_Proverb respecting Long Spoons—Attempt to define its
origin—Female Costume—Trains, Steeple Caps, Fardingales and
Ruffs—Extract from an old Sermon—Homily on Dress—Enormous cost of
Ruffs—George Heriot—Oriental long Spoons—Satan’s Household—Other
Proverbs—Conjurers—Mountebanks—Lotteries—Feats of the Spoon on the
Stage—Curious Practice of Morris-dancers—Superstition of the
Goths—Dryden—Gruel—Possets—Spoons doing duty as ferulas—Sir Thomas
More—The Spoon or Spoon-meat typical of Infancy._
The spoon, as is well known to most readers, gave rise to a once
celebrated proverb, indicative of the advances of sin and the lengths to
which the wicked are led—“_He wants a long spoon who sups with the
devil._” The saying is now nearly obsolete, but it was formerly, like
the implement itself, in every one’s mouth. Thus Chaucer, in the
Squire’s Tale:
What he answerd it nedeth not reherse;
Who can say bet than he, who can do werse
Whan he hath al wel said than he hath done.
Therfore behoveth him a ful _long spone_
That shal ete with a _fend_.
Shakespeare, in the Tempest, makes Stephano exclaim, oh beholding
Caliban, “Mercy! Mercy! This is a devil, and no monster; I’ll leave him;
I have no _long spoon_.” And in the Comedy of Errors, the whimsical
mistakes occasioned by the resemblance of the twins to each other, led
the parties to suppose Satan himself was in the performance. Antipholus
of Syracuse is invited by a female to dinner, his servant hints to him
the character of the hostess:
_Dromio._—Master, if you go, expect spoon-meat, or bespeak a _long
spoon_.
_Ant._—Why, Dromio?
_Dromio._—Marry, he must have a _long spoon_ that must eat with the
devil.
There was in Shakespeare’s time a more substantial reason why those who
supped with ladies as well as such as partook of Satan’s hospitality,
should have long spoons; and why ladies themselves should have been, as
they actually were, furnished with them. “Indeed!” exclaims some female
reader; “pray explain.” Certainly, madam; but before doing so, it is
expedient to allude to something else.
From the times when primitive British ladies were clad in skins sewed
together with sinews and pinned on the person with thorns, to those when
Anglo-Saxon dames wore tunics and mufflers, and Norman females wrapped
themselves in broidered mantles and copes, and thence to the present
days, every age has been distinguished by innovations in _costume_, and
of a very marked character. Norman fashions were succeeded in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the English gown, bibs, aprons,
and corsets. Immense trains were attached to the skirts of gowns. Horned
and also steeple caps for the head made their appearance, thus
lengthening both extremities of the person to a monstrous extent. A
lady, on a visit of ceremony, is said to have sometimes been in the
centre of a drawing-room, while the tail of her dress was still in the
street. Chaucer is severe on this and other parts of female dress. In
the Parson’s Tale, he rails at “the superfluitee of the foresaide
gounes, _trailing in the dong_, and in the _myre_, on hors, and eke on
foot.” In Dunbar’s Poems, they are represented as performing the part of
a besom:
Sic fartingaillis on flaggis als fatt as quhailis
Fattit lyk fulis with hattis that littel availis;
And sic fowill _tailis_ to _sweip the calsay clene_.
[_Poems by W. Dunbar, from the MS. of George Bannatyne. Perth, 1788, p.
52._]
Steeple caps towered about a yard above the heads which bore them, so
that ladies in full dress could hardly pass through an ordinary door, or
stand in a modern room. Queen Elizabeth, it is well known, carried her
head pretty high, in more senses than one, but she had sometimes to
bend. Visiting Burleigh, when he was laid up with the gout, she was much
incommoded by her head-dress in entering his dwelling. As the stateman’s
servant conducted her through the door, he cautioned her to beware of
the lintel, saying, “May it please your Highness to stoop.” The haughty
dame replied, she would not incline her body to the Spanish King, but on
this occasion would bend to see his master. For specimens of steeple
caps, see illustrations in current editions of Froissart, copied from
illuminated MSS. particularly Isabella, wife of Edward I. entering
Paris; the Dutchess of Montfort entering Nantes, and Philippa, consort
of Edward III.
The sixteenth and part of the seventeenth century were characterized by
long bodices, puffed sleeves, the famous fardingale, and celebrated
ruff. The huge cylindrical petticoat was projected by hoops as much at
the hips as at the feet, so that the wearer seemed as if she stood
through an opening in the centre of a round table, the linen cover of
which reached down to the ground, and upon which she could arrange a
variety of apparatus, such as a lady’s work-bag usually
contains—strongly reminding one of Chinese pedlars of small wares, who
carry about goods on a somewhat similar looking contrivance. “The great
ladies at Genoa (observes Evelyn) go in horrible overgrown vertigals of
whalebone, which being put about the waist of the lady, and full as
_broad on both sides as she can reach with her hands_ bear out her coats
in such a manner that she appears to be as broad as long.” See a
portrait of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I. usually found in works on
costume.
The stiff ruff round the neck sometimes projected so far that a
plumb-line dropped from its edge would nearly coincide with the
periphery of the petticoat. At other times, it was pinned up round the
ears, forming a fluted and inverted truncated cone or rather, it
resembled the outer leaves of a rose protecting the blushing beauty
within. Portraits of Queen Elizabeth exhibit both modes of wearing the
ruff. A smaller kind was worn by men in like manner, as may be seen in
portraits of Bacon, Dudley, Sidney, Cecil, and others of that and the
following age. See also Dutch portraits, of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and illustrated works of those periods—the ruff
is represented enormously thick and proportionally broad. Both it and
the fardingale are noticed by Cervantes.
Few parts of female apparel excited more notice than ruffs, and on none
were bestowed more attention and regard. Cambric was first imported into
England, (from Cambray in Flanders, and hence its name,) for the purpose
of making them, and numerous were the devices for forming and stiffening
the plaits. About the year 1574, an invention of great merit, in the
estimation of ladies, was made, since it rendered the ruff much more
commodious to the wearer, and increased the facility of dressing and
putting it in shape. This was the famous “poking stick”—a polished steel
implement which, when heated, was used for stiffening and plaiting the
starched frills. The ladies had cause to rejoice that “setting pins”
(slips of whalebone, &c. formerly concealed in the plaits in the manner
of fans) were thus superseded. These uncomfortable adjuncts formed a
species of _chevaux de frise_, enclosing the neck, and not only keeping
other people, but in a manner themselves, at arms length. Ruffs were not
unlike the Chinese _cangue_, a thick board like a table, resting on the
shoulders of a criminal, his head being passed through a hole in the
centre—a device often compared to “a frill or collar.” It prevents the
wearer from reaching his mouth, so that unless fed by his friends he
would inevitably perish with hunger.
Now, it has doubtless already occurred to our fair querist that, however
elegant and fashionable ruffs formerly were, they must have been
extremely incommodious at _meal times_. It is manifest no lady could
with an ordinary spoon convey food to her lips without crushing or
otherwise spoiling the most cherished part of her attire. The result
was, long-handled implements came into vogue, and were not disused till
“setting-pins” and “poking sticks” were laid aside, and the dimensions
of ruffs diminished.
For ladies’ sakes, the following enumeration of fashionable articles of
costume is taken from a sermon preached in the fourteenth century to
worldly-minded misses: “Thus the devil farith with men and women: first,
he stirreth them to pappe and pamper their flesh, desiring delicious
meates and drinkes; and so they hop on the pillar of the devil’s
temptation, with their _horns_, _locks_, _garlands of gold and rich
pearls_, _cauls_, _fillets_ and _wimples_, and _riddled gowns_ and
_rockets_, _colors_, _laces_, _jackes_, _paltockes_, with their long
_crakowes_; and thus the devil beareth them upon the pillar to teach
them to fly above simple folk, and saith they shall not hurt
themselves—but he lieth falsely, for unless they are as sorry therefore
as ever they were glad, they shall leap down from the pillar into the
pit of hell!” Horned caps were too conspicuous objects to escape the
good father’s censure. The _wimple_ was a species of hood that covered
the head, neck, and shoulders. _Paltockes_—doublets, and probably
pantalettes; such as worn by Turkish females. _Crakowes_, long pointed
shoes.
Of the homilies appointed by Queen Elizabeth to be read in churches, the
one on excess of apparel has some warm denunciations against wimples,
mufflers, head-bands, crisping pins, ladies mincing as they went, and
nicely treading with their feet. The gentlemen catch it also, with their
_velvets_, _furred gowns_, _corked slippers_, _trim buskins_, and the
multitudes of _changes of dress_—_one of this colour, another of that_,
one for _morning_, another for _afternoon_, this in _Spanish_, that in
the _Turkish fashion_, &c. The evil had risen to such a height that
“neither Almighty God by his word, nor godly and necessary laws, could
stop it.” “One spendeth his patrimony in _pounces and cuts_, another
bestoweth more on a _dancing shirt_ than might suffice to buy apparel
for his whole body. _Some hang their revenues about their necks,
ruffling with their ruffs!_” All the world knows immense wealth, in the
shape of jewels, is often pendant from a lady’s neck, but few persons
are aware that gentlemen formerly laid out fortunes on _frills_, and had
peculiar _shirts_ to dance in.
George Heriot, goldsmith to James I. is figured with a ruff consisting
of plaits piled one over another, the whole being at least six inches
thick, and projecting in proportion. He never could have conveniently
fed himself with “cock-a-leekie,” or “crowdy,” the favorite dishes of
King Jamie, with anything like a modern spoon, without deranging if not
defiling his frill. Yet his and his master’s were of moderate dimensions
compared with those of the gallants of their days.
Long spoons are common with the Turks, Persians, and most Asiatics. They
are mentioned by old travellers as “reaching a great way.” The proverb
associated with them no doubt arose from the primitive custom, still
prevalent over the greater part of the earth, of the inmates of a house
eating out of one dish. The tables on this account approaching a
circular form, so as to give every individual an equal chance at the
provision; like the knights at Arthur’s Round Table. In large
households, the tables were necessarily made in proportion, and as the
dish was placed at the centre, the implements were adapted to reach it
without rising. An idea has always prevailed that Satan’s household
never was a small one; spoons therefore much longer than common were
supposed to be required by those invited to a seat at his table.
Other proverbs are connected with the subject. Henry IV. quoted one,
when rebuked for his clemency to his foes—“More flies are caught by a
_spoon_-full of honey than with a hogshead of vinegar.” Perhaps the best
description of a vain-glorious person is one in which he is represented
as taking in praise like porridge, and “_licking the spoon_!”
Silver spoons, almost as much as anything else, afforded employment to
conjurers and wise women of yore. Frequently stolen, their disconsolate
owners had recourse to rustic oracles, who, with ‘wand,’ ‘magic mirror,’
‘key and book,’ ‘sieve and sheers,’ or other cabalistic implements,
found out the rogues. Sometimes the more learned professors of occult
sciences were employed—men who consulted the stars on the fate of
kingdoms, stray cattle, lost keys, and goods of every description and
value.
They’d search a planet’s house to know
Who broke and robbed a house below;
Examine Venus and the moon,
Who stole a thimble or a _spoon_.—_Hudibras_, _Canto_ I.
Another class of men, whose glory has also departed, found a source of
profit in spoons, viz.: _Mountebanks_, who were originally travelling
venders of physic—a species of merchandise associated with rather
unpleasant ideas—one ill adapted to form the staple of a lucrative
trade. But, shrewd and observing, the itinerant quack knew the weak
points of the species, and that to succeed he had only to keep his
customers in good humor. Like a nurse coaxing sick children into love
with the doctor’s prescription, he tickled his hearers with the wonders
his nostrums had wrought, and sold pills out of the same package for
every complaint of man or beast. As people, however, are not always
sick, he reminded them that they were daily in danger of being so; and
hence the wisdom of buying pills which not only removed disease but
prevented its approach. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he
added to his stock various light articles, as tapes, rings, ribbons,
bodkins, scissors, spoons, knives, razors, tea-pots, trays, calicoes,
and eventually introduced them in lotteries—expatiating on their
superior qualities with a fluency which rivaled that of ‘Kikero’—as a
country pedagogue of our acquaintance insists on pronouncing the name of
the Roman orator.
The poets of the last century often complimented these amusing artists,
as Gay in his Sixth Pastoral:
The mountebank now treads the stage and sells
His pills, his balsams, and his ague spells;
· · · · ·
Of lotteries, next with tuneful note he told,
Where _silver spoons_ were won, and rings of gold.
The same gentry were very numerous in ancient Greece and Rome, and quite
as clever as their present representatives. They dealt in trinkets and
small wares, whose virtues were fully equal to modern ones. Eudamus,
mentioned by Aristophanes, peddled finger-rings, for protecting the
wearers from the bite of serpents or other venomous animals! Like recent
artists of the same profession, he probably sold razors so sharp as
would shave sleeping cats without wakening them, and spoons which
rendered loathsome food pleasant, and poisoned food innocuous.
Modern mountebanks sometimes wound up the business of a lottery with
general satisfaction, by providing from two to six bowls of _hasty
pudding_, to partake of which an equal number of their patrons were
invited to step on the stage. The food was scalding hot, and being
retained in wooden bowls lost little of its heat ere passed to its
destination. He who transmitted the contents of one bowl to his stomach
in the shortest time was the victor, and bore off the prize; which was
sometimes the spoon he had used. When every thing was prepared, the
contest began on a signal given by the generous provider of the feast,
and instantly accompanied with acclamations of the bystanders. The witty
remarks of Mr. Merryman caused roars of laughter to become, like
approaching thunder, louder and louder, until the rain descended, and
the faces of the multitudes were fairly washed in their own tears.
Before the performers half finished the task, their visages acquired the
temperature and color of fire, in spite of streams of perspiration with
which they were flooded.
This employment of the spoon was at one time so common as to have given
rise to the soubriquet by which the principal performer was, and still
is, distinguished—_Jean Potage_ in France—_Jack Pudding_ in England.
Here we see the spoon taking an active part in the _public sports_ of
the people, as well as in furthering their private pleasures. It entered
into an _innocent_ contest, which the knife or the sword never did. It
achieved a bloodless conquest, and as an emblem of victory was often
stuck on one side of the hat, by way of cockade. And let not the
disciple of Chesterfield sneer at these rustic entertainments of
ignorant times, for the effects on both actors and spectators were more
beneficial in shaking off the gross humors of the system than cart loads
of physic or wagon loads of sermons.
The spoon in another respect assisted old charlatans, and in that part
of their performances most interesting to themselves and trying to
spectators—viz. in making the collection. The morris dancer, at the
close of every act, put a large spoon or ladle in the mouth of the
hobby-horse and made it career round the ring to solicit donations, when
we may suppose few could resist the moving appeal. [_See Douce’s
Illustrations of Shakespeare._]
The caldron and ladle have been employed in forbidden matters. Witches
made ‘hell broth’ in one, and stirred up the ingredients with the
other—making the gruel thick and slab—but the food entered no mortal
stomach, and hence no mortal spoon was wanted. This may be inferred from
older writers than Shakespeare—from Saxo Grammaticus and Olaus Magnus.
They tell us about the practices of ‘women witches of the North, where
the devil truly hath his seat’—of the ‘gruel’ and ‘earthen pot wherein
the juices, herbs, worms and entrails’ were boiled, &c. but not a
whisper about the spoon. Eventually the law of nature taught the Goths
to detest devils and their dams, for it often happened that famines
ensued when men obeyed them: ‘birds and beasts forsook the woods, and
fish the waters, and would not come back again [to be eaten] until such
time as the Divine Majesty was pacified by prayers and benedictions of
the sacred clergy.’ So says the Reverend Archbishop of Upsal.
In satirical writings, allusions to _spoon-meats_ were formerly common.
When a passionate combatant had no other resource, he too often vented
his wrath in gross personalities. Thus Dryden: ‘Go back to where thy
infancy began, eat pap and _spoon-meats_;’ or when a fling was made at
people’s diet, as in the Scornful Lady of Beaumont and Fletcher: ‘Faith,
sir, here are no _oats_ to be got, unless you’l have ’em in porredge;
the people are so given to _spoon-meats_.’ A similar allusion to oatmeal
gruel is made by Du Bartas:
And in a dish, for want of plate or glass,
Sups oaten drink instead of hippocras.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries oatmeal gruel constituted the
regular breakfast and supper of children. Dryden has an allusion to it
in the ‘Wild Gallant’:—‘_Boy_: These last three weeks I have almost
forgot what my teeth were made for. Last night good Mrs. Bibber took
pity on me, and crammed me a mess of gruel _with the children_, and I
popt and popt my spoon three or four times to my mouth before I could
find the way to it.’
If the spoon was the first thing wanted in a morning, it was often the
last thing laid aside at night; for when youngsters broke their fast
with porridge, old people wound up the day’s labor with posset,—a hot
mixture of milk and mulled wine, and frequently taken in bed. The custom
is repeatedly mentioned in old writers. Page promised Falstaff a posset,
and Mrs. Quickly cheered Rugby with the hopes of another. Lady Macbeth
drugged the posset of Duncan’s grooms. Thomas Heywood, a contemporary of
Shakespeare notices the custom: “Thou shalt be welcome to beef and
bacon, and perhaps a bag pudding; and my daughter Nell shall pop a
posset upon thee when thou goest to bed.”
Besides feeding boys and girls, the spoon has been known to remind them
when they do ill, its bowl being now and then applied to their pates, to
teach them better manners. Among refined people or with mild housewives,
this of course never occurs; but passionate cooks, when teased by young
impertinents, seldom stop to reflect on the impropriety of using the
same implement to baste a boy’s head and a roasting pig. In country
parts this practice is probably more frequent than in cities, _one_
thing there being often necessarily put to _many_ uses. Like a faithful
nurse, the spoon goes out of its way to benefit young folks by
performing duties towards them that do not belong to it.
In some regions, poor people are not over-nice in their tastes—it’s a
merciful dispensation they are not. When the Highland hostess took her
son’s cap off his head, and immediately boiled in it a pudding for Sam.
Johnson’s dinner, she made the most of her resources, did the best her
limited stock of dry goods would permit, and displayed as much ingenuity
in the application of an old thing to a new purpose, as one half of
those do who secure their inventions by patents. There is no doubt that
such a lady, when busily engaged in making “stirabout” for her family,
would hasten the movements of a desidiose boy by applying the implement
she was wielding to his sconce, as well as by threatening to withhold
the contents of the kettle from his lips. To be sure, such a practice is
not very cleanly; but what can a country matron in like circumstances
do? She cannot leave the porridge to “burn” or “boil over,” in order to
seek a suitable rod; if she did, in all probability the individual for
whose benefit it was sought, would be _non est inventus_ when she
returned.
During the fierce contests between the advocates of faith and the
champions of works, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
spoon was sometimes introduced. On one occasion it proved a powerful
weapon in the hands of Sir Thomas More. See how skillfully he wields
it:—“I would wene one _sponeful_ of good works should no more kill y^e
soule, then a potager of good wurts should kill and destroi y^e bodie.”
Wurts is the old name for unfermented beer—a sweet infusion of malt—and
is an aperient. This was an argument _ad hominum_, or rather _ad
stomachus._ In it the Chancellor administered, and in a very quiet way,
a medicine that could not help moving their bowels; and it did move
them—for those whom he thus addressed at length slew him. But such
occasions are not the only ones where the spoon was associated with
religious controversies or ceremonies, as the sequel of this essay will
show.
The spoon, or ‘spoon meat,’ and ‘strong meat,’ have ever been typical of
infancy and manhood—of weak and vigorous intellects. Paul tells the
Hebrews they could only digest pap or spoon meats of children, instead
of the strong food of men. “Ye have need of milk, and not of strong
meat. Every one that useth milk is a babe, but strong meat belongeth to
them that are of full age.” Solomon has the same idea: it is in fact
common as the spoon.