modern penmanship, invariably bearing an appearance not exactly of much
labor, but of much care, as if the writer did not use a pen every
day--did not become too familiar with that weighty implement, and hence
had a vast respect for it when he did take it in hand. Every _t_ is
crossed, every _i_ is dotted, every _a_ and _o_ perfectly rounded, every
tail of every _g_ and _y_ and _z_ is precisely twisted in colonial
script. I think the very trouble and preparation incident to writing
conduced to the finish and elegance of the penmanship. No stylographic
pens were used in those days, but instead, a carefully prepared quill;
and the ink was made of ink-cake or ink-powder dissolved in water; or,
more troublesome still, home-made ink, tediously prepared with nutgalls,
walnut or swamp maple bark, or iron filings steeped in vinegar and
water, or copperas.
Special pains were taken in writing a name in a book. Penmanship was
almost a fine art in colonial days, the one indispensable accomplishment
of a school teacher; and he was often hired to exercise it in writing a
name "perspicuously" in a book. Sometimes the owner's name is seen drawn
with much care in a little wreath or circle of ornamentation. This may
be what Judge Sewall refers to with so much pride when he speaks of
"writing a name" in a gift-book, or it may be what was known as
"conceits" or "fine knotting."
The colonists had a very reprehensible habit, which (save for the pains
taken in writing) might be called book-scribbling. Rude rhymes and
sentiments are often found with the past owner's name, and form a
title-page lore which, ill-spelt and simple as the verses are, have an
interest to the antiquary of which the writer never dreamed. They
consist chiefly of adjurations to honesty, specially with regard to the
special volume thus inscribed:
"Steal not this book my honest friend,
For fear the gallows will be your End."
"If you dare to steal this Book
The Devil will catch you on his Hook."
This was accompanied by the outline of a very spirited "personal devil"
with a pitchfork and an enormous gridiron.
Still another appealed to terrors:
"This is Hanah Moxon Her book
You may just within it Look
You had better not do more
For old black Satan's at the Door
And will snatch at stealing hands
Look behind you! There He Stands."
This had a tail-piece of an open door with a very black forked tail
thrust out of it.
In a leather-bound Bible was seen this rhyme:
"Evert Jonson His book
God Give him Grase thair in to look
not only to looke but to understand
that Larning is better than Hous or Land
When Land is Gon & Gold is spent
then larning is most Axelant
When I am dead & Rotton
If this you see Remember me
Though others is forgotton."
Different portions of this script have been seen in many books.
Four rhymes seem to be specially the property of schoolboys, being found
in Accidences, Spellers, "Logick" Primers, and other school-books, down
even to the present day.
"This book is one thing, My fist's another,
If you touch the one thing, You'll feel the other."
"Hic liber eat meus
And that I will show
Si aliquis capit
I'll give him a blow."
"This book is mine
By Law Divine
And if it runs astray
I'll call you kind
My desk to find
And put it safe away."
"Hic liber est meus Deny it who can
Zenas Graves Junior An honest man."
There also appears a practical warning which may be read with attention
and profit by the public now a days:
"If thou art borrowed by a friend
Right welcome shall he be
To read, to study, _not_ to lend
But to _return_ to me.
"Not that imparted knowledge doth
Diminish Learnings Store
But books I find if often lent
Return to me no more."
"Read _Slowly_--Pause _Frequently_--Think _Seriously_--Finger
_Lightly_--Keep _Cleanly_--Return _Duly_--with the _Corners_ of the
Leaves NOT TURNED DOWN."
The fashion of using book-plates was by no means so general among New
England Puritans as among rich Virginians and New Yorkers and
Pennsylvanian Quakers. Mr. Lichtenstein, writing in the New England
Historical and Genealogical Register in 1886, says he has seen no New
England book-plates of earlier date than 1735. At later dates the
Holyokes, Dudleys, Boylstons, and Phillips, all used book-plates. The
plates most familiar to students in old libraries in New England are
those of the Vaughans and of Isaiah Thomas.
Another, a living interest is found in these old, dusty, leather-bound
volumes, which is not in the inscriptions and not, alas, in the printed
words. They are the chosen home of a race of pigmy spiderlings who love
musty theology with an affection found in no one else nowadays. In these
dingy homes they live and rear their hideous little progeny: for in the
cold light of a microscope these tiny brown book-dwellers are not
beautiful; they are flat, crab-like, goggle-eyed, hairy; and they zigzag
across the page on their ugly crooked legs in a sprawling, drunken
fashion. They do not eat the books; they live apparently on air; yet if
you crush them between the pages they leave a stain of vivid scarlet to
reproach you in future readings for your needless cruelty. I cannot kill
them; though flaming is their blood's rebuke, it is aristocratically as
well as theologically blue. In their veins runs the ichor--arachnidian
though it be--that came over in the Mayflower; yes, doubly honored, came
over in the special stateroom of an Ainsworth's Psalm-Book or a Genevan
Bible. No degrading alliances, no admixtures through foreign emigration,
have crossed that pure inbred strain; my book-spiders are of real
Pilgrim stock--they are true New England Brahmins.
Any one who turns over with attention the books of an old New England
library must be struck with a sense of the affection with which these
books have been treasured, the care with which they have been read, and,
in case of accident, with which they have been repaired. One psalm-book,
nibbled by mice, has had every page neatly mended by the insertion of
thin sheets of paper to replace the lost bits; and some painstaking and
pious New Englander, with a pen and skill worthy the illuminating monks
of another faith, has minutely printed the missing letters on both sides
of the inserted slip in a text no larger than the surrounding print.
Another book, a Bible, burnt in round holes by a slow-burning coal from
the pipe of a sleepy reader, has been mended in the same careful manner.
I have seen Bibles that have been read and turned over till the margins
of the pages at the lower corner and outer edge were worn off down to
the print by loving daily use. In one such the margins had been neatly
replaced by pasted slips of paper. In more than one book I have found a
minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the
volume, showing a personal interest and love for a book which can
hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show a
patient and appreciative perusal.
Though books were so closely cherished, so seemly bekept in colonial
days, they were subject to one indignity with which now they are
unmenaced and undegraded--they were sometimes sentenced to be burned by
the public hangman. In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick
Muggleton, who set up to be prophets, were burned by that abhorred
public functionary in Boston market-place; and two years later Quaker
books were similarly destroyed. William Pyncheon's book was burned, in
1650, in Boston Market. In 1707 a "libel on the Governor" was hanged by
the hangman. In 1754 a pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters," a
sharp political criticism on the Massachusetts Court, was thus burned in
King Street, Boston. From the _Connecticut Gazette_ of November 29th,
1755, we learn that another offending publication was sentenced to be
"publickly whipt according to Moses Law with 40 stripes save one, then
Burnt." How a true book-lover winces at the thought of the public
hangman placing his blood-stained hand on any book, no matter how much a
"monster."
XII
"ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS"
From the earliest days the Puritan colonists fought stoutly, for the
sake of St. Paul, against long hair. They proved themselves worthy the
opprobrious name of Roundhead. Endicott's first act was to institute a
solemn and insistent association against long hair. This wearing of long
locks was one of the existing evils, a wile of the devil, which bade
fair to creep into New England, and in its incipiency was proceeded
against by the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair
like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly
against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson
Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched
burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the
long-growing locks--"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or
Russianly--whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long
nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence
for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off
their long hair into a civil frame." Exact rules were given from the
pulpit as to the properly Puritan length--that the hair should not lie
over the neck, the band, or the doublet collar; in the winter it might
be suffered to grow a little below the ear for warmth. Personal pride
and dignity were appealed to, that no Christian gentleman would wish to
look like "every Ruffian, every wild-Irish, every hangman, every varlet
and vagabond." By Sewall's time, however, Puritan though he were, we see
his white locks flowing long over his doublet collar, and forming a
fitting frame to his serene, benignant countenance.
Puritan women also were not above reproach in regard to the fashion of
extravagant hair-dressing; they also "showed the vile note of
impudency." One parson thus severely addressed them from the pulpit:
"The special sin of woman is pride and haughtiness, and that because
they are generally more ignorant and worthless," and he added that this
feminine pride vented itself in gesture, hair, behavior, and apparel. I
fear all this was true, for the Court also complained of my ignorant and
worthless sex for "cutting and curling and laying out of the hair,
especially among the younger sort." Increase Mather gave them this
thrust in his sermon on the comet, in 1683: "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?" And they were called "Apes of Fancy,
friziling and curlying of their hayr."
I think the sober and decorous women settlers must have worn their hair
cut straight across the forehead, like our modern "bangs;" for
Higginson, writing of the Indians in 1692, says: "Their hair is
generally black and cut before like our gentlewomen." The false locks
denounced by Mather were doubtless "a pair of Perukes which are pretty"
of Pepys's time, about 1656; or the "heart breakers" worn in 1670, which
set out like butterfly-wings over the ears, and which were described
thus: "False locks set on wyers to make them stand at a distance from
the head."
From a letter written by Knollys to Cecil we learn that Mary Queen of
Scots wore these perukes. He says:
"Mary Seaton among other pretty devices yesterday and this day, she
did set such a curled hair upon the Queen that was said to be a
Peruke, that showed very delicately, and every other day she hath a
new device of head dressing without any cost, and yet setteth forth
a woman gaylie well."
The "towers like comets" were doubtless commodes, which were in high
fashion in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century until about
the year 1711, though I have never found that the word commode was used
in America. These commodes were enormously high frames of wire covered
with thin silk, or plaitings of muslin or lace, or frills of ribbon--and
sadly belied their name.
A simpler form of hair-dressing succeeded the commode; portraits painted
during the following half-century, such as those of Copley, Smibert, and
Blackburn, show an elegant and graceful form of coiffure, the hair
brushed back and raised slightly from the forehead, and sometimes curled
loosely behind the ears. At a later date the curls were almost
universally surmounted by a lace cap. Pomatum began to be used by the
middle of the century. In the _Boston News Letter_ of 1768, we read of
"Black White and Yellow Pomatum from six Coppers to Two Shillings per
Roll." The hair was frequently powdered. Hair-dressers sold powdering
puffs and powdering bags and powdering machines, and a dozen different
varieties of hair-powder--brown, maréchal, scented, plain, and blue. By
Revolutionary times a new tower, or "talematongue," had arisen; the
front hair was pulled up over a stuffed cushion or roll, and mixed with
powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short
curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes,
jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a
yard in height. This fashion was much admired by some; a young lover of
the day wrote thus sentimentally of a fair Hartford girl: "Her hair
covered her cushion as a plate of the most beautiful enamel frosted with
silver." A Revolutionary soldier wrote a poem, however, which regarded
from a different point of view this elaborate headgear in such a time of
national depression. His rhymes began thus:
"Ladies you had better leave off your high rolls
Lest by extravagance you lose your poor souls
Then haul out the wool, and likewise the tow
'Twill clothe our whole army we very well know."
The "Dress-à-la-Independance" was a style of hair-dressing with thirteen
curls at the neck, thus to honor the thirteen new States.
In the year 1771 Anna Green Winslow wrote in her diary an account of one
of these elaborate hair-dressings which she then saw. She ends her
description thus:
"How long she was under his opperation I know not. I saw him twist
& tug & pick & cut off whole locks of gray hair at a slice, the
lady telling him he would have no hair to dress next time, for a
space of an hour and a half, when I left them he seeming not to be
near done."
She also gives a most sprightly account of the manufacture of a roll for
her own hair:
"I had my HEDDUS roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made
less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my
head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is
not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that &
horsehair very coarse & a little human hair of a yellow hue that I
suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. (the
barber) made it, all carded together and twisted up. When it first
came home, Aunt put it on, and my new cap upon it; she then took up
her apron and measured me & from the roots of my hair on my
forehead to the top of my notions I measured above an inch longer
than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my
chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than Virtue and
Modesty without the help of fals hair, Red-Cow tail or D. the
barber."
The _Boston Gazette_ had, in 1771, a ludicrous description of an
accident to a young woman in the streets of that town. In an infaust
moment she was thrown down by a runaway, and her tower received serious
damage. It burst its thin outer wall of natural hair, and disgorged
cotton and wool and tow stuffing, false hair, loops of ribbon and gauze.
Ill-bred boys kicked off portions of the various excrescences, and the
tower-wearer was jeered at until she was glad to escape with her own few
natural locks.
A New England clergyman--Manasseh Cutler--wrote thus of the head-dress
of Mrs. General Knox in 1787:
"Her hair in front is craped at least a foot high much in the form
of a churn bottom upward and topped off with a wire skeleton in the
same form covered with black gauze which hangs in streamers down
her back. Her hair behind is in a large braid turned up and
confined with a monstrous large crooked comb. She reminded me of
the monstrous cap worn by the Marquis of La Fayettes valet,
commonly called on this account the Marquises devil."
Hair so elaborately arranged could not be dressed daily. Once a week was
frequently thought sufficient; and some very disgusting accounts are
given of methods to dress the hair so it would "keep safely" for a
month. The Abbé Robin wrote of New England women in 1781:
"The hair of the head is raised and supported upon cushions to an
extravagant height somewhat resembling the manner in which the
French ladies wore their hair some years ago. Instead of powdering
they often wash the head, which answers the purpose well enough as
their own hair is commonly of an agreeable light color, but the
more fashionable among them begin to adopt the European fashion of
setting off the head to the best advantage."
The fashion of the roll was of much importance, and various shaped rolls
were advertised; we find one of "a modish new roll weighing but 8 ounces
when others weigh fourteen ounces." We can well believe that such a
heavy roll made poor Anna Winslow's head "ach and itch like anything." A
Salem hair-dresser, who employed twelve barbers, advertised thus in
1773: "Ladies shall be attended to in the polite constructions of rolls
such as may tend to raise their heads to any pitch they desire."
The grotesqueness of such adornment found frequent ridicule in prose and
verse. One poet sang:
"Give Chloe a bushel of horsehair and wool,
Of paste and pomatum a pound,
Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull
And gauze to encompass it round.
"Of all the gay colours the rainbow displays
Be those ribbons which hang on her head,
Be her flowers adapted to make the folks gaze,
And about the whole work be they spread.
"Let her flaps fly behind for a yard at the least,
Let her curls meet just under her chin,
Let those curls be supported to keep up the list,
With an hundred instead of one pin."
We can easily see that after such rough treatment the hair needed
restoring waters; and indeed from earliest times hair-restorers and
hair-dyes did these "vain ancients" use. "Women with juice of herbs gray
locks disguised." In these days of manifold mysterious nostrums that
gild the head of declining age and make glad the waste places on bald
young masculine pates, let us read the simple receipts of the good old
times:
"Take half a pound of Aqua Mellis in the Springtime of the Year,
warm a little of it every morning when you rise in a Sawcer, and
tie a little Spunge to a fine Box combe, and dip it in the water
and therewith moisten the roots of the hair in Combing it, and it
will grow long and thick and curled in a very short time."
"Take three spoonfuls of Honey and a good handful of Vine Twigs
that twist like Wire, and beat them wel, and strain their Juyce
into the Honey and anoynt the Bald Places therewith."
Here is what Captain Sam Ingersoll of Salem used, or at any rate had the
formula of, in 1685:
"A Metson to make a mans heare groe when he is bald. Take sume fier
flies & sum Redd wormes & black snayls and sum hume bees and dri
them and pound them & mixt them in milk or water."
These washes were not so expensive as Hirsutus or Tricopherous, but
quite as effective perhaps. There were hair-dyes, too, "to make hair
grow black though any other color," and the leaf that holds this
precious instruction is sadly worn and spotted with various tinted
inks, as though the words had been often read and copied:
"Take a little Aqua Fortis, put therein a groat or sixpence, as to
the quantity of the aforesaid water, then set both to dissolve
before the fire, then dip a small Spunge in the said water, and wet
your beard or hair therewith, but touch not the skin."
Hair-dressers also improved on nature. William Warden, a wig maker in
King Street, Boston, respectfully informed the ladies of that town that
he would "colour the hair on the head from a Red or any other
Disagreable Colour to a Dark Brown or Black."
It did not matter long to our forefathers whether these hair-dyes dyed,
or hair-restorers restored, for a fashion hated by some of the early
Puritans as a choice device of Satan--the fashion of wig-wearing--was to
revolutionize the matter of masculine hair. The question of wigs was a
difficult one to settle, since the ministers themselves could not agree.
John Wilson and Cotton Mather wore them, but Rev. Mr. Noyes launched
denunciations at them from the pulpit and the Apostle Eliot delivered
many a blast against "prolix locks with boiling zeal," and he
stigmatized them as a "luxurious feminine protexity," but yielded sadly
later in life to the fact that the "lust for wigs is become
insuperable." The legislature of Massachusetts also denounced periwigs
in 1675, but all in vain.
They were termed by one author "artificial deformed Maypowles fit to
furnish her that in a Stage play should represent some Hagge of Hell,"
and other choice epithets were applied. To learn how these "Horrid
Bushes of Vanity" could be hated, let us hear the pages of Judge
Sewall's diary:
"1701. Having last night heard that Joshua Willard had cut off his
hair (a very full head of hair) and put on a Wigg, I went to him
this morning. Told his mother what I came about and she call'd him.
I enquired of him what Extremity had forced him to put off his own
Hair and put on a Wigg? He answered none at all. But said that his
Hair was streight and that it parted behinde. Seem'd to argue that
men might as well shave their hair off their head, as off their
face. I answered men were men before they had any hair on their
faces (half of man-kind never have any). God seems to have ordain'd
our Hair as a Test, to see whether we can bring out to be content
at his finding: or whether we would be our own Carvers, Lords, and
come no more at Him. If we disliked our Skin or Nails; tis no
Thanks to us for all that we cut them not off.... He seem'd to say
would leave off his Wigg when his hair was grown. I spake to his
Father of it a day or two after. He thank'd me that had discoursed
his Son, and told me when his Hair was grown to cover his ears he
promised to leave off his Wigg. If he had known it would have
forbidden him."
At a later day, though it was "gravaminous," Sewall would not go to hear
the bewigged Joshua preach, but attended another meeting. The Judge
frequently states his annoyance at the universally wigged condition of
New England.
I never read of these wig-wearing times without fresh amaze at the
manner in which our sensible ancestors disfigured themselves. We read
such advertisements of mountebank head-gear as this, from the _Boston
News Letter_ of August 14, 1729:
"Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott Barber, a light Flaxen
Naturall Wigg Parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow
Ribband is of a Red Pinck Colour. The Caul is in Rows of Red Green
& White."
Twenty shillings reward was offered for this gay wig, and "if it be
offered for sale to any it is desired they wont stop it." Grafton
Fevergrure, the peruke-maker at the sign of the Black Wigg, lost a
"Light Flaxen Natural Wigg with a Peach-Blossom-coloured Ribband." In
1755 the house of barber Coes, of Marblehead, was broken into, and eight
brown and three grizzle wigs were stolen; some of these had "feathered
tops," some were bordered with red ribbon, some with purple. In 1754
James Mitchel had white wigs and "grizzels." He asked £20 O. T. for the
best. "Light Grizzels are £15, dark Grizzels are £12 10s." Under date of
1731 we read of the loss of "a horsehair bobwig," and another with crown
hair, each with gray ribbon, an Indian hair bobwig with a light ribbon,
and a goat's hair natural wig with red and white ribbons.
The "London Magazine" gave in 1753 a list of curious names of wigs: "The
pigeons wing, the comet, the cauliflower, the royal bird, the
staircase, the ladder, the brush, the wild boars back, the temple, the
rhinoceros, the crutch, the negligent, the chancellor, the out-bob, the
long-bob, the half-natural, the chain-buckle, the corded buckle, the
detached buckle, the Jasenist bob, the drop wigg, the snail back, the
spinage-seed, the artichoke."