For many years a favorite and much praised accomplishment was the cutting of paper in ornamental designs. This art was ambitiously called Papyrotamia, and it was of special usefulness in its application to watch-papers, a favorite lover’s token of the day. The watch proper at that time was separate and removable from its case, which was of gold, silver, shagreen, or lacquer. Of course the watch did not fit closely into the case, and watch-papers were placed within to serve as a cushion to prevent jar and wear; sometimes the case would hold several. Artistic and grotesque taste could be used in the manufacture of these tokens of regard. I have seen them cut in various open-work designs from gilt and silver paper, embroidered in hair, painted in water colors. One I have has two turtle-doves billing over two hearts, and surrounded by a tiny wreath; another, embroidered on net, has the words “God is Love;” another has a moss rose and the words “Rejoice and blossom as a rose.” Another bears a funeral urn, and is evidently in memoriam. Still another, a heart and arrows, and the sentimental legend “Kill me for I die of love.” Jefferson, writing as a young man, bitterly deplores his inadvertent tearing of watch-papers which had been cut for him by his beloved Belinda. Watch and watch-papers had been accidentally soaked in water, and when he attempted to remove the papers, he says, “My cursed fingers gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over. I would have cried bitterly, but that I thought it beneath the dignity of a man.” And he trusts the fair Becca will give him another paper of her cutting, which, though but a plain round one, he will esteem more than the nicest in the world cut by other hands.
Nothing can be more pathetic than the thoughtful survey of the crude and often cumbersome and ludicrous attempts at decorative art, through which the stunted and cramped love of the beautiful found expression, until our own day, in country homes. The dreary succession of hair-work, feather-work, wax flowers, shell-work, the crystallization with various domestic minerals and gums of dried leaves and grasses, vied with yarn and worsted monstrosities, and bewildering patchwork. Occasionally some bold feminine spirit, made inventive through artistic longing, gave birth to a novel, though too often grotesque form of decoration.
A most interesting symbol of exquisite neatness, unbounded patience, and blind groping for artistic expression was Rhoda Baker’s “Leather-Works.” Rhoda Baker lived in a small Rhode Island village, which was dull at its birth and slow of growth and progress. She had a nature so timid, so repelling, and so wholly introspective, that, after nearly fifty years of shy and even unwilling “keeping company” with a preaching elder of the time,—a saint, almost a mystic,—she died without ever having given to the quaint, thin, pleasant-faced, awkward man, one word of encouragement to his equally timid, his hinting and halting love-making. During those patient years of warm hopes, but most scanty fruition, he had built a house on an island which he owned in Narragansett Bay, with a window where his beloved Rhoda could sit sewing when she became his wife, and watch him happily rowing across the Bay to her; but great lilac bushes grew up unchecked, and shaded and finally hid the window at which Rhoda never sat to welcome her husband-lover. After her death the Elder so grieved that he had naught to remind him and speak to him of his beloved, that he boldly decided to name his boat for her; but as he could not conscientiously say she had ever encouraged him by word or look in his incipient love-making, and he must be strictly honest and chivalrously respectful to her memory, he painted upon the boat in black letters this truthful yet dimly consoling legend, “Rhoda Wouldnt.” Poor Elder! Many a time had he ventured a-courting, and slowly entering, after his unanswered assault upon the door-knocker, had found the kitchen of this elusive Rhoda vacant,—but her rocking-chair was slowly rocking,—so he sadly left the deserted room, the unwelcoming house.
He sacrificed his life to his affection for his dead love. He had all his days a fear, a premonition, that he should lose his life through a horse, so he never rode or drove, but walked, rowed, or sailed, and lived on an island to escape his dreaded doom. When Rhoda’s brother died in a distant town, the Elder was bidden to the funeral, and he honored his Rhoda’s memory by his attendance, and he had to ride there. As he left the house of mourning, a fractious young colt ran away with him, threw him out of the wagon, and broke his neck.
His sweetheart’s “Leather-Works” still exist, to keep fresh this New England romance. I saw them last summer in the attic of the Town Hall. Rhoda left them in her will to her church, and they are now the property of the village church-guild. The guild is vigorous and young, so can bear this ancient maiden’s bequest with cheerful carriage and undaunted spirits. The leather-works are many and ponderous. One is a vast trellis (which may have been originally two clothes-horses), hung with elaborately twisted and tendrilled vines, bearing minutely veined leaves and various counterfeit and imaginary fruits. The bunches of grapes are made of home-cast leaden bullets, or round stones, covered dexterously and with unparalleled neatness and imperceptible stitches with pieces of old kid gloves or thin leather; and to each a common dress-hook is attached. The stem of the bunch has corresponding eyes, to each of which a grape is hung. By this ingenious means the bunches of grapes could be neatly dusted each week, and kept in repair, as well as easily shaped. On this trellis hung also Roses of Sharon, a mystic flower which Rhoda’s sister Eunice invented, and which had a deep spiritual signification, as well as extraordinary outline and intricate composition. Every leaf, every grape, every monstrous fruit, every flower of these Leather-Works, speaks of the æsthetic longing, the vague mysticism, the stifled repression, of Rhoda Baker’s life; and they speak equally of the Elder’s love. It was he who moulded the bullets, and searched on the shore for carefully rounded stones; and he who haunted the country saddlers and repair-shops for waste strips of leather, which he often deposited in the silent kitchen by the rocking-chair, sure of grateful though unspoken thanks. Many a pair of his old boot-tops figures as glorious vine leaves; and he even tanned and dressed skins to supply swiftly the artist’s materials when genius burned. It was he who tenderly unhooked the grapes and pears, the fruits of Eden and the Roses of Sharon, when the trellis was transported to the Town Hall, and he reverently placed the trophies of his true love’s skill and genius in place in their new home. I always rather resent the fact that Rhoda did not bequeath the Leather-Works to him, when I think of the vast and almost sacred pleasure he would have had in them; as well as when I remember the share he had in the preparations for their manufacture. And the Leather-Works speak still another lesson, as do many of the household grotesqueries seen in New England, a lesson of sympathy, almost of beauty, to those who “read between the lines, the finer grace of unfulfilled designs.”
CHAPTER X.
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY.
We are constantly hearing the statement reiterated, that the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution was the first association of women ever formed for patriotic purpose. This assertion shows a lamentable ignorance of Revolutionary history; for a century and a quarter ago, before the War of the Revolution, patriotic societies of women were formed all over the country, and called Daughters of Liberty. Our modern bands should be distinguished by being called the first patriotic-hereditary societies of women.
As we approach Revolutionary days, it is evident that the women of all the colonies were as deeply stirred as were the men at the constant injustice and growing tyranny of the British government, and they were not slow in openly averring their abhorrence and revolt against this injustice. Their individual action consisted in the wearing only of garments of homespun manufacture; their concerted exertions in gathering in patriotic bands to spin, and the signing of compacts to drink no more of the taxed tea, that significant emblem of British injustice and American revolt.
The earliest definite notice of any gathering of Daughters of Liberty was in Providence in 1766, when seventeen young ladies met at the house of Deacon Ephraim Bowen and spun all day long for the public benefit, and assumed the name Daughters of Liberty. The next meeting the little band had so increased in numbers that it had to meet in the Court House. At about the same time another band of daughters gathered at Newport, and an old list of the members has been preserved. It comprised all the beautiful and brilliant young girls for which Newport was at that time so celebrated. As one result of this patriotic interest, the President and the first graduating class of Brown University, then called Rhode Island College, were clothed, at Commencement in 1769, in fabrics of American homespun manufacture. The senior class of the previous year at Harvard had been similarly dressed.
These little bands of patriotic women gathered far and wide throughout New England. At one meeting seventy linen wheels were employed. In Newbury, Beverly, Rowley, Ipswich, spinning matches were held. Let me show how the day was spent. I quote from the Boston News-Letter:—