Table traits, with something on them

by Dr. Doran

TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES.

When Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years before the Christian era, he described the island as being thickly inhabited, ruled by many Kings and Princes, and all living peaceably together,—though with war-chariots and strong arms, to settle quarrels when they occurred. But if our ancestors lived peaceably among themselves, they can hardly be said to have lived comfortably. Their habitations were of reed, or of wood; and they gathered in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn. These ears they garnered in subterranean repositories, wherefrom they daily culled the ripest grain; and, rudely dressing the same, had thence their sustenance. Diodorus says that our primitive sires were far removed from the cunning and wickedness of the rest of the world; and other writers contrast them favourably with the Irish, who are said to have fed on human flesh, to have had enormous appetites for such food, and to have been given to the nasty habit of devouring their deceased fathers; but it is not uncommon for others, as well as for Irish sons, to devour, at least, their parents’ substance, even at the present day. The food of an Irish child was certainly illustrative of character,—we should rather say that the solemnity of offering the first food to a child was characteristic. Caius Julius Solinus, a writer of the first century, says, that “when a Hibernian mother gives birth to a male child, she puts its first food on the point of her husband’s sword, and lightly inserts this foretaste of meat into the mouth of the infant, on its very tip; and, by family vows, desires that it may never die but under arms.” In other words, the relations wished that the little stranger might never be in want of a row, when disposed to distinguish the family name!

In the days of Julius Cæsar, our stalwart sires supported their thews and sinews on milk and flesh,—the diet of a pugilist. We see how much progress was made by the time of Constantine,—the Constantine that was crowned in Britain,—“when,” says a contemporary writer, “the harvests sufficed alike for the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, and the pastures were covered with innumerable multitudes of tame flocks, distended with milk, or laden with fleeces.”

I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the rather poetical accounts of certain early writers, that our aboriginal ancestry were very little superior to the New Zealanders. They were, perhaps, more uncivilized, and quite as ignorant; and their abstinence from the flesh of hares and poultry, and, in the northern parts of the island, from fish, bespeaks a race who lacked, at once, industry and knowledge. Indeed, it is by no means certain, that we do not wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting their possible inferiority to the Britons, seeing that the latter are very strongly suspected of being guilty of the most revolting cannibalism.

They were clever enough to brew mead and ale; but wine and civilization were brought to them by their enemies, the Romans,—invaders whom, for some reasons, they might have welcomed with a sentiment akin to the line in Béranger:—

“Vivent nos amis! nos amis, les ennemis!”

They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the more important one. Their seats were skins, or bundles of hay, flung on the ground. The table was a low stool, around which British Chiefs sat, and, even in the locality occupied by modern Belgravia, tore their food with teeth and nails, or hacked at it with a wretched knife, as bad as any thing of the sort now in common use in Gaul. In short, they committed a thousand solecisms, the very idea of which is sufficient to make the Sybarites of Belgravia very much ashamed of their descent from the savages of Britain.

It was characteristic of the sort of civilization which the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, that they introduced the rather vulgar custom of taking four meals a day. The custom was, however, one solemnly observed by the high-feeding nobility of the Saxons. They ate good solid joints of flesh-meat, boiled, baked, or broiled. It would seem, that, in those days, cooks were not of such an illustrious guild as that which they subsequently formed. A cook among the Anglo-Saxons was little more accounted of than the calf he cut up into collops. The cook, in fact, was a slave; and was as unceremoniously bequeathed by his owner, in the latter’s last will and testament, as though the culinary artist had been a mere kitchen utensil. At Saxon tables, both sexes sat together,—a custom refined in itself, refining in its effects, and of such importance, that half-a-dozen nations claim the honour of being the inventors of that excellent custom. In Europe, Turkey alone has obstinately refused to follow this civilizing example; and Turkey is falling to pieces. It may, therefore, be logically proved, that where table rights are not conceded to the ladies, nations slowly perish; and—“serve them right.”

It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table-cloths were features at Anglo-Saxon feasts; but, as the long ends were used in place of napkins, the delicacy would be of a somewhat dirty hue, if the cloth were made to serve at a second feast. There was a rude sort of display upon the board; but the order of service was of a quality that would strike the “Jeameses” of the age of Victoria with inexpressible disgust. The meat was never “dished,” and “covers” were as yet unknown. The attendants brought the viands into the dining hall on the spits, knelt to each guest, presented the spit to his consideration; and, the guest having helped himself, the attendant went through the same ceremony with the next guest. Hard drinking followed upon these same ceremonies; and even the monasteries were not exempt from the sins of gluttony and drunkenness. Notwithstanding these bad habits, the Anglo-Saxons were a cleanly people. The warm bath was in general use. Water, for hands and feet, was brought to every stranger on entering a house wherein he was about to tarry and feed; and, it is said that one of the severest penances of the Church was the temporary denial of the bath, and of cutting the hair and nails.

With the Normans came greater grandeur and increased discomfort. They neither knew nor tolerated the use of table-cloths or plain steel forks; but their bill of fare showed more variety and costliness than the Saxons cared for. Their cookery was such an improvement on that of their predecessors in the island, that Norman French, and Norman dishes, flung the Saxon tongue and table into the annihilating position of “vulgarity.” The art was so much esteemed, that Monarchs even granted estates, on condition that the holder thereof should, through his cook, prepare a certain dish at stated periods, and set it before the King. It was under the Normans that the boar’s head had regal honours paid it; and its progress from the kitchen to the banquet was under escort of a guard, and behind the deafening salutes of puffy-cheeked trumpeters. The crane was then what the goose is now,—highly esteemed; yet labouring under the shadow of a suspicion of being “common.” The peacock, on the other hand, was only seen, tail and all, at the tables of the wealthy. Their beverage was of a very bilious character,—spicy and cordialed; namely, hippocras, piment, morat, and mead. The drink of the humbler classes partook of a more choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, perry, and ale. The Norman maxim for good living and plenty of it, was to “rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five, and bed at nine, if you’d live to a hundred all but one.” Dinner at nine is, however, a contradiction of terms; for dinner, as I have said, is the abbreviation of dixième heure, or “ten o’clock,” the time at which all people sat down to a solid repast in the days of the first Williams.

In the two following centuries, cooks and Kings launched into far greater magnificence than had ever, hitherto, been seen in England. Richard II. entertained ten thousand guests daily at his numerous tables; and the exceedingly fast Earl of Leicester, grandson of the equally slow Henry III., is said to have spent twenty-two thousand pounds of silver in one year, in eating, alone. His thirsty household retainers drank no less than three hundred and seventy-one pipes of wine, in the same space of time. At great banquets, the dishes were reckoned by thousands, and Kings in vain dictated decrees denouncing such dinners; for cooks and convives considered them with contempt. As a show of moderation, the old four meals a day were now reduced to two; but these two were connected by such a savoury chain of intermeats and refections, that the board was spread all day long, and guests were never weary:—

“Their life like the life of the Germans would be,

Du lit à la table; de la table au lit.”

To have things “brennying like wildfire,” was the characteristic of the cookery of the period. Confectionery of the richest sorts were the lighter materials of meals, which were abundantly irrigated by hippocras, piment, or claret, or the simpler and purer wines of France, Spain, Syria, and Greece. Thus might a host say:—

“Ye shall have rumney and malespine,

Both ypocrasse and vernage wine;

Mountrasse and wyne of Greke,

Both algrade and despice eke,

Antioche and bastarde,

Pyment also and garnarde,

Wyne of Greke and muscadell,

Both clary, pyment, and Rochelle.”

Ricobaldi of Ferrara, writing, about the year 1300, of the Italian social condition in the age of Frederick II., illustrates the former rudeness of the Italian manners, by showing that in those days “a man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now, frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is sought after in dress,—gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs.”

The Household-Book of the Earl of Northumberland admirably illustrates the interior and table life of the greater nobles of the period of Henry VII. In this well-known and well-kept record, the family is described as consisting of one hundred and sixty-six persons, masters and servants; and hospitable reckoning is allowed for more than half a hundred strangers who are expected daily to partake of the Earl’s good cheer. The cost for each individual, for board and fuel, is settled at twopence halfpenny daily, about one and sixpence of our present money, if we take into account the relative value of money, and the relative prices of provisions. The Earl allots for his annual expenditure £1178. 17s. 8d. More than two-thirds of this is consumed in meat, drink, and firing; namely, £797. 11s. 2d. The book carefully states the number of pieces which the carver is to cut out of each quarter of beef, mutton, veal, pork, nay, even stockfish and salmon; and supervising clerks were appointed to see that this was carried into effect, and to make due entry of the same in their registers. An absent servant’s share is to be accounted for, and not to be divided among the rest. The absentee, if he be on “my Lord’s” business, received 8d. per day, board wages, in winter, and 5d. in summer; with 2d. additional daily for the keep of a horse. A little more than a quarter of wheat, estimated at 5s. 8d. per quarter, is allowed for every month throughout the year; with this, 250 quarters of malt, at 4s., (two hogsheads to the quarter,) and producing about a bottle and a third of intermediate beer to each person, does not say much for the liberality of the Lord, though it may for the temperance of his retainers. One hundred and nine fat beeves are to be bought at All-Hallow’s Tide, at 13s. 4d. each; a couple of dozen of lean kine, at 8s., are to be bought at St. Helen’s, to be fattened for service between Midsummer and Michaelmas. All the rest of the year, nine weary months, the family was on salted provisions, to aid the digestion of which, the Earl, so chary of his liquor, allows the profuse aid of one hundred and sixty-six gallons of mustard. 647 sheep at 1s. 8d., to be eaten salted between Lammas and Michaelmas; 25 hogs at 2s., 28 calves at 1s. 8d., 40 lambs at 10d. or 1s.,—are other articles which seem to have been reserved rather for the upper table than for the servants, whose chief fare was salted beef, without vegetables, but with mustard à discretion! There was great scarcity of linen, and the little there was, except that for the chapel, not often washed. No mention is made of sheets; and though “my Lord’s” table had eight “table-cloths” for the year, that of the Knights had but one, and probably went uncovered while the cloth was “at the wash.” If the ale was limited, the wine appears to have been more liberally dispensed; and ten tuns and two hogsheads of Gascony wine, at £4. 13s. 4d. per tun, show the bent of the Earl’s taste. Ninety-one dozens of candles for the year, and no fires after Lady-Day, except half-fires in the great room and the nursery; twenty-four fires, with a peck of coals daily for each, (for the offices,) and eighty chaldrons of coals, at 4s. 10d., with sixty-four loads of wood, at 1s. a load,—are the provisions made for lighting and firing. It must have been cold work to live in the noble Earl’s house in Yorkshire, from Lady-Day till the warm summer came; which advent is sometimes put off till next year. The family rose at six, or before; for Mass was especially ordered at that hour, in order to force the household to rise early. The dinner hour was ten A.M.; four P.M. was the hour for supper; and at nine the bell rang for bed. I have omitted the breakfast, which took place at seven, after Mass; when my Lord and Lady sat down to a repast of two pieces of salt fish, and half-a-dozen red herrings, with four fresh ones, or a dish of sprats, and a quart of beer, and the same measure of wine. This was on meagre days. At other seasons, half a chine of mutton, or of boiled beef, graced the board of the delicate Earl and Countess, who sometimes forgot that they had to dine at ten. Capons, at 2d. each, were only on the Lord’s table, and plovers, at a penny, (at Christmas,) were deemed too good for any digestion that was not carried on in a “noble” stomach. Game generally is specified, but without intimation as to limit of the board. No doubt the fragments were not rejected at the servants’ table; but much certainly went in doles at the gate. My Lord maintained between twenty and thirty horses for his own use. His mounted servants found their own; but their keep was at the noble master’s cost. Of mounted servants, not less than three dozen attended their Lord on a journey; and when this journey was for change of residence from one mansion to another, the illustrious Percy carried with him bed and bedding, household furniture, pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. The baggage waggon bore these impedimenta; and before and behind them went chiefs and serving men, including in the array eleven Priests,—two hundred and twenty-three persons in all,—and only two cooks to look after their material happiness! No notice is taken of plate; but the “hiring of pewter vessels” is mentioned; and with these rough elements did the Earl construct his imperfect social system, so far taking care for his soul as well as his body, inasmuch as that he contributed a groat a year to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, and the same magnificent sum to the holy blood at Hales, on the express condition of the interest of the Virgin for the promotion of the future welfare of the Earl in heaven. Such is an outline of a nobleman’s household in the good old days of Henry VII.

In the reign of the same King, fish was a scarce article, and for a singular reason; namely, people destroyed them at an unlawful season, for the purpose of feeding their pigs or manuring the ground. The favourite wine at table was Malmsey: it came from Candy; and there was a legal restriction against its costing more than four pounds per butt. In this reign our cooks wrought at fires made with wood imported from Gascony and Languedoc, whence also much wine was brought, but, by law, only in English bottoms. The richest man of this reign was Sir William Stanley, into whose hands fell nearly all the spoil of Bosworth Field; and therewith he maintained a far more princely house and table than his master.

In Pegge’s “Cury” there is an account of the rolls of provisions, with their prices, in the time of Henry VIII.; and we find that, at the dinner given at the marriage of Gervase Clifton and Mary Nevile, the price of three hogsheads of wine (one white, one red, one claret) was set down at £5. 5s.

The dining-rooms—and, indeed, these were the common living rooms in the greatest houses—were still uncomfortable places. The walls were of stone, partially concealed by tapestry hung upon timber hooks, and taken down whenever the family removed, (leaving bare the stone walls,) lest the damp should rot it. It was a fashion that had lasted for centuries; but it began to disappear when mansions ceased to be fortresses. The tapestry, it may be observed, was suspended on a wooden frame projecting from the wall, between which and the hangings there was a passage wide enough to kill a man, as Hamlet did Polonius, “behind the arras.” It was not till the reign of Charles I. that houses were built with underground rooms; the pantry, cellars, kitchens, and store-rooms were, previous to this reign, all on the ground floor; and the officials presiding in each took there, respectively, their solemn post on great days of state-dinners. There were certain days when the contents of these several offices, meat and drink, were bountifully supplied to every applicant. To revert to tapestry: we see the time of its change, in the speech of Falstaff, who wishes his hostess to sell her tapestry, and adopt the cheaper painted canvas which came from Holland.

At this time, and, indeed, long after, our English yeomanry and tradesmen were more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a generous diet, than to dwell in well-furnished houses, or to find comfort in cleanliness and elegance. “These English,” said the Spaniards who came over with Philip II., “have their houses made of sticks and dirt; but they fare commonly as well as the King.”

Previous to the age of Elizabeth, even the Monarch, well as he might fare, and gloriously as he shone in pageants, was but simply lodged. The furniture of the bed-room of Henry VIII. was of the very simplest; and the magnificent Wolsey was content with deal for the material of most of the furniture of his palace. But the community generally was, from this period, both boarded and bedded more comfortably and refinedly than before. The hours for meals were eight, noon, and six; but “after-meats,” and “after-suppers,” filled up the intervals. It was chiefly at the “after-supper” that wine was used. The dinner, however, had become the principal meal of the day. It was abundant; but the jester and harper were no longer tolerated at it, with their lively sauce of mirth and music. It was the fashion to be sad, and ceremonious dinners were celebrated in stately silence, or a dignified sotto voce. Each guest took his place according to a properly marshalled order of precedence; and, before sitting down to dinner, they washed with rose-water and perfumes, like the parochial boards of half a century ago, who used also to deduct the expenses of both dinners and rose-water from the rates levied for the relief of the poor; this, too, at a time when men who were not parish authorities were being hanged for stealing to the amount of a few shillings.

By the reign of Elizabeth, napkins had been added to table-cloths. The wealthy ate the manchet, or fine wheaten bread; the middle classes were content with a bread of coarser quality called “chete;” and the ravelled, brown, or maslin bread was consumed by those who could afford to procure no better. There was a passion for strong wines at this time. Of this, France sent more than half a hundred different sorts, and thirty-six various kinds were imported from other parts of Europe. About 30,000 tuns were imported yearly, exclusive of what the nobility imported free of duty. The compound wines were in great request; and ladies did not disdain to put their lips to distilled liquors, such as rosa-solis and aqua-vitæ. Ale was brewed stronger than these distillations; and our ancestors drank thereof to an extent that is terrific only to think of. Camden ascribes the prevailing drunkenness to the long wars in the Netherlands, previous to which, we had been held, “of all the northern nations, the most commended for sobriety.” The barbarous terms formerly used in drinking matches, are all of Dutch, German, or Danish origin, and this serves to confirm Camden’s assertion. The statutes passed to correct the evil were disregarded. James I. was particularly desirous to enforce these statutes; but his chief difficulty lay in the fact, that he was the first to infringe them.

In Elizabeth’s reign the “watching candles” of Alfred (to mark the time) were in use in many houses. This is a curious trait of in-door life. We have an “exterior” one, in the fact that the Vicar of Hurly, who served Maidenhead, had an addition of stipend on account of the danger he ran, in crossing the thicket, when he passed to or from the church—and his inn. It was not a delicate period, and if caraways always appeared at dessert, every one knew that they were there for the kind purpose of curing expected flatulence in the guests.

In James the First’s reign, the fashion of Malmsey had passed away, and the Hungarian red wine (Ofener) had taken its place. It came by Breslau to Hamburg, where it was shipped to England. It is a strong wine, and bears some resemblance to port.

In country-houses in the seventeenth century, the Knight or Squire was head of a host of retainers, three-fourths of whom consumed the substance of the master on whose estate they were born, without rendering him much other service than drinking his ale, eating his beef, and wearing his livery. Brief family prayers, and heavy family breakfasts, a run with the hounds, and an early dinner, followed by long and heavy drinking, till supper-time, when more feeding and imbibing went on until each man finished his posset, or carried it with him to bed,—such was the ordinary course: but it admitted of exceptions where the master was a man of intellect, and then the country-house was a temple of hospitality rather than of riot; and good sense and ripe wit took the place of the sensuality, obscurity, and ignorance that distinguished the boards where the Squire was simply a “brute.”

Of the table traits of this century, the best examples are to be found in Pepys and Evelyn. In the Diary of the former, may be seen what a jolly tavern life could be led by a grave official, and no scandal given. Evelyn takes us into better company. We find him at the Spanish Ambassador’s, when his Excellency, by way of dessert, endeavoured to convert him to the Roman Catholic Church. We go with him to the feast where the Envoy from the Emperor of Morocco figured as so civilized a gentleman, while the representative of the Czar of Muscovy comported himself like a rude clown; and we dine with him at Lady Sunderland’s, where the noble hostess had engaged, for the amusement of the guests, a man who swallowed stones, and who not only performed the feat in presence of the company, but convinced them there was no cheat, by making the stones rattle in his stomach. But, nous avons changé tout cela, and not only changed in taste, but improved in manners.

Pepys gives a curious account of a Lord Mayor’s dinner in 1663. It was served in the Guildhall, at one o’clock in the day. A bill of fare was placed with every salt-cellar, and at the end of each table was a list of “the persons proper” there to be seated. Here is a mixture of abundance and barbarism. “Many were the tables, but none in the hall, but the Mayor’s and the Lords’ of the Privy Council, that had napkins or knives, which was very strange. I sat at the merchant-strangers’ table, where ten good dishes to a mess, with plenty of wine of all sorts; but it was very unpleasing that we had no napkins, nor change of trenchers, and drank out of earthen pitchers and wooden dishes. The dinner, it seems, is made by the Mayor and two Sheriffs for the time being, and the whole is reckoned to come to £700 or £800 at most.” Pepys took his spoon and fork with him, as was the custom of those days with guests invited to great entertainments. “Forks” came in with Tom Coryat, in the reign of James I.; but they were not “familiar” till after the Restoration. The “laying of napkins,” as it was called, was a profession of itself. Pepys mentions, the day before one of his dinner-parties, that he went home, and “there found one laying of my napkins against to-morrow, in figures of all sorts, which is mighty pretty, and, it seems, is his trade, and he gets much money by it.” The age of Pepys, we may further notice, was the great “supping age.” Pepys himself supped heartily on venison pasty; but his occasional “next-morning” remark was like that of Scrub: “My head aches consumedly!” The dashing Duchess of Cleveland supped off such substantials as roast chine of beef; much more solid fare than that of the Squires in a succeeding reign, who were content, with Sir Roger de Coverley, to wind up the day with “good Cheshire cheese, best mustard, a golden pippin, and a pipe of John Sly’s best.”

A few years earlier, Laud had leisure to write anxiously to Strafford on the subject of Ulster eels. “Your Ulster eels are the fattest and fairest that ever I saw, and it’s a thousand pities there should be any error in their salting, or any thing else about them; for how the carriage should hurt them I do not see, considering that other salted eels are brought as far, and retain their goodness; but the dried fish was exceeding good.” There was a good deal of error in the preserving of other things besides eels, if Laud had only known as much.

It may be mentioned as something of a “Table Trait,” illustrating the popular appetite in the reign of Charles II., that he sent sea stores to the people encamped in Moorfields; but they were so well provisioned by the liberality of the nation, that they turned up their noses at the King’s biscuits, and sent them back, “not having been used to the same.” There was some ungrateful impertinence in this; but there was less meanness in it than was shown by the great ladies of Queen Anne’s reign, who were curious in old china, and who indulged their passion by “swopping” their old clothes for fragile cups and saucers, instead of giving the former to the poor.

Dryden speaks, in the Preface to his “Love Triumphant,” of a remarkable trait of the time of William III. “It is the usual practice,” he says, “of our decayed gentry, to look about them for some illustrious family, and then endeavour to fix their young darling, where he may be both well educated and supported.”

Shaftesbury reveals to us an illustration of George the First’s reign. “In latter days,” he says, “it has become the fashion to eat with less ceremony and method. Every one chooses to carve for himself. The learned manner of dissection is out of request; and a certain method of cookery has been introduced, by which the anatomical science of the table is entirely set aside. Ragoûts and fricassées are the reigning dishes, in which every thing is so dismembered, and thrown out of all order and form, that no part of the mess can properly be divided or distinguished from another.” But we have come to a period that demands a chapter to itself; and even with that implied space, we can hardly do justice to the Table Traits of the Last Century.