Towards the end of the seventeenth century it was customary to carry in the muff small dogs known as “muff dogs,” and Hollar made a picture of one of these little animals.
A tale is told of the eccentric head of one of the colleges at Oxford, who had a great aversion to the undergraduates wearing long hair, that on one occasion he reduced the length of a young man’s hair by means of a bread-knife. It is stated that he carried concealed in his muff a pair of scissors, and with these he slyly cut off offending locks.
Both the Tatler and the Spectator include notices of the muff. In No. 153 of the Tatler, 1710, is a description of a poor but doubtless a proud person with a muff. “I saw,” it is stated, “he was reduced to extreme poverty, by certain shabby superfluities in his dress, for—notwithstanding that it was a very sultry day for the time of the year—he wore a loose great coat and a muff. Here we see poverty trying to imitate prosperity.” There are at least three allusions to the muff in the pages of the Spectator. We find in the issue for March 19th, 1711, a correspondent desires Addison to be “very satyrical upon the little muff” that was then fashionable amongst men.
A satirical print was published in 1756, at the Gold Acorn Tavern, facing Hungerford Market, London, called the “Beau Admiral.” It represents Admiral Byng carrying a large muff. He had been sent to relieve Minorca, besieged by the French, and after a futile action withdrew his ships, declaring that the ministry had not furnished him with a sufficient fleet to successfully fight the enemy. This action made the ministry furious, and Byng was brought before a court martial, and early in 1757 he was, according to sentence, shot at Portsmouth.
In America muffs were popular with both men and women. Old newspapers contain references to them. The following advertisement is drawn from the Boston News Letter of March 5th, 1715:—
“Any man that took up a Man’s Muff drop’t on the Lord’s Day between the Old Meeting House & the South, are desired to bring it to the Printer’s Office, and shall be rewarded.”
Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, in her “Costume of Colonial Times” (New York: 1894), gives other instances of men’s muffs being missing, “In 1725,” says Mrs. Earle, “Dr. Prince lost his ‘black bear-skin muff,’ and in 1740 a sable-skin man’s muff was advertised.” It is clear from Mrs. Earle’s investigations that the beaux of New England followed closely the lead of the dandies of Old England. “I can easily fancy,” she says, “the mincing face of Horace Walpole peering out of a carriage window or a sedan-chair, with his hands and his wrists thrust in a great muff; but when I look at the severe and ascetic countenance in the portrait of Thomas Prince, I find it hard to think of him, walking solemnly along Boston streets, carrying his big bear-skin muff.” Other Bostonians, we are told, maintained the fashion until a much later period. Judge Dana employed it even after Revolutionary times. In 1783, in the will of René Hett, of New York, several muffs are mentioned, and were considered of sufficient account to form bequests.
The puritans of New England had little regard for warmth in their places of worship, and it is not surprising that men wore muffs. People were obliged to attend the services of the church unless they were sick, yet little attempt was made to render the places comfortable.
The first stove introduced into a meeting-house in Massachusetts was at Boston in 1773. In 1793 two stoves were placed in the Friends’ meeting-house, Salem, and in 1809 one was erected in the North Church, Salem. Persons are still living in the United States who can remember the knocking of feet on a cold day towards the close of a long sermon. The preachers would ask for a little patience and promise to close their discourses.