The Love of Clothes

'Clothes make the man,' as the saying goes, so it follows that what a character is wearing says a lot about who they are. Lately, I've been reading Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini--a swashbuckling novel about a seventeenth-century doctor Peter Blood, whose misadventures lead him to turn to piracy in the Caribbean. 

I loved the first description of Blood's appearance:

He had a pleasant, vibrant voice, whose metallic ring was softened and muted by the Irish accent which in all his wanderings he had never lost. It was a voice that could woo seductively and caressingly, or command in such a way as to compel obedience. Indeed, the man's whole nature was in that voice of his. For the rest of him, he was tall and spare, swarthy of tint as a gipsy, with eyes that were startlingly blue in that dark face and under those level black brows. In their glance those eyes, flanking a high-bridged, intrepid nose, were of singular penetration and of a steady haughtiness that went well with his firm lips. Though dressed in black as became his calling, yet it was with an elegance derived from the love of clothes that is peculiar to the adventurer he had been, rather than to the staid medicus he now was. His coat was of fine camlet, and it was laced with silver; there were ruffles of Mechlin at his wrists and a Mechlin cravat encased his throat. His great black periwig was as sedulously curled as any at Whitehall. 

Blood, a man with a medical degree and an eleven year career as a solider of fortune, loves clothes. In our era, masculinity and love of fashion, do not go hand in hand (see Ben Barry's amazing research on what men wear to work and why). One would not expect a military man to be a clotheshorse. Sabatini, writing one hundred years ago (Captain Blood was published in 1922) turns this expectation on its head. Peter Blood's love of clothes, not just any clothes, but elegant clothes, beautiful clothes, clothes that are made of fine-quality cloth and adorned with high-quality lace--is presented as an important part of his character, one that developed out of his personal history of military service and the practice of medicine. His fine clothes are in complete harmony with his masculinity.

Sabatini's descriptions of men's appearances are a delight throughout the novel. Take, for instance, the introduction of the character of Lord Julian Wade, an English envoy:

He was a young man of perhaps eight-and-twenty, well above the middle height in stature and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness. He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness.

Wade's mission--to persuade Peter Blood to turn away from piracy and accept a commission in the Royal Navy (not as implausible as it might sound--see the career of Henry Morgan, on which the plot of the novel is based). When this commission and Blood's budding romance with a woman named Arabella Bishop fall through, there is another wonderful instance where his clothing and appearance provide a look into his inner life as a character:

He was degenerating visibly, under the eyes of all. He had entirely lost the almost foppish concern for his appearance, and was grown careless and slovenly in his dress. He allowed a black beard to grow on cheeks that had ever been so carefully shaven; and the long, thick black hair, once so sedulously curled, hung now in a lank, untidy mane about a face that was changing from its vigorous swarthiness to an unhealthy sallow, whilst the blue eyes, that had been so vivid and compelling, were now dull and lacklustre. 

After further events (I am trying not to give away the plot), the final turn of Blood's fortunes is signaled by a change in his appearance:

...there entered now into his presence a spruce and modish gentleman, dressed with care and sombre richness in black and silver, his swarthy, clear-cut face scrupulously shaven, his long black hair in ringlets that fell to a collar of fine point. In his right hand the gentleman carried a broad black hat with a scarlet ostrich-plume, in his left hand an ebony cane. His stockings were of silk, a bunch of ribbons masked his garters, and the black rosettes on his shoes were finely edged with gold. 

The black and silver is a lovely throwback to the beginning of the novel, and description reinforces the connection between clothes and character. Blood is at his best when he is well-dressed.

Taking delight in Peter Blood's love of clothes reminds me that I am eagerly looking forward to visiting the exhibit Fashioning Masculinities: the Art of Menswear at the V&A before it closes on 6 November 2022!