CHAPTER VI
SMALL DRINK
"Under this tearme of small-drink," wrote an old chronicler, "do I endow such drinks as are of comfort, to quench an honest thirst, not to heat the brain, as one man hath ale, another cider, another metheglin, and one sack." Under this title I also place such tavern and home drinks of colonial times as were not deemed vastly intoxicating; though New England cider might well be ranged very close to New England rum in intoxicating powers.
The American colonists were not enthusiastic water drinkers, and they soon imported malt and established breweries to make the familiar ale and beer of old England. The Dutch patroons found brewing a profitable business in New York, and private families in all the colonies built home brew-houses and planted barley and hops.
In Virginia a makeshift ale was made from maize as early as 1620. George Thorpe wrote that it was a good drink, much preferable to English beer. Governor Berkeley wrote of Virginians a century later:--
"Their small-drink is either wine or water, beer, milk and water, or water alone. Their richer sort generally brew their small-beer with malt, which they have from England, though barley grows there very well; but for the want of convenience of malt-houses, the inhabitants take no care to sow it. The poorer sort brew their beer with molasses and bran; with Indian corn malted with drying in a stove: with persimmons dried in a cake and baked; with potatoes with the green stalks of Indian corn cut small and bruised, with pompions, with the Jerusalem artichoke which some people plant purposely for that use, but this is the least esteemed."
Similar beers were made in New England. The court records are full of enactments to encourage beer-brewing. They had not learned that liberty to brew, when and as each citizen pleased, would prove the best stimulus. Much personal encouragement was also given. The President of Harvard College did not disdain to write to the court on behalf of "Sister Bradish," that she might be "encouraged and countenanced" in her baking of bread and brewing and selling of penny beer. And he adds in testimony that "such is her art, way, and skill that shee doth vend such comfortable penniworths for the relief of all that send unto her as elsewhere they can seldom meet with." College students were permitted to buy of her to a certain amount; and with the light of some contemporary evidence as to the quality of the college commons we can believe they needed very "comfortable penniworths."
Some New England taverns were famous for their spruce, birch, and sassafras beer, boiled with scores of roots and herbs, with birch, spruce, or sassafras bark, with pumpkin and apple parings, with sweetening of molasses or maple syrup, or beet tops and other makeshifts. A colonial song writer boasted--
"Oh, we can make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips."
[Illustration: Sign-board of Amherst Hotel.]
According to Diodorus Siculus, the ancient Britons drank on festive occasions liquors made from honey, apples, and barley, viz., mead, cider, and ale. The Celts drank mead and cider--natural drinks within the capabilities of manufacture by slightly civilized nations; for wild honey and wild apples could be found everywhere. Ale indicated agriculture and a more advanced civilization.
Mead, or metheglin, of fermented honey, herbs, and water, has been made by every race and tribe on this globe, living where there was enough vegetation to cherish bees. It had been a universal drink in England, but was somewhat in disuse when this country was settled.
Harrison wrote:--
"The Welsh make no less account of metheglin than the Greeks did of their ambrosia or nectar, which for the pleasantness thereof was supposed to be such as the gods themselves did delight in. There is a kind of swishswash made also in Essex, and divers other places, with honeycomb and water, which the homely country-wives putting some pepper and a little other spice among, called mead: very good in mine opinion for such as love to be loose-bodied at large, or a little eased of the cough. Otherwise it differeth so much from true metheglin as chalk from cheese; and one of the best things that I know belonging thereto is, that they spend but little labour and less cost in making of the same, and therefore no great loss if it were never occupied."
Metheglin was one of the drinks of the American colonists. It was a favorite drink in Kentucky till well into this century. As early as 1633, the Piscataqua planters of New Hampshire, in their list of values which they set in furs,--the currency of the colony,--made "6 Gallon Mathaglin equal 2 Lb Beaver." In Virginia, whole plantations of honey locust were set out to supply metheglin. The long beans of the locust were ground and mixed with honey herbs and water, and fermented.
In a letter written from Virginia in 1649, it is told of "an ancient planter of twenty-five years standing," that he had good store of bees and "made excellent good Matheglin, a pleasant and strong drink."
Oldmixon, in _History of Carolina_ (1708), says, "the bees swarm there six or seven times a year, and the metheglin made there is as good as Malaga sack," which may be taken _cum grano salis_.
In New England drinking habits soon underwent a marked and speedy change. English grains did not thrive well those first years of settlement, and were costly to import, so New Englanders soon drifted from beer-drinking to cider-drinking. The many apple orchards planted first by Endicott and Blackstone in Massachusetts, and Wolcott in Connecticut, and seen in a few decades on every prosperous and thrifty farm, soon gave forth their bountiful yield of juicy fruit. Perhaps this change in drinking habits was indirectly the result of the influence of the New England climate. Cider seemed more fitted for sharp New England air than ale. Cider was soon so cheap and plentiful throughout the colony that all could have their fill. Josselyn said in 1670: "I have had at the tap-houses of Boston an ale-quart of cider spiced and sweetened with sugar for a groat."
[Illustration: Eagle Tavern and Sign-board, Newton, New Hampshire.]
All the colonists drank cider, old and young, and in all places,--funerals, weddings, ordainings, vestry-meetings, church-raisings, etc. Infants in arms drank mulled hard cider at night, a beverage which would kill a modern babe. It was supplied to students at Harvard and Yale colleges at dinner and bever, being passed in two quart tankards from hand to hand down the commons table. Old men began the day with a quart or more of hard cider before breakfast. Delicate women drank hard cider. All laborers in the field drank it in great draughts that were often liberally fortified with drams of New England rum. The apple crop was so wholly devoted to the manufacture of cider that in the days of temperance reform at the beginning of this century, Washingtonian zealots cut down great orchards of full-bearing trees, not conceiving any adequate use of the fruit for any purpose save cider-making.
A friend--envious and emulous of the detective work so minutely described by Conan Doyle--was driving last summer on an old New England road entirely unfamiliar to him. He suddenly turned to the stage-driver by his side and, pointing to a house alongside the road, said, "The man who lives there is a drunkard."--"Why, yes," answered the driver in surprise, "do you know him?"--"No," said the traveller, "I never saw him and don't know his name, but he's a drunkard and his father was before him, and his grandfather."--"It's true," answered the driver, with much astonishment; "how could you tell?"--"Well, there is a large orchard of very old apple trees round that house, while all his neighbors, even when the houses are old, have younger orchards. When the 'Washingtonian or Temperance Movement' reached this town, the owner of this place was too confirmed a drunkard to reform and cut down his apple trees as his neighbors did, and he kept on at his hard cider and cider brandy, and his son and grandson grew up to be drunkards after him." Later inquiry in the town proved the truth of the amateur detective's guesswork.
Cider was tediously made at first by pounding the apples in wooden mortars; the pomace was afterward pressed in baskets. Then rude mills with a spring board and heavy maul crushed the apples in a hollowed log. Then presses for cider-making began to be set up about the year 1650.
Apples were at that time six to eight shillings a bushel; cider 1_s._ 8_d._ a gallon--as high-priced as New England rum a century later.
Connecticut cider soon became specially famous. Roger Williams in 1660 says John Winthrop's loving letter to him was as grateful as "a cup of your Connecticut cider." By 1679 it was cheap enough, ten shillings a barrel; and in the year 1700, about seven shillings only. It had then replaced beer in nearly all localities in daily diet; yet at the Commencement dinner at Harvard in 1703, four barrels of beer were served and but one of cider, with eighteen gallons of wine.
In 1721 one Massachusetts village of forty families made three thousand barrels of cider, and Judge Joseph Wilder of Lancaster, Massachusetts, made six hundred and sixteen barrels in the year 1728.
Bennett, an English traveller, writing of Boston in the year 1740, says that "the generality of the people with their victuals" drank cider, which was plentiful and good at three shillings a barrel. It took a large amount of cider to supply a family when all drank, and drank freely. Ministers often stored forty barrels of cider for winter use.
[Illustration: Cider Pitcher and Cups.]
By the closing years of the seventeenth century nearly all Virginia plantations had an apple orchard. Colonel Fitzhugh had twenty-five hundred apple trees. So quickly did they mature, that six years after the scions were planted, they bore fruit. Many varieties were common, such as russets, costards, pippins, mains, marigolds, kings, and batchelors. So great was the demand for cider in the South that apple orchards were deemed the most desirable leasing property. Cider never reached a higher price, however, than two shillings and a half in Virginia during the seventeenth century. Thus it could be found in the house of every Maryland and Virginia planter. It was supplied to the local courts during their times of sitting. Many households used it in large quantity instead of beer or metheglin, storing many barrels for everyday use.
At a very early date apple trees were set out in New York, and cultivated with much care and much success. Nowhere else in America, says Dankers, the Labadist traveller, had he seen such fine apples. The names of the Newton pippin, the Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie swaar apple, the red streak, guelderleng, and others of well-known quality, show New York's attention to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swedist naturalist, spoke of the splendid apple orchards which he saw throughout New York in 1749, and told of the use of the horse press in the Hudson Valley for making cider. Cider soon rivalled in domestic use in this province the beer of the Fatherland. It was constantly used during the winter season, and, diluted with water, sweetened and flavored with nutmeg, made a grateful summer drink. Combined with rum, it formed many of the most popular and intoxicating colonial drinks, of which "stone-wall" was the most potent. Cider-royal was made by boiling four barrels of cider into one barrel. P. T. Barnum said cider-spirits was called "gumption."
A New Hampshire settler carried on his back for twenty miles to his home a load of young apple trees. They thrived and grew apace, and his first crop was eight bushels. From these, he proudly recounted, he made one barrel of cider, one barrel of water-cider, and "one barrel of charming good drink." Water-cider, or ciderkin, was a very weak, slightly cidery beverage, which was made by pouring water over the solid dregs left after the cider had been pressed from the pomace, and pressing it over again. It was deemed especially suitable for children to drink; sometimes a little molasses and ginger was added to it.
A very mild tavern drink was beverige; its concoction varied in different localities. Sometimes beverige was water-cider or ciderkin; at other times cider, spices, and water. Water flavored with molasses and ginger was called beverige, and is a summer drink for New England country-folk to-day.
[Illustration: Parson's Tavern.]
John Hammond wrote of Virginia in 1656 in his _Leah and Rachel_:--
"Beare is indeed in some places constantly drunken, in other some nothing but Water or Milk, and Water or Beverige; and that is where the good-wives (if I may so call them) are negligent and idle; for it is not want of Corn to make Malt with, for the Country affords enough, but because they are slothful and careless; and I hope this Item will shame them out of these humours; that they will be adjudged by their drinke, what kind of Housewives they are."
Vinegar and water--a drink of the ancient Roman soldiery--was also called beverige. Dr. Rush wrote a pamphlet recommending its use by harvest laborers.
Switchel was a similar drink, strengthened with a dash of rum. Ebulum was the juice of elder and juniper berries, spiced and sweetened. Perry was made from pears, and peachy from peaches.
A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem. It is difficult to decide which was worse, the drink or its name. It was sour household beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with crumbs of "ryneinjun" bread, and drunk piping hot; its name was whistle-belly-vengeance, or whip-belly-vengeance. This name was not a Yankee vulgarism, but a well-known old English term. Bickerdyke says small beer was rightly stigmatized by this name. Dean Swift in his _Polite Conversations_ gives this smart dialogue:--
"_Hostess_ (offering ale to Sir John Linger). I never taste malt-liquor, but they say ours is well-hopp'd.
_Sir John._ Hopp'd! why if it had hopp'd a little further, it would have hopp'd into the river.
_Hostess._ I was told ours was very strong.
_Sir John._ Yes! strong of the water. I believe the brewer forgot the malt, or the river was too near him. Faith! it is more whip-belly-vengeance; he that drinks most has the worst share."
This would hardly seem a word for "polite conversation," though it was certainly a term in common use. Its vulgarity is in keen contrast to the name of another "small drink," a name which brings to the mental vision thoughts of the good cheer, the genial hospitality, the joy of living, of Elizabethan days. A black letter copy of the _Loyal Garland_, a collection of songs of the seventeenth century, thus names the drink in this gay song:--
"To the Tavern lets away! There have I a Mistress got, Cloystered in a Pottle Pot; Plump and bounding, soft and fair, Bucksome, sweet and debonair, And they call her _Sack_, my Dear!"
It is vain to enter here into a discussion of exactly what sack was, since so much has been written about it. The name was certainly applied to sweet wines from many places. A contemporary authority, Gervayse Markham, says in The _English Housewife_, "Your best Sackes are of Seres in Spain, your smaller of Galicia or Portugall: your strong Sackes are of the islands of the Canaries."
Sack was, therefore, a special make of the strong, dry, sweet, light-colored wines of the sherry family, such as come from the South, from Portugal, Spain, and the Canary Islands. By the seventeenth century the name was applied to all sweet wines of this class, as distinguished from Rhenish wines on one hand and red wines on the other. Many do not wish to acknowledge that sack was sherry, but there was little distinction between them. Sherris-sack, named by Shakespeare, was practically also sherry.
Sack was so cheap that it could be used by all classes. From an original license granted by Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1584, to one Bradshaw to keep a tavern we learn that sack was then worth two shillings a gallon.
[Illustration: Toby Fillpots.]
Perhaps the most famous use of sack was in the making of sack-posset, that drink of brides, of grooms, of wedding and christening parties. A rhymed rule for sack-posset found its way into many collections, and into English and American newspapers. It is said to have been written by Sir Fleetwood Fletcher. It was thus printed in the _New York Gazette_ of February 13, 1744:--
"A Receipt for all young Ladies that are going to be Married. To make a SACK-POSSET
From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch sack from Spain A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast. O'er flaming coals together let them heat Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet. O'er such another fire set eggs, twice ten, New born from crowing cock and speckled hen; Stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken. From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet, A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it. When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg, Unite them firmly like the triple League. Then covered close, together let them dwell Till Miss twice sings: _You must not kiss and tell_. Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon, And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon."
Sack was drunk in America during the first half-century of colonial life. It was frequently imported to Virginia; and all the early instructions for the voyage cross-seas, such as Governor Winthrop's to his wife and those of the Plymouth Plantations, urge the shipping of sack for the sailors. Even in Judge Sewall's day, a century after the planting of Boston, sack-posset was drunk at Puritan weddings, but a psalm and a prayer made it properly solemn. Judge Sewall wrote of a Boston wedding:--
"There was a pretty deal of company present. Many young gentlemen and young gentlewomen. Mr. Noyes made a speech, said love was the sugar to sweeten every condition in the marriage state. After the Sack-Posset sang 45th Psalm from 8th verse to end."
[Illustration: Flip Glasses and Nutmeg Holders.]
Canary soon displaced sack in popular affection, and many varieties of closely allied wines were imported. Sir Edmund Andros named in his excise list "Fayal wines, or any other wines of the Western Islands, Madeira, Malaga, Canary, Tent, and Alcant." Claret was not popular. The consumption of sweet wines was astonishing, and the quality was exceeding good. Spiced wines were much sold at taverns, sangaree and mulled wines. Brigham's Tavern at Westborough had a simple recipe for mulled wine: simply a quart of boiling hot Madeira, half a pint of boiling water, six eggs beaten to a froth, all sweetened and spiced. Nutmeg was the favorite flavoring, and nutmegs gilded and beribboned were an esteemed gift. The importation of them was in early days wholly controlled by the Dutch. High livers--_bon vivants_--carried nutmegs in their pockets, fashionable dames also. One of the prettiest trinkets of colonial times is the dainty nutmeg holder, of wrought silver or Battersea enamel, just large enough to hold a single nutmeg. The inside of the cover is pierced or corrugated to form a grater. The ones now before me, both a century and a half old, when opened exhale a strong aroma of nutmeg, though it is many a year since they have been used. With a nutmeg in a pocket holder, the exquisite traveller, whether man or woman, could be sure of a dainty spiced wine flavored to taste; "atop the musky nut could grated be," even in the most remote tavern, for wine was everywhere to be found, but nutmegs were a luxury. Negus, a washy warm wine-punch invented in Queen Anne's day by Colonel Negus, was also improved by a flavoring of nutmeg.
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