The baby dresses of olden times are either rather shapeless sacques drawn in at the neck with narrow cotton ferret or linen bobbin, or little straight-waisted gowns of state. All were exquisitely made by hand, and usually of fine stuff. Many are trimmed with fine cording.
It is astounding to note the infinite number of stitches put in garments. An infant’s slips quilted with a single tiny backstitch in a regular design of interlaced squares, stars, and rounds. By counting the number of rounds and the stitches in each, and so on, it has been found that there are 397,000 stitches in that dress. Think of the time spent even by the quickest sewer over such a piece of work.
Within a few years we have shortened the long clothes worn by youngest infants; twenty-five years ago the handsome dress of an infant, such as the christening-robe, was so long that when the child was held on the arm of its standing nurse or mother, the edge of the robe barely escaped touching the ground. Two hundred years ago, a baby’s dress was much shorter. In the family group of Charles I and Henrietta Maria and their children, in the Copley family picture, and in the picture of the Cadwalader family, we find the little baby in scarce “three-quarters length” of robe. With this exception it is astonishing to find how little infants’ dress has changed during the two centuries. In 1889, at the Stuart Exhibition, some of the infant dresses of Charles I were shown. They had been preserved in the family of Sir Thomas Coventry, Lord Keeper. And Charles II’s baby linen was on view in the New Gallery in 1901. Both sets had the dainty little shirts, slips, bibs, mitts, and all the babies’ dress of fifty years ago, and the changes since then have been few. The “barrow-coat,” a square of flannel wrapped around an infant’s body below the arms with the part below the feet turned up and pinned, was part of the old swaddling-clothes; and within ten years it has been largely abandoned for a flannel petticoat on a band or waist. The bands, or binders, have always been the same as to-day, and the bibs. The lace cuffs and lace mittens were left off before the caps. The shirt is the most important change.
Nowadays a little infant wears long clothes till three, four, or even eight months old; then he is put in short dresses about as long as he is. In colonial days when a boy was taken from his swaddling-clothes, he was dressed in a short frock with petticoats and was “coated” or sometimes “short-coated.” When he left off coats, he donned breeches. In families of sentiment and affection, the “coating” of a boy was made a little festival. So was also the assumption of breeches an important event—as it really is, as we all know who have boys.
One of the most charming of all grandmothers’ letters was written by a doting English grandmother to her son. Lord Chief Justice North, telling of the “leaving off of coats” of his motherless little son, Francis Guilford, then six years old. The letter is dated October 10, 1679:—
“DEAR SON:
You cannot beleeve the great concerne that was in the whole family here last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to helpe to dress little ffrank in his breeches in order to the making an everyday suit by it. Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her weding night more handes about her, some the legs, some the armes, the taylor butt’ning, and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that had I not a ffinger amongst I could not have seen him. When he was quite drest he acted his part as well as any of them for he desired he might goe downe to inquire for the little gentleman that was there the day before in a black coat, and speak to the man to tell the gentleman when he came from school that there was a gallant with very fine clothes and a sword to have waited upon him and would come again upon Sunday next. But this was not all, there was great contrivings while he was dressing who should have the first salute; but he sayd if old Joan had been here, she should, but he gave it to me to quiett them all. They were very fitt, everything, and he looks taller and prettyer than in his coats. Little Charles rejoyced as much as he did for he jumpt all the while about him and took notice of everything. I went to Bury, and bot everything for another suitt which will be finisht on Saturday so the coats are to be quite left off on Sunday. I consider it is not yett terme time and since you could not have the pleasure of the first sight, I resolved you should have a full relation from
“Yo’r most Aff’nate Mother
“A. North.
“When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion because they had not sent him one.”
This affectionate letter, written to a great and busy statesman, the Lord Keeper of the Seals, shows how pure and delightful domestic life in England could be; it shows how beautiful it was after Puritanism perfected the English home.
In an old family letter dated 1780 I find this sentence:—
“Mary is most wise with her child, and hath no new-fangledness. She has little David in what she wore herself, a pudding and pinner.”
For a time these words “pudding and pinner” were a puzzle; and long after pinner was defined we could not even guess at a pudding. But now I know two uses of the word “pudding” which are in no dictionary. One is the stuffing of a man’s great neck-cloth in front, under the chin. The other is a thick roll or cushion stuffed with wool or some soft filling and furnished with strings. This pudding was tied round the head of a little child while it was learning to walk. The head was thus protected from serious bruises or injury. Nollekens noted with satisfaction such a pudding on the head of an infant, and said: “That is right. I always wore a pudding, and all children should.” I saw one upon a child’s head last summer in a New England town; I asked the mother what it was, and she answered, “A pudding-cap”; that it made children soft (idiotic) to bump the head frequently.