Jane Bonner, Eight Years Old, 1700
To return to the dress of John Quincy: with the exception of the neck of the body of the frock it is much like the dress of grown women of that day. We have existing portraits of Madam Shimpton and Rebecca Rawson of the same date. In both of these, as in this little boy's portrait, the sleeve is the most noticeable feature, with its single slash, double puff drawn in below the elbow and confined with pretty ribbon knots. This sleeve was known as the virago sleeve, and John Quincy's are darker colored than his frock. All three wear loosely tied rather shapeless hoods, such as are seen on the women in the prints of the coronation procession of King William. The boy has a close cap under his hood. His dress is certainly picturesque and distinctive.
A portrait, facing page 36, of another Massachusetts boy, contemporary with John Quincy, is that of Robert Gibbs, the rich Boston merchant. This is plainly marked as being painted when he was four and a half years old, and with the date 1670. He wears the same stiff cuirass as John Quincy, the same odd truncated shoes of buff leather, and has the same masculine swing of the petticoats. Both figures stand on a checker-board floor, four squares deep, with their toes at the same point on the board. Robert Gibbs wears a more boyish collar, or band, as befits a bigger boy. The sleeves are an important feature of his dress, having a pair of long hanging sleeves bordered with fur, which do not show in the print in this book, but are plainly visible in the original portrait. Hanging sleeves were so distinctively the dress of a little child that the term had at that time a symbolic significance, implying childishness both of youth and second childhood. Pepys thus figuratively employs the term. Judge Sewall wrote in old age to a brother whose widowed sister he desired to marry:—
"I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have sometime met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves, coming home from their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure of speaking to them. And I could find it in my heart now to speak to Mrs Martha again, now I myself am reduc'd to Hanging Sleeves."
This roundabout wooing came to naught. The Judge married Widow Mary Gibbs, relict of this very Robert Gibbs whose childish portrait we have here. The artist who painted this picture may have been Tom Child, who is named by Judge Sewall as the portrait-painter of that day.
A demure and quaint portrait, opposite page 42, is that of Jane Bonner. She was born in 1691, the daughter of Captain John Bonner of Boston, and was married in 1710 to John Ellery. She was about eight or ten years old when the portrait was painted. Crude as is the painting, it gives evident proof that the lace of the stomacher and sleeve frills is of the nature of what is now called rose point.
In the early settlements of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia, sumptuary laws were passed to restrain and attempt to prohibit extravagance in dress. The New England magistrates were curiously minute in description of overluxurious attire, and many offenders were tried and fined. But vain daughters and sons "psisted in fflonting," though ministers joined the lawmakers in solemn warnings and reprehensions. Young girls were fined for silk hoods and immoderate great sleeves, and boldly appeared in court in still richer attire. The Dutch never attempted or wished to simplify the dress of either men or women. In New York dress was ample, substantial, varied in texture, and variegated in color. It ever formed a considerable item in personal property. The children of the Dutch settlers had plentiful and warm clothing, and sometimes very rich clothing, as may be seen in the quaint and interesting picture facing page 26, of twin girls, the two daughters of Abraham De Peyster of New York, and his wife, Margaret Van Cortlandt. They are dressed in red velvet trained gowns, but are barefooted. They were born December 3, 1724, and Eva died in 1729, a month after the portrait was painted. Catherine was married on her eighteenth birthday to John Livingstone, son of the second lord of the manor. Their son had a daughter Catherine, who became the wife of Don Mariano Velasquez de la Cadenas. To their daughters, Mrs. Azoy and Miss Mariana Velasquez, this interesting portrait now belongs.
