THE LATER COLONIAL PERIOD
Though perhaps rather a ramification than an inherent part of the
history of woman, the subject of dress among the female colonists, at
least in New England, is one of too great interest to permit it to be
passed over in silence in a book concerning the women of America. From
the very first--retracing our steps somewhat in order to obtain a
complete view of the matter--the question of female dress was one that
in New England was constantly giving grave offence and even scandal to
the more serious of the colonists. Sumptuary laws were passed again and
again, their very repetition showing how helpless was legislation to
cope with the conditions confronting it in the matter of feminine love
for gauds. As early as 1634 there was enacted a law which forbade any
person, either man or woman, from making or buying any apparel, either
woollen or silk or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, or thread,
under the penalty of forfeiture of said clothes. Gold and silver
girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats were prohibited by the
same law; but the planters were permitted to wear out such apparel as
they were already provided with, "except the immoderate great sleeves,
slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings." Five years
later there was a new piece of legislation which banished "immoderate
great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk
ruses, double ruffles and capes," and in 1651 the General Court, having
found its legislation futile in many respects, descended to argument,
and expressed its "utter detestation and dislike that men or women of
meane condition, education, and callings shoulde take uppon them the
garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of gold or silver lace or buttons or
poynts at their knees, to walke in great boots, or women of the same
rank to weare silke or tiffany hoodes or scarfes." If those "of meane
condition" did these things, it is evident that the people of higher
class could not have been very sober in their garb--indeed we know that
they were not. In 1676 the Court of Connecticut passed a law that is
worthy of quotation in full, since it not only sets forth the Puritan
opinion upon the matter, but shows the ingenuity of their efforts to
cope with the growing evil, and also gives us a good idea of the
fashions of that time:
"Whereas excess in apparel amongst us is unbecoming a wilderness
condition and the profession of the gospell, whereby the riseing
Generation is in danger to be corrupted, which practices are testifyed
against in God's holy word, it is therefore ordered by this Court and
authority thereof, that what person soever shall wear Gold or Silver
Lace, or Gold or Silver Buttons, Silk Ribbons, or other costly
superfluous trimings, or any bone Lace above three shillings per yard,
or Silk Scarf es, the List makers of the respective Townes are hereby
required to assesse such persons so offending, (or their Husbands,
parents, or masters under whose government they are) in the list of
Estates at one hundred and fifty pound Estate; and they to pay their
Rates according to that proportion, as such men use to pay, to whom such
apparell alowed as suitable to their Rank, provided this law shall not
extend to any magistrate, or a like publique officer of this Colony,
their wives or children, whoe are left to their discretion in wearing of
apparell, or any setled military commission officer, or such whose
quality and Estate have been above the ordinary degree, though now
decayed.
"It is further ordered that all such persons as shall for the future
make, or weave, or buy any apparell exceeding the quality and condition
of their persons and Estates, or that is apparently beyond the necessary
end of apparell for covering or comeliness, either of these to be judged
by the Grand Jury and County Court where such presentments are made,
shall forfeit for every such offence ten shillings; and if any Taylor
shall fashion any garment for any child or servant contrary to the mind
of the Parent or Master of such a child or servant, he shall forfeit for
every such offence ten shillings."
Think of the position of the Grand Jury and County Court which were to
decide as to whether "apparell" went beyond the "necessary end for
covering or comeliness!" Imagine the grave and reverend judges and the
sapient jurymen putting their wise heads together over the question as
to whether Mistress Anne's "wascote" was an inch too long for the mere
needs of covering, or whether Mistress Jane's coif was decorated with
lace beyond the absolute requirements of comeliness! The law doubtless
meant well, but from its nature it was not capable of enforcement.
A fairly comprehensive understanding of the wardrobe of a lady of the
mid-seventeenth century may be furnished by reproducing, in all the
glory of its original orthography, the list of the clothes of Jane
Humphrey, as given in her last will and testament. Mistress Humphrey
died in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1668, and she seems to have had no
possessions beyond her wardrobe. This, however, was not uncommon at the
time, when clothes had a value that came from their rarity of stuff and
necessary skill in fashioning, so that such a list as that of the
deceased lady represented a considerable amount in those days.
"Ye Jump. Best Red Kersey Petticoate. Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My
blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian Wascote. A
black silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Apron. A plain black
Quoife without any lace. A white Holland Appron with a small lace at the
bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish Searge petticoat. Greene
Searge Wascote & my hoode & muffe. My Greene Linsey Woolsey petticoate.
My Whittle that is fringed and my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A
blew Apron. My best Quife with a lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A
White Holland apron with two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A
greene Vnder Coate. Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake
and my blew Wascote. My best White Apron, my best Shifts. One of my best
Neck Cloathes, and one of my plain Quieus. One Calico Vnder Neck Cloath.
My fine thick Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A square Cloath
with a little lace on it. My greene Apron."
It is not probable that many women of the present day, far less any man,
will be able to recognize all the stuffs that are here represented; but
we can easily gather that Mistress Humphrey was well provided in the
matter of "apparell", and the fact that her wardrobe was deemed worthy
to be so divided into small portions--for each period as printed
represents a beneficiary, the name being omitted as of no interest to
us--of itself proves the value that in those days attached to the
smallest articles of clothing. Yet a gown could be made at a cost of but
eight shillings for the mantua-maker; the whole of the expense lay in
the stuff, which was costly in proportion to its difficulty of
attainment. Indian stuffs were very popular among the later colonists
and in the days immediately after the Revolution. In the matter of
general fashions at this time it may be best to quote from a work
written by a woman concerning feminine costume in the older days of our
country:
"We can gain some notion of the general shape of the dress of our
forbears at various periods from the portraits of the times. Those of
Madam Shrimpton and of Rebecca Rawson are among the earliest. They were
painted during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The dress is
not very graceful, but far from plain, showing no trace of Puritanical
simplicity; in fact, it is precisely that seen in portraits of English
well-to-do folk of the same date. Both have strings of beads around the
neck and no other jewels; both wear loosely tied and rather shapeless
flat hoods concealing the hair, Madam Shrimpton's having an embroidered
edge about two inches wide. Similar hoods are shown in Remain de Rooge
prints of the landing of King William, of the women in the coronation
procession. They were like the Nithesdale hoods of Hogarth's prints, but
smaller. Both New England dames have also broad collars, stiff and ugly,
with uncurved horizontal lower edge, apparently trimmed with embroidery
or cut-work. Both show the wooden contour of figure which was either the
fault of the artist or of the iron busk of the wearer's stays. The
bodies are stiffly pointed, and the most noticeable feature of the gown
is the sleeve, consisting of a double puff drawn in just above the
elbow; in one case with very narrow ribbon loops. Randle Holme says that
a sleeve thus tied in at the elbow was called a virago sleeve.
Madam Shrimpton's sleeve has also a falling frill of embroidery and lace
and a ruffle around the armsize. The question of sleeves sorely vexed
the colonial magistrates. Men and women were forbidden to have but one
slash or opening in each sleeve. Then the inordinate width of sleeves
became equally trying, and all were ordered to restrain themselves to
sleeves half an ell wide. Worse modes were to come: 'short sleeves
whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered' had to be
prohibited; and if any such ill-fashioned gowns came over from London,
the owners were enjoined to wear thick linen to cover the arms to the
wrist. Existing portraits show how futile were these precautions, how
inoperative these laws; arms were bared with impunity, with complacency,
and the presentment of Governor Wentworth shows three slashes in the
sleeves.
"Not only were the arms of New England women bared to an immodest
degree, but their necks also, calling forth many a 'just and seasonable
reprehension of naked breasts.' Though gowns thus cut in the pink of the
English mode proved too scanty to suit Puritan ministers, the fair
wearers wore them as long as they were in vogue.
"It is curious to note in the oldest gowns I have seen, that the method
of cutting and shaping the waist or body is precisely the same as at the
present day. The outlines of the shoulder and back-seams, of the bust
forms, are the same, though not so gracefully curved: and the number of
pieces is usually the same. Very good examples to study are the gorgeous
brocaded gowns of Peter Faneuil's sister, perfectly preserved and now
exhibited in the Boston Art Museum."
That the record made in this quotation may be complete, it must be
supplemented by a few words devoted to another aspect of fashion among
the early Puritans. This was in the matter of hair-dressing, that
fashion which went to such enormous lengths in England during the
eighteenth century. A curious fact is that the Puritan women seem
generally to have worn "bangs"; and this fact is more of a certificate
to their simplicity than to their taste. However, there was a large
leaven of fashion in the towns of the Puritans; for in 1683 Increase
Mather thus spoke of the mode of his day: "Will not the haughty
daughters of Zion refrain their pride in apparell? Will they lay out
their hair, and wear their false locks, their borders, and towers like
comets about their heads?" These queries suggest decided lengths in head
adornment, probably even to the adoption of the "heart-breakers" worn in
1670, which are described as "False locks set on wyers to make them
stand at a distance from the head." One would think that such frank
admission of falsity might plead its own excuse; but one Puritan
minister describes the women of that time as "Apes of Fancy, friziling
and curyling of their hayr."
Enough of dress and fashion! Yet some record thereof is pertinent here,
for it shows us the gradual change which was being worked in the customs
and ideas of New England. The colonies were becoming conventional; when
modishness comes in at the door, individuality flies out at the window.
The ideal of the home was being modified, not to say altered. There had
always been among a certain element a love for the gauds and fripperies
of the world, but it was not until the opening of the second colonial
period that this element grew to the ascendency in New England. The old
primitive simplicity as a national attribute was beginning to fail, and
in its stead was being imported the conventional complexity of life in
the mother country. New England was becoming more deserving of her name;
she was growing to be a lesser England instead of a new civilization.
She was fast falling into the errors that were undermining the true
American spirit in the southern colonies.
We have seen the wardrobe of a New England woman, presumably one of
fashion, yet not of notable rank. Here was a great change from the era
when the majority of women wore homespun and furnished themselves with
the material which they wore as well as fashioned the garments with
their own hands. Of course there was still, and long continued to be, an
element that preserved the household traditions of the earlier settlers,
and thus the individuality of the life; but it had come to be in the
minority. The New England woman, taken from the representative class, no
longer whirled her spinning wheel and wove the garments for her wearing
and that of her family; she looked to her goodman to import these things
from England in the vessels which were now regularly arriving in the
home ports.
Another sign of the changed conditions of the New England home was the
matter of domestic service. In 1687, according to the writer of _The
Diary of a French Refugee_ in Boston, there was "absolute Need of Hired
Help;" but it was less household servants than field hands to whom the
author was referring. Later, however, we find Hugh Peters, of Salem,
writing to an acquaintance in Boston, "Wee haue heard of a diuidence of
women & children in the baye & would be glad of a share viz: a young
woman or girle & a boy if you thinke goode." This points to domestic
service, as does a later letter from the same source, in which he says,
"My wife desires my daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayde now at
Charlestowne to know if she would dwell with us, for truly wee are now
so destutute (having now but an Indian) that wee know not what to do."
Later yet, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in the
journals frequent advertisements of runaway servants, mostly Indians.
There was also negro slavery in the northern colonies, though it was
never entirely accepted as an institution,--not from any moral scruples,
but because of inexpediency and poverty. In 1645, Emanuel Downing
suggested the exchange of Indian captives for negroes, and said, "I doe
not see how wee can thrive untill wee gett a stock of slaves sufficient
to doe all our business;" but this probably referred to field hands,
though he later wrote to England for "godly e skylful paynestakeing
girles" as servants, and in default of these he at last fairly
inaugurated the system of slavery which existed for a time in New
England. There were white slaves as well as black in the northern
colonies, and this infamous custom helped to solve the problem of
domestic service.
That there was trouble with servants in those old days, even as in these
present, is amply attested by the records; but it was possible to resort
to more drastic measures than are now feasible. We read that at
Hartford, "Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris
is to be sent to the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and
course dyet, to be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publiquely
corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the
contrary." This was in the early times, and many matrons of later days,
even as many now, must have longed for the return of the laws which
enabled them to keep their servants in order. Mary Dudley has set forth
her experience in this matter in a letter to her mother, Madame
Winthrop, whom she had asked to send her "a goode girle, a strong lusty
servant, used to all kind of work who would refuse none." Her letter of
complaint is worth quoting at large, as showing the conditions of the
New England housekeeper of that day in relation to her "help:"
"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now I am
like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming to
me she carried herselfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through
mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath
got such a head and is growen so insolent that her carriage towards vs
especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge she will
bid me to doe it myselfe, and she sayes how she can give content as wel
as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietness I
was never so fitted in my life for she would make mee have enough of it.
If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie
language she hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you."
There is more of it; but enough has been quoted to show the tone, which
is strikingly prophetic of many things of the present day; even a piece
of our reprehensible slang seems foreshadowed in that phrase, "she hath
got such a head." In another letter, this time written by a man, John
Winthrop, we hear that the "Irish creature" whom he and his wife have
for servant is a very plague. She is "lying and unfaithfull; w'd doe
things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her mistress; lye out
of the house anights and have contrivances w'th fellows that have been
stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out of ye cellar for them; saucy
and impudent.... She w'd frequently take her mistresses capps and
stockins, hankerchers etc., to dress herselfe and away without leave
among her companions." So that the servant question was just as
difficult of solution among our great-great-grandmothers as for
ourselves.
Yet from this very condition of servitude blossomed one of the purest
flowers of romance that we find in the history of the early days of our
country,--the story of Agnes Surriage. She was but a servant, a mere
drudge, scrubbing the floor of the tavern at Marblehead, when her beauty
attracted the attention of young Sir Harry Frankland, then collector of
the port of Boston. Noting that she was barefooted, he gave her a crown
to buy a pair of shoes; but on a subsequent visit he saw her again
scrubbing and still shoeless. His question as to the disposition of his
crown elicited the reply that she had bought the shoes but was keeping
them "to wear to meeting;" and though there would seem to be no great
wit herein, it is recorded that Frankland thought that "a reply had
never been made with such charming grace." At all events, he
incontinently fell heels over head in love; but his pride of family
forbade marriage, and it would seem that at first his intentions toward
the young girl were creditable enough, since he had her educated by the
best masters in Boston, and especially instructed in religion by the
Rev. Dr. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College. So matters went
until Agnes was twenty-three; but then Frankland's passion would no
longer be denied, though he had no intention of making the lowborn girl
his wife. But she loved him with a love too great to balk at
conventions; she felt herself his wife in heart, and she gave herself
unreservedly to him. For a time they lived together in Boston; but
scandal became too strong, and they went into the country, where they
lived for about three years the ideal country life of that day,--a life
much like that of the Virginia planter. Then they went on a visit to
England; but the relatives of Frankland would have none of them, and
they went to travel on the continent. After about a year of wandering
they settled down at Lisbon, and were there during the terrible
earthquake that visited that city on All Saints' Day, 1755. During that
catastrophe Frankland was in mortal peril; and in his moments of pain
and danger he vowed that, if he were saved, he would make Agnes his wife
in fact as she had so long been in heart. Scarcely had the vow been
recorded before Agnes was at his side, having searched for him and come
in time to aid in his rescue. He did not forget his oath when the danger
was passed, and the next day married her according to the rites of the
Church of Rome, the ceremony being repeated according to English customs
while they were on their homeward voyage. Agnes, now Lady Frankland, was
on this occasion well received in England; but the hearts of the
lovers--for such they still were--inclined to Boston, the scene of their
first loves, and they soon crossed the ocean and took up their residence
in the Clarke Mansion on Garden Street in Boston. Here they lived until
1757, when Frankland was appointed consul-general at Lisbon; but in 1763
they once more returned to the city of their early love and lived there
until 1768, when they went to England, where Frankland died. Lady
Frankland then returned once more to her now desolate home, though she
did not live in the Clarke Mansion, but in Hopkinton, where she dwelt
until the Revolution, when she once more suffered exile, this time as a
Tory. She went to England, and there she harmed the romance of her life
by her marriage to John Drew, a rich banker; but she died within a year,
at the age of fifty-eight, and one can only regret that death did not
anticipate that unfaithfulness to the memory of her first lover. Even
with its luckless anticlimax, there are few stories so romantic as that
of the beautiful scrubbing-girl of Marblehead, and she may well be
remembered as one of the most prominent figures of colonial womanhood.
Let us now return to matters more immediately connected with the earlier
part of the period which we are considering; and among them there is
none of more interest, even though it be hardly enduring, than the story
of the epidemic of witchcraft at Salem.
It must be remembered that the witchcraft outbreak at Salem, though it
was there most exaggerated, was yet typical. It was the day of
superstition; and that superstition was both received and fostered
mostly by women. The outbreak at Salem was in a way salutary, for its
very violence brought about the reaction which soon culminated in the
establishment of a truer creed and a different influence for women; but
at the time it was in the actual direction of primitive development in
America.
It began with the troubles between the parish of Salem and the
lately-called minister, one Samuel Parris, into the nature of which
troubles it is not necessary to enter. In 1689, Mr. Parris had come to
Salem from the West Indies, and he had brought with him two colored
servants. These people, John Indian and Tituba, his wife, were experts
in palmistry, second-sight, magic, and incantations, and they soon
infected a circle of the village children with love for these matters.
The daughter and the niece of Mr. Parris, aged respectively nine and
eleven, were among the most prominent at first; but they had older
companions who soon began to make earnest that which in its inception
was only intended as a play. The girls learned to go into trances, to
talk gibberish, to creep about on all-fours, and generally to give a
good imitation of the pythonesses of old. The chief of these young
people were Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, each aged seventeen;
Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon, each aged eighteen; and Mary
Warren and Sarah Churchill, each aged twenty. These, however, though the
leaders in a way, did not long retain the supremacy; for it was found
that Ann Putnam, aged twelve, and Mercy Lewis, aged seventeen, were
preeminent for mischief and ingenuity. Another leader in the mischief
was Mrs. Ann Putnam, about thirty years of age and probably of unsound
mind, though she was apparently not suspected of anything beyond
vindictiveness and eccentricity. She was a beautiful and well-educated
woman, admirably fitted for the part she was destined to play in the
coming orgy of murder.
The antics of these girls, not improbably first carried out in a spirit
of sport, were begun at the parsonage about Christmas, 1691; but after a
time they were challenged for their actions, when they declared that
they could not help themselves, being bewitched. Instead of disregarding
their folly or attributing it to childish mischief and putting a stop to
it by the strong hand, Mr. Parris published the matter to the world. The
children now found themselves of a sudden objects of the most widespread
scrutiny; they also found themselves, it is not absurd to suppose, in a
position where they deemed themselves in peril if they were discovered
to be impostors. They were soon acknowledged as truly suffering from
witchcraft; and then began the inquisition as to the guilty parties.
Tituba, the Indian hag, who had probably taught them the tricks which
they now put into effect against her, was the first named by them as one
of their tormentors; and then followed the names of Sarah Good and Sarah
Osburn, two old women with few friends. Tituba confessed,--it is at
least possible, because of the craze for notoriety often to be found in
such people,--but the two white women denied their guilt, and all were
sent to Boston for trial. The matter might now well have been allowed to
die out; but the girls had tasted power and were anxious for more.
Tituba, in her confession, had implicated the two women, Good and
Osburn, and "two others whose faces she could not see"; and the girls
were importuned to name these other "tormentors." At first they
refused,--probably because they had not held council to decide on the
two to be named,--but at last they indicated two of the most estimable
women in the community, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, aged
respectively sixty and (about) seventy years. The village was
thunderstruck, for these women, if not of the highest rank, were full of
courtesy and kindliness and were well-educated and well-bred. None the
less, they were accused, Goodwife Corey by little Ann Putnam,--at whose
instigation it seems unnecessary to suggest,--Goodwife Nurse, whose
husband was one of the most honored persons in the village, while she
herself was regarded as a model of virtue and piety, by more than one of
"The Afflicted Children," as the girls were now called; but the bearing
of Mistress Putnam at the examination was sufficient to show where stood
the chief accuser. The girls went into their regular fits at each answer
to the questions, unshamed by the sight of the venerable lady standing
there in her dainty dress and with her fragile figure and pure face; and
Mrs. Putnam broke in on the magistrate's questions with "Did you not
bring the black man with you? Did you not bid me tempt God and die? How
oft have you eaten and drunk your own damnation?" It is no wonder that
the accused, at such a horrible outburst of vindictive hate,--as she
must have known it to be,--raised her hands to heaven with the cry, "O
Lord, help me!" But at that the "Afflicted Children" went into the most
extraordinary convulsions; and the foolish magistrate, Hathorne by name,
who had until then been favorably inclined toward the prisoner,
connected the spasms of the girls with the uplifted hands of the old
lady, and this turned the tide against her. She was remanded for trial.
The mischief was now fairly afoot. Personal malice began to work; some
of the girls were servants and accused their masters and mistresses, as
in the cases of John Proctor and George Jacobs. On the other hand, now
that superstition was thoroughly awakened, it ran its usual course of
madness, and the most absurd pretexts for accusations were eagerly
fastened upon. Susannah Martin, for instance, was accused, and executed,
upon the ground that she had walked on a country road without getting
her skirts or stockings muddy, and must be a witch to be able to perform
such a feat! Even such a man as the Rev. George Burroughs, who had been
pastor of the church at Salem for about three years, but had long left
there, and in 1692 was living in Maine, was arrested on a charge of
witchcraft and taken to Salem to be tried, on the plea that he was,
though of small stature, strong enough to lift a barrel of cider or hold
a heavy musket out at arm's length. He was named by the "Afflicted
Children"; but the fact that while in Salem he had been inimical to the
party of Mrs. Ann Putnam makes the real source of the accusation not
problematical. He was formally accused by little Ann Putnam, who said
that one evening there came to her the apparition of a minister and
asked her to write her name in the devil's book; then appeared two women
in shrouds, who scolded the first wraith away; then the two women told
Ann that they were the ghosts of the first and second wives of Mr.
Burroughs, who had murdered them, and one of them showed to the child
the gaping wound which had been inflicted upon her. On such testimony as
this Mr. Burroughs, a man of high standing and deep learning, was
condemned to die.
Nor was this an isolated case; on the contrary, it was the rule. So
numerous grew the accusations that Sir William Phips, the first royal
governor, appointed a special court to try cases of witchcraft, and
nineteen in all suffered death upon such accusations as have been
instanced. At last the girls made the mistake--whether or not instigated
by Mrs. Putnam in these instances does not appear--of accusing persons
who could not possibly be suspected of such practices, even allowing the
possibility of the practices themselves. When they brought charges
against the Rev. Samuel Willard, one of the most eminent divines of
Boston, and Lady Phips, the wife of the governor, they were sharply
rebuked; and when they added to their list the name of Mistress Hale,
wife of the minister in Beverly and famous throughout the colony for her
saintly character, they ranged against them the best of all the people
of the country. Mr. Hale himself had been a believer in the accusations;
but now, when their falsity was thus proved to him, he changed his
allegiance and declared war against the perpetrators of the real crimes,
as he now saw those accusations to be. This was practically the end of
the insanity, and the death blow to the panic was given when some people
of Andover, on being accused, brought action for defamation of character
and thus removed the matter to its true tribunal. There were no more
accusations after that.
Some fourteen years afterward, one of the "Afflicted Children," Ann
Putnam, who had been the most active of all, made public confession in
the Salem church that she had been a cause of the shedding of innocent
blood. She declared, however, that she had not acted "out of anger,
malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one
of them, but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded of Satan." This
latter declaration has been generally interpreted to mean that Ann was
even then, at the age of twenty-five, convinced that she had had actual
communion with the powers of darkness--in other words, that she was a
self-deceived seer of visions. The theory is open to doubt. Ann's words
are at least susceptible of another interpretation; and, whether they
were intended to bear this meaning or not, it may well be that she was
"deluded of Satan" under the form of Mistress Ann Putnam, her mother.
The complicity of Mr. Parris, the minister, is probable; but there is
little doubt that the moving spirit of the conspiracy, after this had
gained strength and purpose, was Mistress Ann Putnam. She was a
brilliant woman in many ways, a fact which is not at all incompatible
with the further fact that she was a moral degenerate, or at least a
monomaniac. It is most probable that she directed the whole progress of
the conspiracy, which at first arose in opportunity by the accident of
the teaching of the old Indian woman and its effect upon some hysterical
girls, who saw before them a chance to become notorious, and that she
worked it throughout to her own ends, persuading the girls that, having
once embarked upon such an enterprise, their sole safety consisted in
playing the game to its finish. Possibly she also was to some extent
self-deceived; she was a descendant of the Carrs of Salisbury, who were
noted as being very nervous and excitable, and she was herself of the
most irritable and sanguine temperament. But it seems little probable
that she was a victim rather than a ruler in the insanity which came of
her fostering, for not only were her daughter and servant the most
prominent members of the "Afflicted Children," but it was her personal
enemies who first disappeared into the shadows of death, and it was her
hand which guided the accusation that smote every victim, until the
reign of terror grew beyond even her control. She stands as the female
Robespierre of America, slaying for lust of power and afterward for fear
of losing her own head; and she remains one of the most picturesque and
yet gruesome figures that our history has produced.
We shall leave this ominous figure standing on the threshold of New
England as we turn southward to inquire as to the conditions existent in
the other great colony of English America; but on our way it is worth
while to take a passing glimpse at New York. This city had emerged from
New Amsterdam; the old vrouws, with their feather beds and their
multiplicity of petticoats and their scrupulously clean houses and their
floors with patterns traced in sand, had passed away. They had been most
picturesque in their way, though they left no enduring effect upon the
type which we now know.
Of the lives of the old burghers and their wives and families, their
characteristics and their customs, we have a most animated account in
the words of the master-writer, Washington Irving. Fine old fellows were
these burghers; and companionable and merry were their wives and
daughters. What a group is offered in the polite, yet firm Peter Minuit;
the pleasure-loving, but vacillating and not too scrupulous Wouter Van
Twiller, in frequent tilt with the irascible but honest Dominie
Bogardus; the honest, but ill-adapted Wilhelm Kieft; the grand old Peter
Stuyvesant, despotic, yet paternal in his rule, stubborn, but brave. Of
another kind, and in a lighter vein, we have a picture of the genial and
universal favorite, Antony Van Corlear, of whom Irving writes:
"It was a moving sight to see the buxom lasses, how they hung about the
doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly, rosy-faced, lusty
bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desperate rogue among women.
Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away;
for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add,
that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in
comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and
this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the
city."
The vrouws were comfortable persons, not given to vivacity, yet in their
way individual, and that sometimes in a manner not altogether
commendable. We are told in the court records of Brooklyn that two
ladies, Mistress Jonica Schampf and Widow Rachel Luguer by name,
actually assaulted one Peter Praa, captain of militia, when he was
proudly leading his troops on training day, and so dealt with him in
"ivill inormities"--which included beating, hair-pulling, and other like
amenities--that his life was for a time thought to be forfeit. In the
matter of legal quarrels, too, there was vigor as well as characteristic
type among the vrouws; we are told that Dominie Bogardus and Anneke, his
wife, sued a female neighbor because the latter had said that the chaste
Anneke, in crossing a muddy street, had lifted her petticoats higher
than was necessitated by the mud or was consistent with modesty.
The love of gossip among the burghers' ladies was a characteristic that
gave rise to a number of suits for slander. On the other hand, the
vrouws often engaged in trade, and so set the example for the business
woman of to-day, and in such matters their energy and perseverance were
commendable. We are told of these good vrouws that they were up with the
crow of the cock, took their first meal at dawn, and ate their dinner at
the stroke of noon. Then, says our chronicler, "the worthy Dutch matrons
would array themselves in their best linsey jackets and petticoats, and,
putting a half-finished stocking into the capacious pocket which hung
from the girdle, with scissors, pin-cushion, and keys outside their
dress, sally forth to a neighbor's house to spend the afternoon. Here
they plied their knitting needles and their tongues at the same time,
discussed the village gossip, settled their neighbors' affairs to their
own satisfaction, and finished their stockings in time for tea, which
was on the table at six o'clock. This was the occasion for the display
of the family plate and the cups of rare old china, out of which the
guests sipped the fragrant bohea, sweetening it by an occasional bite
from the huge lump of loaf sugar which was laid invariably by the side
of each plate, while they discussed the hostess's apple-pies, doughnuts,
and waffles. Tea over, the party donned their cloaks and hoods, for
bonnets were not, and set out for home to be in time to superintend the
milking and look after their household affairs before bed-time," which
came at nine o'clock to the minute.
The dress of these ladies "consisted of a jacket of cloth or silk and a
number of short petticoats of every stuff and color, quilted in fanciful
figures. If the pride of the Dutch matrons lay in their beds and linen,
that of the Dutch maidens lay equally in their elaborately wrought
petticoats, which were their own handiwork and often constituted their
only dowry. They wore blue, red, and green worsted stockings of their
own knitting, with parti-colored clocks, together with high-heeled
leather shoes. Considerable jewelry was in use among them in the shape
of rings and brooches, and girdle-chains of gold and silver were much
affected by fashionable belles. These were attached to the richly bound
Bibles and hymn-books and suspended from the belt outside the dress,
thus forming an ostentatious Sunday decoration. For necklaces they wore
numerous strings of gold beads; and the poorer classes, in humble
imitation, encircled their throats with steel and glass beads and
strings of Job's tears, the fruit of a plant thought to possess some
medicinal virtues."
This was their holiday costume. Their dress for work and wear was "of
good substantial homespun. Every household had from two to six
spinning-wheels for wool and flax, whereon the women of the family
expended every leisure moment. Looms, too, were in common use, and piles
of homespun cloth and snow-white linen attested to the industry of the
active Dutch maidens. Hoards of home-made stuffs were thus accumulated
in the settlement, sufficient to last till a distant generation."
Stolid as we think these old Dutch people, they had their amusements, in
which their women participated with much zest. There were "bees" of all
kinds,--quilting-bees, husking-bees, apple-bees, and raising-bees; but
above all they loved dancing; and, though we may think of them as
heavy-footed, it is probable that many of these demure Dutch maidens
would "trip it on the light fantastic toe" with as good a grace as their
less sedate sisters of the South.
Before leaving the north, one somewhat curious female figure of New York
is especially worth noting, as having been associated with one of the
most picturesque and sorely maligned characters in our history,--Sarah
Bradley, daughter of Captain Thomas Bradley, and herself an Englishwoman
by birth. In 1685, she married one William Cox, a man of singular
character, whose mother was termed "Alice Cox, alias Bono," for what
reason does not appear. Sarah Cox, with whom we are more immediately
concerned, was at the time of her marriage a dashing young woman, of
handsome face and fine figure, but so illiterate that she could not
write her own name, as is attested by the fact that sundry documents
bearing her authorization give her mark instead of the usual signature.
In later years, however, she seems to have attained sufficient knowledge
to sign her name. In 1689, Mr. Cox met with an accident, thus described
in a letter of the period: "Mr. Cox, to show his fine cloaths,
undertooke to goe to Amboy to proclaime the King, who coming whome
againe, was fairely drowned, which accident startled our commanders here
very much; there is a good rich widdow left."
John Tuder, who wrote the letter and had no love for Cox, is rather
flippant in his treatment of the fatal occurrence; but it seems that
"the good rich widdow" was herself hardly inconsolable, for in a very
short time she married again, this time one John Oort, who in his turn
soon disappeared from the scene, leaving Sarah a double widow and also
doubly rich. She was hardly to be more successful in her third marriage
than the others, nor did she show much sensibility in the matter; for
on' the 15th of May, 1691, she took out letters of administration on the
estate of her late husband, and on the 16th of May a license was issued
for the marriage of the fair Sarah to Captain William Kidd. Familiar to
all is the fate of that redoubtable pirate, as he is generally held to
have been,--though pirate he certainly was not,--and it is not
convenient here to enter upon details; but there seems to be little
doubt that Mistress Kidd exerted a curious, and, as it turned out, fatal
influence upon the fortunes of her third husband. It is averred, though
it is hardly a matter of history, that her relations with the Earl of
Bellamont, Governor of New York, furnished the reason for the choice of
her husband as the commander of the expedition which resulted in the
accusation of piracy for which he suffered, and that it was her restless
ambition which induced him to accept a post which was little to his
liking. Be all this as it may, Kidd was hanged; and his widow, after
this time prolonging her period of mourning to the unconscionable (for
her) time of two years, married Christopher Rousby and settled down to a
life free from further matrimonial adventures. She lived to a great age,
but never lost her vivacity and assertiveness, and she merits a place in
our record for her influence upon the romantic career of the
famous--long infamous--Captain Kidd.
Now, passing by the growing towns of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
Annapolis, and the fading one of Saint Mary's, let us seek the Old
Dominion and learn the conditions which there obtained in the days prior
to the coming of the Revolution. The influx of Cavaliers during the
later portion of the seventeenth century had had its effect upon
Virginia society, already prone to graft the lighter of English manners
and customs upon those proper to the colonial conditions. In Virginia
the women were free, untrammelled by public sentiment, to indulge their
taste for gay apparel, to trick themselves off with all the gauds and
gewgaws that fashion could invent. The towering heads of hair which were
such an offence in the eyes of our Puritan forefathers were tolerated,
if not admired, by our grandsires of Virginia; the brocade skirt, the
exposed bosom, the embroidered jupe, straight corset, and gay
farthingale were entirely congenial to the theories of the Virginia
colonists, men as well as women. The gaiety in dress was answered by
gaiety of life. With a rapidity that seemed strange in the face of the
preference for the life of the country, the towns had become more
populous and accessible; and they served as _foci_ for the social
functions and life. Yet, even though there was such rout and revel at
Williamsburg and kindred towns, it was in the houses of the great
planters that one saw the true Virginia social existence, that one found
the Virginia woman of the time in her truest apparition. Under the
influences of the coming of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots--for the
descendants of the latter perpetuated the restless gaiety of their
forsaken land rather than the austerities of the faith which had been
the cause of their exile--there had arisen in Virginia something of a
cult of the social function. The court of Sir William Berkeley had been
a miniature reproduction of that of his king, and though some of the
traditions of his time passed away with the old governor, the main
spirit survived in the ideals of Virginia society. As in all such cases
there must be, there was a certain amount of discernible hollowness;
but, as a rule, there were to be found in the best and most typical
houses of Virginia the graces of the society of the Restoration without
its vices, its courtesy without its affectations. An aristocracy was
growing where none had been before, or at least where there had been but
a feeble and ineffectual leaven of one. At this period, the woman of
Virginia was the typical and representative lady of English America.
[Illustration 5: _ANTONY VAN CORLEAR, TRUMPETER.
After the painting by F. D. Millet.
"It was a moving sight to see the buxom lasses, how they hung about the
doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly rosy-faced, lusty
bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desparate rogue among women.
Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away;
for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add,
that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in
comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and
this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the
city."_]
Moreover, there was now entering into Virginia conditions a sort of
feudality, less in theory than in fact. There was much to recall the
life of the old feudal baron. There was the same dependence upon the
household for the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life; in the
families of the great planters, such as Colonel Byrd of Westover,
--whose daughter, Evelyn Byrd, was the pearl of Virginia ladies in her
day, but died of a broken heart before she had grown past her first
maturity,--there was manufacture of the raw materials into the finished
product, under the eye of the mistress of the house. Slavery had by this
time become an established feature of Virginia society, and it was at
its best in results. The slaves answered in conditions to the feudal
servitors; they were retainers in a way, and they were also the workmen
of the home. They made shoes and rough clothing, and they performed all
the household tasks which were not strictly within the province of the
chatelaine. The field hands raised tobacco; and it was with this
commodity that the planter bought the silks and laces which clothed his
wife and daughters when they appeared _en grande tenue_. But, though
thus the lady of the manor had her duties in the training of her
household servants, in the supervision of the household tasks, and in
the provision of certain cates and other dainties which were to be made
by no hands but hers, her general duty, that which occupied more of her
time and thought than any other, was to be effective and satisfactory as
a hostess.
It was thus in the southern colonies, with their greater wealth in
servants and money and their consequently greater refinement, that there
first appeared the type of American woman as she was a little later to
be known throughout the land; but the coming of refinement and its
accompaniment, modishness, was not long confined to the Virginias.
Before the ending of the later colonial period and the beginnings of the
days of the Revolution, there were to be found refinement and modishness
in Massachusetts as in Virginia; but it was long before an equal amount
of luxury was there displayed. In the North the same distinction of
station was maintained between the "governor's lady" and the plebeian
housewife that existed in the South between the lady of the plantation
and her humbler sister of the hut; but there were fewer spouses of
governors and their social equals in the North than there were wives of
planters in the South, and so the developing type of American lady began
in Virginia and spread thence rather than adopted from without. But
everywhere, in all sections of the country save indeed the undeveloped
outskirts, where the wilderness was being forced back and concerning
which we shall busy ourselves later, when the type of the pioneer was
more distinctive--there was up-springing a different type from that of
the settlers or the early colonists. The American woman was ceasing to
be the co-worker with her husband in matters of the hands and was
gradually taking her rightful place as the director rather than the
laborer. She was still the housewife; but her sphere was becoming
enlarged and her ideas different. The wilderness had been pushed back
from her door; she was as much a dweller in towns, even if they were not
of very great dimensions or importance, as were her sisters across the
great water. Her husband no longer wrestled with a hostile earth for a
bare sustenance, but owned his houses and his lands and held himself
among the prosperous ones of the world, so that his wife and his
daughters were free from need of personal labor. Not that they were
idle, these ladies who had blossomed from the earlier stem; we shall see
that many of them were notable housewives, real helpmeets to their
husbands; but they worked in a different manner from that of their
grandmothers. And they differed from those excellent dames in many
things, but above all in their respect for that impalpable but dominant
thing called Fashion; and so they began to lose their individuality and
take on the bearing and ways of the cosmopolitan type of women.
As a consequence of the introduction of luxury as a recognized condition
of the American household of wealth and refinement, there came about a
gradual change in the type of the sections which resulted in a levelling
of the type of the whole land and its adaptation to European standards.
That subtle influence of fashion permeated the land from north to
south--there was then no east or west--and brought all the severed types
under one strait rule. No longer could the dame of the Puritans be
distinguished by outer guise or even by her customs and manners from her
of the Cavaliers, while the intermediate woman, she of the settlement
erstwhile known as Manhattan, on her part came forward with the rest to
the goal of identity. There were more women of fashion in Virginia and
Maryland than in Massachusetts or Connecticut; but the type was the
same, and a man might travel from Williamsburg to Boston, stopping on
his way at Annapolis, Philadelphia, and New York, and find no
considerable difference between the woman who sped him at the outset and
the woman who greeted him at the end of his journey,--at least as far as
the eye and ear could note. From Madame Berkeley to Madame Phips was no
step at all. The gracious dame of the period, stately in silks and
satins and brocade, was as easy to find at one end of the country as at
the other; the "toasts" were just as lovely, if not quite so plentiful,
in Boston as in Williamsburg. But all this gain, as is the inevitable
law, was at the expense of compensating loss. Refinement and elegance
had come to be the inheritance of the American woman, but at the cost
and loss of individuality. There had come into existence a type which
was neither Puritan nor Cavalier nor Dutch, but American; though a
universal type, it was not a distinctive one, as had been the others.
The word "American" had come to have a meaning of universality as
applied to the women of this country, and was yet to have a more
inclusive signification; but the passing of marked sectional differences
had also brought with it the doing away as well with that subtle thing
which we term individuality. As distinguished from her sisters of that
country which was still termed "mother," though so soon to be
encountered in bitter hatred, the American woman had lost definition and
personality.
We have now come to the period in our story when there will be no longer
distinction between the woman of the North and her sister in the South
in the things which have thus far kept them apart in type. They will
always preserve certain racial, climatic, and inherited traits peculiar
to their respective sections; but they will be none the less in mass the
women of America. Even when we shall be forced to record the great
dissension which separated our country into two nations and accentuated
all the sectional traits of its womankind as of its men there will be
but different expressions of womanhood to record, not different
types,--different conditions of existence, having effect of direction,
not differing spirits and impulses. It was in the days before the
darkening of the shadow of the Revolution that the American woman,
untrammelled by conditions of residence or descent, began to appear as a
type. She was very admirable, but she was no longer unique.