This extract portrays social life among the early
Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan. It is
written in Irving's deliciously humorous style.
In those happy days, a well-regulated family always
rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed
at sundown. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and
the fat old burghers showed incontestable symptoms of
disapprobation and uneasiness on being surprised by a 5
visit from a neighbor on such occasions. But though our
worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving
dinners, yet they kept up the social bonds of intimacy by
occasional banquetings, called tea parties.
As this is the first introduction of those delectable orgies 10
which have since become so fashionable in this city, I am
conscious my fair readers will be very curious to receive
information on the subject. Sorry am I that there will be
but little in my description calculated to excite their admiration.
I can neither delight them with accounts of suffocating 15
crowds, nor brilliant drawing rooms, nor towering
feathers, nor sparkling diamonds, nor immeasurable trains.
I can detail no choice anecdotes of scandal, for in those
primitive times the simple folk were either too stupid or
too good-natured to pull each other's characters to pieces; 20
nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag--how
one lady cheated or another bounced into a passion; for
as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers who met
to win each other's money and lose their own tempers at
a card table.
These fashionable parties were generally confined to the
higher classes, or _noblesse_; that is to say, such as kept their
own cows and drove their own wagons. The company 5
commonly assembled at three o'clock and went away about
six, unless it was winter time, when the fashionable hours
were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before
dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company
to ice creams, jellies, or sillabubs, or regaled them with 10
musty almonds, moldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often
done in the present age of refinement. Our ancestors were
fond of more sturdy, substantial fare. The tea table was
crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices
of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming 15
in gravy.
The company, being seated around the genial board and
each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in
launching at the fattest pieces of this mighty dish in much
the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea or 20
our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the
table was graced with immense apple pies or saucers full
of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to
boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough
fried in hog's fat and called doughnuts; a delicious kind 25
of cake, at present scarce known in this city except in genuine
Dutch families.
The tea was served out of a majestic delft teapot ornamented
with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and
shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air 30
and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious
Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by
their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper
teakettle which would have made the pigmy macaronis
of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To
sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each
cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with 5
great decorum; until an improvement was introduced
by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend
a large lump directly over the tea table by a string from
the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth--an
ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some 10
families in Albany, but which prevails without exception
in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated
Dutch villages.
At these primitive tea parties the utmost propriety and
dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting; 15
no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and
romping of young ones; no self-satisfied struttings of
wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets nor
amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart
young gentlemen with no brains at all. 20
The parties broke up without noise and without confusion.
They were carried home by their own carriages; that
is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting
such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon.
--_Knickerbocker's History of New York._
1. Read some passages in which Irving pokes fun at
the Dutch customs; at the customs of his own times.