His physic a farce is.
Well, this same John Hill, in his earlier and more obscure days, was doing hack-work for the booksellers, and also following the business of an apothecary in St. Martin’s Lane. This must have been in the year 1744 or 1745. He was struck (as who might not have been) by the ease with which a new cookery book might be compiled by extracting the best recipes from scores of old ones, and rehashing them with original remarks and new settings. He had plenty of material to work upon. The best-known cookery books prior to that date were, according to Dr. Kitchiner (who wrongly dates Mrs. Glasse 1757), Sarah Jackson’s “Cook’s Director,” La Chapelle’s “Modern Cook,” Kidder’s “Receipts,” Harrison’s “Family Cook,” “Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery,” “The Accomplish’d Housewife,” “Lemery on Food,” Arnaud’s “Alarm to all Persons touching their Health and Lives,” Smith’s “Cookery,” Hall’s “Royal Cookery,” Dr. Salmon’s “Cookery,” “The Compleat Cook,” and many more.
Hill accordingly made up his book, and his introduction was certainly ingenuous and modest; one phrase will prove this: “If I had not wrote in the high polite style, I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention is to instruct the lower sort.” The sly dog knew his public, and this is further proved by his not putting his book to the world through a bookseller, but publishing it himself, and evolving an entirely new method of distribution. Among his friends he numbered the ingenious Mrs. Ashburn, or Ashburner, as it is spelt in some of the later editions. This good lady kept a glass and china shop in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar, and her customers came from the fashionable squares of Bloomsbury and St. James. Hill made an arrangement with Mrs. Ashburn, whereby she sold his book over her counter and recommended it warmly to all the ladies who called at her shop.
In order to make the illusion of authorship more complete, a female name was wanted for the title page. What could be more simple than “Mrs. Glasse,” seeing that Mrs. Ashburn kept a glass shop? The exact title of the magnum opus ran, “The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds anything yet published. By a Lady. Printed for the author and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a china shop, the corner of Fleet Ditch, 1745.” The actual name of Mrs. Glasse did not, however, appear on the title page until the issue of the third edition, for the book was a great success from the first; every one came to Mrs. Ashburn’s to buy it, and its popularity vastly helped the glass and china trade.
About fourteen years ago a lively discussion as to the authentic authorship of Mrs. Glasse filled several columns in the newspapers, the principal correspondents being Mr. W. F. Waller and Mr. G. A. Sala. It was suggested that “first catch your hare” was a misprint for “first case your hare.” Mr. Waller proved that neither of these passages occurred in any known edition of the book, although case, meaning “to skin,” would have been entirely legitimate and in place.
Shakespeare says in “All’s Well That Ends Well”:—
We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him
And a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Love’s Pilgrimage” gives the lines—
Some of them knew me,
Else had they cased me like a coney.