THE DRESS OF OLD-TIME CHILDREN
W
hen we reflect that in any community the number of “the younger sort”
is far larger than of grown folk, when we know, too, what large
families our ancestors had, in all the colonies, we must deem any
picture of social life, any history of costume, incomplete unless the
dress of children is shown. French and English books upon costume are
curiously silent regarding such dress. It might be alleged as a reason
for this singular silence that the dress of young children was for
centuries precisely that of their elders, and needed no specification.
But infants’ dress certainly was widely different, and full of historic
interest, as well as quaint prettiness; and there were certain details
of the dress of older children that were most curious and were wholly
unlike the contemporary garb of their elders; sometimes these details
were survivals of ancient modes for grown folk, sometimes their name
was a survival while their form had changed.
For the dress of children of the early years of colonial life—the
seventeenth century—I have an unusual group of five portraits. One is
the little Padishal child, shown with her mother in the frontispiece,
one is Robert Gibbes (shown here). The third child is said to be John
Quincy—his picture is opposite this page. The two portraits of Margaret
and Henry Gibbes are owned in Virginia; but are too dimly photographed
for reproduction. The portrait of Robert Gibbes is owned by inheritance
by Miss Sarah B. Hager, of Kendal Green, Massachusetts. It is well
preserved, having hung for over a hundred years on the same wall in the
old house. He was four years old when this portrait was painted. It is
marked 1670. John Quincy’s portrait is marked also plainly as one and a
half years old, and with a date which is a bit dimmed; it is either
1670 or 1690. If it is 1690, the picture can be that of John Quincy,
though he would scarcely be as large as is the portrayed figure. If the
date is 1670, it cannot be John Quincy, for he was born in 1689. The
picture has the same checker-board floor as the three other Gibbes
portraits, four rows of squares wide; and the child’s toes are set at
the same row as are the toes of the shoes in the picture of Robert
Gibbes.
The portraits of Henry and Margaret Gibbes are also marked plainly
1670. There was a fourth Gibbes child, who would have been just the age
of the subject of the Quincy portrait; and it is natural that there
should be a suspicion that this fourth portrait is of the fourth Gibbes
child, not of John Quincy.
John Quincy. John Quincy.
Margaret Gibbes was born in 1663. Henry Gibbes was born in 1667. He
became a Congregational minister. His daughter married Nathaniel
Appleton, and through Nathaniel, John, Dr. John S., and John, the
portrait, with that of Margaret, came to the present owner, General
John W. S. Appleton, of Charlestown, West Virginia.
The dress of these five children is of the same rich materials that
would be worn by their mothers. The Padishal child wears black velvet
like her mother’s gown; but her frock is brightened with scarlet points
of color. The linings of the velvet hanging sleeves, the ribbon knots
of the white virago-sleeve, the shoe-tip, the curious cap-tassel, are
of bright scarlet. We have noted the dominance of scarlet in old
English costumes. It was evidently the only color favored for children.
The lace cap, the rich lace stomacher, the lace-edged apron, all are of
Flemish lace. Margaret Gibbes wears a frock of similar shape, and
equally rich and dark in color; it is a heavy brocade of blue and red,
with a bit of yellow. Her fine apron, stomacher, and full sleeves are
rich in needlework. Robert Gibbes’s “coat,” as a boy’s dress at that
age then was called, is a striking costume. The inmost sleeves are of
white lawn, over them are sleeves made of strips of galloon of a
pattern in yellow, white, scarlet, and black, with a rolled cuff of red
velvet. There is a similar roll around the hem of the coat. Still
further sleeves are hanging sleeves of velvet trimmed with the galloon.
It will be noted that his hanging sleeve is cut square and trimmed
squarely across the end. It is similar to the sleeves worn at the same
time by citizens of London in their formal “liveryman’s” dress, which
had bands like pockets, that sometimes really were pockets.
His plain, white, hemstitched band would indicate that he was a boy,
did not the swing of his petticoats plainly serve to show it, as do
also his brothers’ “coats.” That child knew well what it was to tread
and trip on those hated petticoats as he went upstairs. I know how he
begged for breeches. The apron of John Quincy varies slightly in shape
from that of the other boy, but the general dress is like, save his
pretty, gay, scarlet hood, worn over a white lace cap. One unique
detail of these Gibbes portraits, and the Quincy portrait, is the
shoes. In all four, the shoes are of buff leather, with absolutely
square toes, with a thick, scarlet sole to which the buff-leather upper
seems tacked with a row either of long, thick, white stitches or of
heavy metal-headed nails; these white dots are very ornamental. One
pair of the shoes has great scarlet roses on the instep. The square toe
was distinctly a Cavalier fashion. It is in Miss Campion’s portrait,
facing this page, and in the print of the Prince of Orange here, and is
found in many portraits of the day. But these American shoes are in the
minor details entirely unlike any English shoes I have seen in any
collection elsewhere, and are most interesting. They were doubtless
English in make.
The portrait of John Quincy resembles much in its dress that of Oliver
Cromwell when two years old, the picture now at Chequers Court.
Cromwell’s linen collar is rounded, and a curious ornament is worn in
front, as a little girl would wear a locket. The whole throat and a
little of the upper neck is bare. Dark hair, slightly curled, comes out
from the close cap in front of the ears. This picture of Cromwell
distinctly resembles his mother’s portrait.
Miss Campion, 1667. Miss Campion, 1667.
The quaint tassel or rosette or feather on the cap of the Padishal
child was a fashion of the day. It is seen in many Dutch portraits of
children. In a curious old satirical print of Oliver Cromwell preaching
are the figures of two little children drawn standing by their mother’s
side. One child’s back is turned for our sight, and shows us what might
well be the back of the gown of the Padishal child. The cap has the
same ornament on the crown, and the hanging sleeves—of similar
form—have, at intervals of a few inches apart from shoulder to heel, an
outside embellishment of knots of ribbon. There is also a band or strip
of embroidery or passementerie up the back of the gown from skirt-hem
to lace collar, with a row of buttons on the strip. This proves that
the dress was fastened in the back, as the stiff, unbroken, white
stomacher also indicates. The other child is evidently a boy. His gown
is long and fur-edged. His cap is round like a Scotch bonnet, and has
also a tuft or rosette at the crown. On either side hang long strings
or ribbon bands reaching from the cap edge to the knee.
These portraits of these little American children display nothing of
that God-given attribute which we call genius, but they do possess a
certain welcome trait, which is truthfulness; a hard attention to
detail, which confers on them a quality of exactness of likeness of
which we are very sensible. We have for comparison a series of
portraits of the same dates, but of English children, the children of
the royal and court families. I give here a part of the portrait group
of the family of the Duke of Buckingham; namely, the Duchess of
Buckingham and her two children, an infant son and a daughter, Mary.
She was a wonderful child, known in the court as “Pretty Moll,” having
the beauty of her father, the “handsomest-bodied” man in court, his
vivacity, his vigor, and his love of dancing, all of which made him the
prime favorite both of James and his son, Charles.
A letter exists written by the duchess to her husband while he was gone
to Spain with his thirty suits of richly embroidered garments of which
I have written in my first chapter. The duchess writes of “Pretty
Moll,” who was not a year old:—
“She is very well, I thank God; and when she is set to her feet and
held by her sleeves she will not go softly but stamp, and set one foot
before another very fast, and I think she will run before she can go.
She loves dancing extremely; and when the Saraband is played, she will
get her thumb and finger together offering to snap; and then when “Tom
Duff” is sung, she will shake her apron; and when she hears the tune of
the clapping dance my Lady Frances Herbert taught the Prince, she will
clap both her hands together, and on her breast, and she can tell the
tunes as well as any of us can; and as they change tunes she will
change her dancing. I would you were here but to see her, for you would
take much delight in her now she is so full of pretty play and tricks.
Everybody says she grows each day more like you.”
Can you not see the engaging little creature, clapping her hands and
trying to step out in a dance? No imaginary description could equal in
charm this bit of real life, this word-picture painted in bright and
living colors by a mother’s love. I give another merry picture of her
childhood and widowhood in a later chapter. Many portraits of “Pretty
Moll” were painted by Van Dyck, more than of any woman in England save
the queen. One shows her in the few months that she was the child-wife
of the eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke. She is in the centre of the
great family group. She was married thrice; her favorite choice of
character in which to be painted was Saint Agnes, who died rather than
be married at all.
Infant’s Cap. Infant’s Cap.
Both mother and child in this picture wear a lace cap of unusual shape,
rather broader where turned over at the ear than at the top. It is seen
on a few other portraits of that date, and seems to have come to
England with the queen of James I. It disappeared before the graceful
modes of hair-dressing introduced by Queen Henrietta Maria.
The genius of Van Dyck has preserved for us a wonderful portraiture of
children of this period, the children of King Charles I. The earliest
group shows the king and queen with two children; one a baby in arms
with long clothes and close cap—this might have been painted yesterday.
The little prince standing at his father’s knee is in a dark green
frock, much like John Quincy’s, and apparently no richer. A painting at
Windsor shows king and queen with the two princes, Charles and James;
another, also at Windsor, gives the mother with the two sons. One at
Turin gives the two princes with their sister. At Windsor, and in
_replica_ at Berlin, is the famous masterpiece with the five children,
dated 1637.
Eleanor Foster. 1755. Eleanor Foster. 1755.
This exquisite group shows Charles, the Prince of Wales (aged seven),
with his arm on the head of a great dog; he is in the full garb of a
grown man, a Cavalier. His suit is red satin; the shoes are white, with
red roses. Mary, demure as in all her portraits, is aged six; she wears
virago-sleeves made like those of Margaret Gibbes, with hanging sleeves
over them, a lace stomacher, and cap, with tufts of scarlet, and hair
curled lightly on the forehead, and pulled out at the side in ringlets,
like that of her mother, Henrietta Maria. The Duke of York, aged two,
wears a red dress spotted with yellow, with sleeves precisely like
those of Robert Gibbes; white lace-edged apron, stomacher, and cap; his
hair is in curls. The Princess Elizabeth was aged about two; she is in
blue. Her cap is of wrought and tucked lawn, and she wears either a
pearl ear-ring or a pearl pendant at the corner of the cap just at the
ear, and a string of pearls around her neck. She has a gentle, serious
face, one with a premonitory tinge of sadness. She was the favorite
daughter of the king, and wrote the inexpressibly touching account of
his last days in prison. She was but thirteen, and he said to her the
day before his execution, “Sweetheart, you will forget all this.” “Not
while I live,” she answered, with many tears, and promised to write it
down. She lived but a short time, for she was broken-hearted; she was
found dead, with her head lying on the religious book she had been
reading—in which attitude she is carved on her tomb. The baby is
Princess Anne, a fat little thing not a year old; she is naked, save
for a close cap and a little drapery. She died when three and a half
years old; died with these words on her lips, “Lighten Thou mine eyes,
O Lord, that I sleep not the sleep of Death.” It was not Puritan
children only at that time who were filled with deep religious thought,
and gave expression to that thought even in infancy; children of the
Church of England and of the Roman Catholic Church were all widely
imbued with religious feeling, and Biblical words were the familiar
speech of the day, of both young and old. It rouses in me strange
emotions when I gaze at this portrait and remember all that came into
the lives of these royal children. They had been happier had they been
born, like the little Gibbes children, in America, and of untitled
parents.
[Illustration: William, Prince of Orange.]
At Amsterdam may be seen the portrait of Princess Mary painted with her
cousin, William of Orange, who became her child-husband. She had the
happiest life of any of the five—if she ever could be happy after her
father’s tragic death. In this later portrait she is a little older and
sadder and stiffer. Her waist is more pinched, her shoulders narrower,
her face more demure. His likeness is here given. The only marked
difference in the dress of these children from the dress of the Gibbes
children is in the lace; the royal family wear laces with deeply
pointed edges, the point known as a Vandyke. The American children wear
straight-edged laces, as was the general manner of laces of that day.
An old print of the Duke of York when about seven years old is given
(here). He carries in his hand a quaint racket.
The costume worn by these children is like that of plebeian English
children of the same date. A manuscript drawing of a child of the
people in the reign of Charles I shows a precisely similar dress, save
that the child is in leading-strings held by the mother; and in the
belt to which the leading-strings are attached is thrust a “muckinder”
or handkerchief.
These leading-strings are seldom used now, but they were for centuries
a factor in a child’s progress. They were a favorite gift to children;
and might be a simple flat strip of strong stuff, or might be richly
worked like the leading-strings which Mary, Queen of Scots embroidered
for her little baby, James. These are three bands of Spanish pink satin
ribbon, each about four or five feet long and over an inch wide. The
three are sewed with minute over-and-over stitches into a flat band
about four inches wide, and are embroidered with initials, emblems of
the crown, a verse of a psalm, and a charming flower and grape design.
The gold has tarnished into brown, and the flower colors are fled; but
it is still a beautiful piece of work, speaking with no uncertain voice
of a tender, loving mother and a womanly queen. There were
crewel-worked leading-strings in America. One is prettily lined with
strips of handsome brocade that had been the mother’s wedding
petticoat; it is not an ill rival of the princely leading-strings.
Another little English girl, who was not a princess, but who lived in
the years when ran and played our little American children, was Miss
Campion, who “minded her horn-book”—minded it so well that she has been
duly honored as the only English child ever painted with horn-book in
hand. Her petticoat and stomacher, her apron, and cap and hanging
sleeves and square-toed shoes are just like Margaret Gibbes’s—bought in
the same London shops, very likely.
Not only did all these little English and American children dress
alike, but so did French children, and so did Spanish children—only
little Spanish girls had to wear hoops. Hoops were invented in Spain;
and proud was the Spanish queen of them.
Velasquez, contemporary with Van Dyck, painted the Infanta Maria
Theresa; the portrait is now in the Prado at Madrid. She carries a
handkerchief as big as a tablecloth; but above her enormous hoop
appears not only the familiar virago-sleeve, but the straight whisk or
collar, just like that of English children and dames. This child and
the Princess Marguerite, by Velasquez, have the hair parted on one side
with the top lock turned aside and tied with a knot of ribbon precisely
as we tie our little daughters’ hair to-day; and as the bride of
Charles II wore her hair when he married her. French children had not
assumed hoops. I have an old French portrait before me of a little
demoiselle, aged five, in a scarlet cloth gown with edgings of a narrow
gray gimp or silver lace. All the sleeves, the slashes, the long,
hanging sleeves are thus edged. She wears a long, narrow, white lawn
apron, and her stiff bodice has a stomacher of lawn. There is a
straight white collar tied with tiny bows in front and white cuffs; a
scarlet close cap edged with silver lace completes an exquisite
costume, which is in shape like that of Margaret Gibbes. The garments
of all these children, royal and subject, are too long, of course, for
comfort in walking; too stiff, likewise, for comfort in wearing; too
richly laced to be suitable for everyday wear; too costly, save for
folk of wealth; yet nevertheless so quaint, so becoming, so handsome,
so rich, that we reluctantly turn away from them.
The dress of all young children in families of estate was cumbersome to
a degree. There exists to-day a warrant for the purchase of clothing of
Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, when she was a sportive, wilful,
naughty little child of four. She wore such unwieldy and ugly guise as
this: kirtles of tawny damask and black satin; gowns of green and
crimson striped velvet edged with purple tinsel, which must have been
hideous. All were lined with heavy black buckram. Indeed, the inner
portions, the linings of old-time garments, even of royalty, were far
from elegant. I have seen garments worn by grown princesses of the
eighteenth century, whereof the rich brocade bodies were lined with
common, heavy fabric, usually a stiff linen; and the sewing was done
with thread as coarse as shoe-thread, often homespun. This, too, when
the sleeve and neck-ruffles would be of needlework so exquisite that it
could not be rivalled in execution to-day.
Many of the older portraits of children show hanging sleeves. The rich
claret velvet dresses of the Van Cortlandt twins, aged four, had
hanging sleeves. This dress is given in my book, _Child Life in
Colonial Days_, as is that of Katherine Ten Broeck, another child of
Dutch birth living in New York, who also wore heavy hanging sleeves.
The use of the word hanging sleeves in common speech and in literature
is most interesting. It had a figurative meaning; it symbolized youth
and innocence. This meaning was acquired, of course, from the wear for
centuries of hanging sleeves by little children, both boys and girls.
It had a second, a derivative signification, being constantly employed
as a figure of speech to indicate second childhood; it was used with a
wistful tender meaning as an emblem of the helplessness of feeble old
age. The following example shows such an employment of the term.
In 1720, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, then about seventy-five years
of age, wrote to another old gentleman, whose widowed sister he desired
to marry, in these words:—
“I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have sometime
met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves, coming home from
their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure of speaking
to them. And I could find it in my heart now to speak to Mrs. Martha
again, now I myself am reduced to Hanging Sleeves.”
William Byrd, of Westover, in Virginia, in one of his engaging and
sprightly letters written in 1732, pictures the time of the patriarchs
when “a man was reckoned at Years of Discretion at 100; Boys went into
Breeches at about 40; Girles continued in Hanging Sleeves till 50, and
plaid with their Babys till Threescore.”
When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, he wrote a poem which was
sent to his uncle, a bright old Quaker. This uncle responded in clever
lines which begin thus:—
“’Tis time for me to throw aside my pen
When Hanging-Sleeves read, write and rhyme like men.
This forward Spring foretells a plenteous crop
For if the bud bear grain, what will the top?”
A curious use of the long hanging sleeve was as a pocket; that is, it
would seem curious to us were it not for our acquaintance with the
capacity of the sleeves of our unwelcome friend, Ah Sing. The pocketing
sleeve of the time of Henry III still exists in the heraldic charge
known as the manche, borne by the Hastings and Norton family. This is
also called maunch, émanche, and mancheron. The word “manchette,” an
ornamented cuff, retains the meaning of the word, as does manacle; all
are from _manus_.
Hanging sleeves had a time of short popularity for grown folk while
Anne Boleyn was queen of England; for the little finger of her left
hand had a double tip, and the long, graceful sleeves effectually
concealed the deformity.
In my book entitled _Child Life in Colonial Days_ I have given over
thirty portraits of American children. These show the changes of
fashions, the wear of children at various periods and ages. Childish
dress ever reflected the dress of their elders, and often closely
imitated it. Two very charming costumes are worn by two little children
of the province of South Carolina. The little girl is but two years
old. She is Ellinor Cordes, and was painted about 1740. She is a lovely
little child of French features and French daintiness of dress, albeit
a bright yellow brocaded satin would seem rather gorgeous attire for a
girl of her years. The boy is her kinsman, Daniel Ravenel, and was then
about five years old. He wore what might be termed a frock with
spreading petticoats, which touched the ground; there is a decided
boyishness in the tight-fitting, trim waistcoat with its silver buttons
and lace, and the befrogged coat with broad cuffs and wrist ruffles,
and turned-over revers, and narrow linen inner collar. It is an
exceptionally pleasing boy’s dress, for a little boy.
A somewhat similar but more feminine coat is worn by Thomas Aston
Coffin; it opens in front over a white satin petticoat, and it has a
low-cut neck and sleeves shortened to the elbow, and worn over full
white undersleeves. Other portraits by Copley show the same dress of
white satin, which boys wore till six years of age.
Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick and Daughter. Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick and
Daughter.
Copley’s portrait of his own children is given on a later page. This
family group always startles all who have seen it only in photographs;
for its colors are so unexpected, so frankly crude and vivid. The
individuals are all charming. The oldest child, the daughter,
Elizabeth, stands in the foreground in a delightful white frock of
striped gauze. This is worn over a pink slip, and the pink tints show
in the thinner folds of whiteness; a fine piece of texture-painting.
The gauze sash is tied in a vast knot, and lies out in a train; this is
a more vivid pink, inclining to the tint of the old-rose damask
furniture-covering. She wears a pretty little net and muslin cap with a
cap-pin like a tiny rose. This single figure is not excelled, I think,
by any child’s portrait in foreign galleries, nor is it often equalled.
Nor can the exquisite expression of childish love and confidence seen
on the face of the boy, John Singleton Copley, Junior, who later became
Lord Lyndhurst, find a rival in painting. It is an unspeakably touching
portrait to all who have seen upturned close to their own eyes the
trusting and loving face of a beautiful son as he clung with strong
boyish arms and affection to his mother’s neck.
Infant Child of Francis Hopkinson Infant Child of Francis Hopkinson,
“the Signer.” Painted by Francis Hopkinson.
This little American boy, who became Lord Chancellor of England, wears
a nankeen suit with a lilac-tinted sash. It is his beaver hat with gold
hatband and blue feather that lies on the ground at the feet of the
grandfather, Richard Clarke. The baby, held by the grandfather, wears a
coral and bells on a lilac sash-ribbon; such a coral as we see in many
portraits of infants. Another child in white-embroidered robe and dark
yellow sash completes this beautiful family picture. Its great fault to
me is the blue of Mrs. Copley’s gown, which is as vivid as a peacock’s
breast. This painting is deemed Copley’s masterpiece; but an equal
interest is that it is such an absolute and open expression of Copley’s
lovable character and upright life. In it we can read his affectionate
nature, his love of his sweet wife, his happy home-relations, and his
pride in his beautiful children.
There is ample proof, not only in the inventories which chance to be
preserved, but in portraits of the times, that children’s dress in the
eighteenth century was often costly. Of course the children of wealthy
parents only would have their portraits painted; but their dress was as
rich as the dress of the children of the nobility in England at the
same time. You can see this in the colored reproduction of the
portraits of Hon. James Bowdoin and his sister, Augusta, afterwards
Lady Temple. That they were good likenesses is proved by the fact that
the faces are strongly like those of the same persons in more mature
years. You find little Augusta changed but slightly in matronhood in
the fine pastel by Copley. In this portrait of the two Bowdoin
children, the entire dress is given. Seldom are the shoes shown. These
are interesting, for the boy’s square-toed black shoes with buckles are
wholly unlike his sister’s blue morocco slippers with turned-up peaks
and gilt ornaments from toe to instep, making a foot-gear much like
certain Turkish slippers seen to-day. Her hair has the bedizenment of
beads and feathers, which were worn by young girls for as many years as
their mothers wore the same. The young lad’s dress is precisely like
his father’s. There is much charm in these straight little figures.
They have the aristocratic bearing which is a family trait of all of
that kin. I should not deem Lady Temple ever a beauty, though she was
called so by Manasseh Cutler, a minister who completely yielded to her
charms when she was a grandmother and forty-four. This portrait of
brother and sister is, I believe, by Blackburn. The dress is similar
and the date the same as the portrait of the Misses Royall (one of whom
became Lady Pepperell), which is by Blackburn.
Mary Seton, 1763. Mary Seton, 1763.
The portrait of a charming little American child is shown here. This
child, in feature, figure, and attitude, and even in the companionship
of the kitten, is a curious replica of a famous English portrait of
“Miss Trimmer.”
I have written at length in Chapter IV of a grandmother in the Hall
family and of the Hall family connection. Let me tell of another
grandmother, Madam Lydia Coleman, the daughter of the old Indian
fighter, Captain Joshua Scottow. She, like Madam Symonds and Madam
Stoddard, had had several husbands—Colonel Benjamin Gibbs,
Attorney-General Anthony Checkley, and William Coleman. The Hall
children were her grandchildren; and came to Boston for schooling at
one time. Many letters exist of Hon. Hugh Hall to and from his
grandmother, Madam Coleman. She writes thus.—
“As for Richard since I told him I would write to his Father he is more
orderly, &; he is very hungry, and has grown so much yt all his Clothes
is too Little for him. He loves his book and his play too. I hired him
to get a Chapter of ye Proverbs &; give him a penny every Sabbath day,
&; promised him 5 shillings when he can say them all by heart. I would
do my duty by his soul as well as his body.... He has grown a good boy
and minds his School and Lattin and Dancing. He is a brisk Child &;
grows very Cute and wont wear his new silk coat yt was made for him. He
wont wear it every day so yt I don’t know what to do with it. It wont
make him a jackitt. I would have him a good husbander but he is but a
child. For shoes, gloves, hankers &; stockins, they ask very deare, 8
shillings for a paire &; Richard takes no care of them. Richard wears
out nigh 12 paire of shoes a year. He brought 12 hankers with him and
they have all been lost long ago; and I have bought him 3 or 4 more at
a time. His way is to tie knottys at one end &; beat ye Boys with them
and then to lose them &; he cares not a bit what I will say to him.”
Madam Coleman, after this handful, was given charge of his sister
Sarah. When Missy arrived from the Barbadoes, she was eight years old.
She brought with her a maid. The grandmother wrote back cheerfully to
the parents that the child was well and brisk, as indeed she was. All
the very young gentlemen and young ladies of Boston Brahmin blood paid
her visits, and she gave a feast at a child’s dancing-party with the
sweetmeats left over from her sea-store. Her stay in her grandmother’s
household was surprisingly brief. She left unbidden with her maid, and
went to a Mr. Binning’s to board; she sent home word to the Barbadoes
that her grandmother made her drink water with her meals. Her brother
wrote to Madam Coleman:—
“We were all persuaded of your tender and hearty affection to my Sister
when we recommended her to your parental care. We are sorry to hear of
her Independence in removing from under the Benign Influences of your
Wing &; am surprised she dare do it without our leave or consent or
that Mr. Binning receive her at his house before he knew how we were
affected to it. We shall now desire Mr. Binning to resign her with her
waiting maid to you and in our Letter to him have strictly ordered her
to Return to your House.”
But no brother could control this spirited young damsel. Three months
later a letter from Madam Coleman read thus:—
“Sally wont go to school nor to church and wants a nue muff and a great
many other things she don’t need. I tell her fine things are cheaper in
Barbadoes. She is well and brisk, says her Brother has nothing to do
with her as long as her father is alive.”
Hugh Hall wrote in return, saying his daughter ought to have one room
to sleep in, and her maid another, that it was not befitting children
of their station to drink water, they should have wine and beer. We
cannot wonder that they dressed like their elders since they were
treated like their elders in other respects.
The dress of very young girls was often extraordinarily rich. We find
this order sent to London in 1739, for finery for Mary Cabell, daughter
of Dr. William Cabell of Virginia, when she was but thirteen years
old:—
“1 Prayer Book (almost every such inventory had this item).
1 Red Silk Petticoat.
1 Very good broad Silver laced hat and hat-band.
1 Pair Stays 17 inches round the waist.
2 Pair fine Shoes.
12 Pair fine Stockings.
1 Hoop Petticoat.
1 Pair Ear rings.
1 Pair Clasps.
3 Pair Silver Buttons set with Stones.
1 Suit of Headclothes.
4 Fine Handkerchiefs and Ruffles suitable.
A Very handsome Knot and Girdle.
A Fine Cloak and Short Apron.”
The Bowdoin Children. The Bowdoin Children. Lady Temple and Governor
James Bowdoin in Childhood.
I never read such a list as this without picturing the delight of
little Mary Cabell when she opened the box containing all these pretty
garments.
The order given by Colonel John Lewis for his young ward of eleven
years old—another Virginia child—reads thus:—
“A cap, ruffle, and tucker, the lace 5s. per yard.
1 pair White Stays.
8 pair White kid gloves.
2 pair Colour’d kid gloves.
2 pair worsted hose.
3 pair thread hose.
1 pair silk shoes laced.
1 pair morocco shoes.
4 pair plain Spanish shoes.
2 pair calf shoes.
1 Mask.
1 Fan.
1 Necklace.
1 Girdle and Buckle.
1 Piece fashionable Calico.
4 yards Ribbon for Knots.
1 Hoop Coat.
1 Hat.
1 1/2 Yard of Cambric.
A Mantua and Coat of Slite Lustring.”
Orders for purchases were regularly despatched to London agent by
George Washington after his marriage. In 1761 he orders a full list of
garments for both his stepchildren. “Miss Custis” was only six years
old. These are some of the items:—
“1 Coat made of Fashionable Silk.
A Fashionable Cap or fillet with Bib apron.
Ruffles and Tuckers, to be laced.
4 Fashionable Dresses made of Long Lawn.
2 Fine Cambrick Frocks.
A Satin Capuchin, hat, and neckatees.
A Persian Quilted Coat.
1 p. Pack Thread Stays.
4 p. Callimanco Shoes.
6 p. Leather Shoes.
2 p. Satin Shoes with flat ties.
6 p. Fine Cotton Stockings.
4 p. White Worsted Stockings.
12 p. Mitts.
6 p. White Kid Gloves.
1 p. Silver Shoe Buckles.
1 p. Neat Sleeve Buttons.
6 Handsome Egrettes Different Sorts.
6 Yards Ribbon for Egrettes.
12 Yards Coarse Green Callimanco.”
A Virginia gentleman, Colonel William Fleming, kept for several years a
close account of the money he spent for his little daughters, who were
young misses of ten and eleven in the year 1787. The most expensive
single items are bonnets, each at £;4 10s.; an umbrella, £;2 8s. Cloth
cloaks and saddles and bridles for riding were costly items. Tamboured
muslin was at that time 18s. a yard; durant, 3s. 6d.; lutestring, 12s.;
calico, 6s. 3d. Scarlet cloaks for each girl cost £;2 14s. each. Other
dress materials besides those named above were cambric, linen, cotton,
osnaburgs, negro cotton, book-muslin, ermin, nankeen, persian, Turkey
cotton, shalloon, and swanskin. There were many yards of taste and
ribbon, black lace, and edgings, and gauze—gauze—gauze. A curious item
several times appearing is a “paper bonnet,” not bonnet-paper, which
latter was a constant purchase on women’s lists. There were pen-knives,
“scanes of silk,” crooked combs, morocco shoes, “nitting pins,”
constant “sticks of pomatum,” fans, “chanes,” a shawl, a tamboured
coat, gloves, stockings, trunks, bands and clasps, tooth-brushes, silk
gloves, necklaces, “fingered gloves,” silk stockings, handkerchiefs,
china teacups and saucers and silver spoons. All these show a very
generous outfit.
In the year 1770 a delightful, engaging little child came to Boston
from Nova Scotia to live for a time with her aunt, a Boston
gentlewoman, and to attend Boston schools. For the amusement of her
parents so far away, and for practice in penmanship, she kept during
the years 1771 and part of 1772 a diary. She was but ten years old when
she began, but her intelligence and originality make this diary a
valuable record of domestic life in Boston at that date. I have had the
pleasure of publishing her diary with notes under the title, _Diary of
Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl, in the Year 1771_. I lived so
much with her while transcribing her words that she seems almost like a
child of my own. Like other unusual children she died young—when but
nineteen. She was not so gifted and wonderful and rare a creature as
that star among children, Marjorie Fleming, yet she was in many ways
equally interesting; she was a frank, homely little flower of New
England life destined never to grow old or weary, or tired or sad, but
to live forever in eternal, happy childhood, through the magic living
words in the hundred pages of her time-stained diary.
She was of what Dr. Holmes called Boston Brahmin blood, was related to
many of the wealthiest and best families of Boston and vicinity, and
knew the best society. Dress was to her a matter of distinct
importance, and her clothes were carefully fashionable. Her distress
over wearing “an old red Domino” was genuine. We have in her words many
references to her garments, and we find her dress very handsome. This
is what she wore at a child’s party:—
“I was dressed in my yellow coat, black bib &; apron, black feathers on
my head, my past comb &; all my past garnet, marquesett &; jet pins,
together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my
neck, black mitts &; yards of blue ribbin (black &; blue is high tast),
striped tucker &; ruffels (not my best) &; my silk shoes completed my
dress.”
A few days later she writes:—
“I wore my black bib &; apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my Aunt
Storer since presented me with (blue ribbins on it) &; a very handsome
locket in the shape of a hart she gave me, the past Pin my Hon’d Papa
presented me with in my cap. My new cloak &; bonnet, my pompedore
gloves, &;c. And I would tell you that _for the first time they all on
lik’d my dress very much_. My cloak &; bonnett are really very handsome
&; so they had need be. For they cost an amasing sight of money, not
quite £;45, tho’ Aunt Suky said that she suppos’d Aunt Deming would be
frighted out of her Wits at the money it cost. I have got _one_
covering by the cost that is genteel &; I like it much myself.”
As this was in the times of depreciated values, £;45 was not so large a
sum to expend for a girl’s outdoor garments as at first sight appears.
She gives a very exact account of her successions of head-gear, some
being borrowed finery. She apparently managed to rise entirely above
the hated “black hatt” and red domino, which she patronizingly said
would be “Decent for Common Occations.” She writes:—
“Last Thursday I purchased with my aunt Deming’s leave a very beautiful
white feather hat, that is the outside, which is a bit of white
hollowed with the feathers sew’d on in a most curious manner; white and
unsully’d as the falling snow. As I am, as we say, a Daughter of
Liberty I chuse to were as much of our own manufactory as pocible....
My Aunt says if I behave myself very well indeed, not else, she will
give me a garland of flowers to orniment it, tho’ she has layd aside
the biziness of flower-making.”
The dress described and portrayed of these children all seems very
mature; but children were quickly grown up in colonial days. Cotton
Mather wrote, “New English youth are very sharp and early ripe in their
capacities.” They married early; though none of the “child-marriages”
of England disfigure the pages of our history. Sturdy Endicott would
not permit the marriage of his ward, Rebecca Cooper, an
“inheritrice,”—though Governor Winthrop wished her for his
nephew,—because the girl was but fifteen. I am surprised at this, for
marriages at fifteen were common enough. My far-away grandmother, Mary
Burnet, married William Browne, when she was fourteen; another
grandmother, Mary Philips, married her cousin at thirteen, and there is
every evidence that the match was arranged with little heed of the
girl’s wishes. It was the happiest of marriages. Boys became men by law
when sixteen. Winthrop named his son as executor of his will when the
boy was fourteen—but there were few boys like that boy. We find that
the Virginia tutor who taught in the Carter family just previous to the
war of the Revolution deemed a young lady of thirteen no longer a
child.
Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years,
Daughter of Colonel James Robinson. Marked “Corné pinxt, Sept. 1805.”
“Miss Betsy Lee is about thirteen, a tall, slim, genteel girl. She is
very far from Miss Hale’s taciturnity, yet is by no means disagreeably
Forward. She dances extremely well, and is just beginning to play the
Spinet. She is dressed in a neat Shell Callico Gown, has very light
Hair done up with a Feather, and her whole carriage is Inoffensive,
Easy and Graceful.”
The christening of an infant was not only a sacrament of the church,
and thus of highest importance, but it was also of secular note. It was
a time of great rejoicing, of good wishes, of gift-making. In mediaeval
times, the child was arrayed by the priest in a white robe which had
been anointed with sacred oil, and called a chrismale, or a chrisom. If
the child died within a month, it was buried in this robe and called a
chrisom-child. The robe was also called a christening palm or pall.
When the custom of redressing the child in a robe at the altar had
passed away, the christening palm still was used and was thrown over
the child when it was brought out to receive visitors. This robe was
also termed a bearing-cloth, a christening sheet, and a cade-cloth.
This fine coverlet of state, what we would now call a christening
blanket, was usually made of silk; often it was richly embroidered,
sometimes with a text of Scripture. It was generally lace-bordered, or
edged with a narrow, home-woven silk fringe. The christening-blanket of
Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony still is owned by a
descendant; it is whole of fabric and unfaded of dye. It is rich
crimson silk, soft of texture, like heavy sarcenet silk, and is
powdered at regular distances about six inches apart with conventional
sprays of flowers, embroidered chiefly in pink and yellow, in minute
silk cross-stitch. Another beautiful silk christening blanket was
quilted in an intricate flower pattern in almost imperceptible
stitches. Another of yellow satin has a design in white floss that
gives it the appearance of being trimmed with white silk lace. Best of
all was to embroider the cloth with designs and initials and emblems
and biblical references. A coat-of-arms or crest was very elegant. The
words, “God Bless the Babe,” were not left wholly to the pincushions
which every babe had given him or her, but appeared on the christening
blanket. A curious design shown me was called _The Tree of Knowledge_.
The figure of a child in cap, apron, bib, and hanging sleeves stands
pointing to a tree upon which grew books as though they were apples.
The open pages of each book-apple is printed with a title, as, _The New
England Primer, Lilly’s Grammar, Janeway’s Holy Children, The Prodigal
Daughter._
An inventory of the christening garments of a child in the seventeenth
century reads thus:—
“1. A lined white figured satin cap.
2. A lined white satin cap embroidered in sprays with gold coloured
silk.
3. A white satin palm embroidered in sprays of yellow silk to match.
This is 44 inches by 34 inches in size.
4. A palm of rich ‘still yellow’ silk lined with white satin. This is
54 inches by 48 inches in size.
5. A pair of deep cuffs of white satin, lace trimmed and embroidered.
6. A pair of linen mittens trimmed with narrow lace, the back of the
fingers outlined with yellow silk figures.”
Knitted Flaxen Mittens. Knitted Flaxen Mittens.
The satin cuffs were for the wear of the older person who carried the
child. The infant was placed upon the larger palm or cloth, and the
smaller one thrown over him, over his petticoats. The inner cap was
very tight to the head. The outer was embroidered; often it turned back
in a band.
There was a significance in the use of yellow; it is the altar color
for certain church festivals, and was proper for the pledging of the
child.
All these formalities of christening in the Church of England were not
abandoned by the Separatists. New England children were just as
carefully christened and dressed for christening as any child in the
Church of England. In the reign of James I tiny shirts with little
bands or sleeves or cuffs wrought in silk or in coventry-blue thread
were added to the gift of spoons from the sponsors. I have one of these
little coventry-blue embroidered things with quaint little sleeves; too
faded, I regret, to reveal any pattern to the camera.
The christening shirts and mittens given by the sponsors are said to be
a relic of the ancient custom of presenting white clothes to the
neophytes when converted to Christianity. These “Christening Sets” are
preserved in many families.
Of the dress of infants of colonial times we can judge from the
articles of clothing which have been preserved till this day. These are
of course the better garments worn by babies, not their everyday dress;
their simpler attire has not survived, but their christening robes,
their finer shirts and petticoats and caps remain.
Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and Daughter. Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and
Daughter.
Linen formed the chilling substructure of their dress, thin linen,
low-necked, short-sleeved shirts; and linen remained the underwear of
infants until thirty years ago. I do not wonder that these little linen
shirts were worn for centuries. They are infinitely daintier than the
finest silk or woollen underwear that have succeeded them; they are
edged with narrowest thread lace, and hemstitched with tiny rows of
stitches or corded with tiny cords, and sometimes embroidered by hand
in minute designs. They were worn by all babies from the time of James
I, never varying one stitch in shape; but I fear this pretty garment of
which our infants were bereft a few years ago will never crowd out the
warm, present-day silk wear. This wholly infantile article of childish
dress had tiny little revers or collarettes or laps made to turn over
outside the robe or slip like a minute bib, and these laps were
beautifully oversewn where the corners joined the shirt, to prevent
tearing down at this seam. These tiny shirts were the dearest little
garments ever made or dreamed of. When a baby had on a fresh, corded
slip, low of neck, with short, puffed sleeve, and the tiny hemstitched
laps were turned down outside the neck of the slip, and the little
sleeves were caught up by fine strings of gold-clasped pink coral, the
baby’s dimpled shoulders and round head rose up out of the little
shirt-laps like some darling flower.
I have seen an infant’s shirt and a cap embroidered on the laps with
the coat-of-arms of the Lux and Johnson families and the motto, “God
Bless the Babe;” these delicate garments, the work of fairies, were
worn in infancy by the Revolutionary soldier, Governor Johnson of
Virginia.
In the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the baptismal shirt
and mittens of the Pilgrim father, William Bradford, second governor of
the Plymouth colony, who was born in 1590. They are shown here. All are
of firm, close-woven, homespun linen, but the little mittens have been
worn at the ends by the active friction of baby hands, and are patched
with red and yellow figured “chiney” or calico. A similar colored
material frills the sleeves and neck. This may have been part of their
ornamentation when first made, but it looks extraneous.
The sleeves of this shirt are plaited or goffered in a way that seems
wholly lost; this is what I have already described—_pinching_. I have
seen the sleeve of a child’s dress thus pinched which had been worn by
a little girl aged three. The wrist-cuff measured about five inches
around, and was stoutly corded. Upon ripping the sleeve apart, it was
found that the strip of fine mull which was thus pinched into the
sleeve was two yards in length. The cuff flared slightly, else even
this length of sheer lawn could not have been confined at the wrist. In
the so-called “Museum,” gloomily scattered around the famous old South
Church edifice in Boston, are fine examples of this pinched work.
Christening Shirt and Mitts of Governor Bradford. Christening Shirt and
Mitts of Governor Bradford.
Many of the finest existing specimens of old guipure, Flanders, and
needlepoint laces in England and America are preserved on the ancient
shirts, mitts, caps, and bearing-cloths of infants. Often there is a
little padded bib of guipure lace accompanied with tiny mittens like
these.
Flanders Lace Mitts. Flanders Lace Mitts.
This pair was wrought and worn in the sixteenth century, and the
stitches and work are those of the Flanders point laces. I have seen
tiny mitts knitted of silk, of fine linen thread, also made of linen,
hem-stitched, or worked in drawn-work, or embroidered, and one pair of
mittens, and the cap that matched was of tatting-work done in the
finest of thread. No needlepoint could be more beautiful. Some are
shown on here.
Mitts of yellow nankeen or silk, made with long wrists or arms, were
also worn by babies, and must have proved specially irritating to tiny
little hands and arms. These had the seams sewed over and over with
colored silks in a curiously intricate netted stitch.
I have an infant’s cap with two squares of lace set in the crown, one
over each ear. The lace is of a curious design; a conventionalized vase
or urn on a standard. I recognize it as the lace and pattern known as
“pot-lace,” made for centuries at Antwerp, and worn there by old women
on their caps with a devotion to a single pattern that is unparalleled.
It was the “flower-pot” symbol of the Annunciation. The earliest
representation of the Angel Gabriel in the Annunciation showed him with
lilies in his hand; then these lilies were set in a vase. In years the
angel has disappeared and then the lilies, and the lily-pot only
remains. It is a whimsical fancy that this symbol of Romanism should
have been carefully transferred to adorn the pate of a child of the
Puritans. The place of the medallion, set over each ear, is so unusual
that I think it must have had some significance. I wonder whether they
were ever set thus in caps of heavy silk or linen to let the child hear
more readily, as he certainly would through the thin lace net.
The word “beguine” meant a nun; and thus derivatively a nun’s close
cap. This was altered in spelling to biggin, and for a time a nun’s
plain linen cap was thus called. By Shakespere’s day biggin had become
wholly a term for a child’s cap. It was a plain phrase and a plain cap
of linen. Shakespere calls them “homely biggens.”
I have seen it stated that the biggin was a night-cap. When Queen
Elizabeth lost her mother, Anne Boleyn, she was but three years old, a
neglected little creature. A lady of the court wrote that the child had
“no manner of linen, nor for-smocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails, nor
body-stitches, nor handkerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor mufflers, nor
biggins.”
In 1636 Mary Dudley, the daughter of Governor John Winthrop, had a
little baby. She did not live in Boston town, therefore her mother had
to purchase supplies for her; and many letters crossed, telling of
wants, and their relief. “Holland for biggins” was eagerly sought. At
that date all babies wore caps. I mean English and French, Dutch and
Spanish, all mothers deemed it unwise and almost improper for a young
baby ever to be seen bare-headed. With the imperfect heating and many
draughts in all the houses, this mode of dress may have been wholly
wise and indeed necessary. Every child’s head was covered, as the
pictures of children in this book show, until he or she was several
years old. The finest needlework and lace stitches were lavished on
these tiny infants’ caps, which were not, when thus adorned and
ornamented, called biggins.
Infant’s Adjustable Cap. Infant’s Adjustable Cap.
A favorite trimming for night-caps and infants’ caps is a sort of
quilting in a leaf and vine pattern, done with a white cord inserted
between outer and inner pieces of linen—a cord stuffing, as it were. It
does not seem oversuited for caps to be worn in bed or by little
infants, as the stiff cords must prove a disagreeable cushion. This
work was done as early as the seventeenth century; but nearly all the
pieces preserved were made in the early years of the nineteenth century
in the revival of needlework then so universal.
Often a velvet cap was worn outside the biggin or lace cap.
I have never seen a woollen petticoat that was worn by an infant of
pre-Revolutionary days. I think infants had no woollen petticoats;
their shirts, petticoats, and gowns were of linen or some cotton stuff
like dimity. Warmth of clothing was given by tiny shawls pinned round
the shoulders, and heavier blankets and quilts and shawls in which baby
and petticoats were wholly enveloped.
The baby dresses of olden times are either rather shapeless sacques
drawn in at the neck with narrow cotton ferret or linen bobbin, or
little straight-waisted gowns of state. All were exquisitely made by
hand, and usually of fine stuff. Many are trimmed with fine cording.
It is astounding to note the infinite number of stitches put in
garments. An infant’s slips quilted with a single tiny backstitch in a
regular design of interlaced squares, stars, and rounds. By counting
the number of rounds and the stitches in each, and so on, it has been
found that there are 397,000 stitches in that dress. Think of the time
spent even by the quickest sewer over such a piece of work.
Within a few years we have shortened the long clothes worn by youngest
infants; twenty-five years ago the handsome dress of an infant, such as
the christening-robe, was so long that when the child was held on the
arm of its standing nurse or mother, the edge of the robe barely
escaped touching the ground. Two hundred years ago, a baby’s dress was
much shorter. In the family group of Charles I and Henrietta Maria and
their children, in the Copley family picture, and in the picture of the
Cadwalader family, we find the little baby in scarce “three-quarters
length” of robe. With this exception it is astonishing to find how
little infants’ dress has changed during the two centuries. In 1889, at
the Stuart Exhibition, some of the infant dresses of Charles I were
shown. They had been preserved in the family of Sir Thomas Coventry,
Lord Keeper. And Charles II’s baby linen was on view in the New Gallery
in 1901. Both sets had the dainty little shirts, slips, bibs, mitts,
and all the babies’ dress of fifty years ago, and the changes since
then have been few. The “barrow-coat,” a square of flannel wrapped
around an infant’s body below the arms with the part below the feet
turned up and pinned, was part of the old swaddling-clothes; and within
ten years it has been largely abandoned for a flannel petticoat on a
band or waist. The bands, or binders, have always been the same as
to-day, and the bibs. The lace cuffs and lace mittens were left off
before the caps. The shirt is the most important change.
Nowadays a little infant wears long clothes till three, four, or even
eight months old; then he is put in short dresses about as long as he
is. In colonial days when a boy was taken from his swaddling-clothes,
he was dressed in a short frock with petticoats and was “coated” or
sometimes “short-coated.” When he left off coats, he donned breeches.
In families of sentiment and affection, the “coating” of a boy was made
a little festival. So was also the assumption of breeches an important
event—as it really is, as we all know who have boys.
One of the most charming of all grandmothers’ letters was written by a
doting English grandmother to her son. Lord Chief Justice North,
telling of the “leaving off of coats” of his motherless little son,
Francis Guilford, then six years old. The letter is dated October 10,
1679:—
“DEAR SON:
You cannot beleeve the great concerne that was in the whole family here
last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to helpe to dress
little ffrank in his breeches in order to the making an everyday suit
by it. Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her weding night
more handes about her, some the legs, some the armes, the taylor
butt’ning, and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that
had I not a ffinger amongst I could not have seen him. When he was
quite drest he acted his part as well as any of them for he desired he
might goe downe to inquire for the little gentleman that was there the
day before in a black coat, and speak to the man to tell the gentleman
when he came from school that there was a gallant with very fine
clothes and a sword to have waited upon him and would come again upon
Sunday next. But this was not all, there was great contrivings while he
was dressing who should have the first salute; but he sayd if old Joan
had been here, she should, but he gave it to me to quiett them all.
They were very fitt, everything, and he looks taller and prettyer than
in his coats. Little Charles rejoyced as much as he did for he jumpt
all the while about him and took notice of everything. I went to Bury,
and bot everything for another suitt which will be finisht on Saturday
so the coats are to be quite left off on Sunday. I consider it is not
yett terme time and since you could not have the pleasure of the first
sight, I resolved you should have a full relation from
“Yo’r most Aff’nate Mother
“A. North.
“When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion
because they had not sent him one.”
This affectionate letter, written to a great and busy statesman, the
Lord Keeper of the Seals, shows how pure and delightful domestic life
in England could be; it shows how beautiful it was after Puritanism
perfected the English home.
In an old family letter dated 1780 I find this sentence:—
“Mary is most wise with her child, and hath no new-fangledness. She has
little David in what she wore herself, a pudding and pinner.”
For a time these words “pudding and pinner” were a puzzle; and long
after pinner was defined we could not even guess at a pudding. But now
I know two uses of the word “pudding” which are in no dictionary. One
is the stuffing of a man’s great neck-cloth in front, under the chin.
The other is a thick roll or cushion stuffed with wool or some soft
filling and furnished with strings. This pudding was tied round the
head of a little child while it was learning to walk. The head was thus
protected from serious bruises or injury. Nollekens noted with
satisfaction such a pudding on the head of an infant, and said: “That
is right. I always wore a pudding, and all children should.” I saw one
upon a child’s head last summer in a New England town; I asked the
mother what it was, and she answered, “A pudding-cap”; that it made
children soft (idiotic) to bump the head frequently.
The word “pinner” has two meanings. The earlier use was precisely that
of pinafore, or pincurtle, or pincloth—a child’s apron. Thus we read in
the Harvard College records, of the expenses of the year 1677, of
“Linnen Cloth for Table Pinners,” which makes us suspect that Harvard
students of that day had to wear bibs at commons.
All children wore aprons, which might be called pinners; these were
aprons with pinned-up bibs; or they might be tiers, which were sleeved
aprons covering the whole waist, sleeves, and skirt, an outer slip,
buttoned in the back.
A severe and ancient moralist looked forth from her window in
Worcester, one day last spring, at a band of New England children
running to their morning school. She gazed over her glasses
reprovingly, and turned to me with bitterness: “There they go! _Such_
mothers as they must have! Not a pinner nor a sleeved tier among ’em.”
The sleeved tier occupied a singular place in childish opinion in my
youth; and I find the same feeling anent it had existed for many
generations. It was hated by all children, regarded as something to be
escaped from at the earliest possible date. You had to wear sleeved
tiers as you had to have the mumps. It was a thing to endure with what
childish patience and fortitude you could command for a short time; but
thoughtful, tender parents would not make you suffer it long.
There were aprons, and aprons. Pinners and tiers were for use, but
there were elegant aprons for ornament. Did not Queen Anne wear one?
Even babies wore them. The little Padishal child has one richly laced.
I have seen a beautiful apron for a little child of three. It was edged
with a straight insertion of Venetian point like that pictured here. It
had been made in 1690. Tender affection for a beloved and beautiful
little child preserved it in one trunk in the same attic for sixty-five
years; and a beautiful sympathy for that mother’s long sorrow kept the
apron untouched by young lace-lovers. This lace has white horsehair
woven into the edge.
We find George Washington ordering for his little stepdaughter (a
well-dressed child if ever there was one), when she was six years old,
“A fashionable cap or fillet with bib apron.” And a few years later he
orders, “Tuckers, Bibs, and Aprons if Fashionable.” Boys wore aprons as
long as they wore coats; aprons with stomachers or bibs of drawn-work
and lace, or of stiffly starched lawn; aprons just like those of their
sisters. It was hard to bear. Hoop-coat, masks, packthread stays—these
seem strange dress for growing girls.
George Washington sent abroad for masks for his wife and his little
stepdaughter, “Miss Custis,” when the little girl was six years old;
and “children’s masks” are often named in bills of sale. Loo-masks were
small half-masks, and were also imported in all sizes.
The face of Mrs. Madison, familiarly known as “Dolly Madison,” wife of
President James Madison, long retained the beauty of youth. Much of
this was surely due to a faithful mother, who, when little Dolly Payne
was sent to school, sewed a sun-bonnet on the child’s head every
morning, placed on her arms and hands long gloves, and made her wear a
mask to keep every ray of sunlight from her face. When masks were so
universally worn by women, it is not strange, after all, that children
wore them.
Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child. Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child.
I read with horror an advertisement of John McQueen, a New York
stay-maker in 1767, that he has children’s packthread stays, children’s
bone stays, and “neat polished steel collars for young Misses so much
worn at the boarding schools in London.” Poor little “young Misses”!
There were also “turned stays, jumps, gazzets, costrells and caushets”
(which were perhaps corsets) to make children appear straight.
Costrells and gazzets we know not to-day. Jumps were feeble stays.
“Now a shape in neat stays
Now a slattern in jumps.”
Robert Gibbes. Robert Gibbes.
Jumps were allied to jimps, and perhaps to jupe; and I think jumper is
a cousin of a word. One pair of stays I have seen is labelled as having
been made for a boy of five. One of the worst instruments of torture I
ever beheld was a pair of child’s stays worn in 1760. They were made,
not of little strips of wood, but of a large piece of board, front and
back, tightly sewed into a buckram jacket and reënforced across at
right angles and diagonally over the hips (though really there were no
hip-places) with bars of whalebone and steel. The tin corsets I have
heard of would not have been half as ill to wear. It is true, too, that
needles were placed in the front of the stays, that the stay-wearer who
“poked her head” would be well pricked. The daughter of General
Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary patriot, told her grandchildren
that she sat many hours every day in her girlhood, with her feet in
stocks and strapped to a backboard. A friend has a chair of ordinary
size, save that the seat is about four inches wide from the front edge
of seat to the back. And the back is well worn at certain points where
a heavy leather strap strapped up the young girl who was tortured in it
for six years of her life. The result of back board, stocks, steel
collar, wooden stays, is shown in such figures as have Dorothy Q. and
her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth Storer, on page 98 of my _Child Life in
Colonial Days_, is an extreme example, straight-backed indeed, but
narrow-chested to match.
Dr. Holmes wrote in jest, but he wrote in truth, too:—
“They braced My Aunt against a board
To make her straight and tall,
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small.
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins,
Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.”
Nankeen Breeches with Silver Buttons. Nankeen Breeches with Silver
Buttons.
Nankeen was the favorite wear for boys, even before the Revolution. The
little figure of the boy who became Lord Lyndhurst, shown in the Copley
family portrait, is dressed in nankeen; he is the engaging, loving
child looking up in his mother’s face. Nankeen was worn summer and
winter by men, and women, and children. If it were deemed too thin and
too damp a wear for delicate children in extreme winters, then a yellow
color in wool was preferred for children’s dress. I have seen a little
pair of breeches of yellow flannel made precisely like these nankeen
breeches on this page. They were worn in 1768. Carlyle in his _Sartor
Resartus_ gives this account of the childhood of the professor and
philosopher of his book:—
“My first short clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say,
my first short cloth; for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching
from neck to ankle; a single body with four limbs; of which fashion how
little could I then divine the architectural, much less the moral
significance.”
Ralph Izard when a Little Boy. 1750. Ralph Izard when a Little Boy.
1750.
It is a curious coincidence that a great philosopher of our own world
wore a precisely similar dress in his youth. Madam Mary Bradford writes
in a private letter, at the age of one hundred and three, of her life
in 1805 in the household of Rev. Joseph Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson
was then a little child of two years, and he and his brother William
till several years old were dressed wholly in yellow flannel, by night
and by day. When they put on trousers, which was at about the age of
seven, they wore complete home-made suits of nankeen. The picture
amuses me of the philosophical child, Ralph Waldo, walking soberly
around in ugly yellow flannel, contentedly sucking his thumb; for Mrs.
Bradford records that he was the hardest child to break of sucking his
thumb whom she ever had seen during her long life. I cannot help
wondering whether in their soul-to-soul talks Emerson ever told Carlyle
of the yellow woollen dress of his childhood, and thus gave him the
thought of the child’s dress for his philosopher.
Fortunately for the children who were our grandparents. French fashions
were not absorbingly the rage in America until after some amelioration
of dress had come to French children. Mercier wrote at length at the
close of the eighteenth century of the abominable artificiality and
restraint in dress of French children; their great wigs, full-skirted
coats, immense ruffles, swords on thigh, and hat in hand. He contrasts
them disparagingly with English boys. The English boy was certainly
more robust, but I find no difference in dress. Wigs, swords, ruffles,
may be seen at that time both in English and American portraits. But an
amelioration of dress did come to both English and American boys
through the introduction of pantaloons, and a change to little girls’
dress through the invention of pantalets, but the changes came first to
France, in spite of Mercier’s animadversions. These changes will be
left until the later pages of this book; for during nearly all the two
hundred years of which I write children’s dress varied little. It
followed the changes of the parent’s dress, and adopted some modes to a
degree but never to an extreme.