For the dress of children of the early years of colonial life—the seventeenth century—I have an unusual group of five portraits. One is the little Padishal child, shown with her mother in the frontispiece, one is Robert Gibbes (shown [here]). The third child is said to be John Quincy—his picture is opposite this page. The two portraits of Margaret and Henry Gibbes are owned in Virginia; but are too dimly photographed for reproduction. The portrait of Robert Gibbes is owned by inheritance by Miss Sarah B. Hager, of Kendal Green, Massachusetts. It is well preserved, having hung for over a hundred years on the same wall in the old house. He was four years old when this portrait was painted. It is marked 1670. John Quincy’s portrait is marked also plainly as one and a half years old, and with a date which is a bit dimmed; it is either 1670 or 1690. If it is 1690, the picture can be that of John Quincy, though he would scarcely be as large as is the portrayed figure. If the date is 1670, it cannot be John Quincy, for he was born in 1689. The picture has the same checker-board floor as the three other Gibbes portraits, four rows of squares wide; and the child’s toes are set at the same row as are the toes of the shoes in the picture of Robert Gibbes.
The portraits of Henry and Margaret Gibbes are also marked plainly 1670. There was a fourth Gibbes child, who would have been just the age of the subject of the Quincy portrait; and it is natural that there should be a suspicion that this fourth portrait is of the fourth Gibbes child, not of John Quincy.
John Quincy.
Margaret Gibbes was born in 1663. Henry Gibbes was born in 1667. He became a Congregational minister. His daughter married Nathaniel Appleton, and through Nathaniel, John, Dr. John S., and John, the portrait, with that of Margaret, came to the present owner, General John W. S. Appleton, of Charlestown, West Virginia.
The dress of these five children is of the same rich materials that would be worn by their mothers. The Padishal child wears black velvet like her mother’s gown; but her frock is brightened with scarlet points of color. The linings of the velvet hanging sleeves, the ribbon knots of the white virago-sleeve, the shoe-tip, the curious cap-tassel, are of bright scarlet. We have noted the dominance of scarlet in old English costumes. It was evidently the only color favored for children. The lace cap, the rich lace stomacher, the lace-edged apron, all are of Flemish lace. Margaret Gibbes wears a frock of similar shape, and equally rich and dark in color; it is a heavy brocade of blue and red, with a bit of yellow. Her fine apron, stomacher, and full sleeves are rich in needlework. Robert Gibbes’s “coat,” as a boy’s dress at that age then was called, is a striking costume. The inmost sleeves are of white lawn, over them are sleeves made of strips of galloon of a pattern in yellow, white, scarlet, and black, with a rolled cuff of red velvet. There is a similar roll around the hem of the coat. Still further sleeves are hanging sleeves of velvet trimmed with the galloon.
It will be noted that his hanging sleeve is cut square and trimmed squarely across the end. It is similar to the sleeves worn at the same time by citizens of London in their formal “liveryman’s” dress, which had bands like pockets, that sometimes really were pockets.
His plain, white, hemstitched band would indicate that he was a boy, did not the swing of his petticoats plainly serve to show it, as do also his brothers’ “coats.” That child knew well what it was to tread and trip on those hated petticoats as he went upstairs. I know how he begged for breeches. The apron of John Quincy varies slightly in shape from that of the other boy, but the general dress is like, save his pretty, gay, scarlet hood, worn over a white lace cap. One unique detail of these Gibbes portraits, and the Quincy portrait, is the shoes. In all four, the shoes are of buff leather, with absolutely square toes, with a thick, scarlet sole to which the buff-leather upper seems tacked with a row either of long, thick, white stitches or of heavy metal-headed nails; these white dots are very ornamental. One pair of the shoes has great scarlet roses on the instep. The square toe was distinctly a Cavalier fashion. It is in Miss Campion’s portrait, facing this page, and in the print of the Prince of Orange [here], and is found in many portraits of the day. But these American shoes are in the minor details entirely unlike any English shoes I have seen in any collection elsewhere, and are most interesting. They were doubtless English in make.
The portrait of John Quincy resembles much in its dress that of Oliver Cromwell when two years old, the picture now at Chequers Court. Cromwell’s linen collar is rounded, and a curious ornament is worn in front, as a little girl would wear a locket. The whole throat and a little of the upper neck is bare. Dark hair, slightly curled, comes out from the close cap in front of the ears. This picture of Cromwell distinctly resembles his mother’s portrait.