CHAPTER IX
THE COLONIAL WARDROBE
The Dutch goodwife worked hard from early morn till sunset. She worked in restricted ways, she had few recreations and pleasures and altogether little variety in her life; but she possessed what doubtless proved to her in that day, as it would to any woman in this day, a source of just satisfaction, a soothing to the spirit, a staying of melancholy, a moral support second only to the solace of religion,—namely, a large quantity of very good clothes, which were substantial, cheerful, and suitable, if not elegant.
The Dutch never dressed “in a plaine habbit according to the maner of a poore wildernesse people,” as the Connecticut colonists wrote of themselves to Charles II.; nor were they weary wanderers in a wilderness as were Connecticut folk.
I have not found among the statutes of New Netherland any sumptuary laws such as were passed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia, to restrain and attempt to prohibit luxury and extravagance in dress. Nor have I discovered in the court-records any evidences of magisterial reproof of finery; there is, on the contrary, much indirect proof of encouragement to “dress orderly and well according to the fashion and the time.” Of course the Dutch had no Puritanical dread of over-rich garments; and we must also never forget New Netherland was not under the control of a government nor of a religious band, but of a trading-company.
The ordinary dress of the fair dames and damsels of New Amsterdam has been vividly described by Diedrich Knickerbocker; and even with the additional light upon their wardrobe thrown by the lists contained in colonial inventories, I still think his description of their every-day dress exceedingly good for one given by a man. He writes:
“Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, though I must confess those gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen’s small-clothes; and what is still more praiseworthy, they were all of their own manufacture,—of which circumstance, as may well be supposed, they were not a little vain.
“Those were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets,—ay, and that, too, of a goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles where all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed.
“Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbons, or, among the more opulent and showy classes, by a brass and even silver chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and a neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle.
“There was a secret charm in those petticoats, which no doubt entered into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock of petticoats and stockings was as absolutely an heiress as is a Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with plenty of reindeer.”
A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting New York in 1704, wrote:—
“The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habitt go loose, wear French muches wch are like a Capp and head-band in one, leaving their ears bare, which are sett out with jewells of a large size and many in number; and their fingers hoop’t with rings, some with large stones in them of many Coullers, as were their pendants in their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as Young.”
This really gives a very good picture of the vrouws; “loose in their habit,” wearing sacques and loose gowns, not laced in with pointed waists as were the English and Boston women; with the ornamental head-dress, and the gay display of stoned earrings and rings, which was also not the usual wear of New England women, who generally owned only a few funeral rings.
In the inventories of personal estates contained in the Surrogate’s Court we find details of the wardrobe; but as I have enumerated and defined all the different articles at some length in my book, “Costume of Colonial Times,” I will not repeat the definitions here; but it should be remembered that in the enumeration of the articles of clothing, many stuffs and materials of simple names were often of exceedingly good and even rich quality. From those inventories we have proof that all Dutch women had plenty of clothes; while the wives of the burgomasters, the opulent merchants, and those in authority, had rich clothes. I have given in full in my book a list of the clothing of a wealthy New York dame, Madam De Lange; but I wish to refer to it again as an example of a really beautiful wardrobe. In it were twelve petticoats of varying elegance, some worth two pounds fifteen shillings each, which would be more than fifty dollars to-day. They were of silk lined with silk, striped stuff, scarlet cloth, and ash-gray cloth. Some were trimmed with gold lace. With those petticoats were worn samares and samares-a-potoso, six in number, which were evidently jackets or fancy bodies; these were of calico, crape, “tartanel,” and silk. One trimmed with lace was worth three pounds. Waistcoats and bodies also appear; also fancy sleeves. Love-hoods of silk and cornet-caps with lace make a pretty head-gear to complete this costume, with which was worn the reim or silver girdle with hanging purse, and also with a handsome number of diamond, amber, and white coral jewels.
The colors in the Dutch gowns were almost uniformly gay,—in keen contrast to the sad-colored garments of New England. Madam Cornelia de Vos in a green cloth petticoat, a red and blue “Haarlamer” waistcoat, a pair of red and yellow sleeves, and a purple “Pooyse” apron was a blooming flower-bed of color.
The dress of Vrouentje Ides Stoffelsen, a very capable Dutchwoman who went to Bergen Point to live, varied a little from that of these town dames. Petticoats she had, and waistcoats, bodies and sleeves; but there was also homelier attire,—purple and blue aprons, four pairs of pattens, a fur cap instead of love-hoods, and twenty-three caps. She wore the simpler and more universal head-gear,—a close linen or calico cap.
The head covering was of considerable importance in New Amsterdam, as it was in Holland as well as in England at that date. We find that it was also costly. In 1665 Mistress Piertje Jans sold a fine “little ornamental headdress” for fifty-five guilders to the young daughter of Evert Duyckinck. But it seems that Missy bought this “genteel head-clothes” without the knowledge or permission of her parents, and on its arrival at the Duyckinck home Vrouw Duyckinck promptly sent back the emblem of extravagance and disobedience. Summoned to court by the incensed milliner who wished no rejected head-dresses on her hands, and who claimed that the transaction was from the beginning with full cognizance of the parents, Father Duyckinck pronounced the milliner’s bill extortionate; and furthermore said gloomily, with a familiar nineteenth-century phraseology of New York fathers, that “this was no time to be buying and wearing costly head-dresses.” But the court decided in the milliner’s favor.
It is to be deplored that we have no fashion-plates of past centuries to show to us in exact presentment the varying modes worn by New York dames from year to year; that method of fashion-conveying has been adopted but a century. The modes in olden days travelled from country to country, from town to town, in the form of dolls or “babies,” as they were called, wearing miniature model costumes. These dolls were dressed by cutters and tailors in Paris or London, and with various tiny modish garments were sent out on their important mission across the water. In Venice a doll attired in the last fashions—the toilette of the year—was for centuries exhibited on each Ascension Day at the “Merceria” for the edification of noble Venetian dames, who eagerly flocked to the attractive sight. Not less eagerly did American dames flock to provincial mantua-makers and milliners to see the London-dressed babies with their miniature garments. Even in this century, fashions were brought to New York and Philadelphia and Albany through “milliners’ boxes” containing dressed dolls. Mrs. Vanderbilt tells of one much admired fashion-doll of her youth who had a treasured old age as a juvenile goddess.
A leading man of New Amsterdam, a burgomaster, had at the time of his death, near the end of Dutch rule, this plentiful number of substantial garments: a cloth coat with silver buttons, a stuff coat, cloth breeches, a cloth coat with gimp buttons, a black cloth coat, a silk coat, breeches and doublet, a silver cloth breeches and doublet, a velvet waistcoat with silver lace, a buff coat with silk sleeves, three “gross-green” cloaks, several old suits of clothes, linen, hosiery, silver-buckled shoes, an ivory-headed cane, and a hat. One hat may seem very little with so many other garments; but the real beaver hats of those days were so substantial, so well-made, so truly worthy an article of attire, that they could be constantly worn and yet last for years. They were costly; some were worth several pounds apiece.
Gayer masculine garments are told of in other inventories: green silk breeches flowered with silver and gold, silver gauze breeches, yellow fringed gloves, lacquered hats, laced shirts and neck-cloths, and (towards the end of the century, and nearly through the eighteenth century) a vast variety of wigs. For over a hundred years these unnatural abominations, which bore no pretence of resembling the human hair, often in grotesque, clumsy, cumbersome shapes, bearing equally fantastic names, and made of various indifferent and coarse materials, loaded the heads and lightened the pockets of our ancestors. I am glad to note that they were taxed by the government of the province of New York. The barber and wig-maker soon became a very important personage in a community so given over to costly modes of dressing the head. Advertisements in the newspapers show the various kinds of wigs worn in the middle of the eighteenth century. From the “New York Gazette” of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief’s stealing “one gray Hair Wig, one Horse hair wig not the worse for wearing, one Pale Hair Wig, not worn five times, marked V. S. E., one brown Natural wig, One old wig of goat’s hair put in buckle.” Buckle meant to curl; and derivatively a wig was in buckle when it was rolled on papers for curling. Other advertisements tell of “Perukes, Tets, and Fox-tails after the Genteelest Fashion. Ladies’ Tets and wigs in perfect imitation of their own hair.” Other curious notices are of “Orange Butter” for “Gentlewomen to comb up their hair with.”
This use of orange butter as a pomatum was certainly unique; it was really a Dutch marmalade. I read in my “Closet of Rarities,” dated 1706:—
“The Dutch Way to make Orange-butter. Take new cream two gallons, beat it up to a thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower-water, and as much red wine, and so being become the thicknesse of butter it has both the colour and smell of an orange.”
A very characteristic and eye-catching advertisement was this from the “New York Gazette” of May 21, 1750:—
“This is to acquaint the Public, that there is lately arrived from London the Wonder of the World, an Honest Barber and Peruke Maker, who might have worked for the King, if his Majesty would have employed him: It was not for the want of Money he came here, for he had enough of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, that he advertises hinself, BUT to acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies, That Such a Person is now in Town, living near Rosemary Lane where Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.: Tyes, Full-Bottoms, Majors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut and bob Perukes: Also Ladies Tatematongues and Towers after the Manner that is now wore at Court. By their Humble and Obedient Servant,
“John Still.”
With the change from simple Dutch ways of hairdressing came in other details more constrained modes of dressing. With the wig-maker came the stay-maker, whose curious advertisements may be read in scores in the provincial newspapers; and his arbitrary fashions bring us to modern times.
From the deacons’ records of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany we catch occasional hints of the dress of the children of the Dutch colonists. There was no poor-house, and few poor; but since the church occasionally helped worthy folk who were not rich, we find the deacons in 1665 and 1666 paying for blue linen for schorteldoecykers, or aprons, for Albany kindeken; also for haaken en oogen, or hooks and eyes, for warm under-waists called borsrockyen. They bought linen for luyers, which were neither pinning-blankets nor diapers, but a sort of swaddling clothes, which evidently were worn then by Dutch babies. Voor-schooten, which were white bibs; neerstucken, which were tuckers, also were worn by little children. Some little Hans of Pieter had given to him by the deacons a fine little scarlet aperock, or monkey-jacket; and other children were furnished linen cosynties, or night-caps with capes. Yellow stockings were sold at the same time for children, and a gay little yellow turkey-legged Dutchman in a scarlet monkey-jacket and fat little breeches must have been a jolly sight.