Woman's Life in Colonial Days Part 18

There was indeed some attendance at theatres as the source of amus.e.m.e.nt; 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 s.e.xual morality, the men of the day too frequently found their chief pastimes in feeding the appet.i.tes 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, the Middle Colonies, or Virginia and South Carolina social activities often showed a culture, refinement and general _eclat_ 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[153] Tyler: _England in America_, p. 115, _American Nation Series_.

[154] _The Jeffersonian System_, p. 218, _American Nation Series_.

[155] _Ibid._, p. 115.

[156] Page 89.

[157] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 227.

[158] Ravenel: _Elisa Pinckney_, p. 13.

[159] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 166.

[160] Ravenel: _E. Pinckney_, p. 20.

[161] Pages 46-48.

[162] Ravenal: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 49.

[163] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 56.

[164] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 186.

[165] Page 205.

[166] Vol. I, p. 116.

[167] Vol. I, p. 31.

[168] Vol. I, p. 143.

[169] Vol. I, p. 171.

[170] Vol. I, p, 191.

[171] _Diary_, p. 189.

[172] _Diary_, p. 289.

[173] _Diary_, p. 321.

[174] _Diary_, p. 119.

[175] _Diary_, p. 54.

[176] _Diary_, p. 121.

[177] _Diary_, p. 69.

[178] Vol. III, p. 43.

[179] Vol. III, p. 341.

[180] Vol. II, p. 367.

[181] Vol. III, p. 7.

[182] Vol. II, p. 14.

[183] Vol. II, p. 20.

[184] Vol. II, p. 32.

[185] Vol. I, p. 481.

[186] Vol. I, p. 202.

[187] Vol. I, p. 195.

[188] Vol. II, p. 175.

[189] Vol. III, p. 292.

[190] Andrews: _Colonial Self-Government_, p. 302, _American Nation Series_.

[191] _Diary_, Vol. II, p. 109.

[192] _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 125.

[193] _Diary_, Vol. II, p. 158.

[194] _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 145.

[195] _Diary_, Vol. III, p. 244.

[196] _Diary_, Vol. III, p. 341.

[197] _Diary_, Vol. III, p. 143.