The Spoon

Trifling—Publishers’ Rebuke—Habits of Animals and Men—Their Organization—Man designed for a Mechanic—Arts—Origin of Spoons—Descended from the Ladle and Caldron—Original pottage—Defects of Recorded History—Spoons coeval with Soup—Adam and Animal Food—Artificial Forms—Natural Utensils—Spoons of Marine Shells—Who first beheld the Ocean—Primitive Spoon-Handles—Devices common to all Times—Chowder Parties—Visit to the Sea—The Cockle an ancient Symbol.

It is now time to attend to the more serious part of the subject. When schoolboys have consumed their allotted hour at noontide in sport, their attention is required to less diverting studies in-doors; and we, after wearying grave readers with trifling, must endeavor to gain their forgiveness by closer attention to the lesson before us. We confess proceeding to the remainder with reluctance, and a wish that it was over; because we regret to part from those congenial spirits with whom we have hitherto frolicked. It were unreasonable to hope for their 86company to the end of our task, and presumptuous to press them to stay, lest entering on the following chapters should be to them like passing into school after play. We hope, however, like a veritable truant, to meet them again ‘as soon as school’s out,’ and sooner, if the master’s back should be turned.

While closing the last sentence, the bell wires suddenly lashed the walls of our humble domicil, making one start like an idler whose back unexpectedly tastes the pedagogue’s cane. A presentiment came over us that all was not right; and sure enough, the postman handed in a note from the publishers, reminding us that they dealt in sterling works, and had no intention of vending ephemeral brochures—and that unless the rest of ‘the copy’ was divested of such volatile matter as pervaded the pages already printed, they should not risk any more of their money in setting up the type, and none of their reputation in selling the work! As there is no withstanding these men, the reader will bear in mind, when the subject becomes remarkably dull, that it is so in obedience to orders, and whenever a little life or pleasantry appears, the writer has for a moment slipped off the shackles so cruelly imposed upon him.

The history of man is more fluctuating than waves or the wind; its aspect is never the same for an hour. That of animals is uniform, because they pursue the even tenor of their way undiverted by unnatural or visionary speculations; they live, rear and educate their young, and die, as they ought to do; hence the annals of a tribe serve for the species 87wherever located, and for that species forever. Their ideas of propriety, (they certainly have such, for a matronly cat slaps her kitten when it does wrong, as neatly, and frowns on it as demurely as a lady correcting her boy—so a monkey pinches the ear of its baby and grins its rebuke as intelligibly as ever did M. Picard,) their manners, customs, vocations, and devices, never vary, except where climate and peculiar circumstances require slight modifications. Pursuing the same course through life, one which experience has established as the best, the present races enjoy the blessings of existence in a degree equal to their ancestors, nor will their descendants partake of them in a greater.

But not so with man. Here, one people riots in luxury; yonder, groans another with the pangs of penury. There, science develops new motive forces to supercede human labor; here, men toil like cattle, and not even for themselves. This community is enlightened; the inhabitants of a thousand others are ignorant almost as the beasts among which they dwell. In one place, man is a philosopher; in another, a savage. Yonder, he exists in primeval forests, clothed with skins, sheltered in huts, and destitute of the commonest conveniences; here, he rolls through streets in chariots, his raiment silks and brocade—he banquets in palaces, taking his food from plates of porcelain, with forks of silver and spoons of gold.

The origin of spoons, like that of every primeval device may be traced to man’s organization. Though 88lord of this planet, he is destitute of many physical endowments conferred on inferior beings; but, in the superiority of his reasoning powers, he finds a thousand substitutes for every deprivation; hence, with a tender, a comparatively feeble, and a naked body, one unfurnished with defensive or destructive weapons, he overcomes the largest animals, subdues the fiercest, overtakes the fleetest, and brings to his feet both the feathered and finny tribes. Except him, all things living have natural apparatus or appendages to seek and seize their food. Such as live in liquids, or which frequently imbibe them, are equally provided for every emergency. The leech tribe, and myriads of insects, extract blood by natural lancets and cupping implements. Dogs, and the feline race, lap or scoop up water with their tongues. The elephant draws it through his trunk, as through the hose of an engine, while other quadrupeds plunge their mouths into a stream. Some birds pump it up as by a sucking syringe, and others hoist it mechanically in their bills—that is, in spoons attached to their heads.

Plate 3

Roman

Lith of E. Jones 128 Fulton S^t N.Y.

There is, then, a marked line of separation between man and other inhabitants of the earth, in this—he fabricates for himself artificial tools; they possess in their bodily organs natural ones. In other words, he was intended to be, par excellence, a mechanic—an inventor and maker of machines. Here we see the arts in their origin and design are of God; being based on the deficiencies of our natural organs, and on our capacities for devising substitutes. 89No truth shines so clear on Nature’s page. Without arts, man could not, as an animal, exist; the wolf, lion and bear would hunt him as their certain prey; but if none of these prowled in forests, the simplest of his wants could not be realized without implements of some form or other; he could neither procure water from pits, nor fruit from trees—nothing beyond the reach of his hands. He could have no beds to repose on, no clothes to cover nor fire to warm him. He would be the most loathsome and helpless of beings. The Arts make him what he is. Essential to animal life, they also form the ladder by which alone he rises in the scale of intelligence. They are the foundation of all his greatness; and while the world endures, those people who cultivate them the most will be found the most wealthy, powerful, and intelligent.

Man has no natural appendage for carrying fluids to his lips. The half-closed hand is at best a leaky and a poor substitute for a ladle or spoon; consequently never made for either. With hot liquids, it is wholly inapplicable. If the Creator, therefore, designed our species to cook food and feed on warm fluids, he also designed us to invent ready means of heating and convenient apparatus from which to receive them. Let us see how this duty has, in part, been performed; for the history of the spoon, so far as it goes, is, as well as that of the caldron, the history of man.

There are two views in which the origin of the implement may be considered: 1st, as a convenient 90device for taking a mouthful of hot fluids; 2d, its like employment for cold ones. Though now often used with food at natural temperatures, the spoon proper was not invented till victuals were boiled. It is a genuine descendant of the caldron: but comes more directly from the ladle. Another member of the family may here be mentioned—the basin or bowl—for the spoon is to the latter what the ladle is to the kettle or pot. The spoon is known in some countries as the bowl-spoon, and the ladle as the pot-spoon—‘cuiller à pot.’

These cognate companions are so proverbially fond of each other’s company that wherever one is, the others are sure not to be far off. When one is mentioned, the rest are implied—a fact of material benefit to us in pursuing the subject. Thus, when the servant of Elisha put on the great pot, as directed, ‘and poured out the pottage for the young men to eat,’ we are as certain he furnished each with a spoon, as if the fact had been particularly detailed. The order of precedency, then, according to seniority or birth-right, stands thus: the kettle, the ladle, the bowl, and the spoon.

Is it asked—When was the first pottage made? We cannot tell. All similar questions bring antiquarians and historians to a stand, and for the simple reason, the annals of the early ages are lost—or rather, were never written. If we look back three thousand years—and what are thirty centuries in this planet’s history?—we find little else than monstrous fables, puerile legends, and incredible traditions, in 91which scarcely a ray of truth can be perceived. The early history of man is a blank; that of succeeding ages, a chaos. The mythologic or legendary lore of antiquity is of the same character as modern barbarians give of their ancestors and country, and about the same reliance may be placed on one as on the other. All savages are ignorant of their origin as a people, and on the same subject enlightened nations are little better informed.

Take what is called ancient history, and what is it but a few isolated scraps relating to minute portions of the earth, and, comparatively speaking, extending back but to yesterday? What men were doing elsewhere, absolutely nothing is known—there is not a whisper about them. Unheard of nations have agitated the surface of this planet, have been tossed to and fro by political and civil commotions, and have sunk into the fathomless depths of the past. Of them, neither we nor all who come after us can learn anything. In fact, we are wholly ignorant of the early adventures of our species. Oblivion has swept away all memorials of the first races of men, while the arenas of their exploits are, for aught we know, covered by the ocean.

If the first chapters of Genesis are to be taken in their literal sense, and the first pair of Moses for the original progenitors of mankind, (i. e. not of a race only, as some writers suppose,) spoons may be dated from the epoch of Adam. They are certainly coeval with soup, and soup with the boiling of liquids. ’Tis true the idea of flesh meats not having 92been used in Adam’s time is commonly entertained, notwithstanding animals were offered in sacrifices, their skins used as clothes, and the strange fact of his second son being a breeder of cattle, (strange, indeed, if vegetable food, only was used); but we are fully persuaded the old gentleman, at least during the latter part of his life, ate venison with a relish equal to Isaac’s, and conveyed pottage to his mouth with a spoon, in the manner of Esau. Meat broth was a favorite dish with the patriarchs, and there is little reason to suppose antediluvian farmers and keepers of sheep were not as fond of it as Abraham, Jacob, or Job, or those who in later times prepared soup for the ‘sons of the prophets.’

The same instinct which leads man to seek food leads him to cook it; that which induces him to quench his thirst suggests the means of carrying fluids to his lips. Every close observer knows that the primitive contrivances of men were counterparts of Nature’s. In all he received the first hint from her, while in many she supplied him with the object he wanted ready formed, or nearly so, to his hands. This might have been expected à priori; for, as an ignorant pupil, placed in her school, it was necessary that he should have examples to imitate—patterns to copy. Without these, what could he have done or known? He might have felt wants, but could not tell how to remove them. If natural objects had not, like types, impressed their images on his mind, and their adaptation to various purposes become obvious to his senses, a knowledge of the 93properties of matter, of the principles of fusing, forging, modeling and carving it, and the influence of figure in its modifications, would have been slowly acquired, if acquired at all. The development of the intellect depends on external things; without these the mind would be a receptacle of dark and shapeless visions—a chaos. If innate ideas existed, they would have been useless, for they could have no relation to physical creation unless derived from it.

It would be a curious speculation to inquire what might have been the forms of the current productions of our workshops, if the Creator had molded every object after one figure. Could the human mind have produced the exquisite goblets and vases of Greece and Etruria, if beauty in these and endless other shapes had not been displayed in the vegetable kingdom? Where would have been the stately column, the wreathed shaft, Corinthian capital, and their appendages? And but for mineral and marine productions, could the primitive savage have developed the implements upon which his existence depended—tools, the parents of those on which the happiness of civilized society rests? We believe he could no more have invented the bow or sling than the musket—the spoon than the smokejack.

In utensils adapted for culinary purposes, nature is lavish of her gifts. Vessels of capacity, from a mug to a barrel, she supplies in abundance; leaving man simply to determine the uses to which to put 94them. Pitchers, pipkins, ladles, buckets, plates, &c. of all sizes, are derived from the vegetable world—from husks of cocoa-nuts, joints of bamboo, from the calabash and other varieties of the gourd. In the East Indies, says Dampier, ‘cups, dishes, ladles, spoons, and in a manner all eating and drinking vessels, are made from the shell of the cocoa-nut.’ Marine shells are distinguished by naturalists, from their resemblance to artificial devices. One genera is named Patella, from their likeness to a dish; another is known as the Dippers. Of species, there is the Haustrum or Bucket, Urceus the Pitcher, Trocus the Cup, &c. Others are named after the Razor, Rasp, Lancet, Awl, Bell, Bodkin, Needle, &c. [See Wood’s Catalogue, Lon. 1828.]

The first spoons were all natural ones. A large class of prototypes were shells of the limpit, (a univalve) those of the cockle, muscle, clam, and similar bivalvular inhabitants of salt and fresh waters. They are so obviously adapted to convey small quantities of liquids to the mouth, so numerous and accessible, so neat and cleanly, that people in all ages have used them for such purposes. [See Plate I.] The choicest liquors of the old Picts and Scots were served in cockle shells; hence, “rejoicing in the shell,” was a term with them equivalent to modern expressions respecting the glass. Till recently Highlanders drank whiskey in the same way, holding the shell with the thumb on the thick part. Of late years, natural shells have given place to artificial 95ones. [See Scottish Gael, 349.] Pearls were formerly found in fresh-water muscles of the River Ban, in Ulster, Ireland. The shells, says an old gazetteer, “are used by the poor as spoons.”

People now sip tea with a spoon to which the name of the decoction has been given; but formerly northern ladies took it from the same kind of vessels as their lords used for usquebaugh. Scott has an allusion to the practice in ‘St. Ronan’s Well’—the old nabob ungallantly describes the ladies as sipping catlap out of cockle shells.

An interesting question, could it be answered, is here suggested: Under what circumstances were shells originally used for artificial purposes? Perhaps not till the ocean had been seen by human eyes; but no one has told us where, nor at what epoch, this took place, nor who the individuals were. In fact, we are ignorant of the physical condition of the earth at the time, and of the location of the progenitors of our race with regard to the sea. Ages may have elapsed ere the grand terrestrial reservoir was made known. Who can imagine the feelings of those who first approached the coast, and their amazement when they reached it! How intent they gazed upon the rising and receding waves, and marvelled at the breakers—at the roaring surf, as it rushed in foam towards them! But when their emotions had somewhat subsided, with what rapture did they bound along the white and glistening shore, and seize the strangely formed and variously colored objects! With what volubility did they descant 96upon them, and the uses to which to apply them! And how gladly were these primeval travellers hailed on returning to their homes, laden with knives, saws, cups, spoons, and other natural utensils! Immense treasures must have adorned the virgin borders of the oceanic basin at the birth of man. Shells of every shape, and size, and hue, accumulated through unknown periods, had laid undisturbed until our species came.

Shells have been incorporated with the arts. Vessels for a thousand purposes are modeled and decorated after them. Some are perfect spoons, including the handles. [See Plate I.] Such are used where they abound, and of course were much more in demand in early times. When a muscle, cockle, or similar shell, was required for scooping up heated fluids, an artificial handle was necessary, to avoid scalding the fingers: now, of what material were the handles, and in what manner were they attached to the bowls? These questions may appear unanswerable, but we think we can solve them as certainly as if we had lived among the first spoon-users: Man, under the same circumstances, always adopts the same or similar devices. This is a general—a universal truth. It is the result of a species of instinct, invariable in its impulses as in the lower tribes; and hence, we are sure the original mode of putting handles to limpit, cockle, and clam shells, was identical with that now practiced by African negroes, American Indians, Arabs, Malays, and mountaineers, viz. by forcing the split-end of a 97short stick over the edge, as represented in the plate. Shells of the cockle and soft clam thus make capital spoons, and fastidious indeed must he be who cannot relish his food from them.

Such contrivances are common to man—made patent from the beginning, and repeated in every age and clime. In them the origin of many useful arts and devices may be traced. They are among the ‘early lessons,’ the ‘easy problems,’ printed by nature in her horn-book for mechanics; and simple as they are, they offer delightful matter for reflection on the process by which man was led, step by step, to explore and beneficially employ the wonderful sources of pleasure and wealth placed at his disposal—in other words, to accomplish his destiny here.

Civilized parties of pleasure, when thrown upon their own resources to prepare food on the beach, or inland, &c. insensibly copy the devices of untutored children of the forests—making spoons of shells, forks and flesh-hooks out of pointed sticks, knives of flint or sharp-edged shells, and handling hot coals with tongs formed of a couple of twigs. By placing ourselves in such situations, we can study our species in times of which no record remains, and perceive how invention began and progressed. A sketch of an Indian “chowder party,” to illustrate more fully the use of shell spoons, was prepared, but subsequent arrangements required its exclusion and our lucubrations with it.

Perhaps no recreation, for people whose lives are spent in cities, is so beneficial as occasional fishing 98trips to the sea. The fresh air, the new feelings which floating on water gives rise to, the excitement produced by sly fish nibbling, the palpitation consequent on ravenous bites, and the fluttering at heart when the biter is fairly hooked, &c. salutarily agitate both body and mind. The appetite created by the sea breeze and the exercise—the hoisting of the anchor and sailing to the shore to cook what is caught—one preparing the pot; another gathering fuel; a third, head cook; and a fourth converting shells into spoons, &c.—is real enjoyment. On such occasions the blessings of life are felt, uncontaminated with drawing-room rules and parlor distinctions.

To persons dwelling far inland, a visit once in their lives to the ocean constitutes an epoch in their existence, and a never-failing theme of grateful recollection and discourse. If such do not now wear scallop shells in their hats as emblems of having had a glimpse of the wonders of the deep, they retain vivid impressions of the scene in their heads. The adventure forms a pleasing reminiscence—its history a little romance and the gem of fire-side tales.

Much learning has been expended on the cockle as a badge of pilgrims in the middle ages. Worn in the hat, it indicated that the wearer had visited the shores of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. But it was an emblem of Astarte, the famous Syrian goddess. Possibly its symbolical application originated from its primitive use as a spoon, and as such, carried about the person.

Spoons unknown in Polynesia—People of Guinea at Dinner—Spoons of the Peruvians and Astecs—Caldron and Spoon indigenous to Northern Climes—Hot Fluids and Ultra Dietists—Warm Drinks sold in Pompeii—Chinese Opinion—Natural Aliment of the Esquimaux—A Fuegian eating Fresh Fish—Cooking—Original Sin—Sacrifices—Athenian Boiling Feast—Anglo-Saxons—Unsavory Superstitions—Persians—Guatamalian Kitchen—Tartar Cookery—Laplanders—Greenlanders—Cosmetics and Domestic Economy in the Polar Regions.

It should be remarked that, notwithstanding the preceding specimens of spoons from the South Seas, there is no question of the implements being in many parts of Oceanica a modern innovation. In the Sandwich and other islands of Polynesia they were unknown till introduced by whalemen or national 112navigators. The inhabitants did not use them, because they had no use for them. They had no idea of heating liquids, and no vessels (except a small wooden bowl) in which to heat them. It was the same with most if not all the people of Australasia. Their cookery was confined to roasting and baking. Rutherford says the New Zealanders never drank any thing hot or warm. Their only vessel for holding water was the calabash which they never dreamt of turning to a boiler or skillet.

Some African tribes use the spoon, but many do not; yet all are acquainted with the process of making pottage. Villault, speaking of Negroes on the coast of Guinea, says: ‘Ils mangent avec beaucoup de mal propreté. Leurs ongles leur servent de couteau; et n’ayant ni fourchettes ni cuillers: ils se lancent avec les doigts chaque morceau dans le gozier. On les voit porter tous ensemble la main au plat, et prendre leurs ragouts a poignées.’ [Histoire Générale, Tome V. 197.] To take up solid and even semifluid food (as boiled rice) with the fingers, is of great antiquity. The custom prevails universally in the Eastern world, except China; but this is not owing to ignorance of the spoon, either with Africans or Asiatics. If neither use the implement in eating rice, it invariably assists them to cook that great pabulum of life.

Perhaps it may be doubted whether the aborigines of America had the spoon previous to the arrival of white people: most of them certainly had. Here, as in other parts of the earth, wherever the caldron 113was known, spoons were in use. The Peruvians had them of silver and gold; so had the Mexicans. The Astecs, in their feasts, ablutions, and table furniture, approached in many respects to Asiatic customs. They kept meats warm with chafing dishes. The tables of the wealthy were ornamented with vases of silver and sometimes of gold; ‘their drinking cups and spoons were of the same costly materials.’ Montezuma took no other beverage than chocolate flavored with vanilla and other spices, so prepared as to be reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth. This beverage, if so it could be called, was served in golden goblets, with spoons of the same metal, or of tortoise-shell, finely wrought.’ [Prescott’s Mexico.]

But the less refined people, of both continents were found in possession of the caldron and spoon. The brutalized Brazilians boiled victuals in earthen vessels, and used knives of flint and spoons of wood and horn. [See Lafitau’s Mœurs des Sauvages, Tome I. 572, Plate 19, and Tome II. 114.] The Virginia Indians had clay pipkins of a very superior quality, and wooden bowls, &c. of their own manufacture. [Phil. Trans. Abrid. III. 572, and IX. 474.] The Mandans, a tribe now nearly extinct, still fabricate earthen caldrons as their ancestors did. They alone, of those occupying the Missouri valley, are believed to make them.

The boiler and spoon would seem to be indigenous and indispensable to northern climes. The 114former, made sometimes of a skin, at other times of wood, and the latter of horn, bone, &c. are used at this day, as they ever have been since man first took possession of the arctic regions. A few Indians about Hudson’s Bay purchase brass kettles at the factories, but the greater part prepare their food in the large upright boilers of birch already mentioned. When animal food is scarce, and it often is so, they have no resource but to make pottage with a species of moss that collects on stones. To render it palatable or nutritive boiling is essential.

The utility of hot fluids is a mooted point, but it is not our intention to discuss it. If they are not natural to people in high latitudes, they are to none, and the caldron and spoon, as vehicles for preparing and receiving them, must be denounced as injurious devices. If heated decoctions are violations of nature’s laws, warm or hot food of every description must be deemed such, whether taken in sickness or in health; but who, except the most ultra of dietists, will believe this—men that not only reject animal food but every artificial preparation of aliment—who insist that we should eat only raw fruit and unground grain, and drink nothing. Of course, mills then should be abolished as enervating inventions, preventing people from grinding their own grist with their natural grinders. On the same principle, clothing, dwellings, and fire might be dispensed with; for within the tropics people make little use of the first, and not much of the second; while the Terra del Fuegians can endure their severe climate 115apparently without the other. Abandon the use of fire in cooking, and there would be little demand for fuel even within the temperate zones. Probably three-fourths of the arts connected with the working of metals are more or less allied to the dining-room, kitchen, and toilet.

Nearly every device characteristic of civilization might with equal propriety be abolished; not trifling things only, as knives and forks, in place of teeth and fingers; plates and dishes, for leaves and slabs of slate; napkins, instead of wiping the mouth with the hand; but articles of dress, as shoes, that supersede the thick and more elastic soles which nature bestows on those who go barefoot; straw, beaver and other fancy coverings for the head, when she is ready to furnish gratis matted or felted caps to all who have no dealings with the hatter.

Beneficial or not, the ancients had shops expressly fitted up for the sale of hot drinks. Several Thermopolia have been discovered in Pompeii, with the urns in which the decoctions were made, and furnished with metallic heaters and cocks, like our tea and coffee urns. The Chinese (a pretty good authority as far as relates to antiquity of customs connected with domestic life) drink all their beverages warm. Cold liquids, even pure water, they say, engenders disease. Ice is employed by them to cool meats and fruits, but not to refrigerate water. [Chinese Repos. III. 464.]

Animal diet and warm fluids may be dispensed with in some countries, but not everywhere. It is as 116absurd to suppose that man can in civilized society live in the manner of the savage, as that he could in all climates exist on the same food. Under the influence of science and the division of labor consequent upon an advanced state of the arts, the physical as well as the mental constitution is changed, and a different aliment required to sustain the one as well as the other. If the Creator designed the arctic regions of our planet to be inhabited, he designed man to sustain himself there on animal food, since, generally speaking, no other is within his reach, and in some parts absolutely no other. Besides food, the Esquimaux derive material for clothing, dwellings, light and fuel from the whale, seal, and a few land animals. Olaus Magnus, speaking of the wild people of the north in his time, says, “they dwell in caves made of the bones and ribs of sea-monsters; they live without bread, but only on fish and deer.” Pulse, grain, fruit or roots are not to be had; but if they were actually produced by the soil the natives could not live upon them there.

With these people, then, the use of animal food cannot be wrong, nor the cooking of it a crime. Indeed, so far as they are concerned the kettle and spoon may be considered of divine origin; though like more valuable gifts in more favored climes, these implements are too often neglected; for the brutalized men and women of the north frequently feed, like the bear, on raw flesh; while at the opposite extremity of the continent, the Fuegian, on catching a fish, is in the habit of taking it by the gills and 117instantly making a repast on the struggling victim—lowering the tail into his mouth somewhat like a Neapolitan swallowing strings of macaroni: thus literally obeying the injunctions of those reformers who denounce “every species of cookery as polluting the food which the God of our natures has provided for the sustenance of man.”

So far as history goes, people without cooking have ever been savages, and no refined nations ever eat their food raw. Individual and partial exceptions may of course be found. Cato, the censor, seldom drank anything but water, and often ate dinner prepared without fire. Epicurus is slandered as a voluptuary, for his ordinary diet was bread and water, pulse, milk and cheese. The cynics lived austerely, water being their beverage, and the ground their bed. Diogenes, it is well known, lived more like a brute than a gentleman: his manners too were allied to those of a Hottentot. But some modern ascetics leave the most eccentric of the ancients behind, for they reject not merely flesh meats, but bread, salt, milk, and even water itself! contending that juices of fruits and herbs yield fluid sufficient for the human system; and as animals bake not nor boil, make neither puddings, porridge nor pies—they conclude such things are superfluous to us: nay, some look on cooking as original sin—as the very crime for which Adam and his consort were driven out of Eden!—not satisfied with celestial food, it is said they began to improve (i. e. to spoil) it by art, and were therefore expelled, that they might 118carry their wicked devices elsewhere. Hence the nature of their punishment, and why so large a portion was inflicted on Eve; she being the original transgressor and the greater sinner of the two, just as all her daughters, in the same respect, have been since; for where food is spoiled by cooking, it is woman generally who still commits the crime.

Boiled meats have been common from the earliest periods which history has noticed, and according to the scriptures, with divine approbation. Sacrifices were so frequently boiled that capacious caldrons were permanently erected near temples for the purpose. As the virtue of the flesh was extracted by the soup, spoons must have been in as great demand at Jewish and heathen festivals as knives, fleshforks, or any other implement of the table. [See Ewbank’s Hydraulics, p. 392.]

The Athenians had an annual boiling-feast, dating back to the times of Theseus and the fabulous Minotaur. It was instituted, according to Plutarch, to commemorate the return of the hero and his companions from their perilous adventure at Crete, and arose from the fact of their having made a species of olla-podrida the moment they got safe ashore—mixing the remains of their provisions, “and boiling them in one pot.” Theseus is supposed to have been contemporary with Gideon, and to have flourished 1350 B. C. about 1400 years before his ancient biographer.

The Anglo-Saxon and contemporary people chiefly boiled their meat. Large houses had “a boiling place for small meats and a boiling house 119for the great boiler.” One resistless argument that nature designed men to prepare food by fire is derived from the fact that some roots, upon which large portions of mankind live, are positively noxious if eaten without being cooked—the potato is a sufficient example. In some parts of the earth water for drinking requires to be boiled to render it wholesome. Several ancient people besides the Persians found this necessary.

Most northern nations have been noticed for a want of cleanliness, especially in cooking. The further northward we proceed, the less regard for this virtue appears. It diminishes with degrees of longitude, and within the arctic may be said to have vanished. But it is not confined to one people or one continent. We shall conclude this chapter with a few examples of unsavory superstitions, of which some have direct reference to the ladle and spoon. Let not the reader who is particular in his tastes turn sick at the manners of his species, for not many ages have elapsed since his forefathers became freed from practices as filthy and foolish as any about to be noticed.

The polite and effeminate Persian grandee, so scrupulous in his ablutions and personal purity, takes up his food with his hands, and dreads to change his table cover. “On the ground before us,” observes Mr. Morier, in describing a dinner given to the British embassy by the governor of Bushire, “was spread the sofra, a fine chintz cloth, which perfectly entrenched our legs, and which is used so 120long unchanged that the accumulated fragments of former meals collect into a musty paste and emit no very savory smell; but the Persians are content, for they say that changing the sofra brings ill luck.”

Irish women were formerly described as very “unmannerly [unwomanly] in making butter,” because they held it extremely unlucky to wash their milk-vessels! But the daughters of St. Patrick were not alone addicted to this filthy superstition. In some parts of Scotland the same prejudice to soap and water exists or did recently exist. It is humorously referred to in the Cottages of Glenburnie: “‘Don’t you clean the churn before you put in the cream?’ asked Mrs. Mason. ‘Na, na,’ returned Mrs. McClarty; ‘that wadna be canny ye ken. Naebody hereabouts wad clean their kirn for ony consideration. I never hard o’ sic a thing in a’ my life!’”

‘Dirt bodes luck’ is an old Scottish proverb.

In the middle ages in Europe, candle-bearers in large houses were allowed, among other perquisites, the broken meat which the king or lords spilt on the floor from their plates! No wonder that kings’ houses were then littered with straw like modern stables.

Most travellers complain of South American cookery. Among others, Dunn, in Guatamala, observes, “The whole of these messes were prepared under a shed, in a large dirty yard, which served as a kitchen, and was full of filth of all kinds. The knowledge of this, with the sight of the servants had no tendency to quicken our appetites. The spoons, cups, knives, and forks were of silver.”

121Bell, in passing through Tartary, in the suite of the ‘Russian Embassador to Pekin,’ mentions a hospitable matron, whose cooking was not quite to his taste. Entering a tent, the mistress immediately set to work to make him and his companions some tea. After placing a large iron kettle over the fire, she wiped it out with a horse’s tail which hung in one corner of the tent. Then some water was put in, coarse bohea tea, and a little salt. When near boiling, she took a large brass ladle and tossed the tea till the liquid became quite brown. It was next taken off the fire and poured into another vessel. The kettle was now again wiped out with the same implement as before, and a paste, made of meal and butter, put in and fried; some cream taken from a sheep-skin was added. The tea previously made was poured in, and the whole beat together with the ladle. After being allowed to cool, it was handed round in wooden bowls.

Maundeville, who 500 years before, seems to have passed through Tartary on his way to or from China, says: “The Tartarienes han gret conscience, and holden it for a gret synne to casten a knyf in the fuyr, and for to drawe flessche out of a pot with a knyf.... Thei eten but littille bred, but zif it be in the courtes of gretr Lordes. And thei han not in many places nouther pesen ne benes, ne non other potages, but the brothe of the flessche. For littille ete thei ony thing but flessche and the brothe. And whan thei han eten, thei wypen hire hondes upon hire skirtes; for thei usen non naperye ne towayelles, 122but zif it be before grete Lordes.... And whan thei han eten, thei putten hire dissches vnwasschen in to the pot or cawdroun with remenant of the flessche and of the brothe, til thei wole eten azen.” [Travels, cap. xxiii.]

The cookery of the Laplanders is generally performed by men, and in the dirtiest manner possibly. It is said “the dishes and spoons are seldom washed, or at most, only by squirting water upon them from the mouth, and rubbing them with their fingers!” A favorite dish is made by boiling in a deer’s paunch a mixture of minced meat, blood, and fat; “but the fat is previously chewed by the men and boys to prepare it for mixing more intimately with the other ingredients!” [Ed. Encyc. Arts. Lapland—Hudson Bay.]

With the Greenlanders, “the color and odor of the last dish are left to remove those of a former one.” When a stranger is present, the woman of the house takes a piece of meat from the kettle, licks off the scum and blood, and presents it to him in her hands. This is considered a mark of respect—to decline on his part an insult! The inhabitants of the Marquesas are still more polite: at San Christina it is considered an act of civility to offer the food already chewed, to a friend, that he may have no other trouble than that of swallowing it! Verily, there is no accounting for tastes. The aboriginal women of Brazil prepared an intoxicating drink by masticating manioc, and boiling the substance thus reduced to a pulp. So the ladies of Otaheite made 123a beverage for their lords by chewing yava and spitting the juice into a bowl, when it was mixed with cocoa-nut liquor, and left to ferment.

All the inhabitants of the polar regions resemble each other in their manners and customs. Their bodies are coated with a varnish of dirt and grease, the accumulation of years—the color of the surface beneath being as effectually concealed as in articles covered with paint or japan. With regard to the kitchen, Esquimaux dames would seem to bear off the palm, since they cleanse every culinary utensil, the caldron as well as the spoon, with their tongues; continuing the operation as long as a particle of blubber remains. When Captain Parry bought a lamp of a matron, the economical owner licked it quite clean, devouring the soot and oil with which it was covered, as forming no part of the bargain, and too precious to be given away.

Antiquarian Value of Ancient Table Furniture—People of Egypt—Specimens of their Spoons—Humorists—Other Spoons of Ivory, Bronze and Wood—Salt and Salt-Cellar—Roast Goose in Egypt—Golden Spoons of the Tabernacle and Temple—Simpula of Wood, Bronze and Gilt—Reflections.

Having given samples of primitive spoons formed of shells, horn, and wood, we might proceed to the introduction of those made of pewter, brass, 124iron, silver and other metals—of which some were undoubtedly made in ages anterior to those of history; but all would be sheer conjecture. The fortunes of the first races of men have not been recorded—much less the adventures of their spoons. We shall therefore confine our future observations chiefly to actual specimens, arranged in chronological order and beginning with the oldest extant.

It would have been an agreeable task to have traced a connection in the table utensils of the famous nations of old—in those exported from Tyre, and such as were produced in the silversmith shops of Persepolis or Troy; but no pattern-card of Tyrian or Sidonian spoonmakers has reached us, nor, any specimens placed on the sideboards of Priam or Nebuchadnezzar. The blank might indeed be in a great measure filled by a few from the neighborhood of Memphis and Thebes—such as old Egyptian artists supplied their own and other countries with, when the useful and ornamental arts flourished in the Nilotic valley. Such would have given us an idea of prevailing tastes in the forms and decorations of the implement. We could at a glance have compared them with our own, and told in a moment whether Moses and Joshua, Nehemiah or Ezra—whether Egyptian gentlemen or Jewish maidens took pottage with implements fashioned like ours. How interesting would a sight of such spoons have been! What would not lovers of antiquity give to behold them, or for drawings and descriptions of them! Does the reader enter into the spirit and feelings of 125such philosophers? Does he take pleasure in tracing the characters of remote people in vestiges of their arts—ascertaining their domestic manners in their culinary utensils, and the state of the useful professions among them in products of their workshops? Well, spoons made and used by the old inhabitants of Egypt are in existence! The assortment is limited, but it might have been less; and small as it is, we are enabled to produce drawings of ‘a round dozen.’

What a wonderful people were these children of Ham! The greatest benefactors of their race the world ever saw, they seem to have lived only for posterity—to perpetuate the useful arts—to hand to their successors their knowledge; and lest future physiologists should dispute about their persons, they have come down themselves, and submitted their bodies to our inspection—not in small numbers, but in millions! The catacombs have for ages been quarried like coal mines for fuel, and are yet said to contain more mummies than Egypt living men. How surpassing strange is it, then, that we should have before us spoons used (perhaps) three or four thousand years since, with the men and women they nourished—the identical hands that handled them—the very mouths they entered! What people but one ever did this much for posterity; and what people will ever repeat it? Four thousand years hence (or even one thousand) antiquarians, on referring to our days and our arts, might as well search the soil for our souls as our bodies.

126Is the reader anxious to look on spoons made under the Ptolemies or Pharaohs? Let him exercise a little patience, and, ere he casts his eyes on the next illustration, think within himself what can they be like—of what forms are the bowls—do they resemble shells—are all of one shapes—how decorated, if decorated at all? Then the handles—are they flat like modern ones, round or square, plain or carved? And of what materials are these relics of ancient days?

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SPOONS.

See! there is half a dozen—each of a different pattern, and of assorted sizes, too; unless, as is most likely, the artist who copied them has not drawn all to the same scale. The originals are in the British Museum. Do not they, few as they are, present about as much variety as every species of modern spoons? But if they do—if these stragglers, picked up among tombs or ploughed out of the soil, exhibit such fertility of design, what rich displays of the article must the shelves of goldsmiths, hardware 127and fancy stores in Memphis, Thebes, and On have afforded!

[As we have unfortunately little or no specific information respecting the originals of several of our illustrations, the reader will, we presume, be better pleased with some reflections than with absolute silence. It is awkward to introduce specimens without comment; hence, where descriptive data are not within reach, we shall occasionally offer such remarks, serious or otherwise, as the figures themselves may suggest.]

Not two of the bowls in the preceding spoons are alike; and as for the handles, they are as different as they well could be. In Fig. 1. the bowl represents a slightly scolloped shell, supported on the head of a human figure, which serves as a handle, and whose feet rest on the capital of a column. The handle is short compared to the size of the bowl, (a remark applicable to others,) but it was no doubt proportioned to the particular purpose for which such spoons were made. The pattern seems to have been borrowed from architecture; but there is something bizarre in making Atlantes bear spoons instead of entablatures or domes of temples. The Egyptians were great humorists, and freely indulged in burlesque. If we could suppose a joke was intended in the design, the figure might be taken for a caricature of Atlas or Hercules bearing the celestial or terrestrial sphere, as an intimation that the spoon was all the world to gastronomes, its effects a heavy burden fat men groaned under, and its pleasures 128their highest delight. In this respect the figure is not an inapt representation of some people’s achievements in life.

In Fig. 2. the handle appears as if turned in a lathe: where it joins the bowl it assumes the form of the lotus flower, out of whose leaves the bowl like a ripe fruit is seen to rise. The shape of the bowl is precisely like that of ours, viz: a longitudinal segment of an egg shell.

Fig. 3. is of wood, and very unlike a modern one in shape, unless compared to a marrow spoon. The bowl resembles the cartouche or royal oval, in which the names of the kings of Egypt are inscribed in hieroglyphics on the monuments. It obviously could only have raised fluid matter from shallow dishes or plates. The ornaments may be arbitrary, but we should rather suppose they had an allegorical meaning. The ibex or gazelle, an animal which supplied the chief material for broth; and the fish, with sprigs of parsley or other herbs, in their mouths, as if ready for the table, were certainly not inappropriate decorations of an implement employed in transmitting portions of these victims to the human palate.

Fig. 4.—a bronze spoon, and more nearly resembling the modern one than any of the preceding. The shank is made to represent the human hand and arm—a copy of the first spoon handles, when cockle and muscle shells only were in use. Perhaps there is an allusion to that custom in this ancient implement; but the artist did not forget to introduce a victim of the caldron or spit: he has made the handle 129terminate with the head of a goose, a bird in much repute with the Apician literati of Egypt, and as such often figured on spoons.

Fig. 5. Here we have a spoon representing a fish swimming into a kettle, as if anxious to be macerated and served up at table. The material is wood, and the bowl circular. One part of the fish is made to turn on a pin near the tail, so as to expose a small cavity or box in the thick part of the body. This was probably a sportman’s or traveller’s portable spoon, and the cavity occupied with salt or other condiment—a feature of some interest, since it shows us that ingenuity in such matters dates back to remote periods. In Plate V. is a spoon with a concealed toothpick, an instrument more appropriate to a knife or fork. The Egyptian artist adhered more closely to propriety in introducing a receptacle for seasoning, especially in an utensil employed only with fluid aliments.

Fig. 6. is the plainest of the whole, but not devoid of ornament: the handle, which is long and stout, having one extremity carved into a horse’s head, and the other a projecting piece or shoulder that unites it to the bowl.

Another group, taken from Wilkinson’s ‘Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,’ will be found on the following page.

Fig. 1. is of ivory, about four inches long, and preserved in the Public Museum at Berlin. It was discovered at Thebes along with a deep stand or chest containing a number of small jars or bottles—supposed 130to have been part of the stock of an apothecary, or to have belonged to the toilet of a Theban beauty. The style of the handle of this spoon is unique, and independent of the carved head, displays much taste.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SPOONS.

The implement itself is not unlike some of our small spoons—possibly it belonged to an ancient salt-cellar. Salt, it will be remembered, was used at table in remote antiquity just as it is at this day, and several superstitions were associated with it. Omens drawn from spilling it, observes Fosbroke, are equally antique with its use. The salt-cellar was 131placed on the table with the first dish containing offerings to the Gods. Its presence was supposed to sanctify the food, and great importance was attached to keeping it bright and clean. Fabricius, the conqueror of Pyrrhus, was distinguished for the simplicity of his manners: history informs us that a small salt-cellar, with horn feet, was the only article of silver in his house.

Fig. 2.—of bronze, eight inches long, and with a flat handle; perhaps the common table-spoon of the people, occupying the place of the modern iron or pewter one. The form of the bowl is very like that of wooden and pewter spoons of the last century. Here we have the head of the goose again, one of the favorite, though certainly not most healthy viands of both priests and people. The occupants of the temples, says Herodotus, were not obliged to live on their private means, but each individual had sacred victuals ready dressed assigned him, and in addition a daily allowance of beef and goose, (ii. 37.) In the tombs near the pyramids are representations of dinner parties, at which the goose figures as a prominent dish. Other scenes exhibit Egyptian cookery in detail, where the victim is undergoing the various operations preparatory to its appearance at table. The end of the handle of Fig. 2. being curved was doubtless designed to suspend the spoon over the edge of a vessel, or over a nail or cord. Several utensils are seen hanging from lines in an Egyptian kitchen, portrayed in the tomb of Rameses III. at Thebes.

132Fig. 3.—another bronze table spoon. The handle is round and tapered, partly formed in the lathe, enriched with carving, and having on the whole a tasteful appearance.

Fig. 4.—also of bronze, found at Thebes by Mr. Burton: smaller than 2 or 3, it was probably a child’s spoon. It is the plainest of Egyptian spoons yet found.

Fig. 5.—a small wooden spoon, formed like a spade—a shape so singular that it has been refused a place at the dining table. It is, however, a genuine spoon. The Romans used such, (See Plate II.) and similar formed implements are not uncommon with the Chinese, as will be noticed in a future page,—a people among whom many primitive arts and implements are preserved in their purity.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SPOONS.

In the first two figures above we have another elegant variety of the spoon. They represent the back and front of a wooden one. The handle is round, straight, and short, and handsomely set off with a wreath, terminating with leaves at the junction with the bowl. The latter is long and pointed, and seems 133well calculated for a pap spoon for infants—a purpose for which it was probably designed. In comparing this implement with those which have preceded it, some readers will be agreeably surprised at finding so great a diversity of forms in so simple a thing; but ere they arrive at the end of these pages the feeling will probably rise into wonder; and yet the whole of the illustrations embraced in this essay are but part of what might have been introduced.

Fig. 3. resembles one figured on page 126; but it is not like that formed of metal, but of ivory—a circumstance from which we may infer that the goose and human hand were staple ornaments of Egyptian spoons, and frequently adopted with every material of which the latter were made.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SHELL AND SPOON.

The relationship between spoons and their natural originals is exhibited in the above figure. The shell is an artificial one, of alabaster, and is among the antiquities preserved in Alnwick Castle. Its dimensions are those of an ordinary mussel shell or table spoon. The minikin spoon figured within it is supposed to have belonged to a lady’s toilet. Where the handle unites with the bowl it assumes the form of the favorite lotus.

134No better proof could be adduced of the refined taste of Pharaonic artists than this copying after nature; for it is the perfection of skill to follow her instructions. In the infancy of the arts man runs from her, preferring puerile conceits and monstrous figures; but as the mind ripens and the judgment matures, he returns to the only true teacher and guide.

We are not aware of any silver or golden spoons having been disinterred. It is certain the wealthy classes had such, and as the richest taste and greatest skill were lavished on them, it is to be regretted that none have been discovered. The first spoons mentioned in history were golden ones, made by Egyptian artists, viz: those furnished for the Tabernacle. (Exod. xxv. 29.) So were those presented by the princes of Israel at the dedication of the sanctuary. (Numb. vii.) Is it said they were fabricated by Aholihab and Bezaleel, or workmen employed by them, that is, by Israelites? True, but in every sense of the word, except as regards religion, and even that need hardly be excepted, these men were Egyptians—natives of the land, both they and their fathers, for many generations. What did the people whom Moses led out of Egypt know, except what they learned there? And what had they, but what they got there? If he himself was learned, it was with ‘the wisdom of Egypt.’ Neither had they nor their ancestors any other country. In Egypt they were born and brought up, and when they entered Canaan, it was to them a foreign land.

135The Jews always neglected the useful arts. The splendid mechanics who left Egypt with Moses died, and all their generation, in the wilderness. With them the arts were buried, and were never resuscitated on the other side of Jordan. When Solomon built the temple he had workmen from Tyre; it was a Phenician founder who made the bronze and golden bowls, basins, snuffers, spoons, &c. required. (1. Kings vii.—2. Kings xxv.) Both spoons and ladles, or simpula, were extensively used in Pagan worship. A few of those of ancient Egypt are figured below.

EGYPTIAN LADLES OR SIMPULA.

Simpula have been found of great variety of forms and materials. Those of bronze were frequently gilt, which made them richer in ornament, and prevented wine or acids retained in them from being contaminated with solutions of copper. They were used chiefly for dipping fluids from amphoræ or jars. The two upper ones in the cut are of bronze, in the Berlin Museum. The first has a folding joint in the middle of the handle; and the next one has its 136handle lengthened or shortened (according to the depth of the vessel) by one part sliding behind the other. Fig. 3 represents an extremely small wooden ladle; the fixed part of the handle being only five inches in length, and the sliding rod which rises and falls in a groove extending down the centre, about the thickness of a darning needle. The last (Fig. 4) in Mr. Wilkinson’s possession, is eighteen inches long, the bowl three inches deep and nearly the same, in diameter. It is of bronze and has been gilt.

In taking leave of Egyptian spoons figured in this chapter, one can hardly avoid thinking of the persons they belonged to, of the families of their owners, the mouths they fed, the food they assisted to cook and serve up, of the scenes of festivity, of sickness and sorrow, of high life and low life, in which they took a part; of the workmen who made them, the merchants who sold them, and the many strange conversations held in their presence! In their forms we have the turns of thought of old artists; nay, casts of the very thoughts themselves; such as inspired the cunning artists, companions of Bezaleel or of Hiram, and like them, skilful to devise curious works in gold and silver, brass and iron, ivory and pearl. We fancy we can almost see a Theban spoonmaker’s face brighten up as the image of a new pattern crossed his mind; behold him sketch it on papyrus, and watch every movement of his chisel or graver as he gradually embodied the thought, and published it in one of the forms portrayed on these pages—securing an accession of customers and a 137corresponding reward in an increase of profits. We take it for granted that piratical artisans were not permitted to pounce on every popular invention which the wit of another brought forth. Had there been no checks to unprincipled usurpers of other men’s productions, the energies of inventors would have been paralyzed and the arts could hardly have attained the perfection they did among some of the famous people of old.

What a transient, ephemeral being is man! How short is his life compared even to that of a spoon! Notwithstanding his pride and his power, the grasp of his intellect, the noise he makes in the world, and the lasting wonders he works, he is himself a bubble—no sooner inflated than burst! The meanest of his labors survive, while he vanishes as vapor. Probably not less than one hundred generations, including some of the mightiest spirits of Egypt, have passed away since the implements delineated above were made! Strange that a thing should endure longer than the head which conceived and the hands that formed it; that a pot should live longer than a potter. Here have we the identical spoons which, twenty or thirty centuries ago, men, women, and children handled at dinner!—individuals perhaps contemporary with those who encamped with Moses at Elim, or fought under Joshua at Jericho; or, it may be, such as were acquainted with Plato or Solon, with Helen and Herodotus, when these Grecian wanderers were in the land of Mizraim.

Description of Plate IV—Anointing of Kings and the Process—Miraculous Utensils—Oil Bottles brought from Heaven—The Spoon among Regalia—Relics of Becket—Coronation Spoon described—Its Antiquity—Spoons of Henry VI—Cadenat—Apostle Spoons—Ancient Customs at the Naming of Children—Christening Shirts—Scripture Biography taught by Spoons—Anecdotes of Henry VIII. and Cranmer, of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare—Plate presented to Guests—Spoons carried off—Sacramental Spoon—Sanguisuchello—Snuff Spoons—Chinese, Scotch and Malagasy Snuff Takers—Snuff an Ingredient used in Witchcraft.

It may not be generally known that the spoon takes part in the most pompous of national pageants. We have spoken of exhibitions of mountebanks, wherein it amused common people: let us now refer to the part it performs in the hands of political raree-showmen for diverting another class of spectators.

158Anointing monarchs at their coronation has always been deemed indispensable. Barely to touch royal sconces with the holy unguent, as sometimes now practiced, was formerly insufficient. Baker, in his Chronicles, says Richard I. the hero of the Crusades, “put off all his garments from his middle upwards but only his shirt, which was open on the shoulders, that he might be anointed. Then the Archbishop of Canterbury anointed him in three places: on the head, on the shoulder, and on the right arm.” The same writer gives the particulars at the ceremony of crowning Richard II.—a child of eleven years: “After a sermon the king took his oath, (!) and then the archbishop blessed the king, which done, he took off his garments and stripped him into his shift; then he anointed his hands, head, breast, shoulders, and the joynts of his arms with the sacred oil.” Henry IV. (of England,) says Froissart, was “stripped of all his state before the altar, naked to his shirt, and was then anointed and consecrated at six places, that is to say, on the head, the breast, the two shoulders before and behind, on the back and the hands.” [chap. cxvi.] Henry’s title to the crown was a very dubious one—perhaps on that account a greater quantity of the consecrating ointment was expended on him and a larger portion of his body exposed to its influence.

It seems that much the same process was gone through with in the case of queens! Mary, of Smithfield memory, was crowned and anointed by Gardiner “with all rites and ceremonies of old accustomed.” 159Similar language is used by Baker in the case of Elizabeth; so also of King Jamie and his wife: they were “crowned together and anointed at Westminster.” The pageant of Charles I.’s coronation, got up by Laud, was, as may be supposed, a great affair. Obsolete customs were introduced, as well as old forms of prayer. When the king had taken an oath “to protect and defend the bishops and the churches under their government,” his robes were taken off “and offered at the altar; the king stood for a while, stripped to his doublet and hose of white satin; then, led by the archbishop and the Bishop of St. David’s, he was placed in the chair of the coronation, having a close canopy spread over him; and while the archbishop anointed his head, shoulders, arms and hands with a costly oyntment, the quire sung an anthem of these words:

So Charles was stripped to his hose and doublet when the crown was put on his head, as well as when he lost both his head and his crown. In him the magic shield which the scriptural passage ‘touch not mine anointed’ had for ages thrown around kings, and which some of these gentry used with effect in silencing the murmurings of their oppressed people, was shattered to the winds.

The blasphemous application of such passages of scripture as the foregoing to the vilest tyrants, was but a small part of that atrocious system of ecclesiastical delusions which prevailed through the dark ages. The monarch swore when crowned to ‘protect 160bishops,’ and they, from Dunstan downwards, returned the compliment. To preserve their immunities and extend their influence, they performed the part of pagan priests and made the oracles speak what they and the king pleased. But they did more: through their instrumentality it was that almost every utensil employed in coronations had a miraculous origin—was fabricated in heaven by angelic artists or beatified saints, and sent direct for the use of ‘his sacred majesty’ by a special embassy, consisting of one or more celestial messengers! The ampoule or small bottle containing the holy oil seems to have been most distinguished in this respect.

When Clovis of France embraced Christianity, he was baptized in the Church at Rheims in a consecrated lavatory, (on Christmas day, A. D. 496.) Three thousand of his people followed his example, and with him wore white robes for eight days. Now so great was the joy in heaven at their conversion that an angel appeared to a holy hermit, and deposited with him for the king’s use, “a royal standard adorned with the oriflamme, a shield sown with the fleur de lis, and an ampoule of sacred oil.” This celestial bottle is (or was in the last century) preserved in the cathedral church of Rheims, and is still used in the coronation of French kings. “On appelle la Sainte Ampoule, certaine petite bouteille venue du ciel, où il y a de l’huile qui sert à sacrer les Rois de France, laquelle on garde bien soigneusement dans l’Abbaye de saint Remi de Rheims.”—[Dict. de Trevoux and Mazeray.]

Plate 5 Middle Ages & Oriental

Lith of E Jones 128 Fulton S^t N.Y.

161When Charles was conducted by the Maid of Orleans to Rheims and crowned in her presence, the holy oil and miraculous ampoule performed their part in the ceremony, as historians have taken care to inform us.

Hincmarc, Archbishop of Rheims, in the time of Charles the Bald, declares (in his life of St. Remi) that the precious vial was sent from heaven by a white dove. Many French disputations have been written on the miracle, pro and con! The English ampoule (still used) was also of celestial origin, having been brought down by the Virgin Mary herself, and presented by her ‘to St. Thomas of Canterbury [Becket] when he was in France.’ It was, observes Mazeray, of lapis, with a golden eagle on the top and enriched with pearls and diamonds.

Now the consecrated fluid was not poured directly from the ampoule on the candidate for royalty, but into a spoon, whence it was transferred to its destination. As we presume our readers may gather a few facts from these speculations, with which they were not previously acquainted, it may be that some now learn for the first time, that besides crowns, orbs, sceptres, swords, globes, spheres, staffs, cups, plates, rings, and other royal rattletraps, which constitute what is known as ‘the regalia and crown jewels,’ the spoon holds a distinguished place! To those who admire such things it is shown, with the articles enumerated above, in the Tower of London at a shilling a head, and indeed to those who admire them not, at the same price.

162Lord Herbert in his history of Henry VIII. mentions among other ‘notable trumperies’ by which the public were deluded, ‘the penknife and boots of Becket, with a piece of his shirt.’ Large sums, it seems, were received from ladies in a certain condition for permission to handle the last article.

The reader will now turn to Plate IV. Figs. 1, 2, represent the English coronation spoon, [from Shaw’s splendid work, “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages, from the seventh to the seventeenth centuries.”] If drawn by Shaw to the full size, its length is 9 inches, that of the bowl 2¼, and its width 1¾ inches. The whole is of gold, and whether made by a mortal goldsmith or not, a fine piece of work. The bowl is thin, with an elegant arabesque pattern engraved on its inner surface. At the broadest part of the handle are four pearls. The enamel with which it was once enriched is destroyed. There is a slight elevation or ridge dividing the bowl. When used a portion of the consecrating fluid being poured into it, the officiating bishop dips two fingers, one into each cavity of the bowl, and transfers what sticks to them to the head and other parts of the royal neophyte, who thus receives unction as a sign of investiture of regal power.

Hence the spoon is not the least useful of the numerous insignia employed on such occasions, and we may fairly presume it performs a more laborious part than any of them when the ceremonies are over and the actors are seated at dinner. In unison with this there is one feature in the official implement 163which we must be excused for noticing. It will be seen that the upper part of the handle is twisted and the end terminates with a hemispherical button precisely like a punch spoon. This beautiful specimen of ancient art is in truth the oldest spoon of that kind known. Whether the maker designed a practical joke or not, it is not a bad one, considering the history of royal carousals, from Belshazzar and Alexander to George IV—the accomplished companion of modern Falstaffs, Pistols and Quicklys. Of all men, kings have been least stinted with punch or sack; few persons are known to have indulged more in it or got it on easier terms.

There is some uncertainty respecting the date of this royal spoon. Cromwell and the Long Parliament made sad havoc among ‘the baubles,’ as that irreverend man named the regalia. It seems most of them disappeared during the civil wars—probably melted down and the proceeds applied to the public service. When Charles II. returned, it is said, his inauguration was delayed on account of the absence of these necessary articles belonging to the ceremony! Shaw thinks some of the old ones were concealed and recovered, and among them the spoon. Its antiquity he says is undoubted. He supposes it to have been in use since the twelfth century.

Of coronations, their expense, inutility and puerilities, an English writer has well remarked, that they are only calculated to superinduce in the individual vanity upon vanity, and are characteristic of imperfect civilization.

164We have not done with royal spoons:—In 1422, Henry V. the Hal of Shakespeare, died, and was succeeded by his son, an infant. As Henry VI. grew up he exhibited indications of a feeble mind. Harmless and passive, he was wholly unfit for controlling the destinies of his country and the ambition of its warlike nobles. His reign was one of perpetual domestic war. He had, says Sir R. Baker, virtues enough to make him a saint, but not to make him a god, as kings are said to be gods. He was fitter for a priest than a king, and for a sacrifice than a priest. A mere instrument in the hands of the ministers and his masculine wife, Margaret of Anjou, his fate was that of a shuttlecock, tossed to and fro and treated with contempt by the adherents of both the white and red roses. Repeatedly taken prisoner by one party or the other in battle, he at last ended his melancholy life in the Tower.

After the sanguinary battle of Hexham, in Northumberland, the fate of his family was distressing. Margaret with their son fled into a wood, where they were rudely seized and plundered of their jewels by thieves. While the robbers quarreled about the division of the plunder, the miserable captives crept unperceived into the thickest of the forest, where they sank down overcome with darkness, distress and fatigue. One of the robbers subsequently found them; to him Margaret made herself known, and appealed to his generosity for protection, especially for the son of the king. He was amazed at the strange occurrence, swore to protect them, and kept 165his word. He concealed them until an opportunity offered for conducting them to the coast, whence they sailed to Flanders.

How Henry escaped is not very well known. By the vigilance of friends he lay concealed in different parts of the country for twelve months. Shifting from place to place, he at length was seized while at dinner at Wadington Hall, in Lincolnshire, and carried to the tower. Ere being taken away he left with his host his inkhorn, one of the last articles retained about his person. It is of leather, like a knife sheath, with three cells, one for the ink and two for pens. It is ornamented with much elegance, and was worn suspended from the girdle. Before reaching Wadington, he was hid nine days at Bolton Hall; and here he left with the proprietor, as a token of his friendship, his boots, one glove (or a pair) and his spoon. [See Antiq. Repertory, III. 168.]

Fig. 3, Plate IV. represents this interesting relic of the fifteenth century. It was we presume of gold, though the account does not say so, but merely that its length was 6¼ inches. The handle is short, and in its union to the small end of the bowl resembles both Roman and Egyptian spoons. The handle is a plain cylinder capped at its extremity with a molding and a hexagonal finial. Although void of ornament, this spoon exhibits considerable taste in its contour. Its dimensions, as will have been perceived from its length, did not exceed those of a modern dessert spoon. If made for Henry, it dates from the time of Jack Cade, Joan of Arc, the great 166Earl of Warwick, and the introduction of Printing. The circumstance of a king carrying his spoon about with him may strike some readers as singular, but the practice was not uncommon in olden times. Almost every wealthy individual had a portable case containing one and a knife, to which in after times a fork was added. Even guests took their own implements when invited to a feast. Kings more than other people have always been particular in having feeding apparatus exclusively for their own use: the custom is an eastern one. Spoons which nourish royal palates must not enter meaner mouths. Cadenat was the old French term for the portable case in which was secured a prince’s knife and spoon. It was afterwards written cadenas. The case was often of gold or silver gilt, and contained minute receptacles for salt, pepper, and other condiments. From the following extract it will be seen that kings and nobles used such pocket conveniences in the beginning of the last century, as well as in the previous ones:—

“Cadenas est aussi une espèce d’assiette carrée ou l’on serre la cuillière, la fourchette et le couteau. Un des côtés est retroussé et élevé de deux doigts, avec un petit courvercle où l’on met du sel, du sucre et du poivre. On s’en servoit autrefois chez les Rois et les Princes. C’est maintenant une espèce de coffret d’or ou de vermeil doré, où l’on met le couteau, la cuillière, la fourchette, &c. qu’on sert à la table des Rois et des Princes.” [Old Dict. de Trevoux.]

167Figs. 4, 5, and 10, Plate IV. are from ‘Ackerman’s Designs for Gold and Silver Smiths,’ publish-without any description. We know not the source whence they were derived, but as they were associated with ‘Apostle Spoons,’ known to be ancient, we suppose they are of the same character. The handle of Fig. 4 is of twisted wire, folded into two knots, as in Fig. 6. The bowl, of a fanciful form, differs from every other we have met with. Fig. 5—an elaborate specimen, and well suited to a monastery or abbot. The heart at one extremity and the cross at the other are quite in character with the ecclesiastical tastes of the middle ages, and would afford matter for interesting reflections. Fig. 10, a salt spoon, partakes of the same religious character. It presents a motto, the initial and arms of the owner—acknowledged features of many ancient “spuuns.” Moral sentences and maxims of prudence are painted by the Chinese on most of their furniture and utensils—on tea pots, chop stick cases, combs, apparatus for striking fire, cups, lanterns, vases, &c. and might be advantageously imitated. Fig. 6—an ivory spoon of the sixteenth century. It is French, and preserved along with a knife and two pronged fork in the collection of the Louvre.

Apostle Spoons.—Fig. 7, Plate IV. represents a class of implements intimately allied with the social and religious customs of former times. Nothing smooths the asperities of life like friendship. When evinced by kind offices and gifts, it unlocks the human breast and excites within it the holiest affections. 168All people learn this truth, and no lesson is more readily understood by juveniles; the pure and buoyant joys they feel on receiving novel or rich presents, may be portrayed on the mental tablet but not on paper. Now it is a fact that for ages the very first gift which boys and girls received, consisted of one or more spoons—these being the established presents of sponsors at christenings; hence the implements may be said to have not only fed the bodies of children but to have given them a taste of the sweetest of mental pleasures—indicating to the young travellers that enter this rugged world one of the pleasantest means of passing through it.

The Greeks, Romans, and older people than either, held family feasts when a child was named. Relatives and friends attended as witnesses, and made presents of various articles to the little stranger. The pouring on, or immersion in, water, (baptism) at the nomination of children, is also of heathen origin. It was practiced both in the old world and the new. When a child among the Astecs was to be named, a priestess sprinkled its lips and bosom with water, and invoked the goddess Cioacoatl that original sin might be thus removed and the child born anew. On these occasions friends and relatives brought presents of dresses and ornaments suitable to the circumstances of the parents and wants of the child.

In the earlier ages of Christianity sponsors provided a frock or shirt in which the infant was christened—hence named the ‘christening shirt.’ Its 169value of course depended on the circumstances of the donor: when he or she was wealthy, it was often trimmed with silk and gold. The Anglo Saxons continued this custom for many ages, but it subsequently went out of fashion, and the older one of giving small articles of plate succeeded.

When spoons were given they were called Apostle spoons, because the handle of each was carved into the figure of an apostle with his appropriate symbol, as Peter with the keys, Andrew with his cross, &c. Wealthy godfathers generally gave a dozen, each being named after one of the twelve it was designed to represent. People, whose circumstances did not admit of giving so many, or who were penurious, compounded by sending the four evangelists; while those who could not do better ingeniously presented a single spoon, with the effigies of the saint after whom the infant was named, or under whose protection it had been placed by its parents.

This practice was in imitation of the heathen, who introduced figures of their gods upon almost every utensil—spoons, as we have seen, as well as the rest. The idea as adopted in the middle ages was excellent. A child no sooner learned to feed himself—to use his own spoons—than he began to acquire a knowledge of scriptural and ecclesiastical biography. Every spoonful of food he received, conveyed, or might convey a useful lesson to his mind. The custom might be revived with advantage—at any rate important truths or facts connected with scientific individuals or with science and the arts, might thus 170be communicated to, and indelibly impressed upon the minds of the young.

Allusions to Apostle spoons are common. In the play of Henry VIII. Act 5, Scene 2, Shakespeare makes the king say to Cranmer that he must stand godfather to the young princess, Elizabeth. The Archbishop expresses his unfitness for so great an honor, upon which Harry, bantering him, says he is afraid of the expense of the usual gift to a godchild: “Come, come, my lord, you’d spare your spoons.” In Scene 4 the directions are, “Enter trumpets, lord mayor, Cranmer, dukes, &c. two noblemen bearing great standing bowls for the christening gifts.”

In a manuscript of L’Estrange, preserved in the British Museum, an anecdote is related of Shakespeare himself and Ben Jonson directly in point. Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben’s children; and after the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson cheerily asked him why he was so melancholy? “Ben,” said he, “I have been considering what would be the fittest gift for my godchild, and I have resolved it at last.” “I pri’thee, what?” said Ben. “I’ faith, then, Ben,” answered Shakespeare, “I’ll give him a good dozen of latten spoons, and thou shalt translate them;” an example of friendly pleasantry betwen the two wits—the word ‘latten’ being a play upon Latin. Latten, sometimes written laton, was formerly applied to tinned iron, or articles made of it, but more generally to brass, of which examples will be found in these pages.

171Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and other dramatic writers, refer to christening or Apostle spoons. Thus also Congreve:—“Angelica—Will you lend me your coach or I’ll go on—nay I’ll declare how you prophesied popery was coming, only because the butler had mislaid some of the Apostle’s spoons, and thought they were lost—away went religion and spoon meat together.”—[Comedy of Love for Love, Act 2, Scene 1.]

Mr. Hone, in his Every Day Book, [vol. i. 177,] has given a representation of a dozen in his own possession, and besides the anecdote of Shakespeare just recited, quotes the following lines from a poem published in 1666, in which the custom of giving spoons is stated to have been on the decline:

The spoon figured on Plate IV. is in the writer’s possession. It is larger than those described by Hone, the bowl being 2¼ inches wide and nearly 3 inches long. The handle is 5¼ inches in length, including the figure of the apostle which is gilt. The hat or flat cap is common to this class of spoons, and was probably designed, as Hone suggests, to preserve the features from effacement; but this was not its only use; when the figure was not sufficiently characteristic of the particular one of the twelve whom it was intended to represent, an additional symbol of him was impressed on the crown of the cap; as an eagle, a dove, an ox, &c. emblematical 172of the evangelists. The weight of this spoon is 2¼ ounces. The only mark stamped on it is an X with what appear the remains of a crown above it, but it is very illegible. The face of the punch was a circle three eighths of an inch in diameter. The impression has been struck twice on the back of the handle and once inside of the bowl, (the usual place in old spoons.) The implement was forged, except the image of the apostle, which was cast and soldered on the handle. It is not of English manufacture, since neither three leopards, the ancient government stamp, nor a rampant lion, the modern one, is impressed upon it.

These implements are interesting, as showing the influence of religion on the arts in mediæval times—how ingeniously ecclesiastical matters were interwoven with almost every thing—how even a spoon was made to infuse religious truths into the minds of children while it conveyed pap to their mouths.

Without being aware of the origin of the custom, says Hone in his entertaining miscellany, many persons in Europe continue to present spoons at christenings, though no longer adorned with imagery.

One remark more ere Apostle spoons are dismissed: It was a custom of remote antiquity to get up convivial feasts at the common expense of the guests, each individual contributing his proportion either in money or victuals. There is an allusion to it in the first book of the Odyssey:—

173The custom may be traced down to present times. There is a direct reference to it in the Spanish proverb: Huésped tardio no viene manivacio—‘a late guest comes not sluggishly nor empty handed;’ the presents he brings will account for his delay. In the middle ages donations were invariably sent by friends to feasts, whether social or religious. Another pleasing trait of primitive manners was the exchange of tokens of friendship between a host and an esteemed guest at parting. Sometimes a piece of money or other small article was broken in two, one piece being retained by each individual as a symbol and pledge of mutual hospitality. From wealthy houses a stranger of rank was seldom allowed to depart without a valuable gift, such as his condition or the disposition and ability of the donor might suggest; as a faulchion, a walking stick, vest, or tunic, &c. but more generally a golden or silver vase or cup. Instances abound in Homer.

It was also a practice for princes to present to each guest the goblet he drank from at table. Of the nine thousand individuals who feasted with Alexander at Susa, every one received a golden cup. The Roman emperors and patricians occasionally complimented their friends in the same way. Suetonius informs us that Claudius having suspected a visitor of stealing a golden cup, caused him to be served at another time with an earthenware one. Sometimes the plate used by visitors at a feast was sent home to them on the following day—one of the most acceptable tokens of the host’s regard.

174In later times guests did not wait to be presented with, but actually helped themselves to articles of plate! At entertainments given on the installations of civil or ecclesiastical dignitaries, scrambles for silver cups, dishes, salt cellars and spoons occurred just as they have in recent times at coronations. The practice became so common that it was at last claimed by the robbers as a right, and was positively recognized as such by law! It became interwoven with the tenures by which lands and privileges were held! We have an example at page 80 of a lord of the manor being entitled to carry off four dishes, two salt-cellars, a cup, a wine pot, a spoon, and two wash bowls (all of silver) from a bishop’s table; to which may be added a much later one: When Dudly North was elected Sheriff of London (in the last century) and knighted, he gave the usual official banquet, and selected for the purpose one of the largest halls in the city. Several public bodies contributed to the expense. The Middle Templars presented one hundred guineas. In North’s life it is said, “he had diverse very considerable presents from friends and relations, besides the compliments of the several companies, inviting themselves and wives to dinner—dropping their guineas, and taking Apostle spoons in the room of them; which, with what they ate and drank, and such as came in the shape of wives, made but an indifferent bargain.”

Another application of the spoon will hardly be anticipated by every reader—its employment in the administration of the sacrament. The introduction 175of the implement for this purpose is ascribed by old ecclesiastical writers to St. Chrysostom; who, it is said, designed it to prevent effusion of the chalice. The Greek Church does not allow of pouring wine into the cup; it is therefore transferred in spoons. The practice is different at Rome, but as the pope claims to be the head of both Greek and Latin churches, he combines in his person the peculiar customs of both.

Fig. 11, Plate IV. represents the golden spoon used when he celebrates high mass ‘in both languages,’ and with the ceremonies common to both churches. It is from the first volume of Motraye’s Travels, where it is figured of full size. The bowl is 2¼ inches wide and 3 long; the length of handle and bowl 11½ inches. With this spoon the deacon and sub-deacon, who are generally cardinal priests, sup what remains in the chalice after the pope has communicated.

There can be no harm in stating here how the pope conveys the wine to his own mouth, since he neither puts the spoon nor the cup to his lips. As the wine is believed to be transubstantiated into real blood, it is deemed more seemly to suck than drink it; and hence the ‘sanguisuchello or blood-sucker,’ a small golden and highly ornamented tube, 13 inches long, through which his holiness imbibes the consecrated fluid. [See its figure and description in Ewbank’s Hydraulics.] At the celebration of high mass in the cathedral church of Paris, a similar instrument is used. [Dict. de Trevoux, Art. Chalumeau.] But 176the honor of using it is deemed so great that permission to do so is scarcely ever obtained. Motraye tells us the king of Portugal was exceedingly zealous in promoting the splendor of the church, but it was not till after many solicitations that Clement XI. consented that the Archbishop of Lisbon should celebrate mass pontifically with papal paraphernalia, but the spoon and sanguisuchello were expressly excepted!

This curious instrument is not of modern date. The Queen of Oviedo and Asturia, A. D. 777, presented to one of the churches in Spain, dedicated to St. Thyrsus, ‘a silver chalice and paten, a wash hand basin and a pipe;’ which last, says Butler, in his lives of the Saints, was ‘a silver pipe or quill to suck up the blood of Christ at the communion, such as the pope sometimes uses; it sucks it up as a nose draws up air.’ The use of the instrument was not formerly confined to priests; i. e. not until the council of Constance took away the wine altogether from the laity and gave it exclusively to the clergy. Peter Martyr, complaining of the wealth and pride of the Roman clergy, quotes Beatus Rhenanus respecting ‘certaine silver pypes, by the which prophane men, whom they call the laitie, sucked out of the challice in the holy supper, as though, forsooth, out of the challice itself the faithful might not drink.’ The device was probably designed as a check—and an ingenious one it was—to rude and ignorant converts in the dark ages, to prevent them from taking too freely of the cup.

Plate 6 Middle Ages & Modern

Lith of E. Jones 128 Fulton S^t. N.Y.

177We have seen the spoon treasured up among the regalia of kings, and here we find it with crosiers, tiaras, sacred slippers, pastoral staffs, the sword of St. Peter, keys of heaven, and other holy matters belonging to the head of the church.

The next spoon was for a different purpose than any yet described; and so far from being a religious application of the implement, many persons consider it a wicked one; but sinful or not, it is our duty to notice it. Perhaps the reader’s attention in arriving thus far in this long chapter begins to flag, and he mentally exclaims ‘would it were ended.’ Well, there is little to add, and if he will but imitate some drowsy people at church, by taking a sternutatory, he will arrive at the close without feeling fatigue or ascribing his heaviness to the writer. There are persons whose physical constitutions are so delicate that mere thoughts of taking snuff, (and medicines generally,) produce the same effect as inhaling the powder itself: now, if the imagination of the reader has a similar influence over his system, he can have no disposition to oscitate while finishing the chapter; on the contrary, the greatest obstacle to his progress will arise from a disposition to sneeze.

Spoons were formerly much in vogue for taking snuff! Gentlemen carried the powder in a small bottle, the neck of which was closed by a cork or stopper, through which passed the shank of a small spoon. Sometimes the handle of the spoon formed the head of the stopper. See Figs. 8 and 9, Plate IV. for a specimen of these precursors of the snuff-box. 178In those days the expression was, ‘take a spoonful,’ instead of ‘a pinch.’ Old people yet living remember this use of the spoon. The stopper in the cut was screwed into the neck.

The practice was most probably derived from China, for snuff is there generally carried in vials or cruets by the wealthy, and drawn out with a spoon. In Mr. Dunn’s celebrated Chinese collection, recently in Philadelphia, but now in London, there is a porcelain snuff bottle of great beauty, with a stopper of red cornelian, and a spoon of tortoise shell. [Descriptive Catalogue, Phila. 1839, p. 68.] ‘A mandarin,’ says Staunton, ‘is seldom without a small ornamented vial to hold his snuff, of which he occasionally pours a quantity equal to a pinch upon the back of his left hand, between the thumb and index, and carrying to his nose, he snuffs up several times a day.’ Powdered cinnabar is often employed for the same purpose, as opium and odorous ingredients are for smoking. The emperor of China distributed among other presents to the members of the Dutch embassy (of 1799) ‘little bags for tobacco, and little glass bottles to hold snuff.’ One of these would be taken by an American or European as a smelling bottle. With the spoon, says Dunn, they take out the pungent dust and place it on the back of the left hand, near the lower thumb joint, whence it is snuffed up by the olfactories to perform its titillating office.—[Catalogue, p. 11.]

With the bottle, snuff-taking was a more cleanly practice than the present one of thrusting the finger 179and thumb into a box, and besmearing the person and pockets with the contents. Laws had not then been thought of, by which, as was subsequently enacted in some parts of Europe, those were to lose their noses who ‘fed them with the prohibited food.’

Howell mentions in his letters that rustic laborers and even maid-servants in his time were accustomed to snuff, taking out their boxes of ‘smutchin’ and conveying it to their nostrils by a quill. The Scotch highlanders take great pride in the ‘mull’ or spiral horn, which is supported as a personal ornament from the neck or belt, and from which they take the snuff either with a pen, quill, or spoon of tin, brass or silver, suspended by a small chain from the mull.

Pocket handkerchiefs were never very common with the Gael, and yet something of the kind seems indispensable to inveterate snuff takers; but men in every clime, when destitute of artificial conveniences, are soon furnished by nature with appropriate substitutes. It is so with the people of North Britain. Along with the spoon there dangles at their breast a hare’s foot, with which they brush off superfluous particles from the regions of the nostrils and lips. The sensations produced by the use of this natural duster, it is said, are far more delicate and pleasing than the application of a bandana.

The people of Madagascar use snuff, but in a manner very different from inhabitants of the western world. These take it at the nose, but the Malagasy prefers the mouth. Putting a spoonful between the under lip and the teeth, he sucks it at leisure, affirming 180that a more lasting and exquisite pleasure is derived from it there than from momentary sniffs. Snuff was used by the ancient Mexicans.

Nose powder or snuff is mentioned in an ancient burlesque poem, on the laying of a ghost, inserted by Walter Scott, in the appendix to his introduction to the minstrelsy of the Scottish border. The ingredients required by the exorcist were as numerous and select as those used by the witches in Macbeth. Besides plants and holy water, there were fox-tails, teeth of an old horse, crabs’ claws, a dog’s ear, blue wool, a pig’s tooth, the tail of a sow, &c. and “of neis powder ane grit loik.”

Old Pocket Spoons—Costume—Cutlers and Tailors. Pockets—their Origin, History and Influence—Derived from the Poke. Pocketing Sleeves. Valets. Ladies’ Pockets—Reticules—Capacity and Strange Contents of Old Pockets—Material and Manufacture. Curious Old Folding Spoon—Conjectures respecting its owner. Forks—Of Uncertain Origin and Date—Ancient Egyptians at Dinner—Boarding Schools—Washing before and after Meals, and why—Anglo Saxons at Dinner—Forks denounced by the Clergy—Combined with the Spoon—Historical Notices of them.

Plate V. Figs. 1 and 2 are French spoons of the sixteenth century. The style of Fig. 2 (a shell and wreathed handle) is occasionally adopted in modern 181specimens. Fig. 1—of silver gilt, and designed for the pocket. It consists of three distinct pieces, which joined together, form a spoon as in the figure, but when separated each serves a different purpose. The lower part of the handle forms a fork, the prongs of which fit into loops soldered on the back of the bowl; the upper extremity unscrews, and when taken off, presents a toothpick. A little above the bowl there is a joint by which, on removing a small ring that covers it, the whole may be folded up so as to occupy a very small space.

‘Folding spoons,’ as they were named, were not rare in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the Progresses of Elizabeth we read of a golden one, and numerous specimens are still extant. They were, we believe, like clasp or folding knives, one of the results of a change in costume. Does the reader smile at this, and ask what they could have to do with dress? At the first glance we admit the connection is not obvious; nevertheless they really were, and are, as much allied to POCKETS, as ever were long-handled ones to ruffs. In other words, if pockets had never been known, folding spoons like folding knives had never been made.

When knives had no joint at the junction of the handle and blade, they were worn pendant in sheaths at the side, as cooks, stevedores and sailors still wear them. Rich men and scholars sometimes attached them to silver or gilt chains that went round the neck. Chaucer thus carried his penknife, as seen in some of his portraits. Ladies now wear watches 182much in the same way, and so do gentlemen reading glasses. But when the tunic and toga gave place to the coat, and the modern vest superseded the doublet, multitudes of portable implements were expressly designed for and named after the novel receptacles which the new garments brought into vogue—as pocket-books, pocket-glasses, pocket-knives, pocket-combs, &c. &c. Then came in also snuff-boxes in place of the old bottle, with hundreds of other pocket devices, which a dealer alone can enumerate—devices that never were thought of before. Where pockets have been made for one thing, a thousand things have been contrived for pockets. To the tailor, therefore, manufacturers of small articles in hardware, tortoise shell, ivory and pearl, are more indebted than they probably imagine. As for spoons, it is clear the same artist had a hand in bringing jointed ones into fashion, just as mantuamakers once caused the handles of ordinary ones to be lengthened.

One might almost suspect collusion between knights of the file and those of the scissors! Did ancient Sheffield workmen furnish contemporary shapers of apparel with bodkins, needles and thimbles, with shears and smoothing irons gratis, on condition of bringing pockets into fashion, and multiplying their variety? The offer of such a bribe would have been a proof of far-seeing sagacity, since every species of pocket, from those of an overcoat to the latent watch-fob, has made fortunes for fancy cutlers, for ages, and will make them for ages to come.

183Pockets.—In noticing pocket-spoons, perhaps we are expected to say something on pockets. Of all tasks, such an one would be to our taste; but it would be digressing too far to enter on so diverting, instructive and copious a subject; or even give a sketch of these curious contrivances, of which it is supposed the classical ancients knew nothing. Still it is scarcely proper to pass them wholly without notice, since their connection with spoons is already apparent, and must as we proceed become more so. Shades of Demosthenes and Cicero, of Quintilian and Burke! what a subject for eloquence and sublimity is here! One fraught with materials for the richest paper ever read before a society of Chiffonniers—one charged, like pockets themselves, with entertaining miscellanies with gems and gimcracks, treasures and trifles, antiques and uniques! A dish flavored with spices, one over which the eyes of literary gourmands would glisten and their pulse throb quicker as they seated themselves to enjoy it!

We know not how sufficiently to admire the ingenuity displayed in the origin and disposition on the person of these flexible little cupboards, for hiding what we wish to conceal, securing what we are anxious to preserve and for having always at hand what may every moment be wanted. To deduce their descent from the primitive girdle, oriental sash, philosopher’s red scrip, pilgrim’s wallet, and beggar’s unctuous pouch—to trace them through every shape and disguise, and enumerate the diverse uses to which they have been put, would indeed be a feast 184of good things and of queer things. But, alas! no literary cuisinier can now procure the necessary ingredients. Such has been the inconsistency of historians that the annals of pockets have never been written, while memorials of old pocket-makers have been suffered to perish. Some valuable matter may of course yet be collected, and among other sources from Newgate calendars—from the lives and exploits of scientific analyzers of pockets—a class of men profoundly versed in their capacities, secret locations, approaches and uses. This branch of biography, we opine, must be studied ere a standard and luminous treatise on the subject can be written.

The history of a pocket would be a journal of the owner’s thoughts—a record of his motives; for in this adjunct to his dress lies coiled up the spring of his actions—the secret power that moves him. ‘The pocket’ is every thing to man—from it comfort and consequence proceed. He who hunting the dark recesses of one finds nothing, is nobody; but to the pocket of the rich annuitant all do reverence. Strange that this little sack should be the fount of men’s hopes and despair, the source of their sorrows and pleasures, the subject of their thoughts by day and dreams by night—they flourish with it and sicken as it dries up. When it expands so does their joy; when it shrinks their pleasures are fled. The highest enjoyment is to fill it—the deepest distress to feel it void.

All the excitement in the world is about pockets! One party putting their hands in, and the other striving 185to keep them out—some going deeper than the owners think right, and others appealing to the law to make them submit. Yonder fat publishers laugh at the profit they make, and here sits a lean author, shedding tears over the pittance they give him. The former are at peace with themselves and the world; the latter is at war with his tailor and dreads the sight of his butcher and baker. A history of pockets would make startling disclosures and correct many errors. Some would be found empty which rumor crams full, while in others supposed not to contain a maravedi a plum lies concealed.

Abolish pockets and the world will stand still, for every man lives by putting his hand into his neighbor’s. It is his business—the only one by which he gets breads. To facilitate this reciprocal attention to each other’s purses, merchants meet on ’Change, shops are furnished, stores erected, markets established and ships put afloat. For this, worshippers of Mercury adore him, and disciples of St. Nicholas pray. All the inequalities in human condition arise from the various modes of performing the operation: to do it adroitly is the science and apparently the sole purpose of life. Few minds can comprehend the multiplicity of devices by which pockets are exhausted, replenished and made to run over; nor is the genius yet born who can unravel them all:—but a truce to such thoughts and let us glance for a moment at pockets themselves.

Their name, as every body knows, is derived from the poke—a sack for carrying grain to feed cattle, 186and sometimes small animals to market—hence the expression “to buy a pig in a poke.” Reduced in dimensions, it was adopted for holding victuals for men, and subsequently implements to eat with. It soon assumed a great variety of shapes, sizes and names. As a wallet both ends were closed, with an entrance through a slit in the middle, so that when slung over the shoulder, one moiety of the contents was suspended before and another behind—a species of biped saddle-bags. As a simple purse it was still more reduced and carried in the hand like a satchel or hung over the wrist. The next form was by far the most common, and we may safely infer the most useful—that of the pouch. This ancient and most favored of all forerunners of pockets was located at a different part of the person. Suspended from the girdle by strings or over the shoulders by a strap, it hung at the hips, either on the right side or left, (though sometimes in front,) so that the hand could enter, remain in, or be withdrawn, without inconvenience and with little effort. It is to the pouch we are indebted for outside coat pockets and ‘poches des culottes.’

As a bag or purse, the material was commonly linen or silk, and the mouth drawn close with strings; but as a pouch it was leather, sometimes prepared with the fur on, and the entrance left open—a serious inconvenience, since the opening became wider as the contents increased—inviting the notice of inquisitive people, and leading the patriarchs of pickpockets into constant temptation; moreover, in wet 187weather rain dripped in from upper parts of the dress, as into a gutter from the eaves of a house. These evils were removed by the invention of covers or flaps—an ingenious device for turning off water and shutting out from public gaze the treasures within.

The epoch of flaps is not well ascertained, but their antiquity is beyond cavil. In old cuts they are not always distinguishable, because artists were ignorant of the importance of delineating them distinctly. Clovis, who flourished in the fifth century, is represented with a purse or pouch at his girdle, very like a modern lady’s work bag. In 1285 we find a French gentleman with one shaped like the curved blade of an axe or a leather-cutter’s knife. Another specimen of the same century is plain, six or seven inches deep and nearly as many broad. A Parisian of A. D. 1400, sports one of a hemispherical shape, handsomely fluted or crimped; but these, belonging to fashionable people, deviated from flapped pouches of the commonalty. [See Art du Tailleur, par Gausault, published by the Academy in Arts et Metières, and numerous examples of the Anglo-Saxon pouch in Strutt.] Leather pouches were staple articles of the shoemaker or cordwainer’s art. In the ‘Orbis Pictus’ of Commenius, the professor of those mysteries is at work, making them with pointed and other fashionable formed flaps and bodies. They were universally worn by people in the middle ranks of life, down to the seventeenth century, and by the poor in the eighteenth. We believe they are not yet wholly laid aside.

188The next improvement was to secure the flaps. This was sometimes accomplished by a simple button: careful people had often two, and at one time three were quite common, just as outside coat pockets were fitted fifty years ago. These were indeed literal pouches fastened near that part of the person where they formerly hung, and with covers larger than those of a cartridge-box. Flaps were often edged with wrought borders and adorned with a row of gilt buttons. The pouch was sometimes provided with a minute padlock, like those used with valises, a precaution for keeping strangers’ hands out, which we do not remember having seen adopted by tailors.

As coats, vests, and culottes rose into favor, wallets and pouches died off; but they left ere they vanished a prolific brood of hybrids behind. These are now classified under the generic names of the garments to which they belong; as cloak, coat, waistcoat and overcoat pockets, pockets for jackets, pantaloons, &c. Some are named from their location; as outside, inside, right and left handed pockets; and others again after the articles they are intended to hold. One is devoted to the handkerchief, a second to the gloves, a third to an eye or ogling glass, a fourth to a tooth pick, pencil case and knife. Some are for money and memoranda, watches, snuff boxes, small change, and indescribable sundries. Professional men have professional pockets; as surgeons, mechanics, and sportsmen; the first for their instruments, the second for rules and measuring tapes, the third for ammunition and game. Pockets 189for the last article are as capacious as knapsacks, and when full often weigh down the owner, like Issachar’s ass under a couple of panniers. Ere pockets were invented, sportsmen were content with less elaborate arrangements. Strutt has engraved the figure of an Anglo-Saxon gentleman, scouring the fields without a hat or any covering to his head; his arms are a quiver and bow, while his game (which he shot flying) are strung round his belt, forming a picturesque fringe composed of brant, snipe and quail.

Instead of the solitary pouch of our forefathers, pockets have become so very numerous that it is difficult to tell how many some gentlemen carry; always a pair, but often from three to five in the coat, two to four in the vest, as many in the pants, while in stormy weather an equal number in the great coat or surtout—and yet these are not enough, since we often see people stow away in their hats what they cannot find room for any where else—imitating prudent skippers who pile freight on deck for want of room in the hold. A person is now enveloped in pockets; they are suspended so thickly about him, that he would formerly have been taken for an itinerant ‘pochetier,’ or a merchant of new-fashioned ‘escarcelles.’

As fashion is governed by whim, some whimsical pockets have come into fashion—as the ‘pocketing sleeves’ of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These did not resemble the modern ‘bishop sleeve,’ but were long pendant pokes, which hung from 190men’s arms like orioles’ nests, and from ladies’ wrists like carpet bags. Modifications of them are yet worn by Spanish and Portuguese monks. Head, in his notes on the Pampas, mentions supping at an apology for an inn with a travelling priest. After finishing the meal, the reverend gentleman thrust his hand “into the large sleeve of his white serge gown and pulled out some cigars.” Old writers state that these pockets were usually searched before their wearers could be admitted into kings’ houses, and in some cases before retiring; the conveniences which they presented for concealing things surreptitiously acquired, gave rise to some strange petty larcenies.

Richard Brathwait, in his ‘Rules for the government of the house of an Earle,’ charges the usher of the dining hall to give a sharp look out, lest those who wait at table pocket the victuals; ‘and I very well like the order I have seene in some noble houses, that neither yeoman, groome, nor gentleman’s man, must be suffered to wait in a cloake, but in their livery coates, [garments fitted close to the body,] for so were they easier to be seene if they carried forthe any meat that they ought not to doe.’ Hence there was after all nothing very extraordinary in Hudibras securing bread, black-puddings and cheese in his trunk hose, or Sancho stowing away in similar cavities boiled capons and sausage. Those who kept porters’ lodges, [entrances to castles,] Brathwait observes, “should be men tall and stronge; they are to looke diligently that none filch and carry out 191at the gates meate or any thing else.” For the same reason Roman slaves who served at table were clothed only in tunics and girt with a towel. Visitors used their own napkins which a servant carried to the feast and took back, and in it generally part of the victuals—sometimes they were detected carrying off articles of plate.

So much for men’s pockets: those of the ladies are more interesting affairs; but having been admonished to let them alone, at least to refrain from all remarks on modern ‘poches des dames,’ we shall only take a peep at such as our grandmothers wore. Indeed it would require a more inquisitive disposition than ours to detect, and more assurance to describe the devices by which young ladies avoid carrying the enormous pouches in fashion a century ago. We have neither the requisite knowledge nor nerve. To be sure, we have occasionally seen belles, when preparing for shopping, thrust their money between the glove and palm of the hand, and others use cuffs of the pelisse for the purpose; while in cold weather they carry small parcels in muffs. Billets-doux and souvenirs are concealed in the bosom—a favorite place for favorite things—a convenient one too for papers of thread, and other things of that sort, in the absence of a work-bag—as Grecian and Roman ladies well knew.

But there never was half the subtlety employed in concealing the pockets of females as those of the ruder sex. The French lady’s apron is provided with two pockets in front, as if inviting inspection. 192Originally devised by ‘une marchande’ as a substitute for the till, it was found so convenient for other things besides change as to become adopted by those who had nothing to sell. The famed reticule is carried in the hand, in every one’s sight, and even laid like the bonnet aside when its owner is not disposed to walk out. Its materials and decorations are surprisingly varied; sometimes formed of net work (hence its name) of links of silver or steel, like flexible armor of old; now made of shells, of seeds and glass beads, of rich colored velvets and silks, and enriched with lace. In public promenades, swinging to and fro from the arms, these beautiful things reflect rays tinctured with azure, crimson and gold, reminding one of the plumage of tropical birds in the sun.

In articles of taste ladies take the lead—reticules are examples; for in them pockets have got back to the old pendant pouch. Having run through the entire circle of fashion, they have reached the point where they began, and are ready to run it again. This is an advance which the male sex has not attained; as in other circles, the beaux are here doomed to follow the belles.

But we are forgetting our promise to let pockets of living ladies alone, and notice simply such as belonged to frugal housewives in days gone by. Of a truth, theirs were pockets!—receptacles, redolent of other perfumes than camphor or musk, and replete with other things than ladies now carry. Characteristic of rude times, they were doomed to hard 193service. At first they were made of the most durable of woven fabrics, but so great was the wear and tear that eventually well tanned leather superseded every other material. In shape many of them resembled an inverted heart, but more were like a violin and in size a violoncello. Into one of these capacious cul de sacs a dozen reticules might have been put, a muff thrown in, and room be left. Let those who doubt this, if any such there be, enquire of an ancient farmer’s wife, and they will doubt no more.

Besides doing duty as a purse or money drawer, we have known one hold a clasp-knife for paring apples and ripping up seams, half a dozen silver spoons, supposed to be safe no where else; a bunch of keys, bits of ginger, cinnamon, and straggling cloves, metallic tractors, a box of salve, a pincushion, thimble, scissors, a leather case well stocked with bodkins, needles, tape and hanks of thread. The marbles of the owner’s favorite boy were thus secured each day, till he returned from school. A set of knitting needles with their sheath found lodgings there, and often folded in a half formed stocking, with the ball of yarn to finish it. There were other matters, but we forbear to specify them. It would be difficult to do so, because into this omnium gatherum all things were placed for which no other place was found—a kind of moving closet, into which, in sweeping round a house, the odds and ends were swept—things so various and select as would suffice to stock a curiosity shop.

194It will at once be understood that pockets such as these were not suspended to any part of the attire: no gingham gown, nor silk, nor cotton stuff could long support the load without being rent to tatters. No! they were strapped round the person independently of the dress—a necessary precaution! They were worn at the right side, except the fair owner was an ambidexter, when they took the left. In large households a lady preferred two, thus dividing the load and making one half balance the other; at the same time preventing the wearer from the risk of being dragged down on one side and becoming deformed in the spine. It was at one time common to wear them on the outside of the gown, when they were generally ornamented with stars, rings and lovers’ knots, in various colored leather. Sometimes the owner or the donor’s name was wrought in ‘chain stitch,’ and like samplers with a motto underneath.

Justice to a class of scientific artists, now no more, requires us to state that these pockets were not the work of women. The severe labor to which they were subjected when in use, required a corresponding amount to be expended on their fabrication: this, as in the case of shoes, saddlery, and other departments of the leather trade, was deemed too great for females; hence housewives were indebted for their pockets, as well as corsets, to old ‘stay makers.’

A marked relationship in the dress of the sexes is ever observable. If the costume of one sex be neat, elegant, or bizarre, so is that of the other. 195They partake of each other’s character, and are assimulated, though in a way not easily described; but look at works of costume from Roman times to our own, and this curious fact will be apparent. It is so to some extent even with pockets. When those of our grandmothers were all but fathomless, our grandfathers had theirs made of equal dimensions. When ladies wore high caps and copious gowns tucked out behind, gentlemen had their hair worked up in crests like cockatoos, and clad themselves in coats whose skirts were not like ours, “swallowtailed,” but broad and projecting, a la fan-tailed pigeons.

Let us now return to spoons: Fig. 3, Plate V. is another old pocket or folding one. The original, lying before us, is of silver. Like the one already described, its handle forms a fork. Having been purchased by a silversmith with other worn out plate, its history is unknown. From the style of the workmanship and other more obvious marks of antiquity, it would seem to date from a much earlier period than Fig. 1. The bowl is 2¾ inches long and 1¾ wide, and of a moderate depth; the length of bowl and handle when united, 6½ inches. Folded, the whole is comprised in less room than an ordinary snuff box. The jointed handle is shown separately at Fig. 4. The lower part, where united to the fork, is plain and square—a portion of which is removed on one side, leaving a recess into which the small shank of the fork is received; so that when the little sliding and ornamented tube is slipped over both, a perfect fork 196is made. Fig. 5—the back of the bowl, showing five oblong loops, through which the prongs were pushed when the owner wished to transfer liquid food to his lips.

An interesting feature, and one indicative of considerable antiquity, is the death’s head, and round it the well known admonition, ‘memento mori,’ engraved on the bowl—the initials of the melancholy owner standing on each side like armorial supporters to this graveyard emblazonry. The letters and writing are rudely executed, much more so than appears in the cut.

Possibly the implement belonged to some pious recluse who doomed himself to self-torture, and took this mode of mortifying his flesh—causing an image of the grim monster to stare him in the face with every mouthful he swallowed—a device by which the horrors of the charnel house were associated with the dining table! Quite a refinement on the practice of the ancient Egyptians—a people naturally lively and jocose, and whom the priests, as guardians of their morality, had considerable difficulty to keep within bounds. At convivial parties, Herodotus informs us (ii. 78) a coffin containing a perfect image of a dead person was carried round to every guest, the bearer requesting him to look on, and remember he would soon resemble it—an ingenious contrivance to keep people sober—but the owner of the spoon went further; he actually put into his mouth a grinning death’s head when he tasted his food, and repeated the operation with every morsel he ate. 197Custom is all powerful, or such a mode of taking dinner would stay some people’s stomachs ere dinner began.

Numerous were the inventions in past ages for conquering rebellious appetites. Most of them had relation to abstinence; as with the Yogees and other sects of India, of which some individuals, though watched closely, were never seen to eat, and were therefore esteemed most holy. There is certainly nothing like fasting for subduing the passions, and it is really astonishing how far it has been carried. Red lettered eremites, in whose constitutions a craving for food predominated, heroically endured the constant pangs of hunger and thirst, with the view of fairly starving the wicked ones out. Some limited themselves to two or three spoonfuls of thin pottage a day, and with it actually ‘mixed dirt’ to punish the palate, or sprinkled in ‘grit’ to set the teeth on an edge! They sorrowed because they could not exist without eating. From some accounts it would seem as if each spoonful was accompanied to the mouth with a groan, while streams of tears often made it run over! No wonder that such men checked indulgence in themselves and other people by engraving emblems of death on table utensils.

Perhaps it will be said, severe disciplinarians used simple spoons of wood or horn, while the one under consideration, being of silver, was not suited to a sorrowful penitent. True; hence if it really belonged to a monastery, it perhaps had a place in the abbot’s buffet. These men, we know, ‘lived well,’ 198bodily as well as spiritually; they were no strangers to creature comforts. ‘Table d’Abbe’ was a proverbial expression for a splendidly furnished board. They were served in plate, and with considerable state too; so were lady abbesses also; but we cannot think this spoon was ever owned by a nun—no female could of choice love to contemplate (in the ornament on the back) the figure her face was destined to make, nor did any one ever wish her beauty to fade. The lady of the cloister no more than her sister of the ball room was ever insensible to personal charms or indifferent about her appearance in the eyes of mankind.

With the implement, then, we may suppose some superior of a convent moderately cherished his body, especially on meagre days; and as an exterior sign of interior grace had a symbol of mortification cut on the outside of the bowl. Perhaps many a lesson on fasting was given to his attendants with this spoon in his hand—serious homilies on the evils of good cheer, and the blessings heaven bestows on the abstemious—blessings, we may presume, evinced in the shining face, the en bon point and comely appearance of his reverence. But other thoughts were indulged and other scenes enacted when his table was cleared, and the spoon, with the dishes, found their way to the kitchen or refectory, where the lay brethren dined, out of his sight and out of his hearing! Verily, all the stories extant about monasteries and monks would be well nigh eclipsed by a week’s table-talk held in the presence of an old abbot’s spoon.

199Possibly some reader exclaims, ‘this is all well enough, if the implement ever had a place in a convent—it more likely was owned by a layman; the initials imply as much, while the female bust on the handle was not by any means appropriate for a priest either to handle or look on.’ There is some force in these remarks. Well, let us see to whom it could have belonged—not to an Englishman certainly, since neither the maker’s nor the government stamp is impressed on it. It is from continental Europe, and if made to order was designed for a gentleman acquainted with mythology and versed in the classics. The handle, representing a nymph and twisted serpents, indicates this. Now who could he be? The initials are A. L.—perhaps Alphonso Ledesma, the Spanish poet, who died in 1623; or Andrea Lanzano, the Italian painter; but poets and painters are generally poor, and many, like Cervantes and Morland, never owned any plate; we shall therefore conclude that Andrew Laguna, the rich and favorite physician of Charles V. once owned it. If such was the fact, this spoon was, probably often in the company of the most famous men of the age. It may have been even handled by Columbus himself, after returning from his immortal adventure.

Other readers may think the implement was originally made for the special use of an individual: very possible, and on second thoughts we may be sure none but a niggard, afraid of his victuals, or a miser like Elwes could have made a practice of putting such an one into guests’ hands.

200After all it is no great matter who the owner was. It has obviously existed through two, possibly three or even four centuries, and has seen much service. Many are the mouths it has opened, the palates it has tickled, the stomachs it has comforted, the tongues it has silenced, and peradventure blistered by hastily leaving scalding pottage in the mouth. But alas! where now are the eyes that once glistened over it, the wits seated at tables it has graced? Having outlived them all, it appears in a land of strangers; a wanderer in another hemisphere. Could this venerable relic give an account of its former proprietors, tell us who and what they were, how they lived and where they died, how it came among and why parted from them—could it describe their persons, tempers, and conditions, the friends they entertained and the families they visited—few novels would surpass, perhaps none equal the story in interest.

Forks.—As the handles of some old spoons were separable from the bowls, so as to be used as forks, we may as well devote the concluding pages of this chapter to the latter. The transition from pocket-spoons to pocket-forks is easy enough, but when both implements are joined together, their descriptions should not be apart.

There is something singular in the history of forks. Though of modern date, as little is known of their origin as that of spoons. The author of one is as much lost to fame as the inventor of the other. It is certain that people of the ancient world took dinner without forks. All raised victuals to their mouths 201as orientals do now; hot and thin liquids with spoons, and butcher’s meat with the fingers. Even in the advanced state of society and manners under the Pharaohs, Egyptians held cooked joints and roasted fowls in one hand while shaving off slices with a knife in the other. In one of the paintings copied by Rossilini representing a feasting party, a gentleman flourishes a joint of venison or lamb, two are eating fish which they retain in their fingers, while a fourth is actually separating the wing of a goose with the same instruments. This may have been an exception to the general practice, though if so, why it should have been selected for record on eternal tablets of stone, it is not easy to divine. These tablets present the most ancient pictures in existence of feasts. It is not till some four thousand years later we meet with table forks. These are not found portrayed in sculptures, nor paintings or engravings till the 17th century, yet pictorial delineations of Roman, Asiatic, Norman, and Anglo-Saxon domestic life abound.

The absence of forks at Jewish tables is sufficiently evident from the affecting declaration of the Savior: ‘He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me’—the identical mode of eating still followed in Palestine. We know from Roman writers, that to take food from a dish without unnecessarily immersing the fingers, was a part of the education of youth of both sexes. Ovid has versified the lesson:

202The same advice was imparted to boys and girls of ancient Greece. It is now impressed upon their offspring by the polite Persian, Turk and Hindoo. Boarding schools are of extreme antiquity, (ii. Kings, iv. 38.) and Pharaonic as well as Jewish proprietors taught young masters and misses to behave not unseemly at table. Chaucer mentions a school at Bow, where girls were initiated in the arts of fashionable life; among other acquirements they were taught how to avoid putting their hands too deep in the dish. Somewhat similar advice was given to European ladies in the seventeenth century, and Quixote praises Sancho for his attainments in this branch of politeness.

It was the want of forks which gave rise to the old practice of washing before and after meals—one for which the ceremonious Pharisees were so tenacious, and with which they combined many ridiculous superstitions. The custom was demanded by decency, when plates were not in use and each person at dinner thrust his hand into one common dish. What could be more offensive to natural propriety than an individual fishing up from that dish gobbets of flesh with fingers only washed with the soup! To the decent as well as the delicate, the sight must ever be abhorrent. A subsequent ablution was as necessary to personal comfort as the first was to the company’s enjoyment of their food. When pocket handkerchiefs were not in vogue, what else could a lady or gentleman do while their fingers were streaming with the fluid material of a ragout, or coated with 203the glutinous remains of a bowl of rich cuscous? They must either have wiped them dry on the hair of their heads, or rubbed off what they could on their garments. The process of washing the hands, and the utensils employed, are described at page 83, as used in Europe in the sixteenth century. Later still the custom was common. In Commenius’ Visible World there is a cut representing a feast. The guests being brought in, wash their hands by holding them over a basin presented by a servant, who pours out water from an ewer. The reader who is desirous of beholding orientals dining on the favorite ragout may consult the cuts in Lane’s Modern Egyptians, and illustrated works on Eastern manners. If he wishes to see how occidentals formerly managed roasted joints let him cast his eyes on the cut below, copied from Strutt:

ANGLO-SAXON NOBLES OR PRINCES AT DINNER.

Three Anglo-Saxon nobles or princes at dinner! Their rank is indicated by being served on the knee. 204The number was one most preferred in classical eras for convivial parties. These, it was said, ought never to consist of fewer persons than the Graces nor more than the Muses. The round table is covered by an ample cloth upon which are placed bowls or deep dishes, but no plates. One of the party only is supplied with a spoon; he seems in the act of calling to his attendant, perhaps for soup. His associates amuse themselves with solider things; one is engaged in separating a slice from a joint presented on the rod on which it was roasted. To facilitate the operation, he grasps one end of the spit while the waiter holds fast the other. The gentleman with a beard appears indetermined whether to follow the example or first finish the fish in his hand.

Here is ocular proof how indispensable was the washing of hands after dinner, and this old painting is in all essential points a mere fac-simile of others which might be produced, of earlier and later dates. The reader may find specimens in D’Agincourt’s History of the Arts. Plate 71 shows a royal party at a table furnished much in the same style as the foregoing. To assist digestion and gratify two senses at once, a fiddler stands by, playing a favorite air. The date is about the 11th century. But so late as the middle of the 17th century, it was common for carvers to handle flesh meats at table. In 1641 a festival was held at Paris by the Savetiers. One gentleman grasps the shank of a leg of mutton while cutting it up, to supply the plate of a lady beside him. It is hence obvious that the unbecoming practice of 205‘licking the fingers,’ attributed as a crime to ancient turnspits, was not unknown to their betters—that kings as well as cobblers were guilty of it daily.

The attendants in the cut wear tunics, and apparently are girt with towels. Each holds a trencher, the essential requisite of an Anglo-Saxon page. He was never allowed to wait at table without it; a good reason for which is furnished by the illustration: held under the smoking joint, it caught the dripping gravy and such pieces of meat as a guest when carving might let fall. [The rich subject of spits must be left for future papers which the Society of Chiffonniers intend to issue.]

Perhaps some readers imagine the want of forks was sensibly felt in old times, and that they were eagerly adopted as soon as they appeared. No such thing. We regret to say their introduction was violently opposed, and a storm of abuse poured on the heads of their users. Even the clergy, who ought to have known better, preached against them as a wicked innovation. Among others, the Benedictines of St. Maur declared them inconsistent with the scriptural mode of living, as exemplified by the patriarchs, prophets, and especially by the great exemplar and his apostles—an abominable violation of primitive manners! But notwithstanding the denunciation of table forks by friars and monks, the very people among whom the pope had his seat were the first to receive them. They were first domesticated in Italy in the 16th century, but were certainly known there before, either as luxuries or curiosities.

206As early as the 11th and 12th centuries they were occasionally used by the wealthy. Peter Damiani, who died A. D. 1073, mentions in one of his letters a lady of Constantinople, married to a doge of Venice, and who, among other strange fancies, required rain water to wash in, and used a golden fork to eat with. But this does not determine the date or place of their invention. It does not appear that they were quite novel things then—nay, a silver fork has been found at Pompeii; so that they were not absolutely unknown to some of the fashionables of antiquity.

Forks are mentioned in a charter of Ferdinand I. of Spain, A. D. 1101. In the wardrobe account of Edward I. king of England, ‘a pair of knives with sheathes of silver enameled, and a forcke of chrystal’ are specified. In 1595, Queen Elizabeth dined at Kew, at the house of Sir John Pickering, who presented her with a rich fan, the handle of which was set with diamonds; an artificial nosegay composed of jewels, “and to grace him the more, she, of herself, took from him a salt, a spoone, and a forcke of fair agatte.” At the same period they were looked on as curiosities in France. Brathwait, who wrote his ‘Rules’ in the early part of the reign of James I. is silent on forks, though full on the minutest matters. The groom of the pantry was “to keepe the saltes, spoones, and knives very faire and cleane.”

It was owing to their being made portable that eventually brought forks into vogue. Travellers, gentlemen, delicate ladies, young beaux, and all who disliked to feed out of dishes into which the fingers 207of a company were unceremoniously thrust, carried their eating apparatus in a case or cadenas. The eighty-second proposition of the Marquis of Worcester’s famous Century of Inventions is a proof in point;—“A knife, spoon, or fork, in an usual portable case, may have the like conveyance in their handles;” i.e. secret devices might be concealed in them. Nichols mentions knives with ‘conceytes’ in the handles—a toothpick for example, as in a spoon already described. Great ingenuity was displayed in things of this kind and not a little pride indulged in them by the wearers—like the conceited fop in Gil Blas who carried his gloves and handkerchief in the hilt of his sword. The oldest forks were generally of silver. Henry IV. of France had one of steel. Heylin attributes their introduction into England to young men of fashion, but errs, we think, in ascribing them to the Chinese: “The use of silver forks with us, by some of our spruce gallants taken up of late, came from China to Italy, and from thence to England.”—[Cosmog. p. 865.]

In the cut of a feast in Commenius, besides trenchers, cups, glasses, knives, and other table furniture, there are “little forks,” not much unlike those figured on Plate VI. which date from an earlier period. In 1611, Coryatt, the eccentric English traveller was ridiculed by writers and wits for using forks. Their introduction into Britain has been erroneously ascribed to him. They were previously known there as we have seen, but the book of his travels made the public more familiar with them:

208“I observed,” he says “a custom in all those Italian cities and townes through the which I passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels; neither do I think that any other nation of Christendome doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian and most strangers that are commorant [dwelling] in Italy, do alwaies at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate. For while with their knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten their forke, which they hold in the other hand, upon the same dish. So that whatsoever he be, that sitting in the company of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate with his fingers, from which all at the table doe eat, he will give occasion of offense unto the company, as having transgressed the lawes of good manners; insomuch that for his error he shall be at least brow-beaten, if not reprehended in words. This forme of feeding, I understand, is generally used in all places in Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver; but these are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane—hereupon I myself thought good, to imitate the Italian fashion, by this forked cutting of meate, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home: being once quipped for that frequent using of my forke, by a certain learned gentleman, a familiar friend of 209mine, one Master Laurence Whitaker, who in his merry humour doubted not to call me furcifer, only for using a forke at feeding.”

In the preceding extract, we have a view of Italian gentlemen ‘feeding’ in the beginning of the 17th century. In the following passage we obtain an insight into British manners during the middle of it:—“A gentlewoman being at table, abroad or at home, must observe to keep her body straighte, and lean not by any means upon her elbowes—nor by ravenous gesture discover a voracious appetite. Talke not when you have meate in your mouth; and do not smacke like a pig—nor eat spoonemeat so hot that the tears stand in your eyes. It is very uncourtly to drink so large a draught that your breath is almost gone, and you are forced to blow strongly to recover yourselfe. Throwing down your liquor as, into a funnel, is an action fitter for a juggler than a gentlewoman. In carving at your own table, distribute the best pieces first, and it will appear very decent and comely to use a forke; so touch no piece of meat without it.” This elegant extract is from ‘The Accomplished Lady’s Rich Closet of Rarities.’ London, 1653.

To conclude: That forks were known in Spain when Cervantes wrote, is obvious from the address of Quixote to Don Antonio in praise of Squire Pansa: ‘In truth, Sancho’s temperance and cleanliness in eating deserve to be engraved on plates of brass, to remain an eternal memorial for ages to come. I must confess when he is hungry, he seems to be 210somewhat of a glutton, for he eats fast and chews on both sides of his mouth; but for cleanliness he always strictly observes it. When he was a governor he learned to eat so nicely that he took up grapes and even the grains of pomegranates with the point of a FORK.’

Oriental Manners—Semifluids and Fingers—Spoons of Gold and Silver prohibited—Church Plate—Quibbling Evasion of Mahomet’s Precept—Modern Oriental Spoons—Substitutes for Tumblers—Arabs at Dinner—Revenge of Hasan—Persian Spoons—A Vulgar Ambassador—Cakes used as Napkins—Frolic of Tavernier and the King of Persia—Proverbs—Sherbert Spoons—Curious Article in the Persian Creed—Repartee—Chinese Spoons—Chopsticks—Sheathed Knives and Spoons—Worn by Janizaries—‘Standard and Caldron’—Military Romances—Ancient Beggars—Clack Dish and Spoon—Interesting Family—Beggars and Lent—St. Giles.

A cursory reader of travels might imagine spoons unknown in the greater part of the earth, so frequently are unguarded expressions to that effect met with. We may therefore as well premise that the practice of conveying semifluid food to the mouth without them was formerly as universal as handling flesh, meats at table without forks. With the exception of Europe and European descendants, it is so still. Boiled rice is the great pabulum of life to a majority 211of our species—with millions it is the only food. Now, whether eaten by the scrupulous Hindoo, delicate Persian, or fastidious Turk—people with whom cleanliness is godliness, whose daily ablutions are religious duties—or by the revolting Hottentot, the wild Arab, or revengeful Malay, it is conveyed to the mouth with the hand alone. So general is this filthy custom among people on opposite parts of the globe that it can hardly be looked on in any other light than as a relic of times when mankind formed one family—times when no forks were used but fingers, no other knives than finger nails, and spoons had not been thought of—when men and women clutched their food as parrots do, and raised it to their lips like squirrels.

Suppose we add a few examples of the custom—not drawn from people ignorant of spoons, but such as follow it from choice. The reflecting reader will need no stronger proof of the still prevailing influence of antediluvian usages, and of the humiliating fact, that like other creatures, men are creatures of habit—that tenacity to the rude practices of our forefathers is not always to be overcome by refinements or reason.

The Hindoos use neither knives nor forks at table, ‘nor spoons except with soup.’ Rice is served on banana leaves cut in the form of plates, and fresh ones are had for every meal.

M. Loubere, ambassador to Siam in 1687, and the author of two volumes on that country, says:—‘Ils n’ont à table, ny nappe, ny serviette, ny cuillière, 212ny fourchette, ny couteau.’ [Tome i. 101.] But that spoons were known there, is clear from the oriental jewelry and plate presented to the king of France by his royal brother of Siam, in 1685. Among other things was ‘une cuillière d’or, au plus bel ouvrage du Japon.’—[His. Gen. Tome xii.]

One traveller says the natives of Madagascar use no spoons; another, that they find substitutes for them and for dishes and ladles in the leaves of the raven plant. According to a third, spoons are not uncommon, while some of costly materials are occasionally to be met with. Rice is considered the best of all dishes; and beef, mutton, fowls and fish mere adjuncts. These, when cooked, are cut into small pieces, and invariably served up on boiled rice, into which ‘horn spoons are stuck,’ and for it alone used. The fore finger and thumb—a pair of natural forceps—pick up the meat and deliver it into the mouth. When Radama, king of the Island, died in 1828, immense treasure was buried with him. His coffin was silver. To make it, fourteen thousand dollars were melted and beaten into plates, which were fastened together with silver rivets. Besides other valuables buried with him were a silver ladle and a golden spoon, for his use in another world.

The people of Barbary make no use of knives and forks, ‘and very rarely of spoons.’ Like other orientals, they take up their food with the right hand, and dexterously jerk it into the mouth. Caffres use neither tables, knives nor plates, but sometimes call in the aid of forks and spoons. Squatting round a 213boiling pot, each spears with a pointed stick a piece of flesh, and leisurely eats it from the hand; When a missionary arrived at Lattakoo, some colored ladies sent his party a present of porridge in the pot in which it was made, but unaccompanied with implements to eat it with; they never thought of spoons being used with semifluid food, but naturally supposed that white as well as black men’s fingers tasted every morsel swallowed. The Negroes of the Gambia, says Moore, are not very proud in their furniture, for the greater part have only a mat raised on a few sticks to sleep on, a jar for water, a calabash for drinking, two or three mortars to pound rice, and calabashes out of which they eat rice with their hands.

The Sumatrans, says Marsden, use at table neither knives nor spoons, nor any substitute for them. They take up rice and other victuals with the thumb and fingers, and dexterously throw it into the mouth. Rice is boiled generally in a joint of bamboo, and by the time it is cooked the vessel is nearly destroyed. Their manner of boiling the grain is to let it simmer over a slow fire, drawing off the water by degrees ‘with a flat ladle or spoon.’

The Bashee Islanders take meat from the pot in which it is cooked with their fingers, as the Moors do pillau, using no spoons. At Mindanao the common food is sago and rice. When served up, each person dips his fingers in water, to prevent the glutinous food from sticking to them; then taking a handful out of the platter, squeezes it into a lump, and crams it into his mouth. [Dampier.]

214When Kotzebue was at Owhyhee, Tamaahmaah, the king, who possessed European table utensils, including spoons, used a gourd for a basin at dinner, and fed himself like an Asiatic, dipping his fingers into the taro dough, and conveying it to his mouth with the same implements. He observed to the Russian navigator: ‘This is the custom in my country, and I will not depart from it.’ The same slovenly way of eating was observed from the king to the lowest menial. Mr. Farnham, in his ‘Scenes in the Pacific,’ is more particular: “The mode of conveying poi to their mouths was quite primitive. The fore and middle fingers served instead of a spoon. These they inserted to the depth of the knuckles, and having raised as much as would lie upon them, and by a very dexterous whirl brought it into a globular shape upon the tips, they thrust it into their mouths and licked the fingers clean for another essay.”

When Captain John Smith, the hero and historian of Virginia was a slave among the Turks, his stomach was sorely tried. In his chapter on Turkish diet, he says pillau was served out to his captors in great bowls; they sat ‘round it on the ground, and after they have raked it thorow so oft as they please with their foule fists, the remainder was for the christian slaves.’

Nearly 200 years have elapsed since Van Sleb visited Egypt. He was once entertained at an extraordinary banquet given by a rich Arab; but ‘wine was wanting, and spoons, knives and forks.’ ‘The modern Egyptians;’ says Lane, ‘seldom use at table 215either knives or forks; the thumb and two fingers of the right hand serve for every thing not fluid. Spoons are used for soup and thin rice, or other things not easily conveyed to the mouth without them.’ The same writer, speaking ‘on meals and the manner of eating,’ in a note to his translation of the ‘Thousand and One Tales,’ remarks: ‘The table is usually placed upon a round cloth spread in the middle of the floor, or in a corner next two of the deewáns or low seats, which generally extend along three sides of the room: it is composed of a large round tray of silver, or tinned copper or brass, supported by a stool commonly about 15 or 16 inches high, made of wood and generally inlaid with mother of pearl, tortoise shell, &c. The dishes are of silver, of tinned copper or china; several are placed upon the tray, and around them are dispersed some round flat cakes of bread, with spoons of box-wood, ebony, or other material.’

The leading customs through all the East, with regard to eating, are in fact similar. When people sit at table their legs are crossed under them. They perform topical ablutions before and after meals, at which knives and spoons are seldom seen. When the master of the family is present, he first puts his hand in the dish, and the rest in order after him. There is another particular with which the reader should be acquainted, in order to understand why wooden spoons chiefly are used by wealthy orientals. The poorer classes have spoons of horn, wood, brass, and iron; and a few silver and golden ones may occasionally 216be found on the tables of princes and rich men; but such are not common, and for this reason: they were prohibited by Mahomet. “Verily, [said he,] the fire of hell will roar like the bellowings of a camel in the bellies of those who eat and drink from vessels of gold and silver.” No articles of plate are allowed in mosques, and formerly they were excluded from christian churches. “Exuperius, Bishop of Tholose, ministered the holie supper with a glasse cup and a wicker basket. The Triburien Council disputed whether golden or woodden vessels should be used. Boniface, the martyr, said when they were golden priests, they had woodden cups, but now being woodden priests, they will have golden challices.” [P. Martyr, on ‘Ornaments of Churches.’]

Some rich Mahommedans, however, like other rich people, contrive, while obeying literally a precept they do not like, to depart widely from its spirit. Indeed no law, divine or human, can repress the love of distinction. Hunger breaks through stone walls, but pride bursts through brass ones. Believers in the Koran are forbid to eat of drink out of gold or silver utensils. ‘True,’ quoth a worldly-minded mufti; ‘that applies only to things put to the lips, not to trays, dishes, wash-basins, knives, nor yet to the handles of spoons, for none of these things come in contact with the mouth.’ Awful would be the fury of the prophet, could he hear his doctrines thus explained away; and how would his indignation boil could he read the following extract 217from a travelling giaour’s remarks on the manners of his people: ‘As for pillau, and other soft and liquid meats, the Turks have spoons, though not of gold and silver, which they are forbidden by the law to put into their mouths. Those at the tables of persons of distinction are generally of agate, amber, or other scarce material, with handles of gold or silver gilt, and set with jewels; for the parts which enter not the mouth may be of those metals!’ [Motraye.]

In the ‘Grande Description,’ tome ii, E. M. are two Egyptian spoons of the kind, being richly ornamented. They are shown in Figs. 6, 7, Plate V. ‘Cuillers en ecaille, ornées d’ambre, de corail et de nacre.’ [Fig. 8 is enlarged from a cut in Jacob Cat’s works.] Fig. 9—another Turkish spoon, elaborately enriched in both bowl and handle.

The Turks and other orientals seldom drink at meals, but when they do it is out of spoons; hence if they do not employ them always as we do, they put them in requisition where we do not. The wealthy have a variety of pleasant drinks, consisting of diluted peach, cherry, and raspberry syrups. Each person has by him a wooden spoon, with which he lades the syrup out of bowls, taking ever and anon spoonfuls of it, and so suspends his thirst. [Tavernier.] A sweet drink, composed of raisins boiled in sugar and scented with rose water, is drunk by ladies out of ladles, or spoons of tortoise shell, and sometimes of cocoa nut. [Lane.]

Near the custom house, says Commodore Porter, is the most famous eating place in all Constantinople. 218Persons who like what is good go there to regale themselves with kibobs, a dish in great favor with the Turks. It consists of pieces of mutton or lamb cut into small mouthfuls and seasoned; then strung on an iron skewer and exposed to the heat of an oven of peculiar construction. They are, when done, served up in their own gravy, or in kaymar, which is cream. There is also served with them a soft flat kind of bread or pancake, which, as no knives or forks are made use of, suits admirably as a means of conveying the kibobs and kaymar to the mouth, whence they soon find their way into the stomach. The bread is called Firna Pidésé. With this mess they give you a large vessel filled with sherbet, or a drink prepared from dried grapes, and to each person is given a large spoon to sip it.

The manners of Arabs at table are repulsive. ‘They use neither knives nor forks, nor even spoons, unless for food wholly liquid.’ They have been observed to plunge their filthy hands into milk placed before them, and thus raise the liquid to the lips. Before sitting down they repeat a short prayer beginning thus:—“In the name of the most merciful God.” The instant it is finished all hands are in the food—and lo, it has vanished! “In the middle of all was a large wooden bowl, in which were the camel’s bones and a thin broth in which they were boiled. Knives, forks, and spoons are silly, impertinent things in the esteem of Arabs; however, being known to use such things, we had large wooden spoons laid before us.” [Jour. to Tadmor, 1691.]

219Having no arabesque spoon, plain or jewelled, to lay before the reader, we present him with a gem of another kind—one first brought to light as an Ishmaelite sat down to dinner. It is an old remark that hunger induces ill humor—that men are more disposed to anger when waiting for a meal, than when rising from the table. As Hasan, the son and successor of Ali was one day about to dine, a slave let a dish of hot pillau drop on him! An unprecedented insult to the dread leader of the faithful! Now, how did the startled caliph, as his eyes glistened and his face assumed the color of fire, act—he at whose nod the heads of a dozen men would have flown for a less offence from their owners’ shoulders? We have seen a servant of the pope’s slain for spilling hot broth on a scholar, and an ambassador of his holiness flying for his life on that occasion to a steeple; we know too how a pagan Roman acted when one of his servants let a porcelain dish fall, at a supper given to Augustus—viz: ordered the offender to be sunk in a fish-pond wherein the monster fattened lampreys on human flesh! an order which thrilled Octavius with horror.

The revenge of Hasan exceeded them both; and it was based on a verse of the Koran! In the third chapter of that book is the following passage:—“Paradise is prepared for those who give alms in prosperity and adversity; who bridle their anger and forgive men, for God loveth the beneficent.” Dreading the caliph’s resentment, the poor slave dropped on his knees, and in an agony exclaimed, “Paradise 220is for those who bridle their anger—” “I—I am, not angry,” was the unexpected reply. The trembling supplicant proceeded—“and for those who forgive men—” “I forgive you,” was the life-sparing answer—thus emboldened, the youth meekly added, “for God loveth the beneficent.” “Since it is so,” said Hasan, whose brow the angel of forgiveness had now smoothed, and lit up his face with virtue’s own smile—“I give you your liberty and four hundred pieces of silver”!

If there is a more beautiful episode in human annals, we have not met with it. Who would compare Alexander to Hasan—who is not enraptured at the intelligence and ready wit of the young Arab slave; at the inspiration which led him to quote and beautifully invert the order of a passage so suited to the exigencies of the moment—and who does not envy Hasan the heavenly feast he enjoyed in the place of the dish he had lost?

Persian Spoons.—The Persians, says Tavernier, eat their broths with wooden spoons. Their rice, which is made thick, they take up with their fingers, and wipe their hands upon handkerchiefs. Invited with the Venetian ambassador to sup with a Persian grandee, the representative of the doge, he remarks, ‘committed an absurdity, for there are no [few] silver or gold spoons in Persia, but only long wooden ladles that reach a great way. Now, the ambassador, reaching his ladle to a porcelain dish, full of scalding hot pottage, clapped it presently into his mouth, but finding it so hot that he could not endure 221it, after several scurvy faces threw it out of his mouth into his hand, in presence of all the company.’

John Bell says an entertainment given to the Russian ambassador at Ispahan consisted of sweetmeats, ice water in golden basins, rice boiled with butter, fowls, mutton, lambs, &c. The whole was served in gold and china dishes. ‘But according to the custom of the country, we had neither napkins, spoons, knives nor forks. The shah himself eat with his fingers, and every one followed his example. Thin cakes made of wheat flour were used to wipe our fingers.’—a practice of the Romans, whose slaves afterwards ate the cakes. Fryer visited Persia 170 years ago, and observed the wealthy drink wine out of ‘long thin wooden spoons,’ but he was in error in saying ‘spoons are not in use, unless to drink sherbet with.’

Tavernier is one of the most interesting of old travellers. His details of oriental life are vivid and fresh as if drawn yesterday. He had, from his profession as a merchant-jeweller and goldsmith, access to every court. Haying spent forty years in his travels, he was personally known to most Asiatic princes, and his arrival was often hailed by them with joy. On his sixth and last visit to Ispahan, he was warmly greeted by the king, who seems to have been a real toper. Two days after reaching the city, the traveller was waited on early in the morning, by a chief officer of state, accompanied by a jesuit and two Dutchmen, (favorites of the monarch,) and requested to attend them to the palace. Upon entering, 222they found his majesty seated upon a low-pallet; before him were fruits, sweetmeats, two bottles of Schiras wine and a golden cup. There was also a small wooden vat or cistern full of wine, and a golden spoon or ladle which held nearly a pint. The bottles and cup were for the king; the vat and spoon for his guests.

It would be disagreeable to many readers, were we to recite the particulars of the succeeding debauch—one in which the spoon acted so prominent a part, despite of every precept of the Koran. Suffice to say, ‘the entertainment’ was kept up for seventeen hours! being diversified with feasting, music and dancing. At short intervals ‘the great ladle went about smartly,’ the king insisting that ‘no man should leave a drop.’ Tavernier thus winds up the account:—“We had droll’d together till eleven o’clock at night, when the king started another question—whether any one present could sing? It happened that there was one Monsieur Daulier there, who played on the virginals, and pretended to sing a court air. His voice being high-pitched, the king did not like it, as the Persians prefer the base. Perceiving this, and being in a merry vein, though I knew not a note, yet having a deep and clear voice, I sung an old air, beginning thus:—

The king was ravished, crying out, ‘Baricala! Baricala!’ an exclamation equivalent to ‘Oh! the works of God!’

223Wine, as well as ‘plate,’ is prohibited, but rich Persians make no scruple about either. They excuse themselves when overtaken by liquor, by quoting a proverb which certainly was not designed to encourage drunkenness:—‘Equal sin in a spoonful as in a potful.’ Hence, after tasting a small quantity, they have no compunction about swallowing the largest. But such reasoning is not confined to oriental sinners; we have too many who exclaim, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’—‘As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’

Morier, describing a dinner given to the British embassy, says, there was placed before each guest a tray, on which stood three china bowls, filled with sherbets; two made of sweet liquors, and one an exquisite species of lemonade. There were besides, fruits ready cut, plates with elegant little arrangements of sweetmeats and confectionery, and smaller cups of sweet sherbet; the whole of which were placed most symmetrically, and were quite inviting even by their appearance. In the vases of sherbet were spoons made of the pear tree, with very deep bowls, and worked so delicately that the long handles just slightly bent when carried to the mouth.

If the reader has any curiosity to behold a Persian sherbet spoon, let him turn to Plate V. Figs. 10, 11, represent one, preserved with others of a similar form and different sizes in the Philadelphia Museum. It is fifteen inches long, and made of box-wood or pear tree. The handle is thin and ornamented with designs formed by openings cut entirely through. 224The junction of the handle with the bowl is strengthened by a pierced semicircular piece, shown in Fig. 10, and exhibiting a very novel feature.

From what has been said, the reader will be no longer surprised at Mahommedans associating the spoon with the pleasures of heaven; yet unless he had been informed of its employment in drinking wine upon earth, he could scarcely comprehend that part of the Persian creed which states that Rusuen, the porter of paradise, opens to faithful Mahommedans the gates of heaven; and when seated on the banks of the fountain Kauser, the great camel driver himself hands round to each the water of life in a LADLE.

As a specimen of Persian repartee, we may here introduce an anecdote, which, if not associated with the spoon, is at least connected with one of the ingredients of soup. An Ispahan dealer in pot-herbs, remonstrating against the imposition of an exorbitant tax, was ordered by the governor to pay it or leave the city. “I cannot pay it, and whither can I go,” ejaculated the poor man—knowing no place where he could live, out of the reach of the oppressor, or his equally rapacious relatives. “You may proceed to Schiras or Kashan, if you like those cities better than this.” “Yes; but your brother is in power in one, and your nephew in the other; what relief can I expect in either?” “Proceed, then; to court, and complain to the king,” replied the extortioner. “Alas! your brother, the Hajee, is prime minister.” “Well then,” said the irritated minister, 225“go to the devil, and trouble me no more!” “Ah! but the holy man your deceased father is with him”! said the persevering dealer in esculents. The spectators laughed, the governor followed their example, and promised to examine and redress the bold green-grocer’s wrongs.

Chinese Spoons.—In China and neighboring countries, spoons are often of earthenware. At an entertainment given to the British embassy in Cochin China, the table was loaded with every imaginable delicacy. The number of dishes piled in three rows, one above the other, exceeded a hundred. Before each person was placed boiled rice in place of bread, and two porcupine quills by way of knife and fork. ‘The spoons were of porcelain, and somewhat in the form of small shovels.’ [Staunton.] ‘We were in want of every accommodation, even of forks and spoons, for the former are not used in China, and the latter are made of porcelain, with very short handles.’ [Van Braam.]

Chopsticks.—But of Chinese peculiarities, few things have excited more interest than chopsticks—two small rods or wires, which at table perform the same duties as our forks and spoons. Enclosed in a sheath along with a knife, they are suspended from the sash of every gentleman. See Fig. 12, Plate V. for the sheath. The original is before us. It is 7 inches long, and half an inch wide, made of bamboo, and neatly covered with tortoise shell, in which no joint can be detected. A minute brass band goes round the middle and each end. A ring is attached 226to the upper one, and on a strip of metal is a proverb or moral sentence. An ivory handled knife, (left out in the cut) with a strong blade, and rough as the grindstone left it, occupies one half of the sheath. As both sticks are alike, one only is figured. They are square rods of ivory, eight inches long, one-fifth of an inch thick at the smaller ends, and rather thicker at the other, which are held in the hand. The thick parts, like the handle of the knife, project out of the case. Sometimes they are round and have their ends pointed with silver. When used, they are held in the right hand, between the forefinger and thumb. A toothpick occasionally finds a place in the sheath.

The dexterity with which chopsticks are used, and the celerity with which food disappears before them, show how appropriate is their name—kwae tsze, ‘nimble lads.’ A native readily picks up objects small as pin heads, while fruitless attempts of foreigners to convey with them a piece of edible bird’snest to the mouth, often afford amusement to Chinese hosts. The eating apparatus of the poorer classes consists of chopsticks and bowls. If they possess no table or bench, the large pot of rice is placed on the floor, and they squat round, with their feet inwards, just the contrary way from the Jews and Romans. A portion of rice is transferred by a ladle to each member’s bowl. This he holds in one hand close to the chin, and with the ‘nimble lads’ pushes the food into his mouth till the latter is crammed; then wiping the sticks across the edge of 227the bowl, he takes up with them, as with forceps, a piece of fish, meat, or whatever else is on the table, and thrusts it in edgewise as a relish. After a while the mouth is ready for more, and the nimble lads are again set to work. [See Chinese Rep. Vol. iii.]

Chopsticks are interesting relics of antediluvian days; for their origin is to be traced to the twigs by which barbarians scrape semifluid food from natural cups into the mouth; such as travellers use when dining on cuscous, while far distant from dwellings and destitute of artificial spatulæ. South Sea islanders thus gather taro dough out of cocoa shells, and American Indians scrape samp out of baskets.

A sheathed eating-knife was worn at the belt by the Celts, Gauls, Germans, Saxons and Anglo-Saxons, and by their descendants down to recent times. It was an essential part of the personal equipment of gentlemen, laborers and artisans. Even ladies wore them as they wear scissors now. An old saying arose from the practice, intimating that appearances are often deceptive:—“In a sheath of gold may be a knife of lead.” ‘Among the Celts,’ says Macpherson, ‘as at this day in France, guests carried their own knives and forks [?] enclosed in the same sheath with the dagger.’ Highlanders carry the skene dhu or knife, and a fork, in a horn or other sheath—the handle of the knife being sometimes hollowed out for the reception of snuff. Spoons also were worn in like manner. Every Janizary had one, and there is no reason to suppose the custom originated with them.

Fig. 13, Plate V. represents a brass sheath holding 228three knives and a spoon, such as the warlike infantry of the Turks formerly were furnished with, and which they wore pendent from, or stuck in, the girdle. At the time Motraye wrote, the spoon had been removed, being then worn in a perpendicular sheath in front of the cap, occupying the place of the head dress of modern troops, where we may suppose it sometimes warded off a blow aimed at the head of its owner, as well as refreshing him when a battle was over. This prominent disposition of the spoon by the Janizaries was appropriate enough, since each regiment had its own soup kettle, which in process of time acquired a sort of prescriptive sanctity, and formed as it were the chief standard of the regiment; while the officers and other military functionaries derived their titles from their various supposed employments as cooks, waiters, or scullions! The Spaniards have a proverb which reflects light on this strange custom:—‘Pendon y caldera’—the standard and caldron. In the Moorish wars, a Castilian who undertook to raise a regiment, was privileged by the king to carry a standard as the sign of his authority to enlist troops; while a caldron figured on it indicated that he fed them at his own cost.

Let not modern warriors laugh at this; for if posterity judge them from ‘Tableux,’ ‘Military Adventures,’ and other fashionable novels, descriptive of the foraging and bivouacing of epauletted gourmands and legal bucaniers, which constitute so large a portion of the light literature of the day, the old Turkish legions, God wot, will lose nothing in the comparison; 229for knives, forks, plates, spoons, the bottle and the glass, are infinitely more conspicuous than such things ever were with the Moslem. But it is a new thing under the sun for the most horrible of all crimes—that which includes every other, and surpasses the power of devils to commit, to be treated in books as a bagatelle, for the amusement of drawing-room loungers and boarding-school misses. Would that these literary warriors electrified the reading world with equally vivid details of the blessings their own countrymen have derived from their valor—how every victory has lessened the laborer’s toil and increased the artisan’s comforts, diminished the price of bread, and poured abundance among a happy population—how their liberties have increased with their armies, and taxes been reduced with their conquests—how—but we are digressing.

Fig. 14, Plate V.—one of the numerous illustrations of the ‘Romance of the Rose,’ a French poetical satire, written by Guillaume de Lois, and translated by Chaucer. As a portrait of a female mendicant of the middle ages, it is not without interest, independently of the spoon which ornaments the felt hat. The distressed condition of the lady’s wardrobe and her famishing looks are described in the poem:—

230The poet is speaking of avarice, which the ancient illustrator depicts in the aspect and costume of a beggar. The alms-dish, suspended from the wrist, was the professional badge of mendicants in the remotest ages, and has continued to be one to the present day. It dates back to the fountain-head of Hindoo mythology. ‘Gunga was produced by the sweat of Vishnu’s foot, which Brahma caught in his alms dish.’ The Pandaroons and other beggars of India eat from it the rice given them. Fryer, describing the Fakirs, says, ‘they beg up and down like our bedlams with an horn and a bowl.’

The spoon is also carried by Asiatic as well as old European beggars. ‘Persian Durweeshes in Egypt have oblong bowls of cocoa-nut or metal, in which they receive alms and put their food. They carry also a wooden spoon.’ [Lane.]

It was a daily custom to distribute victuals at the gates of monasteries and rich houses. Of such, we often read, ‘Pottage was given to every poor person who begged.’ ‘All dinners being ended, the Vsher and Groome of the Hall are to see the broken meate and drincke safely put into the almes tubbes.’ [Brathwait.] Every recipient was required to provide his own bowl and spoon—a prudent precaution, since lepers or other diseased persons were commonly among the applicants. It does not seem possible that more appropriate symbols of want could have been adopted, than those carried by ancient children of sorrow. What more touching devices for moving the bowels of the compassionate than an 231empty bowl and an unemployed spoon? There was even something expressive in the way they were carried—the spoon as near the mouth as could be, and the vacant dish in front of the empty stomach.

As the lady figured on Plate V. represents a class of old artists allied to modern chiffonniers, we trust no reader will take offence at her presence. Having described spoons belonging to kings, why should we not mention those owned by people, who, like kings, are fed at the public expense? Every part of her gabardine seems ready to bid ‘good bye’ to its neighbors, while many have already gone off, as certain rents and gaps too plainly declare. Still, there is philosophy in the disposal of the dress. If her organs of motion are wofully exposed, the more noble parts of her person are carefully guarded from the weather—perhaps on the principle of keeping ‘the head warm and feet cold;’ an aphorism which Boerhaave acquired, praise for inverting, though against the experience of swarms of young urchins, who scamper about summer and winter with bare legs and feet; and contrary to the advice of Locke, to bore holes in the soles of new shoes, that wind and water might always have free ingress and egress! There was policy if not humor in exhibiting the parts which the figure represents as denuded: in approaching a mansion for alms, the wretched toes enforced the appeal, and where their owner received nothing but curses, she quickly showed the churls ‘a clean pair of heels.’

Beggars were not allowed to enter a house when 232they sought alms—a circumstance from which a proverbial expression of ‘poor Richard’ is derived:—‘Hunger looks in at the working-man’s door, but dares not enter.’ Various devices were in vogue for giving notice of their presence; sometimes a horn was blown, or other rude instrument played on; but the usual music was produced by striking the dish with the spoon or a cup. From this clattering the principal utensil became known as the ‘clap-dish,’ or ‘clack-dish.’

The useful arts arose in Asia; and poetry, painting, and music were born there. Thence came the trumpet, harp, drum, cymbals, and what is older than all, the musical clack-dish. The begging friars of Fo enforce their demands by beating two pieces of bamboo, ‘or hammering a hollow piece of wood with a stick.’ With similar instruments Chinese mendicants get up such powerful solos and duets in front of shop doors, that the inmates, whose organs of harmony sympathize not with the sounds, relieve the musicians to get rid of the music. Lepers, when they attended markets to beg corn, carried a rattle to warn people from touching them.

Plate 7 Modern

There is an Italian female mendicant in one of the illustrations of Ackerman’s ‘Forget me Not’ for 1843, which shows how little the accoutrements and costume of this class have changed. With the exception of a crutch, she of Italy might be taken for the ancient French damsel on Plate V. An equal lack of covering is equally obvious about the regions of the toes, and opposite extremities of her feet. 233The mantle and skirts of an inner garment are ornamented with the same picturesque fringe; a species of muffler or band holds up the chin, and kept the miserable mouth shut when there was no occasion to open it; a tapered hat covers the head; a spoon, stuck through the band, sets off the hat, and an alms-dish hangs from the waist.

In a volume of ancient engravings now before us, one dated A. D. 1470 represents an itinerant charlatan, with his family and stock in trade. He is playing on bagpipes, and bears two children in a basket strapped to his back. His wife carries a young cherub and leads an ass laden with panniers, out of which peep a couple of boys who have not learned to walk. The eldest son, accompanied by the dog, goes before with an owl on his shoulder. In the man’s hat are stuck a couple of spoons.

In the days of ecclesiastical rule, when monks were monarchs and lay people could neither eat nor drink but as the Church pleased, a merciful clause was at length introduced into the canons respecting lent, with the view of removing a very serious obstacle to the salvation of those who lived upon alms—a pleasing proof of the anxiety of ghostly fathers to save (though only at the last extremity) the ghastly sheep in their flocks. It was to this effect:—“Beggars, when ready to affamish for want, may eat in lent time what they can get.”

Plate VIII—Tea Caddy, Salt Spoons, and Salt—Salt-Cellar—Monks of La Trappe—Egg Spoon—Paschal Eggs—Poultry raised by Steam—Mustard Spoons—French Prayer—Celestial House Movers—Beef and Mustard—Punch Spoon and Ladle—Wassail Bowl—Burns—‘Arts et Metières’—Sugar Tongs—Sifter and Snuff Spoons—Cream, Marrow, and Physic Spoons—Human Life—History and Influence of the Spoon—Author’s Request—His Parting Bow.

Plate VIII.—a miscellaneous collection. Figs. 1, 2—tea caddy spoons, for transferring the dried herb from small canisters to tea-pots. They are of the last century; but being imitations of nature, will be more or less in fashion while refined taste prevails. Figs. 3, 4, 5—salt spoons of silver, pearl and ivory, but 276sometimes made of tortoise shell, horn and bone, and of diverse patterns. As salt has been used at table from primitive times minute implements for taking it up are of undoubted antiquity, though particular descriptions of them have not reached us.

Of all condiments salt is the chief, both for animals and men. Quadrupeds relish it as well as bipeds. One of nature’s own preparing, it is furnished in profuse abundance. Millions of tons are annually consumed by horses, sheep and oxen in Europe and the United States. Ancient farmers gave it to their stock, for which Plutarch (in Nat. Ques.) assigns the same reasons as modern agriculturists. What philosophical husbandman is not gratified as his cattle crowd around him for it? The mild eyes of his oxen looking grateful for a relish and watching his movements in hopes of another. The timid ewe takes the treat from his hand, and licks up every stray atom, while the colt, more familiar, smells his pockets and whinnies for more.

Salt not only seasons unsavory meat but preserves it from putrefaction. In view of these admirable qualities, Homer calls it ‘divine.’ It was a symbol of incorruptibility and fidelity—a pledge of friendship and hospitality which nothing but death was allowed to cancel. No social feast was perfect without it, and oblations were seldom offered unless it was an ingredient. ‘No sacrifice,’ says Pliny, ‘was presented to the gods without salt.’ ‘Every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt.’ [Levit.] At the ceremony of circumcision the Turks place, 277or used to place, a few grains in the boy’s mouth, saying, ‘Heaven make thy name savory as salt among men, and mayest thou live to enjoy the fruits of the earth.’ Can that which is unsavory, exclaims Job, be eaten without salt? Even bread, says one of the ancients, is unpalatable without it. Its enormous consumption was a fruitful source of revenue to ancient as well as modern governments. On one occasion Demetrius rewarded the fidelity of the Jews to him by remitting the gabel.

The salt-cellar was held in great veneration of old, and from superstitious motives, kept remarkably bright and clean. Placed on the table near the images of the presiding deities (as already observed) its presence consecrated the food. In the middle ages it was generally of silver and elaborately wrought. A gilt one is extant modelled after the white tower of London.

To be placed at table above the salt was a mark of honor—to desire a guest to seat himself below it an indication of inferior rank, or of disesteem. In the latter case the mortification was not altogether imaginary, as the following account of an old English hall, the scene of feasting and hospitality, will show:—“At the upper end was placed the orsille, or high table, a little elevated above the floor, and here the master of the mansion presided with an authority, if not a state, which almost equalled that of the potent baron. The table was divided into upper and lower messes by a huge salt-cellar, and the rank and consequence of the visitors were marked 278by the situation of their seats above and below it—a custom which not only distinguished the relative dignity of the guests, but extended to the nature of the provision—the wine frequently circulating only above the salt-cellar, and the dishes below it being of a coarser kind than those near the head of the table.” From the correspondence of the younger Pliny, it appears that a similar practice prevailed among the Romans. [See Letter vi. Book 2.]

The fabrication of carved spoons was an employment of religious recluses; they brought higher prices than when made by worldly minded workmen. The monks of La Trappe were prohibited from using their tongues—all communications being made by signs. They were forbidden to read, write, or raise their eyes above the ground unless to direct their steps. Their teeth too might as well have been drawn, for neither fish, flesh nor any thing like solid food was given them to grind;—but absorbed as these men were with celestial matters, and having no need themselves of eating apparatus, they thought it no sin to provide them for other people. Such of the brethren as could not endure the fatigue of the mattock (observes Motraye) were employed in turning, carving, &c. The traveller was presented “with an ivory spoon and fork wrought as well as possible.”

Fig. 6—an egg spoon, rather larger than a ‘tea,’ and having the handle joined to the small end of the bowl. Such kind of implements have been in use since hens laid eggs and women boiled them. 279The Romans were great consumers of eggs; hence the saying ‘ab ovo usque ad mala,’ from eggs to apples—an elliptical expression for a feast—eggs being the first, and apples the last dish served up. Eggs played important parts in monastic feasts and farces. The tenth of all produce of land, fowls and cattle kept monks’ larders well supplied, and woe to him who robbed the church of tythes, or ‘stole eggs from a cloister.’ “If a peeter penny or an housle egg were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid, then beware of spirits.” At Easter, eggs were boiled hard and stained of various colors with onion peeling or broom flowers, and sometimes gilded. They were consecrated according to a ritual of Pope Paul V. and presented to children and friends, under the name of pace or paschal eggs. The practice of boys striking eggs against each other, the shattered becoming the property of the owners of the sound ones, is descended from mediæval times.

The egg was an ancient emblem of the universe, and has been symbolized in a thousand things. An envious man thinks his neighbor’s fowls lay more than his. Eggs are now hatched by steam, and chickens reared without the aid of clucking hens. Released from anxious care about their young and from the debilitating work of incubation, matronly fowls have now nought to do but quietly lay their eggs and pass their time in pleasure. Cooks with poultry can be supplied without tearing screaming pullets from their parent’s side—sundering the finest fibres of affection. Then the ‘Eccaleobion,’ it is said, 280will shortly place within the poor’s reach luxuries hitherto denied them. The destitute are not long to remain ignorant of the taste of chicken broth and plovers fricasseed, of broiled partridge, quail and meadow hens; of roasted geese, and ducks and turkeys.

Fig. 7 a silver and 8 an ebony mustard spoon. Forms of the ancient implements have not reached us, but some sayings to which the condiment gave rise are still in use:—‘’Tis mustard after dinner,’ indicating that the time for using a thing has passed, or that the thing itself is of no consequence; ‘a man amused with mustard;’ one that makes great things of trifles. It has ever been deemed essential to beef, especially salt beef; hence an old French prayer:—

‘Dijon mustard’ was renowned in the time of Philip the Fair, during whose reign the reader will recollect two important transactions took place—the introduction of the mariner’s compass into modern Europe, and [in 1291] the transportation by angels of the Virgin Mary’s dwelling at Nazareth into Dalmatia; whence it was conveyed three years afterwards (by the same celestial house movers) to the opposite coast of the Adriatic, and located on land belonging to a widow named Loretta. There it has remained for the edification of pious pilgrims, and the maturing of grace in the hearts of its reverend proprietors.

Fig. 9—a punch spoon, and 13 a punch ladle—two of the least beneficial applications of a valuable thing.

Few things have better exemplified the truth of another saying of ‘Poor Richard’ than punch and punch spoons:—‘What maintains one vice would bring up two children.’ The old ‘wassail bowl’ and its accompanying spoon were not such promoters of dissipation as their modern descendants, nor did they accommodate such pernicious liquids. Families took wassail at home on festivals, when innocent hilarity reigned; but to indulge in punch, men meet at taverns, where they ply the ladle till they perform antics rude and grotesque as those for which that hero is known whose name is the same as the liquor. After supper at Christmas “the wassail bowl was brought in, of which every one partook, by taking with a spoon a roasted apple out of the ale and eating it, then drinking the healths of the company out of the bowl, wishing them a merry christmas and a happy new year.” With the Greeks and Romans wine was carried to the dining room in large vases, 282and poured into bowls, whence it was drawn by ladles into cups and tumblers. See figures on the second plate.

Unfortunately for Burns he did not confine himself to invocations of the spirit, or even to moderate draughts at her fountain. His punch bowl of Inverary marble and its attending ladle were too often put in requisition. Under their influence he produced his poem called ‘Scotch Drink,’ in which he thus humorously blesses every total abstinence man:

How opinions change! With the laudable view of preserving a knowledge of the arts and of innocent comforts, and to guard, as far as human power can, against a second deluge of barbarism, the old French Academy published descriptions, in great detail, of the most valuable manufactures and professions. In ‘L’Art du Distillateur Liquoriste’ is figured and described a Paris coffee room with its appendages, including a “grande jatte de porcelaine pleine de punch, un cuiller de buis pour puiser cette liqueur, et la verser dans les verres.”

Figs. 10—sugar tongs; a singular application of the spoon, which, instead of scooping up fluids or semi-fluids is here designed to take up solids. When 283loaf sugar was introduced, (the period of which is uncertain, for it was made several ages before its alleged discovery by Venetians in the 16th century,) the ordinary spoon could not readily plunge among the lumps nor be secure of catching one, or of retaining it when caught; hence two spoons were joined in the chase, and as one heads the game while the other closes up the rear, they seldom lose their destined prey. Two spoons inseparably linked in a pair of sugar tongs are like those married couples, who none but mutual pleasures know, and whose time is spent among the sweets of life.

Fig. 11—another curious transformation. We have seen the spoon resemble a pair of shears, then a pair of tongs—here it is a sifter. Copiously perforated, the bowl is used to sprinkle refined sugar over the crust of pies, custards and other delicious dainties. Strange, how one thing glides into another! What primeval artist ever thought that spoons would be converted into riddles—made as useless for lifting liquids as the buckets of the Danaides! The bowl is also sometimes flattened and pierced for a fish slice, and, when half covered, is made into a basting ladle! By the way, we forgot to mention at page 177, that snuff spoons were also punctured, because they could not properly discharge their contents otherwise. When held laden to the nostrils, the sudden withdrawal of the superincumbent air by the snifter draws up the spoon itself if the bowl be not perforated, just as a piece of paper held near the mouth is sucked in by an inspiration. But when 284two or three minute holes are made in the bowl, no sooner does the owner set his nasal pump at work than the atmospheric air, ascending through the openings, drives up the powder in a trice, and scatters none in lateral directions.

Fig. 12—a cream spoon, invented on the labor saving principle. It supersedes the necessity of lifting the pitcher with its contents every time a modicum only of the fluid is wanted—exhibiting the advantages of economizing force, though in a less degree than the tea or coffee urn. Fifty cups can be filled from one of these by simply opening a tap which the little finger can effect; whereas no lady could charge half that number from a tea-pot without her arms and shoulders complaining of the labor. Fig. 14 is the well known marrow spoon, of the history of which we are uninformed. It is however an emblem of many good things. O! for the salt of wit, cream of pleasantry, and marrow of rich stories!

The last spoon figured on the plate is not the least appropriate to finish with. The others are for taking food, this for taking physic; they to comfort people when in health, this to cure them when sick. Having furnished so many devices by which the stomach is often overloaded, it may be expected that one at least will be given to assist in recovering its natural tone. Every person knows that pills were formerly gilded with the view of preventing their substance from annoying the sense while passing the gullet. Roman apothecaries supplied squeamish patients with such; as a box half full with the 285gold leaf remaining has been found at Pompeii. The spoon Fig. 15 is designed for much the like purpose, viz: to send fluids down the same passage with as little delay and annoyance as possible. To patients in a recumbent position, and to such as are disposed to resist, it is a capital thing. The handle is hollow and communicates with the bowl. When the latter is charged (through the lid which is shown open) the thumb of the nurse or attendant is placed over the aperture of the handle and the lid closed. The contents are then prevented, by the exclusion of air, from escaping. The spoon is next properly placed in the patient’s mouth, and the thumb removed, when the liquid necessarily goes to its appointed place, for air cannot pass to the lungs but through the handle and bowl. This contrivance is modern, but covered spoons for administering broths to sick people, and medicines to children, are old.

Roman bon vivants took a vomit before dinner, as well as one after, and even now there are persons who prepare for the principal meal by exciting an artificial craving with ‘dinner pills.’ There have been, and perhaps always will be, men who live only to digest, and many more with two stomachs to eat and not one to work.

The different states of human life—infancy, adolescence, manhood, senility and second childhood, are represented by pap, dessert, table, tea and physic spoons. The spoon is the first artificial thing an infant studies, the earliest one he handles and knows. As intelligence dawns it is recognized, and at its 286sight he flutters like a nestling impatient for aliment. In time he leaves the nurse’s arms and tries to feed himself; ambitious to manage his spoon alone, he scatters half the food upon his bib, and smears his hands, his face and throat with porridge. Next a youth, he handles it with ease and plies it with dexterity; a stranger to artificial appetite, he relishes the food it bears, and grows in strength and beauty. A strong man now, his breasts the implement has filled with milk, and made his bones abound with marrow. But quickly the noon of life is past; age and infirmity with rapid strides approach, and take his relish and his strength away. An octogenary now, he feeds himself with pain. Next, helpless as when born, he stares in idiot vacancy and recognizes nothing—save a spoon. The nurse now feeds him as at first, and tends this fitful being, till he goes wailing out of life as he came crying in.

Lest the reader should feel symptoms of a surfeit, we will now make an end, although many things are left untouched, especially such as relate to the statistics of spoons, their diversified materials, processes of manufacture, their cost, numbers annually worn out, hosts of artists employed in making them, talents they have exercised and skill displayed; the myriads incessantly engaged in using them, the daily influx into our world of fresh beings that want them, and a probably increasing demand to the end of time for them—for though science supersedes many things, and the progress of the arts renders old machines useless, neither science nor arts, nor fashion 287to boot, can ever banish spoons from the earth, or make much alteration in them. While men’s mouths are not placed at the ends of flexible trunks, manufacturers will find work; and the last spoons will differ as little from ours as the persons of the present and the latest spoonmakers. Nay, if people in Venus and Mars eat like us, as they probably do, a deputation from each at one of our public dinners would be at no loss in applying these table utensils.

An extended account of the spoon; of its influence on food, manners, and imagination; of its virtues, the pleasures it imparts and sorrows it soothes, would be a history of all times and people. Looking at the excitement it produces, how seas are crossed, lands ploughed, rivers dragged, fish ponds made, cattle slain, birds ensnared, caldrons cast, mines exhausted and forests burnt for fuel; mountains of clay used up for pottery, kitchens built and cooks employed, &c. to supply materials and prepare them for it—one might suppose the spoon was the spring that keeps all things in motion—the source of genius and parent of the useful arts.

We trust the reader, now he has arrived at the close, will admit that he is more familiar with the subject than when he began it. Few persons would refuse a modest author so slight a reward for his toil, since he could hardly solicit a less one. But there are envious critics, we fear, who, without perusing our work, will condemn it; perhaps declaring there is nothing novel in its spirit or its plan, and that the best things in it were written years ago! If 288they do, and if, which heaven forefend, they should prove it too, we shall, with the feelings of injured innocence, fervently pray that those impertinent plagiarists may perish who said our good things before us, and that memory may fail all who remember them!

Respected Guest:—Perceiving by the inverted position of thy bowl and spoon that thou hast not despised the plain food set before thee, but hast relished it so well as to leave none, I, Hab’k O. Westman, present myself in propria persona, as in duty bound, to make my parting bow, and acknowledge my sense of thy patronage. It is also my wont, when an agreeable customer is about to leave me, to request him, if the entertainments have been to his liking, and the charges no more than they should be, to invite his friends to take an opportunity of judging of my cookery, and my conscience in making out bills. Adieu, kind patron! Heaven send thee pleasant adventures and a speedy return to “The Globe,” when I hope to have a better dish awaiting thy reception—one preparing under the auspices of our society, and the recipe of which was commended by Dr. Swallow himself—who was, as thou art aware,