CHAPTER IX.
THEIR AMUSEMENTS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
Of amusements for women in the first century of colonial life, we can almost say there were none. There was in New England no card-playing, no theatre-going, no dancing. The solemn Thursday lecture was the sole mid-week gathering. Occasionally there was the excitement of Training Day. In the South the distances were too great from plantation to plantation for frequent friendly meetings. As time went on, coöperation in gathering and storing the various food-harvests afforded opportunities for social intercourse. Apple-parings and corn-huskings were autumnal delights, but when these were over, the chafing youth found no recreations through the long, snowy months in country homes, and but scant opportunity for amusement in town. No wonder that they turned eagerly to the singing-school, and found in that innocent gathering a safety-valve for the pent-up longing for diversion which burned in young souls then as now. We can but wonder how, ere the singing-school became a force, young New Englanders became acquainted enough with each other to think of marriage; and we can almost regard the establishment of the study of fugue and psalm singing as the preservation of the commonwealth.
In Virginia the different elements of life developed characteristic pastimes, and by the first quarter of the eighteenth century there were opportunities of diversion offered for women.
We have preserved to us an exact account of the sports which were enjoyed by both Virginian men and women. It may be found in the Virginia Gazette for October, 1737:—
We have advices from Hanover County that on St Andrews Day there are to be Horse Races and several other Diversions for the entertainment of the Gentlemen and Ladies, at the Old Field, near Captain John Bickertons, in that County if permitted by the Hon Wm Byrd Esq Proprietor of said land, the substance of which is as follows viz:
It is proposed that 20 Horses or Mares do run around a three mile course for a prize of five pounds.
That a Hat of the value of 20s be cudgelled for, and that after the first challenge made the Drums are to beat every Quarter of an hour for three challenges round the Ring and none to play with their Left hand.
That a violin be played for by 20 Fiddlers; no person to have the liberty of playing unless he bring a fiddle with him. After the prize is won they are all to play together and each a different tune, and to be treated by the company.
That 12 Boys of 12 years of age do run 112 yards for a hat of the cost of 12 shillings.
That a Flag be flying on said Day 30 feet high.
That a handsome entertainment be provided for the subscribers and their wives; and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives may treat any other lady.
That Drums Trumpets Hautboys &c be provided to play at said entertainment.
That after Dinner the Royal Health His Honor the Governor’s &c are to be drunk.
That a Quire of Ballads be sung for by a number of Songsters, all of them to have liquor sufficient to clear their Wind Pipes.
That a pair of Silver Buckles be wrestled for by a number of brisk young men.
That a pair of handsome Shoes be danced for.
That a pair of handsome Silk Stockings of one Pistole value be given to the handsomest young country maid that appears in the field.
With many other whimsical and Comical Diversions too numerous to mention.
And as this mirth is designed to be purely innocent and void of offence, all persons resorting there are desired to behave themselves with decency and sobriety; the subscribers being resolved to discountenance all immorality with the utmost rigor.
There is a certain rough and noisy heartiness in this rollicking Racing Day in old Virginia that speaks of boisterous cheer akin to the days of “merrie England,” and which seems far from disagreeable when contrasted with the dull yearly round of sober days in New England. Virginia and Maryland men had many social clubs “to promote innocent mirth and ingenious humour,” but of course within these clubs their consorts and daughters were not guests. A ball or a country dance were the chief amusements of Southern women, and very smart functions some of these balls were, though they did begin in broad daylight.
An early account was given by a travelling Virginian, William Black, of a Government Ball in the Council Room at Annapolis in 1744.
The Ladies of Note made a Splendant Appearance. In a Room Back from where they Danc’d was Several Sorts of Wines, Punch and Sweetmeats. In this Room those that was not engaged in any Dancing Match might better employ themselves at Cards, Dice, Backgammon, or with a cheerful Glass. The Ladies were so very agreeable and seem’d so intent on Dancing that one might have Imagin’d they had some Design on the Virginians, either Designing to make Tryal of their Strength and Vigour, or to convince them of their Activity and Sprightliness. After several smart engagements in which no advantage on either side was Observable, with a mutual Consent about 1 of the Clock in the Morning it was agreed to break up, every Gentleman waiting on his Partner home.
The method in which a ball was conducted somewhat more than a century ago in Louisville was thus told by Maj. Samuel S. Forman, who visited that town as a young man.
After the managers had organized the Company by drawing numbers and appointing the opening with a Minuet, Uncle was called on and introduc’d to a Lady for the opening scene. The Managers who distributed the numbers called Gentⁿ No. 1, he takes his stand—Lady No. 1, she rises from her seat, the Manager leads her to the floor and introduces Gentⁿ No. 1, & so on till the floor is full. After all the Company have been thus call’d out then the Gentⁿ are free to seek his Partner but no monopoly. Lady at the head chooses the figure, but it is considered out of order for one Lady to head a figure twice unless all have been at the head. If there happen to be some ladies to whom from mistake or otherwise have been passed the Managers duty is to see to it. And another Custom was for a Gentⁿ to call on a Lady & inform her of an intended ball & ask permission to see her to the place & see her safe home again. If the Gentⁿ does not draw such Lady for the first Contra Dance he generally engages her for the first Volunteer. At the Refreshments the Gentⁿ will by instinct without Chesterfieldian monition see that his betterhalf (for the time being) has a quantum sufficit and that without cramming his jaws full until he has reconducted her to the ball-room, then he is at liberty to absent himself for a while. There were two young gentlemen there from New York who were much attached to each other. They promised to let each other know when a ball was on foot. At one time one came to the other and told him to prepare his pumps against such an evening. The answer was—Pumps out of order, must decline. No Sir that will not do. Then Sir you have been buying Several pair of handsome Mocassons for New York Ladies. If you will lend me one pair & you will put on one pair (it wont hurt them) I will go. Snaps his fingers—the very thing. The next ball after this Moccasons became very fashionable. So many fashions have their origins from Necessity.
A traveller named Bennet gives us an account of the amusements of Boston women in the middle of the century, when dancing was slowly becoming fashionable.
For their domestic amusements every afternoon after drinking tea, the gentlemen and ladies walk the Mall, and from there adjourn to one anothers house to spend the evening, those that are not disposed to attend the evening lecture which they may do if they please six nights in the seven the year round. What they call the Mall is a walk on a fine green Common adjoining to the south east side of the town. The Government being in the hands of dissenters they dont admit of plays or music houses; but of late they have sent up an assembly to which some of the ladies resort. But they are looked upon to be none of the nicest, in regard to their reputation, and it is thought it will be soon suppressed for it is much taken notice of and exploded by the religious and sober part of the people. But notwithstanding plays and such like diversions do not obtain here, they dont be dispirited or moped for the want of them; for both the ladies and gentlemen dress and appear as gay in common as courtiers in England on a coronation or birthday. And the ladies visit here, drink tea, indulge in every little piece of gentility to the height of the mode, and neglect the affairs of the family with as good a grace as the finest ladies in London.
The Marquis de Chastellux writes of the Philadelphia assembly in 1780:—
The assembly or subscription ball, of which I must give an account may here be introduced. At Philadelphia, there are places appropriated for the young people to dance in and where those whom that amusement does not suit may play at different games of cards, but at Philadelphia games of commerce are alone allowed. A manager or Master of Ceremonies presides at the methodical amusements; he presents to the gentlemen and lady dancers, billets folded up containing each a number; thus fate decides the male or female partner for the whole evening. All the dances are previously arranged and the dancers are called in their turns. These dances, like the toasts we drink at table, have some relation to politics; one is called The Successful Campaign, another Bourgoynes Defeat, a third Clintons Retreat. The managers are generally chosen from among the most distinguished officers of the army. Colonel Mitchell, a little fat squat man, was formerly the manager, but when I saw him he had descended from the magistracy and danced like a common citizen. He is said to have exercised his office with great severity, and it is told of him, that a young lady who was figuring in a country dance, having forgot her turn through conversing with a friend, he came up to her and called out aloud, “Give over, Miss, take care what you are about. Do you think you come here for your pleasure?”
The dance, A Successful Campaign, was the one selected by diplomatic Miss Peggy Champlin to open the ball, when she danced in Newport with General Washington, to the piping of De Rochambeau and his fellow officers. This was “the figure” of A Successful Campaign. “Lead down two couples on the outside and up the middle; second couple do the same, turn contrary partners, cast off, right hand and left.” It was simple, was it not—but I doubt not it was dignified and of sedate importance when Washington footed it.
Stony Point was another favorite of Revolutionary days—for did not General Wayne successfully storm the place? This dance was more difficult; the directions were somewhat bewildering. “First couple three hands round with the second lady—allemand. Three hands round with the second gentleman—allemand again. Lead down two couples, up again, cast off one couple, hands round with the third, right and left.” I scarcely know what the figure “allemand” was. The German allemande was then an old style of waltz, slower than the modern waltz, but I can scarcely think that Washington or any of those serious, dignified officers waltzed, even to slow time.
Another obsolete term is “foot it.”
seems to refer to some definite step in dancing. Sheridan in The Rivals thus uses the term in regard to dances:—
I’d foot it with e’er a captain in the county, but these outlandish heathen allemandes and cotillions are quite beyond me.
But “footing it” and “outlandish heathen allemandes” are not so misty as another term, “to haze.” In the Innocent Maid they “hazed.” “First three couples haze, then lead down the middle and back again, close with the right hand and left.” In dancing the Corsino they figured thus: “Three couples foot it and change sides; foot it again and once more change sides; three couples allemand, and the first fall in the middle then right hand and left.”
Dancing-masters’ advertisements of those days often give us the list of modish dances: “Allemandes Vally’s, De la Cours, Devonshire Minuets and Jiggs.”
Burnaby in 1759 wrote of a special pleasure of the Quaker maids of Philadelphia: of fishing-parties.
The women are exceedingly handsome and polite. They are naturally sprightly and fond of pleasure and upon the whole are much more agreeable and accomplished than the men. Since their intercourse with the English officers they are greatly improved, and without flattery, many of them would not make bad figures even in the first assemblies in Europe. Their amusements are chiefly dancing in the winter, and in the summer forming parties of pleasure upon the Schuilkill, and in the country. There is a society of sixteen ladies and as many gentlemen called The fishing company, who meet once a fortnight upon the Schuilkill. They have a very pleasant room erected in a romantic situation upon the banks of that river where they generally dine and drink tea. There are several pretty walks about it, and some wild and rugged rocks which together with the water and fine groves that adorn the banks, form a most beautiful and picturesque scene. There are boats and fishing tackle of all sorts, and the company divert themselves with walking, fishing, going up the water, dancing, singing, conversing, or just as they please. The ladies wear an uniform and appear with great ease and advantage from the neatness and simplicity of it. The first and most distinguished people of the colony are of this society; and it is very advantageous to a stranger to be introduced to it, as he hereby gets acquainted with the best and most respectable company in Philadelphia. In the winter when there is snow upon the ground it is usual to make what they call sleighing parties.
He says of New York society:—
The women are handsome and agreeable though rather more reserved than the Philadelphian ladies. Their amusements are much the same as in Pensylvania; viz balls and sleighing expeditions in the winter, and in the summer going in parties upon the water and fishing; or making excursions into the country. There are several houses pleasantly situated upon East River near New York where it is common to have turtle feasts; these happen once or twice in a week. Thirty or forty gentlemen and ladies meet and dine together, drink tea in the afternoon, fish and amuse themselves till evening and then return home in Italian chaises, a gentleman and lady in each chaise. In the way there is a bridge, about three miles distant from New York which you always pass over as you return, called the Kissing Bridge where it is a part of the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself under your protection.
It is evident from these quotations and from the testimony of other contemporary authors that one of the chief winter amusements in New York and Philadelphia and neighboring towns was through sleighing-parties. Madam Knights, of Boston, writing in 1704 of her visit to New York, said:—
Their diversion in winter is riding sleighs about three or four miles out of town where they have houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, and some go to friends houses, who handsomely treat them. Mr. Burroughs carried his spouse and daughter and myself out to one Madam Dowes a gentlewoman that lived at a farmhouse who gave us a handsome entertainment of five or six dishes and choice beer and metheglin, etc, all which she said was the produce of her farm. I believe we met fifty or sixty sleighs that day; they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they will turn out of the path for none except a loaded cart.
There were few sleighs at that date in Boston.
Sixty-four years later, in 1768, a young English officer, Alexander Macraby, wrote thus to his brother of the pleasures of sleighing:—
You can never have had a party in a sleigh or sledge I had a very clever one a few days ago. Seven sleighs with two ladies and two men in each proceeded by fiddlers on horseback set out together upon a snow of about a foot deep on the roads to a public house, a few miles from town where we danced, sung, romped and eat and drank and kicked away care from morning till night, and finished our frolic in two or three side-boxes at the play. You can have no idea of the state of the pulse seated with pretty women mid-deep in straw, your body armed with furs and flannels, clear air, bright sunshine, spotless sky, horses galloping, every feeling turned to joy and jollity.
That older members of society then, as now, did not find sleighing parties altogether alluring, we learn from this sentence in a letter of Hannah Thompson written to John Mifflin in 1786:—
This Slaying match Mr Houston of Houston St gave his Daughters, Dear Papa, Dear Papa, do give us a slaying—he at last consented, told them to get ready and dress themselves warm, which they accordingly did and came running. We are ready papa. He ordered the Servants to have some burnt wine against they came back. He desir’d them to step upstairs with him before they went. As soon as they got in an Attick chamber, he threw up all the windows and seated them in two old Arm Chairs and began to whip and Chirrup with all the Spirit of a Slaying party. And after he kept them long enough to be sufficiently cold he took them down and call’d for the Mulled Wine and they were very glad to set close to the Fire and leave Slaying for those who were too warm.
This I quote to execrate the memory of Mr. Houston and express my sympathy for his daughters.
There were no entertainments more popular, from the middle of the past century to the early years of this one, than “turtle frolics,” what Burnaby called turtle-feasts. Every sea-captain who sailed to the West Indies intended and was expected to bring home a turtle on the return voyage; and if he were only to touch at the West Indies and thence pass on to more distant shores, he still tried, if possible, to secure a turtle and send it home by some returning vessel. In no seaport town did the turtle frolic come to a higher state of perfection than in Newport. Scores of turtles were borne to that welcoming shore. In 1752 George Bresett, a Newport gentleman, sailed to the West Indies, and promptly did a neighborly and civic duty by sending home to his friend Samuel Freebody, a gallant turtle and a generous keg of limes. Lime juice was the fashionable and favorite “souring” of the day, to combine with arrack and Barbadoes rum into a glorious punch. The turtle arrived in prime condition, and Freebody handed the prize over to a slave-body named Cuffy Cockroach. He was a Guinea Coast negro, of a race who were (as I have noted before) the most intelligent of all the Africans brought as slaves to these shores. Any negro who acquired a position of dignity or trust or skill in this country, in colonial days, was sure to be a Guinea-boy. Cuffy Cockroach followed the rule, by filling a position of much dignity and trust and skill—as turtle-cook. He was a slave of Jaheel Brenton, but he cooked turtle for the entire town. The frolic was held at Fort George, on Goat Island, on December 23. The guests, fifty ladies and gentlemen, sailed over in a sloop, and were welcomed with hoisted flag and salute of cannon. The dinner was served at two, tea at five, and then dancing begun. Pea Straw, Faithful Shepherd, Arcadian Nuptials, were allemanded and footed, and the keg of limes and its fellow-ingredients kept pace with the turtle. The moon was at the full when the party landed at the Newport wharf at eleven, but the frolic was not ended. For instead of the jolly crowd separating, they went the rounds, leaving one member of the party at a time at his own door, and then serenading him or her, till the whole company had been honored in succession. When Sammy wrote to Mr. Bresett he said:—
Upon the whole the entertainment had the preference over all turtle frolics before it, and Mr George Bresetts health with “Honest George” was freely drank in a cheerful glass by every person; and at the request of the company I return you their compliments for the foundation of so agreeable an entertainment.
We find even so staid and dignified a minister and legislator as Manasseh Cutler writing thus in Providence in 1787:—
This morning I received a polite invitation from Govenor Bowen in the name of a large company to join them in a Turtle Frolic about six miles out of town. Mr Hitchcock and other clergymen of the town were of the party but much against my inclination I was obliged to excuse myself.
The traveller who drives through the by-roads of New England to-day is almost ready to assert that there is no dwelling too poor or too lonely to contain a piano, or at the very least a melodeon or parlor organ. The sounds of Czerny’s exercises issue from every farmhouse. There may be no new farm implements, no sewing-machine, but there will surely be a piano. This love of music has ever existed on those rock-bound shores, though in early days it found a stunted and sad expression in hymn tunes only, and the performance of music could scarce be called a colonial accomplishment. The first musical instruments were martial, drums and fifes and hautboys. I have never seen, in any personal inventory, the notice of a “gitterne” as in similar Virginian lists.
But in the early years of the eighteenth century a few spinets must have been exported to Boston and Philadelphia, and perhaps to Virginia. In 1712 an advertisement was placed in the Boston News-Letter that the Spinet would be taught, and on April 23, 1716, appeared in the same paper:—
Note that any Persons may have all Instruments of Music mended or Virginalls or Spinnets Strung & Tun’d, at a Reasonable Rate & likewise may be taught to play on any of the Instruments above mentioned.
In August, 1740, a “Good Spinnet” was offered for sale, and soon after a second-hand “Spinnet,” and in January, 1750, “Spinnet wire.”
On September 18, 1769, this notice appeared in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal:—
It is with pleasure that we inform the Public that a few days since was ship’d for Newport a very Curious Spinnet being the first ever made in America, the performance of the ingenious Mr. John Harris of Boston (son of the late Mr. Jos. Harris of London, Harpsichord and Spinnet Maker deceased) and in every respect does honor to that Artist who now carries on the Business at his house a few doors Northward of Dr. Clarkes, North End of Boston.
This first American spinet is said to be still in existence in a house in Newport on the corner of Thames and Gidley streets. It has one set of jacks and strings. The hammers have crow-quills which press on brass strings. It has ancient neighbors. In Bristol, R. I., is a triangular spinet four feet long, which is more than a century older than the town which is now its home. It bears this maker’s mark,—“Johann Hitchcock fecit London 1520.” If this date is correct, it is the oldest spinet known, the one of Italian manufacture in the British Museum being dated 1521.
At the rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem, Mass., is an old spinet made by Dr. Samuel Blyth in that town. Henry M. Brooks, Esq., author of Olden Time Music, has in his possession a bill for one of these American spinets that shows that the price in 1786 was £18. In the Memorial Hall at Deerfield, Mass., may be seen another dilapidated one, made by Stephanus & Keene. This belonged once to Mrs. Sukey Barker, of Hingham.
In the Newport Mercury of May 17, 1773, is advertised, “To be sold a Spinnet of a proper size for a little miss, and a most agreeable tone—plays extremely easy on the keys. Inquire of the Printer.” Advertisement of the sale of spinets and of instruction on the spinet do not disappear from the newspapers in this country even after formidable rivals and successors, the harpsichord and forte-piano, had begun to be imported in comparatively large numbers.
The tone of a spinet has been characterized concisely by Holmes in his poem, The Opening of the Piano,—the “spinet with its thin metallic thrills.” I know of nothing more truly the “relic of things that have passed away,” more completely the voice of the past, than the tinkling thrill of a spinet. It is like seeing a ghost to touch the keys, and bring forth once more that obsolete sound. There is no sound born in the nineteenth century that at all resembles it. Like “loggerheads” in the coals and “lug-poles” in the chimney, like church lotteries and tithingmen, the spinet—even its very voice—is extinct.
Since in the News-Letter first quoted in this chapter virginals are named, I think the musical instrument of Queen Elizabeth must have been tolerably familiar to Bostonians. Judge Sewall, who “had a passion for music,” writes in 1690 of fetching his wife’s “virginalls.” I cannot conceive what tunes Madam Sewall played on her virginals, no tawdry ballads and roundelays, no minuets and corams; she may have known half a dozen long-metre psalm tunes such as the Judge set for so many years in meeting.
“Forte-pianers” were imported to America, as were other musical instruments. It is said the first one brought to New England was in 1785 by John Brown for his daughter Sarah, afterwards Mrs. Herreshoff. It is still possessed by Miss Herreshoff, of Bristol, R. I. The first brought to “the Cape” was a Clementi of the date 1790, and found for many years a home in Falmouth. It is in perfect preservation, a dainty little inlaid box lying upon a slender low table, with tiny shelves for the music books, and a tiny little painted rack to hold the music sheets, and a pedal fit for the foot of a doll. It is now owned by Miss Frances Morse, of Worcester, Mass. An old Broadwood piano, once owned by the venerable Dr. Sweetser, may be seen at the rooms of the Worcester Society of Antiquity; and still another, a Clementi, at the Essex Institute in Salem.
By the beginning of this century piano-playing became a more common accomplishment, especially in the large towns, though General Oliver said that in 1810, among the six thousand families in Boston, there were not fifty pianos. Rev. Manasseh Cutler writes in 1801, from Washington, of a young friend:—
She has been educated at the best schools in Baltimore and Alexandria. She does not converse much, but is very modest and agreeable. She plays with great skill on the Forte Piano which she always accompanies with the most delightful voice, and is frequently joined in the vocal part by her mother. Mr. King has an excellent Forte-Piano which is connected with an organ placed under it, which she plays and fills with her feet, while her fingers are employed upon the Forte-Piano. On Sunday evenings she constantly plays Psalm music. Miss Anna plays Denmark remarkably well. But the most of the psalm tunes our gentlemen prefer are the old ones such as Old Hundred, Canterbury, which you would be delighted to hear on the Forte-Piano assisted by the Organ. Miss Anna gave us some good music this evening, particularly the Wayworn Traveller, Ma Chere Amie, The Tea, The Twins of Latma (somewhat similar to Indian Chief) Eliza, Lucy or Selims Complaint. These are among my favourites.
In February, 1800, Eliza Southgate Bowne wrote thus in Boston:—
In the morning I am going to look at some Instruments; however we got one picked out that I imagine we shall take, 150 dollars, a charming toned one and not made in this country.
In June she said enthusiastically of her “Instrument:”—
I am learning my 12th tune Oh Octavia, I almost worship my Instrument,—it reciprocates my joys and sorrows, and is my bosom companion. How I long to have you return! I have hardly attempted to sing since you went away. I am sure I shall not dare to when you return. I must enjoy my triumph while you are absent; my musical talents will be dim when compared with the lustre of yours.
The most universal accomplishment of colonial women was the making of samplers, if, indeed, anything could be termed an accomplishment which was so rigidly and prosaically part of their education. I can well imagine the disgrace it would have been to any little miss in her teens a century ago not to be able to show a carefully designed and wrought sampler. On these samplers were displayed the alphabet, sometimes in various shaped letters—thus did she learn to mark neatly her household linen; bands of conventional designs, of flowers, of geometrical patterns—thus was she taught to embroider muslin caps and kerchiefs; and there were gorgeous flowers and strange buildings, and domestic scenes, and pastoral views, birds that perched as large as cows, and roses that were larger than either; and last and best of all (and often of much satisfaction to the genealogist), there was her name and her age, and sometimes her place of birth, and withal a pious verse as a motto for this housewifely shield. Of all the relics of old-time life which have come to us, none are more interesting than the samplers. Happily, many of them have come to us; worked with wiry enduring crewels and silk on strong linen canvas, they speak down through the century of the little, useful, willing hands that worked them; of the tidy sempstresses and housewives of those simple domestic days. We know little of the daughters of the Pilgrims, but Lora Standish has sent to us a prim little message of her piety, and a faded testimony of her skill, that makes her seem dear to us:—
A more ambitious kind of needlework took the form of what were known as mourning pieces. These were regarded with deepest affection, for were they not a token of loving remembrance? They bore stiff presentments of funeral urns, with drooping willows, or a monument with a bowed and weeping figure. Often the names of dead members of the family were worked upon the monument. A still more ambitious sampler bore a design known as The Tree of Life. A stiffly branched tree was sparingly hung with apples labelled with the names of the virtues of humanity, such as Love, Honor, Truth, Modesty, Silence. A white-winged angel on one side of this tree watered the roots with a very realistic watering-pot, and was balanced with exactness, as were evenly adjusted all good embroidery designs of that day, by an inky-black Satan who bore a pitchfork of colossal proportions and a tail as long as a kite’s, and so heavy that he could scarce have dragged it along the ground—much less with it have flown.
For many years a favorite and much praised accomplishment was the cutting of paper in ornamental designs. This art was ambitiously called Papyrotamia, and it was of special usefulness in its application to watch-papers, a favorite lover’s token of the day. The watch proper at that time was separate and removable from its case, which was of gold, silver, shagreen, or lacquer. Of course the watch did not fit closely into the case, and watch-papers were placed within to serve as a cushion to prevent jar and wear; sometimes the case would hold several. Artistic and grotesque taste could be used in the manufacture of these tokens of regard. I have seen them cut in various open-work designs from gilt and silver paper, embroidered in hair, painted in water colors. One I have has two turtle-doves billing over two hearts, and surrounded by a tiny wreath; another, embroidered on net, has the words “God is Love;” another has a moss rose and the words “Rejoice and blossom as a rose.” Another bears a funeral urn, and is evidently in memoriam. Still another, a heart and arrows, and the sentimental legend “Kill me for I die of love.” Jefferson, writing as a young man, bitterly deplores his inadvertent tearing of watch-papers which had been cut for him by his beloved Belinda. Watch and watch-papers had been accidentally soaked in water, and when he attempted to remove the papers, he says, “My cursed fingers gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over. I would have cried bitterly, but that I thought it beneath the dignity of a man.” And he trusts the fair Becca will give him another paper of her cutting, which, though but a plain round one, he will esteem more than the nicest in the world cut by other hands.
Nothing can be more pathetic than the thoughtful survey of the crude and often cumbersome and ludicrous attempts at decorative art, through which the stunted and cramped love of the beautiful found expression, until our own day, in country homes. The dreary succession of hair-work, feather-work, wax flowers, shell-work, the crystallization with various domestic minerals and gums of dried leaves and grasses, vied with yarn and worsted monstrosities, and bewildering patchwork. Occasionally some bold feminine spirit, made inventive through artistic longing, gave birth to a novel, though too often grotesque form of decoration.
A most interesting symbol of exquisite neatness, unbounded patience, and blind groping for artistic expression was Rhoda Baker’s “Leather-Works.” Rhoda Baker lived in a small Rhode Island village, which was dull at its birth and slow of growth and progress. She had a nature so timid, so repelling, and so wholly introspective, that, after nearly fifty years of shy and even unwilling “keeping company” with a preaching elder of the time,—a saint, almost a mystic,—she died without ever having given to the quaint, thin, pleasant-faced, awkward man, one word of encouragement to his equally timid, his hinting and halting love-making. During those patient years of warm hopes, but most scanty fruition, he had built a house on an island which he owned in Narragansett Bay, with a window where his beloved Rhoda could sit sewing when she became his wife, and watch him happily rowing across the Bay to her; but great lilac bushes grew up unchecked, and shaded and finally hid the window at which Rhoda never sat to welcome her husband-lover. After her death the Elder so grieved that he had naught to remind him and speak to him of his beloved, that he boldly decided to name his boat for her; but as he could not conscientiously say she had ever encouraged him by word or look in his incipient love-making, and he must be strictly honest and chivalrously respectful to her memory, he painted upon the boat in black letters this truthful yet dimly consoling legend, “Rhoda Wouldnt.” Poor Elder! Many a time had he ventured a-courting, and slowly entering, after his unanswered assault upon the door-knocker, had found the kitchen of this elusive Rhoda vacant,—but her rocking-chair was slowly rocking,—so he sadly left the deserted room, the unwelcoming house.
He sacrificed his life to his affection for his dead love. He had all his days a fear, a premonition, that he should lose his life through a horse, so he never rode or drove, but walked, rowed, or sailed, and lived on an island to escape his dreaded doom. When Rhoda’s brother died in a distant town, the Elder was bidden to the funeral, and he honored his Rhoda’s memory by his attendance, and he had to ride there. As he left the house of mourning, a fractious young colt ran away with him, threw him out of the wagon, and broke his neck.
His sweetheart’s “Leather-Works” still exist, to keep fresh this New England romance. I saw them last summer in the attic of the Town Hall. Rhoda left them in her will to her church, and they are now the property of the village church-guild. The guild is vigorous and young, so can bear this ancient maiden’s bequest with cheerful carriage and undaunted spirits. The leather-works are many and ponderous. One is a vast trellis (which may have been originally two clothes-horses), hung with elaborately twisted and tendrilled vines, bearing minutely veined leaves and various counterfeit and imaginary fruits. The bunches of grapes are made of home-cast leaden bullets, or round stones, covered dexterously and with unparalleled neatness and imperceptible stitches with pieces of old kid gloves or thin leather; and to each a common dress-hook is attached. The stem of the bunch has corresponding eyes, to each of which a grape is hung. By this ingenious means the bunches of grapes could be neatly dusted each week, and kept in repair, as well as easily shaped. On this trellis hung also Roses of Sharon, a mystic flower which Rhoda’s sister Eunice invented, and which had a deep spiritual signification, as well as extraordinary outline and intricate composition. Every leaf, every grape, every monstrous fruit, every flower of these Leather-Works, speaks of the æsthetic longing, the vague mysticism, the stifled repression, of Rhoda Baker’s life; and they speak equally of the Elder’s love. It was he who moulded the bullets, and searched on the shore for carefully rounded stones; and he who haunted the country saddlers and repair-shops for waste strips of leather, which he often deposited in the silent kitchen by the rocking-chair, sure of grateful though unspoken thanks. Many a pair of his old boot-tops figures as glorious vine leaves; and he even tanned and dressed skins to supply swiftly the artist’s materials when genius burned. It was he who tenderly unhooked the grapes and pears, the fruits of Eden and the Roses of Sharon, when the trellis was transported to the Town Hall, and he reverently placed the trophies of his true love’s skill and genius in place in their new home. I always rather resent the fact that Rhoda did not bequeath the Leather-Works to him, when I think of the vast and almost sacred pleasure he would have had in them; as well as when I remember the share he had in the preparations for their manufacture. And the Leather-Works speak still another lesson, as do many of the household grotesqueries seen in New England, a lesson of sympathy, almost of beauty, to those who “read between the lines, the finer grace of unfulfilled designs.”