Customs and Fashions in Old New England
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tiers, Robert Daniel, is found the item "two Ceruse Jugs." Ceruse was a preparation of white lead with which women then painted their faces, and I think these ceruse jugs were part of the paraphernalia of my Lady Daniel's toilet-table.
With the advent of newspapers came various advertisements that showed the vanity of our forbears, the "collusions of women, their oyntments and potticary drugs, and all their slibber sawces." "An Excellent Wash for the Skin which entirely taketh out all Freckles Moath & Sunburn from the Face Neck & Hands, which with Frequent Use adds a most Agreeable Lustre to the Complexion, softens & beautifies the Skin to Admiration And is generally used and approved of by most of the Gentry in London of both Sexes."
"Best Face Powder which gives a fine Bloom to the Face which answers all the intents of White Paint without that Pernicious effect that attends Paint. Also a Composition to take off Superficious Hair."
The latter clause shows that our great-grandmothers were quite au fait with the nostrums of the present day, with "pargetting, painting, slicking, glazing, and renewing old rivelled faces." Many pretty rules may be found in old books and diaries, that are of New England, rules "to make the face fair" and to "make sweet the mouth." "Take the flowers of Rosemary and seeth them in VVhite VVine, with which wash your face, and if you drink thereof it wil make you have a sweet breath."
Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a "faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew. Could this have been but a sly trick to get the lasses from their beds betimes? We know the early hour at which Madam Pepys had to bathe her mighty handsome face in the beautifying spring dew. Patches were worn as eagerly, apparently, by Boston as by London belles. Whitefield complained of the jewels, patches, and gay apparel donned in New England. In scores of old newspapars after 1760 appear notices of the sale of "Face Patches," "Patch for Ladies," "Gum Patches," etc., and the frequency of advertisement would indicate a popular and ready sale. With regard to the bathing habits of our ancestors but little can be said, and but little had best be said. Charles Francis Adams writes, with witty plainness, "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed that which ranks next to godliness, then judged by the nineteenth century standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they lacked of the former." He says there was not a bath-room in the town of Quincy prior to the year 1820. And of what use would pitchers or tubs of water have been in bed-rooms in the winter time, when if exposed These pages are © Laurel O'Donnell, 2005, all rights reserved
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