CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIIIPATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOESWhen 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 myOld 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 shownhere, 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 picturedhere.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. (Seehere.) 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 clogshereandhereto the fine brocade clogs made and worn by two brides and picturedhere. 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. (Seehere.) 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 shownhere. 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 inPiers Plowman. In aCompotus—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. InPurchas’, 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 fireTo 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 dameThat from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.”In reality, patten is derived from the French wordpatin, 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 XIVBATTS 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.

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 myOld 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.

Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760.

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

English Clogs.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. (Seehere.) 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 clogshereandhereto the fine brocade clogs made and worn by two brides and picturedhere. 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. (Seehere.) 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 shownhere. 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 inPiers Plowman. In aCompotus—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.

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.

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. InPurchas’, 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.”

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 fireTo 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 dameThat from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.”

In reality, patten is derived from the French wordpatin, 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.

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.

“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.

Back to Index Next