curious and interesting teapots—old Spode, Staffordshire, and Wedgwood.
Black basalts and cream-ware specimens of good design are found in the
well-kept and well-arranged cases. All have a story or a history of past
owners to make them interesting, aside from the longing we feel for them
as “specimens.” I would we could pour out from their spouts in old-time
words the stream of Continental tattle that has been poured into them;
we could write therefrom a social and economic history of our country
that would excel in point of detail Boswell’s Johnson, Pepys’s Diary,
and Horace Walpole’s Letters all rolled into one.
A famous and curious teapot was the shape known as the Cadogan. They
were also used for coffee, and were formed from a model of Indian
green-ware brought from abroad by the Marchioness of Rockingham, or the
Hon. Mrs. Cadogan, and from her received the name. They were made at the
Rockingham works; and George IV., then Prince Regent, a connoisseur in
tea, chancing to see one and to praise the tea that came from it, the
Cadogan teapots sprang at once into high fashion. Mortlock, the dealer,
ordered for one season’s supply, £900 worth. This teapot was all in one
piece; it had no cover. It was filled through a hole in the bottom. A
slightly spiral tube ran up from this hole nearly to the top of the
teapot. It can plainly be seen that when it was filled with an infusion
of tea and inverted, that the liquid could only escape through the
spout. The teapots were decorated on the outside with raised leaves and
flowers. Some of these Cadogan teapots of course came to America, and
are now found in collections. I have also seen Japanese “puzzle teapots”
fashioned in the same manner, to be filled at the bottom. Another
Japanese “puzzle-teapot” looks like a gray earthen doughnut with a
handle and spout, the tea being poured into it through the hollow
handle.
George IV. was a connoisseur in teapots not only from a gastronomic
point of view, but he was a collector of them as well, and had at the
Pavilion at Brighton great pyramids formed of a vast variety of teapots.
Many collections of them have been made in England. Mrs. Hawes left to
her daughter three hundred choice teapots which were arranged in a room
built specially for them. A number that had belonged to Queen Charlotte
were in this gathering. Such a collection is interesting and
instructive, the pieces being from various factories and lands. Even
more instructive still, because gathered with a definite purpose and
forming a serial guide to the perfect knowledge of the ceramic
productions of a single country, is such a collection of teapots as that
in the unrivalled Morse Collection in the Boston Museum of Art. But
collections of modern Japanese teapots, gathered simply for the sake of
seeing how many different kinds and what grotesque shapes one can get,
do not appeal to me. Such is said to be the modern “assorted lot” of
Madame de Struve, the wife of the minister to Japan, who gathered
together nine hundred and seventy-five Japanese teapots. Such a
collection can be formed in a week by any person having money enough to
pay for them and interest enough to order the cratefuls sent home; while
a collection of good old teapots of Oriental, English, French, and
German wares is a matter of a lifetime, especially if historical
interest is a desideratum, and good taste as well.
I have not seen in America, as may be found in boudoirs and dining-rooms
in France and England, any friezes “three row deep” of teapots round the
top of the room; but one fair New York china-maniac, who says with the
vehement exaggeration so typical of American women, “I love my teapots
and my tea as I love my life,” has a narrow shelf quite round the
wall-top, about a foot below the ceiling, filled closely with a gay
procession of vari-colored, vari-formed teapots. It is a unique and
striking decoration—in good taste, since the frieze teapots are none of
them gems, but simply gay and effective bits of Oriental color and
grotesque shape. In a cabinet, glass-covered and screened, are all the
old teapots which she owns, a rare and dainty company of ancients and
honorables.
At Stockbridge, in the possession of Mrs. Plumb, may be seen, arranged
on shallow shelves, a large and good collection of teapots, gathered
chiefly from farm-houses in the country around. Over one hundred old
English pieces are among the number, some of them being very beautiful
and rare.
Mottoes, names, and inscriptions are often found on ancient teapots
found in America. One of Leeds-ware bears on one side the words:
“May all loving friends
Be happy and free
In drinking a Cup
Of Harmless Tea.”
Another bears these verses:
“My Lad is far upon the Sea
His absence makes me mourn
The bark that bears him off from me
I hope will safe return
And from his earnings I’ll save up
If lucky he should be
And then when old with me he’ll stop
And go no more to sea”
Another friendly teapot has the lines:
“Kindly take this gift of mine
Full of love for thee & thine. 1769.”
A fourth this good advice:
“Drink only tea
& Sober keep.”
Many of the sailor mottoes found on Liverpool pitchers are also seen on
teapots of Liverpool ware, as if made to some sailor’s order for a gift.
[Illustration: Lowestoft Teapot.]
Perhaps the teapots most commonly used by our grandmothers are the types
here shown; one a cylindrical Canton china teapot known now as
Lowestoft, and one a gayly painted Bristol pottery teapot. Specimens of
the latter and Staffordshire pottery teapots differed much in shape, an
hexagonal form being frequent, and the swan or dolphin knob being seen
on many of the varied shapes. The black Jackfield teapots with raised
designs, looking like black glass, are sometimes found, silver mounted
and quaint.
[Illustration: Bristol Pottery Teapot.]
For the perfection, the idealization of the teapot we must turn to the
productions of Josiah Wedgwood. Appropriate and convenient in shape,
elegant in decoration, perfect in manufacture, they have handles
adjusted in precisely the best possible balancing place, spouts shaped
to empty the contents in the most perfect and thorough manner, covers
that slide or fit with ease and yet with exactitude, bases that are
perfectly proportioned and levelled—in a Wedgwood teapot we find
elegance and fitness equally combined, it obeys and satisfies every
artistic, economic, and mathematical rule; “built by that only law—that
use be suggestive of beauty.” Our modern tastes do not run now to the
black basalts, the blue jasper, the cream-ware of Wedgwood; we fancy a
glazed, painted porcelain for every-day use, but the fact remains the
same—the Wedgwood teapots are the best, the most perfect ever made; even
in China and Japan, the acknowledged home of teapots, where the little
vessels are not only used to hold tea, but as an omniparient cistern of
every other liquid, even in those countries can be found no more perfect
teapots than those of Wedgwood. They deserve the appellation of De
Quincey, “an eternal teapot.”
X.
PUNCH-BOWLS AND PUNCHES
There is no individual piece of china around which shines such a glowing
halo of warm hospitality, of good-fellowship, of good cheer, as around
the jolly punch-bowl. A plate, a mug, a pitcher, is absolutely devoid of
any interest or sentiment save what may come from knowledge of past
ownership, or from beauty or quaintness of decoration; a teapot conveys
a sense of cosiness and homeliness; but a punch-bowl, even a common,
ugly, cracked crockery punch-bowl—visions of good company and good
companions rise at the very sight, even at the very name.
What tales of colonial and continental times an old American punch-bowl
could tell if it only could and would repeat half that it has heard;
what gay drinking-songs, what stirring patriotic speeches, what sharp
legal wit, what sober and circumspect clerical jokes, what kindly
eleemosynary plans would echo cheerfully out of its great sounding bell
could it, like the phonograph, give forth what has rung into it in the
past! What scenes of rollicking mirth, of dancing feet and dicing-games
have been photographed on its insensitive and unchanging glaze! In what
scene of cheerfulness and of seriousness alike did not the colonial
punch-bowl take its part? It encouraged the soldier on eve of battle, it
bade the sailor God-speed. The heavy Delft bowl stood filled and
refilled to the brim at the husking-party, the apple-bee, the
wood-spell, the timber-rolling, the muster, the house-raising, the
lottery-drawing, the election; while the big India china bowl stood even
on the church steps at an ordination or a church dedication. It held the
water to christen the baby; it made cheerful the wedding-feast; and even
in times of sadness it was not banished, but side by side with the
funeral baked meats the omnipresent punch-bowl stood to greet and cheer
every sad comer.
Indeed, at a funeral the punch-bowl specially shone. Great pains were
taken and no expense spared to properly concoct and serve the sombre
funeral-punches. “Rum, lemons, a loaf of sugar, and spices,” sometimes
also “Malligo raisins and rose-water,” were items on every reputable and
_à la mode_, as they called it, undertakers’ bills. A sober,
responsible, and above all, an _experienced_ committee was appointed to
carefully mix and flavor the last libation that could ever be offered to
the dead friend. Small wonder with such good cheer that even sober Judge
Sewall openly called a funeral a “treat.” And we can understand why a
very worthy old gentleman, a lover of the olden times, complained with
much bitterness in the early part of this century that “temperance had
done for funerals.” The gayly-flowered and gilded punch-bowl was not
sadly draped in trappings of woe, nor set one side in seclusion, but
standing cheerfully in a prominent position with its spicy welcome, made
even sad mourners feel that life was still worth living.
The punch-bowl certainly flourished proudly in America through the
eighteenth century, just as it reigned in honor in England at the same
time. Previous to that date the English prototype of the punch-bowl had
been the posset-pot, and that primitive form still exists, and indeed is
made and used in Derbyshire and the neighboring English counties to the
present day. A few posset-pots have made their way to America with
Derbyshire emigrants and have been gathered in by rapacious collectors.
On Christmas eve in olden times the great vessel, which sometimes held
two gallons, was filled with the “good drink,” and a silver coin and a
wedding-ring were dropped in when the guests assembled; each partaker in
turn dipped out a great spoonful or ladleful of the drink, and whoever
was lucky enough to fish up the coin was certain of good luck during the
ensuing year, while the ring-finder would be happily and speedily
married. Posset was a very good mixture—a “very pretty drink”—not so
good as punch, of course, but to us invested with a reflected glory.
Hath not Shakespeare oft spoke to us of posset? In my little “Queen’s
Closet Opened,” a book of culinary, medical, and potatory recipes
collected by and for Queen Henrietta Maria, I find half a dozen rules
for the brewing of “sack-posset.” “To make a Sack-Posset without Milk or
Cream: Take eighteen Egs, whites and all, taking out the Treads, let
them be beaten very well, take a pint of Sack, and a quart of Ale
boyl’d, and scum it, then put in three-quarters of a pound of suger and
a little Nutmeg, let it boyl a few wames together, then take it off the
fire stirring the Egs still, put into them two or three Ladlefuls of
drink, then mingle all together, and set it on the fire, and keep it
stirring til you find it thick then serve it up”—and not drink it, but
cut it up and eat it, one might fancy. There is no recipe for punch in
my “Queen’s Closet.” I fear Queen Henrietta did not know about that new
drink, punch, in 1676, when this quaint old book was published. Had she
done so, she had not needed so many nostrums for insomnia. Englishmen in
India knew of it; “spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaff,” wrote one
in 1665, and in 1697 Tryer spoke of it and basely libelled it as “an
enervating liquor.” The punchless Queen knew, however, how to make
hypocras, metheglin, mead, caudle, cordial-water, aqua-cœlestis,
aqua-mirabilis, clary-water, gillyflower-wine, usquebarb, and, best and
delectablest of all, she knew how to make a Damnable Hum, and I doubt
not she served it in a punch-bowl as was befitting so noble a drink.
The posset-pot had some cousins in England—the goddard, the
wassail-bowl, the gossip-bowl, the caudle-cup—poor relations, however,
and feeble ancestors of the glorious punch-bowl. To the Orientals, not
to the English, we owe our punch-bowls and our punches. Punch or “pauch”
was an Indian drink, and the word meant five, and was named from the
five ingredients used in its composition—arrack, tea, sugar, water, and
lemon-juice. A “pauch” was also a conclave of five men, a “pauch-pillav”
a medicine of five ingredients, and so on.
The English people took very readily to the new Oriental drink and the
new vessel to hold it, as it did to everything else in India. We read in
the old ballad of “Jock-o’-the-Side,” “They hae gard fill up a
punch-bowl,” and when a ballad adopts a word, then it is the people’s.
As the potter’s art advanced in England, great bowls were made to hold
punch at taverns and halls, often for the special use of the potters
themselves. Cheerful mottoes did these potters’ punch-bowls sometimes
bear. For simplicity and terseness this excels, “One Bowie more, and
then”—does it not speak a never-ending welcome? A blue and white
potter’s bowl ten inches in diameter has this descriptive motto:
“John Udy of Luxillion
his tin was so fine
it glidered this punch-bowl
and made it to shine,
pray fill it with punch
let the tinners sitt round
they never will budge
till the bottom they sound.”
Glider meant to glaze, not to gild, and the verses refer to the
stanniferous opaque white glaze formed by the use of Cornish tin.
Another bowl has these sententious lines:
“What art can with the potter’s art compare?
For of what we are ourselves of such we make our wares.”
More serious rhymes still are found. At North Hylton, in England, were
made many punch-bowls of lustre ware, and the proprietor, Mr. Phillips,
must have been a very serious-minded and inconsequential man, or he
never would have put these lines on so worldly a vessel:
“The loss of gold is great,
The loss of health is more,
But losing Christ is such a loss
As no man can restore.”
This bowl may, however, have been for a parson. On another specimen of
the Hylton pottery gayly decorated with a print of a ship, a public
house, and a hat-and-feathered young woman with an umbrella and small
dog, are these sober and comically incongruous verses:
“There is a land of peaceful rest
To mourning wanderers given,
There’s a tear for souls distrest,
A balm for every wounded breast,
’Tis found above in Heaven!”
Were it not for the public house, and the hat and feathers, we should
know that this punch-bowl was surely made purposely to use at funerals.
One of the finest punch-bowls ever figulated is twenty inches and a half
in diameter. It is of Liverpool Delft, painted in blue with ships and a
landscape, and the inscription, “Success to the Africa Trade, George
Dickinson.” When we remember of what the “Africa Trade” consisted—the
slave-traffic—we wonder the punch did not poison the drinkers. I have
often seen this bowl referred to by authors as of extraordinary and
unique size. It is not as large as the grand blue and white punch-bowl
used by the first Continental Congress, a bowl which is now at
Morristown, at Washington’s Headquarters. I do not know whether this
mammoth Congressional bowl is Canton china or English delft, for, since
it stands in a cupboard, one cannot examine it closely. The color and
design are good, and the size impressive, and altogether it is a noble
relic, for this courage-giver of those troubled and anxious Federal days
may have played no unimportant part in the affairs and history of our
nation; I regard it with grateful awe and veneration, and also with a
rather unworthy pride and satisfaction in its great size.
There were hosts of punch-bowls at that date in America. Watson wrote in
1830, of old colonial Philadelphia: “A corner was occupied by a beaufet,
which was a corner closet with a glass door, in which all the china and
plate were intended to be displayed for ornament as well as for use. A
conspicuous article was always a great china punch-bowl.” And they
needed a punch-bowl, and a large one too, if we can trust the local
annals of the time. William Black recorded in his diary in 1744, that he
was given in Philadelphia cider and punch for lunch, rum and brandy
before dinner, punch, Madeira, port, and sherry at dinner, bounce and
liqueurs with the ladies, and wine and spirits and punch until bedtime.
Well might he say that in Philadelphia “they were as liberal with wine
as an apple-tree with its fruit on a windy day.”
A clergyman named Acrelius gives us the most abundant proof why
Philadelphians and their neighbors always should need a punch-bowl. In
1759 there was printed in Stockholm a detailed account of Pennsylvania
or New Sweden, written by this Parson Acrelius. He fairly revels in his
descriptions of the appetizing drinks to be had in the new land, and he
unctuously explains how to concoct the “mixed drinks” in the most
approved fashion. Here is the list of American drinks that he sent back
to Sweden to encourage emigration. French Wine, Frontenac, Pontac,
Port-a-port, Lisbon Wine, Phial Wine, Sherry, Madeira Wine, Sangaree,
Mulled Wine, Currant Wine, Cherry Wine, Raspberry Wine, Apple Wine or
Cider, Cider Royal, Mulled Cider, Rum “which is like French Brandy, only
with no unpleasant odor,” Raw-dram, Egg-dram, Egg-nogg, Cherry-dram,
Cherry Bounce, Billberry Bounce, Punch, Mamm, Manathann (made of small
beer, rum and sugar), Hotchpot (also of beer, curd and rum), Sampson (of
warm cider and rum). More familiar and modern names appear also: Tiff,
Flip, Hot Rum, Mulled Rum, Grog, Sling; then come Long-sup, Mint-water,
Egg-punch, Milk-punch, Sillabub, Still Liquor (which was peach brandy),
Anise Cordial, Cinnamon Cordial—in all a list of fifty drinks with an
added finish of liqueurs, “drops almost without end,” meads, metheglins,
and beers. Now, do you wonder that they had great and many punch-bowls
in Philadelphia? What a list to make a toper wish that he had lived in
Pennsylvania in colonial days.
Sober Boston was not one whit behind its Quaker neighbor. As early as
1686 John Dunton had more than one “noble bowl of punch” in that Puritan
town. Bennett, a visitor in Boston, in 1740, wrote, “As to drink they
have no good beer. Madeira wines and rum-punch are the liquors they
drink in common.” Boston people of fashion served a great punch-bowl of
flip or punch before dinner. If the bowl were not too large it was
passed from hand to hand, and all drank from it without the ceremony of
intervening glasses. I doubt not it was a test of high fashion to handle
well and gracefully the punch-bowl.
Various and strange were the names of the contents of these
punch-bowls—names not on Parson Acrelius’s list. Madam Knights wrote in
1704, that “the Bare-legged Punch had so awfull or rather awkerd a name
that we would not drink.” Berkeley wrote that the strong drink of
Virginia in 1710 was “Mobby Punch, made either of rum from the Caribbee
Islands, or Brandy distill’d from their Apples and Peaches.” Another
Virginian traveller wrote in 1744, “Our liquor was sorry rum mixed with
water and sugar, which bore the heathenish name of Gumbo punch.”
“Pupello punch” was made from cider brandy. “Sangry punch” was probably
an accented sangaree. “Rack punch” was made from arrack; while “Jincy
punch” I leave to the philologists, antiquaries, or expert bartenders to
define or analyze.
Where are all those great punch-bowls now that we read of in history? I
wish I could see the punch-bowl used by the Newburyport ministers in
their frequent social meetings, the punch-bowl in the picture painted
over Parson Lowell’s mantel, the picture with its great bowl, the
parsons all smoking, and the cheerful motto, “In Essentials, Unity; in
Non-essentials, Liberty; in All Things, Charity.”
I should like to see the bowl which played such an important part in the
transfer of the four hundred acres of land which formed the birthplace
of Thomas Jefferson. Old Peter Jefferson made a very canny trade when he
acquired the deed of that large tract in exchange for “Henry
Weatherbourne’s biggest punch-bowl full of arrack punch.” Golden should
have been that bowl, and vast its size, to justify its purchase-power.
I would I could see the great punch-bowls used by the rollicking,
hunting, drunken clergy of Virginia in ante-Revolutionary times, at
their “Monthly Meetings,” the tale of whose disgraceful revelry has been
told us by Mr. Parton in his “Life of Jefferson.” Where is the
punch-bowl used at the Wolfes Head Tavern in Newburyport, on September
26, 1765, “at the greate uneasyness and Tumult on acasion of the Stamp
Act;” the bowl from which the alarmed citizens of Newburytown drank
fifty-seven pounds worth of “double and thribble bowles” of punch, and
in company with which they had two pounds worth of supper and coffee.
Well might we say, “O monstrous! But one penny worth of bread to this
intolerable deal of Sack!” “Greate uneasyness,” no doubt, they felt.
One of the oldest punch-bowls—indeed, one of the oldest pieces of china
in the country—is the beautiful India or Chinese bowl now owned by
Edmund Randolph Robinson, Esq., of New York. It is eighteen inches in
diameter, of rich red and gold decoration, and is mounted upon a black
wood stand upon which is a silver plate bearing the noble historical
names of its past owners, so far back as known. It is supposed to have
been brought to America by William Randolph, as his son, Sir John
Randolph, is known to have long possessed it. This gentleman was one of
the early Governors of Virginia, and Attorney-General in the first part
of the eighteenth century. His son Peyton was president of the first
Continental Congress in 1774, and Attorney-General of Virginia. From him
it passed to Edmund Randolph—also Governor and Attorney-General of
Virginia—aide-de-camp to Washington, and first Attorney-General and
second Secretary of State of the United States. He was the
great-grandfather of the present owner. This beautiful relic has passed
through good service as a christening-bowl for many generations of
Governors and Attorney-Generals, as well as enduring a vast amount of
use on less solemn occasions.
How many punch-bowls did George Washington own? The great India china
bowl with a picture of a frigate; the “rose china” bowl now at Mount
Vernon; the fine great bowl now in the National Museum; the china bowl
given by him to William Fitzhugh. He gave a beautiful punch-bowl to his
friend and aide-de-camp, Colonel Benjamin Eyre; another to Tobias Lear,
and another to Mrs. Allen Jones, of Newberne, N. C. And still less can
we number the punch-bowls out of which he once drank. We all have one in
the possession of some member of our family—I wonder, with all his
punch-drinking, that the father of his country was ever sober.
[Illustration: Bowl Given to Mrs. Allen Jones.]
This beautiful great bowl, eighteen inches in diameter, was given by
Washington to Mrs. Allen Jones, and has had sad usage. It was buried in
the ground to hide it from Tarleton’s men, and is grievously cracked and
broken. It is of richest decoration of red, blue, and gold on an India
china ground. It is now owned by the Washington Association of New
Jersey.
Washington’s India china punch-bowl, which was at Arlington House in
1840, is thus described by Mr. Lossing. “The great porcelain punch-bowl
has a deep blue border on the rim spangled with gilt dots. It was made
expressly for Washington, but when, where, and by whom is not known. In
the bottom is the picture of a frigate and on the side are the initials
‘G. W.’ in gold upon a shield, with ornamental surroundings. It is
supposed to have been presented to Washington by the French naval
officers.”