THE COLONIAL WARDROBE
The Dutch goodwife worked hard from early morn till sunset. She
worked in restricted ways, she had few recreations and pleasures
and altogether little variety in her life; but she possessed what
doubtless proved to her in that day, as it would to any woman in
this day, a source of just satisfaction, a soothing to the spirit, a
staying of melancholy, a moral support second only to the solace of
religion,--namely, a large quantity of very good clothes, which were
substantial, cheerful, and suitable, if not elegant.
The Dutch never dressed “in a plaine habbit according to the maner
of a poore wildernesse people,” as the Connecticut colonists wrote
of themselves to Charles II.; nor were they weary wanderers in a
wilderness as were Connecticut folk.
I have not found among the statutes of New Netherland any sumptuary
laws such as were passed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia,
to restrain and attempt to prohibit luxury and extravagance in dress.
Nor have I discovered in the court-records any evidences of magisterial
reproof of finery; there is, on the contrary, much indirect proof of
encouragement to “dress orderly and well according to the fashion and
the time.” Of course the Dutch had no Puritanical dread of over-rich
garments; and we must also never forget New Netherland was not
under the control of a government nor of a religious band, but of a
trading-company.
The ordinary dress of the fair dames and damsels of New Amsterdam has
been vividly described by Diedrich Knickerbocker; and even with the
additional light upon their wardrobe thrown by the lists contained in
colonial inventories, I still think his description of their every-day
dress exceedingly good for one given by a man. He writes:
“Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously
pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a
little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads.
Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of
gorgeous dyes, though I must confess those gallant garments were
rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made
up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen’s
small-clothes; and what is still more praiseworthy, they were all
of their own manufacture,--of which circumstance, as may well be
supposed, they were not a little vain.
“Those were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read
the Bible, and wore pockets,--ay, and that, too, of a goodly size,
fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously
worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles where
all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished
to have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly
crammed.
“Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and
pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbons, or, among the
more opulent and showy classes, by a brass and even silver chains,
indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters.
I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats;
it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings
a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with
magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and
a neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern
shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle.
“There was a secret charm in those petticoats, which no doubt entered
into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a
lady was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock
of petticoats and stockings was as absolutely an heiress as is a
Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with
plenty of reindeer.”
A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting New York in 1704, wrote:--
“The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch,
especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habitt
go loose, wear French muches wch are like a Capp and head-band in one,
leaving their ears bare, which are sett out with jewells of a large
size and many in number; and their fingers hoop’t with rings, some
with large stones in them of many Coullers, as were their pendants in
their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as Young.”
This really gives a very good picture of the _vrouws_; “loose in their
habit,” wearing sacques and loose gowns, not laced in with pointed
waists as were the English and Boston women; with the ornamental
head-dress, and the gay display of stoned earrings and rings, which
was also not the usual wear of New England women, who generally owned
only a few funeral rings.
In the inventories of personal estates contained in the Surrogate’s
Court we find details of the wardrobe; but as I have enumerated
and defined all the different articles at some length in my book,
“Costume of Colonial Times,” I will not repeat the definitions here;
but it should be remembered that in the enumeration of the articles
of clothing, many stuffs and materials of simple names were often of
exceedingly good and even rich quality. From those inventories we have
proof that all Dutch women had plenty of clothes; while the wives of
the burgomasters, the opulent merchants, and those in authority, had
rich clothes. I have given in full in my book a list of the clothing
of a wealthy New York dame, Madam De Lange; but I wish to refer to it
again as an example of a really beautiful wardrobe. In it were twelve
petticoats of varying elegance, some worth two pounds fifteen shillings
each, which would be more than fifty dollars to-day. They were of silk
lined with silk, striped stuff, scarlet cloth, and ash-gray cloth.
Some were trimmed with gold lace. With those petticoats were worn
samares and samares-a-potoso, six in number, which were evidently
jackets or fancy bodies; these were of calico, crape, “tartanel,”
and silk. One trimmed with lace was worth three pounds. Waistcoats
and bodies also appear; also fancy sleeves. Love-hoods of silk and
cornet-caps with lace make a pretty head-gear to complete this costume,
with which was worn the reim or silver girdle with hanging purse, and
also with a handsome number of diamond, amber, and white coral jewels.
The colors in the Dutch gowns were almost uniformly gay,--in keen
contrast to the sad-colored garments of New England. Madam Cornelia de
Vos in a green cloth petticoat, a red and blue “Haarlamer” waistcoat,
a pair of red and yellow sleeves, and a purple “Pooyse” apron was a
blooming flower-bed of color.
The dress of Vrouentje Ides Stoffelsen, a very capable Dutchwoman who
went to Bergen Point to live, varied a little from that of these town
dames. Petticoats she had, and waistcoats, bodies and sleeves; but
there was also homelier attire,--purple and blue aprons, four pairs of
pattens, a fur cap instead of love-hoods, and twenty-three caps. She
wore the simpler and more universal head-gear,--a close linen or calico
cap.
The head covering was of considerable importance in New Amsterdam, as
it was in Holland as well as in England at that date. We find that it
was also costly. In 1665 Mistress Piertje Jans sold a fine “little
ornamental headdress” for fifty-five guilders to the young daughter
of Evert Duyckinck. But it seems that Missy bought this “genteel
head-clothes” without the knowledge or permission of her parents, and
on its arrival at the Duyckinck home Vrouw Duyckinck promptly sent back
the emblem of extravagance and disobedience. Summoned to court by the
incensed milliner who wished no rejected head-dresses on her hands,
and who claimed that the transaction was from the beginning with full
cognizance of the parents, Father Duyckinck pronounced the milliner’s
bill extortionate; and furthermore said gloomily, with a familiar
nineteenth-century phraseology of New York fathers, that “this was
no time to be buying and wearing costly head-dresses.” But the court
decided in the milliner’s favor.
It is to be deplored that we have no fashion-plates of past centuries
to show to us in exact presentment the varying modes worn by New York
dames from year to year; that method of fashion-conveying has been
adopted but a century. The modes in olden days travelled from country
to country, from town to town, in the form of dolls or “babies,”
as they were called, wearing miniature model costumes. These dolls
were dressed by cutters and tailors in Paris or London, and with
various tiny modish garments were sent out on their important mission
across the water. In Venice a doll attired in the last fashions--the
toilette of the year--was for centuries exhibited on each Ascension
Day at the “Merceria” for the edification of noble Venetian dames,
who eagerly flocked to the attractive sight. Not less eagerly did
American dames flock to provincial mantua-makers and milliners to see
the London-dressed babies with their miniature garments. Even in this
century, fashions were brought to New York and Philadelphia and Albany
through “milliners’ boxes” containing dressed dolls. Mrs. Vanderbilt
tells of one much admired fashion-doll of her youth who had a treasured
old age as a juvenile goddess.
A leading man of New Amsterdam, a burgomaster, had at the time of his
death, near the end of Dutch rule, this plentiful number of substantial
garments: a cloth coat with silver buttons, a stuff coat, cloth
breeches, a cloth coat with gimp buttons, a black cloth coat, a silk
coat, breeches and doublet, a silver cloth breeches and doublet, a
velvet waistcoat with silver lace, a buff coat with silk sleeves, three
“gross-green” cloaks, several old suits of clothes, linen, hosiery,
silver-buckled shoes, an ivory-headed cane, and a hat. One hat may
seem very little with so many other garments; but the real beaver hats
of those days were so substantial, so well-made, so truly worthy an
article of attire, that they could be constantly worn and yet last for
years. They were costly; some were worth several pounds apiece.
Gayer masculine garments are told of in other inventories: green silk
breeches flowered with silver and gold, silver gauze breeches, yellow
fringed gloves, lacquered hats, laced shirts and neck-cloths, and
(towards the end of the century, and nearly through the eighteenth
century) a vast variety of wigs. For over a hundred years these
unnatural abominations, which bore no pretence of resembling the human
hair, often in grotesque, clumsy, cumbersome shapes, bearing equally
fantastic names, and made of various indifferent and coarse materials,
loaded the heads and lightened the pockets of our ancestors. I am glad
to note that they were taxed by the government of the province of New
York. The barber and wig-maker soon became a very important personage
in a community so given over to costly modes of dressing the head.
Advertisements in the newspapers show the various kinds of wigs worn
in the middle of the eighteenth century. From the “New York Gazette”
of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief’s stealing “one gray Hair Wig,
one Horse hair wig not the worse for wearing, one Pale Hair Wig, not
worn five times, marked V. S. E., one brown Natural wig, One old wig
of goat’s hair put in buckle.” Buckle meant to curl; and derivatively
a wig was in buckle when it was rolled on papers for curling. Other
advertisements tell of “Perukes, Tets, and Fox-tails after the
Genteelest Fashion. Ladies’ Tets and wigs in perfect imitation of
their own hair.” Other curious notices are of “Orange Butter” for
“Gentlewomen to comb up their hair with.”
This use of orange butter as a pomatum was certainly unique; it was
really a Dutch marmalade. I read in my “Closet of Rarities,” dated
1706:--
“The Dutch Way to make Orange-butter. Take new cream two gallons, beat
it up to a thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower-water,
and as much red wine, and so being become the thicknesse of butter it
has both the colour and smell of an orange.”
A very characteristic and eye-catching advertisement was this from the
“New York Gazette” of May 21, 1750:--
“This is to acquaint the Public, that there is lately arrived from
London the Wonder of the World, _an Honest_ Barber and Peruke Maker,
who might have worked for the King, if his Majesty would have
employed him: It was not for the want of Money he came here, for he
had enough of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, that he
advertises hinself, BUT to acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies, That
_Such a Person is now in Town_, living near _Rosemary Lane_ where
Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.:
Tyes, Full-Bottoms, Majors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut
and bob Perukes: Also Ladies Tatematongues and Towers after the Manner
that is now wore at Court. _By their Humble and Obedient Servant_,
“JOHN STILL.”
With the change from simple Dutch ways of hairdressing came in other
details more constrained modes of dressing. With the wig-maker came the
stay-maker, whose curious advertisements may be read in scores in the
provincial newspapers; and his arbitrary fashions bring us to modern
times.
From the deacons’ records of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany we
catch occasional hints of the dress of the children of the Dutch
colonists. There was no poor-house, and few poor; but since the church
occasionally helped worthy folk who were not rich, we find the deacons
in 1665 and 1666 paying for blue linen for _schorteldoecykers_, or
aprons, for Albany _kindeken_; also for _haaken en oogen_, or hooks and
eyes, for warm under-waists called _borsrockyen_. They bought linen
for _luyers_, which were neither pinning-blankets nor diapers, but a
sort of swaddling clothes, which evidently were worn then by Dutch
babies. _Voor-schooten_, which were white bibs; _neerstucken_, which
were tuckers, also were worn by little children. Some little Hans of
Pieter had given to him by the deacons a fine little scarlet _aperock_,
or monkey-jacket; and other children were furnished linen _cosynties_,
or night-caps with capes. Yellow stockings were sold at the same time
for children, and a gay little yellow turkey-legged Dutchman in a
scarlet monkey-jacket and fat little breeches must have been a jolly
sight.