I am convinced that a samare was a certain garment which I have seen in French, Dutch, and English portraits of the day. It is a tight-fitting jacket or waist or bodice—call it what you will; its skirt or portion below the belt-line is four to eight inches deep, cut up in tabs or oblong flaps, four on each side. These slits are to the belt line. It is, to explain further, a basque, tight-fitting or with the waist laid in plaits, and with the basque skirt cut in eight tabs. These laps or tabs set out rather stiffly and squarely over the full-gathered petticoats of the day.
I turn to a Dutch dictionary for a definition of the word “samare,” though my Dutch dictionary being of the date 1735 is too recent a publication to be of much value. In it a samare is defined simply as a woman’s gown. Randle Holme says, rather vaguely, that it is a short jacket for women’s wear with four side-laps, reaching to the knees. In this rich wardrobe of the widow De Lange, twelve petticoats are enumerated and no overdress-jacket or doublet of any kind except those samares. Their price shows that they were not a small garment. One “silk potoso-a-samare with lace” was worth £;3. One “tartanel samare with tucker” was worth £;1 10s. One “black silk crape samare with tucker” was worth £;1 10s., and three “flowered calico” samares were worth £;2 10s. They were evidently of varying weights for summer and winter wear, and were worn over the rich petticoat.
The bill of the Salem tailor, William Sweatland (1679), shows that he charged 9s. for making a scarlet petticoat with silver lace; for making a black broadcloth gown 18s.; while “new-makeing a plush somar for Mistress.” (which was making over) was 6s.; “making a somar for your Maide” was 10s., which was the same price he charged for making a gown for the maid.
The colors in the Dutch gowns were uniformly gay. Madam Cornelia de Vos in a green cloth petticoat, a red and blue “Haarlamer” waistcoat, a pair of red and yellow sleeves, a white cornet cap, green stockings with crimson clocks, and a purple “Pooyse” apron was a blooming flower-bed of color.
Mrs. Magdalen Beekman.
I fear we have unconsciously formed our mental pictures of our Dutch forefathers through the vivid descriptions of Washington Irving. We certainly cannot improve upon his account of the Dutch housewife of New Amsterdam:—
“Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, though I must confess those gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen’s small-clothes; and what is still more praise-worthy, they were all of their own manufacture,—of which circumstance, as may well be supposed, they were not a little vain.
“Those were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets,—ay, and that, too, of a goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles where all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed.
“Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbons, or, among the more opulent and showy classes, by brass and even silver chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and a neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle.
“There was a secret charm in those petticoats, which no doubt entered into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock of petticoats and stockings was as absolutely an heiress as is a Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with plenty of reindeer.”
A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting New York in 1704, wrote also with clear pen:—