Unlike the other first ladies of the day, Martha Washington made little effort toward ostentation, and her plain manner of dress was sometimes the occasion of astonishment and comment on the part of wives of foreign representatives.  Says Miss Chambers concerning this contrast between European women and Mrs. Washington, as shown at a birthday ball tendered the President in 1795:  “She was dressed in a rich silk, but entirely without ornament, except the animation her amiable heart gives to her countenance.  Next her were seated the wives of the foreign ambassadors, glittering from the floor to the summit of their head-dress.  One of the ladies wore three large ostrich feathers, her brow encircled by a sparkling fillet of diamonds; her neck and arms were almost covered with jewels, and two watches were suspended from her girdle, and all reflecting the light from a hundred directions."[151]

Nor was this richness of dress among foreign visitors confined to the women.  Sally McKean, who became the wife of the Spanish minister to America, wore at one state function, “a blue satin dress, trimmed with white crape and flowers, and petticoat of white crape richly embroidered and across the front a festoon of rose color, caught up with flowers”; but her future husband had “his hair powdered like a snow ball; with dark striped silk coat lined with satin, black silk breeches, white silk stockings, shoes and buckles.  He had by his side an elegant hilted small-sword, and his chapeau tipped with white feathers, under his arm."[152]

There were, of course, no fashion plates in that day, nor were there any “living models” to strut back and forth before keen-eyed customers; but fully dressed dolls were imported from France and England, and sent from town to town as examples of properly attired ladies.  Eliza Southgate Bowne, after seeing the dolls in her shopping expeditions, wrote to a friend:  “Caroline and I went a-shopping yesterday, and ’tis a fact that the little white satin Quaker bonnets, cap-crowns, are the most fashionable that are worn—­lined with pink or blue or white—­but I’ll not have one, for if any of my old acquaintance should meet me in the street they would laugh....  Large sheer-muslin shawls, put on as Sally Weeks wears hers, are much worn; they show the form through and look pretty.  Silk nabobs, plaided, colored and white are much worn—­very short waists—­hair very plain.”

Of course, the men of the day, found a good deal of pleasure in poking fun at woman’s use of dress and ornaments as bait for entrapping lovers, and many a squib expressing this theory appeared in the newspapers.  These cynical notes no more represented the general opinion of the people than do similar satires in the comic sheets of to-day; but they are interesting at least, as showing a long prevailing weakness among men.  The following sarcastic advertisement, for instance, was written by John Trumbull: 

     “To Be Sold at Public Vendue,
     The Whole Estate of
     Isabella Sprightly, Toast and Coquette,
     (Now retiring from Business)