October 17.
A Lying-in Custom.
A lady who is pleased to grace these columns by her pen, transmits a very minute description of a very “comfortable thing” at this time of the year, which may well be extended from a particular usage at an interesting period, to a general one.
Sugared Toast.
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.
Westbury, September 10, 1826.
Sir,—I suspect that although you solicit the aid of correspondents in furnishing your excellent miscellany with accounts of local customs, you scarcely expect to receive one which appertains to that important time, when mothers increase their care, and fathers receive the additional “tender juveniles” with joy or sorrow, “as it may happen!” If you should give publicity to the following strange “feast,” (more honoured in the breach than in the observance,) I shall feel gratified, as it may not only lead to an elucidation of its meaning and origin, but will tend to convince your readers, that you will not despise their efforts at contribution, however humble. I am not a native of this part of the country, or, as the good people say here, I am not “one o’ Westbury,” for I have resided till lately in and near London, where the manners customs, and habits, are a hundred years in advance of those of the western part of the kingdom; hence, many of the usages that obtain around us, which now excite my surprise, would have passed as a thing of course, had I been always among them.
On the “confinement” of a lady,—but I must, before I proceed, define a lady “of these parts,” by the unerring test of her husband’s qualifications: if he can maintain his own, and her station in their little world, he is then “well to do,”—“a rich fellow enough, go to—a fellow that hath had losses, and which is more, a householder; one who hath two gowns to his back, and every thing handsome about him;”—one who recreates in his own gig; keeps a “main” of company; patronises the tiny theatre; grows his own pines, and tries to coax his forced plants into the belief that the three dozen mould candles which he orders to be lighted in his hot-house every evening, are “shedding delicious light,” left by the “garish god of day,” for their especial benefit, during his nocturnal rambles![388] The wife of such a man, sir, I designate a lady and when such a lady’s accouchement takes place, her “dear five hundred friends” are admitted to see her the next day. In London, the scale of friendship is graduated woefully lower; for visiters there, bear the pangs of absence from the interesting recluse a whole fortnight.
You are, doubtless, anxious to come to the “pith and marrow” of this communication, and I will tantalize you no longer. In “these” parts of the country, it is the custom, when a lady shall have been “as well as can be expected,” for thirteen or fourteen days, for the husband to enjoy what is called “the gentleman’s party,” viz: all his friends, bachelor and Benedict, are invited to eat “sugared toast,” which, (as the cookery-books always say,) “is thus prepared”—Rounds of bread are “baked,” (videlicit toasted,) each stratum spread thick with moist sugar, and piled up in a portly punch bowl, ready for action: “strong beer,” (anglice, home-brewed ale,) is in the mean time heated, and poured boiling hot over the mound of bread; which is taken immediately to the expectant guests, who quickly come to the conclusion of the gothic “mess.” How they contrive to emancipate the toast from the scalding liquid, I never could, by any effort of ingenuity and research, decide to my own satisfaction. A goodly slice you know, sir, it would be entirely impracticable to achieve; for in half a minute from the time of the admission of the “hot beer,” the toast must be “all of a swam,” (as we elegantly say here,) and, resembling the contents of the witch’s cauldron, “thick and slab.” Whether a soup ladle and soup plates are in requisition on the occasion, I am equally unable to ascertain; but on the final dismissal of this gentlemanly food, (for I by no means would insinuate that the congregation is limited to one act of devotion,) they magnanimously remunerate the “nurse,” by each putting money into the empty bowl, which is then conveyed to the priestess of their ignoble orgies! Of all the “mean and impotent conclusions” of a feast, defend me from that, which pays its “pic nic” pittance to an old crone, who is hired to attend the behests of the “lady,” but who by some strange mutation becomes the directress of the “gentleman’s” revels, and the recipient of the payment from his guests, for “sugar’d toast!”
Should this “custom,” be thought worthy of being admitted into the Every-Day Book, you will “tell” of something more than Herrick “dreamt of in his philosophy;” and the following couplet might “blush to find its fame” among his descriptive lines that adorn your title-page; after
“Bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes,”
might come—
“I tell of times when husbands rule the roast,
And riot in the joys of ‘sugar’d toast;’
I tell of groves, &c.”
I am, Sir,
Yours very respectfully,
I. J. T.