USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Annals of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania in the olden time; being a collection of the memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of the earliest settlements of the inland part of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 24
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Ladies formerly wore cloaks as their chief overcoats; they were used with some changes of form under the successive names of roquelaus, capuchins, and cardinals.
In Mrs. Shoemaker's time, above named, they had no knowledge of umbrellas to keep off rain, but she had seen some few use quita- sols --- an article as small as present parasols. They were en- tirely to keep off rain from ladies. They were of oiled muslin, and were of various colours, from India by way of England. They mus:, however, have been but rare, as they never appear in any advertisements. Their name is derived from the Spanish.
Doctor Chanceller and the Rev. Mr. Duché were the first persons in Philadelphia who were ever seen to wear umbrellas to keep off the rain. They were of oiled linen, very coarse and clumsy, with ratan sticks. Before their time, some doctors and ministers used an oiled linen cape hooked round their shoulders, looking not unlike the big coat-capes now in use, and then called a roquelaue. It was only used for severe storms.
About the year 1771, the first efforts were made in Philadelphia to introduce the use of umbrellas in summer as a defence from the sun. They were then scouted in the public Gazettes as a ridicu- VOL. I .- Z 17
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lous effeminacy. On the other hand, the physicians recommended them to keep off vertigoes, epilepsies, sore eyes, fevers, &c. Finally, as the doctors were their chief patrons, Doctor Chanceller and Doctor Morgan, with the Rev. Parson Duché, were the first persons who had the hardihood to be so singular as to wear umbrellas in sunshine. Mr. Bingham, when he returned from the West Indies, where he had amassed a great fortune in the Revolution, appeared abroad in the streets attended by a mulatto boy bearing his umbrella. But his example did not take, and he desisted from its use.
In the old time, shagreen-cased watches, of turtle shell and pinchbeck, were the earliest kind seen; but watches of any kind were much more rare then. When they began to come into use, they were so far deemed a matter of pride and show, that men are living who have heard public Friends express their concern at seeing their youth in the show of watches or watch chains. It was so rare to find watches in common use that it was quite an annoyance at the watchmakers to be so repeatedly called on by street passengers for . the hour of the day. Mr. Duffield, therefore, first set up an out- door clock to give the time of day to people in the street. Gold chains would have been a wonder then ; silver and steel chains and seals were the mode, and regarded good enough. The best gen- tlemen of the country were content with silver watches, although gold ones were occasionally used. Gold watches for ladies were of rare occurrence, and when worn, were kept without display for domestic use.
The men of former days never saw such things as our Mahome- dan whiskers on Christian men : but since then our young men have turned cultivators of whiskers, mustachios and sidelocks for street display, and for the Chestnut Street and Broadway markets. That men of no particular business should so parade themselves, might pass ; but when it comes to business men who have to live by their employments, it is then we perceive the glaring incon- gruity, and cannot forbear to wish them unbarbed and uncorsetted, and especially in business houses. The overweening fondness of some for these satyr-like appendages of manhood, presents an ad- mirable measuring reed, whereby to ascertain the calibre of minds. In mixed companies, it may afford, to the considerate, a positive amusement to look around and note the differences of men's attachment to such things. Some may be observed, as direct, though silent, protestors against the innovation, by their close shaving, as if they meant, thereby, to publish that they act in inverse opposition ; while, at the same time, others indicate their morbid regard for what seems so outre and extremne. Intellectual men, it is observed, are rarely found in this array, unless they also have occasionally some known obliquity of the imagination and taste. It is also a curious fact, that any thing so disagreeable in itself to sight and wear, should be chiefly countenanced by the ladies ! but so it is ; and what is more, some of the wearers have far less
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liking for the hairy deformity, than for flaunting with the superficial belles who advocate them. The same remarks might be equally extended to the blowze cut and lengthened sidelocks of the hair of the head. But there is enough for passing remark, and to preserve the record of these passing caprices of ungain fashion. To " note and observe," is our motto.
The use of boots has come in since the war of Independence ; they were first with black tops, after the military, strapped up in union with the knee bands; afterwards bright tops were introduced. The leggings to these latter were made of buckskin, for some extreme beaux, for the sake of close fitting a well turned leg.
It having been the object of these pages to notice the change of fashions in the habiliments of men and women from the olden to the modern time, it may be necessary to say, that no attempt has been made to note the quick succession of modern changes,-pre- cisely because they are too rapid and evanescent for any useful record. The subject, however, leads me to the general remark, that the general character of our dress is always ill adapted to our climate; and this fact arises from our national predilection as English. As English colonists we early introduced the modes of our British ancestors. They derived their notions of dress from France ; and we, even now, take all annual fashions from the ton of England,- a circumstance which leads us into many unseasonable and injurious imitations, very ill adapted to either our hotter or colder climate. Here we have the extremes of heat and cold. There they are moderate. The loose and light habits of the East, or of southern Europe, would be better adapted to the ardour of our mid-summers ; and the close and warm apparel of the north of Europe might furnish us better examples for our severe winters.
But in these matters (while enduring the profuse sweating of ninety degrees of heat) we fashion after the modes of England, which are adapted to a climate of but seventy degrees! Instead, therefore, of the broad slouched hat of southern Europe, we have the narrow brim, a stiff stock or starched-buckram collar for the neck, a coat so close and tight as if glued to our skins, and boots so closely set over insteps and ankles, as if over the lasts on which they were made! Our ladies have as many ill adapted dresses and hats, and sadly their healths are impaired in our rigorous winters, by their thin stuff-shoes and transparent and light draperies, affording but slight defence for tender frames against the cold.
Since the publication of the former edition, we have gathered and conclude to add the following additional notices under this head, to wit :
The article in my former Annals on dress, (p. 171,) was scarcely published, when, notwithstanding the hint there given, the fashion began to run again into " monstrous novelty and strange dis- guise." The words then were "while we may wonder at the stiff and formal cut of the old fashions, we will hope never to see
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thein again return !" They did return quickly, showing corsetted long waists, big skirts, and monstrous sleeves! These latter held their empire till the winter of 1836-7, and then tight sleeves came back as suddenly as if they had come in under a legal decree and penalty. The sudden change was then so suitably and humour- ously noticed, that I here affix a specimen, to wit :-
" It is somewhat refreshing, as the fashionable novelists used to say, to perceive the sudden and effectual banishment that has been decreed and carried into execution, against those vast, unsightly, ridiculous and immense bags, which it has been the pleasure of the ladies, bless their hearts! to insist upon our recognising as sleeves, for the last three or four years. The perverse obstinacy of Pe- truchio was not more unreasonable, when he made the unhappy and starving Catharine swear that the pale moon was in truth "the blessed sun ;" 'and perhaps, it was from him that the hint was bor- rowed. Be that as it may, they are gone, bag and baggage, and our belles are no longer compelled to walk the streets, as though suffer- ing the penalties of justice, with eight or ten pounds of silk, chally, gros-de-something, muslin, merino, Circassian, Canton crape, barege white satin, printed calico, or pelisse-cloth, dangling from each shoulder; or to exhibit themselves with a pair of feather pillows stuck upon each side of their graceful figures, and far surpassing them in magnitude. The day of five feet high and six feet wide is gone, we trust, forever, and henceforward, we hope to see the beau- tiful of our race resembling somewhat more in appearance the model in which nature formed them, and which French milliners have so long succeeded in keeping out of fashion."
The transition has been, as usual in fashionable matters, some- what violent ; the poet's notion of " fine by degrees and beautifully less," has not been thought of; but where there was yesterday a bale, there is to-day a spermaceti candle ; the ten yards of last night are replaced this morning by some half ell, or perhaps a quarter. One lady was a sufficient occupant, a week ago, for the seat of a mo- derate sized carriage; now three may ride right pleasantly in com- pany. Arms are at a tremendous discount, compared with what they have been ; and shoulders are like India rubber balls, with the air let out through a pin hole. All this looks queer just now, and may stay looking queer for some time yet, but after a while our eyes will receive their right tone, and then we shall applaud the change most heartily. Nevertheless, we beseech our fair readers not to run to the other extreme, and compress the arm entirely up to the shoul- der, as some have already done, thereby giving themselves some- what the resemblance of the undressed dolls in the packages of Bailly and Ward ; or like a giblet-pie-all wings and legs.
Fashion rules the world, and a most tyrannical mistress she is, compelling people to submit to the most inconvenient things ima- ginable, for fashion's sake. She pinches our feet with tight shoes
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or chokes us with a tight neck-handkerchief, or squeezes the breath out of our body by tight lacing ; she makes people sit up late by night when they ought to be in bed, and keeps them in bed in the morning when they ought to be up and doing. She makes it vulgar to wait upon one's self, and genteel to live idle and useless. She makes people visit when they would rather stay at home, eat when they are not hungry, and drink when they are not thirsty. She is a despot of the highest grade, full of intrigue and cunning, and yet husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, and servants, black and white, voluntarily have become her obedient servants and slaves, and vie with one another, to see who shall be the most ob- sequious !
The daughter of a merchant of my acquaintance, who was mar- ried at Philadelphia in 1835, had her wedding wardrobe furnished at a cost of 1000 dollars ; her robe was fringed with gold, her pocket- handkerchief, by reason of its gold hem and decoration, cost 30 dol- lars! What an advance of style since the war of Independence ! This too, for a republican commoner ;- for one who passed his hours on wharves, among sailors, and draymen, and casks, bags and boxes -sun-scorched, dusty and wearied ! " What a falling off was there !' The course is, however, still " onward." Another merchant, (one and the same day,) paid 300 dollars at a store in Chestnut street, for three veils for three daughters. They ride or walk in Chestnut street like princesses ; and he, good man of labour, grinds pennies from stocks and transfers, by slavish toil in a close, dark, dingy count- ing house! The same class of persons pay now one dollar an hour for three or four successive teachers a day, for music, French, Italian, dancing, &c. Only fifty years since, Anthony Benezet taught real ladies a whole quarter for the same money !
Wigs, it is ascertained, were first originated in France, as may be seen by the chronological tables. Perukes, for instance, " first used in 1620 ;" " wigs for judges first worn in 1674 ;" and hair-powder first used in 1590." Pindar speaks of wigs in the case of the annoy- ance in his Majesty's kitchen, and their disuse may be considered as still later. Judge Mckean wore one, and was withal so partial to them, that he intended to wear one of the Bench kind. He en- gaged one of Kid for 100 dollars, and being found, when delivered, to be so strange and outre, he refused it, and was sued for the value.
I have said in the former edition, that in my boyhood days no young men or women were seen using spectacles whilst walking in the streets, and now they are so numerous! We may judge, even now, how useless they may be, by the fact, that at this time, no man sees any coloured person who uses them! It can't be that the two races are so essentially different; it must be the result of fashion rather than otherwise ; and that by the non-use of them the eyes which may have been near sighted in youth, accommodate themselves in time to avoid it. It wasthen not uncommon to see men
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puckering up their eyes, and looking queer, because near sighted I remember several.
Ladies' shoes 60 or 70 years ago were made mostly of white o! russet rands, stitched very fine on the rand with white waxed thread ; and all having wooden heels, called cross cut, common, and court heels ; [now the heelmakers are non est!] Next came in the use of cork, plug, and wedge or spring heels. The sole leather was all worked, with the flesh side out. The materials of the uppers in the olden time, among us, were of common woollen cloth, or coarse curried leather,-afterwards of stuffs, such as cassimere, everlasting, shalloon, and russet; some of satin and damask, others of satin lasting and florentine.
All elderly gentlemen had gold headed canes. It was their mark of distinction. Seeing that they were once so general, it is matter of curiosity now, to ask what may have become of the many, now no longer seen ! It was usual to see them in the churches and other public places, used ostensibly as a support to the chin when sitting ; but often times from motives of vanity, as a badge of expensive ability. It was a pride of the same kind, which gave favour and use to gold snuff boxes, and to the free proffering of their con- tents, to the persons near. Silas Deane, it is remembered, had one a present from royalty, which he was very proud of displaying with its diamonds. This was so manifest to Charles Thomson, his fami- liar friend, that he once broke out upon him in full laugh for his manner of urging it upon his notice !
A writer in the Gazette, of 1769, says, " Will the ladies take a law of fashion from such a wanton tyranny of example as is imposed on them by Great Britain? The decent gown which showed the form of the sex in all its native elegance is banished, to give place to negligées, using many yards of costly silk, cut into pieces with the most licentious profusion ; they have things flapping down on each side which look as if the ladies had turned a most monstrous pair of silk pockets inside out, and drawn them through their pocket holes. The hinder part seems contrived by an upholsterer, for it is as a cur- tain drawn up ;- and for the front, how monstrous is the elegant fall of the petticoat deformed with flounces of massacred silk! Oh ! barbarous murder both of beauty and materials !" How very re- markable it is, that in every age the men have always been the only critics upon the female dress, and always with so little head way against the tide of encroaching fashion ! The ladies, it would seem, nad rather lose the men than lose the mode; and in the end, the men had rather take all as they find them, than miss them as brides !
With a view to show that we are not alone in the interest we feel in giving such notices of the passing changes in dress and the vaga- ries of fashion in altering them, we here add a couple of facetious notices of fleeting transitions of gentlemen themselves, even withir the memory of the present writer, to wit :---
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One, calling himself a beau of the last century, for the century s not long since passed, says, that although he does not mean to represent himself as a gallant during the Revolution, or that he was old enough to carry arms in Shay's rebellion, yet, says he, " I was most certainly born, and made some advance in belles let- tres ; that is to say, in A. B. C., &c., before the commencement of the nineteenth century, and had acquired a pretty considerable many notions of the fitness of things before midnight of December 31st, 1799, which is now very generally admitted, by historians and chro- nologers of the present day, to be about the last that was seen of the eighteenth century. I have consequently lived to see many mighty revolutions in kingdoms and states, and I have also lived to see many mightier and more important changes in fashion and dress I have seen periwigs, buckskin breeches and waistcoats, or in mo- dern sartorial phraseology, vests, with flaps and low descending pockets reaching to the knees, drop quietly into the grave. I have seen coats, cut after a pattern of the middle of the eighteenth cen tury, with scarcely any collar, and I have seen them succeeded, in the early part of the nineteenth, by coats with little beside collar ; coats the apex of whose collar towered above and overlooked the apex of the wearer. I have seen Hessian boots, Suwarrow boots, white top boots, swell back boots, laced boots start into existence and start out of it. I came into the world as the first generation of square toed boots were about going out of it; and my feet are, at this moment, after an interval of-years, no matter how many, incased in a pair of square toes No. 2. I have witnessed the birth and death of two distinct races of sharp toed shoes. I have seen them both kick up a dust in a ball room ; and then, thank heaven, kick the bucket. I have worn out many a pair of round-toed shoes, and do not despair of wearing out many more as soon as they come in fashion again In the year 1817, I bought in the East Indies, a second hand vest sold by its owner because it was out of fashion ; I have it yet, and it is nearly as good as new, although it has been in and out of fashion five times respectively since I bought it."
" But a few years since, the snow-white and nicely plaited ruffle was prevented from fluttering in the breeze by the jewelled breast- pin ; and now, whenever I go abroad, I see the idealess, soulless, worshippers of fashion, as carefully hiding every appearance of linen, whether clean or dirty, as a fashionable belle does a gray hair or a freckle, a hole in her stocking, or a flaw in her reputation. An Eng- lishman and a Frenchman disputing upon the comparative im provements their respective nations had made in dress-" Sare," said the exterminator of frogs, " in la belle France we have invent de roffel, one grand ornament for de hand." "Very true," re- sponded the sturdy Briton, " but we English have improved upon your invention, for we have added a shirt to your ruffle."
" But alas ! " the glory is departed " from among us of inventing the shirt. Fashion has decreed that the very name of "shirt" like
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petticoat-my fashionable paper blushes with fashionable modesty, as I write the words so near to each other on its pure surface-is in- decent and not fit to be used by "good society," and even were that not the case, the word must soon perforce become obsolete, because the thing that the word represents has ceased to exist among the votaries of that despotic goddess. Catching inspiration and enthu- siasm from the spirit of reform and retrenchment that has invaded the cabinet old and new, of General Jackson, and that characterizes the councils of William the IV ; the worshippers of Fashion have at one blow lopped away the entire garment, substituting false wrist- bands and false bosoms, flinging at the feet of the weeping genius of banished cleanliness, " the empty and bloody skin of the immolated victims." Here, it was to be hoped, would have ceased the destruc- tion, but no, the demon of Fashion and Folly issued another decree, and also collars, and false wristbands, even paper ones disappeared- the false bosom did, indeed, struggle, and gasp for breath, but it was the feeble and ineffectual writhing of a sickly calf in the folds of the Boa Constrictor-after a double-breasted vest, and the false bosom was no more, even that " horrible shadow," that " unreal mockery" vanished in eternal night. Stocks rose, not U. S. 5 per cent., for 1836, nor Ohio sixes, but neck stocks, and the false collar, left its post on the cheek bone of the exquisite, the dickey ceased to exco- riate the lobe of the dandy's ear, the false wristband, whether of paper or well starched cotton, retreated up the coat sleeve. A Sanhe- drim of tailors decreed that the vest should be double breasted and padded, and its upper button should be located on the shoulder blade, and the " bosom friend," the last feeble and expiring relic of cleanliness, once the pride and boast, as well as the distinguishing mark of a gentleman, was annihilated, smothered, like Desdemona, by its nearest and dearest friend, hitherto, alike its foil and its orna- ment, its contrast and its comparison-and now
" Full many a skin, that sweat and dirt begrime, The double breasted vests of Fashion hide,
Full many a - - from waist to chin may climb, &c."
But I drop the parody, not from inability to follow it further, but because I hold it as a species of high treason to reveal any more secrets of the toilet masculine. I have but one consolation under this affliction, namely the hope that shirts may possibly once more come into fashion. Yes, I have another comfort : this abominable and worse than Moloch sacrifice of decency of appearance, as well as reality, has not invaded the fair, for though the garment is with thern hidden, there were once and are even now certain hors d'œuvres, outworks, as it were, that bear testimony to its existence among the adies of the present age."
Another observer of the present and past, thus moralizes upon this subject :-
Dress, says he, that was at first our shame, has become our pride
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and we, therefore, glory in our shame. It was first used for our covering ; it is now made for display. A fashionable dress may hardly be defined as a covering ; it is so scanty, that the plainest coat is half show. The sober drab of the Quaker, cut in straight lines, is yet ornamented in its own way. It is cut in a shape that gratifies the wearer, and that may make him proud of his humility.
All our fashions are fleeting, and the form of a cloud is not more liable to change. In the shoe and the boot, those minor and infe- rior parts of dress, what change may come ere we have shuffled off this square-toed pair ! All human inventions, however, have a limit ; for all combinations may be exhausted, and new fashions, like new boots, are but imitations of the old. Of shoes we remember the duck-billed shape, the pointed, the rounded, and the square ; shoes horizontal, that exactly coincide with a flat surface, and others so much hollowed, that the heel and toe only leave a track in the sand. Others are turned up at an angle, equal to the eighth of a circle, and my toes are now pinched by a pair, small and square, of the exact fashion that has for centuries prevailed in China, that happy country where wise laws make the fashions unchangeable. Boots have been more mutable than shoes, but after a course of changes return to an old form. In the sculptures around the Parthenon, the work of Phidias himself, the equestrians have boots of as finical a fit and wrinkle as any in later times. Their form is that of the old white tops.
There are boots military, civic, and dramatic ; there is the bootee, which is evidently a sheer abridgement, and the jack boot, that would not be filled after having swallowed them all.
The fashion at one time requires the boot to be wide and stiff in the back, and at another close and limber. Suwarrow and Welling- ton have a greater name among cordwainers than among soldiers. Of their victories, the remembrance will fade away, but their boots promise immortality. I remember my first pair of Suwarrows ; they made a part of the great equipment, with which I came from col- lege into the world. Four skeins of silk did I purchase of a mercer, and equal expense did I incur with the sweeper, for aid in twisting them into tassels for the boots. I would incur double the expense now to have the same feeling of dignity that I enjoyed then, when walking in those boots! I stepped long and slowly, and the iron heels, which it pleased me to set firmly on the pavement, made a greater clatter than a troop of horse-"shod with felt." But if I wore them with pride it was not without suffering ; nor did I get my- self into them without labour. Before I attempted to draw them on, I rubbed the inside with soap, and powdered my instep and heel with flour. I next drew the handle of the two forks through the straps, lest they should cut into my fingers, and then commenced the "tug of war." I contracted myself into the form of a chicken, trussed for the spit, and whatever patience and perseverance Provi- dence had given me, I tested to the utmost. I cursed Suwarrow for VOL. I .- 2 A
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