Child Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

NEEDLECRAFT AND DECORATIVE ARTS

She wrought all Needleworks that Women exercise,
With Pin Frame or Stoole all Pictures Artificiall,
Curious Knots or Traits that Fancy could devise,
Beasts, Birds, or Flowers even as things Naturall.

—Epitaph of Elizabeth Lucar. Church St. Michael, Crooked Lane, London, 1537.

Human nature was the same in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as to-day; waves of devotion to some special form of ornamentation either for the household or the wardrobe swept over families, neighborhoods, communities; when we reach the days of newspapers we find in their columns some evidence of the names and character of these decorations. In 1716 Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster, advertised that at his school young women and children could be taught "all sorts of fine works as Feather-works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new way, Turkeywork for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new fashion Purses, flourishing ishing and Plain work," The perishable nature of the material would prevent the preservation of many specimens of feather-work; but very pretty flowers for head-dresses and bonnets were made of minute feathers or portions of feathers pasted on a firm foundation in many collected shapes. This work may have been suggested by the beautiful feather flowers made in many of the South Sea Islands; perhaps an old sea captain brought some home to his wife or sweetheart as a gift. The sober colors of many of our home birds would not make so brilliant a bouquet as the songless birds of the tropics, especially the millions of the various parrot tribes; still an everyday New England rooster has a wealth of splendid glistening color, while blue jays, red-headed woodpeckers, yellow birds, and an occasional oriole or scarlet tanager could furnish beautiful feathers enough to waken the ire of an Audubon Society.

Painting on glass was an amusement of more scope. In England it was all the mode, and some very quaint specimens survive; simpering beauties, flowers, and fruit were the favorite subjects. Coats of arms, too, were painted on glass, and handsome they were. It is not possible to state exactly the position which the study of armorial bearings and significations had for two or three centuries. It seemed to bear relatively the same place that a profound study of literature has to-day—the pastime and delight of cultured people. We have been amused for a few years past at the domination of color in literature; every book title had a color word, as The Red Robe, Under the Red Lamp, A Study in Scarlet, The Red Badge of Courage, etc. This idiasm—as Mr. Ingleby would call it—has extended to music, and even into scientific suggestion and medicine; but this attributing unusual qualities to colors is nothing new. In the Cotton Manuscripts, a series of essays on music six hundred years old, the relation between music and color, especially in coat armor, is given; for instance, "fire-red" was the most malignant color in arms, and only third in benignity in music. All gentlefolk were profoundly wise as to the meaning of colors in coats of arms, etc., and their influence on the character and life of the persons bearing the arms.

This interest in the study of heraldry wavered in intensity but did not die till the days of a new nation; and we find from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century that young girls in the families of gentlefolk paid much attention to the making of coats of arms. Those painted on glass were the richest in color and the most satisfactory, but embroidered ones were more common. The choicest materials were used, the drawing was carefully executed, and the stitches minute. It is interesting to note that the laws of the herald were strictly regarded in the setting of the stitches. In azure the stitches were laid parallel across the escutcheon; in gules, perpendicular; in purpure, diagonally from right to left, and so on.

Jerusha Pitkin's Embroidery and Frame

Here is shown an unfinished coat of arms of the Pitkin family which belonged to Jerusha Pitkin, who was born in 1736. The frame upon which the work is stretched, the manner in which it is mounted, the hand-made nails that fasten it, the way the work is outlined, are all of interest. The needle still is thrust in the black satin background where it was left by girlish hands a century and a half ago. Colored silks, gold bullion and thread to complete this work have been preserved with it. The embroidery is on black satin, and is lozenge-shaped, as was the proper shape of a hatchment or mourning emblem; and it is possible that this work was begun as a funeral piece, commemorative of some Pitkin ancestor.

Such funeral pieces were deemed a very dignified observance of respect and mark of affection. They had as successors what were definitely termed "mourning pieces," bearing stiff presentments of funeral urns, monuments, drooping willows, and sometimes a bowed and weeping figure.

After the death of Washington, mourning designs deploring our national loss and significant of our affection and respect for that honored name appeared in vast numbers. Framed prints of these designs hung on every wall, table china in large numbers and variety bore these funereal emblems, and laudatory and sad mottoes. As other Revolutionary heroes passed away, similar designs appeared in more limited numbers, and the reign of embroidered "mourning pieces" may be said to begin at this time. Washington—so to speak—set the fashion. Familiarized with the hideous Apotheosis pitcher, or the gloomy Washington's Tomb teacups as set on a festal board, special mourning embroideries did not seem oversad for decorative purposes, and soon no properly ambitious household was without one. They were even embroidered when the family circle was unbroken, and an empty space was left yawning like an open grave for some one to die. Religious designs were also eagerly sought for. The Tree of Life was a favorite. A conventional tree was hung at wide intervals with apples, bearing the names of various virtues and estimable traits of humanity, such as Honor, Modesty, Silence, Patience, etc. The sparse harvest of these emblematic fruits seemed to indicate a cynical belief in scant nobility of nature; but there was hope of improvement, for a white-winged angel assiduously watered the roots of the tree with a realistic watering-pot. The devil, never absent in that day from art, science, or literature, also loomed in blackness beneath the branches, but sadly handicapped from activity by being forced to carry a colossal pitchfork and an absolutely unsurmountable tail of gigantic proportions.

These mourning pieces were but decadent successors of the significant heraldic embroideries of earlier days. We passed through trying days in art, architecture, and costume in the first half of this century; and it was not until we revived the older forms of embroidery, and the ancient stitches, that we rallied from the blight of commonplaceness and sentimentality which seemed to spread over everything.

Lora Standish's Sampler

The most universal and best-preserved piece of embroidery done by our foremothers was the sampler. These were known as sampleths, sam-cloths, saumplers, and sampleres; the titles were all derived by apheresis from esampler, exampleir.

The sampler "contrived a double debt to pay" of teaching letters and stitches; it was, in fact, a needlework hornbook, containing the alphabet, a verse indicative of good morals or industry, or a sentence from the Bible, the name and date, and some crude representations of impossible birds, beasts, flowers, trees, or human beings. Though the sampler's reign in every American household was in the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth, it was the direct successor of the glories of needlework of English women of earlier years, which was known and admired on the Continent as Opus Anglicanum. The chief excellency of English needlework has even been closely associated with a high state of social morals. In Elizabeth's day Englishwomen still loved needlecraft. Shakespeare, Sidney, Milton, Herrick, all refer to women's samplers. In a collection of old ballads printed in 1725 is "A Short and Sweet Sonnet made by one of the Maids of Honour upon the death of Q. Elizabeth, which she sewed upon a Sampler of Red Silk":—

"Gone is Elizabeth whom we have loved so dear,
She our kind Mistress was full four and Forty Year,
England she govern'd well not to be blamed.
Flanders she govern'd well, and Ireland famed.
France she befriended, Spain she had toiled,
Papists rejected, and the Pope spoiled.
To Princes powerful, to the World vertuous,
To her Foes merciful, to subjects gracious.
Her Soul is in Heaven, the World keeps her glory,
Subjects her good deeds, so ends my Story."

In the licentious days of King James and King Charles there is little record of women's needlework in court or country, but the Puritan women, the virtuous home makers, revived and encouraged all household arts.

There is no doubt that as a rule the long and narrow samplers are older than those more nearly square. These ancient samplers, especially the few bearing dates of the seventeenth century, are much finer in design, more closely worked, and better in execution than those of later date. The linen background is much more closely covered. They have more curious and varied stitches. Occasionally they are of minute size, but four or five inches long, with exquisitely fine stitches.

Fleetwood-Quincy Sampler

Two ancient samplers are here depicted. One shown on page 327 was made by Lora Standish, the daughter of a Pilgrim Father, and it is now at Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. The interesting and beautiful sampler known as the Fleetwood-Quincy Sampler has such perfect stitches that both sides are alike. It bears the names Miles and Abigail Fleetwood, and the date 1654. It has been in the possession of Mrs. Henry Quincy and her descendants since 1750. There is little doubt that the Miles Fleetwood of the sampler was the brother or nephew of Charles Fleetwood who married Anne Ireton, eldest daughter of great Cromwell. A splendid piece of Anne Fleetwood's embroidery was recently exhibited in the Kensington Museum. It was scarcely a sampler for it bore a curious design in applique work of a lozenge formed by four right-angled triangles, each of a different bit of rich brocade of gold and silver figures on amber or pink ground; all worked together with curious vines and stitches. Miles Fleetwood clung to the royal cause, and thus fell into the obscurity hinted at in the sampler verses:—

"In prosperity friends will be plenty,
But in adversity not one in twenty."

In the older samplers little attention is paid to the representation of things in their real colors; a green horse may balance a blue tree. And as flat tints were used there were few effects of light and shade, and no perspective. Distance is indicated by a different color of worsted; thus the green horse will have his off legs worked in red. This is precisely the method used in the Bayeux Tapestry and other antique embroideries.

Sampler verses had their times and seasons, and ran through families. They were eagerly copied for young friends, and, in a few cases, were "natural composures"—or, as we should say to-day, "original compositions." Ruth Gray of Salem embroidered on her sampler a century ago:—

"Next unto God, dear Parents, I address
Myself to you in humble Thankfulness.
For all your Care and Charge on me bestow'd,
The means of learning unto me allowed.
Go on! I pray, and let me still Pursue
Such Golden Arts the Vulgar never knew."

To show the extent to which those lines could be transmitted let me state that they are found on a sampler in Dorchester, Massachusetts, worked in 1802, one in Waltham, Massachusetts, one worked in 1813 in a seminary in Boston, one in Medford, one worked in 1790 in Salem by a young girl of ten, another in Lynn, on an English sampler in the Kensington Museum, and in the diary of that Boston schoolgirl, Anna Green Winslow, dated 1771.

There were certain variants of a popular sampler verse that ran thus:—

"This is my Sampler,
Here you see
What care my Mother
Took of me."

Another rhyme was:—

"Mary Jackson is my name,
America my nation,
Boston is my dwelling place,
And Christ is my salvation."

The doxology, "From all that dwell below the skies," etc., appears on samplers; and these lines:—

"Though life is fair
And pleasure young,
And Love on ev'ry
Shepherd's Tongue,
I turn my thoughts
To serious things,
Life is ever on the wing."

Another rhyme is found with varying words in some of the lines:—

"Young Ladyes fair when youthful minds incline
To all that's curious, Innocent, and fine
With Admiration let your worke be made
The various textures and the twining thread
Then let your fingers with unrivalled skill
Exalt the Needle, Grace the noble Quill."

Some of the verses are as short as the scant but sweet English words on the sampler of Katherine, the wife of Charles II.:—

"21st of Maye
Was our Wedding Daye."

A sampler in the Old South Church in Boston has this inscription:—

"Dorothy Lynde is my Name
And this Work is mine
My Friends may have
When I am Dead and laid in Grave
This Needlework of mine can tell
That in my youth I learned well
And by my elders also taught
Not to spend my time for naught."

Polly Coggeshall's Sampler

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was high fashion to have mottoes and texts carved or painted on many articles where they would frequently catch the eye. Printed books were then rare possessions, and these mottoes, whether of vanity or piety, took their place. Perhaps inscriptions on various pieces of tableware and drinking utensils were the most common. Specially beautiful and interesting early examples are the sets of "beechen roundels" known to collectors; that is, sets of wooden plates or trenchers carved with mottoes. Women dexterous of the needle embroidered mottoes and words on articles of clothing. Whole texts of the Bible are said to have been inscribed on the edges of gowns and petticoats.

"She is a Puritan at her needle too
She works religious petticoats."

Elaborate vines of flowers and other scroll designs were worked on petticoats, often in colored crewels. There still exists the linen petticoat of Rebecca Taylor Orne, a Salem dame who lived to be one hundred and twenty years old. It is deeply embroidered with trees, vines, flowers, and fruits, on homespun linen. Silk petticoats were also embroidered and painted by young girls, and are beautiful pieces of work.

In New York newspapers we find proof that New York girls were taught decorative accomplishments similar to those which were so fashionable in Boston:—

"Martha Gazley, late from Great Britain, now in the city of New York Makes and Teacheth the following curious Works, viz: Artificial Fruit and Flowers and other Wax-Works, Nuns-work, Philligree and Pencil Work upon Muslin, all sorts of Needle-Work, and Raising of Paste, as also to Paint upon Glass, and Transparant for Sconces, with other Works. If any young Gentlewomen, or others are inclined to learn any or all of the above-mentioned curious Works, they may be carefully instructed in the same by said Martha Gazley."

Flowered Apron

The waxwork of Martha Gazley was more fully detailed in a school advertisement of Mrs. Sarah Wilson of Philadelphia. She taught "waxworks in all its branches"; flowers, fruit, and pin-baskets, also "how to take profiles in wax." This latter was distinctly art work; and portraits of Washington and other Revolutionary heroes still exist in wax—a material that could be worked with facility; but was very perishable.

Mary Richards' Sampler

A very full list of old-time stitches has come down to us, and curiously enough not from any woman who worked these stitches but from the pen of a man, John Taylor, "the Water-Poet," in his Praise of the Needle, 1640.

"For Tent-worke, Rais'd-work, Laid-worke, Frost-worke, Net-worke,
Most curious Purles, or rare Italian Cut-worke,
Fine Ferne-stitch, Finny-stitch, New-stitch and Chain-stitch
Brave Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch and Queen-stitch
The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Mouse-stitch
The smarting Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Cross-stitch
All these are good, and these we must allow,
And these are everywhere in practise now."

They were doubtless "everywhere in practice," in America as well, but nearly all are now but empty names.

While Dutch women must be awarded the palm of comfortable and attractive housekeeping, they did not excel Englishwomen in needlework; though the first gold thimble was made for Madam Van Rensselaer, the foremother of our American patroons; and many beautiful specimens of Dutch embroidery exist. A sample is here shown which was worked by Mary Richards, a granddaughter of the famous Anneke Jans. Mrs. Van Cortlandt wrote in her delightful account of home life in old New York:—

"Crewel-work and silk-embroidery were fashionable, and surprisingly pretty effects were produced. Every little maiden had her sampler which she begun with the alphabet and numerals, following them with a Scriptural text or verse of a psalm. Then fancy was let loose on birds, beasts and trees. Most of the old families possessed framed pieces of embroidery, the handiwork of female ancestors."

Pride in needlework, and a longing for household decoration, found expression in quilt-piecing. Bits of calico "chiney" or chintz were carefully shaped by older hands, and sewed by diligent little fingers into many fanciful designs. A Job's Trouble, made of hexagon pieces, could be neatly done by little children, but more complicated designs required more "judgement," and the age of a little daughter might be accurately guessed by her patchwork. The quilt-making was the work of older folk. It required long arms, larger hands, greater strength.

Knitting was taught to little girls as soon as they could hold the needles. Girls four years of age could knit stockings and mittens. In country households young damsels knit mittens to sell and coarse socks. Many fine and beautiful stitches were taught, and a beautiful pair of long silk stockings of open-work design has initials knit on the instep. They were the wedding hose of a bride of the year 1760; and the silk for them was raised, wound, and spun by the bride's sister, a girl of fourteen, who also did the exquisite knitting.

Lace-making was never an industry in the colonies; it was an elegant accomplishment. Pillow lace was made, and the stitches were taught in families of wealth; a guinea a stitch was charged by some teachers. Old lace pillows have been preserved to this day, with strips of unfinished lace and hanging bobbins, to show the kind of lace which was the mode—a thread lace much like the fine Swiss hand-made laces.

Old Lace Pillow, Reels and Pockets

Tambour work on muslin or lace, and a lace made of certain designs darned on net, took the place of pillow lace. Nothing could be more beautiful in execution and design than the rich veils, collars, and caps of this worked net, which remained the mode during the early years of this century. Girls spent years working on a single collar or tucker. Sometimes medallions of this net lace were embroidered down upon fine linen lawn. I have infants' caps of this beautiful work, finer than any needlework of to-day.

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