married women are reserved, and their husbands are not as familiar with
the girls as they were, when bachelors. If a young man were to take it
into his head that his betrothed should not be free and gay in her social
intercourse, he would run the risk of being discarded, incur the
reputation of jealousy, and would find it very difficult to get married.
Yet if a single woman were to play the coquette, she would be regarded
with contempt. As this innocent freedom between the sexes diminishes in
proportion as society loses its purity and simplicity of manners, as is
the case in cities, I desire sincerely that our good Virginia ladies may
long retain their liberty entire."
The Colonial age was the day of elaborate compliment. Gentlemen took time
to turn their sentences and polish them neatly, and ladies heard them to
the end without suggesting by a word or glance that the climax had been
foreseen for the last five minutes, at least. An essay on _Woman_, by a
certain Mr. Thomas, had a great vogue in the eighteenth century, and
antedated Tupper's Poems as a well of sentimental quotation. _The
Spectator_ and _The Tattler_ gave the tone to society literature, and
enabled the provincial dame to reflect accurately the Lady Betty Modish of
London. The beaux, too, took many a leaf from _The Spectator_ in the study
of a compliment. When I read of the Colonial maiden poring over the tiny
glaze-paper note accompanying a book entitled "The Art of Loving"--in
which the writer declares it to be "most convenient, presenting the _art
of Loving_ to one who so fully possesses the _art of Pleasing_"--I am
carried back to the days of Sir Charles Grandison.
There is a marked contrast in the social chronicles of the eighteenth
century at home and abroad, between what the gentlemen said _to_ the
ladies and what they said _about_ them. That wicked Colonel Byrd, for
instance, after making himself agreeable to Governor Spotswood's ladies
the whole evening, writes in his journal that their conversation was "like
whip sillabub--very pretty, but with nothing in it." Again he describes
himself patronizingly as "prattling with the ladies after a nine o'clock
supper." Yet, underneath all the superficial bowing and scraping of
courtesy and compliment, and the jesting asides at the expense of the fair
sex, it must be set down to the Cavalier's credit that he treated
womankind with a great tenderness and respect. Woman's influence made
itself felt in private and in public--in the Council, in the Virginia
House of Burgesses, and in the Assemblies of Maryland and of Carolina.
The pride and folly of Governor Tryon of Carolina led him to make a demand
on the Assembly for an extensive appropriation for the building of a
palace at Newbern suitable for the residence of a royal Governor. To
obtain this appropriation, Lady Tryon and her sister, the beautiful Esther
Wake, used all their blandishments. Lady Tryon gave brilliant balls and
dinners, and her sister's bright eyes rained influence to such good
purpose, that the first appropriation and as much more was granted, and
the palace was pronounced the most magnificent structure in America. The
palace is fallen--its marble mantels, its colonnades, its carved
staircases are in ruins; but the name of beautiful Esther Wake is
preserved in Wake County.
The chronicles of the Carolinas are full of romance. Here, at Cross Creek,
dwelt Flora MacDonald, the heroic rescuer of the Pretender after the
disasters of Culloden. It seems a strange chance that brought her from
such exciting masquerades, from the companionship of kings and the rôle of
heroine on the stage of the great world, to the pioneer's cottage in the
wild woods of the Western wilderness. The only drawback to her career in
eighteenth century eyes was that she married and lived happy ever after.
The romance of that day demanded a broken heart, and tragedy was always in
high favor. Every locality had its story of blighted love and life. The
Dismal Swamp, lying on the border between Virginia and Maryland, was a
sort of Gretna Green, where many runaway marriages were celebrated.
Tradition tells of a lover whose sweetheart died suddenly; and he, driven
mad by grief, fancied that she had gone to the Dismal Swamp, where he
perished in the search for her.
When Tom Moore was in this country he was impressed by the legend, and set
it thus to the music--let us not dare to say the jingle--of his verse:
They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true,
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by her fire-fly lamp
She paddles her white canoe.
And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
Her paddle I soon shall hear.
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footsteps of Death draw near.
Real life had its tragedies, too. In the deep wainscoted hall of the
Brandon Mansion hangs a portrait of lovely Evelyn Byrd. She sits on a
green bank, with a handful of roses and a shepherd's crook in her lap--her
soft, dark eyes look out in pensive sadness as though they could, if they
would, tell the story of a maiden's heart and a life ended untimely by
unhappy love. One story says she broke her heart for Parke Custis, who
left her to wear the willow, and married afterward the Martha Dandridge,
who in the whirligig of time became Lady Washington. Another rumor
connects her name with that of the Earl of Peterborough, who loved her
deeply, so the story runs; but his creed was not hers, and her father,
Colonel Byrd, would not consent to the marriage. The maiden yielded to her
father's will, but pined away and died; and there, in the Westover
burying-ground, she lies under a ponderous stone, which records this
epitaph:
"Alas, Reader,
We can detain nothing, however valued,
From unrelenting death,
Beauty, Fortune, or exalted Honour--
See here a proof!"
[Illustration: "Brandon," James River, Va.]
I cannot help feeling that all these might have been detained on earth to
a ripe age, had the maiden been left free to decide the most important
question of her life to her liking; for, in a letter written by Colonel
Byrd when Evelyn was a slip of a girl, I read concerning the maiden, "She
has grown a great romp and enjoys robust health." Yet a few years later,
the robust romp has faded to a shadow, and is laid away in the family
graveyard, and only her portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, remains to appeal
to the sentiment and sympathy of posterity.
The gentle Evelyn Byrd was not the only one whom the traditions of the
Colonial Cavalier credit with carrying to the grave a heart scarred with
the wounds of unhappy love. Lord Fairfax, who lived to be over sixty and
kept open house at Belvoir, where Washington visited him and kept him
company in riding to hounds over hill and dale; Lord Fairfax--with his
gaunt, tall frame; his gray, near-sighted eyes, and prominent aquiline
nose, little outward resemblance as he might bear to the original of the
almond-eyed portrait at Brandon--resembled her at least in a wounded heart
and a broken career. In his youth, this solitary Virginia recluse had been
a brilliant man-about-town in the gay world of London. He had held a
commission in "the Blues"; he had known the famous men of the day, he had
dabbled in literature, and contributed a paper now and then to the
_Spectator_. When his career of fashion was at its height, he paid his
addresses to a young lady of rank and was accepted. The day for the
wedding was fixed--the establishment furnished, even to equipage and
servants--when the inconstant bride-elect, dazzled by a ducal coronet,
broke her engagement. The blow wrought a complete change in the jilted
lover. From that time he shrank from the society of all women, and finally
came over to Virginia to hide his hurt in the Western forests.
Spite of such traditions of melancholy, the actual career of most of the
people of those times forms a curious contrast to the ideals of their
poetry and fiction. With scarcely an exception, they survived their
unsuccessful love affairs, and lived in prosperous serenity with others
than the first rulers of their hearts.
There is Jefferson, for instance. Almost the first letter in his published
correspondence is devoted to a confession of his tender passion for a
young lady dwelling in the town of Williamsburg. Yet her name is not the
one that stands next his own on the marriage register. This first love of
his was a Miss 'Becca Burwell. We chance upon the young collegian's secret
as we open his letter to John Page, written on Christmas day, 1762. He
begins jocularly enough, yet only half in fun after all: "I am sure if
there is such a thing as a Devil in this world, he must have been here
last night, and have had some hand in contriving what happened to me. Do
you think the cursed rats (at his instigation, I suppose) did not eat up
my pocket-book, which was in my pocket, within a foot of my head? And not
contented with plenty for the present, they carried away my jemmy-worked
silk garters and half a dozen new minuets I had just got." "Tell Miss
Alice Corbin," he adds, "that I verily believe the rats knew I was to win
a pair of garters from her, or they never would have been so cruel as to
carry mine away."
Christmas day, indeed, found him in sorry case. These losses he could have
borne, but worse remained to tell: "You know it rained last night, or if
you do not know it, I am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in
the usual place; and going to take her up after I arose this morning, I
found her in the same place, 'tis true, but--_quantum mutatus ab
illo_--all afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house, and
as silent and still as the rats that had eat my pocket-book. Now, you
know, if chance had had anything to do in this matter, there were a
thousand other spots where it might have chanced to leak as well as this
one, which was perpendicularly over my watch. But, I'll tell you, it's my
opinion that the Devil came and bored the hole over it on purpose." It was
not the injury to his timepiece which drew forth these violent, half-real,
half-jesting objurgations; no, there was a sentimental reason behind. The
water had soaked a watch-paper and a picture, so that when he attempted to
remove them, he says: "My cursed fingers gave them such a rent as I fear I
shall never get over. I would have cried bitterly, but that I thought it
beneath the dignity of a man!" The mystery of the original of the picture
and the maker of the watch-paper is soon explained, for a page or two
further on, he trusts that Miss 'Becca Burwell will give him another
watch-paper of her own cutting, which he promises to esteem much more,
though it were a plain round one, than the nicest in the world cut by
other hands. "However," he adds, "I am afraid she would think this
presumption, after my suffering the other to get spoiled."
A very real and tumultuous passion this of young Tom Jefferson's! Every
letter he writes to his friend teems with reference to _her_. Now she is
R. B.; again Belinda; and again, with that deep secrecy of dog Latin so
dear to the collegian, she figures as _Campana in die_ (bell in day); or,
still more mysteriously, as Adnileb, written in Greek that the vulgar
world may not pry into the sacred secret. Oh, youth, youth, how like is
the nineteenth century to the eighteenth, and that to its preceding, till
we reach the courtship of Adam and Eve!
In October, '63, he writes to his old confidant: "In the most melancholy
fit that ever any poor soul was, I sit down to write you. Last night, as
merry as agreeable company and dancing with Belinda in the Apollo could
make me, I never could have thought the succeeding sun could have seen me
so wretched as I now am!... I was prepared to say a great deal. I had
dressed up in my own mind such thoughts as occurred to me in as moving a
language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably
creditable manner. But, good God! when I had an opportunity of venting
them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder and interrupted
with pauses of uncommon length, were the too visible marks of my strange
confusion." The framer of the Declaration of Independence, whose eloquence
startled the world, found himself tongue-tied and stammering in a
declaration of love to a provincial maiden.
At twenty-nine or thirty Jefferson had recovered enough to go a-courting
again, to Mistress Martha Skelton, a young and childless widow, of such
great beauty that many rivals contested with him the honor of winning her
hand. The story goes that two of these rivals met one evening in Mrs.
Skelton's drawing-room. While waiting for her to enter, they heard her
singing in an adjoining room, to the accompaniment of Jefferson's violin.
The love-song was so expressively executed that the admirers perceived
that their doom was sealed, and, picking up their cocked hats, they stole
out without waiting for the lady.
If Jefferson in his younger days was soft-hearted toward the gentler sex,
his susceptibility was as nothing compared to Washington's. The
sentimental biography of that great man would be more entertaining than
the story of his battles, or his triumphs of government. There are
evidences in his own handwriting that, before he was fifteen years old, he
had conceived a passion for a fair unknown beauty, so serious as to
disturb his otherwise well-regulated mind, and make him seriously unhappy.
His sentimental poems written at that age, are neither better nor worse
than the productions of most boys of fifteen. One of them hints that
bashfulness has prevented his divulging his passion:
"Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal!
Long have I wished and never dare reveal."
At the mature age of sixteen, he writes to his "dear friend Robin": "my
residence is at present at his Lordship's, where I might, _was my heart
disengaged_, pass my time very pleasantly, as there's a very agreeable
young lady lives in the same house; but as that's only adding fuel to the
fire, it makes me the more uneasy; for by often and unavoidably (!) being
in company with her, revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty;
whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might in some
measure alleviate my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome
passion in the grave of oblivion." This "chaste and troublesome passion"
had subsided enough, when he went as a young officer to New York in all
the gorgeousness of uniform and trappings, to enable him to fall in love
with Miss Mary Phillipse, whom he met at the house of her sister, Mrs.
Beverly Robinson. She was gay, she was rich, she was beautiful, and
Washington might have made her the offer of his heart and hand; but
suddenly an express from Winchester brought word to New York of a French
and Indian raid, and young Washington hastened to rejoin his command,
leaving the capture of the lady to Captain Morris. Three years later we
find him married to the Widow Custis, with two children and a fortune of
fifteen thousand pounds sterling. Shortly after, he writes of himself
from Mount Vernon, temperately enough, as "fixed in this seat with an
agreeable partner for life," and we hear no more of amatory verses in
honor of his Lowland Beauty, or flirtations with fashionable young dames
in New York. But when the Marquis de Chastellux announced his marriage,
Washington wrote him in a vein of humor rather foreign to him, and
bespeaking a genial sympathy in his expectations of happiness. "I saw by
the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America,"
he writes, "that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely
be taken one day or other, as that you were a philosopher and a soldier.
So your day has at length come! I am glad of it with all my heart and
soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming
to fight in favor of the American rebels all the way across the Atlantic
Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion--domestic felicity--which, like
the small-pox or plague, a man can have only once in his life."
Of all the joyous festivals among the Southern Colonists, none was so
mirthful as a wedding. The early records of the wreck of the Sea Venture
and the tedious and dangerous delay on the Bermudas mention that in even
that troublous time they held one "merry English wedding." In any new
land marriages and births are joyful events. All that is needed for
prosperity is multiplication of settlers, and so it is quite natural that
the setting up of a new household should be celebrated with rejoicing and
merry-making.
In one respect the colonists broke with the home traditions. They insisted
on holding their marriage ceremonies at home rather than in church, and no
minister could move their determination. As civilization advanced, and
habits grew more luxurious, the marriage festivities grew more elaborate
and formal. The primitive customs gave way to pomp and display, till at
length a wedding became an affair of serious expense. "The house of the
parents," says Scharf in his "Chronicles of Baltimore," "would be filled
with company to dine; the same company would stay to supper. For two days
punch was dealt out in profusion. The gentlemen saw the groom on the first
floor, and then ascended to the second floor, where they saw the bride;
there every gentleman, even to one hundred a day, kissed her."
A Virginia wedding in the olden time was a charming picture--the dancers
making merry in the wide halls or on the lawn; the black servants dressed
in fine raiment for the occasion and showing their white teeth in that
enjoyment only possible to a negro; the jolly parson acting at once as
priest and toast-master; the groom in ruffles and velvet, and the bride in
brocade and jewels. Never again will our country have so picturesque a
scene to offer. Let us recall it while we may!
His Dress
[Illustration: His Dress.
"_In teacup time of hood and hoop
And when the patch was worn_"]
If you have any curiosity to know what clothes these first Colonial
Cavaliers wore, you may learn very easily by reading over the "particular
of Apparrell" upon which they agreed as necessary to the settler bound for
Virginia.
The list includes: "1 dozen Points, a Monmouth cap, 1 waste-coat, 3
falling bands, 1 suit of canvase, 3 shirts, 1 suit of frieze, 1 suit of
cloth, 4 paire shoes, 3 paire Irish stockings, and 1 paire garters."
Besides these he would need "1 Armor compleat, light, a long peece, a
sword, a belt and a Bandelier," which may be reckoned among his wearing
apparel, for it would be long before the settler could be safe without
them when he ventured outside the palisade.
Englishmen in those days were fond of elaborate dress. It was the period
of conical hats, and rosetted shoes, of doublets and sashes and padded
trunk-hose, which his Majesty, James the First, much affected because
they filled out his ill-shaped legs. Suits of clothes were a frequent form
of gift and bequest. Captain John Smith's will declares, "I give unto
Thomas Packer, my best suite of aparrell, of a tawney colour, viz., hose,
doublet, jerkin and cloake."
The peruke began its all-conquering career in England, under the Stuarts.
Elizabeth, it is true, had owned eighty suits of hair, and Mary of
Scotland had varied her hair to match her dresses. But a defect of the
French Dauphin introduced the use of the wig for men as well as women, and
false hair became the rage throughout the world of fashion. A London
peruke-maker advertised: "Full-bottom wigs, full bobs, minister's bobs,
naturals, half-naturals, Grecian flyes, Curleyroys, airey levants, qu
perukes and baggwiggs." The customer must have been hard to please, who
could find nothing to suit his style in such a stock.
The settlers in Colonial America did not allow themselves such luxuries of
the toilet as a variety of wigs, though a well-planned peruke or "a bob"
might have been a good device to trick the tomahawk of the savage into a
bloodless scalping. With the poorer people, a single wig for Sunday wear
sufficed, and was replaced on week days by a cap, generally of linen.
The Colonial dames, being too far from Court to copy the low-necked
dresses, the stomachers and farthingales of the inner circle of fashion,
wore instead, huge ruffs, full, short petticoats, and long, flowing
sleeves, over tight undersleeves. Even in the wilderness, however, they
retained a feminine fondness for gay attire.
John Pory, a clever scapegrace intimately acquainted with gaming-tables
and sponging-houses in London, but figuring in Virginia as secretary to
Governor Yeardley, wrote home to Sir Dudley Carleton, "That your Lordship
may know that we are not the veriest beggars in the world, our cow-keeper
here of James Cittie, on Sundays goes accoutred all in fresh flaming silk,
and a wife of one that in England professed the black art, not of a
scholar but of a collier of Croydon, wears her rough beaver hat with a
fair pearl hat-band and a silken suit, thereto correspondent."
Lively John was probably lying a little in the cause of immigration, but
it is certain that the desire for fine clothes early called for a check,
and at an early session of the Virginia House of Burgesses, a sumptuary
law was passed "against excess in apparell," directing "that every man be
ceffed in the church for all publique contributions--if he be unmarried,
according to his own apparrell; if he be married, according to his own and
his wives, or either of their apparell." Here, surely, is a suggestion
from the past, for the fashionable church of the present.
A later law in the provinces enacts that "no silke stuffe in garments or
in peeces, except for hoods or scarfes, nor silver or gold lace, nor
bonelace of silke or thread, nor ribbands wrought with silver or gold in
them, shall be brought into this country to sell, after the first of
February." A Maryland statute proposes that two sorts of "cloaths" only be
worn, one for summer, the other for winter. But this was going too far,
and the law was never enforced.
It was permitted to none but Members of the Council and Heads of Hundreds
in Virginia to wear the coveted gold on their clothes, or to wear any silk
not made by themselves. This last prohibition was intended not so much to
discourage pomp and pride, as to stimulate the infant industry of silk
production, which from the beginning had been a pet scheme of the
colonists. They had imported silk-worms and planted mulberry trees; and as
an inducement to go into the business, the Burgesses offered a premium of
five thousand pounds of tobacco to any one making a hundred pounds of
wound silk in any one year.
His Gracious Majesty, Charles the Second, sent to his loyal subjects in
Virginia, a letter, still to be seen in the college library at
Williamsburg. It is written by his Majesty's private secretary and signed
with the sacred "Charles R." It is addressed to Governor Berkeley, and
runs:
"Trusty & Wellbeloved, We Greet You Well. Wee have received w{th} much
content ye dutifull respects of Our Colony in y{e} present lately made us
by you & y{e} councell there, of y{e} first product of y{e} new
Manufacture of Silke, which as a mark of Our Princely acceptation of yo{r}
duteys & for y{r} particular encouragement, etc.--Wee have commanded to be
wrought up for y{e} use of Our owne person."
From this letter has sprung the legend, dear to loyalist hearts, that the
robe worn by Charles at his coronation was woven of Virginia silk.
So much material was needed "for y{e} use of our owne person," that the
offering of silk was no doubt very welcome. The King's favorite,
Buckingham, had twenty-seven suits, one of them of white uncut velvet, set
all over with diamonds and worn with diamond hat-bands, cockades and
ear-rings, and yoked with ropes and knots of pearls.
It was an era of wild extravagance. Not satisfied with the elegance of the
time of Charles First, his son's courtiers added plumes to the
wide-brimmed hats, enlarged the bows on the shoes, donned great wigs,
loaded their vests with embroidery, and over their coats hung short
cloaks, worth a fortune.