Woman's Life in Colonial Days

by Carl Holliday

"A plain celestial blue satin with a white satin petticoat. On the neck a very large Italian gauze handkerchief with white satin stripes. The head-dress was a puff of gauze in the form of a globe on a foundation of white satin, having a double wing in large plaits, with a wreath of roses twined about it. The hair was dressed with detached curls, four each side of the neck and a floating chignon behind."

"Another was a periot made of gray Indian taffetas with dark stripes of the same color with two collars, one white, one yellow with blue silk fringe, having a reverse trimmed in the same manner. Under the periot was a yellow corset of cross blue stripes. Around the bosom of the periot was a frill of white vandyked gauze of the same form covered with black gauze which hangs in streamers down her back. Her hair behind is a large braid with a monstrous crooked comb."

We cannot say that the society of the new capital was notable for its intellect or for the intellectual turn of its activities. John Adams' daughter declared that it was "quite enough dissipated," and indeed costly dress, card playing, and dancing seem to have received an undue amount of society's attention. The Philadelphia belle, Miss Franks, wrote home: "Here you enter a room with a formal set courtesy, and after the 'How-dos' things are finished, all a dead calm until cards are introduced when you see pleasure dancing in the eyes of all the matrons, and they seem to gain new life; the maidens decline for the pleasure of making love. Here it is always leap year. For my part I am used to another style of behavior." And, continues Miss Franks: "They (the Philadelphia girls) have more cleverness in the turn of the eye than those of New York in their whole composition." But blunt, old Governor Livingston, on the other hand, wrote his daughter Kitty that "the Philadelphia flirts are equally famous for their want of modesty and want of patriotism in their over-complacence to red coats, who would not conquer the men of the country, but everywhere they have taken the women almost without a trial—damm them."[219]

But there can be no doubt that the whirl of life was a little too giddy in New York, during the last years of the eighteenth century; and that, as a visiting Frenchman declared: "Luxury is already forming in this city, a very dangerous class of men, namely, the bachelors, the extravagance of the women makes them dread marriage."[220] As mentioned above, there was much card playing among the women, and on the then fashionable John Street married women sometimes lost as high as $400 in a single evening of gambling. To some of the older men who had suffered the hardships of war that the new nation might be born, such frivolity and extravagance seemed almost a crime, and doubtless these veterans would have agreed with Governor Livingston when he complained: "My principal Secretary of State, who is one of my daughters, has gone to New York to shake her heels at the balls and assemblies of a metropolis which might be better employed, more studious of taxes than of instituting expensive diversions."[221]

XI. Causes of Display and Frivolity

What else could be expected, for the time being at least? For, the war over, the people naturally reacted from the dreary period of hardships and suspense to a period of luxury and enjoyment. Moreover, here was a new nation, and the citizens of the capital felt impelled to uphold the dignity of the new commonwealth by some display of riches, brilliance, and power. Then, too, the first President of the young nation was not niggardly in dress or expenditure, and his contemporaries felt, naturally enough, that they must meet him at least half way. Washington apparently was a believer in dignified appearances, and there was frequently a wealth of livery attending his coach. A story went the round, no doubt in an exaggerated form, that shows perhaps too much punctiliousness on the part of the Father of His Country:

"The night before the famous white chargers were to be used they were covered with a white paste, swathed in body clothes, and put to sleep on clean straw. In the morning this paste was rubbed in, and the horses brushed until their coats shone. The hoofs were then blacked and polished, the mouths washed, and their teeth picked. It is related that after this grooming the master of the stables was accustomed to flick over their coats a clean muslin handkerchief, and if this revealed a speck of dust the stable man was punished."[222]

Perhaps Washington himself rather enjoyed the stateliness and a certain aloofness in his position; but to Martha Washington, used to the freedom of social mingling on the Virginia plantation, the conditions were undoubtedly irksome. "I lead," she wrote, "a very dull life and know nothing that passes in the town. I never go to any public place—indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is a certain bound set for me which I must not depart from and as I cannot doe as I like I am obstinate and stay home a great deal." To some of the more democratic patriots all this dignity and formality and display were rather disgusting, and some did not hesitate to express themselves in rather sarcastic language about the customs. For instance, gruff old Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania, who was not a lover of Washington anyway, recorded in his Journal his impressions of one of the President's decidedly formal dinners:

"First was the soup; fish roasted and boiled; meats, gammon (smoked ham), fowls, etc. This was the dinner. The middle of the table was garnished in the usual tasty way, with small images, artificial flowers, etc. The dessert was first apple-pies, pudding, etc., then iced creams, jellies, etc., then water-melons, musk-melons, apples, peaches, nuts.... The President and Mrs. Washington sat opposite each other in the middle of the table; the two secretaries, one at each end....

"It was the most solemn dinner ever I sat at. Not a health drank, scarce a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table. Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of 'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and 'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with the ladies.