Hatch, Match and Dispatch
Rites of passage, dressed in White
Guest edited by Sarah Jane Downing
Throughout the long centuries of uncertain health and superstition, when catching a cold could be a matter of life and death, rites of passage were extremely important. Each ceremony proclaimed not only one’s success at survival but also one’s status to the world. In the Christian history of Britain from the mediaeval era to World War II, these rites cemented one’s place within the community, showing that if it had been sanctioned by the Church, it was sanctioned by God. For most of these significant, life-affirming occasions, the colour white was worn for its symbolism of purity and new beginnings and for its sense of being separate and not like any other colour.
Image: Medieval wedding ceremony.
Image above: Christening ensemble, French, 1770-80, cotton. Gift of Karl Lagerfeld, 2015.
Birth: Without a complete understanding of the process, pregnancy often brought fear as well as joy. Infant mortality was a constant grim reality, as was death in childbirth, so to allay fears and suspicions, there were a number of rituals surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, and christening, each performed in white.
Once the baby was safely delivered, the new mother would entertain while she was lying in bed, propped up in bed, dressed in her finest, and with the baby presented on an ornate bearing cloth. The baby would be swaddled in white linen to protect and promote straight, healthy limbs. The rigid little package would then be wrapped in fine velvet or even the mother’s smock, which superstition held would make the baby beautiful in adulthood.
At the birth of King Edward II’s second son in 1316, the Queen ordered five pieces of white velvet to make a gown for her Churching – the first communion after giving birth when the new mother would give thanks for a safe delivery and be cleansed spiritually. It was customary for the priest to wear a white stole and the new mother to wear a white veil. In the 17th century, she was also required to bring a fine white linen handkerchief as a gift to the priest.
Image: Early photo of Queen Victoria's wedding veil, ca. 1855. Albumen print; 14 x 10.5 cm. Image courtesy of The Royal Collection Trust.
It was important that the christening take place as soon as possible to ensure that the child was known to God and would be protected in case of serious illness or untimely death. In Britain, it was not until the end of the 17th century, when swaddling babies began to fall out of fashion, that white christening robes began to be worn under the mantle. White symbolised purity and innocence, but also, like baptismal robes, it symbolised a new life in Christ.
A Medieval custom that survived until the 18th century was that if a mother wished to baptise her illegitimate baby she could but only do so after doing penance. Penance for crimes against chastity was enacted by wearing a white sheet in church or the marketplace to ensure that the shame and sorrow were acknowledged to all the community.
Image: Queen Victoria wearing a Honiton lace wedding dress marrying Prince Albert in 1855.
After having worn white Honiton lace at her wedding, Queen Victoria had all her children and grandchildren baptised in white Honiton lace. This was instrumental in consolidating the tradition of a long white robe as the correct form of christening gown. By the end of the 19th century, not only was it vital for a christening to take place, but it was so important that the baby appeared in a perfect white christening gown that many parish churches had one available that could be borrowed by families who did not have a family gown or were too poor to afford one.
Weddings: Perhaps the first bride to be married in white was King Henry IV’s daughter in 1406. Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of James I, was married to Frederick the Elector on Valentine’s Day in 1613 when she was just 17. According to Wilson’s History of Great Britain Being the Life and Reign of James I (1653), “Her vestments were white, the emblem of Innocency; her hair dishevelled hanging down her back at length, an ornament of virginity; … her train supported by twelve young ladies in white garments so adorned with jewels that her passage looked like a milky way.”
Image: Wedding Anniversary Portrait of Queen Victoria, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1847. Oil on canvas; 53.4 x 43.2 cm. Image courtesy of The Royal Collection Trust
King Charles I’s daughter Mary also wore white and was accompanied by a flurry of bridesmaids in white satin to carry her train when she married in 1641. However, she had a garland of pendant pearls to adorn her hair, which was tied up with silver ribbons.
Some brides were married in nothing more than a smock – the main undergarment of white linen worn under the stays. This was to take advantage of an odd loophole in the law that meant that a man was not responsible for his wife’s debts if she proved that she was penniless by being married in no more than the smock she stood in. The parish register of Much Wenlock for 1547 records: ‘Here was wedded Thomas M Smith and Alice Nycols, which wedded to him in her smock and bareheaded.’ Chamberlain’s Book of Days suggests that occasionally, a bride was forced to marry naked to prove the point.
Image: Miniature portrait of Mrs Jane Small by Hans Holbien. Watercolour on vellum, stuck to a playing card with five of diamonds.
Blue for constancy was often worn until the mid-18th century when there was a superstition that it was unlucky to be married in anything other than white and silver, as mentioned by Oliver Goldsmith in his 1768 play The Good-Natured Man: “I wish you could take the white and silver to be married in; it’s the worst luck in the world in anything but white.”
When she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Princess Charlotte was perhaps mindful of the superstition, as in May 1816, La Belle Assemblée reported, “Her dress was silver lama [lamé] on the net, over a white tissue slip, embroidered at the bottom with silver lama [lamé] in shells and flowers.”
Image: Mary, Queen of Scots in “white mourning”.
Until 1840, Fashionable brides wore a decorative semi décolleté evening gown of white lace layered over white silk with short sleeves and long white gloves. Not only elegant, the white gloves referenced a tradition dating back to the Elizabethan era that saw brides distribute white gloves as a gift to their wedding guests. As the fashions of the century progressed from crinoline to bustle, it became usual for weddings to take place in the afternoon, an afternoon dress with a higher neckline became fashionable, and by the 1880s when it became stylish to marry in a going-away ensemble – to highlight that the honeymoon would involve travel – any hint of décolleté was banished.
It was not only brides who wore white, King James IV of Scotland married in 1503 wearing a gown of white damask figured in gold. White for bridegrooms was revived in the 19th century with white waistcoats and stockings and later trousers added to the usual ceremonial formal dress.
Funerals: As it was a colour not often used in ordinary dress, white was also used for mourning to mark the division of the state from normal life. The shroud or wrapping cloth for the departed was frequently of white and usually of wool in the years after the decree of 1678 that demanded that all the English must be buried in wool. Babies who died within the first few months of life were buried in the white chrisom cloth from their christening, and young married women were buried in their wedding gowns.
Image: British School, Portrait of a Woman c.1635. Oil on canvas.
Projecting ideas of innocence and purity, white was often worn when mourning young women and children, particularly by juvenile mourners and other unmarried women. At Elizabeth of York’s funeral in 1503, there was a procession of torch bearers from various London guilds, all outfitted in gowns and hoods of white woollen cloth. Henry VIII even made the token gesture of mourning Anne Boleyn in white, but it was rather short-lived, as he married Jane Seymour only a week later. Even at the beginning of the modern era, The Times reported that when the artist Angelica Kaufmann died in 1808, as she was unmarried, ‘her pall was supported by young ladies in white’.
As the obsession with mourning reached its full height when Queen Victoria maintained full mourning for Prince Albert for an extended time, even tiny children were plunged into full black, but as the century drew to an end touches of white were allowed such as a white bonnet lining or the white yoke of the dress worn by Prime Minister Gladstone’s grand-daughter at his state funeral in 1898.
Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter Vicky several times, reminding her about the correct standards of court mourning and personal mourning, stating that if she died, she would expect the princess to make sure that her children and family would go into proper full mourning for her including the baby who should wear white and lilac but not colours.
Guest edited by Sarah Jane Downing
Throughout the long centuries of uncertain health and superstition, when catching a cold could be a matter of life and death, rites of passage were extremely important. Each ceremony proclaimed not only one’s success at survival but also one’s status to the world. In the Christian history of Britain from the mediaeval era to World War II, these rites cemented one’s place within the community, showing that if it had been sanctioned by the Church, it was sanctioned by God. For most of these significant, life-affirming occasions, the colour white was worn for its symbolism of purity and new beginnings and for its sense of being separate and not like any other colour.
Image above: Christening ensemble, French, 1770-80, cotton. Gift of Karl Lagerfeld, 2015.
Birth: Without a complete understanding of the process, pregnancy often brought fear as well as joy. Infant mortality was a constant grim reality, as was death in childbirth, so to allay fears and suspicions, there were a number of rituals surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, and christening, each performed in white.
Once the baby was safely delivered, the new mother would entertain while she was lying in bed, propped up in bed, dressed in her finest, and with the baby presented on an ornate bearing cloth. The baby would be swaddled in white linen to protect and promote straight, healthy limbs. The rigid little package would then be wrapped in fine velvet or even the mother’s smock, which superstition held would make the baby beautiful in adulthood.
At the birth of King Edward II’s second son in 1316, the Queen ordered five pieces of white velvet to make a gown for her Churching – the first communion after giving birth when the new mother would give thanks for a safe delivery and be cleansed spiritually. It was customary for the priest to wear a white stole and the new mother to wear a white veil. In the 17th century, she was also required to bring a fine white linen handkerchief as a gift to the priest.
It was important that the christening take place as soon as possible to ensure that the child was known to God and would be protected in case of serious illness or untimely death. In Britain, it was not until the end of the 17th century, when swaddling babies began to fall out of fashion, that white christening robes began to be worn under the mantle. White symbolised purity and innocence, but also, like baptismal robes, it symbolised a new life in Christ.
A Medieval custom that survived until the 18th century was that if a mother wished to baptise her illegitimate baby she could but only do so after doing penance. Penance for crimes against chastity was enacted by wearing a white sheet in church or the marketplace to ensure that the shame and sorrow were acknowledged to all the community.
After having worn white Honiton lace at her wedding, Queen Victoria had all her children and grandchildren baptised in white Honiton lace. This was instrumental in consolidating the tradition of a long white robe as the correct form of christening gown. By the end of the 19th century, not only was it vital for a christening to take place, but it was so important that the baby appeared in a perfect white christening gown that many parish churches had one available that could be borrowed by families who did not have a family gown or were too poor to afford one.
Weddings: Perhaps the first bride to be married in white was King Henry IV’s daughter in 1406. Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of James I, was married to Frederick the Elector on Valentine’s Day in 1613 when she was just 17. According to Wilson’s History of Great Britain Being the Life and Reign of James I (1653), “Her vestments were white, the emblem of Innocency; her hair dishevelled hanging down her back at length, an ornament of virginity; … her train supported by twelve young ladies in white garments so adorned with jewels that her passage looked like a milky way.”
King Charles I’s daughter Mary also wore white and was accompanied by a flurry of bridesmaids in white satin to carry her train when she married in 1641. However, she had a garland of pendant pearls to adorn her hair, which was tied up with silver ribbons.
Some brides were married in nothing more than a smock – the main undergarment of white linen worn under the stays. This was to take advantage of an odd loophole in the law that meant that a man was not responsible for his wife’s debts if she proved that she was penniless by being married in no more than the smock she stood in. The parish register of Much Wenlock for 1547 records: ‘Here was wedded Thomas M Smith and Alice Nycols, which wedded to him in her smock and bareheaded.’ Chamberlain’s Book of Days suggests that occasionally, a bride was forced to marry naked to prove the point.
Blue for constancy was often worn until the mid-18th century when there was a superstition that it was unlucky to be married in anything other than white and silver, as mentioned by Oliver Goldsmith in his 1768 play The Good-Natured Man: “I wish you could take the white and silver to be married in; it’s the worst luck in the world in anything but white.”
When she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Princess Charlotte was perhaps mindful of the superstition, as in May 1816, La Belle Assemblée reported, “Her dress was silver lama [lamé] on the net, over a white tissue slip, embroidered at the bottom with silver lama [lamé] in shells and flowers.”
Until 1840, Fashionable brides wore a decorative semi décolleté evening gown of white lace layered over white silk with short sleeves and long white gloves. Not only elegant, the white gloves referenced a tradition dating back to the Elizabethan era that saw brides distribute white gloves as a gift to their wedding guests. As the fashions of the century progressed from crinoline to bustle, it became usual for weddings to take place in the afternoon, an afternoon dress with a higher neckline became fashionable, and by the 1880s when it became stylish to marry in a going-away ensemble – to highlight that the honeymoon would involve travel – any hint of décolleté was banished.
It was not only brides who wore white, King James IV of Scotland married in 1503 wearing a gown of white damask figured in gold. White for bridegrooms was revived in the 19th century with white waistcoats and stockings and later trousers added to the usual ceremonial formal dress.
Funerals: As it was a colour not often used in ordinary dress, white was also used for mourning to mark the division of the state from normal life. The shroud or wrapping cloth for the departed was frequently of white and usually of wool in the years after the decree of 1678 that demanded that all the English must be buried in wool. Babies who died within the first few months of life were buried in the white chrisom cloth from their christening, and young married women were buried in their wedding gowns.
Projecting ideas of innocence and purity, white was often worn when mourning young women and children, particularly by juvenile mourners and other unmarried women. At Elizabeth of York’s funeral in 1503, there was a procession of torch bearers from various London guilds, all outfitted in gowns and hoods of white woollen cloth. Henry VIII even made the token gesture of mourning Anne Boleyn in white, but it was rather short-lived, as he married Jane Seymour only a week later. Even at the beginning of the modern era, The Times reported that when the artist Angelica Kaufmann died in 1808, as she was unmarried, ‘her pall was supported by young ladies in white’.
As the obsession with mourning reached its full height when Queen Victoria maintained full mourning for Prince Albert for an extended time, even tiny children were plunged into full black, but as the century drew to an end touches of white were allowed such as a white bonnet lining or the white yoke of the dress worn by Prime Minister Gladstone’s grand-daughter at his state funeral in 1898.
Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter Vicky several times, reminding her about the correct standards of court mourning and personal mourning, stating that if she died, she would expect the princess to make sure that her children and family would go into proper full mourning for her including the baby who should wear white and lilac but not colours.