Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.--SAMPLER. SCOTTISH (?). 18TH CENTURY. _Formerly in the Author's Collection._

NOTE.--The bright colouring, coa.r.s.e canvas, and ornate lettering of this piece suggest a Scottish origin. It dates from about 1730, and is one of the earliest of the bordered samplers, the border being at present an altogether insignificant addition. It is also one of the first specimens of decoration with crowns and coronets, the initials underneath standing for king, duke, marquis, earl, viscount, lord, count, and baron.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 21.--SAMPLER BY J. H. [JANE HEATH]. A.D. 1725. _Mr Ashby Sterry._]

The tiny sampler with crown ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 21 was one of four contributed to the Exhibition by Mr Ashby Sterry, each of them representing a generation in his family. It is unfinished, the background only having been completed in the lower half; its crown and thistle denote its Scottish origin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22.--SAMPLER BY MARY BYWATER. 1751. _Formerly in the Author's Collection._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23.--HEART-SHAPED SAMPLER BY MARY IVES. DATED 1796.

_Miss Haldane._

NOTE.--This delightful little sampler is reproduced in its full size, and is most delicately adorned with a pink frilled ribbon edging. We do not know which of the three ladies whose names it bears worked it, or to which of them the lines, "Be unto me kind and true as I be unto you," were addressed. The date, it will be seen, is 1796, and it shows that at the end of the century there was still an affection for the little flying Cupids so usual upon eighteenth-century gravestones. We have remarked upon the absence of the cross in samplers: even here we do not find it, although we have the heart and anchor.]

Sampler Design: Hearts

This emblem, which one would have imagined to be a much more favourite device with impressionable little ladies than the crown, is more seldom met with. In fact, it only figured on four of the hundreds of samplers which composed the Exhibition, and in three of these cases it was in conjunction with a crown. When it is remembered how common the heart used to be as an ornament to be worn, and how it is a.s.sociated with the crown in foreign religious Art, its infrequency is remarkable. The unusually designed small sampler (the reproduction being almost the size of the original), Fig. 22, dated 1751, simply worked in pale blue silk, on a fine khaki-coloured ground, has a device of crowns within a large heart. Fig.

23 shows a sampler in the form of a heart, and has, in conjunction with this symbol, anchors. It is dated 1796.

The Borders to Samplers

The sampler with a border was the direct and natural outcome of the sampler in "rows." A case, for instance, probably occurred, as in Fig.

24,[6] where a piece of decoration had a vacant s.p.a.ce at its sides, and resort was at once had to a portion of a row, in this case actually the top one. From this it would follow as a matter of course that the advantage, from a decorative point of view, of an ornamental framework was seen and promptly followed. The earliest border I have seen is that reproduced in Fig. 25, from a sampler dated 1726, but it is certain that many must exist between that date and 1700, the date upon the sampler in Fig. 24 just referred to. The 1726 border consists of a pattern of trefoils, worked in alternating red and yellow silks, connected by a running stem of a stiff angular character; the device being somewhat akin to the earlier semi-border in Fig. 24.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 24.--DRAWN-WORK SAMPLER BY S. W. A.D. 1700. _Mrs C. J.

Longman._]

It is astonis.h.i.+ng with what persistency the samplerists followed the designs which they had had handed to them in the "row" samplers, confining their attentions to a few favourites, and repeating them again and again for a hundred and fifty years, and losing, naturally, with each repet.i.tion somewhat of the feeling of the original. We give a few examples which show this persistency of certain ideas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 25.--BORDER OF MARY LOUNDS'S SAMPLER. A.D. 1726.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 26.--BORDER OF MARY HEAVISIDE'S SAMPLER. A.D. 1735.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 27.--BORDER OF ELIZABETH GREENSMITH'S SAMPLER. AGED 10. JULY YE 26, 1737.]

The border in Fig. 26 is dated 1735, and presents but little advance from a decorative point of view. It is the production of Mary Heaviside, and is upon an Easter sampler, which bears, besides the verse to the Holy Feast of Easter, the Lord's Prayer and the Belief. The border may possibly typify the Cross and the Tree of Life.

Elizabeth Greensmith's sampler (Fig. 27), worked two years later, in 1737, is more pretentious in form, the body of the work being taken up with a spreading tree, beneath which repose a lion and a leopard. The border consists of an ill-composed and ill-drawn design of yellow tulips, blue-bells, and red roses. The stem, which runs through this and almost every subsequent design, is here very feebly arranged; it is, however, only fair to say that the work is that of a girl in her tenth year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 28.--BORDER OF MARGARET KNOWLES'S SAMPLER. AGED 9.

A.D. 1738.]

Margaret Knowles's sampler (Fig. 28), made in the next year--A.D. 1738--is the earliest example I know of the use on a border of that universal favourite the pink, which is oftentimes hardly distinguishable from the corn blue-bottle. In the present instance it is, however, flattened almost out of recognition, whilst the design is spoilt by the colossal proportions of the connecting stem. In the second row of the sampler, Fig.

24, it is seen in a much simpler form, and it will also be found in Plate VI.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 29.--BORDER TO SAMPLER BY ELIZABETH TURNER. A.D.

1771.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XI.--SAMPLER BY ANN CHAPMAN. DATED 1779. _Mrs C. J.

Longman._

Incongruity between the ornament and the lettering of a Sampler could hardly be carried to a more ludicrous extreme than in Ann Chapman's, which is here reproduced in colour. The two points of Agur's prayer, which fills the panel, are that before he dies vanity shall be removed far from him, and that he shall have neither poverty nor riches. Yet as surroundings and supporters to this appeal we have two figures posing as mock shepherd and shepherdess, and decked out in all the vanities of the time. Agur's prayer was apparently often selected, for we see it again in the Sampler of Emily Jane Bronte (Fig. 10), but there it has the quietest of ornament to surround it, and it is worked in black silk; whereas in the present case there is no Sampler in the collection where the whole sheaf of colours has been more drawn upon.]

The remaining ill.u.s.trations of borders are selected as being those where the design is well carried out, and as showing how the types continue. The first (Fig. 29), worked by Elizabeth Turner in 1771, represents a conventional rose in two aspects; the second, by Sarah Carr (Fig. 30), in 1809, is founded on the honeysuckle; whilst the third (Fig.

31) is a delightfully simple one of wild strawberries that is frequently found in samplers from the earliest (in Plate II.) onwards. In that from which this example is taken, worked by Susanna Hayes in 1813, it is most effective with its pink fruit and green stalks and band. It will be noticed that it even crossed the Atlantic, for it reappears in Mr Pennell's American sampler, Plate XIII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.--BORDER TO SAMPLER BY SARAH CARR. A.D. 1809.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.--BORDER TO SAMPLER BY SUSANNA HAYES. A.D. 1813.]

How even the border degenerated as the nineteenth century advanced may be seen in the monotonous Greek fret used in the three samplers of the Brontes (Figs. 10, 11, 12), and in that of Mary Anderson (Fig. 19).

Miscellanea respecting Samplers

Under this heading we group what remains to be said concerning samplers, namely:--

The Age and s.e.x of Sampler Workers

In modern times samplers have been almost universally the product of children's hands; but the earliest ones exhibit so much more proficiency that it would seem to have been hardly possible that they could have been worked by those who were not yet in their teens. This supposition is in a way supported by an examination of samplers. Of those prior to the year 1700, I have seen but one in which the age of the maker is mentioned. It reads thus, "Mary Hall is my name and when I was thirteen years of age I ended this in 1662." On the other hand, the rhyme which we quoted at page 50, attached to one in Mrs Longman's possession, which, although undated, is certainly of the seventeenth century, points to it being the work of a grown-up and possibly a married lady.

It is not until we reach the year 1704 that I have found a sampler (Fig.

32) which was the product of a child under ten, namely, that bearing the inscription "Martha Haynes ended her sampler in the 9th year of her age, 1704."

This is quickly followed by one by "Anne Michel, the daughter of John and Sarah Michel ended Nov. the 21 being 11 years of age and in the 3 year of Her Majesti Queen Anne and in the year of ovr Lord 1705."

1740 is the next date upon one worked by Mary Gardner, aged 9 (page 27).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 32.--SMALL SAMPLER BY MARTHA HAYNES. DATED 1704. _Late in the Author's Collection._]

From 1750 onwards the majority of samplers are endorsed with the age of the child, and the main interest in the endors.e.m.e.nts lies in the remarkable proficiency which many of them exhibit, considering the youth of the worker, and in the tender age at which they were wrought. Almost one half of the tiny workers have not reached the s.p.a.ce when their years are marked with two figures, and we even have one mite of six producing the piece of needlework reproduced in Fig. 33, and talking of herself as in her prime in the verse set out upon it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 33.--SAMPLER BY SARAH PELHAM, AGED 6.]

But perhaps the most remarkable achievement is the "goldfinch" sampler ill.u.s.trated in Plate XII., which was worked by Ann Maria Wiggins at the age of seven.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that samplers were on occasions worked by children of both s.e.xes. One's own recollection carries back to canvas and Berlin wool-work having been one way of pa.s.sing the tedious hours of a wet day. But specimens where the Christian name of a male appears are few and far between, and more often than not they are worked in conjunction with others, which would seem to indicate that they are only there as part and parcel of a list (which is not unusual) of the family. In the sampler ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 34 the boy's name, Robert Henderson, is in black silk, differing from any of the rest of the lettering, which is perhaps testimony to his having produced it. This sampler shows the perpetuation until 1762 of the form in which rows are the predominant feature. A sampler, formerly in the author's collection, was more clearly that of a boy, being signed Lindsay Duncan, Cuper [_sic_], 1788. Another Scottish one bears the name or names Alex. Peter Isobel Dunbar, whilst a third of the same kind is signed "Mathew was born on April 16, 1764, and sewed this in August, 1774."

The Size of Samplers

The ravages of time and the little value attached to them have probably reduced to very small numbers the tiny samplers such as those which are seen in Figs. 35 and 36, and which must have usually been very infantine efforts. Those ill.u.s.trated, however, show the progress made by two sisters, Mary and Lydia Johnson, in two years. Presumably Lydia was the elder, and worked the sampler which bears her name and the date 1784. This was copied by her sister Mary in the following year, but in a manner which showed her to be but a tyro with the needle; nor much advanced in st.i.tchery in the following year, in which she attempted the larger sampler which bears her name. Lydia, on the other hand, in the undated sampler, but which was probably made in the year 1786, showed progress in everything except the power of adapting the well-known design of a pink to the small sampler on which she was engaged, as to which she clearly could not manage the joining of the pattern at the corners. The originals of these samplers measure from four to six inches in their largest dimensions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--SCOTTISH SAMPLER BY ROBERT HENDERSON. DATED 1762.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.--SMALL SAMPLERS BY MARY JOHNSON. 1785-6. _Author's Collection._]