Boston, with the conditions of town life in Old England at that same
date, where drunken young men of fashion under the name of Mohocks,
Scourers, Hectors, Muns, or Tityriti, prowled the streets abusing and
beating every man and woman they met--"sons of Belial flown with
insolence and wine;" where turbulent apprentices set upon those the
Mohocks chanced to spare; where duels and intrigues and gaming were the
order of the day; where foot-pads, highwaymen, and street ruffians
robbed unceasingly and with impunity. Life in New England may have been
dull and monotonous, but women could go through the streets in safety,
and Judge Sewall could stumble home alone in the dark from his
love-making without fear of molestation; and when he found a party of
young men singing and making too much noise in a tavern, he could go
among them uninsulted, and could get them to meekly write down their own
names with his "Pensil" for him to bring them up and fine them the next
day.
Still, the Judge, though he hated noisy revellers, was no total
abstainer. He speaks of "grace cups" and "treating the Deputies," and
sent gifts of wine to his friends. I find in his diary references to
these drinks: Ale, beer, mead, metheglin, tea, chocolate, sage tea,
cider, wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack-posset, and
black cherry brandy.
Sack, the drink of Shakespeare's day, beloved and praised of Falstaff,
was passing out of date in Sewall's time. Winthrop tells of four ships
coming into port in 1646 with eight hundred butts of sack on board. In
1634 ordinaries were forbidden to sell it, hence the sack found but a
poor market. Sack-posset was made of ale and sack, thickened with eggs
and cream, seasoned with nutmeg, mace, and sugar, then boiled on the
fire for hours, and made a "very pretty drink" for weddings and feasts.
Canary wine was imported at that time in large quantities. In the first
year's issue of the _News Letter_ were advertised "Fyall wine sold by
the Pipe; Passados & Right Canary." The Winthrops in their letters make
frequent mention of Canary, as also of "Vendredi" and "Palme Wine." Wait
Winthrop said the latter was better than Canary. Tent wine also was sent
to the colonists.
It is interesting to find that the sanguine settlers aspired, even in
bleak New England, to the home production of wine. "Vine planters" were
asked for the colony in 1629. The use of Governor's Island in
Massachusetts Bay was granted to Governor Winthrop in 1634 for a
vineyard, for an annual rental of a hogshead of wine, which at a later
date was changed to a yearly payment of two barrels of apples. The
French settlers also planted vineyards in Rhode Island.
Claret was not much loved by the planters, who had a taste for the sweet
sack. Morton tells that for his revellers he "broched a hogshead, caused
them to fill the Can with Lusty liquor--Claret sparklinge neat--which
was not suffered to grow pale & flat but tipled off with quick
dexterity." Mumm, a fat ale made of oat-malt and wheat-malt, appears
frequently in early importations and accounts. The sillabub of which
Sewall speaks was made with cider and was not boiled:
"Fill your Sillabub Pot with Syder (for that is best for a
Sillabub) and good store of Sugar and a little Nutmeg, stir it wel
together, put in as much thick Cream by two or three spoonfuls at a
time, as hard as you can as though you milke it in, then stir it
together exceeding softly once about and let it stand two hours at
least."
Other mild fermented drinks than beer were made and drunk in colonial
days in large quantities. Mead and metheglin, wherewith the Druids and
old English bards were wont to carouse, were made from water, honey, and
yeast. Here is an old receipt for the latter drink, which some colonists
pronounced as good as Malaga sack.
"Take all sorts of Hearbs that are good and wholesome as Balme,
Mint, Fennel, Rosemary, Angelica, wilde Tyme, Isop, Burnet,
Egrimony, and such other as you think fit; some Field Hearbs, but
you must not put in too many, but especially Rosemary or any Strong
Hearb, lesse than halfe a handfull will serve of every sorte, you
must boyl your Hearbs & strain them, and let the liquor stand till
to Morrow and settle them, take off the clearest Liquor, two
Gallons & a halfe to one Gallon of Honey, and that proportion as
much as you will make, and let it boyle an houre, and in the
boyling skim it very clear, then set it a cooling as you doe Beere,
when it is cold take some very good Ale Barme and put into the
bottome of the Tubb a little and a little as they do Beere, keeping
back the thicke Setling that lyeth in the bottome of the Vessel
that it is cooled in, and when it is all put together cover it with
a Cloth and let it worke very neere three dayes, and when you mean
to put it up, skim off all the Barme clean, put it up into the
Vessel, but you must not stop your Vessel very close in three or
four dayes but let it have all the vent, for it will worke and when
it is close stopped you must looke very often to it and have a peg
in the top to give it vent, when you heare it make a noise as it
will do, or else it will breake the Vessell; sometime I make a bag
and put in good store of Ginger sliced, some Cloves and Cinnamon
and boyl it in, and other time I put it into the Barrel and never
boyl it, it is both good, but Nutmeg & Mace do not well to my
Tast."
In the list of values fixed by the Piscataqua planters in 1633, "6
Gallons Mathaglin were equal to 2 lb. Beauer." In the middle of the
century metheglin was worth ten shillings a barrel in the Connecticut
Valley.
Though mild, these drinks were intoxicating. One could "get fox'd e'en
with foolish matheglin." Old James Howel says, "metheglin does stupefy
more than any other liquor if taken immoderately and keeps a humming in
the brain which made one say he loved not metheglin because he was wont
to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive."
Bradford tells of backsliders from Merrymount who "abased themselves
disorderly with drinking too much stronge drinke aboard the
Freindshipp." This strong drink was metheglin, of which two hogsheads
were to be delivered at Plymouth. But after it was transferred to wooden
"flackets" in Boston, these Friendship merrymakers contrived to "drinke
it up under the name leackage" till but six gallons of the metheglin
arrived at Plymouth.
"Cyder famed" was made at an early date from the fruitful apple-trees so
faithfully planted by Endicott, Blackstone, and other settlers. Cider
was cheap enough; Josselyn wrote, "I have had at the tap houses of
Boston an ale-quart of cyder spiced and sweetened with sugar, for a
groat."
This was not the New England nectar or Passada which he praised so
highly and which was thus made--
"Take of Malligo Raisins, stamp them and put milk to them and put
them to a Hippocras Bag and let it drain out of itself and put a
quantity of this with a spoonful or two of Syrup of Clove
Gilly-flowers into every bottle when you bottle your Syder, and
your Planter will have a liquor that exceeds Passada, the Nectar of
the Country."
Cider was made at first by pounding the apples by hand in wooden
mortars; sometimes the pomace was pressed in baskets. Rude mills were
then formed with a hollowed log, and a heavy weight or maul on a
spring-board. Cider soon became the common drink of the people, and it
was made in vast quantities. In 1671 five hundred hogsheads were made of
one orchard's produce. One village of forty families made three thousand
barrels in 1721. Bennet wrote in 1740, "Cider being cheap and the people
used to it they do not encourage malt liquors. They pay about three
shillings a barrel for cider." It was freely used even by the children
at breakfast, as well as at dinner, up to the end of the first quarter
of the present century, when many zealous followers so eagerly embraced
the new temperance reform that they cut down whole orchards of thriving
apple-trees, conceiving no possibility of the general use of the fruit
for food instead of drink.
Charles Francis Adams says that "to the end of John Adams's life a large
tankard of hard cider was his morning draught before breakfast."
Cider was supplied in large amounts to students at college at dinner and
"bever," being passed 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 molasses and ginger
was called beverige. The advertisement 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 molasses 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 Massachusetts. 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
sassafras, birch, or spruce bark with molasses 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-vitæ, a general name for strong
waters, was brought over in large quantities 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, molasses
had come into port in considerable quantity 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
manuscript description of Barbadoes, written in 1651, we read: "The
chief fudling they make in this island is Rumbullion alias Kill Divil--a
hot hellish 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 quantity of spirits
which they distil in Boston from the molasses 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 quantity 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 glass 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 "noble 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 passed from hand to hand and
drunk from without intervening glasses. 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 Hancock 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 quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner
to the General Court of Massachusetts 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 quantity of cider. The clergy were
not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the
ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Mass., 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
passion 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, molasses, 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, Mass., 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 molasses. 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 molasses, 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 buttered,
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 "damned 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 Abbé 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 noble 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 substitutes 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 advertisement 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 Penobscot, 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
brass 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 Assembled in this Green on the 4th of July
1788 to celebrate the establishment of the Constitution 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