brigadier, the spencer, the albemarle, the major, the ramillies, the
grave full-bottom, and the giddy feather-top." To these let me add the
campaign, the neck-lock, the bob, the lavant, the vallaney, the
drop-wig, the buckle-wig, the bag-wig, the Grecian fly, the peruke, the
beau-peruke, the long-tail, the bob-tail, the fox-tail, the cut-wig, the
tuck-wig, the twist-wig, the scratch. Sydney says the name campaign was
applied to a wig which was imported from France in 1702, and was made
very full and curled eighteen inches to the front. This date cannot be
correct, when we find John Winthrop writing in 1695 for "two wiggs one a
campane, the other short." The Ramillies wig had a long plaited tail,
with a big bow at the top of the braid and a small one at the bottom. It
would be idle to attempt to describe all these wigs, how they swelled at
the sides, and turned under in rolls, and rose in puffs, and then shrank
to a small close wig that vanished at Revolutionary times in powdered
natural hair and a queue of ribbon, a bag, or an eel-skin, and finally
gave way to cropped hair "à-la-Brutus or à-la-Titus," as a Boston
hair-dresser advertised in the year 1800.
Not only did gentlemen wear wigs, but children, servants, prisoners,
sailors, and soldiers also; as early certainly as 1716 the fashion was
universal. So great was the demand for this false head-gear, that wigs
were made of goat-hair and horse-hair, as well as human hair. The cost
of dressing and caring for wigs became a heavy item of expense to the
wearer, and income to the barber; often eight or ten pounds a year were
paid for the care of a single wig. Wigmakers' materials were expensive
also--"wig ribans, cauls, curling pipes, sprigg wyers, and wigg steels;"
and were advertised in vast numbers that show the universal prevalence
of the fashion.
By the beginning of this century, women--having powdered and greased and
pulled their hair almost off their heads--were glad to wear their
remaining locks à-la-Flora or à-la-Virginia, or to wear wigs to simulate
these styles. We find Eliza Southgate Bowne writing thus to her mother
from Boston in the year 1800:
"... Now Mamma what do you think I am going to ask for? A WIG.
Eleanor Coffin has got a new one just like my hair and only 5
dollars. I must either cut my hair or have one. I cannot dress it
at all _stylish_. Mrs. Coffin bought Eleanor's and says that she
will write to Mrs. Sumner to get me one just like it. How much time
it will save--in one year! We could save it in pins and paper,
besides the _trouble_. At the Assembly I was quite ashamed of my
head, for nobody had long hair. If you will consent to my having
one do send me over a 5 dollar bill by the post immediately after
you receive this, for I am in hopes to have it for the next
Assembly--do send me word immediately if you can let me have one."
This persuasive appeal was successful, for frequent references to the
wig appear in later letters.
Though false teeth and the fashion of filling the teeth were known even
by the ancient Egyptians, the science of dentistry is a modern one. But
little care of the teeth was taken in early colonial days, and the
advice given for their preservation was very simple:
"If you will keep your teeth from rot, plug, or aking, wash the
mouth continually with Juyce of Lemons, and afterwards rub your
teeth with a Sage Leaf and Wash your teeth after meat with faire
water. To cure Tooth Ach. 1. Take Mastick and chew it in your mouth
until it is as soft as Wax, then stop your teeth with it, if
hollow, there remaining till it's consumed, and it wil certainly
cure you. 2. The tooth of a dead man carried about a man presently
suppresses the pains of the Teeth."
I suppose this latter ghoulish cure would not affect the teeth of a
woman; if, however, a seventeenth or eighteenth century dame could cure
the toothache simply with a plug of mastic, she was much to be envied by
her degenerate nineteenth-century sister with her long dentist's bill.
If we can believe Josselyn, writing in 1684, New England women, then as
now, lost their teeth at an early age. He speaks of them as "pitifully
Tooth shaken." He recommended to relieve their misery a compound of
brimstone, gunpowder, and butter, to be "rubbed on the mandible." This
colonial remedy is still employed on New England farms. Burnaby, writing
in 1759, said that New England dames had universally and even
proverbially very indifferent teeth. The Abbé Robin says they were
toothless at eighteen or twenty years of age, and attributes this
premature disfigurement to tea-drinking and the eating of warm bread.
When we read the composition of the tooth-powders and dentifrices used
in early colonial days, we wonder that they had any teeth left to scour.
Here is Mr. Ferene's "rare Dentifrice:"
"First take eight ounces of Irios roots, also four ounces of
Pomistone, and eight ounces of Cutel Bone, also eight ounces of
Mother of Pearl, and eight ounces of Coral, and a pound of Brown
Sugar Candy, and a pound of Brick if you desire to make them red;
but he did oftener make them white, and then instead of the Brick
did take a pound of fine Alabaster; all this being thoroughly
beaten and sifted through a fine searse the powder is then ready
prepar'd to make up in a past which must be done as follows:
To make the Said Powders into a past.
Take a little Gum Dragant and lay it in steep twelve hours, in
Orange flower water or Damask Rose Water; and when it is dissolved
take the sweet Gum and grind it on a Marble Stone with the
aforesaid Powder, and mixing some crums of white bread it will come
into a past, the which you may make Dentifrices, of what shape or
fashion you please, but long rowles is the most commodious for your
use."
Just fancy scouring your teeth with a commodious roll of cuttle-bone,
brick-dust, and pumice-stone!
Another tooth-powder was composed of coral, Portugal snuff, Armenian
bole, "ashes of good tobacco which has been burnt," and gum myrrh; and
ground up "broken pans"--coarse earthenware might be substituted for the
coral.
A very popular and much advertised tooth-wash was called "Dentium
Conservator." It was made and sold in New England by the manufacturer
and vendor of Bryson's Famous Bug Liquid--not an alluring companionship.
This person also "removed Stumps and unsound Teeth with a dexterity
peculiar to Himself at the Sign on the Leapord." There were also rival
Essences of Pearl advertised, each equally eulogized and disparaged;
"Infallible Sivit rendering the teeth white as alabaster tho' they be
black as Coal;" and "Very Neat Hawksbill and Key Draught Teeth Pullers."
These key-draught teeth-pullers were one of the cruellest instruments of
torture of the day, often breaking the jaw-bone, and always causing
unutterable anguish. Old Zabdiel Boylston advertised in the _News
Letter_, in 1712, "Powder to refresh the Gums & whiten the Teeth." There
were also sold "tooth-sopes, tooth-blanchs, tooth-rakes."
I cannot find any notice of the sale of "teeth brushes" till nearly
Revolutionary times. Perhaps the colonists used, as in old England,
little brushes made of "dentissick root" or mallow, chewed into a
fibrous swab.
I have seen no advertisements that strike a greater chill than the
scanty notices of early dentists and dentistry that appear at the latter
part of the past century. The glory of having a Revolutionary patriot
for a workman cannot soften the hard plainness of speech of this
advertisement in the _Boston Evening Post_ of September 26, 1768:
"Whereas many Persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore
Teeth by Accident or Otherways to their great Detriment not only in
looks but in speaking both in public and private. This is to inform
all such that they may have them replaced with Artificial Ones that
look as well as the Natural and answer the End of Speaking by Paul
Revere Goldsmith near the head of Dr. Clarkes wharf. All Persons
who have had false Teeth Fixed by Mr. Jos Baker Surgeon Dentist and
They have got loose as they will in Time may have them fastened by
above said Revere who learnt the method of fixing them from Mr.
Baker."
It will be remarked that these teeth were only to display and talk with,
and were but sorry helps in eating. This very appalling advertisement
from the _Massachusetts Centinel_ gives a clue to the way in which
missing teeth were replaced: "Live Teeth. Those Persons inclined to
dispose of Live Teeth may apply to Templeman." Or this from the
_Connecticut Courant_ of August 17, 1795: "A generous price paid for
Human Front Teeth perfectly sound, by Dr. Skinner." These "live teeth"
were inserted in other and vainer, if not more squeamish persons'
mouths, by a process of "in-grafting" which was much in vogue. There
were few New England dentists _eo nomine_ until well into this
century--but three in Boston in 1816. As silversmith and engraver Revere
also set teeth, so Isaac Greenwood, who waited at their houses on all
who required his dental services, also made umbrellas, sold cane for
hoop petticoats, and made dice and chessmen. Wm. Greenwood pulled teeth
and sold pianos; and Dr. Flagg, a surgeon dentist, advertised in 1797
that he would get hand-organs in Europe suitable for church use. John
Templeman, the live-teeth purchaser, was a broker as well as a dentist;
and Whitlock, the actor, did a thriving dental business, and doubtless
carried his "neat hawksbill or key-draught tooth-wrench" to the
play-house, and used it, to his own profit and his fellow-townsmen's
misery, between the acts.
Though the Pilgrim women were doubtless as simple at their toilet as
they were in their dress, the sudden growth of the colony in wealth
brought to their daughters, besides variety and richness of dress, a
love of cosmetics. Dunton tells positively of one painted face in Boston
in 1686. He said, "to hide her age she paints, and to hide her painting
dares hardly laugh." One New England minister thus reproved and warned
the women of his congregation: "At the resurrection of the Just there
will no such sight be met as the Angels carrying Painted Ladies in their
arms."
In the inventory of one of the early Cambridge settlers, Robert Daniel,
is found the item "two Ceruse Jugs." Ceruse was a preparation of white
lead with which women then painted their faces, and I think these ceruse
jugs were part of the paraphernalia of my Lady Daniel's toilet-table.
With the advent of newspapers came various advertisements that showed
the vanity of our forbears, the "collusions of women, their oyntments
and potticary drugs, and all their slibber sawces."
"An Excellent Wash for the Skin which entirely taketh out all
Freckles Moath & Sunburn from the Face Neck & Hands, which with
Frequent Use adds a most Agreeable Lustre to the Complexion,
softens & beautifies the Skin to Admiration And is generally used
and approved of by most of the Gentry in London _of both Sexes_."
"Best Face Powder which gives a fine Bloom to the Face which
answers all the intents of White Paint without that Pernicious
effect that attends Paint. Also a Composition to take off
Superficious Hair."
The latter clause shows that our great-grandmothers were quite _au fait_
with the nostrums of the present day, with "pargetting, painting,
slicking, glazing, and renewing old rivelled faces."
Many pretty rules may be found in old books and diaries, that are of New
England, rules "to make the face fair" and to "make sweet the mouth."
"Take the flowers of Rosemary and seeth them in VVhite VVine, with
which wash your face, and if you drink thereof it wil make you have
a sweet breath."
Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the
early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's
milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were
to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a
"faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew.
Could this have been but a sly trick to get the lasses from their beds
betimes? We know the early hour at which Madam Pepys had to bathe her
mighty handsome face in the beautifying spring dew.
Patches were worn as eagerly, apparently, by Boston as by London belles.
Whitefield complained of the jewels, patches, and gay apparel donned in
New England. In scores of old newspapers after 1760 appear notices of
the sale of "Face Patches," "Patch for Ladies," "Gum Patches," etc., and
the frequency of advertisement would indicate a popular and ready sale.
With regard to the bathing habits of our ancestors but little can be
said, and but little had best be said. Charles Francis Adams writes,
with witty plainness, "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed
that which ranks next to godliness, then judged by the nineteenth
century standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth
century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they
lacked of the former." He says there was not a bath-room in the town of
Quincy prior to the year 1820. And of what use would pitchers or tubs of
water have been in bed-rooms in the winter time, when if exposed over
night solid ice would be found therein in the morning? The washing of
linen in New England homes was done monthly; it is to be hoped the
personal baths were more frequent, even under the apparent difficulties
of accomplishment. I must state, in truth, though with deep
mortification, that I cannot find in inventories even of Revolutionary
times the slightest sign of the presence of balneary appurtenances in
bed-rooms; not even of ewers, lavers, and basins, nor of pails and tubs.
As petty pieces of furniture, such as stools, besoms, framed pictures,
and looking-glasses are enumerated, this conspicuous absence of what we
deem an absolute necessity for decency speaks with a persistent and
exceedingly disagreeable voice of the unwashed condition of our
ancestors, a condition all the more mortifying when we consider their
exceeding external elegance in dress. This total absence of toilet
appliances does not of course render impossible a special lavatory or
bath-room in the house, or the daily importation to the bed-rooms of
hot-water cans, twiggen bottles, bath-tubs, and basins from other
portions of the house; but even that equipment would show a lack of
adequate bathing facilities. Nor do the tiny toilet jugs and basins of
Staffordshire ware that date from the first part of this century point
to any very elaborate ablutions.
But these be parlous words an we wish to honor the memory of our New
England grandsires; and let us remember that these negative toilet
traits were not peculiar to them, but dated from the fatherland. A
century ago the English were said to be the only European people that
had the unenviable distinction of going to the dinner-table without
previously washing or "dressing" the hands.
One very unpleasant cosmetic, or rather detergent, was in constant use,
however, throughout colonial times--wash-balls. They were imported as
early as 1693 in company with scented and plain hair-powder. In 1771,
"Gentlemen's Fine Washballs" were advertised in Boston, and "Scented
Marbled Washballs." Other varieties of these substitutes for soap were
Chemical, Greek, Venice, Marseilles, camphor, ambergris, and Bologna
wash-balls. This is a rule given in olden times for the "Composition for
Best Wash Balls:"
"Take forty pounds of Rice in fine powder, twenty eight pounds of
fine flour, twenty eight pounds of starch powder, twelve pounds of
White Lead, and four pounds of Orris Root in fine powder but no
Whitening. Mix the whole well together and pass it through a fine
sieve, then place it in a dry place and keep it for use. Great care
must be taken that the Flour be not musty, in which case the Balls
will in time crack and fall to pieces. To this composition may be
added Dutch pink or brown fine damask powder according to the
colour required when the Wash Balls are quite dry."
The effect of so large an amount of white lead must have been felt and
shown most deleteriously upon the complexion of the user of this
disagreeable compound.
"Ipswitch balls"--also the mode--were more pleasing:
"Take a pound of fine White Castill Sope; shave it thin in a pinte
of Rose water, and let it stand two or three dayes, then pour all
the water from it, and put to it a halfe a pinte of fresh water,
and so let it stand one whole day, then pour out that, and put to
it halfe a pinte more and let it stand a night more, then put to it
halfe an ounce of powder called sweet Marjoram, a quarter of an
ounce of Winter Savory, two or three drops of the Oil of Spike and
the Oil of Cloves, three grains of musk, and as much Ambergreese,
work all these together in a fair Mortar with the powder of an
Almond Cake dryed and beaten as small as fine flowre, so rowl it
round in your hands in Rose water."
The favorite soap, if one can judge from importations, was "Brown or
Gray Bristol Sope," but this was not used by many in the community. The
manufacture of home-made soap, of soft soap, was one of the universal,
most important, and most trying of all the household industries. The
refuse grease of the family cooking was stowed away in an unsavory mass
till early spring, and the wood ashes from the fireplaces were also
stored. When the soap-making took place, the ashes were placed in a
leach tub out of doors. This tub was sometimes made from the section of
the bark of a birch tree; it was set loosely in a circular groove in a
base of wood, or preferably of stone. Water was poured on the ashes, and
the lye trickled from an outlet cut in the groove. The boiling of the
lye and grease was an ill-smelling process, which was also carried on
out of doors, and required an enormous amount of labor and patience. It
was judged that when the compound was strong enough to hold up an egg,
the soap was done. This strong soft soap was kept in a wooden "soap box"
in the kitchen, and used for toilet as well as household purposes.
Dearly did the English and the New English love perfumes. They made
little rolls of sweet-scented powders and gums and oils, "as large as
pease," that they placed between rose-leaves and burned on coals in
skillets or in little perfume-holders to scent the room. They burned on
their open hearths mint and rose-leaves with sugar. They took the "maste
of sweet Apple trees gathered betwixt two Lady days," and with gums and
perfumes made bracelets and pomanders, "to keep to one a sweet smell."
They made cakes of damask rose-leaves and pulvilio, civit, and musk, of
"linet and ambergreese," to perfume their linen chests, for lavender
thrived not in New England. The duties of the still-room were the most
luxury-bearing of all the old household industries. Its very name brings
to us sweet scents of Araby, as it brought to our forbears the most
charming and nice of all their domestic occupations. But these duties
were not easy nor expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the
still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden,
from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and
limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great
susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and
distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown
through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In
many an old garret now bare of such stores "mints still perfume the
air;" the very walls exhale "the homesick smell of dry forgotten herbs."
From these old stills, these retorts and mills, came not only perfumes
and oils and beauty-waters, but half the medicines and diet-drinks, all
the "kitchen-physicke" of the domestic and even the professional
pharmacopæia.
Perfumes were also imported; we frequently find advertised "Royal Honey
Water, an Excellent Perfume, good against Deafness, and to make the hair
grow as the directions Sets forth. 1s 6d per bottle and proportionate by
Ounce." Old Zabdiel Boylston had it in 1712. Spirit of Benjamin was also
for toilet uses. This was the base of the well-known scent known as
Queen Elizabeth's Perfume. It was combined with sweet marjoram. Lavender
water was apparently a great favorite for importation, and we find
notices of lavender bottles with shagreen cases.
We find in newspaper days many advertisements of other toilet articles
such as nail-knippers, pick-tooth cases, silk and worsted powder-puffs,
deerskin powder bags, lip-salve, ivory scratch-backs, flesh brushes,
curling and pinching tongs, all showing a strongly crescent vanity and
love of luxury.
XIII
RAIMENT AND VESTURE
We know definitely the dress of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, for
the inventory of the "Apparell for 100 men" furnished by the
Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628 is still in existence. From it we
learn that enough clothing was provided to supply to each emigrant four
"peare of shewes," four "peare of stockings," a "peare Norwich garters,"
four shirts, two "sutes dublet and hose of leather lynd with oil'd skyn
leather, ye hose & dublett with hookes & eyes," a "sute of Norden
dussens or hampshire kersies lynd, the hose with skins, dublets with
lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys," four bands, two handkerchiefs, a
"wastcoate of greene cotton bound about with red tape," a leather
girdle, a Monmouth cap, a "black hatt lyned in the browes with lether,"
five "Red knit capps mill'd about 5d a piece," two pair of gloves, a
mandillion "lyned with cotton," one pair of breeches and waistcoat, and
a "lether sute of Dublett & breeches of oyled lether," and one pair of
leather breeches and "drawers to serve to weare with both their other
sutes."
This surely was a liberal outfit save perhaps in the matter of shirts
and handkerchiefs, and doubtless intended to last many years. Though
simple it was far from being a sombre one. Scarlet caps and green
waistcoats bound with red made cheerful bits of color alongside the
leather breeches and buff doublets on Salem shore.
The apparel of the Piscataquay planters, furnished in 1635, varied
somewhat from that just enumerated. Their waistcoats were scarlet, and
they had cassocks of cloth and canvas, instead of doublets. Though
scarce more than a lustrum had passed since the settlement on the shores
of the Bay, long hose like the Florentine hose had become entirely
old-fashioned and breeches were the wear. Coats--"lynd coats, papous
coats, and moose coats"--had also been invented, or at any rate dubbed
with that name and assumed. Cassocks, doublets, and jerkins varied
little in shape, and the names seem to have been interchangeable.
Mandillions, said by some authorities to be cloaks, were in fact much
like the doublets, and were worn apparently as an over-garment or
great-coat. The name appears not in inventories after the earliest
years.
Though simplicity of dress was one of the cornerstones of the Puritan
Church, the individual members did not yield their personal vanity
without many struggles. As soon as the colonies rallied from the first
years of poverty and, above all, of comparative isolation, and a sequent
tide of prosperity and wealth came rolling in, the settlers began to
pick up in dress, to bedeck themselves, to send eagerly to the mother
country for new petticoats and doublets that, when proudly donned, did
not seem simple and grave enough for the critical eyes of the omnipotent
New England magistrates and ministers. Hence restraining and simplifying
sumptuary laws were passed. In 1634, in view of some new fashions which
were deemed by these autocrats to be immodest and extravagant, this
order was sent forth by the General Court:
"That no person either man or woman shall hereafter make or buy any
apparel, either woolen or silk or linen with any lace on it,
silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said
clothes. Also that no person either man or woman shall make or buy
any slashed clothes other than one slash in each sleeve and another
in the back; also all cut-works, embroideries, or needlework cap,
bands, and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn under
the aforesaid penalty; also all gold or silver girdles, hatbands,
belts, ruffs, beaverhats are prohibited to be bought and worn
hereafter."
Liberty was thriftily given the planters, however, to "wear out such
apparel as they are now provided of except the immoderate great sleeves,
slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings," which latter
were apparently beyond Puritanical endurance.