the play, rather rollicking at church, and gave accommodation money to the steward for paying his wages half a year before they were usually payable, which was "perhaps half a year after they were due." It was a period when society was generally corrupted, and when masters were as proud of their vices as their servants were of their liveries. (J. D.)