Woman's Life in Colonial Days Part 16

Doubtless the whole world has heard of that other Dutch love--for good things on the table. This epicurean trait perhaps has been exaggerated; Mrs. Grant herself had her doubts at first; but she, like most visitors, soon realized that a Dutchman's "tea" was a fair banquet. Hear again her own words:

"They were exceedingly social, and visited each other frequently, besides the regular a.s.sembling together in their porches every evening.

"If you went to spend a day anywhere, you were received in a manner we should think very cold. No one rose to welcome you; no one wondered you had not come sooner, or apologized for any deficiency in your entertainment. Dinner, which was very early, was served exactly in the same manner as if there were only the family. The house was so exquisitely neat and well regulated that you could not surprise these people; they saw each other so often and so easily that intimates made no difference. Of strangers they were shy; not by any means of want of hospitality, but from a consciousness that people who had little to value themselves on but their knowledge of the modes and ceremonies of polished life disliked their sincerity and despised their simplicity....

"Tea was served in at a very early hour. And here it was that the distinction shown to strangers commenced. Tea here was a perfect regale, being served up with various sorts of cakes unknown to us, cold pastry, and great quant.i.ties of sweet meats and preserved fruits of various kinds, and plates of hickory and other nuts ready cracked. In all manner of confectionery and pastry these people excelled."[213]

To the Puritan this manner of living evidently seemed unG.o.dly, and perhaps the citizens of New Amsterdam were a trifle lax not only in their appet.i.te for the things of this world, but also in their indifference toward the Sabbath. As Madam Knight observes in her _Journal_: "There are also Dutch and divers conventicles, as they call them, viz., Baptist, Quaker, etc. They are not strict in keeping the Sabbath, as in Boston and other places where I had been, but seemed to deal with exactness as far as I see or deal with."

But the kindly sociableness of these Dutch prevented any decidedly vicious tendency among them, and went far toward making amends for any real or supposed laxity in religious principles. Even as children, this social nature was consciously trained among them, and so closely did the little ones become attached to one another that marriage meant not at all the abrupt change and departure from former ways that it is rather commonly considered to mean to-day. Says Mrs. Grant:

"The children of the town were all divided into companies, as they called them, from five or six years of age, till they became marriageable. How these companies first originated or what were their exact regulations, I cannot say; though I belonging to nine occasionally mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called heads of the company, and, as such, were obeyed by the others.... Each company, at a certain time of the year, went in a body to gather a particular kind of berries, to the hill. It was a sort of annual festival, attended with religious punctuality.... Every child was permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once besides, during the winter and spring. The master and mistress of the family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider, or a syllabub.... The consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was that, grown up, it was reckoned a sort of apostacy to marry out of one's company, and indeed it did not often happen. The girls, from the example of their mothers, rather than any compulsion, very early became notable and industrious, being constantly employed in knitting stockings and making clothes for the family and slaves; they even made all the boys'

clothes."[214]

Childhood in New England meant, as we have seen, a good deal of down-right hard toil; in Virginia, for the better cla.s.s child, it meant much dressing in dainty clothes, and much care about manners and etiquette; but the Dutch childhood and even young manhood and womanhood meant an unusual amount of carefree, whole-hearted, simple pleasure.

There were picnics in the summer, nut gatherings in the Autumn, and skating and sleighing in the winter.

"In spring eight or ten of one company, young men and maidens, would set out together in a canoe on a kind of rural excursion.... They went without attendants.... They arrived generally by nine or ten o'clock.... The breakfast, a very regular and cheerful one, occupied an hour or two; the young men then set out to fish or perhaps to shoot birds, and the maidens sat busily down to their work.... After the sultry hours had been thus employed, the boys brought their tribute from the river....

After dinner they all set out together to gather wild strawberries, or whatever fruit was in season; for it was accounted a reproach to come home empty-handed...."

"The young parties, or some times the elder ones, who set out on this woodland excursion had no fixed destination, ... when they were tired of going on the ordinary road, they turned into the bush, and wherever they saw an inhabited spot ... they went into it with all the ease of intimacy.... The good people, not in the least surprised at this intrusion, very calmly opened the reserved apartments.... After sharing with each other their food, dancing or any other amus.e.m.e.nt that struck their fancy succeeded.

They sauntered about the bounds in the evening, and returned by moonlight...."

"In winter the river ... formed the princ.i.p.al road through the country, and was the scene of all these amus.e.m.e.nts of skating and sledge races common to the north of Europe. They used in great parties to visit their friends at a distance, and having an excellent and hearty breed of horses, flew from place to place over the snow or ice in these sledges with incredible rapidity, stopping a little while at every house they came to, where they were always well received, whether acquainted with the owners or not. The night never impeded these travellers, for the atmosphere was so pure and serene, and the snow so reflected the moon and starlight, that the nights exceeded the days in beauty."[215]

All this meant so much more for the growth of normal children and the creation of a cheerful people than did the Puritan attendance at executions and funerals. Those quaint old-time Dutch probably did not love children any more dearly than did the New Englanders; but they undoubtedly made more display of it than did the Puritans. "Orphans were never neglected.... You never entered a house without meeting children.

Maidens, bachelors, and childless married people all adopted orphans, and all treated them as if they were their own."[216]

Since we have mentioned such subjects as funerals and orphans, perhaps it would not be out of place to notice the peculiar funeral customs among the Dutch. Even a burial was not so dreary an affair with them.

The following bill of 1763, found among the Schuyler papers, gives a hint of the manner in which the service was conducted, and perhaps explains why the women scarcely ever attended the funeral in the "dead room," as it was called, but remained in an upper room, where they could at least hear what was said, if they could not "partake" of the occasion.

"Tobacco 2.

Fonda for Pipes 14s.

2 casks wine 69 gal. 11.

12 yds. Cloath 6.

2 barrels strong beer 3.

To spice from Dr. Stringer To the porters 2s.

12 yds. Bombazine 5. 17s.

2 Tammise 1.

1 Barcelona handkerchief 10s.

2 pr. black chamios Gloves 6 yds. c.r.a.pe 5 ells Black Shalloon

Paid Mr. Benson his fee for opinion on will 9."[217a]

Certainly the custom of making the funeral as pleasant as possible for the visitors had not pa.s.sed away even as late as the days of the Revolution; for during that war Tench Tilghman wrote the following description of a burial service attended by him in New York City: "This morning I attended the funeral of old Mr. Doer.... This was something in a stile new to me. The Corpse was carried to the Grave and interred with out any funeral Ceremony, the Clergy attended. We then returned to the home of the Deceased where we found many tables set out with Bottles, cool Tankards, Candles, Pipes & Tobacco. The Company sat themselves down and lighted their Pipes and handed the Bottles & Tankards pretty briskly. Some of them I think rather too much so. I fancy the undertakers had borrowed all the silver plate of the neighborhood. Tankards and Candle Sticks were all silver plated."[217b]

_X. British Social Influences_

With the increase of the English population New York began to depart from its normal, quiet round of social life, and entered into far more flashy, but far less healthful forms of pleasure. There was wealth in the old city before the British flocked to it, and withal an atmosphere of plenty and peaceful enjoyment of life. The description of the Schuyler residence, "The Flatts," presented in Grant's _Memoirs_, probably indicates at its best the home life of the wealthier natives, and gives hints of a wholesome existence which, while not showy, was full of comfort:

"It was a large brick house of two, or rather three stories (for there were excellent attics), besides a sunk story.... The lower floor had two s.p.a.cious rooms, ... on the first there were three rooms, and in the upper one, four. Through the middle of the house was a very wide pa.s.sage, with opposite front and back doors, which in summer admitted a stream of air peculiarly grateful to the languid senses. It was furnished with chairs and pictures like a summer parlor.... There was at the side a large portico, with a few steps leading up to it, and floored like a room; it was open at the sides and had seats all round. Above was ... a slight wooden roof, painted like an awning, or a covering of lattice work, over which a transplanted wild vine spread its luxuriant leaves...."

"At the back of the large house was a smaller and lower one, so joined to it as to make the form of a cross. There one or two lower and smaller rooms below, and the same number above, afforded a refuge to the family during the rigors of winter, when the s.p.a.cious summer rooms would have been intolerably cold, and the smoke of prodigious wood fires would have sullied the elegantly clean furniture."[218]

But before 1760, as indicated above, the English element in New York was making itself felt, and a curious mingling of gaiety and economy began to be noticeable. William Smith, writing in his _History of the Province of New York_, in 1757, points this out:

"In the city of New York, through our intercourse with the Europeans, we follow the London fashions; though, by the time we adopt them, they become disused in England. Our affluence during the late war introduced a degree of luxury in tables, dress, and furniture, with which we were before unacquainted. But still we are not so gay a people as our neighbors in Boston and several of the Southern colonies. The Dutch counties, in some measure, follow the example of New York, but still retain many modes peculiar to the Hollanders."

"New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies in winter are frequently entertained either at concerts of music or a.s.semblies, and make a very good appearance. They are comely and dress well...."

"Tinctured with the Dutch education, they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and singular neatness.

The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the fashionable part of the fair s.e.x in some places, is a vice with which my country women cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the improvement of the mind--in which, I confess we have set them the example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable, naturally sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable in the s.e.x."

With the coming of the Revolution, and the consequent invasion of the city by the British, New York became far more gay than ever before; but even then the native Dutch conservativeness so restrained social affairs that Philadelphia was more brilliant. When, however, the capital of the national government was located in New York then indeed did the city shine. Foreigners spoke with astonishment at the display of luxury and down-right extravagance. Brissot de Warville, for example, writing in 1788, declared: "If there is a town on the American continent where English luxury displays its follies, it is New York." And James Pintard, after attending a New Year levee, given by Mrs. Washington, wrote his sister: "You will see no such formal bows at the Court of St.

James." If we may judge by the dress of ladies attending such gatherings, as one described in the _New York Gazette_ of May 15, 1789, we may safely conclude that expense was not spared in the upper cla.s.ses of society. Hear some descriptions:

"A plain celestial blue satin with a white satin petticoat. On the neck a very large Italian gauze handkerchief with white satin stripes. The head-dress was a puff of gauze in the form of a globe on a foundation of white satin, having a double wing in large plaits, with a wreath of roses twined about it. The hair was dressed with detached curls, four each side of the neck and a floating _chignon_ behind."

"Another was a periot made of gray Indian taffetas with dark stripes of the same color with two collars, one white, one yellow with blue silk fringe, having a reverse trimmed in the same manner. Under the periot was a yellow corset of cross blue stripes. Around the bosom of the periot was a frill of white vand.y.k.ed gauze of the same form covered with black gauze which hangs in streamers down her back. Her hair behind is a large braid with a monstrous crooked comb."

We cannot say that the society of the new capital was notable for its intellect or for the intellectual turn of its activities. John Adams'

daughter declared that it was "quite enough dissipated," and indeed costly dress, card playing, and dancing seem to have received an undue amount of society's attention. The Philadelphia belle, Miss Franks, wrote home: "Here you enter a room with a formal set courtesy, and after the 'How-dos' things are finished, all a dead calm until cards are introduced when you see pleasure dancing in the eyes of all the matrons, and they seem to gain new life; the maidens decline for the pleasure of making love. Here it is always leap year. For my part I am used to another style of behavior." And, continues Miss Franks: "They (the Philadelphia girls) have more cleverness in the turn of the eye than those of New York in their whole composition." But blunt, old Governor Livingston, on the other hand, wrote his daughter Kitty that "the Philadelphia flirts are equally famous for their want of modesty and want of patriotism in their over-complacence to red coats, who would not conquer the men of the country, but everywhere they have taken the women almost without a trial--damm them."[219]

But there can be no doubt that the whirl of life was a little too giddy in New York, during the last years of the eighteenth century; and that, as a visiting Frenchman declared: "Luxury is already forming in this city, a very dangerous cla.s.s of men, namely, the bachelors, the extravagance of the women makes them dread marriage."[220] As mentioned above, there was much card playing among the women, and on the then fashionable John Street married women sometimes lost as high as $400 in a single evening of gambling. To some of the older men who had suffered the hardships of war that the new nation might be born, such frivolity and extravagance seemed almost a crime, and doubtless these veterans would have agreed with Governor Livingston when he complained: "My princ.i.p.al Secretary of State, who is one of my daughters, has gone to New York to shake her heels at the b.a.l.l.s and a.s.semblies of a metropolis which might be better employed, more studious of taxes than of inst.i.tuting expensive diversions."[221]

_XI. Causes of Display and Frivolity_

What else could be expected, for the time being at least? For, the war over, the people naturally reacted from the dreary period of hardships and suspense to a period of luxury and enjoyment. Moreover, here was a new nation, and the citizens of the capital felt impelled to uphold the dignity of the new commonwealth by some display of riches, brilliance, and power. Then, too, the first President of the young nation was not n.i.g.g.ardly in dress or expenditure, and his contemporaries felt, naturally enough, that they must meet him at least half way. Washington apparently was a believer in dignified appearances, and there was frequently a wealth of livery attending his coach. A story went the round, no doubt in an exaggerated form, that shows perhaps too much punctiliousness on the part of the Father of His Country:

"The night before the famous white chargers were to be used they were covered with a white paste, swathed in body clothes, and put to sleep on clean straw. In the morning this paste was rubbed in, and the horses brushed until their coats shone. The hoofs were then blacked and polished, the mouths washed, and their teeth picked. It is related that after this grooming the master of the stables was accustomed to flick over their coats a clean muslin handkerchief, and if this revealed a speck of dust the stable man was punished."[222]

Perhaps Washington himself rather enjoyed the stateliness and a certain aloofness in his position; but to Martha Washington, used to the freedom of social mingling on the Virginia plantation, the conditions were undoubtedly irksome. "I lead," she wrote, "a very dull life and know nothing that pa.s.ses in the town. I never go to any public place--indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is a certain bound set for me which I must not depart from and as I cannot doe as I like I am obstinate and stay home a great deal." To some of the more democratic patriots all this dignity and formality and display were rather disgusting, and some did not hesitate to express themselves in rather sarcastic language about the customs. For instance, gruff old Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania, who was not a lover of Washington anyway, recorded in his _Journal_ his impressions of one of the President's decidedly formal dinners:

"First was the soup; fish roasted and boiled; meats, gammon (smoked ham), fowls, etc. This was the dinner. The middle of the table was garnished in the usual tasty way, with small images, artificial flowers, etc. The dessert was first apple-pies, pudding, etc., then iced creams, jellies, etc., then water-melons, musk-melons, apples, peaches, nuts.... The President and Mrs. Washington sat opposite each other in the middle of the table; the two secretaries, one at each end....

"It was the most solemn dinner ever I sat at. Not a health drank, scarce a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then the President, filling a gla.s.s of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table.

Everybody imitated him and changed gla.s.ses and such a buzz of 'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and 'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a good while and the bottles pa.s.sed about; but there was a dead silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with the ladies.

"I expected the men would now begin but the same stillness remained. He (the President) now and then said a sentence or two on some common subject and what he said was not amiss. Mr. Jay tried to make a laugh by mentioning the d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire leaving no stone unturned to carry Fox's election. There was a Mr. Smith who mentioned how _Homer_ described aeneas leaving his wife and carrying his father out of flaming Troy. He had heard somebody (I suppose) witty on the occasion; but if he had ever read it he would have said _Virgil_. The President kept a fork in his hand, when the cloth was taken away, I thought for the purpose of picking nuts. He ate no nuts, however, but played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with it. We did not sit long after the ladies retired. The President rose, went up-stairs to drink coffee; the company followed. I took my hat and came home."

After all, it was well that our first President and his lady were believers in a reasonable amount of formality and dignity. They established a form of social etiquette and an insistence on certain principles of high-bred procedure genuinely needed in a country the tendency of which was toward a crude display of raw, hail-fellow-well-met democracy. With an Andrew Jackson type of man as its first President, our country would soon have been the laughing stock of nations, and could never have gained that prestige which neither wealth nor power can bring, but which is obtained only through evidences of genuine civilization and culture. As Wharton says in her _Martha Washington_: "An executive mansion presided over by a man and woman who combined with the most ardent patriotism a dignity, elegance, and moderation that would have graced the court of any Old World sovereign, saved the social functions of the new nation from the crudeness and bald simplicity of extreme republicanism, as well as from the luxury and excess that often mark the sudden elevation to power and place of those who have spent their early years in obscurity."[223]

Even after the removal of the capital from New York the city was still the scene of unabated gaiety. Elizabeth Southgate, who became the wife of Walter Bowne, mayor of the metropolis, left among her letters the following bits of helpful description of the city pastimes and fashionable life: "Last night we were at the play--'The Way to Get Married.' Mr. Hodgkinson in _Tangen_ is inimitable. Mrs. Johnson, a sweet, interesting actress, in _Julia_, and Jefferson, a great comic player, were all that were particularly pleasing.... I have been to two of the gardens: Columbia, near the Battery--a most romantic, beautiful place--'tis enclosed in a circular form and little rooms and boxes all around--with tables and chairs--these full of company.... They have a fine orchestra, and have concerts here sometimes.... We went on to the Battery--this is a large promonade by the sh.o.r.e of the North River--very extensive; rows and cl.u.s.ters of trees in every part, and a large walk along the sh.o.r.e, almost over the water.... Here too, they have music playing on the water in boats of a moonlight night. Last night we went to a garden a little out of town--Mount Vernon Garden. This, too, is surrounded by boxes of the same kind, with a walk on top of them--you can see the gardens all below--but 'tis a summer play-house--pit and boxes, stage and all, but open on top."

_XII. Society in Philadelphia_