Corroborative evidence of the richness and great cost of these hatbands is found in a letter of Susan Moseley to Governor Yardley of Virginia, telling of the exchange of a hatband and jewel for four young cows, one older cow and four oxen, on account of her “great want of cattle.” She writes on “this Last July 1650, at Elizabeth River in Virginia”:—
“I had rayther your wife should weare them then any gentle woman I yet know in ye country; but good Sir have no scruple concerninge their rightnesse, for I went my selfe from Rotterdam to ye haugh (The Hague) to inquire of ye gould smiths and found y’t they weare all Right, therefore thats without question, and for ye hat band y’t alone coste five hundred gilders as my husband knows verry well and will tell you soe when he sees you; for ye Juell and ye ringe they weare made for me at Rotterdam and I paid in good rex dollars sixty gilders for ye Juell and fivety and two gilders for ye ringe, which comes to in English monny eleaven poundes fower shillings. I have sent the sute and Ringe by your servant, and I wish Mrs. Yeardley health and prosperity to weare them in, and give you both thanks for your kind token. When my husband comes home we will see to gett ye Cattell home, in ye meantime I present my Love and service to your selfe &; wife, and commit you all to God, and remaine,
“Your friend and servant,
“SUSAN MOSELEY.”
The purchasing value of five hundred guilders, the cost of the hatband, would be equal to-day to nearly a thousand dollars.
In the portrait of Pocahontas in the original, there is also much liveliness of color, a rich scarlet with heavy braidings; these all lessen somewhat the forbidding presence of the stiff hat. She carries a fan of ostrich feathers, such as are depicted in portraits of Queen Elizabeth.
These feather fans had little looking-glasses of silvered glass or polished steel set at the base of the feathers. Euphues says, “The glasses you carry in fans of feathers show you to be lighter than feathers; the new-found glass chains that you wear about your necks, argue you to be more brittle than glass.”
These fans were, in the queen’s hands, as large as hand fire-screens; many were given to her as New Year’s gifts or other tokens, one by Sir Francis Drake. This makes me believe that they were a fashion taken from the North American Indians and eagerly adopted in England; where, for two centuries, everything related to the red-men of the New World was seized upon with avidity—except their costume.
The hat worn by Pocahontas, or a lower crowned form of it, is seen in the Hollar drawing of Puritan women ([here]), where it seems specially ugly and ineffective, and on the Quaker Tub-preacher. It lingered for many years, perched on top of French hoods, close caps, kerchiefs, and other variety of head-gear worn by women of all ranks; never elegant, never becoming. I can think of no reason for its long existence and dominance save its costliness. It was not imitated, so it kept its place as long as the supply of beaver was ample. This hat was also durable. A good beaver hat was not for a year nor even for a generation. It lasted easily half a century. But we all know that the beaver disappeared suddenly from our forests; and as a sequence the beaver hat was no longer available for common wear. It still held its place as a splendid, feather-trimmed, rich article of dress, a hat for dress wear, and it was then comely and becoming. Within a few years, through national and state protection, the beaver, most interesting of wild creatures, has increased and multiplied in North America until it has become in certain localities a serious pest to lumbermen. We must revive the fashion of real beaver hats—that will speedily exterminate the race.
Duchess of Buckingham and her Two Children.