III.  Raillery and Scolding

Of course, the colonial man found woman’s dress a subject for jest; what man has not?  Certainly in America the custom is of long standing.  Old Nathaniel Ward, writing in 1647 in his Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, declares:  “It is a more common than convenient saying that nine tailors make a man; it were well if nineteen could make a woman to her mind.  If tailors were men indeed well furnished, but with more moral principles, they would disdain to be led about like apes by such mimic marmosets.  It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them to spend their lives in making fiddle-cases for futilous women’s fancies; which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys....  It is no little labor to be continually putting up English women into outlandish casks; who if they be not shifted anew once in a few months grow too sour for their husbands....  He that makes coats for the moon had need take measure every noon, and he that makes for women, as often to keep them from lunacy.”

Indeed Ward becomes genuinely excited over the matter, and says some really bitter things:  “I shall make bold for this once to borrow a little of their long-waisted but short skirted patience....  It is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women should have any true grace, or valuable virtue, that have so little wit as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garbes, as not only dismantle their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant-bar-geese, ill shapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphics, or at the best French flirts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorn with her heels....”

The raillery became more frequent and certainly much more good-natured in the eighteenth century.  Philip Fithian, a Virginia tutor, writing in 1773, said in his Diary:  “Almost every Lady wears a red Cloak; and when they ride out they tye a red handkerchief over their Head and face, so that when I first came into Virginia, I was distressed whenever I saw a Lady, for I thought she had the toothache.”

In fact, the subject sometimes inspired the men to poetry, as may be seen from the following specimen: 

      “Young ladies, in town, and those that live ’round,
        Let a friend at this season advise you;
      Since money’s so scarce, and times growing worse,
        Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.

“First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride,
Wear none but your own country linen,
Of Economy boast, let your pride be the most,
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.

“What if home-spun, they say, is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known, this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out—­’’Tis the fashion.’

* * * * *

“Throw aside your Bohea and your Green Hyson tea,
And all things with a new-fashion duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labrador
For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.