But Mrs. Washington was not alone in Philadelphia in this domestic tendency; many of those women who dazzled both Americans and foreigners with their beauty and social graces were most careful housekeepers, and even expert at weaving and sewing. Sarah Bache, for example, might please at a ball, but the next morning might find her industriously working at the spinning wheel. We find her writing her father, Ben Franklin, in 1790: "If I was to mention to you the prices of the common necessaries of life, it would astonish you. I should tell you that I had seven tablecloths of my own spinning." Again, she shrewdly requests her father in Paris to send her various articles of dress which are entirely too expensive in America, but the old gentleman's answer seems still more shrewd, especially when we remember what a delightful time he was just then having with several sprightly French dames: "I was charmed with the account you gave me of your industry, the tablecloths of your own spinning, and so on; but the latter part of the paragraph that you had sent for linen from France ... and you sending for ... lace and feathers, disgusted me as much as if you had put salt into my strawberries. The spinning, I see, is laid aside, and you are to be dressed for the ball! You seem not to know, my dear daughter, that of all the dear things in this world idleness is the dearest, except mischief."
Her declaration in her letter that "there was never so much pleasure and dressing going on" is corroborated by the statement of an officer writing to General Wayne: "It is all gaiety, and from what I can observe, every lady endeavors to outdo the other in splendor and show.... The manner of entertaining in this place has likewise undergone its change. You cannot conceive anything more elegant than the present taste. You can hardly dine at a table but they present you with three courses, and each of them in the most elegant manner."
XV. Theatrical Performances
The dinners and balls seem to have been expensive enough, but another demand for expenditure, especially in items of dress, arose from the constantly increasing popularity of the theatre. In Philadelphia the first regular theatre season began in 1754, and from this time forth the stage seems to have filled an important part in the activities of society. We find that Washington attended such performances at the early South Street Theatre, and was especially pleased with a comedy called The Young Quaker; or the Fair Philadelphian by O'Keefe, a sketch that was followed by a pantomimic ballet, a musical piece called The Children in the Wood, a recitation of Goldsmith's Epilogue in the character of Harlequin, and a "grand finale" by some adventuresome actor who made a leap through a barrel of fire! Truly vaudeville began early in America.
Mrs. Adams from staid old Massachusetts, where theatrical performances were not received cordially for many a year, wrote from Philadelphia in 1791: "The managers of the theatre have been very polite to me and my family. I have been to one play, and here again we have been treated with much politeness. The actors came and informed us that a box was prepared for us.... The house is equal to most of the theatres we meet with out of France.... The actors did their best; the 'School for Scandal' was the play. I missed the divine Farran, but upon the whole it was very well performed."
The first theatrical performance given in New York is said to have been acted in a barn by English officers and shocked beyond all measure the honest Dutch citizens whose lives hitherto had gone along so peacefully without such ungodly spectacles. As Humphreys writes in her Catherine Schuyler, "Great was the scandal in the church and among the burghers. Their indictment was searching.... Moreover, they painted their faces which was against God and nature.... They had degraded manhood by assuming female habits."[226]
But in most sections of the Middle Colonies, as well as in Virginia and South Carolina, the colonists took very readily to the theatre, and in both Pennsylvania and Virginia, where the curtain generally rose at six o'clock, such crowds attended that the fashionable folk commonly sent their negroes ahead to hold the seats against all comers. Williamsburg, Virginia, had a good play house as early as 1716; Charleston just a little later, and Annapolis had regular performances in 1752. Baltimore first opened the theatre in 1782, and did the thing "in the fine style," by presenting Shakespeare's King Richard. Society doubtless tingled with excitement when that first theatrical notice appeared in the Baltimore papers.
"THE NEW THEATRE IN BALTIMORE
Will Open, This Evening, being the 15th of January ...
With an HISTORICAL TRAGEDY, CALLED
KING RICHARD III
AN OCCASIONAL PROLOGUE by MR. WALL
to which will be added a FARCE,
MISS IN HER TEENS