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.