There is not a school child in England who has not heard of the marvellous piece of work supposed to have been wrought by Queen Matilda and the ladies of her court; but until the tapestry is actually seen, the conception of it is as vague as that of giants and fairies. As a matter of fact, the work is not tapestry at all, but crewel work. Real tapestry resembles carpet, and is closely worked, and the background is all filled in; but this of Bayeux is lightly worked in worsted, on a strip of linen about two hundred and thirty feet in length by about twenty inches in breadth, and is placed on a stand, ingeniously arranged, so that by walking round the outside and inside the whole strip can be seen without trouble, and in itself remains intact.

The question whether Queen Matilda and the ladies of William’s court really were the authors of this marvellous record in needlework will, with such subjects as the authorship of the Letters of Junius, always remain unanswered. There are arguments for and against; the fact that the tapestry was designed for the glorification of William, looks as if it were executed in his lifetime, and the disproportionate importance attached to the smallest events in the campaign in Brittany, which are given with more detail and fidelity than even in the chronicles, looks as if that campaign must have been contemporary, and was depicted with that disregard for proportion which is ever the effect of seeing an affair in the foreground. The minute details given in the case of the figures look also as if they were done from personal knowledge—details such as the fact that Edward the Confessor is always represented with a beard, and that the Saxons wear moustaches, while the Frenchmen are clean shaven. In the reign of the Conqueror’s successor, the Normans themselves cultivated beards, and allowed the hair to grow; and anyone working tapestry at that date would surely never have been realistic enough to depart from the fashions he saw around him to depict those which had preceded them. Later on, also, other little points, such as immoderately peaked shoes, were adopted; these are not shown in the tapestry, though had the work been done later than the Conqueror’s reign, the fashions would have been those of the then prevailing mode.

On the other hand, there are serious arguments against Matilda’s being the designer, though they are mostly negative; for instance, the tapestry is not mentioned in her will, neither does it find a place in the inventory of the goods belonging to the church at Bayeux in 1369, though it is mentioned in that made in 1476, from which the inference is drawn that it was not in existence at the earlier date. But, on the other hand, it may well have been overlooked. By some it is supposed to have been executed for the cathedral of Bayeux by Bishop Odo’s command, and it is a fact that in length it exactly fits the circuit of the choir walls, where it might have been hung on feast days.

It was in 1724 that attention was first drawn to the tapestry, which until then had been lying unnoticed at Bayeux. There was a drawing of it in the Cabinet of Antiquities at Paris, and M. Lancelot coming across this was struck by it, and searched for the original, though he was quite uncertain what material it was in, whether it were a fresco, a sculpture, or a piece of needlework. It was unearthed at last at Bayeux, and was kept in a side chapel at the cathedral rolled around a mighty spool, whence it was unrolled once a year. In 1803, when Buonaparte meditated an invasion of England, the tapestry was brought to France with a view to stimulating the spirits of the French by pointing out to them what had been done might be done again. Subsequently, the much better plan of preserving the work from injury and enabling it to be seen, which is at present in use, was adopted. The case is glazed, so that the tapestry may stand for as many hundred years as it has already stood, without perceptible injury.

The worsted in which it is worked is as fresh as the day it was first used, and its brightness against the light background contrasts very strongly with the dingy hues of the tapestry one is accustomed to see. The colours used are drabs and greens, russets and blues, all art colours, and extraordinarily effective. The shadows are treated in a very original manner: for instance, when it is desired to show the inside of a horse’s leg in shadow, the leg is filled in in a different colour from that of the horse’s body; it is technically supposed to represent a shadow, and this does very well.

There is a border decorated by grotesque beasts and heraldic figures, and the border has sometimes to give way to the exigencies of the story, when an exceptionally tall man or a large ship has to encroach upon it.

The drama begins long before the Norman Conquest, and is told with a verve and humour quite unexpected; whether it were Matilda who was the designer, or the wives of those “natives of Normandy on whom William had bestowed lands in England,” as the writer in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica thinks, the authors must have had plenty of character, and strong indeed must their freshness have been to resist the withering dulness of the life then deemed meet for women. And freshness they had in full measure, for no one could have depicted the lugubrious roundness of Harold’s face, and the quaint expressions of the horses, who did not delight in the work.

The first scene shows King Edward the Confessor commissioning Harold to visit Normandy. Harold’s object was nominally to obtain the release of his nephews held prisoners by William, but it is supposed that Edward the Confessor had his own reasons for sending him into William’s power, as he feared Harold, and really desired William to be his heir in England. If this were so, William certainly took the advantage thus given to him, and played his cards with conspicuous skill. We are carried through Harold’s journey to the coast, his voyage, his wreck, and his subsequent capture by Guy, Count of Ponthieu. It may be noted that the hawks, which can be seen on the wrists of the characters, are not hooded, another small indication as to date, for hawks began to wear hoods about 1200, so that the work must have been executed before then. When Harold follows Guy as a prisoner, his hawk sits reversed upon his wrist, a sign of dejection, while that of Guy looks forward in the usual way. At the repeated solicitation of William, who backed his request with the present of a considerable slice of territory, Harold is next brought to him as a prisoner by the triumphant Guy, who points to him, as much as to say, “See what I have done!” However, William receives him as a guest, and brings him to his palace. The leading characters in this drama are by no means lay figures; Harold can be easily recognised by his round face and vacuous expression; he is smaller than William, who is heavy jawed and strong. In the beasts on the border we see the same spirit which is to be found more developed in the gargoyles on churches, a spirit full of mischief and appreciation of what may be called the “weird grotesque.”

Did some of these ladies who worked, apparently so patiently and submissively, get rid of their feelings of petty jealousy and spite by working them into the canvas? Did Edith caricature the knight who was blind to her charms, and Matilda glorify him who loved her in secret? It is strange to notice that the main figures are all men; women very seldom figure in the play, only three times in fact, and twice they are nameless. In the next compartment we have the principal exception, a lady dressed in a nunlike habit stands in a small kiosk, and a man pats her cheek condescendingly; the inscription tells us that some woman named Elgiva conversed with a clerk. The probable explanation is that this is William’s daughter Adeliza or Agatha, whom he agreed to give to Harold in marriage, and it may be that the pleasing intelligence so jocularly conveyed to her, is that of her future destiny. Though Adeliza at this date was only seven or eight years old, she afterwards refused to marry a Spaniard, on account of her former betrothal to Harold, and so it seems probable that she played a part in the drama.

In the next stage Harold assists William in an expedition to suppress the rebels, Conan, Duke of Brittany, and the Duke of Anjou. The men are all represented in chain armour, and their pointed shoes nearly touch the ground on each side of the horses, which are small. It may be noted also that the horses wear no defensive armour, which was not used until the time of Henry the First. Towns are symbolised by a kind of dome standing on an arch. The army passes by Mont St Michel, and at the river Couesnon, which forms the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, many of the soldiers come to grief. The towns of Dol and Rennes are next passed, and Dinan is besieged. In it Conan is caught, and is forced to yield to hand out the keys of the besieged town. Harold is knighted by William for his prowess on the field. In this section we have the local touch which gives Bayeux her representation in the tapestry, for at Bayeux is held a solemn parliament, whereat Harold acknowledges William heir to King Edward.

At this time also took place the formal ceremonial of betrothal between himself and Adeliza, which made so undying an impression on the child; and which seemed to Harold merely a part of the game he had to play, as he took no account of it whatever, marrying almost directly after his return to England. The ceremony of the oath, by which he swore to uphold William’s claim to the English throne, was, if chroniclers can be believed, of more importance in his eyes. For a book of the New Testament having been laid before him, he swore upon it with a sacred oath, and then the gold cloth on which it had been laid was lifted, and there, disclosed to his astonished eyes, were relics of great sanctity and value, apparently to him of far more import than the Gospels, for he started and trembled violently.

Having thus committed himself, he returns to England and gives an account of his enterprise to Edward, who soon afterwards dies. There are several deathbed scenes; indeed we are never quite sure that we have seen the last of Edward. Two of these scenes, for reasons of space, are put into one compartment; that is to say, those representing Edward on his deathbed, and Edward at the point of death addressing his courtiers.

It is said that William was hunting in the forest of Rouvray, near Rouen, when the fact of Harold’s having assumed the crown was made known to him by no less a messenger than Tostig, Harold’s own rebellious brother. William was not the man to submit quietly; the next scene in the tapestry shows us the diligent preparations made for the invasion of England. Normandy maintained no standing navy: it was necessary to build one. We see men chopping down trees, which have a striking resemblance to barnacles upside down. It was in January the news was brought, and not till the following autumn was the fleet ready to sail. The smallest details are given faithfully on the tapestry; we see the ships, when ready, being drawn down to the shore by ropes, and floated on sinuous waves. The conveyance of the horses to the English shore threatened a difficulty from the tapestry-workers’ point of view, but they did not shirk it. They represented a row of horses’ heads projecting in regular array from the edges of the boats, and the bodies were left to the imagination, supposed to be neatly packed away in a space that would have conveniently held their tails! The flotilla set sail on September 12th from Dives, but was driven into St Valery, where it lay until the 27th, then once more set forward with a favourable wind.

Harold had himself been by no means idle, his fleet had cruised the Channel during the summer months, waiting for the expected foe; but in September there bore down upon the Yorkshire coast his brother Tostig, in force, with the support of Harold Hardrada, so Harold hastened northward to engage with him, and while he was facing and subduing this new foe, his fleet, left without a head, dispersed, and William landed without opposition. He landed at Pevensey, and we see in the tapestry the horses, restored to their full size, led ashore; the ships drawn up in array on the beach, and the establishment of a camp, with arrangements for plenteous eating and drinking. On one side we have the killing of an ox, who regards his executioner with an expression of pained surprise. This is deliberate; the lady who worked that ox could have made him wear any expression she chose. A sheep is also sacrificed, and red tongues of flame start up beneath the cauldrons wherein the food is cooked. Then we see tables spread, groaning with provender. “The duke sat down to eat, and the barons and knights had food in plenty; for they had brought ample store. All ate and drank enough, and were right glad that they were ashore.” The fortifying of the camp is done symmetrically; the men raising the earthworks take care to have three little dabs or mounds of earth of equal size upon their spades;—indeed the mixture of symmetry and fidelity to detail is remarkable throughout the work; we generally find that in following design, truth is lost sight of. A messenger comes from Harold to William, and in the next scene hostilities have begun in the burning of a house, in which are a woman and child—the third woman in the piece, the second being present at King Edward’s deathbed.

Then after all these preliminaries we come to the climax, the mÊlÉe at Hastings, which occupies fully a quarter of the whole length of the canvas. These scenes are extraordinarily fine. All the vigour of mixed action is shown in the most uncompromising of materials, wool-work. We have the deaths of Harold’s two brothers, Leofwine and Gurth; the encouragement of Bishop Odo of Bayeux; the scene where William raises his visor to show himself unhurt; the mÊlÉe where Harold’s army is cut to pieces. The border consists of a line of more or less dismembered men lying prostrate, and the ladies’ highly-developed sense of humour shows itself at every turn. It is unfortunate that some of these, the most brilliant of the scenes, are on the inside of the frame as the tapestry now stands, and cannot be photographed for lack of light and space.

At last we see Harold in agony drawing the fatal arrow from his eye; and though he lived for some hours longer, the news of his death when it came was the signal for flight, leaving the Normans victors in a fight which had lasted the whole day. Of Earl Godwin’s seven sons, two still remained alive after the battle, but both ended their lives in the seclusion of a religious house. As we draw to the close of the great drama the stitches are unfinished, the work left in many places merely indicated, and the roll is worn.

We feel a debt of gratitude toward the workers difficult to express. The tapestry thrills with life: it is not a mere strip of worked linen, but what we in these latter days would call a “human document,” and it has come down through nine hundred years bearing more detail, more history, on its folds than has ever been told to us by any monkish parchment or royal scroll.