I am struck in all these old gastronomic records with the immense amount of meat, in proportion to the vegetables used. No wonder gout was a common disease, and the overheated blood needed to be reduced by cupping and leeching. The out-of-door life, the riding and hunting of Maryland and Virginia, enabled the men to eat freely and drink deep, and the Southern table was always lavishly provided. A foreigner having remarked of Mrs. Madison that her table was like a Harvest-Home, she replied that, as the profusion which amused the visitor was the outgrowth of her country’s prosperity, she was quite willing to sacrifice European elegance to Virginia liberality. Good housekeeping in those days consisted chiefly in setting a bountiful table, and the Colonial dame, in spite of her troop of servants, was kept busy in planning the meals, the breakfasts of hot bread and griddle-cakes, the afternoon dinner, and “the bite before bedtime.” To her it fell, to carry the keys, to portion out the rations for the negro quarters, and to lay aside the materials from which the turbanned queen of the kitchen should compound the savory sausage, the fried chicken, the sauces, and dumplings, and cakes, which have made Southern cooking famous.
The domestic life of women on those old plantations must have been rather monotonous. The travellers who visited them, describe them as sharing little in the amusements of their husbands, and brothers, and sons. Chastellux says that, like the English, they are very fond of their infants, but care little for their children; but the annals and biographies do not bear out his statement. George Wythe learned his Greek at home, from a Testament, while his mother held an English copy in her hand and prompted him as he went on. John Mason, too, bore through life the impress of his mother’s influence. He was only seven years old when she died, yet through life, “mother’s room” was perfectly distinct to him, the old chest of drawers distinguished as gown drawer, shirt drawer, and jacket drawer, the closet known as mistress’ closet, containing his mother’s dresses, and another cupboard, known as the closet, in which hung a small green horsewhip with a silver head, carried by Mrs. Mason when she rode, and on other occasions used for purposes of correction, so that the children nicknamed it “the green doctor.” An old letter recalls another “mother’s room” in those eighteenth-century days: “On one side sits the chambermaid with her knitting; on the other a little colored pet, learning to sew. An old decent woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes’ winter clothes, while the old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting.”
Home, rather than Church, was the sacred spot to the Colonial Cavalier, in spite of his theoretical reverence for Mother Church. It was at home that most of the baptisms and funerals occurred, and Hugh Jones complains that “in houses also they most commonly marry, without regard to the time of the day, or season of the year.” The central idea of the Puritan religion was fear of God; the centre of the Cavalier’s religion was love of man. From this root sprung a radiant cheerfulness, an open-handed liberality, and an unbounded hospitality. If it be true that the best ornaments of a house are its guests, never were houses more brilliantly decorated than those Southern mansions. The names of Brandon, and Berkeley, and Westover, and Mont Clare, and Doughoregan call up the procession of guests who have walked, and danced, and dined, and slept under their roofs. We see stately men, in lace and ruffles, pacing the minuet with powdered dames, in “teacup time of hood and hoop, and when the patch was worn.” We see lovers and maidens, brides and bridegrooms spending the honeymoon under the sheltering trees, and patriot Continentals arming in their halls for the struggle with the enemies of their country.
Not the lofty alone, but the lowly as well, could claim a welcome at those always open doors. Indians, half-breeds, and leather-clad huntsmen hung round the kitchen of Greenaway Court, while Washington and Lord Fairfax dined in the saloon. Not even acquaintance was considered necessary to ensure a cordial reception. “The inhabitants,” wrote Beverly, “are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation than being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and there he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good-nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords; and the poor planters who have but one bed, will often sit up, or lie upon a form, or couch, all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey.”
In Winter, the fire blazed high on the hearth, and the toddy hissed in the noggin; in Summer, the basket of fruit stood in the breeze-swept hall, and lightly clad black boys tripped in, bearing cool tankards of punch and sangaree. The guest need only enter in, to be at home. No one was considered so contemptible, as he who consented to receive money for entertaining visitors. Keeping an inn or “ordinary” was looked upon askance, and the law dealt with the proprietor rigorously, as with one who probably would cheat if he got a chance. His charges were carefully regulated, and he was subject to fine, and even imprisonment, if he went beyond them. A Maryland statute provides that “noe Ordinary-Keeper within this Province shall at any Time charge anything to account for Boles of Punch, but shall only Sell the Severall Ingredients to the Said Mixture according to the Rates before in this Act Ascertained.” A traveller, in those good old days, might ride from Maryland to Georgia, and never put up at an Ordinary at all, sure, whenever he wished to stop by the way, of a cordial welcome at a private house. Some planters even kept negroes posted at their gate, to give warning of a rider’s approach, that he might be invited in, and that the household might be in readiness to receive him.
Such promiscuous hospitality could only exist in a community with a happy faculty for taking life easily, an ability to dispense with the slavery to method, and to be contented though things went wrong. The fastidious European found some of the manners and customs a little trying. “In private houses as well as inns,” writes a traveller, “several people are crowded together in the same room; and in the latter it very commonly happens that after you have been some time in bed, a stranger of any condition comes into the room, pulls off his clothes, and places himself without ceremony between your sheets.”
Another visitor says that the Virginia houses are spacious, but the apartments are not commodious, “and they make no ceremony of putting three or four persons into the same room, nor do these make any objections to being thus heaped together.”