Though the Pilgrim women were doubtless as simple at their toilet as they were in their dress, the sudden growth of the colony in wealth brought to their daughters, besides variety and richness of dress, a love of cosmetics. Dunton tells positively of one painted face in Boston in 1686. He said, "to hide her age she paints, and to hide her painting dares hardly laugh." One New England minister thus reproved and warned the women of his congregation: "At the resurrection of the Just there will no such sight be met as the Angels carrying Painted Ladies in their arms."
In the inventory of one of the early Cambridge settlers, 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.