Though perhaps rather a ramification than an inherent part of the history of woman, the subject of dress among the female colonists, at least in New England, is one of too great interest to permit it to be passed over in silence in a book concerning the women of America. From the very first--retracing our steps somewhat in order to obtain a complete view of the matter--the question of female dress was one that in New England was constantly giving grave offence and even scandal to the more serious of the colonists. Sumptuary laws were passed again and again, their very repetition showing how helpless was legislation to cope with the conditions confronting it in the matter of feminine love for gauds. As early as 1634 there was enacted a law which forbade any person, either man or woman, from making or buying any apparel, either woollen or silk or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said clothes. Gold and silver girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats were prohibited by the same law; but the planters were permitted to wear out such apparel as they were already provided with, "except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings." Five years later there was a new piece of legislation which banished "immoderate great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and capes," and in 1651 the General Court, having found its legislation futile in many respects, descended to argument, and expressed its "utter detestation and dislike that men or women of meane condition, education, and callings shoulde take uppon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of gold or silver lace or buttons or poynts at their knees, to walke in great boots, or women of the same rank to weare silke or tiffany hoodes or scarfes." If those "of meane condition" did these things, it is evident that the people of higher class could not have been very sober in their garb--indeed we know that they were not. In 1676 the Court of Connecticut passed a law that is worthy of quotation in full, since it not only sets forth the Puritan opinion upon the matter, but shows the ingenuity of their efforts to cope with the growing evil, and also gives us a good idea of the fashions of that time:
"Whereas excess in apparel amongst us is unbecoming a wilderness condition and the profession of the gospell, whereby the riseing Generation is in danger to be corrupted, which practices are testifyed against in God's holy word, it is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that what person soever shall wear Gold or Silver Lace, or Gold or Silver Buttons, Silk Ribbons, or other costly superfluous trimings, or any bone Lace above three shillings per yard, or Silk Scarf es, the List makers of the respective Townes are hereby required to assesse such persons so offending, (or their Husbands, parents, or masters under whose government they are) in the list of Estates at one hundred and fifty pound Estate; and they to pay their Rates according to that proportion, as such men use to pay, to whom such apparell alowed as suitable to their Rank, provided this law shall not extend to any magistrate, or a like publique officer of this Colony, their wives or children, whoe are left to their discretion in wearing of apparell, or any setled military commission officer, or such whose quality and Estate have been above the ordinary degree, though now decayed.
"It is further ordered that all such persons as shall for the future make, or weave, or buy any apparell exceeding the quality and condition of their persons and Estates, or that is apparently beyond the necessary end of apparell for covering or comeliness, either of these to be judged by the Grand Jury and County Court where such presentments are made, shall forfeit for every such offence ten shillings; and if any Taylor shall fashion any garment for any child or servant contrary to the mind of the Parent or Master of such a child or servant, he shall forfeit for every such offence ten shillings."
Think of the position of the Grand Jury and County Court which were to decide as to whether "apparell" went beyond the "necessary end for covering or comeliness!" Imagine the grave and reverend judges and the sapient jurymen putting their wise heads together over the question as to whether Mistress Anne's "wascote" was an inch too long for the mere needs of covering, or whether Mistress Jane's coif was decorated with lace beyond the absolute requirements of comeliness! The law doubtless meant well, but from its nature it was not capable of enforcement.
A fairly comprehensive understanding of the wardrobe of a lady of the mid-seventeenth century may be furnished by reproducing, in all the glory of its original orthography, the list of the clothes of Jane Humphrey, as given in her last will and testament. Mistress Humphrey died in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1668, and she seems to have had no possessions beyond her wardrobe. This, however, was not uncommon at the time, when clothes had a value that came from their rarity of stuff and necessary skill in fashioning, so that such a list as that of the deceased lady represented a considerable amount in those days.
"Ye Jump. Best Red Kersey Petticoate. Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian Wascote. A black silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Apron. A plain black Quoife without any lace. A white Holland Appron with a small lace at the bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hoode & muffe. My Greene Linsey Woolsey petticoate. My Whittle that is fringed and my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Apron. My best Quife with a lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A White Holland apron with two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A greene Vnder Coate. Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake and my blew Wascote. My best White Apron, my best Shifts. One of my best Neck Cloathes, and one of my plain Quieus. One Calico Vnder Neck Cloath. My fine thick Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A square Cloath with a little lace on it. My greene Apron."
It is not probable that many women of the present day, far less any man, will be able to recognize all the stuffs that are here represented; but we can easily gather that Mistress Humphrey was well provided in the matter of "apparell", and the fact that her wardrobe was deemed worthy to be so divided into small portions--for each period as printed represents a beneficiary, the name being omitted as of no interest to us--of itself proves the value that in those days attached to the smallest articles of clothing. Yet a gown could be made at a cost of but eight shillings for the mantua-maker; the whole of the expense lay in the stuff, which was costly in proportion to its difficulty of attainment. Indian stuffs were very popular among the later colonists and in the days immediately after the Revolution. In the matter of general fashions at this time it may be best to quote from a work written by a woman concerning feminine costume in the older days of our country:
"We can gain some notion of the general shape of the dress of our forbears at various periods from the portraits of the times. Those of Madam Shrimpton and of Rebecca Rawson are among the earliest. They were painted during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The dress is not very graceful, but far from plain, showing no trace of Puritanical simplicity; in fact, it is precisely that seen in portraits of English well-to-do folk of the same date. Both have strings of beads around the neck and no other jewels; both wear loosely tied and rather shapeless flat hoods concealing the hair, Madam Shrimpton's having an embroidered edge about two inches wide. Similar hoods are shown in Remain de Rooge prints of the landing of King William, of the women in the coronation procession. They were like the Nithesdale hoods of Hogarth's prints, but smaller. Both New England dames have also broad collars, stiff and ugly, with uncurved horizontal lower edge, apparently trimmed with embroidery or cut-work. Both show the wooden contour of figure which was either the fault of the artist or of the iron busk of the wearer's stays. The bodies are stiffly pointed, and the most noticeable feature of the gown is the sleeve, consisting of a double puff drawn in just above the elbow; in one case with very narrow ribbon loops. Randle Holme says that a sleeve thus tied in at the elbow was called a virago sleeve.
Madam Shrimpton's sleeve has also a falling frill of embroidery and lace and a ruffle around the armsize. The question of sleeves sorely vexed the colonial magistrates. Men and women were forbidden to have but one slash or opening in each sleeve. Then the inordinate width of sleeves became equally trying, and all were ordered to restrain themselves to sleeves half an ell wide. Worse modes were to come: 'short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered' had to be prohibited; and if any such ill-fashioned gowns came over from London, the owners were enjoined to wear thick linen to cover the arms to the wrist. Existing portraits show how futile were these precautions, how inoperative these laws; arms were bared with impunity, with complacency, and the presentment of Governor Wentworth shows three slashes in the sleeves.
"Not only were the arms of New England women bared to an immodest degree, but their necks also, calling forth many a 'just and seasonable reprehension of naked breasts.' Though gowns thus cut in the pink of the English mode proved too scanty to suit Puritan ministers, the fair wearers wore them as long as they were in vogue.
"It is curious to note in the oldest gowns I have seen, that the method of cutting and shaping the waist or body is precisely the same as at the present day. The outlines of the shoulder and back-seams, of the bust forms, are the same, though not so gracefully curved: and the number of pieces is usually the same. Very good examples to study are the gorgeous brocaded gowns of Peter Faneuil's sister, perfectly preserved and now exhibited in the Boston Art Museum."
That the record made in this quotation may be complete, it must be supplemented by a few words devoted to another aspect of fashion among the early Puritans. This was in the matter of hair-dressing, that fashion which went to such enormous lengths in England during the eighteenth century. A curious fact is that the Puritan women seem generally to have worn "bangs"; and this fact is more of a certificate to their simplicity than to their taste. However, there was a large leaven of fashion in the towns of the Puritans; for in 1683 Increase Mather thus spoke of the mode of his day: "Will not the haughty daughters of Zion refrain their pride in apparell? Will they lay out their hair, and wear their false locks, their borders, and towers like comets about their heads?" These queries suggest decided lengths in head adornment, probably even to the adoption of the "heart-breakers" worn in 1670, which are described as "False locks set on wyers to make them stand at a distance from the head." One would think that such frank admission of falsity might plead its own excuse; but one Puritan minister describes the women of that time as "Apes of Fancy, friziling and curyling of their hayr."
Enough of dress and fashion! Yet some record thereof is pertinent here, for it shows us the gradual change which was being worked in the customs and ideas of New England. The colonies were becoming conventional; when modishness comes in at the door, individuality flies out at the window. The ideal of the home was being modified, not to say altered. There had always been among a certain element a love for the gauds and fripperies of the world, but it was not until the opening of the second colonial period that this element grew to the ascendency in New England. The old primitive simplicity as a national attribute was beginning to fail, and in its stead was being imported the conventional complexity of life in the mother country. New England was becoming more deserving of her name; she was growing to be a lesser England instead of a new civilization. She was fast falling into the errors that were undermining the true American spirit in the southern colonies.
We have seen the wardrobe of a New England woman, presumably one of fashion, yet not of notable rank. Here was a great change from the era when the majority of women wore homespun and furnished themselves with the material which they wore as well as fashioned the garments with their own hands. Of course there was still, and long continued to be, an element that preserved the household traditions of the earlier settlers, and thus the individuality of the life; but it had come to be in the minority. The New England woman, taken from the representative class, no longer whirled her spinning wheel and wove the garments for her wearing and that of her family; she looked to her goodman to import these things from England in the vessels which were now regularly arriving in the home ports.
Another sign of the changed conditions of the New England home was the matter of domestic service. In 1687, according to the writer ofThe Diary of a French Refugeein Boston, there was "absolute Need of Hired Help;" but it was less household servants than field hands to whom the author was referring. Later, however, we find Hugh Peters, of Salem, writing to an acquaintance in Boston, "Wee haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would be glad of a share viz: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke goode." This points to domestic service, as does a later letter from the same source, in which he says, "My wife desires my daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayde now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell with us, for truly wee are now so destutute (having now but an Indian) that wee know not what to do." Later yet, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in the journals frequent advertisements of runaway servants, mostly Indians. There was also negro slavery in the northern colonies, though it was never entirely accepted as an institution,--not from any moral scruples, but because of inexpediency and poverty. In 1645, Emanuel Downing suggested the exchange of Indian captives for negroes, and said, "I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee gett a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business;" but this probably referred to field hands, though he later wrote to England for "godly e skylful paynestakeing girles" as servants, and in default of these he at last fairly inaugurated the system of slavery which existed for a time in New England. There were white slaves as well as black in the northern colonies, and this infamous custom helped to solve the problem of domestic service.
That there was trouble with servants in those old days, even as in these present, is amply attested by the records; but it was possible to resort to more drastic measures than are now feasible. We read that at Hartford, "Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publiquely corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary." This was in the early times, and many matrons of later days, even as many now, must have longed for the return of the laws which enabled them to keep their servants in order. Mary Dudley has set forth her experience in this matter in a letter to her mother, Madame Winthrop, whom she had asked to send her "a goode girle, a strong lusty servant, used to all kind of work who would refuse none." Her letter of complaint is worth quoting at large, as showing the conditions of the New England housekeeper of that day in relation to her "help:"
"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming to me she carried herselfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietness I was never so fitted in my life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you."
There is more of it; but enough has been quoted to show the tone, which is strikingly prophetic of many things of the present day; even a piece of our reprehensible slang seems foreshadowed in that phrase, "she hath got such a head." In another letter, this time written by a man, John Winthrop, we hear that the "Irish creature" whom he and his wife have for servant is a very plague. She is "lying and unfaithfull; w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent.... She w'd frequently take her mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dress herselfe and away without leave among her companions." So that the servant question was just as difficult of solution among our great-great-grandmothers as for ourselves.
Yet from this very condition of servitude blossomed one of the purest flowers of romance that we find in the history of the early days of our country,--the story of Agnes Surriage. She was but a servant, a mere drudge, scrubbing the floor of the tavern at Marblehead, when her beauty attracted the attention of young Sir Harry Frankland, then collector of the port of Boston. Noting that she was barefooted, he gave her a crown to buy a pair of shoes; but on a subsequent visit he saw her again scrubbing and still shoeless. His question as to the disposition of his crown elicited the reply that she had bought the shoes but was keeping them "to wear to meeting;" and though there would seem to be no great wit herein, it is recorded that Frankland thought that "a reply had never been made with such charming grace." At all events, he incontinently fell heels over head in love; but his pride of family forbade marriage, and it would seem that at first his intentions toward the young girl were creditable enough, since he had her educated by the best masters in Boston, and especially instructed in religion by the Rev. Dr. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College. So matters went until Agnes was twenty-three; but then Frankland's passion would no longer be denied, though he had no intention of making the lowborn girl his wife. But she loved him with a love too great to balk at conventions; she felt herself his wife in heart, and she gave herself unreservedly to him. For a time they lived together in Boston; but scandal became too strong, and they went into the country, where they lived for about three years the ideal country life of that day,--a life much like that of the Virginia planter. Then they went on a visit to England; but the relatives of Frankland would have none of them, and they went to travel on the continent. After about a year of wandering they settled down at Lisbon, and were there during the terrible earthquake that visited that city on All Saints' Day, 1755. During that catastrophe Frankland was in mortal peril; and in his moments of pain and danger he vowed that, if he were saved, he would make Agnes his wife in fact as she had so long been in heart. Scarcely had the vow been recorded before Agnes was at his side, having searched for him and come in time to aid in his rescue. He did not forget his oath when the danger was passed, and the next day married her according to the rites of the Church of Rome, the ceremony being repeated according to English customs while they were on their homeward voyage. Agnes, now Lady Frankland, was on this occasion well received in England; but the hearts of the lovers--for such they still were--inclined to Boston, the scene of their first loves, and they soon crossed the ocean and took up their residence in the Clarke Mansion on Garden Street in Boston. Here they lived until 1757, when Frankland was appointed consul-general at Lisbon; but in 1763 they once more returned to the city of their early love and lived there until 1768, when they went to England, where Frankland died. Lady Frankland then returned once more to her now desolate home, though she did not live in the Clarke Mansion, but in Hopkinton, where she dwelt until the Revolution, when she once more suffered exile, this time as a Tory. She went to England, and there she harmed the romance of her life by her marriage to John Drew, a rich banker; but she died within a year, at the age of fifty-eight, and one can only regret that death did not anticipate that unfaithfulness to the memory of her first lover. Even with its luckless anticlimax, there are few stories so romantic as that of the beautiful scrubbing-girl of Marblehead, and she may well be remembered as one of the most prominent figures of colonial womanhood.
Let us now return to matters more immediately connected with the earlier part of the period which we are considering; and among them there is none of more interest, even though it be hardly enduring, than the story of the epidemic of witchcraft at Salem.
It must be remembered that the witchcraft outbreak at Salem, though it was there most exaggerated, was yet typical. It was the day of superstition; and that superstition was both received and fostered mostly by women. The outbreak at Salem was in a way salutary, for its very violence brought about the reaction which soon culminated in the establishment of a truer creed and a different influence for women; but at the time it was in the actual direction of primitive development in America.
It began with the troubles between the parish of Salem and the lately-called minister, one Samuel Parris, into the nature of which troubles it is not necessary to enter. In 1689, Mr. Parris had come to Salem from the West Indies, and he had brought with him two colored servants. These people, John Indian and Tituba, his wife, were experts in palmistry, second-sight, magic, and incantations, and they soon infected a circle of the village children with love for these matters. The daughter and the niece of Mr. Parris, aged respectively nine and eleven, were among the most prominent at first; but they had older companions who soon began to make earnest that which in its inception was only intended as a play. The girls learned to go into trances, to talk gibberish, to creep about on all-fours, and generally to give a good imitation of the pythonesses of old. The chief of these young people were Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, each aged seventeen; Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon, each aged eighteen; and Mary Warren and Sarah Churchill, each aged twenty. These, however, though the leaders in a way, did not long retain the supremacy; for it was found that Ann Putnam, aged twelve, and Mercy Lewis, aged seventeen, were preeminent for mischief and ingenuity. Another leader in the mischief was Mrs. Ann Putnam, about thirty years of age and probably of unsound mind, though she was apparently not suspected of anything beyond vindictiveness and eccentricity. She was a beautiful and well-educated woman, admirably fitted for the part she was destined to play in the coming orgy of murder.
The antics of these girls, not improbably first carried out in a spirit of sport, were begun at the parsonage about Christmas, 1691; but after a time they were challenged for their actions, when they declared that they could not help themselves, being bewitched. Instead of disregarding their folly or attributing it to childish mischief and putting a stop to it by the strong hand, Mr. Parris published the matter to the world. The children now found themselves of a sudden objects of the most widespread scrutiny; they also found themselves, it is not absurd to suppose, in a position where they deemed themselves in peril if they were discovered to be impostors. They were soon acknowledged as truly suffering from witchcraft; and then began the inquisition as to the guilty parties. Tituba, the Indian hag, who had probably taught them the tricks which they now put into effect against her, was the first named by them as one of their tormentors; and then followed the names of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, two old women with few friends. Tituba confessed,--it is at least possible, because of the craze for notoriety often to be found in such people,--but the two white women denied their guilt, and all were sent to Boston for trial. The matter might now well have been allowed to die out; but the girls had tasted power and were anxious for more.
Tituba, in her confession, had implicated the two women, Good and Osburn, and "two others whose faces she could not see"; and the girls were importuned to name these other "tormentors." At first they refused,--probably because they had not held council to decide on the two to be named,--but at last they indicated two of the most estimable women in the community, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, aged respectively sixty and (about) seventy years. The village was thunderstruck, for these women, if not of the highest rank, were full of courtesy and kindliness and were well-educated and well-bred. None the less, they were accused, Goodwife Corey by little Ann Putnam,--at whose instigation it seems unnecessary to suggest,--Goodwife Nurse, whose husband was one of the most honored persons in the village, while she herself was regarded as a model of virtue and piety, by more than one of "The Afflicted Children," as the girls were now called; but the bearing of Mistress Putnam at the examination was sufficient to show where stood the chief accuser. The girls went into their regular fits at each answer to the questions, unshamed by the sight of the venerable lady standing there in her dainty dress and with her fragile figure and pure face; and Mrs. Putnam broke in on the magistrate's questions with "Did you not bring the black man with you? Did you not bid me tempt God and die? How oft have you eaten and drunk your own damnation?" It is no wonder that the accused, at such a horrible outburst of vindictive hate,--as she must have known it to be,--raised her hands to heaven with the cry, "O Lord, help me!" But at that the "Afflicted Children" went into the most extraordinary convulsions; and the foolish magistrate, Hathorne by name, who had until then been favorably inclined toward the prisoner, connected the spasms of the girls with the uplifted hands of the old lady, and this turned the tide against her. She was remanded for trial.
The mischief was now fairly afoot. Personal malice began to work; some of the girls were servants and accused their masters and mistresses, as in the cases of John Proctor and George Jacobs. On the other hand, now that superstition was thoroughly awakened, it ran its usual course of madness, and the most absurd pretexts for accusations were eagerly fastened upon. Susannah Martin, for instance, was accused, and executed, upon the ground that she had walked on a country road without getting her skirts or stockings muddy, and must be a witch to be able to perform such a feat! Even such a man as the Rev. George Burroughs, who had been pastor of the church at Salem for about three years, but had long left there, and in 1692 was living in Maine, was arrested on a charge of witchcraft and taken to Salem to be tried, on the plea that he was, though of small stature, strong enough to lift a barrel of cider or hold a heavy musket out at arm's length. He was named by the "Afflicted Children"; but the fact that while in Salem he had been inimical to the party of Mrs. Ann Putnam makes the real source of the accusation not problematical. He was formally accused by little Ann Putnam, who said that one evening there came to her the apparition of a minister and asked her to write her name in the devil's book; then appeared two women in shrouds, who scolded the first wraith away; then the two women told Ann that they were the ghosts of the first and second wives of Mr. Burroughs, who had murdered them, and one of them showed to the child the gaping wound which had been inflicted upon her. On such testimony as this Mr. Burroughs, a man of high standing and deep learning, was condemned to die.
Nor was this an isolated case; on the contrary, it was the rule. So numerous grew the accusations that Sir William Phips, the first royal governor, appointed a special court to try cases of witchcraft, and nineteen in all suffered death upon such accusations as have been instanced. At last the girls made the mistake--whether or not instigated by Mrs. Putnam in these instances does not appear--of accusing persons who could not possibly be suspected of such practices, even allowing the possibility of the practices themselves. When they brought charges against the Rev. Samuel Willard, one of the most eminent divines of Boston, and Lady Phips, the wife of the governor, they were sharply rebuked; and when they added to their list the name of Mistress Hale, wife of the minister in Beverly and famous throughout the colony for her saintly character, they ranged against them the best of all the people of the country. Mr. Hale himself had been a believer in the accusations; but now, when their falsity was thus proved to him, he changed his allegiance and declared war against the perpetrators of the real crimes, as he now saw those accusations to be. This was practically the end of the insanity, and the death blow to the panic was given when some people of Andover, on being accused, brought action for defamation of character and thus removed the matter to its true tribunal. There were no more accusations after that.
Some fourteen years afterward, one of the "Afflicted Children," Ann Putnam, who had been the most active of all, made public confession in the Salem church that she had been a cause of the shedding of innocent blood. She declared, however, that she had not acted "out of anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them, but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded of Satan." This latter declaration has been generally interpreted to mean that Ann was even then, at the age of twenty-five, convinced that she had had actual communion with the powers of darkness--in other words, that she was a self-deceived seer of visions. The theory is open to doubt. Ann's words are at least susceptible of another interpretation; and, whether they were intended to bear this meaning or not, it may well be that she was "deluded of Satan" under the form of Mistress Ann Putnam, her mother. The complicity of Mr. Parris, the minister, is probable; but there is little doubt that the moving spirit of the conspiracy, after this had gained strength and purpose, was Mistress Ann Putnam. She was a brilliant woman in many ways, a fact which is not at all incompatible with the further fact that she was a moral degenerate, or at least a monomaniac. It is most probable that she directed the whole progress of the conspiracy, which at first arose in opportunity by the accident of the teaching of the old Indian woman and its effect upon some hysterical girls, who saw before them a chance to become notorious, and that she worked it throughout to her own ends, persuading the girls that, having once embarked upon such an enterprise, their sole safety consisted in playing the game to its finish. Possibly she also was to some extent self-deceived; she was a descendant of the Carrs of Salisbury, who were noted as being very nervous and excitable, and she was herself of the most irritable and sanguine temperament. But it seems little probable that she was a victim rather than a ruler in the insanity which came of her fostering, for not only were her daughter and servant the most prominent members of the "Afflicted Children," but it was her personal enemies who first disappeared into the shadows of death, and it was her hand which guided the accusation that smote every victim, until the reign of terror grew beyond even her control. She stands as the female Robespierre of America, slaying for lust of power and afterward for fear of losing her own head; and she remains one of the most picturesque and yet gruesome figures that our history has produced.
We shall leave this ominous figure standing on the threshold of New England as we turn southward to inquire as to the conditions existent in the other great colony of English America; but on our way it is worth while to take a passing glimpse at New York. This city had emerged from New Amsterdam; the old vrouws, with their feather beds and their multiplicity of petticoats and their scrupulously clean houses and their floors with patterns traced in sand, had passed away. They had been most picturesque in their way, though they left no enduring effect upon the type which we now know.
Of the lives of the old burghers and their wives and families, their characteristics and their customs, we have a most animated account in the words of the master-writer, Washington Irving. Fine old fellows were these burghers; and companionable and merry were their wives and daughters. What a group is offered in the polite, yet firm Peter Minuit; the pleasure-loving, but vacillating and not too scrupulous Wouter Van Twiller, in frequent tilt with the irascible but honest Dominie Bogardus; the honest, but ill-adapted Wilhelm Kieft; the grand old Peter Stuyvesant, despotic, yet paternal in his rule, stubborn, but brave. Of another kind, and in a lighter vein, we have a picture of the genial and universal favorite, Antony Van Corlear, of whom Irving writes:
"It was a moving sight to see the buxom lasses, how they hung about the doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly, rosy-faced, lusty bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desperate rogue among women. Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away; for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add, that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the city."
The vrouws were comfortable persons, not given to vivacity, yet in their way individual, and that sometimes in a manner not altogether commendable. We are told in the court records of Brooklyn that two ladies, Mistress Jonica Schampf and Widow Rachel Luguer by name, actually assaulted one Peter Praa, captain of militia, when he was proudly leading his troops on training day, and so dealt with him in "ivill inormities"--which included beating, hair-pulling, and other like amenities--that his life was for a time thought to be forfeit. In the matter of legal quarrels, too, there was vigor as well as characteristic type among the vrouws; we are told that Dominie Bogardus and Anneke, his wife, sued a female neighbor because the latter had said that the chaste Anneke, in crossing a muddy street, had lifted her petticoats higher than was necessitated by the mud or was consistent with modesty.
The love of gossip among the burghers' ladies was a characteristic that gave rise to a number of suits for slander. On the other hand, the vrouws often engaged in trade, and so set the example for the business woman of to-day, and in such matters their energy and perseverance were commendable. We are told of these good vrouws that they were up with the crow of the cock, took their first meal at dawn, and ate their dinner at the stroke of noon. Then, says our chronicler, "the worthy Dutch matrons would array themselves in their best linsey jackets and petticoats, and, putting a half-finished stocking into the capacious pocket which hung from the girdle, with scissors, pin-cushion, and keys outside their dress, sally forth to a neighbor's house to spend the afternoon. Here they plied their knitting needles and their tongues at the same time, discussed the village gossip, settled their neighbors' affairs to their own satisfaction, and finished their stockings in time for tea, which was on the table at six o'clock. This was the occasion for the display of the family plate and the cups of rare old china, out of which the guests sipped the fragrant bohea, sweetening it by an occasional bite from the huge lump of loaf sugar which was laid invariably by the side of each plate, while they discussed the hostess's apple-pies, doughnuts, and waffles. Tea over, the party donned their cloaks and hoods, for bonnets were not, and set out for home to be in time to superintend the milking and look after their household affairs before bed-time," which came at nine o'clock to the minute.
The dress of these ladies "consisted of a jacket of cloth or silk and a number of short petticoats of every stuff and color, quilted in fanciful figures. If the pride of the Dutch matrons lay in their beds and linen, that of the Dutch maidens lay equally in their elaborately wrought petticoats, which were their own handiwork and often constituted their only dowry. They wore blue, red, and green worsted stockings of their own knitting, with parti-colored clocks, together with high-heeled leather shoes. Considerable jewelry was in use among them in the shape of rings and brooches, and girdle-chains of gold and silver were much affected by fashionable belles. These were attached to the richly bound Bibles and hymn-books and suspended from the belt outside the dress, thus forming an ostentatious Sunday decoration. For necklaces they wore numerous strings of gold beads; and the poorer classes, in humble imitation, encircled their throats with steel and glass beads and strings of Job's tears, the fruit of a plant thought to possess some medicinal virtues."
This was their holiday costume. Their dress for work and wear was "of good substantial homespun. Every household had from two to six spinning-wheels for wool and flax, whereon the women of the family expended every leisure moment. Looms, too, were in common use, and piles of homespun cloth and snow-white linen attested to the industry of the active Dutch maidens. Hoards of home-made stuffs were thus accumulated in the settlement, sufficient to last till a distant generation."
Stolid as we think these old Dutch people, they had their amusements, in which their women participated with much zest. There were "bees" of all kinds,--quilting-bees, husking-bees, apple-bees, and raising-bees; but above all they loved dancing; and, though we may think of them as heavy-footed, it is probable that many of these demure Dutch maidens would "trip it on the light fantastic toe" with as good a grace as their less sedate sisters of the South.
Before leaving the north, one somewhat curious female figure of New York is especially worth noting, as having been associated with one of the most picturesque and sorely maligned characters in our history,--Sarah Bradley, daughter of Captain Thomas Bradley, and herself an Englishwoman by birth. In 1685, she married one William Cox, a man of singular character, whose mother was termed "Alice Cox, alias Bono," for what reason does not appear. Sarah Cox, with whom we are more immediately concerned, was at the time of her marriage a dashing young woman, of handsome face and fine figure, but so illiterate that she could not write her own name, as is attested by the fact that sundry documents bearing her authorization give her mark instead of the usual signature. In later years, however, she seems to have attained sufficient knowledge to sign her name. In 1689, Mr. Cox met with an accident, thus described in a letter of the period: "Mr. Cox, to show his fine cloaths, undertooke to goe to Amboy to proclaime the King, who coming whome againe, was fairely drowned, which accident startled our commanders here very much; there is a good rich widdow left."
John Tuder, who wrote the letter and had no love for Cox, is rather flippant in his treatment of the fatal occurrence; but it seems that "the good rich widdow" was herself hardly inconsolable, for in a very short time she married again, this time one John Oort, who in his turn soon disappeared from the scene, leaving Sarah a double widow and also doubly rich. She was hardly to be more successful in her third marriage than the others, nor did she show much sensibility in the matter; for on' the 15th of May, 1691, she took out letters of administration on the estate of her late husband, and on the 16th of May a license was issued for the marriage of the fair Sarah to Captain William Kidd. Familiar to all is the fate of that redoubtable pirate, as he is generally held to have been,--though pirate he certainly was not,--and it is not convenient here to enter upon details; but there seems to be little doubt that Mistress Kidd exerted a curious, and, as it turned out, fatal influence upon the fortunes of her third husband. It is averred, though it is hardly a matter of history, that her relations with the Earl of Bellamont, Governor of New York, furnished the reason for the choice of her husband as the commander of the expedition which resulted in the accusation of piracy for which he suffered, and that it was her restless ambition which induced him to accept a post which was little to his liking. Be all this as it may, Kidd was hanged; and his widow, after this time prolonging her period of mourning to the unconscionable (for her) time of two years, married Christopher Rousby and settled down to a life free from further matrimonial adventures. She lived to a great age, but never lost her vivacity and assertiveness, and she merits a place in our record for her influence upon the romantic career of the famous--long infamous--Captain Kidd.
Now, passing by the growing towns of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Annapolis, and the fading one of Saint Mary's, let us seek the Old Dominion and learn the conditions which there obtained in the days prior to the coming of the Revolution. The influx of Cavaliers during the later portion of the seventeenth century had had its effect upon Virginia society, already prone to graft the lighter of English manners and customs upon those proper to the colonial conditions. In Virginia the women were free, untrammelled by public sentiment, to indulge their taste for gay apparel, to trick themselves off with all the gauds and gewgaws that fashion could invent. The towering heads of hair which were such an offence in the eyes of our Puritan forefathers were tolerated, if not admired, by our grandsires of Virginia; the brocade skirt, the exposed bosom, the embroidered jupe, straight corset, and gay farthingale were entirely congenial to the theories of the Virginia colonists, men as well as women. The gaiety in dress was answered by gaiety of life. With a rapidity that seemed strange in the face of the preference for the life of the country, the towns had become more populous and accessible; and they served asfocifor the social functions and life. Yet, even though there was such rout and revel at Williamsburg and kindred towns, it was in the houses of the great planters that one saw the true Virginia social existence, that one found the Virginia woman of the time in her truest apparition. Under the influences of the coming of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots--for the descendants of the latter perpetuated the restless gaiety of their forsaken land rather than the austerities of the faith which had been the cause of their exile--there had arisen in Virginia something of a cult of the social function. The court of Sir William Berkeley had been a miniature reproduction of that of his king, and though some of the traditions of his time passed away with the old governor, the main spirit survived in the ideals of Virginia society. As in all such cases there must be, there was a certain amount of discernible hollowness; but, as a rule, there were to be found in the best and most typical houses of Virginia the graces of the society of the Restoration without its vices, its courtesy without its affectations. An aristocracy was growing where none had been before, or at least where there had been but a feeble and ineffectual leaven of one. At this period, the woman of Virginia was the typical and representative lady of English America.
ANTONY VAN CORLEAR, TRUMPETERAfter the painting by F. D. Millet
"It was a moving sight to see the buxom lasses, how they hung about the doughty Antony Van Corlear--for he was a jolly rosy-faced, lusty bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desparate rogue among women. Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army was away; for besides what I have said of him, it is no more than justice to add, that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in comforting disconsolate wives during the absence of their husbands--and this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the city."
Moreover, there was now entering into Virginia conditions a sort of feudality, less in theory than in fact. There was much to recall the life of the old feudal baron. There was the same dependence upon the household for the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life; in the families of the great planters, such as Colonel Byrd of Westover, --whose daughter, Evelyn Byrd, was the pearl of Virginia ladies in her day, but died of a broken heart before she had grown past her first maturity,--there was manufacture of the raw materials into the finished product, under the eye of the mistress of the house. Slavery had by this time become an established feature of Virginia society, and it was at its best in results. The slaves answered in conditions to the feudal servitors; they were retainers in a way, and they were also the workmen of the home. They made shoes and rough clothing, and they performed all the household tasks which were not strictly within the province of the chatelaine. The field hands raised tobacco; and it was with this commodity that the planter bought the silks and laces which clothed his wife and daughters when they appeareden grande tenue. But, though thus the lady of the manor had her duties in the training of her household servants, in the supervision of the household tasks, and in the provision of certain cates and other dainties which were to be made by no hands but hers, her general duty, that which occupied more of her time and thought than any other, was to be effective and satisfactory as a hostess.
It was thus in the southern colonies, with their greater wealth in servants and money and their consequently greater refinement, that there first appeared the type of American woman as she was a little later to be known throughout the land; but the coming of refinement and its accompaniment, modishness, was not long confined to the Virginias. Before the ending of the later colonial period and the beginnings of the days of the Revolution, there were to be found refinement and modishness in Massachusetts as in Virginia; but it was long before an equal amount of luxury was there displayed. In the North the same distinction of station was maintained between the "governor's lady" and the plebeian housewife that existed in the South between the lady of the plantation and her humbler sister of the hut; but there were fewer spouses of governors and their social equals in the North than there were wives of planters in the South, and so the developing type of American lady began in Virginia and spread thence rather than adopted from without. But everywhere, in all sections of the country save indeed the undeveloped outskirts, where the wilderness was being forced back and concerning which we shall busy ourselves later, when the type of the pioneer was more distinctive--there was up-springing a different type from that of the settlers or the early colonists. The American woman was ceasing to be the co-worker with her husband in matters of the hands and was gradually taking her rightful place as the director rather than the laborer. She was still the housewife; but her sphere was becoming enlarged and her ideas different. The wilderness had been pushed back from her door; she was as much a dweller in towns, even if they were not of very great dimensions or importance, as were her sisters across the great water. Her husband no longer wrestled with a hostile earth for a bare sustenance, but owned his houses and his lands and held himself among the prosperous ones of the world, so that his wife and his daughters were free from need of personal labor. Not that they were idle, these ladies who had blossomed from the earlier stem; we shall see that many of them were notable housewives, real helpmeets to their husbands; but they worked in a different manner from that of their grandmothers. And they differed from those excellent dames in many things, but above all in their respect for that impalpable but dominant thing called Fashion; and so they began to lose their individuality and take on the bearing and ways of the cosmopolitan type of women.
As a consequence of the introduction of luxury as a recognized condition of the American household of wealth and refinement, there came about a gradual change in the type of the sections which resulted in a levelling of the type of the whole land and its adaptation to European standards. That subtle influence of fashion permeated the land from north to south--there was then no east or west--and brought all the severed types under one strait rule. No longer could the dame of the Puritans be distinguished by outer guise or even by her customs and manners from her of the Cavaliers, while the intermediate woman, she of the settlement erstwhile known as Manhattan, on her part came forward with the rest to the goal of identity. There were more women of fashion in Virginia and Maryland than in Massachusetts or Connecticut; but the type was the same, and a man might travel from Williamsburg to Boston, stopping on his way at Annapolis, Philadelphia, and New York, and find no considerable difference between the woman who sped him at the outset and the woman who greeted him at the end of his journey,--at least as far as the eye and ear could note. From Madame Berkeley to Madame Phips was no step at all. The gracious dame of the period, stately in silks and satins and brocade, was as easy to find at one end of the country as at the other; the "toasts" were just as lovely, if not quite so plentiful, in Boston as in Williamsburg. But all this gain, as is the inevitable law, was at the expense of compensating loss. Refinement and elegance had come to be the inheritance of the American woman, but at the cost and loss of individuality. There had come into existence a type which was neither Puritan nor Cavalier nor Dutch, but American; though a universal type, it was not a distinctive one, as had been the others. The word "American" had come to have a meaning of universality as applied to the women of this country, and was yet to have a more inclusive signification; but the passing of marked sectional differences had also brought with it the doing away as well with that subtle thing which we term individuality. As distinguished from her sisters of that country which was still termed "mother," though so soon to be encountered in bitter hatred, the American woman had lost definition and personality.
We have now come to the period in our story when there will be no longer distinction between the woman of the North and her sister in the South in the things which have thus far kept them apart in type. They will always preserve certain racial, climatic, and inherited traits peculiar to their respective sections; but they will be none the less in mass the women of America. Even when we shall be forced to record the great dissension which separated our country into two nations and accentuated all the sectional traits of its womankind as of its men there will be but different expressions of womanhood to record, not different types,--different conditions of existence, having effect of direction, not differing spirits and impulses. It was in the days before the darkening of the shadow of the Revolution that the American woman, untrammelled by conditions of residence or descent, began to appear as a type. She was very admirable, but she was no longer unique.