These portraits show whisks in slightly varying forms. We have the “broad Lace lying down” in the handsome band at the shoulder; the “little lace standing up” was a narrow lace edging the whisk at the throat or just above the broad lace. Sometimes the whisk was wholly of mull or lawn. The whisk was at first wholly a part of woman’s attire, then for a time it was worn, in modified form, by men.
Madam Pepys had a white whisk in 1660 and then a “noble lace whisk.” The same year she bought hers in London, Governor Berkeley paid half a pound for a tiffany whisk in Virginia. Many American women, probably all well-dressed women, had them. They are also seen on French portraits of the day. One of Madam de Maintenon shows precisely the same whisk as this of Madam Padishal’s, tied in front with tiny knots of ribbon.
It will be noted that Madam Padishal has black lace frills about the upper portion of the sleeve, at the arm-scye. English portraits previous to the year 1660 seldom show black lace, and portraits are not many of the succeeding forty years which have black lace, so in this American portrait this detail is unusual. The wearing of black lace came into a short popularity in the year 1660, through compliment to the Spanish court upon the marriage of the young French king, Louis XIV, with the Infanta. The English court followed promptly. Pepys gloried in “our Mistress Stewart in black and white lace.” It interests me to see how quickly American women had the very latest court fashions and wore them even in uncourtlike America; such distinct novelties as black lace. Contemporary descriptions of dress are silent as to it by the year 1700, and it disappears from portraits until a century later, when we have pretty black lace collars, capes and fichus, as may be seen on the portraits of Mrs. Sedgwick, Mrs. Waldo, and others later in this book. These first black laces of 1660 are Bayeux laces, which are precisely like our Chantilly laces of to-day. This ancient piece of black lace has been carefully preserved in an old New York family. A portrait of the year 1690 has a black lace frill like the Maltese laces of to-day, with the same guipure pattern. But such laces were not made in Malta until after 1833. So it must have been a guipure lace of the kind known in England as parchment lace. This was made in the environs of Paris, but was seldom black, so this was a rare bit. It was sometimes made of gold and silver thread. Parchment lace was a favorite lace of Mary, Queen of Scots, and through her good offices was peddled in England by French lace-makers. The black moiré hoods of Italian women sometimes had a narrow edge of black lace, and a little was brought to England on French hoods, but as a whole black lace was seldom seen or known.
Ancient Black Lace.
An evidence of the widespread extent of fashions even in that day, a proof that English and French women and American women (when American women there were other than the native squaws) all dressed alike, is found in comparing portraits. An interesting one from the James Jackson Jarvis Collection is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is of an unknown woman and by an unknown artist, and is simply labelled “Of the School of Susteman.” But this unknown Frenchwoman has a dress as precisely like Madam Padishal’s and Madam Stoddard’s as are Doucet’s models of to-day like each other. All have the whisk of rich straight-edged lace, and the tiny knots of velvet ribbon. All have the sleeve knots, but the French portrait is gay in narrow red and buff ribbon.
Doubtless many have formed their notion of Puritan dress from the imaginary pictures of several popular modern artists. It can plainly be seen by any one who examines the portraits in this book that they are little like these modern representations. The single figures called “Priscilla” and “Rose Standish” are well known. The former is the better in costume, and could the close dark cloth or velvet hood with turned-back band, and plain linen edge displayed beneath, be exchanged for the horseshoe shaped French hood which was then and many years later the universal head-wear, the verisimilitude would be increased. This hood is shown on the portraits of Madam Rawson, Madam Stoddard, Mistress Paddy, and others in this book. Rose Standish’s cap is a very pretty one, much prettier than the French hood, but I do not find it like any cap in English portraits of that day. Nor have I seen her picturesque sash. I do not deny the existence in portraits of 1620 of this cap and sash; I simply say that I have never found them myself in the hundreds of English portraits, effigies, etc., that I have examined.
It will be noted that the women in the modern pictures all wear aprons. I think this is correct as they are drawn in their everyday dress, but it will be noted that none of these portraits display an apron; nor was an apron part of any rich dress in the seventeenth century. The reign of the apron had been in the sixteenth century, and it came in again with Anne. Of course every woman in Massachusetts used aprons.
Early inventories of the effects of emigrant dames contain many an item of those housewifely garments. Jane Humphreys, of Dorchester, Massachusetts, had in her good wardrobe, in 1668, “2 Blew aprons, A White Holland Apron with a Small Lace at the bottom. A White Holland Apron with two breathes in it. My best white apron. My greene apron.”