Woman's Life in Colonial Days by Carl Holliday

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And Mrs. Grant has this to say of their love of children and
flowers--probably the most normal loves in the human soul: "Not only the
training of children, but of plants, such as needed peculiar care or
skill to rear them, was the female province.... I have so often beheld,
both in town and country, a respectable mistress of a family going out
to her garden, in an April morning, with her great calash, her little
painted basket of seeds, and her rake over her shoulder to her garden
labors.... A woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in
form and manner would sow and plant and rake incessantly. These fair
gardners were also great florists."[212]

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The children of the town were all divided into companies, as they
called them, from five or six years of age, till they became
marriageable. How these companies first originated or what were their
exact regulations, I cannot say; though I belonging to nine occasionally
mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I
spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many
boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number; only
this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older,
cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called
heads of the company, and, as such, were obeyed by the others.... Each
company, at a certain time of the year, went in a body to gather a
particular kind of berries, to the hill. It was a sort of annual
festival, attended with religious punctuality.... Every child was
permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once
besides, during the winter and spring. The master and mistress of the
family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while some
old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample
provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes
of various kinds, to which was added cider, or a syllabub.... The
consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was that, grown up,
it was reckoned a sort of apostacy to marry out of one's company, and
indeed it did not often happen. The girls, from the example of their
mothers, rather than any compulsion, very early became notable and
industrious, being constantly employed in knitting stockings and making
clothes for the family and slaves; they even made all the boys'
clothes."[214]

Childhood in New England meant, as we have seen, a good deal of
down-right hard toil; in Virginia, for the better class child, it meant
much dressing in dainty clothes, and much care about manners and
etiquette; but the Dutch childhood and even young manhood and womanhood
meant an unusual amount of carefree, whole-hearted, simple pleasure.
There were picnics in the summer, nut gatherings in the Autumn, and
skating and sleighing in the winter.

"In spring eight or ten of one company, young men and maidens,
would set out together in a canoe on a kind of rural
excursion.... They went without attendants.... They arrived
generally by nine or ten o'clock.... The breakfast, a very
regular and cheerful one, occupied an hour or two; the young men
then set out to fish or perhaps to shoot birds, and the maidens
sat busily down to their work.... After the sultry hours had been
thus employed, the boys brought their tribute from the river....
After dinner they all set out together to gather wild
strawberries, or whatever fruit was in season; for it was
accounted a reproach to come home empty-handed...."

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

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

All this meant so much more for the growth of normal children and the
creation of a cheerful people than did the Puritan attendance at
executions and funerals. Those quaint old-time Dutch probably did not
love children any more dearly than did the New Englanders; but they
undoubtedly made more display of it than did the Puritans. "Orphans were
never neglected.... You never entered a house without meeting children.
Maidens, bachelors, and childless married people all adopted orphans,
and all treated them as if they were their own."[216]

Since we have mentioned such subjects as funerals and orphans, perhaps
it would not be out of place to notice the peculiar funeral customs
among the Dutch. Even a burial was not so dreary an affair with them.
The following bill of 1763, found among the Schuyler papers, gives a
hint of the manner in which the service was conducted, and perhaps
explains why the women scarcely ever attended the funeral in the "dead
room," as it was called, but remained in an upper room, where they could
at least hear what was said, if they could not "partake" of the
occasion.

"Tobacco 2.
Fonda for Pipes 14s.
2 casks wine 69 gal. 11.
12 yds. Cloath 6.
2 barrels strong beer 3.
To spice from Dr. Stringer
To the porters 2s.
12 yds. Bombazine 5. 17s.
2 Tammise 1.
1 Barcelona handkerchief 10s.
2 pr. black chamios Gloves
6 yds. crape
5 ells Black Shalloon

Paid Mr. Benson his fee for opinion on will L9."[217a]

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

_X. British Social Influences_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With the coming of the Revolution, and the consequent invasion of the
city by the British, New York became far more gay than ever before; but
even then the native Dutch conservativeness so restrained social affairs
that Philadelphia was more brilliant. When, however, the capital of the
national government was located in New York then indeed did the city
shine. Foreigners spoke with astonishment at the display of luxury and
down-right extravagance. Brissot de Warville, for example, writing in
1788, declared: "If there is a town on the American continent where
English luxury displays its follies, it is New York." And James
Pintard, after attending a New Year levee, given by Mrs. Washington,
wrote his sister: "You will see no such formal bows at the Court of St.
James." If we may judge by the dress of ladies attending such
gatherings, as one described in the _New York Gazette_ of May 15, 1789,
we may safely conclude that expense was not spared in the upper classes
of society. Hear some descriptions:

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

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

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

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

_XI. Causes of Display and Frivolity_

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

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

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

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

"It was the most solemn dinner ever I sat at. Not a health
drank, scarce a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then
the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality
drank to the health of every individual by name around the table.
Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of
'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and
'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a
good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead
silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with the ladies.

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

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

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

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