at her stall, in front of one of the Bristol banks. She had a £10
Bank-of-England note in her hand; and as, in her younger days, she had
been nurse-maid in the family of one of the partners, she thought she
might venture to enter, and ask for gold for her note. She did so; but
it was at a time when guineas were worth five-and-twenty shillings
a-piece, and gold was scarce, and----in short, she met with a refusal.
The quick-witted market-woman, without exhibiting any disappointment,
thereupon asked the cashier to let her have ten of the bank’s £1 notes
in exchange for her “Bank-of-Englander.” The cashier was delighted to
accommodate her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the old
lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud the promise
engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. “Very good!” said she,
with a gleesome chuckle, “now gi’ me goold for _your_ notes, or I’ll
run to the door, and call out, ‘Bank’s broke!’” There was no resisting
this, and the market-woman departed triumphantly with her gold.
Light-heeled Mercury could not have helped her better than she helped
herself, by means of her own sharp wit.
Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, for many years,
had no better food than gruel made from oatmeal, and sharpened for the
appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an addition suggested by
Numa, who also not only improved the very rude ideas which previously
prevailed with regard to the making of bread, but turned baker himself,
and sent his loaves to the ovens which he had erected, and to the
bakers whom he had raised into a “guild,” placed under the protection
of the goddess Fornax;--and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable,
deity she was! The public ovens were to the people of Rome what a
barber’s shop is to a village in war time,--the temple of gossip. It
had been well had they never been any thing worse! The vocation of
baker was hereditary in a family; the son was compelled to follow his
father’s calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity was offered
a senatorship; but then he was required to make over his property,
realized by baking, to his successors; and, consequently, the honour
was as deeply declined as the London mayoralty would be by the Governor
of the Bank of England.
If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the bakers were consigned
by the State, she suffered by the religious liberty exercised by the
bakers themselves, who chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta was the
very antipodes in character and attributes to Fornax; and the selection
of the former would seem to show, that the generally reviled bakers
could not only praise virtue, but practise it.
Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets at Rome. There
was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy; pugilistic loaves for the
athletæ; batter-bread for the strong, and Greek rolls for the weak, of
stomach: and there were the prepared bread poultices, which people who,
like Pompey’s young soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion,
were wont to keep applied to their cheeks during the hours of sleep.
Anadyomene so slumbering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed,
can hardly be said to be a subject for a painter; and yet many a
blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and more _panis madidus_
than blushes on the cheeks of either.
Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to oats. He says that
oats and barley are so nearly allied, that when a man sows the one,
he is not sure that he may not reap the other! He also illustrates
the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single grain produced
“innumerable ears of corn; and that a bushel (twenty pounds’ weight)
of millet would make more than sixty pounds of wholesome bread!” The
Romans and the Greeks also appear to have been acquainted with Indian
corn.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love nature,--and he was
himself one of the most artificial of characters,--knew very little
about her, or her productions. Some of our great men are described as
being in much the same condition of ignorance. Three poets of the last
century were one day walking through a field, promising a glorious
harvest of grain. One of them extolled the beauty of the wheat. “Nay,”
said the second, “it is rye.” “Not so,” remarked the third, “it is a
field of barley.” A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at the
triple ignorance. “You are all wrong, gentlemen,” said he; “those be
oats.” The poets were town-bred; or were of that class of people who go
through a country with their eyes open, and are unable to distinguish
between its productions. I have seen Londoners contemplating, with a
very puzzled look, the “canary” crops growing in the vicinity of Herne
Bay; and I was once gravely asked if it was “teazle!”
These crops are, as I was told by a grower, “capricious.” They will
grow abundantly upon certain land having certain aspects; but where the
aspect is changed, although the land be chemically the same, the canary
will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in large quantities from Herne
Bay for London, where it is used for many purposes. None of its uses
are so singular as one to which corn was applied, some thirty years
ago, in the western settlements of America, namely, for stretching
boots and shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and made
secure by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then immersed
for several hours in water; during which the leather was distended by
the gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, a
coating of neat’s-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot
or shoe fit for wear.
A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, and illustrative
of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chalmers in his Diary. The
Doctor, as is well known,--and he was ever ready to confess his
weakness,--occasionally let his warm temper get the better of his
excellent judgment. Here is an instance, which shows, moreover, how
Christian judgment recovered itself from the influence of human nature:
“Nov. 20th, 1812.--Was provoked with Thomas taking it upon him to ask
more corn for my horse. It has got feeble under his administration of
corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appropriates it; and his
eagerness to have it strengthens the suspicion. Erred in betraying
anger to my servant and wife; and, though I afterwards got my feelings
into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon Christian principles,
was moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. Let
me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire
charity. O, my God, support me!” Was it not to Socrates that some one
said?--“To judge from your looks, you are the best-tempered man in the
world.” “Then my looks belie me,” replied the philosopher; “I have the
worst possible temper, by nature; with the strongest possible control
over it, by philosophy.” Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but
the control over his stubborn infirmity had something better “than your
philosophy” for its support.
Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, according to
the Earl of Northumberland’s “Household-Book,” the corn was not thrown
loose into the manger, but made into loaves. It has been conjectured,
that the English poor formerly ate the same bread. There can be no
question about it; and even at the present time it is no uncommon
sight, in some towns of the Continent, to see a driver feeding his
horse from a loaf, and occasionally taking a slice therefrom for
himself.
There is no greater consumer of corn in England than the pigeon.
Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the hungry poor, calls pigeons
“voracious and insatiate vermin.” He calculates the pigeons of England
and Wales at nearly a million and a quarter; “consuming 159,500,000
pints of corn annually, to the value of £1,476,562. 10_s._” It is
impossible for calculation to be made closer. Darwin says of pigeons,
that they have an organ in the stomach for secreting milk. And it is
not alone in the way of devouring corn that they are destructive. In
the “Philosophical Transactions,” it is mentioned that pigeons for
many ages built under the roof of the great church of Pisa. Their dung
spontaneously took fire, at last, and the church was consumed.
I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory under the
influence of no more exciting stimulant than gruel and vinegar. A
little oatmeal has often sustained the strength of our own legions in
the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they are, sometimes require
a more substantial support. Thus, after a defeat endured by the Great
Frederick, hundreds of respectable burgesses of the province of Mark
set out as volunteers for the royal army,--the Hellengers in white, the
Sauerlanders in blue jackets,--each man with a stout staff in his hand,
and a rye loaf and a ham on his back. “Fritz” glared with astonishment
when they presented themselves at his head-quarters. “Where do you
fellows come from?” said he. “From Mark, to help our King.” “Who
doesn’t want you,” interrupted Fritz. “So much the better; we are here
of our own accord.” “Where are your officers?” “We have none.” “And
how many of you deserted by the way?” “Deserted!” cried the Markers
indignantly: “if any of us had been capable of _that_, we should not
be what we are,--volunteers.” “True!” said the King, “and I can depend
upon you. You shall have fire enough soon to toast your bread and cook
your hams by.”
When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the Leaguers, the want
most severely felt by the famished inhabitants was that of bread.
The Guise party, who held the city,--and the most active agent of
that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the sister of Duke Henri
of Guise,--endeavoured to keep life in the people by means that
nature revolts at. When every other sort of food had disappeared, the
Government within the walls distributed very diminutive rolls made of a
paste, the chief ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder.
The people devoured them under the name of “Madame de Montpensier’s
cakes;”--no wonder that they soon after exultingly welcomed the entry
of a King, who declared that his first desire was to secure to every
man in France his “_poule au pot!_” But enough of bread. Let us examine
briefly the subject of
BUTTER.
The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority for
the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having twenty
religions, and only one sauce,--melted butter. A French commentator
has added, that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and
that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged
dislike of the French of his day for the English, to the circumstance
that the latter poured melted butter over their roast veal. The French
execration is amusingly said to have been further directed against
us, on account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with
rump-steak, and “poultice,” as they cruelly characterize “bread sauce,”
with pheasant. But, to return to butter:--the spilling of it has more
than once been elucidative of character. When, in the days of the old
_régime_, an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted
butter fall upon the silken suit of a French _petit-maître_, the latter
indignantly declared that “blood and butter were an Englishman’s food.”
The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John
Townshend manifested better temper and wit, when a similar accident
befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, where the coachman
was the only servant in waiting. “John,” said my Lord, “you should
never grease anything but your coach-wheels.”
It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might consist
of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that a
breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus
breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of less rank, and higher
worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid
breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exercise to take
after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked for. Avoid new bread and
spongy rolls; look on muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of
worse than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally
wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for
persons of indifferent powers of digestion; or they may substitute for
it the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next
speak; and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence.
TEA.
The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian
mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to China,
vowing he would never take rest by the way; but he once fell asleep,
and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his
eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang up in the form of
tea shrubs; and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes the
juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been
first used in China as a corrective for bad water; and _that_ not at a
remote date.
In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland published
treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, and the most
moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be
drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the ninth
century, tea was taken in China simply as a medicine; and it then
had the repute of being a panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so
earnestly recommended its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous
opposition. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin,
Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and
the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself
unanimous in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized
the infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; but others
again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as filthy
“hay-water.” Olearius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its
dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian Ambassador, at about
the same period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the Mogul
as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the gift was neither
useful nor agreeable.
The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the value of
the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it for the sake
of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of
barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for three or
four pounds of tea; and it is very possible that each party, preferring
its own acquisition, looked on the opposite party as duped.
Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from Holland,
in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it
was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original cost was,
as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. But great uncertainty
rests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the original
importers, and the value of the merchandise. One fact connected with it
is well ascertained; namely, that European Companies had long traded
with China before they discovered the value and uses of tea.
It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles II., owing to
the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used to drink it in
Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that health could not be
more effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the blood;
and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best means of attaining
that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, published a
celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to his authority its general
use in so many parts of Europe is to be attributed.
The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two weeds of
novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, (“Garraway’s,”)
and his _locale_, Exchange-alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a
medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only “made
up prescriptions,” in which tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels
for presents, and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to his
house to drink it over his counter. Its price then varied from 11_s._
to 50_s._ per pound. The taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic
circumstance; and, towards the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and
Père Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an
occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to
lead us to suppose that it was an extraordinary event.
Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, on
the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own dry
medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others; but he was the
first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of green tea. He
“distilled some green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous
and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of the abdomen
and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he paralysed the animal.
He applied it to the cavity of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of
another, and the frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be
unwholesome”--to the frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such
experiments, however, are unsatisfactory. _Nux vomica_, for instance,
deadly poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many
animals.
The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the
preparation of the new mystery. “Mrs. Hutchinson’s great grandmother
was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea that ever
came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without directions how
to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to
eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how any person
could like such a diet.”
Steele, in “The Funeral,” laughs at the “cups which cheer, but not
inebriate.” “Don’t you see,” says he, “how they swallow gallons of the
juice of tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under foot?”
What Bishop Berkeley did with “Tar Water,” when he made his Essay
thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph
Williams--“the Christian merchant” of the early and middle part of last
century, whose biography is well known to serious readers--did, when
he wrote to his friend Green upon the necessity of “setting the Lord
always before us.” When treating of this subject, the pious layman
adverts to a present of that new thing called “tea,” which Green had
sent him, and which had lost some of its flavour in the transit. There
is something amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which
worthy Joseph Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon tea with one upon
human morals. “The tea,” he says, “came safe to hand, but it hath lost
the elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I
suppose, to its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, easily
admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and emits effluvia
from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil communications
among men, which nothing will prevent, (like canisters for tea,) but
taking to us the whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up with
cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been tinctured with these
sweet spices; so ‘he that walks with wise men shall be wise.’ He that
converses with heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in heaven,
whose treasure and whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from
their holy fire; but ‘evil communications corrupt good manners.’ I have
put the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its original
flavour, as the pious soul which hath received some ill impressions
from vicious or vain conversation will, by retiring from the world,
by communing with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent
prayer, recover his spiritual ardour.” The simile, however, limps
a little; for if every man canistered himself, and a good example,
from the world, the wide-spreading aroma of that example would never
seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It is by contact
we brighten, and sometimes suffer. We must not canister our virtue
as Mr. Williams did his tea: the latter was for selfish enjoyment. A
guinea may be kept for ever unstained by the commerce of the world,
in the very centre of the chest of avarice; but what good does it do
there? Let it circulate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant
Industry, and there will be more profit than evil effected by the
process. But good Joseph Williams would not have agreed with us, and he
_would_ take his saintly similes from traits of the table. “O that I
may walk humbly,” he says, “and look on myself, when fullest of divine
communications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and which,
consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may be put into
it.” A very tipsy-like simile!
I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion happily proved
stronger than tea, but not without still stronger opposition; and we
are told by the disgusted _Connoisseur_, that “persons of fashion
cannot but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Ranelagh
were laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion.” A remark
which shows how very poor a _connoisseur_ this writer was in matters of
propriety. Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could not be seated at
the same table. On Easter-day, for instance, the first dish that used
to be placed before the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback,
set in a corn salad. Some hundred and fifty years ago, too, there was
a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held at the “Northern Ale-house
in St. Paul’s Alley,” every member of which was of the name of Adam. It
was formed in honour and remembrance of the first man. The honour was
more than Adam deserved; for the first created man not only betrayed
his trust, but he shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the
first woman. And as for “remembrance,” he has managed to survive
even the memory of the club founded by his namesakes, and long since
defunct. The members were hard drinkers, but not of saffron posset,
which Arabella, in “The Committee,” recommends as “a very good drink
against the heaviness of the spirits.” The Adamites mostly died, as the
legend says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout,--an assertion which
would seem to indicate that the author of it was of Hibernian origin!
There are various passages of our poets which tend to show that “tea”
and “coffee” became, very early, fixed social observances. Pope,
writing, in 1715, of a lady who left town after the coronation of
George I., says that she went to the country--
“To part her time ’twixt reading and Bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea;
Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.”
At the same period, the more fortunate belles who remained in town made
of tea a means for other ends than shortening time. Dr. Young, in his
“Satires,” says of Memmia, that--
“Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow,
To cool the Bohea and inflame the beau;
While one white finger and a thumb conspire
To lift the cup and make the world admire.”
Dr. Parr’s delicate compliment is well known; but I may be pardoned,
perhaps, for introducing it here. He was not very partial to the _Thea
Sinensis_, though lauded so warmly by a French writer, as “_nostris
gratissima Musis_;” but once being invited to take tea by a lady, he,
with a mixture of wit and gallantry, exclaimed, “_Nec teacum possum
vivere, nec sine te!_” The Christchurch men at Oxford were remarkable,
at an early period, for their love of tea; and, in reference to it,
they were pleasantly recommended to adopt as their motto: “_Te veniente
die, te decedente notamus._” In 1718, Pope draws an illustration
from tea, when writing to Mr. Digby: “My Lady Scudamore,” he remarks
jocosely, “from having rusticated in your company too long, really
behaves herself scandalously among us. She pretends to open her eyes
for the sake of seeing the sun, and to sleep because it is night;
drinks tea at nine in the morning, and is thought to have said her
prayers before; talks, without any manner of shame, of good books, and
has not seen Cibber’s play of ‘The Nonjuror.’” This is a pleasant
picture of the “good woman” of the last century. She drank tea at nine
in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to be aroused at last, like
Belinda, by--
“Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leap’d up and waked his mistress with his tongue.”