Where, as we have already shown, it was, as with the Dutchmen, an
_inherited_ custom. Its comparatively innocent and harmless character
has, however, been fearfully distorted and maligned by irresponsible
satirists, and prejudiced historians. Take, for example, the following
passage from Knickerbocker's _History of New York_,[22] wherein he
pretends to describe "the curious device among these sturdy barbarians
[the Connecticut colonists], to keep up a harmony of interests, and
promote population. * * * * They multiplied to a degree which would be
incredible to any man unacquainted with the marvellous fecundity of this
growing country. This amazing increase may, indeed, be partly ascribed
to a singular custom prevalent among them, commonly known by the name of
_bundling_--a superstitious rite observed by the young people of both
sexes, with which they usually terminated their festivities, and which
was kept up with religious strictness by the more bigoted and vulgar
part of the community. This ceremony was likewise, in those primitive
times, considered as an indispensable preliminary to matrimony; their
courtships commencing where ours usually finish, by which means they
acquired, that intimate acquaintance with each other's good qualities
before marriage, which has been pronounced by philosophers the sure
basis of a happy union. Thus early did this cunning and ingenious people
display a shrewdness at making a bargain, which has ever since
distinguished them, and a strict adherence to the good old vulgar maxim
about 'buying a pig in a poke.'
"To this sagacious custom, therefore, do I chiefly attribute the
unparalleled increase of the Yanokie or Yankee tribe; for it is a
certain fact, well authenticated by court records and parish registers,
that wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing
number of sturdy brats annually born unto the state, without the license
of the law, or the benefit of clergy. Neither did the irregularity of
their birth operate in the least to their disparagement. On the
contrary, they grew up a long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race of whoreson
whalers, wood cutters, fishermen, and peddlers; and strapping corn-fed
wenches, who by their united efforts tended marvellously towards
populating those notable tracts of country called Nantucket, Piscataway,
and Cape Cod."
Hear, also, that learned, but audacious and unscrupulous divine, the
Rev. Samuel Peters, who thus discourseth at length upon the custom of
bundling in Connecticut, and other parts of New England. After admitting
that "the women of Connecticut are strictly virtuous, and to be compared
to the prude rather than the European polite lady," he says:
"Notwithstanding the modesty of the females is such that it would be
accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a lady
of a garter, knee, or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to
ask her to _bundle_; a custom as old as the first settlement in 1634. It
is certainly innocent, virtuous and prudent, or the puritans would not
have permitted it to prevail among their offspring, for whom in general
they would suffer crucifixion. Children brought up with the chastest
ideas, with so much religion as to believe that the omniscient God sees
them in the dark, and that angels guard them when absent from their
parents, will not, nay, cannot, act a wicked thing. People who are
influenced more by lust, than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to
behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to _bundle_. If any man,
thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God, and the Christian
religion, should _bundle_ with a young lady in New England, and behave
himself unseemly towards her, he must first melt her into passion, and
expel heaven, death, and hell, from her mind, or he will undergo the
chastisement of negroes turned mad--if he escape with life, it will be
owing to the parents flying from their bed to protect him. The Indians,
who had this method of courtship when the English arrived among them in
1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world. Concubinage and
fornication are vices none of them are addicted to, except such as
forsake the laws of Hobbamockow and turn Christians. The savages have
taken many female prisoners, carried them back three hundred miles into
their country, and kept them several years, and yet not a single
instance of their violating the laws of chastity has ever been known.
This cannot be said of the French, or of the English, whenever Indian or
other women have fallen into their hands. I am no advocate for
temptation; yet must say, that _bundling_ has prevailed 160 years in New
England, and, I verily believe, with ten times more chastity than the
sitting on a sofa. I had daughters, and speak from near forty years'
experience. _Bundling_ takes place only in cold seasons of the year--the
sofa in summer is more dangerous than the bed in winter. About the year
1756, Boston, Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be more polite
than their ancestors, forbade their daughters _bundling_ on the bed with
any young man whatever, and introduced a sofa to render courtship more
palatable and Turkish, whatever it was owing to, whether to the sofa, or
any uncommon excess of the _feu d'esprit_, there went abroad a report
that this _raffinage_ produced more _natural consequences_ then all the
_bundling_ among the boors with their _rurales pedantes_, through every
village in New England besides.
"In 1776, a clergyman from one of the polite towns, went into the
country, and preached against the unchristian custom of young men and
maidens lying together on a bed. He was no sooner out of the church,
then attacked by a shoal of good old women, with, 'Sir, do you think we
and our daughters are naughty, because we allow _bundling_?' 'You lead
yourselves into temptation by it.' They all replied at once, 'Sir, have
you been told thus, or has experience taught it you?' The Levite began
to lift up his eyes, and to consider of his situation, and bowing, said,
'I have been told so.' The ladies, _una voce_, bawled out, 'Your
informants, sir, we conclude, are those city ladies who prefer a sofa to
a bed: we advise you to alter your sermon, by substituting the word
_sofa_ for _bundling_, and on your return home preach it to them, for
experience has told us that city folks send more children into the
country without fathers or mothers to own them, than are born among us;
therefore, you see, a sofa is more dangerous than a bed.' The poor
priest, seemingly convinced of his blunder, exclaimed, '_Nec vitia
nostra, neo remedia pati possumus_,' hoping thereby to get rid of his
guests; but an old matron pulled off her spectacles, and, looking the
priest in the face like a Roman heroine, said, '_Noli putare me hæc
auribus tuis dare_.' Others cried out to the priest to explain his
Latin. 'The English,' said he, 'is this: Wo is me that I sojourn in
Meseck, and dwell in the tents of Kedar!' One pertly retorted, '_Gladii
decussati sunt gemina presbyteri clavis_.' The priest confessed his
error, begged pardon, and promised never more to preach against
bundling, or to think amiss of the custom; the ladies generously forgave
him, and went away.
"It may seem very strange to find this custom of bundling in bed
attended with so much innocence in New England, while in Europe it is
thought not safe or scarcely decent to permit a young man and maid to be
together in private anywhere. But in this quarter of the old world the
viciousness of the one, and the simplicity of the other, are the result
merely of education and habit. It seems to be a part of heroism, among
the polished nations of it, to sacrifice the virtuous fair one, whenever
an opportunity offers, and thence it is concluded that the same
principles actuate those of the new world. It is egregiously absurd to
judge all of all countries by one. In Spain, Portugal and Italy,
jealousy reigns; in France, England, and Holland, suspicion; in the West
and East Indies, lust; in New England, superstition. These four blind
deities govern Jews, Turks, Christians, infidels, and heathen.
Superstition is the most amiable. She sees no vice with approbation but
persecution, and self-preservation is the cause of her seeing that. My
insular readers will, I hope, believe me, when I tell them that I have
seen, in the West Indies, naked boys and girls, some fifteen or sixteen
years of age, waiting at table and at tea, even when twenty or thirty
virtuous English ladies were in the room; who were under no more
embarrassment at such an awful sight in the eyes of English people that
have not traveled abroad, than they would have been at the sight of so
many servants in livery. Shall we censure the ladies of the West Indies
as vicious above all their sex, on account of this local custom? By no
means; for long experience has taught the world that the West Indian
white ladies are virtuous prudes. Where superstition reigns, fanaticism
will be minister of state; and the people, under the taxation of zeal,
will shun what is commonly called vice, with ten times more care than
the polite and civilized Christians, who know what is right and what is
wrong from reason and revelation. Happy would it be for the world, if
reason and revelation were suffered to control the mind and passions of
the great and wise men of the earth, as superstition does that of the
simple and less polished! When America shall erect societies for the
promotion of chastity in Europe, in return for the establishment of
European arts in the American capitals, then Europe will discover that
there is more Christian philosophy in American bundling than can be
found in the customs of nations more polite.
"I should not have said so much about bundling, had not a learned
divine[23] of the English church published his travels through some
parts of America, wherein this remarkable custom is represented in an
unfavorable light, and as prevailing among the _lower class_ of people.
The truth is, the custom prevails among all classes, to the great honor
of the country, its religion, and ladies. The virtuous may be tempted;
but the tempter is despised. Why it should be thought incredible for a
young man and young woman innocently and virtuously to lie down together
in a bed with a great part of their clothes on, I cannot conceive. Human
passions may be alike in every region; but religion, diversified as it
is, operates differently in different countries. Upon the whole, had I
daughters now, I would venture to let them _bundle_ on the bed, or even
on the sofa, after a proper education, sooner than adopt the Spanish
mode of forcing young people to prattle only before the lady's mother
the chitchat of artless lovers. Could the four quarters of the world
produce a more chaste, exemplary and beautiful company of wives and
daughters than are in Connecticut, I should not have remaining one
favorable sentiment for the province. But the soil, the rivers, the
ponds, the ten thousand landscapes, together with the virtuous and
lovely women which now adorn the ancient kingdoms of Connecticote,
Sassacus, and Quinnipiog, would tempt me into the highest wonder and
admiration of them, could they once be freed ofthe skunk, the
moping-owl, rattlesnake and fanatic Christian."
Or, to take another example of the abuse heaped by our English cousins
upon this so-called "American custom of bundling." We extract the
following from an article entitled _British Abuse of American Manners_,
published in 1815.[24] It seems that it had long been a custom in the
Westminster school, in the city of London, for the senior students, who
were about to leave that seminary for the university, at the age of
sixteen to eighteen, to have an annual dramatic performance, which was
generally a play of Terence.[25] To this, as annually performed, there
was usually a Latin prologue, and also an epilogue composed for the
occasion and this epilogue turned, for the most part, on the manners of
the day that would bear the gentle correction of good humored satire, in
elegant Latinity. In the epilogue presented at one of these exhibitions,
about 1815, in connection with the performance of Terence's _Phormio_,
the following balderdash (with much else, as applied to American life
and manners) was introduced and spoken by these ingenuous and virtuous
British youth, before a large and enlightened audience:
"Nec morum dicere promtum est,
Sit ratio simplex, sitne venusta magis.
Æthiopissa palam mensæ formulatur herili
In puris naturalibus, ut loquimur.
Vir braccis se bellus amat nudare décentér,
Strenuus ut choreas ex-que-peditus agat.
Quid quod ibi; quod congere ipsis conque moveri
Dicitur, incolumi nempe pudicitiâ,
Sponte suâ, sine fraude, torum sese audet in unum.
Condere cum casto casta puelle viro?
Quid noctes coenaque Deûm? quid amœna piorum.
Concilia?"
Which being translated is as follows:
"Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more to be
admired for simplicity or elegance; a negro wench, as we are told, will
wait on her master at table in native nudity; and a beau will strip
himself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, and with more
agility. There, too, we hear of the practice of _bundling_ without any
infraction of female modesty; and the chaste maiden, without any
deception, but with right good will, ventures to share the bed with her
chaste swain! Oh, what nights and banquets, worthy of the gods! What
delightful customs among these pious people?"
But this spirit of misrepresentation and ridicule, so glaringly apparent
in the foregoing extracts, and which has so universally characterized
all those British travelers and authors who have attempted to describe
our social habits and manners, is fitly rebuked, even as long ago as
1815, by an anonymous writer, whose trenchant pen reminds our British
cousins of the old adage concerning "those who live in glass houses,"
etc.
"From the time of Jack Cade," says he, "to Lord George Gordon, and down
to the present day, neither your _grave_ or _gay_ authorities on the
subject of _bundling_ and _tarrying_ are worthy of criticism. There is a
littleness in noticing, in the _London Quarterly Review_, a work which
heretofore has been distinguished for its taste, chasteness and
celebrity, the observation of travelers who, if men of truth, could only
mean to mention customs (if they were customs) of the most vulgar and
ignorant, which at any rate are now as little known as are the operation
of the blue laws of Connecticut, or part of the penal code enacted to
keep in slavery and subjection the sister kingdom.[26]
"Englishmen, examine your own cottages, particularly in the north, and
on the borders, and extend your view to the western extremity of your
island. Pray, what term will you give to that promiscuous bundling of
the father, mother, children, sons and daughters-in-law, cousins, and
inmates who call to _tarry_, and not unfrequently stretch themselves in
one common bed of straw on the hovel's floor?[27]
"Nay, even, in some parts of your empire, the hogs and the cows join the
group, and form a most audible respiration from their noses, getting
vent through the hole in the roof intended for a chimney, or spreading
throughout the clay built edifice with odorific sweetness, though
perhaps not so fragrant and refreshing as was the precious oil poured on
the venerable head of Aaron, which Sternhold and Hopkins tell us filled
the room with pleasure. In the early settlement of this country there
might have been houses in the route of the inquisitive and insidious
European travelers, unprovided with a spare bed on which he might
stretch his limbs; but, now, should Mr. Canning[28] himself visit us, he
need not fear being _bundled_--he need not travel far in any part of the
United States without enjoying the luxury of a soft couch and clean
sheets, where he can ruminate on the injustice he attempts on our
national character."
Badinage, ridicule and misrepresentation aside, however, there can be no
reasonable doubt that _bundling_ did prevail to a very great extent in
the New England colonies from a very early date. It is equally evident
that it was originally confined almost entirely to the lower classes of
the community, or to those whose limited means compelled them to
economize strictly in their expenditure of firewood and candlelight.
Many, perhaps the majority, of the dwellings of the early settlers,
consisted of but one room, in which the whole family lived and slept.
Yet their innocent and generous hospitality forbade that the stranger,
or the friend whom night overtook on their threshold, should be turned
shelterless and couchless away, so long as they could offer him even
half of a bed. As an example of this we may cite the case of Lieut.
Anbury, a British officer, who served in America during the
Revolutionary War, and whose letters preserve many sprightly and
interesting pictures of the manners and customs of that period. In a
letter dated at Cambridge, New England, November 20, 1777, he thus
speaks:
"The night before we came to this town [Williamstown, Mass.], being
quartered at a small log hut, I was convinced in how innocent a view the
Americans look upon that indelicate custom they call _bundling_. Though
they have remarkable good feather beds, and are extremely neat and
clean, still I preferred my hard mattress, as being accustomed to it;
this evening, however, owing to the badness of the roads, and the
weakness of my mare, my servant had not arrived with my baggage at the
time for retiring to rest. There being only two beds in the house, I
inquired which I was to sleep in, when the old woman replied, 'Mr.
Ensign,' here I should observe to you, that the New England people are
very inquisitive as to the rank you have in the army; 'Mr. Ensign,' says
she, 'our Jonathan and I will sleep in this, and our Jemima and you
shall sleep in that.' I was much astonished at such a proposal, and
offered to sit up all night, when Jonathan immediately replied, 'Oh, la!
Mr. Ensign, you wont be the first man our Jemima has bundled with, will
it Jemima?' when little Jemima, who, by the bye, was a very pretty,
black-eyed girl, of about sixteen or seventeen, archly replied, 'No,
father, not by many, but it will be with the first Britainer' (the name
they give to Englishmen). In this dilemma what could I do? The smiling
invitation of pretty Jemima--the eye, the lip, the--Lord ha' mercy,
where am I going to? But wherever I may be going now, I did not go to
bundle with her--in the same room with her father and mother, my kind
_host_ and _hostess_ too! I thought of that--I thought of more
besides--to struggle with the passions of nature; to clasp Jemima in my
arms--to--do what? you'll ask--why, to do--nothing! for if amid all
these temptations, the lovely Jemima had melted into kindness, she had
been an outcast from the world--treated with contempt, abused by
violence, and left perhaps to perish! No, Jemima; I could have endured
all this to have been blest with you, but it was too vast a sacrifice,
when you was to be the victim! Suppose how great the test of virtue must
be, or how cold the American constitution, when this unaccountable
custom is in hospitable repute, and perpetual practice."[29]
Again, in a subsequent letter, the Lieutenant, after describing a New
England sleighing frolic, says: "In England this would be esteemed
extremely imprudent, and attended with dangerous consequences; but,
after what I have related respecting _bundling_, I need not say, in how
innocent a view this is looked upon. Apropos, as to that custom, along
the sea coast, by a continual intercourse among Europeans, it is in some
measure abolished; but they still retain one something similar, which is
termed _tarrying_. When a young man is enamored of a woman, and wishes
to marry her, he proposes the affair to her parents (without whose
consent no marriage, in this colony, can take place); if they have no
objections, he is allowed to tarry with her one night, in order to make
his court. At the usual time the old couple retire to bed, leaving the
young ones to settle matters as they can, who having sat up as long as
they think proper, get into bed together also, but without putting off
their under garments; to prevent scandal. If the parties agree, it is
all very well, the banns are published, and they married without delay;
if not, they part, and possibly never see each other again, unless,
which is an accident that seldom happens, the forsaken fair proves
pregnant, in which case the man, unless he absconds, is obliged to marry
her, on pain of excommunication."[30]
The word _tarry_, in the sense of _to stop_ or _to stay_, was more used
by our ancestors than by the present generation; yet we think that
Lieut. Anbury was mistaken in his idea that the _tarrying_ was but for a
single night. It is true that marriages were early, and probably the
courtships were short, but we all know enough of New England _sparking_
to know that a single night was cutting it rather short; and yet it is
easy to see how Anbury should get his erroneous idea. True, if the lover
was so unlucky as to get his final dismissal the first night, there was
an end of the matter, and well might they fail to meet again; but, in
that case, it is not likely that the favors of which he could boast
would be such as to seriously affect the reputation of the girl with
whom he tarried. The fact that in the custom of _tarrying_, the parties
also _bundled_, does not authorize the synonymous use of the two words,
which have nothing in common. For, doubtless many young men _tarried_
with their sweethearts, who did not _bundle_ with them.
Again, when, on a sabbath night, the faithful swain arrived, having,
perhaps, walked ten or more weary miles, to enjoy the company of his
favorite lass, in the few brief hours which would elapse before the
morning light should call him again to his homeward walk and his week of
toil, was it not the dictate of humanity as well as of economy, which
prompted the _old folks_ to allow the approved and accepted suitor of
their daughter to pursue his wooing under the downy coverlid of a good
feather bed (oftentimes, too, in the very same room in which they
themselves slept), rather than to have them _sit up_ and _burn out
uselessly_ firewood and _candles_, to say nothing of the risk of
catching their _death a' cold_? Indeed, was not the sanction of bundling
in such cases a tacit admission, on the part of the parents, of their
perfect confidence in the young folks, which necessarily acted upon the
latter as, at once, a strong restraint from wrong, and a strong
incentive to right doing? The influence of early religious training, the
powerful control which the church had obtained upon the social and
domestic life of the people, and the superstitious aspect which, in
those days, the gospel was made to wear, must also be taken into the
account. And, moreover, is it not probable that the universality of the
custom, which certainly cleared it from anything like odium or reproach,
would naturally tend to preclude, in a degree, any improper ideas in the
minds of those who practiced it? Such, then, we consider the _status_ of
the custom in the earlier history of the colonies, and among the _first
generation_ of settlers.
"But," if the reader will allow us to quote from a previous work, "the
emigration from a civilized to a new country,[31] is necessarily a step
backward into barbarism. The _second generation_ did not fill the place
of the fathers. Reared amid the trials and dangers of a new settlement,
they were in a great measure deprived of the advantages, both social and
educational, which their parents had enjoyed. Nearly all of the former
could write, which cannot be said of their children. Neither did the
latter possess that depth of religious feeling, or earnest practical
piety which distinguished the first comers. Religion was to them less a
matter of the heart than of social privilege, and in the _half way
covenant_ controversy we behold the gradual _letting down of bars_
between a pure church and a grasping world.
"The _third_ generation followed in the footsteps of their predecessors.
Then came war; and young New England brought from the long Canadian
campaigns, stores of loose camp vices, and recklessness, which soon
flooded the land with immorality and infidelity. The church was
neglected, drunkenness fearfully increased, and social life was sadly
corrupted."[32]
It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that bundling should, in the
increased laxity of public morals, become more frequently abused. Its
pernicious effects became constantly more apparent, and more decidedly
challenged the attention of the comparatively few godly men who
endeavored to stem and to control the rapidly widening current of
immorality which threatened to overwhelm the land.[33] The powerful
intellect of Jonathan Edwards thundered its anathemas upon it; pious
divines prayed against it in their closets, and wrestled with it in
their pulpits; while many attempted by a revision of their church
polity, by greater carefulness in the admission of members; by rules
more stringently framed and enforced, to preserve, as best they might,
the purity of the churches committed to their charge, and to make them,
if it were possible, beacon lights amid the surrounding darkness of the
times.[34] The task, however, was well nigh hopeless. The French wars
were succeeded by that of the American Revolution, and not before the
close of that struggle, may the custom of bundling be said to have
received its deathblow, and even then it _died hard_.
Its final disuse was brought about by a variety of causes, among which
may be named the improved condition of the people after the Revolution,
enabling many to live in larger and better warmed houses, and in the
very few places where the ministers dared to touch the subject in the
pulpit, as in Dedham, already referred to, a decided effect was
produced, but it was confined to the neighborhood, having very little
effect on the general custom. Probably no single thing tended so much to
break up the practice as the publication of a song, or ballad, in an
almanac, about 1785.
This ballad described in a free and easy style the various plans adopted
by those who bundled, and rather more than hinted at the results in
certain cases. Being published in an almanac, it had a much larger
circulation than could have been obtained for it in any other way (tract
societies not being then in vogue), and the descriptions were so _pat_,
that each one who saw them was disposed to apply them in a joking way to
any other who was known to practice bundling; and the result was, such a
general storm of banter and ridicule that no girl had the courage to
stand against it, and continue to admit her lovers to her bed.
We have found many persons who distinctly remember the publication of
this song, and the effect which it had on the public mind, but all our
efforts to find the almanac containing it, have proved of no avail.
We have, however, been favored with the use of a broadside copy of a
ballad, preserved among the treasures of the American Antiquarian
Society, at Worcester, Massachusetts, which several of our ancient
friends have recognized as identical with that in the almanac, one of
them proving it by repeating from memory several lines from the Almanac
version, which were precisely like that of the broadside, a copy of
which we give herewith.