[Sidenote: American Society.]
Despite the numerous biographies, histories, narratives, diaries, and
volumes of correspondence concerning the revolutionary epoch, which fill
many shelves of our larger libraries, it is not easy to reproduce in
imagination the state of American society as it was a hundred years ago.
In order to do so we must exclude from the mind many objects and ideas
which have been familiar to us all our lives. We must subtract all of
material improvements, of changes in the method of doing things, of new
directions and wide divergencies in the current of thought and knowledge
that have come about in the interval. We must strip the modern home, for
instance, of appliances without which it is difficult to conjure up a
picture of comfort, much less of luxury. We must forget railways, and
the telegraph, and every other use of that still mysterious agent,
electricity. We must put out of our minds all notion of great cities, of
long lines of elegant shops, blocks of noble residences, spacious parks
adorned by every refinement of the gardening art, public buildings
capped with stately dome and graceful turret and sculptured front; all
notion of the later growth of recreation, the theatre and the concert
hall, the lecture platform, the brilliant holiday festival, the sea
excursion, the gay and attractive summer resort with its big hotels and
its countless luxuries. We must return in imagination, in short, to
a social condition but few remnants of which are still to be found in
remote corners of the country; the relics of which still visible to the
eye are rare and precious, and dwindling away day by day; and the
life and spirit of which have ceased with the broadened, gift-laden
civilization which has replaced the old primitive simplicity, and made
a powerful, teeming, and restless nation out of scattered villages and
colonies struggling to exist.
[Sidenote: Old-time Mansions.]
Still, there was a very distinct advance in culture, elegance, comfort,
and luxury, beyond the condition of the colonies in the previous
century. Those who remember the stately Hancock House, on the top of
Beacon Hill in Boston, and compare its exterior and interior with still
extant edifices which were residences of the wealthier colonists of two
hundred years ago, may gather some idea of the far more lavish adornment
and elegance of the period in which Hancock lived. We may well believe
that when Washington drove through the streets of Philadelphia in
a state coach, "of which the body was in the shape of a hemisphere,
cream-colored, bordered with flowers round the panels, and ornamented
with figures representing cupids, and supporting festoons," he presented
a very different appearance from that of the early Puritan governors
and Virginian squires; and could we have peeped into the square, solid
drawing-room in which, as President, he held his receptions, aided by
the matronly grace and dignity of Mrs. Washington, the scene would
be far gayer and more imposing than William Penn's house would have
displayed, or the company of the richest Dutch "patroon" of New York
could have presented in the seventeenth century.
[Sidenote: Old Furniture.]
Yet, had we gone over the mansion, in how many things would we, used
to the minute refinements of this later age, have judged it wanting!
Instead of gas, there would be candles, and not of the best quality,
everywhere. Instead of stoves and furnaces with coal, we should have
been fain to comfort ourselves with the cheerful blaze and genial glow,
but scant and capricious warmth, of the wood logs, burning in the big
open fireplaces. Lace curtains and moquette carpets would be nowhere
apparent. The furniture, though here and there richly carved and
bountifully upholstered, would be wanting in variety and the luxurious
ease of that which we now enjoy.
[Sidenote: The Tables of 1776.]
At table we should have missed the thousand refinements and inventions
of French and native cooking which now lend variety to our sustenance.
The food would have been substantial and heavy and little various; the
English simplicity, probably, of barons of beef and shoulders of mutton,
and cold bread, and big plum puddings, with a relish of fruits. Were we
in fancy to journey from New York to Philadelphia or Boston, we should
be forced to rumble slowly over bad roads, through interminable forests
and by desert sea-coasts, in heavy and rudely jolting vehicles, and be
several days upon the trip.
[Sidenote: Travelling in the Olden Time.]
[Sidenote: The Wealthier Classes.]
It is a striking fact that people in the days of Washington travelled
not a whit more rapidly than people in the days of Moses or of Homer.
The chariot-rider of the Olympic games attained a speed which
was, perhaps, never equalled in Europe or America until the first
railway-train sped between Liverpool and Manchester, in 1830. In 1776,
the Americans were still mainly confined to the original occupations of
the early colonists, farming, trade, hunting, and fishing. Manufactories
there were not as yet; Lawrence and Lowell. Pittsburg, and the great
industrial New York towns, were still in the womb of the future.
In almost every household throughout the land the old-fashioned
spinning-wheel was humming under the pressure of matronly and maidenly
feet, by which the homespun garments of the time were made. While the
less well-to-do and laboring classes were content with clothing spun and
knitted at their own firesides, the wealthier people arrayed themselves
with far more ostentation than they do at this day. Silks and satins
came hither by ship-loads from France to supply the luxury of costume
which was then in vogue. The difference between the costumes of that day
and of this was especially marked in the attire of gentlemen. Now there
is much greater plainness and uniformity. When Washington held his
levees, he was generally dressed "in black velvet, with white
or pearl-colored waistcoat, yellow gloves, and silver knee and
shoe-buckles." "His hair was powdered and gathered in a silk bag behind.
He carried a cocked hat in his hand, and wore a long sword with a
scabbard of polished white leather." The display of dress was not less
marked in other officials, and in men of high social rank. The judges of
the Supreme Court wore scarlet robes faced with velvet. "If a
gentleman went abroad, he appeared in his wig, white stock, white satin
embroidered vest, black satin small-clothes, with white silk stockings,
and a fine broadcloth or velvet coat; if at home, a velvet cap,
sometimes with a fine linen one under it, took the place of the
wig; while a gown, frequently of colored damask lined with silk,
was substituted for the coat, and the feet were covered with leather
slippers of some fancy color." All men shaved their beards clean; a man
who appeared in the streets wearing hair on any part of his face was
stared at, and very likely laughed at.
[Sidenote: Old-time Attire.]
[Sidenote: Wigs and Queues.]
All the great gentlemen wore wigs; most of the country farmers contented
themselves with tying their hair in a queue behind, sprinkling it with
powder when they went to church on a Sunday. As for the ladies, those in
the best society were even more elaborate in their toilets than those
of to-day. On the dressing of the hair, especially, much time and money
were spent. It was raised high upon the head and powdered thick; "the
hair dressers," says Higginson, "were kept so busy on the day of any
fashionable entertainment, that ladies sometimes had to employ their
services at four or five in the morning, and had to sit upright all the
rest of the day, in order to avoid disturbing the head-dress."
[Sidenote: Amusements.]
Although our ancestors did not possess the variety of amusements
which now exists, their life was far from a humdrum one. Theatres were
tabooed, but were beginning to hold their ground here and there, though
not, we may be sure, in New England. There were, however, private
theatricals and charades, which became at one period very much in vogue
in the aristocratic houses of New York and Philadelphia. Concerts were
often held, and in the country many old-time English festivals, such as
May Day, were kept up. The most frequent and fashionable amusements of
that time were balls and parties. We hear of the gentlemen and dames
going to "routs" in their sedan chairs, much as they did in the old
country: arriving at eight--they kept better hours than our modern
fashionable people--they would dance the staid and stately minuet and
the gayer contra-dance, to the music mainly of fiddles, till midnight,
and then separate, horrified at the lateness of the hour.
[Sidenote: Imitations of the English.]
Indeed, we are able to see in the habits of the American upper classes
a distinct imitation of London fashions, despite the quarrel with the
British. The whole etiquette of patrician society was based upon that
of the English court, just as the law administered in the courts was
borrowed from that dispensed at Westminster. It is interesting to note
that "gentlemen took snuff in those days almost universally: and a great
deal of expense and variety were often lavished upon a snuff-box. To
take snuff with one another was as much a matter of courtesy as the
lifting of the hat."
[Sidenote: Wine and Profanity.]
The days of prevalent cigar-smoking and tobacco-chewing had not come.
The use of wine and ardent spirits was regarded with less reprobation
in the old society than in the new; profanity, too, was indulged in much
more freely by men of standing and moral profession than now. Thus we
can recognize, in these and in many other things, a progress in morals,
and in greater refinement both of thought, manners, and language, as
well as in the material enginery of civilization.