PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES
W
hen this old pigskin trunk was new, the men who fought in the
Revolution were young. Here is the date, “1756,” and the initials in
brass-headed nails, “J.E.H.” It was a bride’s trunk, the trunk of
Elizabeth, who married John; and it was marked after the manner of
marking the belongings of married folk in her day. It is curious in
shape, spreading out wide at the top; for it was made to fit a special
place in an old coach. I have told the story of that ancient coach in
my _Old Narragansett_: the tale of the ignoble end of its days, the
account of its fall from transportation of this happy bride and
bridegroom, through years of stately use and formal dignity to more
years of happy desuetude as a children’s cubby-house; and finally its
ignominy as a roosting-place, and hiding-place, and laying-place, and
setting-place of misinformed and misguided hens. Under the coachman’s
seat, where the two-score dark-blue Staffordshire pie-plates were found
on the day of the annihilation of the coach, was the true resting-place
of this trunk. It was a hidden spot, for the trunk was small, and was
intended to hold only treasures. It holds them still, though they are
not the silver-plate, the round watches, the narrow laces, and the
precious camel’s-hair scarf. It now holds treasured relics of the olden
time; trifles, but not unconsidered ones; much esteemed trifles are
they, albeit not in form or shape or manner of being fit to rest in
parlor cabinets or on tables, but valued, nevertheless, valued for that
most intangible of qualities—association.
Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760. Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760.
Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790. Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790.
Here is one little “antick.” It is an ample bag with the neat double
drawing-strings of our youth; a bag, nay, a pocket. It once hung by the
side of some one of my forbears, perhaps Elizabeth of the brass-nailed
initials. It was a much-esteemed pocket, though it is only of figured
cotton or chiney; but those stuffs were much sought after when this old
trunk was new. The pocket has served during recent years as a cover for
two articles of footwear which many “of the younger sort” to-day have
never seen—they are pattens. “Clumsy, ugly pattens” we find them
frequently stigmatized in the severe words of the early years of the
nineteenth century, but there is nothing ugly or clumsy about this
pair. The sole is of some black, polished wood—it is heavy enough for
ebony; the straps are of strong leather neatly stitched; the buckles
are polished brass, and brass nails fasten the leather to the wooden
soles. These soles are cut up high in a ridge to fit under the instep
of a high-heeled shoe; for it was a very little lady who wore these
pattens,—Elizabeth,—and her little feet always stood in the highest
heels. She was active, kindly, and bountiful. She lived to great age,
and she could and did walk many miles a day until the last year of her
life. She is recalled as wearing a great scarlet cloak with a black
silk quilted hood on cold winter days, when she visited her neighbors
with kindly words, and housewifely, homely gifts, conveyed in an ample
basket. The cloak was made precisely like the scarlet cloak shown here,
and had a like hood. She was brown-eyed, and her dark hair was never
gray even in extreme old age; nor was the hair of her granddaughter,
another Elizabeth, my grandmother. Trim and erect of figure, and
precise and neat of dress, wearing, on account of this neatness,
shorter petticoats, when walking, than was the mode of her day, and
also through this neatness clinging to the very last to these cleanly,
useful, quaint pattens. Her black hood, frilled white cap, short,
quilted petticoat, high-heeled shoes, and the shining ebony and brass
pattens, and over all the great, full scarlet cloak,—all these made her
an unusual and striking figure against the Wayland landscape, the snowy
fields and great sombre pine trees of Heard’s Island, as she trod
trimly, in short pattened steps that crackled the kittly-benders in the
shadowed roads, or sunk softly in the shallow mud of the sunny lanes on
a snow-melting day in late winter. Would I could paint the picture as I
see it!
These pattens in the old trunk are prettier than most pattens which
have been preserved. In general, they are rather shabby things. I have
another pair—more commonplace, which chance to exist; they were not
saved purposely. They are pictured here.
English Clogs. English Clogs.
There is a most ungallant old riddle, “Why is a wife like a patten?”
The answer reads, “Because both are clogs.” A very courteous bishop was
once asked this uncivil query, and he answered without a moment’s
hesitation, “Because both elevate the soul (sole).” Pattens may be
clogs, yet there is a difference. After much consultation of various
authorities, and much discussion in the columns of various querying
journals, I make this decision and definition. Pattens are thick,
wooden soles roughly shaped in the outline of the human foot (in the
shoemaker’s notion of that member), mounted on a round or oval ring of
iron, fixed by two or three pins to the sole, in such a way that when
the patten is worn the sole of the wearer’s foot is about two inches
above the ground. A heel-piece with buckles and straps, strings or
buttons and leather loops, and a strap over the toe, retain the patten
in place upon the foot when the wearer trips along. (See here.) Clogs
serve the same purpose, but are simply wooden soles tipped and shod
with iron. These also have heel-pieces and straps of various
materials—from the heavy serviceable leather shown in the clogs here
and here to the fine brocade clogs made and worn by two brides and
pictured here. Dainty brass tips and colored morocco straps made a
really refined pair of clogs. Poplar wood was deemed the best wood for
pattens and clogs. Sometimes the wooden sole was thin, and was cut at
the line under the instep in two pieces and hinged. These hinges were
held to facilitate walking. Children also wore clogs. (See here.)
Clogs, as worn by English and American folk, did not raise the wearer
as high above the mud and mire as did pattens, but I have seen Turkish
clogs that were ten inches high. Chopines were worn by Englishwomen to
make them look taller. Three are shown here. Lady Falkland was short
and stout, and wore them for years to increase her apparent height; so
she states in her memoirs.
It is a curious philological study that, while the words “clogs” and
“pattens” for a time were constantly heard, the third name which has
survived till to-day is the oldest of all—“galoshes.” Under the many
spellings, galoe-shoes, goloshes, gallage, galoche, and gallosh, it has
come down to us from the Middle Ages. It is spelt galoches in _Piers
Plowman_. In a _Compotus_—or household account of the Countess of Derby
in 1388 are entries of botews (boots), souters (slippers), and “one
pair of galoches, 14 d.” Clogs, or galoches, were known in the days of
the Saxons, when they were termed “wife’s shoes.”
A “galage” was a shoe “which has nothing on the feet but a latchet”; it
was simply a clog. In February, 1687, Judge Sewall notes, “Send my
mothers Shoes &; Golowshoes to carry to her.” In 1736 Peter Faneuil
sent to England for “Galoushoes” for his sister. Another foot-covering
for slippery, icy walking is named by Judge Sewall. He wrote on January
19, 1717, “Great rain and very Slippery; was fain to wear Frosts.”
These frosts were what had been called on horses, “frost nails,” or
calks. They were simply spiked soles to help the wearer to walk on ice.
A pair may be seen at the Deerfield Memorial Hall. Another pair is of
half-soles with sharp ridges of iron, set, one the length of the
half-sole, the other across it.
Chopines, Seventeenth Century. In the Ashmolean Museum. Chopines,
Seventeenth Century. In the Ashmolean Museum.
For a time clogs seem to have been in constant use in America; frail
morocco slippers and thin prunella and callimanco shoes made them
necessary, as did also the unpaved streets. Heavy-soled shoes were
unknown for women’s wear. Women walked but short distances. In the
country they always rode. We find even Quaker women warned in 1720 not
to wear “Shoes of light Colours bound with Differing Colours, and heels
White or Red, with White bands, and fine Coloured Clogs and Strings,
and Scarlet and Purple Stockings and Petticoats made Short to expose
them”—a rather startling description of footwear. Again, in 1726, in
Burlington, New Jersey, Friends were asked to be “careful to avoid
wearing of Stript Shoos, or Red and White Heel’d Shoos, or Clogs, or
Shoos trimmed with Gawdy Colours.”
Brides’ Clogs of Brocade and Sole Leather. Brides’ Clogs of Brocade and
Sole Leather.
Ann Warder, an English Quaker, was in Philadelphia, 1786 to 1789, and
kept an entertaining journal, from which I make this quotation:—
“Got B. Parker to go out shopping with me. On our way happened of Uncle
Head, to whom I complained bitterly of the dirty streets, declaring if
I could purchase a pair of pattens, the singularity I would not mind.
Uncle soon found me up an apartment, out of which I took a pair and
trotted along quite Comfortable, crossing some streets with the
greatest ease, which the idea of had troubled me. My little companion
was so pleased, that she wished some also, and kept them on her feet to
learn to walk in them most of the remainder of the day.”
Fairholt, in his book upon costume, says, “Pattens date their origin to
the reign of Anne.” Like many other dates and statements given by this
author, this is wholly wrong. In _Purchas’, his Pilgrimage_, 1613, is
this sentence, “Clogges or Pattens to keep them out of the dust they
may not burden themselves with,” showing that the name and thing was
the same then as to-day.
Clogs of “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Clogs of “Pennsylvania Dutch.”
Charles Dibdin has a song entitled, _The Origin of the Patten_. Fair
Patty went out in the mud and the mire, and her thin shoes speedily
were wet. Then she became hoarse and could not sing, while her lover
longed for the sweet sound of her voice.
“My anvil glow’d, my hammer rang,
Till I had form’d from out the fire
To bear her feet above the mire,
A platform for my blue-eyed Patty.
Again was heard each tuneful close,
My fair one in the patten rose,
Which takes its name from blue-eyed Patty.”
This fanciful derivation of the word was not an original thought of
Dibdin. Gay wrote in his Trivia, 1715:—
“The patten now supports each frugal dame
That from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.”
In reality, patten is derived from the French word _patin_, which has a
varied meaning of the sole of a shoe or a skate.
Pattens were noisy, awkward wear. A writer of the day of their
universality wrote, “Those ugly, noisy, ferruginous, ancle-twisting,
foot-cutting, clinking things called women’s pattens.” Notices were set
in church porches enjoining the removal of women’s pattens, which, of
course, should never have been worn into church during service-time.
Children’s Clogs. 1730. Children’s Clogs. 1730.
It may have disappeared today, but four years ago, on the door of
Walpole St. Peters, near Wisbeck, England, hung a board which read,
“People who enter this church are requested to take off their pattens.”
A friend in Northamptonshire, England, writes me that pattens are still
seen on muddy days in remote English villages in that shire.
Men wore pattens in early days. And men did and do wear clogs in
English mill-towns.
There were also horse pattens or horse clogs which horses wore through
deep, muddy roads; I have an interesting photograph of a pair found in
Northampton.