PATTENS, CLOGS, AND GOLOE-SHOES
hen this old pigskin trunk was new, the men who fought in the Revolution were young. Here is the date, “1756,” and the initials in brass-headed nails, “J.E.H.” It was a bride’s trunk, the trunk of Elizabeth, who married John; and it was marked after the manner of marking the belongings of married folk in her day. It is curious in shape, spreading out wide at the top; for it was made to fit a special place in an old coach. I have told the story of that ancient coach in my Old Narragansett: the tale of the ignoble end of its days, the account of its fall from transportation of this happy bride and bridegroom, through years of stately use and formal dignity to more years of happy desuetude as a children’s cubby-house; and finally its ignominy as a roosting-place, and hiding-place, and laying-place, and setting-place of misinformed and misguided hens. Under the coachman’s seat, where the two-score dark-blue Staffordshire pie-plates were found on the day of the annihilation of the coach, was the true resting-place of this trunk. It was a hidden spot, for the trunk was small, and was intended to hold only treasures. It holds them still, though they are not the silver-plate, the round watches, the narrow laces, and the precious camel’s-hair scarf. It now holds treasured relics of the olden time; trifles, but not unconsidered ones; much esteemed trifles are they, albeit not in form or shape or manner of being fit to rest in parlor cabinets or on tables, but valued, nevertheless, valued for that most intangible of qualities—association.
Iron and Leather Pattens. 1760.
Oak, Iron, and Leather Clogs. 1790.
Here is one little “antick.” It is an ample bag with the neat double drawing-strings of our youth; a bag, nay, a pocket. It once hung by the side of some one of my forbears, perhaps Elizabeth of the brass-nailed initials. It was a much-esteemed pocket, though it is only of figured cotton or chiney; but those stuffs were much sought after when this old trunk was new. The pocket has served during recent years as a cover for two articles of footwear which many “of the younger sort” to-day have never seen—they are pattens. “Clumsy, ugly pattens” we find them frequently stigmatized in the severe words of the early years of the nineteenth century, but there is nothing ugly or clumsy about this pair. The sole is of some black, polished wood—it is heavy enough for ebony; the straps are of strong leather neatly stitched; the buckles are polished brass, and brass nails fasten the leather to the wooden soles. These soles are cut up high in a ridge to fit under the instep of a high-heeled shoe; for it was a very little lady who wore these pattens,—Elizabeth,—and her little feet always stood in the highest heels. She was active, kindly, and bountiful. She lived to great age, and she could and did walk many miles a day until the last year of her life. She is recalled as wearing a great scarlet cloak with a black silk quilted hood on cold winter days, when she visited her neighbors with kindly words, and housewifely, homely gifts, conveyed in an ample basket. The cloak was made precisely like the scarlet cloak shown [here], and had a like hood. She was brown-eyed, and her dark hair was never gray even in extreme old age; nor was the hair of her granddaughter, another Elizabeth, my grandmother. Trim and erect of figure, and precise and neat of dress, wearing, on account of this neatness, shorter petticoats, when walking, than was the mode of her day, and also through this neatness clinging to the very last to these cleanly, useful, quaint pattens. Her black hood, frilled white cap, short, quilted petticoat, high-heeled shoes, and the shining ebony and brass pattens, and over all the great, full scarlet cloak,—all these made her an unusual and striking figure against the Wayland landscape, the snowy fields and great sombre pine trees of Heard’s Island, as she trod trimly, in short pattened steps that crackled the kittly-benders in the shadowed roads, or sunk softly in the shallow mud of the sunny lanes on a snow-melting day in late winter. Would I could paint the picture as I see it!