The servants were up and took their breakfast at six in the winter and at five in the summer. The family breakfasted at eight. They had, for the most part, cold meat and beer with oat-cake. Pepys tells us of a breakfast of cold turkey-pie and goose—imagine a poor, weak creature of this generation making a breakfast of turkey-pie and goose, or of goose alone, with small beer! At another time he had bread and butter, sweetmeats, and strong drinks. And on another occasion he sat down to a table spread with oysters, anchovies, and neats' tongues, with wine "of all sort."
At two o'clock dinner was served. If it was boiled-beef day, the broth was served in porringers, bread or oat-cake being crumbled into it with herbs. When it was not boiled-beef day, they had fresh meat or poultry (the latter only seldom), and, in season, what are called in the accounts "pateridges"—it really matters little how a bird is spelled, provided it is well cooked and ready to be eaten. The invariable rule of the house was to have two joints a week, mutton, veal, pork, or poultry. This provided four dinners, or perhaps five. The other two or three dinners were consecrated to boiled beef. Calf's head and bacon was (deservedly) a favorite dish; they did not disdain tripe; black puddings were regarded with affection; a hog's cheek was reckoned a toothsome kickshaw; anchovies, prawns, and lobsters are also mentioned with commendation. On most days they had a pudding—the good old English pudding, boiled or baked, with raisins and "currance" in it, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, mace, ginger, suet, and sometimes milk—a famous pudding of which no one was ever tired.
The menu of a dinner where there was company is preserved in Pepys. Everything was served at once. They had marrow-bones, a leg of mutton, three pullets, and a dozen larks in one dish, a tart, a neat's tongue, anchovies, and a dish of prawns, and cheese. This was for thirteen persons.
The dishes were served in pewter, as they are still for the students in the hall of Lincoln's Inn. The supper, of which very little is said, was like the breakfast, but not quite so solid. Cheese played a large part in the supper, and in summer "a sallet"—cost, one penny—or a dish of "redishes" helped out the cold meat. After supper a cool tankard of ale—not small beer—stood within the master's reach while he took his pipe of tobacco. In the winter there was a posset or a toasted crab in the jug.
One is sorry to part with this interesting family, but, unfortunately, further information is lacking; I could give the inventory of the master's linen and that of his wife, but these details want general interest. So they disappear, the master, the mistress, Mr. Arthur, and the baby. Let us hope that they all enjoyed a long life and prospered exceedingly. After pondering so long over their account-books, one seems to know them so well. They have become personal friends. They sit on the green cloth chairs in the room with the green carpet and the green curtains and the fine tapestry. The chairs are high and straight in the back. Madam has her knitting in her lap. The master and Mr. Arthur sit on opposite sides of the fire, their heads adorned with beautiful flowing perriwigs of brown hair, their own color, which they have curled every week at an expense of twopence. They are sipping hot spiced ale and talking of last Sunday morning's sermon. They are grave and responsible people, rather fat in the cheeks because they take so little exercise and so much beer. In the window stands a row of books. Among them was Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Herrick's Hesperides, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Braithwaite's Arcadian Princess, Milton's Paradise Lost, the first edition in ten books; a Book of Husbandry, a Prophetical Almanack—that of Montelion—and I suppose, if we only knew it, the book for which they paid the "gentleman" £3 10s.—was it a Bible, illustrated? It is only seventeen years since the commonwealth; there are Puritans still; their talk chiefly turns on godly matters; the clamor and the scandal of the Court hardly so much as reaches their ears. The clouds roll over; they are gone. Oh, world of change and fleeting shadows! Whither do they go, the flying shadows, the ghosts, the groups and pictures of the men and women that flit before our eyes when we raise the wizard's wand and conjure up the spirits of the past?
IX
GEORGE THE SECOND
From the accession of the First to the death of the Fourth George very little change took place in the outward appearance or the customs of London and its people. Not that these kings could have had anything to do with the manners or the changes of the City. The first two Georges were Germans who understood not their chief town, and had neither love nor fear for the citizens, such as possessed the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts. There was little change, because the forces that produce change were working slowly. Ideas, for instance, are always changing, but the English people are slow to catch the new ideas. They were born in this country, but they were developed in France, and they produced the French Revolution. For this they were suppressed in England, only to grow and spread more rapidly underground, and to produce changes of a more stable kind than the effervescence of the First Republic.
There was little communication between town and town or between town and country. The rustic never left his native village unless he enlisted. Then he never returned. The mechanic lived out his life over his work on the spot where he was born and where he was brought up. The London shopkeeper never went farther afield than Hampstead, and generally found sufficient change of air at Bagnigge Wells or in Moorfields. If wealth and trade increased, which they did by leaps and bounds, it was still on the old lines: the City jealous of its rights, the masters keeping the wealth for themselves, and the men remaining in silence and submission.
One important change may, however, be noted. The City had by this time ceased altogether to attract the younger sons of the country gentry; the old connection, therefore, between London and the counties was severed. The chief reason was that the continual wars of the century found employment and a career for all the younger sons in the services, and that the value of land went up enormously. Trade was no longer recruited from the better sort, class distinctions were deepened and more sharply defined even among the middle class: a barrister looked down upon a merchant, and would not shake hands with an attorney, while a simple clergyman would not associate with a man in business. Sydney Smith, for instance, refused to stay a night at a country-house because its owner was a banker and a tradesman. The real extent of the contempt with which trade was regarded, and the width of the breach between the court and the City, was illustrated when the corporation entertained the Queen on her accession at Guildhall, when the Lord Mayor and the corporation, the givers of the feast, were actually set down at a lower table separate from the Queen their guest! Think of that other great dinner chronicled above, where the mayor entertained four kings and played cards with them after dinner!