THE LACE-MAKERS OF BUCKINGHAM.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10580, 8 October 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE LACE-MAKERS OF BUCKINGHAM.

(By Margaret Douglas.)

As the years go by and life becomes daily nioro complex, moro hurried', on o hy one , old celebrations and customs drop, out of use. Even in the quiet vil. lages of Buckinghamshire and Bedford, shire the .present is';so full there i s small time to'looKback,. and for nearly fifty years the lace-makers of these dij. tricte have ceased to keep' the festival of 'the ■. patroness: of •; their craft—th,, good Queen Catharine of Arngon, first of Henry yill.'s succession of wives OuSt."Catharine's. Bayi November i", they would make holiday— "Cat tern's Day," they called it—and subscribe f,„. a tea and feast of "Cattern" cake i u memory of the unhappy Queen who "Her days did pass In working with the needle curiously." ■ For among , them at Ainpthill , s l u , spent the sad years before her divorce and the people learnt to love her (~r her piety and gentle graeiousness, and there, tradition says, she taught them the art of lacc-makuig as then known. AY hen tradition speaks romant really j ; is hard to disbelieve, and one I eels tlm, Catharine was but living up to a IM,,l M ,, I tine's part when, in a season oi dull trade, she- burnt all her lace m, \\ m new orders had to be given ami ni,„> prosperous days were brought lor ti„. people. If- twentieth-century patrom wes „i the craft can show less high-handed generosity, make less i appeal to eye ;n„| imagination, their ilabors have been m, less sincere and successful, for in recent years, through the North Buckingham. shire and Bedfordshire Lace Assucia. tions, they have built up a solt-supp wl . ing industry and have rescued a bi-auti-ful art from' threatened extinction. . After Catharine of Aragon tame the Flemish refugees with the pillows and 'bobbins of which they could proudly claim to be the inventors, and with them too they brought the curling waved designs of Flanders winch still remain characteristic of- Biu-kinghum-shire lace. In Newport I'nguo.ll, ami Great Marlow, in Bedfordshire, Cam. bridgeshire, and Northamptonslnre tW v settled, and the manufacture grew ami flourished through the days when nun wore lace on top-boots, culls and niuhtcaps till at the end of the. eighteenth century we read that" in the village of Hanslape alone eight hundred people of a population of twelve hundred were 1 employed in the work which lnougltt an I annual not profit of eight thousand I pounds into the parish. But moro prosaic, times were to come. Men grew less decorative in their out. ward appearance, and after the French Revolution a change of taste set in which caused.ladies to bestow their law on their maids as old rubbish. This, added to foreign and machine-made competition, brought the Buckinghamshire industry to a low- ebb, but for--tunately the art never died out wholly, though designs grew degenerate. The travelling buyer kept up the quality of such work as was still done in the cottages. Every fortnight he would arrive at the public-house with his measure, and the women would gather with their strips of lace. If the work was uneven and lay not fiat and smooth on the table, or if it was half an inch short of the yard, back it would he tossed to the worker. If any woman sold to a rival traveller, moreover, she was thrown out of employment at onto. This tradition .of loyalty and sound, if inartistic, work was immensely valuable in assisting the revival of the_ industry under the committees of ladies, who. in 1897, set themselves to raise the level of the craft by the re-introduetnin of old and purer designs, and to increase the'prosperity and number ol the workcrs hy organising the sale of Inn- in such a way that the excessive profits ol the middleman were eliminate,!. To-day scattered among the various villages of Buckinghamshire and liedfordshire four hundred workers bend over the bolster-shaped pillows witli their clusters of bobbins hanging fr«mi a forest of pins, and in spare moments instruct their little children in the mysteries of the art. Not m the old barbarous way, when failure to complete! certain number of "pins" in. a givta time brought so many strokes ol * cane on little shoulders, and children were kept mercilessly at their task instead of enjoying the fresh air and the p-ames of childhood, hut in the more humane fashion of a sensitive generation. Unless, however, the hands are earlv formed to the habit of the linn. bin." re?l dexterity and swiftness and consequent high earning power » rc never attained. In olden days men as well as women plied this delioate craft, but the revived industry is entirely m the linn* of the women, who are thus enableij, in agricultural districts when- the mi'iis .wages are low, to help very materially in the upkeep of the home. In mW a cottage the lace pillow, like the Irishman's pig, pays the rent, or K.'l 1 '- l " tide over some bad season, while tinnature of the work, its scrupulous refinement and the delicacy of tniu-li am handling it demands, is certainly imi without influence on the lives n tut workers. "A lace cottage is nearly always a clean cottage," declares tinsecretary of the North Bucks Association ' proudly, and the fine needlework done in connection with the uidustij lias also its high educational value. r»r the narrower laces arc used to turn babv robes fashioned- here Hint : ir( ' worthy of their royal wearers, and W linen under garments are also iim<'' '■ hand as well as the lace winch aCinw them. It is testimony to the excellent! of the thread employed in the miiliiiig«' the latter that the lace outlasts » linen—the triumph of patient hand labor over the hurrying machine.

As one turns over the filmy foments, some with their clinractcristirmlv English designs, such as the nan-'■ nattern, some that have comfl iron ■Flanders and some from Franco, others that have had to be redrawn, ■ strangely altered have tlioy P"°! vn , four centuries of passing tliroiißlt ferent hands, ono feels tlm shnn> trast of the double association. <"' T hand the quiet workers m tlu-ir <• : tng'es plving the .bobbins swiltly m busily; on the other tin; terra t our-. 1 . the earth going about their >''s |lll ' ss "'. their pleasure, in laoe-tri>iimo<l K"' ?' , r ncss. We see William lll.in <")'' ■ a spending £2459 on lace lor hf < ™ adornment, and the ladies of <"- nr >> I.'s time who

' "Of-caps and ruffles hold -the firnve debate, ~ , ,„;,i„ As of their lives they would <l<o<' the fate," , or Mrs Oldfield, the actress, beinp «|J in her coffin in 1730 "in ■' v<-<> ' Brussels lace head, a Ho 1 ami J\ with n.'"tucker, of. double nidi'*, ■'"'•' pair of hew kid gloves." ,•], Yet we may pardon the vaiul> w caused so much artistic boa in > > ~ nroduced, and/instead of joining ; M Hall,. Bishop of Exeter, in * the wearers of lace-trimm™ ""',,,,,1,1 "garish popiniavs, whom Heaven ■„ clothe with shame and in member that in his every dioccs', ■ . s Buckinghamshire, prosperity wis • still brought to manv Miupl' 1 Z O . where these delicate fabrics an' atcd. .--,■' -