"KILL-DEVIL" AND ITS AFFINES
Any account of old-time travel by stage-coach and lodging in old-time
taverns would be incomplete without frequent reference to that universal
accompaniment of travel and tavern sojourn, that most American of
comforting stimulants--rum.
The name is doubtless American. A manuscript description of Barbadoes,
written twenty-five years after the English settlement of the island in
1651, is thus quoted in _The Academy_: "The chief fudling they make in the
island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes
distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor." This is the
earliest-known allusion to the liquor rum; the word is held by some
antiquaries in what seems rather a strained explanation to be the gypsy
rum, meaning potent, or mighty. The word rum was at a very early date
adopted and used as English university slang. The oldest American
reference to the word rum (meaning the liquor) which I have found is in
the act of the General Court of Massachusetts in May, 1657, prohibiting
the sale of strong liquors "whether knowne by the name of rumme, strong
water, wine, brandy, etc., etc." The traveller Josselyn wrote of it,
terming it that "cursed liquor rhum, rumbullion or kill-devil." English
sailors still call their grog rumbowling. But the word rum in this word
and in rumbooze and in rumfustian did not mean rum; it meant the gypsy
adjective powerful. Rumbooze or rambooze, distinctly a gypsy word, and an
English university drink also, is made of eggs, ale, wine, and sugar.
Rumfustian was made of a quart of strong beer, a bottle of white wine or
sherry, half a pint of gin, the yolks of twelve eggs, orange peel, nutmeg,
spices, and sugar. Rum-barge is another mixed drink of gypsy name. It will
be noted that none of these contains any rum.
In some localities in America rum was called in early days
Barbadoes-liquor, a very natural name, occasionally also Barbadoes-brandy.
The Indians called it ocuby, or as it was spelled in the Norridgewock
tongue, ah-coobee. Many of the early white settlers called it by the same
name. Kill-devil was its most universal name, not only a slang name, but a
trading-term used in bills of sale. A description of Surinam written in
1651 says: "Rhum made from sugar-canes is called kill-devil in New
England." At thus early a date had the manufacture of rum become
associated with New England.
The Dutch in New York called the liquor brandy-wine, and soon in that
colony wherever strong waters were named in tavern lists, the liquor was
neither aqua vitae nor gin nor brandy, but New England rum.
It soon was cheap enough. Rev. Increase Mather, the Puritan parson, wrote,
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 make themselves drunk." From old account-books, bills of
lading, grocers' bills, family expenses, etc., we have the price of rum at
various dates, and find that his assertion was true.
[Illustration: Old Rum Bottles.]
In 1673 Barbadoes rum was worth 6_s._ a gallon. In 1687 its price had
vastly fallen, and New England rum sold for 1_s._ 6_d._ a gallon. In 1692
2_s._ a gallon was the regular price. In 1711 the price was 3_s._ 3_d._ In
1757, as currency grew valueless, it was 21_s._ a gallon. In 1783 only a
little over a shilling; then it was but 8_d._ a quart. During this time
the average cost of molasses in the West Indies was 12_d._ a gallon; so,
though the distillery plant for its production was costly, it can be seen
that the profits were great.
Burke said about 1750: "The quantity of spirits which they distill in
Boston from the molasses which 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." An English traveller named Bennet wrote at the
same date of Boston society: "Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors
they drink in common." Baron Riedesel, who commanded the foreign troops in
America during the Revolution, wrote of the New England inhabitants: "Most
of the males have a strong passion for strong drink, especially rum."
While President John Adams said caustically: "If the ancients drank wine
as our people drink rum and cider, it is no wonder we hear of so many
possessed with devils;" yet he himself, to the end of his life, always
began the day with a tankard of hard cider before breakfast.
The Dutch were too constant beer drinkers to become with speed great rum
consumers, and they were too great lovers of gin and schnapps. But they
deprecated the sharp and intolerant prohibition of the sale of rum to the
Indians, saying: "To prohibit all strong liquor to them seems very hard
and very Turkish. Rum doth as little hurt as the Frenchman's Brandie, and
in the whole is much more wholesome." The English were fiercely abhorrent
of intemperance among the Indians, and court records abound in laws
restraining the sale of rum to the "bloudy salvages," of prosecutions and
fines of white traders who violated these laws, and of constant and fierce
punishment of the thirsty red men, who simply tried to gratify an appetite
instilled in them by the English.
William Penn wrote to the Earl of Sutherland in 1683: "Ye Dutch, Sweed,
and English have by Brandy and Specially Rum, almost Debaucht ye Indians
all. When Drunk ye most Wretched of Spectacles. They had been very
Tractable but Rum is so dear to them."
Rum formed the strong intoxicant of all popular tavern drinks; many are
still mixed to-day. Toddy, sling, grog, are old-time concoctions.
A writer for the first _Galaxy_ thus parodied the poem, _I knew by the
smoke that so gracefully curled_:--
"I knew by the pole that's so gracefully crown'd
Beyond the old church, that a tavern was near,
And I said if there's black-strap on earth to be found,
A man who had credit might hope for it here."
Josiah Quincy said that black-strap was a composition of which the secret,
he fervently hoped, reposed with the lost arts. Its principal ingredients
were rum and molasses, though there were other simples combined with it.
He adds, "Of all the detestable American drinks on which our inventive
genius has exercised itself, this black-strap was truly the most
outrageous."
Casks of it stood in every country store and tavern, a salted cod-fish
hung alongside, slyly to tempt by thirst additional purchasers of
black-strap. "Calibogus," or "bogus," was unsweetened rum and beer.
Mimbo, sometimes abbreviated to mim, was a drink made of rum and
loaf-sugar--and possibly water. The "Rates in Taverns" fixed in York
County in Pennsylvania, in 1752, for "the protecting of travellers against
the extortions of tavern-keepers," gives its price:--
"1 Quart Mimbo made best W. I. Rum and Loaf: 10_d._
1 Quart Mimbo, made of New England Rum and Loaf: 9_d._"
Many years ago, one bitter winter day, there stepped down from a rocking
mail-coach into the Washington Tavern in a Pennsylvania town, a dashing
young man who swaggered up to the bar and bawled out for a drink of
"Scotchem." The landlord was running here and there, talking to a score of
people and doing a score of things at once, and he called to his son, a
lubberly, countrified young fellow, to give the gentleman his Scotchem.
The boy was but a learner in the taproom, but he was a lad of few words,
so he hesitatingly mixed a glass of hot water and Scotch whiskey, which
the traveller scarcely tasted ere he roared out: "Don't you know what
Scotchem is? Apple-jack, and boiling water, and a good dash of ground
mustard. Here's a shilling to pay for it." The boy stared at the
uninviting recipe, but faithfully compounded it, when toot-toot sounded
the horn--the coach waited for no man, certainly not for a man to sip a
scalding drink--and such a drink, and off in a trice went full coach and
empty traveller. The young tapster looked dubiously at the great mug of
steaming drink; then he called to an old trapper, a town pauper, who,
crippled with rheumatism, sat ever in the warm chimney corner of the
taproom, telling stories of coons and catamounts and wolverines, and
taking such stray drops of liquid comfort as old companions or new
sympathizers might pityingly give him. "Here, Ezra," the boy said, "you
take the gentleman's drink. It's paid for." Ezra was ever thirsty and
never fastidious. He gulped down the Scotchem. "It's good," he swaggered
bravely, with eyes streaming from the scalding mustard, "an' it's tasty,
too, ef it does favor tomato ketchup."
[Illustration: Burgoyne Tavern.]
Forty years later an aged man was swung precariously out with a violent
jerk from a rampant trolley car in front of the Washington Hotel. He
wearily entered the gaudy office, and turned thence to the bar. The
barkeeper, a keen-eyed, lean old fellow of inscrutable countenance,
glanced sharply at him, pondered a moment, then opened a remote closet,
drew forth from its recess an ancient and dusty demijohn of apple-jack,
and with boiling water and a dash of mustard compounded a drink which he
placed unasked before the traveller. "Here's your Scotchem," he said
laconically. The surprised old man looked sharply around him. Outside the
window, in the stable yard, a single blasted and scaling buttonwood tree
alone remained of the stately green row whose mottled trunks and glossy
leaves once bordered the avenue. The varying grades of city streets had
entirely cut off the long porch beloved of old-time tavern loafers. The
creaking sign-board had vanished. Within was no cheerful chimney corner
and no welcoming blazing fire, but the old taproom still displayed its
raftered ceiling. The ancient traveller solemnly drank his long-paid-for
mug of Scotchem. "It's good," he said, "and tasty, if it does favor tomato
ketchup."
A ray of memory darted across the brain of the old barkeeper, and albeit
he was not a member of the Society of Psychical Research and could not
formulate his brain impressions, yet he pondered on the curious problem
of thought transference, of forced sequence of ideas, of coincidences of
mental action resulting from similar physical conditions and influences.
Flip was a dearly loved drink of colonial times, far more popular in
America than in England, much different in concoction in America than in
England, and much superior in America--a truly American drink. As its
chief ingredient is beer, it might be placed in the chapter on small
drink, but the large amount consumed entitles it to a place with more
rankly intoxicating liquors.
The earliest date that I find flip named in New England is 1690. From that
year till the middle of this century there never was a day, never a minute
of the day, and scarce of the night, that some old Yankee flip drinker was
not plunging in a loggerhead, or smacking his lips over a mug of creaming
flip.
In the _New England Almanac_ for 1704 we read under December:--
"The days are short, the weather's cold,
By tavern fires tales are told.
Some ask for dram when first come in,
Others with flip and bounce begin."
American flip was made in a great pewter mug or earthen pitcher filled
two-thirds full of strong beer; sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried
pumpkin, according to individual taste or capabilities; and flavored with
"a dash"--about a gill--of New England rum. Into this mixture was thrust
and stirred a red-hot loggerhead, made of iron and shaped like a poker,
and the seething iron made the liquor foam and bubble and mantle high, and
gave it the burnt, bitter taste so dearly loved. A famous tavern host of
Canton, Massachusetts, had a special fancy in flip. He mixed together a
pint of cream, four eggs, and four pounds of sugar, and kept this on hand.
When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug two-thirds full
of bitter beer, added four great spoonfuls of his creamy compound, a gill
of rum, and thrust in the loggerhead. If a fresh egg were beaten into the
mixture, the froth poured over the top of the mug, and the drink was
called "bellows-top."
[Illustration: Happy Farmer Pitcher.]
Let me not fail to speak of the splendid glasses in which flip was often
served--I mean the great glass tumblers without handles which, under the
name of flip glasses, still are found in New England homes. They are vast
drinking-vessels, sometimes holding three or four quarts apiece, and speak
to us distinctly of the unlimited bibulous capacities of our ancestors.
They are eagerly sought for by glass and china collectors, and are among
the prettiest and most interesting of old-time relics.
[Illustration: Sign-board of Hancock Tavern.]
English flip is not so simple nor so original nor so good a drink as
American flip. It might be anything but flip, since it is compounded in a
saucepan, and knows naught of the distinctive branding of flip, the
seething loggerhead. If it contained no spirits, it was called "egg-hot."
A rule for flip which seems to combine the good points of the American and
English methods, uses ale instead of home-brewed. It may be given "in the
words of the Publican who made it":--
"Keep grated Ginger and Nutmeg with a fine dried Lemon Peel rubbed
together in a Mortar. To make a quart of Flip: Put the Ale on the Fire
to warm, and beat up three or four Eggs with four ounces of moist
Sugar, a teaspoonful of grated Nutmeg or Ginger, and a Quartern of
good old Rum or Brandy. When the Ale is near to boil, put it into one
pitcher, and the Rum and Eggs, etc., into another: turn it from one
Pitcher to another till it is as smooth as cream. To heat plunge in
the red hot Loggerhead or Poker. This quantity is styled One Yard of
Flannel."
A quartern is a quarter of a gill, which is about the "dash" of rum.
No flip was more widely known and more respected than the famous brew of
Abbott's Tavern at Holden, Massachusetts. This house, built in 1763, and
kept by three generations of Abbotts, never wavered in the quality of its
flip. It is said to have been famous from the Atlantic to the Pacific--and
few stage-coaches or travellers ever passed that door without adding to
its praises and thereafter spreading its reputation. It is sad to add that
I don't know exactly how it was made. A bill still existing tells its
price in Revolutionary days; other items show its relative valuation:--
"Mug New England Flip 9_d._
" West India " 11_d._
Lodging per night 3_d._
Pot luck per meal 8_d._
Boarding commons Men 4_s._ 8_d._
" " Weomen 2_s._"
This is the only tavern bill I have ever seen in which nice distinctions
were made in boarding men and women. I am glad to know that the "weomen"
traveller in those days had 2_s._ 8_d._ of daily advantage over the men.
Other names for the hospital loggerhead were flip-dog and hottle. The
loggerhead was as much a part of the chimney furniture of an old-time New
England tavern and farm-house as the bellows or andirons. In all taverns
and many hospitable homes it was constantly kept warm in the ashes, ready
for speedy heating in a bed of hot coals, to burn a mug of fresh flip for
every visitor or passer by. Cider could be used instead of beer, if beer
could not be had. Some wise old flip tasters preferred cider to beer.
Every tavern bill of the eighteenth century was punctuated with entries of
flip. John Adams said if you spent the evening in a tavern, you found it
full of people drinking drams of flip, carousing, and swearing. The old
taprooms were certainly cheerful and inviting gathering-places; where mine
host sat behind his cagelike counter surrounded by cans and bottles and
glasses, jars of whole spices and whole loaves of sugar; where an
inspiring row of barrels of New England rum, hard cider, and beer ranged
in rivalry at an end of the room, and
"Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred
Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,
And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,
Timed by wise instinct, creamed the bowl of flip."
[Illustration: Flip Glasses, Loggerhead, and Toddy Stick.]
These fine lines of Lowell's seem to idealize the homely flip and the
loggerhead as we love to idealize the customs of our forbears. Many a
reader of them, inspired by the picture, has heated an iron poker or
flip-dog and brewed and drunk a mug of flip. I did so not long ago, mixing
carefully by a rule for flip recommended and recorded and used by General
Putnam--Old Put--in the Revolution. I had the Revolutionary receipt and I
had the Revolutionary loggerhead, and I had the old-time ingredients, but
alas, I had neither the tastes nor the digestion of my Revolutionary
sires, and the indescribable scorched and puckering bitterness of taste
and pungency of smell of that rank compound which was flip, will serve for
some time in my memory as an antidote for any overweening longing for the
good old times.
The toddy stick, beloved for the welcome ringing music it made on the
sides of glass tumblers, was used to stir up toddy and other sweetened
drinks.
It was a stick six or eight inches long, with a knob at one end, or
flattened out at the end so it would readily crush the loaf sugar used in
the drink. The egg-nog stick was split at one end, and a cross-piece of
wood was set firmly in. It was a crude egg-beater. Whirled rapidly around,
while the upright stick was held firmly between the palms of the hands, it
was a grateful, graceful, and inviting machine in the hands of skilful
landlords of old.
Another universal and potent colonial drink was punch. It came to the
English colonies in America from the English colonies in India. To the
Orientals we owe punch--as many other good things. The word is from the
Hindustani _panch_, five, referring to the five ingredients then used in
the drink, namely: tea, arrack, sugar, lemons, water.
In 1675 one Tryer drank punch in India and, like the poor thing that he
was, basely libelled it as an enervating liquor. The English took very
quickly to the new drink, as they did to everything else in India, and
soon the word appeared in English ballads, showing that punch was well
known.
Englishmen did not use without change the punch-bowls of India, but
invented an exceptionally elegant form known by the name of Monteith. It
was called after a man of fashion who was marked and remarkable for
wearing a scalloped coat. In the _Art of Cookery_ we find reference to him
and the Monteith punch bowl:--
"New things produce new words, and so Monteith
Has by one vessel saved himself from death."
[Illustration: Porcelain Monteith.]
Monteiths seem to have come into fashion about 1697. The rim was scalloped
like its namesake's coat, or cut in battlements, thus forming
indentations, in which a punch ladle and lemon strainer and tall
wine-glasses were hung on their sides, the foot out. The rim was usually
separate from the bowl, and was lifted off with the glasses and ladle and
strainer, for the punch to be brewed in the bowl. When the punch was duly
finished, the ornamental rim was replaced. A porcelain imitation of a
Monteith is here shown, which was made in China for an American
ship-owner, doubtless from a silver model.
Punch became popular in New England just as it did in old England, in
fact, wherever English-speaking sea rovers could tell of the new drink. In
1682 John Winthrop wrote of the sale of a punch bowl in Boston, and in
1686 John Dunton told of more than one noble bowl of punch in New England.
Every buffet of people of good station in prosperous times soon had a
punch bowl. Every dinner was prefaced by a bowl of punch passed from hand
to hand, while the liquor was drunk from the bowl. Double and "thribble"
bowls of punch were served in taverns; these held two and three quarts
each.
To show the amount of punch drunk at a minister's ordination in New
England in 1785, I will state that the eighty people attending in the
morning had thirty bowls of punch before going to meeting; and the
sixty-eight who had dinner disposed of forty-four bowls of punch, eighteen
bottles of wine, eight bowls of brandy, and a quantity of cherry rum.
Punch was popular in Virginia, it was popular in New York, it was popular
in Pennsylvania. William Black recorded in his diary in 1744 that in
Philadelphia he was given cider and punch for lunch; rum and brandy before
dinner; punch, Madeira, port, and sherry at dinner; punch and liqueurs
with the ladies; and wine, spirit, and punch till bedtime; all in punch
bowls big enough for a goose to swim in.
In 1757 S. M. of Boston, who was doubtless Samuel Mather, the son of
Cotton Mather, sent to Sir Harry Frankland, the hero of the New England
romance of Agnes Surriage, a box of lemons with these lines:--
"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."
[Illustration: Cincinnati Punch Bowl.]
From the accounts that have come down to us, the "spirits a small share"
of the Puritan Mather's punch receipt was seldom adhered to in New England
punches.
The importation to England and America of lemons, oranges, and limes for
use as punch "sowrings," as they were called, was an important part of the
West Indian and Portuguese trade. The juices of lemons, oranges, limes,
and pineapples were all used in punches, and were imported in demijohns
and bottles. The appetizing advertisements of J. Crosby, a Boston fruit
importer, are frequent for many years in New England newspapers. Here is
one from the _Salem Gazette_ in 1741:--
"Extraordinary good and very fresh Orange juice which some of the very
best Punch Tasters prefer to Lemmon, at one dollar a gallon. Also very
good Lime Juice and Shrub to put into Punch at the Basket of Lemmons,
J. Crosby, Lemmon Trader."
I don't know whether the punch tasters referred to were professional punch
mixers or whether it was simply a term applied to persons of well-known
experience and judgment in punch-drinking.
In Salem, New Jersey, in 1729, tavern prices were regulated by the Court.
They were thus:--
"A rub of punch made with double-refined sugar
and one and a half gills of rum 9_d._
A rub of punch made with single refined sugar
and one and a half gills of rum 8_d._
A rub made of Muscovado sugar and one and a
half gills of rum 7_d._
A quart of flipp made with a pint of rum 9_d._
A pint of wine 1_s._
A gill of rum 3_d._
A quart of strong beer 4_d._
A gill of brandy or cordial 6_d._
A quart of metheglin 9_d._
A quart of cider royal 8_d._
A quart of cider 4_d._"
Punches were many of name, scores of different ones were given by drink
compounders, both amateur and professional. Punches were named for
persons, for places; for taverns and hosts; for bar-tenders and
stage-coach drivers; for unusual ingredients or romantic incidents.
Sometimes honor was conferred by naming the punch for the person;
sometimes the punch was the only honor the original ever had. In these
punches all kinds of flavoring and spices were used, and all the strong
liquors of the world, all the spirits, wines, liqueurs, drops, distilled
waters and essences--but seldom and scant malt liquors, if it were truly
punch.
With regard to the proper amounts of all these various fluids to be used
in composition opinions always differed. Many advised a light hand with
cordials, some disliked spices; others wished a plentiful amount of lemon
juice, others wished tea. In respect of the proportions of two important
and much-discussed ingredients, old-time landlords apparently heeded
directions similar to those I once heard given impressively by an old
Irish ecclesiastic of high office: "Shtop! shtop! ye are not commincin'
right and in due ordher! Ye musthn't iver put your whiskey or rum foorst
in your punch-bowl and thin add wather; for if ye do, ivery dhrop of
wather ye put in is just cruel spoilin' of the punch; but--foorst--put
some wather in the bowl--some, I say, since in conscience ye must--thin
pour in the rum; and sure ye can aisily parcaive that ivery dhrop ye put
in is afther makin' the punch betther and betther."
Charles Lamb tells in his _Popular Fallacies_ of "Bully Dawson kicked by
half the town and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This Bully Dawson
was a famous punch brewer; his rule was precisely like that of a famous
New England landlord, and is worth choosing among a score of rules:--
"The man who sees, does, or thinks of anything else while he is making
Punch may as well look for the Northwest Passage on Mutton Hill. A man
can never make good punch unless he is satisfied, nay positive, that
no man breathing can make better. I can and do make good Punch,
because I do nothing else, and this is my way of doing it. I retire to
a solitary corner with my ingredients ready sorted; they are as
follows, and I mix them in the order they are here written. Sugar,
twelve tolerable lumps; hot water, one pint; lemons, two, the juice
and peel; old Jamaica rum, two gills; brandy, one gill; porter or
stout, half a gill; arrack, a slight dash. I allow myself five minutes
to make a bowl in the foregoing proportions, carefully stirring the
mixture as I furnish the ingredients until it actually foams; and then
Kangaroos! how beautiful it is!"
With this nectar and a toast we may fitly close this chapter. May the
grass grow lightly o'er the grave of Bully Dawson, and weigh like lead on
the half the town that kicked him!