portions, the linings of old-time garments, even of royalty, were far
from elegant. I have seen garments worn by grown princesses of the
eighteenth century, whereof the rich brocade bodies were lined with
common, heavy fabric, usually a stiff linen; and the sewing was done
with thread as coarse as shoe-thread, often homespun. This, too, when
the sleeve and neck-ruffles would be of needlework so exquisite that it
could not be rivalled in execution to-day.

Many of the older portraits of children show hanging sleeves. The rich
claret velvet dresses of the Van Cortlandt twins, aged four, had
hanging sleeves. This dress is given in my book, _Child Life in
Colonial Days_, as is that of Katherine Ten Broeck, another child of
Dutch birth living in New York, who also wore heavy hanging sleeves.

The use of the word hanging sleeves in common speech and in literature
is most interesting. It had a figurative meaning; it symbolized youth
and innocence. This meaning was acquired, of course, from the wear for
centuries of hanging sleeves by little children, both boys and girls.
It had a second, a derivative signification, being constantly employed
as a figure of speech to indicate second childhood; it was used with a
wistful tender meaning as an emblem of the helplessness of feeble old
age. The following example shows such an employment of the term.

In 1720, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, then about seventy-five years
of age, wrote to another old gentleman, whose widowed sister he desired
to marry, in these words:—

“I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have sometime
met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves, coming home from
their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure of speaking
to them. And I could find it in my heart now to speak to Mrs. Martha
again, now I myself am reduced to Hanging Sleeves.”

William Byrd, of Westover, in Virginia, in one of his engaging and
sprightly letters written in 1732, pictures the time of the patriarchs
when “a man was reckoned at Years of Discretion at 100; Boys went into
Breeches at about 40; Girles continued in Hanging Sleeves till 50, and
plaid with their Babys till Threescore.”

When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, he wrote a poem which was
sent to his uncle, a bright old Quaker. This uncle responded in clever
lines which begin thus:—

“’Tis time for me to throw aside my pen
When Hanging-Sleeves read, write and rhyme like men.
This forward Spring foretells a plenteous crop
For if the bud bear grain, what will the top?”

A curious use of the long hanging sleeve was as a pocket; that is, it
would seem curious to us were it not for our acquaintance with the
capacity of the sleeves of our unwelcome friend, Ah Sing. The pocketing
sleeve of the time of Henry III still exists in the heraldic charge
known as the manche, borne by the Hastings and Norton family. This is
also called maunch, émanche, and mancheron. The word “manchette,” an
ornamented cuff, retains the meaning of the word, as does manacle; all
are from _manus_.

Hanging sleeves had a time of short popularity for grown folk while
Anne Boleyn was queen of England; for the little finger of her left
hand had a double tip, and the long, graceful sleeves effectually
concealed the deformity.

In my book entitled _Child Life in Colonial Days_ I have given over
thirty portraits of American children. These show the changes of
fashions, the wear of children at various periods and ages. Childish
dress ever reflected the dress of their elders, and often closely
imitated it. Two very charming costumes are worn by two little children
of the province of South Carolina. The little girl is but two years
old. She is Ellinor Cordes, and was painted about 1740. She is a lovely
little child of French features and French daintiness of dress, albeit
a bright yellow brocaded satin would seem rather gorgeous attire for a
girl of her years. The boy is her kinsman, Daniel Ravenel, and was then
about five years old. He wore what might be termed a frock with
spreading petticoats, which touched the ground; there is a decided
boyishness in the tight-fitting, trim waistcoat with its silver buttons
and lace, and the befrogged coat with broad cuffs and wrist ruffles,
and turned-over revers, and narrow linen inner collar. It is an
exceptionally pleasing boy’s dress, for a little boy.

A somewhat similar but more feminine coat is worn by Thomas Aston
Coffin; it opens in front over a white satin petticoat, and it has a
low-cut neck and sleeves shortened to the elbow, and worn over full
white undersleeves. Other portraits by Copley show the same dress of
white satin, which boys wore till six years of age.

Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick and Daughter. Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick and
Daughter.

Copley’s portrait of his own children is given on a later page. This
family group always startles all who have seen it only in photographs;
for its colors are so unexpected, so frankly crude and vivid. The
individuals are all charming. The oldest child, the daughter,
Elizabeth, stands in the foreground in a delightful white frock of
striped gauze. This is worn over a pink slip, and the pink tints show
in the thinner folds of whiteness; a fine piece of texture-painting.
The gauze sash is tied in a vast knot, and lies out in a train; this is
a more vivid pink, inclining to the tint of the old-rose damask
furniture-covering. She wears a pretty little net and muslin cap with a
cap-pin like a tiny rose. This single figure is not excelled, I think,
by any child’s portrait in foreign galleries, nor is it often equalled.
Nor can the exquisite expression of childish love and confidence seen
on the face of the boy, John Singleton Copley, Junior, who later became
Lord Lyndhurst, find a rival in painting. It is an unspeakably touching
portrait to all who have seen upturned close to their own eyes the
trusting and loving face of a beautiful son as he clung with strong
boyish arms and affection to his mother’s neck.

Infant Child of Francis Hopkinson Infant Child of Francis Hopkinson,
“the Signer.” Painted by Francis Hopkinson.

This little American boy, who became Lord Chancellor of England, wears
a nankeen suit with a lilac-tinted sash. It is his beaver hat with gold
hatband and blue feather that lies on the ground at the feet of the
grandfather, Richard Clarke. The baby, held by the grandfather, wears a
coral and bells on a lilac sash-ribbon; such a coral as we see in many
portraits of infants. Another child in white-embroidered robe and dark
yellow sash completes this beautiful family picture. Its great fault to
me is the blue of Mrs. Copley’s gown, which is as vivid as a peacock’s
breast. This painting is deemed Copley’s masterpiece; but an equal
interest is that it is such an absolute and open expression of Copley’s
lovable character and upright life. In it we can read his affectionate
nature, his love of his sweet wife, his happy home-relations, and his
pride in his beautiful children.

There is ample proof, not only in the inventories which chance to be
preserved, but in portraits of the times, that children’s dress in the
eighteenth century was often costly. Of course the children of wealthy
parents only would have their portraits painted; but their dress was as
rich as the dress of the children of the nobility in England at the
same time. You can see this in the colored reproduction of the
portraits of Hon. James Bowdoin and his sister, Augusta, afterwards
Lady Temple. That they were good likenesses is proved by the fact that
the faces are strongly like those of the same persons in more mature
years. You find little Augusta changed but slightly in matronhood in
the fine pastel by Copley. In this portrait of the two Bowdoin
children, the entire dress is given. Seldom are the shoes shown. These
are interesting, for the boy’s square-toed black shoes with buckles are
wholly unlike his sister’s blue morocco slippers with turned-up peaks
and gilt ornaments from toe to instep, making a foot-gear much like
certain Turkish slippers seen to-day. Her hair has the bedizenment of
beads and feathers, which were worn by young girls for as many years as
their mothers wore the same. The young lad’s dress is precisely like
his father’s. There is much charm in these straight little figures.
They have the aristocratic bearing which is a family trait of all of
that kin. I should not deem Lady Temple ever a beauty, though she was
called so by Manasseh Cutler, a minister who completely yielded to her
charms when she was a grandmother and forty-four. This portrait of
brother and sister is, I believe, by Blackburn. The dress is similar
and the date the same as the portrait of the Misses Royall (one of whom
became Lady Pepperell), which is by Blackburn.

Mary Seton, 1763. Mary Seton, 1763.

The portrait of a charming little American child is shown here. This
child, in feature, figure, and attitude, and even in the companionship
of the kitten, is a curious replica of a famous English portrait of
“Miss Trimmer.”

I have written at length in Chapter IV of a grandmother in the Hall
family and of the Hall family connection. Let me tell of another
grandmother, Madam Lydia Coleman, the daughter of the old Indian
fighter, Captain Joshua Scottow. She, like Madam Symonds and Madam
Stoddard, had had several husbands—Colonel Benjamin Gibbs,
Attorney-General Anthony Checkley, and William Coleman. The Hall
children were her grandchildren; and came to Boston for schooling at
one time. Many letters exist of Hon. Hugh Hall to and from his
grandmother, Madam Coleman. She writes thus.—

“As for Richard since I told him I would write to his Father he is more
orderly, &; he is very hungry, and has grown so much yt all his Clothes
is too Little for him. He loves his book and his play too. I hired him
to get a Chapter of ye Proverbs &; give him a penny every Sabbath day,
&; promised him 5 shillings when he can say them all by heart. I would
do my duty by his soul as well as his body.... He has grown a good boy
and minds his School and Lattin and Dancing. He is a brisk Child &;
grows very Cute and wont wear his new silk coat yt was made for him. He
wont wear it every day so yt I don’t know what to do with it. It wont
make him a jackitt. I would have him a good husbander but he is but a
child. For shoes, gloves, hankers &; stockins, they ask very deare, 8
shillings for a paire &; Richard takes no care of them. Richard wears
out nigh 12 paire of shoes a year. He brought 12 hankers with him and
they have all been lost long ago; and I have bought him 3 or 4 more at
a time. His way is to tie knottys at one end &; beat ye Boys with them
and then to lose them &; he cares not a bit what I will say to him.”

Madam Coleman, after this handful, was given charge of his sister
Sarah. When Missy arrived from the Barbadoes, she was eight years old.
She brought with her a maid. The grandmother wrote back cheerfully to
the parents that the child was well and brisk, as indeed she was. All
the very young gentlemen and young ladies of Boston Brahmin blood paid
her visits, and she gave a feast at a child’s dancing-party with the
sweetmeats left over from her sea-store. Her stay in her grandmother’s
household was surprisingly brief. She left unbidden with her maid, and
went to a Mr. Binning’s to board; she sent home word to the Barbadoes
that her grandmother made her drink water with her meals. Her brother
wrote to Madam Coleman:—

“We were all persuaded of your tender and hearty affection to my Sister
when we recommended her to your parental care. We are sorry to hear of
her Independence in removing from under the Benign Influences of your
Wing &; am surprised she dare do it without our leave or consent or
that Mr. Binning receive her at his house before he knew how we were
affected to it. We shall now desire Mr. Binning to resign her with her
waiting maid to you and in our Letter to him have strictly ordered her
to Return to your House.”

But no brother could control this spirited young damsel. Three months
later a letter from Madam Coleman read thus:—

“Sally wont go to school nor to church and wants a nue muff and a great
many other things she don’t need. I tell her fine things are cheaper in
Barbadoes. She is well and brisk, says her Brother has nothing to do
with her as long as her father is alive.”

Hugh Hall wrote in return, saying his daughter ought to have one room
to sleep in, and her maid another, that it was not befitting children
of their station to drink water, they should have wine and beer. We
cannot wonder that they dressed like their elders since they were
treated like their elders in other respects.

The dress of very young girls was often extraordinarily rich. We find
this order sent to London in 1739, for finery for Mary Cabell, daughter
of Dr. William Cabell of Virginia, when she was but thirteen years
old:—

“1 Prayer Book (almost every such inventory had this item).
1 Red Silk Petticoat.
1 Very good broad Silver laced hat and hat-band.
1 Pair Stays 17 inches round the waist.
2 Pair fine Shoes.
12 Pair fine Stockings.
1 Hoop Petticoat.
1 Pair Ear rings.
1 Pair Clasps.
3 Pair Silver Buttons set with Stones.
1 Suit of Headclothes.
4 Fine Handkerchiefs and Ruffles suitable.
A Very handsome Knot and Girdle.
A Fine Cloak and Short Apron.”

The Bowdoin Children. The Bowdoin Children. Lady Temple and Governor
James Bowdoin in Childhood.

I never read such a list as this without picturing the delight of
little Mary Cabell when she opened the box containing all these pretty
garments.

The order given by Colonel John Lewis for his young ward of eleven
years old—another Virginia child—reads thus:—

“A cap, ruffle, and tucker, the lace 5s. per yard.
1 pair White Stays.
8 pair White kid gloves.
2 pair Colour’d kid gloves.
2 pair worsted hose.
3 pair thread hose.
1 pair silk shoes laced.
1 pair morocco shoes.
4 pair plain Spanish shoes.
2 pair calf shoes.
1 Mask.
1 Fan.
1 Necklace.
1 Girdle and Buckle.
1 Piece fashionable Calico.
4 yards Ribbon for Knots.
1 Hoop Coat.
1 Hat.
1 1/2 Yard of Cambric.
A Mantua and Coat of Slite Lustring.”

Orders for purchases were regularly despatched to London agent by
George Washington after his marriage. In 1761 he orders a full list of
garments for both his stepchildren. “Miss Custis” was only six years
old. These are some of the items:—

“1 Coat made of Fashionable Silk.
A Fashionable Cap or fillet with Bib apron.
Ruffles and Tuckers, to be laced.
4 Fashionable Dresses made of Long Lawn.
2 Fine Cambrick Frocks.
A Satin Capuchin, hat, and neckatees.
A Persian Quilted Coat.
1 p. Pack Thread Stays.
4 p. Callimanco Shoes.
6 p. Leather Shoes.
2 p. Satin Shoes with flat ties.
6 p. Fine Cotton Stockings.
4 p. White Worsted Stockings.
12 p. Mitts.
6 p. White Kid Gloves.
1 p. Silver Shoe Buckles.
1 p. Neat Sleeve Buttons.
6 Handsome Egrettes Different Sorts.
6 Yards Ribbon for Egrettes.
12 Yards Coarse Green Callimanco.”

A Virginia gentleman, Colonel William Fleming, kept for several years a
close account of the money he spent for his little daughters, who were
young misses of ten and eleven in the year 1787. The most expensive
single items are bonnets, each at £;4 10s.; an umbrella, £;2 8s. Cloth
cloaks and saddles and bridles for riding were costly items. Tamboured
muslin was at that time 18s. a yard; durant, 3s. 6d.; lutestring, 12s.;
calico, 6s. 3d. Scarlet cloaks for each girl cost £;2 14s. each. Other
dress materials besides those named above were cambric, linen, cotton,
osnaburgs, negro cotton, book-muslin, ermin, nankeen, persian, Turkey
cotton, shalloon, and swanskin. There were many yards of taste and
ribbon, black lace, and edgings, and gauze—gauze—gauze. A curious item
several times appearing is a “paper bonnet,” not bonnet-paper, which
latter was a constant purchase on women’s lists. There were pen-knives,
“scanes of silk,” crooked combs, morocco shoes, “nitting pins,”
constant “sticks of pomatum,” fans, “chanes,” a shawl, a tamboured
coat, gloves, stockings, trunks, bands and clasps, tooth-brushes, silk
gloves, necklaces, “fingered gloves,” silk stockings, handkerchiefs,
china teacups and saucers and silver spoons. All these show a very
generous outfit.

In the year 1770 a delightful, engaging little child came to Boston
from Nova Scotia to live for a time with her aunt, a Boston
gentlewoman, and to attend Boston schools. For the amusement of her
parents so far away, and for practice in penmanship, she kept during
the years 1771 and part of 1772 a diary. She was but ten years old when
she began, but her intelligence and originality make this diary a
valuable record of domestic life in Boston at that date. I have had the
pleasure of publishing her diary with notes under the title, _Diary of
Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl, in the Year 1771_. I lived so
much with her while transcribing her words that she seems almost like a
child of my own. Like other unusual children she died young—when but
nineteen. She was not so gifted and wonderful and rare a creature as
that star among children, Marjorie Fleming, yet she was in many ways
equally interesting; she was a frank, homely little flower of New
England life destined never to grow old or weary, or tired or sad, but
to live forever in eternal, happy childhood, through the magic living
words in the hundred pages of her time-stained diary.

She was of what Dr. Holmes called Boston Brahmin blood, was related to
many of the wealthiest and best families of Boston and vicinity, and
knew the best society. Dress was to her a matter of distinct
importance, and her clothes were carefully fashionable. Her distress
over wearing “an old red Domino” was genuine. We have in her words many
references to her garments, and we find her dress very handsome. This
is what she wore at a child’s party:—

“I was dressed in my yellow coat, black bib &; apron, black feathers on
my head, my past comb &; all my past garnet, marquesett &; jet pins,
together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my
neck, black mitts &; yards of blue ribbin (black &; blue is high tast),
striped tucker &; ruffels (not my best) &; my silk shoes completed my
dress.”

A few days later she writes:—

“I wore my black bib &; apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my Aunt
Storer since presented me with (blue ribbins on it) &; a very handsome
locket in the shape of a hart she gave me, the past Pin my Hon’d Papa
presented me with in my cap. My new cloak &; bonnet, my pompedore
gloves, &;c. And I would tell you that _for the first time they all on
lik’d my dress very much_. My cloak &; bonnett are really very handsome
&; so they had need be. For they cost an amasing sight of money, not
quite £;45, tho’ Aunt Suky said that she suppos’d Aunt Deming would be
frighted out of her Wits at the money it cost. I have got _one_
covering by the cost that is genteel &; I like it much myself.”

As this was in the times of depreciated values, £;45 was not so large a
sum to expend for a girl’s outdoor garments as at first sight appears.

She gives a very exact account of her successions of head-gear, some
being borrowed finery. She apparently managed to rise entirely above
the hated “black hatt” and red domino, which she patronizingly said
would be “Decent for Common Occations.” She writes:—

“Last Thursday I purchased with my aunt Deming’s leave a very beautiful
white feather hat, that is the outside, which is a bit of white
hollowed with the feathers sew’d on in a most curious manner; white and
unsully’d as the falling snow. As I am, as we say, a Daughter of
Liberty I chuse to were as much of our own manufactory as pocible....
My Aunt says if I behave myself very well indeed, not else, she will
give me a garland of flowers to orniment it, tho’ she has layd aside
the biziness of flower-making.”

The dress described and portrayed of these children all seems very
mature; but children were quickly grown up in colonial days. Cotton
Mather wrote, “New English youth are very sharp and early ripe in their
capacities.” They married early; though none of the “child-marriages”
of England disfigure the pages of our history. Sturdy Endicott would
not permit the marriage of his ward, Rebecca Cooper, an
“inheritrice,”—though Governor Winthrop wished her for his
nephew,—because the girl was but fifteen. I am surprised at this, for
marriages at fifteen were common enough. My far-away grandmother, Mary
Burnet, married William Browne, when she was fourteen; another
grandmother, Mary Philips, married her cousin at thirteen, and there is
every evidence that the match was arranged with little heed of the
girl’s wishes. It was the happiest of marriages. Boys became men by law
when sixteen. Winthrop named his son as executor of his will when the
boy was fourteen—but there were few boys like that boy. We find that
the Virginia tutor who taught in the Carter family just previous to the
war of the Revolution deemed a young lady of thirteen no longer a
child.

Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years,
Daughter of Colonel James Robinson. Marked “Corné pinxt, Sept. 1805.”

“Miss Betsy Lee is about thirteen, a tall, slim, genteel girl. She is
very far from Miss Hale’s taciturnity, yet is by no means disagreeably
Forward. She dances extremely well, and is just beginning to play the
Spinet. She is dressed in a neat Shell Callico Gown, has very light
Hair done up with a Feather, and her whole carriage is Inoffensive,
Easy and Graceful.”

The christening of an infant was not only a sacrament of the church,
and thus of highest importance, but it was also of secular note. It was
a time of great rejoicing, of good wishes, of gift-making. In mediaeval
times, the child was arrayed by the priest in a white robe which had
been anointed with sacred oil, and called a chrismale, or a chrisom. If
the child died within a month, it was buried in this robe and called a
chrisom-child. The robe was also called a christening palm or pall.
When the custom of redressing the child in a robe at the altar had
passed away, the christening palm still was used and was thrown over
the child when it was brought out to receive visitors. This robe was
also termed a bearing-cloth, a christening sheet, and a cade-cloth.

This fine coverlet of state, what we would now call a christening
blanket, was usually made of silk; often it was richly embroidered,
sometimes with a text of Scripture. It was generally lace-bordered, or
edged with a narrow, home-woven silk fringe. The christening-blanket of
Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony still is owned by a
descendant; it is whole of fabric and unfaded of dye. It is rich
crimson silk, soft of texture, like heavy sarcenet silk, and is
powdered at regular distances about six inches apart with conventional
sprays of flowers, embroidered chiefly in pink and yellow, in minute
silk cross-stitch. Another beautiful silk christening blanket was
quilted in an intricate flower pattern in almost imperceptible
stitches. Another of yellow satin has a design in white floss that
gives it the appearance of being trimmed with white silk lace. Best of
all was to embroider the cloth with designs and initials and emblems
and biblical references. A coat-of-arms or crest was very elegant. The
words, “God Bless the Babe,” were not left wholly to the pincushions
which every babe had given him or her, but appeared on the christening
blanket. A curious design shown me was called _The Tree of Knowledge_.
The figure of a child in cap, apron, bib, and hanging sleeves stands
pointing to a tree upon which grew books as though they were apples.
The open pages of each book-apple is printed with a title, as, _The New
England Primer, Lilly’s Grammar, Janeway’s Holy Children, The Prodigal
Daughter._

An inventory of the christening garments of a child in the seventeenth
century reads thus:—

“1. A lined white figured satin cap.
2. A lined white satin cap embroidered in sprays with gold coloured
silk.
3. A white satin palm embroidered in sprays of yellow silk to match.
This is 44 inches by 34 inches in size.
4. A palm of rich ‘still yellow’ silk lined with white satin. This is
54 inches by 48 inches in size.
5. A pair of deep cuffs of white satin, lace trimmed and embroidered.
6. A pair of linen mittens trimmed with narrow lace, the back of the
fingers outlined with yellow silk figures.”

Knitted Flaxen Mittens. Knitted Flaxen Mittens.

The satin cuffs were for the wear of the older person who carried the
child. The infant was placed upon the larger palm or cloth, and the
smaller one thrown over him, over his petticoats. The inner cap was
very tight to the head. The outer was embroidered; often it turned back
in a band.

There was a significance in the use of yellow; it is the altar color
for certain church festivals, and was proper for the pledging of the
child.

All these formalities of christening in the Church of England were not
abandoned by the Separatists. New England children were just as
carefully christened and dressed for christening as any child in the
Church of England. In the reign of James I tiny shirts with little
bands or sleeves or cuffs wrought in silk or in coventry-blue thread
were added to the gift of spoons from the sponsors. I have one of these
little coventry-blue embroidered things with quaint little sleeves; too
faded, I regret, to reveal any pattern to the camera.

The christening shirts and mittens given by the sponsors are said to be
a relic of the ancient custom of presenting white clothes to the
neophytes when converted to Christianity. These “Christening Sets” are
preserved in many families.

Of the dress of infants of colonial times we can judge from the
articles of clothing which have been preserved till this day. These are
of course the better garments worn by babies, not their everyday dress;
their simpler attire has not survived, but their christening robes,
their finer shirts and petticoats and caps remain.

Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and Daughter. Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and
Daughter.

Linen formed the chilling substructure of their dress, thin linen,
low-necked, short-sleeved shirts; and linen remained the underwear of
infants until thirty years ago. I do not wonder that these little linen
shirts were worn for centuries. They are infinitely daintier than the
finest silk or woollen underwear that have succeeded them; they are
edged with narrowest thread lace, and hemstitched with tiny rows of
stitches or corded with tiny cords, and sometimes embroidered by hand
in minute designs. They were worn by all babies from the time of James
I, never varying one stitch in shape; but I fear this pretty garment of
which our infants were bereft a few years ago will never crowd out the
warm, present-day silk wear. This wholly infantile article of childish
dress had tiny little revers or collarettes or laps made to turn over
outside the robe or slip like a minute bib, and these laps were
beautifully oversewn where the corners joined the shirt, to prevent
tearing down at this seam. These tiny shirts were the dearest little
garments ever made or dreamed of. When a baby had on a fresh, corded
slip, low of neck, with short, puffed sleeve, and the tiny hemstitched
laps were turned down outside the neck of the slip, and the little
sleeves were caught up by fine strings of gold-clasped pink coral, the
baby’s dimpled shoulders and round head rose up out of the little
shirt-laps like some darling flower.

I have seen an infant’s shirt and a cap embroidered on the laps with
the coat-of-arms of the Lux and Johnson families and the motto, “God
Bless the Babe;” these delicate garments, the work of fairies, were
worn in infancy by the Revolutionary soldier, Governor Johnson of
Virginia.

In the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the baptismal shirt
and mittens of the Pilgrim father, William Bradford, second governor of
the Plymouth colony, who was born in 1590. They are shown here. All are
of firm, close-woven, homespun linen, but the little mittens have been
worn at the ends by the active friction of baby hands, and are patched
with red and yellow figured “chiney” or calico. A similar colored
material frills the sleeves and neck. This may have been part of their
ornamentation when first made, but it looks extraneous.

The sleeves of this shirt are plaited or goffered in a way that seems
wholly lost; this is what I have already described—_pinching_. I have
seen the sleeve of a child’s dress thus pinched which had been worn by
a little girl aged three. The wrist-cuff measured about five inches
around, and was stoutly corded. Upon ripping the sleeve apart, it was
found that the strip of fine mull which was thus pinched into the
sleeve was two yards in length. The cuff flared slightly, else even
this length of sheer lawn could not have been confined at the wrist. In
the so-called “Museum,” gloomily scattered around the famous old South
Church edifice in Boston, are fine examples of this pinched work.

Christening Shirt and Mitts of Governor Bradford. Christening Shirt and
Mitts of Governor Bradford.

Many of the finest existing specimens of old guipure, Flanders, and
needlepoint laces in England and America are preserved on the ancient
shirts, mitts, caps, and bearing-cloths of infants. Often there is a
little padded bib of guipure lace accompanied with tiny mittens like
these.

Flanders Lace Mitts. Flanders Lace Mitts.

This pair was wrought and worn in the sixteenth century, and the
stitches and work are those of the Flanders point laces. I have seen
tiny mitts knitted of silk, of fine linen thread, also made of linen,
hem-stitched, or worked in drawn-work, or embroidered, and one pair of
mittens, and the cap that matched was of tatting-work done in the
finest of thread. No needlepoint could be more beautiful. Some are
shown on here.

Mitts of yellow nankeen or silk, made with long wrists or arms, were
also worn by babies, and must have proved specially irritating to tiny
little hands and arms. These had the seams sewed over and over with
colored silks in a curiously intricate netted stitch.

I have an infant’s cap with two squares of lace set in the crown, one
over each ear. The lace is of a curious design; a conventionalized vase
or urn on a standard. I recognize it as the lace and pattern known as
“pot-lace,” made for centuries at Antwerp, and worn there by old women
on their caps with a devotion to a single pattern that is unparalleled.
It was the “flower-pot” symbol of the Annunciation. The earliest
representation of the Angel Gabriel in the Annunciation showed him with
lilies in his hand; then these lilies were set in a vase. In years the
angel has disappeared and then the lilies, and the lily-pot only
remains. It is a whimsical fancy that this symbol of Romanism should
have been carefully transferred to adorn the pate of a child of the
Puritans. The place of the medallion, set over each ear, is so unusual
that I think it must have had some significance. I wonder whether they
were ever set thus in caps of heavy silk or linen to let the child hear
more readily, as he certainly would through the thin lace net.

The word “beguine” meant a nun; and thus derivatively a nun’s close
cap. This was altered in spelling to biggin, and for a time a nun’s
plain linen cap was thus called. By Shakespere’s day biggin had become
wholly a term for a child’s cap. It was a plain phrase and a plain cap
of linen. Shakespere calls them “homely biggens.”

I have seen it stated that the biggin was a night-cap. When Queen
Elizabeth lost her mother, Anne Boleyn, she was but three years old, a
neglected little creature. A lady of the court wrote that the child had
“no manner of linen, nor for-smocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails, nor
body-stitches, nor handkerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor mufflers, nor
biggins.”

In 1636 Mary Dudley, the daughter of Governor John Winthrop, had a
little baby. She did not live in Boston town, therefore her mother had
to purchase supplies for her; and many letters crossed, telling of
wants, and their relief. “Holland for biggins” was eagerly sought. At
that date all babies wore caps. I mean English and French, Dutch and
Spanish, all mothers deemed it unwise and almost improper for a young
baby ever to be seen bare-headed. With the imperfect heating and many
draughts in all the houses, this mode of dress may have been wholly
wise and indeed necessary. Every child’s head was covered, as the
pictures of children in this book show, until he or she was several
years old. The finest needlework and lace stitches were lavished on
these tiny infants’ caps, which were not, when thus adorned and
ornamented, called biggins.

Infant’s Adjustable Cap. Infant’s Adjustable Cap.

A favorite trimming for night-caps and infants’ caps is a sort of
quilting in a leaf and vine pattern, done with a white cord inserted
between outer and inner pieces of linen—a cord stuffing, as it were. It
does not seem oversuited for caps to be worn in bed or by little
infants, as the stiff cords must prove a disagreeable cushion. This
work was done as early as the seventeenth century; but nearly all the
pieces preserved were made in the early years of the nineteenth century
in the revival of needlework then so universal.

Often a velvet cap was worn outside the biggin or lace cap.

I have never seen a woollen petticoat that was worn by an infant of
pre-Revolutionary days. I think infants had no woollen petticoats;
their shirts, petticoats, and gowns were of linen or some cotton stuff
like dimity. Warmth of clothing was given by tiny shawls pinned round
the shoulders, and heavier blankets and quilts and shawls in which baby
and petticoats were wholly enveloped.

The baby dresses of olden times are either rather shapeless sacques
drawn in at the neck with narrow cotton ferret or linen bobbin, or
little straight-waisted gowns of state. All were exquisitely made by
hand, and usually of fine stuff. Many are trimmed with fine cording.

It is astounding to note the infinite number of stitches put in
garments. An infant’s slips quilted with a single tiny backstitch in a
regular design of interlaced squares, stars, and rounds. By counting
the number of rounds and the stitches in each, and so on, it has been
found that there are 397,000 stitches in that dress. Think of the time
spent even by the quickest sewer over such a piece of work.

Within a few years we have shortened the long clothes worn by youngest
infants; twenty-five years ago the handsome dress of an infant, such as
the christening-robe, was so long that when the child was held on the
arm of its standing nurse or mother, the edge of the robe barely
escaped touching the ground. Two hundred years ago, a baby’s dress was
much shorter. In the family group of Charles I and Henrietta Maria and
their children, in the Copley family picture, and in the picture of the
Cadwalader family, we find the little baby in scarce “three-quarters
length” of robe. With this exception it is astonishing to find how
little infants’ dress has changed during the two centuries. In 1889, at
the Stuart Exhibition, some of the infant dresses of Charles I were
shown. They had been preserved in the family of Sir Thomas Coventry,
Lord Keeper. And Charles II’s baby linen was on view in the New Gallery
in 1901. Both sets had the dainty little shirts, slips, bibs, mitts,
and all the babies’ dress of fifty years ago, and the changes since
then have been few. The “barrow-coat,” a square of flannel wrapped
around an infant’s body below the arms with the part below the feet
turned up and pinned, was part of the old swaddling-clothes; and within
ten years it has been largely abandoned for a flannel petticoat on a
band or waist. The bands, or binders, have always been the same as
to-day, and the bibs. The lace cuffs and lace mittens were left off
before the caps. The shirt is the most important change.

Nowadays a little infant wears long clothes till three, four, or even
eight months old; then he is put in short dresses about as long as he
is. In colonial days when a boy was taken from his swaddling-clothes,
he was dressed in a short frock with petticoats and was “coated” or
sometimes “short-coated.” When he left off coats, he donned breeches.
In families of sentiment and affection, the “coating” of a boy was made
a little festival. So was also the assumption of breeches an important
event—as it really is, as we all know who have boys.

One of the most charming of all grandmothers’ letters was written by a
doting English grandmother to her son. Lord Chief Justice North,
telling of the “leaving off of coats” of his motherless little son,
Francis Guilford, then six years old. The letter is dated October 10,
1679:—

“DEAR SON:
You cannot beleeve the great concerne that was in the whole family here
last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to helpe to dress
little ffrank in his breeches in order to the making an everyday suit
by it. Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her weding night
more handes about her, some the legs, some the armes, the taylor
butt’ning, and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that
had I not a ffinger amongst I could not have seen him. When he was
quite drest he acted his part as well as any of them for he desired he
might goe downe to inquire for the little gentleman that was there the
day before in a black coat, and speak to the man to tell the gentleman
when he came from school that there was a gallant with very fine
clothes and a sword to have waited upon him and would come again upon
Sunday next. But this was not all, there was great contrivings while he
was dressing who should have the first salute; but he sayd if old Joan
had been here, she should, but he gave it to me to quiett them all.
They were very fitt, everything, and he looks taller and prettyer than
in his coats. Little Charles rejoyced as much as he did for he jumpt
all the while about him and took notice of everything. I went to Bury,
and bot everything for another suitt which will be finisht on Saturday
so the coats are to be quite left off on Sunday. I consider it is not
yett terme time and since you could not have the pleasure of the first
sight, I resolved you should have a full relation from

    “Yo’r most Aff’nate Mother

    “A. North.

“When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion
because they had not sent him one.”

This affectionate letter, written to a great and busy statesman, the
Lord Keeper of the Seals, shows how pure and delightful domestic life
in England could be; it shows how beautiful it was after Puritanism
perfected the English home.

In an old family letter dated 1780 I find this sentence:—

“Mary is most wise with her child, and hath no new-fangledness. She has
little David in what she wore herself, a pudding and pinner.”

For a time these words “pudding and pinner” were a puzzle; and long
after pinner was defined we could not even guess at a pudding. But now
I know two uses of the word “pudding” which are in no dictionary. One
is the stuffing of a man’s great neck-cloth in front, under the chin.
The other is a thick roll or cushion stuffed with wool or some soft
filling and furnished with strings. This pudding was tied round the
head of a little child while it was learning to walk. The head was thus
protected from serious bruises or injury. Nollekens noted with
satisfaction such a pudding on the head of an infant, and said: “That
is right. I always wore a pudding, and all children should.” I saw one
upon a child’s head last summer in a New England town; I asked the
mother what it was, and she answered, “A pudding-cap”; that it made
children soft (idiotic) to bump the head frequently.

The word “pinner” has two meanings. The earlier use was precisely that
of pinafore, or pincurtle, or pincloth—a child’s apron. Thus we read in
the Harvard College records, of the expenses of the year 1677, of
“Linnen Cloth for Table Pinners,” which makes us suspect that Harvard
students of that day had to wear bibs at commons.

All children wore aprons, which might be called pinners; these were
aprons with pinned-up bibs; or they might be tiers, which were sleeved
aprons covering the whole waist, sleeves, and skirt, an outer slip,
buttoned in the back.

A severe and ancient moralist looked forth from her window in
Worcester, one day last spring, at a band of New England children
running to their morning school. She gazed over her glasses
reprovingly, and turned to me with bitterness: “There they go! _Such_
mothers as they must have! Not a pinner nor a sleeved tier among ’em.”

The sleeved tier occupied a singular place in childish opinion in my
youth; and I find the same feeling anent it had existed for many
generations. It was hated by all children, regarded as something to be
escaped from at the earliest possible date. You had to wear sleeved
tiers as you had to have the mumps. It was a thing to endure with what
childish patience and fortitude you could command for a short time; but
thoughtful, tender parents would not make you suffer it long.

There were aprons, and aprons. Pinners and tiers were for use, but
there were elegant aprons for ornament. Did not Queen Anne wear one?
Even babies wore them. The little Padishal child has one richly laced.
I have seen a beautiful apron for a little child of three. It was edged
with a straight insertion of Venetian point like that pictured here. It
had been made in 1690. Tender affection for a beloved and beautiful
little child preserved it in one trunk in the same attic for sixty-five
years; and a beautiful sympathy for that mother’s long sorrow kept the
apron untouched by young lace-lovers. This lace has white horsehair
woven into the edge.

We find George Washington ordering for his little stepdaughter (a
well-dressed child if ever there was one), when she was six years old,
“A fashionable cap or fillet with bib apron.” And a few years later he
orders, “Tuckers, Bibs, and Aprons if Fashionable.” Boys wore aprons as
long as they wore coats; aprons with stomachers or bibs of drawn-work
and lace, or of stiffly starched lawn; aprons just like those of their
sisters. It was hard to bear. Hoop-coat, masks, packthread stays—these
seem strange dress for growing girls.

George Washington sent abroad for masks for his wife and his little
stepdaughter, “Miss Custis,” when the little girl was six years old;
and “children’s masks” are often named in bills of sale. Loo-masks were
small half-masks, and were also imported in all sizes.

The face of Mrs. Madison, familiarly known as “Dolly Madison,” wife of
President James Madison, long retained the beauty of youth. Much of
this was surely due to a faithful mother, who, when little Dolly Payne
was sent to school, sewed a sun-bonnet on the child’s head every
morning, placed on her arms and hands long gloves, and made her wear a
mask to keep every ray of sunlight from her face. When masks were so
universally worn by women, it is not strange, after all, that children
wore them.

Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child. Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child.

I read with horror an advertisement of John McQueen, a New York
stay-maker in 1767, that he has children’s packthread stays, children’s
bone stays, and “neat polished steel collars for young Misses so much
worn at the boarding schools in London.” Poor little “young Misses”!

There were also “turned stays, jumps, gazzets, costrells and caushets”
(which were perhaps corsets) to make children appear straight.
Costrells and gazzets we know not to-day. Jumps were feeble stays.

“Now a shape in neat stays
Now a slattern in jumps.”

Robert Gibbes. Robert Gibbes.

Jumps were allied to jimps, and perhaps to jupe; and I think jumper is
a cousin of a word. One pair of stays I have seen is labelled as having
been made for a boy of five. One of the worst instruments of torture I
ever beheld was a pair of child’s stays worn in 1760. They were made,
not of little strips of wood, but of a large piece of board, front and
back, tightly sewed into a buckram jacket and reënforced across at
right angles and diagonally over the hips (though really there were no
hip-places) with bars of whalebone and steel. The tin corsets I have
heard of would not have been half as ill to wear. It is true, too, that
needles were placed in the front of the stays, that the stay-wearer who
“poked her head” would be well pricked. The daughter of General
Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary patriot, told her grandchildren
that she sat many hours every day in her girlhood, with her feet in
stocks and strapped to a backboard. A friend has a chair of ordinary
size, save that the seat is about four inches wide from the front edge
of seat to the back. And the back is well worn at certain points where
a heavy leather strap strapped up the young girl who was tortured in it
for six years of her life. The result of back board, stocks, steel
collar, wooden stays, is shown in such figures as have Dorothy Q. and
her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth Storer, on page 98 of my _Child Life in
Colonial Days_, is an extreme example, straight-backed indeed, but
narrow-chested to match.

Dr. Holmes wrote in jest, but he wrote in truth, too:—

“They braced My Aunt against a board
      To make her straight and tall,
 They laced her up, they starved her down,
      To make her light and small.
 They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
      They screwed it up with pins,
 Oh, never mortal suffered more
      In penance for her sins.”

Nankeen Breeches with Silver Buttons. Nankeen Breeches with Silver
Buttons.

Nankeen was the favorite wear for boys, even before the Revolution. The
little figure of the boy who became Lord Lyndhurst, shown in the Copley
family portrait, is dressed in nankeen; he is the engaging, loving
child looking up in his mother’s face. Nankeen was worn summer and
winter by men, and women, and children. If it were deemed too thin and
too damp a wear for delicate children in extreme winters, then a yellow
color in wool was preferred for children’s dress. I have seen a little
pair of breeches of yellow flannel made precisely like these nankeen
breeches on this page. They were worn in 1768. Carlyle in his _Sartor
Resartus_ gives this account of the childhood of the professor and
philosopher of his book:—

“My first short clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say,
my first short cloth; for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching
from neck to ankle; a single body with four limbs; of which fashion how
little could I then divine the architectural, much less the moral
significance.”

Ralph Izard when a Little Boy. 1750. Ralph Izard when a Little Boy.
1750.

It is a curious coincidence that a great philosopher of our own world
wore a precisely similar dress in his youth. Madam Mary Bradford writes
in a private letter, at the age of one hundred and three, of her life
in 1805 in the household of Rev. Joseph Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson
was then a little child of two years, and he and his brother William
till several years old were dressed wholly in yellow flannel, by night
and by day. When they put on trousers, which was at about the age of
seven, they wore complete home-made suits of nankeen. The picture
amuses me of the philosophical child, Ralph Waldo, walking soberly
around in ugly yellow flannel, contentedly sucking his thumb; for Mrs.
Bradford records that he was the hardest child to break of sucking his
thumb whom she ever had seen during her long life. I cannot help
wondering whether in their soul-to-soul talks Emerson ever told Carlyle
of the yellow woollen dress of his childhood, and thus gave him the
thought of the child’s dress for his philosopher.

Fortunately for the children who were our grandparents. French fashions
were not absorbingly the rage in America until after some amelioration
of dress had come to French children. Mercier wrote at length at the
close of the eighteenth century of the abominable artificiality and
restraint in dress of French children; their great wigs, full-skirted
coats, immense ruffles, swords on thigh, and hat in hand. He contrasts
them disparagingly with English boys. The English boy was certainly
more robust, but I find no difference in dress. Wigs, swords, ruffles,
may be seen at that time both in English and American portraits. But an
amelioration of dress did come to both English and American boys
through the introduction of pantaloons, and a change to little girls’
dress through the invention of pantalets, but the changes came first to
France, in spite of Mercier’s animadversions. These changes will be
left until the later pages of this book; for during nearly all the two
hundred years of which I write children’s dress varied little. It
followed the changes of the parent’s dress, and adopted some modes to a
degree but never to an extreme.

CHAPTER XI

PERUKES AND PERIWIGS

_“As to a Periwigg, my best and Greatest Friend begun to find me with
Hair before I was Born, and has continued to do so ever since, and I
could not find it in my Heart to go to another.”
_
—“Diary,” JUDGE SAMUEL SEWALL, 1718.

_A phrensy or a periwigmanee
That over-runs his pericranie._

—JOHN BYRON, 1730 (circa).

CHAPTER XI

PERUKES AND PERIWIGS

T

o-day, when every man, save a football player or some eccentric
reformer or religious fanatic, displays in youth a close-cropped head,
and when even hoary age is seldom graced with flowing, silvery locks,
when women’s hair is dressed in simplicity, we can scarcely realize the
important and formal part the hair played in the dress of the
eighteenth century.

In the great eagerness shown from earliest colonial days to acquire and
reproduce in the New World every change of mode in the Old, to purchase
rich dress, and to assume novel dress, no article was sought for more
speedily and more anxiously than the wig. It has proved an interesting
study to compare the introduction of wigs in England with the wear of
the same form of head-gear in America. Wigs were not in general use in
England when Plymouth and Boston were settled; though in Elizabeth’s
day a “peryuke” had been bought for the court fool. They were not in
universal wear till the close of the seventeenth century.

The “Wig Mania” arose in France in the reign of Louis XV. In 1656 the
king had forty court perruquiers, who were termed and deemed artists,
and had their academy. The wigs they produced were superb. It is told
that one cost £;200, a sum equal in purchasing power to-day to $5000.
The French statesman and financier, Colbert, aghast at the vast sums
spent for foreign hair, endeavored to introduce a sort of cap to
supplant the wig, but fashions are not made that way.

Governor and Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall. Governor and Reverend Gurdon
Saltonstall.

For information of English manners and customs in that day, I turn (and
never in vain) to those fascinating volumes, the _Verney Memoirs_. From
them I learn this of early wig-wearing by Englishmen; that Sir Ralph
Verney, though in straitened circumstances during his enforced
residence abroad, felt himself compelled to follow the French mode,
which at that period, 1646, had not reached England. That exemplary
gentleman paid twelve livres for a wig, when he was sadly short of
money for household necessaries. It was an elaborate wig, curled in
great rings, with two locks tied with black ribbon, and made without
any parting at the back. This wig was powdered.

Sir Ralph wrote to his wife that a good hair-powder was very difficult
to get and costly, even in France. It was an appreciable addition to
the weight of the wig and to the expense, large quantities being used,
sometimes as much as two pounds at a time. It added not only to the
expense, but to the discomfort, inconvenience, and untidiness of
wig-wearing.

Pomatum made of fat, and that sometimes rancid, was used to make the
powder stick; and noxious substances were introduced into the powder,
as a certain kind is mentioned which must not be used alone, for it
would produce headache.

Charles II was the earliest king represented on the Great Seal wearing
a large periwig. Dr. Doran assures us that the king did not bring the
fashion to Whitehall. “He forbade,” we are told, “the members of the
Universities to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, or read their sermons.
The members did all three, and Charles soon found himself doing the
first two.”

Mayor Rip Van Dam. Mayor Rip Van Dam.

Pepys’s _Diary_ contains much interesting information concerning the
wigs of this reign. On 2d of November, 1663, he writes: “I heard the
Duke say that he was going to wear a periwig, and says the King also
will, never till this day observed that the King is mighty gray.” It
was doubtless this change in the color of his Majesty’s hair that
induced him to assume the head-dress he had previously so strongly
condemned.

The wig he adopted was very voluminous, richly curled, and black. He
was very dark. “Odds fish! but I’m an ugly black fellow!” he said of
himself when he looked at his portrait. Loyal colonists quickly
followed royal example and complexion. We have very good specimens of
this curly black wig in many American portraits.

As might be expected, and as befitted one who delighted to be in
fashion, Pepys adopted this wig. He took time to consider the matter,
and had consultations with Mr. Jervas, his old barber, about the
affair. Referring to one of his visits to his hairdresser, Pepys says:—

“I did try two or three borders and periwigs, meaning to wear one, and
yet I have no stomach for it; but that the pains of keeping my hair
clean is great. He trimmed me, and at last I parted, but my mind was
almost altered from my first purpose, from the trouble which I foresee
in wearing them also.”

Weeks passed before he could make up his mind to wear a wig. Mrs. Pepys
was taken to the periwig-maker’s shop to see one, and expressed her
satisfaction with it. We read in April, 1665, of the wig being back at
Jervas’s under repair. Later, under date of September 3d, he writes:—

“Lord’s day. Up; and put on my coloured silk suit, very fine, and my
new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear, because the
plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a wonder what
will be in fashion, after the plague is done, as to periwigs, for
nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.”

In 1670, only, five years after this entry of Pepys, we find Governor
Barefoot of New Hampshire wearing a periwig; and in 1675 the court of
Massachusetts, in view of the distresses of the Indian wars, denounced
the “manifest pride openly appearing amongst us in that long hair, like
women’s hair is worn by some men, either their own hair, or others’
hair made into periwigs.”

Abraham De Peyster. Abraham De Peyster.

In 1676 Wait Winthrop sent a wig (price £;3) to his brother in New
London. Mr. Sergeant had brought it from England for his own use; but
was willing to sell it to oblige a friend, who was, I am confident,
very devoted to wig-wearing. The largest wig that I recall upon any
colonist’s head is in the portrait of Governor Fitz-John Winthrop. He
is painted in armor; and a great wig never seems so absurd as when worn
with armor. Horace Walpole said, “Perukes of outrageous length flowing
over suits of armour compose wonderful habits.” An edge of Winthrop’s
own dark hair seems to show under the wig front. I do not know the
precise date of this portrait. It was, of course, painted in England.
He served in the Parliamentary army with General Monck; returned to New
England in 1663, and was commander of the New England forces. He spent
1693 to l697 in England as commissioner. Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey
Kneller both were painting in England in those years, and both were
constant in painting men with armor and perukes. This portrait seems
like Kneller’s work.

Governor De Bienville. Governor De Bienville.

Another portrait attired also in armor and peruke is of Sir Nathaniel
Johnson, who was appointed governor of South Carolina by the Lords
Proprietors in 1702. The portrait was painted in 1705. It is one of the
few of that date which show a faint mustache; he likewise wears a seal
ring with coat-of-arms on the little finger of his left hand, which was
unusual at that day. De Bienville, the governor of Louisiana, is
likewise in wig and armor. In 1682 Thomas Richbell died in Boston,
leaving a very rich and costly wardrobe. He had eight wigs. Of these,
three were small periwigs worth but a pound apiece. In New York, in
Virginia, in all the colonies, these wigs were worn, and were just as
large and costly, as elaborately curled, as heavily powdered, as at the
English and French courts.

Archbishop Tillotson is usually regarded as the first amongst the
English clergy to adopt the wig. He said in one of his sermons:—

“I can remember since the wearing of hair below the ears was looked
upon as a sin of the first magnitude, and when ministers generally,
whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion to reprove
the great sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation
guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly
at him with great zeal.”

Dr. Tillotson died on November 24, 1694.

Daniel Waldo. Daniel Waldo.

Long before that American preachers had felt it necessary to “let fly”
also; to denounce wig-wearing from their pulpits. The question could
not be settled, since the ministers themselves could not agree. John
Wilson, the zealous Boston minister, wore one, and John Cotton (see
here); while Rev. Mr. Noyes preached long and often against the
fashion. John Eliot, the noble preacher and missionary to the Indians,
found time even in the midst of his arduous and incessant duties to
deliver many a blast against “prolix locks,”—“with boiling zeal,” as
Cotton Mather said,—and he labelled them a “luxurious feminine
protexity”; but lamented late in life that “the lust for wigs is become
insuperable.” He thought the horrors in King Philip’s War were a direct
punishment from God for wig-wearing. Increase Mather preached warmly
against wigs, calling them “Horrid Bushes of Vanity,” and saying that
“such Apparel is contrary to the light of Nature, and to express
Scripture,” and that “Monstrous Periwigs such as some of our church
members indulge in make them resemble ye locusts that came out of ye
Bottomless Pit.”

Rev. George Weeks preached a sermon on impropriety in clothes. He said
in regard to wig-wearing:—

“We have no warrant in the word of God, that I know of, for our wearing
of Periwigs except it be in extraordinary cases. Elisha did not cover
his head with a Perriwigg altho’ it was bald. To see the greater part
of Men in some congregations wearing Perriwiggs is a matter of deep
lamentation. For either all these men had a necessity to cut off their
Hair or else not. If they had a necessity to cut off their Hair then we
have reason to take up a lamentation over the sin of our first Parents
which hath occasioned so many Persons in our Congregation to be sickly,
weakly, crazy Persons.”

Long “Ruffianly” or “Russianly” (I know not which word is right) hair
equally worried the parsons. President Chauncey of Harvard College
preached upon it, for the college undergraduates were vexingly addicted
to prolix locks. Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth’s sermon on the subject has
often been reprinted, and is full of logical arguments. This offence
was named on the list of existing evils which was made by the general
court: that “the men wore long hair like women’s hair.” Still, the
Puritan magistrates, omnipotent as they were in small things, did riot
dare to force the becurled citizens of the little towns to cut their
long love-locks, though they bribed them to do so. A Salem man was, in
1687, fined l0s. for a misdemeanor, but “in case he shall cutt off his
long har of his head into a sevill (civil?) frame, in the mean time
shall have abated 5s. of his fine.” John Eliot hated long, natural hair
as well as false hair. Rev. Cotton Mather said of him, in a very
unpleasant figure of speech, “The hair of them that professed religion
grew too long for him to swallow.” His own hair curled on his
shoulders, and would seem long to us to-day.

Reverend John Marsh. Reverend John Marsh.

A climax of wig-hating was reached by one who has been styled “The Last
of the Puritans”—Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston. Constant references in
his diary show how this hatred influenced his daily life. He despised
wigs so long and so deeply, he thought and talked and prayed upon them,
until they became to him of undue importance; they became godless
emblems of iniquity; an unutterable snare and peril.

We find Sewall copying with evident approval a “scandalous bill” which
had been “posted” on the church in Plymouth in 1701. In this a few
lines ran:—

 “Our churches are too genteel.
Parsons grow trim and trigg
With wealth, wine, and wigg,
   And their crowns are covered with meal.”

John Adams in Youth. John Adams in Youth.

Bitter must have been his efforts to reconcile to his conscience the
sight of wigs upon the heads of his parson friends, worn boldly in the
pulpit. He would refrain from attending a church where the parson wore
a wig; and his italicized praise of a dead friend was that he “was a
true New-English man and _abominated periwigs_.” A Boston wig-maker
died a drunkard, and Sewall took much melancholy satisfaction in
dilating upon it.

Cotton Mather and Sewall had many pious differences and personal
jealousies. The parson was a handsome man (see his picture here), and
he was a harmlessly and naively vain man. He quickly adopted a “great
bush of vanity”—and a very personable appearance he makes in it. Soon
we find him inveighing at length in the pulpit against “those who
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, those who were zealous against an
innocent fashion taken up and used by the best of men.” “’Tis supposed
he means wearing a Perriwigg,” writes Sewall after this sermon; “I
expected not to hear a vindication of Perriwiggs in Boston pulpit by
Mr. Mather.”

Poor Sewall! his regard of wigs had a severe test when he wooed Madam
Winthrop late in life. She was a rich widow. He had courted her vainly
for a second wife. And now he “yearned for her deeply” for a third
wife, so he wrote. And ere she would consent or even discuss marriage
she stipulated two things: one, that he keep a coach; the other, that
he wear a periwig. When all the men of dignity and office in the colony
were bourgeoning out in great flowing perukes, she was naturally a bit
averse to an elderly lover in a skullcap or, as he often wore, a hood.
His love did not make him waver; he stoutly persisted in his refusal to
assume a periwig.

His portrait in a velvet skullcap shows a fringe of white curling hair
with a few forehead locks. I fancy he was bald. Here is his entry with
regard to young Parson Willard’s wig, in the year 1701:—

“Having last night heard that Josiah Willard had cut off his hair (a
very full head of hair) and put on a wig, I went to him this morning.
When I told his mother what I came about, she called him. Whereupon I
inquired of him what extreme need had forced him to put off his own
hair and put on a wig? He answered, none at all; he said that his hair
was straight, and that it parted behind.

“He seemed to argue that men might as well shave their hair off their
head, as off their face. I answered that boys grew to be men before
they had hair on their faces, and that half of mankind never have any
beards. I told him that God seems to have created our hair as a test,
to see whether we can bring our minds to be content at what he gives
us, or whether wewould be our own carvers and come back to him for
nothing more. We might dislike our skin or nails, as he disliked his
hair; but in our case no thanks are due to us that we cut them not off;
for pain and danger restrain us. Your duty, said I, is to teach men
self-denial. I told him, further, that it would be displeasing and
burdensome to good men for him to wear a wig, and they that care not
what men think of them, care not what God thinks of them.

“I told him that he must remember that wigs were condemned by a meeting
of ministers at Northampton. I told him of the solemnity of the
covenant which he and I had lately entered into, which put upon me the
duty of discoursing to him.

“He seemed to say that he would leave off his wig when his hair was
grown again. I spoke to his father of it a day or two afterwards and he
thanked me for reasoning with his son.

“He told me his son had promised to leave off his wig when his hair was
grown to cover his ears. If the father had known of it, he would have
forbidden him to cut off his hair. His mother heard him talk of it, but
was afraid to forbid him for fear he should do it in spite of her, and
so be more faulty than if she had let him go his own way.”

Jonathan Edwards, 2nd. Jonathan Edwards, 2nd.

Soon nearly every parson in England and every colony wore wigs. John
Wesley alone wore what seems to be his own white hair curled under
softly at the ends. Whitfield is in a portentous wig like the one on
Dr. Marsh (here).

In the time of Queen Anne, wigs had multiplied vastly in variety as
they had increased in size. I have been asked the difference between a
peruke and a wig. Of course both, and the periwig, are simply wigs; but
the term “peruke” is in general applied to a formal, richly curled wig;
and the word “periwig” also conveys the distinction of a formal wig. Of
less dignity were riding-wigs, nightcap wigs, and bag-wigs. Bag-wigs
are said to have had their origin among French servants, who tied up
their hair in a black leather bag as a speedy way of dressing it, and
to keep it out of the way when at other and disordering duties.

Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry.

In May, 1706, the English, led by Marlborough, gained a great victory
on the battle-field of Ramillies, and that gave the title to a new wig
described as “having a long, gradually diminishing, plaited tail,
called the ‘Ramillie-tail,’ which was tied with a great bow at the top
and a smaller one at the bottom.” The hair also bushed out at both
sides of the face. The Ramillies wig shown in Hogarth’s _Modern
Midnight Conversation_ hanging against the wall, is reproduced here.
This wig was not at first deemed full-dress. Queen Anne was deeply
offended because Lord Bolingbroke, summoned hurriedly to her, appeared
in a Ramillies wig instead of a full-bottomed peruke. The queen
remarked that she supposed next time Lord Bolingbroke would come in his
nightcap. It was the same offending nobleman who brought in the fashion
of the mean little tie-wigs.

It is stated in Read’s _Weekly Journal_ of May 1, 1736, in an account
of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, that the officers of the Horse
and Foot Guards wore Ramillies periwigs when on parade, by his
Majesty’s order. We meet in the reign of George II other forms of wigs
and other titles; the most popular was the pigtail wig. The pigtail of
this was worn hanging down the back or tied up in a knot behind. This
pigtail wig, worn for so many years, is shown here. It was popular in
the army for sixty years, but in 1804 orders were given for the pigtail
to be reduced to seven inches in length, and finally, in 1808, to be
cut off wholly, to the deep mourning of disciplinarians who deemed a
soldier without a pigtail as hopeless as a Manx cat.

“King” Carter. Died 1732. “King” Carter. Died 1732.

Bob-wigs, minor and major, came in during the reign of George II. The
bob-wig was held to be a direct imitation of the natural hair, though,
of course, it deceived no one; it was used chiefly by poorer folk. The
’prentice minor bob was close and short, the citizen’s bob major, or
Sunday buckle, had several rows of curls. All these came to America by
the hundreds—yes, by the thousands. Every profession and almost every
calling had its peculiar wig. The caricatures of the period represent
full-fledged lawyers with a towering frontlet and a long bag at the
back tied in the middle; while students of the university have a wig
flat on the top, to accommodate their stiff, square-cornered hats, and
a great bag like a lawyer’s wig at the back.

Judge Benjamin Lynde. Judge Benjamin Lynde.

“When the law lays down its full-bottom’d periwig you will find less
wisdom in bald pates than you are aware of,” says the _Choleric Man_.
This lawyer’s wig is the only one which has not been changed or
abandoned. You may see it here, on the head of Judge Benjamin Lynde of
Salem. He died in 1745. Carlyle sneers:—

“Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins,
and a plush-gown—whereby all Mortals know that he is a JUDGE?”

In the reigns of Anne and William and Mary perukes grew so vast and
cumbersome that a wig was invented for travelling and for undress wear,
and was called the “Campaign wig.” It would not seem very simple since
it was made full and curled to the front, and had, so writes a
contemporary, Randle Holme, in his _Academy of Armory_, 1684, “knots
and bobs a-dildo on each side and a curled forehead.”

A campaign wig from Holme’s drawing is shown here.

There are constant references in old letters and in early literature in
America which alter much the dates assigned by English authorities on
costume: thus, knowing not of Randle Holme’s drawing, Sydney writes
that the name “campaign” was applied to a wig, the name and fashion of
which came to England from France in 1702. In the Letter-book of
William Byrd of Westover, Virginia, in a letter written in June, 1690,
to Perry and Lane, his English factors in London, he says, “I have by
Tonner sent my long Periwig which I desire you to get made into a
Campagne and send mee.” This was twelve years earlier than Sydney’s
date. Fitz-John Winthrop wrote to England in 1695 for “two wiggs one a
campane the other short.” The portrait of Fitz-John Winthrop shows a
prodigious imposing wig, but it has no “knots or bobs a-dildo on each
side,” though the forehead is curled; it is a fine example of a peruke.

I cannot attempt even to name all the wigs, much less can I describe
them; Hawthorne gave “the tie,” the “Brigadier,” the “Major,” the
“Ramillies,” the grave “Full-bottom,” the giddy “Feather-top.” To these
and others already named in this chapter I can add the “Neck-lock,” the
“Allonge,” the “Lavant,” the “Vallancy,” the “Grecian fly wig,” the
“Beau-peruke,” the “Long-tail,” the “Fox-tail,” the “Cut-wig,” the
“Scratch,” the “Twist-wig.”

Others named in 1753 in the _London Magazine_ were the “Royal bird,”
the “Rhinoceros,” the “Corded Wolf’s-paw,” “Count Saxe’s mode,” the
“She-dragon,” the “Jansenist,” the “Wild-boar’s-back,” the
“Snail-back,” the “Spinach-seed.” These titles were literal
translations of French wig-names.

Another wig-name was the “Gregorian.” We read in _The Honest Ghost_,
1658, “Pulling a little down his Gregorian, which was displac’t a
little by his hastie taking off his beaver.” This wig was named from
the inventor, one Gregory, “the famous peruke-maker who is buryed at
St. Clements Danes Church.” In Cotgrave’s _Dictionary_ perukes are
called Gregorians.

John Rutledge. John Rutledge.

In the prologue to _Haut Ton_, written by George Colman, these wigs are
named:—

“The Tyburn scratch, thick Club and Temple tyes,
The Parson’s Feather-top, frizzed, broad and high.
The coachman’s Cauliflower, built tier on tier.”

There was also the “Minister’s bob,” “Curley roys,” “Airy levants,” and
“I—perukes.” The “Dalmahoy” was a bushy bob-wig.

When Colonel John Carter died, he left to his brother Robert his cane,
sword, and periwig. I believe this to be the very Valiancy periwig
which, in all its snowy whiteness and air of extreme fashion, graces
the head of the handsome young fellow as he is shown here. Even the
portrait shares the fascination which the man is said to have had for
every woman. I have a copy of it now standing on my desk, where I can
glance at him as I write; and pleasant company have I found the gay
young Virginian—the best of company. It is good to have a companion so
handsome of feature, so personable of figure, so laughing, care free,
and debonair—isn’t it, King Robert?

Campaign, Ramillies, Bob, and Pigtail Wigs. Campaign, Ramillies, Bob,
and Pigtail Wigs.

These snowy wigs at a later date were called Adonis wigs.

The cost of a handsome wig would sometimes amount to thirty, forty, and
fifty guineas, though Swift grumbled at paying three guineas, and the
exceedingly correct Mr. Pepys bought wigs at two and three pounds. It
is not strange that they were often stolen. Gay, in his _Trivia_, thus
tells the manner of their disappearance:—

“Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn;
 High on the shoulder, in a basket borne,
 Lurks the sly boy, whose hand to rapine bred,
 Plucks off the curling honors of the head.”

In America wigs were deemed rich spoils for the sneak-thief.

There was a vast trade in second-hand wigs. ’Tis said there was in
Rosemary Lane in London a constantly replenished “Wig lottery.” It was,
rather, a wig grab-bag. The wreck of gentility paid his last sixpence
for appearances, dipped a long arm into a hole in a cask, and fished
out his wig. It might be half-decent, or it might be fit only to polish
shoes—worse yet, it might have been used already for that purpose. The
lowest depths of everything were found in London. I doubt if we had any
Rosemary Lane wig lotteries in New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston.

Rev. William Welsteed. Rev. William Welsteed.

An answer to a query in a modern newspaper gives the word “caxon” as
descriptive of a dress-wig. It was in truth a term for a wig, but it
was a cant term, a slang phrase for the worst possible wig; thus
Charles Lamb Wrote:—

“He had two wigs both pedantic but of different omen. The one serene,
smiling, fresh-powdered, betokening a mild day. The other an old
discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon denoting frequent and bloody
execution.”

All these wigs, even the bob-wig, were openly artificial. The manner of
their make, their bindings, their fastening, as well as their material,
completely destroyed any illusion which could possibly have been
entertained as to their being a luxuriant crop of natural hair.

No one was ashamed of wearing a wig. On the contrary, a person with any
sense of dignity was ashamed of being so unfashionable as to wear his
own hair. It was a glorious time for those to whom Nature had been
niggardly. A wig was as frankly extraneous as a hat. No attempt was
made to imitate the roots of the hairs, or the parting. The hair was
attached openly, and bound with a high-colored, narrow ribbon. Here is
an advertisement from the _Boston News Letter_ of August 14, 1729:—

“Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott, Barber, a light Flaxen Natural
Wigg parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow Ribband is of a
Red Pink Color, the Caul is in rows of Red, Green and White Ribband.”

Another “peruke-maker” lost a Flaxen “Natural” wig bound with
peach-colored ribbon; while in 1755 Barber Coes, of Marblehead, lost
“feather-tops” bound with various ribbons. Some had three colors on one
wig—pink, green and purple. A goat’s-hair wig bound with red and
purple, with green ribbons striping the caul, must have been a pretty
and dignified thing on an old gentleman’s head. One of the most curious
materials for a wig was fine wire, of which Wortley Montague’s wig was
made.

Thomas Hopkinson. Thomas Hopkinson.

We read in many histories of costume, among them Miss Hill’s recent
history of English dress, that Quakers did not wear wigs. This is
widely incorrect. Many Quakers wore most fashionably made wigs. William
Penn wrote from England to his steward, telling him to allow Deputy
Governor Lloyd to wear his (Penn’s) wigs. I suppose he wished his
deputy to cut a good figure.

From the _New York Gazette_ of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief’s
stealing “one gray Hair Wig, not the worse for wearing, one Pale Hair
Wig, not worn five times, marked V. S. E., one brown Natural wig, One
old wig of goat’s hair put in buckle.” Buckle meant to curl, and
derivatively a wig was in buckle when it was rolled for curling.
Roulettes or bilbouquettes for buckling a wig were little rollers of
pipe clay. The hair was twisted up in them, and papers bound over them
to fix them in place. The roulettes could be put in buckle hot, or they
could be rolled cold and the whole wig heated. The latter was not
favored; it damaged the wig. Moreover, a careless barber had often
roasted a forgotten wig which he had put in buckle and in an oven.

The _New York Gazette_ of May 12, 1750, had this alluring
advertisement:—

“This is to acquaint the Public, that there is lately arrived from
London the Wonder of the World, _an Honest_ Barber and Peruke Maker,
who might have worked for the King, if his Majesty would have employed
him: It was not for the want of Money he came here, for he had enough
of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, that he advertises
himself, BUT to acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies, that _Such a Person
is now in Town_, living near _Rosemary Lane_ where Gentlemen and Ladies
may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.: Tyes, Full-Bottoms,
Majors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut and bob Perukes: Also
Ladies Tatematongues and Towers after the Manner that is now wore at
Court. _By their Humble and Obedient Servant_,

“JOHN STILL.”

Reverend Dr. Barnard. Reverend Dr. Barnard.

“Perukes,” says Malcolm, in his _Manners and Customs_, “were an highly
important article in 1734.” Those of right gray human hair were four
guineas each; light grizzle ties, three guineas; and other colors in
proportion, to twenty-five shillings. Right gray human hair cue
perukes, from two guineas to fifteen shillings each, was the price of
dark ones; and right gray bob perukes, two guineas and a half to
fifteen shillings, the price of dark bobs. Those mixed with horsehair
were much lower.

Prices were a bit higher in America. It was held that better wigs were
made in England than in America or France; so the letter-books and
agent’s-lists of American merchants are filled with orders for English
wigs.

Imperative orders for the earliest and extremest new fashions stood
from year to year on the lists of fashionable London wig-makers; and
these constant orders came from Virginia gentlemen and Massachusetts
magistrates,—not a few, too, from the parsons,—scantly paid as they
were. The smaller bob-wigs and tie-wigs were precisely the same in both
countries, and I am sure were no later in assumption in America than
was necessitated by the weeks occupied in coming across seas.

Throughout the seventeenth century all classes of men in American towns
wore wigs. Negro slaves flaunted white horsehair wigs, goat’s-hair
bob-wigs, natural wigs, all the plainer wigs, and all the more costly
sorts when these were half worn and secondhand. Soldiers wore wigs; and
in the _Massachusetts Gazette_ of the year 1774 a runaway negro is
described as wearing a curl of hair tied around his head to imitate a
scratch wig; with his woolly crown this dangling curl must have been
the height of absurdity.

It is not surprising to find in the formal life of the English court
the poor little tormented, sickly, sad child of Queen Anne wearing,
before he was seven years old, a large full-bottomed wig; but it is
curious to see the portraits of American children rigged up in wigs (I
have half a dozen such), and to find likewise an American gentleman
(and not one of wealth either) paying £;9 apiece for wigs for three
little sons of seven, nine, and eleven years of age. This lavish parent
was Enoch Freeman, who lived in Portland, Maine, in 1754.

Wigs were objects of much and constant solicitude and care; their
dressing was costly, and they wore out readily. Barbers cared for them
by the month or year, visiting from house to house. Ten pounds a year
was not a large sum to be paid for the care of a single wig. Men of
dignity and careful dress had barbers’ bills of large amount, such men
as Governor John Hancock, Governor Hutchinson, and Governor Belcher. On
Saturday afternoons the barbers’ boys were seen flying through the
narrow streets, wig-box in hand, hurrying to deliver all the dressed
wigs ere sunset came.

No doubt the constant wearing of such hot, heavy head-covering made the
hair thin and the head bald; thus wigs became a necessity. Men had
their heads very closely covered of old, and caught cold at a breath.
Pepys took cold throwing off his hat while at dinner. If the wig were
removed even within doors a close cap or hood at once took its place,
or, as I tell elsewhere, a turban of some rich stuff. In America, in
the Southern states, where people were poor and plantations scattered,
all men did not wear wigs. A writer in the _London Magazine_ in 1745
tells of this country carelessness of dress. He says that except some
of the “very Elevated Sort” few wore perukes; so that at first sight
“all looked as if about to go to bed,” for all wore caps. Common people
wore woollen caps; richer ones donned caps of white cotton or Holland
linen. These were worn even when riding fifty miles from home. He adds,
“It may be cooler for aught I know; but methinks ’tis very ridiculous.”
So wonted were his eyes to perukes, that his only thought of caps was
that they were “ridiculous.” Nevertheless, when a shipload of servants,
bond-servants who might be stolen when in drink, or lured under false
pretences, might be convicts, or honest workmen,—when these transports
were set up in respectability,—scores of new wigs of varying degrees of
dignity came across seas with them. Many an old caxon or “gossoon”—a
wig worn yellow with age—ended its days on the pate of a redemptioner,
who thereby acquired dignity and was more likely to be bought as a
schoolmaster. Truly our ancestors were not squeamish, and it is well
they were not, else they would have squeamed from morning till night at
the sights, and sounds, and things, and dirt around them. But these be
parlous words; they had the senses and feelings of their day—suited to
the surroundings of their day. In one thing they can be envied. Knowing
not of germs and microbes, dreaming not of antiseptics and fumigation,
they could be happy in blissful unconsciousness of menacing
environment—a blessing wholly denied to us.

Andrew Ellicott. Andrew Ellicott.

When James Murray came from Scotland in 1735 he went up the Cape Fear
River in North Carolina to the struggling settlements of Brunswick. The
stock of wigs which he brought as one of the commodities of his trade
had absolutely no market. In 1751 he wrote thus to his London
wig-maker:—

“We deal so much in caps in this country that we are almost as careless
of the outside as of the inside of our heads. I have had but one wig
since the last I had of you, and yours has outworn it. Now I am near
out, and you may make me a new grisel Bob.”

Nevertheless, in 1769, when he was roughly handled in Boston on account
of his Tory utterances, his head, though he was but fifty-six, was bald
from wig-wearing. His spirited recital runs thus:—

“The crowd intending sport, remained. As I was pressing out, my Wig was
pulled off and a pate shaved by Time and the barber was left exposed.
This was thought a signal and prelude to further insult; which would
probably have taken place but for hindering the cause. Going along in
this plight, surrounded by the crowd, in the dark, a friend hold of
either arm supporting me, while somebody behind kept nibbling at my
sides and endeavouring of treading the reforming justice out of me by
the multitude. My wig dishevelled, was borne on a staff behind. My
friends and supporters offered to house me, but I insisted on going
home in the present trim, and was landed in safety.”

Patriotic Boston barbers found much satisfaction in ill treating the
wigs of their Tory customers and patrons. William Pyncheon, a Salem
Tory, wrote a few years later:—

“The tailors and barbers, in their squinting and fleering at our
clothes, and especially our wiggs, begin to border on malevolence. Had
not the caul of my wigg been of uncommon stuff and workmanship, I think
my barber would have had it in pieces: his dressing it greatly
resembles the farmer dressing his flax, the latter of the two being the
gentlest in his motions.”

Worcester Tories, among them Timothy Paine, had their wigs pulled off
in public. Mr. Paine at once gave his dishonored wig to one of his
negro slaves, and never after resumed wig-wearing.

CHAPTER XII

THE BEARD

_“Though yours be sorely lugged and torn
It does your Visage more adorn
Than if ’twere prun’d, and starch’d, and launder’d
And cut square by the Russian standard.”_

—“Hudibras,” SAMUEL BUTLER.

_“Now of beards there be such company
And fashions such a throng
That it is very hard to handle a beard
Tho’ it be never so long.

“’Tis a pretty sight and a grave delight
That adorns both young and old
A well thatch’t face is a comely grace
And a shelter from the cold”_

—“Le Prince d’Amour,” 1660.

CHAPTER XII

THE BEARD

M

en’s hair on their heads hath ever been at odds with that on their
face. If the head were well covered and the hair long, then the face
was smooth shaven. William the Conqueror had short hair and a beard,
then came a long-haired king, then a cropped one; Edward IV’s subjects
had long hair and closely cut beards. Henry VII fiercely forbade
beards. The great sovereign Henry VIII ordered short hair like the
French, and wore a beard. Through Elizabeth’s day and that of James the
beard continued. Not until great perukes overshadowed the whole face
did the beard disappear. It vanished for a century as if men were
beardless; but after men began to wear short hair in the early years of
the nineteenth century, bearded men appeared. A few German mystics who
had come to America full-bearded were stared at like the elephant, and
a sight of them was recorded in a diary as a great event.

There is no doubt that, to the general reader, the ordinary thought of
the Puritan is with a beard, a face and figure much like the Hogarth
illustrations of Hudibras—one of the “Presbyterian true Blue,” “the
stubborn crew of Errant Saints,”—without the grotesquery of face and
feature, perhaps, but certainly with all the plainness and
gracelessness of dress and the commonplace beard. The wording of
Hudibras also figures the popular conception:—

“His tawny Beard was th’ equal Grace
Both of his Wisdom and his Face:
“His Doublet was of sturdy Buff
And tho’ not Sword, was Cudgel-Proof.
His Breeches were of rugged Woolen
And had been at the Siege of Bullen.”

Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford. Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of
Hereford.

In truth this is well enough as far as it runs and for one suit of
clothing; but this was by no means a universal dress, nor was it a
universal beard. Indeed beards were fearfully and wonderfully varied.

That humorous old rhymester, Taylor, the “Water Poet,” may be quoted at
length on the vanity thus:—

“And Some, to set their Love’s-Desire on Edge
Are cut and prun’d, like to a Quickset Hedge.
Some like a Spade, some like a Forke, some square,
Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some starke bare;
Some sharpe, Stilletto-fashion, Dagger-like,
That may with Whispering a Man’s Eyes unpike;
Some with the Hammer-cut, or Roman T.
Their Beards extravagant, reform’d must be.
Some with the Quadrate, some Triangle fashion;
Some circular, some ovall in translation;
Some Perpendicular in Longitude,
Some like a Thicket for their Crassitude,
That Heights, Depths, Breadths, Triform, Square, Ovall, Round
And Rules Geometrical in Beards are found.”

Taylor’s own beard was screw-shaped. I fancy he invented it.

The Anglo-Saxon beard was parted, and this double form remained for a
long time. Sometimes there were two twists or two long forks.

A curious pointed beard, a beard in two curls, is shown here, on James
Douglas, Earl of Morton. A still more strangely kept one, pointed in
the middle of the chin, and kept in two rolls which roll toward the
front, is upon the aged herald, here.

Richard II had a mean beard,—two little tufts on the chin known as “the
mouse-eaten beard, here a tuft, there a tuft.” The round beard “like a
half a Holland cheese” is always seen in the depictions of Falstaff; “a
great round beard” we know he had. This was easily trimmed, but others
took so much time and attention that pasteboard boxes were made to tie
over them at night, that they might be unrumpled in the morning.

The Herald Vandum. The Herald Vandum.

In the reign of Elizabeth and of James I a beard and whiskers or
mustache were universally worn. In the time of Charles I the general
effect of beard and mustache was triangular, with the mouth in the
centre, as in the portrait of Waller here.

A beard of some form was certainly universal in 1620. Often it was the
orderly natural growth shown on Winthrop’s face; a smaller tuft on the
chin with a mustache also was much worn. Many ministers in America had
this chin-tuft. Among them were John Eliot and John Davenport. The
Stuarts wore a pointed beard, carefully trimmed, and a mustache; but
the natural beard seems to have disappeared with the ruff. Charles II
clung for a time to a mustache; his portrait by Mary Beale has one; but
with the great development of the periwig came a smooth face. This
continued until the nineteenth century brought a fashion of bearded men
again; a fashion which was so abhorred, so reviled, so openly warred
with that I know of the bequest of a large estate with the absolute and
irrevocable condition that the inheritor should never wear a beard of
any form.

The hammer cut was of the reign of Charles I. It was T-shaped. In the
play, _The Queen of Corinth_, 1647, are the lines:—

      “He strokes his beard
Which now he puts in the posture of a T,
The Roman T. Your T-beard is in fashion.”

The spade beard is shown here. It was called the “broad pendant,” and
was held to make a man look like a warrior. The sugar-loaf beard was
the natural form much worn by Puritans; by natural I mean not twisted
into any “strange antic forms.” The swallow-tail cut (about 1600) is
more unusual, but was occasionally seen.

“The stiletto-beard
It makes me afeard
     It is so sharp beneath.
For he that doth place
A dagger in his face
     What wears he in his sheath?”

An unusually fine stiletto beard is on the chin of John Endicott
(here). It was distinctly a soldier’s beard. Endicott was major-general
of the colonial forces and a severe disciplinarian. Shakespere, in
_Henry V_, speaks of “a beard of the General’s cut.” It was worn by the
Earl of Southampton (see here), and perhaps Endicott favored it on that
account. The pique-devant beard or “pick-a-devant beard, O Fine
Fashion,” was much worn. A good moderate example may be seen upon
Cousin Kilvert, with doublet and band, in the print here. An extreme
type was the beard of Robert Greene, the Elizabethan dramatist, “A
jolly long red peake like the spire of a steeple, which he wore
continually, whereat a man might hang a jewell; it was so sharp and
pendent.”

Scotch Beard. Scotch Beard.

The word “peak” was constantly used for a beard, and also the words
“spike” and “spear.” A barber is represented in an old play as asking
whether his customer will “have his peak cut short and sharp; or
amiable like an inamorato, or broad pendant like a spade; to be
terrible like a warrior and a soldado; to have his appendices primed,
or his mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like ye branches of
a vine.”

A broad square-cut beard spreading at the ends like an open fan is the
“cathedral beard” of Randle Holme, “so called because grave men of the
church did wear it.” It is often seen in portraits. One of these is
shown here.

Dr. William Slater. Cathedral Beard. Dr. William Slater. Cathedral
Beard.

In the _Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas_, 1731, she writes of her
grandfather, a Turkey-merchant:—

“He was very nice in the Mode of his Age—his Valet being some hours
every morning in _Starching_ his _Beard_ and Curling his Whiskers
during which Time a Gentleman whom he maintained as Companion always
read to him upon some useful subject.”

So we may believe they really “starched” their beards, stiffened them
with some dressing. Taylor, the “Water Poet” (1640), says of beards:—

“Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine
Like to the Bristles of some Angry Swine.”

Dr. John Dee. 1600. Dr. John Dee. 1600.

Dr. Dee’s extraordinary beard I can but regard as an affectation of
singularity, assumed doubtless to attract attention, and to be a sign
of unusual parts. Aubrey, his friend, calls him “a very handsome man;
of very fair, clear, sanguine complexion, with a long beard as white as
milke. He was tall and slender. He wore a gowne like an artist’s gowne;
with hanging sleeves and a slitt. A mighty good man he was.” The word
“artist” then meant artisan; and in this reference means a smock like a
workman’s.

A name seen often in Winthrop’s letters is that of Sir Kenelm Digby. He
was an intimate correspondent of John Winthrop the second, and it would
not be strange if he did many errands for Winthrop in England besides
purchasing drugs. His portrait, and a lugubrious one it is, is one of
the few of his day which shows an untrimmed beard. Aubrey says of him
that after the death of his wife he wore “a long mourning cloak, a high
cornered hatt, his beard unshorn, look’t like a hermit; as signs of
sorrow for his beloved wife. He had something of the sweetness of his
mother’s face.” This sweetness is, however, not to be perceived in his
unattractive portrait.

CHAPTER XIII

PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES

_“Q. Why is a Wife like a Patten? A. Both are Clogs.”_

—Old Riddle.

CHAPTER XIII

PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES

W

hen this old pigskin trunk was new, the men who fought in the
Revolution were young. Here is the date, “1756,” and the initials in
brass-headed nails, “J.E.H.” It was a bride’s trunk, the trunk of
Elizabeth, who married John; and it was marked after the manner of
marking the belongings of married folk in her day. It is curious in
shape, spreading out wide at the top; for it was made to fit a special
place in an old coach. I have told the story of that ancient coach in
my _Old Narragansett_: the tale of the ignoble end of its days, the
account of its fall from transportation of this happy bride and
bridegroom, through years of stately use and formal dignity to more
years of happy desuetude as a children’s cubby-house; and finally its
ignominy as a roosting-place, and hiding-place, and laying-place, and
setting-place of misinformed and misguided hens. Under the coachman’s
seat, where the two-score dark-blue Staffordshire pie-plates were found
on the day of the annihilation of the coach, was the true resting-place
of this trunk. It was a hidden spot, for the trunk was small, and was
intended to hold only treasures. It holds them still, though they are
not the silver-plate, the round watches, the narrow laces, and the
precious camel’s-hair scarf. It now holds treasured relics of the olden
time; trifles, but not unconsidered ones; much esteemed trifles are
they, albeit not in form or shape or manner of being fit to rest in
parlor cabinets or on tables, but valued, nevertheless, valued for that
most intangible of qualities—association.

Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760. Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760.

Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790. Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790.

Here is one little “antick.” It is an ample bag with the neat double
drawing-strings of our youth; a bag, nay, a pocket. It once hung by the
side of some one of my forbears, perhaps Elizabeth of the brass-nailed
initials. It was a much-esteemed pocket, though it is only of figured
cotton or chiney; but those stuffs were much sought after when this old
trunk was new. The pocket has served during recent years as a cover for
two articles of footwear which many “of the younger sort” to-day have
never seen—they are pattens. “Clumsy, ugly pattens” we find them
frequently stigmatized in the severe words of the early years of the
nineteenth century, but there is nothing ugly or clumsy about this
pair. The sole is of some black, polished wood—it is heavy enough for
ebony; the straps are of strong leather neatly stitched; the buckles
are polished brass, and brass nails fasten the leather to the wooden
soles. These soles are cut up high in a ridge to fit under the instep
of a high-heeled shoe; for it was a very little lady who wore these
pattens,—Elizabeth,—and her little feet always stood in the highest
heels. She was active, kindly, and bountiful. She lived to great age,
and she could and did walk many miles a day until the last year of her
life. She is recalled as wearing a great scarlet cloak with a black
silk quilted hood on cold winter days, when she visited her neighbors
with kindly words, and housewifely, homely gifts, conveyed in an ample
basket. The cloak was made precisely like the scarlet cloak shown here,
and had a like hood. She was brown-eyed, and her dark hair was never
gray even in extreme old age; nor was the hair of her granddaughter,
another Elizabeth, my grandmother. Trim and erect of figure, and
precise and neat of dress, wearing, on account of this neatness,
shorter petticoats, when walking, than was the mode of her day, and
also through this neatness clinging to the very last to these cleanly,
useful, quaint pattens. Her black hood, frilled white cap, short,
quilted petticoat, high-heeled shoes, and the shining ebony and brass
pattens, and over all the great, full scarlet cloak,—all these made her
an unusual and striking figure against the Wayland landscape, the snowy
fields and great sombre pine trees of Heard’s Island, as she trod
trimly, in short pattened steps that crackled the kittly-benders in the
shadowed roads, or sunk softly in the shallow mud of the sunny lanes on
a snow-melting day in late winter. Would I could paint the picture as I
see it!

These pattens in the old trunk are prettier than most pattens which
have been preserved. In general, they are rather shabby things. I have
another pair—more commonplace, which chance to exist; they were not
saved purposely. They are pictured here.

English Clogs. English Clogs.

There is a most ungallant old riddle, “Why is a wife like a patten?”
The answer reads, “Because both are clogs.” A very courteous bishop was
once asked this uncivil query, and he answered without a moment’s
hesitation, “Because both elevate the soul (sole).” Pattens may be
clogs, yet there is a difference. After much consultation of various
authorities, and much discussion in the columns of various querying
journals, I make this decision and definition. Pattens are thick,
wooden soles roughly shaped in the outline of the human foot (in the
shoemaker’s notion of that member), mounted on a round or oval ring of
iron, fixed by two or three pins to the sole, in such a way that when
the patten is worn the sole of the wearer’s foot is about two inches
above the ground. A heel-piece with buckles and straps, strings or
buttons and leather loops, and a strap over the toe, retain the patten
in place upon the foot when the wearer trips along. (See here.) Clogs
serve the same purpose, but are simply wooden soles tipped and shod
with iron. These also have heel-pieces and straps of various
materials—from the heavy serviceable leather shown in the clogs here
and here to the fine brocade clogs made and worn by two brides and
pictured here. Dainty brass tips and colored morocco straps made a
really refined pair of clogs. Poplar wood was deemed the best wood for
pattens and clogs. Sometimes the wooden sole was thin, and was cut at
the line under the instep in two pieces and hinged. These hinges were
held to facilitate walking. Children also wore clogs. (See here.)
Clogs, as worn by English and American folk, did not raise the wearer
as high above the mud and mire as did pattens, but I have seen Turkish
clogs that were ten inches high. Chopines were worn by Englishwomen to
make them look taller. Three are shown here. Lady Falkland was short
and stout, and wore them for years to increase her apparent height; so
she states in her memoirs.

It is a curious philological study that, while the words “clogs” and
“pattens” for a time were constantly heard, the third name which has
survived till to-day is the oldest of all—“galoshes.” Under the many
spellings, galoe-shoes, goloshes, gallage, galoche, and gallosh, it has
come down to us from the Middle Ages. It is spelt galoches in _Piers
Plowman_. In a _Compotus_—or household account of the Countess of Derby
in 1388 are entries of botews (boots), souters (slippers), and “one
pair of galoches, 14 d.” Clogs, or galoches, were known in the days of
the Saxons, when they were termed “wife’s shoes.”

A “galage” was a shoe “which has nothing on the feet but a latchet”; it
was simply a clog. In February, 1687, Judge Sewall notes, “Send my
mothers Shoes &; Golowshoes to carry to her.” In 1736 Peter Faneuil
sent to England for “Galoushoes” for his sister. Another foot-covering
for slippery, icy walking is named by Judge Sewall. He wrote on January
19, 1717, “Great rain and very Slippery; was fain to wear Frosts.”
These frosts were what had been called on horses, “frost nails,” or
calks. They were simply spiked soles to help the wearer to walk on ice.
A pair may be seen at the Deerfield Memorial Hall. Another pair is of
half-soles with sharp ridges of iron, set, one the length of the
half-sole, the other across it.

Chopines, Seventeenth Century. In the Ashmolean Museum. Chopines,
Seventeenth Century. In the Ashmolean Museum.

For a time clogs seem to have been in constant use in America; frail
morocco slippers and thin prunella and callimanco shoes made them
necessary, as did also the unpaved streets. Heavy-soled shoes were
unknown for women’s wear. Women walked but short distances. In the
country they always rode. We find even Quaker women warned in 1720 not
to wear “Shoes of light Colours bound with Differing Colours, and heels
White or Red, with White bands, and fine Coloured Clogs and Strings,
and Scarlet and Purple Stockings and Petticoats made Short to expose
them”—a rather startling description of footwear. Again, in 1726, in
Burlington, New Jersey, Friends were asked to be “careful to avoid
wearing of Stript Shoos, or Red and White Heel’d Shoos, or Clogs, or
Shoos trimmed with Gawdy Colours.”

Brides’ Clogs of Brocade and Sole Leather. Brides’ Clogs of Brocade and
Sole Leather.

Ann Warder, an English Quaker, was in Philadelphia, 1786 to 1789, and
kept an entertaining journal, from which I make this quotation:—

“Got B. Parker to go out shopping with me. On our way happened of Uncle
Head, to whom I complained bitterly of the dirty streets, declaring if
I could purchase a pair of pattens, the singularity I would not mind.
Uncle soon found me up an apartment, out of which I took a pair and
trotted along quite Comfortable, crossing some streets with the
greatest ease, which the idea of had troubled me. My little companion
was so pleased, that she wished some also, and kept them on her feet to
learn to walk in them most of the remainder of the day.”

Fairholt, in his book upon costume, says, “Pattens date their origin to
the reign of Anne.” Like many other dates and statements given by this
author, this is wholly wrong. In _Purchas’, his Pilgrimage_, 1613, is
this sentence, “Clogges or Pattens to keep them out of the dust they
may not burden themselves with,” showing that the name and thing was
the same then as to-day.

Clogs of “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Clogs of “Pennsylvania Dutch.”

Charles Dibdin has a song entitled, _The Origin of the Patten_. Fair
Patty went out in the mud and the mire, and her thin shoes speedily
were wet. Then she became hoarse and could not sing, while her lover
longed for the sweet sound of her voice.

“My anvil glow’d, my hammer rang,
Till I had form’d from out the fire
To bear her feet above the mire,
A platform for my blue-eyed Patty.
Again was heard each tuneful close,
My fair one in the patten rose,
  Which takes its name from blue-eyed Patty.”

This fanciful derivation of the word was not an original thought of
Dibdin. Gay wrote in his Trivia, 1715:—

“The patten now supports each frugal dame
That from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.”

In reality, patten is derived from the French word _patin_, which has a
varied meaning of the sole of a shoe or a skate.

Pattens were noisy, awkward wear. A writer of the day of their
universality wrote, “Those ugly, noisy, ferruginous, ancle-twisting,
foot-cutting, clinking things called women’s pattens.” Notices were set
in church porches enjoining the removal of women’s pattens, which, of
course, should never have been worn into church during service-time.

Children’s Clogs. 1730. Children’s Clogs. 1730.

It may have disappeared today, but four years ago, on the door of
Walpole St. Peters, near Wisbeck, England, hung a board which read,
“People who enter this church are requested to take off their pattens.”
A friend in Northamptonshire, England, writes me that pattens are still
seen on muddy days in remote English villages in that shire.

Men wore pattens in early days. And men did and do wear clogs in
English mill-towns.

There were also horse pattens or horse clogs which horses wore through
deep, muddy roads; I have an interesting photograph of a pair found in
Northampton.

CHAPTER XIV

BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES

_“By my Faith! Master Inkpen, thou hast put thy foot in it! Tis a
pretty subject and a strange one, and a vast one, but we’ll leave it
never a sole to stand on. The proverb hath ‘There’s naught like
leather,’ but my Lady answers ‘Save silk:’”_

—Old Play.

CHAPTER XIV

BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES

O

ne of the first sumptuary laws in New England declared that men of mean
estate should not walk abroad in immoderate great boots. It was a
natural prohibition where all extravagance in dress was reprehended and
restrained. The “great boots” which had been so vast in the reign of
James I seemed to be spreading still wider in the reign of Charles. I
have an old “Discourse” on leather dated 1629, which states fully the
condition of things. Its various headings read, “The general Use of
Leather;” “The general Abuse thereof;” “The good which may arise from
the Reformation;” “The several Statutes made in that behalf by our
ancient Kings;” and lastly a “Petition to the High Court of
Parliament.” It is all most informing; for instance, in the trades that
might want work were it not for leather are named not only “shoemakers,
cordwainers, curriers, etc.,” but many now obsolete. The list reads:—

“Book binders.
Budget makers.
Saddlers.
Trunk makers.
Upholsterers.
Belt makers.
Case makers.
Box makers.
Wool-card makers.
Cabinet makers.
Shuttle makers.
Bottle and Jack makers.
Hawks-hood makers.
Gridlers.
Scabbard-makers.
Glovers.”

Unwillingly the author added “those _upstart trades_—Coach Makers, and
Harness Makers for Coach Horses.” It was really feared, by this
sensible gentleman-writer—and many others—that if many carriages and
coaches were used, shoemakers would suffer because so few shoes would
be worn out.

From the statutes which are rehearsed we learn that the footwear of the
day was “boots, shoes, buskins, startups, slippers, or pantofles.”
Stubbes said:—

“They have korked shooes puisnets pantoffles, some of black velvet,
some of white some of green, some of yellow, some of Spanish leather,
some of English leather stitched with Silke and embroidered with Gold
&; Silver all over the foot.”

A very interesting book has been published by the British Cordwainers’
Guild, giving a succession of fine illustrations of the footwear of
different times and nations. Among them are some handsome English
slippers, shoes, jack-boots, etc. We have also in our museums,
historical collections, and private families many fine examples; but
the difficulty is in the assigning of correct dates. Family tradition
is absolutely wide of the truth—its fabulous dates are often a century
away from the proper year.

The Copley Family Picture. The Copley Family Picture.

Wedding Slippers and Brocade. 1712. Wedding Slippers and Brocade. 1712.

Buskins to the knee were worn even by royalty; Queen Elizabeth’s still
exist. Buskins were in wear when the colonies were settled. Richard
Sawyer, of Windsor, Connecticut, had cloth buskins in 1648; and a
hundred years later runaway servants wore them. One redemptioner is
described as running off in “sliders and buskins.” American buskins
were a foot-covering consisting of a strong leather sole with cloth
uppers and leggins to the knees, which were fastened with lacings.
Startups were similar, but heavier. In Thynne’s _Debate between Pride
and Lowliness_, the dress of a countryman is described. It runs thus:—

“A payre of startups had he on his feete
   That lased were up to the small of the legge.
 Homelie they are, and easier than meete;
   And in their soles full many a wooden pegge.”

Thomas Johnson of Wethersfield, Connecticut, died in 1840. He owned “1
Perre of Startups.”

Slippers were worn even in the fifteenth century. In the _Paston
Letters_, in a letter dated February 23, 1479, is this sentence, “In
the whych lettre was VIII d with the whych I shulde bye a peyr of
slyppers.” Even for those days eightpence must have been a small price
for slippers. In 1686, Judge Samuel Sewall wrote to a member of the
Hall family thanking him for “The Kind Loving Token—the East Indian
Slippers for my wife.” Other colonial letters refer to Oriental
slippers; and I am sure that Turkish slippers are worn by Lady Temple
in her childish portrait, painted in company with her brother.
Slip-shoes were evidently slippers—the word is used by Sewall; and
slap-shoes are named by Randle Holme. Pantofles were also slippers,
being apparently rather handsomer footwear than ordinary slippers or
slip-shoes. They are in general specified as embroidered. Evelyn tells
of the fine pantofles of the Pope embroidered with jewels on the
instep.

So great was the use and abuse of leather that a petition was made to
Parliament in 1629 to attempt to restrict the making of great boots.
One sentence runs:—

“The wearing of Boots is not the Abuse; but the generality of wearing
and the manner of cutting Boots out with huge slovenly unmannerly
immoderate tops. What over lavish spending is there in Boots and Shoes.
To either of which is now added a French proud Superfluity of Leather.

“For the general Walking in Boots it is a Pride taken up by the
Courtier and is descended to the Clown. The Merchant and Mechanic walk
in Boots. Many of our Clergy either in neat Boots or Shoes and
Galloshoes. University Scholars maintain the Fashion likewise. Some
Citizens out of a Scorn not to be Gentile go every day booted.
Attorneys, Lawyers, Clerks, Serving Men, All Sorts of Men delight in
this Wasteful Wantonness.

“Wasteful I may well call it. One pair of boots eats up the leather of
six reasonable pair of men’s shoes.”

Jack-boots. Owned by Lord Fairfax of Virginia. Jack-boots. Owned by
Lord Fairfax of Virginia.

Monstrous boots seem to have been the one frivolity in dress which the
Puritans could not give up. In the reign of Charles I boots were
superb. The tops were flaring, lined within with lace or embroidered or
fringed; thus when turned down they were richly ornamental. Fringes of
leather, silk, or cloth edged some boot-tops on the outside; the
leather itself was carved and gilded. The soldiers and officers of
Cromwell’s army sometimes gave up laces and fringes, but not the
boot-tops. The Earl of Essex, his general, had cloth fringes on his
boots. (See his portrait facing here; also the portrait of Lord Fairfax
here.) In the court of Charles II and Louis XIV of France the boot-tops
spread to absurd inconvenience. The toes of these boots were very
square, as were the toes of men’s and women’s shoes. Children’s shoes
were of similar form. The singular shoes worn by John Quincy and Robert
Gibbes are precisely right-angled. It was a sneer at the Puritans that
they wore pointed toes. The shoe-ties, roses, and buckles varied; but
the square toes lingered, though they were singularly inelegant. On the
feet of George I (see portrait here) the square-toed shoes are ugly
indeed.

James I scornfully repelled shoe-roses when brought to him for his
wear; asking if they wished to “make a ruffle-footed dove” of him. But
soon he wore the largest rosettes in court. Peacham tells that some
cost as much as £;30 a pair, being then, of course, of rare lace.

Joshua Warner. Joshua Warner.

_Friar Bacon’s Brazen Head Prophecie_, set into a “Plaie” or Rhyme, has
these verses (1604):

“Then Handkerchers were wrought
    With Names and true Love Knots;
And not a wench was taught
    A false Stitch in her spots;
When Roses in the Gardaines grew
And not in Ribons on a Shoe.

“_Now_ Sempsters few are taught
    The true Stitch in their Spots;
And Names are sildome wrought
    Within the true love knots;
And Ribon Roses takes such Place
That Garden Roses want their Grace.”

Shoes of buff leather, slashed, were the very height of the fashion in
the first years of the seventeenth century. They can be seen on the
feet of Will Sommers in his portrait. Through the slashes showed bright
the scarlet or green stockings of cloth or yarn. Bright-colored
shoe-strings gave additional gaudiness. Green shoe-strings, spangled,
gilded shoe-strings, shoes of “dry-neat-leather tied with red ribbons,”
“russet boots,” “white silken shoe strings,”—all were worn.

Red heels appear about 1710. In Hogarth’s original paintings they are
seen. Women wore them extensively in America.

The jack-boots of Stuart days seem absolutely imperishable. They are of
black, jacked leather like the leather bottles and black-jacks from
which Englishmen drank their ale. So closely are they alike that I do
not wonder a French traveller wrote home that Englishmen drank from
their boots. These jack-boots were as solid and unpliable as iron,
square-toed and clumsy of shape. A pair in perfect preservation which
belonged to Lord Fairfax in Virginia is portrayed here. Had all
colonial gentlemen worn jack-boots, the bootmakers and shoemakers would
have been ruined, for a pair would last a lifetime.

Shoe and Knee Buckles. Shoe and Knee Buckles.

In 1767 we find William Cabell of Virginia paying these prices for his
finery:—

£	s.	d. 1 Pair single channelled boots with straps	 1	 2 1
Pair Strong Buckskin Breeches	1	 10 2 Pairs Fashionable Chain
Silver Spurs 	 2	 10 1 Pair Silver Buttons 		 6 1 fine
Magazine Blue Cloth Housing laced		12 1 Strong Double
Bridle		4	 6 6 Pair Men’s fine Silk Hose	 4 	 4 Buttons
&; trimmings for a coat	 5	 2

New England dandies wore, as did Monsieur A-la-mode:—

  “A pair of smart pumps made up of grain’d leather,
   So thin he can’t venture to tread on a feather.”

Buckles were made of pinchbeck, an alloy of four parts of copper and
one part of zinc, invented by Christopher Pinchbeck, a London
watchmaker of the eighteenth century. Buckles were also “plaited” and
double “plaited” with gold and silver (which was the general spelling
of plated). Plated buckles were cast in pinchbeck, with a pattern on
the surface. A silver coating was laid over this. These buckles were
set with marcasite, garnet, and paste jewels; sometimes they were of
gold with real diamonds. But much imitation jewellery was worn by all
people even of great wealth. Perhaps imitation is an incorrect word.
The old paste jewels made no assertion of being diamonds. Steel cut in
facets and combined with gold, made beautiful buckles. A number of rich
shoe and garter buckles, owned in Salem, are shown here.

These old buckles were handsome, costly, dignified; they were becoming;
they were elegant. Nevertheless, the fashionable world tired of its
expensive and appropriate buckles; they suddenly were deemed
inconveniently large, and plain shoe-strings took their place. This
caused great commotion and ruin among the buckle-makers, who, with the
fatuity of other tradespeople—the wig-makers, the hair-powder makers—in
like calamitous changes of fashion, petitioned the Prince of Wales, in
1791, to do something to revive their vanishing trade. But it was like
placing King Canute against the advancing waves of the sea.

Wedding Slippers. Wedding Slippers.

When the Revolutionists in France set about altering and simplifying
costume, they did away with shoe-buckles, and fastened their shoes with
plain strings. Minister Roland, one day in 1793, was about to present
himself to Louis XVI while he was wearing shoes with strings. The old
Master of Ceremonies, scandalized at having to introduce a person in
such a state of undress, looked despairingly at Dumouriez, who was
present. Dumouriez replied with an equally hopeless gesture, and the
words, “Hélas! oui, monsieur, tout est perdu.”

President Jefferson, with his hateful French notions, made himself
especially obnoxious to conservative American folk by giving up
shoe-buckles. I read in the _New York Evening Post_ that when he
received the noisy bawling band of admirers who brought into the White
House the Mammoth Cheese (one of the most vulgar exhibitions ever seen
in this country), he was “dressed in his suit of customary black, with
shoes that laced tight round the ankle and closed with a neat leathern
string.”

When shoe-strings were established and trousers were becoming popular,
there seemed to be a time of indecision as to the dress of the legs
below the short pantaloons and above the stringed shoes. That point of
indefiniteness was filled promptly with top-boots. First, black tops
appeared; then came tops of fancy leather, of which yellow was the
favorite. Gilt tassels swung pleasingly from the colored tops. Silken
tassels—home made—were worn. I have a letter from a young American
macaroni to his sweetheart in which he thanks her for her
“heart-filling boot-tossels”—which seems to me a very cleverly
flattering adjective. He adds: “Did those rosy fingers twist the silken
strands, and knot them with thought of the wearer? I wish you was
loveing enough to tye some threads of your golden hair into the
tossells, but I swear I cannot find never a one.” The conjunction of
two negatives in this manner was common usage a hundred years ago;
while “you was” may be found in the writings of our greatest authors of
that date.

In one attribute, women’s footwear never varied in the two centuries of
this book’s recording. It was always thin-soled and of light material;
never adequate for much “walking abroad” or for any wet weather. In
fact, women have never worn heavy walking-boots until our own day.
Whether high-heeled or no-heeled they were always thin.

The curious “needle-pointed” slippers which are pictured here were the
bridal slippers at the wedding of Cornelia de Peyster, who married
Oliver Teller in 1712. Several articles of her dress still exist; and
the background of the slippers is a breadth of the superb yellow and
silver brocade wedding gown worn at the same time.

When we have the tiny pages of the few newspapers to turn to, we learn
a little of women’s shoes. There were advertisements in 1740 of
“mourning shoes,” “fine silk shoes,” “flowered russet shoes,” “white
callimanco shoes,” “black shammy shoes,” “girls’ flowered russet
shoes,” “shoes of black velvet, white damask, red morocco, and red
everlasting.” “Damask worsted shoes in red, blue, green, pink color and
white,” in 1751. There were satinet patterns for ladies’ shoes
embroidered with flowers in the vamp. The heels were “high, cross-cut,
common, court, and wurtemburgh.” Some shoes were white with russet
bands. “French fall” shoes were worn both by women and men for many
years.

Mrs. Abigail Bromfield Rogers. Mrs. Abigail Bromfield Rogers.

Here is a pair of beautiful brocade wedding shoes. The heels are not
high. Another pair was made of the silken stuff of the beautiful sacque
worn by Mrs. Carroll. These have high heels running down to a very
small heel-base. In the works of Hogarth we may find many examples of
women’s shoes. In all the old shoes I have seen, made about the time of
the American Revolution, the maker’s name is within and this legend,
“Rips mended free.” Many heels were much higher and smaller than any
given in this book.

Mrs. Carroll’s Slippers. Mrs. Carroll’s Slippers.

It is astonishing to read the advocacy and eulogy given by sensible
gentlemen to these extreme heels. Watson, the writer of the _Annals of
Philadelphia_, extolled their virtues—that they threw the weight of the
wearer on the ball of the foot and spread it out for a good support. He
deplores the flat feet of 1830.

In 1790 heels disappeared; sandal-shapes were the mode. The quarters
were made low, and instead of a buckle was a tiny bow or a pleated
ribbon edging. In 1791 “the exact size” of the shoe of the Duchess of
York was published—a fashionable fad which our modern sensation hunters
have not bethought themselves of. It was 5 3/4 inches in length; the
breadth of sole, 1 3/4 inches. It was a colored print, and shows that
the lady’s shoe was of green silk spotted with gold stars, and bound
with scarlet silk. The sole is thicker at the back, forming a slight
uplift which was not strictly a heel. Of course, this was a tiny foot,
but we do not know the height of the duchess.

I have seen the remains of a charming pair of court shoes worn in
France by a pretty Boston girl. These had been embroidered with paste
jewels, “diamonds”; while to my surprise the back seam of both shoes
was outlined with paste emeralds. I find that this was the mode of the
court of Marie Antoinette. The queen and her ladies wore these in real
jewels, and in affectation wore no jewels elsewhere.

In Mrs. Gaskell’s _My Lady Ludlow_ we are told that my lady would not
sanction the mode of the beginning of the century which “made all the
fine ladies take to making shoes.” Mrs. Blundell, in one of her novels,
sets her heroine (about 1805) at shoe-making. The shoes of that day
were very thin of material, very simple of shape, were heelless, and in
many cases closely approached a sandal. A pair worn by my great-aunt at
that date is shown on this page. American women certainly had tiny
feet. This aunt was above the average height, but her shoes are no
larger than the number known to-day as “Ones”—a size about large enough
for a girl ten years old.

White Kid Slippers. 1815. White Kid Slippers. 1815.

It was not long after English girls were making shoes that Yankee girls
were shaping and binding them in New England. I have seen several old
letters which gave rules for shaping and directions for sewing
party-shoes of thin light kid and silk. It is not probable that any
heavy materials were ever made up by women at home. Sandals also were
worn, and made by girls for their own wear from bits of morocco and
kid.

In the early years of the century the thin, silk hose and low slippers
of the French fashions proved almost unendurable in our northern
winters. One wearer of the time writes, “Many a time have I walked
Broadway when the pavement sent almost a death chill to my heart.” The
Indians then furnished an article of dress which must have been
grateful indeed, pretty moccasins edged with fur, to be worn over the
thin slippers.

An old lady recalled with precision that the first boots for women’s
wear came in fashion in 1828; they were laced at the side. Garters and
boots both had fringes at the top.