In old Narragansett; romances and realities

by Alice Morse Earle

In the latter part of the eighteenth century, an American gentleman married in England an English lady of some wealth. They brought to America with them in a sailing-vessel, as part of the bride’s wedding-outfit, a gayly painted, richly mounted travelling-coach. In this great coach they rode in grand style with four post-horses from Boston to Albany, New York, and Philadelphia, and back to the little town in Narragansett, which was ever after their home. In due time they died, and left to their only son, a physician, all their worldly goods, including the old coach, and the far less desirable inheritance of a high and stubborn temper, and a firm and deep-seated veneration for English customs, manners, traditions, and productions, which would be worthy an Anglomaniac of the present day. He, however, made one unfortunate and incomprehensible deviation from his Anglo-worship when he married an American wife. As years went on, the Doctor grew more and more overbearing and dictatorial, especially in his household (as some English husbands are also said to be), and in the matter of food and of cooking—those unfortunate hobbies of an ill-tempered man—he took, perhaps, the most violent stand. Never did any other wife have to hear so often the words, “as my mother used to cook it,” and “they don’t do it so in England,” or have to listen so frequently to acrimonious expressions of dislike of American cooks and cooking. Pork and beans, “cracker johnny-cake,” Indian-pudding, even the purely Dutch dough-nuts were banished from his board; for not only did he refuse to eat these New England dishes himself, but would not let his wife and daughters, either. He also became unjust enough bumptiously to denounce as “American” and “taboo” any food (no matter of what nationality) which did not suit his fancy or which chanced to disagree with him.

On an unlucky day, having eaten too greedily of mince-pie (for he had a fine English appetite), he passed his universal banishing dictum on that darling of New England hearts and stomachs—the pie. From thenceforth on feast-days only English plum-pudding was served for dessert. To the New England wife, accustomed to see at least four kinds of pie offered to “company,” if one made pretence even of being truly hospitable and housewifely, the lonely pudding was a great and almost unbearable source of grief and mortification, and many a struggle did she make (trying to imitate her forefathers of old) against the English yoke, but in vain; pieless and barren for years was her table. But reinforcing troops at last came to her rescue; for three daughters were grown, and, brave and strong with youth, they dared to rebel more openly and recklessly than their browbeaten mother.

In 1830 all the Doctor’s relatives, far and near, were invited to eat “Thanksgiving dinner” with him and his family; for he was hospitable enough, in his own fashion; in all, thirty were to sit down at his board. On the day before Thanksgiving, mother, daughters, and “help” were all busy at work from early morning in the great pantry and kitchen, making careful preparation for the coming dinner, and brisk sounds of chopping and pounding and mixing were heard, and savory smells and spicy vapors filled the house. Toward the close of the day, when their work was nearly done, they suddenly heard, to their terror, the sound of the Doctor’s cane (for he was badly crippled with that typical English disease, the gout) thump, thumping through the halls and rooms to the kitchen, an apartment he seldom visited. With palpitating hearts but firm countenances they stood in a hollow square for strength, as does any determined band, while he walked past them to the “buttery,” where were placed in military rows twenty-six of those hated abominations, pies—mince-pies, pumpkin and apple and cranberry, and, the crowning dainty of all, “Marlboro’” pies. Their only hope of salvation was that in the dull, fading November light the tyrant might not discover the forbidden pastry; and, indeed, he did not appear to do so, for he merely glanced scowlingly around, and, without speaking, hobbled back to his office. Once more they breathed freely, and the eldest daughter said, cheerfully: “Now, girls, nothing can happen; if he had seen them we should have had to give them away; but he won’t know anything about it now until they are brought on the table with the pudding, and he will be most through his bottle of port then—but oh, what shall we do when the company goes?”

Poor souls! they slept for one night the happy, unconscious sleep of the victorious, the hospitable, and awoke on Thanksgiving morn to find every pie vanished from the pantry-shelf. Every pie? Yes, and every pie-plate, too!—twenty-six of the new English blue-and-white stone-ware plates. At first they really believed, in their simplicity, that a thief must have entered from outside and stolen them; but why should the marauder take pies, and no other food? Then, too, there was not a foot-print on the light snow which had fallen early in the evening. No; the Doctor must have stolen his wife’s pies! But where could he have hidden the pie-plates? For weeks, yes, for years, they searched in every nook and corner; through the hay in the barns, behind the logs of wood in the sheds, in old barrels and boxes in the cellar, in closets, in trunks, under the eaves in the attic; and they even peered out on the roof behind the peaks of the gable-windows, but no pie-plates could they find. The grim old Doctor kept his silence, until his daughters grew at last to think that some thief must have entered in spite of apparent impossibility.

Thirty-six years later, in 1866, the aged Doctor died, and went, doubtless, to an English paradise. His browbeaten wife had given up the struggle many years before. The daughters, now elderly women, with a long-concealed but unsubdued hatred born of years of tyrannical browbeating and oppression, at once made a triumphal holocaust of many of the cherished treasures of the British tyrant; and the first victim doomed to destruction was the old English coach in which their English grandmother had ridden in state through the country. This broken-down, moth-eaten, rat-nibbled, cobweb and dirt-filled relic had stood unused for fifty years—an abominable nuisance, an inconvenient obstruction, a hated eyesore, in the carriage-house connected with their dwelling. The Doctor had cherished it on account of its English birthplace; but now its fate was sealed. As the first heavy blow of the destroying iconoclastic axe struck the hated coach, a loud rattle as of falling crockery was heard, and the executioner paused. A careful investigation discovered an unknown compartment under the driver’s seat which had been constructed for the purpose of hiding despatch-boxes and, perhaps, the bride’s jewel-cases—and in this hiding-place were twenty-six dirt-covered, dark-blue Staffordshire plates. A sudden light of comprehension and recognition came into the faces of the sisters—here were the long-lost pie-plates! The cantankerous old Doctor had craftily arisen in the night, hobbled out silently, in spite of his gout, thrown the carefully and daintily made Thanksgiving pies to the pigs, stealthily packed the plates in the old coach, watched maliciously the unsuccessful plate-search, kept silence throughout the despoiled Thanksgiving dinner and through nearly forty pieless years, and died triumphant.

Half of this treasure-trove, which the Doctor could hide, but, happily, could not take with him, were the Dr. Syntax plates; and from that half came my share. The other plates were of well-known English views—Payn’s Hill, the City of Liverpool, Blenheim Castle, Fulham Church-yard, Windsor Castle—no American views were on any of his crockery; no landing of Lafayette, no State plates, were ever allowed to grace that rank old Tory’s pantry.

Thus, one good, one noble result came from this “ugly trick”—the hidden pie-plates were all saved unscratched, unbroken, for the Doctor’s kinsfolk to-day, who, in gratitude for his unintentional posthumous favor, suitably reward him by telling the story of his spiteful midnight theft whenever we show the plates. And, moreover, we wantonly and openly insulted and jeered at his memory and his gastronomic laws by formally and derisively naming the dark-blue salvage from the coach the Doctor’s Pie-plates.

MY DELFT APOTHECARY JARS

The circumstances under which I first saw my old Delft apothecary jars were so painful, so mortifying, that for a long time I could not bear even to think of them; but now, as years have passed and softened the sharp lines, I will write account of that unique adventure.

We were one day, as was our wont, hunting in old Narragansett for ancient china and colonial furniture, but even on that historic and early-settled ground had met with scant success. At last, on an out-of-the-way road, was found a clew.