As the Mall seems to be the chief resort for company of an evening I am surprized that there is no more politeness and decorum observ’d by the masculine gender. In short there is seldom a seat in that agreeable walk that is not taken up by the gentlemen. This must be very disagreeable to the fair sex in general whose tender delicate limbs may be tired with the fatigues of walking, and bend, denied a seat to rest them.
I cannot discover that anything of the nature of our modern chaperonage was known in colonial days. We find the early travellers such as Dunton taking many a long ride with a fair maid a-pillion back behind them. In 1750 Captain Francis Goelet made a trip through New England. He consorted only with the fashionable folk of the day, and he appeared to find in them a very genial and even countrified simplicity of manners. He tells of riding to “Turtle Frolicks” and country dances with young ladies of refinement and good station in life. To one of the finer routs at Cambridge he rode with Miss Betty Wendell in a chaise. There were twenty couples in all who went to this Frolick, all, he says complacently, the “Best Fashion in Boston.” Young men escorted young girls to dancing-parties, and also accompanied them home after the dance was finished.
Weddings were everywhere, throughout the middle and southern colonies, scenes of great festivity.
I have been much interested and amused in reading the Diary of Jacob Hiltzheimer, of Philadelphia (which has recently been published), to note his references to the deep drinking at the weddings of the day. One entry, on February 14, 1767, runs thus: “At noon went to William Jones to drink punch, met several of my friends and got decently drunk. The groom could not be accused of the same fault.” This cheerful frankness reminds us of Sir Walter Raleigh’s similar ingenuous expression: “Some of our captains garoused of wine till they were reasonable pleasant.”
This William Jones was married eighteen years later to a third wife, and again kept open house, and once more friend Jacob called on the bride and ate the wedding-cake and drank the wedding-punch. Nay, more, he called four days in succession, and at the end “rode all the afternoon to wear off the effects of the punch and clear my head.” At one bride’s house, Mrs. Robert Erwin’s, record was kept that for two days after the wedding, between three and four hundred gentlemen had called, drank punch, and probably kissed the bride.
It was the universal Philadelphia custom for the groom’s friends to call thus for two days at his house and drink punch, and every evening for a week large tea-parties were given by the bride, the bridesmaids and groomsmen always in attendance. Sometimes a coaching trip was taken by the entire bridal party out on the Lancaster pike, for a wedding breakfast.
Similar customs prevailed in New York. In a letter written by Hannah Thompson I read of bridal festivities in that town.
The Gentlemans Parents keep Open house just in the same manner as the Brides Parents. The Gentlemen go from the Bridegroom house to drink punch with and give Joy to his Father. The Brides visitors go in the same manner from the Brides to her mothers to pay their compliments to her. There is so much driving about at these times that in our narrow streets there is some danger. The Wedding house resembles a beehive. Company perpetually flying in and out.
In a new country, with novel methods of living, and unusual social relations, there were some wild and furious wooings. None were more coarsely extraordinary than the courting of young Mistress Burwell by the Governor of the colony of Virginia, an intemperate, blustering English ruffian named Nicholson. He demanded her hand in an Orientally autocratic manner, and when neither she nor her parents regarded him with favor, his rage and determination knew no bounds. He threatened the lives of her father and mother “with mad furious distracted speech.” When Parson Fouace came, meekly riding to visit poor Mr. Burwell, his parishioner, who was sick (naturally enough), the Governor set upon him with words of abuse, pulled the clerical hat off, drew his sword, and threatened the clerical life, until the parson fled in dismay. Fancying that the brother of Commissary Blair, the President of the Virginia College, was a would-be suitor to his desired fair one, he assailed the President with insane jealousy, saying, “Sir, your brother is a villain and you have betrayed me,” and he swore revenge on the entire family. To annoy further the good President, he lent his pistols to the wicked college boys that they might thus keep the President out of the college buildings. He vowed if Mistress Burwell married any one but himself he would cut the throat of bridegroom, minister, and justice who issued the marriage license. The noise of his abuse reached England, and friends wrote from thence protesting letters to him. At last the Council united and succeeded in procuring his removal. Poor President Blair did not fare well under other governors, and both College and President were fiercely hated by Governor Andros; and “a sparkish young gentleman,” the grandfather of Martha Washington’s first husband, to show his zeal for his gubernatorial friend, went into church and “with great fury and violence” pulled Mrs. Blair out of her pew in the face of the minister and the whole congregation—and this in the stately old cavalier days.
One very curious duty devolved on young girls at that day. They often served as pall-bearers. At the funeral of Mrs. Daniel Phœnix the pall-bearers were women, and when Mrs. John Morgan, sister of Francis Hopkinson, died in Philadelphia, her brother wrote of her funeral:—