Blue Brocade Gown and Quilted Satin Petticoat.
Masks were in those years in constant wear in the French court and society, as a protection to the complexion when walking or riding. Sometimes plain glass was fitted in the eye-holes. French masks had wires which fastened behind the ears, or a mouthpiece of silver; or they had an ingenious and simple stay in the form of two strings at the corners of the mouth-opening of the mask. These strings ended in a silver button or glass bead. With a bead held firmly in either corner of her mouth, the mask-wearer could talk. These vizards are seen in old English wood-cuts, often hanging by the side, fastened to the belt with a small cord or chain. They brought forth the bitter denunciations of the old Puritan Stubbes. He writes in his Anatomie of Abuses:—
“When they vse to ride abroad, they haue visors made of ueluet (or in my iudgment they may rather be called inuisories) wherewith they couer all their faces, hauing holes made in them agaynst their eies, whereout they looke. So that if a man that knew not their guise before, shoulde chaunce to meete one of theme, he would thinke he mette a monster or a deuill; for face he can see none, but two broad holes against their eyes with glasses in them.”
Masks were certainly worn to a considerable extent in America. As early as 1645, masks were forbidden in Plymouth, Massachusetts, “for improper purposes.” When you think of the Plymouth of that year, its few houses and inhabitants, its desperate struggle to hold its place at all as a community, the narrow means of its citizens, the comparatively scant wardrobes of the wives and daughters, this restriction as to mask-wearing seems a grim jest. They were for sale in Salem and Boston, black velvet masks worth two shillings each; but these towns were more flourishing than Plymouth. And New York dames had them, and the planters’ wives of Virginia and South Carolina.
I suppose Madam Symonds wore her mask when she mounted on a pillion behind some strong young lad, and rode out to Argilla Farm.
A few years later than the dates when Madam Symonds was ordering these fashionable articles of dress from England a rhyming catalogue of a lady’s toilet was written by John Evelyn and entitled, Mundus Muliebris or a Voyage to Mary-Land; it might be a list of Madam Symonds’s wardrobe. Some of the lines run:—
“One gown of rich black silk, which odd is
Without one coloured embroidered boddice.
Three manteaux, nor can Madam less
Provision have for due undress.
Of under-boddice three neat pair
Embroidered, and of shoes as fair;
Short under petticoats, pure fine,
Some of Japan stuff, some of Chine,
With knee-high galoon bottomed;
Another quilted white and red,
With a broad Flanders lace below.
Three night gowns of rich Indian stuff;
Four cushion-cloths are scarce enough.
A manteau girdle, ruby buckle,
And brilliant diamond ring for knuckle.
Fans painted and perfumed three;
Three muffs of ermine, sable, grey.”
Other articles of personal and household comfort were gathered in London shops by her dutiful son and sent to Madam Symonds. The list is full of interest, and helps to fill out the picture of daily life. He despatched to her cloves, nutmegs, spices, eringo roots, “coronation” and stock-gilly-flower seed, “colly flower seed,” hearth brushes (these came every year), silver whistles and several pomanders and pomander-beads, bouquet-glasses (which could hardly have been the bosom bottles which were worn later), necklaces, amber beads, many and varied pins, needles, silk lacings, kid gloves, silver ink-boxes, sealing-wax, gilt trunks, fancy boxes, painted desks, tape, ferret, bobbin, bone lace, calico, gimp, many yards of ducape, lustring, persian, and other silk stuffs—all these items of transport show the son’s devoted selection of the articles his mother wished. Gowns seem never to have been sent, but manteaus, mantles, and “ferrandine” cloaks appear frequently. Of course there are some articles which cannot be positively described to-day, such as the “shape, with ruffles” and “double pleated drolls” and “lace drolls” which appear several times on the lists. These “drolls” were, I believe, the “drowlas” of Madame de Lange, in New Amsterdam. “Men’s knives” occasionally were sent, and “women’s knives” many times. These latter had hafts of ivory, agate, and “Ellotheropian.” This Ellotheropian or Alleteropeain or Illyteropian stone has been ever a great puzzle to me until in another letter I chanced to find the spelling Hellotyropian; then I knew the real word was the Heliotropium of the ancients, our blood-stone. It was a favorite stone of the day not only for those fancy-handled knives, but for seals, finger-rings and other forms of ornament.