Women of America Part 7

Let us resume the journey to Virginia and study as best we may the aspects of feminine culture as found in the great Southern colony.

Unfortunately, even in general matters there is great dearth of authoritative record of Virginia colonial days, and in the matter of the doings of individual women, or even of the s.e.x generally, we find but little of interest. We can only gather up the fragments and judge from them of the feast of which they tell. Though Maryland may be considered a southern colony, and was indeed so regarded, we must not take Margaret Brent as representative of the feminine status or spirit in the South.

The women of Virginia in the early colonial days were less independent, less a.s.sertive, than their sisters of New England, where women, as we have seen, occasionally took the lead in matters of public import. It was not so in Virginia. There women were held in less account, though not in less respect, than in the northern colonies. This was caused by a multiplicity of reasons, chief among which is the fact that in Virginia there was far greater difference of rank and station than in the North.

The consequence of this was that, while in New England the woman was a needful and recognized adjunct of the home, that unit on which was based the civilization of the North, in Virginia she was more of ornament than necessity. Hence, while in the councils of New England woman had made herself felt and recognized as a power and thus had come to be held in mental esteem as a s.e.x, though not always overtly, as we have seen, she was in Virginia still the lady, the almsgiver, the comforter and inspirer, but not the fellow-laborer, the equal in danger and toil and therefore in counsel. For it cannot be denied, save by him who has studied history with blind eyes, that in the matter of descent the colonists of Virginia were far superior to those who made to blossom the bleak sh.o.r.es of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. On both records there are too many blots of birth to make it safe for the ancestral tuft-hunter to delve very deep into the past in his search on American soil; but the balance of rank is with the Virginian. Therefore it is that, while we instinctively regard the early New England woman, taken collectively, as a worker, a true colonist, we turn to the representative Virginia woman of the same day with the expectation of seeing a dame dressed in a short skirt of divers colors, with huge ruff and high-heeled shoes, with mincing gait and some pretty little affectations of speech and bearing, and we are not disappointed in the expectation.

There is another very important influence in the result of Southern culture as discriminated from that of the North,--the existence of slavery. Though in some of the Northern colonies there was Indian slave labor, there was but little of pure menial service in the household itself. The New England woman, as we shall see more clearly in the next chapter, was her own servant; she was the worker as well as the lady of the house. It was not so in Virginia. From the day--ill-omened in many respects, but powerful in formative effect upon the culture it modified--when the Dutchman left behind him his twenty negro slaves, the conditions of servitude in the Virginia plantations were altered; and when the plantations had become a colony, slavery was well established.

It was still held in disfavor by many, at home and abroad; but it had come to remain for years and even centuries. The consequence of the importation and constant increase of slave labor was felt in many ways, but in none so strongly as in the conditions of the household. The Virginia lady had her troops of servants--not so many at first, but still in sufficient numbers to save her any need of personal labor, while her sister of the North was compelled, because of circ.u.mstances if not of choice, to do with her own hands the daily tasks that arise in the well-ordered household. True, this difference was not so marked at the time which we are immediately considering as it became soon afterward. It is stated that in 1649 there were in Virginia but three hundred negro slaves; and, though the strict accuracy of such computation may be doubted, it may be admitted as substantially correct.

But there was rapid and constant increase, and long before the end of the early colonial period slavery had become an established inst.i.tution and had produced the effects upon Virginia society which were later to take such emphasized shape. The Virginia lady of the colonial period was teaching as a mistress of the manor rather than as a housewife. She was less notable in her accomplishments of "huswifery" than were the women of New England; but she had charms which they lacked, the charms that come from opportunity to indulge the impulse of refinement.

Of course all Virginia in its feminine element was not made up of the cream bubbles of society. There was the lower stratum as well; there were even strata, diminishing in numbers as in importance as one neared the bottom of the pail. There were in Virginia, as in New England, laws which show that the Virginia woman was not always a lady or at least did not always "demean herself as such." We find, for instance, that there is an enactment which determines that "women causing scandalous suits"

are to be ducked; and for the furtherance of this penalty there shall be set up "neere the court house in every county," besides a pillory, stocks, and a whipping post--a ducking-stool. This same ducking-stool, which was an importation from England and not an American innovation, consisted of a pole, with a rude chair fastened to the end, hanging over a pond or stream, the pole being so balanced that anyone seated in the chair, and secured there, might be lowered into the water, held therein until drowning was imminent, and then again hoisted to air and life.

This weapon of an offended justice was, in Virginia as in New England, made the penalty for divers offences, and the language of one act is amusing in its evidently masculine origin, where it condemns to the ducking-stool "brabling women who often slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages." That "poor"

is significant of experience and consequent wrath.

Yet, while these and similar precautions against feminine dominance by force prove the existence, if we did not know of them otherwise, of degrees in Virginia feminine station, the representative Virginia woman was of more pampered and easier existence than was her sister of the North. In New England as well there were toward the end of the early colonial period well defined strata of society; but they were neither so far separated nor so marked as were those of Virginia. The New England dame was called "Goody" or "Mistress" according to her social standing, the latter t.i.tle being for long reserved for the spouse of a knight; the "Goodies" were not only enormously in the majority, but they were types of the popular existence. The Virginia woman was softly nurtured and clad in purple and fine linen,--the latter literally after a time; the New England woman was expected to do her duties to her husband as he to her, and her garb was homespun.

Even the conditions of ordinary life were different in the two great colonies. New England existence was from the first a segregation; there was a constant tendency to draw together in towns. In Virginia, on the other hand, there was a tendency to differentiation of residence; beginning as a chain of plantations the colony continued in this character. The consequence was a number of small feudalities in outward aspect and the a.s.sumption by the Virginia lady of the position of the _chatelaine_. Each of the great ladies was a little queen, ruling over a certain number of acres and subjects; and this attribute of the colony, at first accidental and of small scope, grew into a condition. Now, this existence, and the tendencies that brought it about, were far more English than were the conditions of the northern colonies; and so it is that in early Virginia we find far less individuality of femininity than we find in early New England. England held her influence in Virginia,--the England of the royal court; for it must be remembered that Virginia was strongly loyal. She never accepted the rule of the Roundhead; and the influx of the Cavaliers, some of their own wills and some on compulsion as political convicts, not only confirmed Virginian politics but Virginian manners. More English than England itself, these eager Carolists never acknowledged a hiatus in the rule of the Stuarts, and the Restoration found them entirely in accord with its returning theories and the majority of its practices. But not all, for Virginia had some morals left her even after the coming of the Cavaliers.

An incident in connection with "Bacon's Rebellion" will indicate the esteem and place in which women were held in the days when Berkeley ruled Virginia as its nominal governor and real emperor,--the culminating days of the period with which we have to do. The stalwart rebel, being in danger of attack before he was ready, sent into the surrounding country and gathered in the wives of several of the prominent gentlemen who were themselves in the camp of his antagonist, the autocratic Berkeley. We are told that it is probable that these ladies were brought to the stronghold of the rebel in their carriages, which shows in itself the advance of Virginian luxury beyond that of New England, where a pillion was all that could be expected by any but the most modish people; for Bacon rebelled in 1676, and coaches were not general in New England until nearly two decades later, though we are told that John Winthrop had one in 1685. The ladies were brought to Bacon's camp at "Greenspring," whether afoot, on pillions, or in carriages, but a.s.suredly "sorely against their wills." There have been handed down to us the names of four of these ladies: "Madame Bray, Madame Page, Madame Ballard and Madame Bacon,"--the latter a connection of the rebel himself. They were treated courteously enough in some ways, but they were informed that they would be held as hostages for the forbearance of Sir William until preparations had been made for his reception; and still greater precautions were taken against attack, as will be seen.

For Mr. Bacon, though he had the repute of a _preux chevalier_, yet sent one of the ladies to inform her husband and those of the other dames that he meant to place the ladies "in the forefront of his men" while the fortifications were in progress, thus securing his forces against attack by interposing the shield of sacred femininity between them and their enemies. When the "white-ap.r.o.ned" herald delivered her message, "the poor gentlewomen were mightily astonished, and neather were their husbands void of amazement at this subtill invention." No wonder; for though as a conception the words of General Bosquet, _C'est magnifique!_ might have been applied, certainly they would needs be followed by the rest of the famous saying, _mais ce n'est pas la guerre!_ The chronicler of the affair continues in a strain which is worthy of at least partial quotation for its sardonic humor. "If Mr. Fuller thought it strange that the Divell's black garde should be enrouled G.o.d's soldiers," he says, the husbands made it no less wonderful that their innocent and harmless wives should thus be entred a white garde to the Divell. And this action was a method in war that they were not well acquainted with that before they could come to pierce their enemy's sides they must be obliged to dart their weapons through their wives brest. "The Divell" of the foregoing is of course Bacon himself; and really, when we think of the poor ladies set in their "white ap.r.o.ns" on the breastworks, not sure whether they have most to fear from front or rear, from friend or foe, we are tempted to consider the t.i.tle well bestowed. Yet Bacon was generally held to be a man of gallantry as well as a gallant man; but the incident is not to the point. At last "the guardian angells withdrew into a place of safety," the works being finished; and, strange to say, we hear no more concerning them, though they were left in the camp of the rebels when Berkeley's troops were repulsed, and what befel them during the subsequent triumph--a brief one--of the Baconian forces and the burning of Jamestown we are not told. It is to be hoped that they were restored to their homes with more courtesy than they were brought thence.

Bacon's antagonist, Sir William Berkeley, did not prove himself more gallant or considerate to women than the defeated rebel. After Bacon had been defeated and had wisely died, the wife of Major Cheeseman, one of the captured rebels, was present during the interrogation of her husband by Berkeley, and when the latter demanded Cheeseman's reasons for rebelling, the lady very courageously came forward and prevented his reply by telling the enraged Sir William that "It was her provocation that made her husband join in the cause that Bacon contended for; if he had not been influenced by her instigations he had never done that which he had done;" and then, kneeling to Berkeley, she continued, "Since what her husband had done was by her means, and so by consequence she most guilty, she prayed that she might be hanged and he pardoned." It was a womanly and wifely speech; and those who are unacquainted with the character of Berkeley will find it difficult to believe that he answered her by a proposition so gross and insulting that it proved him utterly wanting the true instincts, however he may have had the veneer, of a gentleman, as well as in understanding of a woman's heart. Cheeseman was not hanged, however; but he died in prison, and the circ.u.mstances were thought mysterious, so that Berkeley was not held guiltless of the death.

In the narrated incidents we can find a point of contrast between the female cultures of the North and the South. We can well imagine a Puritan wife addressing a dignitary as Mrs. Cheeseman addressed Governor Berkeley; but it is impossible to fancy Puritan women in the situation in which those "white gardes of the Divell" found themselves. The former would never have submitted to the degradation; they would not, for their lives, have so hampered the hands of their husbands. It was not the pioneer woman of a new continent who stood upon those ramparts and made their own b.r.e.a.s.t.s the shields of their enemies, but the delicately reared and nurtured woman of a pampered cla.s.s. Yet that there was good courage among these fine ladies is shown, if showing were necessary, in the example of Mrs. Cheeseman; but it was not universal as among the women of the Puritans, though both its presence and absence formed but a general rule to which there were many and important exceptions.

With all their divergences and differences, however, there was between the North and South one point of contact which was typical, racial, and individual, and which in its persistence grew to be national. It was of course a continuation of Anglo-Saxon tradition, applied to new circ.u.mstances which made it but the more powerful in influence; but it was a tradition which was to be potent in the formation of the American spirit. This was the home. For the home, as we know it, is almost, if not entirely, uniquely American and English. There may be entered a saving clause concerning the Teutonic nations, but it would not impeach the full integrity of the statement. Only in the Anglo-Saxon races has the home possessed the peculiar sanct.i.ty which it holds in this day among those same peoples; and in America this has been distinctively the case. For a race of pioneers, which builds in the desert its own continuing cities, sees in its edifices, however humble at first, something which is not evident to the inhabiter of ancient cities. The dweller in the wilderness gazes with a peculiar affection upon the little tract which he has reclaimed; and the cottage or even hut, with its humble household G.o.ds and goods, takes in his eyes a strange and extrinsic value because of that which they represent to him, in achievement and of necessity.

Therefore, north and south, the first thought of the pioneer settler was to establish the home; and the first requisite of the home is its presiding deity, the wife. Thus the American woman had from the first a peculiar value in the eyes of her husband; she was more surely "flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone" than were other wives, for she shared of necessity all his perils and triumphs, while his work was patiently done for her as for himself. She represented to him his gage to fortune as well as his best-beloved and most-needed companion; and she was necessary to him. This att.i.tude of the husband, unexpressed, perhaps uncomprehended, was none the less effective in forming the womanly ideal of the home. Because that home had been gained--in the aggregate at last, in the individual at first--by the sweat of her goodman's brow and was maintained and guarded by the labor of his hands and the courage of his heart, therefore the American wife was conscious of a peculiar duty toward the husband, a peculiar tenderness toward the home, which to her represented as much as to him.

In this way and for these reasons the sanct.i.ty of the American home became peculiarly marked, and there arose in that home an atmosphere of holiness and purity that was in contrast to the households of other nations at that day. There is no more appropriate place than this, on the border line of the two epochs of colonization, when the American type began to be defined and recognized, for a brief glance at the American home in its spiritual features. As with the homes in rural England, but differing in this respect, as in so many others, from the city life of the mother country, the purity of the home was its most noteworthy and carefully conserved feature. In many respects there was likeness between the home of America and that of Holland; certainly, though in many aspects the resemblance failed, there was a closer resemblance than between the former and the home in any other nation.

Whether this came from the brief sojourn of the Pilgrims in Holland cannot be said with certainty, though it seems most improbable; the greater likelihood is that the conditions which prevailed in colonial America were those best adapted to the genius of the Dutch people in the matter of domesticity, as later shown in the somewhat similar conditions and results in South Africa. Certain it is that the American home, like that of Holland, was in all ways, materially and morally, preeminently _clean_. There are many faults to be attributed to our ancestors north and south; but they had great virtues as well, and this of cleanliness in the home was one, and a great one. Even at this early day there was plenty of roystering and even vice in the colonies, more especially in Virginia, where the gay young blades ruffled it in imitation of the sparks of the court of the Stuarts; but the home was still preserved free from contamination. Woman was from the first held as a sacred thing, as a being to be reverenced and even worshipped, not with the affected gallantry of the English cavaliers or the French exquisites, but in all honesty and honor. They knew her value, these men of the old colonies; and they felt that an affront to her purity and virtue was a blow at the very foundation of the country they were learning to love.

So it was that in America, as nowhere else, woman was in the mid-colonial days held in honor and honest reverence, and so it was that the American home, founded amid the clamor of the war-whoop and standing as the true stronghold of civilization, grew to be the finest emblem of the spirit of the new land and the n.o.blest monument to the character and influence of its women.

CHAPTER VI

THE LATER COLONIAL PERIOD

Though perhaps rather a ramification than an inherent part of the history of woman, the subject of dress among the female colonists, at least in New England, is one of too great interest to permit it to be pa.s.sed over in silence in a book concerning the women of America. From the very first--retracing our steps somewhat in order to obtain a complete view of the matter--the question of female dress was one that in New England was constantly giving grave offence and even scandal to the more serious of the colonists. Sumptuary laws were pa.s.sed again and again, their very repet.i.tion showing how helpless was legislation to cope with the conditions confronting it in the matter of feminine love for gauds. As early as 1634 there was enacted a law which forbade any person, either man or woman, from making or buying any apparel, either woollen or silk or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said clothes. Gold and silver girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats were prohibited by the same law; but the planters were permitted to wear out such apparel as they were already provided with, "except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings." Five years later there was a new piece of legislation which banished "immoderate great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and capes," and in 1651 the General Court, having found its legislation futile in many respects, descended to argument, and expressed its "utter detestation and dislike that men or women of meane condition, education, and callings shoulde take uppon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of gold or silver lace or b.u.t.tons or poynts at their knees, to walke in great boots, or women of the same rank to weare silke or tiffany hoodes or scarfes." If those "of meane condition" did these things, it is evident that the people of higher cla.s.s could not have been very sober in their garb--indeed we know that they were not. In 1676 the Court of Connecticut pa.s.sed a law that is worthy of quotation in full, since it not only sets forth the Puritan opinion upon the matter, but shows the ingenuity of their efforts to cope with the growing evil, and also gives us a good idea of the fashions of that time:

"Whereas excess in apparel amongst us is unbecoming a wilderness condition and the profession of the gospell, whereby the riseing Generation is in danger to be corrupted, which practices are testifyed against in G.o.d's holy word, it is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that what person soever shall wear Gold or Silver Lace, or Gold or Silver b.u.t.tons, Silk Ribbons, or other costly superfluous trimings, or any bone Lace above three shillings per yard, or Silk Scarf es, the List makers of the respective Townes are hereby required to a.s.sesse such persons so offending, (or their Husbands, parents, or masters under whose government they are) in the list of Estates at one hundred and fifty pound Estate; and they to pay their Rates according to that proportion, as such men use to pay, to whom such apparell alowed as suitable to their Rank, provided this law shall not extend to any magistrate, or a like publique officer of this Colony, their wives or children, whoe are left to their discretion in wearing of apparell, or any setled military commission officer, or such whose quality and Estate have been above the ordinary degree, though now decayed.

"It is further ordered that all such persons as shall for the future make, or weave, or buy any apparell exceeding the quality and condition of their persons and Estates, or that is apparently beyond the necessary end of apparell for covering or comeliness, either of these to be judged by the Grand Jury and County Court where such presentments are made, shall forfeit for every such offence ten shillings; and if any Taylor shall fashion any garment for any child or servant contrary to the mind of the Parent or Master of such a child or servant, he shall forfeit for every such offence ten shillings."

Think of the position of the Grand Jury and County Court which were to decide as to whether "apparell" went beyond the "necessary end for covering or comeliness!" Imagine the grave and reverend judges and the sapient jurymen putting their wise heads together over the question as to whether Mistress Anne's "wascote" was an inch too long for the mere needs of covering, or whether Mistress Jane's coif was decorated with lace beyond the absolute requirements of comeliness! The law doubtless meant well, but from its nature it was not capable of enforcement.

A fairly comprehensive understanding of the wardrobe of a lady of the mid-seventeenth century may be furnished by reproducing, in all the glory of its original orthography, the list of the clothes of Jane Humphrey, as given in her last will and testament. Mistress Humphrey died in Dorchester, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1668, and she seems to have had no possessions beyond her wardrobe. This, however, was not uncommon at the time, when clothes had a value that came from their rarity of stuff and necessary skill in fashioning, so that such a list as that of the deceased lady represented a considerable amount in those days.

"Ye Jump. Best Red Kersey Petticoate. Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian Wascote. A black silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Ap.r.o.n. A plain black Quoife without any lace. A white Holland App.r.o.n with a small lace at the bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hoode & m.u.f.fe. My Greene Linsey Woolsey petticoate.

My Whittle that is fringed and my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Ap.r.o.n. My best Quife with a lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A White Holland ap.r.o.n with two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A greene Vnder Coate. Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake and my blew Wascote. My best White Ap.r.o.n, my best Shifts. One of my best Neck Cloathes, and one of my plain Quieus. One Calico Vnder Neck Cloath.

My fine thick Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A square Cloath with a little lace on it. My greene Ap.r.o.n."

It is not probable that many women of the present day, far less any man, will be able to recognize all the stuffs that are here represented; but we can easily gather that Mistress Humphrey was well provided in the matter of "apparell", and the fact that her wardrobe was deemed worthy to be so divided into small portions--for each period as printed represents a beneficiary, the name being omitted as of no interest to us--of itself proves the value that in those days attached to the smallest articles of clothing. Yet a gown could be made at a cost of but eight shillings for the mantua-maker; the whole of the expense lay in the stuff, which was costly in proportion to its difficulty of attainment. Indian stuffs were very popular among the later colonists and in the days immediately after the Revolution. In the matter of general fashions at this time it may be best to quote from a work written by a woman concerning feminine costume in the older days of our country:

"We can gain some notion of the general shape of the dress of our forbears at various periods from the portraits of the times. Those of Madam Shrimpton and of Rebecca Rawson are among the earliest. They were painted during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The dress is not very graceful, but far from plain, showing no trace of Puritanical simplicity; in fact, it is precisely that seen in portraits of English well-to-do folk of the same date. Both have strings of beads around the neck and no other jewels; both wear loosely tied and rather shapeless flat hoods concealing the hair, Madam Shrimpton's having an embroidered edge about two inches wide. Similar hoods are shown in Remain de Rooge prints of the landing of King William, of the women in the coronation procession. They were like the Nithesdale hoods of Hogarth's prints, but smaller. Both New England dames have also broad collars, stiff and ugly, with uncurved horizontal lower edge, apparently trimmed with embroidery or cut-work. Both show the wooden contour of figure which was either the fault of the artist or of the iron busk of the wearer's stays. The bodies are stiffly pointed, and the most noticeable feature of the gown is the sleeve, consisting of a double puff drawn in just above the elbow; in one case with very narrow ribbon loops. Randle Holme says that a sleeve thus tied in at the elbow was called a virago sleeve.

Madam Shrimpton's sleeve has also a falling frill of embroidery and lace and a ruffle around the armsize. The question of sleeves sorely vexed the colonial magistrates. Men and women were forbidden to have but one slash or opening in each sleeve. Then the inordinate width of sleeves became equally trying, and all were ordered to restrain themselves to sleeves half an ell wide. Worse modes were to come: 'short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered' had to be prohibited; and if any such ill-fashioned gowns came over from London, the owners were enjoined to wear thick linen to cover the arms to the wrist. Existing portraits show how futile were these precautions, how inoperative these laws; arms were bared with impunity, with complacency, and the presentment of Governor Wentworth shows three slashes in the sleeves.

"Not only were the arms of New England women bared to an immodest degree, but their necks also, calling forth many a 'just and seasonable reprehension of naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s.' Though gowns thus cut in the pink of the English mode proved too scanty to suit Puritan ministers, the fair wearers wore them as long as they were in vogue.

"It is curious to note in the oldest gowns I have seen, that the method of cutting and shaping the waist or body is precisely the same as at the present day. The outlines of the shoulder and back-seams, of the bust forms, are the same, though not so gracefully curved: and the number of pieces is usually the same. Very good examples to study are the gorgeous brocaded gowns of Peter Faneuil's sister, perfectly preserved and now exhibited in the Boston Art Museum."

That the record made in this quotation may be complete, it must be supplemented by a few words devoted to another aspect of fashion among the early Puritans. This was in the matter of hair-dressing, that fashion which went to such enormous lengths in England during the eighteenth century. A curious fact is that the Puritan women seem generally to have worn "bangs"; and this fact is more of a certificate to their simplicity than to their taste. However, there was a large leaven of fashion in the towns of the Puritans; for in 1683 Increase Mather thus spoke of the mode of his day: "Will not the haughty daughters of Zion refrain their pride in apparell? Will they lay out their hair, and wear their false locks, their borders, and towers like comets about their heads?" These queries suggest decided lengths in head adornment, probably even to the adoption of the "heart-breakers" worn in 1670, which are described as "False locks set on wyers to make them stand at a distance from the head." One would think that such frank admission of falsity might plead its own excuse; but one Puritan minister describes the women of that time as "Apes of Fancy, friziling and curyling of their hayr."

Enough of dress and fashion! Yet some record thereof is pertinent here, for it shows us the gradual change which was being worked in the customs and ideas of New England. The colonies were becoming conventional; when modishness comes in at the door, individuality flies out at the window.

The ideal of the home was being modified, not to say altered. There had always been among a certain element a love for the gauds and fripperies of the world, but it was not until the opening of the second colonial period that this element grew to the ascendency in New England. The old primitive simplicity as a national attribute was beginning to fail, and in its stead was being imported the conventional complexity of life in the mother country. New England was becoming more deserving of her name; she was growing to be a lesser England instead of a new civilization.

She was fast falling into the errors that were undermining the true American spirit in the southern colonies.

We have seen the wardrobe of a New England woman, presumably one of fashion, yet not of notable rank. Here was a great change from the era when the majority of women wore homespun and furnished themselves with the material which they wore as well as fashioned the garments with their own hands. Of course there was still, and long continued to be, an element that preserved the household traditions of the earlier settlers, and thus the individuality of the life; but it had come to be in the minority. The New England woman, taken from the representative cla.s.s, no longer whirled her spinning wheel and wove the garments for her wearing and that of her family; she looked to her goodman to import these things from England in the vessels which were now regularly arriving in the home ports.

Another sign of the changed conditions of the New England home was the matter of domestic service. In 1687, according to the writer of _The Diary of a French Refugee_ in Boston, there was "absolute Need of Hired Help;" but it was less household servants than field hands to whom the author was referring. Later, however, we find Hugh Peters, of Salem, writing to an acquaintance in Boston, "Wee haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would be glad of a share viz: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke goode." This points to domestic service, as does a later letter from the same source, in which he says, "My wife desires my daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayde now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell with us, for truly wee are now so destutute (having now but an Indian) that wee know not what to do."

Later yet, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in the journals frequent advertis.e.m.e.nts of runaway servants, mostly Indians.

There was also negro slavery in the northern colonies, though it was never entirely accepted as an inst.i.tution,--not from any moral scruples, but because of inexpediency and poverty. In 1645, Emanuel Downing suggested the exchange of Indian captives for negroes, and said, "I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee gett a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business;" but this probably referred to field hands, though he later wrote to England for "G.o.dly e skylful paynestakeing girles" as servants, and in default of these he at last fairly inaugurated the system of slavery which existed for a time in New England. There were white slaves as well as black in the northern colonies, and this infamous custom helped to solve the problem of domestic service.

That there was trouble with servants in those old days, even as in these present, is amply attested by the records; but it was possible to resort to more drastic measures than are now feasible. We read that at Hartford, "Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publiquely corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary." This was in the early times, and many matrons of later days, even as many now, must have longed for the return of the laws which enabled them to keep their servants in order. Mary Dudley has set forth her experience in this matter in a letter to her mother, Madame Winthrop, whom she had asked to send her "a goode girle, a strong l.u.s.ty servant, used to all kind of work who would refuse none." Her letter of complaint is worth quoting at large, as showing the conditions of the New England housekeeper of that day in relation to her "help:"

"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now I am like through G.o.d his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming to me she carried herselfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietness I was never so fitted in my life for she would make mee have enough of it.

If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you."

There is more of it; but enough has been quoted to show the tone, which is strikingly prophetic of many things of the present day; even a piece of our reprehensible slang seems foreshadowed in that phrase, "she hath got such a head." In another letter, this time written by a man, John Winthrop, we hear that the "Irish creature" whom he and his wife have for servant is a very plague. She is "lying and unfaithfull; w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent.... She w'd frequently take her mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dress herselfe and away without leave among her companions." So that the servant question was just as difficult of solution among our great-great-grandmothers as for ourselves.

Yet from this very condition of servitude blossomed one of the purest flowers of romance that we find in the history of the early days of our country,--the story of Agnes Surriage. She was but a servant, a mere drudge, scrubbing the floor of the tavern at Marblehead, when her beauty attracted the attention of young Sir Harry Frankland, then collector of the port of Boston. Noting that she was barefooted, he gave her a crown to buy a pair of shoes; but on a subsequent visit he saw her again scrubbing and still shoeless. His question as to the disposition of his crown elicited the reply that she had bought the shoes but was keeping them "to wear to meeting;" and though there would seem to be no great wit herein, it is recorded that Frankland thought that "a reply had never been made with such charming grace." At all events, he incontinently fell heels over head in love; but his pride of family forbade marriage, and it would seem that at first his intentions toward the young girl were creditable enough, since he had her educated by the best masters in Boston, and especially instructed in religion by the Rev. Dr. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College. So matters went until Agnes was twenty-three; but then Frankland's pa.s.sion would no longer be denied, though he had no intention of making the lowborn girl his wife. But she loved him with a love too great to balk at conventions; she felt herself his wife in heart, and she gave herself unreservedly to him. For a time they lived together in Boston; but scandal became too strong, and they went into the country, where they lived for about three years the ideal country life of that day,--a life much like that of the Virginia planter. Then they went on a visit to England; but the relatives of Frankland would have none of them, and they went to travel on the continent. After about a year of wandering they settled down at Lisbon, and were there during the terrible earthquake that visited that city on All Saints' Day, 1755. During that catastrophe Frankland was in mortal peril; and in his moments of pain and danger he vowed that, if he were saved, he would make Agnes his wife in fact as she had so long been in heart. Scarcely had the vow been recorded before Agnes was at his side, having searched for him and come in time to aid in his rescue. He did not forget his oath when the danger was pa.s.sed, and the next day married her according to the rites of the Church of Rome, the ceremony being repeated according to English customs while they were on their homeward voyage. Agnes, now Lady Frankland, was on this occasion well received in England; but the hearts of the lovers--for such they still were--inclined to Boston, the scene of their first loves, and they soon crossed the ocean and took up their residence in the Clarke Mansion on Garden Street in Boston. Here they lived until 1757, when Frankland was appointed consul-general at Lisbon; but in 1763 they once more returned to the city of their early love and lived there until 1768, when they went to England, where Frankland died. Lady Frankland then returned once more to her now desolate home, though she did not live in the Clarke Mansion, but in Hopkinton, where she dwelt until the Revolution, when she once more suffered exile, this time as a Tory. She went to England, and there she harmed the romance of her life by her marriage to John Drew, a rich banker; but she died within a year, at the age of fifty-eight, and one can only regret that death did not antic.i.p.ate that unfaithfulness to the memory of her first lover. Even with its luckless anticlimax, there are few stories so romantic as that of the beautiful scrubbing-girl of Marblehead, and she may well be remembered as one of the most prominent figures of colonial womanhood.

Let us now return to matters more immediately connected with the earlier part of the period which we are considering; and among them there is none of more interest, even though it be hardly enduring, than the story of the epidemic of witchcraft at Salem.

It must be remembered that the witchcraft outbreak at Salem, though it was there most exaggerated, was yet typical. It was the day of superst.i.tion; and that superst.i.tion was both received and fostered mostly by women. The outbreak at Salem was in a way salutary, for its very violence brought about the reaction which soon culminated in the establishment of a truer creed and a different influence for women; but at the time it was in the actual direction of primitive development in America.

It began with the troubles between the parish of Salem and the lately-called minister, one Samuel Parris, into the nature of which troubles it is not necessary to enter. In 1689, Mr. Parris had come to Salem from the West Indies, and he had brought with him two colored servants. These people, John Indian and t.i.tuba, his wife, were experts in palmistry, second-sight, magic, and incantations, and they soon infected a circle of the village children with love for these matters.

The daughter and the niece of Mr. Parris, aged respectively nine and eleven, were among the most prominent at first; but they had older companions who soon began to make earnest that which in its inception was only intended as a play. The girls learned to go into trances, to talk gibberish, to creep about on all-fours, and generally to give a good imitation of the pythonesses of old. The chief of these young people were Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, each aged seventeen; Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon, each aged eighteen; and Mary Warren and Sarah Churchill, each aged twenty. These, however, though the leaders in a way, did not long retain the supremacy; for it was found that Ann Putnam, aged twelve, and Mercy Lewis, aged seventeen, were preeminent for mischief and ingenuity. Another leader in the mischief was Mrs. Ann Putnam, about thirty years of age and probably of unsound mind, though she was apparently not suspected of anything beyond vindictiveness and eccentricity. She was a beautiful and well-educated woman, admirably fitted for the part she was destined to play in the coming orgy of murder.

The antics of these girls, not improbably first carried out in a spirit of sport, were begun at the parsonage about Christmas, 1691; but after a time they were challenged for their actions, when they declared that they could not help themselves, being bewitched. Instead of disregarding their folly or attributing it to childish mischief and putting a stop to it by the strong hand, Mr. Parris published the matter to the world. The children now found themselves of a sudden objects of the most widespread scrutiny; they also found themselves, it is not absurd to suppose, in a position where they deemed themselves in peril if they were discovered to be impostors. They were soon acknowledged as truly suffering from witchcraft; and then began the inquisition as to the guilty parties.

t.i.tuba, the Indian hag, who had probably taught them the tricks which they now put into effect against her, was the first named by them as one of their tormentors; and then followed the names of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, two old women with few friends. t.i.tuba confessed,--it is at least possible, because of the craze for notoriety often to be found in such people,--but the two white women denied their guilt, and all were sent to Boston for trial. The matter might now well have been allowed to die out; but the girls had tasted power and were anxious for more.

t.i.tuba, in her confession, had implicated the two women, Good and Osburn, and "two others whose faces she could not see"; and the girls were importuned to name these other "tormentors." At first they refused,--probably because they had not held council to decide on the two to be named,--but at last they indicated two of the most estimable women in the community, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, aged respectively sixty and (about) seventy years. The village was thunderstruck, for these women, if not of the highest rank, were full of courtesy and kindliness and were well-educated and well-bred. None the less, they were accused, Goodwife Corey by little Ann Putnam,--at whose instigation it seems unnecessary to suggest,--Goodwife Nurse, whose husband was one of the most honored persons in the village, while she herself was regarded as a model of virtue and piety, by more than one of "The Afflicted Children," as the girls were now called; but the bearing of Mistress Putnam at the examination was sufficient to show where stood the chief accuser. The girls went into their regular fits at each answer to the questions, unshamed by the sight of the venerable lady standing there in her dainty dress and with her fragile figure and pure face; and Mrs. Putnam broke in on the magistrate's questions with "Did you not bring the black man with you? Did you not bid me tempt G.o.d and die? How oft have you eaten and drunk your own d.a.m.nation?" It is no wonder that the accused, at such a horrible outburst of vindictive hate,--as she must have known it to be,--raised her hands to heaven with the cry, "O Lord, help me!" But at that the "Afflicted Children" went into the most extraordinary convulsions; and the foolish magistrate, Hathorne by name, who had until then been favorably inclined toward the prisoner, connected the spasms of the girls with the uplifted hands of the old lady, and this turned the tide against her. She was remanded for trial.

The mischief was now fairly afoot. Personal malice began to work; some of the girls were servants and accused their masters and mistresses, as in the cases of John Proctor and George Jacobs. On the other hand, now that superst.i.tion was thoroughly awakened, it ran its usual course of madness, and the most absurd pretexts for accusations were eagerly fastened upon. Susannah Martin, for instance, was accused, and executed, upon the ground that she had walked on a country road without getting her skirts or stockings muddy, and must be a witch to be able to perform such a feat! Even such a man as the Rev. George Burroughs, who had been pastor of the church at Salem for about three years, but had long left there, and in 1692 was living in Maine, was arrested on a charge of witchcraft and taken to Salem to be tried, on the plea that he was, though of small stature, strong enough to lift a barrel of cider or hold a heavy musket out at arm's length. He was named by the "Afflicted Children"; but the fact that while in Salem he had been inimical to the party of Mrs. Ann Putnam makes the real source of the accusation not problematical. He was formally accused by little Ann Putnam, who said that one evening there came to her the apparition of a minister and asked her to write her name in the devil's book; then appeared two women in shrouds, who scolded the first wraith away; then the two women told Ann that they were the ghosts of the first and second wives of Mr.