For Halloween: Witchfinders Direct (another silly historical video)

In honor of Halloween, we offer up this dark-humored piece by our favorite folk at the Horrible Histories – and wish you lots of treats without a hint of tricks, let alone any witch-burnings.

As a casual observation: it's interesting how in contemporary American popular culture, witches are still regarded as having supernatural powers. They can be malevolent, like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz, or cheerfully undercover in TV suburbia, like Samantha in Bewitched or Sabrina, the Teen-Aged Witch, or glamorously over-the-top Hollywood with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Phieffer in The Witches of Eastwick.

But unless you happen to be a high school student laboring through Arthur Miller's The Crucible in English class, there's very little reference to the historical persecution of witches and witchcraft, or to the misogyny, hysteria, and general intolerance tied to them, either. Even the town of Salem, MA, where the most famous American witch trials took place in the 17th c., tends to play up the witches on broomsticks for the tourist trade. Striped stockings, pointed hats, and stick-on warts are what sells at Halloween Adventure.

In other words, modern American witches in the media are all about the paranormal, and very little about the paranoia. As we noted, we don't have any deep historical explanations to offer for this right now (it's the weekend), but please feel free to Discuss Among Yourselves if you wish.

And save us some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from your goodie bag, okay?

A Perfect Pair of Gentleman's Buckskin Breeches

Susan reporting:

One of our very first posts here at the TNHG involved Loretta's encounter with a pair of black stockinette breeches. It was also one of our most popular posts – which is why we were particularly pleased to discover this pair of white buckskin breeches, as worn by the Spruce Sportsman, lower right, beautifully replicated by the tailors of Colonial Williamsburg using traditional 18th c. techniques.

Buckskin breeches are another masculine style that had a long fashion-life (much like cocked beaver hats.) The Spruce Sportsman is shown wearing buckskins in 1777, and yet this singing swain by Gillray, right, is shown wearing virtually the same breeches nearly thirty years later, and they also appear on the heroes of countless Regency romances. Buckskins remained in fashion for good reasons: they were comfortable, durable, and looked quite dashing. Preferred for riding and country wear as a sporting look, they were so popular that they were also often seen about London as well.

Buckskins were in fact cut and stitched from the skins of deer, both bucks and does, with hides imported in great quantities from America to England (though George Washington preferred to have his made from elk skin.) Buckskin breeches were most usually white or pale tan, and not lined. Unlike most modern leather clothing, buckskins were washable to a point, though if they finally became too worn and stained over time and hard wear, they could be dyed a darker color. If this pair is typical, they were also incredibly soft, like the most velvety, comfortable pair of old jeans you've ever worn. We completely understand why gentlemen became so attached to them.

The view, above, shows the self-covered buttons on the leg openings, and the cuff tabs that would have fastened with buckles beneath the knee and over stockings.  That white half-wafer lying on the breeches is a buffball (and, alternately, also a breeches ball, yellow ball, and yellow boys), a cake made of compressed ochre and kaolin clay suspended in glue and soap that was used for emergency touch-ups. The buffball didn't remove dirt or soil, but it did effectively cover the spot.

The detail, left, shows not only the decorative stitching and metallic buttons on the fall (the front flap), but also the fob, or watch pocket (wrist watches still being a far-distant invention.) A gentleman would take care to keep his fall buttoned, not only for propriety's sake, but also to protect his valuable pocket-watch from thieves. But if he were not a gentleman, but, say, a jockey or other professionally sporting fellow, he might choose to saunter about with the fall half-open like this with rakish nonchalance. Sporting indeed!

Many thanks to Neal Hurst of the Margaret Hunter Shop, Colonial Williamsburg, for the information in this post.


Top illustration: detail from Harmony Before Matrimony, by James Gillray, 1805.
Lower illustration: detail from The Spruce Sportsman, or Beauty the best shot, by Carrington Bowles, 1777.

Now for the Gentleman: A Cocked Hat, c. 1777

Susan reporting:

While ladies' feathered hats and towering calashes (not to mention the big hair) garner the most attention in 18th c. caricatures like The Spruce Sportsman, the hat of that same Sportsman seems almost tame by comparison.

Perhaps that's fitting, considering that the main style in men's hats was virtually unchanged from the late 17th c. until the early 19th c. A moderate crown with a wide, flat brim, made from dark felt was worn by men of every rank. The personal style came from the quality of the felt (gentlemen's hats were made from beaver fur felt, while more inexpensive hats were made from wool), the embellishment (braid, lace, buttons, cockades, plumes, and badges), and how the brim was cocked, or bent upwards. Most men worn their hats cocked on three sides in a triangular shape, a style so popular that it has become the ubiquitous hat of the 18th c. European man. From kings to peddlers, military officers to fops, dukes to footmen – hey, even Captain Jack Sparrow – all wore cocked hats.

(And let us take a moment to put to rest the term "tricorne" or "tricorned hat." Yes, that was what such hats were called in your Bicentennial History Pageant in third grade, but it's not right for the real George Washington. "Tricorned" doesn't come into usage until 1819, and "tricorne" doesn't appear until even later, in 1857.)

Although our Sportsman sits in a lady's parlor, he is dressed for hunting (doubtless for hearts instead of foxes), and his clothes have the stylish military air popular at the time for outdoor activities. The skillful tailors of Colonial Williamsburg have replicated his handsome black beaver hat, above, along with the rest of his clothing. The cocked brim is edged with a metallic gold braid and held in place with loops of more gold braid. Centering the crown is a button wrapped with gold thread, in a pattern known as death-head.

Now we've seen plenty of hats like this in prints and paintings, but we'd never seen the inside of one. Here it is, lined in pale blue silk. Over the forehead is a patch of suede to protect the hat from sweat (shudder), and in the center of the crown is the hatter's paper label, proclaiming the admirable taste of the wearer every time he bows and removes his hat.

But just because our Sportsman's hat is elegant in its restraint, we feel we must offer a balanced view with another 18th c. print, right, to prove that, without a brain beneath it, even a cocked hat could go tragically wrong. (Also see this young macaroni.)

Right: detail of "What, Is This my Son Tom?" published by R. Sayer, London, 1774

Covering Your Hair with a Calash (if it's 1777)

Susan reporting:

Calash (if you're English; in French it's called caleche) bonnets were a popular ladies' fashion from the mid-18th c. well into the 19th c. They were one of the rare 18th c. fashions born of necessity, rather than pure fancy: when hairstyles grew to such towering heights that the hoods on cloaks could no longer accommodate them, calash bonnets were created.

Engineered to rise high and collapse flat much like the top of a covered carriage, the calash was customarily made of black or other dark-colored silk taffeta, whose glossy sheen highlighted all the ruffles and gathers. Narrow strips of flexible cane or whalebone were inserted into stitched channels, and bent to produce the arches that would sit over, rather than on top of, elaborately arranged hair. The calash tied under the chin, making it a kind of hybrid of a bonnet and a hood. While 18th c. models are tall and almost oval in shape, later versions are more round, reflecting the more modest hairstyles of the 19th c. Here's an example from 1820, and another from 1840. In an earlier post, Loretta wrote of one more, made from cotton, on display at Sturbridge Village.

Some fashion legends claim the calash was first worn by the trend-setting Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire in 1765, while others say the Duchess of Bedford deserves the honor. Either way, the bonnets were swiftly embraced by fashionable ladies, and just as swiftly skewered by caricaturists – which brings us back to our Spruce Sportsman ladies from Colonial Williamsburg. The photo from the video shoot, above left, shows an elegant black calash (worn by Emma, a mantua-maker's assistant from the Margaret Hunter Shop), topping the requisite tall hair of the period, plus a cap and bow as in the original drawing. And yes, that really is Emma's own very long hair, powdered and dressed (right) and not a wig!

Back in the milliner's shop, Sarah offered to give us a closer look at the calash, below left and right. While she doesn't have the extravagant hair to fill the calash the way Emma did, the photo, left, does show the ribs and gathers, and the flirtatious bow centering the back, and guaranteeing a memorable exit. The calash's ruffled collar sat over the cloak, almost like a little capelet. Given all that volume, the calash is surprisingly lightweight, and again I wondered what sort of mishaps might occur if an untoward gust of wind crept up inside it.

In the picture, right, Sarah is demonstrating the long loop of ribbon that was used to pull the calash forward over the face. Fiddling with this ribbon was also apparently a popular affectation of young ladies of the day; contemporary sources refer to them snapping these ribbons to artful (and likely quite annoying) affect. Must have been the 18th c. version of twirling one's hair and cracking one's chewing gum....

A Fantastical Feathered Hat, c. 1777

Susan reporting:

As promised yesterday, we'll be showing you some of the pieces inspired by the 1777 print The Spruce Sportsman, and recently reproduced by the tailors and mantuamakers of Colonial Williamsburg. And what better place to begin than with this amazing feathered hat?

Sarah (the mantuamaker's apprentice, and our fav and most obliging model) is wearing the hat here over her dressed hair and a ruffled, beribboned cap – not quite the super-fashionable "big hair" of the 1770s as in the print, but still handsome enough to support the hat.

The hat began its life as a simple circle of flexible woven straw, covered in yellow silk. (Imagine a flat-brimmed straw hat without a crown.) Then, like a pastry chef layering on the whipped cream, the mantuamaker embellished the hat with poufs of blue silk gauze and loops of silver silk satin and black velvet ribbon.

Last, though certainly not least, came the plumes. While 18th c. fashion pages do mention tinted feathers, these were created with another technique. Several ostrich feathers were tied closely together so that their barbs mingled and overlapped to make the colors appear to shade into one another: white, silver grey, pink, and dark crimson.

(N.B.: Something we didn't realize, at least as it pertains to 18th c. millinery: a single feather is always a feather, but bundle two or more together, and they jointly become a plume. And here we'd always believed that it was the fluffiness that differentiated a feather from a plume!)

When the ribbons  tie the hat on the head, the brim takes on the distinctive curved shape of the period. And, of course, no trendy 18th c. lady would ever dream of tying those ribbons beneath her chin – they always go to the back, tucked beneath her hair, so the brim tips enchantingly over the eyes. You know, the way the Gainsborough ladies wear them whilst strolling The Mall in St. James's Park.

Even so, maneuvering down The Mall or any other street in a breeze more fierce than light airs could be perilous, and long hair pins, thrust through the brim or crown and hair with the pin-heads buried in the ribbons, may be necessary to keep the whole concoction from taking off.