Woman's Life in Colonial Days

by Carl Holliday

Such women, as well as the negro and mulatto girls, were an ever present temptation to men whose passion had never known restraint. Thus Berquin-Duvallon declares that concubinage was far more common than marriage: "The rarity of marriage must necessarily be attributed to the causes we have already assigned, to that state of celibacy, to that monkish life, the taste for which is extending here more and more among the men. In witness of what I advance on this matter, one single observation will suffice, as follows: For the two and one-half years that I have been in this colony not thirty marriages at all notable have occurred in New Orleans and for ten leagues about it. And in this district there are at least six hundred white girls of virtuous estate, of marriageable age, between fourteen and twenty-five or thirty years."

This early observer receives abundant corroboration from other travellers of the day. Paul Alliott, drawing a contrast between New Orleans and St. Louis, another city with a considerable number of French inhabitants, says: "The inhabitants of the city of St. Louis, like those old time simple and united patriarchs, do not live at all in debauchery as do a part of those of New Orleans. Marriage is honored there, and the children resulting from it share the inheritance of their parents without any quarrelling."[228] But, says Berquin-Duvallon, among a large percentage of the colonists about New Orleans, "their taste for women extends more particularly to those of color, whom they prefer to the white women, because such women demand fewer of those annoying attentions which contradict their taste for independence. A great number, accordingly, prefer to live in concubinage rather than to marry. They find in that the double advantage of being served with the most scrupulous exactness, and in case of discontent or unfaithfulness, of changing their housekeeper (this is the honorable name given to that sort of woman)." Of course, such a scheme of life was not especially conducive to happiness among white women, and, although as Alliott declares, the white men "have generally much more regard for (negro girls) in their domestic economy than they do for their legitimate wives.... the (white) women show the greatest contempt and aversion for that sort of women."

When moral conditions could shock an eighteenth century Frenchman they must have been exceptionally bad; but the customs of the New Orleans men were entirely too unprincipled for Berquin-Duvallon and various other French investigators. "Not far from the taverns are obscene bawdy houses and dirty smoking houses where the father on one side, and the son on the other go, openly and without embarassment as well as without shame, ... to revel and dance indiscriminately and for whole nights with a lot of men and women of saffron color or quite black, either free or slave. Will any one dare to deny this fact? I will only designate, in support of my assertion (and to say no more), the famous house of Coquet, located near the center of the city, where all that scum is to be seen publicly, and that for several years."[229]

Naturally, as a matter of mere defense, the women of pure white blood drew the color line very strictly, and would not knowingly mingle socially to the very slightest degree with a person of mixed negro or Indian blood. Such severe distinctions led to embarrassing and even cruel incidents at social gatherings; and on many occasions, if cool-headed social leaders had not quickly ejected guests of tainted lineage, there undoubtedly would have been bloodshed. Berquin-Duvallon describes just such a scene: "The ladies' ball is a sanctuary where no woman dare approach if she has even a suspicion of mixed blood. The purest conduct, the most eminent virtues could not lessen this strain in the eyes of the implacable ladies. One of the latter, married and known to have been implicated in various intrigues with men of the locality, one day entered one of those fine balls. 'There is a woman of mixed blood here,' she cried haughtily. This rumor ran about the ballroom. In fact, two young quadroon ladies were seen there, who were esteemed for the excellent education which they had received, and much more for their honorable conduct. They were warned and obliged to disappear in haste before a shameless woman, and their society would have been a real pollution for her."

Perhaps, after all, little blame for such outbursts can be placed upon the white women of the day. Berquin-Duvallon recognized and admired their excellent quality and seems to have wondered why so many men could prefer girls of color to these clean, healthy, and honorable ladies. Of them he says: "The Louisiana women, and notably those born and resident on the plantations, have various estimable qualities. Respectful as girls, affectionate as wives, tender as mothers, and careful as mistresses, possessing thoroughly the details of household economy, honest, reserved, proper—in the van almost—they are in general, most excellent women." But those of mixed blood or lower lineage, he remarks: "A tone of extravagance and show in excess of one's means is seen there in the dress of the women, in the elegance of their carriages, and in their fine furniture."

Indeed, this display in dress and equipage astounded the French. The sight of it in a city where Indians, negroes, and half-breeds mingled freely with whites on street and in dive, where sanitary conditions were beyond description, and where ignorance and slovenliness were too apparent to be overlooked, seems to have rather nettled Berquin-Duvallon, and he sometimes grew rather heated in his descriptions of an unwarranted luxury and extravagance equal to that of the capitals of Europe. But now, "the women of the city dress tastefully, and their change of appearance in this respect in a very short space of time is really surprising. Not three years ago, with lengthened skirts, the upper part of their clothing being of one color, and the lower of another, and all the rest of their dress in proportion; they were brave with many ribbons and few jewels. Thus rigged out they went everywhere, on their round of visits, to the ball, and to the theatre. To-day, such a costume seems to them, and rightfully so, a masquerade. The richest of embroidered muslins, cut in the latest styles, and set off as transparencies over soft and brilliant taffetas, with magnificent lace trimmings, and with embroidery and gold-embroidered spangles, are to-day fitted to and beautify well dressed women and girls; and this is accompanied by rich earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, precious jewels, in fine with all that can relate to dress—to that important occupation of the fair sex."

But beneath all this gaudy show of dress and wealth there was a shameful ignorance that seems to have disgusted foreign visitors. There was so little other pleasure in life for the women of this colony; their education was so limited that they could not possibly have known the variety of intellectual pastimes that made life so interesting for Eliza Pinckney, Mrs. Adams, and Catherine Schuyler. With surprise Berquin-Duvallon noted that "there is no other public institution fit for the education of the youth of this country than a simple school maintained by the government. It is composed of about fifty children, nearly all from poor families. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught there in two languages, French and Spanish. There is also the house of the French nuns, who have some young girls as boarders, and who have a class for day students. There is also a boarding school for young Creole girls, which was established about fifteen months ago.... The Creole women lacking in general the talents that adorn education have no taste for music, drawing or, embroidery, but in revenge they have an extreme passion for dancing and would pass all their days and nights at it."

There was indeed some attendance at theatres as the source of amusement; but of the sources of cultural pleasure there were certainly very few. To our French friend it was genuinely disgusting, and he relieved his feelings in the following summary of fault-finding: "Few good musicians are to be seen here. There is only one single portrait painter, whose talent is suited to the walk of life where he employs it. Finally, in a city inhabited by ten thousand souls, as is New Orleans, I record it as a fact that not ten truly learned men can be found.... There is found here neither ship-yard, colonial post, college, nor public nor private library. Neither is there a book store, and, for good reasons, for a bookseller would die of hunger in the midst of his books."

With little of an intellectual nature to divert them, with the temptations incident to slavery and mixed races on every hand, with a heritage of rather lax ideas concerning sexual morality, the men of the day too frequently found their chief pastimes in feeding the appetites of the flesh, and too often the women forgot and forgave. To Berquin-Duvallon it all seems very strange and very crude. "I cannot accustom myself to those great mobs, or to the old custom of the men (on these gala occasions or better, orgies) of getting more than on edge with wine, so that they get fuddled even before the ladies, and afterward act like drunken men in the presence of those beautiful ladies, who, far from being offended at it, appear on the contrary to be amused by it." And out of it all, out of these conditions forming so vivid a contrast to the average life of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, grew this final dark picture—one that could not have been tolerated in the Anglo-Saxon colonies of the North: "The most remarkable, as well as the most pathetic result of that gangrenous irregularity in this city is the exposing of a number of white babies (sad fruits of a clandestine excess) who are sacrificed from birth by their guilty mothers to a false honor after they have sacrificed their true honor to their unbridled inclination for a luxury that destroys them."

Thus, we have had glimpses of social life, with its pleasures, throughout the colonies. Perhaps, it was a trifle too cautious in Massachusetts, a little fearful lest the mere fact that a thing was pleasant might make it sinful; perhaps in early New York it was a little too physical, though generally innocent, smacking a little too much of rich, heavy foods and drink; perhaps among the Virginians it echoed too often with the bay of the fox hound and the click of racing hoofs. But certainly in the latter half of the eighteenth century whether in Massachusetts, the Middle Colonies, or Virginia and South Carolina social activities often showed a culture, refinement and general éclat which no young nation need be ashamed of, and which, in fact, were far above what might justly have been expected in a country so little touched by the hand of civilized man. In the main, those were wholesome, sane days in the English colonies, and life offered almost as pleasant a journey to most Americans as it does to-day.