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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Two Centuries of Costume in America, Vol. 1 (1620-1820), by Alice Morse Earle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Two Centuries of Costume in America
+       Vol. 1 (1620-1820)
+
+Author: Alice Morse Earle
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2003 [eBook #10115]
+[Most recently updated: April 8, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Susan Skinner, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO CENTURIES OF COSTUME IN AMERICA, VOL. 1 (1620-1820)  ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+TWO CENTURIES OF COSTUME IN AMERICA
+MDCXX-MDCCCXX
+
+
+ALICE MORSE EARLE
+
+AUTHOR OF “SUN-DIALS AND ROSES OF YESTERDAY” “OLD TIME GARDENS,” ETC.
+
+
+VOLUME I
+
+Nineteen Hundred and Three
+
+
+
+
+Madam Padishal and Child Madam Padishal and Child.
+
+
+
+
+_To George P. Brett_
+
+
+_“An honest Stationer (or Publisher) is he, that exercizeth his Mystery
+(whether it be in printing, bynding or selling of Bookes) with more
+respect to the glory of God & the publike aduantage than to his owne
+Commodity & is both an ornament & a profitable member in a ciuill
+Commonwealth.... If he be a Printer he makes conscience to exemplefy
+his Coppy fayrely & truly. If he be a Booke-bynder, he is no meere
+Bookeseller (that is) one who selleth meerely ynck & paper bundled up
+together for his owne aduantage only: but he is a Chapman of Arts, of
+wisdome, & of much experience for a little money.... The reputation of
+Schollers is as deare unto him as his owne: For, he acknowledgeth that
+from them his Mystery had both begining and means of continuance. He
+heartely loues & seekes the Prosperity of his owne Corporation: Yet he
+would not iniure the Uniuersityes to advantage it. In a word, he is
+such a man that the State ought to cherish him; Schollers to loue him;
+good Customers to frequent his shopp; and the whole Company of
+Stationers to pray for him.”_
+
+—GEORGE WITHER, 1625.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+VOL. I
+
+I. APPAREL OF THE PURITAN AND PILGRIM FATHERS
+
+II. DRESS OF THE NEW ENGLAND MOTHERS
+
+III. ATTIRE OF VIRGINIA DAMES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS
+
+IV. A VAIN PURITAN GRANDMOTHER
+
+V. THE EVOLUTION OF COATS AND WAISTCOATS
+
+VI. RUFFS AND BANDS
+
+VII. CAPS AND BEAVERS IN COLONIAL DAYS
+
+VIII. THE VENERABLE HOOD
+
+IX. CLOAKS AND THEIR COUSINS
+
+X. THE DRESS OF OLD-TIME CHILDREN
+
+XI. PERUKES AND PERIWIGS
+
+XII. THE BEARD
+
+XIII. PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES
+
+XIV. BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME I
+
+
+MADAM PADISHAL AND CHILD
+
+_Frontispiece_
+
+This fine presentation of the dress of a gentlewoman and infant child,
+in the middle of the seventeenth century, hung in old Plymouth homes in
+the Thomas and Stevenson families till it came by inheritance to the
+present owner, Mrs. Greely Stevenson Curtis of Boston, Mass. The artist
+is unknown.
+
+JOHN ENDICOTT
+
+Born in Dorchester, Eng., 1589. Died in Boston, Mass., 1665. He
+emigrated to America in 1628; became governor of the colony in 1644,
+and was major-general of the colonial troops. He hated Indians, the
+Church of Rome, and Quakers. He wears a velvet skull-cap, and a
+finger-ring, which is somewhat unusual; a square band; a richly fringed
+and embroidered glove; and a “stiletto” beard. This portrait is in the
+Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+EDWARD WINSLOW
+
+Born in England, 1595; died at sea, 1655. One of the founders of the
+Plymouth colony in 1620; and governor of that colony in 1633, 1636,
+1644. This portrait is dated 1651. It is in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth,
+Mass.
+
+JOHN WINTHROP
+
+Born in England, 1588; died in Boston, 1649. Educated at Trinity
+College, Cambridge; admitted to the Inner Temple, 1628. Made governor
+of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. Arrived in Salem, 1630. His
+portrait by Van Dyck and a fine miniature exist. The latter is owned by
+American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. This picture is copied
+from a very rare engraving from the miniature, which is finer and even
+more thoughtful in expression than the portrait. Both have the
+lace-edged ruff, but the shape of the dress is indistinct.
+
+SIMON BRADSTREET
+
+Born in England, 1603; died in Salem, Mass., 1697. He was governor of
+the colony when he was ninety years old. The Labadists, who visited
+him, wrote: “He is an old man, quiet and grave; dressed in black silk,
+but not sumptuously.”
+
+SIR RICHARD SALTONSTALL
+
+A mayor of London who came to Salem among the first settlers. The New
+England families of his name are all descended from him. He wears
+buff-coat and trooping scarf. This portrait was painted by Rembrandt.
+
+SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+
+Born in Devonshire, Eng., 1552; executed in London, 1618. A courtier,
+poet, historian, nobleman, soldier, explorer, and colonizer. He was the
+favorite of Elizabeth; the colonizer of Virginia; the hero of the
+Armada; the victim of King James. In this portrait he wears a slashed
+jerkin; a lace ruff; a broad trooping scarf with great lace
+shoulder-knot; a jewelled sword-belt; full, embroidered breeches;
+lace-edged garters, and vast shoe-roses, which combine to form a
+confused dress.
+
+SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND SON
+
+This print was owned by the author for many years, with the written
+endorsement by some unknown hand, _Martin Frobisher and Son_. I am glad
+to learn that it is from a painting by Zucchero of Raleigh and his son,
+and is owned at Wickham Court, in Kent, Eng., by the descendant of one
+of Raleigh’s companions in his explorations. The child’s dress is less
+fantastic than other portraits of English children of the same date.
+
+ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX
+
+From an old print. A general of Cromwell’s army.
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL DISSOLVING PARLIAMENT
+
+From an old Dutch print.
+
+SIR WILLIAM WALLER
+
+A general in Cromwell’s army. Born, 1597; died, 1668. He served in the
+Thirty Years’ War. This portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+LORD FAIRFAX
+
+A general in Cromwell’s army. From an old print.
+
+ALDERMAN ABELL AND RICHARD KILVERT
+
+From an old print.
+
+REV. JOHN COTTON, D.D.
+
+Born in Derby, Eng., 1585; died at Boston, Mass., in 1652. A Puritan
+clergyman who settled in Boston in 1633. He drew up for the colonists,
+at the request of the General Court, an abstract of the laws of Moses
+entitled _Moses His Judicials_, which was of greatest influence in the
+formation of the laws of the colony. This portrait is owned by Robert
+C. Winthrop, Esq.
+
+REV. COTTON MATHER, D.D.
+
+Born in Boston, Mass., 1683; died in Boston, Mass., 1728. A clergyman,
+author, and scholar. His book, _Magnalia Christi Americana_, an
+ecclesiastical history of New England, is of much value, though most
+trying. He took an active and now much-abhorred part in the Salem
+witchcraft. This portrait is owned by the American Antiquarian Society,
+Worcester, Mass.
+
+SLASHED SLEEVES
+
+From portraits _temp_. Charles I. The first is from a Van Dyck portrait
+of the Earl of Stanhope, and has a rich, lace-edged cuff. The second,
+with a graceful lawn undersleeve, is from a Van Dyck of Lucius Gary,
+Viscount Falkland. The third is from a painting by Mytens of the Duke
+of Hamilton. The fourth, by Van Dyck, is from one of Lord Villiers,
+Viscount Grandison.
+
+MRS. KATHERINE CLARK
+
+Born, 1602; died, 1671. An English gentlewoman renowned in her day for
+her piety and charity.
+
+LADY MARY ARMINE
+
+An English lady of great piety, whose gifts to Christianize the Indians
+make her name appear in the early history of Massachusetts. Her black
+domino and frontlet are of interest. This portrait was painted about
+1650.
+
+THE TUB-PREACHER
+
+An old print of a Quaker meeting. Probably by Marcel Lawson.
+
+VENICE POINT LACE
+
+Owned by Mrs. Robert Fulton Crary of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
+
+REBECCA RAWSON
+
+The daughter of Edward Rawson, Secretary of State. Born in Boston in
+1656; married in 1679 to an adventurer, Thomas Rumsey, who called
+himself Sir Thomas Hale. She died at sea, in 1692. This portrait is
+owned by New England Historic Genealogical Society.
+
+ELIZABETH PADDY
+
+Born in Plymouth, Mass., in 1641. Daughter of William Paddy; she
+married John Wensley of Plymouth. Their daughter Sarah married Dr.
+Isaac Winslow. This portrait is in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Mass.
+
+MRS. SIMEON STODDARD
+
+A wealthy Boston gentlewoman. This portrait was painted in the latter
+half of the seventeenth century. It is owned by the Massachusetts
+Historical Society.
+
+ANCIENT BLACK LACE
+
+Owned by Mrs. Robert Fulton Crary, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
+
+VIRAGO-SLEEVE
+
+From a French portrait.
+
+NINON DE L’ENCLOS
+
+Born in Paris, 1615; died in 1705. Her dress has a slashed
+virago-sleeve and lace whisk.
+
+LADY CATHERINE HOWARD
+
+Grandchild of the Earl of Arundel. Aged thirteen years. Drawn in 1646
+by W. Hollar.
+
+COSTUMES OF ENGLISHWOMEN OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+Plates from _Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus, or Several Habits of
+Englishwomen_, 1640. By Wenceslaus Hollar, an engraver of much note and
+much performance; born at Prague, 1607; died in England, 1677. This
+book contains twenty-six plates illustrating women’s dress in all ranks
+of life with absolute fidelity.
+
+GERTRUDE SCHUYLER LIVINGSTONE
+
+Second wife and widow of Robert Livingstone. The curiously plaited
+widow’s cap can be seen under her hood.
+
+MRS. MAGDALEN BEEKMAN
+
+Died in New York in 1730. Widow of Gerardus Beekman, who died in 1723.
+
+LADY ANNE CLIFFORD
+
+Born, 1590. Daughter of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. Painted in
+1603.
+
+LADY HERRMAN
+
+Of Bohemia Manor, Maryland. Wife of a pioneer settler. From _Some
+Colonial Mansions_. Published by Henry T. Coates & Co.
+
+ELIZABETH CROMWELL
+
+Mother of Oliver Cromwell. She died at Whitehall in 1654, aged 90
+years. This portrait is at Hinchinbrook, and is owned by the Earl of
+Sandwich. It was painted by Robert Walker. Her dress is described as “a
+green velvet cardinal, trimmed with gold lace.” Her hood is white
+satin.
+
+POCAHONTAS
+
+Daughter of Powhatan, and wife of Mr. Thomas Rolfe. Born 1593; died
+1619; aged twenty-one when this was painted. The portrait is owned by a
+member of the Rolfe family.
+
+DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAM AND CHILDREN
+
+Painted in 1626 by Gerard Honthorst. In the original the Duke of
+Buckingham is also upon the canvas. He was George Villiers, the
+“Steenie” of James I, who was assassinated by John Felton. The duchess
+was the daughter of the Earl of Rutland. The little daughter was
+afterwards Duchess of Richmond and Lenox. The baby was George, the
+second Duke of Buckingham, poet, politician, courtier, the friend of
+Charles II. The picture is now in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+A WOMAN’S DOUBLET
+
+Worn by the infamous Mrs. Anne Turner.
+
+A PURITAN DAME
+
+Plate from _Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus_.
+
+PENELOPE WINSLOW
+
+Painted in 1651. Dress dull olive; mantle bright red; pearl necklace,
+ear-rings and pearl bandeau in hair. The hair is curled as the hair in
+portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria. In Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Mass.
+
+GOLD-FRINGED GLOVES OF GOVERNOR LEVERETT
+
+In Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+EMBROIDERED PETTICOAT-BAND, 1750
+
+Bright-colored crewels on linen. Owned by the Misses Manning of Salem,
+Mass.
+
+BLUE DAMASK GOWN AND QUILTED SATIN PETTICOAT
+
+These were owned by Mrs. James Lovell, who was born 1735; died, 1817.
+Through her only daughter, Mrs. Pickard, who died in 1812, they came to
+her only child, Mary Pickard (Mrs. Henry Ware, Jr.), whose heirs now
+own them. They are in the keeping of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
+
+A PLAIN JERKIN
+
+This portrait is of Martin Frobisher, hero of the Armada; explorer in
+1576, 1577, and 1578 for the Northwestern Passage, and discoverer of
+Frobisher’s Bay. He died in 1594.
+
+CLOTH DOUBLET
+
+This portrait is of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire. Owned by the
+Duke of Bedford. It shows a plain cloth doublet with double row of
+turreted welts at the shoulder. Horace Walpole says of this portrait,
+“He is quite in the style of Queen Elizabeth’s lovers; red-bearded, and
+not comely.”
+
+JAMES, DUKE OF YORK
+
+Born, 1633. Afterwards James II of England. This scene in a
+tennis-court was painted about 1643.
+
+EMBROIDERED JERKIN
+
+This portrait is of George Carew, Earl of Totnes. It was painted by
+Zucchero, and is owned by the Earl of Verulam. He wears a rich jerkin
+with four laps on each side below the belt; it is embroidered in
+sprigs, and guarded on the seams. The sleeves are detached. He wears
+also a rich sword-belt and ruff.
+
+JOHN LILBURNE
+
+Born in Greenwich, Eng., in 1614; died in 1659. A Puritan soldier,
+politician, and pamphleteer. He was fined, whipped, pilloried, tried
+for treason, sedition, controversy, libel. He was imprisoned in the
+Tower, Newgate, Tyburn, and the Castle. He was a Puritan till he turned
+Quaker. His sprawling boots, dangling knee-points, and silly little
+short doublet form a foolish dress.
+
+COLONEL WILLIAM LEGGE
+
+Born in 1609. Died in 1672. He was a stanch Royalist. His portrait is
+by Jacob Huysmans, and is in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+SIR THOMAS ORCHARD KNIGHT, 1646
+
+From an old print indorsed “S Glover ad vivum delineavit 1646.” He is
+in characteristic court-dress, with slashed sleeves, laced cloak, laced
+garters, and shoe-roses. His hair and beard are like those of Charles
+II.
+
+THE ENGLISH ANTICK
+
+From a broadside of 1646.
+
+GEORGE I OF ENGLAND
+
+Born in Hanover, 1660. Died in Hanover, 1727. Crowned King of England
+in 1714. This portrait is by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and is in the
+National Portrait Gallery. It is remarkable for its ribbons and curious
+shoes.
+
+THREE CASSOCK SLEEVES AND A BUFF-COAT SLEEVE
+
+_Temp_. Charles I. The first sleeve is from a portrait of Lord Bedford.
+The second, with shoulder-knot of ribbon, was worn by Algernon Sidney;
+the third is from a Van Dyck portrait of Viscount Grandison; the
+fourth, the sleeve of a curiously slashed buff-coat worn by Sir Philip
+Sidney.
+
+HENRY BENNET, EARL OF ARLINGTON
+
+Born, 1618; died, 1685. From the original by Sir Peter Lely. This is
+asserted to be the costume chosen by Charles II in 1661 “to wear
+forever.”
+
+FIGURES FROM FUNERAL PROCESSION OF THE DUKE OF ALBEMARLE IN 1670
+
+These drawings of “Gentlemen,” “Earls,” “Clergymen,” “Physicians,” and
+“Poor Men” are by F. Sanford, Lancaster Herald, and are from his
+engraving of the Funeral Procession of George Monk, Duke of Albemarle.
+
+EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, HENRY WRIOTHESLEY.
+
+Born, 1573. Died in The Netherlands in 1624. He was the friend of
+Shakespere, and governor of the Virginia Company. This portrait is by
+Mierevelt.
+
+A BOWDOIN PORTRAIT
+
+This fine portrait is by a master’s hand. The name of the subject is
+unknown. The initials would indicate that he was a Bowdoin, or a
+Baudouine, which was the name of the original emigrant. It has been
+owned by the Bowdoin family until it was presented to Bowdoin College,
+Brunswick, Me., where it now hangs in the Walker Art Building.
+
+WILLIAM PYNCHEON
+
+Born, 1590; died, 1670. This portrait was painted in 1657. It is in an
+unusual dress, with the only double row of buttons I have seen on a
+portrait of that date. It also shows no hair under the close cap.
+
+JONATHAN EDWARDS, D.D.
+
+Born, Windsor, Conn., 1703. Died, Princeton, N.J., 1758. A theologian,
+metaphysician, missionary, author, and president of Princeton
+University.
+
+GEORGE CURWEN
+
+Born in England, 1610; died in Salem, 1685. He came to Salem in 1638,
+where he was the most prominent merchant, and commanded a troop of
+horse, whereby he acquired his title of Captain. He is in military
+dress. Portrait owned by Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+WALKING-STICK AND LACE FRILL, 1660
+
+These articles are in the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+WILLIAM CODDINGTON
+
+Born in Leicestershire, Eng., 1601; died in Rhode Island, 1678. One of
+the founders of the Rhode Island Colony, and governor for many years.
+
+THOMAS FAYERWEATHER
+
+Born, 1692; died, 1733, in Boston. Married, in 1718, Hannah Waldo,
+sister of Brigadier-general Samuel Waldo. This portrait is by Smybcrt.
+It is owned by his descendants, Miss Elizabeth L. Bond and Miss
+Catherine Harris Bond, of Cambridge, Mass.
+
+“KING” CARTER IN YOUTH
+
+CITY FLAT-CAP
+
+Worn by “Bilious” Bale, who died in 1563. His square beard, coif, and
+citizen’s flat-cap were worn by Englishmen till 1620.
+
+KING JAMES I OF ENGLAND
+
+This portrait was painted before he was king of England. It is now in
+the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE
+
+In doublet, with curious slashed tabs or bands at the waist, forming a
+roll like a woman’s farthingale. The hat, with jewelled hat-band, is of
+a singular and ugly shape.
+
+JAMES DOUGLAS, EARL OF MORTON
+
+His hat, band, and jerkin are unusual.
+
+ELIHU YALE
+
+Born in Boston, Mass., in 1648. Died in England in 1721. He founded
+Yale College, now Yale University. This portrait is owned by Yale
+University, New Haven, Conn.
+
+THOMAS CECIL, FIRST EARL OF EXETER
+
+Died in 1621.
+
+CORNELIUS STEINWYCK
+
+The wealthiest merchant of New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century.
+This portrait is owned by the New York Historical Society.
+
+HAT WITH GLOVE AS A FAVOR
+
+From portrait of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. He died in 1605.
+
+GULIELMA SPRINGETT PENN
+
+First wife of William Penn. Born, 1644; died, 1694. The original
+painting is on glass. Owned by the heirs of Henry Swan, Dorking, Eng.
+
+HANNAH CALLOWHILL PENN
+
+Second wife of William Penn; from a portrait now in Blackwell Hall,
+County Durham, Eng.
+
+MADAME DE MIRAMION
+
+Born, 1629; died in Paris, 1696.
+
+THE STRAWBERRY GIRL
+
+From Tempest’s _Cries of London_.
+
+OPERA HOOD, OR CARDINAL, OF BLACK SILK
+
+It is now in Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
+
+QUILTED HOOD
+
+Owned by Miss Mary Atkinson of Doylestown, Pa.
+
+PINK SILK HOOD
+
+Owned by Miss Alice Browne of Salem, Mass.
+
+PUG HOOD
+
+Owned by Miss Alice Browne of Salem, Mass.
+
+SCARLET CLOAK
+
+This fine broadcloth cloak and hood were worn by Judge Curwen. They are
+in perfect preservation, owing, in later years, to the excellent care
+given them by their present owner, Miss Bessie Curwen, of Salem, Mass.,
+a descendant of the original owner.
+
+JUDGE STOUGHTON
+
+WOMAN’S CLOAK
+
+From Hogarth.
+
+A CAPUCHIN
+
+From Hogarth.
+
+LADY CAROLINE MONTAGU
+
+Daughter of Duke of Buccleuch. Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1776.
+
+JOHN QUINCY
+
+Born, 1686. This portrait is owned by Brooks Adams, Esq., Boston, Mass.
+
+Miss CAMPION
+
+From Andrew W. Tuer’s _History of the Hornbook_. This portrait has hung
+for two centuries in an Essex manor-house. Its date, 1661, is but nine
+years earlier than the portraits of the Gibbes children, and the dress
+is the same. The cavalier hat and cuffs are the only varying detail.
+
+INFANT’S CAP
+
+Tambour work, 1790.
+
+ELEANOR FOSTER
+
+Born, 1746. She married Dr. Nathaniel Coffin, of Portland, Me., and
+became the mother of the beautiful Martha, who married Richard C.
+Derby. This portrait was painted in 1755. It is owned by Mrs. Greely
+Stevenson Curtis of Boston, Mass.
+
+WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE
+
+From an old print.
+
+MRS. THEODORE S. SEDGWICK AND DAUGHTER.
+
+Mrs. Sedgwick was Pamela Dwight. This portrait was painted by Ralph
+Earle, and exhibits one of his peculiarities. The home of the subject
+of the portrait is shown through an open window, though the immediate
+surroundings are a room within the house. The child is Catherine M.
+Sedgwick, the poet. This painting is owned in Stockbridge by members of
+the family.
+
+INFANT CHILD OF FRANCIS HOPKINSON, THE SIGNER
+
+A drawing in crayon by the child’s father. The child carries a coral
+and bells.
+
+MARY SETON
+
+1763. Died in 1800, aged forty. Married John Wilkes of New York. White
+frock and blue scarf.
+
+THE BOWDOIN CHILDREN
+
+Lady Temple and Governor James Bowdoin in childhood. The artist of this
+pleasing portrait is unknown. I think it was painted by Blackburn. It
+is now in the Walker Art Gallery, at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me.
+
+Miss LYDIA ROBINSON
+
+Aged twelve years, daughter of Colonel James Robinson, Salem, Mass.
+Painted by M. Corné in 1808. Owned by the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+KNITTED FLAXEN MITTENS
+
+These are knitted upon finest wire needles, of linen thread, which had
+been spun, and the flax raised and prepared by the knitter.
+
+MRS. ELIZABETH (LUX) RUSSELL AND DAUGHTER.
+
+CHRISTENING SHIRT AND MITTS OF GOVERNOR BRADFORD.
+
+White linen with pinched sleeves and chaney ruffles and fingertips.
+Owned by Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+FLANDERS LACE MITTS
+
+These infant’s mitts were worn in the sixteenth century, and came to
+Salem with the first emigrants. Owned by Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+INFANT’S ADJUSTABLE CAP
+
+This has curious shirring-strings to make it fit heads of various
+sizes. It is home spun and woven, and the lace edging is home knit.
+
+REV. JOHN P. DABNEY, WHEN A CHILD IN 1806
+
+This portrait of a Salem minister in childhood is in jacket and
+trousers, with openwork collar and ruffles. It is now owned by the
+Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
+
+ROBERT GIBBES
+
+Born, 1665. This portrait is dated 1670. It is owned by Miss Sarah B.
+Hager of Kendal Green, Mass.
+
+NANKEEN BREECHES, WITH SILVER BUTTONS. 1790
+
+RALPH IZARD, WHEN A LITTLE BOY
+
+Born in Charleston, S. C., 1742; died in 1804. Painted in 1750. He was
+United States Senator 1789-1795. This debonair little figure in blue
+velvet, silk-embroidered waistcoat, silken hose, buckled shoes, and
+black hat, gold-laced, is a miniature courtier. The portrait is now
+owned by William E. Huger, Esq., of Charleston, S.C.
+
+GOVERNOR AND REVEREND GURDON SALTONSTALL
+
+Born in 1666; died in 1724. Governor of Connecticut, 1708-24. He was
+also ordained a minister of the church at New London.
+
+MAYOR RIP VAN DAM
+
+Mayor of New York in 1710.
+
+JUDGE ABRAHAM DE PEYSTER OF NEW YORK
+
+GOVERNOR DE BIENVILLE, JEAN BAPTISTE LEMOINE
+
+Born in Montreal, Can., 1680. Died in 1768. French Governor of
+Louisiana for many years. He founded New Orleans. The original is in
+Longeuil, Can.
+
+DANIEL WALDO
+
+Born in Boston, 1724; died in 1808. Married Rebecca Salisbury.
+
+REV. JOHN MARSH, HARTFORD, CONN
+
+JOHN ADAMS IN YOUTH
+
+Born in Braintree, Mass., 1735; died at Quincy, Mass., 1826. Second
+President of the United States, 1797-1801. He was a member of Congress,
+signer of Declaration of Independence, Commissioner to France,
+Ambassador to The Netherlands, Peace Commissioner to Great Britain,
+Minister to Court of St. James. This portrait in youth is in a wig.
+Throughout life he wore his hair bushed out at the ears.
+
+JONATHAN EDWARDS, D.D.
+
+Born in 1745; died in 1801. He was a son of the great Jonathan Edwards,
+and was President of Union College, Schenectady, 1799-1801. This
+portrait shows the fashion of dressing the hair when wigs and powder
+had been banished and the hair hung lank and long in the neck.
+
+PATRICK HENRY
+
+Born in Virginia, 1736; died in Charlotte County, Va., in 1799. An
+orator, patriot, and a leader in the American Revolution. He organized
+the Committees of Correspondence, was a member of Continental Congress,
+1774, of the Virginia Convention, 1775, and was governor of Virginia
+for several terms. This portrait shows him in lawyer’s close wig and
+robe.
+
+“KING” CARTER
+
+Died, 1732.
+
+JUDGE BENJAMIN LYNDE, OF SALEM AND BOSTON, MASS
+
+Died, 1745. Painted by Smybert.
+
+JOHN RUTLEDGE
+
+Born, Charleston, S.C., 1739; died, 1800. He was member of Congress,
+governor of South Carolina, chief justice of Supreme Court. His hair is
+tied in cue.
+
+CAMPAIGN, RAMILLIES, BOB, AND PIGTAIL WIGS
+
+REV. WILLIAM WELSTEED
+
+From an engraving by Copley, his only engraving.
+
+THOMAS HOPKINSON
+
+Born in London, 1709. Came to America in 1731. Married Mary Johnson in
+1736. Made Judge of the Admiralty in 1741. Died in 1751. He was the
+father of Francis the Signer. This portrait is believed to be by Sir
+Godfrey Kneller.
+
+REV. DR. BARNARD
+
+A Connecticut clergyman.
+
+ANDREW ELLICOTT
+
+Born, 1754; died, 1820. A Maryland gentleman of wealth and position.
+
+HERBERT WESTPHALING
+
+Bishop of Hereford, Eng.
+
+HERALD CORNELIUS VANDUM.
+
+Born, 1483; died, 1577, aged ninety-four years. Yeoman of the Guard and
+usher to Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. His beard is
+unique.
+
+SCOTCH BEARD
+
+Worn by Alexander Ross, 1655.
+
+DR. WILLIAM SLATER
+
+Cathedral beard.
+
+DR. JOHN DEE
+
+Born in London, 1527; died, 1608. An English mathematician, astrologer,
+physician, author, and magician. He wrote seventy-nine books, mostly on
+magic. His “pique-a-devant” beard might well “a man’s eye out-pike.”
+
+IRON AND LEATHER PATTENS, 1760
+
+Owned by author.
+
+OAK, IRON, AND LEATHER CLOGS
+
+In Museum of Bucks County Historical Society, Penn.
+
+ENGLISH CLOGS
+
+CHOPINES
+
+Drawing from Chopines in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The tallest
+chopine had a sole about nine inches thick.
+
+WEDDING CLOGS
+
+These clogs are of silk brocade, and were made to match brocade
+slippers. The one with pointed toe would fit the brocaded shoes of the
+year 1760. The other has with it a high-heeled, black satin slipper of
+the year 1780, to show how they were worn. They forced a curious
+shuffling step.
+
+CLOGS OF PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH
+
+CHILD’S CLOGS
+
+About 1780. Owned by Bucks County Historical Society.
+
+COPLEY FAMILY PICTURE
+
+This group, consisting of the artist, John Singleton Copley, his wife,
+who was formerly a young widow, Susannah Farnham; his wife’s father,
+Richard Clarke, a most respected Boston merchant who was wealthy until
+ruined by the War of the Revolution; and the four little Copley
+children. Elizabeth is between four and five; John Singleton, Jr., is
+the boy of three, who afterwards became Lord Lyndhurst; Mary is aged
+two, and an infant is in the grandfather’s arms. Copley was born in
+1737, and must have been about thirty-seven when this was painted in
+1775. It is deemed by many his masterpiece. The portrait is owned by
+Mr. Amory, but is now in the custody of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
+It is most pronounced, almost startling, in color, every tint being
+absolutely frank.
+
+WEDDING SLIPPERS AND BROCADE STRIP, 1712
+
+Owned by Mrs. Thomas Robinson Harris, of Scarboro on the Hudson, N.Y.
+
+JACK-BOOTS
+
+Owned by Lord Fairfax of Virginia.
+
+JOSHUA WARNER
+
+A Portsmouth gentleman. This portrait is now in the Boston Museum of
+Fine Arts.
+
+SHOE AND KNEE BUCKLES
+
+They are shoe-buckles, breeches-buckles, garter-buckles, stock-buckles.
+Some are cut silver and gold; others are cut steel; some are paste.
+Some of these were owned by Dr. Edward Holyoke, of Salem, and are now
+owned by Miss Susan W. Osgood, of Salem, Mass.
+
+WEDDING SLIPPERS
+
+Worn in 1760 by granddaughter of Governor Simon Bradstreet. Owned by
+Miss Mary S. Cleveland, of Salem, Mass. Their make and finish are
+curious; they have paste buckles.
+
+ABIGAIL BROMFIELD ROGERS
+
+Painted by Copley in Europe. Owned by Miss Annette Rogers, of Boston,
+Mass.
+
+SLIPPERS
+
+Worn by Mrs. Carroll with the brocade silk sacque. They are embroidered
+in the colors of the brocade.
+
+WHITE KID SLIPPERS, 1810
+
+Owned by author.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+APPAREL OF THE PURITAN AND PILGRIM FATHERS
+
+
+_“Deep-skirted doublets, puritanic capes
+Which now would render men like upright apes
+Was comelier wear, our wiser fathers thought
+Than the cast fashions from all Europe brought”_
+
+—“New England’s Crisis,” BENJAMIN TOMPSON, 1675.
+
+
+_“I am neither Niggard nor Cynic to the due Bravery of the true
+Gentry.”_
+
+—“The simple Cobbler of Agawam,” J. WARD, 1713.
+
+
+_“Never was it happier in England than when an Englishman was known
+abroad by his own cloth; and contented himself at home with his fine
+russet carsey hosen, and a warm slop; his coat, gown, and cloak of
+brown, blue or putre, with some pretty furnishings of velvet or fur,
+and a doublet of sad-tawnie or black velvet or comely silk, without
+such cuts and gawrish colours as are worn in these dayes by those who
+think themselves the gayest men when they have most diversities of
+jagges and changes of colours.”_
+
+—“Chronicles,” HOLINSHED, 1578.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+APPAREL OF THE PURITAN AND PILGRIM FATHERS
+
+
+I
+
+
+t is difficult to discover the reasons, to trace the influences which
+have resulted in the production in the modern mind of that composite
+figure which serves to the everyday reader, the heedless observer, as
+the counterfeit presentment of the New England colonist,—the Boston
+Puritan or Plymouth Pilgrim. We have a very respectable notion, a
+fairly true picture, of Dutch patroon, Pennsylvania Quaker, and
+Virginia planter; but we see a very unreal New Englishman. This “gray
+old Gospeller, sour as midwinter,” appears with goodwife or dame in the
+hastily drawn illustrations of our daily press; we find him outlined
+with greater care but equal inaccuracy in our choicer periodical
+literature; we have him depicted by artists in our handsome books and
+on the walls of our art museums; he is cut in stone and cast in bronze
+for our halls and parks; he is dressed by actors for a part in some
+historical play; he is furbished up with conglomerate and makeshift
+garments by enthusiastic and confident young folk in tableau and
+fancy-dress party; he is richly and amply attired by portly,
+self-satisfied members of our patriotic-hereditary societies; we
+constantly see these figures garbed in semblance in some details, yet
+never in verisimilitude as a whole figure.
+
+We are wont to think of our Puritan forbears, indeed we are determined
+to think of them, garbed in sombre sad-colored garments, in a life
+devoid of color, warmth, or fragrance. But sad color was not dismal and
+dull save in name; it was brown in tone, and brown is warm, and being a
+primitive color is, like many primitive things, cheerful. Old England
+was garbed in hearty honest russet, even in the days of our
+colonization. Read the list of the garments of any master of the manor,
+of the honest English yeoman, of our own sturdy English emigrants from
+manor and farm in Suffolk and Essex. What did they wear across seas?
+What did they wear in the New World? What they wore in England, namely:
+Doublets of leathers, all brown in tint; breeches of various tanned
+skins and hides; untanned leather shoes; jerkins of “filomot” or
+“phillymort” (feuille morte), dead-leaf color; buff-coats of fine buff
+leather; tawny camlet cloaks and jackets of “du Boys” (which was wood
+color); russet hose; horseman’s coats of tan-colored linsey-woolsey or
+homespun ginger-lyne or brown perpetuana; fawn-colored mandillions and
+deer-colored cassocks—all brown; and sometimes a hat of natural beaver.
+Here is a “falding” doublet of “treen color”—and what is treen but
+wooden and wood color is brown again.
+
+It was a fitting dress for their conditions of life. The colonists
+lived close to nature—they touched the beginnings of things; and we are
+close to nature when all dress in russet. The homely “butternuts” of
+the Kentucky mountains express this; so too does khaki, a good, simple
+native dye and stuff; so eagerly welcomed, so closely cherished, as all
+good and primitive things should be.
+
+
+[Illustration: Governor John Endicott]
+
+So when I think of my sturdy Puritan forbears in the summer planting of
+Salem and of Boston, I see them in “honest russet kersey”; gay too with
+the bright stamell-red of their waistcoats and the grain-red linings of
+mandillions; scarlet-capped are they, and enlivened with many a great
+scarlet-hooded cloak. I see them in this attire on shipboard, where
+they were greeted off Salem with “a smell from the shore like the smell
+of a garden”; I see them landing in happy June amid “sweet wild
+strawberries and fair single roses.” I see them walking along the
+little lanes and half-streets in which for many years bayberry and
+sweet-fern lingered in dusty fragrant clumps by the roadside.
+
+“Scented with Cædar and Sweet Fern
+From Heats reflection dry,”
+
+
+wrote of that welcoming shore one colonist who came on the first ship,
+and noted in rhyme what he found and saw and felt and smelt. And I see
+the forefathers standing under the hot little cedar trees of the
+Massachusetts coast, not sober in sad color, but cheery in russet and
+scarlet; and sweetbrier and strawberries, bayberry and cedar, smell
+sweetly and glow genially in that summer sunlight which shines down on
+us through all these two centuries.
+
+We have ample sources from which to learn precisely what was worn by
+these first colonists—men and women—gentle and simple. We have minute
+“Lists of Apparell” furnished by the Colonization Companies to the male
+colonists; we have also ample lists of apparel supplied to individual
+emigrants of varied degree; we have inventories in detail of the
+personal estates of all those who died in the colonies even in the
+earliest years—inventories wherein even a half-worn pair of gloves is
+gravely set down, appraised in value, sworn to, and entered in the town
+records; we have wills giving equal minuteness; we have even the
+articles of dress themselves preserved from moth and rust and mildew;
+we have private letters asking that supplies of clothing be sent across
+seas—clothing substantial and clothing fashionable; we have ships’
+bills of lading showing that these orders were carried out; we have
+curiously minute private letters giving quaint descriptions and hints
+of new and modish wearing apparel; we have sumptuary laws telling what
+articles of clothing must not be worn by those of mean estate; we have
+court records showing trials under these laws; we have ministers’
+sermons denouncing excessive details of fashion, enumerating and almost
+describing the offences; and we have also a goodly number of portraits
+of men and a few of women. I give in this chapter excellent portraits
+of the first governors, Endicott, Winthrop, Bradstreet, Winslow; and
+others could be added. Having all these, do we need fashion-plates or
+magazines of the modes? We have also for the early years great
+instruction through comparison and inference in knowing the English
+fashions of those dates as revealed through inventories, compotuses,
+accounts, diaries, letters, portraits, prints, carvings, and effigies;
+and American fashions varied little from English ones.
+
+
+[Illustration: Governor Edward Winslow]
+
+It is impossible to disassociate the history of costume from the
+general history of the country where such dress is worn. Nor could any
+one write upon dress with discrimination and balance unless he knew
+thoroughly the dress of all countries and likewise the history of all
+countries. Of the special country, he must know more than general
+history, for the relations of small things to great things are too
+close. Influences apparently remote prove vital. At no time was history
+told in dress, and at no period was dress influenced by historical
+events more than during the seventeenth century and in the dress of
+English-speaking folk. The writer on dress should know the temperament
+and character of the dress wearer; this was of special bearing in the
+seventeenth century. It would be thought by any one ignorant of the
+character of the first Puritan settlers, and indifferent to or ignorant
+of historical facts, that in a new world with all the hardships,
+restraints, lacks, and inconveniences, no one, even the vainest woman,
+would think much upon dress, save that it should be warm, comfortable,
+ample, and durable. But, in truth, such was not the case. Even in the
+first years the settlers paid close attention to their attire, to its
+richness, its elegance, its modishness, and watched narrowly also the
+attire of their neighbors, not only from a distinct liking for dress,
+but from a careful regard of social distinctions and from a regard for
+the proprieties and relations of life. Dress was a badge of rank, of
+social standing and dignity; and class distinctions were just as
+zealously guarded in America, the land of liberty, as in England. The
+Puritan church preached simplicity of dress; but the church attendants
+never followed that preaching. All believed, too, that dress had a
+moral effect, as it certainly does; that to dress orderly and well and
+convenable to the existing fashions helped to preserve the morals of
+the individual and general welfare of the community. Eagerly did the
+settlers seek every year, every season, by every incoming ship, by
+every traveller, to learn the changes of fashions in Europe. The first
+native-born poet, Benjamin Tompson, is quoted in the heading of this
+chapter in a wail over thus following new fashions, a wail for the
+“good old times,” as has been the cry of “old fogy” poets and
+philosophers since the days of the ancient classics.
+
+We have ample proof of the love of dignity, of form, of state, which
+dominated even in the first struggling days; we can see the governor of
+Virginia when he landed, turning out his entire force in most formal
+attire and with full company of forty halberdiers in scarlet cloaks to
+attend in imposing procession the church services in the poor little
+church edifice—this when the settlement at Jamestown was scarce more
+than an encampment.
+
+We can read the words of Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, in
+which he recounts his mortification at the undignified condition of
+affairs when the governor of the French province, the courtly La Tour,
+landed unexpectedly in Boston and caught the governor picnicking
+peacefully with his family on an island in the harbor, with no
+attendants, no soldiers, no dignitaries. Nor was there any force in the
+fort, and therefore no salute could be given to the distinguished
+visitors; and still more mortifying was the sole announcement of this
+important arrival through the hurried sail across the bay, and the
+running to the governor of a badly scared woman neighbor. We see
+Winthrop trying to recover his dignity in La Tour’s eyes (and in his
+own) by bourgeoning throughout the remainder of the French governor’s
+stay with an imposing guard of soldiers in formal attendance at every
+step he took abroad; ordering them to wear, I am sure, their very
+fullest stuffed doublets and shiniest armor, while he displayed his
+best black velvet suit of garments. Fortunately for New England’s
+appearance, Winthrop was a man of such aristocratic bearing and feature
+that no dress or lack of dress could lower his dignity.
+
+
+Governor John Winthrop. Governor John Winthrop.
+
+Our forbears did not change their dress by emigrating; they may have
+worn heavier clothing in New England, more furs, stronger shoes, but I
+cannot find that they adopted simpler or less costly clothing; any
+change that may have been made through Puritan belief and teaching had
+been made in England. All the colonists
+
+“ ... studied after nyce array,
+And made greet cost in clothing.”
+
+
+Many persons preferred to keep their property in the form of what they
+quaintly called “duds.” The fashion did not wear out more apparel than
+the man; for clothing, no matter what its cut, was worn as long as it
+lasted, doing service frequently through three generations. For
+instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, when she was
+over fifty years old, receiving this bequest by will: “If she desire to
+have the suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother,
+let her have it upon appraisement.” I have traced a certain flowered
+satin gown and “manto” in four wills; a dame to her daughter; she to
+her sister; then to the child of the last-named who was a granddaughter
+of the first owner. And it was a proud possession to the last. The
+fashions and shapes then did not change yearly. The Boston gentlewoman
+of 1660 would not have been ill dressed or out of the mode in the dress
+worn by her grandmother when she landed in 1625.
+
+Petty details were altered in woman’s dress—though but slightly; the
+change of a cap, a band, a scarf, a ruffle, meant much to the wearer,
+though it seems unimportant to us to-day. Men’s dress, we know from
+portraits, was unaltered for a time save in neckwear and hair-dressing,
+both being of such importance in costume that they must be written upon
+at length.
+
+Let us fix in our minds the limit of reign of each ruler during the
+early years of colonization, and the dates of settlement of each
+colony. When Elizabeth died in 1603, the Brownist Puritans or
+Separatists were well established in Holland; they had been there
+twenty years. They were dissatisfied with their Dutch home, however,
+and had had internal quarrels—one, of petty cause, namely, a “topish
+Hatt,” a “Schowish Hood,” a “garish spitz-fashioned Stomacher,” the
+vain garments of one woman; but the strife over these “abhominations”
+lasted eleven years.
+
+James I was king when the Pilgrims came to America in 1620; but Charles
+I was on the throne in 1630 when John Winthrop arrived with his band of
+friends and followers and settled in Salem and Boston.
+
+The settlement of Portsmouth and Dover in New Hampshire was in 1623,
+and in Maine the same year. The settlements of the Dutch in New
+Netherland were in 1614; while Virginia, named for Elizabeth, the
+Virgin Queen, and discovered in her day, was settled first of all at
+Jamestown in 1607. The Plymouth colony was poor. It came poor from
+Holland, and grew poorer through various misfortunes and set-backs—one
+being the condition of the land near Plymouth. The Massachusetts Bay
+Company was different. It came with properties estimated to be worth a
+million dollars, and it had prospered wonderfully after an opening year
+of want and distress. The relative social condition and means of the
+settlers of Jamestown, of Plymouth, of Boston, were carefully
+investigated from English sources by a thoughtful and fair authority,
+the historian Green. He says of the Boston settlers in his _Short
+History of the English People_:—
+
+
+“Those Massachusetts settlers were not like the earlier colonists of
+the South; broken men, adventurers, bankrupts, criminals; or simply
+poor men and artisans like the Pilgrim Fathers of the _Mayflower_. They
+were in great part men of the professional and middle classes, some of
+them men of large landed estate, some zealous clergymen, some shrewd
+London lawyers or young scholars from Oxford. The bulk were God-fearing
+farmers from Lincolnshire and the Eastern counties.”
+
+
+A full comprehension of these differences in the colonies will make us
+understand certain conditions, certain surprises, as to dress; for
+instance, why so little of the extreme Puritan is found in the dress of
+the first Boston colonists.
+
+There lived in England, near the close of Elizabeth’s reign, a Puritan
+named Philip Stubbes, to whom we are infinitely indebted for our
+knowledge of English dress of his times. It was also the dress of the
+colonists; for details of attire, especially of men’s wear, had not
+changed to any extent since the years in which and of which Philip
+Stubbes wrote.
+
+He published in 1586 a book called _An Anatomie of Abuses_, in which he
+described in full the excesses of England in his day. He wrote with
+spirited, vivid pen, and in plain speech, leaving nothing unspoken lest
+it offend, and he used strong, racy English words and sentences. In his
+later editions he even took pains to change certain “strange, inkhorn
+terms” or complicate words of his first writing into simpler ones. Thus
+he changed _preter time_ to _former ages; auditory_ to _hearers;
+prostrated_ to _humbled; consummate_ to _ended_; and of course this was
+to the book’s advantage. Unusual words still linger, however, but we
+must believe they are not intentionally “outlandish” as was the term of
+the day for such words.
+
+The attitude of Stubbes toward dress and dress wearers is of great
+interest, for he was certainly one of the most severe, most determined,
+most conscientious of Puritans; yet his hatred of “corruptions desiring
+reformation” did not lead him to a hatred of dress in itself. He is
+careful to state in detail in the body of his book and in his preface
+that his attack is not upon the dress of people of wealth and station;
+that he approves of rich dress for the rich. His hatred is for the
+pretentious dress of the many men of low birth or of mean estate who
+lavish their all in dress ill suited to their station; and also his
+reproof is for swindling in dress materials and dress-making; against
+false weights and measures, adulterations and profits; in short,
+against abuses, not uses.
+
+
+Governor Simon Bradstreet. Governor Simon Bradstreet.
+
+His words run thus explicitly:—
+
+
+“Whereas I have spoken of the excesse in apparell, and of the Abuse of
+the same as wel in Men as in Women, generally I would not be so
+understood as though my speaches extended to any either noble honorable
+or worshipful; for I am farre from once thinking that any kind of
+sumptuous or gorgeous Attire is not to be worn of them; as I suppose
+them rather Ornaments in them than otherwise. And therefore when I
+speak of excesse of Apparel my meaning is of the inferiour sorte only
+who for the most parte do farre surpasse either noble honorable or
+worshipful, ruffling in Silks Velvets, Satens, Damaske, Taffeties, Gold
+Silver and what not; these bee the Abuses I speak of, these bee the
+Evills that I lament, and these bee the Persons my wordes doe concern.”
+
+
+There was ample room for reformation from Stubbes’s point of view.
+
+
+“There is such a confuse mingle mangle of apparell and such
+preponderous excess thereof, as every one is permitted to flaunt it out
+in what apparell he has himself or can get by anie kind of means. So
+that it is verie hard to know who is noble, who is worshipful, who is a
+gentleman, who is not; for you shall have those who are neither of the
+nobilytie, gentilitie, nor yeomanrie goe daylie in silks velvets satens
+damasks taffeties notwithstanding they be base by byrth, meane by
+estate and servyle by calling. This a great confusion, a general
+disorder. God bee mercyfull unto us.”
+
+
+This regard of dress was, I take it, the regard of the Puritan reformer
+in general; it was only excess in dress that was hated. This was
+certainly the estimate of the best of the Puritans, and it was
+certainly the belief of the New England Puritan. It would be thought,
+and was thought by some men, that in the New World liberty of religious
+belief and liberty of dress would be given to all. Not at all!—the
+Puritan magistrates at once set to work to show, by means of sumptuary
+laws, rules of town settlement, and laws as to Sunday observance and
+religious services, that nothing of the kind was expected or intended,
+or would be permitted willingly. No religious sects and denominations
+were welcome save the Puritans and allied forms—Brownists,
+Presbyterians, Congregationalists. For a time none other were permitted
+to hold services; no one could wear rich dress save gentlefolk, and
+folk of wealth or some distinction—as Stubbes said, “by being in some
+sort of office”
+
+We shall find in the early pages of this book frequent references to
+Stubbes’s descriptions of articles of dress, but his own life has some
+bearing on his utterances; so let me bear testimony as to his character
+and to the absolute truth of his descriptions. He was held up in his
+own day to contempt by that miserable Thomas Nashe who plagiarized his
+title and helped his own dull book into popularity by calling it _The
+Anatomie of Absurdities_; and who further ran on against him in a still
+duller book, _An Almand for a Parrat_. He called Stubbes “A MarPrelate
+Zealot and Hypocrite” and Stubbes has been held up by others as a
+morose man having no family ties and no social instincts. He was in
+reality the tenderest of husbands to a modest, gentle, pious girl whom
+he married when she was but fourteen, and with whom he lived in ideal
+happiness until her death in child-birth when eighteen years old. He
+bore testimony to his happiness and her goodness in a loving but sad
+and trying book “intituled” _A Christiall Glasse for Christian Women_.
+It is a record of a life which was indeed pure as crystal; a life so
+retiring, so quiet, so composed, so unvarying, a life so remote from
+any gentlewoman’s life to day that it seems of another ether, another
+planet, as well as of another century. But it is useful for us to know
+it, notwithstanding its background of gloomy religionism and its air of
+unreality; for it helps us to understand the character of Puritan women
+and of Philip Stubbes. This fair young wife died in an ecstasy, her
+voice triumphant, her face radiant with visions of another and a
+glorious life. And yet she was not wholly happy in death; for she had a
+Puritan conscience, and she thought she _must_ have offended God in
+some way. She had to search far indeed for the offence; and this was
+it—it would be absurd if it were not so true and so deep in its
+sentiment of regret. She and her husband had set their hearts too much
+in affection upon a little dog that they had loved well, and she found
+now that “it was a vanitye”; and she repented of it, and bade them bear
+the dog from her bedside. Knowing Stubbes’s love for this little dog
+(and knowing it must have been a spaniel, for they were then being well
+known and beloved and were called “Spaniel-gentles or comforters”—a
+wonderfully appropriate name), I do not much mind the fierce words with
+which he stigmatizes the vanity and extravagance of women. I have a
+strong belief too that if we knew the dress of his child-wife, we would
+find that he liked her bravely even richly attired, and that he
+acquired his wonderful mastery of every term and detail of women’s
+dress, every term of description, through a very uxorious regard of his
+wife’s apparel.
+
+
+Sir Richard Saltonstall. Sir Richard Saltonstall.
+
+Of the absolute truth of every word in Stubbes’s accounts we have ample
+corroborative proof. He wrote in real earnest, in true zeal, for the
+reform of the foolery and extravagance he saw around him, not against
+imaginary evils. There is ample proof in the writings of his
+contemporaries—in Shakespere’s comparisons, in Harrison’s sensible
+_Description of England_, in Tom Coryat’s _Crudities_—and oddities—of
+the existence of this foolishness and extravagance. There is likewise
+ample proof in the sumptuary laws of Elizabeth’s day.
+
+It would have been the last thing the solemn Stubbes could have liked
+or have imagined, that he should have afforded important help to future
+writers upon costume, yet such is the case. For he described the dress
+of English men and women with as much precision as a modern reporter of
+the modes. No casual survey of dress could have furnished to him the
+detail of his description. It required much examination and inquiry,
+especially as to the minutiae of women’s dress. Therefore when I read
+his bitter pages (if I can forget the little pet spaniel) I have always
+a comic picture in my mind of a sour, morose, shocked old Puritan, “a
+meer, bitter, narrow-sould Puritan” clad in cloak and doublet, with
+great horn spectacles on nose, and ample note-book, penner, and
+ink-horn in hand, agonizingly though eagerly surveying the figure of
+one of his fashion-clad women neighbors, walking around her slowly,
+asking as he walked the name of this jupe, the price of that pinner,
+the stuff of this sleeve, the cut of this cap, groaning as he wrote it
+all down, yet never turning to squire or knight till every detail of
+her extravagance and “greet cost” is recorded. In spite of all his
+moralizing his quill pen had too sharp a point, his scowling forehead
+and fierce eyes too keen a power of vision ever to render to us a dull
+page; even the author of _Wimples and Crisping Pins_ might envy his
+powers of perception and description.
+
+The bravery of the Jacobean gallant did not differ in the main from his
+dress under Elizabeth; but in details he found some extravagances. The
+love-locks became more prominent, and shoe-roses and garters both grew
+in size. Pomanders were carried by men and women, and
+“casting-bottles.” Gloves and pockets were perfumed. As musk was the
+favorite scent this perfume-wearing is not over-alluring. As a
+preventive of the plague all perfumes were valued.
+
+Since a hatred and revolt against this excess was one of the conditions
+which positively led to the formation of the Puritan political party if
+not of the Separatist religious faith, and as a consequence to the
+settlement of the English colonies in America, let us recount the
+conditions of dress in England when America was settled. Let us regard
+first the dress of a courtier whose name is connected closely and
+warmly in history and romance with the colonization of America; a man
+who was hated by the Pilgrim and Puritan fathers but whose dress in
+some degree and likeness, though modified and simplified, must have
+been worn by the first emigrants to Virginia across seas—let us look at
+the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a hero and a scholar, but he
+was also a courtier; and of a court, too, where every court-attendant
+had to bethink himself much and ever of dress, for dress occupied
+vastly the thought and almost wholly the public conversation of his
+queen and her successor.
+
+
+Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh.
+
+To understand Raleigh’s dress, you must know the man and his life; to
+comprehend its absurdities and forgive its follies and see whence it
+originated, you must know Elizabeth and her dress; you must see her
+with “oblong face, eyes small, yet black; her nose a little hooked, her
+lips narrow, her teeth black; false hair and that red,”—these are the
+striking and plain words of the German ambassador to her court. You
+must look at this queen with her colorless meagre person lost in a
+dress monstrous in size, yet hung, even in its enormous expanse of many
+square yards, with crowded ornaments, tags, jewels, laces,
+embroideries, gimp, feathers, knobs, knots, and aglets, with these
+bedizened rankly, embellished richly. You must see her talking in
+public of buskins and gowns, love-locks and virginals, anything but
+matters of seriousness or of state; you must note her at a formal
+ceremonial tickling handsome Dudley in the neck; watch her dancing,
+“most high and disposedly” when in great age; you must see her giving
+Essex a hearty boxing of the ear; hear her swearing at her ministers.
+You must remember, too, her parents, her heritage. From King Henry VIII
+came her love of popularity, her great activity, her extraordinary
+self-confidence, her indomitable will, her outbursts of anger, her
+cruelty, just as came her harsh, mannish voice. From her mother, Anne
+Boleyn, came her sensuous love of pleasure, of dress, of flattery, of
+gayety and laughter. Her nature came from her mother, her temper from
+her father. The familiarity with Robert Dudley was but a piece with her
+boisterous romps in her girlhood, and her flap in the face of young
+Talbot when he saw her “unready in my night-stuff.” But she had more in
+her than came from Henry and Anne; she had her own individuality, which
+made her as hard as steel, made her resolute, made her live frugally
+and work hard, and, above all, made her know her limitations. The
+woman, be she queen or the plainest mortal, who can estimate accurately
+her own limitations, who is proof against enthusiasm, proof against
+ambition, and, at a climax, proof against flattery, who knows what she
+can _not_ do, in that very thing finds success. Elizabeth was and ever
+will be a wonderful character-study; I never weary of reading or
+thinking of her.
+
+The settlement of Massachusetts was under James I; but costume varied
+little, save that it became more cumbersome. This may be attributed
+directly to the cowardice of the king, who wore quilted and
+padded—dagger-proof—clothing; and thus gave to his courtiers an example
+of stuffing and padding which exceeded even that of the men of
+Elizabeth’s day. “A great, round, abominable breech,” did the satirists
+call it. Stays had to be worn beneath the long-waisted,
+peascod-bellied, stuffed doublet to keep it in shape; thus a man’s
+attire had scarcely a single natural outline.
+
+We have this description of Raleigh, courtier and “servant” of
+Elizabeth and victim of James, given by a contemporary, Aubrey:—
+
+
+“He looked like a Knave with his gogling eyes. He could transform
+himself into any shape. He was a tall, handsome, bold man; but his
+naeve was that he was damnably proud. A good piece of him is in a white
+satin doublet all embroidered with rich pearls, and a mighty told me
+that the true pearls were nigh as big as the painted ones. He had a
+most remarkable aspect, an exceeding high forehead, long faced, and
+sour eie-lidded, a kind of pigge-eie.”
+
+
+We leave the choice of belief between one sentence of this personal
+description, that he was handsome, and the later plain-spoken details
+to the judgment of the reader. Certainly both statements cannot be
+true. As I look at his portrait, the “good piece of him” here, I wholly
+disbelieve the former.
+
+
+Sir Walter Raleigh and Son. Sir Walter Raleigh and Son.
+
+His laced-in, stiffened waist, his absurd breeches, his ruffs and
+sashes and knots, his great shoe-roses, his jewelled hatband, make this
+a fantastic picture, one of little dignity, though of vast cost. The
+jewels on his shoes were said to have cost thirty thousand pounds; and
+the perfect pearls in his ear, as seen in another portrait, must have
+been an inch and a half long. He had doublets entirely covered with a
+pattern of jewels. In another portrait (here) his little son, poor
+child, stands by his side in similar stiff attire. The famous portrait
+of Sir Philip Sidney and his brother is equally comic in its absurdity
+of costume for young lads.
+
+Read these words descriptive of another courtier, of the reign of
+James; his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham:—
+
+
+“With great buttons of diamonds, and with diamond hat bands, cockades
+and ear-rings, yoked with great and manifold knots of pearls. At his
+going over to Paris in 1625 he had twenty-seven suits of clothes made
+the richest that embroidery, gems, lace, silk, velvet, gold and stones
+could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet set all over
+suit and cloak with diamonds valued at £14,000 besides a great feather
+stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat-band
+and spurs.”
+
+
+These were all courtiers, but we should in general think of an English
+merchant as dressed richly but plainly; yet here is the dress of
+Marmaduke Rawdon, a merchant of that day:—
+
+
+“The apparell he rid in, with his chaine of gold and hat band was
+vallued in a thousand Spanish ducats; being two hundred and seventy and
+five pounds sterling. His hatband was of esmeralds set in gold; his
+suite was of a fine cloth trim’d with a small silke and gold fringe;
+the buttons of his suite fine gold—goldsmith’s work; his rapier and
+dagger richly hatcht with gold.”
+
+
+The white velvet dress of Buckingham showed one of the extreme fashions
+of the day, the wearing of pure white. Horace Walpole had a full-length
+painting of Lord Falkland all in white save his black gloves. Another
+of Sir Godfrey Hart, 1600, is all in white save scarlet heels to the
+shoes. These scarlet heels were worn long in every court. Who will ever
+forget their clatter in the pages of Saint Simon, as they ran in
+frantic haste through hall and corridor—in terror, in cupidity, in
+satisfaction, in zeal to curry favor, in desire to herald the news, in
+hope to obtain office, in every mean and detestable spirit—ran from the
+bedside of the dying king? We can still hear, after two centuries, the
+noisy, heartless tapping of those hurrying red heels.
+
+
+Robert Devereux Earle of Essex His Excellency & Generall of y° Army.
+Pub April 1. 1799 by W Richardson York House N° 31 Strand Robert
+Devereux
+
+Look at the portrait of another courtier, Sir Robert Dudley, who died
+in 1639; not the Robert Dudley who was tickled in the neck by Queen
+Elizabeth while he was being dubbed earl; not the Dudley who murdered
+Amy Robsart, but his disowned son by a noble lady whom he secretly
+married and dishonored. This son was a brave sailor and a learned man.
+He wrote the _Arcana del Mare_, and he was a sportsman; “the first of
+all that taught a dog to sit in order to catch partridges.” His
+portrait shows clumsy armor and showy rings, a great jewel and a vast
+tie of gauze ribbon on one arm; on the other a cord with many aglets;
+he wears marvellously embroidered, slashed, and bombasted breeches,
+tight hose, a heavily jewelled, broad belt; and a richly fringed scarf
+over one shoulder, and ridiculous garters at his calf. It is so absurd,
+so vain a dress one cannot wonder that sensible gentlemen turned away
+in disgust to so-called Puritan plainness, even if it went to the
+extreme of Puritan ugliness.
+
+But in truth the eccentrics and extremes of Puritan dress were adopted
+by zealots; the best of that dress only was worn by the best men of the
+party. All Puritans were not like Philip Stubbes, the moralist; nor did
+all Royalists dress like Buckingham, the courtier.
+
+I have spoken of the influence of the word “sad-color.” I believe that
+our notion of the gloom of Puritan dress, of the dress certainly of the
+New England colonist, comes to us through it, for the term was
+certainly much used. A Puritan lover in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in
+1645, wrote to his lass that he had chosen for her a sad-colored gown.
+Winthrop wrote, “Bring the coarsest woolen cloth, so it be not flocks,
+and of sad colours and some red;” and he ordered a “grave gown” for his
+wife, “not black, but sad-colour.” But while sad-colored meant a quiet
+tint, it did not mean either a dull stone color or a dingy grayish
+brown—nor even a dark brown. We read distinctly in an English list of
+dyes of the year 1638 of these tints in these words, “Sadd-colours the
+following; liver colour, De Boys, tawney, russet, purple, French green,
+ginger-lyne, deere colour, orange colour.” Of these nine tints, five,
+namely, “De Boys,” tawny, russet, ginger-lyne, and deer color, were all
+browns. Other colors in this list of dyes were called “light colours”
+and “graine colours.” Light colors were named plainly as those which
+are now termed by shopmen “evening shades”; that is, pale blue, pink,
+lemon, sulphur, lavender, pale green, ecru, and cream color. Grain
+colors were shades of scarlet, and were worn as much as russet. When
+dress in sad colors ranged from purple and French green through the
+various tints of brown to orange, it was certainly not a _dull_-colored
+dress.
+
+Let us see precisely what were the colors of the apparel of the first
+colonists. Let us read the details of russet and scarlet. We find them
+in _The Record of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in
+New England_, one of the incontrovertible sources which are a delight
+to every true historian. These records are in the handwriting of the
+first secretary, Washburn, and contain lists of the articles sent on
+the ships _Talbot, George, Lion’s Whelp, Four Sisters_, and _Mayflower_
+for the use of the plantation at Naumkeag (Salem) and later at Boston.
+They give the amount of iron, coal, and bricks sent as ballast; the red
+lead, sail-cloth, and copper; and in 1629, at some month and day
+previous to 16th of March, give the order for the “Apparell for 100
+men.” We learn that each colonist had this attire:—
+
+
+“4 Pair Shoes.
+2 Pair Irish Stockings about 13d. a pair.
+1 Pair knit Stockings about 2s. 4d. a pair.
+1 Pair Norwich Garters about 5s. a dozen.
+4 Shirts.
+2 Suits of Doublet and Hose; of leather lined with oiled skin leather,
+the hose and doublet with hooks and eyes.
+1 Suit of Northern Dussens or Hampshire Kerseys lined, the hose with
+skins, the doublet with linen of Guildford or Gedleyman serges, 2s.
+10d. a yard, 4-1/2 to 5 yards a suit.
+4 Bands.
+2 Plain falling bands.
+1 Standing band.
+1 Waistcoat of green cotton bound about with red tape.
+1 Leather Girdle.
+2 Monmouth Cap, about 2s. apiece.
+1 Black Hat lined at the brim with leather.
+5 Red knit caps milled; about 5d. apiece.
+2 Dozen Hooks and eyes and small hooks and eyes for mandillions.
+1 Pair Calfs Leather gloves (and some odd pairs of knit and sheeps
+leather gloves).
+A number of Ells Sheer Linen for Handkerchiefs.”
+
+
+On March 16th was added to this list a mandillion lined with cotton at
+12d. a yard. Also breeches and waistcoats; a leather suit of doublet
+and breeches of oiled leather; a pair of breeches of leather, “the
+drawers to serve to wear with both their other suits.” There was also
+full, yes, generous for the day, provision of rugs, bedticks, bolsters,
+mats, blankets, and sheets for the berths, and table linen. There were
+fifty beds; evidently two men occupied each bed. Folk, even of wealth
+and refinement, were not at all sensitive as to their mode of sleeping
+or their bedfellows. The pages of Pepys’s _Diary_ give ample examples
+of this carelessness.
+
+Arms and armor were also furnished, as will be explained in a later
+chapter.
+
+A private letter written by an engineer, one Master Graves, the
+following year (1630), giving a list of “such needful things as every
+planter ought to provide,” affords a more curt and much less expensive
+list, though this has three full suits, two being of wool stuffs:—
+
+
+“1 Monmouth Cap.
+3 Falling Bands.
+3 Shirts.
+1 Waistcoat.
+1 Suit Canvass.
+1 Suit Frieze.
+1 Suit of Cloth.
+3 Pair of Stockings.
+4 Pair of Shoes.
+Armour complete.
+Sword &; Belt.”
+
+
+The underclothing in this outfit seems very scanty.
+
+I am sure that to some of the emigrants on these ships either outfit
+afforded an ampler wardrobe than they had known theretofore in England,
+though English folk of that day were well dressed. With a little
+consideration we can see that the Massachusetts Bay apparel was
+adequate for all occasions, but it was far different from a man’s dress
+to-day. The colonist “hadn’t a coat to his back”; nor had he a pair of
+trousers. Some had not even a pair of breeches. It was a time when
+great changes in dress were taking place. The ancient gown had just
+been abandoned for doublet and long hose, which were still in high
+esteem, especially among “the elder sort,” with garters or points for
+the knees. These doublets were both of leather and wool. And there were
+also doublets to be worn by younger men with breeches and stockings.
+
+When doublet and hose were worn, the latter were, of course, the long,
+Florentine hose, somewhat like our modern tights.
+
+The jerkin of other lists varied little from the doublet; both were
+often sleeveless, and the cassock in turn was different only in being
+longer; buff-coat and horseman’s coat were slightly changed. The
+evolution of doublet, jerkin, and cassock into a man’s coat is a long
+enough story for a special chapter, and one which took place just while
+America was being settled. Let me explain here that, while the general
+arrangement of this book is naturally chronological, we halt upon our
+progress at times, to review a certain aspect of dress, as, for
+instance, the riding-dress of women, or the dress of the Quakers, or to
+review the description of certain details of dress in a consecutive
+account. We thus run on ahead of our story sometimes; and other times,
+topics have to be resumed and reviewed near the close of the book.
+
+The breeches worn by the early planters were fulled at the waist and
+knee, after the Dutch fashion, somewhat like our modern knickerbockers
+or the English bag-breeches.
+
+The four pairs of shoes furnished to the colonists were the best. In
+another entry the specifications of their make are given thus:—
+
+
+“Welt Neats Leather shoes crossed on the out-side with a seam. To be
+substantial good over-leather of the best, and two soles; the under
+sole of Neats-leather, the outer sole of tallowed backs.”
+
+
+They were to be of ample size, some thirteen inches long; each
+reference to them insisted upon good quality.
+
+There is plentiful head-gear named in these inventories,—six caps and a
+hat for each man, at a time when Englishmen thought much and deeply
+upon what they wore to cover their heads, and at a time when hats were
+very costly. I give due honor to those hats in an entire chapter, as I
+do to the ruffs and bands supplied in such adequate and dignified
+numbers. There was an unusually liberal supply of shirts, and there
+were drawers which are believed to have been draw-strings for the
+breeches.
+
+In _New England’s First Fruits_ we read instructions to bring over
+“good Irish stockings, which if they are good are much more serviceable
+than knit ones.” There appears to have been much variety in shape as
+well as in material. John Usher, writing in 1675 to England, says,
+“your sherrups stockings and your turn down stocking are not salable
+here.” Nevertheless, stirrup stockings and socks were advertised in the
+Boston News Letter as late as January 30, 1731. Stirrup-hose are
+described in 1658 as being very wide at the top—two yards wide—and
+edged with points or eyelet holes by which they were made fast to the
+girdle or bag-breeches. Sometimes they were allowed to bag down over
+the garter. They are said to have been worn on horseback to protect the
+other garments.
+
+Stockings at that time were made of cotton and woollen cloth more than
+they were knitted. Calico stockings are found in inventories, and often
+stockings as well as hose with calico linings. In the clothing of
+William Wright of Plymouth, at his death in 1633, were
+
+
+“2 Pair Old Knit Stockins.
+2 Pair Old Yrish Stockins.
+2 Pair Cloth Stockins.
+2 Pair Wadmoll Stockins.
+4 Pair Linnen Stockins,”
+
+
+which would indicate that Goodman Wright had stockings for all
+weathers, or, as said a list of that day, “of all denominations.” He
+had also two pair of boot-hose and two pair of boot-briches; evidently
+he was a seafaring man. I must note that he had more ample
+underclothing than many “plain citizens,” having cotton drawers and
+linen drawers and dimity waistcoats.
+
+That petty details of propriety and dignity of dress were not
+forgotten; that the articles serving to such dignity were furnished to
+the colonists, and the use of these articles was expected of them, is
+shown by the supply of such additions to dress as Norwich garters.
+Garters had been a decorative and elegant ornament to dress, as may be
+seen by glancing at the portraits of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Robert
+Orchard, and the _English Antick_, in this book. And they might well
+have been decried as offensive luxuries unmeet for any Puritan and
+unnecessary for any colonist; yet here they are. The settlers in one of
+the closely following ships had points for the knee as well as garters.
+
+From all this cheerful and ample dress, this might well be a Cavalier
+emigration; in truth, the apparel supplied as an outfit to the Virginia
+planters (who are generally supposed to be far more given over to rich
+dress) is not as full nor as costly as this apparel of Massachusetts
+Bay. In this as in every comparison I make, I find little to indicate
+any difference between Puritan and Cavalier in quantity of garments, in
+quality, or cost—or, indeed, in form. The differences in England were
+much exaggerated in print; in America they often existed wholly in
+men’s notions of what a Puritan must be.
+
+At first the English Puritan reformers made marked alterations in
+dress; and there were also distinct changes in the soldiers of
+Cromwell’s army, but in neither case did rigid reforms prove permanent,
+nor were they ever as great or as sweeping as the changes which came to
+the Cavalier dress. Many of the extremes preached in Elizabeth’s day
+had disappeared before New England was settled; they had been abandoned
+as unwise or unnecessary; others had been adopted by Cavaliers, so that
+equalized all differences. I find it difficult to pick out with
+accuracy Puritan or Cavalier in any picture of a large gathering. Let
+us glance at the Puritan Roundhead, at Cromwell himself. His picture is
+given here, cut from a famous print of his day, which represents
+Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament. He and his three friends, all
+Puritan leaders, are dressed in clothes as distinctly Cavalier as the
+attire of the king himself. The graceful hats with sweeping ostrich
+feathers are precisely like the Cavalier hats still preserved in
+England; like one in the South Kensington Museum. Cromwell’s wide boots
+and his short cape all have a Cavalier aspect.
+
+
+Cromwell dissolving Parliament. Be gone you rogues/You have Sate long
+enough. Cromwell dissolving Parliament.
+
+While Cromwell was steadily working for power, the fashion of plain
+attire was being more talked about than at any other time; so he
+appeared in studiously simple dress—the plainest apparel, indeed, of
+any man prominent in affairs in English history. This is a description
+of his appearance at a time before his name was in all Englishmen’s
+mouths. It was written by Sir Philip Warwick:—
+
+
+“The first time I ever took notice of him (Cromwell) was in the
+beginning of Parliament, November, 1640. I came into the house one
+morning, well-clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not,
+very ordinary apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit which seemed to
+have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain and not
+very clean, and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his band which
+was not much larger than his collar; his hat was without a hat-band;
+his stature was of good size; his sword stuck close to his side.”
+
+
+Lowell has written of what he terms verbal magic; the power of certain
+words and sentences, apparently simple, and without any recognizable
+quality, which will, nevertheless, fix themselves in our memory, or
+will picture a scene to us which we can never forget. This description
+of Cromwell has this magic. There is no apparent reason why these
+plain, commonplace words should fix in my mind this simple, rough-hewn
+form; yet I never can think of Cromwell otherwise than in this attire,
+and whatever portrait I see of him, I instinctively look for the spot
+of blood on his band. I know of his rich dress after he was in power;
+of that splendid purple velvet suit in which he lay majestic in death;
+but they never seem to me to be Cromwell—he wears forever an ill-cut,
+clumsy cloth suit, a close sword, and rumpled linen.
+
+The noble portraits of Cromwell by the miniaturist, Samuel Cooper,
+especially the one which is at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, are
+held to be the truest likenesses. They show a narrow band, but the hair
+curls softly on the shoulders. The wonderful portrait of the Puritan
+General Ireton, in the National Portrait Gallery, has beautiful, long
+hair, and a velvet suit much slashed, and with many loops and buttons
+at the slashes. He wears mustache and imperial. We expect we may find
+that friend of Puritanism, Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, in rich dress;
+and we find him in the richest of dress; namely, a doublet made, as to
+its body and large full sleeves, wholly of bands an inch or two wide of
+embroidery and gold lace, opening like long slashes from throat to
+waist, and from arm-scye to wrist over fine white lawn, and with extra
+slashes at various spots, with the full white lawn of his “habit-shirt”
+pulled out in pretty puffs. His hair is long and curling. General
+Waller of Cromwell’s army, here shown, is the very figure of a
+Cavalier, as handsome a face, with as flowing hair and careful
+mustache, as the Duke of Buckingham, or Mr. Endymion Porter,—that
+courtier of courtiers,—gentleman of the bed-chamber to Charles I.
+Cornet Joyce, the sturdy personal custodian of the king in captivity,
+came the closest to being a Roundhead; but even his hair covers his ear
+and hangs over his collar—it would be deemed over-long to-day.
+
+
+Sir William Waller. Sir William Waller.
+
+Here is Lord Fairfax in plain buff coat slightly laced and slashed with
+white satin. Fanshawe dressed—so his wife tells us—in “phillamot
+brocade with 9 Laces every one as broad as my hand, a little gold and
+silver lace between and both of curious workmanship.” And his suit was
+gay with scarlet knots of ribbon; and his legs were cased in white silk
+hose over scarlet ones; and he wore black shoes with scarlet shoe
+strings and scarlet roses and garters; and his gloves were trimmed with
+scarlet ribbon—a fine “gaybeseen”—to use Chaucer’s words.
+
+Surprising to all must be the portrait of that Puritan figurehead, the
+Earl of Leicester; for he wears an affected double-peaked beard, a
+great ruff, feathered hat, richly jewelled hatband and collar, and an
+ear-ring. Shown here is the dress he wore when masquerading in Holland
+as general during the Netherland insurrection against Philip II.
+
+It is strange to find even writers of intelligence calling Winthrop and
+Endicott Roundheads. A recent magazine article calls Myles Standish a
+Roundhead captain. That term was not invented till a score of years
+after Myles Standish landed at Plymouth. A political song printed in
+1641 is entitled _The Character of a Roundhead_. It begins:—
+
+“What creature’s this with his short hairs
+His little band and huge long ears
+     That this new faith hath founded?
+
+“The Puritans were never such,
+The saints themselves had ne’er as much.
+     Oh, such a knave’s a Roundhead.”
+
+
+
+
+The right Honourable Ferdinand Lord Fairfax. The right Honourable
+Ferdinand—Lord Fairfax.
+
+Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson was the wife of a Puritan gentleman, who was
+colonel in Cromwell’s army, and one of the regicide judges. She wrote a
+history of her husband’s life, which is one of the most valuable
+sources of information of the period wherein he lived, the day when
+Cromwell and Hampden acted, when Laud and Strafford suffered. In this
+history she tells explicitly of the early use of the word Roundhead:—
+
+
+“The name of Roundhead coming so opportunely, I shall make a little
+digression to show how it came up: When Puritanism grew a faction, the
+Zealots distinguished themselves by several affectations of habit,
+looks and words, which had it been a real forsaking of vanity would
+have been most commendable. Among other affected habits, few of the
+Puritans, what degree soever they were, wore their hair long enough to
+cover their ears; and the ministers and many others cut it close around
+their heads with so many little peaks—as was something ridiculous to
+behold. From this custom that name of Roundhead became the scornful
+term given to the whole Parliament Party, whose army indeed marched out
+as if they had only been sent out till their hair was grown. Two or
+three years later any stranger that had seen them would have inquired
+the meaning of that name.”
+
+
+It is a pleasure to point out Colonel Hutchinson as a Puritan, though
+there was little in his dress to indicate the significance of such a
+name for him, and certainly he was not a Roundhead, with his light
+brown hair “softer than the finest silk and curling in great loose
+rings at the ends—a very fine, thick-set head of hair.” He loved
+dancing, fencing, shooting, and hawking; he was a charming musician; he
+had judgment in painting, sculpture, architecture, and the “liberal
+arts.” He delighted in books and in gardening and in all rarities; in
+fact, he seemed to care for everything that was “lovely and of good
+report.” “He was wonderfully neat, cleanly and genteel in his habit,
+and had a very good fancy in it, but he left off very early the wearing
+of anything very costly, yet in his plainest habit appeared very much a
+gentleman.” Such dress was the _best_ of Puritan dress; just as he was
+the best type of a Puritan. He was cheerful, witty, happy, eager,
+earnest, vivacious—a bit quick in temper, but kind, generous, and good.
+He was, in truth, what is best of all,—a noble, consistent, Christian
+gentleman.
+
+Those who have not acquired from accurate modern portrayal and
+representation their whole notion of the dress of the early colonists
+have, I find, a figure in their mind’s eye something like that of
+Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder. Hogarth’s illustrations of Hudibras
+give similar Puritans. Others have figures, dull and plainly dressed,
+from the pictures in some book of saints and martyrs of the Puritan
+church, such as were found in many an old New England home. _My_
+Puritan is reproduced here. I have found in later years that this
+Alderman Abel of my old print was quite a character in English history;
+having been given with Cousin Kilvert the monopoly of the sale of wines
+at retail, one of those vastly lucrative privileges which brought forth
+the bitterest denunciations from Sir John Eliot, who regarded them as
+an infamous imposition upon the English people. The site of Abel’s
+house had once belonged to Cardinal Wolsey; and it was popularly
+believed that Abel found and used treasure of the cardinal which had
+been hidden in his cellar. He was called the “Main Projector and
+Patentee for the Raising of Wines.” Unfortunately for my theory that
+Abel was a typical Puritan, he was under the protection of King Charles
+I; and Cromwell’s Parliament put an end to his monopoly in 1641, and
+his dress was simply that of any dull, uninteresting, commonplace, and
+common Englishman of his day.
+
+
+Alderman Abell and Richard Kilvert, the two maine Projectors for Wine,
+1641. Mr. Alderman Abell and Richard Kilvert, the two maine Projectors
+for Wine, 1641.
+
+Another New England man who is constantly called a Roundhead is Cotton
+Mather; with equal inconsequence and inaccuracy he is often referred
+to, and often stigmatized, as “the typical Puritan colonist,” a narrow,
+bigoted Gospeller. I have open before me an editorial from a reputable
+newspaper which speaks of Cotton Mather dressed in dingy, skimped,
+sad-colored garments “shivering in the icy air of Plymouth as he
+uncovered his close-clipped Round-head when he landed on the Rock from
+the _Mayflower_.” He was in fact born in America; he was not a Plymouth
+man, and did not die till more than a century after the landing of the
+_Mayflower_, and, of course, he was not a Roundhead. Another drawing of
+Cotton Mather, in a respectable magazine, depicts him with clipped
+hair, emaciated, clad in clumsy garments, mean and haggard in
+countenance, raising a bundle of rods over a cowering Indian child.
+Now, Cotton Mather was distinctly handsome, as may be seen from his
+picture here, which displays plainly the full, sensual features of the
+Cotton family, shown in John Cotton’s portrait. And the Roundhead is in
+an elegant, richly curled periwig, such as was fashionable a hundred
+years after the _Mayflower_. And though he had the tormenting Puritan
+conscience he was not wholly a Puritan, for the world, the flesh, and
+the devil were strong in him. He was much more gentle and tender than
+men of that day were in general; especially with all children, white
+and Indian, and was most conscientious in his relations both to Indians
+and negroes. And in those days of universal whippings by English and
+American schoolmasters and parents, he spoke in no uncertain voice his
+horror and disapproval of the rod for children, and never countenanced
+or permitted any whippings.
+
+
+Reverend John Cotton. Reverend John Cotton.
+
+
+Reverend Cotton Mather. Reverend Cotton Mather.
+
+There was certainly great diversity in dress among those who called
+themselves Puritans. Some amusing stories are told of that strange,
+restless, brilliant creature, the major-general of Cromwell’s
+army,—Harrison. When the first-accredited ambassador sent by any great
+nation to the new republic came to London, there was naturally some
+stir as to the wisdom of certain details of demeanor and dress. It was
+a ticklish time. The new Commonwealth must command due honor, and the
+day before the audience a group of Parliament gentlemen, among them
+Colonel Hutchinson and one who was afterwards the Earl of Warwick, were
+seated together when Harrison came in and spoke of the coming audience,
+and admonished them all—and Hutchinson in particular, “who was in a
+habit pretty rich but grave and none other than he usually wore”—that,
+now nations sent to them, they must “shine in wisdom and piety, not in
+gold and silver and worldly bravery which did not become saints.” And
+he asked them not to appear before the ambassador in “gorgeous habits.”
+So the colonel—though he was not “convinced of any misbecoming bravery
+in a suit of sad-coloured cloth trimmed with gold and with silver
+points and buttons”—still conformed to his comrade’s opinion, and
+appeared as did all the other gentlemen in solemn, handsome black. When
+who should come in, “all in red and gold-a,”—in scarlet coat and cloak
+laden with gold and silver, “the coat so covered with clinquant one
+could scarcely discern the ground,” and in this gorgeous and glittering
+habit seat himself alone just under the speaker’s chair and receive the
+specially low respects and salutes of all in the ambassador’s
+train,—who should thus blazon and brazon and bourgeon forth but
+Harrison! I presume, though Hutchinson was a Puritan and a saint, he
+was a bit chagrined at his black suit of garments, and a bit angered at
+being thus decoyed; and it touched Madam Hutchinson deeply.
+
+But Hutchinson had his turn to wear gay clothes. A great funeral was to
+be given to Ireton, who was his distant kinsman; yet Cromwell, from
+jealousy, sent no bidding or mourning suit to him. A general invitation
+and notice was given to the whole assembly, and on the hour of the
+funeral, within the great, gloomy state-chamber, hung in funereal
+black, and filled with men in trappings of woe, covered with great
+black cloaks with long, weeping hatbands drooping to the ground, in
+strode Hutchinson; this time he was in scarlet and cliquante, “such as
+he usually wore,”—so wrote his wife,—astonishing the eyes of all,
+especially the diplomats and ambassadors who were present, who probably
+deemed him of so great station as to be exempt from wearing black. The
+master of ceremonies timidly regretted to him, in hesitating words,
+that no mourning had been sent—it had been in some way overlooked; the
+General could not, thus unsuitably dressed, follow the coffin in the
+funeral procession—it would not look well; the master of ceremonies
+would be rebuked—all which proved he did not know Hutchinson, for
+follow he could, and would, and did, in this rich dress. And he walked
+through the streets and stood in the Abbey, with his scarlet cloak
+flaunting and fluttering like a gay tropical bird in the midst of a
+slowly flying, sagging flock of depressed black crows,—you have seen
+their dragging, heavy flight,—and was looked upon with admiration and
+love by the people as a splendid and soldierly figure.
+
+We must not forget that the years which saw the settlement of Salem and
+Boston were not under the riot of dress countenanced by James. Charles
+I was then on the throne; and the rich and beautiful dress worn by that
+king had already taken shape.
+
+There has been an endeavor made to attribute this dress to the
+stimulus, to the influence, of Puritan feeling. Possibly some of the
+reaction against the absurdities of Elizabeth and James may have helped
+in the establishment of this costume; but I think the excellent taste
+of Charles and especially of his queen, Henrietta Maria, who succeeded
+in making women’s dress wholly beautiful, may be thanked largely for
+it. And we may be grateful to the painter Van Dyck; for he had not only
+great taste as to dress, and genius in presenting his taste to the
+public, but he had a singular appreciation of the pictorial quality of
+dress and a power of making dress appropriate to the wearer. And he
+fully understood its value in indicating character.
+
+Since Van Dyck formed and painted these fine and elegant modes, they
+are known by his name,—it is the Van Dyck costume. We have ample
+exposition of it, for his portraits are many. It is told that he
+painted forty portraits of the king and thirty of the queen, and many
+of the royal children. There are nine portraits by his hand of the Earl
+of Strafford, the king’s friend. He painted the Earl of Arundel seven
+times. Venetia, Lady Digby, had four portraits in one year. He painted
+all persons of fashion, many of distinction and dignity, and some with
+no special reason for consideration or portrayal.
+
+The Van Dyck dress is a gallant dress, one fitted for a court, not for
+everyday life, nor for a strenuous life, though men of such aims wore
+it. The absurdity of Elizabeth’s day is lacking; the richness remains.
+It is a dress distinctly expressive of dignity. The doublet is of some
+rich, silken stuff, usually satin or velvet. The sleeves are loose and
+graceful; at one time they were slashed liberally to show the fine,
+full, linen shirt-sleeve. Here are a number of slashed sleeves, from
+portraits of the day, painted by Van Dyck. The cuffs of the doublet are
+often turned back deeply to show embroidered shirt cuffs or lace
+ruffles, or even linen undersleeves. The collar of the doublet was
+wholly covered with a band or collar of rich lace and lawn, or all
+lace; this usually with the pointed edges now termed Vandykes. Band
+strings of ribbon or “snake-bone” were worn. These often had jewelled
+tassels. Rich tassels of pearl were the favorite. A short cloak was
+thrown gracefully on one shoulder or hung at the back. Knee-breeches
+edged with points or fringes or ribbons met the tops of wide, high
+boots of Spanish leather, which often also turned over with ruffles of
+leather or lace. Within-doors silken hose and shoes with rich
+shoe-roses of lace or ribbon were worn. A great hat, broad-leafed,
+often of Flemish beaver, had a splendid feather and jewelled hatband. A
+rich sword-belt and gauntleted and fringed gloves were added. A peaked
+beard with small upturned mustache formed a triangle, with the mouth in
+the centre, as in the portrait of General Waller. The hair curled
+loosely in the neck, and was rarely, I think, powdered.
+
+
+Slashed Sleeves Slashed Sleeves, _temp_. Charles I.
+
+Other great painters besides Van Dyck were fortunately in England at
+the time this dress was worn, and the king was a patron and appreciator
+of art. Hence they were encouraged in their work; and every form and
+detail of this beautiful costume is fully depicted for us.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DRESS OF THE NEW ENGLAND MOTHERS
+
+
+_“Nowe my deare hearte let me parlye a little with thee about trifles,
+for when I am present with thee, my speeche is preiudiced by thy
+presence which drawes my mind from itselfe; I suppose now, upon thy
+unkles cominge there wilbe advisinge &; counsellinge of all hands; and
+amongst many I know there wilbe some, that wilbe provokinge thee, in
+these indifferent things, as matter of apparell, fashions and other
+circumstances; I hould it a rule of Christian wisdome in all things to
+follow the soberest examples; I confesse that there be some ornaments
+which for Virgins and Knights Daughters &;c may be comly and
+tollerrable which yet in soe great a change as thine is, may well
+admitt a change allso; I will medle with noe particulars neither doe I
+thinke it shall be needfull; thine own wisdome and godliness shall
+teach thee sufficiently what to doe in such things. I knowe thou wilt
+not grieve me for trifles. Let me intreate thee (my sweet Love) to take
+all in good part.”_
+
+—JOHN WINTHROP TO MARGARET TYNDALE, 1616.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DRESS OF THE NEW ENGLAND MOTHERS
+
+
+I
+
+
+have expressed a doubt that the dress of Cavalier and Puritan varied as
+much as has been popularly believed; I feel sure that the dress of
+Puritan women did not differ from the attire of women of quiet life who
+remained in the Church of England; nor did it vary materially either in
+form or quality from the attire of the sensible followers of court
+life. It simply did not extend to the extreme of the mode in gay color,
+extravagance, or grotesqueness. In the first severity of revolt over
+the dissoluteness of English life which had shown so plainly in the
+extravagance and absurdity of English court dress, many persons of deep
+thought (especially men), both of the Church of England and of the
+Puritan faith, expressed their feeling by a change in their dress.
+Doubtless also in some the extremity of feeling extended to fanaticism.
+It is always thus in reforms; the slow start becomes suddenly a violent
+rush which needs to be retarded and moderated, and it always is
+moderated. I have referred to one exhibition of bigotry in regard to
+dress which is found in the annals of Puritanism; it is detailed in the
+censure and attempt at restraint of the dress of Madam Johnson, the
+wife of the Rev. Francis Johnson, the pastor of the exiles to Holland.
+
+There is a tradition that Parson Johnson was one of the Marprelate
+brotherhood, who certainly deserved the imprisonment they received,
+were it only for their ill-spelling and ill-use of their native tongue.
+The Marprelate pamphlet before me as I write had an author who could
+not even spell the titles of the prelates it assailed; but called them
+“parsones, fyckers and currats,” the latter two names being intended
+for vicars and curates. The story of Madam Johnson’s revolt, and her
+triumph, is preserved to us in such real and earnest language, and was
+such a vital thing to the actors in the little play, that it seems
+almost irreverent to regard it as a farce, yet none to-day could read
+of it without a sense of absurdity, and we may as well laugh frankly
+and freely at the episode.
+
+When the protagonist of this Puritan comedy entered the stage, she was
+a widow—Tomison or Thomasine Boyes, a “warm” widow, as the saying of
+the day ran, that is, warm with a comfortable legacy of ready money.
+She was a young widow, and she was handsome. At any rate, it was
+brought up against her when events came to a climax; it was testified
+in the church examination or trial that “men called her a bouncing
+girl,” as if she could help that! Husband Boyes had been a haberdasher,
+and I fancy she got both her finery and her love of finery in his shop.
+And it was told with all the petty terms of scandal-mongering that
+might be heard in a small shop in a small English town to-day; it was
+told very gravely that the “clarkes in the shop” compared her for her
+pride in apparel to the wife of the Bishop of London, and it was
+affirmed that she stood “gazing, braving, and vaunting in shop doores.”
+
+Now this special complaint against the Widow Boyes, that she stood
+braving and vaunting in shop doors, was not a far-fetched attack
+brought as a novelty of tantalizing annoyance; it touches in her what
+was one of the light carriages of the day, which were so detestable to
+sober and thoughtful folk, an odious custom specified by Stubbes in his
+_Anatomy of Abuses_. He writes thus of London women, the wives of
+merchants:—
+
+
+“Othersome spend the greater part of the daie in sittyng at the doore,
+to shewe their braveries, to make knowen their beauties, to behold the
+passers by; to view the coast, to see fashions, and to acquaint
+themselves of the bravest fellows—for, if not for these causes, I know
+no other causes why they should sitt at their doores—as many doe from
+Morning till Noon, from Noon till Night.”
+
+
+Other writers give other reasons for this “vaunting.” We learn that
+“merchants’ wives had seats built a purpose” to sit in, in order to
+lure customers. Marston in _The Dutch Courtesan_ says:—
+
+
+“His wife’s a proper woman—that she is! She has been as proper a woman
+as any in the Chepe. She paints now, and yet she keeps her husband’s
+old customers to him still. In troth, a fine-fac’d wife in a
+wainscot-carved seat, is a worthy ornament to any tradesman’s shop. And
+an attractive one I’le warrant.”
+
+
+This handsome, buxom, bouncing widow fell in love with Pastor Johnson,
+and he with her, while he was “a prisoner in the Clink,” he having been
+thrown therein by the Archbishop of Canterbury for his persistent
+preaching of Puritanism. Many of his friends “thought this not a good
+match” for him at any time; and all deemed it ill advised for a man in
+prison to pledge himself in matrimony to any one. And soon zealous and
+meddlesome Brother George Johnson took a hand in advice and counsel,
+with as high a hand as if Francis had been a child instead of a man of
+thirty-two, and a man of experience as well, and likewise older than
+George.
+
+George at first opened warily, saying in his letters that “he was very
+loth to contrary his brother;” still Brother Francis must be sensible
+that this widow was noted for her pride and vanity, her light and
+garish dress, and that it would give great offence to all Puritans if
+he married her, and “it (the vanity and extravagance, etc.) should not
+be refrained.” There was then some apparent concession and yielding on
+the widow’s part, for George for a time “sett down satysfyed”; when
+suddenly, to his “great grief” and discomfiture, he found that his
+brother had been “inveigled and overcarried,” and the sly twain had
+been married secretly in prison.
+
+It must be remembered that this was in the last years of Elizabeth’s
+reign, in 1596, when the laws were rigid in attempts at limitation of
+dress, as I shall note later in this chapter. But there were certain
+privileges of large estate, even if the owner were of mean birth; and
+Madam Johnson certainly had money enough to warrant her costly apparel,
+and in ready cash also, from Husband Boyes. But in the first good
+temper and general good will of the honeymoon she “obeyed”; she
+promised to dress as became her husband’s condition, which would
+naturally mean much simpler attire. He was soon in very bad case for
+having married without permission of the archbishop, and was still more
+closely confined within-walls; but even while he lingered in prison,
+Brother George saw with anguish that the bride’s short obedience had
+ended. She appeared in “more garish and proud apparell” than he had
+ever before seen upon the widow,—naturally enough for a bride,—even the
+bride of a bridegroom in prison; but he “dealt with her that she would
+refrain”—poor, simple man! She dallied on, tantalizing him and daring
+him, and she was very “bold in inviting proof,” but never quitting her
+bridal finery for one moment; so George read to her with emphasis, as a
+final and unconquerable weapon, that favorite wail of all men who would
+check or reprove an extravagant woman, namely, Isaiah iii, 16 _et
+seq_., the chapter called by Mercy Warren
+
+“... An antiquated page
+That taught us the threatenings of an Hebrew sage
+Gainst wimples, mantles, curls and crisping pins.”
+
+
+I wonder how many Puritan parsons have preached fatuously upon those
+verses! how many defiant women have had them read to them—and how many
+meek ones! I knew a deacon’s wife in Worcester, some years ago, who
+asked for a new pair of India-rubber overshoes, and in pious response
+her frugal partner slapped open the great Bible at this favorite third
+chapter of the lamenting and threatening prophet, and roared out to his
+poor little wife, sitting meekly before him in calico gown and checked
+apron, the lesson of the haughty daughters of Zion walking with
+stretched-forth necks and tinkling feet; of their chains and bracelets
+and mufflers; their bonnets and rings and rich jewels; their mantles
+and wimples and crisping-pins; their fair hoods and veils—oh, how she
+must have longed for an Oriental husband!
+
+Petulant with his new sister-in-law’s successful evasions of his
+readings, his letters, and his advice, his instructions, his pleadings,
+his commands, and “full of sauce and zeal” like Elnathan, George
+Johnson, in emulation of the prophet Isaiah, made a list of the
+offences of this London “daughter of Zion,” wrote them out, and
+presented them to the congregation. She wore “3, 4, or even 5 gold
+rings at one time” Then likewise “her Busks and ye Whalebones at her
+Brest were soe manifest that many of ye Saints were greeved thereby.”
+She was asked to “pull off her Excessive Deal of Lace.” And she was
+fairly implored to “exchange ye Schowish Hatt for a sober Taffety or
+Felt.” She was ordered severely “to discontinue Whalebones,” and to
+“quit ye great starcht Ruffs, ye Muske, and ye Rings.” And not to wear
+her bodice tied to her petticoat “as men do their doublets to their
+hose contrary to I Thessalonians, V, 22.” And a certain stomacher or
+neckerchief he plainly called “abominable and loathsome.” A “schowish
+Velvet Hood,” such as only “the richest, finest and proudest sort
+should use,” was likewise beyond endurance, almost beyond forgiveness,
+and other “gawrish gear gave him grave greevance.”
+
+
+Mrs. William Clark. Mrs. William Clark.
+
+But here the young husband interfered, as it was high time he should;
+and he called his brother “fantasticall, fond, ignorant,
+anabaptisticall and such like,” though what the poor Anabaptists had to
+do with such dress quarrels I know not. George’s cautious reference in
+his letter to the third verse of the third chapter of Jeremiah made the
+parson call it “the Abhominablest Letter ever was written.” George, a
+bit frightened, answered pacificatorily that he noted of late that “the
+excessive lace upon the sleeve of her dress had a Cover drawn upon it;”
+that the stomacher was not “so gawrish, so low, and so spitz-fashioned
+as it was wont to be”; nor was her hat “so topishly set,”—and he
+expressed pious gladness at the happy change, “hoping more would
+follow,”—and for a time all did seem subdued. But soon another
+meddlesome young man became “greeved” (did ever any one hear of such a
+set of silly, grieving fellows?); and seeing “how heavily the young
+gentleman took it,” stupid George must interfere again, to be met this
+time very boldly by the bouncing girl herself, who, he writes sadly,
+answered him in a tone “very peert and coppet.” “Coppet” is a
+delightful old word which all our dictionaries have missed; it
+signifies impudent, saucy, or, to be precise, “sassy,” which we all
+know has a shade more of meaning. “Peert and coppet” is a delightful
+characterization. George refused to give the sad young complainer’s
+name, who must have been well ashamed of himself by this time, and was
+then reproached with being a “forestaller,” a “picker,” and a
+“quarrelous meddler”—and with truth.
+
+During the action of this farce, all had gone from London into exile in
+Holland. Then came the sudden trip to Newfoundland and the disastrous
+and speedy return to Holland again. And through the misfortunes and the
+exiles, the company drew more closely together, and gentle words
+prevailed; George was “sorie if he had overcarried himself”; Madam “was
+sure if it were to do now, she would not so wear it.” Still, she did
+not offer her martinet of a brother-in-law a room to lodge in in her
+house, though she had many rooms unused, and he needed shelter, whereat
+he whimpered much; and soon he was charging her again “with Muske as a
+sin” (musk was at that time in the very height of fashion in France)
+and cavilling at her unbearable “topish hat.” Then came long argument
+and sparring for months over “topishness,” which seems to have been
+deemed a most offensive term. They told its nature and being; they
+brought in Greek derivatives, and the pastor produced a syllogism upon
+the word. And they declared that the hat in itself was not topish, but
+only became so when she wore it, she being the wife of a preacher; and
+they disputed over velvet and vanity; they bickered over topishness and
+lightness; they wrangled about lawn coives and busks in a way that was
+sad to read. The pastor argued soundly, logically, that both coives and
+busks might be lawfully used; whereat one of his flock, Christopher
+Dickens, rose up promptly in dire fright and dread of future
+extravagance among the women-saints in the line of topish hats and
+coives and busks, and he “begged them not to speak so, and _so loud_,
+lest it should bring _many inconveniences among their wives_.” Finally
+the topish head-gear was demanded in court, which the parson declared
+was “offensive”; and so they bickered on till a most unseemly hour,
+till _ten o’clock at night_, as “was proved by the watchman and
+rattleman coming about.” Naturally they wished to go to bed at an early
+hour, for religious services began at nine; one of the complaints
+against the topish bride was that she was a “slug-a-bed,” flippantly
+refused to rise and have her house ordered and ready for the nine
+o’clock public service. The meetings were then held in the parson’s
+house, and held every day; which may have been one reason why the
+settlement grew poorer. It matters little what was said, or how it
+ended, since it did not disrupt and disband the Holland Pilgrims. For
+eleven years this stupid wrangling lasted; and it seemed imminent that
+the settlement would finish with a separation, and a return of many to
+England. Slight events have great power—this topish hat of a vain and
+pretty, a peert and coppet young Puritan bride came near to hindering
+and changing the colonization of America.
+
+
+Lady Mary Armine. Lady Mary Armine.
+
+I have related this episode at some length because its recounting makes
+us enter into the spirit of the first Separatist settlers. It shows us
+too that dress conquered zeal; it could not be “forborne” by entreaty,
+by reproof, by discipline, by threats, by example. An influence, or
+perhaps I should term it an echo, of this long quarrel is seen plainly
+by the thoughtful mind in the sumptuary laws of the New World. Some of
+the articles of dress so dreaded, so discussed in Holland, still
+threatened the peace of Puritanical husbands in New England; they still
+dreaded many inconveniences. In 1634, the general court of
+Massachusetts issued this edict:—
+
+
+“That no person, man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any
+Apparell, either Woolen, or Silk, or Linen, with any Lace on it,
+Silver, Gold, or Thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said
+clothes. Also that no person either man or woman, shall make or buy any
+Slashed Clothes, other than one Slash in each Sleeve and another in the
+Back. Also all Cut-works, embroideries, or Needlework Caps, Bands or
+Rails, are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn under the aforesaid
+Penalty; also all gold or silver Girdles Hat bands, Belts, Ruffs,
+Beaver hats are prohibited to be bought and worn hereafter.”
+
+
+Fines were stated, also the amount of estate which released the
+dress-wearer from restriction. Liberty was given to all to wear out the
+apparel which they had on hand except “immoderate great sleeves,
+slashed apparell, immoderate great rails, and long wings”—these being
+beyond endurance.
+
+In 1639 “immoderate great breeches, knots of riban, broad shoulder
+bands and rayles, silk roses, double ruffles and capes” were forbidden
+to folk of low estate. Soon the court expressed its “utter detestation
+and dislike,” that men and women of “mean condition, education and
+calling” should take upon themselves “the garb of gentlemen” by wearing
+gold and silver lace, buttons and points at the knee, or “walk in great
+boots,” or women of the same low rank to wear silk or tiffany hoods or
+scarfs. There were likewise orders that no short sleeves should be worn
+“whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered”; women’s sleeves
+were not to be more than half an ell wide; long hair and immodest
+laying out of the hair and wearing borders of hair were abhorrent. Poor
+folk must not appear with “naked breasts and arms; or as it were
+pinioned with superstitious ribbons on hair and apparell.” Tailors who
+made garments for servants or children, richer than the garments of the
+parents or masters of these juniors, were to be fined. Similar laws
+were passed in Connecticut and Virginia. I know of no one being
+“psented” under these laws in Virginia, but in Connecticut and
+Massachusetts both men and women were fined. In 1676, in Northampton,
+thirty-six young women at one time were brought up for overdress
+chiefly in hoods; and an amusing entry in the court record is that one
+of them, Hannah Lyman, appeared in the very hood for which she was
+fined; and was thereupon censured for “wearing silk in a fflonting
+manner, in an offensive way, not only before but when she stood
+Psented. Not only in Ordinary but Extraordinary times.” These girls
+were all fined; but six years later, when a stern magistrate attempted
+a similar persecution, the indictments were quashed.
+
+
+The Tub-preacher. The Tub-preacher.
+
+It is not unusual to find the careless observer or the superficial
+reader—and writer—commenting upon the sumptuary laws of the New World
+as if they were extraordinary and peculiar. There appeared in a recent
+American magazine a long rehearsal of the unheard-of presumption of
+Puritan magistrates in their prohibition of certain articles of dress.
+This writer was evidently wholly ignorant of the existence of similar
+laws in England, and even of like laws in Virginia, but railed against
+Winthrop and Endicott as monsters of Puritanical arrogance and
+impudence.
+
+In truth, however, such laws had existed not only in France and
+England, but since the days of the old Locrian legislation, when it was
+ordered that no woman should go attended with more than one maid in the
+street “unless she were drunk.” Ancient Rome and Sparta were surrounded
+by dress restrictions which were broken just as were similar ones in
+more modern times. The Roman could wear a robe but of a single color;
+he could wear in embroideries not more than half an ounce of gold; and,
+with what seems churlishness he was forbidden to ride in a carriage. At
+that time, just as in later days, dress was made to emphasize class
+distinction, and the clergy joined with the magistrates in denouncing
+extravagant dress in both men and women. The chronicles of the monks
+are ever chiding men for their peaked shoes, deep sleeves and curled
+locks like women, and Savonarola outdid them all in severity. The
+English kings and queens, jealous of the rich dress of their opulent
+subjects, multiplied restrictions, and some very curious anecdotes
+exist of the calm assumption by both Elizabeth and Mary to their own
+wardrobe of the rich finery of some lady at the court who displayed
+some new and too becoming fancy.
+
+
+Old Venice Point Lace. Old Venice Point Lace.
+
+Adam Smith declared it “an act of highest impertinence and presumption
+for kings and rulers to pretend to watch over the earnings and
+expenditure of private persons,” nevertheless this public interference
+lingered long, especially under monarchies.
+
+These sumptuary laws of New England followed in spirit and letter
+similar laws in England. Winthrop had seen the many apprentices who ran
+through London streets, dressed under laws as full of details of dress
+as is a modern journal of the modes. For instance, the apprentice’s
+head-covering must be a small, flat, round cap, called often a bonnet—a
+hat like a pie-dish. The facing of the hat could not exceed three
+inches in breadth in the head; nor could the hat with band and facing
+cost over five shillings. His band or collar could have no lace edge;
+it must be of linen not over five shillings an ell in price; and could
+have no other work or ornament save “a plain hem and one stitch”—which
+was a hemstitch. If he wore a ruff, it must not be over three inches
+wide before it was gathered and set into the “stock.” The collar of his
+doublet could have neither “point, well-bone or plait,” but must be
+made “close and comely.” The stuff of his doublet and breeches could
+not cost over two shillings and sixpence a yard. It could be either
+cloth, kersey, fustian, sackcloth, canvas, or “English stuff”; or
+leather could be used. The breeches were generally of the shape known
+as “round slops.” His stockings could be knit or of cloth; but his
+shoes could have no polonia heels. His hair was to be cut close, with
+no “tuft or lock.”
+
+Queen Elizabeth stood no nonsense in these things; finding that London
+’prentices had adopted a certain white stitching for their collars, she
+put a stop to this mild finery by ordering the first transgressor to be
+whipped publicly in the hall of his company. These same laws, tinkered
+and altered to suit occasions, appear for many years in English
+records, for years after New England’s sumptuary laws were silenced.
+
+Notwithstanding Hannah Lyman and the thirty-six vain Northampton girls,
+we do not on the whole hear great complaint of extravagance in dress or
+deportment. At any rate none were called bouncing girls. The portraits
+of men or women certainly show no restraint as to richness in dress.
+Their sumptuary laws were of less use to their day than to ours, for
+they do reveal to us what articles of dress our forbears wore.
+
+While the Massachusetts magistrates were fussing a little over woman’s
+dress, the parsons, as a whole, were remarkably silent. Of course two
+or three of them could not refrain from announcing a text from Isaiah
+iii, 16 _et seq_., and enlarging upon the well-worn wimples and nose
+jewels, and bells on their feet, which were as much out of fashion in
+Massachusetts then as now. It is such a well-rounded, ringing, colorful
+arraignment of woman’s follies you couldn’t expect a parson to give it
+up. Every evil predicted of the prophet was laid at the door of these
+demure Puritan dames,—fire and war, and caterpillars, and even
+baldness, which last was really unjust. Solomon Stoddard preached on
+the “Intolerable Pride in the Plantations in Clothes and Hair,” that
+his parishioners “drew iniquity with a cord of vanity and sin with a
+cart-rope.” The apostle Paul also furnished ample texts for the Puritan
+preacher.
+
+
+Rebecca Rawson. Rebecca Rawson.
+
+In the eleventh chapter of Corinthians wise Paul delivered some
+sentences of exhortation, of reproof, of warning to Corinthian women
+which I presume he understood and perhaps Corinthian dames did, but
+which have been a dire puzzle since to parsons and male members of
+their congregations. (I cannot think that women ever bothered much
+about his words.) For instance, Archbishop Latimer, in one of the
+cheerful, slangy rallies to his hearers which he called sermons, quotes
+Paul’s sentence that a woman ought to have a power on her head, and
+construes positively that a power is a French hood. This is certainly a
+somewhat surprising notion, but I presume he knew. However, Roger
+Williams deemed a power a veil; and being somewhat dictatorial in his
+words, albeit the tenderest of creatures in his heart, he bade Salem
+women come to meeting in a veil, telling them they should come like
+Sarah of old, wearing this veil as a token of submission to their
+husbands. The text saith this exactly, “A woman ought to have power on
+her head because of the angels,” which seems to me one of those
+convenient sayings of Paul and others which can be twisted to many, to
+any meanings, even to Latimer’s French hood. Old John Cotton, of
+course, found ample Scripture to prove Salem women should not wear
+veils, and so here in this New World, as in the Holland sojourn, the
+head-covering of the mothers rent in twain the meetings of the fathers,
+while the women wore veils or no veils, French hoods or beaver hats, in
+despite of Paul’s opinions and their husbands’ constructions of his
+opinions.
+
+An excellent description of the Puritan women of a dissenting
+congregation is in _Hudibras Redivivus;_ it reads:—
+
+“The good old dames among the rest
+Were all most primitively drest
+In stiffen-bodyed russet gowns
+And on their heads old steeple crowns
+With pristine pinners next their faces
+Edged round with ancient scallop-laces,
+Such as, my antiquary says,
+Were worn in old Queen Bess’s days,
+In ruffs; and fifty other ways
+Their wrinkled necks were covered o’er
+With whisks of lawn by granmarms wore.”
+
+
+The “old steeple crowns” over “pristine pinners” were not peculiar to
+the Puritans. There was a time, in the first years of the seventeenth
+century, when many Englishwomen wore steeple-crowned hats with costly
+hatbands. We find them in pictures of women of the court, as well as
+upon the heads of Puritans. I have a dozen prints and portraits of
+Englishwomen in rich dress with these hats. The Quaker Tub-preacher,
+shown here, wears one. Perhaps the best known example to Americans may
+be seen in the portrait of Pocahontas here.
+
+Authentic portraits of American women who came in the _Mayflower_ or in
+the first ships to the Massachusetts Bay settlement, there are none to
+my knowledge. Some exist which are doubtless of that day, but cannot be
+certified. One preserved in Connecticut in the family of Governor Eaton
+shows a brown old canvas like a Rembrandt. The subject is believed to
+be of the Yale family, and the chief and most distinct feature of dress
+is the ruff.
+
+It was a time of change both of men’s and women’s neckwear. A few older
+women clung to the ruffs of their youth; younger women wore bands,
+falling-bands, falls, rebatoes, falling-whisks and whisks, the “fifty
+other ways” which could be counted everywhere. Carlyle says:—
+
+
+“There are various traceable small threads of relation, interesting
+reciprocities and mutabilities connecting the poor young Infant, New
+England, with its old Puritan mother and her affairs, which ought to be
+disentangled, to be made conspicuous by the Infant herself now she has
+grown big.”
+
+
+These traceable threads of relation are ever of romantic interest to
+me, and even when I refer to the dress of English folk I linger with
+pleasure with those whose lives were connected even by the smallest
+thread with the Infant, New England. One such thread of connection was
+in the life of Lady Mary Armine; so I choose to give her picture here,
+to illustrate the dress, if not of a New Englander, yet of one of New
+England’s closest friends. She was a noble, high-minded English
+gentlewoman, who gave “even to her dying day” to the conversion of poor
+tawny heathen of New England. A churchwoman by open profession, she was
+a Puritan in her sympathies, as were many of England’s best hearts and
+souls who never left the Church of England. She gave in one gift £500
+to families of ministers who had been driven from their pulpits in
+England. The Nipmuck schools at Natick and Hassamanesit (near Grafton)
+were founded under her patronage. The life of this “Truly Honourable,
+Very Aged and Singularly Pious Lady who dyed 1675,” was written as a
+“pattern to Ladies.” Her long prosy epitaph, after enumerating the
+virtues of many of the name of Mary, concludes thus:—
+
+“The Army of such Ladies so Divine
+This Lady said ‘I’ll follow, they Ar-mine.’
+Lady Elect! in whom there did combine
+So many Maries, might well say All Ar-mine.”
+
+
+A pun was a Puritan’s one jocularity; and he would pun even in an
+epitaph.
+
+It will be seen that Lady Mary Armine wears the straight collar or
+band, and the black French hood which was the forerunner, then the
+rival, and at last the survivor of the “sugar-loaf” beaver or felt
+hat,—a hood with a history, which will have a chapter for the telling
+thereof. Lady Mary wears a peaked widow’s cap under her hood; this also
+is a detail of much interest.
+
+Another portrait of this date is of Mrs. Clark (see here). This has two
+singular details; namely, a thumb-ring, which was frequently owned but
+infrequently painted, and a singular bracelet, which is accurately
+described in the verse of Herrick, written at that date:—
+
+“I saw about her spotless wrist
+Of blackest silk a curious twist
+Which circumvolving gently there
+Enthralled her arm as prisoner.”
+
+
+I may say in passing that I have seen in portraits knots of narrow
+ribbon on the wrists, both of men and women, and I am sure they had
+some mourning significance, as did the knot of black on the left arm of
+the queen of King James of England.
+
+We have in the portrait shown as a frontispiece an excellent
+presentment of the dress of the Puritan woman of refinement; the dress
+worn by the wives of Winthrop, Endicott, Leverett, Dudley, Saltonstall,
+and other gentlemen of Salem and Boston and Plymouth. We have also the
+dress worn by her little child about a year old. This portrait is of
+Madam Padishal. She was a Plymouth woman; and we know from the
+inventories of estates that there were not so many richly dressed women
+in Plymouth as in Boston and Salem. This dress of Madam Padishal’s is
+certainly much richer than the ordinary attire of Plymouth dames of
+that generation.
+
+This portrait has been preserved in Plymouth in the family of Judge
+Thomas, from whom it descended to the present owner. Madam Padishal was
+young and handsome when this portrait was painted. Her black velvet
+gown is shaped just like the gown of Madam Rawson (shown here), of
+Madam Stoddard (shown here), both Boston women; and of the English
+ladies of her times. It is much richer than that of Lady Mary Armine or
+Mrs. Clark.
+
+The gown of Madam Padishal is varied pleasingly from that of Lady Mary
+Armine, in that the body is low-necked, and the lace whisk is worn over
+the bare neck. The pearl necklace and ear-rings likewise show a more
+frivolous spirit than that of the English dame.
+
+Another Plymouth portrait of very rich dress, that of Elizabeth Paddy,
+Mrs. John Wensley, faces this page. The dress in this is a golden-brown
+brocade under-petticoat and satin overdress. The stiff, busked stays
+are equal to Queen Elizabeth’s. Revers at the edge of overdress and on
+the virago sleeves are now of flame color, a Spanish pink, but were
+originally scarlet, I am sure. The narrow stomacher is a beaded galloon
+with bright spangles and bugles. On the hair there shows above the ears
+a curious ornament which resembles a band of this galloon. There are
+traces of a similar ornament in Madam Rawson’s portrait (here); and
+Madam Stoddard’s (here) has some ornament over the ears. This may have
+been a modification of a contemporary Dutch head-jewel. The pattern of
+the lace of Elizabeth Paddy’s whisk is most distinct; it was a good
+costly Flemish parchment lace like Mrs. Padishal’s. She carries a fan,
+and wears rings, a pearl necklace, and ear-rings. I may say here that I
+have never seen other jewels than these,—a few rings, and necklace and
+ear-rings of pearl. Other necklaces seem never to have been worn.
+
+
+Elizabeth Paddy Wensley. Elizabeth Paddy Wensley.
+
+We cannot always trust that all the jewels seen in these portraits were
+real, or that the sitter owned as many as represented. A bill is in
+existence where a painter charged ten shillings extra for bestowing a
+gold and pearl necklace upon his complaisant subject. In this case,
+however, the extra charge was to pay for the gold paint or gold-leaf
+used for gilding the painted necklace. In the amusing letters of Lady
+Sussex to Lord Verney are many relating to her portrait by Van Dyck.
+She consented to the painting very unwillingly, saying, “it is money
+ill bestowed.” She writes:—
+
+
+“Put Sr Vandyke in remembrance to do my pictuer well. I have seen
+sables with the clasp of them set with diamonds—if those I am pictured
+in were done so, I think it would look very well in the pictuer. If Sr
+Vandyke thinks it would do well I pray desier him to do all the clawes
+so. I do not mene the end of the tales but only the end of the other
+peces, they call them clawes I think.”
+
+
+This gives a glimpse of a richness of detail in dress even beyond our
+own day, and one which I commend to some New York dame of vast wealth,
+to have the claws of her sables set with diamonds. She writes later in
+two letters of some weeks’ difference in date:—
+
+
+“I am glad you have prefalede with Sr Vandyke to make my pictuer
+leaner, for truly it was too fat. If he made it farer it will bee to my
+credit. I am glad you have made Sr Vandyke mind my dress.” ...
+
+
+“I am glad you have got home my pictuer, but I doubt he has made it
+lener or farer, but too rich in jewels, I am sure; but ’tis no great
+matter for another age to thinke mee richer than I was. I wish it could
+be mended in the face for sure ’tis very ugly. The pictuer is very
+ill-favourede, makes me quite out of love with myselfe, the face is so
+bigg and so fat it pleases mee not at all. It looks like one of the
+Windes puffinge—(but truly I think it is lyke the original).”
+
+
+I am struck by a likeness in workmanship in the portraits of these two
+Plymouth dames, and the portrait of Madam Stoddard (here), and
+succeeding illustrations of the Gibbes children. I do wish I knew
+whether these were painted by Tom Child—a painter-stainer and limner
+referred to by Judge Samuel Sewall in his Diary, who was living in
+Boston at that time. Perhaps we may find something, some day, to tell
+us this. I feel sure these were all painted in America, especially the
+portraits of the Gibbes children. A great many coats-of-arms were made
+in Boston at this time, and I expect the painter-stainer made them. All
+painting then was called coloring. A man would say in 1700, “Archer has
+set us a fine example of expense; he has colored his house, and has
+even laid one room in oils; he had the painter-stainer from Boston to
+do it—the man who limns faces, and does pieces, and tricks coats.” This
+was absolutely correct English, but we would hardly know that the man
+meant: “Archer has been extravagant enough; he has painted his house,
+and even painted the woodwork of one room. He had the artist from
+Boston to do the work—the painter of faces and full-lengths, who makes
+coats-of-arms.”
+
+It is hard to associate the very melancholy countenance shown here with
+a tradition of youth and beauty. Had the portrait been painted after a
+romance of sorrow came to this young maid, Rebecca Rawson, we could
+understand her expression; but it was painted when she was young and
+beautiful, so beautiful that she caught the eye and the wandering
+affections of a wandering gentleman, who announced himself as the son
+of one nobleman and kinsman of many others, and persuaded this daughter
+of Secretary Edward Rawson to marry him, which she did in the presence
+of forty witnesses. This young married pair then went to London, where
+the husband deserted Rebecca, who found to her horror that she was not
+his wife, as he had at least one English wife living. Alone and proud,
+Rebecca Rawson supported herself and her child by painting on glass;
+and when at last she set out to return to her childhood’s home, her
+life was lost at sea by shipwreck.
+
+The portrait of another Boston woman of distinction, Mrs. Simeon
+Stoddard, is given here. I will attempt to explain who Mrs. Simeon
+Stoddard was. She was Mr. Stoddard’s third widow and the third widow
+also of Peter Sergeant, builder of the Province House. Mr. Sergeant’s
+second wife had been married twice before she married him, and Simeon
+Stoddard’s father had four wives, all having been widows when he
+married them. Lastly, our Mrs. Simeon Stoddard, triumphing over death
+and this gallimaufry of Boston widows, took a fourth husband, the
+richest merchant in town, Samuel Shrimpton. Having had in all four
+husbands of wealth, and with them and their accumulation of widows
+there must have been as a widow’s mite an immense increment and
+inheritance of clothing (for clothing we know was a valued bequest), it
+is natural that we find her very richly dressed and with a distinctly
+haughty look upon her handsome face as becomes a conqueror both of men
+and widows.
+
+The straight, lace collar, such as is worn by Madam Padishal and shown
+in all portraits of this date, is, I believe, a whisk.
+
+The whisk was a very interesting and to us a puzzling article of
+attire, through the lack of precise description. It was at first called
+the falling-whisk, and is believed to have been simply the handsome,
+lace-edged, stiff, standing collar turned down over the shoulders. This
+collar had been both worn with the ruff and worn after it, and had been
+called a fall. Quicherat tells that the “whisk” came into universal use
+in 1644, when very low-necked gowns were worn, and that it was simply a
+kerchief or fichu to cover the neck.
+
+We have a few side-lights to help us, as to the shape of the whisk, in
+the form of advertisements of lost whisks. In one case (1662) it is “a
+cambric whisk with Flanders lace, about a quarter of a yard broad, and
+a lace turning up about an inch broad, with a stock in the neck and a
+strap hanging down before.” And in 1664 “A Tiffany Whisk with a great
+Lace down and a little one up, of large Flowers, and open work; with a
+Roul for the Head and Peak.” The roll and peak were part of a cap.
+
+
+Mrs. Simeon Stoddard. Mrs. Simeon Stoddard.
+
+These portraits show whisks in slightly varying forms. We have the
+“broad Lace lying down” in the handsome band at the shoulder; the
+“little lace standing up” was a narrow lace edging the whisk at the
+throat or just above the broad lace. Sometimes the whisk was wholly of
+mull or lawn. The whisk was at first wholly a part of woman’s attire,
+then for a time it was worn, in modified form, by men.
+
+Madam Pepys had a white whisk in 1660 and then a “noble lace whisk.”
+The same year she bought hers in London, Governor Berkeley paid half a
+pound for a tiffany whisk in Virginia. Many American women, probably
+all well-dressed women, had them. They are also seen on French
+portraits of the day. One of Madam de Maintenon shows precisely the
+same whisk as this of Madam Padishal’s, tied in front with tiny knots
+of ribbon.
+
+It will be noted that Madam Padishal has black lace frills about the
+upper portion of the sleeve, at the arm-scye. English portraits
+previous to the year 1660 seldom show black lace, and portraits are not
+many of the succeeding forty years which have black lace, so in this
+American portrait this detail is unusual. The wearing of black lace
+came into a short popularity in the year 1660, through compliment to
+the Spanish court upon the marriage of the young French king, Louis
+XIV, with the Infanta. The English court followed promptly. Pepys
+gloried in “our Mistress Stewart in black and white lace.” It interests
+me to see how quickly American women had the very latest court fashions
+and wore them even in uncourtlike America; such distinct novelties as
+black lace. Contemporary descriptions of dress are silent as to it by
+the year 1700, and it disappears from portraits until a century later,
+when we have pretty black lace collars, capes and fichus, as may be
+seen on the portraits of Mrs. Sedgwick, Mrs. Waldo, and others later in
+this book. These first black laces of 1660 are Bayeux laces, which are
+precisely like our Chantilly laces of to-day. This ancient piece of
+black lace has been carefully preserved in an old New York family. A
+portrait of the year 1690 has a black lace frill like the Maltese laces
+of to-day, with the same guipure pattern. But such laces were not made
+in Malta until after 1833. So it must have been a guipure lace of the
+kind known in England as parchment lace. This was made in the environs
+of Paris, but was seldom black, so this was a rare bit. It was
+sometimes made of gold and silver thread. Parchment lace was a favorite
+lace of Mary, Queen of Scots, and through her good offices was peddled
+in England by French lace-makers. The black moiré hoods of Italian
+women sometimes had a narrow edge of black lace, and a little was
+brought to England on French hoods, but as a whole black lace was
+seldom seen or known.
+
+
+Ancient Black Lace. Ancient Black Lace.
+
+An evidence of the widespread extent of fashions even in that day, a
+proof that English and French women and American women (when American
+women there were other than the native squaws) all dressed alike, is
+found in comparing portraits. An interesting one from the James Jackson
+Jarvis Collection is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is of an
+unknown woman and by an unknown artist, and is simply labelled “Of the
+School of Susteman.” But this unknown Frenchwoman has a dress as
+precisely like Madam Padishal’s and Madam Stoddard’s as are Doucet’s
+models of to-day like each other. All have the whisk of rich
+straight-edged lace, and the tiny knots of velvet ribbon. All have the
+sleeve knots, but the French portrait is gay in narrow red and buff
+ribbon.
+
+Doubtless many have formed their notion of Puritan dress from the
+imaginary pictures of several popular modern artists. It can plainly be
+seen by any one who examines the portraits in this book that they are
+little like these modern representations. The single figures called
+“Priscilla” and “Rose Standish” are well known. The former is the
+better in costume, and could the close dark cloth or velvet hood with
+turned-back band, and plain linen edge displayed beneath, be exchanged
+for the horseshoe shaped French hood which was then and many years
+later the universal head-wear, the verisimilitude would be increased.
+This hood is shown on the portraits of Madam Rawson, Madam Stoddard,
+Mistress Paddy, and others in this book. Rose Standish’s cap is a very
+pretty one, much prettier than the French hood, but I do not find it
+like any cap in English portraits of that day. Nor have I seen her
+picturesque sash. I do not deny the existence in portraits of 1620 of
+this cap and sash; I simply say that I have never found them myself in
+the hundreds of English portraits, effigies, etc., that I have
+examined.
+
+It will be noted that the women in the modern pictures all wear aprons.
+I think this is correct as they are drawn in their everyday dress, but
+it will be noted that none of these portraits display an apron; nor was
+an apron part of any rich dress in the seventeenth century. The reign
+of the apron had been in the sixteenth century, and it came in again
+with Anne. Of course every woman in Massachusetts used aprons.
+
+Early inventories of the effects of emigrant dames contain many an item
+of those housewifely garments. Jane Humphreys, of Dorchester,
+Massachusetts, had in her good wardrobe, in 1668, “2 Blew aprons, A
+White Holland Apron with a Small Lace at the bottom. A White Holland
+Apron with two breathes in it. My best white apron. My greene apron.”
+
+In the pictures, _The Return of the Mayflower_ and _The Pilgrim
+Exiles_, the masculine dress therein displayed is very close to that of
+the real men of the times. The great power of these pictures is, after
+all, not in the dress, but in the expression of the faces. The artist
+has portrayed the very spirit of pure religious feeling, self-denial,
+home-longing, and sadness of exile which we know must have been
+imprinted on those faces.
+
+The lack of likeness in the women’s dress is more through difference of
+figure and carriage and an indescribable cut of the garments than in
+detail, except in one adjunct, the sleeve, which is wholly unlike the
+seventeenth-century sleeve in these portraits. I have ever deemed the
+sleeve an important part both of a man’s coat and a woman’s gown. The
+tailor in the old play, _The Maid of the Mill_, says, “O Sleeve! O
+Sleeve! I’ll study all night, madam, to magnify your sleeves!” By its
+inelegant shape a garment may be ruined. By its grace it accents the
+beauty of other portions of the apparel. In these pictures of Puritan
+attire, it has proved able to make or mar the likeness to the real
+dress. It is now a component part of both outer and inner garment. It
+was formerly extraneous.
+
+In the reign of Henry VIII, the sleeve was generally a separate article
+of dress and the most gorgeous and richly ornamented portion of the
+dress. Outer and inner sleeves were worn by both men and women, for
+their doublets were sleeveless. Elizabeth gradually banished the outer
+hanging sleeve, though she retained the detached sleeve.
+
+Sleeves had grown gravely offensive to Puritans; the slashing was
+excessive. A Massachusetts statute of 1634 specifies that “No man or
+woman shall make or buy any slashed clothes other than one slash in
+each sleeve and another in the back. Men and women shall have liberty
+to wear out such apparell as they now are provided of except the
+immoderate great sleeves and slashed apparel.”
+
+
+Virago-sleeve. Virago-sleeve.
+
+Size and slashes were both held to be a waste of good cloth.
+“Immoderate great sleeves” could never be the simple coat sleeve with
+cuff in which our modern artists are given to depicting Virginian and
+New England dames. Doubtless the general shape of the dress was simple
+enough, but the sleeve was the only part which was not close and plain
+and unornamented. I have found no close coat sleeves with cuffs upon
+any old American portraits. I recall none on English portraits. You may
+see them, though rarely, in England under hanging sleeves upon figures
+which have proved valuable conservators of fashion, albeit sombre of
+design and rigid of form, namely, effigies in stone or metal upon old
+tombs; these not after the year 1620, though these are really a small
+“leg-of-mutton” sleeve being gathered into the arm-scye. A beautiful
+brass in a church on the Isle of Wight is dated 1615. This has long,
+hanging sleeves edged with leaflike points of cut-work; cuffs of
+similar work turn back from the wrists of the undersleeves. A _Satyr_
+by Fitzgeffrey, published the same year, complains that the wrists of
+women and men are clogged with bush-points, ribbons, or rebato-twists.
+“Double cufts” is an entry in a Plymouth inventory—which explains
+itself. In the hundreds of inventories I have investigated I have never
+seen half a dozen entries of cuffs. The two or three I have found have
+been specified as “lace cuffs.”
+
+George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, wrote with a vivid pen; one of
+his own followers said with severity, “He paints high.” Some of his
+denunciations of the dress of his day afford a very good notion of the
+peculiarities of contemporary costume; though he may be read with this
+caution in mind. He writes deploringly of women’s sleeves (in the year
+1654); it will be noted that he refers to double cuffs:—
+
+
+“The women having their cuffs double under and above, like a butcher
+with his white sleeves, their ribands tied about their hands, and three
+or four gold laces about their clothes.”
+
+
+
+
+Ninon de l’Enclos. Ninon de l’Enclos.
+
+There were three generations of English heralds named Holme, all
+genealogists, and all artists; they have added much to our knowledge of
+old English dress. Randle Holme, the Chester herald, lived in the reign
+of Charles II, and increased a collection of manuscript begun by his
+grandfather and now forming part of the Harleian Collection in the
+British Museum. He wrote also the _Academy of Armoury_, published in
+1688, and made a vast number of drawings for it, as well as for his
+other works. His note-books of drawings are preserved. In one of them
+he gives drawings of the sleeve which is found on every
+seventeenth-century portrait of American women which I have ever seen.
+He calls this a virago-sleeve. It was worn in Queen Elizabeth’s day,
+but was a French fashion. It is gathered very full in the shoulder and
+again at the wrist, or at the forearm. At intervals between, it is
+drawn in by gathering-strings of narrow ribbons, or ferret, which are
+tied in a pretty knot or rose on the upper part of the sleeve. One from
+a French portrait is given here. Madam Ninon de l’Enclos also wears
+one. This gathering may be at the elbow, forming thus two puffs, or
+there may be several such drawing-strings. I have seen a virago-sleeve
+with five puffs. It is a fine decorative sleeve, not always shapely,
+perhaps, but affording in the pretty knots of ribbon some relief to the
+severity of the rest of the dress.
+
+Stubbes wrote, “Some have sleeves cut up the arm, drawn out with sundry
+colours, pointed with silk ribbands, and very gallantly tied with love
+knotts.” It was at first a convention of fashion, and it lingered long
+in some modification, that wherever there was a slash there was a knot
+of ribbon or a bunch of tags or aglets. This in its origin was really
+that the slash might be tied together. Ribbon knots were much worn; the
+early days of the great court of Louis XIV saw an infinite use of
+ribbons for men and women. When, in the closing years of the century,
+rows of these knots were placed on either side of the stiff busk with
+bars of ribbon forming a stomacher, they were called _echelles_,
+ladders. _The Ladies’ Dictionary_ (1694) says they were “much in
+request.”
+
+This virago-sleeve was worn by women of all ages and by children, both
+boys and girls. A virago-sleeve is worn by Rebecca Rawson (here), and
+by Mrs. Simeon Stoddard (here), by Madam Padishal and by her little
+girl, and by the Gibbes child shown later in the book.
+
+A carved figure of Anne Stotevill (1631) is in Westminster Abbey. Her
+dress is a rich gown slightly open in front at the foot. It has
+ornamental hooks, or frogs, with a button at each end—these are in
+groups of three, from chin to toe. Four groups of three frogs each, on
+both sides, make twenty-four, thus giving forty-eight buttons. A stiff
+ruff is at the neck, and similar smaller ones at the wrist. She wears a
+French hood with a loose scarf over it. She has a very graceful
+virago-sleeve with handsome knots of ribbon.
+
+It is certain that men’s sleeves and women’s sleeves kept ever close
+company. Neither followed the other; they walked abreast. If a woman’s
+sleeves were broad and scalloped, so was the man’s. If the man had a
+tight and narrow sleeve, so did his wife. When women had
+virago-sleeves, so did men. Even in the nineteenth century, at the
+first coming of leg-of-mutton sleeves in 1830 _et seq_., dandies’
+sleeves were gathered full at the armhole. In the second reign of these
+vast sleeves a few years ago, man had emancipated himself from the
+reign of woman’s fashions, and his sleeves remained severely plain.
+
+Small invoices of fashionable clothing were constantly being sent
+across seas. There were sent to and from England and other countries
+“ventures,” which were either small lots of goods sent on speculation
+to be sold in the New World, or a small sum given by a private
+individual as a “venture,” with instructions to purchase abroad
+anything of interest or value that was salable. To take charge of these
+petty commercial transactions, there existed an officer, now obsolete,
+known as a supercargo. It is told that one Providence ship went out
+with the ventures of one hundred and fifty neighbors on board—that is,
+one hundred and fifty persons had some money or property at stake on
+the trip. Three hundred ventures were placed with another supercargo.
+Sometimes women sent sage from their gardens, or ginseng if they could
+get it. A bunch of sage paid in China for a porcelain tea-set. Along
+the coast, women ventured food-supplies,—cheese, eggs, butter, dried
+apples, pickles, even hard gingerbread; another sent a barrel of cider
+vinegar. Clothes in small lots were constantly being bought and sold on
+a venture. From London, in November, 1667, Walter Banesely sent as a
+venture to William Pitkin in Hartford these articles of clothing with
+their prices:—
+
+£	s. “1 Paire Pinck Colour’d mens hose	1	6 10 Paire Mens Silke
+Hose, 17s per pair	8	10 10 Paire Womens Silke Hose, 16s per
+pair	1	 12 10 Paire Womens Green Hose	6	 10 1 Pinck
+Colour’d Stomacher made of Knotts	3	10 1 Pinck Colour’d Wastcote
+A Black Sute of Padisuay. Hatt, Hatt band, Shoo knots &; trunk. The
+wastcote and stomacher are a Venture of my wife’s; the Silke Stockens
+mine own.”
+
+There remains another means of information of the dress of Puritan
+women in what was the nearest approach to a collection of
+fashion-plates which the times afforded.
+
+
+Lady Catharina Howard. Lady Catharina Howard.
+
+In the year 1640 a collection of twenty-six pictures of Englishwomen
+was issued by one Wenceslas Hollar, an engraver and drawing-master,
+with this title, _Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus. The severall Habits of
+Englishwomen, from the Nobilitie to the Country Woman As they are in
+these Times._ These bear the same relation to portraits showing what
+was really worn, as do fashion-plates to photographs. They give us the
+shapes of gowns, bonnets, etc., yet are not precisely the real thing.
+The value of this special set is found in three points: First, the
+drawings confirm the testimony of Lely, Van Dyck, and other artists;
+they prove how slightly Van Dyck idealized the costume of his sitters.
+Second, they give representations of folk in the lower walks of life;
+such folk were not of course depicted in portraits. Third, the drawings
+are full length, which the portraits are not. Four of these drawings
+are reduced and shown here. I give here the one entitled _The Puritan
+Woman_, though it is one of the most disappointing in the whole
+collection. It is such a negative presentation; so little marked detail
+or even associated evidence is gained from it. I had a baffled thought
+after examining it that I knew less of Puritan dress than without it. I
+see that they gather up their gowns for walking after a mode known in
+later years as washerwoman style. And by that very gathering up we lose
+what the drawing might have told us; namely, how the gowns were shaped
+in the back; how attached to the waist or bodice; and how the bodice
+was shaped at the waist, whether it had a straight belt, whether it was
+pointed, whether slashed in tabs or laps like a samare. The sleeve,
+too, is concealed, and the kerchief hides everything else. We know
+these kerchiefs were worn among the “fifty other ways,” for some
+portraits have them; but the whisk was far more common. Lady Catharina
+Howard, aged eleven in the year 1646, was drawn by Hollar in a
+kerchief.
+
+There had been some change in the names of women’s attire in twenty
+years, since 1600, when the catalogue of the Queen’s wardrobe was made.
+Exclusive of the Coronation, Garter, Parliament, and mourning robes, it
+ran thus:—
+
+
+“Robes.
+Petticoats.
+French gowns.
+Cloaks.
+Round gowns.
+Safeguards.
+Loose gowns.
+Jupes.
+Kirtles.
+Doublets.
+Foreparts.
+Lap mantles.”
+
+
+In her New Year’s gifts were also, “strayt-bodyed gowns, trayn-gowns,
+waist-robes, night rayls, shoulder cloaks, inner sleeves, round
+kirtles.” She also had nightgowns and jackets, and underwear, hose, and
+various forms of foot-gear. Many of these garments never came to
+America. Some came under new names. Many quickly disappeared from
+wardrobes. I never read in early American inventories of robes, either
+French robes or plain robes. Round gowns, loose gowns, petticoats,
+cloaks, safeguards, lap mantles, sleeves, nightgowns, nightrails, and
+night-jackets continued in wear.
+
+I have never found the word forepart in this distinctive signification
+nor the word kirtle; though our modern writers of historical novels are
+most liberal of kirtles to their heroines. It is a pretty, quaint name,
+and ought to have lingered with us; but “what a deformed thief this
+Fashion is”—it will not leave with us garment or name that we like
+simply because it pleases us.
+
+Doublets were worn by women.
+
+
+“The Women also have doublets and Jerkins as men have, buttoned up the
+brest, and made with Wings, Welts and Pinions on shoulder points as
+men’s apparell is for all the world, &; though this be a kind of attire
+appropriate only to Man yet they blush not to wear it.”
+
+
+Anne Hibbins, the _witch_, had a black satin doublet among other
+substantial attire.
+
+A fellow-barrister of Governor John Winthrop, Sergeant Erasmus Earle, a
+most uxorious husband, was writing love-letters to his wife Frances,
+who lived out of London, at the same time that Winthrop was writing to
+Margaret Winthrop. Earle was much concerned over a certain doublet he
+had ordered for his wife. He had bought the blue bayes for this garment
+in two pieces, and he could not decide whether the shorter piece should
+go into the sleeve or the body, whether it should have skirts or not.
+If it did not, then he had bought too much silver lace, which troubled
+him sorely.
+
+Margaret Winthrop had better instincts; to her husband’s query as to
+sending trimming for her doublet and gown, she answers, “_When I see
+the cloth_ I will send word what trimming will serve;” and she writes
+to London, insisting on “the civilest fashion now in use,” and for
+Sister Downing, who is still in England, to give Tailor Smith
+directions “that he may make it the better.” Mr. Smith sent scissors
+and a hundred needles and the like homely gifts across seas as “tokens”
+to various members of the Winthrop household, showing his friendly
+intimacy with them all. For many years after America was settled we
+find no evidence that women’s garments were ever made by mantua-makers.
+All the bills which exist are from tailors. One of William Sweatland
+for work done for Jonathan Corwin of Salem is in the library of the
+American Antiquarian Society:—
+
+£	s.	d. “Sept. 29, 1679. To plaiting a gown for
+Mrs.		3	6 To makeing a Childs Coat		6 To makeing a
+Scarlet petticoat with Silver Lace for Mrs.		9 For new makeing a
+plush somar for Mrs.		6 Dec. 22, 1679. For makeing a somar for
+your Maide		10 Mar. 10, 1679. To a yard of Callico		2 To 1
+Douzen and 1/2 of silver buttons		1	6 To Thread			4
+To makeing a broad cloth hatte		14 To makeing a haire
+Camcottcoat		9 To makeing new halfsleeves to a silk
+Coascett		1 March 25. To altering and fitting a paire of Stays
+for Mrs		1 Ap. 2, 1680, to makeing a Gowne for ye Maide		10
+May 20. For removing buttons of yr coat.			6 Juli 25, 1630.
+For makeing two Hatts and Jacketts for your two sonnes		19 Aug.
+14. To makeing a white Scarsonnett plaited Gowne for Mrs		8 To
+makeing a black broad cloth Coat for yourselfe		9 Sept. 3, 1868.
+To makeing a Silke Laced Gowne for Mrs	1	8 Oct. 7, 1860, to
+makeing a Young Childs Coate		4 To faceing your Owne Coat
+Sleeves		1 To new plaiting a petty Coat for Mrs		1	6
+Nov. 7. To makeing a black broad Cloth Gowne for Mrs		18 Feb. 26,
+1680-1. To Searing a Petty Coat for Mrs		6 —-	—-	—- Sum is,
+£;8	 4s.	10d.	”
+
+From many bills and inventories we learn that the time of the
+settlement of Plymouth and Boston reached a transitional period in
+women’s dress as it did in men’s. Mrs. Winthrop had doublets as had
+Governor Winthrop, but I think her daughter wore gowns when her sons
+wore coats. The doublet for a woman was shaped like that of a man, and
+was of double thickness like a man’s. It might be sleeveless, with a
+row of welts or wings around the armhole; or if it had sleeves the
+welts, or a roll or cap, still remained. The trimming of the arm-scye
+was universal, both for men and women. A fuller description of the
+doublet than has ever before been written will be given in the chapter
+upon the Evolution of the Coat. The “somar” which is the samare, named
+also in the bill of the Salem tailor, seems to have been a Dutch
+garment, and was so much worn in New York that I prefer to write of it
+in the following chapter. We are then left with the gown; the gown
+which took definite shape in Elizabeth’s day. Of course no one could
+describe it like Stubbes. I frankly confess my inability to approach
+him. Read his words, so concise yet full of color and conveying detail;
+I protest it is wonderful.
+
+
+“Their Gowns be no less famous, some of silk velvet grogram taffety
+fine cloth of forty shillings a yard. But if the whole gown be not
+silke or velvet then the same shall be layed with lace two or three
+fingers broade all over the gowne or the most parte. Or if not so (as
+Lace is not fine enough sometimes) then it must be garded with great
+gardes of costly Lace, and as these gowns be of sundry colours so they
+be of divers fashions changing with the Moon. Some with sleeves hanging
+down to their skirts, trayling on the ground, and cast over the
+shoulders like a cow’s tayle. These have sleeves much shorter, cut up
+the arme, and pointed with Silke-ribons very gallantly tyed with true
+loves knottes—(for soe they call them). Some have capes fastened down
+to the middist of their backs, faced with velvet or else with some fine
+wrought silk Taffeetie at the least, and fringed about Bravely, and (to
+sum up all in a word) some are pleated and ryveled down the back
+wonderfully with more knacks than I can declare.”
+
+
+The guards of lace a finger broad laid on over the seams of the gown
+are described by Pepys in his day. He had some of these guards of gold
+lace taken from the seams of one of his wife’s old gowns to overlay the
+seams of one of his own cassocks and rig it up for wear, just as he
+took his wife’s old muff, like a thrifty husband, and bought her a new
+muff, like a kind one. Not such a domestic frugalist was he, though, as
+his contemporary, the great political economist, Dudley North, Baron
+Guildford, Lord Sheriff of London, who loved to sit with his wife
+ripping off the old guards of lace from her gown, “unpicking” her gown,
+he called it, and was not at all secret about it. Both men walked
+abroad to survey the gems and guards worn by their neighbors’ wives,
+and to bring home word of new stuffs, new trimmings, to their own
+wives. Really a seventeenth-century husband was not so bad. Note in my
+_Life of Margaret Winthrop_ how Winthrop’s fellow-barrister, Sergeant
+Erasmus Earle, bought camlet and lace, and patterns for doublets for
+his wife Frances Fontayne, and ran from London clothier to London
+mantua-maker, and then to London haberdasher and London tailor, to
+learn the newest weaves of cloth, the newest drawing in of the sleeves.
+I know no nineteenth-century husband of that name who would hunt
+materials and sleeve patterns, and buy doublet laces and find
+gown-guards for his wife. And then the gown sleeves! What a description
+by Stubbes of the virago-sleeve “tied in and knotted with silk ribbons
+in love-knots!” It is all wonderful to read.
+
+We learn from these tailors’ bills that tailors’ work embraced far more
+articles than to-day; in the _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, 1659, a
+tailor’s shop has hanging upon the wall woollen hats, breeches,
+waistcoats, jackets, women’s cloaks, and petticoats. There are also
+either long hose or lasts for stretching hose, for they made stockings,
+leggins, gaiters, buskins; also a number of boxes which look like
+muff-boxes. One tailor at work is seated upon a platform raised about a
+foot from the floor. His seat is a curious bench with two legs about
+two feet long and two about one foot long. The base of the two long
+legs are on the floor, the other two set upon the platform. The
+tailor’s feet are on the platform, thus his work is held well up before
+his face. Sometimes his legs are crossed upon the platform in front of
+him. The platform was necessary, or, at any rate, advisable for another
+reason. The habits of Englishmen at that time, their manners and
+customs, I mean, were not tidy; and floors were very dirty. Any garment
+resting on the floor would have been too soiled for a gentleman’s wear
+before it was donned at all.
+
+I have discovered one thing about old-time tailors,—they were just as
+trying as their successors, and had as many tricks of trade. A writer
+in 1582 says, “If a tailor makes your gown too little, he covers his
+fault with a broad stomacher; if too great, with a number of pleats; if
+too short, with a fine guard; if too long with a false gathering.”
+
+In several of the household accounts of colonial dames which I have
+examined I have found the prices and items very confusing and irregular
+when compared with tailors’ bills and descriptive notes and letters
+accompanying them. And in one case I was fain to believe that the
+lady’s account-book had been kept upon the plan devised by the simple
+Mrs. Pepys,—a plan which did anger her spouse Samuel “most mightily.”
+He was filled with admiration of her household-lists—her kitchen
+accounts. He admired in the modern sense of the word “admire”; then he
+admired in the old-time meaning—of suspicious wonder. For albeit she
+could do through his strenuous teaching but simple sums in
+“Arithmetique,” had never even attempted long division, yet she always
+rendered to her husband perfectly balanced accounts, month after month.
+At last, to his angry queries, she whimpered that “whenever she doe
+misse a sum of money, she do add some sums to other things,” till she
+made it perfectly correct in her book—a piece of such simple duplicity
+that I wonder her husband had not suspected it months before. And she
+also revealed to him that she “would lay aside money for a necklace” by
+pretending to pay more for household supplies than she really had, and
+then tying up the extra amount in a stocking foot. He writes, “I find
+she is very cunning and when she makes least show hath her wits at
+work; and _so_ to my office to my accounts.”
+
+
+Costumes of Englishwomen of the Seventeenth Century. Costumes of
+Englishwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ATTIRE OF VIRGINIA DAMES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS
+
+“Two things I love, two usuall thinges they are:
+The Firste, New-fashioned cloaths I love to wear,
+Newe Tires, newe Ruffes; aye, and newe Gestures too
+In all newe Fashions I do love to goe.
+    The Second Thing I love is this, I weene
+    To ride aboute to have those Newe Cloaths scene.
+
+“At every Gossipping I am at still
+And ever wilbe—maye I have my will.
+For at ones own Home, praie—who is’t can see
+How fyne in new-found fashioned Tyres we bee?
+Vnless our Husbands—Faith! but very fewe!—
+And whoo’d goe gaie, to please a Husband’s view?
+    Alas! wee wives doe take but small Delight
+    If none (besides our husbands) see that Sight”
+
+—“The Gossipping Wives Complaint,” 1611 (circa).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ATTIRE OF VIRGINIA DAMES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS
+
+
+I
+
+
+t is a matter of deep regret that no “Lists of Apparel” were made out
+for the women emigrants in any of the colonies. Doubtless many came who
+had a distinct allotment of clothing, among them the redemptioners. We
+know one case, that of the “Casket Girls,” of Louisiana, where a group
+of “virtuous, modest, well-carriaged young maids” each had a casket or
+box of clothing supplied to her as part of her payment for emigration.
+I wish we had these lists, not that I should deem them of great value
+or accuracy in one respect since they would have been made out
+naturally by men, but because I should like to read the struggles of
+the average shipping-clerk or supercargo, or even shipping-master or
+company’s president, over the items of women’s dress. One reason why
+the lists we have in the court records are so wildly spelled and often
+vague is, I am sure, because the recording-clerks were always men. Such
+hopeless puzzles as droll or drowlas, cale or caul or kail, chatto or
+shadow, shabbaroon or chaperone, have come to us through these poor
+struggling gentlemen.
+
+There are not to my knowledge any portraits in existence of the wives
+of the first Dutch settlers of New Netherland. They would have been
+dressed, I am sure, in the full dress of Holland vrouws. We can turn to
+the court records of New Netherland to learn the exact item of the
+dress of the settlers. Let me give in full this inventory of an
+exceptionally rich and varied wardrobe of Madam Jacob de Lange of New
+Amsterdam, 1662:—
+
+£;	 s.	d. One under petticoat with a body of red bay	1	7
+One under petticoat, scarlet	1	15 One petticoat, red cloth with
+black lace	2	15 One striped stuff petticoat with black
+lace	2	8 Two colored drugget petticoats with gray
+linings	1	2 Two colored drugget petticoats with white
+linings		18 One colored drugget petticoat with pointed
+lace		8 One black silk petticoat with ash gray silk
+lining	1	10 One potto-foo silk petticoat with black silk
+lining	2	15 One potto-foo silk petticoat with taffeta
+lining	1	13 One silk potoso-a-samare with lace	3 One tartanel
+samare with tucker	1	10 One black silk crape samare with
+tucker	1	10 Three flowered calico samares	2	17 Three calico
+nightgowns, one flowered, two red		7 One silk waistcoat, one
+calico waistcoa.		14 One pair of bodices		4 Five pair white
+cotton stockings		9 Three black love-hoods		5 One white
+love-hood		2	6 Two pair sleeves with great lace	1	3 Four
+cornet caps with lace	3 One black silk rain cloth cap		10 One
+black plush mask		1	6 Four yellow lace drowlas		2
+
+This is a most interesting list of garments. The sleeves with great
+lace must from their price have been very rich articles of dress. The
+yellow lace drowlas, since there were four of them (and no other
+neckerchiefs, such as gorgets, piccadillies, or whisks are named), must
+have been neckwear of some form. I suspect they are the lace drowls or
+drolls to which I refer in a succeeding chapter on A Vain Puritan
+Grandmother. The rain cloth cap of black silk is curious also, being
+intended to wear over another cap or a love-hood. The cornet caps with
+lace are a Dutch fashion. The “lace” was in the form of lappets or
+pinners which flapped down at the side of the face over the ears and
+almost over the cheeks. Evelyn speaks of a woman in “a cornet with the
+upper pinner dangling about her cheeks like hound’s ears.” Cotgrave
+tells in rather vague definition that a cornet is “a fashion of Shadow
+or Boone Grace used in old time and to this day by old women.” It was
+not like a bongrace, nor like the cap I always have termed a shadow,
+but it had two points like broad horns or ears with lace or gauze
+spread over both and hanging from these horns. Cornets and corneted
+caps are often in Dutch inventories in early New York. And they can be
+seen in old Dutch pictures. They were one of the few distinctly Dutch
+modes that lingered in New Netherland; but by the third generation from
+the settlement they had disappeared.
+
+
+Mrs. Livingstone. Mrs. Livingstone.
+
+What the words “potto-foo” and “potoso-a-samare” mean I cannot
+decipher. I have tried to find Dutch words allied in sound but in vain.
+I believe the samare was a Dutch fashion. We rarely find samares worn
+in Virginia and Maryland, but the name frequently occurs in the first
+Dutch inventories in New Netherland and occasionally in the Connecticut
+valley, where there were a few Dutch settlers; occasionally also in
+Plymouth, whose first settlers had been for a number of years under
+Dutch influences in Holland; and rarely in Salem and Boston, whose
+planters also had felt Dutch influences through the settling in Essex
+and Suffolk of opulent Flemish and Dutch “clothiers”—cloth-workers.
+These Dutchmen had married Englishwomen, and their presence in English
+homes was distinctly shown by the use then and to the present day of
+Dutch words, Dutch articles of dress, furniture, and food. From these
+Dutch-settled shires of Essex and Suffolk came John Winthrop and all
+the so-called Bay Emigration.
+
+I am convinced that a samare was a certain garment which I have seen in
+French, Dutch, and English portraits of the day. It is a tight-fitting
+jacket or waist or bodice—call it what you will; its skirt or portion
+below the belt-line is four to eight inches deep, cut up in tabs or
+oblong flaps, four on each side. These slits are to the belt line. It
+is, to explain further, a basque, tight-fitting or with the waist laid
+in plaits, and with the basque skirt cut in eight tabs. These laps or
+tabs set out rather stiffly and squarely over the full-gathered
+petticoats of the day.
+
+I turn to a Dutch dictionary for a definition of the word “samare,”
+though my Dutch dictionary being of the date 1735 is too recent a
+publication to be of much value. In it a samare is defined simply as a
+woman’s gown. Randle Holme says, rather vaguely, that it is a short
+jacket for women’s wear with four side-laps, reaching to the knees. In
+this rich wardrobe of the widow De Lange, twelve petticoats are
+enumerated and no overdress-jacket or doublet of any kind except those
+samares. Their price shows that they were not a small garment. One
+“silk potoso-a-samare with lace” was worth £;3. One “tartanel samare
+with tucker” was worth £;1 10s. One “black silk crape samare with
+tucker” was worth £;1 10s., and three “flowered calico” samares were
+worth £;2 10s. They were evidently of varying weights for summer and
+winter wear, and were worn over the rich petticoat.
+
+The bill of the Salem tailor, William Sweatland (1679), shows that he
+charged 9s. for making a scarlet petticoat with silver lace; for making
+a black broadcloth gown 18s.; while “new-makeing a plush somar for
+Mistress.” (which was making over) was 6s.; “making a somar for your
+Maide” was 10s., which was the same price he charged for making a gown
+for the maid.
+
+The colors in the Dutch gowns were uniformly gay. Madam Cornelia de Vos
+in a green cloth petticoat, a red and blue “Haarlamer” waistcoat, a
+pair of red and yellow sleeves, a white cornet cap, green stockings
+with crimson clocks, and a purple “Pooyse” apron was a blooming
+flower-bed of color.
+
+
+Mrs. Magdalen Beekman. Mrs. Magdalen Beekman.
+
+I fear we have unconsciously formed our mental pictures of our Dutch
+forefathers through the vivid descriptions of Washington Irving. We
+certainly cannot improve upon his account of the Dutch housewife of New
+Amsterdam:—
+
+
+“Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously
+pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a
+little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads.
+Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of
+gorgeous dyes, though I must confess those gallant garments were rather
+short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the
+number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen’s small-clothes;
+and what is still more praise-worthy, they were all of their own
+manufacture,—of which circumstance, as may well be supposed, they were
+not a little vain.
+
+“Those were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read
+the Bible, and wore pockets,—ay, and that, too, of a goodly size,
+fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously
+worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles where
+all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to
+have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed.
+
+“Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and
+pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbons, or, among the
+more opulent and showy classes, by brass and even silver chains,
+indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I
+cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it
+doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a
+chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with
+magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and a
+neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern shoe,
+with a large and splendid silver buckle.
+
+“There was a secret charm in those petticoats, which no doubt entered
+into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady
+was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock of
+petticoats and stockings was as absolutely an heiress as is a
+Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with
+plenty of reindeer.”
+
+
+A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting New York in 1704, wrote also
+with clear pen:—
+
+
+“The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch,
+especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habitt go
+loose, wear French muches which are like a Capp and headband in one,
+leaving their ears bare, which are sett out with jewells of a large
+size and many in number; and their fingers hoop’t with rings, some with
+large stones in them of many Coullers, as were their pendants in their
+ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as Young.”
+
+
+The jewels of one settler of New Amsterdam were unusually rich (in
+1650), and were enumerated thus:—
+
+ £;	 s.	d. One embroidered purse with silver bugle and chain to
+ the girdle and silver hook and eye	1	4 One pair black pendants,
+ gold nocks		10 One gold boat, wherein thirteen diamonds &; one
+ white coral chain	 16 One pair gold stucks or pendants each with
+ ten diamonds	25 Two diamond rings	 24 One gold ring with clasp
+ beck		12 One gold ring or hoop bound round with
+ diamonds	2	 10
+
+These jewels were owned by the wife of an English-born citizen; but
+some of the Dutch dames had handsome jewels, especially rich
+chatelaines with their equipages and etuis with rich and useful
+articles in variety. When we read of such articles, we find it
+difficult to credit the words of an English clergyman who visited
+Albany about the year 1700; namely, that he found the Dutch women of
+best Albany families going about their homes in summer time and doing
+their household work while barefooted.
+
+Many conditions existed in Maryland which were found nowhere else in
+the colonies. These were chiefly topographical. The bay and its many
+and accommodative tide-water estuaries gave the planters the means, not
+only of easy, cheap, and speedy communication with each other, but with
+the whole world. It was a freedom of intercourse not given to any other
+_agricultural_ community in the whole world. It was said that every
+planter had salt water within a rifle-shot of his front gate—therefore
+the world was open to him. The tide is never strong enough on this
+shore to hinder a sailboat nor is the current of the rivers
+perceptible. The crop of the settlers was wholly tobacco—indeed, all
+the processes of government, of society, of domestic life, began and
+ended with tobacco. It was a wonderfully lucrative crop, but it was an
+unhappy one for any colony; for the tobacco ships arrived in fleets
+only in May and June, when the crops were ready for market. The ships
+could come in anywhere by tide-water. Hence there were two or three
+months of intense excitement, or jollity, lavishness, extravagance,
+when these ships were in; a regular Bartholomew Fair of disorder,
+coarse wit, and rough fun; and the rest of the year there was nothing;
+no business, no money, no fun. Often the planter found himself after a
+month of June gambling and fun with three years’ crops pledged in
+advance to his creditors. The factor then played his part; took a
+mortgage, perhaps, on both crops and plantation; and invariably ended
+in owning everything. A striking but coarse picture of the traffic and
+its evils is given in _The Sot-weed Factor_, a poem of the day.
+
+
+Lady Anne Clifford. Lady Anne Clifford.
+
+Land and living were cheap in this tobacco land, but labor was needed
+for the sudden crops; so negro slaves were bought, and warm invitations
+were sent back to England for all and every kind of labor. Convicts
+were welcomed, redemptioners were eagerly sought for; and the
+scrupulous laws which were made for their protection were blazoned in
+England. Many laborers were “crimped,” too, in England, and brought of
+course, willy-nilly, to Maryland. Landlords were even granted lands in
+proportion to their number of servants; a hundred acres per capita was
+the allowance. It can readily be seen that an ambitious or unscrupulous
+planter would gather in in some way as many heads as possible.
+
+Maryland under the Baltimores was the only colony that then admitted
+convicts—that is, admitted them openly and legally. She even greeted
+them warmly, eager for the labor of their hands, which was often
+skilled labor; welcomed them for their wits, albeit these had often
+been ill applied; welcomed them for their manners, often amply refined;
+welcomed them for their possibilities of rehabilitation of morals and
+behavior.
+
+The kidnapped servants did not fare badly. Many examples are known
+where they worked on until they had acquired ample means; still the
+literature of the day is full of complaints such as this in _The
+Sot-weed Factor_:—
+
+“Not then a slave; for twice two years
+My clothes were fashionably new.
+Nor were my shifts of linen blue.
+But Things are Changed. Now at the Hoe
+I daily work; and Barefoot go.
+In weeding Corn, or feeding Swine
+I spend my melancholy time.”
+
+
+Cheap ballads were sold in England warning English maidens against
+kidnapping.
+
+In the collection of Old Black Letter Ballads in the British Museum is
+one entitled _The Trappan’d Maiden or the Distressed Damsel_. Its date
+is believed to be 1670.
+
+“The Girl was cunningly trappan’d
+Sent to Virginny from England.
+Where she doth Hardship undergo;
+There is no cure, it must be so;
+But if she lives to cross the Main
+She vows she’ll ne’er go there again.
+  Give ear unto a Maid
+  That lately was betray’d
+    And sent unto Virginny O.
+  In brief I shall declare
+  What I have suffered there
+    When that I was weary, O.
+  The cloathes that I brought in
+  They are worn so thin
+    In the Land of Virginny O.
+  Which makes me for to say
+  Alas! and well-a-day
+    When that I was weary, O.”
+
+
+The indentured servant, the redemptioner, or free-willer saw before
+him, at the close of his seven years term, a home in a teeming land; he
+would own fifty acres of that land with three barrels, an axe, a gun,
+and a hoe—truly, the world was his. He would have also a suit of
+kersey, strong hose, a shirt, French fall shoes, and a good hat,—a
+Monmouth cap,—a suit worthy any man. Abigail had an equal start, a
+petticoat and waistcoat of strong wool, a perpetuana or callimaneo, two
+blue aprons, two linen caps, a pair of new shoes, two pairs of new
+stockings and a smock, and three barrels of Indian corn.
+
+We find that many of these redemptioners became soldiers in the
+colonial wars, often distinguished for bravery. This was through a law
+passed by the British government that all who enlisted in military
+service in the colonies were released by that act from further bondage.
+
+
+Lady Herrman. Lady Herrman.
+
+In the year 1659, on an autumn day, two white men with an Indian guide
+paddled swiftly over the waters of Chesapeake Bay on business of much
+import. They had come from Manhattan, and bore despatches from Governor
+Stuyvesant to the governor of Maryland, relating to the ever
+troublesome query of those days, namely, the exact placing of boundary
+lines. One of these men was Augustine Herrman, a man of parts, who had
+been ambassador to Rhode Island, a ship-owner, and man of executive
+ability, which was proven by his offer to Lord Baltimore to draw a map
+of Maryland and the surrounding country in exchange for a tract of land
+at the head of the bay. He was a land-surveyor, and drew an excellent
+map; and he received the four thousand acres afterwards known as
+Bohemia Manor. His portrait and that of his wife exist; they are
+wretched daubs, as were many of the portraits of the day, but,
+nevertheless, her dress is plainly revealed by it. You can see a copy
+of it here. The overdress, pleated body, and upper sleeve are green.
+The little lace collar is drawn up with a tiny ribbon just as we see
+collars to-day. Her hair is simplicity itself. The full undersleeves
+and heavy ear-rings give a little richness to the dress, which is not
+English nor is it Dutch.
+
+It is easy to know the items of the dress of the early Virginian
+settlers, where any court records exist. Many, of course, have perished
+in the terrible devastations of two long wars; but wherever they have
+escaped destruction all the records of church and town in the various
+counties of Virginia have been carefully transcribed and certified, and
+are open to consultation in the Virginia State Library at Richmond,
+where many of the originals are also preserved. Many have also been
+printed. Mr. Bruce, in his fine book, _The Economic History of Virginia
+in the Seventeenth Century_, has given frequent extracts from these
+certified records. From them and from the originals I gain much
+knowledge of the dress of the planters at that time. It varied little
+from dress in the New England colonies save that Virginians were richer
+than New Englanders, and so had more costly apparel. Almost nothing was
+manufactured in Virginia. The plainest and simplest articles of dress,
+save those of homespun stuffs, were ordered from England, as well as
+richer garments. We see even in George Washington’s day, until he was
+prevented by war, that he sent frequent orders, wherein elaborately
+detailed attire was ordered with the pettiest articles for household
+and plantation use.
+
+
+Elizabeth Cromwell. Elizabeth Cromwell.
+
+Mrs. Francis Pritchard of Lancaster, Virginia (in 1660), we find had a
+representative wardrobe. She owned an olive-colored silk petticoat,
+another of silk tabby, and one of flowered tabby, one of velvet, and
+one of white striped dimity. Her printed calico gown was lined with
+blue silk, thus proving how much calico was valued. Other bodices were
+a striped dimity jacket and a black silk waistcoat. To wear with these
+were a pair of scarlet sleeves and other sleeves of ruffled holland.
+Five aprons, various neckwear of Flanders lace, and several rich
+handkerchiefs completed a gay costume to which green silk stockings
+gave an additional touch of color. Green was distinctly the favorite
+color for hose among all the early settlers; and nearly all the
+inventories in Virginia have that entry.
+
+Mrs. Sarah Willoughby of Lower Norfolk, Virginia, had at the same date
+a like gay wardrobe, valued, however, at but £;14. Petticoats of
+calico, striped linen, India silk, worsted prunella, and red, blue, and
+black silk were accompanied with scarlet waistcoats with silver lace, a
+white knit waistcoat, a “pair of red paragon bodices,” and another pair
+of sky-colored satin bodices. She had also a striped stuff jacket, a
+worsted prunella mantle, and a black silk gown. There were distinctions
+in the shape of the outer garments—mantles, jackets, and gowns. Hoods,
+aprons, and bands completed her comfortable attire.
+
+Though so much of the clothing of the Virginia planters was made in
+England, there was certain work done by home tailors; such work as
+repairs, alterations, making children’s common clothing, and the like,
+also the clothing of upper servants. Often the tailor himself was a
+bond-servant. Thus, Luke Mathews, a tailor from Hereford, England, was
+bound to Thomas Landon for a term of two years from the day he landed.
+He was to have sixpence a day while working for the Landon family, but
+when working for other persons half of whatever he earned. In the
+Lancaster County records is a tailor’s account (one Noah Rogers) from
+the year 1690 to 1709; it was paid, of course, in tobacco. We may set
+the tobacco as worth about twopence a pound. It will be thus seen from
+the following items that prices in Virginia were higher than in New
+England:—
+
+Pounds For making seven womens’ Jacketts	70 For making a Coat for
+y’r Wife	60 For altering a Plush Britches	20 For Y’r Wife &;
+Daughturs Jackett	30 For y’r Britches	20 Coat	40 Y’r Boys
+Jacketts	20 Y’r Sons britches	25 Y’r Eldest Sons Ticking
+Suite	60 To making I Dimity Waistcoat, Serge suite 2 Cotton
+Waistcoats and y’r Dimity Coat	185 For a pr of buff Gloves	100
+For I Neck Cloth	12 A pr of Stockings	120 A pr Callimmaneo
+britches	60
+
+Another bill of the year 1643 reads:—
+
+Pounds To making a suit with buttons to it	80 1 ell canvas	30 for
+dimothy linings	30 for buttons &; silke	50 for points	50 for
+taffeta	58 for belly pieces	40 for hooks &; eies	10 for
+ribbonin for pockets	20 for stiffinin for a collar	10 —- Sum 378
+
+The extraordinary prices of one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco
+for making a pair of stockings, and one hundred for a pair of gloves,
+when making a coat was but forty, must remain a seventeenth-century
+puzzle. This coat was probably a petticoat. It is curious, too, to find
+a tailor making gloves and stockings at any price. I think both buff
+gloves and stockings were of leather. Perhaps he charged thus broadly
+because it was “not in his line.” Work in leather was always well paid.
+We find tailors making leather breeches and leather drawers; the latter
+could not be the garments thus named to-day. Tailors became prosperous
+and well-to-do, perhaps because they worked in winter when other
+Virginia tradesfolk were idle; and they acquired large tracts of land.
+
+The conditions of settlement of Virginia were somewhat different from
+those of the planting of New England. We find the land of many
+Massachusetts towns wholly taken up by a group of settlers who
+emigrated together from the Old World and gathered into a town together
+in the New. It was like the transferal of a neighborhood. It brought
+about many happy results of mutual helpfulness and interdependence.
+From it arose that system of domestic service in which the children of
+friends rendered helpful duty in other households and were called help.
+Nothing of the kind existed in Virginia. There was far less
+neighborhood life. Plantations were isolated. Lines of demarcation in
+domestic service were much more definite where black life slaves and
+white bond-servants for a term of years performed all household
+service. For the daughter of one Virginia household to “help” in the
+work in another household was unknown. Each system had its benefits;
+each had its drawbacks. Neither has wholly survived; but something
+better has been evolved, in spite of our lamentations for the good old
+times.
+
+Life is better ordered, but it is not so picturesque as when negro
+servants swarmed in the kitchen, and German, Scotch, and Irish
+redemptioners served in varied callings. There was vast variety of
+attire to be found on the Virginia and Maryland plantations and in the
+few towns of these colonies. The black slaves wore homespun cloths and
+homespun stuff, crocus and Virginia cloth; and the women were happy if
+they could crown their simple attire with gay turbans. Indians stalked
+up to the plantation doors, halted in silence, and added their gay
+dress of the wild woods. German sectaries and mystics fared on garbed
+in their simple peasant dress. Irish sturdy beggars idled and fiddled
+through existence, in dress of shabby gentility, with always a wig.
+“Wild-Irish” came in brogues and Irish trousers. Sailors and pirates
+came ashore gayly dressed in varied costume, with gay sashes full of
+pistols and cutlasses, swaggering from wharf to plantation. Queer
+details of dress had all these varied souls; some have lingered to
+puzzle us.
+
+A year ago I had sent to me, by a descendant of an old Virginia family,
+a photograph of a curious gold medal or disk, a family relic which was
+evidently a token of some importance, since it bore tiny holes and had
+marks of having been affixed as an insignia. Though I could decipher
+the bold initials, cut in openwork, I could judge little by the
+colorless photograph, and finally with due misgivings and great
+precautions in careful packing, insurance, etc., the priceless family
+relic was intrusted to an express company for transmission to my
+inspection. Glad indeed was I that the owner had not presented it in
+person; for the decoration of honor, the insignia of rank, the trophy
+of prowess in war or emblem of conquest in love, was the pauper’s badge
+of a Maryland or Virginia parish. It was not a pleasant task to write
+back the mortifying news; but I am proud of the letter which I
+composed; no one could have done the deed better.
+
+There was an old law in Virginia which ran thus:—
+
+
+“Every person who shall receive relief from the parish and be sent to
+the said alms-house, shall, upon the shoulder of the right sleeve of
+his uppermost garment in an open and visible manner, wear a badge with
+the name of the parish to which he or she belongs, cut in red, blue or
+green cloth, as the vestry or church wardens shall direct. And if any
+poor person shall neglect or refuse to wear such badge, such offense
+may be punished either by ordering his or her allowance to be abridged,
+suspended or withdrawn, or the offender to be whipped not exceeding
+five lashes for one offense; and if any person not entitled to relief
+as aforesaid, shall presume to wear such badge, he or she shall be
+whipped for every such offense.”
+
+
+This law did not mean the full name of the parish, but significant
+initials. Sometimes the initials “P P” were employed, standing for
+public pauper. In other counties a metal badge was ordered, often cast
+in pewter. In one case a die-cutter was made by which an oblong brass
+badge could be cut, and stamps of letters to stamp the badges
+accompanied it. Sometimes these badges were three inches long.
+
+The expression, “the badge of poverty,” became a literal one when all
+persons receiving parochial relief had to wear a large Roman “P” with
+the initial of their parish set on the right sleeve of the uppermost
+garment in an open and visible manner. Likewise all pensioners were
+ordered to wear their badges “so they may be seen.” A pauper who
+refused to do this might be whipped and imprisoned for twenty-one days.
+Moreover, if the parish beadle neglected to spy out that the badge was
+missing from some poor pensioner, he had to pay half a crown himself.
+This legality was necessitated by actions like that of the English
+goody, who, when ordered to wear this pauper’s badge, demurely fastened
+it to her flannel petticoat. For this law, like all the early Virginia
+statutes, was simply a transcript of English laws. In New York, for
+some years in the eighteenth century, the parish poor—there were no
+paupers—were ordered to wear these badges.
+
+This mode of stigmatizing offenders as well as paupers was in force in
+the earlier days of all the colonies. Its existence in New England has
+been immortalized in _The Scarlet Letter_. I have given in my book,
+_Curious Punishments of By-gone Days_, many examples of the wearing of
+significant letters by criminals in various New England towns, in
+Plymouth, Salem, Taunton, Boston, Hartford, New London, also in New
+York. It offered a singular and striking detail of costume to see
+William Bacon in Boston, and Robert Coles in Roxbury, wearing “hanged
+about their necks on their outerd garment a D made of Ridd cloth sett
+on white.” A Boston woman wore a great “B,” not for Boston, but for
+blasphemy. John Davis wore a “V” for viciousness. Others were forced to
+wear for years a heavy cord around the neck, signifying that the
+offender lived under the shadow of the gallows and its rope.
+
+But return we to the metal badge which has caused this diversion to so
+gloomy a subject as crime and punishment. It was simply an oblong plate
+about three and one-half inches long, of humble metal—pinchbeck, or
+alchemy—but plated heavily with gold, therefore readily mistaken for
+solid gold; upon it the telltale initials “P P” had been stamped with a
+die, while smaller letters read “St. J. Psh.” These confirmed my
+immediate suspicions, for I had seen an order of relief for a stricken
+wanderer—an order for two weeks’ relief, where the wardens of “St. J.
+Psh.” ordered the sheriff to send the pauper on—to make him “move
+along” to some other parish. This gold badge was not unlike the metal
+badges worn on the left arm by “Bedlam beggars,” the licensed beggars
+of Bethlehem Hospital, the half-cured patients of that asylum for
+lunatics.
+
+The owner of this badge with ancient letters had not idly accepted
+them, or jumped at the conclusion that it was a decoration of honor for
+his ancestor. He had searched its history long, and he had found in
+Hall’s _Chronicles of the Pageants and Progress of the English Kings_
+ample reference to similar letters, but not as pauper’s badges. Indeed,
+like many another well-read and intelligent person, he had never heard
+of pauper’s badges. He read:—
+
+
+“In this garden was the King and five with him apparyelled in garments
+of purpull satyn, every edge garnished with frysed golde and every
+garment full of posyes made of letters of fine gold, of bullion as
+thick as might be. And six Ladyes wore rochettes rouled with crymosyn
+velvet and set with lettres like Carettes. And after the Kyng and his
+compaignions had daunsed, he appointed the Ladies, Gentlewomen, and
+Ambassadours to take the lettres off their garments in token of
+liberalyte. Which thing the common people perceiving, ranne to them and
+stripped them. And at this banket a shypman of London caught certayn
+lettres which he sould to a goldsmith for £;3. 14s. 8d.”
+
+
+All this was pleasing to the vanity of our friend, who fancied his
+letters as having taken part in a like pageant; perhaps as a gift of
+the king himself. We must remember that he believed his badge of pure
+gold. He did not know it was a base metal, plated. He proudly pictured
+his forbears taking part in some kingly pageant. He scorned so modern
+and commonplace a possibility as a society like Knights of the Golden
+Horseshoe, which was formed of Virginian gentlefolk.
+
+It plainly was a relic of some romance, and in the strangely
+picturesque events of the early years in this New World need not,
+though a pauper’s badge, have been a badge of dishonor. What strange
+event or happening, or scene had it overlooked? Why had it been covered
+with its golden sheet? Was it in defiance or in satire, in remorse, or
+in revenge, or in humble and grateful recognition of some strange and
+protecting Providence? We shall never know. It was certainly not an
+agreeable discovery, to think that your great-grandmother or
+grandfather had probably been branded as a public pauper; but there
+were strange exiles and strange paupers in those days, exiles through
+political parties, through the disfavor of kings, through religious
+conviction, and the pauper of the golden badge, the pauper of “St. J.
+Psh.,” may have ended his days as vestryman of that very church.
+Certain it was, that no ordinary pauper would have, or could have, thus
+preserved it; and from similar reverses and glorifying equally base
+objects came the subjects of half the crests of English heraldry.
+
+
+Pocahontas. Pocahontas.
+
+The likeness of Pocahontas (here) is dated 1616. It is in the dress of
+a well-to-do Englishwoman, a woman of importance and means. This
+portrait has been a shock to many who idealized the Indian princess as
+“that sweet American girl” as Thackeray called her. Especially is it
+disagreeable in many of the common prints from it. One flippant young
+friend, the wife of an army officer, who had been stationed in the far
+West, said of it, in disgust, remembering her frontier residence, “With
+a man’s hat on! just like every old Indian squaw!” This hat is
+certainly displeasing, but it was not worn through Indian taste; it was
+an English fashion, seen on women of wealth as well as of the plainer
+sort. I have a score of prints and photographs of English portraits,
+wherein this mannish hat is shown. In the original of this portrait of
+Pocahontas, the heavy, sombre effect is much lightened by the gold
+hatband. These rich hatbands were one of the articles of dress
+prohibited as vain and extravagant by the Massachusetts magistrates.
+They were costly luxuries. We find them named and valued in many
+inventories in all the colonies, and John Pory, secretary of the
+Virginia colony, wrote about that time to a friend in England a
+sentence which has given, I think to all who read it, an exaggerated
+notion of the dress of Virginians:—
+
+
+“Our cowekeeper here of James citty on Sundays goes accoutred all in
+ffreshe fflaminge silke, and a wife of one that had in England
+professed the blacke arte not of a Scholler but of a Collier weares her
+rough beaver hatt with a faire perle hatband, and a silken sute there
+to correspond.”
+
+
+Corroborative evidence of the richness and great cost of these hatbands
+is found in a letter of Susan Moseley to Governor Yardley of Virginia,
+telling of the exchange of a hatband and jewel for four young cows, one
+older cow and four oxen, on account of her “great want of cattle.” She
+writes on “this Last July 1650, at Elizabeth River in Virginia”:—
+
+
+“I had rayther your wife should weare them then any gentle woman I yet
+know in ye country; but good Sir have _no_ scruple concerninge their
+rightnesse, for I went my selfe from Rotterdam to ye haugh (The Hague)
+to inquire of ye gould smiths and found y’t they weare all Right,
+therefore thats without question, and for ye hat band y’t alone coste
+five hundred gilders as my husband knows verry well and will tell you
+soe when he sees you; for ye Juell and ye ringe they weare made for me
+at Rotterdam and I paid in good rex dollars sixty gilders for ye Juell
+and fivety and two gilders for ye ringe, which comes to in English
+monny eleaven poundes fower shillings. I have sent the sute and Ringe
+by your servant, and I wish Mrs. Yeardley health and prosperity to
+weare them in, and give you both thanks for your kind token. When my
+husband comes home we will see to gett ye Cattell home, in ye meantime
+I present my Love and service to your selfe &; wife, and commit you all
+to God, and remaine,
+
+    “Your friend and servant,
+
+         “SUSAN MOSELEY.”
+
+
+The purchasing value of five hundred guilders, the cost of the hatband,
+would be equal to-day to nearly a thousand dollars.
+
+In the portrait of Pocahontas in the original, there is also much
+liveliness of color, a rich scarlet with heavy braidings; these all
+lessen somewhat the forbidding presence of the stiff hat. She carries a
+fan of ostrich feathers, such as are depicted in portraits of Queen
+Elizabeth.
+
+These feather fans had little looking-glasses of silvered glass or
+polished steel set at the base of the feathers. Euphues says, “The
+glasses you carry in fans of feathers show you to be lighter than
+feathers; the new-found glass chains that you wear about your necks,
+argue you to be more brittle than glass.”
+
+These fans were, in the queen’s hands, as large as hand fire-screens;
+many were given to her as New Year’s gifts or other tokens, one by Sir
+Francis Drake. This makes me believe that they were a fashion taken
+from the North American Indians and eagerly adopted in England; where,
+for two centuries, everything related to the red-men of the New World
+was seized upon with avidity—except their costume.
+
+The hat worn by Pocahontas, or a lower crowned form of it, is seen in
+the Hollar drawing of Puritan women (here), where it seems specially
+ugly and ineffective, and on the Quaker Tub-preacher. It lingered for
+many years, perched on top of French hoods, close caps, kerchiefs, and
+other variety of head-gear worn by women of all ranks; never elegant,
+never becoming. I can think of no reason for its long existence and
+dominance save its costliness. It was not imitated, so it kept its
+place as long as the supply of beaver was ample. This hat was also
+durable. A good beaver hat was not for a year nor even for a
+generation. It lasted easily half a century. But we all know that the
+beaver disappeared suddenly from our forests; and as a sequence the
+beaver hat was no longer available for common wear. It still held its
+place as a splendid, feather-trimmed, rich article of dress, a hat for
+dress wear, and it was then comely and becoming. Within a few years,
+through national and state protection, the beaver, most interesting of
+wild creatures, has increased and multiplied in North America until it
+has become in certain localities a serious pest to lumbermen. We must
+revive the fashion of real beaver hats—that will speedily exterminate
+the race.
+
+
+Duchess of Buckingham and her Two Children. Duchess of Buckingham and
+her Two Children.
+
+It always has seemed strange to me that, in the prodigious interest
+felt in England for the American Indian, an interest shown in the
+thronging, gaping sight-seers that surrounded every taciturn red-man
+who visited the Old World, no fashions of ornament or dress were copied
+as gay, novel, or becoming. The Indian afforded startling detail to
+interest the most jaded fashion-seeker. The _Works of Captain John
+Smith_, Strachey’s _Historie of Travaile into Virginia_, the works of
+Roger Williams, of John Josselyn, the letters of various missionaries,
+give full accounts of their brilliant attire; and many of these works
+were illustrated. The beautiful mantles of the Virginia squaws, made of
+carefully dressed skins, were tastefully fringed and embroidered with
+tiny white beads and minute disks of copper, like spangles, which, with
+the buff of the dressed skin, made a charming color-study—copper and
+buff—picked out with white. Sometimes small brilliant shells or
+feathers were added to the fringes. An Indian princess, writes one
+chronicler, wore a fair white deerskin with a frontal of white coral
+and pendants of “great but imperfect-colored and worse-drilled
+pearls”—our modern baroque pearls. A chain of linked copper encircled
+her neck; and her maid brought to her a mantle called a “puttawas” of
+glossy blue feathers sewed so thickly and evenly that it seemed like
+heavy purple satin.
+
+A traveller wrote thus of an Indian squaw and brave:—
+
+
+“His wife was very well favored, of medium stature and very bashful.
+She had on her back a long cloak of leather, with the fur side next to
+her body. About her forehead she had a band of white coral. In her ears
+she had bracelets of pearls hanging down to her waist. The rest of her
+women of the better sort had pendants of copper hanging in either ear,
+and some of the children of the King’s brother and other noblemen, had
+five or six in either ear. He himself had upon his head a broad plate
+of gold or copper, for being unpolished we knew not which metal it
+might be, neither would he by any means suffer us to take it off his
+head. His apparel was like his wife’s, only the women wear their hair
+long on both sides of the head, and the men on but one side. They are
+of color yellowish, and their hair black for the most part, and yet we
+saw children who had very fine auburn and chestnut colored hair.”
+
+
+John Josselyn wrote of tawny beauties:—
+
+
+“They are girt about the middle with a Zone wrought with Blue and White
+Beads into Pretty Works. Of these Beads they have Bracelets for the
+Neck and Arms, and Links to hang in their Ears, and a Fair Table
+curiously made up with Beads Likewise to wear before their Breast.
+Their Hair they combe backward, and tye it up short with a Border about
+two Handsfull broad, wrought in works as the Other with their Beads.”
+
+
+Powhatan’s “Habit” still exists. It is in England, in the Tradescant
+Collection which formed the nucleus of the Ashmolean Collection. It was
+probably presented by Captain John Smith himself. It is made of two
+deerskins ornamented with “roanoke” shell-work, about seven feet long
+by five feet wide. Roanoke is akin to wampum, but this is made of West
+Indian shells. The figures are circles, a crude human figure and two
+mythical composite animals. He also wore fine mantles of raccoon skins.
+A conjurer’s dress was simply a girdle with a single deerskin, while a
+great blackbird with outstretched wings was fastened to one ear—a
+striking ornament. I am always delighted to read such proof as this of
+a fact that I have ever known, namely, that the American Indian is the
+most accomplished, the most telling _poseur_ the world has ever known.
+The ear of the Indian man and woman was pierced along the entire outer
+edge and filled with long drops, a fringe of coral, gold, and pearl.
+The wives of Powhatan wore triple strings of great pearls close around
+their throats, and a long string over one shoulder, while their mantles
+were draped to show their full handsome neck and arms. Altogether, with
+their carefully dressed hair, they would have made in full dress a fine
+show in a modern opera-box, and, indeed, the Indian squaws did cause
+vast exhibition of curiosity and delight when they visited London and
+were taken sight-seeing and sight-seen.
+
+As early as 1629 an Indian chief with his wife and son came from Nova
+Scotia to England. Lord Poulet paid them much attention in
+Somersetshire, and Lady Poulet took Lady Squaw up to London and gave
+her a necklace and a diamond, which I suppose she wore with her blue
+and white beads.
+
+Be the story of the saving of John Smith by Pocahontas a myth or the
+truth, it forever lives a beautiful and tender reality in the hearts of
+American children. Pocahontas was not the only Indian squaw who played
+a kindly part in the first colonization of this country. There were
+many, though their deeds and names are forgotten; and there was one
+Indian woman whose influence was much greater and more prolonged than
+was that of Pocahontas, and was haloed with many years of exciting
+adventure as well as romance. Let me recount a few details of her life,
+that you may wonder with me that the only trace of Indian life marked
+indelibly on England was found on the swinging signs of inns known by
+the name of “The Bell Savage,” “La Belle Sauvage,” and even “The Savage
+and Bell.”
+
+This second Indian squaw was a South Carolina neighbor of our beloved
+Pocahontas; she had not, alas, the lovely disposition and noble
+character of Powhatan’s daughter. She was systematically and
+constitutionally mischievous, like a rogue elephant, so I call her a
+rogue squaw. Her name was Coosaponakasee. The name is too long and too
+hard to say with frequency, so we will do as did her English friends
+and foes—call her Mary. Indeed, she was baptized Mary, for she was a
+half-breed, and her white father had her reared like a Christian, had
+her educated like an English girl as far as could be done in the little
+primitive settlement of Ponpon, South Carolina. It will be shown that
+the attempt was not over-successful.
+
+She was a princess, the niece of crafty old Brim, the king of two
+powerful tribes of Georgia Indians, the Creeks and Uchees. In 1715,
+when she was about fifteen years old, a fierce Indian war broke out in
+the early spring, and at the defeat of the Indians she promptly left
+her school and her church and went out into the wilds, a savage among
+savages, preferring defeat and a wild summer in the woods with her own
+people to decorous victory within doors with her fellow Christians.
+
+
+A Woman’s Doublet. A Woman’s Doublet. Mrs. Anne Turner.
+
+The following year an Englishman, Colonel John Musgrove, accompanied by
+his son, went out as a mediator to the Creek Indians to secure their
+friendship, or at any rate their neutrality. The young squaw, Mary,
+served as interpreter, and the younger English pacificator promptly
+proved his amicable disposition by falling in love with her. He did
+what was more unusual, he married her; and soon they set up a large
+trading-house on the Savannah River, where they prospered beyond
+belief. On the arrival of the shipload of emigrants sent out by the
+Trustees of Georgia the English found Mary Musgrove and her husband
+already carrying on a large trade, in securing and transacting which
+she had served as interpreter. When Oglethorpe landed, he at once went
+to her, and asked permission to settle near her trading-station. She
+welcomed him, helped him, interpreted for him, and kept things in
+general running smoothly in the settlement between the English and the
+Indians. The two became close friends, and as long as generous but
+confiding Oglethorpe remained, all went well in the settlement; but in
+time he returned to England, giving her a handsome diamond ring in
+token of his esteem. Her husband died soon after and she removed to a
+new station called Mount Venture. Oglethorpe shortly wrote of her:—
+
+
+“I find that there is the utmost endeavour by the Spaniards to destroy
+her because she is of consequence and in the King’s interests; therefor
+it is the business of the King’s friends to support her; besides which
+I shall always be desirous to serve her out of the friendship she has
+shown me as well as the colony.”
+
+
+In a letter of John Wesley’s written to Lady Oglethorpe, and now
+preserved in the Georgia Historical Society, he refers frequently to
+Mary Musgrove, saying:—
+
+
+“I had with me an interpreter the half-breed, Mary Musgrove, and daily
+had meetings for instruction and prayer. One woman was baptized. She
+was of them who came out of great tribulation, her husband and all her
+three children having been drowned four days before in crossing the
+Ogeechee River. Her happiness in the gospel caused me to feel that,
+like Job, the widow’s heart had been caused to sing for joy. She was
+married again the day following her baptism. I suggested longer days of
+mourning. She replied that her first husband was surely dead; and that
+his successor was of much substance, owning a cornfield and gun. I
+doubt the interpreter Mary Musgrove, that she is yet in the valley and
+shadow of darkness.”
+
+
+One can picture the excitement of the Choctaw squaw to lose her husband
+and children, and to get another husband and religion in a week’s time.
+Her reply that her husband “was surely dead” bears a close resemblance
+to the hackneyed story of the response to a charivari query of the
+Dutch bridegroom who had been a widower but a week, “Ain’t my vife as
+deadt as she ever vill be?”
+
+Her usefulness continued. If a “talk” were had with the Indians in
+Savannah, Fredonia, or any other settlement, Mary had to be sent for;
+if Indian warriors had to be hired, to keep an army against the Spanish
+or marauding Indians, Mary obtained them from her own people. If land
+were bought of the Indians, Mary made the trade. She soon married
+Captain Matthews, who had been sent out with a small English troop to
+protect her trading-post; he also speedily died, leaving her free,
+after alliances with trade and war, to find a third husband in
+ecclesiastical circles, in the person of one Chaplain Bosomworth, a
+parson of much pomposity and ambition, and of liberal education without
+a liberal brain. He had had a goodly grant of lands to prompt and
+encourage him in his missionary endeavors; and he was under the
+direction and protection of the Society for the Propagation of the
+Gospel. His mission was to convert the Indians, and he began by
+marrying one; he then proceeded to break the law by bringing in the
+first load of negro slaves in that colony, a trade which was positively
+prohibited by the conditions and laws of the colony. When his illegal
+traffic was stopped, he got his wife to send in back claims to the
+colony of Georgia for $25,000 as interpreter, mediator, agent, etc.,
+for the English. She had already been paid about a thousand dollars.
+This demand being promptly refused, the hitherto pacific and friendly
+Mary, edged on by that sorry specimen of a parson, her husband, began a
+series of annoying and extraordinary capers. She declared herself
+empress of Georgia, and after sending her half-brother, a full-blooded
+Indian, as an advance-courier, she came with a body of Indians to
+Savannah. The Rev. Thomas Bosomworth, decked in full canonical robes,
+headed the Indians by the side of his empress wife, dressed in Indian
+costume; and an imposing procession they made, with plenty of
+theatrical color. At first the desperate colonists thought of seizing
+Mary and shipping her off to England to Oglethorpe, but this notion was
+abandoned. As the English soldiers were very few at that special time,
+and the Indian warriors many, we can well believe that the colonists
+were well scared, the more so that when the Indians were asked the
+reason of their visit, “their answers were very trifling and very
+dark.” So a feast was offered them, but Mary and her brother refused to
+come and to eat; and the dinner was scarcely under way when more armed
+Indians appeared from all quarters in the streets, running up and down
+in an uproar, and the town was in great confusion. The alarm drums were
+beaten, and it was reported that the Indians had cut off the head of
+the president as they sat together at the feast. Every man in the
+colony turned out in full arms for duty, the women and children
+gathered in groups in their homes in unspeakable terror. Then the
+president and his assistants who had been at the dinner, and who had
+gone unarmed to show their friendly intent, did what they should have
+done in the beginning, seized that disreputable specimen of an English
+missionary, the Rev. Mr. Bosomworth, and put him in prison; and we
+wonder they kept their hands off him as long as they did. Still trying
+to settle the matter without bloodshed, the president asked the Indian
+chiefs to adjourn to his house “to drink a glass of wine and talk the
+matter over.” Into this conference came Mary, bereft of her husband,
+raging like a madwoman, threatening the lives of the magistrates,
+swearing she would annihilate the colony. “A fig for your general,”
+screamed she, “you own not a foot of land in this colony. The whole
+earth is mine.” Whereupon the Empress of Georgia, too, was placed under
+military guard.
+
+Then a harassing week of apprehension ensued; the Indians were fed, and
+parleyed with, and reasoned with, and explained to. At last Mary’s
+brother Malatche, at a conference, presented as a final demand a paper
+setting forth plainly the claims of the Indians. The sequel of this
+presentation is almost comic. The paper was so evidently the production
+of Bosomworth, and so wholly for his own personal benefit and not for
+that of the Indians, and the astonishment of the president and his
+council was so great at his vast and open assumption, that the Indians
+were bewildered in turn by the strange and unexpected manner of the
+white men upon reading the paper; and childishly begged to have the
+paper back again “to give to him who made it.” A plain exposition of
+Bosomworth’s greed and craft followed, and all seemed amicably
+explained and settled, and the Creeks offered to smoke the pipe of
+peace; when in came Mary, having escaped her guards, full of rum and of
+rancor. The president said to her in a low voice that unless she ceased
+brawling and quarrelling he would at once put her into close
+confinement; she turned in a rage to her brother, and translated the
+threat. He and every Indian in the room sprang to their feet, drew
+tomahawks, and for a short time a complete massacre was imminent. Then
+the captain of the guard, Captain Noble Jones, who had chafed under all
+this explaining diplomacy, lost his much-tried patience, and like a
+brave and fearless English soldier ordered the Indians to surrender
+arms. Though far greater in number than the English, they yielded to
+his intrepidity and wrath; and the following night and day they sneaked
+out of the town, as ordered, by twos and threes.
+
+For one month this fright and commotion and expense had existed; and at
+last wholly alone were left the two contemptible malcontents and
+instigators of it all. Mr. and Mrs. Bosomworth thereafter ate very
+humble pie; he begged sorely and cried tearfully to be forgiven; and he
+wailed so deeply and promised so broadly that at last the two were
+publicly pardoned.
+
+Yet, after all, they had their own way; for they soon went to London
+and cut an infinitely fine figure there. Mary was the top of the mode,
+and there Bosomworth managed to get for his wife lands and coin to the
+amount of about a hundred thousand dollars.
+
+The prosperous twain returned to America in triumph, and built a
+curious and large house on an island they had acquired; in it the
+Empress did not long reign; at her death the Rev. Mr. Bosomworth
+married his chambermaid.
+
+Such is the sorry tale of the Indian squaw and the English parson, a
+tale the more despicable because, though she had been reared in English
+ways, baptized in the English faith, had been the friend of English men
+and women, and married three English husbands; yet when fifty years old
+she returned at vicious suggestion with promptitude and fierceness to
+violent savage ways, to incite a massacre of her friends. And that
+suggestion came not from her barbarian kin, but from an English
+gentleman—a Christian priest.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A VAIN PURITAN GRANDMOTHER
+
+_“Things farre-fetched and deare-bought are good for Ladies.”_
+
+—“Arte of English Poesie,” G. PUTTENHAM, 1589.
+
+
+_“I honour a Woman that can honour herself with her Attire. A good Text
+deserves a Fair Margent.”_
+
+—“The Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” J. WARD, 1713.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A VAIN PURITAN GRANDMOTHER
+
+
+T
+
+
+here was a certain family prominent in affairs in the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, with members resident in England, New England,
+and the Barbadoes. They were gentlefolk—and gentle folk; they were of
+birth and breeding; and they were kindly, tender, affectionate to one
+another. They were given to much letter-writing, and better still to
+much letter-keeping. Knowing the quality of their letters, I cannot
+wonder at either habit; for the prevalence of the letter-keeping was
+due, I am sure, to the perfection of the writing. Their letters were
+ever lively in diction, direct and lucid in description, and widely
+varied in interest; therefore they were well worthy of preservation,
+simply for the owner’s re-reading. They have proved so for all who have
+brushed the dust from the packages and deciphered the faded words.
+Moreover, these letters are among the few family letters of our two
+centuries which convey, either to the original reader or to his
+successor of to-day, anything that could, by most generous construction
+or fullest imagination, be deemed equivalent to what we now term News.
+
+Of course their epistles contained many moral reflections and ample
+religious allusions and aspirations; and they even transcribed to each
+other, in full, long Biblical quotations with as much exactness and
+length as if each deemed his correspondent a benighted heathen, with no
+Bible to consult, instead of being an equally pious kinsman with a
+Bible in every room of his house.
+
+Their name was Hall. The heads of the family in early colonial days
+were the merchants John Hall and Hugh Hall; these surnames have
+continued in the family till the present time, as has the cunning of
+hand and wit of brain in letter-writing, even into the seventh and
+eighth generation, as I can abundantly testify from my own private
+correspondence. I have quoted freely in several of my books from old
+family letters and business letter-books of the Hall family. Many of
+these letters have been intrusted to me from the family archives;
+others, especially the business letters, have found their way, through
+devious paths, to our several historical societies; where they have
+been lost in oblivion, hidden through churlishness, displayed in pride,
+or offered in helpfulness, as suited the various humors of their
+custodians. To the safe, wise, and generous guardianship of the
+American Antiquarian Society fell a collection of letters of the years
+1663 to 1684, written from London by the merchant John Hall to his
+mother, Madam Rebekah Symonds, who, after a fourth matrimonial
+venture,—successful, as were all her marriages,—was living, in what
+must have seemed painful seclusion to any Londoner, in the struggling
+little New England hamlet of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
+
+I wish to note as a light-giving fact in regard to these letters that
+the Halls were as happy in marrying as in letter-writing, and as
+assiduous. They married early; they married late. And by each marriage
+increased wonderfully either the number of descendants, or of
+influential family connections, who were often also business
+associates.
+
+Madam Symonds had four excellent husbands, more than her share of good
+fortune. She married Henry Byley in 1636; John Hall in 1641; William
+Worcester in 1650; and Deputy Governor Symonds in 1663. She was,
+therefore, in 1664, scarcely more than a bride (if one may be so termed
+for the fourth time), when many costly garments were sent to her by her
+devoted and loving son, John Hall; she was then about forty-eight years
+of age. Her husband, Governor Symonds, was a gentle and noble old
+Puritan gentleman, a New Englishman of the best type; a Christian of
+missionary spirit who wrote that he “could go singing to his grave” if
+he felt sure that the poor benighted Indians were won to Christ. His
+stepson, John Hall, never failed in respectful and affectionate
+messages to him and sedately appropriate gifts, such as “men’s knives.”
+Governor Symonds had two sons and six married daughters by two—or
+three—previous marriages. He died in Boston in 1678.
+
+A triangle of mutual helpfulness and prosperity was formed by England,
+New England, and the Barbadoes in this widespread relationship of the
+Hall family in matrimony, business, kin, and friendly allies. England
+sent to the Barbadoes English trading-stuffs and judiciously cheap and
+attractive trinkets. The islands sent to New England sugar and
+molasses, and also the young children born in the islands, to be
+educated in Boston schools ere they went to English universities, or
+were presented in the English court and London society. There was one
+school in Boston established expressly for the children of the
+Barbadoes planters. You may read in a later chapter upon the dress of
+old-time children of some naughty grandchildren of John Hall who were
+sent to this Boston school and to the care of another oft-married
+grandmother. In this triangle, New England returned to the Barbadoes
+non-perishable and most lucrative rum and salt codfish—codfish for the
+many fast-days of the Roman Catholic Church; New England rum to
+exchange with profit for slaves, coffee, and sugar. The Barbadoes and
+New England sent good, solid Spanish coin to England, both for
+investment and domestic purchases; and England sent to New England what
+is of value to us in this book—the latest fashions.
+
+
+A Puritan Dame. A Puritan Dame.
+
+When I ponder on the conditions of life in Ipswich at the time these
+letters were written—the few good houses, the small amount of tilled
+land, the entire lack of all the elegancies of social life; when I
+think upon the proximity and ferocity of the Indian tribes and the ever
+present terror of their invasion; when I picture the gloom, the dread,
+the oppression of the vast, close-lying, primeval forest,—then the rich
+articles of dress and elaborate explanation of the modes despatched by
+John Hall to his mother would seem more than incongruous, they would be
+ridiculous, did I not know what a factor dress was in public life in
+that day.
+
+Poor Madam Symonds dreaded deeply lest The Plague be sent to her in her
+fine garments from London; and her dutiful son wrote her to have no
+fear, that he bought her finery himself, in safe shops, from reliable
+dealers, and kept all for a month in his own home where none had been
+infected. But she must have had fear of disaster and death more
+intimately menacing to her home than was The Plague.
+
+She had seen the career of genial Master Rowlandson, a neighbor’s son,
+full of naughtiness, fun, and life. While an undergraduate at Harvard
+College he had written in doggerel what was termed pompously a
+“scandalous libell,” and he had pinned it on the door of Ipswich
+Meeting-house, along with the tax-collector’s and road-mender’s notices
+and the announcement of intending marriages, and the grinning wolves’
+heads brought for reward. For this prank he had been soundly whipped by
+the college president on the College Green; but it did not prevent his
+graduating with honor at the head of his class. He was valedictorian,
+class-orator, class-poet—in fact, I may say that he had full honors. (I
+have to add also that in his case honors were easy; for his class, of
+the year 1652, had but one graduate, himself.) The gay, mischievous boy
+had become a faithful, zealous, noble preacher to the Puritan church in
+the neighboring town of Lancaster; and in one cruel night, in 1676, his
+home was destroyed, the whole town made desolate, his parishioners
+slaughtered, and his wife, Esther Rowlandson, carried off by the savage
+red-men, from whom she was bravely rescued by my far-off grandfather,
+John Hoar. Read the thrilling story of her “captivation” and rescue,
+and then think of Madam Symonds’s finery in her gilt trunk in the
+near-by town. For four years the valley of the Nashua—blood-stained,
+fire-blackened—lay desolate and unsettled before Madam Symonds’s eyes;
+then settlers slowly crept in. But for fifty years Ipswich was not
+deemed a safe home nor free from dread of cruel Indians; “Lovewell’s
+War” dragged on in 1726. But mantuas and masks, whisks and drolls, were
+just as eagerly sought by the governor’s wife as if Esther Rowlandson’s
+capture had been a dream.
+
+There was a soured, abusive, intolerant old fellow in New England in
+the year 1700, a “vituperative epithetizer,” ready to throw mud on
+everything around him (though not working—to my knowledge—in cleaning
+out any mud-holes). He was not abusive because he was a Puritan, but
+because “it was his nature to.” He styled himself a “Simple Cobbler,”
+and he announced himself “willing to Mend his Native Country,
+lamentably tattered both in the upper Leather and in the Sole, with all
+the Honest Stitches he can take,” but he took out his aid in loud
+hammering of his lapstone and noisy protesting against all other
+footwear than his own. I fancy he thought himself another Stubbes. I
+know of no whole soles he set, nor any holes he mended, and his
+“Simple” ideas are so involved in expression, in such twisted
+sentences, and with such “strange Ink-pot termes” and so many Latin
+quotations and derivatives, that I doubt if many sensible folk knew
+what he meant, even in his own day. His words have none of the
+directness, the force, the interest that have the writings of old
+Stubbes. Such words as nugiperous, perquisquilian, ill-shapen-shotten,
+nudistertian, futulous, overturcased, quaematry, surquedryes,
+prodromie, would seem to apply ill to woman’s attire; they really fall
+wide of the mark if intended as weapons, but it was to such vain dames
+as the governor’s wife that the Simple Cobbler applied them. Some of
+the ministers of the colony, terrified by the Indian outbreaks,
+gloomily held the vanity and extravagance of dames and goodwives as
+responsible for them all. Others, with broader minds, could discern
+that both the open and the subtle influence of good clothes was needed
+in the new community. They gave an air of cheerfulness, of substance,
+of stability, which is of importance in any new venture. For the
+governor’s wife to dress richly and in the best London modes added
+lustre to the governor’s office. And when the excitement had quieted
+and the sullen Indian sachem and his tawny braves stalked through the
+little town in their gay, barbaric trappings, they were sensible that
+Madam Symonds’s embroidered satin manteau was rich and costly, even if
+they did not know what we know, that it was the top of the mode.
+
+Governor Symonds’s home in Ipswich was on the ground where the old
+seminary building now stands; but the happy married pair spent much of
+the time at his farm-house on Argilla Farm, on Heart-Break Hill, by
+Labor-in-vain Creek, which was also in Ipswich County. This lonely
+farm, so sad in name, was the only dwelling-place in that region; it
+was so remote that when Indian assault was daily feared, the general
+court voted to station there a guard of soldiers at public expense
+because the governor was “so much in the country’s service.” He says
+distinctly, however, concerning the bargain in the purchase of Argilla
+Farm, that his wife was well content with it.
+
+
+Penelope Winslow. Penelope Winslow.
+
+There were also intimate personal considerations which would apparently
+render so luxurious a wardrobe unnecessary and unsuitable. The age and
+health of the wearer might generally be held to be sufficient reason
+for indifference to such costly, delicate, and gay finery. When Madam
+Symonds was fifty-eight years old, in 1674, her son wrote, “Oh, Good
+Mother, grieved am I to learn that Craziness creeps upon you, yet am I
+glad that you have Faith to look beyond this Life.” Craziness had
+originally no meaning of infirmity of mind; it meant feebleness,
+weakness of body. Her letters evidently informed him of failing health,
+but even that did not hinder the export of London finery.
+
+Governor Symonds’s estate at his death was under £;3000, and Argilla
+Farm was valued only at £;150; yet Madam had a “Manto” which is marked
+distinctly in her son’s own handwriting as costing £;30. She had money
+of her own, and estates in England, of which John Hall kept an account,
+and with the income of which he made these purchases. This manteau was
+of flowered satin, and had silver clasps and a rich pair of embroidered
+satin sleeves to wear with it; it was evidently like a sleeveless cape.
+We must always remember that seventeenth-century accounts must be
+multiplied by five to give twentieth-century values. Even this
+valuation is inadequate. Therefore the £;30 paid for the manteau would
+to-day be £;150; $800 would nearly represent the original value. As it
+was sent in early autumn it was evidently a winter garment, and it must
+have been furred with sable to be so costly.
+
+In the early inventories of all the colonies “a pair of sleeves” is a
+frequent item, and to my delight—when so seldom color is given—I have
+more than once a pair of green sleeves.
+
+“Thy gown was of the grassy green
+   Thy sleeves of satin hanging by,
+ Which made thee be our harvest queen
+   And yet thou wouldst not love me.
+     Green sleeves was all my joy,
+     Green sleeves was my delight,
+     Green sleeves was my Heart of Gold,
+     And who but Lady Green-sleeves!”
+
+
+Let me recount some of “My Good Son’s labors of love and pride in
+London shops” for his vain old mother. She had written in the year 1675
+for lawn whisks, but he is quick to respond that she has made a very
+countrified mistake.
+
+
+“Lawn whisks is not now worn either by Gentil or simple, young or old.
+Instead whereof I have bought a shape and ruffles, what is now the ware
+of the bravest as well as the young ones. Such as goe not with naked
+neckes, wear a black whisk over it. Therefore I have not only bought a
+plain one you sent for, but also a Lustre one, such as are most in
+fashion.”
+
+
+John Hall’s “lustre for whisks” was of course lustring, or lutestring,
+a soft half-lustred pure silk fabric which was worn constantly for two
+centuries. He sent his mother many yards of it for her wear.
+
+We have ample proof that these black whisks were in general wear in
+England. In an account-book of Sarah Fell of Swarthmoor Hall in 1673,
+are these items: “a black alamode whiske for Sister Rachel; a round
+whiske for Susanna; a little black whiske for myself.” This English
+Quaker sends also a colored stuff manteo to her sister; scores of
+English inventories of women’s wardrobes contain precisely similar
+items to those bought by Son Hall. And it is a tribute to the devotion
+of American women to the rigid laws of fashion, even in that early day,
+to find that all whisks, save black whisks and lustring ones, disappear
+at this date from colonial inventories of effects.
+
+She wrote to him for a “side of plum colored leather” for her shoes.
+This was a matter of much concern to him, not at all because this
+leather was a bit gay or extravagant, or frail wear for an elderly
+grandmother, but because it was not the very latest thing in leather.
+He writes anxiously:—
+
+
+“Secondly you sent for Damson-Coloured Spanish Leather for Womans
+Shoes. But there is noe Spanish Leather of that Colour; and Turkey
+Leather is coloured on the grain side only, both of which are out of
+use for Women’s Shoes. Therefore I bought a Skin of Leather that is all
+the mode for Women’s Shoes. All that I fear is, that it is too thick.
+But my Coz. Eppes told me yt such thin ones as are here generally used,
+would by rain and snow in N. England presently be rendered of noe
+service and therefore persuaded me to send this, which is stronger than
+ordinary. And if the Shoemaker fit it well, may not be uneasy.”
+
+
+Perhaps his anxious offices and advices in regard to fans show more
+curiously than other quotations, the insistent attitude of the New
+England mind in regard to the latest fashions. I cannot to-day conceive
+why any woman, young or old, could have been at all concerned in
+Ipswich in 1675 as to which sort of fan she carried, or what was
+carried in London, yet good Son John writes:—
+
+
+“As to the feathered fan, I should also have found it in my heart to
+let it alone, because none but very grave persons (and of them very
+few) use it. That now ’tis grown almost as obsolete as Russets and more
+rare to be seen than a yellow Hood. But the Thing being Civil and not
+very dear, Remembering that in the years 64 and 68, if I mistake not,
+you had Two Fans sent, I have bought one now on purpose for you, and I
+hope you will be pleased.”
+
+
+Evidently the screen-fan of Pocahontas’s day was no longer a novelty.
+His mother had had far more fans that he remembered. In 1664 two
+“Tortis shell fanns” had gone across seas; one had cost five shillings,
+the other ten shillings. The following year came a black feather fan
+with silver handle, and two tortoise-shell fans; in 1666 two more
+tortoise-shell fans; in 1688 another feather fan, and so on. These many
+fans may have been disposed of as gifts to others, but the entire trend
+of the son’s letters, as well as his express directions, would show
+that all these articles were for his mother’s personal use. When finery
+was sent for madam’s daughter, it was so specified; in 1675, when the
+daughter became a bride, Brother John sent her her wedding gloves, ever
+a gift of sentiment. A pair of wedding gloves of that date lies now
+before me. They are mitts rather than gloves, being fingerless. They
+are of white kid, and are twenty-two inches long. They are very wide at
+the top, and have three drawing-strings with gilt tassels; these are
+run in welts about two inches apart, and were evidently drawn into
+puffs above the elbow when worn. A full edging of white Swiss lace and
+a pretty design of dots made in gold thread on the back of the hand,
+form altogether a very costly, elegant, and decorative article of
+dress. I should fancy they cost several pounds. Men’s gloves were
+equally rich. Here are the gold-fringed gloves of Governor Leverett
+worn in 1640.
+
+
+Gold-fringed Gloves of Governor Leverett. Gold-fringed Gloves of
+Governor Leverett.
+
+Of course the only head-gear of Madam Symonds for outdoor wear was a
+hood. Hats were falling in disfavor. I shall tell in a special chapter
+of the dominance at this date and the importance of the French hood.
+Its heavy black folds are shown in the portraits of Rebecca Rawson
+(here), of Madam Simeon Stoddard (here), and on other heads in this
+book. Such a hood probably covered Madam Symonds’s head heavily and
+fully, whene’er she walked abroad; certainly it did when she rode a
+pillion-back. She had other fashionable hoods—all the fashionable
+hoods, in fact, that were worn in England at that time; hoods of
+lustring, of tiffany, of “bird’s-eye”—precisely the same as had Madam
+Pepys, and one of spotted gauze, the last a pretty vanity for summer
+wear. We may remember, in fact, that Madam Symonds was a
+contemporary—across-seas—of Madam Pepys, and wore the same garments;
+only she apparently had richer and more varied garments than did that
+beautiful young woman whose husband was in the immediate employ of the
+king.
+
+Arthur Abbott was the agent in Boston through whom this London finery
+and flummery was delivered to Madam Symonds in safety; and it is an
+amusing side-light upon social life in the colony to know that in 1675
+Abbott’s wife was “presented before the court” for wearing a silk hood
+above her station, and her husband paid the fine. Knowing womankind,
+and knowing the skill and cunning in needlework of women of that day, I
+cannot resist building up a little imaginative story around this
+“presentment” and fine. I believe that the pretty young woman could not
+put aside the fascination of all the beautiful London hoods consigned
+to her husband for the old lady at Ipswich; I suspect she tried all the
+finery on, and that she copied one hood for herself so successfully and
+with such telling effect that its air of high fashion at once caught
+the eye and met with the reproof of the severe Boston magistrates. She
+was the last woman, I believe, to be fined under the colonial sumptuary
+laws of Massachusetts.
+
+The colors of Madam Symonds’s garments were seldom given, but I doubt
+that they were “sad-coloured” or “grave of colour” as we find Governor
+Winthrop’s orders for his wife. One lustring hood was brown; and
+frequently green ribbons were sent; also many yards of scarlet and pink
+gauze, which seem the very essence of juvenility. Her son writes a list
+of gifts to her and the members of her family from his own people:—
+
+
+“A light violet-colored Petti-Coat is my wife’s token to you. The
+Petti-Coat was bought for my wife’s mother and scarcely worn. This my
+wife humbly presents to you, requesting your acceptance of it, for your
+own wearing, as being Grave and suitable for a Person of Quality.”
+
+
+Even a half-worn petticoat was a considerable gift; for petticoats were
+both costly and of infinite needlework. Even the wealthiest folk
+esteemed a gift of partly worn clothing, when materials were so rich.
+Letters of deep gratitude were sent in thanks.
+
+The variety of stuffs used in them was great. Some of these are wholly
+obsolete; even the meaning of their names is lost. In an inventory of
+1644, of a citizen of Plymouth there was, for instance, “a petticoate
+of phillip &; cheny” worth £;1. Much of the value of these petticoats
+was in the handwork bestowed upon them; they were both embroidered and
+elaborately quilted. About 1730, in the Van Cortlandt family, a woman
+was paid at one time £;2 5s. for quilting, a large amount for that day.
+Often we find items of fifteen or twenty shillings for quilting a
+petticoat.
+
+
+Embroidered Petticoat Band. Embroidered Petticoat Band.
+
+The handsomest petticoats were of quilted silk or satin. No pattern was
+so elaborate, no amount of work so large, that it could dismay the
+heart or tire the fingers of an eighteenth-century needlewoman. One
+yellow satin petticoat has a lining of stout linen. These are quilted
+together in an exquisite irregular design of interlacing ribbons,
+slender vines, and long, narrow leaves, all stuffed with white cord.
+Though the general effect of this pattern is very regular, an
+examination shows it is not a set design, but must have been drawn as
+well as worked by the maker. Another petticoat has a curious design
+made with two shades of blue silk cord sewed on in a pattern. Another
+of infinite work has a design outlined in tiny rolls of satin.
+
+These petticoats had many flat trimmings; laces of silver, gold, or
+silk thread were used, galloons and orrice. Tufts of fringed silk were
+dotted in clusters and made into fly-fringe. Bridget Neal, writing in
+1685 to her sister, says:—
+
+
+“I am told las is yused on petit-coats. Three fringes is much yused,
+but they are not set on the petcot strait, but in waves; it does not
+look well, unless all the fringes yused that fashion is the plane
+twisted fring not very deep. I hear some has nine fringes sett in this
+fashion.”
+
+
+Anxiety to please his honored mother, and desire that she should be
+dressed in the top of the mode, show in every letter of John Hall:—
+
+
+“I bought your muffs of my Coz. Jno. Rolfe who tells me they are worth
+more money than I gave for them. You desired yours Modish yet Long; but
+here with us they are now much shorter. These were made a Purpose for
+you. As to yr Silk Flowered Manto, I hope it may please you; Tis not
+the Mode to lyne you now at all; but if you like to have it soe, any
+silke will serve, and may be done at yr pleasure.”
+
+
+In 1663 Pepys notes (with his customary delight at a new fashion,
+mingled with fear that thereby he might be led into more expense) that
+ladies at the play put on “vizards which hid the whole face, and had
+become a great fashion; and _so_ to the Exchange to buy a Vizard for my
+wife.” Soon he added a French mask, which led to some unpleasant
+encounters for Mrs. Pepys with dissolute courtiers on the street. The
+plays in London were then so bold and so bad that we cannot wonder at
+the masks of the play-goers. The masks concealed constant blushes; but
+wearers and hearers did not stay away, for neither eyes nor ears were
+covered by the mask. Busino tells of a woman at the theatre all in
+yellow and scarlet, with two masks and three pairs of gloves, worn one
+pair over the other. Suddenly out came disappointing Queen Anne with
+her royal command that the plays be refined and reformed, and then
+masks were abandoned.
+
+
+Blue Brocade Gown and Quilted Satin Petticoat. Blue Brocade Gown and
+Quilted Satin Petticoat.
+
+Masks were in those years in constant wear in the French court and
+society, as a protection to the complexion when walking or riding.
+Sometimes plain glass was fitted in the eye-holes. French masks had
+wires which fastened behind the ears, or a mouthpiece of silver; or
+they had an ingenious and simple stay in the form of two strings at the
+corners of the mouth-opening of the mask. These strings ended in a
+silver button or glass bead. With a bead held firmly in either corner
+of her mouth, the mask-wearer could talk. These vizards are seen in old
+English wood-cuts, often hanging by the side, fastened to the belt with
+a small cord or chain. They brought forth the bitter denunciations of
+the old Puritan Stubbes. He writes in his _Anatomie of Abuses_:—
+
+
+“When they vse to ride abroad, they haue visors made of ueluet (or in
+my iudgment they may rather be called inuisories) wherewith they couer
+all their faces, hauing holes made in them agaynst their eies, whereout
+they looke. So that if a man that knew not their guise before, shoulde
+chaunce to meete one of theme, he would thinke he mette a monster or a
+deuill; for face he can see none, but two broad holes against their
+eyes with glasses in them.”
+
+
+Masks were certainly worn to a considerable extent in America. As early
+as 1645, masks were forbidden in Plymouth, Massachusetts, “for improper
+purposes.” When you think of the Plymouth of that year, its few houses
+and inhabitants, its desperate struggle to hold its place at all as a
+community, the narrow means of its citizens, the comparatively scant
+wardrobes of the wives and daughters, this restriction as to
+mask-wearing seems a grim jest. They were for sale in Salem and Boston,
+black velvet masks worth two shillings each; but these towns were more
+flourishing than Plymouth. And New York dames had them, and the
+planters’ wives of Virginia and South Carolina.
+
+I suppose Madam Symonds wore her mask when she mounted on a pillion
+behind some strong young lad, and rode out to Argilla Farm.
+
+A few years later than the dates when Madam Symonds was ordering these
+fashionable articles of dress from England a rhyming catalogue of a
+lady’s toilet was written by John Evelyn and entitled, _Mundus
+Muliebris or a Voyage to Mary-Land_; it might be a list of Madam
+Symonds’s wardrobe. Some of the lines run:—
+
+“One gown of rich black silk, which odd is
+Without one coloured embroidered boddice.
+Three manteaux, nor can Madam less
+Provision have for due undress.
+Of under-boddice three neat pair
+Embroidered, and of shoes as fair;
+Short under petticoats, pure fine,
+Some of Japan stuff, some of Chine,
+With knee-high galoon bottomed;
+Another quilted white and red,
+With a broad Flanders lace below.
+Three night gowns of rich Indian stuff;
+Four cushion-cloths are scarce enough.
+A manteau girdle, ruby buckle,
+And brilliant diamond ring for knuckle.
+Fans painted and perfumed three;
+Three muffs of ermine, sable, grey.”
+
+
+Other articles of personal and household comfort were gathered in
+London shops by her dutiful son and sent to Madam Symonds. The list is
+full of interest, and helps to fill out the picture of daily life. He
+despatched to her cloves, nutmegs, spices, eringo roots, “coronation”
+and stock-gilly-flower seed, “colly flower seed,” hearth brushes (these
+came every year), silver whistles and several pomanders and
+pomander-beads, bouquet-glasses (which could hardly have been the bosom
+bottles which were worn later), necklaces, amber beads, many and varied
+pins, needles, silk lacings, kid gloves, silver ink-boxes, sealing-wax,
+gilt trunks, fancy boxes, painted desks, tape, ferret, bobbin, bone
+lace, calico, gimp, many yards of ducape, lustring, persian, and other
+silk stuffs—all these items of transport show the son’s devoted
+selection of the articles his mother wished. Gowns seem never to have
+been sent, but manteaus, mantles, and “ferrandine” cloaks appear
+frequently. Of course there are some articles which cannot be
+positively described to-day, such as the “shape, with ruffles” and
+“double pleated drolls” and “lace drolls” which appear several times on
+the lists. These “drolls” were, I believe, the “drowlas” of Madame de
+Lange, in New Amsterdam. “Men’s knives” occasionally were sent, and
+“women’s knives” many times. These latter had hafts of ivory, agate,
+and “Ellotheropian.” This Ellotheropian or Alleteropeain or
+Illyteropian stone has been ever a great puzzle to me until in another
+letter I chanced to find the spelling Hellotyropian; then I knew the
+real word was the Heliotropium of the ancients, our blood-stone. It was
+a favorite stone of the day not only for those fancy-handled knives,
+but for seals, finger-rings and other forms of ornament.
+
+A few books were on the list,—a Greek Lexicon ordered as a gift for a
+student; a very costly Bible, bound in velvet, with silver clasps, the
+expense of which was carefully detailed down to the Indian silk for the
+inner-end leaves; “_Dod on Commandments_—my Ant Jane said you had a
+fancie for it, and I have bound it in green plush for you.” Fancy any
+one having a fancy for Dod on anything! and fancy Dod in green plush
+covers!
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF COATS AND WAISTCOATS
+
+
+_This day the King began to put on his vest; and I did see several
+persons of the House of Lords and Commons too, great courtiers who are
+in it, being a long cassock close to the body, of long cloth, pinked
+with white silk under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with
+white ribbon like a pigeon’s leg; and upon the whole I wish the King
+may keep it, for it is a very fine and handsome garment._
+
+—“Diary,” SAMUEL PEPYS, October 8, 1666.
+
+
+_Fashion then was counted a disease and horses died of it._
+
+—“The Gulls Hornbook,” ANDREW DEKKER, 1609.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF COATS AND WAISTCOATS
+
+
+B
+
+
+oth word and garment—coat—are of curious interest, one as a
+philological study, the other as an evolution. A singular transfer of
+meaning from cot or cote, a house and shelter, to the word coat, used
+for a garment, is duplicated in some degree in chasuble, casule, and
+cassock; the words body, and bodice; and corse or corpse, and corselet
+and corset. The word coat, meaning a garment for men for covering the
+upper part of the body, has been in use for centuries; but of very
+changeable and confusing usage, for it also constantly meant petticoat.
+The garment itself was a puzzle, for many years; most bewildering of
+all the attire which was worn by the first colonists was the elusive,
+coatlike over-garment called in shipping-lists, tailors’ orders,
+household inventories, and other legal and domestic records a doublet,
+a jerkin, a jacket, a cassock, a paltock, a coat, a horseman’s coat, an
+upper-coat, and a buff-coat. All these garments resembled each other;
+all closed with a single row of buttons or points or hooks and eyes.
+There was not a double-breasted coat in the _Mayflower_, nor on any man
+in any of the colonies for many years; they hadn’t been invented. Let
+me attempt to define these several coatlike garments.
+
+
+A Plain Jerkin. A Plain Jerkin.
+
+In 1697 a jerkin was described by Randle Holme as “a kind of jacket or
+upper doublet, with four skirts or laps.” These laps were made by slits
+up from the hem to the belt-line, and varied in number, but four on
+each side was a usual number, or there might be a slit up the back, and
+one on each hip, which would afford four laps in all. Mr. Knight, in
+his notes on Shakespere’s use of the word, conjectures that the jerkin
+was generally worn over the doublet; but one guess is as good as
+another, and I guess it was not. I agree, however, with his surmise
+that the two garments were constantly confounded; in truth it is not a
+surmise, it is a fact. Shakespere expressed the situation when he said
+in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, “My jerkin is a doublet;” and I fancy
+there was slight difference in the garments, save that in the beginning
+the doublet was always of two thicknesses, as its name indicates; and
+it was wadded.
+
+As the jerkin was often minutely slashed, it could scarcely have been
+wadded; though it may have had a lining for special display through the
+slashes.
+
+A jerkin had no skirts in our modern sense of the word,—a piece set on
+at the waist-line,—nor could it on that account be what we term a coat,
+nor was it a coat, nor was it what the colonists deemed a coat.
+
+The old Dutch word is _jurkken_, and it was often thus spelt, which has
+led some to deem it a Dutch name and article of dress. But then it was
+also spelt _irkin, ircken, jorken, jorgen, erkyn_, and _ergoin_—which
+are not Dutch nor any other tongue. Indeed, under the name _ergoin_ I
+wonder that we recognize it or that it knew itself. A jerkin was often
+of leather like a buff-coat, but not always so.
+
+Sir Richard Saltonstall wears a buff-coat, with handsome sword-belt, or
+trooping-belt, and rich gloves. His portrait is shown here. As we look
+at his fine countenance we think of Hawthorne’s words:—
+
+
+“What dignitary is this crossing to greet the Governor. A stately
+personage in velvet cloak—with ample beard and a gold band across his
+breast. He has the authoritative port of one who has filled the highest
+civic position in the first of cities. Of all men in the world, we
+should least expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London—as Sir Richard
+Saltonstall has been once and again—in a forest-bordered settlement in
+the western wilderness.”
+
+
+A fine buff-coat and a buff-coat sleeve are given in the chapter upon
+Armor.
+
+All the early colonial inventories of wearing-apparel contain doublets.
+Richard Sawyer died in 1648 in Windsor, Connecticut; he was a plain
+average “Goodman Citizen.” A part of his apparel was thus inventoried:—
+
+£;	 s.	d. 1 musck-colour’d cloth doublitt &; breeches	1 1
+bucks leather doublitt		12 1 calves leather doublitt		6 1
+liver-colour’d doublitt &; jacket &; breeches		7 1 haire-colour’d
+doublitt &; jackett &; breeches 		5 1 paire canvas
+drawers		1	6 1 olde coate. 1 paire old gray breeches		5
+1 stuffe jackett		2	6
+
+William Kempe of “Duxborrow,” a settler of importance, died in 1641.
+His wardrobe was more varied, and ample and rich. He left two
+buff-coats and leather doublets with silver buttons; cloth doublets,
+three horsemen’s coats, “frize jerkines,” three cassocks, two cloaks.
+
+Of course we turn to Stubbes to see what he can say for or against
+doublets. His outcry here is against their size; and those who know the
+“great pease-cod-bellied doublets” of Elizabeth’s day will agree with
+him that they look as if a man were wholly gone to “gourmandice and
+gluttonie.”
+
+
+A Doublet. A Doublet.
+
+Stubbes has a very good list of coats and jerkins in which he gives
+incidentally an excellent description by which we may know a
+mandillion:—
+
+
+“Their coates and jerkins as they be diuers in colours so be they
+diuers in fashions; for some be made with collars, some without, some
+close to the body, some loose, which they call mandilians, couering the
+whole body down to the thigh, like bags or sacks, that were drawne ouer
+them, hiding the dimensions and lineaments of the body. Some are
+buttoned down the breast, some vnder the arme, and some down the backe,
+some with flaps over the brest, some without, some with great sleeves,
+some with small, some with none at all, some pleated and crested behind
+and curiously gathered and some not.”
+
+
+An old satirical print, dated 1644, gives drawings of men of all the
+new varieties of religious belief and practices which “pestered
+Christians” at the beginning of the century. With the exception of the
+Adamite, whose garb is that of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all ten wear
+doublets. These vary slightly, much less than in Stubbes’s list of
+jerkins. One is open up the back with buttons and button-loops. Another
+has the “four laps on a side,” showing it is a jerkin. Another is
+opened on the hips; one is slit at back and hips. All save one from
+neck to hem are buttoned in front with a single row of buttons, with no
+lapells, collar, or cuffs, and no “flaps,” no ornaments or trimming. A
+linen shirt-cuff and a plain band finish sleeves and neck of all save
+the Arminian, who wears a small ruff. Not one of these doublets is a
+graceful or an elegant garment. All are shapeless and over-plain; and
+have none of the French smartness that came from the spreading
+coat-skirts of men’s later wear.
+
+The welts or wings named in the early sumptuary laws were the pieces of
+cloth set at the shoulder over the arm-hole where body and sleeves
+meet. The welt was at first a sort of epaulet, but grew longer and
+often set out, thus deserving its title of wings.
+
+A dress of the times is thus described:—
+
+
+“His doublet was of a strange cut, the collar of it was up so high and
+sharp as it would cut his throat. His wings according to the fashion
+now were as little and diminutive as a Puritan’s ruff.”
+
+
+A note to this says that “wings were lateral projections, extending
+from each shoulder”—a good round sentence that by itself really means
+nothing. Ben Jonson calls them “puff-wings.”
+
+There is one positive rule in the shape of doublets; they were always
+welted at the arm-hole. Possibly the sleeves were sometimes sewn in,
+but even then there was always a cap, a welt or a hanging sleeve or
+some edging. In the illustrations of the _Roxburghe Ballads_ there is
+not a doublet or jerkin on man, woman, or child but is thus welted.
+Some trimming around the arm-hole was a law. This lasted until the coat
+was wholly evolved. This had sleeves, and the shoulder-welt vanished.
+
+These welts were often turreted or cut in squares. You will note this
+turreted shoulder in some form on nearly all the doublets given in the
+portraits displayed in this book—both on men and women. For doublets
+were also worn by women. Stubbes says, “Though this be a kind of attire
+proper only to a man, yet they blush not to wear it.” The old print of
+the infamous Mrs. Turner given here shows her in a doublet.
+
+
+The high borne Prince Iames Dvke of Yorke borne October = the 13.1633
+James, Duke of York.
+
+Another author complains:—
+
+
+“If Men get up French standing collars Women will have the French
+standing collar too: if Dublets with little thick skirts, so short none
+are able to sit upon them, women’s foreparts are thick skirted too.”
+
+
+Children also had doublets and this same shoulder-cap at the arm-hole;
+their little doublets were made precisely like those of their parents.
+Look at the childish portrait of Lady Arabella Stuart, the portrait
+with the doll. Her fat little figure is squeezed in a doublet which has
+turreted welts like those worn by Anne Boleyn and by Pocahontas (shown
+here). Often a button was set between each square of the welt, and the
+sleeve loops or points could be tied to these buttons and thus hold up
+the detached undersleeves. The portrait of Sir Richard Saltonstall
+vaguely shows these buttons. Nearly all these garments-jerkins,
+jackets, doublets, buff-coats, paltocks, were sleeveless, especially
+when worn as the uppermost or outer garment. Holinshed tells of
+“doublets full of jagges and cuts and sleeves of sundry colours.” These
+welts were “embroidered, indented, waved, furred, chisel-punched,
+dagged,” as well as turreted. On one sleeve the turreted welt varied,
+the middle square or turret was long, the others each two inches
+shorter. Thus the sleeve-welt had a “crow-step” shape. A charming
+doublet sleeve of Elizabeth’s day displayed a short hanging sleeve that
+was scarce more than a hanging welt. This was edged around with crystal
+balls or buttons. Other welts were scalloped, with an eyelet-hole in
+each scallop, like the edge of old ladies’ flannel petticoats.
+Othersome welts were a round stuffed roll. This roll also had its day
+around the petticoat edge, as may be seen in the petticoat of the child
+Henry Gibbes. This roll still appears on Japanese kimonos.
+
+We are constantly finding complaints of the unsuitably ambitious attire
+of laboring folk in such sentences as this:—
+
+
+“The plowman, in times past content in russet, must now-a-daies have
+his doublett of the fashion with wide cuts; his fine garters of
+Granada, to meet his Sis on Sunday. The fair one in russet frock and
+mockaldo sleeves now sells a cow against Easter to buy her silken
+gear.”
+
+
+Velvet jerkins and damask doublets were for men of dignity and estate.
+Governor Winthrop had two tufted velvet jerkins.
+
+Jerkins and doublets varied much in shape and detail:—
+
+
+“These doublets were this day short-waisted, anon, long-bellied;
+by-and-by-after great-buttoned, straight-after plain-laced, or else
+your buttons as strange for smallness as were before for bigness.”
+
+
+
+
+An Embroidered Jerkin. An Embroidered Jerkin.
+
+In Charles II’s time at the May-pole dances still appear the old,
+welted doublets. Jack may have worn Cicily’s doublet, and Peg may have
+borrowed Will’s for all the difference that can be seen. The man’s
+doublet did not ever have long, hanging sleeves, however, in the
+seventeenth century, while women wore such sleeves.
+
+Sometimes the sleeves were very large, as in the Bowdoin portrait
+(here). The great puffs were held out by whalebones and rolls of
+cotton, and “tiring-sleeves” of wires, a fashion which has obtained for
+women at least seven times in the history of English costume. Gosson
+describes the vast sleeves of English doublets thus;—
+
+“This Cloth of Price all cut in ragges,
+    These monstrous bones that compass arms,
+These buttons, pinches, fringes, jagges,
+    With them he (the Devil) weaveth woeful harms.”
+
+
+We have seen how bitterly the slashing of good cloth exercised good
+men. The “cutting in rags” was slashing.
+
+A favorite pattern of slashing is in small, narrow slits as shown in
+the portrait here of James Douglas. These jerkins are of leather, and
+the slashes are of course ornamental, and are also for health and
+comfort, as those know who wear chamois jackets with perforated holes
+throughout them, or slashes if we choose to call them so. They permit a
+circulation of the skin and a natural condition. These jerkins are
+slashed in curious little cuts, “carved of very good intail,” as was
+said of King Henry’s jerkin, which means, in modern English, cut in
+very good designs. And I presume, being of buff leather, the slashes
+were simply cut, not overcast or embroidered as were some wool stuffs.
+
+The guard was literally a guard to the seam, a strip of galloon, silk,
+lace, velvet, put on over the seam to protect and strengthen it.
+
+The large openings or slashes were called panes. Fynes Mayson says,
+“Lord Mountjoy wore jerkins and round hose with laced panes of russet
+cloth.” The Swiss dress was painted by Coryat as doublet and hose of
+panes intermingled of red and yellow, trimmed with long puffs of blue
+and yellow rising up between the panes. It was necessarily a costly
+dress. Of course this is the same word with the same meaning as when
+used in the term a “pane of glass.”
+
+The word “pinches” refers to an elaborate pleating which was worn for
+years; it lingered in America till 1750, and we have revived it in what
+we term “accordion pleating.” The seventeenth-century pinching was
+usually applied to lawn or some washable stuff; and there must have
+been a pinching, a goffering machine by which the pinching was done to
+the washed garment by means of a heated iron.
+
+
+John Lilburne. John Lilburne.
+
+Pinched sleeves, pinched partlets, pinched shirts, pinched wimples,
+pinched ruffs, are often referred to, all washable garments. The good
+wife of Bath wore a wimple which was “y-pinched full seemly.” Henry
+VIII wore a pinched habit-shirt of finest lawn, and his fine, healthy
+skin glowed pink through the folds of the lawn after his hearty
+exercise at tennis and all kinds of athletic sports, for which he had
+thrown off his doublet. We are taught to deem him “a spot of grease and
+blood on England’s page.” There was more muscle than fat in him; he
+could not be restrained from constant, violent, dangerous exercise;
+this was one of the causes of the admiration of his subjects.
+
+The pinched partlet made a fine undergarment for the slashed doublet.
+
+So full, so close, were these “pinchings,” that one author complained
+that men wearing them could not draw their bowstrings well. It was said
+that the “pinched partlet and puffed sleeves” of a courtier would
+easily make a lad a doublet and cloak.
+
+In my chapter on Children’s Dress I tell of the pinched shirt worn by
+Governor Bradford when an infant, and give an illustration of it.
+
+Aglets or tags were a pretty fashion revived for women’s wear three
+years ago. Under Stuart reign, these aglets were of gold or silver, and
+set with precious stones such as pear-shaped pearls. For ordinary wear
+they were of metal, silk, or leather. They secured from untwisting or
+ravelling the points which were worn for over a century; these were
+ties or laces of ribbon, or woollen yarn or leather, decorated with
+tags or aglets at one end. Points were often home-woven, and were
+deemed a pretty gift to a friend. They were employed instead of buttons
+in securing clothes, and were used by the earliest settlers, chiefly, I
+think, as ornaments at the knee or for holding up the stockings in the
+place of garters. They were regarded as but foolish vanities, and were
+one of the articles of finery tabooed in early sumptuary laws. In 1651
+the general court of Massachusetts expressed its “utter detestation and
+dislike that men of meane condition, education and calling should take
+upon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of poynts at the
+knees.” Fashion was more powerful than law; the richly trimmed,
+sashlike garters quickly displaced the modest points.
+
+The Earl of Southampton, friend of Shakespere and of Virginia, as
+pictured on a later page, wears a doublet with agletted points around
+his belt, by which breeches and doublet are tied together. This is a
+striking portrait. The face is very noble. A similar belt was the
+favorite wear of Charles I.
+
+Martin Frobisher, the hero of the Armada, wears a jerkin fastened down
+the front with buttons and aigletted points. (See here.) I suppose,
+when the fronts of the jerkin were thoroughly joined, each button had a
+point twisted or tied around it. Frobisher’s lawn ruff is a modest and
+becoming one. This portrait in the original is full length. The
+remainder of the costume is very plain; it has no garters, no
+knee-points, no ribbons, no shoe-roses. The foot-covering is Turkish
+slippers precisely like the Oriental slippers which are imported
+to-day.
+
+The Earl of Morton (here) wore a jerkin of buff leather curiously
+pinked and slashed. Fulke Greville’s doublet (here) has a singular puff
+around the waist, like a farthingale.Here is shown a doublet of the
+commonest form; this is worn by Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire.
+The portrait is painted by Sir Antonio More—the portrait of one artist
+by another, and a very fine one, too.
+
+Another garment, which is constantly named in lists of clothing, was
+the cassock. Steevens says a cassock “signifies a horseman’s loose
+coat, and is used in that sense by the writers of the age of
+Shakespere.” It was apparently a garment much like a doublet or jerkin,
+and the names were used interchangeably. I think the cassock was longer
+than the doublet, and without “laps.” The straight, long coats shown on
+the gentlemen in the picture here were cassocks. The name finally
+became applied only to the coat or gown of the clergy. In the will of
+Robert Saltonstall, made in 1650, he names a “Plush Cassock,” but cloth
+cassocks were the commonest wear.
+
+There were other names for the doublet which are now difficult to place
+precisely. In the reign of Henry VIII a law was passed as to men’s wear
+of velvet in their sleeveless cotes, jackets, and jupes. This word jupe
+and its ally jupon were more frequently heard in women’s lists; but
+jump, a derivative, was man’s wear. Randle Holme said: “A jump
+extendeth to the thighs; is open and buttoned before, and may have a
+slit half way behind.” It might be with or without sleeves—all this
+being likewise true of the doublet. From this jump descended the modern
+jumper and the eighteenth century jumps—what Dr. Johnson defined in one
+of his delightsome struggles with the names of women’s attire, “Jumps:
+a kind of loose or limber stays worn by sickly ladies.”
+
+
+Colonel William Legge. Colonel William Legge.
+
+Coats were not furnished to the Massachusetts or Plymouth planters, but
+those of Piscataquay in New Hampshire had “lined coats,” which were
+simply doublets like all the rest.
+
+In 1633 we find that Governor Winthrop had several dozen scarlet coats
+sent from England to “the Bay.” The consigner wrote, “I could not find
+any Bridgwater cloth but Red; so all the coats sent are red lined with
+blew, and lace suitable; which red is the choise color of all.” These
+coats of double thickness were evidently doublets.
+
+The word “coat” in the earliest lists must often refer to a waistcoat.
+I infer this from the small cost of the garments, the small amount of
+stuff it took to make them, and because they were worn with “Vper
+coats”—upper coats. Raccoon-skin and deerskin coats were many; these
+were likewise waistcoats, and the first lace coats were also
+waistcoats. Robert Keayne of Boston had costly lace coats in 1640,
+which he wore with doublets—these likewise were waistcoats.
+
+As years go on, the use of the word becomes constant. There were
+“moose-coats” of mooseskin. Josselyn says mooseskin made excellent
+coats for martial men. Then come papous coats and pappous coats. These
+I inferred—since they were used in Indian trading—were for pappooses’
+wear, pappoose being the Indian word for child. But I had a painful
+shock in finding in the _Traders’ Table of Values_ that “3 Pappous
+Skins equal 1 Beaver”—so I must not believe that pappoose here means
+Indian baby. Match-coats were originally of skins dressed with the fur
+on, shaped in a coat like the hunting-shirt. The “Duffield Match-coat”
+was made of duffels, a woollen stuff, in the same shape. Duffels was
+called match-cloth. The word “coat” here is not really an English word;
+it is matchigode, the Chippewa Indian name for this garment.
+
+
+[Illustration: Sir Thomas Orchard, Knight]
+
+We have in old-time letters and accounts occasional proof that the coat
+of the Puritan fathers was not at all like the shapely coat of our day.
+We have also many words to prove that the coat was a doublet which, as
+old Stubbes said, could be “pleated, or crested behind and curiously
+gathered.”
+
+The tailor of the Winthrop family was one John Smith; he made garments
+for them all, father, mother, children, and children’s wives, and
+husband’s sisters, nieces, cousins, and aunts. He was a good Puritan,
+and seems to have been much esteemed by Winthrop. One letter
+accompanying a coat runs: “Good Mr. Winthrop, I have, by Mr. Downing’s
+direction sent you a coat, a sad foulding colour without lace. For the
+fittness I am a little vncerteyne, but if it be too bigg or too little
+it is esie to amend, vnder the arme to take in or let out the lyning;
+the outside may be let out in the gathering or taken in also without
+any prejudice.” This instruction would appear to prove not only that
+the coat was a doublet, “curiously gathered” but that the “fittness”
+was more than “uncerteyne” of the coats of the Fathers. Since even such
+wildly broad directions could not “prejudice” the coat, we may assume
+that Governor Winthrop was more easily suited as to the cut of his
+apparel, than would have been Sir Walter Raleigh or Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+Though Puritan influence on dress simplified much of the flippery and
+finery of the days of Elizabeth and James, and the refining elegance of
+Van Dyck gave additional simplicity as well as beauty to women’s
+attire, which it retained for many years, still there lingered
+throughout the seventeenth century, ready to spring into fresh life at
+a breath of encouragement, many grotesqueries of fashion in men’s dress
+which, in the picturesque sneer of the day, were deemed meet only for
+“a changeable-silk-gallant.” At the restoration of the crown, courtiers
+seemed to love to flaunt frivolity in the faces of the Puritans.
+
+One of these trumperies came through the excessive use of ribbons, a
+use which gave much charm to women’s dress, but which ever gave to
+men’s garments a finicky look. Beribboned doublets came in the
+butterfly period, between worm and chrysalis, between doublet and coat;
+beribboned breeches were eagerly adopted.
+
+Shown here is the copy of an old print, which shows the dress of an
+estimable and sensible gentleman, Sir Thomas Orchard, with ribbon-edged
+garments and much galloon or laces. It is far too much trimmed to be
+rich or elegant. See also _The English Antick_ on this page, from a
+rare broadside. His tall hat is beribboned and befeathered; his face is
+patched, ribbons knot his love-locks, his breeches are edged with
+agletted ribbons, and “on either side are two great bunches of ribbons
+of several colors.” Similar knots are at wrists and belt. His boots are
+fringed with lace, and so wide that he “straddled as he went along
+singing.”
+
+
+The English Antick. The English Antick.
+
+Ribboned sleeves like those of Colonel Legge, here, were a pretty
+fashion, but more suited to women’s wear than to men’s.
+
+George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, tells us what he thought of such
+attire. He wrote satirically:—
+
+
+“If one have store of ribands hanging about his waist or his knees and
+in his hat; of divers colours red, white black or yellow, O! then he is
+a brave man. He hath ribands on his back, belly and knees, and his hair
+powdered, this is the array of the world. Are not these that have got
+ribands hanging about their arms, hands, back, waist, knees, hats, like
+fiddlers’ boys? And further if one get a pair of breeches like a coat
+and hang them about with points, and tied up almost to the middle, a
+pair of double cuffs on his hands, and a feather in his cap, here is a
+gentleman!”
+
+
+These beribboned garments were a French mode. The breeches were the
+“rhingraves” of the French court, which were breeches made wholly of
+loops of ribbons—like two ribboned petticoats. They caught the eye of
+seafaring men; we know that Jack ashore loves finery. We are told of
+sea-captains wearing beribboned breeches as they came into quiet little
+American ports, and of one English gallant landing from a ship in sober
+Boston, wearing breeches made wholly from waist to knee of overlapping
+loops of gay varicolored ribbon. It is recorded that “the boys did
+wonder and call out thereat,” and they “were chided therefor.” It is
+easy to picture the scene: the staring boys, born in Boston, of Puritan
+parents, of dignified dress, and more familiar with fringes on the
+garments of savage Indians than on the breeches of English gentlemen;
+we can see the soberly reproving minister or schoolmaster looking with
+equal disapproval on the foppish visitor and the mannerless boys; and
+the gayly dressed ship’s captain, armed with self-satisfaction and
+masculine vanity, swaggering along the narrow streets of the little
+town. It mattered not what he wore or what he did, a seafaring man was
+welcome. I wonder what the governor thought of those beribboned
+breeches! Perhaps he ordered a pair from London for himself,—of
+sad-colored ribbons,—offering the color as a compromise for the
+over-gayety of the ribbons. Randle Holme gave in 1658 three
+descriptions of the first petticoat-breeches, with drawings of each.
+One had the lining lower than the breeches, and tied in about the
+knees; ribbons extended halfway up the breeches, and ribbons hung out
+from the doublet all about the waistband. The second had a single row
+of pointed ribbons hanging all around the lower edge of the breeches;
+these were worn with stirrup-hose two yards wide at the top, tied by
+points and eyelet-holes to the breeches. The third had stirrup-hose
+tied to the breeches, and another pair of hose over them turned down at
+the calf of the leg, and the ribbons edged the stirrup-hose. His
+drawings of them are foolish things—not even pretty. He says ribbons
+were worn first at the knees, then at the waist at the doublet edge,
+then around the neck, then on the wrists and sleeves. These
+knee-ribbons formed what Dryden called in 1674 “a dangling
+knee-fringe.” It is difficult for me to think of Dryden living at that
+period of history. He seems to me infinitely modern in comparison with
+it. Evelyn describes the wearer of such a suit as “a fine silken
+thing”; and tells that the ribbons were of “well-chosen colours of red,
+orange, and blew, of well-gummed satin, which augured a happy fancy.”
+
+In 1672 a suit of men’s clothes was made for the beautiful Duchess of
+Portsmouth to wear to a masquerade; this was with “Rhingrave breeches
+and cannons.” The suit was of dove-colored silk brocade trimmed with
+scarlet and silver lace and ribbons.
+
+The ten yards of brocade for this beautiful suit cost £;14. The
+Rhingrave breeches were trimmed with thirty-six yards of figured
+scarlet ribbon and thirty-six yards of plain satin ribbon and
+thirty-six of scarlet taffeta ribbon; this made one hundred and eight
+yards of ribbon—a great amount—an unusable amount. I fear the tailor
+was not honest. There were also as trimmings twenty-two yards of
+scarlet and silver vellum lace for guards; six dozen scarlet and silver
+vellum buttons, smaller breast buttons, narrow laces for the waistcoat,
+and silver twist for buttonholes. The suit was lined with lutestring.
+There was a black beaver hat with scarlet and silver edging, and lace
+embroidered scarlet stockings, a rich belt and lace garters, and point
+lace ruffles for the neck, sleeves, and knees. This suit had an
+interlining of scarlet camlet; and lutestring drawers seamed with
+scarlet and silver lace. The total bill of £;59 would be represented
+to-day by $1400,—a goodly sum,—but it was a goodly suit. There is a
+portrait of the Duchess of Richmond in a similar suit, now at
+Buckingham Palace. Portraits of the Duke of Bedford, and of George I,
+painted by Kneller, are almost equally beribboned. The one of the king
+is given facing this page to show his ribbons and also the
+extraordinary shoes, which were fashionable at this date.
+
+
+George I. George I.
+
+“Indians gowns,” or banyans, were for a century worn in England and
+America, and are of enough importance to receive a separate chapter in
+this book. The graceful folds allured all men and all portrait
+painters, just as the fashionable new china allured all women. The
+banyan was not the only Oriental garment which had become of interest
+to Englishmen. John Evelyn described in his _Tyrannus or the Mode_ the
+“comeliness and usefulnesse” of all Persian clothing; and he noted with
+justifiable gratification that the new attire which had recently been
+adopted by King Charles II was “a comely dress after ye Persian mode.”
+He says modestly, “I do not impute to this my discourse the change
+which soone happened; but it was an identity I could not but take
+notice of.”
+
+Rugge in his _Diurnal_ describes the novel dress which was assumed by
+King Charles and the whole court, due notice of a subject of so much
+importance having been given to the council the previous month; and
+notice of the king’s determination “never to change it,” which he kept
+like many another of his promises and resolutions.
+
+
+“It is a close coat of cloth pinkt with a white taffety under the
+cutts. This in length reached the calf of the leg; and upon that a
+sercoat cutt at the breast, which hung loose and shorter than the vest
+six inches. The breeches the Spanish cutt; and buskins some of cloth,
+some of leather but of the same colour as the vest or garment; of never
+the like garment since William the Conqueror.”
+
+
+
+
+Three Cassock Sleeves and a Buff-coat Sleeve. Three Cassock Sleeves and
+a Buff-coat Sleeve.
+
+Pepys we have seen further explained that it was all black and white,
+the black cassock being close to the body. “The legs ruffled with black
+ribands like a pigeon’s leg, and I wish the King may keep it for it is
+a fine and handsome garment.” The news which came to the English court
+a month later that the king of France had put all his footmen and
+servants in this same dress as a livery made Pepys “mightie merry, it
+being an ingenious kind of affront, and yet makes me angry,” which is
+as curious a frame of mind as even curious Pepys could record. Planché
+doubts this act of the king of France; but in _The Character of a
+Trimmer_ the story is told _in extenso_—that the “vests were put on at
+first by the King to make Englishmen look unlike Frenchmen; but at the
+first laughing at it all ran back to the dress of French gentlemen.”
+The king had already taken out the white linings as “’tis like a
+magpie;” and was glad to quit it I do not doubt. Dr. Holmes—and the
+rest of us—have looked askance at the word “vest” as allied in usage to
+that unutterable contraction, pants. But here we find that vest is a
+more classic name than waistcoat for this dull garment—a garment with
+too little form or significance to be elegant or interesting or
+attractive.
+
+
+Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington. Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington.
+
+Though this dress was adopted by the whole court, and though it was an
+age of portrait painting,—and surely no more delicate flattery to the
+king’s taste could be given than to have one’s portrait painted in the
+king’s chosen vestments,—yet but one portrait remains which is stated
+to display this dress. This is the portrait of Henry Bennet, Earl of
+Arlington—it is shown on this page. This was painted by the king’s own
+painter, Sir Peter Lely. I must say that I cannot find much resemblance
+to Pepys’s or Rugge’s description, unless the word “pinked” means cut
+out in an all-over pattern like Italian cut-work; then this inner vest
+might be of “cloth pinkt with a white taffeta under the coat.” The
+surcoat is of black lined with white. Of course the sash is present,
+but not in any way distinctive. It was a characteristic act in the Earl
+to be painted in this dress, for he was a courtier of courtiers,
+perhaps the most rigid follower of court rules in England. He was “by
+nature of a pleasant and agreeable humour,” but after a diplomatic
+journey on the continent he assumed an absurd formality of manner which
+was much ridiculed by his contemporaries. His letters show him to be
+exceeding nice in his phraseology; and he prided himself upon being the
+best-bred man in court. He was a trimmer, “the chief trickster of the
+court,” a member of the Cabal, the first _a_ in the word; and he was
+heartily hated as well as ridiculed. When a young man he received a cut
+on the nose in a skirmish in Ireland; he never let his prowess be
+forgotten, but ever after wore a black patch over the scar—it may be
+seen in his portrait. When his fellow courtiers wished to gibe at him,
+they stuck black patches on their noses and with long white staves
+strutted around the court in imitation of his pompous manner. He is a
+handsome fellow, but too fat—which was not a curse of his day as of the
+present.
+
+
+Figures from Funeral Procession of the Duke of Albemarle, 1670. Figures
+from Funeral Procession of the Duke of Albemarle, 1670.
+
+Of course the king changed his dress many times after this solemn
+assumption of a lifelong garment. It was a restless, uncertain, trying
+time in men’s dress. They had lost the doublet, and had not found the
+skirted coat, and stood like the Englishman of Andrew Borde—ready to
+take a covering from any nation of the earth. I wonder the coat ever
+survived—that it did is proof of an inherent worth. Knowing the nature
+of mankind and the modes, the surprise really is that the descendants
+of Charles and all English folk are not now wearing shawls or peplums
+or anything save a coat and waistcoat.
+
+Some of the sturdy rich members of the governors’ cabinets and the
+assemblies and some of our American officers who had been in his
+Majesty’s army, or had served a term in the provincial militia, and had
+had a hot skirmish or two with marauding Indians on the Connecticut
+River frontier, and some very worthy American gentlemen who were not
+widely renowned either in military or diplomatic circles and had never
+worn armor save in the artist’s studio,—these were all painted by Sir
+Godfrey Kneller and by Sir Peter Lely, and by lesser lights in art,
+dressed in a steel corselet of the artist, and wearing their own good
+Flanders necktie and their own full well-buckled wig. There were some
+brave soldiers, too, who were thus painted, but there were far more in
+armor than had ever smelt smoke of powder. It was a good comfortable
+fashion for the busy artist. It must have been much easier when you had
+painted a certain corselet a hundred times to paint it again than to
+have to paint all kinds of new colors and stuffs. And the portrait in
+armor was almost always kitcat, and that disposed of the legs, ever a
+nuisance in portrait-painting.
+
+While the virago-sleeves were growing more and more ornamental, and
+engageants were being more and more worn by women, men’s sleeves
+assumed a most interesting form. The long coat, or cassock, had sleeves
+which were cut off at the elbow with great cuffs and were worn over
+enormous ruffled undersleeves; and they were even cut midway between
+shoulder and elbow, were slashed and pointed and beribboned to a
+wonderful degree. This lasted but a few years, the years when the
+cassock was shaping itself definitely into a skirted coat. Perhaps the
+height of ornamentation in sleeves was in the closing years of the
+reign of Charles II, though fancy sleeves lingered till the time of
+George I.
+
+
+Earl of Southampton. Earl of Southampton.
+
+In an account of the funeral of George Monck, the Duke of Albemarle, in
+the year 1670, the dress is very carefully drawn of those who walked in
+the procession. (Some of them are given here.) It may be noted, first,
+that all the hats are lower crowned and straight crowned, not like a
+cone or a truncated cone, as crowns had been. The _Poor Men_ are in
+robes with beards and flowing natural hair; they wear square bands, and
+carry staves. The _Clergymen_ wear trailing surplices; but these are
+over a sort of cassock and breeches, and they all have high-heeled
+shoes with great roses. They also have their own hair. The _Doctors of
+Physic_ are dressed like the _Gentlemen and Earls_, save that they wear
+a rich robe with bands at the upper arm, over the other fine dress. The
+gentlemen wear a cassock, or coat, which reaches to the knee; the
+pockets are nearly as low as the knee. These cassocks have lapels from
+neck to hem, with a long row of gold buttons which are wholly for
+ornament, the cassock never being fastened with the buttons. The
+sleeves reach only to the elbow and turn back in a spreading cuff; and
+from the elbow hang heavy ruffles and under-sleeves, some of rich lace,
+others of embroidery. The gentlemen and earls wear great wigs.
+
+This coat was called a surcoat or tunic. The under-coat, or waistcoat,
+was also called a vest, as by Charles the king.
+
+From this vest, or surcoat, was developed a coat, with skirts, such as
+had become, ere the year 1700, the universal wear of English and
+American men. Its first form was adopted about at the close of the
+reign of Charles II. By 1688 Quaker teachers warned their younger sort
+against “cross-pockets on men’s coats, side slopes, over-full skirted
+coats.”
+
+In an old play a man threatens a country lad, “I’ll make your buttons
+fly.” The lad replies, “All my buttons is loops.” Some garments,
+especially leather ones, like doublets, which were cumbersome to
+button, were secured by loops. For instance, in spatterdashes, a row of
+holes was set on one side, and of loops on the other. To fasten them,
+one must begin at the lower loop, pass this through the first hole,
+then put the second loop through that first loop and the second hole,
+and so on till the last loop was fastened to the breeches by buckle and
+strap or large single button. From these loops were developed frogs and
+loops.
+
+Major John Pyncheon had, in 1703, a “light coulour’d cape-coat with
+Frogs on it.” In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of 1736 “New
+Fashion’d Frogs” are named; and later, “Spangled Scalloped &; Brocaded
+Frogs.”
+
+Though these jerkins and mandillions and doublets which were furnished
+to the Bay colonists were fastened with hooks and eyes, buttons were
+worn also, as old portraits and old letters prove. John Eliot ordered
+for traffic with the Indians, in 1651, three gross of pewter buttons;
+and Robert Keayne, of Boston, writing in 1653, said bitterly that a
+“haynous offence” of his had been selling buttons at too large
+profit—that they were gold buttons and he had sold them for two
+shillings ninepence a dozen in Boston, when they had cost but two
+shillings a dozen in London (which does not seem, in the light of our
+modern profits on imported goods, a very “haynous” offence). He also
+added with acerbity that “they were never payd for by those that
+complayned.”
+
+Buttonholes were a matter of ornament more than of use; in fact, they
+were never used for closing the garment after coats came to be worn.
+They were carefully cut and “laid around” in gay colors, embroidered
+with silver and gold thread, bound with vellum, with kid, with velvet.
+We find in old-time letters directions about modish buttonholes, and
+drawings even, in order that the shape may be exactly as wished. An
+English contemporary of John Winthrop’s has tasselled buttonholes on
+his doublet.
+
+Various are the reasons given for the placing of the two buttons on the
+back of a man’s coat. One is that they are a survival of buttons which
+were used on the eighteenth-century riding-coat. The coat-tails were
+thus buttoned up when the wearer was on horseback. Another is that they
+were used for looping back the skirts of the coats; it is said that
+loops of cord were placed at the corners of the said skirts.
+
+A curious anecdote about these two buttons on the back of the coat is
+that a tribe of North American Indians, deep believers in the value of
+symbolism, refused to heed a missionary because he could not explain to
+them the significance of these two buttons.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RUFFS AND BANDS
+
+_“Fashion has brought in deep ruffs and shallow ruffs, thick ruffs and
+thin ruffs, double ruffs and no ruffs. When the Judge of the quick and
+the dead shall appear he will not know those who have so defaced the
+fashion he hath created.”_
+
+—Sermon, JOHN KING, Bishop of London, 1590.
+
+
+“Now up aloft I mount unto the Ruffe
+Which into foolish Mortals pride doth puffe;
+Yet Ruffe’s antiquitie is here but small—
+Within these eighty Tears not one at all
+For the 8th Henry, as I understand
+Was the first King that ever wore a Band
+And but a Falling Band, plaine with a Hem
+All other people know no use of them.”
+
+—“The Prayse of Clean Linnen,” JOHN TAYLOR, the “Water Poet,” 1640.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RUFFS AND BANDS
+
+
+W
+
+
+e have in this poem of the old “Water Poet” a definite statement of the
+date of the introduction of ruffs for English wear. We are afforded in
+the portraiture given in this book ample proof of the fall of the ruff.
+
+
+A Bowdoin Portrait. A Bowdoin Portrait.
+
+Like many of the most striking fashions of olden times, the ruff was
+Spanish. French gentlemen had worn frills or ruffs about 1540; soon
+after, these appeared in England; by the date of Elizabeth’s accession
+the ruff had become the most imposing article of English men’s and
+women’s dress. It was worn exclusively by fine folk; for it was too
+frail and too costly for the common wear of the common people, though
+lawn ruffs were seen on many of low degree. A ruff such as was worn by
+a courtier contained eighteen or nineteen yards of fine linen lawn. A
+quarter of a yard wide was the fashionable width in England. Ruffs were
+carefully pleated in triple box-plaits as shown in the Bowdoin portrait
+here. Then they were bound with a firm neck-binding.
+
+This carefully made ruff was starched with good English or Dutch
+starch; fluted with “setting sticks” of wood or bone, to hold each
+pleat up; then fixed with struts—also of wood—placed in a manner to
+hold the pleats firmly apart; and finally “seared” or goffered with
+“poking sticks” of iron or steel, which, duly heated, dried the
+stiffening starch. To “do up” a formal ruff was a wearisome, difficult,
+and costly precess. Women of skill acquired considerable fortunes as
+“gofferers.”
+
+Stubbes tells us further of the rich decoration of ruffs with gold,
+silver, and silk lace, with needlework, with openwork, and with purled
+lace. This was in Elizabeth’s day. John Winthrop’s ruff (here) is edged
+with lace; in general a plain ruff was worn by plain gentlemen; one may
+be seen on Martin Frobisher (here). Rich lace was for the court. Their
+great cost, their inconvenience, their artificiality, their size, were
+sure to make ruffs a “reason of offence” to reformers. Stubbes gave
+voice to their complaints in these words:—
+
+
+“They haue great and monstrous ruffes, made either of cambrike,
+holland, lawne, or els of some other the finest cloth that can be got
+for money, whereof some be a quarter of a yarde deepe, yea, some more,
+very few lesse, so that they stande a full quarter of a yearde (and
+more) from their necks hanging ouer their shoulder points in steade of
+a vaile.”
+
+
+Still more violent does he grow over starch:—
+
+
+“The one arch or piller whereby his (the Devil’s) kyngdome of great
+ruffes is vnderpropped, is a certaine kind of liquid matter, whiche
+they call starch, wherein the deuill hath willed them to washe and dive
+their ruffes well, whiche, beeying drie, will then stande stiff and
+inflexible about their necks.
+
+“The other piller is a certaine device made of wiers, crested for the
+purpose; whipped over either with gold thred, silver, or silke, and
+this he calleth a supportasse or vnderpropper; this is to bee applied
+round about their neckes under the ruffe, upon the out side of the
+bande, to beare up the whole frame and bodie of the ruffe, from
+fallying and hangying doune.”
+
+
+Starch was of various colors. We read of “blue-starch-women,” and of
+what must have been especially ugly, “goose-green starch.” Yellow
+starch was most worn. It was introduced from France by the notorious
+Mrs. Turner. (See here.)
+
+Wither wrote thus of the varying modes of dressing the neck:—
+
+“Some are graced by their Tyres
+As their Quoyfs, their Hats, their Wyres,
+One a Ruff cloth best become;
+Falling bands allureth some;
+And their favours oft we see
+Changèd as their dressings be.”
+
+
+The transformation of ruff to band can be seen in the painting of King
+Charles I. The first Van Dyck portrait of him shows him in a moderate
+ruff turned over to lie down like a collar; the lace edge formed itself
+by the pleats into points which developed into the lace points
+characteristic of Van Dyck’s later pictures and called by his name.
+
+Evelyn, describing a medal of King Charles I struck in 1633, says, “The
+King wears a falling band, a new mode which has succeeded the
+cumbersome ruff; but neither do the bishops nor the Judges give it up
+so soon.” Few of the early colonial portraits show ruffs, though the
+name appears in many inventories, but “playne bands” are more
+frequently named than ruffs. Thus in an Inventory of William Swift,
+Plymouth, 1642, he had “2 Ruff Bands and 4 Playne Bands.” The “playne
+band” of the Puritans is shown in this portrait of William Pyncheon,
+which is dated 1657.
+
+
+William Pyncheon. William Pyncheon.
+
+The first change from the full pleated ruff of the sixteenth century
+came in the adoption of a richly laced collar, unpleated, which still
+stood up behind the ears at the back of the head. Often it was wired in
+place with a supportasse. This was worn by both men and women. You may
+see one here, on the neck of Pocahontas, her portrait painted in 1616.
+This collar, called a standing-band, when turned down was known as a
+falling-band or a rebato.
+
+The rich lace falling-band continued to be worn until the great flowing
+wig, with long, heavy curls, covered the entire shoulders and hid any
+band; the floating ends in front were the only part visible. In time
+they too vanished. Pepys wrote in 1662, “Put on my new lace band and so
+neat; am resolved my great expense shall be lace bands, and it will set
+off anything else the more.”
+
+I scarcely need to point out the falling-band in its various shapes as
+worn in America; they can be found readily in the early pages of this
+book. It was a fashion much discussed and at first much disliked; but
+the ruff had seen its last day—for men’s wear, when the old fellows who
+had worn it in the early years of the seventeenth century dropped off
+as the century waned. The old Bowdoin gentleman must have been one of
+the last to wear this cumbersome though stately adjunct of dress—save
+as it was displaced on some formal state occasion or as part of a
+uniform or livery.
+
+There is a constant tendency in all times and among all
+English-speaking folk to shorten names and titles for colloquial
+purposes; and soon the falling-band became the fall. In the _Wits’
+Recreation_ are two epigrams which show the thought of the times:—
+
+“WHY WOMEN WEARE A FALL
+
+“A Question ’tis why Women wear a fall?
+And truth it is to Pride they’re given all.
+And _Pride_, the proverb says, _will have a fall_.”
+
+
+“ON A LITTLE DIMINUTIVE BAND
+
+“What is the reason of God-dam-me’s band,
+Inch deep? and that his fashion doth not alter,
+God-dam-me saves a labor, understand
+In pulling it off, where he puts on the Halter.”
+
+
+“God-dam-me” was one of the pleasant epithets which, by scores, were
+applied to the Puritans.
+
+
+Reverend Jonathan Edwards. Reverend Jonathan Edwards.
+
+The bands worn by the learned professions, two strips of lawn with
+squared ends, were at first the elongated ends of the shirt collar of
+Jonathan Edwards. We have them still, to remind us of old fashions; and
+we have another word and thing, band-box, which must have been a stern
+necessity in those days of starch, and ruff, and band.
+
+It was by no means a convention of dress that “God-dam-me” should wear
+a small band. Neither Cromwell nor his followers clung long to plain
+bands; nor did they all assume them. It would be wholly impossible to
+generalize or to determine the standing of individuals, either in
+politics or religion, by their neckwear. I have before me a little
+group of prints of men of Cromwell’s day, gathered for extra
+illustration of a history of Cromwell’s time. Let us glance at their
+bands.
+
+First comes Cromwell himself from the Cooper portrait at Cambridge;
+this portrait has a plain linen turnover collar, or band, but two to
+three inches wide. Then his father is shown in a very broad, square,
+plain linen collar extending in front expanse from shoulder seam to
+shoulder seam. Sir Harry Vane and Hampden, both Puritans, have narrow
+collars like Cromwell’s; Pym, an equally precise sectarian, has a
+broader one like the father’s, but apparently of some solid and rich
+embroidery like cut-work. Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, in narrow
+band, Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, in band and band-strings, were
+members of the Long Parliament, but passed in time to the Royal Camp.
+Other portraits of both noblemen are in richly laced bands. The Earl of
+Bristol, who was in the same standing, has the widest of lace, Vandyked
+collars. John Selden wears the plain band; but here is Strafford, the
+very impersonation of all that was hated by Puritans, and yet he wears
+the simplest of puritanical bands. William Lenthal, Speaker of the
+House of Commons, is in a beautiful Cavalier collar with straight lace
+edges. There are a score more, equally indifferent to rule.
+
+There is no doubt, however, that the Puritan regarded his plain band—if
+he wore it—with jealous care. Poor Mary Downing, niece of Governor
+Winthrop, paid dearly for her careless “searing,” or ironing, of her
+brother’s bands. Her stepmother’s severity at her offence brought forth
+this plaintive letter:—
+
+
+“Father, I trust that I have not provoked you to harbour soe ill an
+opinion of mee as my mothers lettres do signifie and give me to
+understand; the ill opinion and hard pswasion which shee beares of mee,
+that is to say, that I should abuse yor goodness, and bee prodigall of
+yor purse, neglectful of my brothers bands, and of my slatterishnes and
+lasines; for my brothers bands I will not excuse myselfe, but I thinke
+not worthy soe sharpe a reproofe; for the rest I must needs excuse, and
+cleare myselfe if I may bee believed. I doe not know myselfe guilty of
+any of them; for myne owne part I doe not desire to be myne owne judge,
+but am willinge to bee judged by them with whom I live, and see my
+course, whether I bee addicted to such things or noe.”
+
+
+Ruffs and bands were not the only neckwear of the colonists. Very soon
+there was a tendency to ornament the band-strings with tassels of silk,
+with little tufts of ribbon, with tiny rosettes, with jewels even; and
+soon a graceful frill of lace hung where the band was tied together.
+This may be termed the beginning of the necktie or cravat; but the
+article itself enjoyed many names, and many forms, which in general
+extended both to men’s and women’s wear.
+
+
+Captain George Curwen. Captain George Curwen.
+
+Let us turn to the old inventories for the various names of this
+neckwear.
+
+A Maryland gentleman left by will, with other attire, in 1642, “Nine
+laced stripps, two plain stripps, nine quoifes, one call, eight
+crosse-cloths, a paire holland sleeves, a paire women’s cuffs, nine
+plaine neck-cloths, five laced neck-cloths, two plaine gorgetts, seven
+laced gorgetts, three old clouts, five plaine neckhandkerchiefs, two
+plain shadowes.”
+
+John Taylor, the “Water Poet,” wrote a poem entitled The Needles
+Excellency. I quote from the twelfth edition, dated 1640. In the list
+of garments which we owe to the needle he names:—
+
+“Shadows, Shapparoones, Cauls, Bands, Ruffs, Kuffs,
+Kerchiefs, Quoyfes, Chin-clouts, Marry-muffes,
+Cross-cloths, Aprons, Hand-kerchiefs, or Falls.”
+
+
+His list runs like that of the Maryland planter. The strip was
+something like the whisk; indeed, the names seem interchangeable.
+Bishop Hall in his _Satires_ writes:—
+
+“When a plum’d fan may hide thy chalked face
+And lawny strips thy naked bosom grace.”
+
+
+Dr. Smith wrote in 1658 in _Penelope and Ulysses_:—
+
+“A stomacher upon her breast so bare
+For strips and gorget were not then the wear.”
+
+
+The gorget was the frill in front; the strip the lace cape or whisk. It
+will be noted that nine gorgets are named with these strips.
+
+The gorget when worn by women was enriched with lace and needlework.
+
+“These Holland smocks as white as snow
+And gorgets brave with drawn-work wrought
+A tempting ware they are you know.”
+
+
+Thus runs a poem published in 1596.
+
+Mary Verney writes in 1642 her desire for “gorgetts and eyther cutt or
+painted callico to wear under them or what is most in fashion.”
+
+The shadow has been a great stumbling-block to antiquaries. Purchas’s
+_Pilgrimage_ is responsible for what is to me a very confusing
+reference. It says of a certain savage race:—
+
+
+“They have a skin of leather hanging about their necks whenever they
+sit bare-headed and bare-footed, with their right arms bare; and a
+broad Sombrero or Shadow in their hands to defend them in Summer from
+the Sunne, in Winter from the Rain.”
+
+
+This would make a shadow a sort of hand-screen or sunshade; but all
+other references seem as if a shadow were a cap. As early as 1580,
+Richard Fenner’s Wardship Roll has “Item a Caul and Shadoe 4
+shillings.” I think a shadow was a great cap like a cornet.
+Cross-cloths were a form of head-dress. I have seen old portraits with
+a cap or head-dress formed of crossed bands which I have supposed were
+cross-cloths.
+
+Cross-cloths also bore a double meaning; for certainly neck-cloths or
+neckerchiefs were sometimes called cross-cloths or cross-clothes.
+Another name is the picardill or piccadilly, a French title for a
+gorget. Fitzgerald, in 1617, wrote of “a spruse coxcomb” that he
+glanced at his pocket looking-glass to see:—
+
+“How his Band jumpeth with his Peccadilly
+Whether his Band-strings ballance equally.”
+
+
+Another satirical author could write in 1638 that “pickadillies are now
+out of request.”
+
+The portrait of Captain Curwen of Salem (here) is unlike many of his
+times. Over his doublet he wears a handsome embroidered shoulder sash
+called a trooping-scarf; and his broad lace tie is very unusual for the
+year 1660. I know few like it upon American gentlemen in portraits; and
+I fancy it is a gorget, or a piccadilly. It is pleasant to know that
+this handsome piece of lace has been preserved. It is here shown with
+his cane.
+
+
+Lace Gorget and Cane of Captain George Curwen. Lace Gorget and Cane of
+Captain George Curwen.
+
+A little negative proof may be given as to one word and article. The
+gorget is said to be an adaptation of the wimple. Our writers of
+historical tales are very fond of attiring their heroines in wimples
+and kirtles. Both have a picturesque, an antique, sound—the wimple is
+Biblical and Shakesperian, and therefore ever satisfying to the ear,
+and to the sight in manuscript. But I have never seen the word wimple
+in an inventory, list, invoice, letter, or book of colonial times, and
+but once the word kirtle. Likewise are these modern authors a bit vague
+as to the manner of garment a wimple is. One fair maid is described as
+having her fair form wrapped in a warm wimple. She might as well be
+described as wrapped in a warm cravat. For a wimple was simply a small
+kerchief or covering for the neck, worn in the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries.
+
+Another quaint term, already obsolete when the _Mayflower_ sailed, was
+partlet. A partlet was an inner kerchief, worn with an open-necked
+bodice or doublet. Its trim plaited edge or ruffle seems to have given
+rise to the popular name, “Dame Partlet,” for a hen. It appeared in the
+reign of Henry VIII; the courtiers imitating the king threw open their
+garments at the throat, and further opened them with slashes; hence the
+use of the partlet, which was a trim form of underhabit or gorget, worn
+well up to the throat. An old dictionary explains that the partlet can
+be “set on or taken off by itself without taking off the bodice, as can
+be pickadillies now-a-days, or men’s bands.” It adds that women’s
+neckerchiefs have been called partlets.
+
+In October, 1662, Samuel Pepys wrote in his _Diary_, “Made myself fine
+with Captain Ferrers lace band; being loathe to wear my own new
+scallop; it is so fine.” This is one of his several references to this
+new fashion of band which both he and his wife adopted. He paid £;3 for
+his scallop, and 45s. for one for his wife. He was so satisfied with
+his elegance in this new scallop, that like many another lover of dress
+he determined his chief extravagance should be for lace. The fashion of
+scallop-wearing came to America. For several years the word was used in
+inventories, then it became as obsolete as a caul, a shadow, a cornet.
+
+The word “cravat” is not very ancient. Its derivation is said to be
+from the Cravates or Croats in the French military service, who adopted
+such neckwear in 1636. An early use of the word is by Blount in 1656,
+who called a cravat “a new fashioned Gorget which Women wear.”
+
+The cravat is a distinct companion of the wig, and was worn whenever
+and wherever wigs were donned.
+
+Evelyn gave the year 1666 as the one when vest, cravat, garters, and
+buckles came to be the fashion. We could add likewise wigs. Of course
+all these had been known before that year, but had not been general
+wear.
+
+An early example of a cravat is shown in the portrait of old William
+Stoughton in my later chapter on Cloaks. His cravat is a distinctly new
+mode of neck-dressing, but is found on all American portraits shortly
+after that date. One is shown with great exactness in the portrait
+here, which is asserted to be that of “the handsomest man in the
+Plantations,” William Coddington, Governor of Rhode Island and
+Providence Plantations.
+
+
+Governor Coddington. Governor Coddington.
+
+He was a precise man, and wearisome in his precision—a bore, even, I
+fear. His beauty went for little in his relation of man to man, and,
+above all, of colonist to colonist; and poor Governor Winthrop must
+have been sorely tormented with his frequent letters, which might have
+been written from Mars for all the signs they bore of news of things of
+this earth. His dress is very neat and rich—a characteristic dress, I
+think. It has slightly wrought buttonholes, plain sleeve ruffles and
+gloves. His full curled peruke has a mass of long curls hanging in
+front of the right shoulder, while the curls on the left side are six
+or eight inches shorter. This was the most elegant London fashion, and
+extreme fashion too. His neck-scarf or cravat was a characteristic one.
+It consisted of a long scarf of soft, fine, sheer, white linen over two
+yards long, passed twice or thrice close around the throat and simply
+lapped under the chin, not knotted. The upper end hung from twelve to
+sixteen inches long. The other and longer end was carried down to a low
+waistline and tucked in between the buttons of the waistcoat. Often the
+free end of this scarf was trimmed with lace or cut-work; indeed, the
+whole scarf might be of embroidery or lace, but the simpler lawn or
+mull appears to have been in better taste. This tie is seen in this
+portrait of Thomas Fayerweather, by Smybert, and in modified forms on
+many other pages.
+
+
+Thomas Fayerweather. Thomas Fayerweather.
+
+We now find constant references to the Steinkirk, a new cravat. As we
+see it frequently stated that the Steinkirk was a black tie, I may
+state here that all the Steinkirks I have seen have been white. I know
+no portraits with black neck-cloths. I find no allusions in old-time
+literature or letters to black Steinkirks.
+
+A Steinkirk was a white cravat, not knotted, but fastened so loosely as
+to seem folded rather than tied, twisted sometimes twice or thrice,
+with one or both ends passed through a buttonhole of the coat. Ladies
+wore them, as well as men, arranged with equal appearance of careless
+negligence; and the soft diagonal folds of linen and lace made a pretty
+finish at the throat, as pretty as any high neck-dressing could be.
+These cravats were called Steinkirks after the battle of Steinkirk,
+when some of the French princes, not having time to perform an
+elaborate toilet before going into action, hurriedly twisted their lace
+cravats about their necks and pulled them through a buttonhole, simply
+to fix them safely in place. The fashionable world eagerly followed
+their example. It is curious that the Steinkirk should have been
+popular in England, where the name might rather have been a bitter
+avoidance.
+
+The battle of Steinkirk took place in 1694. An early English allusion
+to the neckwear thus named is in _The Relapse_, which was acted in
+1697. In it the Semstress says, “I hope your Lordship is pleased with
+your Steenkirk.” His Lordship answers with eloquence, “In love with it,
+stap my vitals! Bring your bill, you shall be paid tomorrow!”
+
+The Steinkirk, both for men’s and women’s wear, came to America very
+promptly, and was soon widely worn. The dashing, handsome figure of
+young King Carter gives an illustration of the pretty studied
+negligence of the Steinkirk. I have seen a Steinkirk tie on at least
+twenty portraits of American gentlemen, magistrates, and officers; some
+of them were the royal governors, but many were American born and bred,
+who never visited Europe, but turned eagerly to English fashions.
+
+
+“King” Carter in Youth, by Sir Godfrey Kneller. “King” Carter in Youth,
+by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
+
+Certain old families have preserved among their ancient treasures a
+very long oval brooch with a bar across it from end to end—the longest
+way of the brooch. These are set sometimes with topaz or moonstone,
+garnet, marcasite, heliotropium, or paste jewels. Many wonder for what
+purpose these were used. They were to hold the lace Steinkirk in place,
+when it was not pulled through the buttonhole. The bar made it seem
+like a tongueless buckle—or perhaps it was like a long, narrow buckle
+to which a brooch pin had been affixed to keep it firmly in place.
+
+The cravat, tied and twisted in Steinkirk form, or more simply folded,
+long held its place in fashionable dress.
+
+“The stock with buckle made of paste
+Has put the cravat out of date,”
+
+
+wrote Whyte in 1742.
+
+With this quotation we will turn from neckwear until a later period.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CAPS AND BEAVERS IN COLONIAL DAYS
+
+
+_“So many poynted cappes
+Lased with double flaps
+And soe gay felted cappes
+  Saw I never.
+
+“So propre cappes
+So lyttle hattes
+And so false hartes
+Saw I never.”
+_
+—“The Maner of the World Nowe-a-dayes,” JOHN SKELTON, 1548.
+
+
+“_The Turk in linen wraps his head
+  The Persian his in lawn, too,
+The Russ with sables furs his cap
+  And change will not be drawn to.
+
+“The Spaniard’s constant to his block
+  The Frenchman inconstant ever;
+But of all felts that may be felt
+  Give me the English beaver.
+
+“The German loves his coney-wool
+  The Irishman his shag, too,
+The Welsh his Monmouth loves to wear
+  And of the same will brag, too”_
+
+—“A Challenge for Beauty,” THOMAS HAYWARD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CAPS AND BEAVERS IN COLONIAL DAYS
+
+
+A
+
+
+ny student of English history and letters would know that caps would
+positively be part of the outfit of every emigrating Englishman. A cap
+was, for centuries, both the enforced and desired headwear of English
+folk of quiet lives.
+
+
+City Flat-cap worn by “Bilious” Bale. City Flat-cap worn by “Bilious”
+Bale.
+
+Belgic Britons, Welshmen, Irish, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans all
+had worn caps, as well as ancient Greeks and Romans. These English caps
+had been of divers colors and manifold forms, some being grotesque
+indeed. When we reach the reign of Henry VIII we are made familiar in
+the paintings of Holbein with a certain flat-cap which sometimes had a
+small jewel or leather or a double fold, but never varied greatly. This
+was known as the city flat-cap.
+
+It is shown also in the Holbein portrait of Adam Winthrop, grandfather
+of Governor John Winthrop; he was a man of dignity, Master of the Cloth
+Workers’ Guild.
+
+The muffin-cap of the boys of Christ’s Hospital is a form of this cap.
+
+This was at first and ever a Londoner’s cap. A poet wrote in 1630:—
+
+
+“Flat caps as proper are to city gowns
+As to armour, helmets, or to kings, their crowns.”
+
+
+Winthrop also wears the city gown.
+
+This flat-cap was often of gay colors, scarlet being a favorite hue.
+
+
+“Behold the bonnet upon my head
+A staryng colour of scarlet red
+I promise you a fyne thred
+   And a soft wool
+   It cost a noble.”
+
+
+These lines were written for the character “Pride,” in the _Interlude
+of Nature_, before the year 1500.
+
+A statute was passed in 1571, “If any person above six years of age
+(except maidens, ladies, gentlemen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of
+twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have born
+office of worship) have not worn upon the Sunday or holyday (except it
+be in the time of his travell out of the city, town or hamlet where he
+dwelleth) one cap of wool, knit, thicked and dressed in England, and
+only dressed and furnished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be
+fined £;3 4d. for each day’s transgression.” The caps thus worn were
+called Statute caps.
+
+This was, of course, to encourage wool-workers in the pride of the
+nation. Winthrop, master of a guild whose existence depended on wool,
+would, of course, wear a woollen cap had he not been a Londoner. It was
+a plain head-covering, but it was also the one worn by King Edward VI.
+
+There was a formal coif or cap worn by men of dignity; always worn, I
+think, by judges and elderly lawyers, ere the assumption of the formal
+wig. This coif may be seen on the head of the venerable Dr. Dee, and
+also on the head of Lord Burleigh, and of Thomas Cecil, surmounted with
+the citizen’s flat-cap. One of these caps in heavy black lustring
+lingered by chance in my home—worn by some forgotten ancestor. It had a
+curious loop, as may be seen on Dr. Dee. This was not a narrow string
+for tying the coif on the head; it was a loop. And if there was any
+need of fastening the cap on the head, a narrow ribbon or ferret, a
+lacing, was put through both loops.
+
+In the inventory of the apparel of the first settlers which I have
+given in the early pages of this book, we find that each colonist to
+the Massachusetts Bay settlement had one Monmouth cap and five red
+milled caps. All the lists of necessary clothing for the planters have
+as an item, caps; but a well-made, well-lined hat was also supplied.
+
+Monmouth caps were in general wear in England. Thomas Fuller said,
+“Caps were the most ancient, general, warm, and profitable coverings of
+men’s heads in this Island.” In making them thousands of people were
+employed, especially before the invention of fulling-mills, when caps
+were wrought, beaten, and thickened by the hands and feet of men.
+Cap-making afforded occupation to fifteen different callings: carders,
+spinners, knitters, parters of wool, forcers, thickers, dressers,
+walkers, dyers, battellers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners, and
+band-makers.
+
+
+King James I of England. King James I of England.
+
+The Monmouth caps were worth two shillings each, which were furnished
+to the Massachusetts colonists. These were much affected by seafaring
+men. We read, in _A Satyr on Sea Officers_, “With Monmouth cap and
+cutlass at my side, striding at least a yard at every stride.” “The
+Ballad of the Caps,” 1656, gives a wonderful list of caps. Among them
+are:
+
+
+The Monmouth Cap, the Saylors thrum,
+And that wherein the tradesmen come,
+The Physick, Lawe, the Cap divine,
+And that which crowns the Muses nine,
+The Cap that Fools do countenance,
+The goodly Cap of Maintenance,
+And any Cap what e’re it be,
+Is still the sign of some degree.
+
+“The sickly Cap both plaine and wrought,
+The Fuddling-cap however bought,
+The quilted, furred, the velvet, satin,
+For which so many pates learn Latin,
+The Crewel Cap, the Fustian pate,
+The Perriwig, the Cap of Late,
+And any Cap what e’er it be
+Is still the sign of some degree.”
+
+—“Ballad of the Caps,” 1656.
+
+
+We seldom have in manuscript or print, in America, titles or names
+given to caps or hats, but one occasionally seen is the term
+“montero-cap,” spelled also mountero, montiro, montearo; and Washington
+Irving tells of “the cedar bird with a little mon-teiro-cap of
+feathers.” Montero-caps were frequently recommended to emigrants, and
+useful dress they were, being a horseman’s or huntsman’s cap with a
+simple round crown, and a flap which went around the sides and back of
+the cap and which could be worn turned up or brought down over the back
+of the neck, the ears and temples, thus making a most protecting
+head-covering. They were, in general, dark colored, of substantial
+woollen stuff, but Sterne writes in Tristram Shandy of a montero-cap
+which he describes as of superfine Spanish cloth, dyed scarlet in the
+grain, mounted all round with fur, except four inches in front, which
+was faced with light blue lightly embroidered. It is a montero-cap
+which is seen on the head of Bamfylde Moore Carew, the “King of the
+Mumpers,” a most genial English rogue, sneak-thief, and cheat of the
+eighteenth century, who spent some of his ill-filled years in the
+American colonies, whither he was brought after being trepanned, and
+where he had to bear the ignominy of wearing an iron collar welded
+around his neck.
+
+A montero-cap seems to have been the favorite dress of rogues. In
+Head’s _English Rogue_ we read, “Beware of him that rides in a
+montero-cap and of him that whispers oft.” The picaro Guzman wore one;
+and as montero is the Spanish word for huntsman, Head may have obtained
+the word from that special scamp, Guzman, whose life was published in
+1633. It is a very ancient name, being given in Cotgrave as a hood, or
+as the horseman’s helmet. It is worn still by Arctic travellers and
+Alpine climbers. Sets of knitted montero-caps were presented by the
+Empress Eugenie to the Arctic expedition of 1875, and the Jackies
+dubbed them “Eugenie Wigs.”
+
+Another and widely different class of men wore likewise the
+montero-cap, the English and American Quakers. Thomas Ellwood, in the
+early days of his Quaker belief, suffered much for his hat, both from
+his fellow Quakers and his father, a Church of England man. The Quakers
+thought his “large Mountier cap of black velvet, the skirt of which
+being turned up in Folds looked somewhat above the common Garb of a
+Quaker.” A young priest at another time snatched this montero-cap off
+because he wore it in the presence of magistrates, and then Ellwood’s
+father fell upon it in this wise:—
+
+
+“He could not contain himself but running upon me with both hands,
+first violently snatcht off my Hat and threw it away and then giving me
+some buffets in the head said Sirrah get you up to your chamber. I had
+now lost one hat and had but one more. The next Time my Father saw it
+on my head he tore it violently from me and laid it up with the other,
+I know not where. Wherefore I put my Mountier Cap which was all I had
+left to wear on my head, and but a little while I had that, for when my
+Father came where I was, I lost that also.”
+
+
+
+
+Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke). Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke).
+
+Finally the father refused to let him wear his “Hive,” as he called the
+hat, at the table while eating, and thereafter Ellwood ate with his
+father’s servants.
+
+The vogue of beaver hats was an important factor in the settlement of
+America.
+
+The first Spanish, Dutch, English, and French colonists all came to
+America to seek for gold and furs. The Spaniards found gold, the Dutch
+and French found furs, but the English who found fish found the
+greatest wealth of all, for food is ever more than raiment.
+
+Of the furs the most important and most valuable was beaver. The
+English sent some beaver back to Europe; the very first ship to return
+from Plymouth carried back two hogsheads. Winslow sent twenty hogsheads
+as early as 1634, and Bradford shows that the trade was deemed
+important. But the wild creatures speedily retreated. Johnson declares
+that as early as 1645 the beaver trade had left the frontier post of
+Springfield, on the Connecticut River.
+
+From the earliest days both the French and English crown had treated
+the fishing and fur industries with unusual discretion, giving a
+monopoly to the fur trade and leaving the fisheries free, so the latter
+constantly increased, while in New England the fur trade passed over to
+the Dutch, distinctly to the advantage of the English, for the lazy
+trader at a post was neither a good savage nor a good citizen, while
+the hardy fishermen and bold sailors of New England brought wealth to
+every town. For some years the Dutch appeared to have the best of it,
+for they received ten to fifteen thousand beaver skins annually from
+New England; and they had trading-posts on Narragansett and Buzzards
+Bay. Still the trade drew the Dutch away from agriculture, and the real
+success of New Netherland did not come with furs, but with corn.
+
+
+James Douglas (Earl of Morton). James Douglas (Earl of Morton).
+
+The fur trade was certainly an interesting factor in the growth of the
+Dutch settlement. Fort Orange, or Albany, called the _Fuyck_, was the
+natural topographical _fuyck_ or trap-net to catch this trade, and in
+the very first season of its settlement fifteen hundred beaver and five
+hundred otter skins were despatched to Holland. In 1657 Johannes
+Dyckman asserted that 40,900 beaver and otter skins were sent that year
+from Fort Orange to Fort Amsterdam (New York City). As these skins were
+valued at from eight to ten guilders apiece (about $3.50 and with a
+purchasing value equal to $20 to-day), it can readily be seen what a
+source of wealth seemed opened. The authorities at Fort Orange, the
+patroons of Renssalaerwyck and Beverwyck, were not to be permitted to
+absorb all this wondrous gain in undisturbed peace. The increment of
+the India Company was diverted and hindered in various ways.
+Unscrupulous and crafty citizens of Fort Orange (independent
+_handaelers_ or handlers) and their thrifty, penny-turning _vrouws_
+decoyed the Indian trappers and hunters into their peaceful, honest
+kitchens under pretence of kindly Christian welcome to the
+peltry-bearing braves; and they filled the guileless savages with Dutch
+schnapps, or Barbadoes “kill-devil,” until the befuddled or half-crazed
+Indians parted with their precious stores of hard-trapped skins and
+threw off their well-perspired and greased beaver coats and exchanged
+them for such valuable Dutch wares as knives, scissors, beads, and
+jews’-harps, or even a few pints of quickly vanishing rum, instead of
+solid Dutch guilders or substantial Dutch blankets. And even before
+these strategic Dutch citizens could corral and fleece them, the
+incoming fur-bearers had to run as insinuating a gantlet of
+_boschloopers_, bush-runners, drummers, or “broakers,” who sallied out
+on the narrow Indian paths to buy the coveted furs even before they
+were brought into Fort Orange. Much legislation ensued. Scout-buying
+was prohibited. Citizens were forbidden “to addresse to speak to the
+wilden of trading,” or to entice them to “traffique,” or to harbor them
+over night. Indian houses to lodge the trappers were built just outside
+the gate, where the dickering would be public. These were built by
+rates collected from all “Christian dealers” in furs.
+
+But Indian paths were many, and the water-ways were unpatrolled, and
+kitchen doors could be slyly opened in the dusk; so the government, in
+spite of laws and shelter-houses, did not get all the beaver skins. Too
+many were eager for the lucrative and irregular trade; agricultural
+pursuits were alarmingly neglected; other communities became rivals,
+and the beavers soon were exterminated from the valley of the Hudson,
+and by 1660 the Fort Orange trade was sadly diminished. The governor of
+Canada had an itching palm, and lured the Indians—and beaver skins—to
+Montreal. Thus “impaired by French wiles,” scarce nine thousand
+peltries came in 1687 to Fort Orange. With a few fluttering rallies
+until Revolutionary times the fur trade of Albany became extinct; it
+passed from both Dutch and French, and was dominated by the Hudson Bay
+Fur Company.
+
+So clear a description of the fur of the beaver and the use of the pelt
+was given by Adriaen van der Donck, who lived at Fort Orange from the
+year 1641 to 1646, and traded for years with the Indians, that it is
+well to give his exact words:—
+
+
+“The beaver’s skin is rough but thickly set with fine fur of an
+ash-gray color inclining to blue. The outward points also incline to a
+russet or brown color. From the fur of the beaver the best hats are
+made that are worn. They are called beavers or castoreums from the
+material of which they are made, and they are known by this name over
+all Europe. Outside of the coat of fur many shining hairs appear called
+wind-hairs, which are more properly winter-hairs, for they fall out in
+summer and appear again in winter. The outer coat is of a
+chestnut-brown color, the browner the color the better is the fur.
+Sometimes it will be a little reddish.
+
+“When hats are made of the fur, the rough hairs are pulled out for they
+are useless. The skins are usually first sent to Russia, where they are
+highly valued for their outside shining hair, and on this their
+greatest recommendation depends with the Russians. The skins are used
+there for mantle-linings and are also cut into strips for borders, as
+we cut rabbit-skins. Therefore we call the same peltries. Whoever has
+there the most and costliest fur-trimmings is deemed a person of very
+high rank, as with us the finest stuffs and gold and silver
+embroideries are regarded as the appendages of the great. After the
+hairs have fallen out, or are worn, and the peltries become old and
+dirty and apparently useless, we get the article back, and convert the
+fur into hats, before which it cannot be well used for this purpose,
+for unless the beaver has been worn, and is greasy and dirty, it will
+not felt properly, hence these old peltries are the most valuable. The
+coats which the Indians make of beaver-skins and which they have worn
+for a long time around their bodies until the skins have become foul
+with perspiration and grease are afterwards used by the hatters and
+make the best hats.”
+
+
+One notion about beaver must be told. Its great popularity for many
+years arose, it is conjectured, from its original use as a cap for
+curative purposes. Such a beaver cap would “unfeignedly” recover to a
+man his hearing, and stimulate his memory to a wonder, especially if
+the “oil of castor” was rubbed in his hair.
+
+
+Elihu Yale. Elihu Yale.
+
+The beaver hat was for centuries a choice and costly article of dress;
+it went through many bizarre forms. On the head of Henry IV of France
+and Navarre, as made known in his portrait, is a hat which effectually
+destroys all possibility of dignity. It is a bell-crowned stove-pipe,
+of the precise shape worn later by coachmen and by dandies about the
+years 1820 to 1830. It is worn very much over one royal ear, like the
+hat of a well-set-up, self-important coachman of the palmy days of
+English coaching, and gives an air of absurd modernity and cockney
+importance to the picture of a king of great dignity. The hat worn by
+James I, ere he was King of England, is shown here. It is funnier than
+any seen for years in a comic opera. The hat worn by Francis Bacon is a
+plain felt, greatly in contrast with his rich laced triple ruff and
+cuffs and embroidered garments. That of Thomas Cecil here varies
+slightly.
+
+Two very singular shapings of the plain hat may be seen, one here on
+the head of Fulke Greville, where the round-topped, high crown is most
+disproportionate to the narrow brim. The second, here, shows an extreme
+sugar-loaf, almost a pointed crown.
+
+A good hat was very expensive, and important enough to be left among
+bequests in a will. They were borrowed and hired for many years, and
+even down to the time of Queen Anne we find the rent of a _subscription
+hat_ to be £;2 6s. per annum! The hiring out of a hat does not seem
+strange when hiring out clothes was a regular business with tailors.
+The wife of a person of low estate hired a gown of Queen Elizabeth’s to
+be married in. Tailor Thomas Gylles complained of the Yeoman of the
+queen’s wardrobe for suffering this. He writes, “The copper cloth of
+gold gowns which were made last, and another, were sent into the
+country for the marriage of Lord Montague.” The bequest of half-worn
+garments was highly regarded. On the very day of Darnley’s funeral,
+Mary Queen of Scots gave his clothes to Bothwell, who sent them to his
+tailor to be refitted. The tailor, bold with the riot and disorder of
+the time, returned them with the impudent message that “the duds of
+dead men were given to the hangman.” The duds of men who were hanged
+were given to the hangman almost as long as hangings took place. A poor
+New England girl, hanged for the murder of her child, went to the
+scaffold in her meanest attire, and taunted the executioner that he
+would get but a poor suit of clothes from her. The last woman hanged in
+Massachusetts wore a white satin gown, which I expect the sheriff’s
+daughter much revelled in the following winter at dancing-parties.
+
+
+Thomas Cecil. Thomas Cecil.
+
+Old Philip Stubbes has given us a wonderful description of English
+head-gear:—
+
+
+“HATS OF SUNDRIE FATIONS”
+
+
+“Sometymes they vse them sharpe on the Croune, pearking vp like the
+Spire, or Shaft of a Steeple, standyng a quarter of a yarde aboue the
+Croune of their heades, somemore, some lesse, as please the phantasies
+of their inconstant mindes. Othersome be flat and broad on the Crowne,
+like the battlemetes of a house. An other sorte haue rounde Crownes,
+sometymes with one kinde of Band, sometymes with another, now black,
+now white, now russet, now red, now grene, now yellowe, now this, now
+that, never content with one colour or fashion two daies to an ende.
+And thus in vanitie they spend the Lorde his treasure, consuming their
+golden yeres and siluer daies in wickednesse and sinne. And as the
+fashions bee rare and strange, so is the stuffe whereof their hattes be
+made divers also; for some are of Silke, some of Veluet, some of
+Taffatie, some of Sarcenet, some of Wooll, and, whiche is more curious,
+some of a certaine kinde of fine Haire; these they call Bever hattes,
+or xx. xxx. or xl. shillinges price, fetched from beyonde the seas,
+from whence a greate sorte of other vanities doe come besides. And so
+common a thing it is, that euery seruyngman, countrieman, and other,
+euen all indefferently, dooe weare of these hattes. For he is of no
+account or estimation amongst men if he haue not a Veluet or Taffatie
+hatte, and that must be Pincked, and Cunnyngly Carved of the beste
+fashion. And good profitable hattes be these, for the longer you weare
+them the fewer holes they haue. Besides this, of late there is a new
+fashion of wearyng their hattes sprong vp amongst them, which they
+father vpon a Frenchman, namely, to weare them with bandes, but how
+vnsemely (I will not saie how hassie) a fashion that is let the wise
+judge; notwithstanding, howeuer it be, if it please them, it shall not
+displease me.
+
+
+“And another sort (as phantasticall as the rest) are content with no
+kinde of hat without a greate Bunche of Feathers of diuers and sondrie
+Colours, peakyng on top of their heades, not vnlike (I dare not saie)
+Cockescombes, but as sternes of pride, and ensignes of vanity. And yet,
+notwithstanding these Flutterying Sailes, and Feathered Flagges of
+defiaunce of Vertue (for so they be) are so advanced that euery child
+hath them in his Hat or Cap; many get good liuing by dying and selling
+of them, and not a few proue the selues more than Fooles in wearyng of
+them.”
+
+
+Notwithstanding this list of Stubbes, it is very curious to note that
+in general the shape of the real beaver hat remained the same as long
+as it was worn uncocked.
+
+
+Cornelius Steinwyck. Cornelius Steinwyck.
+
+The hat was worn much more constantly within-doors than in the present
+day. Pepys states that they were worn in church; even the preacher wore
+his hat. Hats were removed in the presence of royalty. An hereditary
+honor and privilege granted to one of my ancestors was that he might
+wear his hat before the king.
+
+It is somewhat difficult to find out the exact date when the wearing of
+hats by men within-doors ceased to be fashionable and became distinctly
+low bred. We can turn to contemporary art. In 1707 at a grand banquet
+given in France to the Spanish Embassy, a ceremonious state affair with
+the women in magnificent full-dress, the men seated at the table and in
+the presence of royalty wore their cocked hats—so much for courtly
+France.
+
+This wearing of the hat in church, at table, and elsewhere that seems
+now strange to us, was largely as an emblem of dignity and authority.
+Miss Moore in the _Caldwell Papers_ writes of her grandfather:—
+
+
+“I’ my grandfather’s time, as I have heard him tell, ilka maister of a
+family had his ain seat in his ain house; aye, and sat there with his
+hat on, afore the best in the land; and had his ain dish, and was aye
+helpit first and keepit up his authority as a man should so. Parents
+were parents then; and bairns dared not set up their gabs afore them as
+they do now.”
+
+
+That the covering of the head in church still has a significance on
+important occasions, is shown by a rubric from the “Form and Order” for
+the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra; this provides
+that the king remains uncovered during the saying of the Litany and the
+beginning of the Communion Service, but when the sermon begun that he
+should put on his “Cap of crimson velvet turned up with Ermine, and so
+continue,” to the end of the discourse.
+
+Hatbands were just as important for men’s hats as women’s—especially
+during the years of the reign of James I. Endymion Porter had his
+wife’s diamond necklace to wear on his hat in Spain. It probably looked
+like paste beside the gorgeousness of the Duke of Buckingham, who had
+“the Mirror of France,” a great diamond, the finest in England, “to
+wear alone in your hat with a little blacke feather,” so the king wrote
+him. A more curious hat ornament was a glove.
+
+
+Hat with a Glove as a Favor. Hat with a Glove as a Favor.
+
+This handsome hat is from a portrait of George, Earl of Cumberland. It
+has a woman’s glove as a favor. This is said to have been a gift of
+Queen Elizabeth after his prowess in a tournament. He always wore this
+glove on state occasions. Gloves were worn on a hat in three meanings:
+as a memorial of a dead friend, as a favor of a mistress, or as a mark
+of challenge. A pretty laced or tasselled handkerchief was also a favor
+and was worn like a cockade.
+
+An excellent representation of the Cavalier hat may be seen on the
+figure of Oliver Cromwell (here), which shows him dismissing
+Parliament. Cornelius Steinwyck’s flat-leafed hat has no feather.
+
+The steeple-crowned hat of both men and women was in vogue in the
+second half of the seventeenth century in both England and America, at
+the time when the witchcraft tragedies came to a culmination. The long
+scarlet cloak was worn at the same date. It is evident that the
+conventional witch of to-day, an old woman in scarlet cloak and
+steeple-crowned hat, is a relic of that day. Through the striking
+circumstances and the striking dress was struck off a figurative type
+which is for all time.
+
+William Kempe of “Duxburrow” in 1641 left hats, hat-boxes, rich
+hatbands, bone laces, leather hat-cases; also ten “capps.” Hats were
+also made of cloth. In the tailor’s bill of work done for Jonathan
+Corwin of Salem, in 1679, we read “To making a Broadcloth Hatt 14s. To
+making 2 hatts &; 2 jackets for your two sonnes 19s.” In 1672 an
+association of Massachusetts hatters asked privileges and protection
+from the colonial government to aid and encourage American manufacture,
+but they were refused until they made better hats. Shortly after,
+however, the exportation of raccoon fur to England was forbidden, or
+taxed, as it was found to be useful in the home manufacture of hats.
+
+The eighteenth century saw many and varied forms of the cocked hat; the
+nineteenth returned to a straight crown and brim. The description of
+these will be given in the due course of the narrative of this book.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE VENERABLE HOOD
+
+
+_“Paul saith, that a woman ought to have a Power on her head. This
+Power that some of them have is disguised gear and strange fashions.
+They must wear French Hoods—and I cannot tell you—I—what to call it.
+And when they make them ready and come to the Covering of their Head
+they will say, ‘Give me my French Hood, and Give me my Bonnet or my
+Cap.’ Now here is a Vengeance-Devil; we must have our Power from Turkey
+of Velvet, and gay it must be; far-fetched and dear-bought; and when it
+cometh it is a False Sign.”_
+
+—Sermon, ARCHBISHOP LATIMER, 1549.
+
+
+_“Hoods are the most ancient covering for the head and far more elegant
+and useful than the more modern fashion of hats, which present a
+useless elevation, and leave the neck and ears completely exposed.”_
+
+—“Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume,” PUGIN, 1868.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE VENERABLE HOOD
+
+
+W
+
+
+e are told by the great Viollet le Duc that the faces of
+fifteenth-century women were of a uniform type. Certainly a uniform
+head-dress tends to establish a seeming resemblance of the wearers; the
+strange, steeple head-dress of that century might well have that
+effect; and the “French hood” worn so many years by English, French,
+and American women has somewhat the same effect on women’s
+countenances; it gives a uniformity of severity. It is difficult for a
+face to be pretty and gay under this gloomy hood. This French hood is
+plainly a development of the head-rail, which was simply an unshaped
+oblong strip of linen or stuff thrown over the head, and with the ends
+twisted lightly round the neck or tied loosely under the chin with
+whatever grace or elegance the individual wearer possessed.
+
+Varying slightly from reign to reign, yet never greatly changed, this
+sombre plain French hood was worn literally for centuries. It was
+deemed so grave and dignified a head-covering that, in the reign of
+Edward III, women of ill carriage were forbidden the wearing of it.
+
+
+Gulielma Penn. Gulielma Penn.
+
+In the year 1472 “Raye Hoods,” that is, striped hoods, were enjoined in
+several English towns as the distinctive wear of women of ill
+character. And in France this black hood was under restriction; only
+ladies of the French court were permitted to wear velvet hoods, and
+only women of station and dignity, black hoods.
+
+This black hood was dignified in allegorical literature as “the
+venerable hood,” and was ever chosen by limners to cover the head of
+any woman of age or dignity who was to be depicted.
+
+In the _Ladies’ Dictionary_ a hood is defined thus: “A Dutch attire
+covering the head, face and all the body.” And the long cloak with this
+draped hood, which must have been much like the Shaker cloak of to-day,
+seems to have been deemed a Dutch garment. It was warm and comfortable
+enough to be adopted readily by the English Pilgrims in Holland. It had
+come to England, however, in an earlier century. Of Ellinor Rummin, the
+alewife, Skelton wrote about the year 1500:—
+
+
+“A Hake of Lincoln greene
+It had been hers I weene
+More than fortye yeare
+And soe it doth appeare
+And the green bare threds
+Looked like sere wedes
+Withered like hay
+The wool worn awaye
+And yet I dare saye
+She thinketh herself gaye
+Upon a holy day.”
+
+
+It is impossible to know how old this hood is. When I have fancied I
+had the earliest reference that could be found, I would soon come to
+another a few years earlier. We know positively from the _Lisle Papers_
+that it was worn in England by the name “French hood” in 1540. Anne
+Basset, daughter of Lady Lisle, had come into the household of the
+queen of Henry VIII, who at the time was Anne of Cleves. The “French
+Apparell” which the maid of honor fetched from Calais was not pleasing
+to the queen, who promptly ordered the young girl to wear “a velvet
+bonnet with a frontlet and edge of pearls.” These bonnets are familiar
+to us on the head of Anne’s predecessor, Anne Boleyn. They were worn
+even by young children. One is shown here. The young lady borrowed a
+bonnet; and a factor named Husee—the biggest gossip of his day—promptly
+chronicles to her mother, “I saw her (Anne Basset) yesterday in her
+velvet bonnet that my Lady Sussex had tired her in, and thought it
+became her nothing so well as the French hood,—but the Queen’s pleasure
+must be done!”
+
+
+Hannah Callowhill Penn. Hannah Callowhill Penn.
+
+Doubtless some of the Pilgrim Mothers wore bonnets like this one of
+Anne Basset’s, especially if the wearer were a widow, when there was
+also an under frontlet which was either plain, plaited, or folded, but
+which came in a distinct point in the middle of the forehead.
+
+This cap, or bandeau, with point on the forehead, is precisely the
+widow’s cap worn by Catherine de Medicis. She was very severe in dress,
+but she introduced the wearing of neck-ruffs. She also wore hoods, the
+favorite head-covering of all Frenchwomen at that time. This form of
+head-gear was sometimes called a widow’s peak, on account of a similar
+peak of black silk or white being often worn by widows, apparently of
+all European nations. Magdalen Beeckman, an American woman of Dutch
+descent (here), wears one. The name is still applied to a pointed
+growth of hair on the forehead. It has also been known as a headdress
+of Mary Queen of Scots, because some of her portraits display this
+pointed outline of head-gear. It continued until the time of Charles
+II. It is often found on church brasses, and was plainly a head-gear of
+dignity. A modified form is shown in the portrait of Lady Mary Armine.
+
+Stubbes in his _Anatomie of Abuses_ gives a notion of the importance of
+the French hood when he speaks of the straining of all classes for rich
+attire: that “every artificer’s wife” will not go without her hat of
+velvet every day; “every merchant’s wife and meane gentlewoman” must be
+in her “French hood”; and “every poor man’s daughter” in her “taffatie
+hat or of wool at least.” We have seen what a fierce controversy burned
+over Madam Johnson’s “schowish” velvet hood.
+
+An excellent account of this black hood as worn by the Puritans is
+given in rhyme in “Hudibras _Redivivus_,” a long poem utterly worthless
+save for the truthful descriptions of dress; it runs:—
+
+
+“The black silk Hood, with formal pride
+First roll’d, beneath the chin was tied
+So close, so very trim and neat,
+So round, so formal, so complete,
+That not one jag of wicked lace
+Or rag of linnen white had place
+Betwixt the black bag and the face,
+Which peep’d from out the sable hood
+Like Luna from a sullen cloud.”
+
+
+It was doubtless selected by the women followers of Fox on account of
+its ancient record of sobriety and sanctity.
+
+
+“Are the pinch’d cap and formal hood the emblems of sanctity? Does your
+virtue consist in your dress, Mrs. Prim?”
+
+
+writes Mrs. Centlivre in _A Bold Stroke for a Wife_.
+
+The black hood was worn long by Quaker women ere they adopted the
+beaver hat of the eighteenth century, and the poke-bonnet of the
+nineteenth century. Here is given a portrait of Hannah Callowhill Penn,
+a Quaker, the second wife of William Penn. She was a sensible woman
+brought up in a home where British mercantile thrift vied with Quaker
+belief in adherence to sober attire, and her portrait plainly shows her
+character. Penn’s young and pretty wife of his youth wears a
+fashionable pocket-hoop and rich brocade dress; but she wears likewise
+the simple black hood (here).
+
+The dominance of this black French hood came not, however, through its
+wear by sober-faced, discreet English Puritans and Quakers, but through
+a French influence, a court influence, the earnestness of its adoption
+by Madame de Maintenon, wife of King Louis XIV of France. The whole
+dress of this strange ascetic would by preference have been that of a
+penitent; but the king had a dislike of anything like mourning, so she
+wore dresses of some dark color other than black, generally a dull
+brown. The conventual aspect of her attire was added to by this large
+black hood, which was her constant wear, and is seen in her portraits.
+The life at court became melancholy, dejected, filled with icy reserve.
+And Madame, whether she rode “shut up in a close chair,” says Duclos,
+“to avoid the least breath of air, while the King walked by her side,
+taking off his hat each time he stopped to speak to her”; or when she
+attended services in the chapel, sitting in a closed gallery; or even
+in her own sombre apartments, bending in silence over ecclesiastic
+needlework,—everywhere, her narrow, yellow, livid face was shadowed and
+buried in this black hood.
+
+
+Madame de Miramion. Madame de Miramion.
+
+Her strange power over the king was in force in 1681, and, until his
+death in 1715, this sable hood, so unlike the French taste, covered the
+heads of French women of all ages and ranks. The genial, almost
+quizzical countenance of that noble and charitable woman, Madame de
+Miramion, wears a like hood.
+
+This French hood is prominent everywhere in book illustrations of the
+eighteenth century and even of earlier years. The loosely tied corners
+and the sides appear under the straw hats upon many of the figures in
+Tempest’s _Cryes of London_, 1698, such as the Milk woman, the “Newes”
+woman, etc., which publication, I may say in passing, is a wonderful
+source for the student of everyday costume. I give the Strawberry Girl
+on this page to show the ordinary form of the French hood on plain
+folk. _Misson’s Memories_, published also in 1698, it gives the
+milkmaids on Mayday in like hoods. The early editions of Hudibras show
+these hoods, and in Hogarth’s works they may be seen; not always of
+black, of course, in later years, but ever of the same shape.
+
+
+The Strawberry Girl. The Strawberry Girl.
+
+The hood worn by the Normans was called a chaperon. It was a sort of
+pointed bag with an oval opening for the face; sometimes the point was
+of great length, and was twisted, folded, knotted. In the Bodleian
+Library is a drawing of eleven figures of young lads and girls playing
+_Hoodman-blind_ or _Blindman’s-buff_. The latter name came from the
+buffet or blow which the players gave with their twisted chaperon
+hoods. The blind man simply put his hood on “hind side afore,” and was
+effectually blinded. These figures are of the fifteenth century.
+
+
+Black Silk Hood. Black Silk Hood.
+
+The wild latitude of spelling often makes it difficult to define an
+article of dress. I have before me a letter of the year 1704, written
+in Boston, asking that a riding-hood be sent from England of any color
+save yellow; and one sentence of the instructions reads thus, “If ’tis
+velvet let it be a shabbaroon; if of cloth, a French hood.” I abandoned
+“shabbaroon” as a wholly lost word; until Mrs. Gummere announced that
+the word was chaperon, from the Norman hood just described. This
+chaperon is specifically the hood worn by the Knights of the Garter
+when in full dress; in general it applies to any ample hood which
+completely covers head and face save for eye-holes. Another hood was
+the sortie.
+
+
+Quilted Hood. Quilted Hood.
+
+The term “coif,” spelt in various ways, quoif, quoiffe, coiffer,
+ciffer, quoiffer, has been held to apply to the French hood; but it
+certainly did not in America, for I find often in inventories side by
+side items of black silk hoods and another of quoifs, which I believe
+were the white undercaps worn with the French hood; just as a coif was
+the close undercap for men’s wear.
+
+Through the two centuries following the assumption of the French hood
+came a troop of hoods, though sometimes under other names. In 1664
+Pepys tells of his wife’s yellow bird’s-eye hood, “very fine, to
+church, as the fashion now is.” Planché says hoods were not displaced
+by caps and bonnets till George II’s time.
+
+In the list of the “wedding apparell” of Madam Phillips, of Boston, are
+velvet hoods, love-hoods, and “sneal hoods”; hoods of Persian, of
+lustring, of gauze; frequently scarlet hoods are named. In 1712 Richard
+Hall sent, from Barbadoes to Boston, a trunk of his deceased wife’s
+finery to be sold, among which was “one black Flowered Gauze Hoode,”
+and he added rather spitefully that he “could send better but it would
+be too rich for Boston.” He was a grandson of Madam Symonds of Ipswich.
+Furbelowed gauze hoods were then owned by Boston women, and must have
+been pretty things. Their delicacy has kept them from being preserved
+as have been velvet and Persian hoods.
+
+For the years 1673 to 1721 we have a personal record of domestic life
+in Boston, a diary which is the sole storehouse to which we can turn
+for intimate knowledge of daily deeds in that little town. A scant
+record it is, as to wearing apparel; for the diary-writer, Samuel
+Sewall, sometime business man, friend, neighbor, councillor, judge,—and
+always Puritan,—had not a regard of dress as had his English
+contemporary, the gay Samuel Pepys, or even that sober English
+gentleman, John Evelyn. In Pepys’s pages we have frequent and
+light-giving entries as to dress, interested and interesting entries.
+In Judge Sewall’s diary, any references to dress are wholly accidental
+and not related as matters of any moment, save one important exception,
+his attitude toward wigs and wig-wearing. I could wish Sewall had had a
+keener eye for dress, for he wrote in strong, well-ordered English; and
+when he was deeply moved he wrote with much color in his pen. The most
+spirited episodes in the book are the judge’s remarkable and varied
+courtships after he was left a widower at the age of sixty-five, and
+again when sixty-eight. While thus courting he makes almost his sole
+reference to women’s dress,—that Madam Mico when he called came to him
+in a splendid dress, and that Madam Winthrop’s dress, _after she had
+refused him_, was “not so clean as sometime it had been.” But an
+article of his own dress, nevertheless, formed an important factor in
+his unsuccessful courtship of Madam Winthrop—his hood. When all the
+other widowers of the community, dignified magistrates, parsons, and
+men of professions, all bourgeoned out in stately full-bottomed wigs,
+what woman would want to have a lover who came a-courting in a hood? A
+detachable hood with a cloak, I doubt not he wore, like the one owned
+by Judge Curwen, his associate in that terrible tale of Salem’s
+bigotry, cruelty, and credulity, the Witchcraft Trial. I cannot fancy
+Judge Sewall in a scarlet cloak and hood—a sad-colored one seems more
+in keeping with his temperament.
+
+Perhaps our old friend, the judge, wore his hood under his hat, as did
+the sober citizens in Piers Plowman; and as did judges in England.
+
+It is certain that many men wore hoods; and they wore occasionally a
+garment which was really woman’s wear, namely, a “riding hood”; which
+was also called a Dutch hood, and was like Elinor Rummin’s hake. This
+riding-hood was really more of a cloak than a head-covering, as it
+often had arm-holes. It might well be classed with cloaks. I may say
+here that it is not possible, either by years or by topics, to isolate
+completely each chapter of this book from the other. Its very
+arrangement, being both by chronology and subject, gives me
+considerable liberty, which I now take in this chapter, by retaining
+the riding-hood among hoods, simply because of its name.
+
+
+Pink Silk Hood. Pink Silk Hood.
+
+
+Pug Hood. Pug Hood.
+
+On May 6, 1717, the _Boston News Letter_ gave a description of a gayly
+attired Indian runaway; she wore off a “red Camblet Ryding Hood fac’d
+with blue.” Another servant absconded with an orange-colored
+riding-hood with arm-holes. I have an ancient pattern of a riding-hood;
+it was found in the bottom of an old hair-covered trunk. It was marked
+“London Ryding Hood.” With it were rolled several packages of bits of
+woollen stuff, one of scarlet broadcloth, one of blue camlet, plainly
+labelled “Cuttings from Apphia’s ryding hood” and “Pieces from Mary’s
+ryding hood,” showing that they had been placed there with the pattern
+when the hood was cut. It is a cape, cut in a deep point in front and
+back; the extreme length of the points from the collar being about
+twenty-six inches. The hood is precisely like the one on Judge Curwen’s
+cloak, like the hoods of Shaker cloaks. As bits of silk are rolled with
+the wool pieces, I infer that these riding-hoods were silk lined.
+
+A most romantic name was given to the riding-hood after the battle of
+Preston in 1715. The Earl of Nithsdale, after the defeat of the
+Jacobites, was imprisoned in the Tower of London under sentence of
+death. From thence he made his escape through his wife’s coolness and
+ingenuity. She visited him dressed in a large riding-hood which could
+be drawn closely over her face. He escaped in her dress and hood, fled
+to the continent, and lived thirty years in safety in France. After
+that dashing rescue, these hoods were known as Nithsdales. The
+head-covering portion still resembled the French hood, but the
+shoulder-covering portion was circular and ruffled—according to
+Hogarth. In Durfey’s _Wit and Mirth_, 1719, is a spirited song
+commemorating this “sacred wife,” who—
+
+
+“by her Wits immortal pains
+With her quick head has saved his brains.”
+
+
+One verse runs thus:—
+
+
+“Let Traitors against Kings conspire
+Let secret spies great Statesmen hire,
+Nought shall be by detection got
+If Woman may have leave to plot.
+There’s nothing clos’d with Bars or Locks
+Can hinder Night-rayls, Pinners, Smocks;
+For they will everywhere make good
+As now they’ve done the Riding-hood.”
+
+
+In 1737 “pug hoods” were in fashion. We have no proof of their shape,
+though I am told they were the close, plain, silk hood sometimes worn
+under other hoods. One is shown here. Pumpkin hoods of thickly wadded
+wool were prodigiously hot head-coverings; they were crudely pumpkin
+shaped. Knitted hoods, under such names as “comforters,” “fascinators,”
+“rigolettes,” “nubias,” “opera hoods,” “molly hoods,” are of
+nineteenth-century invention.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CLOAKS AND THEIR COUSINS
+
+
+_“Within my memory the Ladies covered their lovely Necks with a Cloak,
+this was exchanged for the Manteel; this again was succeeded by the
+Pelorine; the Pelorine by the Neckatee; the Neckatee by the Capuchin,
+which hath now stood its ground for a long time.”_
+
+—“Covent Garden Journal,” May 1, 1752.
+
+
+_“Mary Wallace and Clemintina Ferguson Just arrived from the Kingdom of
+Ireland intend to follow the business of Mantua making and have
+furnished themselves from London in patterns of the following kinds of
+wear, and have fixed a correspondence so to have from thence the
+earliest Fashions in Miniature. They are at Peter Clarke’s within two
+doors of William Walton’s, Esq., in the Fly. Ladies and Gentlemen that
+employ them may depend on being expeditiously and reasonably served in
+making the following Articles, that is to say—Sacks, Negligees,
+Negligee-night-gowns, plain-nightgowns, pattanlears, shepherdesses,
+Roman cloaks, Cardinals, Capuchins, Dauphinesses, Shades lorrains,
+Bonnets and Hives.”_
+
+—“New York Mercury,” May, 1757.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CLOAKS AND THEIR COUSINS
+
+
+U
+
+
+nder the general heading of cloaks I intend to write of the various
+capelike shoulder-coverings, for both men and women, which were worn in
+the two centuries of costume whereof this book treats. Often it is
+impossible to determine whether a garment should be classed as a hood
+or a cloak, for so many cloaks were made with head-coverings. Both
+capuchins and cardinals, garments of popularity for over a century, had
+hoods, and were worn as head-gear.
+
+There is shown here a full, long cloak of rich scarlet broadcloth,
+which is the oldest cloak I know. It has an interesting and romantic
+history. No relic in Salem is more noteworthy than this. It has
+survived since witchcraft days; and with right care, care such as it
+receives from its present owner, will last a thousand years. It was
+worn by Judge Curwen, one of the judges in those dark hours for Salem;
+and is still owned by Miss Bessie Curwen, his descendant. It will be
+noted that it bears a close resemblance to the Shaker cloaks of to-day,
+though the hood is handsomer. This hood also is detached from the cape.
+The presiding justice in the Salem witchcraft trials was William
+Stoughton, a severe Puritan. In later years Judge Sewall, his
+fellow-judge, in an agony of contrition, remorse, self-reproach,
+self-abnegation, and exceeding sorrow at those judicial murders, stood
+in Boston meeting-house, at a Sabbath service while his pastor read
+aloud his confession of his cruel error, his expression of his remorse
+therefor. A striking figure is he in our history. No thoughtful person
+can regard without emotions of tenderest sympathy and admiration that
+benignant white-haired head, with black skullcap, bowed in public
+disgrace, which was really his honor. But Judge Stoughton never
+expressed, in public or private, remorse or even regret. I doubt if he
+ever felt either. He plainly deemed his action right. I wish he could
+tell us what he thinks of it now. In his portrait here he wears a
+skullcap, as does Judge Sewall in his portrait, and a cloak with a cape
+like that of his third associate, Judge Curwen. Judge Sewall had both
+cloak and hood. Possibly all judges wore them. Judge Stoughton’s cloak
+has a rich collar and a curious clasp.
+
+
+Scarlet Broadcloth Hooded Cloak. Scarlet Broadcloth Hooded Cloak.
+
+Stubbes of course told of the fashion of cloak-wearing:—
+
+
+“They have clokes also in nothing discrepant from the rest; of dyverse
+and sundry colours, white red tawnie black, green yellow russet purple
+violet and an infinyte of other colours. Some of cloth silk velvet
+taffetie and such like; some of the Spanish French or Dutch fashion.
+Some short, scarcely reaching to the gyrdlestead or waist, some to the
+knee, and othersome trayling upon the ground almost like gownes than
+clokes. These clokes must be garded laced &; thorouly full, and
+sometimes so lined as the inner side standeth almost in as much as the
+outside. Some have sleeves, othersome have none. Some have hoodes to
+pull over the head, some have none. Some are hanged with points and
+tassels of gold silver silk, some without all this. But howsoever it
+bee, the day hath bene when one might have bought him two Clokes for
+lesse than now he can have one of these Clokes made for. They have such
+store of workmanship bestowed upon them.”
+
+
+It is such descriptions as this that make me regard in admiration this
+ancient Puritan. Would that I had the power of his pen! Fashion-plates,
+forsooth! The _Journal of the Modes_!—pray, what need have we of any
+pictures or any mantua-maker’s words when we can have such a
+description as this. Why! the man had a perfect genius for millinery!
+Had he lived three centuries later, we might have had Master Stubbes in
+full control (openly or secretly, according to his environment) of some
+dress-making or tailoring establishment _pour les dames_.
+
+The lining of these cloaks was often very gay in color and costly;
+“standing in as much as the outside.” We find a son of Governor
+Winthrop writing in 1606:—
+
+
+“I desire you to bring me a very good camlet cloake lyned with what you
+like except blew. It may be purple or red or striped with those or
+other colors if so worn suitable and fashionable.... I would make a
+hard shift rather than not have the cloak.”
+
+
+Similar cloaks of scarlet, and of blue lined with scarlet, formed part
+of the uniform of soldiers for many years and for many nations. They
+were certainly the wear of thrifty comfortable English gentlemen. Did
+not John Gilpin wear one on his famous ride?
+
+
+“There was all that he might be
+  Equipped from head to toe,
+His long red cloak well-brushed and neat
+  He manfully did throw.”
+
+
+Scarlet was a most popular color for all articles of dress in the early
+years of the eighteenth century. Like the good woman in the Book of
+Proverbs, both English and American housewife “clothed her household in
+scarlet.” Women as well as men wore these scarlet cloaks. It is curious
+to learn from Mrs. Gummere that even Quakers wore scarlet. When
+Margaret Fell married George Fox, greatest of Quakers, he bought her a
+scarlet mantle. And in 1678 he sent her scarlet cloth for another
+mantle. There was good reason in the wear of scarlet; it both was warm
+and looked warm; and the color was a lasting one. It did not fade like
+many of the homemade dyes.
+
+
+Judge Stoughton. Judge Stoughton.
+
+A very interesting study is that of color in wearing apparel. Beginning
+with the few crude dyes of mediaeval days, we could trace the history
+of dyeing, and the use and invention of new colors and tints. The names
+of these colors are delightful; the older quaint titles seem
+wonderfully significant. We read of such tints as billymot, phillymurt,
+or philomot (feuille-mort), murry, blemmish, gridolin (gris-de-lin or
+flax blossom), puce colour, foulding colour, Kendal green, Lincoln
+green, treen-colour, watchet blue, barry, milly, tuly, stammel red,
+Bristol red, zaffer-blue, which was either sapphire-blue or
+zaffre-blue, and a score of fanciful names whose signification and
+identification were lost with the death of the century. Historical
+events were commemorated in new hues; we have the political,
+diplomatic, and military history of various countries hinted to us.
+Great discoveries and inventions give names to colors. The materials
+and methods of dyeing, especially domestic dyes, are most interesting.
+An allied topic is the significance of colors, the limitation of their
+use. For instance, the study of blue would fill a chapter. The dress of
+’prentices and serving-men in Elizabeth’s day was always blue blue
+cloaks in winter, blue coats in summer. Blue was not precisely a
+livery; it was their color, the badge of their condition in life, as
+black is now a parson’s. Different articles of dress clung to certain
+colors. Green stockings had their time and season of clothing the
+sturdy legs of English dames as inevitably as green stalks filled the
+fields. Think of the years of domination of the green apron; of the
+black hood—it is curious indeed.
+
+In such exhaustive books upon special topics as the _History of the
+Twelve Great Livery Companies of London_ we find wonderfully
+interesting and significant proof of the power of color; also in many
+the restrictive sumptuary laws of the Crown.
+
+It would appear that this long, scarlet cloak never was out of wear for
+men and women until the nineteenth century. It was, at times, not the
+height of the fashion, but still was worn. Various ancient citizens of
+Boston, of Salem, are recalled through letter or traditions as clinging
+long to this comfortable cloak. Samuel Adams carried a scarlet cloak
+with him when he went to Washington.
+
+I shall tell in a later chapter of my own great-great-grandmother’s
+wear of a scarlet cloak until the opening years of the nineteenth
+century. During and after the Revolution these cloaks remained in high
+favor for women. French officers, writing home to France glowing
+accounts of the fair Americans, noted often that the ladies wore
+scarlet cloaks, and Madame Riedesel asserted that all gentlewomen in
+Canada never left the house save in a scarlet silk or cloth cloak.
+
+“A woman’s long scarlet cloak, almost new with a double cape,” had been
+one of the articles feloniously taken from the house of Benjamin
+Franklin, printer, in Philadelphia, in 1750. Debby Franklin’s dress, if
+we can judge from what was stolen, was a gay revel of color. Among the
+articles was one gown having a pattern of “large red roses and other
+large yellow flowers with blue in some of the flowers with many green
+leaves.”
+
+In the _Life of Jonathan Trumbull_ we read that when a collection was
+taken in the Lebanon church for the benefit of the soldiers of the
+Continental army, when money, jewels, clothing, and food were gathered
+in a great heap near the pulpit, Madam Faith Trumbull rose up, threw
+from her shoulders her splendid scarlet cloth cloak, a gift from Count
+Rochambeau, advanced to the altar and laid the cloak with other
+offerings of patriotism and generosity. It was used, we are told, to
+trim the uniforms of the Continental officers and soldiers.
+
+
+Woman’s Cloak. From Hogarth. Woman’s Cloak. From Hogarth.
+
+One of the first entries in regard to dress made by Philip Fithian in
+1773, when he went to Virginia as a school-teacher, was that “almost
+every Lady wears a Red Cloak; and when they ride out they tye a Red
+Handkerchief over their Head &; Face; so when I first came to Virginia,
+I was distrest whenever I saw a Lady, for I thought she had the
+Tooth-Ach!” When the young tutor left his charge a year later, he wrote
+a long letter of introduction, instruction, and advice to his
+successor; and so much impression had this riding-dress still upon him
+that he recounted at length the “Masked Ladies,” as he calls them,
+explaining that the whole neck and face was covered, save a narrow slit
+for the eyes, as if they had “the Mumps or Tooth-Ach.” It is possible
+that the insect torments encountered by the fair riders may have been
+the reason for this cloaking and masking. Not only mosquitoes and flies
+and fleas were abundant, but Fithian tells of the irritating illness
+and high fever of the fairest of his little flock from being bitten
+with ticks, “which cover her like a distinct smallpox.”
+
+In seventeenth-century inventories an occasional item is a rocket. I
+think no better description of a rocket can be given than that of Celia
+Fiennes:—
+
+
+“You meete all sorts of countrywomen wrapped up in the mantles called
+West Country Rockets, a large mantle doubled together, of a sort of
+serge, some are linsey-woolsey and a deep fringe or fag at the lower
+end; these hang down, some to their feet, some only just below the
+waist; in the summer they are all in white garments of this sort, in
+the winter they are in red ones.”
+
+
+This would seem much like a blanket shawl, but the word was also
+applied to the scarlet round cloak.
+
+Another much-used name and cloaklike garment was the roquelaure. A very
+good contemporary definition may be copied from _A Treatise on the
+Modes_, 1715; it says it is “a short abridgement or compendium of a
+coat which is dedicated to the Duke of Roquelaure.” It was simply a
+shorter cloak than had been worn, and it was hoodless; for the great
+curled wigs with heavy locks well over the shoulders made hoods
+superfluous; and even impossible, for men’s wear. It was very speedily
+taken into favor by women; and soon the advertisements of lost articles
+show that it was worn by women universally as by men. In the _Boston
+News Letter_, in 1730, a citizen advertises that he has lost his “Blue
+Cloak or Roculo with brass buttons.” This was the first of an ingenious
+series of misspellings which produced at times a word almost unrelated
+to the original French word. Rocklow, rockolet, roquelo, rochelo,
+roquello, and even rotkello have I found. Ashton says that scarlet
+cloth was the favorite fabric for roquelaures in England; and he deems
+the scarlet roclows and rocliers with gold loops and buttons “exceeding
+magnifical.” I note in the American advertisements that the lost
+roquelaures are of very bright colors; some were of silk, some of
+camlet; generally they are simply ‘cloth.’ Many of the American
+roquelaures had double capes. I think those handsome, gay cloaks must
+have given a very bright, cheerful aspect to the town streets of the
+middle of the eighteenth century.
+
+Sir William Pepperell, who was ever a little shaky in his spelling, but
+possibly no more so than his neighbors, sent in 1737 from Piscataqua to
+one Hooper in England for “A Handsom Rockolet for my daughter of about
+15 yrs. old, or what is ye Most Newest Fashion for one of her age to
+ware at meeting in ye Winter Season.”
+
+The capuchin was a hooded cloak named from the hooded garment worn by
+the Capuchin monks. The date 1752 given by Fairholt as an early date of
+its wear is far wrong. Fielding used the word in _Tom Jones_ in 1749;
+other English publications, in 1709; and I find it in the _Letters of
+Madame de Sévigné_ as early as 1686. The cardinal, worn at the same
+date, was originally of scarlet cloth, and I find was generally of some
+wool stuff. At one time I felt sure that cardinal was always the name
+for the woollen cloak, and capuchin of the silken one; but now I am a
+bit uncertain whether this is a rule. Judging from references in
+literature and advertisements, the capuchin was a richer garment than
+the cardinal. Capuchins were frequently trimmed liberally with lace,
+ribbons, and robings; were made of silk with gauze ruffles, or of
+figured velvet. One is here shown which is taken from one of Hogarth’s
+prints.
+
+
+A Capuchin. From Hogarth. A Capuchin. From Hogarth.
+
+This notice is from the _Boston Evening Post_ of January 13, 1772:—
+
+
+“Taken from Concert Hall on Thursday Evening a handsom Crimson Satin
+Capuchin trimmed with a rich white Blond Lace with a narrow Blond Lace
+on the upper edge Lined with White Sarsnet.”
+
+
+In 1752 capuchins and cardinals were much worn, especially purple ones.
+The _Connoisseur_ says all colors were neglected for purple. “In purple
+we glowed from hat to shoe. In such request were ribbons and silks of
+that famous color that neither milliner mercer nor dyer could meet the
+demand.”
+
+The names “cardinal” and “capuchin” had been derived from monkish wear,
+and the cape, called a pelerine, had an allied derivation; it is said
+to be derived from _pèlerin_—meaning a pilgrim. It was a small cape
+with longer ends hanging in front; and was invented as a light, easily
+adjustable covering for the ladies’ necks, which had been left so
+widely and coldly bare by the low-cut French bodices. It is said that
+the garment was invented in France in 1671. I do not find the word in
+use in America till 1730. Then mantua-makers advertised that they would
+make them. Various materials were used, from soft silk and thin cloth
+to rich velvet; but silk pelerines were more common.
+
+In 1743, in the _Boston News Letter_, Henrietta Maria East advertised
+that “Ladies may have their Pellerines made” at her mantua-making shop.
+In 1749 “pellerines” were advertised for sale in the _Boston Gazette_
+and a black velvet “pellerine” was lost.
+
+In the quotation heading this chapter, manteel, pelerine, and neckatee
+precede the capuchin; but in fact the capuchin is as old as the
+pelerine. Beyond the fact that all mantua-makers made neckatees, and
+that they were a small cape, this garment cannot be described. It
+required much less stuff than either capuchin or cardinal. The
+“manteel” was, of course, as old as the cloak. Elijah “took his mantle
+and wrapped it together, and smote the waters.” In the Middle Ages the
+mantle was a great piece of cloth in any cloaklike shape, of which the
+upper corners were fastened at the neck. Often one of the front edges
+was thrown over one shoulder. In the varied forms of spelling and
+wearing, as manto, manteau, mantoon, mantelet, and mantilla the
+foundation is the same. We have noted the richness and elegance of
+Madam Symonds’s mantua. We could not forget the word and its
+signification while we have so important a use of it in mantua-maker.
+
+
+Lady Caroline Montagu. Lady Caroline Montagu.
+
+Dauphiness was the name of a certain style of mantle, which was most
+popular about 1750. Harriot Paine had “Dauphiness Mantles” for sale in
+Boston in 1755. A rude drawing in an old letter indicates that the
+“Dauphiness” had a deep point at the back, and was cut up high at the
+arm-hole. It was of thin silk, and was trimmed all around the lower
+edge with a deep, full frill of the silk, which at the arm-hole fell
+over the arm like a short sleeve.
+
+Many were the names of those pretty little cloaks and capes which were
+worn with the sacque-shaped gowns. The duchess was one; we revived the
+name for a similar mantle in 1870. The pelisse was in France the cloak
+with arm-holes, shown, here, upon one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s engaging
+children. The pelisse in America sometimes had sleeves, I am sure; and
+was hardly a cloak. It is difficult to classify some forms which seem
+almost jackets. A general distinction may be made not to include
+sleeved garments with the cloaks; but several of the manteaus had
+loose, large, flowing sleeves, and some like Madam Symonds’s had
+detached sleeves. It is also difficult to know whether some of the
+negligees were cloaks or sacque-like gowns. And there is the other
+extreme; some of the smaller, circular neck-coverings like the
+van-dykes are not cloaks. They are scarcely capes; they are merely
+collars; but there are still others which are a bit bigger and are
+certainly capes. And are there not also capes, like the neckatee, which
+may be termed cloaks? Material, too, is bewildering; a light gauze
+thing of ribbons and furbelows like the Unella is not really a cloak,
+yet it takes a cloaklike form. There are no cut and dried rules as to
+size, form, or weight of these cloaks, capes, collars, and hoods, so I
+have formed my own classes and assignments.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE DRESS OF OLD-TIME CHILDREN
+
+
+_“Rise up to thy Elders, put off thy Hat, make a Leg”_
+
+—“Janua Linguarum,” COMENIUS, 1664.
+
+
+_“Little ones are taught to be proud of their clothes before they can
+put them on.”_
+
+—“Essay on Human Understanding,” LOCKE, 1687.
+
+
+_“When thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery Freshman and newcomer on
+this Planet, sattest mewling in thy nurse’s arms; sucking thy coral,
+and looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst
+thou been without thy blankets and bibs and other nameless hulls?”_
+
+—“Sartor Resartus,” THOMAS CARLYLE, 1836.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE DRESS OF OLD-TIME CHILDREN
+
+
+W
+
+
+hen we reflect that in any community the number of “the younger sort”
+is far larger than of grown folk, when we know, too, what large
+families our ancestors had, in all the colonies, we must deem any
+picture of social life, any history of costume, incomplete unless the
+dress of children is shown. French and English books upon costume are
+curiously silent regarding such dress. It might be alleged as a reason
+for this singular silence that the dress of young children was for
+centuries precisely that of their elders, and needed no specification.
+But infants’ dress certainly was widely different, and full of historic
+interest, as well as quaint prettiness; and there were certain details
+of the dress of older children that were most curious and were wholly
+unlike the contemporary garb of their elders; sometimes these details
+were survivals of ancient modes for grown folk, sometimes their name
+was a survival while their form had changed.
+
+For the dress of children of the early years of colonial life—the
+seventeenth century—I have an unusual group of five portraits. One is
+the little Padishal child, shown with her mother in the frontispiece,
+one is Robert Gibbes (shown here). The third child is said to be John
+Quincy—his picture is opposite this page. The two portraits of Margaret
+and Henry Gibbes are owned in Virginia; but are too dimly photographed
+for reproduction. The portrait of Robert Gibbes is owned by inheritance
+by Miss Sarah B. Hager, of Kendal Green, Massachusetts. It is well
+preserved, having hung for over a hundred years on the same wall in the
+old house. He was four years old when this portrait was painted. It is
+marked 1670. John Quincy’s portrait is marked also plainly as one and a
+half years old, and with a date which is a bit dimmed; it is either
+1670 or 1690. If it is 1690, the picture can be that of John Quincy,
+though he would scarcely be as large as is the portrayed figure. If the
+date is 1670, it cannot be John Quincy, for he was born in 1689. The
+picture has the same checker-board floor as the three other Gibbes
+portraits, four rows of squares wide; and the child’s toes are set at
+the same row as are the toes of the shoes in the picture of Robert
+Gibbes.
+
+The portraits of Henry and Margaret Gibbes are also marked plainly
+1670. There was a fourth Gibbes child, who would have been just the age
+of the subject of the Quincy portrait; and it is natural that there
+should be a suspicion that this fourth portrait is of the fourth Gibbes
+child, not of John Quincy.
+
+
+John Quincy. John Quincy.
+
+Margaret Gibbes was born in 1663. Henry Gibbes was born in 1667. He
+became a Congregational minister. His daughter married Nathaniel
+Appleton, and through Nathaniel, John, Dr. John S., and John, the
+portrait, with that of Margaret, came to the present owner, General
+John W. S. Appleton, of Charlestown, West Virginia.
+
+The dress of these five children is of the same rich materials that
+would be worn by their mothers. The Padishal child wears black velvet
+like her mother’s gown; but her frock is brightened with scarlet points
+of color. The linings of the velvet hanging sleeves, the ribbon knots
+of the white virago-sleeve, the shoe-tip, the curious cap-tassel, are
+of bright scarlet. We have noted the dominance of scarlet in old
+English costumes. It was evidently the only color favored for children.
+The lace cap, the rich lace stomacher, the lace-edged apron, all are of
+Flemish lace. Margaret Gibbes wears a frock of similar shape, and
+equally rich and dark in color; it is a heavy brocade of blue and red,
+with a bit of yellow. Her fine apron, stomacher, and full sleeves are
+rich in needlework. Robert Gibbes’s “coat,” as a boy’s dress at that
+age then was called, is a striking costume. The inmost sleeves are of
+white lawn, over them are sleeves made of strips of galloon of a
+pattern in yellow, white, scarlet, and black, with a rolled cuff of red
+velvet. There is a similar roll around the hem of the coat. Still
+further sleeves are hanging sleeves of velvet trimmed with the galloon.
+
+It will be noted that his hanging sleeve is cut square and trimmed
+squarely across the end. It is similar to the sleeves worn at the same
+time by citizens of London in their formal “liveryman’s” dress, which
+had bands like pockets, that sometimes really were pockets.
+
+His plain, white, hemstitched band would indicate that he was a boy,
+did not the swing of his petticoats plainly serve to show it, as do
+also his brothers’ “coats.” That child knew well what it was to tread
+and trip on those hated petticoats as he went upstairs. I know how he
+begged for breeches. The apron of John Quincy varies slightly in shape
+from that of the other boy, but the general dress is like, save his
+pretty, gay, scarlet hood, worn over a white lace cap. One unique
+detail of these Gibbes portraits, and the Quincy portrait, is the
+shoes. In all four, the shoes are of buff leather, with absolutely
+square toes, with a thick, scarlet sole to which the buff-leather upper
+seems tacked with a row either of long, thick, white stitches or of
+heavy metal-headed nails; these white dots are very ornamental. One
+pair of the shoes has great scarlet roses on the instep. The square toe
+was distinctly a Cavalier fashion. It is in Miss Campion’s portrait,
+facing this page, and in the print of the Prince of Orange here, and is
+found in many portraits of the day. But these American shoes are in the
+minor details entirely unlike any English shoes I have seen in any
+collection elsewhere, and are most interesting. They were doubtless
+English in make.
+
+The portrait of John Quincy resembles much in its dress that of Oliver
+Cromwell when two years old, the picture now at Chequers Court.
+Cromwell’s linen collar is rounded, and a curious ornament is worn in
+front, as a little girl would wear a locket. The whole throat and a
+little of the upper neck is bare. Dark hair, slightly curled, comes out
+from the close cap in front of the ears. This picture of Cromwell
+distinctly resembles his mother’s portrait.
+
+
+Miss Campion, 1667. Miss Campion, 1667.
+
+The quaint tassel or rosette or feather on the cap of the Padishal
+child was a fashion of the day. It is seen in many Dutch portraits of
+children. In a curious old satirical print of Oliver Cromwell preaching
+are the figures of two little children drawn standing by their mother’s
+side. One child’s back is turned for our sight, and shows us what might
+well be the back of the gown of the Padishal child. The cap has the
+same ornament on the crown, and the hanging sleeves—of similar
+form—have, at intervals of a few inches apart from shoulder to heel, an
+outside embellishment of knots of ribbon. There is also a band or strip
+of embroidery or passementerie up the back of the gown from skirt-hem
+to lace collar, with a row of buttons on the strip. This proves that
+the dress was fastened in the back, as the stiff, unbroken, white
+stomacher also indicates. The other child is evidently a boy. His gown
+is long and fur-edged. His cap is round like a Scotch bonnet, and has
+also a tuft or rosette at the crown. On either side hang long strings
+or ribbon bands reaching from the cap edge to the knee.
+
+These portraits of these little American children display nothing of
+that God-given attribute which we call genius, but they do possess a
+certain welcome trait, which is truthfulness; a hard attention to
+detail, which confers on them a quality of exactness of likeness of
+which we are very sensible. We have for comparison a series of
+portraits of the same dates, but of English children, the children of
+the royal and court families. I give here a part of the portrait group
+of the family of the Duke of Buckingham; namely, the Duchess of
+Buckingham and her two children, an infant son and a daughter, Mary.
+She was a wonderful child, known in the court as “Pretty Moll,” having
+the beauty of her father, the “handsomest-bodied” man in court, his
+vivacity, his vigor, and his love of dancing, all of which made him the
+prime favorite both of James and his son, Charles.
+
+A letter exists written by the duchess to her husband while he was gone
+to Spain with his thirty suits of richly embroidered garments of which
+I have written in my first chapter. The duchess writes of “Pretty
+Moll,” who was not a year old:—
+
+
+“She is very well, I thank God; and when she is set to her feet and
+held by her sleeves she will not go softly but stamp, and set one foot
+before another very fast, and I think she will run before she can go.
+She loves dancing extremely; and when the Saraband is played, she will
+get her thumb and finger together offering to snap; and then when “Tom
+Duff” is sung, she will shake her apron; and when she hears the tune of
+the clapping dance my Lady Frances Herbert taught the Prince, she will
+clap both her hands together, and on her breast, and she can tell the
+tunes as well as any of us can; and as they change tunes she will
+change her dancing. I would you were here but to see her, for you would
+take much delight in her now she is so full of pretty play and tricks.
+Everybody says she grows each day more like you.”
+
+
+Can you not see the engaging little creature, clapping her hands and
+trying to step out in a dance? No imaginary description could equal in
+charm this bit of real life, this word-picture painted in bright and
+living colors by a mother’s love. I give another merry picture of her
+childhood and widowhood in a later chapter. Many portraits of “Pretty
+Moll” were painted by Van Dyck, more than of any woman in England save
+the queen. One shows her in the few months that she was the child-wife
+of the eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke. She is in the centre of the
+great family group. She was married thrice; her favorite choice of
+character in which to be painted was Saint Agnes, who died rather than
+be married at all.
+
+
+Infant’s Cap. Infant’s Cap.
+
+Both mother and child in this picture wear a lace cap of unusual shape,
+rather broader where turned over at the ear than at the top. It is seen
+on a few other portraits of that date, and seems to have come to
+England with the queen of James I. It disappeared before the graceful
+modes of hair-dressing introduced by Queen Henrietta Maria.
+
+The genius of Van Dyck has preserved for us a wonderful portraiture of
+children of this period, the children of King Charles I. The earliest
+group shows the king and queen with two children; one a baby in arms
+with long clothes and close cap—this might have been painted yesterday.
+The little prince standing at his father’s knee is in a dark green
+frock, much like John Quincy’s, and apparently no richer. A painting at
+Windsor shows king and queen with the two princes, Charles and James;
+another, also at Windsor, gives the mother with the two sons. One at
+Turin gives the two princes with their sister. At Windsor, and in
+_replica_ at Berlin, is the famous masterpiece with the five children,
+dated 1637.
+
+
+Eleanor Foster. 1755. Eleanor Foster. 1755.
+
+This exquisite group shows Charles, the Prince of Wales (aged seven),
+with his arm on the head of a great dog; he is in the full garb of a
+grown man, a Cavalier. His suit is red satin; the shoes are white, with
+red roses. Mary, demure as in all her portraits, is aged six; she wears
+virago-sleeves made like those of Margaret Gibbes, with hanging sleeves
+over them, a lace stomacher, and cap, with tufts of scarlet, and hair
+curled lightly on the forehead, and pulled out at the side in ringlets,
+like that of her mother, Henrietta Maria. The Duke of York, aged two,
+wears a red dress spotted with yellow, with sleeves precisely like
+those of Robert Gibbes; white lace-edged apron, stomacher, and cap; his
+hair is in curls. The Princess Elizabeth was aged about two; she is in
+blue. Her cap is of wrought and tucked lawn, and she wears either a
+pearl ear-ring or a pearl pendant at the corner of the cap just at the
+ear, and a string of pearls around her neck. She has a gentle, serious
+face, one with a premonitory tinge of sadness. She was the favorite
+daughter of the king, and wrote the inexpressibly touching account of
+his last days in prison. She was but thirteen, and he said to her the
+day before his execution, “Sweetheart, you will forget all this.” “Not
+while I live,” she answered, with many tears, and promised to write it
+down. She lived but a short time, for she was broken-hearted; she was
+found dead, with her head lying on the religious book she had been
+reading—in which attitude she is carved on her tomb. The baby is
+Princess Anne, a fat little thing not a year old; she is naked, save
+for a close cap and a little drapery. She died when three and a half
+years old; died with these words on her lips, “Lighten Thou mine eyes,
+O Lord, that I sleep not the sleep of Death.” It was not Puritan
+children only at that time who were filled with deep religious thought,
+and gave expression to that thought even in infancy; children of the
+Church of England and of the Roman Catholic Church were all widely
+imbued with religious feeling, and Biblical words were the familiar
+speech of the day, of both young and old. It rouses in me strange
+emotions when I gaze at this portrait and remember all that came into
+the lives of these royal children. They had been happier had they been
+born, like the little Gibbes children, in America, and of untitled
+parents.
+
+
+[Illustration: William, Prince of Orange.]
+
+At Amsterdam may be seen the portrait of Princess Mary painted with her
+cousin, William of Orange, who became her child-husband. She had the
+happiest life of any of the five—if she ever could be happy after her
+father’s tragic death. In this later portrait she is a little older and
+sadder and stiffer. Her waist is more pinched, her shoulders narrower,
+her face more demure. His likeness is here given. The only marked
+difference in the dress of these children from the dress of the Gibbes
+children is in the lace; the royal family wear laces with deeply
+pointed edges, the point known as a Vandyke. The American children wear
+straight-edged laces, as was the general manner of laces of that day.
+An old print of the Duke of York when about seven years old is given
+(here). He carries in his hand a quaint racket.
+
+The costume worn by these children is like that of plebeian English
+children of the same date. A manuscript drawing of a child of the
+people in the reign of Charles I shows a precisely similar dress, save
+that the child is in leading-strings held by the mother; and in the
+belt to which the leading-strings are attached is thrust a “muckinder”
+or handkerchief.
+
+These leading-strings are seldom used now, but they were for centuries
+a factor in a child’s progress. They were a favorite gift to children;
+and might be a simple flat strip of strong stuff, or might be richly
+worked like the leading-strings which Mary, Queen of Scots embroidered
+for her little baby, James. These are three bands of Spanish pink satin
+ribbon, each about four or five feet long and over an inch wide. The
+three are sewed with minute over-and-over stitches into a flat band
+about four inches wide, and are embroidered with initials, emblems of
+the crown, a verse of a psalm, and a charming flower and grape design.
+The gold has tarnished into brown, and the flower colors are fled; but
+it is still a beautiful piece of work, speaking with no uncertain voice
+of a tender, loving mother and a womanly queen. There were
+crewel-worked leading-strings in America. One is prettily lined with
+strips of handsome brocade that had been the mother’s wedding
+petticoat; it is not an ill rival of the princely leading-strings.
+
+Another little English girl, who was not a princess, but who lived in
+the years when ran and played our little American children, was Miss
+Campion, who “minded her horn-book”—minded it so well that she has been
+duly honored as the only English child ever painted with horn-book in
+hand. Her petticoat and stomacher, her apron, and cap and hanging
+sleeves and square-toed shoes are just like Margaret Gibbes’s—bought in
+the same London shops, very likely.
+
+Not only did all these little English and American children dress
+alike, but so did French children, and so did Spanish children—only
+little Spanish girls had to wear hoops. Hoops were invented in Spain;
+and proud was the Spanish queen of them.
+
+Velasquez, contemporary with Van Dyck, painted the Infanta Maria
+Theresa; the portrait is now in the Prado at Madrid. She carries a
+handkerchief as big as a tablecloth; but above her enormous hoop
+appears not only the familiar virago-sleeve, but the straight whisk or
+collar, just like that of English children and dames. This child and
+the Princess Marguerite, by Velasquez, have the hair parted on one side
+with the top lock turned aside and tied with a knot of ribbon precisely
+as we tie our little daughters’ hair to-day; and as the bride of
+Charles II wore her hair when he married her. French children had not
+assumed hoops. I have an old French portrait before me of a little
+demoiselle, aged five, in a scarlet cloth gown with edgings of a narrow
+gray gimp or silver lace. All the sleeves, the slashes, the long,
+hanging sleeves are thus edged. She wears a long, narrow, white lawn
+apron, and her stiff bodice has a stomacher of lawn. There is a
+straight white collar tied with tiny bows in front and white cuffs; a
+scarlet close cap edged with silver lace completes an exquisite
+costume, which is in shape like that of Margaret Gibbes. The garments
+of all these children, royal and subject, are too long, of course, for
+comfort in walking; too stiff, likewise, for comfort in wearing; too
+richly laced to be suitable for everyday wear; too costly, save for
+folk of wealth; yet nevertheless so quaint, so becoming, so handsome,
+so rich, that we reluctantly turn away from them.
+
+The dress of all young children in families of estate was cumbersome to
+a degree. There exists to-day a warrant for the purchase of clothing of
+Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, when she was a sportive, wilful,
+naughty little child of four. She wore such unwieldy and ugly guise as
+this: kirtles of tawny damask and black satin; gowns of green and
+crimson striped velvet edged with purple tinsel, which must have been
+hideous. All were lined with heavy black buckram. Indeed, the inner
+portions, the linings of old-time garments, even of royalty, were far
+from elegant. I have seen garments worn by grown princesses of the
+eighteenth century, whereof the rich brocade bodies were lined with
+common, heavy fabric, usually a stiff linen; and the sewing was done
+with thread as coarse as shoe-thread, often homespun. This, too, when
+the sleeve and neck-ruffles would be of needlework so exquisite that it
+could not be rivalled in execution to-day.
+
+Many of the older portraits of children show hanging sleeves. The rich
+claret velvet dresses of the Van Cortlandt twins, aged four, had
+hanging sleeves. This dress is given in my book, _Child Life in
+Colonial Days_, as is that of Katherine Ten Broeck, another child of
+Dutch birth living in New York, who also wore heavy hanging sleeves.
+
+The use of the word hanging sleeves in common speech and in literature
+is most interesting. It had a figurative meaning; it symbolized youth
+and innocence. This meaning was acquired, of course, from the wear for
+centuries of hanging sleeves by little children, both boys and girls.
+It had a second, a derivative signification, being constantly employed
+as a figure of speech to indicate second childhood; it was used with a
+wistful tender meaning as an emblem of the helplessness of feeble old
+age. The following example shows such an employment of the term.
+
+In 1720, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, then about seventy-five years
+of age, wrote to another old gentleman, whose widowed sister he desired
+to marry, in these words:—
+
+
+“I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have sometime
+met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves, coming home from
+their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure of speaking
+to them. And I could find it in my heart now to speak to Mrs. Martha
+again, now I myself am reduced to Hanging Sleeves.”
+
+
+William Byrd, of Westover, in Virginia, in one of his engaging and
+sprightly letters written in 1732, pictures the time of the patriarchs
+when “a man was reckoned at Years of Discretion at 100; Boys went into
+Breeches at about 40; Girles continued in Hanging Sleeves till 50, and
+plaid with their Babys till Threescore.”
+
+When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, he wrote a poem which was
+sent to his uncle, a bright old Quaker. This uncle responded in clever
+lines which begin thus:—
+
+
+“’Tis time for me to throw aside my pen
+When Hanging-Sleeves read, write and rhyme like men.
+This forward Spring foretells a plenteous crop
+For if the bud bear grain, what will the top?”
+
+
+A curious use of the long hanging sleeve was as a pocket; that is, it
+would seem curious to us were it not for our acquaintance with the
+capacity of the sleeves of our unwelcome friend, Ah Sing. The pocketing
+sleeve of the time of Henry III still exists in the heraldic charge
+known as the manche, borne by the Hastings and Norton family. This is
+also called maunch, émanche, and mancheron. The word “manchette,” an
+ornamented cuff, retains the meaning of the word, as does manacle; all
+are from _manus_.
+
+Hanging sleeves had a time of short popularity for grown folk while
+Anne Boleyn was queen of England; for the little finger of her left
+hand had a double tip, and the long, graceful sleeves effectually
+concealed the deformity.
+
+In my book entitled _Child Life in Colonial Days_ I have given over
+thirty portraits of American children. These show the changes of
+fashions, the wear of children at various periods and ages. Childish
+dress ever reflected the dress of their elders, and often closely
+imitated it. Two very charming costumes are worn by two little children
+of the province of South Carolina. The little girl is but two years
+old. She is Ellinor Cordes, and was painted about 1740. She is a lovely
+little child of French features and French daintiness of dress, albeit
+a bright yellow brocaded satin would seem rather gorgeous attire for a
+girl of her years. The boy is her kinsman, Daniel Ravenel, and was then
+about five years old. He wore what might be termed a frock with
+spreading petticoats, which touched the ground; there is a decided
+boyishness in the tight-fitting, trim waistcoat with its silver buttons
+and lace, and the befrogged coat with broad cuffs and wrist ruffles,
+and turned-over revers, and narrow linen inner collar. It is an
+exceptionally pleasing boy’s dress, for a little boy.
+
+A somewhat similar but more feminine coat is worn by Thomas Aston
+Coffin; it opens in front over a white satin petticoat, and it has a
+low-cut neck and sleeves shortened to the elbow, and worn over full
+white undersleeves. Other portraits by Copley show the same dress of
+white satin, which boys wore till six years of age.
+
+
+Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick and Daughter. Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick and
+Daughter.
+
+Copley’s portrait of his own children is given on a later page. This
+family group always startles all who have seen it only in photographs;
+for its colors are so unexpected, so frankly crude and vivid. The
+individuals are all charming. The oldest child, the daughter,
+Elizabeth, stands in the foreground in a delightful white frock of
+striped gauze. This is worn over a pink slip, and the pink tints show
+in the thinner folds of whiteness; a fine piece of texture-painting.
+The gauze sash is tied in a vast knot, and lies out in a train; this is
+a more vivid pink, inclining to the tint of the old-rose damask
+furniture-covering. She wears a pretty little net and muslin cap with a
+cap-pin like a tiny rose. This single figure is not excelled, I think,
+by any child’s portrait in foreign galleries, nor is it often equalled.
+Nor can the exquisite expression of childish love and confidence seen
+on the face of the boy, John Singleton Copley, Junior, who later became
+Lord Lyndhurst, find a rival in painting. It is an unspeakably touching
+portrait to all who have seen upturned close to their own eyes the
+trusting and loving face of a beautiful son as he clung with strong
+boyish arms and affection to his mother’s neck.
+
+
+Infant Child of Francis Hopkinson Infant Child of Francis Hopkinson,
+“the Signer.” Painted by Francis Hopkinson.
+
+This little American boy, who became Lord Chancellor of England, wears
+a nankeen suit with a lilac-tinted sash. It is his beaver hat with gold
+hatband and blue feather that lies on the ground at the feet of the
+grandfather, Richard Clarke. The baby, held by the grandfather, wears a
+coral and bells on a lilac sash-ribbon; such a coral as we see in many
+portraits of infants. Another child in white-embroidered robe and dark
+yellow sash completes this beautiful family picture. Its great fault to
+me is the blue of Mrs. Copley’s gown, which is as vivid as a peacock’s
+breast. This painting is deemed Copley’s masterpiece; but an equal
+interest is that it is such an absolute and open expression of Copley’s
+lovable character and upright life. In it we can read his affectionate
+nature, his love of his sweet wife, his happy home-relations, and his
+pride in his beautiful children.
+
+There is ample proof, not only in the inventories which chance to be
+preserved, but in portraits of the times, that children’s dress in the
+eighteenth century was often costly. Of course the children of wealthy
+parents only would have their portraits painted; but their dress was as
+rich as the dress of the children of the nobility in England at the
+same time. You can see this in the colored reproduction of the
+portraits of Hon. James Bowdoin and his sister, Augusta, afterwards
+Lady Temple. That they were good likenesses is proved by the fact that
+the faces are strongly like those of the same persons in more mature
+years. You find little Augusta changed but slightly in matronhood in
+the fine pastel by Copley. In this portrait of the two Bowdoin
+children, the entire dress is given. Seldom are the shoes shown. These
+are interesting, for the boy’s square-toed black shoes with buckles are
+wholly unlike his sister’s blue morocco slippers with turned-up peaks
+and gilt ornaments from toe to instep, making a foot-gear much like
+certain Turkish slippers seen to-day. Her hair has the bedizenment of
+beads and feathers, which were worn by young girls for as many years as
+their mothers wore the same. The young lad’s dress is precisely like
+his father’s. There is much charm in these straight little figures.
+They have the aristocratic bearing which is a family trait of all of
+that kin. I should not deem Lady Temple ever a beauty, though she was
+called so by Manasseh Cutler, a minister who completely yielded to her
+charms when she was a grandmother and forty-four. This portrait of
+brother and sister is, I believe, by Blackburn. The dress is similar
+and the date the same as the portrait of the Misses Royall (one of whom
+became Lady Pepperell), which is by Blackburn.
+
+
+Mary Seton, 1763. Mary Seton, 1763.
+
+The portrait of a charming little American child is shown here. This
+child, in feature, figure, and attitude, and even in the companionship
+of the kitten, is a curious replica of a famous English portrait of
+“Miss Trimmer.”
+
+I have written at length in Chapter IV of a grandmother in the Hall
+family and of the Hall family connection. Let me tell of another
+grandmother, Madam Lydia Coleman, the daughter of the old Indian
+fighter, Captain Joshua Scottow. She, like Madam Symonds and Madam
+Stoddard, had had several husbands—Colonel Benjamin Gibbs,
+Attorney-General Anthony Checkley, and William Coleman. The Hall
+children were her grandchildren; and came to Boston for schooling at
+one time. Many letters exist of Hon. Hugh Hall to and from his
+grandmother, Madam Coleman. She writes thus.—
+
+
+“As for Richard since I told him I would write to his Father he is more
+orderly, &; he is very hungry, and has grown so much yt all his Clothes
+is too Little for him. He loves his book and his play too. I hired him
+to get a Chapter of ye Proverbs &; give him a penny every Sabbath day,
+&; promised him 5 shillings when he can say them all by heart. I would
+do my duty by his soul as well as his body.... He has grown a good boy
+and minds his School and Lattin and Dancing. He is a brisk Child &;
+grows very Cute and wont wear his new silk coat yt was made for him. He
+wont wear it every day so yt I don’t know what to do with it. It wont
+make him a jackitt. I would have him a good husbander but he is but a
+child. For shoes, gloves, hankers &; stockins, they ask very deare, 8
+shillings for a paire &; Richard takes no care of them. Richard wears
+out nigh 12 paire of shoes a year. He brought 12 hankers with him and
+they have all been lost long ago; and I have bought him 3 or 4 more at
+a time. His way is to tie knottys at one end &; beat ye Boys with them
+and then to lose them &; he cares not a bit what I will say to him.”
+
+
+Madam Coleman, after this handful, was given charge of his sister
+Sarah. When Missy arrived from the Barbadoes, she was eight years old.
+She brought with her a maid. The grandmother wrote back cheerfully to
+the parents that the child was well and brisk, as indeed she was. All
+the very young gentlemen and young ladies of Boston Brahmin blood paid
+her visits, and she gave a feast at a child’s dancing-party with the
+sweetmeats left over from her sea-store. Her stay in her grandmother’s
+household was surprisingly brief. She left unbidden with her maid, and
+went to a Mr. Binning’s to board; she sent home word to the Barbadoes
+that her grandmother made her drink water with her meals. Her brother
+wrote to Madam Coleman:—
+
+
+“We were all persuaded of your tender and hearty affection to my Sister
+when we recommended her to your parental care. We are sorry to hear of
+her Independence in removing from under the Benign Influences of your
+Wing &; am surprised she dare do it without our leave or consent or
+that Mr. Binning receive her at his house before he knew how we were
+affected to it. We shall now desire Mr. Binning to resign her with her
+waiting maid to you and in our Letter to him have strictly ordered her
+to Return to your House.”
+
+
+But no brother could control this spirited young damsel. Three months
+later a letter from Madam Coleman read thus:—
+
+
+“Sally wont go to school nor to church and wants a nue muff and a great
+many other things she don’t need. I tell her fine things are cheaper in
+Barbadoes. She is well and brisk, says her Brother has nothing to do
+with her as long as her father is alive.”
+
+
+Hugh Hall wrote in return, saying his daughter ought to have one room
+to sleep in, and her maid another, that it was not befitting children
+of their station to drink water, they should have wine and beer. We
+cannot wonder that they dressed like their elders since they were
+treated like their elders in other respects.
+
+The dress of very young girls was often extraordinarily rich. We find
+this order sent to London in 1739, for finery for Mary Cabell, daughter
+of Dr. William Cabell of Virginia, when she was but thirteen years
+old:—
+
+
+“1 Prayer Book (almost every such inventory had this item).
+1 Red Silk Petticoat.
+1 Very good broad Silver laced hat and hat-band.
+1 Pair Stays 17 inches round the waist.
+2 Pair fine Shoes.
+12 Pair fine Stockings.
+1 Hoop Petticoat.
+1 Pair Ear rings.
+1 Pair Clasps.
+3 Pair Silver Buttons set with Stones.
+1 Suit of Headclothes.
+4 Fine Handkerchiefs and Ruffles suitable.
+A Very handsome Knot and Girdle.
+A Fine Cloak and Short Apron.”
+
+
+
+
+The Bowdoin Children. The Bowdoin Children. Lady Temple and Governor
+James Bowdoin in Childhood.
+
+I never read such a list as this without picturing the delight of
+little Mary Cabell when she opened the box containing all these pretty
+garments.
+
+The order given by Colonel John Lewis for his young ward of eleven
+years old—another Virginia child—reads thus:—
+
+
+“A cap, ruffle, and tucker, the lace 5s. per yard.
+1 pair White Stays.
+8 pair White kid gloves.
+2 pair Colour’d kid gloves.
+2 pair worsted hose.
+3 pair thread hose.
+1 pair silk shoes laced.
+1 pair morocco shoes.
+4 pair plain Spanish shoes.
+2 pair calf shoes.
+1 Mask.
+1 Fan.
+1 Necklace.
+1 Girdle and Buckle.
+1 Piece fashionable Calico.
+4 yards Ribbon for Knots.
+1 Hoop Coat.
+1 Hat.
+1 1/2 Yard of Cambric.
+A Mantua and Coat of Slite Lustring.”
+
+
+Orders for purchases were regularly despatched to London agent by
+George Washington after his marriage. In 1761 he orders a full list of
+garments for both his stepchildren. “Miss Custis” was only six years
+old. These are some of the items:—
+
+
+“1 Coat made of Fashionable Silk.
+A Fashionable Cap or fillet with Bib apron.
+Ruffles and Tuckers, to be laced.
+4 Fashionable Dresses made of Long Lawn.
+2 Fine Cambrick Frocks.
+A Satin Capuchin, hat, and neckatees.
+A Persian Quilted Coat.
+1 p. Pack Thread Stays.
+4 p. Callimanco Shoes.
+6 p. Leather Shoes.
+2 p. Satin Shoes with flat ties.
+6 p. Fine Cotton Stockings.
+4 p. White Worsted Stockings.
+12 p. Mitts.
+6 p. White Kid Gloves.
+1 p. Silver Shoe Buckles.
+1 p. Neat Sleeve Buttons.
+6 Handsome Egrettes Different Sorts.
+6 Yards Ribbon for Egrettes.
+12 Yards Coarse Green Callimanco.”
+
+
+A Virginia gentleman, Colonel William Fleming, kept for several years a
+close account of the money he spent for his little daughters, who were
+young misses of ten and eleven in the year 1787. The most expensive
+single items are bonnets, each at £;4 10s.; an umbrella, £;2 8s. Cloth
+cloaks and saddles and bridles for riding were costly items. Tamboured
+muslin was at that time 18s. a yard; durant, 3s. 6d.; lutestring, 12s.;
+calico, 6s. 3d. Scarlet cloaks for each girl cost £;2 14s. each. Other
+dress materials besides those named above were cambric, linen, cotton,
+osnaburgs, negro cotton, book-muslin, ermin, nankeen, persian, Turkey
+cotton, shalloon, and swanskin. There were many yards of taste and
+ribbon, black lace, and edgings, and gauze—gauze—gauze. A curious item
+several times appearing is a “paper bonnet,” not bonnet-paper, which
+latter was a constant purchase on women’s lists. There were pen-knives,
+“scanes of silk,” crooked combs, morocco shoes, “nitting pins,”
+constant “sticks of pomatum,” fans, “chanes,” a shawl, a tamboured
+coat, gloves, stockings, trunks, bands and clasps, tooth-brushes, silk
+gloves, necklaces, “fingered gloves,” silk stockings, handkerchiefs,
+china teacups and saucers and silver spoons. All these show a very
+generous outfit.
+
+In the year 1770 a delightful, engaging little child came to Boston
+from Nova Scotia to live for a time with her aunt, a Boston
+gentlewoman, and to attend Boston schools. For the amusement of her
+parents so far away, and for practice in penmanship, she kept during
+the years 1771 and part of 1772 a diary. She was but ten years old when
+she began, but her intelligence and originality make this diary a
+valuable record of domestic life in Boston at that date. I have had the
+pleasure of publishing her diary with notes under the title, _Diary of
+Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl, in the Year 1771_. I lived so
+much with her while transcribing her words that she seems almost like a
+child of my own. Like other unusual children she died young—when but
+nineteen. She was not so gifted and wonderful and rare a creature as
+that star among children, Marjorie Fleming, yet she was in many ways
+equally interesting; she was a frank, homely little flower of New
+England life destined never to grow old or weary, or tired or sad, but
+to live forever in eternal, happy childhood, through the magic living
+words in the hundred pages of her time-stained diary.
+
+She was of what Dr. Holmes called Boston Brahmin blood, was related to
+many of the wealthiest and best families of Boston and vicinity, and
+knew the best society. Dress was to her a matter of distinct
+importance, and her clothes were carefully fashionable. Her distress
+over wearing “an old red Domino” was genuine. We have in her words many
+references to her garments, and we find her dress very handsome. This
+is what she wore at a child’s party:—
+
+
+“I was dressed in my yellow coat, black bib &; apron, black feathers on
+my head, my past comb &; all my past garnet, marquesett &; jet pins,
+together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my
+neck, black mitts &; yards of blue ribbin (black &; blue is high tast),
+striped tucker &; ruffels (not my best) &; my silk shoes completed my
+dress.”
+
+
+A few days later she writes:—
+
+
+“I wore my black bib &; apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my Aunt
+Storer since presented me with (blue ribbins on it) &; a very handsome
+locket in the shape of a hart she gave me, the past Pin my Hon’d Papa
+presented me with in my cap. My new cloak &; bonnet, my pompedore
+gloves, &;c. And I would tell you that _for the first time they all on
+lik’d my dress very much_. My cloak &; bonnett are really very handsome
+&; so they had need be. For they cost an amasing sight of money, not
+quite £;45, tho’ Aunt Suky said that she suppos’d Aunt Deming would be
+frighted out of her Wits at the money it cost. I have got _one_
+covering by the cost that is genteel &; I like it much myself.”
+
+
+As this was in the times of depreciated values, £;45 was not so large a
+sum to expend for a girl’s outdoor garments as at first sight appears.
+
+She gives a very exact account of her successions of head-gear, some
+being borrowed finery. She apparently managed to rise entirely above
+the hated “black hatt” and red domino, which she patronizingly said
+would be “Decent for Common Occations.” She writes:—
+
+
+“Last Thursday I purchased with my aunt Deming’s leave a very beautiful
+white feather hat, that is the outside, which is a bit of white
+hollowed with the feathers sew’d on in a most curious manner; white and
+unsully’d as the falling snow. As I am, as we say, a Daughter of
+Liberty I chuse to were as much of our own manufactory as pocible....
+My Aunt says if I behave myself very well indeed, not else, she will
+give me a garland of flowers to orniment it, tho’ she has layd aside
+the biziness of flower-making.”
+
+
+The dress described and portrayed of these children all seems very
+mature; but children were quickly grown up in colonial days. Cotton
+Mather wrote, “New English youth are very sharp and early ripe in their
+capacities.” They married early; though none of the “child-marriages”
+of England disfigure the pages of our history. Sturdy Endicott would
+not permit the marriage of his ward, Rebecca Cooper, an
+“inheritrice,”—though Governor Winthrop wished her for his
+nephew,—because the girl was but fifteen. I am surprised at this, for
+marriages at fifteen were common enough. My far-away grandmother, Mary
+Burnet, married William Browne, when she was fourteen; another
+grandmother, Mary Philips, married her cousin at thirteen, and there is
+every evidence that the match was arranged with little heed of the
+girl’s wishes. It was the happiest of marriages. Boys became men by law
+when sixteen. Winthrop named his son as executor of his will when the
+boy was fourteen—but there were few boys like that boy. We find that
+the Virginia tutor who taught in the Carter family just previous to the
+war of the Revolution deemed a young lady of thirteen no longer a
+child.
+
+
+Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years,
+Daughter of Colonel James Robinson. Marked “Corné pinxt, Sept. 1805.”
+
+
+“Miss Betsy Lee is about thirteen, a tall, slim, genteel girl. She is
+very far from Miss Hale’s taciturnity, yet is by no means disagreeably
+Forward. She dances extremely well, and is just beginning to play the
+Spinet. She is dressed in a neat Shell Callico Gown, has very light
+Hair done up with a Feather, and her whole carriage is Inoffensive,
+Easy and Graceful.”
+
+
+The christening of an infant was not only a sacrament of the church,
+and thus of highest importance, but it was also of secular note. It was
+a time of great rejoicing, of good wishes, of gift-making. In mediaeval
+times, the child was arrayed by the priest in a white robe which had
+been anointed with sacred oil, and called a chrismale, or a chrisom. If
+the child died within a month, it was buried in this robe and called a
+chrisom-child. The robe was also called a christening palm or pall.
+When the custom of redressing the child in a robe at the altar had
+passed away, the christening palm still was used and was thrown over
+the child when it was brought out to receive visitors. This robe was
+also termed a bearing-cloth, a christening sheet, and a cade-cloth.
+
+This fine coverlet of state, what we would now call a christening
+blanket, was usually made of silk; often it was richly embroidered,
+sometimes with a text of Scripture. It was generally lace-bordered, or
+edged with a narrow, home-woven silk fringe. The christening-blanket of
+Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony still is owned by a
+descendant; it is whole of fabric and unfaded of dye. It is rich
+crimson silk, soft of texture, like heavy sarcenet silk, and is
+powdered at regular distances about six inches apart with conventional
+sprays of flowers, embroidered chiefly in pink and yellow, in minute
+silk cross-stitch. Another beautiful silk christening blanket was
+quilted in an intricate flower pattern in almost imperceptible
+stitches. Another of yellow satin has a design in white floss that
+gives it the appearance of being trimmed with white silk lace. Best of
+all was to embroider the cloth with designs and initials and emblems
+and biblical references. A coat-of-arms or crest was very elegant. The
+words, “God Bless the Babe,” were not left wholly to the pincushions
+which every babe had given him or her, but appeared on the christening
+blanket. A curious design shown me was called _The Tree of Knowledge_.
+The figure of a child in cap, apron, bib, and hanging sleeves stands
+pointing to a tree upon which grew books as though they were apples.
+The open pages of each book-apple is printed with a title, as, _The New
+England Primer, Lilly’s Grammar, Janeway’s Holy Children, The Prodigal
+Daughter._
+
+An inventory of the christening garments of a child in the seventeenth
+century reads thus:—
+
+
+“1. A lined white figured satin cap.
+2. A lined white satin cap embroidered in sprays with gold coloured
+silk.
+3. A white satin palm embroidered in sprays of yellow silk to match.
+This is 44 inches by 34 inches in size.
+4. A palm of rich ‘still yellow’ silk lined with white satin. This is
+54 inches by 48 inches in size.
+5. A pair of deep cuffs of white satin, lace trimmed and embroidered.
+6. A pair of linen mittens trimmed with narrow lace, the back of the
+fingers outlined with yellow silk figures.”
+
+
+
+
+Knitted Flaxen Mittens. Knitted Flaxen Mittens.
+
+The satin cuffs were for the wear of the older person who carried the
+child. The infant was placed upon the larger palm or cloth, and the
+smaller one thrown over him, over his petticoats. The inner cap was
+very tight to the head. The outer was embroidered; often it turned back
+in a band.
+
+There was a significance in the use of yellow; it is the altar color
+for certain church festivals, and was proper for the pledging of the
+child.
+
+All these formalities of christening in the Church of England were not
+abandoned by the Separatists. New England children were just as
+carefully christened and dressed for christening as any child in the
+Church of England. In the reign of James I tiny shirts with little
+bands or sleeves or cuffs wrought in silk or in coventry-blue thread
+were added to the gift of spoons from the sponsors. I have one of these
+little coventry-blue embroidered things with quaint little sleeves; too
+faded, I regret, to reveal any pattern to the camera.
+
+The christening shirts and mittens given by the sponsors are said to be
+a relic of the ancient custom of presenting white clothes to the
+neophytes when converted to Christianity. These “Christening Sets” are
+preserved in many families.
+
+Of the dress of infants of colonial times we can judge from the
+articles of clothing which have been preserved till this day. These are
+of course the better garments worn by babies, not their everyday dress;
+their simpler attire has not survived, but their christening robes,
+their finer shirts and petticoats and caps remain.
+
+
+Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and Daughter. Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and
+Daughter.
+
+Linen formed the chilling substructure of their dress, thin linen,
+low-necked, short-sleeved shirts; and linen remained the underwear of
+infants until thirty years ago. I do not wonder that these little linen
+shirts were worn for centuries. They are infinitely daintier than the
+finest silk or woollen underwear that have succeeded them; they are
+edged with narrowest thread lace, and hemstitched with tiny rows of
+stitches or corded with tiny cords, and sometimes embroidered by hand
+in minute designs. They were worn by all babies from the time of James
+I, never varying one stitch in shape; but I fear this pretty garment of
+which our infants were bereft a few years ago will never crowd out the
+warm, present-day silk wear. This wholly infantile article of childish
+dress had tiny little revers or collarettes or laps made to turn over
+outside the robe or slip like a minute bib, and these laps were
+beautifully oversewn where the corners joined the shirt, to prevent
+tearing down at this seam. These tiny shirts were the dearest little
+garments ever made or dreamed of. When a baby had on a fresh, corded
+slip, low of neck, with short, puffed sleeve, and the tiny hemstitched
+laps were turned down outside the neck of the slip, and the little
+sleeves were caught up by fine strings of gold-clasped pink coral, the
+baby’s dimpled shoulders and round head rose up out of the little
+shirt-laps like some darling flower.
+
+I have seen an infant’s shirt and a cap embroidered on the laps with
+the coat-of-arms of the Lux and Johnson families and the motto, “God
+Bless the Babe;” these delicate garments, the work of fairies, were
+worn in infancy by the Revolutionary soldier, Governor Johnson of
+Virginia.
+
+In the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the baptismal shirt
+and mittens of the Pilgrim father, William Bradford, second governor of
+the Plymouth colony, who was born in 1590. They are shown here. All are
+of firm, close-woven, homespun linen, but the little mittens have been
+worn at the ends by the active friction of baby hands, and are patched
+with red and yellow figured “chiney” or calico. A similar colored
+material frills the sleeves and neck. This may have been part of their
+ornamentation when first made, but it looks extraneous.
+
+The sleeves of this shirt are plaited or goffered in a way that seems
+wholly lost; this is what I have already described—_pinching_. I have
+seen the sleeve of a child’s dress thus pinched which had been worn by
+a little girl aged three. The wrist-cuff measured about five inches
+around, and was stoutly corded. Upon ripping the sleeve apart, it was
+found that the strip of fine mull which was thus pinched into the
+sleeve was two yards in length. The cuff flared slightly, else even
+this length of sheer lawn could not have been confined at the wrist. In
+the so-called “Museum,” gloomily scattered around the famous old South
+Church edifice in Boston, are fine examples of this pinched work.
+
+
+Christening Shirt and Mitts of Governor Bradford. Christening Shirt and
+Mitts of Governor Bradford.
+
+Many of the finest existing specimens of old guipure, Flanders, and
+needlepoint laces in England and America are preserved on the ancient
+shirts, mitts, caps, and bearing-cloths of infants. Often there is a
+little padded bib of guipure lace accompanied with tiny mittens like
+these.
+
+
+Flanders Lace Mitts. Flanders Lace Mitts.
+
+This pair was wrought and worn in the sixteenth century, and the
+stitches and work are those of the Flanders point laces. I have seen
+tiny mitts knitted of silk, of fine linen thread, also made of linen,
+hem-stitched, or worked in drawn-work, or embroidered, and one pair of
+mittens, and the cap that matched was of tatting-work done in the
+finest of thread. No needlepoint could be more beautiful. Some are
+shown on here.
+
+Mitts of yellow nankeen or silk, made with long wrists or arms, were
+also worn by babies, and must have proved specially irritating to tiny
+little hands and arms. These had the seams sewed over and over with
+colored silks in a curiously intricate netted stitch.
+
+I have an infant’s cap with two squares of lace set in the crown, one
+over each ear. The lace is of a curious design; a conventionalized vase
+or urn on a standard. I recognize it as the lace and pattern known as
+“pot-lace,” made for centuries at Antwerp, and worn there by old women
+on their caps with a devotion to a single pattern that is unparalleled.
+It was the “flower-pot” symbol of the Annunciation. The earliest
+representation of the Angel Gabriel in the Annunciation showed him with
+lilies in his hand; then these lilies were set in a vase. In years the
+angel has disappeared and then the lilies, and the lily-pot only
+remains. It is a whimsical fancy that this symbol of Romanism should
+have been carefully transferred to adorn the pate of a child of the
+Puritans. The place of the medallion, set over each ear, is so unusual
+that I think it must have had some significance. I wonder whether they
+were ever set thus in caps of heavy silk or linen to let the child hear
+more readily, as he certainly would through the thin lace net.
+
+The word “beguine” meant a nun; and thus derivatively a nun’s close
+cap. This was altered in spelling to biggin, and for a time a nun’s
+plain linen cap was thus called. By Shakespere’s day biggin had become
+wholly a term for a child’s cap. It was a plain phrase and a plain cap
+of linen. Shakespere calls them “homely biggens.”
+
+I have seen it stated that the biggin was a night-cap. When Queen
+Elizabeth lost her mother, Anne Boleyn, she was but three years old, a
+neglected little creature. A lady of the court wrote that the child had
+“no manner of linen, nor for-smocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails, nor
+body-stitches, nor handkerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor mufflers, nor
+biggins.”
+
+In 1636 Mary Dudley, the daughter of Governor John Winthrop, had a
+little baby. She did not live in Boston town, therefore her mother had
+to purchase supplies for her; and many letters crossed, telling of
+wants, and their relief. “Holland for biggins” was eagerly sought. At
+that date all babies wore caps. I mean English and French, Dutch and
+Spanish, all mothers deemed it unwise and almost improper for a young
+baby ever to be seen bare-headed. With the imperfect heating and many
+draughts in all the houses, this mode of dress may have been wholly
+wise and indeed necessary. Every child’s head was covered, as the
+pictures of children in this book show, until he or she was several
+years old. The finest needlework and lace stitches were lavished on
+these tiny infants’ caps, which were not, when thus adorned and
+ornamented, called biggins.
+
+
+Infant’s Adjustable Cap. Infant’s Adjustable Cap.
+
+A favorite trimming for night-caps and infants’ caps is a sort of
+quilting in a leaf and vine pattern, done with a white cord inserted
+between outer and inner pieces of linen—a cord stuffing, as it were. It
+does not seem oversuited for caps to be worn in bed or by little
+infants, as the stiff cords must prove a disagreeable cushion. This
+work was done as early as the seventeenth century; but nearly all the
+pieces preserved were made in the early years of the nineteenth century
+in the revival of needlework then so universal.
+
+Often a velvet cap was worn outside the biggin or lace cap.
+
+I have never seen a woollen petticoat that was worn by an infant of
+pre-Revolutionary days. I think infants had no woollen petticoats;
+their shirts, petticoats, and gowns were of linen or some cotton stuff
+like dimity. Warmth of clothing was given by tiny shawls pinned round
+the shoulders, and heavier blankets and quilts and shawls in which baby
+and petticoats were wholly enveloped.
+
+The baby dresses of olden times are either rather shapeless sacques
+drawn in at the neck with narrow cotton ferret or linen bobbin, or
+little straight-waisted gowns of state. All were exquisitely made by
+hand, and usually of fine stuff. Many are trimmed with fine cording.
+
+It is astounding to note the infinite number of stitches put in
+garments. An infant’s slips quilted with a single tiny backstitch in a
+regular design of interlaced squares, stars, and rounds. By counting
+the number of rounds and the stitches in each, and so on, it has been
+found that there are 397,000 stitches in that dress. Think of the time
+spent even by the quickest sewer over such a piece of work.
+
+Within a few years we have shortened the long clothes worn by youngest
+infants; twenty-five years ago the handsome dress of an infant, such as
+the christening-robe, was so long that when the child was held on the
+arm of its standing nurse or mother, the edge of the robe barely
+escaped touching the ground. Two hundred years ago, a baby’s dress was
+much shorter. In the family group of Charles I and Henrietta Maria and
+their children, in the Copley family picture, and in the picture of the
+Cadwalader family, we find the little baby in scarce “three-quarters
+length” of robe. With this exception it is astonishing to find how
+little infants’ dress has changed during the two centuries. In 1889, at
+the Stuart Exhibition, some of the infant dresses of Charles I were
+shown. They had been preserved in the family of Sir Thomas Coventry,
+Lord Keeper. And Charles II’s baby linen was on view in the New Gallery
+in 1901. Both sets had the dainty little shirts, slips, bibs, mitts,
+and all the babies’ dress of fifty years ago, and the changes since
+then have been few. The “barrow-coat,” a square of flannel wrapped
+around an infant’s body below the arms with the part below the feet
+turned up and pinned, was part of the old swaddling-clothes; and within
+ten years it has been largely abandoned for a flannel petticoat on a
+band or waist. The bands, or binders, have always been the same as
+to-day, and the bibs. The lace cuffs and lace mittens were left off
+before the caps. The shirt is the most important change.
+
+Nowadays a little infant wears long clothes till three, four, or even
+eight months old; then he is put in short dresses about as long as he
+is. In colonial days when a boy was taken from his swaddling-clothes,
+he was dressed in a short frock with petticoats and was “coated” or
+sometimes “short-coated.” When he left off coats, he donned breeches.
+In families of sentiment and affection, the “coating” of a boy was made
+a little festival. So was also the assumption of breeches an important
+event—as it really is, as we all know who have boys.
+
+One of the most charming of all grandmothers’ letters was written by a
+doting English grandmother to her son. Lord Chief Justice North,
+telling of the “leaving off of coats” of his motherless little son,
+Francis Guilford, then six years old. The letter is dated October 10,
+1679:—
+
+
+“DEAR SON:
+You cannot beleeve the great concerne that was in the whole family here
+last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to helpe to dress
+little ffrank in his breeches in order to the making an everyday suit
+by it. Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her weding night
+more handes about her, some the legs, some the armes, the taylor
+butt’ning, and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that
+had I not a ffinger amongst I could not have seen him. When he was
+quite drest he acted his part as well as any of them for he desired he
+might goe downe to inquire for the little gentleman that was there the
+day before in a black coat, and speak to the man to tell the gentleman
+when he came from school that there was a gallant with very fine
+clothes and a sword to have waited upon him and would come again upon
+Sunday next. But this was not all, there was great contrivings while he
+was dressing who should have the first salute; but he sayd if old Joan
+had been here, she should, but he gave it to me to quiett them all.
+They were very fitt, everything, and he looks taller and prettyer than
+in his coats. Little Charles rejoyced as much as he did for he jumpt
+all the while about him and took notice of everything. I went to Bury,
+and bot everything for another suitt which will be finisht on Saturday
+so the coats are to be quite left off on Sunday. I consider it is not
+yett terme time and since you could not have the pleasure of the first
+sight, I resolved you should have a full relation from
+
+    “Yo’r most Aff’nate Mother
+
+    “A. North.
+
+“When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion
+because they had not sent him one.”
+
+
+This affectionate letter, written to a great and busy statesman, the
+Lord Keeper of the Seals, shows how pure and delightful domestic life
+in England could be; it shows how beautiful it was after Puritanism
+perfected the English home.
+
+In an old family letter dated 1780 I find this sentence:—
+
+
+“Mary is most wise with her child, and hath no new-fangledness. She has
+little David in what she wore herself, a pudding and pinner.”
+
+
+For a time these words “pudding and pinner” were a puzzle; and long
+after pinner was defined we could not even guess at a pudding. But now
+I know two uses of the word “pudding” which are in no dictionary. One
+is the stuffing of a man’s great neck-cloth in front, under the chin.
+The other is a thick roll or cushion stuffed with wool or some soft
+filling and furnished with strings. This pudding was tied round the
+head of a little child while it was learning to walk. The head was thus
+protected from serious bruises or injury. Nollekens noted with
+satisfaction such a pudding on the head of an infant, and said: “That
+is right. I always wore a pudding, and all children should.” I saw one
+upon a child’s head last summer in a New England town; I asked the
+mother what it was, and she answered, “A pudding-cap”; that it made
+children soft (idiotic) to bump the head frequently.
+
+The word “pinner” has two meanings. The earlier use was precisely that
+of pinafore, or pincurtle, or pincloth—a child’s apron. Thus we read in
+the Harvard College records, of the expenses of the year 1677, of
+“Linnen Cloth for Table Pinners,” which makes us suspect that Harvard
+students of that day had to wear bibs at commons.
+
+All children wore aprons, which might be called pinners; these were
+aprons with pinned-up bibs; or they might be tiers, which were sleeved
+aprons covering the whole waist, sleeves, and skirt, an outer slip,
+buttoned in the back.
+
+A severe and ancient moralist looked forth from her window in
+Worcester, one day last spring, at a band of New England children
+running to their morning school. She gazed over her glasses
+reprovingly, and turned to me with bitterness: “There they go! _Such_
+mothers as they must have! Not a pinner nor a sleeved tier among ’em.”
+
+The sleeved tier occupied a singular place in childish opinion in my
+youth; and I find the same feeling anent it had existed for many
+generations. It was hated by all children, regarded as something to be
+escaped from at the earliest possible date. You had to wear sleeved
+tiers as you had to have the mumps. It was a thing to endure with what
+childish patience and fortitude you could command for a short time; but
+thoughtful, tender parents would not make you suffer it long.
+
+There were aprons, and aprons. Pinners and tiers were for use, but
+there were elegant aprons for ornament. Did not Queen Anne wear one?
+Even babies wore them. The little Padishal child has one richly laced.
+I have seen a beautiful apron for a little child of three. It was edged
+with a straight insertion of Venetian point like that pictured here. It
+had been made in 1690. Tender affection for a beloved and beautiful
+little child preserved it in one trunk in the same attic for sixty-five
+years; and a beautiful sympathy for that mother’s long sorrow kept the
+apron untouched by young lace-lovers. This lace has white horsehair
+woven into the edge.
+
+We find George Washington ordering for his little stepdaughter (a
+well-dressed child if ever there was one), when she was six years old,
+“A fashionable cap or fillet with bib apron.” And a few years later he
+orders, “Tuckers, Bibs, and Aprons if Fashionable.” Boys wore aprons as
+long as they wore coats; aprons with stomachers or bibs of drawn-work
+and lace, or of stiffly starched lawn; aprons just like those of their
+sisters. It was hard to bear. Hoop-coat, masks, packthread stays—these
+seem strange dress for growing girls.
+
+George Washington sent abroad for masks for his wife and his little
+stepdaughter, “Miss Custis,” when the little girl was six years old;
+and “children’s masks” are often named in bills of sale. Loo-masks were
+small half-masks, and were also imported in all sizes.
+
+The face of Mrs. Madison, familiarly known as “Dolly Madison,” wife of
+President James Madison, long retained the beauty of youth. Much of
+this was surely due to a faithful mother, who, when little Dolly Payne
+was sent to school, sewed a sun-bonnet on the child’s head every
+morning, placed on her arms and hands long gloves, and made her wear a
+mask to keep every ray of sunlight from her face. When masks were so
+universally worn by women, it is not strange, after all, that children
+wore them.
+
+
+Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child. Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child.
+
+I read with horror an advertisement of John McQueen, a New York
+stay-maker in 1767, that he has children’s packthread stays, children’s
+bone stays, and “neat polished steel collars for young Misses so much
+worn at the boarding schools in London.” Poor little “young Misses”!
+
+There were also “turned stays, jumps, gazzets, costrells and caushets”
+(which were perhaps corsets) to make children appear straight.
+Costrells and gazzets we know not to-day. Jumps were feeble stays.
+
+
+“Now a shape in neat stays
+Now a slattern in jumps.”
+
+
+
+
+Robert Gibbes. Robert Gibbes.
+
+Jumps were allied to jimps, and perhaps to jupe; and I think jumper is
+a cousin of a word. One pair of stays I have seen is labelled as having
+been made for a boy of five. One of the worst instruments of torture I
+ever beheld was a pair of child’s stays worn in 1760. They were made,
+not of little strips of wood, but of a large piece of board, front and
+back, tightly sewed into a buckram jacket and reënforced across at
+right angles and diagonally over the hips (though really there were no
+hip-places) with bars of whalebone and steel. The tin corsets I have
+heard of would not have been half as ill to wear. It is true, too, that
+needles were placed in the front of the stays, that the stay-wearer who
+“poked her head” would be well pricked. The daughter of General
+Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary patriot, told her grandchildren
+that she sat many hours every day in her girlhood, with her feet in
+stocks and strapped to a backboard. A friend has a chair of ordinary
+size, save that the seat is about four inches wide from the front edge
+of seat to the back. And the back is well worn at certain points where
+a heavy leather strap strapped up the young girl who was tortured in it
+for six years of her life. The result of back board, stocks, steel
+collar, wooden stays, is shown in such figures as have Dorothy Q. and
+her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth Storer, on page 98 of my _Child Life in
+Colonial Days_, is an extreme example, straight-backed indeed, but
+narrow-chested to match.
+
+Dr. Holmes wrote in jest, but he wrote in truth, too:—
+
+
+“They braced My Aunt against a board
+      To make her straight and tall,
+ They laced her up, they starved her down,
+      To make her light and small.
+ They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
+      They screwed it up with pins,
+ Oh, never mortal suffered more
+      In penance for her sins.”
+
+
+
+
+Nankeen Breeches with Silver Buttons. Nankeen Breeches with Silver
+Buttons.
+
+Nankeen was the favorite wear for boys, even before the Revolution. The
+little figure of the boy who became Lord Lyndhurst, shown in the Copley
+family portrait, is dressed in nankeen; he is the engaging, loving
+child looking up in his mother’s face. Nankeen was worn summer and
+winter by men, and women, and children. If it were deemed too thin and
+too damp a wear for delicate children in extreme winters, then a yellow
+color in wool was preferred for children’s dress. I have seen a little
+pair of breeches of yellow flannel made precisely like these nankeen
+breeches on this page. They were worn in 1768. Carlyle in his _Sartor
+Resartus_ gives this account of the childhood of the professor and
+philosopher of his book:—
+
+
+“My first short clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say,
+my first short cloth; for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching
+from neck to ankle; a single body with four limbs; of which fashion how
+little could I then divine the architectural, much less the moral
+significance.”
+
+
+
+
+Ralph Izard when a Little Boy. 1750. Ralph Izard when a Little Boy.
+1750.
+
+It is a curious coincidence that a great philosopher of our own world
+wore a precisely similar dress in his youth. Madam Mary Bradford writes
+in a private letter, at the age of one hundred and three, of her life
+in 1805 in the household of Rev. Joseph Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson
+was then a little child of two years, and he and his brother William
+till several years old were dressed wholly in yellow flannel, by night
+and by day. When they put on trousers, which was at about the age of
+seven, they wore complete home-made suits of nankeen. The picture
+amuses me of the philosophical child, Ralph Waldo, walking soberly
+around in ugly yellow flannel, contentedly sucking his thumb; for Mrs.
+Bradford records that he was the hardest child to break of sucking his
+thumb whom she ever had seen during her long life. I cannot help
+wondering whether in their soul-to-soul talks Emerson ever told Carlyle
+of the yellow woollen dress of his childhood, and thus gave him the
+thought of the child’s dress for his philosopher.
+
+Fortunately for the children who were our grandparents. French fashions
+were not absorbingly the rage in America until after some amelioration
+of dress had come to French children. Mercier wrote at length at the
+close of the eighteenth century of the abominable artificiality and
+restraint in dress of French children; their great wigs, full-skirted
+coats, immense ruffles, swords on thigh, and hat in hand. He contrasts
+them disparagingly with English boys. The English boy was certainly
+more robust, but I find no difference in dress. Wigs, swords, ruffles,
+may be seen at that time both in English and American portraits. But an
+amelioration of dress did come to both English and American boys
+through the introduction of pantaloons, and a change to little girls’
+dress through the invention of pantalets, but the changes came first to
+France, in spite of Mercier’s animadversions. These changes will be
+left until the later pages of this book; for during nearly all the two
+hundred years of which I write children’s dress varied little. It
+followed the changes of the parent’s dress, and adopted some modes to a
+degree but never to an extreme.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PERUKES AND PERIWIGS
+
+
+_“As to a Periwigg, my best and Greatest Friend begun to find me with
+Hair before I was Born, and has continued to do so ever since, and I
+could not find it in my Heart to go to another.”
+_
+—“Diary,” JUDGE SAMUEL SEWALL, 1718.
+
+
+_A phrensy or a periwigmanee
+That over-runs his pericranie._
+
+—JOHN BYRON, 1730 (circa).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PERUKES AND PERIWIGS
+
+
+T
+
+
+o-day, when every man, save a football player or some eccentric
+reformer or religious fanatic, displays in youth a close-cropped head,
+and when even hoary age is seldom graced with flowing, silvery locks,
+when women’s hair is dressed in simplicity, we can scarcely realize the
+important and formal part the hair played in the dress of the
+eighteenth century.
+
+In the great eagerness shown from earliest colonial days to acquire and
+reproduce in the New World every change of mode in the Old, to purchase
+rich dress, and to assume novel dress, no article was sought for more
+speedily and more anxiously than the wig. It has proved an interesting
+study to compare the introduction of wigs in England with the wear of
+the same form of head-gear in America. Wigs were not in general use in
+England when Plymouth and Boston were settled; though in Elizabeth’s
+day a “peryuke” had been bought for the court fool. They were not in
+universal wear till the close of the seventeenth century.
+
+The “Wig Mania” arose in France in the reign of Louis XV. In 1656 the
+king had forty court perruquiers, who were termed and deemed artists,
+and had their academy. The wigs they produced were superb. It is told
+that one cost £;200, a sum equal in purchasing power to-day to $5000.
+The French statesman and financier, Colbert, aghast at the vast sums
+spent for foreign hair, endeavored to introduce a sort of cap to
+supplant the wig, but fashions are not made that way.
+
+
+Governor and Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall. Governor and Reverend Gurdon
+Saltonstall.
+
+For information of English manners and customs in that day, I turn (and
+never in vain) to those fascinating volumes, the _Verney Memoirs_. From
+them I learn this of early wig-wearing by Englishmen; that Sir Ralph
+Verney, though in straitened circumstances during his enforced
+residence abroad, felt himself compelled to follow the French mode,
+which at that period, 1646, had not reached England. That exemplary
+gentleman paid twelve livres for a wig, when he was sadly short of
+money for household necessaries. It was an elaborate wig, curled in
+great rings, with two locks tied with black ribbon, and made without
+any parting at the back. This wig was powdered.
+
+Sir Ralph wrote to his wife that a good hair-powder was very difficult
+to get and costly, even in France. It was an appreciable addition to
+the weight of the wig and to the expense, large quantities being used,
+sometimes as much as two pounds at a time. It added not only to the
+expense, but to the discomfort, inconvenience, and untidiness of
+wig-wearing.
+
+Pomatum made of fat, and that sometimes rancid, was used to make the
+powder stick; and noxious substances were introduced into the powder,
+as a certain kind is mentioned which must not be used alone, for it
+would produce headache.
+
+Charles II was the earliest king represented on the Great Seal wearing
+a large periwig. Dr. Doran assures us that the king did not bring the
+fashion to Whitehall. “He forbade,” we are told, “the members of the
+Universities to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, or read their sermons.
+The members did all three, and Charles soon found himself doing the
+first two.”
+
+
+Mayor Rip Van Dam. Mayor Rip Van Dam.
+
+Pepys’s _Diary_ contains much interesting information concerning the
+wigs of this reign. On 2d of November, 1663, he writes: “I heard the
+Duke say that he was going to wear a periwig, and says the King also
+will, never till this day observed that the King is mighty gray.” It
+was doubtless this change in the color of his Majesty’s hair that
+induced him to assume the head-dress he had previously so strongly
+condemned.
+
+The wig he adopted was very voluminous, richly curled, and black. He
+was very dark. “Odds fish! but I’m an ugly black fellow!” he said of
+himself when he looked at his portrait. Loyal colonists quickly
+followed royal example and complexion. We have very good specimens of
+this curly black wig in many American portraits.
+
+As might be expected, and as befitted one who delighted to be in
+fashion, Pepys adopted this wig. He took time to consider the matter,
+and had consultations with Mr. Jervas, his old barber, about the
+affair. Referring to one of his visits to his hairdresser, Pepys says:—
+
+
+“I did try two or three borders and periwigs, meaning to wear one, and
+yet I have no stomach for it; but that the pains of keeping my hair
+clean is great. He trimmed me, and at last I parted, but my mind was
+almost altered from my first purpose, from the trouble which I foresee
+in wearing them also.”
+
+
+Weeks passed before he could make up his mind to wear a wig. Mrs. Pepys
+was taken to the periwig-maker’s shop to see one, and expressed her
+satisfaction with it. We read in April, 1665, of the wig being back at
+Jervas’s under repair. Later, under date of September 3d, he writes:—
+
+
+“Lord’s day. Up; and put on my coloured silk suit, very fine, and my
+new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear, because the
+plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a wonder what
+will be in fashion, after the plague is done, as to periwigs, for
+nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
+had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.”
+
+
+In 1670, only, five years after this entry of Pepys, we find Governor
+Barefoot of New Hampshire wearing a periwig; and in 1675 the court of
+Massachusetts, in view of the distresses of the Indian wars, denounced
+the “manifest pride openly appearing amongst us in that long hair, like
+women’s hair is worn by some men, either their own hair, or others’
+hair made into periwigs.”
+
+
+Abraham De Peyster. Abraham De Peyster.
+
+In 1676 Wait Winthrop sent a wig (price £;3) to his brother in New
+London. Mr. Sergeant had brought it from England for his own use; but
+was willing to sell it to oblige a friend, who was, I am confident,
+very devoted to wig-wearing. The largest wig that I recall upon any
+colonist’s head is in the portrait of Governor Fitz-John Winthrop. He
+is painted in armor; and a great wig never seems so absurd as when worn
+with armor. Horace Walpole said, “Perukes of outrageous length flowing
+over suits of armour compose wonderful habits.” An edge of Winthrop’s
+own dark hair seems to show under the wig front. I do not know the
+precise date of this portrait. It was, of course, painted in England.
+He served in the Parliamentary army with General Monck; returned to New
+England in 1663, and was commander of the New England forces. He spent
+1693 to l697 in England as commissioner. Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey
+Kneller both were painting in England in those years, and both were
+constant in painting men with armor and perukes. This portrait seems
+like Kneller’s work.
+
+
+Governor De Bienville. Governor De Bienville.
+
+Another portrait attired also in armor and peruke is of Sir Nathaniel
+Johnson, who was appointed governor of South Carolina by the Lords
+Proprietors in 1702. The portrait was painted in 1705. It is one of the
+few of that date which show a faint mustache; he likewise wears a seal
+ring with coat-of-arms on the little finger of his left hand, which was
+unusual at that day. De Bienville, the governor of Louisiana, is
+likewise in wig and armor. In 1682 Thomas Richbell died in Boston,
+leaving a very rich and costly wardrobe. He had eight wigs. Of these,
+three were small periwigs worth but a pound apiece. In New York, in
+Virginia, in all the colonies, these wigs were worn, and were just as
+large and costly, as elaborately curled, as heavily powdered, as at the
+English and French courts.
+
+Archbishop Tillotson is usually regarded as the first amongst the
+English clergy to adopt the wig. He said in one of his sermons:—
+
+
+“I can remember since the wearing of hair below the ears was looked
+upon as a sin of the first magnitude, and when ministers generally,
+whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion to reprove
+the great sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation
+guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly
+at him with great zeal.”
+
+
+Dr. Tillotson died on November 24, 1694.
+
+
+Daniel Waldo. Daniel Waldo.
+
+Long before that American preachers had felt it necessary to “let fly”
+also; to denounce wig-wearing from their pulpits. The question could
+not be settled, since the ministers themselves could not agree. John
+Wilson, the zealous Boston minister, wore one, and John Cotton (see
+here); while Rev. Mr. Noyes preached long and often against the
+fashion. John Eliot, the noble preacher and missionary to the Indians,
+found time even in the midst of his arduous and incessant duties to
+deliver many a blast against “prolix locks,”—“with boiling zeal,” as
+Cotton Mather said,—and he labelled them a “luxurious feminine
+protexity”; but lamented late in life that “the lust for wigs is become
+insuperable.” He thought the horrors in King Philip’s War were a direct
+punishment from God for wig-wearing. Increase Mather preached warmly
+against wigs, calling them “Horrid Bushes of Vanity,” and saying that
+“such Apparel is contrary to the light of Nature, and to express
+Scripture,” and that “Monstrous Periwigs such as some of our church
+members indulge in make them resemble ye locusts that came out of ye
+Bottomless Pit.”
+
+Rev. George Weeks preached a sermon on impropriety in clothes. He said
+in regard to wig-wearing:—
+
+
+“We have no warrant in the word of God, that I know of, for our wearing
+of Periwigs except it be in extraordinary cases. Elisha did not cover
+his head with a Perriwigg altho’ it was bald. To see the greater part
+of Men in some congregations wearing Perriwiggs is a matter of deep
+lamentation. For either all these men had a necessity to cut off their
+Hair or else not. If they had a necessity to cut off their Hair then we
+have reason to take up a lamentation over the sin of our first Parents
+which hath occasioned so many Persons in our Congregation to be sickly,
+weakly, crazy Persons.”
+
+
+Long “Ruffianly” or “Russianly” (I know not which word is right) hair
+equally worried the parsons. President Chauncey of Harvard College
+preached upon it, for the college undergraduates were vexingly addicted
+to prolix locks. Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth’s sermon on the subject has
+often been reprinted, and is full of logical arguments. This offence
+was named on the list of existing evils which was made by the general
+court: that “the men wore long hair like women’s hair.” Still, the
+Puritan magistrates, omnipotent as they were in small things, did riot
+dare to force the becurled citizens of the little towns to cut their
+long love-locks, though they bribed them to do so. A Salem man was, in
+1687, fined l0s. for a misdemeanor, but “in case he shall cutt off his
+long har of his head into a sevill (civil?) frame, in the mean time
+shall have abated 5s. of his fine.” John Eliot hated long, natural hair
+as well as false hair. Rev. Cotton Mather said of him, in a very
+unpleasant figure of speech, “The hair of them that professed religion
+grew too long for him to swallow.” His own hair curled on his
+shoulders, and would seem long to us to-day.
+
+
+Reverend John Marsh. Reverend John Marsh.
+
+A climax of wig-hating was reached by one who has been styled “The Last
+of the Puritans”—Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston. Constant references in
+his diary show how this hatred influenced his daily life. He despised
+wigs so long and so deeply, he thought and talked and prayed upon them,
+until they became to him of undue importance; they became godless
+emblems of iniquity; an unutterable snare and peril.
+
+We find Sewall copying with evident approval a “scandalous bill” which
+had been “posted” on the church in Plymouth in 1701. In this a few
+lines ran:—
+
+
+ “Our churches are too genteel.
+Parsons grow trim and trigg
+With wealth, wine, and wigg,
+   And their crowns are covered with meal.”
+
+
+
+
+John Adams in Youth. John Adams in Youth.
+
+Bitter must have been his efforts to reconcile to his conscience the
+sight of wigs upon the heads of his parson friends, worn boldly in the
+pulpit. He would refrain from attending a church where the parson wore
+a wig; and his italicized praise of a dead friend was that he “was a
+true New-English man and _abominated periwigs_.” A Boston wig-maker
+died a drunkard, and Sewall took much melancholy satisfaction in
+dilating upon it.
+
+Cotton Mather and Sewall had many pious differences and personal
+jealousies. The parson was a handsome man (see his picture here), and
+he was a harmlessly and naively vain man. He quickly adopted a “great
+bush of vanity”—and a very personable appearance he makes in it. Soon
+we find him inveighing at length in the pulpit against “those who
+strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, those who were zealous against an
+innocent fashion taken up and used by the best of men.” “’Tis supposed
+he means wearing a Perriwigg,” writes Sewall after this sermon; “I
+expected not to hear a vindication of Perriwiggs in Boston pulpit by
+Mr. Mather.”
+
+Poor Sewall! his regard of wigs had a severe test when he wooed Madam
+Winthrop late in life. She was a rich widow. He had courted her vainly
+for a second wife. And now he “yearned for her deeply” for a third
+wife, so he wrote. And ere she would consent or even discuss marriage
+she stipulated two things: one, that he keep a coach; the other, that
+he wear a periwig. When all the men of dignity and office in the colony
+were bourgeoning out in great flowing perukes, she was naturally a bit
+averse to an elderly lover in a skullcap or, as he often wore, a hood.
+His love did not make him waver; he stoutly persisted in his refusal to
+assume a periwig.
+
+His portrait in a velvet skullcap shows a fringe of white curling hair
+with a few forehead locks. I fancy he was bald. Here is his entry with
+regard to young Parson Willard’s wig, in the year 1701:—
+
+
+“Having last night heard that Josiah Willard had cut off his hair (a
+very full head of hair) and put on a wig, I went to him this morning.
+When I told his mother what I came about, she called him. Whereupon I
+inquired of him what extreme need had forced him to put off his own
+hair and put on a wig? He answered, none at all; he said that his hair
+was straight, and that it parted behind.
+
+“He seemed to argue that men might as well shave their hair off their
+head, as off their face. I answered that boys grew to be men before
+they had hair on their faces, and that half of mankind never have any
+beards. I told him that God seems to have created our hair as a test,
+to see whether we can bring our minds to be content at what he gives
+us, or whether wewould be our own carvers and come back to him for
+nothing more. We might dislike our skin or nails, as he disliked his
+hair; but in our case no thanks are due to us that we cut them not off;
+for pain and danger restrain us. Your duty, said I, is to teach men
+self-denial. I told him, further, that it would be displeasing and
+burdensome to good men for him to wear a wig, and they that care not
+what men think of them, care not what God thinks of them.
+
+“I told him that he must remember that wigs were condemned by a meeting
+of ministers at Northampton. I told him of the solemnity of the
+covenant which he and I had lately entered into, which put upon me the
+duty of discoursing to him.
+
+“He seemed to say that he would leave off his wig when his hair was
+grown again. I spoke to his father of it a day or two afterwards and he
+thanked me for reasoning with his son.
+
+“He told me his son had promised to leave off his wig when his hair was
+grown to cover his ears. If the father had known of it, he would have
+forbidden him to cut off his hair. His mother heard him talk of it, but
+was afraid to forbid him for fear he should do it in spite of her, and
+so be more faulty than if she had let him go his own way.”
+
+
+
+
+Jonathan Edwards, 2nd. Jonathan Edwards, 2nd.
+
+Soon nearly every parson in England and every colony wore wigs. John
+Wesley alone wore what seems to be his own white hair curled under
+softly at the ends. Whitfield is in a portentous wig like the one on
+Dr. Marsh (here).
+
+In the time of Queen Anne, wigs had multiplied vastly in variety as
+they had increased in size. I have been asked the difference between a
+peruke and a wig. Of course both, and the periwig, are simply wigs; but
+the term “peruke” is in general applied to a formal, richly curled wig;
+and the word “periwig” also conveys the distinction of a formal wig. Of
+less dignity were riding-wigs, nightcap wigs, and bag-wigs. Bag-wigs
+are said to have had their origin among French servants, who tied up
+their hair in a black leather bag as a speedy way of dressing it, and
+to keep it out of the way when at other and disordering duties.
+
+
+Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry.
+
+In May, 1706, the English, led by Marlborough, gained a great victory
+on the battle-field of Ramillies, and that gave the title to a new wig
+described as “having a long, gradually diminishing, plaited tail,
+called the ‘Ramillie-tail,’ which was tied with a great bow at the top
+and a smaller one at the bottom.” The hair also bushed out at both
+sides of the face. The Ramillies wig shown in Hogarth’s _Modern
+Midnight Conversation_ hanging against the wall, is reproduced here.
+This wig was not at first deemed full-dress. Queen Anne was deeply
+offended because Lord Bolingbroke, summoned hurriedly to her, appeared
+in a Ramillies wig instead of a full-bottomed peruke. The queen
+remarked that she supposed next time Lord Bolingbroke would come in his
+nightcap. It was the same offending nobleman who brought in the fashion
+of the mean little tie-wigs.
+
+It is stated in Read’s _Weekly Journal_ of May 1, 1736, in an account
+of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, that the officers of the Horse
+and Foot Guards wore Ramillies periwigs when on parade, by his
+Majesty’s order. We meet in the reign of George II other forms of wigs
+and other titles; the most popular was the pigtail wig. The pigtail of
+this was worn hanging down the back or tied up in a knot behind. This
+pigtail wig, worn for so many years, is shown here. It was popular in
+the army for sixty years, but in 1804 orders were given for the pigtail
+to be reduced to seven inches in length, and finally, in 1808, to be
+cut off wholly, to the deep mourning of disciplinarians who deemed a
+soldier without a pigtail as hopeless as a Manx cat.
+
+
+“King” Carter. Died 1732. “King” Carter. Died 1732.
+
+Bob-wigs, minor and major, came in during the reign of George II. The
+bob-wig was held to be a direct imitation of the natural hair, though,
+of course, it deceived no one; it was used chiefly by poorer folk. The
+’prentice minor bob was close and short, the citizen’s bob major, or
+Sunday buckle, had several rows of curls. All these came to America by
+the hundreds—yes, by the thousands. Every profession and almost every
+calling had its peculiar wig. The caricatures of the period represent
+full-fledged lawyers with a towering frontlet and a long bag at the
+back tied in the middle; while students of the university have a wig
+flat on the top, to accommodate their stiff, square-cornered hats, and
+a great bag like a lawyer’s wig at the back.
+
+
+Judge Benjamin Lynde. Judge Benjamin Lynde.
+
+“When the law lays down its full-bottom’d periwig you will find less
+wisdom in bald pates than you are aware of,” says the _Choleric Man_.
+This lawyer’s wig is the only one which has not been changed or
+abandoned. You may see it here, on the head of Judge Benjamin Lynde of
+Salem. He died in 1745. Carlyle sneers:—
+
+
+“Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins,
+and a plush-gown—whereby all Mortals know that he is a JUDGE?”
+
+
+In the reigns of Anne and William and Mary perukes grew so vast and
+cumbersome that a wig was invented for travelling and for undress wear,
+and was called the “Campaign wig.” It would not seem very simple since
+it was made full and curled to the front, and had, so writes a
+contemporary, Randle Holme, in his _Academy of Armory_, 1684, “knots
+and bobs a-dildo on each side and a curled forehead.”
+
+A campaign wig from Holme’s drawing is shown here.
+
+There are constant references in old letters and in early literature in
+America which alter much the dates assigned by English authorities on
+costume: thus, knowing not of Randle Holme’s drawing, Sydney writes
+that the name “campaign” was applied to a wig, the name and fashion of
+which came to England from France in 1702. In the Letter-book of
+William Byrd of Westover, Virginia, in a letter written in June, 1690,
+to Perry and Lane, his English factors in London, he says, “I have by
+Tonner sent my long Periwig which I desire you to get made into a
+Campagne and send mee.” This was twelve years earlier than Sydney’s
+date. Fitz-John Winthrop wrote to England in 1695 for “two wiggs one a
+campane the other short.” The portrait of Fitz-John Winthrop shows a
+prodigious imposing wig, but it has no “knots or bobs a-dildo on each
+side,” though the forehead is curled; it is a fine example of a peruke.
+
+I cannot attempt even to name all the wigs, much less can I describe
+them; Hawthorne gave “the tie,” the “Brigadier,” the “Major,” the
+“Ramillies,” the grave “Full-bottom,” the giddy “Feather-top.” To these
+and others already named in this chapter I can add the “Neck-lock,” the
+“Allonge,” the “Lavant,” the “Vallancy,” the “Grecian fly wig,” the
+“Beau-peruke,” the “Long-tail,” the “Fox-tail,” the “Cut-wig,” the
+“Scratch,” the “Twist-wig.”
+
+Others named in 1753 in the _London Magazine_ were the “Royal bird,”
+the “Rhinoceros,” the “Corded Wolf’s-paw,” “Count Saxe’s mode,” the
+“She-dragon,” the “Jansenist,” the “Wild-boar’s-back,” the
+“Snail-back,” the “Spinach-seed.” These titles were literal
+translations of French wig-names.
+
+Another wig-name was the “Gregorian.” We read in _The Honest Ghost_,
+1658, “Pulling a little down his Gregorian, which was displac’t a
+little by his hastie taking off his beaver.” This wig was named from
+the inventor, one Gregory, “the famous peruke-maker who is buryed at
+St. Clements Danes Church.” In Cotgrave’s _Dictionary_ perukes are
+called Gregorians.
+
+
+John Rutledge. John Rutledge.
+
+In the prologue to _Haut Ton_, written by George Colman, these wigs are
+named:—
+
+
+“The Tyburn scratch, thick Club and Temple tyes,
+The Parson’s Feather-top, frizzed, broad and high.
+The coachman’s Cauliflower, built tier on tier.”
+
+
+There was also the “Minister’s bob,” “Curley roys,” “Airy levants,” and
+“I—perukes.” The “Dalmahoy” was a bushy bob-wig.
+
+When Colonel John Carter died, he left to his brother Robert his cane,
+sword, and periwig. I believe this to be the very Valiancy periwig
+which, in all its snowy whiteness and air of extreme fashion, graces
+the head of the handsome young fellow as he is shown here. Even the
+portrait shares the fascination which the man is said to have had for
+every woman. I have a copy of it now standing on my desk, where I can
+glance at him as I write; and pleasant company have I found the gay
+young Virginian—the best of company. It is good to have a companion so
+handsome of feature, so personable of figure, so laughing, care free,
+and debonair—isn’t it, King Robert?
+
+
+Campaign, Ramillies, Bob, and Pigtail Wigs. Campaign, Ramillies, Bob,
+and Pigtail Wigs.
+
+These snowy wigs at a later date were called Adonis wigs.
+
+The cost of a handsome wig would sometimes amount to thirty, forty, and
+fifty guineas, though Swift grumbled at paying three guineas, and the
+exceedingly correct Mr. Pepys bought wigs at two and three pounds. It
+is not strange that they were often stolen. Gay, in his _Trivia_, thus
+tells the manner of their disappearance:—
+
+
+“Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn;
+ High on the shoulder, in a basket borne,
+ Lurks the sly boy, whose hand to rapine bred,
+ Plucks off the curling honors of the head.”
+
+
+In America wigs were deemed rich spoils for the sneak-thief.
+
+There was a vast trade in second-hand wigs. ’Tis said there was in
+Rosemary Lane in London a constantly replenished “Wig lottery.” It was,
+rather, a wig grab-bag. The wreck of gentility paid his last sixpence
+for appearances, dipped a long arm into a hole in a cask, and fished
+out his wig. It might be half-decent, or it might be fit only to polish
+shoes—worse yet, it might have been used already for that purpose. The
+lowest depths of everything were found in London. I doubt if we had any
+Rosemary Lane wig lotteries in New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston.
+
+
+Rev. William Welsteed. Rev. William Welsteed.
+
+An answer to a query in a modern newspaper gives the word “caxon” as
+descriptive of a dress-wig. It was in truth a term for a wig, but it
+was a cant term, a slang phrase for the worst possible wig; thus
+Charles Lamb Wrote:—
+
+
+“He had two wigs both pedantic but of different omen. The one serene,
+smiling, fresh-powdered, betokening a mild day. The other an old
+discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon denoting frequent and bloody
+execution.”
+
+
+All these wigs, even the bob-wig, were openly artificial. The manner of
+their make, their bindings, their fastening, as well as their material,
+completely destroyed any illusion which could possibly have been
+entertained as to their being a luxuriant crop of natural hair.
+
+No one was ashamed of wearing a wig. On the contrary, a person with any
+sense of dignity was ashamed of being so unfashionable as to wear his
+own hair. It was a glorious time for those to whom Nature had been
+niggardly. A wig was as frankly extraneous as a hat. No attempt was
+made to imitate the roots of the hairs, or the parting. The hair was
+attached openly, and bound with a high-colored, narrow ribbon. Here is
+an advertisement from the _Boston News Letter_ of August 14, 1729:—
+
+
+“Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott, Barber, a light Flaxen Natural
+Wigg parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow Ribband is of a
+Red Pink Color, the Caul is in rows of Red, Green and White Ribband.”
+
+
+Another “peruke-maker” lost a Flaxen “Natural” wig bound with
+peach-colored ribbon; while in 1755 Barber Coes, of Marblehead, lost
+“feather-tops” bound with various ribbons. Some had three colors on one
+wig—pink, green and purple. A goat’s-hair wig bound with red and
+purple, with green ribbons striping the caul, must have been a pretty
+and dignified thing on an old gentleman’s head. One of the most curious
+materials for a wig was fine wire, of which Wortley Montague’s wig was
+made.
+
+
+Thomas Hopkinson. Thomas Hopkinson.
+
+We read in many histories of costume, among them Miss Hill’s recent
+history of English dress, that Quakers did not wear wigs. This is
+widely incorrect. Many Quakers wore most fashionably made wigs. William
+Penn wrote from England to his steward, telling him to allow Deputy
+Governor Lloyd to wear his (Penn’s) wigs. I suppose he wished his
+deputy to cut a good figure.
+
+From the _New York Gazette_ of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief’s
+stealing “one gray Hair Wig, not the worse for wearing, one Pale Hair
+Wig, not worn five times, marked V. S. E., one brown Natural wig, One
+old wig of goat’s hair put in buckle.” Buckle meant to curl, and
+derivatively a wig was in buckle when it was rolled for curling.
+Roulettes or bilbouquettes for buckling a wig were little rollers of
+pipe clay. The hair was twisted up in them, and papers bound over them
+to fix them in place. The roulettes could be put in buckle hot, or they
+could be rolled cold and the whole wig heated. The latter was not
+favored; it damaged the wig. Moreover, a careless barber had often
+roasted a forgotten wig which he had put in buckle and in an oven.
+
+The _New York Gazette_ of May 12, 1750, had this alluring
+advertisement:—
+
+
+“This is to acquaint the Public, that there is lately arrived from
+London the Wonder of the World, _an Honest_ Barber and Peruke Maker,
+who might have worked for the King, if his Majesty would have employed
+him: It was not for the want of Money he came here, for he had enough
+of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, that he advertises
+himself, BUT to acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies, that _Such a Person
+is now in Town_, living near _Rosemary Lane_ where Gentlemen and Ladies
+may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.: Tyes, Full-Bottoms,
+Majors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut and bob Perukes: Also
+Ladies Tatematongues and Towers after the Manner that is now wore at
+Court. _By their Humble and Obedient Servant_,
+
+“JOHN STILL.”
+
+
+
+
+Reverend Dr. Barnard. Reverend Dr. Barnard.
+
+“Perukes,” says Malcolm, in his _Manners and Customs_, “were an highly
+important article in 1734.” Those of right gray human hair were four
+guineas each; light grizzle ties, three guineas; and other colors in
+proportion, to twenty-five shillings. Right gray human hair cue
+perukes, from two guineas to fifteen shillings each, was the price of
+dark ones; and right gray bob perukes, two guineas and a half to
+fifteen shillings, the price of dark bobs. Those mixed with horsehair
+were much lower.
+
+Prices were a bit higher in America. It was held that better wigs were
+made in England than in America or France; so the letter-books and
+agent’s-lists of American merchants are filled with orders for English
+wigs.
+
+Imperative orders for the earliest and extremest new fashions stood
+from year to year on the lists of fashionable London wig-makers; and
+these constant orders came from Virginia gentlemen and Massachusetts
+magistrates,—not a few, too, from the parsons,—scantly paid as they
+were. The smaller bob-wigs and tie-wigs were precisely the same in both
+countries, and I am sure were no later in assumption in America than
+was necessitated by the weeks occupied in coming across seas.
+
+Throughout the seventeenth century all classes of men in American towns
+wore wigs. Negro slaves flaunted white horsehair wigs, goat’s-hair
+bob-wigs, natural wigs, all the plainer wigs, and all the more costly
+sorts when these were half worn and secondhand. Soldiers wore wigs; and
+in the _Massachusetts Gazette_ of the year 1774 a runaway negro is
+described as wearing a curl of hair tied around his head to imitate a
+scratch wig; with his woolly crown this dangling curl must have been
+the height of absurdity.
+
+It is not surprising to find in the formal life of the English court
+the poor little tormented, sickly, sad child of Queen Anne wearing,
+before he was seven years old, a large full-bottomed wig; but it is
+curious to see the portraits of American children rigged up in wigs (I
+have half a dozen such), and to find likewise an American gentleman
+(and not one of wealth either) paying £;9 apiece for wigs for three
+little sons of seven, nine, and eleven years of age. This lavish parent
+was Enoch Freeman, who lived in Portland, Maine, in 1754.
+
+Wigs were objects of much and constant solicitude and care; their
+dressing was costly, and they wore out readily. Barbers cared for them
+by the month or year, visiting from house to house. Ten pounds a year
+was not a large sum to be paid for the care of a single wig. Men of
+dignity and careful dress had barbers’ bills of large amount, such men
+as Governor John Hancock, Governor Hutchinson, and Governor Belcher. On
+Saturday afternoons the barbers’ boys were seen flying through the
+narrow streets, wig-box in hand, hurrying to deliver all the dressed
+wigs ere sunset came.
+
+No doubt the constant wearing of such hot, heavy head-covering made the
+hair thin and the head bald; thus wigs became a necessity. Men had
+their heads very closely covered of old, and caught cold at a breath.
+Pepys took cold throwing off his hat while at dinner. If the wig were
+removed even within doors a close cap or hood at once took its place,
+or, as I tell elsewhere, a turban of some rich stuff. In America, in
+the Southern states, where people were poor and plantations scattered,
+all men did not wear wigs. A writer in the _London Magazine_ in 1745
+tells of this country carelessness of dress. He says that except some
+of the “very Elevated Sort” few wore perukes; so that at first sight
+“all looked as if about to go to bed,” for all wore caps. Common people
+wore woollen caps; richer ones donned caps of white cotton or Holland
+linen. These were worn even when riding fifty miles from home. He adds,
+“It may be cooler for aught I know; but methinks ’tis very ridiculous.”
+So wonted were his eyes to perukes, that his only thought of caps was
+that they were “ridiculous.” Nevertheless, when a shipload of servants,
+bond-servants who might be stolen when in drink, or lured under false
+pretences, might be convicts, or honest workmen,—when these transports
+were set up in respectability,—scores of new wigs of varying degrees of
+dignity came across seas with them. Many an old caxon or “gossoon”—a
+wig worn yellow with age—ended its days on the pate of a redemptioner,
+who thereby acquired dignity and was more likely to be bought as a
+schoolmaster. Truly our ancestors were not squeamish, and it is well
+they were not, else they would have squeamed from morning till night at
+the sights, and sounds, and things, and dirt around them. But these be
+parlous words; they had the senses and feelings of their day—suited to
+the surroundings of their day. In one thing they can be envied. Knowing
+not of germs and microbes, dreaming not of antiseptics and fumigation,
+they could be happy in blissful unconsciousness of menacing
+environment—a blessing wholly denied to us.
+
+
+Andrew Ellicott. Andrew Ellicott.
+
+When James Murray came from Scotland in 1735 he went up the Cape Fear
+River in North Carolina to the struggling settlements of Brunswick. The
+stock of wigs which he brought as one of the commodities of his trade
+had absolutely no market. In 1751 he wrote thus to his London
+wig-maker:—
+
+
+“We deal so much in caps in this country that we are almost as careless
+of the outside as of the inside of our heads. I have had but one wig
+since the last I had of you, and yours has outworn it. Now I am near
+out, and you may make me a new grisel Bob.”
+
+
+Nevertheless, in 1769, when he was roughly handled in Boston on account
+of his Tory utterances, his head, though he was but fifty-six, was bald
+from wig-wearing. His spirited recital runs thus:—
+
+
+“The crowd intending sport, remained. As I was pressing out, my Wig was
+pulled off and a pate shaved by Time and the barber was left exposed.
+This was thought a signal and prelude to further insult; which would
+probably have taken place but for hindering the cause. Going along in
+this plight, surrounded by the crowd, in the dark, a friend hold of
+either arm supporting me, while somebody behind kept nibbling at my
+sides and endeavouring of treading the reforming justice out of me by
+the multitude. My wig dishevelled, was borne on a staff behind. My
+friends and supporters offered to house me, but I insisted on going
+home in the present trim, and was landed in safety.”
+
+
+Patriotic Boston barbers found much satisfaction in ill treating the
+wigs of their Tory customers and patrons. William Pyncheon, a Salem
+Tory, wrote a few years later:—
+
+
+“The tailors and barbers, in their squinting and fleering at our
+clothes, and especially our wiggs, begin to border on malevolence. Had
+not the caul of my wigg been of uncommon stuff and workmanship, I think
+my barber would have had it in pieces: his dressing it greatly
+resembles the farmer dressing his flax, the latter of the two being the
+gentlest in his motions.”
+
+
+Worcester Tories, among them Timothy Paine, had their wigs pulled off
+in public. Mr. Paine at once gave his dishonored wig to one of his
+negro slaves, and never after resumed wig-wearing.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BEARD
+
+
+_“Though yours be sorely lugged and torn
+It does your Visage more adorn
+Than if ’twere prun’d, and starch’d, and launder’d
+And cut square by the Russian standard.”_
+
+—“Hudibras,” SAMUEL BUTLER.
+
+
+_“Now of beards there be such company
+And fashions such a throng
+That it is very hard to handle a beard
+Tho’ it be never so long.
+
+“’Tis a pretty sight and a grave delight
+That adorns both young and old
+A well thatch’t face is a comely grace
+And a shelter from the cold”_
+
+—“Le Prince d’Amour,” 1660.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BEARD
+
+
+M
+
+
+en’s hair on their heads hath ever been at odds with that on their
+face. If the head were well covered and the hair long, then the face
+was smooth shaven. William the Conqueror had short hair and a beard,
+then came a long-haired king, then a cropped one; Edward IV’s subjects
+had long hair and closely cut beards. Henry VII fiercely forbade
+beards. The great sovereign Henry VIII ordered short hair like the
+French, and wore a beard. Through Elizabeth’s day and that of James the
+beard continued. Not until great perukes overshadowed the whole face
+did the beard disappear. It vanished for a century as if men were
+beardless; but after men began to wear short hair in the early years of
+the nineteenth century, bearded men appeared. A few German mystics who
+had come to America full-bearded were stared at like the elephant, and
+a sight of them was recorded in a diary as a great event.
+
+There is no doubt that, to the general reader, the ordinary thought of
+the Puritan is with a beard, a face and figure much like the Hogarth
+illustrations of Hudibras—one of the “Presbyterian true Blue,” “the
+stubborn crew of Errant Saints,”—without the grotesquery of face and
+feature, perhaps, but certainly with all the plainness and
+gracelessness of dress and the commonplace beard. The wording of
+Hudibras also figures the popular conception:—
+
+
+“His tawny Beard was th’ equal Grace
+Both of his Wisdom and his Face:
+       *       *       *       *       *
+“His Doublet was of sturdy Buff
+And tho’ not Sword, was Cudgel-Proof.
+His Breeches were of rugged Woolen
+And had been at the Siege of Bullen.”
+
+
+
+
+Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford. Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of
+Hereford.
+
+In truth this is well enough as far as it runs and for one suit of
+clothing; but this was by no means a universal dress, nor was it a
+universal beard. Indeed beards were fearfully and wonderfully varied.
+
+That humorous old rhymester, Taylor, the “Water Poet,” may be quoted at
+length on the vanity thus:—
+
+
+“And Some, to set their Love’s-Desire on Edge
+Are cut and prun’d, like to a Quickset Hedge.
+Some like a Spade, some like a Forke, some square,
+Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some starke bare;
+Some sharpe, Stilletto-fashion, Dagger-like,
+That may with Whispering a Man’s Eyes unpike;
+Some with the Hammer-cut, or Roman T.
+Their Beards extravagant, reform’d must be.
+Some with the Quadrate, some Triangle fashion;
+Some circular, some ovall in translation;
+Some Perpendicular in Longitude,
+Some like a Thicket for their Crassitude,
+That Heights, Depths, Breadths, Triform, Square, Ovall, Round
+And Rules Geometrical in Beards are found.”
+
+
+Taylor’s own beard was screw-shaped. I fancy he invented it.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon beard was parted, and this double form remained for a
+long time. Sometimes there were two twists or two long forks.
+
+A curious pointed beard, a beard in two curls, is shown here, on James
+Douglas, Earl of Morton. A still more strangely kept one, pointed in
+the middle of the chin, and kept in two rolls which roll toward the
+front, is upon the aged herald, here.
+
+Richard II had a mean beard,—two little tufts on the chin known as “the
+mouse-eaten beard, here a tuft, there a tuft.” The round beard “like a
+half a Holland cheese” is always seen in the depictions of Falstaff; “a
+great round beard” we know he had. This was easily trimmed, but others
+took so much time and attention that pasteboard boxes were made to tie
+over them at night, that they might be unrumpled in the morning.
+
+
+The Herald Vandum. The Herald Vandum.
+
+In the reign of Elizabeth and of James I a beard and whiskers or
+mustache were universally worn. In the time of Charles I the general
+effect of beard and mustache was triangular, with the mouth in the
+centre, as in the portrait of Waller here.
+
+A beard of some form was certainly universal in 1620. Often it was the
+orderly natural growth shown on Winthrop’s face; a smaller tuft on the
+chin with a mustache also was much worn. Many ministers in America had
+this chin-tuft. Among them were John Eliot and John Davenport. The
+Stuarts wore a pointed beard, carefully trimmed, and a mustache; but
+the natural beard seems to have disappeared with the ruff. Charles II
+clung for a time to a mustache; his portrait by Mary Beale has one; but
+with the great development of the periwig came a smooth face. This
+continued until the nineteenth century brought a fashion of bearded men
+again; a fashion which was so abhorred, so reviled, so openly warred
+with that I know of the bequest of a large estate with the absolute and
+irrevocable condition that the inheritor should never wear a beard of
+any form.
+
+The hammer cut was of the reign of Charles I. It was T-shaped. In the
+play, _The Queen of Corinth_, 1647, are the lines:—
+
+
+      “He strokes his beard
+Which now he puts in the posture of a T,
+The Roman T. Your T-beard is in fashion.”
+
+
+The spade beard is shown here. It was called the “broad pendant,” and
+was held to make a man look like a warrior. The sugar-loaf beard was
+the natural form much worn by Puritans; by natural I mean not twisted
+into any “strange antic forms.” The swallow-tail cut (about 1600) is
+more unusual, but was occasionally seen.
+
+
+“The stiletto-beard
+It makes me afeard
+     It is so sharp beneath.
+For he that doth place
+A dagger in his face
+     What wears he in his sheath?”
+
+
+An unusually fine stiletto beard is on the chin of John Endicott
+(here). It was distinctly a soldier’s beard. Endicott was major-general
+of the colonial forces and a severe disciplinarian. Shakespere, in
+_Henry V_, speaks of “a beard of the General’s cut.” It was worn by the
+Earl of Southampton (see here), and perhaps Endicott favored it on that
+account. The pique-devant beard or “pick-a-devant beard, O Fine
+Fashion,” was much worn. A good moderate example may be seen upon
+Cousin Kilvert, with doublet and band, in the print here. An extreme
+type was the beard of Robert Greene, the Elizabethan dramatist, “A
+jolly long red peake like the spire of a steeple, which he wore
+continually, whereat a man might hang a jewell; it was so sharp and
+pendent.”
+
+
+Scotch Beard. Scotch Beard.
+
+The word “peak” was constantly used for a beard, and also the words
+“spike” and “spear.” A barber is represented in an old play as asking
+whether his customer will “have his peak cut short and sharp; or
+amiable like an inamorato, or broad pendant like a spade; to be
+terrible like a warrior and a soldado; to have his appendices primed,
+or his mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like ye branches of
+a vine.”
+
+A broad square-cut beard spreading at the ends like an open fan is the
+“cathedral beard” of Randle Holme, “so called because grave men of the
+church did wear it.” It is often seen in portraits. One of these is
+shown here.
+
+
+Dr. William Slater. Cathedral Beard. Dr. William Slater. Cathedral
+Beard.
+
+In the _Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas_, 1731, she writes of her
+grandfather, a Turkey-merchant:—
+
+
+“He was very nice in the Mode of his Age—his Valet being some hours
+every morning in _Starching_ his _Beard_ and Curling his Whiskers
+during which Time a Gentleman whom he maintained as Companion always
+read to him upon some useful subject.”
+
+
+So we may believe they really “starched” their beards, stiffened them
+with some dressing. Taylor, the “Water Poet” (1640), says of beards:—
+
+
+“Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine
+Like to the Bristles of some Angry Swine.”
+
+
+
+
+Dr. John Dee. 1600. Dr. John Dee. 1600.
+
+Dr. Dee’s extraordinary beard I can but regard as an affectation of
+singularity, assumed doubtless to attract attention, and to be a sign
+of unusual parts. Aubrey, his friend, calls him “a very handsome man;
+of very fair, clear, sanguine complexion, with a long beard as white as
+milke. He was tall and slender. He wore a gowne like an artist’s gowne;
+with hanging sleeves and a slitt. A mighty good man he was.” The word
+“artist” then meant artisan; and in this reference means a smock like a
+workman’s.
+
+A name seen often in Winthrop’s letters is that of Sir Kenelm Digby. He
+was an intimate correspondent of John Winthrop the second, and it would
+not be strange if he did many errands for Winthrop in England besides
+purchasing drugs. His portrait, and a lugubrious one it is, is one of
+the few of his day which shows an untrimmed beard. Aubrey says of him
+that after the death of his wife he wore “a long mourning cloak, a high
+cornered hatt, his beard unshorn, look’t like a hermit; as signs of
+sorrow for his beloved wife. He had something of the sweetness of his
+mother’s face.” This sweetness is, however, not to be perceived in his
+unattractive portrait.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES
+
+
+_“Q. Why is a Wife like a Patten? A. Both are Clogs.”_
+
+—Old Riddle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES
+
+
+W
+
+
+hen this old pigskin trunk was new, the men who fought in the
+Revolution were young. Here is the date, “1756,” and the initials in
+brass-headed nails, “J.E.H.” It was a bride’s trunk, the trunk of
+Elizabeth, who married John; and it was marked after the manner of
+marking the belongings of married folk in her day. It is curious in
+shape, spreading out wide at the top; for it was made to fit a special
+place in an old coach. I have told the story of that ancient coach in
+my _Old Narragansett_: the tale of the ignoble end of its days, the
+account of its fall from transportation of this happy bride and
+bridegroom, through years of stately use and formal dignity to more
+years of happy desuetude as a children’s cubby-house; and finally its
+ignominy as a roosting-place, and hiding-place, and laying-place, and
+setting-place of misinformed and misguided hens. Under the coachman’s
+seat, where the two-score dark-blue Staffordshire pie-plates were found
+on the day of the annihilation of the coach, was the true resting-place
+of this trunk. It was a hidden spot, for the trunk was small, and was
+intended to hold only treasures. It holds them still, though they are
+not the silver-plate, the round watches, the narrow laces, and the
+precious camel’s-hair scarf. It now holds treasured relics of the olden
+time; trifles, but not unconsidered ones; much esteemed trifles are
+they, albeit not in form or shape or manner of being fit to rest in
+parlor cabinets or on tables, but valued, nevertheless, valued for that
+most intangible of qualities—association.
+
+
+Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760. Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760.
+
+
+Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790. Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790.
+
+Here is one little “antick.” It is an ample bag with the neat double
+drawing-strings of our youth; a bag, nay, a pocket. It once hung by the
+side of some one of my forbears, perhaps Elizabeth of the brass-nailed
+initials. It was a much-esteemed pocket, though it is only of figured
+cotton or chiney; but those stuffs were much sought after when this old
+trunk was new. The pocket has served during recent years as a cover for
+two articles of footwear which many “of the younger sort” to-day have
+never seen—they are pattens. “Clumsy, ugly pattens” we find them
+frequently stigmatized in the severe words of the early years of the
+nineteenth century, but there is nothing ugly or clumsy about this
+pair. The sole is of some black, polished wood—it is heavy enough for
+ebony; the straps are of strong leather neatly stitched; the buckles
+are polished brass, and brass nails fasten the leather to the wooden
+soles. These soles are cut up high in a ridge to fit under the instep
+of a high-heeled shoe; for it was a very little lady who wore these
+pattens,—Elizabeth,—and her little feet always stood in the highest
+heels. She was active, kindly, and bountiful. She lived to great age,
+and she could and did walk many miles a day until the last year of her
+life. She is recalled as wearing a great scarlet cloak with a black
+silk quilted hood on cold winter days, when she visited her neighbors
+with kindly words, and housewifely, homely gifts, conveyed in an ample
+basket. The cloak was made precisely like the scarlet cloak shown here,
+and had a like hood. She was brown-eyed, and her dark hair was never
+gray even in extreme old age; nor was the hair of her granddaughter,
+another Elizabeth, my grandmother. Trim and erect of figure, and
+precise and neat of dress, wearing, on account of this neatness,
+shorter petticoats, when walking, than was the mode of her day, and
+also through this neatness clinging to the very last to these cleanly,
+useful, quaint pattens. Her black hood, frilled white cap, short,
+quilted petticoat, high-heeled shoes, and the shining ebony and brass
+pattens, and over all the great, full scarlet cloak,—all these made her
+an unusual and striking figure against the Wayland landscape, the snowy
+fields and great sombre pine trees of Heard’s Island, as she trod
+trimly, in short pattened steps that crackled the kittly-benders in the
+shadowed roads, or sunk softly in the shallow mud of the sunny lanes on
+a snow-melting day in late winter. Would I could paint the picture as I
+see it!
+
+These pattens in the old trunk are prettier than most pattens which
+have been preserved. In general, they are rather shabby things. I have
+another pair—more commonplace, which chance to exist; they were not
+saved purposely. They are pictured here.
+
+
+English Clogs. English Clogs.
+
+There is a most ungallant old riddle, “Why is a wife like a patten?”
+The answer reads, “Because both are clogs.” A very courteous bishop was
+once asked this uncivil query, and he answered without a moment’s
+hesitation, “Because both elevate the soul (sole).” Pattens may be
+clogs, yet there is a difference. After much consultation of various
+authorities, and much discussion in the columns of various querying
+journals, I make this decision and definition. Pattens are thick,
+wooden soles roughly shaped in the outline of the human foot (in the
+shoemaker’s notion of that member), mounted on a round or oval ring of
+iron, fixed by two or three pins to the sole, in such a way that when
+the patten is worn the sole of the wearer’s foot is about two inches
+above the ground. A heel-piece with buckles and straps, strings or
+buttons and leather loops, and a strap over the toe, retain the patten
+in place upon the foot when the wearer trips along. (See here.) Clogs
+serve the same purpose, but are simply wooden soles tipped and shod
+with iron. These also have heel-pieces and straps of various
+materials—from the heavy serviceable leather shown in the clogs here
+and here to the fine brocade clogs made and worn by two brides and
+pictured here. Dainty brass tips and colored morocco straps made a
+really refined pair of clogs. Poplar wood was deemed the best wood for
+pattens and clogs. Sometimes the wooden sole was thin, and was cut at
+the line under the instep in two pieces and hinged. These hinges were
+held to facilitate walking. Children also wore clogs. (See here.)
+Clogs, as worn by English and American folk, did not raise the wearer
+as high above the mud and mire as did pattens, but I have seen Turkish
+clogs that were ten inches high. Chopines were worn by Englishwomen to
+make them look taller. Three are shown here. Lady Falkland was short
+and stout, and wore them for years to increase her apparent height; so
+she states in her memoirs.
+
+It is a curious philological study that, while the words “clogs” and
+“pattens” for a time were constantly heard, the third name which has
+survived till to-day is the oldest of all—“galoshes.” Under the many
+spellings, galoe-shoes, goloshes, gallage, galoche, and gallosh, it has
+come down to us from the Middle Ages. It is spelt galoches in _Piers
+Plowman_. In a _Compotus_—or household account of the Countess of Derby
+in 1388 are entries of botews (boots), souters (slippers), and “one
+pair of galoches, 14 d.” Clogs, or galoches, were known in the days of
+the Saxons, when they were termed “wife’s shoes.”
+
+A “galage” was a shoe “which has nothing on the feet but a latchet”; it
+was simply a clog. In February, 1687, Judge Sewall notes, “Send my
+mothers Shoes &; Golowshoes to carry to her.” In 1736 Peter Faneuil
+sent to England for “Galoushoes” for his sister. Another foot-covering
+for slippery, icy walking is named by Judge Sewall. He wrote on January
+19, 1717, “Great rain and very Slippery; was fain to wear Frosts.”
+These frosts were what had been called on horses, “frost nails,” or
+calks. They were simply spiked soles to help the wearer to walk on ice.
+A pair may be seen at the Deerfield Memorial Hall. Another pair is of
+half-soles with sharp ridges of iron, set, one the length of the
+half-sole, the other across it.
+
+
+Chopines, Seventeenth Century. In the Ashmolean Museum. Chopines,
+Seventeenth Century. In the Ashmolean Museum.
+
+For a time clogs seem to have been in constant use in America; frail
+morocco slippers and thin prunella and callimanco shoes made them
+necessary, as did also the unpaved streets. Heavy-soled shoes were
+unknown for women’s wear. Women walked but short distances. In the
+country they always rode. We find even Quaker women warned in 1720 not
+to wear “Shoes of light Colours bound with Differing Colours, and heels
+White or Red, with White bands, and fine Coloured Clogs and Strings,
+and Scarlet and Purple Stockings and Petticoats made Short to expose
+them”—a rather startling description of footwear. Again, in 1726, in
+Burlington, New Jersey, Friends were asked to be “careful to avoid
+wearing of Stript Shoos, or Red and White Heel’d Shoos, or Clogs, or
+Shoos trimmed with Gawdy Colours.”
+
+
+Brides’ Clogs of Brocade and Sole Leather. Brides’ Clogs of Brocade and
+Sole Leather.
+
+Ann Warder, an English Quaker, was in Philadelphia, 1786 to 1789, and
+kept an entertaining journal, from which I make this quotation:—
+
+
+“Got B. Parker to go out shopping with me. On our way happened of Uncle
+Head, to whom I complained bitterly of the dirty streets, declaring if
+I could purchase a pair of pattens, the singularity I would not mind.
+Uncle soon found me up an apartment, out of which I took a pair and
+trotted along quite Comfortable, crossing some streets with the
+greatest ease, which the idea of had troubled me. My little companion
+was so pleased, that she wished some also, and kept them on her feet to
+learn to walk in them most of the remainder of the day.”
+
+
+Fairholt, in his book upon costume, says, “Pattens date their origin to
+the reign of Anne.” Like many other dates and statements given by this
+author, this is wholly wrong. In _Purchas’, his Pilgrimage_, 1613, is
+this sentence, “Clogges or Pattens to keep them out of the dust they
+may not burden themselves with,” showing that the name and thing was
+the same then as to-day.
+
+
+Clogs of “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Clogs of “Pennsylvania Dutch.”
+
+Charles Dibdin has a song entitled, _The Origin of the Patten_. Fair
+Patty went out in the mud and the mire, and her thin shoes speedily
+were wet. Then she became hoarse and could not sing, while her lover
+longed for the sweet sound of her voice.
+
+
+“My anvil glow’d, my hammer rang,
+Till I had form’d from out the fire
+To bear her feet above the mire,
+A platform for my blue-eyed Patty.
+Again was heard each tuneful close,
+My fair one in the patten rose,
+  Which takes its name from blue-eyed Patty.”
+
+
+This fanciful derivation of the word was not an original thought of
+Dibdin. Gay wrote in his Trivia, 1715:—
+
+
+“The patten now supports each frugal dame
+That from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.”
+
+
+In reality, patten is derived from the French word _patin_, which has a
+varied meaning of the sole of a shoe or a skate.
+
+Pattens were noisy, awkward wear. A writer of the day of their
+universality wrote, “Those ugly, noisy, ferruginous, ancle-twisting,
+foot-cutting, clinking things called women’s pattens.” Notices were set
+in church porches enjoining the removal of women’s pattens, which, of
+course, should never have been worn into church during service-time.
+
+
+Children’s Clogs. 1730. Children’s Clogs. 1730.
+
+It may have disappeared today, but four years ago, on the door of
+Walpole St. Peters, near Wisbeck, England, hung a board which read,
+“People who enter this church are requested to take off their pattens.”
+A friend in Northamptonshire, England, writes me that pattens are still
+seen on muddy days in remote English villages in that shire.
+
+Men wore pattens in early days. And men did and do wear clogs in
+English mill-towns.
+
+There were also horse pattens or horse clogs which horses wore through
+deep, muddy roads; I have an interesting photograph of a pair found in
+Northampton.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES
+
+
+_“By my Faith! Master Inkpen, thou hast put thy foot in it! Tis a
+pretty subject and a strange one, and a vast one, but we’ll leave it
+never a sole to stand on. The proverb hath ‘There’s naught like
+leather,’ but my Lady answers ‘Save silk:’”_
+
+—Old Play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES
+
+
+O
+
+
+ne of the first sumptuary laws in New England declared that men of mean
+estate should not walk abroad in immoderate great boots. It was a
+natural prohibition where all extravagance in dress was reprehended and
+restrained. The “great boots” which had been so vast in the reign of
+James I seemed to be spreading still wider in the reign of Charles. I
+have an old “Discourse” on leather dated 1629, which states fully the
+condition of things. Its various headings read, “The general Use of
+Leather;” “The general Abuse thereof;” “The good which may arise from
+the Reformation;” “The several Statutes made in that behalf by our
+ancient Kings;” and lastly a “Petition to the High Court of
+Parliament.” It is all most informing; for instance, in the trades that
+might want work were it not for leather are named not only “shoemakers,
+cordwainers, curriers, etc.,” but many now obsolete. The list reads:—
+
+
+“Book binders.
+Budget makers.
+Saddlers.
+Trunk makers.
+Upholsterers.
+Belt makers.
+Case makers.
+Box makers.
+Wool-card makers.
+Cabinet makers.
+Shuttle makers.
+Bottle and Jack makers.
+Hawks-hood makers.
+Gridlers.
+Scabbard-makers.
+Glovers.”
+
+
+Unwillingly the author added “those _upstart trades_—Coach Makers, and
+Harness Makers for Coach Horses.” It was really feared, by this
+sensible gentleman-writer—and many others—that if many carriages and
+coaches were used, shoemakers would suffer because so few shoes would
+be worn out.
+
+From the statutes which are rehearsed we learn that the footwear of the
+day was “boots, shoes, buskins, startups, slippers, or pantofles.”
+Stubbes said:—
+
+
+“They have korked shooes puisnets pantoffles, some of black velvet,
+some of white some of green, some of yellow, some of Spanish leather,
+some of English leather stitched with Silke and embroidered with Gold
+&; Silver all over the foot.”
+
+
+A very interesting book has been published by the British Cordwainers’
+Guild, giving a succession of fine illustrations of the footwear of
+different times and nations. Among them are some handsome English
+slippers, shoes, jack-boots, etc. We have also in our museums,
+historical collections, and private families many fine examples; but
+the difficulty is in the assigning of correct dates. Family tradition
+is absolutely wide of the truth—its fabulous dates are often a century
+away from the proper year.
+
+
+The Copley Family Picture. The Copley Family Picture.
+
+
+Wedding Slippers and Brocade. 1712. Wedding Slippers and Brocade. 1712.
+
+Buskins to the knee were worn even by royalty; Queen Elizabeth’s still
+exist. Buskins were in wear when the colonies were settled. Richard
+Sawyer, of Windsor, Connecticut, had cloth buskins in 1648; and a
+hundred years later runaway servants wore them. One redemptioner is
+described as running off in “sliders and buskins.” American buskins
+were a foot-covering consisting of a strong leather sole with cloth
+uppers and leggins to the knees, which were fastened with lacings.
+Startups were similar, but heavier. In Thynne’s _Debate between Pride
+and Lowliness_, the dress of a countryman is described. It runs thus:—
+
+
+“A payre of startups had he on his feete
+   That lased were up to the small of the legge.
+ Homelie they are, and easier than meete;
+   And in their soles full many a wooden pegge.”
+
+
+Thomas Johnson of Wethersfield, Connecticut, died in 1840. He owned “1
+Perre of Startups.”
+
+Slippers were worn even in the fifteenth century. In the _Paston
+Letters_, in a letter dated February 23, 1479, is this sentence, “In
+the whych lettre was VIII d with the whych I shulde bye a peyr of
+slyppers.” Even for those days eightpence must have been a small price
+for slippers. In 1686, Judge Samuel Sewall wrote to a member of the
+Hall family thanking him for “The Kind Loving Token—the East Indian
+Slippers for my wife.” Other colonial letters refer to Oriental
+slippers; and I am sure that Turkish slippers are worn by Lady Temple
+in her childish portrait, painted in company with her brother.
+Slip-shoes were evidently slippers—the word is used by Sewall; and
+slap-shoes are named by Randle Holme. Pantofles were also slippers,
+being apparently rather handsomer footwear than ordinary slippers or
+slip-shoes. They are in general specified as embroidered. Evelyn tells
+of the fine pantofles of the Pope embroidered with jewels on the
+instep.
+
+So great was the use and abuse of leather that a petition was made to
+Parliament in 1629 to attempt to restrict the making of great boots.
+One sentence runs:—
+
+
+“The wearing of Boots is not the Abuse; but the generality of wearing
+and the manner of cutting Boots out with huge slovenly unmannerly
+immoderate tops. What over lavish spending is there in Boots and Shoes.
+To either of which is now added a French proud Superfluity of Leather.
+
+“For the general Walking in Boots it is a Pride taken up by the
+Courtier and is descended to the Clown. The Merchant and Mechanic walk
+in Boots. Many of our Clergy either in neat Boots or Shoes and
+Galloshoes. University Scholars maintain the Fashion likewise. Some
+Citizens out of a Scorn not to be Gentile go every day booted.
+Attorneys, Lawyers, Clerks, Serving Men, All Sorts of Men delight in
+this Wasteful Wantonness.
+
+“Wasteful I may well call it. One pair of boots eats up the leather of
+six reasonable pair of men’s shoes.”
+
+
+
+
+Jack-boots. Owned by Lord Fairfax of Virginia. Jack-boots. Owned by
+Lord Fairfax of Virginia.
+
+Monstrous boots seem to have been the one frivolity in dress which the
+Puritans could not give up. In the reign of Charles I boots were
+superb. The tops were flaring, lined within with lace or embroidered or
+fringed; thus when turned down they were richly ornamental. Fringes of
+leather, silk, or cloth edged some boot-tops on the outside; the
+leather itself was carved and gilded. The soldiers and officers of
+Cromwell’s army sometimes gave up laces and fringes, but not the
+boot-tops. The Earl of Essex, his general, had cloth fringes on his
+boots. (See his portrait facing here; also the portrait of Lord Fairfax
+here.) In the court of Charles II and Louis XIV of France the boot-tops
+spread to absurd inconvenience. The toes of these boots were very
+square, as were the toes of men’s and women’s shoes. Children’s shoes
+were of similar form. The singular shoes worn by John Quincy and Robert
+Gibbes are precisely right-angled. It was a sneer at the Puritans that
+they wore pointed toes. The shoe-ties, roses, and buckles varied; but
+the square toes lingered, though they were singularly inelegant. On the
+feet of George I (see portrait here) the square-toed shoes are ugly
+indeed.
+
+James I scornfully repelled shoe-roses when brought to him for his
+wear; asking if they wished to “make a ruffle-footed dove” of him. But
+soon he wore the largest rosettes in court. Peacham tells that some
+cost as much as £;30 a pair, being then, of course, of rare lace.
+
+
+Joshua Warner. Joshua Warner.
+
+_Friar Bacon’s Brazen Head Prophecie_, set into a “Plaie” or Rhyme, has
+these verses (1604):
+
+“Then Handkerchers were wrought
+    With Names and true Love Knots;
+And not a wench was taught
+    A false Stitch in her spots;
+When Roses in the Gardaines grew
+And not in Ribons on a Shoe.
+
+“_Now_ Sempsters few are taught
+    The true Stitch in their Spots;
+And Names are sildome wrought
+    Within the true love knots;
+And Ribon Roses takes such Place
+That Garden Roses want their Grace.”
+
+
+Shoes of buff leather, slashed, were the very height of the fashion in
+the first years of the seventeenth century. They can be seen on the
+feet of Will Sommers in his portrait. Through the slashes showed bright
+the scarlet or green stockings of cloth or yarn. Bright-colored
+shoe-strings gave additional gaudiness. Green shoe-strings, spangled,
+gilded shoe-strings, shoes of “dry-neat-leather tied with red ribbons,”
+“russet boots,” “white silken shoe strings,”—all were worn.
+
+Red heels appear about 1710. In Hogarth’s original paintings they are
+seen. Women wore them extensively in America.
+
+The jack-boots of Stuart days seem absolutely imperishable. They are of
+black, jacked leather like the leather bottles and black-jacks from
+which Englishmen drank their ale. So closely are they alike that I do
+not wonder a French traveller wrote home that Englishmen drank from
+their boots. These jack-boots were as solid and unpliable as iron,
+square-toed and clumsy of shape. A pair in perfect preservation which
+belonged to Lord Fairfax in Virginia is portrayed here. Had all
+colonial gentlemen worn jack-boots, the bootmakers and shoemakers would
+have been ruined, for a pair would last a lifetime.
+
+
+Shoe and Knee Buckles. Shoe and Knee Buckles.
+
+In 1767 we find William Cabell of Virginia paying these prices for his
+finery:—
+
+£	s.	d. 1 Pair single channelled boots with straps	 1	 2 1
+Pair Strong Buckskin Breeches	1	 10 2 Pairs Fashionable Chain
+Silver Spurs 	 2	 10 1 Pair Silver Buttons 		 6 1 fine
+Magazine Blue Cloth Housing laced		12 1 Strong Double
+Bridle		4	 6 6 Pair Men’s fine Silk Hose	 4 	 4 Buttons
+&; trimmings for a coat	 5	 2
+
+New England dandies wore, as did Monsieur A-la-mode:—
+
+  “A pair of smart pumps made up of grain’d leather,
+   So thin he can’t venture to tread on a feather.”
+
+
+Buckles were made of pinchbeck, an alloy of four parts of copper and
+one part of zinc, invented by Christopher Pinchbeck, a London
+watchmaker of the eighteenth century. Buckles were also “plaited” and
+double “plaited” with gold and silver (which was the general spelling
+of plated). Plated buckles were cast in pinchbeck, with a pattern on
+the surface. A silver coating was laid over this. These buckles were
+set with marcasite, garnet, and paste jewels; sometimes they were of
+gold with real diamonds. But much imitation jewellery was worn by all
+people even of great wealth. Perhaps imitation is an incorrect word.
+The old paste jewels made no assertion of being diamonds. Steel cut in
+facets and combined with gold, made beautiful buckles. A number of rich
+shoe and garter buckles, owned in Salem, are shown here.
+
+These old buckles were handsome, costly, dignified; they were becoming;
+they were elegant. Nevertheless, the fashionable world tired of its
+expensive and appropriate buckles; they suddenly were deemed
+inconveniently large, and plain shoe-strings took their place. This
+caused great commotion and ruin among the buckle-makers, who, with the
+fatuity of other tradespeople—the wig-makers, the hair-powder makers—in
+like calamitous changes of fashion, petitioned the Prince of Wales, in
+1791, to do something to revive their vanishing trade. But it was like
+placing King Canute against the advancing waves of the sea.
+
+
+Wedding Slippers. Wedding Slippers.
+
+When the Revolutionists in France set about altering and simplifying
+costume, they did away with shoe-buckles, and fastened their shoes with
+plain strings. Minister Roland, one day in 1793, was about to present
+himself to Louis XVI while he was wearing shoes with strings. The old
+Master of Ceremonies, scandalized at having to introduce a person in
+such a state of undress, looked despairingly at Dumouriez, who was
+present. Dumouriez replied with an equally hopeless gesture, and the
+words, “Hélas! oui, monsieur, tout est perdu.”
+
+President Jefferson, with his hateful French notions, made himself
+especially obnoxious to conservative American folk by giving up
+shoe-buckles. I read in the _New York Evening Post_ that when he
+received the noisy bawling band of admirers who brought into the White
+House the Mammoth Cheese (one of the most vulgar exhibitions ever seen
+in this country), he was “dressed in his suit of customary black, with
+shoes that laced tight round the ankle and closed with a neat leathern
+string.”
+
+When shoe-strings were established and trousers were becoming popular,
+there seemed to be a time of indecision as to the dress of the legs
+below the short pantaloons and above the stringed shoes. That point of
+indefiniteness was filled promptly with top-boots. First, black tops
+appeared; then came tops of fancy leather, of which yellow was the
+favorite. Gilt tassels swung pleasingly from the colored tops. Silken
+tassels—home made—were worn. I have a letter from a young American
+macaroni to his sweetheart in which he thanks her for her
+“heart-filling boot-tossels”—which seems to me a very cleverly
+flattering adjective. He adds: “Did those rosy fingers twist the silken
+strands, and knot them with thought of the wearer? I wish you was
+loveing enough to tye some threads of your golden hair into the
+tossells, but I swear I cannot find never a one.” The conjunction of
+two negatives in this manner was common usage a hundred years ago;
+while “you was” may be found in the writings of our greatest authors of
+that date.
+
+In one attribute, women’s footwear never varied in the two centuries of
+this book’s recording. It was always thin-soled and of light material;
+never adequate for much “walking abroad” or for any wet weather. In
+fact, women have never worn heavy walking-boots until our own day.
+Whether high-heeled or no-heeled they were always thin.
+
+The curious “needle-pointed” slippers which are pictured here were the
+bridal slippers at the wedding of Cornelia de Peyster, who married
+Oliver Teller in 1712. Several articles of her dress still exist; and
+the background of the slippers is a breadth of the superb yellow and
+silver brocade wedding gown worn at the same time.
+
+When we have the tiny pages of the few newspapers to turn to, we learn
+a little of women’s shoes. There were advertisements in 1740 of
+“mourning shoes,” “fine silk shoes,” “flowered russet shoes,” “white
+callimanco shoes,” “black shammy shoes,” “girls’ flowered russet
+shoes,” “shoes of black velvet, white damask, red morocco, and red
+everlasting.” “Damask worsted shoes in red, blue, green, pink color and
+white,” in 1751. There were satinet patterns for ladies’ shoes
+embroidered with flowers in the vamp. The heels were “high, cross-cut,
+common, court, and wurtemburgh.” Some shoes were white with russet
+bands. “French fall” shoes were worn both by women and men for many
+years.
+
+
+Mrs. Abigail Bromfield Rogers. Mrs. Abigail Bromfield Rogers.
+
+Here is a pair of beautiful brocade wedding shoes. The heels are not
+high. Another pair was made of the silken stuff of the beautiful sacque
+worn by Mrs. Carroll. These have high heels running down to a very
+small heel-base. In the works of Hogarth we may find many examples of
+women’s shoes. In all the old shoes I have seen, made about the time of
+the American Revolution, the maker’s name is within and this legend,
+“Rips mended free.” Many heels were much higher and smaller than any
+given in this book.
+
+
+Mrs. Carroll’s Slippers. Mrs. Carroll’s Slippers.
+
+It is astonishing to read the advocacy and eulogy given by sensible
+gentlemen to these extreme heels. Watson, the writer of the _Annals of
+Philadelphia_, extolled their virtues—that they threw the weight of the
+wearer on the ball of the foot and spread it out for a good support. He
+deplores the flat feet of 1830.
+
+In 1790 heels disappeared; sandal-shapes were the mode. The quarters
+were made low, and instead of a buckle was a tiny bow or a pleated
+ribbon edging. In 1791 “the exact size” of the shoe of the Duchess of
+York was published—a fashionable fad which our modern sensation hunters
+have not bethought themselves of. It was 5 3/4 inches in length; the
+breadth of sole, 1 3/4 inches. It was a colored print, and shows that
+the lady’s shoe was of green silk spotted with gold stars, and bound
+with scarlet silk. The sole is thicker at the back, forming a slight
+uplift which was not strictly a heel. Of course, this was a tiny foot,
+but we do not know the height of the duchess.
+
+I have seen the remains of a charming pair of court shoes worn in
+France by a pretty Boston girl. These had been embroidered with paste
+jewels, “diamonds”; while to my surprise the back seam of both shoes
+was outlined with paste emeralds. I find that this was the mode of the
+court of Marie Antoinette. The queen and her ladies wore these in real
+jewels, and in affectation wore no jewels elsewhere.
+
+In Mrs. Gaskell’s _My Lady Ludlow_ we are told that my lady would not
+sanction the mode of the beginning of the century which “made all the
+fine ladies take to making shoes.” Mrs. Blundell, in one of her novels,
+sets her heroine (about 1805) at shoe-making. The shoes of that day
+were very thin of material, very simple of shape, were heelless, and in
+many cases closely approached a sandal. A pair worn by my great-aunt at
+that date is shown on this page. American women certainly had tiny
+feet. This aunt was above the average height, but her shoes are no
+larger than the number known to-day as “Ones”—a size about large enough
+for a girl ten years old.
+
+
+White Kid Slippers. 1815. White Kid Slippers. 1815.
+
+It was not long after English girls were making shoes that Yankee girls
+were shaping and binding them in New England. I have seen several old
+letters which gave rules for shaping and directions for sewing
+party-shoes of thin light kid and silk. It is not probable that any
+heavy materials were ever made up by women at home. Sandals also were
+worn, and made by girls for their own wear from bits of morocco and
+kid.
+
+In the early years of the century the thin, silk hose and low slippers
+of the French fashions proved almost unendurable in our northern
+winters. One wearer of the time writes, “Many a time have I walked
+Broadway when the pavement sent almost a death chill to my heart.” The
+Indians then furnished an article of dress which must have been
+grateful indeed, pretty moccasins edged with fur, to be worn over the
+thin slippers.
+
+An old lady recalled with precision that the first boots for women’s
+wear came in fashion in 1828; they were laced at the side. Garters and
+boots both had fringes at the top.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO CENTURIES OF COSTUME IN AMERICA, VOL. 1 (1620-1820)  ***
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