Before, however, fastening our gaze upon those yet distant days, let us look at the woman of America as she appeared in the period preceding that of storm. We have spoken of American simplicity, and, with all the coming of luxury during the later years of the southern colonies, this was still an attribute of the American woman; but it hardly applied to her dress or outer guise in any respect. In the very year, 1750, with which we have begun oir steps into the period of the Revolution, we find in the Pennsylvania Gazette an advertisement that is of present interest to us as suggestive of the style of dress affected by the household of one of the most typical Americans of his day:
"Whereas on Saturday night last the house of Benjamin Franklin of this city, Printer, was broken open, and the following things feloniously taken away, viz, a double necklace of gold beads, a womans long scarlet cloak almost new, with a double cape, a womans gown, of printed cotton of the sort called brocade print, very remarkable, the ground dark, with large red roses, and other large and yellow flowers, with blue in some of the flowers, with many green leaves; a pair of womens stays covered with white tabby before, and dove colour'd tabby behind, with two large steel hooks, and sundry other goods, etc."
It is evident that the family of Benjamin Franklin himself were somewhat addicted to gauds and fripperies. About this same date, George Washington is found writing to England for certain articles of dress for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis, then but four years of age; and for this miniature bit of humanity he orders such things as packthread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks for her face, caps, bonnets, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and leather pumps, while for her small hands were ordered eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs of gloves. We are told on excellent authority that at this time the "Southern dames, especially of Annapolis, Baltimore, and Charleston, were said to have the richest brocades and damasks that could be bought in London." Small simplicity here; and the goodwives of New York and New England were learning to follow their leaders in the fashions.
Yet in manners there was in the North still a leaven of the old Puritan sternness. The Rev. Mr. Burnaby, who published a book called Travels in America in 1759, records therein that when the captain of a British man-of-war, who had left his wife at Boston while he was on a cruise, was met by his spouse on his return, he very naturally kissed her in the sight of all men, the meeting taking place on the public wharf. But this act was against the statute which forbade kissing on the street as a great indecency, and the reprobate captain was promptly haled before the magistrates. It will hardly be believed that these gentlemen actually sentenced the Englishman to be whipped and had the sentence executed; and though to be whipped was not then considered a greater disgrace than now to incur a fine, it is nevertheless pleasant to a modern to read that the captain, when later he had become most popular in Boston, invited his judges to a dinner on board his ship and there had them triced up to the rigging and to each meted out the Scriptural forty stripes save one. But the incident shows us the moral atmosphere of New England at least in some of its parts; for it is unfortunately undeniable that in Connecticut the abominable practice of "bundling" was at the height of prevalence and popularity about 1750. The inevitable reaction came a little later, however, and the fulminations of Jonathan Edwards and his fellows at last came to have their effect; and by the end of the Revolution the custom was no longer recognized by any respectable community, with one or two marked exceptions, and these exceptions ceased to be such before the coming of the new century. Yet as late as 1775 we find the diary of Abigail Foote--from which we shall later make a more edifying extract--recording as a matter of course the fact of Ellen Foote, sister to the writer, bundling with a young man "till sun about 3 hours high." It is pleasant to read that a few weeks later the pair were "cried" and married.
Such were the curious contradictions of customs and morals found among our Puritan forefathers: a man might not kiss his wife in the street, but an unmarried woman might, if clothed, spend the night in bed with her lover. There were many other contradictions of manners. For instance, what could be more suggestive of utter simplicity than the diary of Abigail Foote, to which reference has just been made? I will quote an extract from it as an example of the life spent by young girls of her time. Abigail wrote in 1775, and she lived in Colchester, Connecticut. Here is a record of one of her days:
"Fix'd Gown for Prude Just to clear my teeth,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood,--Ague in my face,--Ellen was spark'd last night,--Mother spun short thread,--Fix'd two Gowns for Welch's girls,--Carded tow--spun linen--worked on Cheese Basket,--Hatchel'd Flax with Hannah and we did 51 lb a piece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a sermon of Dodridge's,--Spooled a piece--milked the cows--spun linen and did 50 knots--made a broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to whiten,--Went to Mr. Otis's and made them a swinging visit,--Israel said I might ride his jade,--Set a red Dye,--Prude stayed at home and learned Eve's Dream by heart,--Had two scholars from Mrs. Taylor's--I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,--Spun harness twine,--Scoured the Pewter."
The information concerning Ellen is to us more suggestive than interesting, and why to card two pounds of wool should make anyone feel "Nationly" is not clear; but we can gather from the candid diary of young Mistress Foote a fair idea of the life of the young lady of that day. Varying with section in customs and application, it was yet typical in its way and speaks volumes of the simple and admirable training of the women of the period. But, being on the search for contradictions at this time, look upon this picture of the elaborate headdresses worn at that period, found in a letter from Anna Green Winslow:
"I had my heddus roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that & horsehair very coarse & and a little human hair of a yellow hue that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. made it, all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, Aunt put it on, and my new cap upon it; she then took up her apron and measured me & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions I measured above an inch longer than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than Virtue and Modesty without the help of fals hair, Red-Cow Tail or D. the barber."
In this letter, written in 1771, Mistress Winslow treats the matter jocularly and even wittily; but it was a grave enough affair, that of the "heddus," to the average dame of the day. We are told that "the front hair was pulled up over a stuffed cushion or roll, and mixed with powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes, jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a yard in height." Fashion in this wise had gone to even greater extremes in other lands; but there was not much of colonial simplicity about this sort of thing. We are not told directly whether Abigail Foote, the spinner and carder, wore such a monstrosity as that described when she went to pay her "swinging visit" to the Otis family; but even if she personally avoided such extremes, yet these flagrant contradictions were in constant evidence in the life and garb of the New England woman of that day, nor were her more southern sisters far behind her in their disregard of consistency, even though they manifested it in variant ways. In good and evil projections, all these things have survived and combined in the American woman of the present, though not in their old aspects.
It was about the beginning of the named period that there happened in Virginia a charming incident in which is displayed a feminine trait worthy of chronicle, even if universal in nationality. At the famous college of William and Mary there lived a bachelor professor by the name of John Camm. He had reached the period of life that we euphemistically call "middle age" when there came the end of his bachelorhood in this wise: Among those who listened to his exhortations--for he was preacher as well as professor--was Miss Betsy Hansford, of the family of the Hansford of "Bacon's Rebellion," known as rebel or martyr according to the sympathies of the speaker. She was a pretty maiden, and she was besieged with offers from the youth of the neighborhood, among others, from one who, having himself unsuccessfully pleaded his suit, bethought him of obtaining the services of the gifted divine as intermediary. The latter was willing to undertake the somewhat delicate part assigned to him, and he proceeded to show to the obdurate maiden that matrimony was a holy and much-to-be-desired state, fortifying his position with citations from the Bible. When it came to the quotation of texts, however, Miss Betsy proved herself an adept by telling Mr. Camm that her reason for refusing her young suitor might be discovered by an examination of II. Samuel, xii, 7. Home fared Mr. Camm in search of a Bible, for the young lady refused to lend him one, and there he found that the text read: "And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man." Stronger hint could hardly be given and was not needed; for the Rev. John Camm and Betsy Hansford, spinster, were shortly afterward married. The Virginia Betsy thus fairly rivalled the Puritan Priscilla, and perhaps surpassed her in the delicacy of her hint.