Judge Stoughton.
A very interesting study is that of color in wearing apparel. Beginning with the few crude dyes of mediaeval days, we could trace the history of dyeing, and the use and invention of new colors and tints. The names of these colors are delightful; the older quaint titles seem wonderfully significant. We read of such tints as billymot, phillymurt, or philomot (feuille-mort), murry, blemmish, gridolin (gris-de-lin or flax blossom), puce colour, foulding colour, Kendal green, Lincoln green, treen-colour, watchet blue, barry, milly, tuly, stammel red, Bristol red, zaffer-blue, which was either sapphire-blue or zaffre-blue, and a score of fanciful names whose signification and identification were lost with the death of the century. Historical events were commemorated in new hues; we have the political, diplomatic, and military history of various countries hinted to us. Great discoveries and inventions give names to colors. The materials and methods of dyeing, especially domestic dyes, are most interesting. An allied topic is the significance of colors, the limitation of their use. For instance, the study of blue would fill a chapter. The dress of ’prentices and serving-men in Elizabeth’s day was always blue blue cloaks in winter, blue coats in summer. Blue was not precisely a livery; it was their color, the badge of their condition in life, as black is now a parson’s. Different articles of dress clung to certain colors. Green stockings had their time and season of clothing the sturdy legs of English dames as inevitably as green stalks filled the fields. Think of the years of domination of the green apron; of the black hood—it is curious indeed.
In such exhaustive books upon special topics as the History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London we find wonderfully interesting and significant proof of the power of color; also in many the restrictive sumptuary laws of the Crown.
It would appear that this long, scarlet cloak never was out of wear for men and women until the nineteenth century. It was, at times, not the height of the fashion, but still was worn. Various ancient citizens of Boston, of Salem, are recalled through letter or traditions as clinging long to this comfortable cloak. Samuel Adams carried a scarlet cloak with him when he went to Washington.
I shall tell in a later chapter of my own great-great-grandmother’s wear of a scarlet cloak until the opening years of the nineteenth century. During and after the Revolution these cloaks remained in high favor for women. French officers, writing home to France glowing accounts of the fair Americans, noted often that the ladies wore scarlet cloaks, and Madame Riedesel asserted that all gentlewomen in Canada never left the house save in a scarlet silk or cloth cloak.
“A woman’s long scarlet cloak, almost new with a double cape,” had been one of the articles feloniously taken from the house of Benjamin Franklin, printer, in Philadelphia, in 1750. Debby Franklin’s dress, if we can judge from what was stolen, was a gay revel of color. Among the articles was one gown having a pattern of “large red roses and other large yellow flowers with blue in some of the flowers with many green leaves.”
In the Life of Jonathan Trumbull we read that when a collection was taken in the Lebanon church for the benefit of the soldiers of the Continental army, when money, jewels, clothing, and food were gathered in a great heap near the pulpit, Madam Faith Trumbull rose up, threw from her shoulders her splendid scarlet cloth cloak, a gift from Count Rochambeau, advanced to the altar and laid the cloak with other offerings of patriotism and generosity. It was used, we are told, to trim the uniforms of the Continental officers and soldiers.
Woman’s Cloak. From Hogarth.