“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend
Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute.”
This precision in work is that of the skilled hand and thinking brain controlling the machine, not the vast power of steam relentlessly crowding the overworked body and dulled brain.
By this hand-weaving, as if to prove Ruskin’s glowing and inspiring assertions, this weaver earns an independent living in intelligent work, of reasonable hours, in a comfortable house, and in conditions favorable to health—a vast contrast to the overworked, unhealthy, poorly fed, stultified factory-worker. His business has so prospered of late that he has had a trade-card printed at the village printer’s like any other independent manufacturer. From it I learn that he weaves rag-carpets, bed-coverlets, and hap-harlots. Hap-harlots, forsooth! could anyone believe that obsolete word had been used since Holinshed’s day? He wrote in 1570, in his “Chronicles of England,” etc.:
“Our fathers have lien full oft upon straw pallets or rough mats, covered onlie with a sheet under coverlets made of dagswain or hap-harlots, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster.”
Yet here have been Narragansett weavers weaving hap-harlots, and sleeping under hap-harlots, and speaking of hap-harlots as though three centuries ago were as yesterday. I presume they have made dagswains also, since there still exists bills of Narragansett shepherds for dagging sheep.
The old-time cotton and wool bed-spreads or coverlets, seen of old on every four-post bedstead, he now sells for portières and bathroom rugs, as well as for bed and couch spreads. They are woven in simple geometric patterns, just as in the times of the ancient Britons, when the wools of the weft were dyed with woad and broom. The patterns are nearly all over a century old. He has a worn pattern-book with bewildering rules for setting the heddles for over fifty designs. Quaint of name are the patterns: “chariot-wheels and church-windows,” is a bold, large design; “church-steps,” a simpler one; “bachelors’ fancy,” “devil’s fancy,” “five doves in a row,” “shooting-star,” “rising sun,” “rail fence,” “green veils,” offer little in their designs to give reason for their names. “Whig rose,” “Perry’s Victory,” and “Lady Washington’s fancy,” show an historical influence in naming. “Orange-peel” is simply a series of oblong hexagons honeycombed together. “All summer and all winter” was similar. “Bricks and blocks” is evenly checkered. “Capus diaper” is more a complicated design for weaving damask linen, taking five harnesses. Floral names are common, such as “Dutch tulip,” “rose in bloom,” “pansies in the wilderness,” “five snow-balls,” etc.
The loom on which this Narragansett weaver works might be six centuries old. You may see precisely similar ones pictured by Hogarth in the middle of the eighteenth century; and an older one still in the Campanile at Florence, by Giotto, in 1334.
These excerpts from a letter of Weaver Rose’s give some pleasant weaver’s lore, and are in the lucid, simple, and quaint English to be expected of a man who still weaves and talks of hap-harlots:
“My grandfather and grandmother Robert and Mary Northrup lived at what is now called Stuart Vale but then known as the Fish Pond, in a little hamlet of four houses, only one of which, my grandfather’s, is now standing. He owned a shore and fished in the spring and wove some at home and went out amongst the larger farmers working at his trade of weaving, whilst his wife carried on the weaving at home and had a number of apprentices. He learned his trade of weaving of Martin Read, the deacon of St. Paul’s Church, who lived a few rods from the church. He died in 1822, his wife lived till 1848. The spool I gave you was made by Langworthy Pierce, a veteran of the Revolution. It has the initials of his name. I send you now one of his shuttles used for weaving broadcloth, and a square of linen I have woven for you of a pattern of five harnesses called Browbey. The looms here in Narragansett were all made by local carpenters. Stephen Northrup made looms, and Freeborn Church made looms and spinning wheels. I have 2 of his make. Friend Earle! more money can be made by weaving than farming. I have wove 30 yards of rag carpet in one day at 10 cents a yard; or 23 cents a yard when I found the warp. There was a man here by the name of Eber Sherman, he called himself Slippery Eber. He died in the war of 1812; his widow worked at spinning for 25 cents per day and supported herself and one son well on that wage. One dollar and a half per week was regular wage for a woman’s work. It took a woman one week to weave a coverlet of 3 yards long and 2-1/2 yards wide. Mahala Douglas went out to work at one dollar and a half per week making butter and cheese, milking seven cows every week day and nine on Sunday. She died leaving a large Estate, several thousand dollars, which her Legatees had no trouble in spending in six weeks. My grandfather was one of eight children. One brother was Rev. William Northrup; Thurston Northrup, another brother, was a school-teacher and a weaver of coverlets and cloth. John Northrup was called Weaver John. He was a coverlet weaver. John Congdon was a maker of Weavers’ reeds or slays. I have 70 or 80 of his make in my house. I have a reed that my grandfather Northrup had made when he went to the Island of Rhode Island weaving Broadcloth. He received 50 cents per day pay. Good Cream Cheese was 3 cents a pound at the same time of the Embargo in the war of 1812. I have an Eight and Twenty slay with 29 Beer that cost one dollar, made by John Congdon 70 years ago, as good as when made. He lived in North Kingston.”