Henry Reed Stiles

“ I cannot but think, also, that those who have found, or think that they have found, an inimical design in any pleasantries in which I may have indulged while describing the customs and manners of by-gone days—have betrayed a thin-skinnedness, and an ignorance of the true glory of Connecticut history, when they imagine that her fair fame can be seriously tarnished by the fly-specks of certain customs—at no time without their vigorous opponents—and long since rendered obsolete by the march of improvement. ”

“ Then came war, and young New England brought from the long Canadian campaigns, stores of loose camp vices and recklessness, which soon flooded the land with immorality and infidelity. The church was neglected, drunkenness fearfully increased, and social life was sadly corrupted. Bundling—that ridiculous and pernicious custom which prevailed among the young to a degree which we can scarcely credit—sapped the fountain of morality and tarnished the escutcheons of thousands of families. ”

“ They bundle in Wales; bundling there is a serious matter. A lady—a Welsh woman whose word is truth itself—assured me not long ago, that in her country they do not think a bit the worse, of a girl for anticipating her duties, in other words, for being a mother before she has been a wife; they have discovered, perhaps, that cause and effect may be convertible terms; that in such a serious matter, none but a fool would buy a pig in the poke, and that, after all, maternity may lead to marriage there, as marriage leads to maternity here. ”

“ In those thinly inhabited districts a peasant often has several miles to walk after the hours of labor, to visit his mistress; those who have reciprocally entertained the belle passion will easily imagine that before the lovers grow tired of each other's company the night will be far enough advanced; nor is it surprising that a tender-hearted damsel should be disinclined to turn her lover out over bogs and mountains until the dawn of day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I always act as I feel, and speak as I think. I wish you to do the same, but have none of your make-believes with me—you smile—you begin to think you have been a little too scrupulous—you have no objection to bundling now, have you? ”

“ Indeed, whatever may have been the real state of morality among the ancient Scotch and Irish—and it is quite probable that it has been unfairly depicted by casual and prejudiced observers—the ancient custom of bundling, which has been handed down from earliest times, has not greatly contaminated their descendants of the present day. For, whatever their national vices, the Scotch and Irish of our day maintain a character for chastity superior to that of many of their more fortunate and more civilized neighbors. ”

“ And here, amongst the usages and customs, I must not omit to inform you that what you have, perhaps, often heard, without believing, respecting the mode of courtship amongst the Welsh peasants, is true. The lower order of people do actually carry on their love affairs in bed, and what would extremely astonish more polished lovers, they are carried on honorably, it being, at least, as usual for the Pastoras of the mountains to go from the bed of courtship to the bed of marriage as unpolluted and maidenly as the Chloes of fashion ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the custom in this place, when a man stays with a girl, if it is warm weather, for them to throw themselves on the bed, outside the bed clothes; if the weather is cold, they crawl under the clothes, then if they have anything to say, they say it—when they get tired of talking they go to sleep; this is what we call bundling—now what do you call it in your part of the world? ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is pure in idea is always so in conduct, since bad actions are the common consequence of bad thoughts; and though the better sort of people treat this ceremony as a barbarism, it is very much to be doubted whether more faux pas have been committed by the Cambrian boors in this free access to the bed chambers of their mistresses, than by more fashionable Strephons and their nymphs in groves and shady bowers. ”

“ The power of habit is perhaps stronger than the power of passion, or even of the charms which inspire it; and it is sufficient, almost, to say a thing is the custom of a country, to clear it from any reproach that would attach to an innovation. ”

“ I find by all historians, whether ancient or modern, whom I consulted in searching for this work, the fact well recorded, and established beyond all controversy, that the Yankee nation are a set of talking, guessing, swapping and bundling sons of women. ”

“ For, though British travelers have uniformly endeavored to fix the odium of this custom upon us their transatlantic cousins, as being peculiarly "An American institution," it is, nevertheless, an indisputable fact that bundling has for centuries flourished within their own kingdom. For what else, in fact, was that universal custom of promiscuous sleeping together which prevailed among the ancient Britons at the time of the Roman conquest, and which led Cæsar to consider them as polyandrous polygamists, and other ancient writers to give them an unenviable character for morality? ”

“ Nay, even, in some parts of your empire, the hogs and the cows join the group, and form a most audible respiration from their noses, getting vent through the hole in the roof intended for a chimney, or spreading throughout the clay built edifice with odorific sweetness, though perhaps not so fragrant and refreshing as was the precious oil poured on the venerable head of Aaron, which Sternhold and Hopkins tell us filled the room with pleasure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ True, if the lover was so unlucky as to get his final dismissal the first night, there was an end of the matter, and well might they fail to meet again; but, in that case, it is not likely that the favors of which he could boast would be such as to seriously affect the reputation of the girl with whom he tarried. The fact that in the custom of tarrying, the parties also bundled, does not authorize the synonymous use of the two words, which have nothing in common. For, doubtless many young men tarried with their sweethearts, who did not bundle with them. ”

“ If, as one has happily said, "history is experience teaching by example," we most surely need to have both sides fairly presented to us before we can properly extract therefrom the lesson of good or of evil which is therein taught. It is unnecessary to pursue the argument further. Suffice it to say, that perfection is as little to be expected in the history of a state or a community, as in the life of an individual. ”

“ It is manifest that the practice of so peculiar a species of marriage must have been in terms of original law among the Highlanders, otherwise it would be difficult to conceive how such a custom could have originated, and it is in fact one which seems naturally to have arisen from the form of their society, which rendered it a matter of such vital importance to secure the lineal succession of their chiefs. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Strahan said also: "When you come to the middle class a young man would not marry a girl that had had a child to another man; and very probably he would not marry a girl that had had a child to himself; but in the lower classes it is not so; it is almost universal to marry a woman that has had a child, or that is with child to himself; but it is very frequent to marry a woman that has had a child to another man; the only objection is the burden of the child; the burden of the child might be an obstacle, but the disgrace would be none." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Were it the practice of a few only, and to be gratified by stealth, there would, from the strange construction of human nature, be more cause of suspicion; but being ancient, general, and carried on without difficulty, it is probably as little dangerous as a tête a tête in a drawing-room, or in any other full dress place where young people meet to say soft things to each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A widow with half a score of children, forty years ago, if we may believe Dr. Franklin, was an object for the fortune hunters of America. It is not so now. The demand for widows, and for every sort of ready made family is beginning to be over.
That which is called bundling here, though bad enough, is not a twentieth part so bad. Here it is only a mode of courtship. The parties instead of sitting up together, go to bed together; but go to bed with their clothes on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Religion was to them less a matter of the heart than of social privilege, and in the half way covenant controversy we behold the gradual letting down of bars between a pure church and a grasping world. ”

“ Verily, Peters's sarcasm savors as much of truth as humor when, speaking of bundling, he says: "The Indians who had this method of courtship 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 Hobbamockon 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. ”

“ Yet more; there can be no bad intentions, there can be no evil consequences, where respectable and modest women are not ashamed to acknowledge that they bundle. I am anxious to know the truth for the purpose of correcting both the misrepresentations that are abroad, and the practices that prevail here. Bundling, however, is known in other countries, where they have less excuse, and in Wales where they do not bundle, as I have said before, it is no reproach for a woman to have had a child before marriage. ”

“ At night the lover has access to his mistress after she is in bed; and, upon an application to be admitted upon the bed, which of course is granted, he raises the quilt, or rug, and in this state queests, or enjoys a harmless chit-chat with her, and then retires. This custom meets with the perfect sanction of the most circumspect parents, and the freedom is seldom abused. The author traces its origin to the parsimony of the people, whose economy considers fire and candles as superfluous luxuries in the long winter evenings. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Badinage, ridicule and misrepresentation aside, however, there can be no reasonable doubt that bundling did prevail to a very great extent in the New England colonies from a very early date. It is equally evident that it was originally confined almost entirely to the lower classes of the community, or to those whose limited means compelled them to economize strictly in their expenditure of firewood and candlelight. Many, perhaps the majority, of the dwellings of the early settlers, consisted of but one room, in which the whole family lived and slept. ”