sail from port, and wherever favoring winds wafted them back again, vast
stores of this old blue Canton ware have been and can now be found;
“tall coffee-pots, with straight spouts, looking like lighthouses with
bowsprits; short, clumsy teapots with twisted handles and lids that
always fall off;” jugs, tureens, helmet pitchers, and sauce-boats. At
the recent disbandment of the family and selling of the home of one of
the old presidents of Brown University, a score of old Canton platters
were found behind trunks and old furniture under the eaves in the
garret. Too heavy, too cumbersome to be used on our modern tables, they
were banished to the garret rafters, and there prisoned, were forgotten.
In past years when roast-pig and giant turkeys were served on that
hospitable board, these great platters proudly held their steaming
trophies; but now we have changed all that—the turkey is cut up
surreptitiously in some unseen corner, and the blue Canton platters,
dusty and cobwebbed, lie forgotten in the garret.
These vast stores of blue Canton were doubtless part of the cargo of the
Ann and Hope, the beautiful and stanch ship that in 1799 bore into
Providence “one hundred and thirty boxes of chinaware in tea and dinner
sets.” In 1800 she again brought into port three hundred and sixty-two
boxes and one hundred and twenty-four rolls of chinaware, together with
such other delightful Oriental importations as two bales of gauze
ribbons, seven boxes of lacquered ware, five hundred Chinese umbrellas,
sixty bundles of cassia and five boxes of sweetmeats, forty jars of
rock-candy, and twenty tubs of sugar-candy. In 1802 came on the Ann and
Hope one thousand and forty-eight boxes of chinaware, but, alas! no
sugar-candy, or sweetmeats for Providence lads and lasses, but instead
forty disappointing boxes of rhubarb.
Hot-water plates of Canton china did every well-regulated and
substantial New England family own, deep hollow vessels, with their
strong heavy bottoms and little open ears. Not very practical nor
convenient of use were they—or, at least, so it seems to us nowadays.
And another and common form of coarse blue and white Chinese ware which
our grandmothers had by the score need not be despised by china
collectors—the old, high-shouldered ginger-jars that fifty and
seventy-five years ago were so good in color. Some are mammoth jars
holding nearly a gallon, that are decorated with a chrysanthemum pattern
in clear dark blue, and when set on the top of a corner cupboard need
not fear even the proximity of a cabinet specimen of costly old
hawthorn. A few members of the aristocracy of ginger-jars exist, not in
common plebeian blue and white, but with a greenish ground covered with
red and yellow enamelled flowers. These were never sold in China, but
were used as presentation jars, being usually given by some Chinese
grandee or trader to some Yankee sea-captain, or sent to America as a
token of respect to some American merchant or ship-owner. They sell
readily for $5 each in an out-of-the-way antique shop, for thirty in a
fashionable one. Six shockingly dirty specimens were found in a
hen-house on an inland farm on Long Island, and after being pumped upon
for a long season at the horse-pump, and swept off vigorously with a
birch-broom, they revealed their original glories of color, and after a
thorough cleansing and disinfecting now grace teak-wood cabinets in New
York homes.
A very dainty form of Oriental china was seen in many hospitable homes
in the beginning of this century, a form now obsolete. I mean a “toddy
strainer.” It was a shallow, circular saucer or disk of fine Oriental
ware, blue Canton or Nankin, or white and gold Oriental porcelain, and
was pierced with tiny holes. It was about four or five inches in
diameter and bore two little projecting ears or handles, which were
fastened to the body of the strainer by embossed leaves. On the edge of
a flip-mug or a toddy glass the ears of the toddy strainer rested when
used, and when the toddy was poured from the great punch pitcher into
the glass, the strainer prevented the lemon- and orange-seeds from
entering the glass below. These toddy strainers are no longer imported
in our temperance-ruled and invention-filled days, and being of frail
china, have seldom outlived the years when they were in such constant,
jovial, and hospitable use. Nor have I seen them elsewhere than in the
seaport towns of Narraganset Bay. I fancy some luxury-loving,
toddy-drinking, money-spending old Newport merchant invented, explained
to the Chinese, and imported to America these pretty porcelain toddy
strainers.
[Illustration: Chinese Ewer.]
Sometimes a single odd or beautiful piece of Oriental china was brought
to America in the olden times by those far-roving and home-bringing old
sea-captains, and the single specimen still exists—a stranger in a
strange land. Such is the graceful little ewer here shown, a piece of
Persian shape, but of pure Chinese paste, and “with antick shapes in
China’s azure dyed.” This design, with its “little lawless azure-tinted
grotesques,” forms a piece curious enough to be worthy a place in any
cabinet. Such also is a dull green enamelled and crackled bowl which I
own, and a Chinese dish of antique earthenware, which has been mended
and riveted by some Oriental china-mender with gold wire. A great blue
and white tall jar with red lacquered cover is unique in size as it is
in its contents—long strings of sugar-coated Chinese sweetmeats,
sweetmeats so unpleasant and outlandish in flavor and so mysterious in
appearance that they were regarded with keen disfavor by simple
stay-at-home New Englanders, who invested the innocent sweets with
alarming attributes, and laid them under suspicion of concealing within
their sugary surfaces bits of all the heathenish edibles—sharks’ fins,
birds’ nests, puppies’ tails, and other unchristian foods that had been
seen and even tasted in foreign lands by bold travelled mariners. Hence
there still lie at the bottom of the great jar a few silken strings of
shrivelled, unwholesome-looking black knobs like some strange Oriental
beads; despised by generations of sweet-toothed children of the
Puritans, and now too adamantine in consistency to be tasted or nibbled
even by the boldest gourmand or curiosity-seeker of to-day.
“Posy-holders” are found of India china with a rich decoration of red,
blue, and gold, with little flecks of green, the cover pierced with
holes to keep the stems of the flowers in place; “bowpots” also of
similar porcelain and ornamentation.
I have not found in my china hunting any old blue hawthorn jars, nor any
fragile pieces of “grains-of-rice” porcelain, nor sets of covered
saki-cups in scarlet and gold, nor dainty translucent cups that seem
naught but glaze, though I have been shown them in other collections as
country treasure trove. I have seen a few tall green crackle vases and
jars, of age and dignity enough to chill unspoken within our lips any
inquiry regarding or suggesting purchase.
[Illustration: Persian Vase.]
A few stray polychrome Chinese bowls of the description known as “real
Indian” I have found, and I hear that whole dinner services of such
wares were imported. General Gage had one in Boston, and a few of its
beautiful plates escaped destruction at the “looting” of the Province
House. But the old services of Oriental china that I have seen have all
been blue Canton or Lowestoft. The graceful blue and white vase here
shown I at first sight fancied to be Chinese, but now believe to be
Persian. As the country owner of this oddly-shaped and rather
curiously-decorated vase knew nothing of how it had been acquired by the
members of her family, nor how long it had been possessed by them, nor
whence it came, nor indeed anything, save that it had stood for many
years on her grandmother’s best room mantel-shelf, it may be a
comparatively modern piece of ware. I have woven about it and haloed
around it an Arabian Nights romance of astonishing plot and fancy, in
which a gallant Yankee sailor, a hideous Arabian merchant, and a
black-eyed, gauze-robed houri fill the leading parts; and perhaps my
imaginative story of the presence of the Persian outcast in a staid New
England farm-house is just as satisfactory as many of the wondrous china
tales we hear.
An everlasting interest rests in all Oriental china in attempting to
translate the meaning of the Oriental stamps and marks. I have never
deciphered any save a few of the hundred forms of _Show_—the Chinese
greeting, “May you live forever,” and the marks on one old Chinese bowl,
which signified _wan_, a symbol used only on articles made for talented
literary persons; _Pŏ koo chin wan_ “for the learned in antiquities and
old curiosities,” and the mark of the instruments used by authors—the
stone for grinding ink, the brushes for writing, and the roll of paper.
I was highly delighted, and indeed very proud, when I discovered the
meaning of these Chinese letters. I tried to fancy that it was a
significant coincidence—a friendly message from the old world to the
new—that pointed out that I too belonged to what is in China the ruling
class, the literati. But the more closely I examined my literary
tickets, the more depressed I became. I found, alas, that these
flattering marks were never placed on my bowl by the Orientals; they
were skilfully painted over the glaze in oil colors by the base, jesting
Occidental who gave the piece of old porcelain to me.
The china called Lowestoft was, without doubt, the kind most desired and
most fashionable in early Federal times throughout both North and South.
Such was the dinner service of the Carrolls of Carrollton, with bands of
rich brown and gold and a pretty letter C. Such was the family china of
William Morris; of John Rutledge, with the initials J. R. and the shield
and eagle; and the tea-service of John Dickinson, with blue and gold
bands and his initials. Of Lowestoft china was one of the beautiful
services of General Knox—his “best china” that was used on state
occasions. It was banded with delicate lines of pale gray, black, and
gold, and the rich coloring of red, blue, and gold was confined to the
decoration in the centre of the plate. This was an eagle with extended
wings, bearing on his breast the seal of the Society of the Cincinnati,
a round shield with a group of appropriate figures surrounded by the
motto, “Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam,” a motto certainly very
significant of General Knox’s patriotism. The eagle was surmounted by a
wreath of palm or laurel leaves tied with a knot of blue ribbon. Beneath
the eagle were delicately formed initials about half an inch in
height—L. F. and H. K.—the H. and K. intertwined just as General Knox
always wrote them. This beautiful service was a gift to Mrs. Knox from
her rich grandfather, General Waldo; a wedding gift, it is often
asserted, though I had hardly supposed that her relatives, being so
bitterly opposed to the _mésalliance_ of the “belle of Massachusetts”
with the young clerk in a bookshop, had given her any such rich tokens
of approval. Then, too, the runaway match was made at the beginning of
the Revolutionary War, and Mrs. Knox, following her husband from
battle-field to battle-field, would hardly have needed or thought of
such fine china. The fact that it bears the decoration of the seal of
the Cincinnati, points to a date after the establishment of that
society.
Lowestoft, too, was the china table-ware of John Hancock, the table-ware
that he ordered to be thrust one side and replaced by old-fashioned
pewter. And when he lay in his bedroom groaning with the gout and heard
the rattle of a china plate on the table in the dining-room below, he
ordered his servant to throw the precious but noise-making dish out of
the window, and the thrifty black man saved the dainty Lowestoft by
throwing it on the grass.
But the every-day china, the common table-ware, of all these good
American citizens and patriots—Knox, Hancock, Paul Revere, the Otises,
Quincys, and a score that might be named—the plates and dishes of china
from which they ate their daily bread, were not of Lowestoft, but of
honest old blue Canton.
IX.
THE COSEY TEAPOT
It is small wonder that the craze for the gathering together and
hoarding of teapots has assailed many a feminine china hunter in many a
land, and that many a noble collection has been made. Teapots are so
friendly and appealing, one cannot resist them. No china-loving woman
can pass them by, they are so domestic as well as beautiful; a steam of
simple cheer and homeliness ascends forever (though invisible) from
their upturned spouts, and a gentle genie of cosiness and welcome dwells
therein.
And then their forms are so varied! Plates, from their nature,
necessarily show a prosaic flatness and similarity of outline; cups and
saucers are limited in their capabilities of diversification; but
teapots! you may find a new shape for every day in the year.
In America we have an extra incentive and provoker of interest in the
extraordinary great age assigned to teapots. You can hardly find one of
any pretension to antiquity in America that is asserted to be less than
two hundred years old; and two centuries and a half are as naught to
teapot-owners. Sophisticated possessors are a little shy about assigning
their old teapots to the Mayflower invoice, since we have heard so many
incredulous and bantering jibes about the size and tonnage of that
capacious ship; but country owners are troubled by no such fears of
ridicule, and boldly assert the familiar tradition; while the pages of
our catalogues of loan collections containing entry after entry of
“teapots brought over in 1620,” “teapots three hundred years old,” show
the secret faith and belief of even more travelled and studied
teapot-owners.
1630—1640—1650! It would seem, could we trust tradition, that teapots
just swarmed in America in those years. There were none then in England
or Holland or China, and no tea even in England; but it is proudly
boasted that we had teapots and, of course, tea also in America. I
wonder we do not claim the teapot as a Yankee invention! The Chinese
knew naught of any such “conveniencys” at that time; they stupidly
steeped their tea in a cup or dish or bowl; indeed, they do so still in
the great shops, and tea-gardens, and yaamens of China, and would
doubtless have conservatively clung to the same simple and primitive
fashion in all their houses to this day, had not the opened traffic with
the western world shown them the restless craze for change common to
nearly all Europeans and awakened in them a desire for novelty and
improvement.
The first mention of English teapots which I have chanced to see is in
the private memorandum book of John Dwight, of Fulham, potter. The date
of the entry is previous to 1695. It is a receipt for “the fine white
clay for Dishes or Teapots to endure boiling water.” Under date of
November, 1695, he says: “The little furnace where the last Red Teapots
was burnt I take to be a convenient one for this vse.” An entry dated
1691 tells of a “strong Hardy Clay fit for Teapots;” and again of a
“dark colour’d Cley for marbled Dishes and teapots to endure boiling
water.” In Houghton’s Collections of 1695 we read: “Of teapots in 1694
there came but ten, and those from Holland, but to our credit be it
spoken, we have about Fauxhall made a great many, and I cannot gainsay
but they are as good as any came from abroad.” The first successful
experiment of Bottcher in the manufacture of porcelain took the form of
a teapot; and potters of succeeding years have spent much time and
thought in inventing new shapes and decorations for tea-drawing vessels.
Would it not be interesting to have a cabinet with a chronological and
also a cubical succession of teapots, from the tiny ones of Elers-ware
used in the time of Queen Anne, when tea was sold in ounce packages at
the apothecaries, down to the great three-quart teapot used by Dr.
Johnson and sold at the sale of Mrs. Piozzi’s effects? There would I
stop and never admit as a teapot the ugly great spouted earthen casks
made in Japan, to satisfy abnormal-minded and craving collectors. Into
one of these hideous monstrosities in the possession of a well-known
collector, two men were able to crawl, seat themselves, and have the
cover placed over them—a sight to make the judicious china-lover grieve.
In still another china-succession might we write the history of the
teapot in America, from the simple plebeian undecorated earthenware pot
in which was sparingly placed the precious pinch, through the
gayly-colored and larger teapot, earthen still, through Wedgwood’s
varied wares in which our patriotic grandmothers drank their wretched
“Liberty Tea,” to the fine porcelain treasures of Worcester, Minton,
Derby, Sèvres, and Dresden of to-day—a story of the growth of our nation
in luxury and elegance.
The earliest known mention of the use of tea by Englishmen is in a
letter written in 1615 by one wanderer in China to another
fellow-soldier, asking for a “pot of the best sort of chaw” and also for
“three silver porringers to drink chaw in.” By 1664 it appears to have
been sold in England in some considerable quantity, in spite of Pepys’s
oft-quoted entry in his diary in the year 1665 about tasting “thea a
China drink” that he never had drunk before. Pepys was far from rich at
that time, and tea may have been in frequent use for some years among
persons of wealth and quality without his ever having tasted it. It
quickly grew in favor in the court, the first importations all coming
from the Continent, from Holland, and soon was plentiful and
comparatively cheap. Among the common people and conservative country
folk, however, beer still held its own at breakfast and supper until
Swift’s time.
New England dames followed the fashions, fancies, and tastes of their
sisters in Old England as soon as their growing prosperity allowed. When
in 1666 the fragrant herb cost sixty shillings a pound in England, I
hardly think our frugal Pilgrim Fathers imported much tea. The first
mention of tea which I have found shows that in 1690 Benjamin Harris and
Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell “in publique,” in Boston, “Coffee
Tee & Chucaletto.” The following year two other tea-houses were
licensed. Dr. Benjamin Orman had a “Tinn Teapott” in Boston previous to
his death in 1695, an article of novelty and luxury that probably few of
his neighbors possessed. Though Felt, in his “New England Customs,” and
Weeden, in his “Social and Economic History of New England,” both say
that green tea was first advertised for sale in Boston in 1714, I find
in the _Boston News Letter_ of March, 1712, “green and ordinary teas,”
advertised for sale at “Zabdiel Boyltons (or Boylstons) Apothecary
Shop,” and in the same year teapots and tea-tables were sold at the
Swing Bridge by “Publick Outcry.” In 1713 Zabdiel Boylston had Bohea
tea; in 1714 “very fine green tea, the best for color and taste,” was
advertised; and in 1715 tea was sold at the Coffee House, thus showing
that it was being imported in larger quantities. The taste quickly
spread, and wherever there was tea there was also a teapot. Weeden says
that it is strange that Judge Sewall, with all his fussing about wine,
and “chokolet,” and “cyder,” and “pyes,” and cakes, and “almonds and
reasons,” and oranges and figs, says naught of tea. He does speak of it;
he drank at a “great and Thursday” lecture, at Madam Winthrop’s house in
the year 1709, “Ale Tea & Beer,” and he does not especially note it as a
rarity. I do not believe, however, though he lived until 1730, when it
was sold in every Boston dry-goods, grocers’, hardware, millinery, and
apothecary shop, and advertised in every Boston newspaper, that he often
drank the “cup that cheers but not inebriates.” He may have regarded it
as did Henry Saville, who wrote deploringly of tea-drinking in 1678 as a
“base and unworthy Indian practice,” saying sadly, “the truth is, all
nations are growing so wicked.”
In 1719 Bohea tea was worth twenty-four shillings a pound in
Philadelphia. In 1721 it had risen six shillings higher in price, while
by 1757 it cost only seven shillings a pound. In 1725 they had both
green and Bohea tea in Virginia and the Carolinas, as is shown by the
writings of the times; while, though I have not found it advertised till
1728 in New York, the “tea-water pump” showed its large use in that
town. When tea was first introduced into Salem it was boiled in an iron
kettle, and after the liquor was strained off, it was then drank without
milk or sugar, while the leaves of the herb were placed in a dish,
buttered and salted and eaten.
A letter printed in “Holmes’s Annals,” and written in 1740, thus
complains: “Almost every little tradesman’s wife must sit sipping tea
for an hour or more in the morning, and maybe again in the afternoon, if
they can get it, and nothing will please them to sip it out of but
chinaware. They talk of bestowing of thirty or forty shillings on a tea
equipage, as they call it. There is the silver spoons, the silver tongs,
and many other trinkets that I cannot name.” Bennett, in his Travels,
told the same tale of Boston women. Each woman then carried her own tiny
teapot when she made one of those much-deprecated tea-drinking visits,
and often her own teacup also, else she might have to drink from a
pewter cup. And she frequently brought her own precious thimbleful of
tea, especially if she chanced to have a decided fancy in the variety of
the herb that she used.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century tea and teapots were common
enough in America, and the “China herb” played a part in our national
history that would have immortalized it had it no other claims to our
love and consideration. In December, 1773, Boston Harbor was made one
great “tea-drawing,” and after that memorable event many American dames
gave up from a sense of duty their favorite beverage, but they did not
destroy their tea-sets. Here is the lament of one matron over her empty
urn:
“Farewell the tea-board with its gaudy equipage
Of cups and saucers, Cream-bucket, Sugar-tongs,
The pretty tea-chest, also lately stored
With Hyson, Congo and best Double Fine.
Full many a joyous moment have I sat by ye
Hearing the girls tattle, the old maids talk scandal
Though now detestable.
Because I am taught and I believe it true
Its use will fasten Slavish chains upon my Country
To reign triumphant in America.”
There is in New Bedford one very interesting old teapot which lays a
very definite, decided, and special claim to having been brought over in
the Mayflower. It is said to have been the property of Elder Brewster,
and is known as the “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It is a pretty little
cylindrical vessel with fluted bands, and is decorated with gilt lines
and dark red flowers and border. Scoffers, of course, will bring up to
you all the oft-enumerated points—that the Pilgrims had no china, that
tea was not known in England, and probably not known in Holland in 1620;
that teapots are a comparatively modern invention—but still we feel an
interest in this “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It brought at the sale of
Governor Lyon’s effects only $45, which low price was, I fear, an
indication that the belief of the scoffers prevailed among the buyers
there assembled. The firm of Richard Briggs & Co., of Boston, caused to
be manufactured in 1874 a number of reproductions of this teapot. Before
taking the original to Messrs. Wedgwood, at Etruria, they were careful
to obtain the opinion of a china expert, Mr. Townsend, of the South
Kensington Museum, who pronounced the “Elder Brewster Teapot” old Delft,
and showed to Mr. Briggs several specimens similarly decorated. Whatever
it may be—old Delft, old Meissen, old Staffordshire, or even
comparatively modern ware—the reproduction is certainly a pretty little
teapot, even if the Mayflower episode in the career of the original be
said to be fabulous. The story of the acquisition of this teapot by
Governor Lyon is very interesting. He bought it from an old lady in
Vermont, but only after repeated visits, much cajolery, many rebuffs,
and a very stiff purchase sum.
There is in Morristown, in the beautiful old colonial mansion known as
Washington’s Headquarters, a tall teapot which is dissimilar in shape to
the Elder Brewster teapot, but which is exactly like it in paste, in
decoration of dull vermilion and maroon, and as a further resemblance,
it has the same rather curiously modelled flower as a knob on the cover.
This teapot is labelled “Old English ware,” and old English Delft it
apparently is. It certainly looks like a sister of the Elder Brewster
teapot.