Children -- United States; United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
To return to the dress of John Quincy: with the exception of the
neck of the body of the frock it is much like the dress of grown
women of that day. We have existing portraits of Madam Shimpton and
Rebecca Rawson of the same date. In both of these, as in this little
boy's portrait, the sleeve is the most noticeable feature, with its
single slash, double puff drawn in below the elbow and confined with
pretty ribbon knots. This sleeve was known as the virago sleeve,
and John Quincy's are darker colored than his frock. All three wear
loosely tied rather shapeless hoods, such as are seen on the women
in the prints of the coronation procession of King William. The boy
has a close cap under his hood. His dress is certainly picturesque
and distinctive.
A portrait, facing page 36, of another Massachusetts boy,
contemporary with John Quincy, is that of Robert Gibbs, the rich
Boston merchant. This is plainly marked as being painted when he
was four and a half years old, and with the date 1670. He wears the
same stiff cuirass as John Quincy, the same odd truncated shoes of
buff leather, and has the same masculine swing of the petticoats.
Both figures stand on a checker-board floor, four squares deep, with
their toes at the same point on the board. Robert Gibbs wears a more
boyish collar, or band, as befits a bigger boy. The sleeves are
an important feature of his dress, having a pair of long hanging
sleeves bordered with fur, which do not show in the print in this
book, but are plainly visible in the original portrait. Hanging
sleeves were so distinctively the dress of a little child that the
term had at that time a symbolic significance, implying childishness
both of youth and second childhood. Pepys thus figuratively employs
the term. Judge Sewall wrote in old age to a brother whose widowed
sister he desired to marry:--
"I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have
sometime met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves,
coming home from their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had
the pleasure of speaking to them. And I could find it in my
heart now to speak to Mrs Martha again, now I myself am reduc'd
to Hanging Sleeves."
This roundabout wooing came to naught. The Judge married Widow Mary
Gibbs, relict of this very Robert Gibbs whose childish portrait we
have here. The artist who painted this picture may have been Tom
Child, who is named by Judge Sewall as the portrait-painter of that
day.
A demure and quaint portrait, opposite page 42, is that of Jane
Bonner. She was born in 1691, the daughter of Captain John Bonner of
Boston, and was married in 1710 to John Ellery. She was about eight
or ten years old when the portrait was painted. Crude as is the
painting, it gives evident proof that the lace of the stomacher and
sleeve frills is of the nature of what is now called rose point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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