Last night, as I lay in the tester bed we slept in on What Cheer Eve, I wondered again what it was like to live and work in the house over the course of its life, and how the servants had been treated. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the notion of “service” was still evolving in New England. Help was common, and while northern and urban slavery existed, and we know the Browns traded in and owned enslaved people, we have no evidence of them in the house.
We know there was a white woman between 45 and 60, and four “all other free people,” we have names –Mary, Jonathan, and Gideon– for some of the people associated with the family, but don’t know their details. How did the Browns treat them? What was the relationship like? Were they invisible? Thanked? Chastised?
Goody Morris makes up a bed. Photograph by J. D. Kay
Diary entries that record “my babe takes tea with Ma’s Mary” suggests that there was some level of familiarity, and hints at the friendly relationship children and servants sometimes had in these houses, when both were seen as less civilized, less refined, and (clearly) less educated than the adult homeowners. Physically, service stairs kept chamber pots, laundry, food, servants, and children out of view, sequestered into smaller, dimmer, less-finished spaces.
Petulant Alice faces her first hurdle, Kitty and Goody Morris. Photograph by J. D. Kay
We’ll never really know how the Browns really treated their servants, or felt about them; these are people who matter only enough to be remarked upon in passing. Perhaps even more frustrating is that we’ll never know what the servants thought of the Browns, of their businesses and moods, loves and appetites. These barely-documented people could tell us so much, if only the past could talk.
Mrs William (Jane) Pabodie. oil on canvas, 1813. RIHS 1970.60.2
Remember Mrs Pabodie? She appeared a week ago today in Providence after an intense sewing effort left your author with numb fingers. The process was as straightforward as these things ever are, manipulating fabrics to do your bidding once you think you have the right materials.
It took more rounds of white muslins from Burnley and Trowbridge than I care to count, and a variety of book muslins from Wm Booth Draper, just for the chemisette and cap. The laces came from Farmhouse Fabrics in the most expensive small package I’ve yet ordered that did not contain antique jewelry.
Mrs Pabodie attempts to remember when she was born (1771). Photo by J. D. Kay
The gown is a wool and silk blend remnant from Wm Booth Draper, just enough to make a gown (even at my height) though I admit the front hem will need some piecing or a ruffle to give it the proper length. Still, the thing more or less works, though as I compare the details to the original painting, I admit we’re still in beta.
Impressed from Newport– or nearly so– Low Spark makes his Providence debut. Photo by J.D. Kay
Reverend Hitchcock, hoping against hope that the tailor will one day finish his fine silk waistcoat. Photo by J. D. Kay
Sissieretta Jones extols the beauties of Paris– and pearls. Photo by J. D. Kay
I was joined by three friends from different eras (because you know me: if it’s not didactic, we’re not doing it): a sailor who on the run from a Newport press gang in 1765; Reverend Enos Hitchcock of the Beneficient Congregational Church in 1785; and Sissieretta Jones, soprano of Providence, around 1880. Each of the characters described their lives and their clothing, and I will admit that the Annual Meeting audience may not have been fully prepared for some of what they heard– I’m not certain they had ever considered how apt “balancing a sheep on my head” might be in describing Reverend Hitchcock’s wig.
Mrs Pabodie points out East Side landmarks to a visitor examining the theatre curtain backdrop painted around 1810. Photo by J. D. Kay
In the end, they were entertained, and may even have learned something, as we celebrated 2016’s interpretive theme, Fashioning Rhode Island.
Some regular readers know I was part of Chicago’s punk rock scene in the early 1980s: my first foray into unusual music and natty dressing.* I think that’s me and my keffiyeh at a Naked Raygun show in the Chicago episode of Sonic Highways. But more to the point, I was on the fringes of an underground, taking style tips from obscure English zines, and being told I looked like a whore by a variety of men using Chicago’s public transit system. Judge not lest ye be judged aside, I’m accustomed to occupying uncomfortable spaces by design and by accident. (I wasn’t looking to be called a whore on the Fullerton El platform when I dressed in a below-the-knee vintage skirt and lot of Bakelite jewelry combined with bullet belts and studded leather, but everybody’s a critic when it comes to women’s appearance.)
The Frail Sisters, 1794
Now that I live in Providence, where indoor prostitution was legal for decades, if not centuries, my interest in gender role non-conformity extends to finding ways to document and represent sex workers in Rhode Island history. The adult section of the now-defunct Providence Phoenix, ‘zines, and diaries help record at least some aspects of this facet of our culture, but how do we represent it, and do it well? Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places is not a realistic model.
In discussing this lately, I’ve found consistent themes in representing sex workers in the 18th century: white face powder, rouge, bright clothing, visible stays, friendliness rather than reserve. There are lithographs to guide the portrayal through clothing, and visual tropes that signified a lack of virtue in the 18th century. In considering the local variations on this theme, my thought had been to expand upon the visual imagery by reading the Providence and Newport town papers, and the records of the Colony of Rhode Island, along with the contemporary newspapers.
The Tar’s Triumph, or Bawdy-House Battery, print by Charles Mosley, 1749. British Museum 1868,0808.3896
The Bargain Struck, or Virtue conquer’d by Temptation. Mezzotint, 1773. British Museum 1935,0522.1.130
My sartorial choices for a prostitute would include a rather over-fancy cap with a worn silk ribbon, rouge and a velvet patch, a silk gown stained on the back, silk petticoat stained at the knees, laddered stockings, and heeled shoes tied with silk ribbons, or fastened with paste buckles. If my character worked from a brothel, the dress could be brighter and cleaner, but in either case, neck handkerchiefs would be optional or silk and askew, showing my stays and cleavage.
This is not an easy impression. It’s not just that I do not want to parody an 18th century prostitute, but that I want to honor the memory of these largely forgotten women. They had families– in all likelihood they had children, as we know from the story of Mary Bowen and Eliza Jumel– they had feelings, desires, dreams, felt love and pain. They were likely desperate.
They were human.
We owe them the respect of representing them well– of representing them at all– if we strive to recreate a more complete picture of the past.
It has been quite busy chez Calash, with What Cheer Day a little over a week away, the Warren Commission happening tomorrow, and various and sundry other things to do, like get a Young Giant into college. But results were promised and results you shall have.
Despite my lack of chemistry knowledge, I made and used the pewter-cleaning liquor with some success.
The pewter plate spent some time sitting on its edge in a basin of the liquor, and the line is pretty clearly visible in the first image. The second shows the plate after being cleaned with the liquor and a wool rag. It’s better than it was, but there are still more experiments to do. I’d apply rottenstone, but the container hasn’t made it back to New England yet, the posts being poor and the roads infernal.
different class levels
As the silver bowl demonstrates, rottenstone on its own is remarkably effective at removing polish. It is certainly a fairly readily-available, non-toxic, period method of cleaning metals (andirons and fenders to plates and punch bowls) that can be easil;y employed.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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