Customs and Fashions in Old New England Part 1

Customs and Fashions in Old New England.

by Alice Morse Earle.

I

CHILD LIFE

From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature that would make a modern infant scream with indignant discomfort, or lie stupefied with cold.

Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he was carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill and gloom of those unheated, freezing churches, growing colder and damper and deadlier with every wintry blast--we wonder that grown persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it is recorded that the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. In villages and towns where the houses were all cl.u.s.tered around the meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried far to be baptized; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were widely scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child: "Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly lost its life thereby.

Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket--a "bearing-cloth"--the unfortunate young Puritan was carried to church in the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast importance and dignity as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first cold and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of Judge Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite or extended contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New England, as for knowledge of England of that date we turn to the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, we find abundant proof that inclemency of weather was little heeded when religious customs and duties were in question.

On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus records:

"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of the Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A child named Alexander was baptized in the afternoon."

He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He writes thus of the baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February 6th, 1656:

"Between 3 & 4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up."

And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but six days old:

"Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon fair and sunshine though with a Bl.u.s.tering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was about half done in the Afternoon."

Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived him, a majority dying in infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend Cotton Mather but two survived their father.

This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in early New England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the natural result--the survival of the fittest--may account for the present tough endurance of the New England people.

Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict church-goers, and all the members of the household were equally church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit upright.

Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but little. Linen formed the chilling substructure of their attire--little, thin, linen, short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and with their tiny rows of hemst.i.tching and drawn work and the narrow edges of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the rooms of the Ess.e.x Inst.i.tute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen mittens have evidently been worn off by the active friction of baby fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or calico. The gowns are generally rather shapeless, large-necked sacks of linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin. In summer and winter the baby's head was always closely covered with a cap, or "biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more comforting in winter than comfortable in summer.

The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his nineteenth century descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled or carved wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant drafts.

Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to bring him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as babies are carried upstairs by superst.i.tious nurses nowadays, and he had "scarlet laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with various nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal days, "Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence the most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the word) to be sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and to have its disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits.

Advertis.e.m.e.nts of it frequently appear in the _Boston News Letter_ and other New England newspapers of early date.

The most common and largely dosed diseases of early infancy were, I judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the times, worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new disease, scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered whether it existed in the American plantations. In old medical books which were used by the New England colonists I find manifold receipts for the cure of these infantile diseases. Snails form the basis, or rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones:

"The admirable and most famous Snail water.--Take a peck of garden Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them in an oven till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of Barberries, Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one handful; then lay the Snails and Worms on top of the hearbs and flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the Strongest Ale, and let it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces of Cloves beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it with paste and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine in all, the first is the strongest, whereof take in the morning two spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small Beer, the like in the Afternoon."

Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured. Snails also were used externally:

"To anoint the Ricketed Childs Limbs and to recover it in a short time, though the child be so lame as to go upon crutches:

"Take a peck of Garden Snailes and bruse them, put them into a course Canva.s.s bagg, and hang it up, and set a dish under to receive the liquor that droppeth from them, wherewith anoint the Childe in every Joynt which you perceive to be weak before the fire every morning and evening. This I have known make a Patient Childe that was extream weak to go alone using it only a week time."

There were also "unguents to anoynt the Ricketted Childs breast," and various drinks to be given "to the patient childe fasting," as they termed him in what appears to us a half-comic, though wholly truthful appellation.

For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of senna and rhubarb and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and as for "Collick" and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every respectable Puritan patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and nauseous compounds that were offered to him for his relief.

Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments, "anodyne necklaces." I find them advertised in the _Boston Evening Post_ as late as 1771--"Anodine Necklaces for the Easy breeding of Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays children wear strings of amber beads to avert croup.

Another medicine "to make children's teeth come without paine" was this: "Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the braine thereof mingle Honey and b.u.t.ter and therewith anoynt the Childes gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs around his neck--an ugly necklace.

The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby opened his sad eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and "laid on a pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen or serge were hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of cheney or calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses, and all the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden to a dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "_Les Caquets de l'Accouchee_," the popular book of the time of Louis XIII., proves.

Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the "groaning beer" was drunk, though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning Beer" two months before the child was born. By tradition, "groaning cake," to be used at the time of the birth of the child, and given to visitors for a week or two later, also was made; but I find no allusion to it under that name in any of the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good substantial viands were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd Pyes, good Cheese and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old, seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats, "Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts."

Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and claret." A survival of this custom existed for many years in the fashion of drinking caudle at the bedside of the mother.

As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in attending the dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him into spending a tidy sum--for him--on drinks and feeing "the maid;" and in visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent his entire day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms;--in the house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the entertainment or amus.e.m.e.nt of his children. They were sometimes led solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who formally gave them his blessing. He took them also to some of the funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam said he saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the only tears that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death.

When Betty was a year older her father wrote:

"It falls to my daughter Elizabeths Share to read the 24 of Isaiah which she doth with many Tears not being very well, and the Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me also."

Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years old, also showed evidence of the dejection of soul around him.

"Richard Dumer, a flourishing youth of 9 years old dies of the Small Pocks. I tell Sam of it and what need he had to prepare for Death, and therefore to endeavor really to pray, when he said over the Lord's Prayer: He seemed not much to mind, eating an Aple; but when he came to say Our Father he burst out into a bitter Cry and said he was afraid he should die. I pray'd with him and read Scriptures comforting against Death, as O death where is thy sting, &c. All things yours. Life and Immortality brought to light by Christ."

In January, 1695, Judge Sewall writes:

"When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst out into an amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry too; Her Mother ask'd the reason, she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should goe to h.e.l.l, her Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins ran in her mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather--Why hath Satan filled thy Heart, which increased her Fear.

Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered yes but fear'd her prayers were not heard because her sins were not pardon'd."

A fortnight later he writes:

"Betty comes into me as soon as I was up and tells me the disquiet she had when wak'd; told me she was afraid she should go to h.e.l.l, was like Spira, not Elected. Ask'd her what I should pray for, she said that G.o.d would pardon her Sin and give her a new heart. I answer'd her Fears as well as I could and pray'd with many Tears on either part. Hope G.o.d heard us."

Three months later still he makes this entry:

"Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping, tells me she is afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweetness in reading the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is worn off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with her alone."

Poor little "wounded" Betty! She did not die in childhood as she feared, but lived to pa.s.s through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and of overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight children; but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts, which she despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from comforting father; and at last she faced the dread foe Death at the age of thirty-five. Judge Sewall wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope G.o.d has delivered her now from all her fears;" every one reading of her bewildered and depressed spiritual life must sincerely hope so with him.

In truth, the Puritan children were, as Judge Sewall said, "stirred up dreadfully to seek G.o.d."

Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught his little daughter when she was four years old:

"I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and there I told my child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am Dead, Remember every Thing, that I now said unto her. I sett before her the sinful condition of her Nature and I charged her to pray in secret places every day. That G.o.d for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her she must look to meet with more Humbling Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide for her."

I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to his children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and, indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his son Increase, or "Cressy."

No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable exhibitions of religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when she pa.s.sed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could relate many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion. "Before she was four years old she could say the greater part of the a.s.sembly's Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions about divine mysteries." It is a truly comic anticlimax in her father's stilted letters to her to have him end his pious instructions with this advice: "And as you love me do not eat green apples."

Of the demeanor of children to their parents naught can be said but praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record shows that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were well for them to thus obey the law of G.o.d, for by the law of the land high-handed disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not find this penalty ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim Calvin, a fact which redounds to the credit both of justice and youth in colonial days.

It was not strange that Judge Sewall, always finding in natural events and appearances symbols of spiritual and religious signification, should find in his children painful types of original sin.

"Nov. 6, 1692.--Joseph threw a knop of Bra.s.s and hit his Sister Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed; and upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time and eating when Return Thanks, I whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle; which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage."