GIRLS' OCCUPATIONS
Hatchelling and carding, spinning and reeling, weaving and bleaching,
cooking, candle and cheese making, were not the only household
occupations of our busy grandmothers when they were young; a score of
domestic duties kept ever busy their ready hands.
Some notion of the qualifications of a housekeeper over a century ago
may be obtained from this advertisement in the _Pennsylvania Packet_ of
September 23, 1780:
"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on
which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of
unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amiable
Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct
and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising
small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning,
knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to
instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with
their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated
with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to
such a character."
Respect and esteem, forsooth! and due encouragement to such a miracle of
saintliness and capacity; light terms indeed to apply to such a
character.
There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society, a diary
written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775.
Her name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily work, and the entries
run like this:--
"Fix'd gown for Prude,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood,--Spun short
thread,--Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls,--Carded tow,--Spun
linen,--Worked on Cheese-basket,--Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we
did 51 lbs. apiece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a Sermon of
Doddridge's,--Spooled a piece,--Milked the cows,--Spun linen, did
50 knots,--Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to
whiten,--Set a Red dye,--Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's,--I
carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,--Spun harness
twine,--Scoured the pewter."
She tells also of washing, cooking, knitting, weeding the garden,
picking geese, etc., and of many visits to her friends. She dipped
candles in the spring, and made soap in the autumn. This latter was a
trying and burdensome domestic duty, but the soft soap was important for
home use.
All the refuse grease from cooking, butchering, etc., was stored through
the winter, as well as wood-ashes from the great fireplaces. The first
operation was to make the lye, to "set the leach." Many families owned a
strongly made leach-barrel; others made a sort of barrel from a section
of the bark of the white birch. This barrel was placed on bricks or set
at a slight angle on a circular groove in a wood or stone base; then
filled with ashes; water was poured in till the lye trickled or leached
out through an outlet cut in the groove, into a small wooden tub or
bucket. The water and ashes were frequently replenished as they wasted,
and the lye accumulated in a large tub or kettle. If the lye was not
strong enough, it was poured over fresh ashes. An old-time receipt
says:--
"The great Difficulty in making Soap come is the want of Judgment
of the Strength of the Lye. If your Lye will bear up an Egg or a
Potato so you can see a piece of the Surface as big as a Ninepence
it is just strong enough."
The grease and lye were then boiled together in a great pot over a fire
out of doors. It took about six bushels of ashes and twenty-four pounds
of grease to make a barrel of soap. The soft soap made by this process
seemed like a clean jelly, and showed no trace of the repulsive grease
that helped to form it. A hard soap also was made with the tallow of the
bayberry, and was deemed especially desirable for toilet use. But little
hard soap was purchased, even in city homes.
It was a common saying: "We had bad luck with our soap," or good luck.
The soap was always carefully stirred one way. The "Pennsylvania Dutch"
used a sassafras stick to stir it. A good smart worker could make a
barrel of soap in a day, and have time to sit and rest in the afternoon
and talk her luck over, before getting supper.
This soft soap was used in the great monthly washings which, for a
century after the settlement of the colonies, seem to have been the
custom. The household wash was allowed to accumulate, and the washing
done once a month, or in some households once in three months.
Thomas Tusser's rhymed instructions to good housekeepers as to the
washing contain chiefly warnings to the housekeeper against thieves,
thus:--
"Dry sun, dry wind,
Safe bind, safe find.
Go wash well, saith summer, with sun I shall dry;
Go wring well, saith winter, with wind so shall I.
To trust without heed is to venture a joint,
Give tale and take count is a housewifely point."
Abigail Foote wrote of making a broom of Guinea wheat. This was not
broom-corn, for that useful plant was not grown in Connecticut for the
purpose of broom-making till twenty years or more after she wrote her
diary. Brooms and brushes were made of it in Italy nearly two centuries
ago. Benjamin Franklin, who was ever quick to use and develop anything
that would benefit his native country, and was ever ready to take a
hint, noted a few seeds of broom-corn hanging on an imported brush. He
planted these seeds and raised some of the corn; and Thomas Jefferson
placed broom-corn among the productions of Virginia in 1781. By this
time many had planted it, but no systematic plan of raising broom-corn
abundantly for the manufacture of brooms was planned till 1798, when
Levi Dickenson, a Yankee farmer of Hadley, Massachusetts, planted half
an acre. From this he made between one and two hundred brooms which he
peddled in a horse-cart in neighboring towns. The following year he
planted an acre; and the tall broom-corn with its spreading panicles
attracted much attention. Though he was thought visionary when he
predicted that broom manufacture would be the greatest industry in the
county, and though he was sneeringly told that only Indians ought to
make brooms, he persevered; and his neighbors finally planted and made
brooms also. He carried brooms soon to Pittsfield, to New London, and in
1805 to Albany and Boston. So rapid was the increase of manufacture that
in 1810 seventy thousand brooms were made in the county. Since then
millions of dollars' worth have gone forth from the farms and villages
in his neighborhood.
Mr. Dickenson at first scraped the seed from the brush with a knife;
then he used a sort of hoe; then a coarse comb like a ripple-comb. He
tied each broom by hand, with the help of a negro servant. Much of this
work could be done by little girls, who soon gave great help in broom
manufacture; though the final sewing (when the needle was pressed
through with a leather "palm" such as sailors use) had to be done by the
strong hands of grown women and men.
Doubtless Abigail Foote made many an "Indian broom," as well as her
brooms of Guinea wheat, which may have been a special home manufacture
of her neighborhood; for many fibres, leaves, and straws were used
locally in broom-making.
Another duty of the women of the old-time household was the picking of
domestic geese. Geese were raised for their feathers more than as food.
In some towns every family had a flock, and their clanking was heard all
day and sometimes all night. They roamed the streets all summer, eating
grass by the highways and wallowing in the puddles. Sometimes they were
yoked with a goose-yoke made of a shingle with a hole in it. In
midwinter they were kept in barnyards, but the rest of the year they
spent the night in the street, each flock near the home of its owner. It
is said that one old goose of each flock always kept awake and stood
watch; and it was told in Hadley, Massachusetts, that if a young man
chanced to be out late, as for instance a-courting, his return home
wakened the geese throughout the village, who sounded the unseasonable
hour with a terrible clamor. They made so much noise on summer Sundays
that they seriously disturbed church services; and became such nuisances
that at last the boys killed whole flocks.
Goose-picking was cruel work. Three or four times a year were the
feathers stripped from the live birds. A stocking was pulled over the
bird's head to keep it from biting. Sometimes the head was thrust into a
goose basket. The pickers had to wear old clothes and tie covers over
the hair, as the down flew everywhere. The quills, used for pens, were
never pulled but once from a goose. Palladius, _On Husbondrie_, written
in the fourth century, and Englished in the fifteenth century, tells of
goose-picking:--
"Twice a yere deplumed may they be,
In spryngen tyme and harvest tyme."
The old Latin and English times for picking were followed in the New
World. Among the Dutch, geese were everywhere raised; for feather-beds
were, if possible, more desired by the Dutch than the English.
In a work entitled _Good Order established in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey_, written by a Quaker in 1685, he urges that schools be provided
where girls could be instructed in "the spinning of flax, sewing, and
making all sorts of useful needle work, knitting of gloves and
stockings, making of straw-works, as hats, baskets, etc., or any other
useful art or mystery." It was a century before his "making of
straw-works" was carried out, not till larger importations of straw hats
and bonnets came to this country.
When the beautiful and intricate straw bonnets of Italian braid,
Genoese, Leghorn, and others, were brought here, they were too costly
for many to purchase; and many attempts, especially by country-bred
girls, were made to plait at home straw braids to imitate these envied
bonnets. Many towns claim the first American straw bonnet; in fact, the
attempts were almost simultaneous. To Betsey Metcalf of Providence,
Rhode Island, is usually accorded the honor of starting the straw-hat
business in America. The earliest recorded effort to manufacture straw
head-wear is shown in a patent given to Mrs. Sibylla Masters of
Philadelphia, for using palmetto and straw for hats. This Mrs. Masters
was the first American, man or woman, ever awarded a patent in England.
The first patent issued by the United States to a woman was also for an
invention in straw-plaiting. A Connecticut girl, Miss Sophia Woodhouse,
was given a prize for "leghorn hats" which she had plaited; and she took
out a patent in 1821 for a new material for bonnets. It was the stalks,
above the upper joint, of spear-grass and redtop grass growing so
profusely in Weathersfield. From this she had a national reputation,
and a prize of twenty guineas was given her the same year by the London
Society of Arts. The wife of President John Quincy Adams wore one of
these bonnets, to the great pride of her husband.
When the bonnet was braided and sewed into shape, it had to be bleached,
for it was the dark natural straw. I don't know the domestic process in
general use, but an ingenious family of sisters in Newburyport thus
accomplished their bleaching. They bored holes in the head of a barrel;
tied strings to each new bonnet; passed the strings through the holes
and carefully plugged the openings with wood. This left the bonnets
hanging inside the barrel, which was set over an old-fashioned
foot-stove filled with hot coals on which sulphur had been placed. The
fumes of the burning sulphur arose and filled the barrel, and were
closely retained by quilts wrapped around it. When the bonnets were
taken out, they were clear and white. The base of a lignum-vitae mortar
made into the proper shape with layers of pasteboard formed the mould on
which the bonnet crown was pressed.
Even before they could spin girls were taught to knit, as soon as their
little hands could hold the needles. Sometimes girls four years of age
could knit stockings. Boys had to knit their own suspenders. All the
stockings and mittens for the family, and coarse socks and mittens for
sale, were made in large numbers. Much fine knitting was done, with many
intricate and elaborate stitches; those known as the "herring-bone" and
"fox and geese" were great favorites. By the use of curious stitches
initials could be knit into mittens; and it is said that one young New
Hampshire girl, using fine flaxen yarn, knit the whole alphabet and a
verse of poetry into a pair of mittens; which I think must have been
long-armed mitts for ladies' wear, to have space enough for the poetry.
To knit a pair of double mittens was a sharp and long day's work. Nancy
Peabody's brother of Shelburne, New Hampshire, came home one night and
said he had lost his mittens while chopping in the woods. Nancy ran to a
bundle of wool in the garret, carded and spun a big hank of yarn that
night. It was soaked and scoured the next morning, and in twenty-four
hours from the time the brother announced his loss he had a fine new
pair of double mittens. A pair of double hooked and pegged mittens would
last for years. Pegging, I am told, was heavy crocheting.
An elaborate and much-admired form of knitting was the bead bags and
purses which were so fashionable in the early years of this century,
though I have seen some knitted bags of colonial days.
Great variety and ingenuity were shown in these bags and purses. Some
bore landscapes and figures; others were memorials done in black and
white and purple beads, having so-called "mourning designs," such as
weeping willows, gravestones, urns, etc., with the name of the deceased
person and date of death. Beautiful bags were knitted to match
wedding-gowns. Knitted purses were a favorite token and gift from fair
hands to husband or lover. Watch chains were more unusual; they were
knit in a geometrical design, were about a yard long and about
three-eighths of an inch in diameter. One I saw had in tiny letters in
gilt beads the date and the words "Remember the Giver." In all these
knitted and crocheted bags the beads had to be strung by a rule in
advance; in an elaborate pattern of many colors it may easily be seen
that the mistake of a single bead in the stringing would spoil the
entire design. They were therefore never a cheap form of decorative
work. Five dollars was often paid for knitting a single bag. A varied
group from the collection of Mr. J. Howard Swift of Chicago is here
shown.
Netting was another decorative handiwork. Netted fringes for edging the
coverlets, curtains, testers, and valances of high-post bedsteads
were usually made of cotton thread or twine, and when tufted or
tasselled were a pretty finish. A finer silk or cotton netting was used
for trimming sacks and petticoats. A letter written by Mrs. Carrington
from Mount Vernon in 1799 says of Mrs. President Washington:--
"Her netting is a source of great amusement to her and is so neatly
done that all the younger part of the family are proud of trimming
their dresses with it, and have furnished me with a whole suit so
that I shall appear 'a la domestique' at the first party we have
when I get home."
Netted purses and work-bags also were made similar to the knitted ones.
A homelier and heavier netting of twine was often done at home for small
fishing-nets.
Previous to the Revolution there was a boarding-school kept in
Philadelphia in Second Street near Walnut, by a Mrs. Sarah Wilson. She
thus advertised:--
"Young ladies may be educated in a genteel manner, and pains taken
to teach them in regard to their behaviour, on reasonable terms.
They may be taught all sorts fine needlework, viz., working on
catgut or flowering muslin, sattin stitch, quince stitch, tent
stitch, cross-stitch, open work, tambour, embroidering curtains or
chairs, writing and cyphering. Likewise waxwork in all its several
branches, never as yet particularly taught here; also how to take
profiles in wax, to make wax flowers and fruits and pin-baskets."
There was no limit to the beauty and delicacy of the embroidery of those
days. I have seen the beautiful needlework cap and skirt worn by
Governor Thomas Johnson of Maryland, when he was christened. The coat of
arms of both the Lux and Johnson families, the name Agnes Lux and Anne
Johnson, and the words "God bless the Babe" are embroidered upon them in
most delicate fairy stitches. The babe grew up to be the governor of his
state in Revolutionary times.
In an old book printed in 1821, a set of rules is given for teaching
needlework, and it is doubtless exactly what had been the method for a
century. The girls were first shown how to turn a hem on a piece of
waste paper; then they proceeded to the various stitches in this order:
to hem, to sew and fell a seam, to draw threads and hemstitch, to gather
and sew on gathers, to make buttonholes, to sew on buttons, to do
herring-bone stitch, to darn, to mark, to tuck, whip, and sew on a
frill. There is also a long and tedious set of questions and answers
like a catechism, explaining the various stitches.
There was one piece of needlework which was done by every little girl
who was carefully brought up: she sewed a sampler. These were worked in
various beautiful and difficult stitches in colored silks and wool on a
strong, loosely woven canvas.
In English collections, the oblong samplers, long and narrow, are as a
rule older than the square samplers; and it is safe to believe the same
of American samplers. Fortunately, many of them are dated, but this
ancient one from the Quincy family has no date. The oldest sampler I
have ever seen is in the collection of antique articles now in Pilgrim
Hall at Plymouth. It was made by a daughter of the Pilgrims. The verse
embroidered on it reads:--
"Lorea Standish is My Name.
Lord Guide my Heart that I may do thy Will,
And fill my Hands with such convenient skill
As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame,
And I will give the Glory to thy Name."
Similar verses, and portions of hymns, are often found on these
samplers. A favorite rhyme was:--
"When I was young and in my Prime,
You see how well I spent my Time.
And by my sampler you may see
What care my Parents took of me."
A very spirited verse is:--
"You'll mend your life to-morrow still you cry.
In what far Country does To-morrow lie?
It stays so long, is fetch'd so far, I fear
'Twill prove both very old, and very dear."
Strange trees and fruits and birds and beasts, wonderful vines and
flowers, were embroidered on these domestic tapestries.
In the hands of a skilful worker, the sampler might become a thing of
beauty and historical interest; and the stitches learned and practised
on it might be used on more ambitious pieces of work, which often took
the shape of the family coat of arms. Such was the work of Mary Salter
(Mrs. Henry Quincy), who was born in 1726, and died in 1755. It is the
arms of Salter and Bryan party per pale upon a shield. Rich in embossed
work in gold and silver thread, it is a beautiful testimonial to the
deft and proficient hand of the young needlewoman who embroidered it.
Sometimes pretentious pictures representing events in public or family
history, were embroidered in crewels on sampler linen. The largest and
funniest one I have ever seen was the boarding-school climax of glory
of Miss Hannah Otis, sister of the patriot James Otis. It is a view of
the Hancock House, Boston Common, and vicinity, as they appeared from
1755 to 1760. Across its expanse Governor Hancock rides triumphantly;
and the fair maid looking over the garden wall at the Charles River is
Dorothy Quincy, afterwards Madam Hancock. This triumph of school-girl
affection and needle-craft, wholly devoid of perspective or proportion,
made a great sensation in Boston, in its day.
Another large piece of similar work is here represented. The original is
in the library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester,
Massachusetts. It is a view of the Old South Church, Boston; and with
its hooped dames and coach and footman, has a certain value as
indicating the costume of the times. It is dated 1756.
Familiar to the descendants of old New England families, are the
embroidered mourning pieces. These are seldom more than a century old.
On them weeping willows and urns, tombs and mourning figures, names of
departed friends with dates of their deaths, and epitaphs were worked
with vast skill, and were so much admired and were such a delightful
home decoration, that it is no unusual thing to find these elaborate
memento moris with empty spaces for names and dates, waiting for some
one to die, and still unfilled, unfinished, blankly commemorative of no
one, while the industrious embroiderer has long since gone to the tomb
she so deftly and eagerly pictured, and her name, too, is forgotten.
Tambour work was a favorite form of embroidery. In 1788 Madam Hesselius
wrote thus in jest of her daughter, a Philadelphia miss:--
"To tambour on crape she has a great passion,
Because here of late it has been much the fashion.
The shades are dis-sorted, the spangles are scattered
And for want of due care the crape has got tattered."
Tambouring with various stitches on different kinds of net made pretty
laces; and these were apparently the laces usually worked and worn. In
the form of rich veils and collars scores of intricate and beautiful
stitches were used, and exquisite articles of wear were manufactured.
A strip of net footing pinned and sewn to paper, with reels of fine
linen thread and threaded needle attached, is shown in the accompanying
illustration just as it was left by the deft and industrious hands that
have been folded for a century in the dust. The pattern and stitches in
this design are simple; the design was first pricked in outline with a
pin, then worked in. Other stitches and patterns, none of them the most
elaborate and difficult, are shown in the infant's cap and collars, and
the strips of lace and "modesty-piece."
In the seventeenth century lace-making with bobbins was taught; it is
referred to in Judge Sewall's diary; and a friend has shown me the
cushion and bobbins used by her far-away grandmother who learned the
various stitches in London at a guinea a stitch.
The feminine love of color, the longing for decoration, as well as pride
in skill of needle-craft, found riotous expansion in quilt-piecing. A
thrifty economy, too, a desire to use up all the fragments and bits of
stuffs which were necessarily cut out in the shaping, chiefly of women's
and children's garments, helped to make the patchwork a satisfaction.
The amount of labor, of careful fitting, neat piecing, and elaborate
quilting, the thousands of stitches that went into one of these
patchwork quilts, are to-day almost painful to regard. Women revelled in
intricate and difficult patchwork; they eagerly exchanged patterns with
one another; they talked over the designs, and admired pretty bits of
calico, and pondered what combinations to make, with far more zest than
women ever discuss art or examine high art specimens together to-day.
There was one satisfactory condition in the work, and that was the
quality of the cottons and linens of which the patchwork was made. They
were none of the slimsy, composition-filled, aniline-dyed calicoes of
to-day. A piece of "chaney," "patch," or "copper-plate" a hundred years
old will be as fresh to-day as when woven. Real India chintzes and
palampours are found in these quilts, beautiful and artistic stuffs, and
the firm, unyielding, high-priced, "real" French calicoes.
A sense of the idealization of quilt-piecing is given also by the quaint
descriptive names applied to the various patterns. Of those the
"Rising-sun," "Log Cabin," and "Job's Trouble" are perhaps the most
familiar. "Job's Trouble" was simply honeycomb or hexagonal blocks. "To
set a Job's Trouble," was to cut out an exact hexagon for a pattern
(preferably from tin, otherwise from firm cardboard); to cut out from
this many hexagons in stiff brown paper or letter paper. These were
covered with the bits of calico with the edges turned under; the sides
were sewed carefully together over and over, till a firm expanse
permitted the removal of the papers.
The name of the pattern seldom gave an expression of its character.
"Dove in the Window," "Rob Peter to Pay Paul," "Blue Brigade,"
"Fan-mill," "Crow's Foot," "Chinese Puzzle," "Fly-wheel," "Love-knot,"
"Sugar-bowl," are simply whims of fancy. Floral names, such as "Dutch
Tulip," "Sunflower," "Rose of Sharon," "Bluebells," "World's Rose,"
might suggest a love of flowers. Sometimes designs are appliqued on with
some regard for coloring. I once saw a quilt that was a miracle of
tedious work. The squares of white cotton each held a slender stem with
two leaves of green or light brown calico, surmounted by a four-petalled
flower of high-colored calico,--pink, red, blue, etc. This design was
all carefully hemmed down. The effect was surprisingly Oriental.
When the patchwork was completed, it was laid flatly on the lining
(often another expanse of patchwork), with layers of wool or cotton
wadding between, and the edges were basted all around. Four bars of
wood, about ten feet long, "the quiltin'-frame," were placed at the four
edges, the quilt was sewed to them with stout thread, the bars crossed
and tied firmly at corners, and the whole raised on chairs or tables to
a convenient height. Thus around the outstretched quilt a dozen quilters
could sit running the whole together with fanciful set designs of
stitching. When about a foot on either side was wholly quilted, it was
rolled upon its bar, and the work went on; thus the visible quilt
diminished, like Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, in a united and truly
sociable work that required no special attention, in which all were
facing together and all drawing closer together as the afternoon passed
in intimate gossip. Sometimes several quilts were set up. I know of a
ten days' quilting-bee in Narragansett in 1752.
In early days calicoes were not common, but every one had woollen
garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful
warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and
remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts:
portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men,
worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and
cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by
a lord mayor of London and brought to America by a member of the Merritt
family of Salisbury, Massachusetts, went through a series of adventures
and migrations, and ended its days as small bits of vivid color casting
a grateful glory and variety on a patchwork quilt in the Saco valley of
Maine. To this day at vendues or sales of old country households in New
England, there will be handed out great rolls of woollen pieces to be
used for patchwork quilts or rag carpets, and they find purchasers.
These woollen quilts had a thin wadding, and were usually very closely
quilted, so they were quite flat. They were called "pressed quilts." An
old farm wife said to me in New Hampshire, "Girls won't take the trouble
to make pressed quilts nowadays, it's as much as they'll do to tack a
puff," that is, make a light quilt with thick wadding only tacked
together from front to back, at regular intervals. A pressed quilt which
I saw was quilted in inch squares. Another had a fan-pattern with
sunflower leaf border; another was quilted in the elaborate pattern
known as "feather-work."
As much ingenuity was exercised in the design of the quilting as in the
pattern of the patchwork, and the marking for the quilt design was
exceedingly tedious, since, of course, no drawings could be used. I
remember seeing one quilt marked by chalking strings which were
stretched tightly across at the desired intervals, and held up and
snapped smartly down on the quilt, leaving a faint chalky line to guide
the eye and needle. Another simple design was to quilt in rounds, using
a saucer or plate to form a perfect circle.
The most elaborate quilt I know of is of silk containing portions of the
wedding-dress of Esther Powel, granddaughter of Gabriel Bernon; she was
married to James Helme in 1738. When her granddaughter was married in
1795, the quilt was still unfinished, and a woman was hired who worked
on it for six months, putting a miracle of fine stitches in the
quilting. I think she must have been very old and very slow, for the
wages paid her were but twenty cents a week and "her keep," which was
very small pay even in that day of small wages. When Washington came to
Newport, this splendid quilt was sent to grace the bed upon which the
hero slept.
I said a few summers ago to a farmer's wife who lived on the outskirts
of a small New England hill-village: "Your home is very beautiful. From
every window the view is perfect." She answered quickly: "Yes, but it's
awful lonely for me, for I was born in Worcester; still I don't mind as
long as we have plenty of quiltings." In answer to my questions she told
me that the previous winter she had "kept count," and she had helped at
twenty-eight "regular" quiltings, besides her own home patchwork and
quilt-making, and much informal help of neighbors on plain quilts. Any
one who has attended a county fair (one not too modernized and spoiled)
and seen the display of intricate patchwork and quilting still made in
country homes, can see that it is not an obsolete accomplishment.
A form of decorative work in which many women took great delight and
became astonishingly skilful was what was known, or at any rate
advertised, by the ambitious title of Papyrotamia. It was simply the
cutting out of stiff paper of various decorative and ornamental designs
with scissors. At the time of the Revolution it was evidently deemed a
very high accomplishment, and the best pieces of work were carefully
cherished, mounted on black paper, framed and glazed, and given to
friends or bequeathed by will. One old lady is remembered as using her
scissors with extraordinary deftness, and amusing herself and delighting
her friends by occupying the hours of every afternoon visit with cutting
out entirely by her trained eye various pretty and curious designs.
Valentines in exceedingly delicate and appropriate patterns, wreaths and
baskets of varied flowers, marine views, religious symbols, landscapes,
all were accomplished. Coats of arms and escutcheons cut in black paper
and mounted on white were highly prized. Portrait silhouettes were cut
with the aid of a machine which marked and reduced mechanically a sharp
shadow cast by the sitter's profile through candle-light on a sheet of
white paper. Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney wrote in rhyme of a revered friend
of her youth, Mrs. Lathrop, of a period about a century ago:--
"Thy dextrous scissors ready to produce
The flying squirrel or the long-neck'd goose,
Or dancing girls with hands together join'd,
Or tall spruce-trees with wreaths of roses twin'd,
The well-dress'd dolls whose paper form display'd,
Thy penknife's labor and thy pencil's shade."
I once found in an old lacquered box in a cupboard a paper packet
containing all the cut-paper designs mentioned in this rhyme--and many
more. The workmanship of the "spruce-trees with wreaths of roses twin'd"
was specially marvellous. I plainly saw in that design a derivative of
the English Maypole and encircling wreaths. This package was marked with
the name of the paper-cutter, a Revolutionary dame who died at the
beginning of this century. Her home was remote from the Norwich home of
Mrs. Lathrop, and I know she never visited in Connecticut, yet she made
precisely the same designs and indeed all the designs. This is but a
petty proof among many other more decided ones of the fact that even in
those days of scant communication and infrequent and contracted travel,
there were as in our own times waves of feminine fancy work, of attempts
at artistic expression, which flooded every home, and receding, left
behind much decorative silt of varying but nearly universal uselessness
and laborious commonplaceness.
One of the cut-paper landscapes of Madam Deming, a Boston lady who was a
famous "papyrotamist," is here shown. It is now owned by James F. Trott,
Esq., of Niagara Falls. It is a view of Boston streets just previous to
the Revolution. In that handsome volume, the _Ten Broeck Genealogical
Record_, are reproductions of some of the landscape views by Albertina
Ten Broeck at the same date. They show the house and farm surroundings
of the old Ten Broeck "Bouwerie," the ancestral home in New York, and
give a wonderfully good idea of it. These are not in dead silhouette,
for an appearance of shading is afforded by finely cut lines and
intervening spaces. The highest form of cut-paper reproduction and
decoration ever reached was by the English woman, Mrs. Delaney, who died
in 1788, the friend of the Duchess of Portland, and intimate of George
III. and his queen. She reproduced in colored paper, in what she called
"paper mosaics," the entire flora of the United Kingdom, and it is said
it was impossible at first sight to distinguish these flowers from the
real ones.