Chapter 2

In feudal times, in the last part of the fourteenth century, it became the practice for the vassals, or feudatories, to send their sons to be educated in the family of the suzerain, while the daughters were similarly placed with the lady of the castle. These formed a very important part of the household, and were of gentle blood, claiming the honorary title of _chambriéres_ or chamber-maidens. The demoiselles of this period were very susceptible to the passion of love, which was the ruling spirit of the inmates of the castle. Feudal society was, in comparison to the previous times, polished and even brilliant, but it was not, under the surface, pure. Many good maxims were taught, but they were not all practiced. "There was an extreme intimacy between the two sexes, who commonly visited each other in their chambers or bedrooms. Thus in the poem of Guatier d'Aupias, the hero is represented as visiting in her chamber the demoiselle of whom he is enamored. Numerous similar examples might be quoted. At times, one of the parties is described as being actually in bed, as is the case in the romance of _Blonde of Oxford_, where Blonde visits Jehan in his chamber when he is in bed, and stays all night with him, in perfect innocence as we are told in the romance. We must remember that it was the custom in those times for both sexes to go to bed perfectly naked."[17]

IN SWITZERLAND,

According to an English observer,[18] analogous modes of courtship still exist. In speaking of the canton _Unterwald_ he says: "In the story of the destruction of the castles, we read that the surprise was effected by a young girl admitting her lover to her room by a ladder, and an English guide-book remarks, that this is still the fashion of receiving lovers in Switzerland. Reference is had to the manner of wooing, which in some cantons is called _lichtgetren_, in others _dorfen_ and _stubetegetren_, and answers to the old-fashioned _going-a-courting_ in England. The customs connected with it vary in different cantons, but exist in some form in all except two or three.

In the canon _Lucerne_, the _kiltgang_ is the universal mode of wooing; the lover visiting his betrothed in the evening, to be pelted on the way by all mischievous urchins; or if he is seated quietly with her by the winter fire, they are sure to be serenaded by all manner of _cat voices_ under the window, which are continued till he issues forth, perhaps at dawn in the morning; and however long may be a courtship, these _cater-waulings_ are the invariable attendants, and not the most lamentable consequences of these nightly visits, recognized, however, as entirely respectable and conventional in every canton."

And again in the canton _Vaud_, he says, "the _kiltgang_, or nightly wooings, are the universal custom with the universal consequences, but in general the wife is treated with marked respect, is made keeper of the treasury, and consulted as the oracle of the family."

Among the amatory customs of various

SAVAGE NATIONS

and tribes, there are certain which somewhat resemble _bundling_, except in the greater degree of freedom allowed--a freedom which, in the eyes of civilized nations, is absolute immorality. Of this description is the manner of wooing described by La Hontan as prevalent among the Indians of North America.[19]

Yet, in many of these instances, if we were to carefully examine the social system and customs of our savage friends, and were willing to judge them rather by the results of our own observation, than by our preconceived opinions, we should probably find that the absolute _practical morality_ of these _untutored natives_, was quite equal, if not superior, to that of the educated and civilized whites.[20]

Among these _customs de amour_, however, to which we have alluded as existing among different savage tribes, there are none which bear so perfect a resemblance to _bundling_, as that described by Masson in his _Journeys in Central Asia, Belochistan, Afghanistan,_ etc. (III, 287.) He says:

"Many of the Afghan tribes have a custom of wooing similar to what in Wales is known as _bundling-up_, and which they term _namzat bezé_. The lover presents himself at the house of his betrothed with a suitable gift, and in return is allowed to pass the night with her, on the understanding that innocent endearments are not to be exceeded."

Spencer St. John tells us, in speaking of the piratical and ferocious Sea Dayaks of Borneo, that "besides the ordinary attention which a young man is able to pay to the girl he desires to make his wife--as helping her in her farm work, and in carrying home her load of vegetables or wood, as well as in making her little presents, as a ring or some brass chain-work with which the women adorn their waists, or even a petticoat--there is a very peculiar testimony of regard which is worthy of note. About nine or ten at night, when the family is supposed to be fast asleep within the musquito curtains in the private apartments, the young man quietly slips back the bolt by which the door is fastened on the inside, and enters the room on tiptoe. On hearing who it is, she rises at once, and they sit conversing together and making arrangements for the future, in the dark, over a plentiful supply of _sirih-leaf_ and _batle-nut_, which it is the gentleman's duty to provide, for his suit is in a fair way to prosper; but if, on the other hand, she rises and says, 'be good enough to blow up the fire,' or 'light the lamp' (a bamboo filled with resin), then his hopes are at an end, as that is the usual form of dismissal. Of course, if this kind of nocturnal visit is frequently repeated, the parents do not fail to discover it, although it is a point of honor among them to take no notice of their visitor; and, if they approve of him, matters then take their course, but if not, they use their influence with their daughter to ensure the utterance of the fatal 'please blow up the fire.'"

And now, having discussed the custom of bundling as it formerly existed in Great Britain, and having proved its identity with the _queesting_ of Holland, and the _namzat bezé_ of Central Asia, we propose to follow our investigations to the continent of America, and to trace, if we can, its origin and progress in the

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

in doing which, it is quite likely that, we follow the identical line of travel and colonization--viz: from Old to New England, and from Netherlands (the father-land) to New Netherlands--by which the custom of bundling was really transplanted to these western shores. For, although the grave and (sometimes) veracious historian of New York, Diedrich Knickerbocker, hath endeavored to fasten upon the Connecticut settlers the odium of having introduced the custom into New Netherland,[21] to the great offense of all properly disposed people; yet we may reasonably doubt whether the young mynheers and frauliens of New Amsterdam, in that day, were any more innocent of this lover's pastime, than their vivacious Connecticut neighbors. Indeed, can it be for one moment supposed that the good Hollanders--a most unchanging and conservative race--should have been so far false to the traditions of their fathers, and the honor of the fatherland, as to leave behind them, when they crossed the seas, the good old custom of _queesting_, with its time-honored associations and delights? Or can it be imagined that those astute lawgivers and political economists, the early governors and burgomasters, were so blind to the necessities and interests of a new and sparsely populated country, as to forbid bundling within their borders? Indeed, it would be but a sorry compliment to the wisdom of that sagacious and far-sighted body of merchants comprised in the High and Mighty West India Company, to believe that they were unwilling to introduce under their benign auspices, a custom so intimately connected with their own national social habits, and so promising to the prospective interests and enlargement of their _new plantations_, as this. And, truly, Diedrich himself, doth, in another part of his book, inadvertently betray the fact that bundling was by no means a purely Yankee trick, for he speaks of the redoubtable Anthony Van Corlaer--purest of Dutchmen--as "passing through Hartford, and Pyquag, and Middletown, and all the other border towns, twanging his trumpet like a very devil, so that the sweet valleys and banks of the Connecticut resounded with the warlike melody, and stopping occasionally to eat pumpkin pies, dance at country frolics, and _bundle_ with the beauteous lasses of those parts, whom he rejoiced exceedingly with his soul-stirring instrument." Which passage, while it proves that the practice of bundling prevailed in Connecticut, proves equally well that Anthony the trumpeter was by no means inexperienced in its delights, nor unwilling to enjoy its comforts, whether under the name of _bundling_ or _queesting_.

Indeed, we do most truly believe that the cunning Knickerbocker, in his desire to vindicate, as he thought, the character of his race against the accusation of immorality, hath by his denial not only committed a grievous sin against "the truth of history," but hath greatly added thereto, by attempting to foist off the opprobrium of the same on to the shoulders of the Connecticut folks. But history will not remain forever falsified, and the day has at length arrived when every historical tub must "stand on its own bottom," and the world will henceforth know that the New Netherlanders did not take bundling by inoculation from the Yankees, but that they brought it with them to the New World, as an ancestral heirloom.

This point being thus satisfactorily settled, to the honor of the Dutchman, and the extreme satisfaction of all future historians, we next proceed to investigate the bundling prevalent in

THE NEW ENGLAND STATES,

Where, as we have already shown, it was, as with the Dutchmen, an _inherited_ custom. Its comparatively innocent and harmless character has, however, been fearfully distorted and maligned by irresponsible satirists, and prejudiced historians. Take, for example, the following passage from Knickerbocker's _History of New York_,[22] wherein he pretends to describe "the curious device among these sturdy barbarians [the Connecticut colonists], to keep up a harmony of interests, and promote population. * * * * They multiplied to a degree which would be incredible to any man unacquainted with the marvellous fecundity of this growing country. This amazing increase may, indeed, be partly ascribed to a singular custom prevalent among them, commonly known by the name of _bundling_--a superstitious rite observed by the young people of both sexes, with which they usually terminated their festivities, and which was kept up with religious strictness by the more bigoted and vulgar part of the community. This ceremony was likewise, in those primitive times, considered as an indispensable preliminary to matrimony; their courtships commencing where ours usually finish, by which means they acquired, that intimate acquaintance with each other's good qualities before marriage, which has been pronounced by philosophers the sure basis of a happy union. Thus early did this cunning and ingenious people display a shrewdness at making a bargain, which has ever since distinguished them, and a strict adherence to the good old vulgar maxim about 'buying a pig in a poke.'

"To this sagacious custom, therefore, do I chiefly attribute the unparalleled increase of the Yanokie or Yankee tribe; for it is a certain fact, well authenticated by court records and parish registers, that wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number of sturdy brats annually born unto the state, without the license of the law, or the benefit of clergy. Neither did the irregularity of their birth operate in the least to their disparagement. On the contrary, they grew up a long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race of whoreson whalers, wood cutters, fishermen, and peddlers; and strapping corn-fed wenches, who by their united efforts tended marvellously towards populating those notable tracts of country called Nantucket, Piscataway, and Cape Cod."

Hear, also, that learned, but audacious and unscrupulous divine, the Rev. Samuel Peters, who thus discourseth at length upon the custom of bundling in Connecticut, and other parts of New England. After admitting that "the women of Connecticut are strictly virtuous, and to be compared to the prude rather than the European polite lady," he says:

"Notwithstanding the modesty of the females is such that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a lady of a garter, knee, or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to _bundle_; a custom as old as the first settlement in 1634. It is certainly innocent, virtuous and prudent, or the puritans would not have permitted it to prevail among their offspring, for whom in general they would suffer crucifixion. Children brought up with the chastest ideas, with so much religion as to believe that the omniscient God sees them in the dark, and that angels guard them when absent from their parents, will not, nay, cannot, act a wicked thing. People who are influenced more by lust, than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to _bundle_. If any man, thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God, and the Christian religion, should _bundle_ with a young lady in New England, and behave himself unseemly towards her, he must first melt her into passion, and expel heaven, death, and hell, from her mind, or he will undergo the chastisement of negroes turned mad--if he escape with life, it will be owing to the parents flying from their bed to protect him. The Indians, who had this method of courtship when the English arrived among them in 1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world. Concubinage and fornication are vices none of them are addicted to, except such as forsake the laws of Hobbamockow and turn Christians. The savages have taken many female prisoners, carried them back three hundred miles into their country, and kept them several years, and yet not a single instance of their violating the laws of chastity has ever been known. This cannot be said of the French, or of the English, whenever Indian or other women have fallen into their hands. I am no advocate for temptation; yet must say, that _bundling_ has prevailed 160 years in New England, and, I verily believe, with ten times more chastity than the sitting on a sofa. I had daughters, and speak from near forty years' experience. _Bundling_ takes place only in cold seasons of the year--the sofa in summer is more dangerous than the bed in winter. About the year 1756, Boston, Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be more polite than their ancestors, forbade their daughters _bundling_ on the bed with any young man whatever, and introduced a sofa to render courtship more palatable and Turkish, whatever it was owing to, whether to the sofa, or any uncommon excess of the _feu d'esprit_, there went abroad a report that this _raffinage_ produced more _natural consequences_ then all the _bundling_ among the boors with their _rurales pedantes_, through every village in New England besides.

"In 1776, a clergyman from one of the polite towns, went into the country, and preached against the unchristian custom of young men and maidens lying together on a bed. He was no sooner out of the church, then attacked by a shoal of good old women, with, 'Sir, do you think we and our daughters are naughty, because we allow _bundling_?' 'You lead yourselves into temptation by it.' They all replied at once, 'Sir, have you been told thus, or has experience taught it you?' The Levite began to lift up his eyes, and to consider of his situation, and bowing, said, 'I have been told so.' The ladies, _una voce_, bawled out, 'Your informants, sir, we conclude, are those city ladies who prefer a sofa to a bed: we advise you to alter your sermon, by substituting the word _sofa_ for _bundling_, and on your return home preach it to them, for experience has told us that city folks send more children into the country without fathers or mothers to own them, than are born among us; therefore, you see, a sofa is more dangerous than a bed.' The poor priest, seemingly convinced of his blunder, exclaimed, '_Nec vitia nostra, neo remedia pati possumus_,' hoping thereby to get rid of his guests; but an old matron pulled off her spectacles, and, looking the priest in the face like a Roman heroine, said, '_Noli putare me hæc auribus tuis dare_.' Others cried out to the priest to explain his Latin. 'The English,' said he, 'is this: Wo is me that I sojourn in Meseck, and dwell in the tents of Kedar!' One pertly retorted, '_Gladii decussati sunt gemina presbyteri clavis_.' The priest confessed his error, begged pardon, and promised never more to preach against bundling, or to think amiss of the custom; the ladies generously forgave him, and went away.

"It may seem very strange to find this custom of bundling in bed attended with so much innocence in New England, while in Europe it is thought not safe or scarcely decent to permit a young man and maid to be together in private anywhere. But in this quarter of the old world the viciousness of the one, and the simplicity of the other, are the result merely of education and habit. It seems to be a part of heroism, among the polished nations of it, to sacrifice the virtuous fair one, whenever an opportunity offers, and thence it is concluded that the same principles actuate those of the new world. It is egregiously absurd to judge all of all countries by one. In Spain, Portugal and Italy, jealousy reigns; in France, England, and Holland, suspicion; in the West and East Indies, lust; in New England, superstition. These four blind deities govern Jews, Turks, Christians, infidels, and heathen. Superstition is the most amiable. She sees no vice with approbation but persecution, and self-preservation is the cause of her seeing that. My insular readers will, I hope, believe me, when I tell them that I have seen, in the West Indies, naked boys and girls, some fifteen or sixteen years of age, waiting at table and at tea, even when twenty or thirty virtuous English ladies were in the room; who were under no more embarrassment at such an awful sight in the eyes of English people that have not traveled abroad, than they would have been at the sight of so many servants in livery. Shall we censure the ladies of the West Indies as vicious above all their sex, on account of this local custom? By no means; for long experience has taught the world that the West Indian white ladies are virtuous prudes. Where superstition reigns, fanaticism will be minister of state; and the people, under the taxation of zeal, will shun what is commonly called vice, with ten times more care than the polite and civilized Christians, who know what is right and what is wrong from reason and revelation. Happy would it be for the world, if reason and revelation were suffered to control the mind and passions of the great and wise men of the earth, as superstition does that of the simple and less polished! When America shall erect societies for the promotion of chastity in Europe, in return for the establishment of European arts in the American capitals, then Europe will discover that there is more Christian philosophy in American bundling than can be found in the customs of nations more polite.

"I should not have said so much about bundling, had not a learned divine[23] of the English church published his travels through some parts of America, wherein this remarkable custom is represented in an unfavorable light, and as prevailing among the _lower class_ of people. The truth is, the custom prevails among all classes, to the great honor of the country, its religion, and ladies. The virtuous may be tempted; but the tempter is despised. Why it should be thought incredible for a young man and young woman innocently and virtuously to lie down together in a bed with a great part of their clothes on, I cannot conceive. Human passions may be alike in every region; but religion, diversified as it is, operates differently in different countries. Upon the whole, had I daughters now, I would venture to let them _bundle_ on the bed, or even on the sofa, after a proper education, sooner than adopt the Spanish mode of forcing young people to prattle only before the lady's mother the chitchat of artless lovers. Could the four quarters of the world produce a more chaste, exemplary and beautiful company of wives and daughters than are in Connecticut, I should not have remaining one favorable sentiment for the province. But the soil, the rivers, the ponds, the ten thousand landscapes, together with the virtuous and lovely women which now adorn the ancient kingdoms of Connecticote, Sassacus, and Quinnipiog, would tempt me into the highest wonder and admiration of them, could they once be freed ofthe skunk, the moping-owl, rattlesnake and fanatic Christian."

Or, to take another example of the abuse heaped by our English cousins upon this so-called "American custom of bundling." We extract the following from an article entitled _British Abuse of American Manners_, published in 1815.[24] It seems that it had long been a custom in the Westminster school, in the city of London, for the senior students, who were about to leave that seminary for the university, at the age of sixteen to eighteen, to have an annual dramatic performance, which was generally a play of Terence.[25] To this, as annually performed, there was usually a Latin prologue, and also an epilogue composed for the occasion and this epilogue turned, for the most part, on the manners of the day that would bear the gentle correction of good humored satire, in elegant Latinity. In the epilogue presented at one of these exhibitions, about 1815, in connection with the performance of Terence's _Phormio_, the following balderdash (with much else, as applied to American life and manners) was introduced and spoken by these ingenuous and virtuous British youth, before a large and enlightened audience:

"Nec morum dicere promtum est, Sit ratio simplex, sitne venusta magis. Æthiopissa palam mensæ formulatur herili In puris naturalibus, ut loquimur. Vir braccis se bellus amat nudare décentér, Strenuus ut choreas ex-que-peditus agat. Quid quod ibi; quod congere ipsis conque moveri Dicitur, incolumi nempe pudicitiâ, Sponte suâ, sine fraude, torum sese audet in unum. Condere cum casto casta puelle viro? Quid noctes coenaque Deûm? quid amœna piorum. Concilia?"

Which being translated is as follows:

"Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more to be admired for simplicity or elegance; a negro wench, as we are told, will wait on her master at table in native nudity; and a beau will strip himself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, and with more agility. There, too, we hear of the practice of _bundling_ without any infraction of female modesty; and the chaste maiden, without any deception, but with right good will, ventures to share the bed with her chaste swain! Oh, what nights and banquets, worthy of the gods! What delightful customs among these pious people?"

But this spirit of misrepresentation and ridicule, so glaringly apparent in the foregoing extracts, and which has so universally characterized all those British travelers and authors who have attempted to describe our social habits and manners, is fitly rebuked, even as long ago as 1815, by an anonymous writer, whose trenchant pen reminds our British cousins of the old adage concerning "those who live in glass houses," etc.