As has been said, we are wont to think of our esteemed progenitors of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods as performing valuable service in their day and generation, “being good,” as some wit expresses it, “but not having a very good time.” If our thoughts revert to the ladies of the last century, we picture them spending their days in spinning, knitting, or sewing, surrounded by their maid-servants, whom they are instructing in these most useful arts, as the Mother of the Republic is described by so many who visited her at Mount Vernon, rather than in bedecking themselves for conquest in the gay world. The men of the period seem to have spent so much of their time at assemblies, not dancing assemblies, but those in which the laws of the Colonies were discussed, and land-claims, quit-rents, and other dry affairs settled, that we are surprised when a stray leaf from the note-book of some public man floats down to us containing such entries as the following:
| Diana for attendance | 15s. |
| For candles | £1.12s. |
| “ snuffers | 4s. |
| “ three dozen chairs | £7. |
| “ 200 limes | 14s. |
| “ 18 pounds milk bisket | 9s. |
| “ 5 gallons rum and cask | £2.3s. |
| “ Musick | £1.10s. |
Learning that these items were among the expenses of an early Philadelphia Dancing Assembly, and that the wives and daughters of such ancient worthies as His Honor the Governor of Pennsylvania, Chief Justice Shippen, Thomas Hopkinson, and the Bond brothers wore rich imported silks, feathers, and flowers, and attended routs and balls, life in the old Provincial city is suddenly lit up with brighter hues, and gay scenes take their place upon the canvas of the past.
History has treated with such dignified silence this more frivolous side of Philadelphia life that it is only from old manuscript letters and note-books, from such sprightly diaries as those of William Black, of Virginia, Sarah Eve, and Sally Wister, and from Watson and other annalists, that we learn that there was much gayety, as well as rare good living, in this city in the last century. As early as 1738 we read of a dancing class, instructed by Theobald Hackett, who engaged to teach
“all sorts of fashionable English and French dances, after the newest and politest manner practised in London, Dublin, and Paris, and to give to young ladies, gentlemen, and children the most graceful carriage in dancing and genteel behavior in company that can possibly be given by any dancing-master whatever.”
Certainly the dancing-master’s card is worded in the “politest manner,” and his pupils in this city must have proved singularly apt in the Terpsichorean art, as the Philadelphia women were noted, at an early date, for their grace and social charm.
Later, one Kennet taught dancing and fencing, as did also John Ormsby, from London, “in the newest taste now practised in Europe, at Mr. Foster’s house, in Market Street, opposite the Horse and Dray.”
These announcements sound strangely un-Quakerlike, and in 1749 such alarming premonitory symptoms of gayety culminated in a regular series of subscription balls, after the London fashion. The good Quakers naturally looked askance at such festivities; consequently we find the names of no Pembertons, Logans, Fishers, Lloyds, Whartons, Coxes, Rawles, Norrises, Peningtons, Emlens, Morrises, or Biddles on the original list of membership; but here are M’Calls, Francises, Burds, Shippens, Barclays, Wilcockses, Willings, McIlvaines, Hamiltons, Allens, Whites, and Conynghams.
The clergy was represented in these early Assemblies by the Rev. Richard Peters, of London, who held high positions in the State as well as in the Church, and the Provincial Government by James Hamilton, the first American-born governor of Pennsylvania. A letter from Richard Peters to Thomas Penn shows what a warm interest the reverend gentleman took in the recently-formed Assembly. The letter is dated New Castle, May 3, 1749, and reads as follows: