Stubbes of course told of the fashion of cloak-wearing:—
“They have clokes also in nothing discrepant from the rest; of dyverse and sundry colours, white red tawnie black, green yellow russet purple violet and an infinyte of other colours. Some of cloth silk velvet taffetie and such like; some of the Spanish French or Dutch fashion. Some short, scarcely reaching to the gyrdlestead or waist, some to the knee, and othersome trayling upon the ground almost like gownes than clokes. These clokes must be garded laced &; thorouly full, and sometimes so lined as the inner side standeth almost in as much as the outside. Some have sleeves, othersome have none. Some have hoodes to pull over the head, some have none. Some are hanged with points and tassels of gold silver silk, some without all this. But howsoever it bee, the day hath bene when one might have bought him two Clokes for lesse than now he can have one of these Clokes made for. They have such store of workmanship bestowed upon them.”
It is such descriptions as this that make me regard in admiration this ancient Puritan. Would that I had the power of his pen! Fashion-plates, forsooth! The Journal of the Modes!—pray, what need have we of any pictures or any mantua-maker’s words when we can have such a description as this. Why! the man had a perfect genius for millinery! Had he lived three centuries later, we might have had Master Stubbes in full control (openly or secretly, according to his environment) of some dress-making or tailoring establishment pour les dames.
The lining of these cloaks was often very gay in color and costly; “standing in as much as the outside.” We find a son of Governor Winthrop writing in 1606:—
“I desire you to bring me a very good camlet cloake lyned with what you like except blew. It may be purple or red or striped with those or other colors if so worn suitable and fashionable.... I would make a hard shift rather than not have the cloak.”
Similar cloaks of scarlet, and of blue lined with scarlet, formed part of the uniform of soldiers for many years and for many nations. They were certainly the wear of thrifty comfortable English gentlemen. Did not John Gilpin wear one on his famous ride?
“There was all that he might be
Equipped from head to toe,
His long red cloak well-brushed and neat
He manfully did throw.”
Scarlet was a most popular color for all articles of dress in the early years of the eighteenth century. Like the good woman in the Book of Proverbs, both English and American housewife “clothed her household in scarlet.” Women as well as men wore these scarlet cloaks. It is curious to learn from Mrs. Gummere that even Quakers wore scarlet. When Margaret Fell married George Fox, greatest of Quakers, he bought her a scarlet mantle. And in 1678 he sent her scarlet cloth for another mantle. There was good reason in the wear of scarlet; it both was warm and looked warm; and the color was a lasting one. It did not fade like many of the homemade dyes.
