Part 2 (2/2)
The settlers in Colonial America did not allow themselves such luxuries of the toilet as a variety of wigs, though a well-planned peruke or ”a bob”
might have been a good device to trick the tomahawk of the savage into a bloodless scalping. With the poorer people, a single wig for Sunday wear sufficed, and was replaced on week days by a cap, generally of linen.
The Colonial dames, being too far from Court to copy the low-necked dresses, the stomachers and farthingales of the inner circle of fas.h.i.+on, wore instead, huge ruffs, full, short petticoats, and long, flowing sleeves, over tight undersleeves. Even in the wilderness, however, they retained a feminine fondness for gay attire.
John Pory, a clever scapegrace intimately acquainted with gaming-tables and sponging-houses in London, but figuring in Virginia as secretary to Governor Yeardley, wrote home to Sir Dudley Carleton, ”That your Lords.h.i.+p may know that we are not the veriest beggars in the world, our cow-keeper here of James Cittie, on Sundays goes accoutred all in fresh flaming silk, and a wife of one that in England professed the black art, not of a scholar but of a collier of Croydon, wears her rough beaver hat with a fair pearl hat-band and a silken suit, thereto correspondent.”
Lively John was probably lying a little in the cause of immigration, but it is certain that the desire for fine clothes early called for a check, and at an early session of the Virginia House of Burgesses, a sumptuary law was pa.s.sed ”against excess in apparell,” directing ”that every man be ceffed in the church for all publique contributions--if he be unmarried, according to his own apparrell; if he be married, according to his own and his wives, or either of their apparell.” Here, surely, is a suggestion from the past, for the fas.h.i.+onable church of the present.
A later law in the provinces enacts that ”no silke stuffe in garments or in peeces, except for hoods or scarfes, nor silver or gold lace, nor bonelace of silke or thread, nor ribbands wrought with silver or gold in them, shall be brought into this country to sell, after the first of February.” A Maryland statute proposes that two sorts of ”cloaths” only be worn, one for summer, the other for winter. But this was going too far, and the law was never enforced.
It was permitted to none but Members of the Council and Heads of Hundreds in Virginia to wear the coveted gold on their clothes, or to wear any silk not made by themselves. This last prohibition was intended not so much to discourage pomp and pride, as to stimulate the infant industry of silk production, which from the beginning had been a pet scheme of the colonists. They had imported silk-worms and planted mulberry trees; and as an inducement to go into the business, the Burgesses offered a premium of five thousand pounds of tobacco to any one making a hundred pounds of wound silk in any one year.
His Gracious Majesty, Charles the Second, sent to his loyal subjects in Virginia, a letter, still to be seen in the college library at Williamsburg. It is written by his Majesty's private secretary and signed with the sacred ”Charles R.” It is addressed to Governor Berkeley, and runs:
”Trusty & Wellbeloved, We Greet You Well. Wee have received w{th} much content ye dutifull respects of Our Colony in y{e} present lately made us by you & y{e} councell there, of y{e} first product of y{e} new Manufacture of Silke, which as a mark of Our Princely acceptation of yo{r} duteys & for y{r} particular encouragement, etc.--Wee have commanded to be wrought up for y{e} use of Our owne person.”
From this letter has sprung the legend, dear to loyalist hearts, that the robe worn by Charles at his coronation was woven of Virginia silk.
So much material was needed ”for y{e} use of our owne person,” that the offering of silk was no doubt very welcome. The King's favorite, Buckingham, had twenty-seven suits, one of them of white uncut velvet, set all over with diamonds and worn with diamond hat-bands, c.o.c.kades and ear-rings, and yoked with ropes and knots of pearls.
It was an era of wild extravagance. Not satisfied with the elegance of the time of Charles First, his son's courtiers added plumes to the wide-brimmed hats, enlarged the bows on the shoes, donned great wigs, loaded their vests with embroidery, and over their coats hung short cloaks, worth a fortune.
The women dressed as befitted the court of a dissolute king. Their artificial curls were trained in ”heart-breakers” and ”love-locks.” The whiteness of their skin was enhanced by powder and set off by patches.
Their shoulders rose above bodices of costly brocade hung with jewels which had sometimes ruined both buyer and wearer.
The Puritans, by their opposition to the Court, escaped the evil influences of these extravagances. But the Colonial Cavaliers, who bowed before the King lower than the courtiers at home, of course imitated his dress, so far as their fortunes allowed. Every frigate that came into port at Jamestown or St. Maries brought the latest London fas.h.i.+ons. A little before Colonel Fitzhugh in Virginia was ordering his Riding Camblet cloak from London, Mr. Samuel Pepys was writing in his journal, ”This morning came home my fine camlete cloak with gold b.u.t.tons.” While this gentleman was attiring himself in his new shoulder-belt and tunique laced with silk, ”and so very handsome to church,” Sir William Berkeley and Governor Calvert were opening their eyes of a Sunday morning three thousand miles away, and making ready to get into their rosetted shoes, and to lace their breeches and hose together with points as fanciful as his, and, like him, perhaps, having their heads ”combed by y{e} maide for _powder and other troubles_.” No doubt Lady Berkeley, in her fine lace bands, her coverchef and deep veil, was as fine as Madam Pepys in her paragon pettycoat and ”_just a corps_.”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
With the beginning of the eighteenth century, the hoop appeared, and carried all before it, in more senses than one. ”The ladies' petticoats,”
I read in the notes of a contemporary of the fas.h.i.+on, ”are now blown up into a most enormous concave.” Over this concave the ladies wore, on ceremonious occasions, such as a ball at Governor Spotswood's or an a.s.sembly at Annapolis, trailing gowns of heavy brocade, many yards in length. Dragging these skirts behind, and bearing aloft on their heads a towering structure of feathers, ribbons and lace, it was no wonder these dames preferred slow and stately measures. At their side, or as near as the spreading hoop permitted, moved their favored cavaliers, their coat-skirts stiff with buckram, their swords dangling between their knees, their breeches of red plush or black satin, so tight that they fitted without a wrinkle.
Men of that day took their dress very seriously. Was.h.i.+ngton, who had doubtless gained many ideas of fas.h.i.+on from the modish young officers of Braddock's army, ordered his costumes with as much particularity as he afterward conducted his campaigns. Shortly before he started with his little cavalcade of negro servants on his five-hundred-mile ride to Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1756, he sent over to a correspondent in London an order for an extensive wardrobe. He wanted ”2 complete livery suits for servants, with a spare cloak and all other necessary tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs for two suits more.” He omits no detail. ”I would have you,” he writes, ”choose the livery by our arms; only as the field is white, I think the clothes had better not be quite so, but nearly like the inclosed. The tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and facings of scarlet, and a scarlet waistcoat. If livery lace is not quite disused, I should be glad to have the cloaks laced. I like that fas.h.i.+on best, and two silver-laced hats for the above servants.”
In addition to this, he wishes ”1 set of horse-furniture with livery lace, with the Was.h.i.+ngton crest on the housings, etc. The cloak to be of the same piece and color of the clothes, 3 gold and scarlet sword-knots, 3 silver and blue ditto, 1 fas.h.i.+onable gold-laced hat.”
It is not strange that the gallant young officer made a sensation among the dames and damsels of Philadelphia and New York as he journeyed northward, nor that Mistress Mary Phillipse nearly lost her heart to the wearer of the gold and scarlet sword-knots and the fas.h.i.+onable gold-laced hat.
All society went in gorgeous array in those gay days, before color had been banished to suit the grim taste of the Puritan, and to meet the economical maxims of _Poor Richard_. Judges, on the bench, wore robes of scarlet, faced with black velvet, exchanged in summer for thinner ones of silk. Etiquette demanded equally formal costume for advocates at the bar.
Patrick Henry, who began by indifference to dress, even rus.h.i.+ng into court fresh from the chase, with mud and mire clinging to his leather breeches, at length yielded to social pressure, and donned a full suit of black velvet in which to address the court; and, on one occasion at least, a peach-colored coat effectively set off by a bag-wig, powdered, as pompous Mr. Wirt observes, ”in the highest style of forensic fas.h.i.+on.”
A satirical description sets forth the dress of a dandy in the middle of the eighteenth century, as consisting of ”a coat of light green, with sleeves too small for the arms, and b.u.t.tons too big for the sleeves; a pair of Manchester fine stuff breeches, without money in the pockets; clouded silk stockings, but no legs; a club of hair behind, larger than the head that carries it; a hat of the size of a sixpence, on a block not worth a farthing.”
In October, 1763, the free-school at Annapolis was broken into by robbers, and the wardrobe of the master stolen. When I remember the scanty salaries paid to these schoolmasters, I look with surprise on the inventory, which the victim of the robbery publishes. Here we have a superfine blue broadcloth frock coat, a new superfine scarlet waistcoat bound with gold lace, a pair of green worsted breeches lined with dimity, besides a ruffled s.h.i.+rt, pumps, and doe-skin breeches. A very pretty wardrobe, I should say, for the teacher of a Colonial village-school!
It was a picturesque world in those days. The gentry rode gayly habited in bright-colored velvets and ruffles; the clergy swept along in dignified black; the judges wore their scarlet robes, and the mechanics and laborers were quite content to don a leather ap.r.o.n over their buckskin breeches and red-flannel jacket. The slaves in Carolina were forbidden to wear anything, except when in livery, finer than negro-cloth, duffils, kerseys, osnaburgs, blue linen, check-linen, coa.r.s.e garlix or calicoes, checked cotton, or Scotch plaid. This prohibition was quite unnecessary, as the slave thought himself very lucky if he were clad in a new and whole garment of any sort.
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