Note 22 — THE FIFTY COURTESIES FOR THE TABLE, OF FRA BONVESINO[13] DA RIVA.

‘Drapi da pey.’ I confess to some uncertainty as to what sort of thing these ‘foot-cloths’ may have been. Signor Biondelli terms them ‘the cloths wherewith the feet were wrapped round and dried.’ He adds: ‘This precept apprizes us that at that time the use of a pocket-handkerchief was not yet introduced, and perhaps not even the use of stockings.’ One would fain hope that the summit of Lombardic good breeding in 1290 was not the wiping of noses on cloths actually and at the moment serving for the feet. Possibly drapi da pey is here a generic term; cloths or napkins at hand for use, and which might have served for foot-cloths. Thus the word ‘duster’ might be employed in a similar connection, without our being compelled to suppose that the individual duster had first been used on the spot for dusting the tables or floors, and then for wiping the nose. Or indeed, we moderns, who wipe our noses on hand-kerchiefs, do not first use said kerchiefs for wiping our hands, nor yet for covering our heads (‘couvre chef’).—Reverting to Signor Biondelli’s observation as to ‘the use of stockings,’ I may observe that Francesco da Barberino, in a passage of his Reggimento e Costumi delle Donne, speaks of ‘the beautiful foot shod in silk’—‘calzato in seta’—which may imply either a stocking or else a shoe. This poem, as we shall see further on, is but little later than Bonvicino’s.—The reader may also observe, at p. 68, the horror with which a much later writer, Della Casa, contemplated the use of a dinner-napkin as a pocket-handkerchief.