Customs and Fashions in Old New England Part 12

Cider was supplied in large amounts to students at college at dinner and "bever," being pa.s.sed in two two-quart tankards from hand to hand down the commons table. It was given liberally to all travellers and wanderers who chanced to stop at the farmer's door; to all workmen and farm laborers; and an "Indian barrel," whose contents were for free gift to every tramp Indian or squaw, was found in many a farmer's cellar.

A traveller in Maine just after the Revolution said that their cider was purified by the frost, colored with corn, and looked and tasted like Madeira.

Beverige also was drunk by the colonists. This name was applied to various mild and watery drinks. In the West Indies the juice of the sugar-cane mixed with water was so called. In Devonshire, water which had been pressed through the lees of a cider-mill was called beverige.

In other parts of England water, cider, and spices formed beverige. In New England the concoction varied, but was uniformly innocuous and weak--the colonial prototype of our modern "temperance drinks." In many country houses a summer drink of water flavored with mola.s.ses and ginger was called beverige. The advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Boston News Letter_, August 16th, 1711, of the sale of the captured Neptune with her lading, at the warehouse of Andrew Fanueil, had "Wine, Vinegar and Beveridge" on the list. This must have been stronger stuff than mola.s.ses and water, to have been worth barrelling and sending across the water.

Switchel was a drink similar to beverige, but when served out to sailors was strengthened by a little vinegar and rum. The name was commonly used in New Hampshire and central Ma.s.sachusetts. Ebulum was made of the juices of the elder and juniper berries mixed with ale and spices.

Perry was made to some extent from pears, and was advertised for sale in the _Boston News Letter_, and one traveller told of "peachy" made from peaches. Spruce and birch beer were brewed by mixing a decoction of sa.s.safras, birch, or spruce bark with mola.s.ses and water, or by boiling the twigs in maple sap, or by boiling together pumpkin and apple-parings, water, malt, and roots. Many curious makeshifts were resorted to in the early days. One old song boasted

"Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips."

Fiercer liquors were not lacking. Aqua-vitae, a general name for strong waters, was brought over in large quant.i.ties during the seventeenth century, and sold for about three shillings a gallon. Cider was distilled into cider brandy, or apple-jack; and when, by 1670, mola.s.ses had come into port in considerable quant.i.ty through the West India trade, the forests of New England supplied plentiful and cheap fuel to convert it into "rhum, a strong water drawn from the sugar cane." In a ma.n.u.script description of Barbadoes, written in 1651, we read: "The chief fudling they make in this island is Rumbullion alias Kill Divil--a hot h.e.l.lish and terrible liquor." It was called in some localities Barbadoes liquor, and by the Indians "ahcoobee" or "ockuby," a word of the Norridgewock tongue. John Eliot spelled it "rumb," and Josselyn called it plainly "that cussed liquor, Rhum, rumbullion, or kill-devil."

It went by the latter name and rumbooze everywhere, and was soon cheap enough. Increase Mather said, in 1686, "It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor, and wicked too, can for a penny or twopence make themselves drunk." Burke said, at a later date, "The quant.i.ty of spirits which they distil in Boston from the mola.s.ses they import is as surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quant.i.ty and cheapness than for the excellency of their rum." In 1719, and fifty years later, New England rum was worth but three shillings a gallon, while West India rum was worth but twopence more. New England distilleries quickly found a more lucrative way of disposing of their "kill-devil" than by selling it at such cheap rates. Ships laden with barrels of rum were sent to the African coast, and from thence they returned with a most valuable lading--negro slaves. Along the coast of Africa New England rum quite drove out French brandy.

The Irish and Scotch settlers knew how to make whiskey from rye and wheat, and they soon learned to manufacture it from barley and potatoes, and even from the despised Indian corn.

Not content with their own manufactured liquors, the thirsty colonists imported strong waters, gin and aniseseed cordial from Holland, and wine from Spain, Portugal, and the Canaries. Of these, fiery Madeiras were the favorite of all fashionable folk and often each gla.s.s of wine was strengthened by a liberal dash of brandy. Bennet wrote, in 1740, of Boston society, "Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink in common." Though "spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaffed" in 1665, I do not know of the Oriental mixed drink in New England till 1682, when John Winthrop writes of the sale of a punch-bowl. In 1686 John Dunton had more than one "n.o.ble bowl of punch," during his visit to New England. The word punch was from the East Indian word _pauch_, meaning five. S. M. (who was probably Samuel Mather) sent these lines to Sir Harry Frankland in 1757, with the gift of a box of lemons:

"You know from Eastern India came The skill of making punch as did the name.

And as the name consists of letters five, By five ingredients is it kept alive.

To purest water sugar must be joined, With these the grateful acid is combined.

Some any sours they get contented use, But men of taste do that from Tagus choose.

When now these three are mixed with care Then added be of spirit a small share.

And that you may the drink quite perfect see Atop the musky nut must grated be."

Every buffet of people of fashion contained a punch-bowl, every dinner was prefaced by a bowl of punch, which was pa.s.sed from hand to hand and drunk from without intervening gla.s.ses. J. Crosby, at the Box of Lemons, in Boston, sold for thirty years lime juice and shrub and lemons, and sour oranges and orange juice (which some punch tasters preferred to lemon juice), to flavor Boston punches.

Double and "thribble" bowls of punch were commonly served, holding respectively two and three quarts each, and many existing bills show what large amounts were drunk. Governor Hanc.o.c.k gave a dinner to the Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and a large quant.i.ty of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner to the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter, fifteen double bowls of punch and a quant.i.ty of cider. The clergy were not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Ma.s.s., in 1785, these items are found in the tavern-keeper's bill:

30 Bowles of Punch before the People went to meeting 3 80 people eating in the morning at 16d 6 10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10 68 dinners at 3s 10 4 44 bowles of punch while at dinner 4 8 18 bottles of wine 2 14 8 bowles of Brandy 1 2 Cherry Rum 1 10 6 people drank tea 9_d_

The six mild tea-drinkers and their economical beverage seem to put a finishing and fairly comic touch to this ordination bill. When we read such renderings of accounts we think it natural that Baron Reidesel wrote of New England inhabitants, "most of the males have a strong pa.s.sion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages."

John Adams said, "if the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and cider it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils."

The cost of these various drinks was thus given about Revolutionary times in Bristol, R. I.:

"Nip of Grog 6_d_ Dubel bole of Tod 2_s_ 9_d_ Dubel bole of punch 8_s_ Nip of punch 1_s_ Brandi Sling 8_d_"

Flip was a vastly popular drink, and continued to be so for a century and a half. I find it spoken of as early as 1690. It was made of home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, mola.s.ses, or dried pumpkin, and flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor.

Landlord May, of Canton, Ma.s.s., made a famous brew thus: he mixed four pounds of sugar, four eggs, and one pint of cream and let it stand for two days. When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug two-thirds full of beer, placed in it four great spoonfuls of the compound, then thrust in the seething loggerhead, and added a gill of rum to the creamy mixture. If a fresh egg were beaten into the flip the drink was called "bellows-top," and the froth rose over the top of the mug. "Stone-wall" was a most intoxicating mixture of cider and rum.

"Calibogus," or "bogus," was cold rum and beer unsweetened.

"Black-strap" was a mixture of rum and mola.s.ses. Casks of it stood in every country store, a salted and dried codfish slyly hung alongside--a free lunch to be stripped off and eaten, and thus tempt, through thirst, the purchase of another draught of black-strap.

A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem--a drink with a terrible name--whistle-belly-vengeance. It consisted of sour household beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with mola.s.ses, filled with brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot.

Of course many protests, though chiefly on the ground of wasteful expense, were made, even in ante-temperance days, against the drinking which grew so prevalent with the opening of the eighteenth century. Rev.

Andrew Eliot wrote in 1735, "'Tis surprising what prodigious sums are expended for spirituous liquors in this one poor Province--more than a million of our old currency in a year." Dr. Tenney lamented that the taverns of Exeter, N. H., were thronged with people who seldom retired sober. Strenuous but ineffectual efforts were made to "prevent tippling in the forenoon," and between meals; but with little avail. The temperance-reform of our own century came none too soon.

Tea was too high priced in the first half-century of its Occidental use to have been frequently seen in New England. Judge Sewall mentioned it but once in his diary. He drank it at Madam Winthrop's house in 1709 at a Thursday lecture, but he does not note it as a rarity. In 1690, however, when not over-plentiful in old England, Benjamin Harris and Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell it "in publique" in Boston. In 1712 "green and ordinary teas" were advertised in the apothecary's list of Zabdiel Boylston. Bohea tea came in 1713, and in 1715 tea was sold in the coffee-houses. Some queer mistakes were made through the employment of the herb as food. In Salem it was boiled for a long time till bitter, and drunk without milk or sugar; and the tea-leaves were b.u.t.tered, salted, and eaten. In more than one town the liquid tea was thrown away and the carefully cooked leaves were eaten.

The new China drink did not have a wholly savory reputation. It was called a "d.a.m.ned weed," a "detestable weed," a "base exotick," a "rank poison far-fetched and dear bought," a "base and unworthy Indian drink,"

and various ill effects were attributed to it--the decay of the teeth, and even the loss of the mental faculties. But the Abbe Robin thought the ability of the Revolutionary soldiers to endure military flogging came from the use of tea. And others thought it cured the spleen and indigestion.

As the day drew near when tea-drinking was to become the great turning-point of our national liberty, the spirit of n.o.ble revolt led many dames to join in bands to abandon the use of the unjustly taxed herb, and societies were formed of members pledged to drink no tea. Five hundred women so banded together in Boston. Various subst.i.tutes were employed in the place of the much-loved but rigidly abjured herb, Liberty Tea being the most esteemed. It was thus made: the four-leaved loose-strife was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the leaves and boiled; the leaves were put in an iron kettle and basted with the liquor from the stalks. Then the leaves were put in an oven and dried. Liberty Tea sold for sixpence a pound. It was drunk at every spinning-bee, quilting, or other gathering of women. Ribwort was also used to make a so-called tea--strawberry and currant leaves, sage, and even strong medicinal herbs likewise. Hyperion tea was made from raspberry leaves. An advertis.e.m.e.nt of the day thus reads:

"The use of Hyperion or Labrador tea is every day coming into vogue among people of all ranks. The virtues of the plant or shrub from which this delicate Tea is gathered were first discovered by the Aborigines, and from them the Canadians learned them. Before the cession of Canada to Great Britain we knew little or nothing of this most excellent herb, but since that we have been taught to find it growing all over hill and dale between the Lat. 40 and 60.

It is found all over New England in great plenty and that of best quality particularly on the banks of the Pen.o.bscot, Kennebec, Nichewannock, and Merrimac."

The proportion of tea used in America is now less than in England, and the proportion of coffee much larger. This is wholly the result of national habits formed through patriotic abstinence from tea-drinking in those glorious "Liberty Days."

The first mention of coffee, as given by Dr. Lyon, is in the record of the license of Dorothy Jones, of Boston, in 1670, to sell "Coffe and chuchaletto." At intervals of a few years other innkeepers were licensed to sell it, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century coffee-houses were established. Coffee dishes, coffee-pots, and coffee-mugs appear in inventories, and show how quickly and eagerly the fragrant berry was sought for in private families. As with tea, its method of preparation as a beverage seemed somewhat uncertain in some minds; and it is said that the whole beans were frequently boiled for some hours with not wholly pleasing results in forming either food or drink. After a few years "coffee-powder" was offered for sale.

Chocolate became equally popular. Sewall often drank it, once certainly as early as 1697, at the Lieutenant-Governor's, with a breakfast of venison. Winthrop says it was scarce in 1698. Madam Knight took it with her on her journey in 1704. "I told her I had some chocolate if she would prepare it, which, with the help of some milk and a little clean bra.s.s kettle, she soon effected to my satisfaction." Mills to grind cocoa were quickly established in Boston, and were advertised in the _News Letter_.

Even in the early days of our Republic there were reformers who wished to establish the use of temperance drinks, which were not, however, exactly the same liquids now so called. A writer in the _Boston Evening Post_ wrote forcibly on the subject, and a Philadelphia paper published this statement on July 23d, 1788:

"A correspondent wishes that a monument could be erected in Union Green with the following inscription.

In Honour of American Beer and Cyder.

It is hereby recorded for the information of strangers and posterity that 17,000 a.s.sembled in this Green on the 4th of July 1788 to celebrate the establishment of the Const.i.tution of the United States, and that they departed at an early hour without intoxication or a single quarrel. They drank nothing but Beer and Cyder. Learn Reader to prize these invaluable liquors and to consider them as the companions of those virtues which can alone render our country free and reputable.

Learn likewise to Despise Spirituous Liquors as Anti Federal

and to consider them as the companions of all those vices which are calculated to dishonor and enslave our country."

VIII

TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE

When New England was colonized, the European emigrants were forced to content themselves with the rude means of transportation which were employed by the aborigines. The favorite way back and forth from Plymouth to Boston and Cape Ann was by water, by skirting the sh.o.r.e in birchen pinnaces or dugouts--hollowed pine logs about twenty feet long and two and a half feet wide--in which Johnson said the savages ventured two leagues out at sea. There were few horses, and the few were too valuable for domestic work to be spared for travel, hence the journeyer must go by water, or on foot. When Bradstreet was sent to Dover as Royal Commissioner, he walked the entire distance there, and back to Boston, by narrow Indian paths.

The many estuaries and river-mouths that intersected the coast also made travel on horseback difficult. Foot-pa.s.sengers, however, could cross the narrow streams by natural ford-ways, or on fallen trees, which were ordered to be put in proper place by the colonial government; and the broader rivers by canoe ferries. We see, through the record of one journey, the dignified Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts carried across the ford-ways pick-a-pack on the shoulders of his stalwart Indian guide.

But soon the settlers, true to their English instincts and habits, turned their attention to the breeding of horses. They imported many fine animals, and the magistrates framed laws intended to improve the imported stock. The history of horse-raising in New England is akin to that of any other country, save in one respect. In Rhode Island the breeding of horses resulted in that famous and first distinctively American breed--the Narragansett Pacers.

The first suggestion of horse-raising in Narragansett was, without doubt, given by Sewall's father-in-law, Captain John Hull, of Pine Tree Shilling fame, who was one of the original purchasers of the Petaquamscut Tract, or Narragansett, from the Indians. He wrote, in April, 1677:

"I have often thought if we, the partners of Point Judith Neck did fence with a good stone wall at the north end thereof, that no kind of horses or cattle might get thereon, and also what other parts thereof westerly were needful, and procure a very good breed of large and fair mares and horses, and that no mongrel breed might come among them, we might have a very choice breed for coach horses, some for the saddle and some for draught; and in a few years might draw off considerable numbers and ship them for Barbadoes Nevis or such parts of the Indies where they would vend."

This scheme was doubtless carried into effect, for in 1686 Dudley and his a.s.sociates ordered thirty horses to be seized in Narragansett and sold to pay for building a jail.