Traditions of Christmas Past: from boisterous to banned to bourgeois

From the vaults, via last year's Tumblr post:

“‘At Home’ in the Nursery, or The Masters and Misses Twoshoes Christmas Party,” by George Cruikshank (1792-1878)

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Etching with hand coloring.
Image dimensions: c. 214 x 267 mm (approx.  8.4 x 10.5 inches)
Signed in the plate, “G Cruishank fect” (left) and “Pubd. Augt 1st 1835, by Thos McLean, 26, Haymarket.” (right)

This is the second issue. The print first appeared in the 1826 collection, Holiday Scenes, published by Samuel Knight (active 1805-41). Thomas McLean (1788-1875) reissued it 9 years later in Cruikshankiana, an assemblage of the most celebrated works of George Cruikshank. He largely effaced the original Knight signature, but it survives as a ghost imprint above his own, at lower right:

“London Pubd Jany 3d 1826 by S Knight, 3 Sweetings Alley [{Roy[a] X'Change’}]

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Not yet "Victorian” in the strict (or any other) sense, the etching nonetheless lacks the ribaldry or bite of Cruikshank’s other early (especially political) work: it manages to be satirical and sentimental at once. We can already recognize in it our received image of Christmas as domestic idyll, familiar from Dickens to “The Nutcracker” (though the evolution of the latter is a tale in itself).

The fourteen (count 'em!) children–this, at a time when the average British family size peaked at around 6 children (1, 2)–play with a mixture of sedate enjoyment and abandon as a stout serving-woman brings in a tray of treats. The image is rich in period detail, from the toys and the copy of the Eaton [sic] Latin Grammar abandoned on the floor, to the delicate jelly-glasses (whatever possessed the parents of that day to put them in the hands of youngsters?) and the faux-bamboo “fancy chairs” on which the children sit or climb.

The etching also also suggests why the Calvinists and their American descendants held no truck with Christmas. Theologically, it was a problem for them because its celebration was not biblically mandated, and the date of Jesus’ birth was in any case unknown. The holiday was moreover associated with revelry–whether heavy drinking by adults or just boisterous behavior, as shown in our print–that seemed incommensurate with the spirit of a holy festival.

Such was certainly the attitude here in Massachusetts, where Christmas celebrations were banned in 1659, as the legislature put it: “For preventing disorders … by reason of some still observing such ffestivalls as were superstitiously kept in other countrys, to the great dishonnor of God & offence of others.” The state lifted the ban in 1681, but it took more than a century and a half before things really began to change. Under the influence of shifting national tastes, Christmas began to assume its familiar lineaments of wholesome domesticity and consumption. (In Massachusetts, Irish immigration also contributed to the shift.) The 1855 Christmas celebration at the Worcester Free Church under minister and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a symbolic turning point. The following year, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed, “We are in a transition state about Christmas here in New England. The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so,” and the legislature officially recognized the holiday.

Is Your Restaurant Breeding Bolsheviks?

When we visited Boston earlier this fall for a little family gathering, we stayed, for sentimental as well as practical reasons, at the classic Parker House (now, technically, Omni Parker House).

As I had my breakfast and glanced across the room at a couple of the friendly and accomplished restaurant staff, I could not help but wonder what brought them here and where they might end up in 20 or 30 years.


Home of . . .?

The Parker House, founded in 1855 and now celebrating its 160th anniversary, is famous for many things, from the foods that it introduced to the American table (Parker House rolls, Boston Creme Pie, Boston sc[h]rod) to its distinguished clientele: from the "Saturday Club" of Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Agassiz, Dana, et al., to occasional visitors such as Charles Dickens.

However, I could not help but think of the famous figures who worked there long before they attained world renown: namely, two of the most influential radicals of the twentieth century. Future Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh worked there as a baker from 1911 to 1913, and in the early 1940s, Roxbury resident Malcolm Little worked there as a busboy. It was only after going to prison in 1946 that he converted to Islam and became Malcolm X.


A kind of long but indeterminate period of time which will live in infamy?

Because it's December 7 today: Admittedly, the Omni Parker House website screws things up, saying, "Malcolm X was a busboy in the early 1940's during the Pearl Harbor invasion." Sorry: there was a Pearl Harbor attack on one Sunday morning, but the Japanese invasion--as I thought everyone knew--failed to materialize. There is after all a reason that we still use FDR's phrase, "a date which will live in infamy." Not a week or a couple of months or several years. A date.


"So Ho Chi Minh conceivably could've baked a Boston Cream Pie?"

Just before Thanksgiving, even CBS News alluded to the political connection:

"Malcolm X was a busboy," he said. "Ho Chi Minh worked in the bake shop."

"So Ho Chi Minh conceivably could've baked a Boston Cream Pie?"

"Yes, he could." And Malcolm X presumably could've cleaned up after somebody that had just eaten one.

Who's biding his or her time in the restaurant that you patronize, while dreaming of greater things? Treat them respectfully and tip generously. It's the right thing to do. And besides: who knows?

Surprised that people think the Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism? Listen to what they think about slavery.

Southerners can continue to honor their ancestors, but doing so does not necessitate embracing the vile cause for which they fought — just as Germans can honor their ancestors without embracing Nazism and Japanese without embracing militarism.

--Max Boot, Commentary

many Americans don't seem to think slavery was much of a problem in the first place

In the wake of the horrendous massacre at the Charleston African American church by the racist fanatic Dylan Roof, there has been a startling, salutary, and long overdue willingness to challenge the perversely enduring presence of the so-called "Confederate flag" (actually a version of the battle flag) as ensign and emblem. Where else but in the US today--or until today--would the public display of a symbol of treason be not only tolerated but celebrated? And that's not even taking the question of racism and slavery into account.

Some have expressed surprise that otherwise well-meaning people could insist that the flag is simply a symbol of regional and historical pride, which has nothing to do with slavery and should not be seen as an offense and a provocation. That becomes much less surprising when one realizes that a good many Americans don't seem to think slavery was all that much of a problem in the first place.

Yesterday, the South Carolina Senate voted to remove the offending "Confederate flag" from the grounds of the Statehouse, although subsequent necessary approval from the House was far from certain, and even if successful, the measure might just result in replacement of the battle flag by another Confederate flag. Meanwhile, in Texas, schools are preparing to use textbooks "based," in the words of the Washington Post, "on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation" and "also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws." A Republican Board of Education member was quoted as having called slavery a "side issue to the Civil War.”


"earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery"

I tend to use Twitter more for professional than personal purposes, to keep up with news from and network with colleagues in various historical fields, including historic preservation and history museums. One of the accounts that I follow is @AfAmHistFail. The author, Margaret Biser, who for six years gave tours of a historic southern plantation on which the captive Africans outnumbered the whites by three to one, was dumbfounded when visitors "reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owner." She began to tweet some of their choicest remarks, which range from the offensive and mindboggling to those reflecting "earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery."

Last month, she offered a summary of what she had heard:

1. People think slaveholders "took care" of their slaves out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than out of economic interest
2. People know that field slavery was bad but think household slavery was pretty all right, if not an outright sweet deal
3. People think slavery and poverty are interchangeable
4. People don't understand how prejudice influenced slaveholders' actions beyond mere economic interest
5. People think "loyalty" is a fair term to apply to people held in bondage

As she notes, in many cases, it is probably not so much about an intentional desire to defend slavery as such, and rather, more about the need to defend one's individual or collective national ancestors. (We all saw how Ben Affleck forced PBS to censor the presentation of his ancestry on "Finding Your Roots" because he discovered he had slave-owning forebears--even though no one would seek to visit their sins upon the quintessentially liberal actor.)


How do public historians teach the population about the legacy of slavery and the contributions of African Americans to our collective heritage?

Two African American public historians (among others) are doing brilliant work to teach about the history of slavery and foster understanding by emphasizing a common but not unproblematic American heritage.

Historic preservationist Joseph McGill (@slavedwelling) hit upon the simple but radically original idea of traveling the country to visit every former slave dwelling and, by spending the night in them, calling attention to this lost history and these lost-from-memory historic structures.

The immediate purpose of his Slave Dwelling Project "is to become a clearinghouse for the identification of resources to document and preserve these slave dwellings," but there is also a larger mission:

Now that I have the attention of the public by sleeping in extant slave dwellings, it is time to wake up and deliver the message that the people who lived in these structures were not a footnote in American history.

His work is among the most exciting and innovative efforts of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It has provoked considerable conversation and now inspired two national conferences. Clearly, it no longer suffices simply to mark sites of memory with a sign. We need new ways to engage the public, so that it can understand the place of history as not only the past and memory but also an active contributor to the world that we have inherited.


In a related realm, Michael Twitty (@koshersoul) travels the country to explain our fascinating and tangled foodways. His afroculinaria.com presents his work as "a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian , and historical interpreter personally charged with preparing, preserving and promoting African American foodways and its parent traditions in Africa and her Diaspora and its legacy in the food culture of the American South." His work is multifaceted, focused on three fronts:

Antebellum Chef emphasizes "the vast number of unknown Black cooks across the Americas that were essential in the creation of the creole cuisines of Atlantic world" and their contribtion to the overall "Southern food heritage. A corollary is the need for “culinary justice” in contemporary African American communities suffering from poor health, food deserts, and other symptoms of inequality.

Kosher Soul explains: "Identity cooking isn’t about fusion; rather its how we construct complex identities and then express them through how we eat.  Very few people in the modern West eat one cuisine or live within one culinary construct."

Finally, The Cooking Gene seeks "to document the connection between food history and family history from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom" as Michael "visits sites of cultural memory, does presentations on his journey, and visits places critical to his family history while conducting genealogical and genetic research to discover his roots and food heritage." It is not only an attempt to recover the Black heritage, but also "a proving ground for racial reconciliation and healing and dialogue" which thus "seeks to connect the whole of the Southern food family."

The nation's history, good and bad, black and white, is our collective history. The sooner we recognize that, the better off we will all be. As the foregoing examples show, historic preservation and public history have a crucial role to play here--and the individual with a vision can make difference.

Amherst Honors the Irish February 1 and Kicks Off Series of Cultural Events

Today marks the beginning of what he hope will be a long-running series of events dedicated to celebrating and spreading knowledge of Irish culture.

What's the first thing that you associate with Irish culture?

Fiddle music and stepdancing? The literature of Swift, Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, Yeats, Beckett, and Heaney? The monastic culture that preserved Classical and Christian knowledge and laid the foundations of European literacy and education?  Or getting falling-down drunk?

Thomas Cahill brought our debt to the medieval monks to the attention of a popular audience in his bestselling How the Irish Saved Civilization, but chances are, the popular image of the nation--not least here in a college town in Massachusetts--still has more to with alcohol than the Book of Kells. I am thinking in particular of the antisocial excesses associated with the March "Blarney Blowout," which has caused such headaches for Amherst and tarnished the reputation of the University of Massachusetts.

This dilemma was the motivation behind the formation of the Irish American Association last fall, comprising people from many walks of life--from academics, students, and artists, to ordinary citizens; some of them, Irish, some of Irish heritage, others merely attracted to Irish culture. To be sure, no one seriously blames Ireland and Irish culture, as such, for the Blarney Blowout idiocy, but the members of the association saw here an opportunity not only to refute the stereotype of the crude habitual drunk, but also to create positive programming around Irish culture.

It of course seems particularly fitting in Massachusetts, including Amherst.

The Irish came to Amherst in the middle of the nineteenth century and found employment primarily in factory labor and domestic service. They settled near the rail depot and factories, and in two other areas of town, whose informal names reflected their presence: "Irish Hill" (east of Mount Pleasant), and "the curragh" (corresponding to today's north Sunset Avenue).

The Amherst Community History Mural, commissioned by the Amherst Historical Commission, depicts not only the town's famous residents, but also anonymous common people, including this group of five Irish women workers from the Burnett straw and palm leaf hat factory, derived from a photograph in the collections of the Jones Library.

Those familiar with Emily Dickinson's poetry will also be aware of the prominent role that the Irish servants such as Maggie Maher and Tom ("One-armed") Kelley played in her life and work. Although the young Dickinson made some horrific comments about the Irish, her attitudes changed as she came to know them. Aife Murray argues that the servants, rather than simply providing the leisure that enabled Dickinson to write, played a much more active role and collaborative role in that creative process. In her view, Maher eventually became "confidante, protector, independent spirit, and co-worker in a day-to-day existence of camaraderie that crossed class lines." And as the Emily Dickinson Museum reminds us, Dickinson broke with convention in death as in life: "Defying customary practice, she requested that six of the Homestead workmen, rather than the town's leading citizens, carry the casket at her funeral. Thomas Kelly [sic], who had married Margaret Maher’s sister Mary, served as the chief pallbearer."

The founding organizers of the Irish American Association, Íde B. O'Carroll and Sam Hannigan, approached me--as a member of the Select Board--in order to keep the Town abreast of their plans and see how we could collaborate in the effort to create a safer and more positive community atmosphere.

The association decided that an official proclamation would be the ideal means to call attention to this effort. After all, the Town of Amherst honors its Puerto Rican heritage each year (proclamation; video) but has never noted the contributions of the Irish to Amherst and Massachussetts.

The Select Board issued the following proclamation last Monday night in a meeting with an abbreviated agenda as we prepared for the blizzard:

Town of Amherst, Massachusetts Proclamation Amherst Irish Day, February 1 - Brigid's Day/Lá le Bhríde

WHEREAS, America has welcomed Ireland's emigrants to its shores for centuries, particularly during and after the Great Famines of the 1840s, and continues to do so into the twenty-first century.

WHEREAS, Irish people contributed to the history of Amherst through their labor as factory workers and domestic servants, they continue to enrich the civic, academic, cultural and commercial life of the town today.

WHEREAS, On this day, February 1st, Brigid's Day/Lá le Bhríde, we recognize our Celtic origins, the name most associated with Irish domestic servants in America, and Ireland's first native saint, St. Brigid (for whom the Catholic church in the center of Amherst is named).

THEREFORE, We declare February 1st as the day on which to celebrate Irish heritage in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, and designate it as an appropriate day on which to launch the Amherst Irish Association's Event Series 2015, dedicated to exploring the myriad aspects of Ireland's diaspora, culture, and society.

Today's inaugural event:

"Irish Matters, a Journalist’s Journey"
 
Kevin Cullen, columnist at the Boston Globe, recipient of the Livingston Award, and co-author of the New York Times best-seller “Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice”, comes back to the town of his alma mater, UMass Amherst.

No entry fee –suggested donation, $5-10, welcome at the door.

Following the event, from 4-6, complimentary tea and scones will be provided, accompanied by Irish music and dancing.

Amherst Unitarian Universality Society, 121 North Pleasant Street.

Of course, everyone's mind is on the Patriots and the Superbowl, but kickoff isn't until 6:30, so do please join us.


Press coverage:

Scott Merzbach, "Amherst Irish Association promotes better understanding of Ireland’s culture," Daily Hampshire Gazette, 31 Jan. 2015.

Information on upcoming programs:

Amherst Irish Association on Facebook. (email: amherstirishassociation at gmaildotcom)

The (elegant brass) Christmas Box--Anno 1914

Whenever possible, I like to use images and objects in teaching. They can provide insights into specific aspects of life in the past in the past or simply help to make tangible a world that can seem irredeemably distant and alien to students.

One of the favorite objects in my collection is this one. It's not terribly rare (you can still find them fairly easily, and they don't cost a fortune), but it is special.

hinged embossed brass box, 37 x 125 mm (click to enlarge)

The Imperial War Museum calls this brass box, created as a Christmas gift for British troops in1914, "one of the most enduring mementos of the First World War."

In the center, enclosed in a circle within a wreath, is a profile of Britain's Princess Mary facing left, flanked by the cursive initial "M." Above, center, in a cartouche in the decorative border, the words "Imperium Britannicum" (British Empire) set over a garlanded sword. Below, center, a cartouche with the words "Christmas 1914." flanked by the bows of warships.

The names of the major allies, France and Russia, are set within circles over tripods of banners at left and right, respectively. In the four corner cartouches, diagonally facing the center of the lid, are the names of the other allies. Clockwise: Belgium, Japan, Montenegro, and Servia (sic).

The story is as intriguing as the box is beautiful. The War Museum, which holds the documentary and material record of the undertaking, provides the fullest recounting on its website, but here are the essentials.


'every Sailor afloat and every Soldier at the front'

The story began in the early months of the war, when Britain's Princess Mary (Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary; 1897-1965), daughter of King George V, wanted to do something to honor and cheer the troops.

The undertaking proved far more complex than anyone had anticipated, and indeed, can serve as an illustration, on a microcosmic scale, of the challenges of morale-building efforts and industrial activity in the era of nascent total war. Virtually every aspect of the project, from concept, funding, and contents, to manufacturing and distribution, had to be modified.

Although the Princess's original plan had been to make a true personal gift from her own resources, it soon became apparent that a public effort and fundraising appeal were required, so in October, she wrote:

I want you now to help me to send a Christmas present from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front. I am sure that we should all be happier to feel that we had helped to send our little token of love and sympathy on Christmas morning, something that would be useful and of permanent value, and the making of which may be the means of providing employment in trades adversely affected by the war. Could there be anything more likely to hearten them in their struggle than a present received straight from home on Christmas Day?

The gift was to consist of the hinged and embossed brass box, "one ounce of pipe tobacco, twenty cigarettes, a pipe, a tinder lighter, Christmas card and photograph [of the Princess]." The Executive Committee then decided to produce several variant versions for those for whom the smoking-oriented contents might be inappropriate. For the non-smokers, "a packet of acid tablets, a khaki writing case containing pencil, paper and envelopes" took the place of the tobacco and related products. Nurses at the front received chocolate instead. As for the Colonial troops: "The Gurkhas were to receive the same gift as the British troops; Sikhs the box filled with sugar candy, a tin box of spices and the Christmas card; all other Indian troops, the box with a packet of cigarettes and sugar candy, a tin box of spices and the card."

the smoker's version (Imperial War Museum)

the nonsmoker's version (Imperial War Museum)

The fundraising campaign was so successful--bringing in nearly £ 163,000, most of it from small donations--that it allowed for boxes to be given to all troops, but this proved to be a mixed blessing, given the sheer number of recipients, estimated at some 2.6 million. The Executive Committee thereupon decided to do a sort of triage, aiming to reach recipients in Class A--essentially, the Navy, frontline troops, nurses, prisoners and internees, and families of the deceased--by Christmas, and those in Classes B (British, Colonial, and Indian troops outside the UK), and C (troops within the UK borders) later on. Because these latter were distributed after Christmas, the card proffered New Year's greetings instead.

As it happened, just fabricating the box proved more than challenge enough. The manufacturers were not eager to take on the task in the first place, but the largest problem consisted in the shortage of appropriate brass metal, even after the Committee was forced to intervene and supply it directly. In the event, there proved to be enough for the Christmas issue, but the Committee struggled to find the remainder, even turning to American sources. Nice bit of historical trivia: most of the US shipment was aboard the Lusitania, famously torpedoed by the Germans in 1915.

426,724 boxes were distributed by Christmas 1914. This meant that 1,803,147 still had to reach the other two classes, a daunting number that prompted the Committee to streamline things yet again by settling upon a uniform gift consisting of only the box, New Year's card, and pencil. After the final accounting was done in 1919, the surplus went to Queen Mary's Maternity Home, which aided the wives and newborns of men in the service.

* * *

One of the things that is so fascinating about the rise of the web and social media in museum and historical work is the possibility for dialogue, among members of the public, and between the public and professionals. There is a nice representative collection of responses--from Massachusetts and the UK to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India--on the web page of the box from Museum Victoria in Australia. Some of the commenters knew what the box was, some were learning for the first time about this mysterious object that they had in their homes. One collector and writer used the opportunity to add to his knowledge base prior to issuing a new publication. One of the most intriguing and laconic posts seems to come from a British soldier who found one in an abandoned house in the course of the current war in Afghanistan.

This sort of engagement (though presumably lacking the direct personal connection) is what I hope to bring out when I show the box in class. One can begin the conversation via any one of multiple avenues:

The striking elegance of the design and quality of the product, for example. Do they reflect a soon-to-be antiquated aesthetic?

What of the relationship between monarchy, state, and public? How do the texts and images of the box feature in the construction of a patriotic ideal?

Are students surprised to see Japan featured on the box? Why?

What do the design of the box, along with the production and distribution problems, tell us about expectations of the course of the war? Were the initiators of the project naive?

What do the contents such as tobacco and writing products tell us about the culture of the era and the daily life, hopes, and fears of the soldier in the trenches?

And what about the substitution of spices and sweets in the boxes destined for Indian troops? How did the Empire understand cultural diversity and pluralism? Why has the significant presence of Colonial forces failed to become part of our popular image of the war? (1, 2)

And then there is the now-fabled "Christmas Truce" of 1914 in which the soldiers of the opposing sides climbed out of their trenches, and for a day, at least, met face to face as friends rather than foes. Among the gifts they exchanged were cigarettes. What if this box was there? What if this box could talk?

Amherst Woman During Prohibition Era: George Washington was NOT a drunk!

What curious, serendipitous finds one makes when doing research. A week ago, we marked the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Not long before that, I came across a perfect illustration of how American attitudes about drinking have changed since the Colonial situation described in the last post.

 "Local D.A.R. Woman Defends U.S. Ideals.
 Writes Paper Denying That George Washington was 'a Drinking Man'"

Is that one subject or two? readers could be excused for wondering as they picked up the Springfield newspaper in 1930.

The news was that the Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution had asked the head of the Amherst chapter to send copies of her paper on cultural conflicts and American ideals to the state and national headquarters. Her point, it seems, was openness to change, provided it occurred within the framework of our founding system: to avoid "letting down the bars to strange and foreign ideas and ideals" and "see to it that the constitution is not wrecked by the addition of weakening amendments." "The American," she said, does not hesitate to change methods if by so doing he can better conditions, but he does hold fast to the fundamentals upon which his country is founded."

A liberal defense of traditional freedoms? Conservative "strict constructionism"? It can be hard to tell from such fragments. For example, many of us now associate the D.A.R. of that period with the notorious refusal to allow African-American singer Marianne Anderson to perform in its Constitution Hall in 1939, and indeed, Amherst itself was hardly free of nativism and racist behavior. However, the author's biography suggests greater complexity.

Estella Adaline Eastman Harris (1880-1974) was a resident of my own North Amherst who married carpenter Charles Dickinson Harris (1877-1955) in 1904. Neither went to college, but clearly, she had intellectual ambitions. She was also proud of her ancestors, who included not only the Pilgrim Roger Eastman and her Revolutionary forebears, but also the great abolitionist Zebina Eastman (1815-83), one of the founders the Republican Party in Illinois, appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Consul in Bristol (1861-69).

The Liquor is the Lede?

"Foreign ideas" and challenges to the Constitutional order must have been among the pressing concerns in the political and economic crisis of the 1930s, but, curiously, the article led with the liquor, explaining that the essay "describes the attempts to discredit the great men of American history, especially George Washington, saying he was 'a drinking man.'" We don't get to the Constitution and Monroe Doctrine until more than halfway through.

The article quotes Mrs. Harris as saying:

In the olden days it was the commonly accepted custom to use liquors. As we know, many of the churches were raised to the accompaniment of strong drink. So why endeavor to dim the luster of a great man's life by accusing him of doing something that everyone at that time accepted as correct. Even in those days, he was rated as temperate.

This could of course take us into the intellectual and moral morass of historicist relativism. After all, slavery was also something that (almost) "everyone at that time accepted as correct." And when she wrote, the DAR itself practiced racial discrimination. That said, her point is quite accurate, and the subject of the previous post.

As Corin Hirsch (@latesupper) explained in her Amherst Historical Society lecture last month, everyone in Colonial America, from churchmen to Founding Fathers, drank like a sailor on leave all year 'round (and often all day). Implicitly agreeing with Mrs. Harris, she said:

• George Washington "was a man of all things alcoholic, but he was not an alcoholic,"  "a fanboy of small beer . . . and enthusiastic swiller of porter." He also became one of the nation's leading distillers of whiskey. 
• As for Ben Franklin, he was "a sot, marinating in porter, Champagne, brandy, Madeira and the fine wines of France." 

W. J. Rorabaugh'sThe Alcoholic Republic, (Oxford, 1981), which she used in her research, confirms Mrs. Harris's view that, when it came to heavy drinking, at least, there was no wall of separation between church and state:

New York Governor Georg Clinton honored the French ambassador with a dinner at which 120 guests downed 135 bottles of Madeira, 36 bottles of port, 60 bottles of English beer, and 30 large cups of rum punch. Even in staid New England the upper classes continued to imbibe; at one Congregational minister's ordination in 1793, the celebrants consumed dozens of bottles of hard cider, wine, sherry, cherry brandy, and Jamaica rum. (48)

Ms. Hirsch provides some specific numbers: "At the 1785 ordination of a Beverly, Massachusetts, minister, the eighty attendees drank seventy-four bowls of punch as well as twenty-eight bottles of wine and eight bottles of brandy."

Lots of Liquor at Raisings. High Church?

Speaking of the church: It is said that when the horse teams brought in the granite for the foundations of our own North Amherst Church, Oliver ("Landlord") Dickinson, who had financed much of the project, rode all the way into town from Pelham atop one such load of stone, moved by drink to boisterous song. And when the church was finally dedicated, Carpenter and Morehouse tell us in their classic history of the town, "The raising was made a gala occasion, liquor being generously provided and consumed, the expenses being met by contributions."

Dickinson was a tavernkeeper, for like every good New England town, Amherst had its share of taverns. The reason this institution was so popular, as both they and Hirsch explain, is because the "public house," as the name implies, was not just a source of food, drink, and lodging, but also a social center: for meetings, discussion, reading of periodicals, even convening of court. Take the Baggs Tavern (1818 ff.), for example.

source: Wikimedia Commons

In the words of Carpenter and Morehouse:

In 1828, it was the headquarters of the democratic party in town, where caucuses were held and the politicians gathered in the bar-room of an evening to discuss the state of the country. It was famous for the excellence of the liquors served over its bar and the royal good times that were enjoyed by those who loved the liquors, not wisely but too well. It was a favorite gathering place for the old stage-drivers, who found its toddy and its flip a powerful antidote against winter's cold and summer's heat.

The Amherst branch of the D.A.R., to which Mrs. Harris belonged, is the Mary Mattoon chapter, named after the wife of a local patriot. (With characteristic inflation, we generally refer to him as "General Mattoon," but that title came late in life when he led the Massachusetts Militia; during the Revolution, he was a mere lieutenant.)

As it happens, this chapter, founded in 1894, met and now once again meets at the eighteenth-century Simeon Strong House, which was also since 1916 the home of the Amherst Historical Society, where Corin Hirsch demonstrated her Colonial bartending skills last month.

The Cider House. It Rules!

When Simeon Strong--theologian, Tory, and then respected jurist in the new republic--died in 1805 with an estate worth approximately $ 10,000, he was among the ten richest men in Amherst. A glance at his probate inventory provides some hints at the culture of drink among the upper class. It lists, for example,

• 1 pair fluted decanters (valued at 2.50)
• 2 pair plain decanters (2.00)
• 2 pair round-bottomed decanters (.75), and 
• 1 pair decanter stands (1.25). 

This, in addition to:

• 16 wine glasses (best sort) (worth 4--)
• 9 wine glasses (worth .90)
• 14 tumblers (worth 1.75)
• 5 pint tumblers (worth .62)
• 10 tumblers and 2 small glass canns ["cans" were small, straight-sided drinking vessels] (@10, worth 1.00), and 
• 2 one-quart tumblers (@ .33)

Among the items that his second wife brought to the marriage was a china punch bowl, once again, a luxury item (1.00: equivalent to four chamber pots--or a volume of Foster's Crown Law Reports--in case you were wondering).

At the same time, we are able to discern tastes that crossed class lines. Hirsch tells us that the hard cider "was an almost uniquely New England drink," and Timothy Dwight's account of his travels (1796-1815) described it as "the common drink of all its inhabitants, the rich and poor alike." John Adams found it "mortifying beyond all expression that we Americans should exceed all other eight millions of people on the globe . . . in this degrading, beastly vice of intemperance"--and nonetheless downed a tankard of hard cider at his daily breakfast (yes, breakfast), which speaks volumes about the cultural gap between that era and ours.

In Strong's probate inventory, we thus find 13 barrels of cider, 28 empty cider barrels, 5 old cider barrels, and 1 barrel of old cider. The typical New England farmer, we are told, produced about 10 (50-gallon) barrels per year. According to Hirsch, "By the mid-1700s, the average New England family might consume a barrel of cider a week," which explains her verdict, "Early Americans imbibed hard cider with gusto."

You see how everything comes full circle?

Today, although our drinking habits and mores have changed, cider has been undergoing a revival. Our Pioneer Valley cider business, too, is growing: its products are sold at the Amherst farmers market, the All Things Local Cooperative, and an annual festival dedicated to the juice of the apple.

One is strongly tempted to conclude that Mrs. Harris took much of her argument from Carpenter and Morehouse. They write, somewhat apologetically, before launching into a discussion of the rise of temperance movements:

the drinking habits of the earlier residents of Amherst . . . . were not peculiar, merely following the fashion of their times. It is almost impossible, in later times and under changed conditions, to write of the liquor problem as it existed in the closing years of the 18th and the opening years of the 19th centuries, without doing something of an injustice to those who upheld a system which has since come to be looked upon as pernicious and degrading. The part that liquor then bore in social, business and community life was honored if not honorable. Total abstinence from liquor, while not unknown, was looked upon as an eccentricity rather than a virtue. The minister drank liquor with his deacons, the lawyer with his clients, the doctor with his patients. A 'raising' without the presence of liquor was unknown; ministers drank flip at ecclesiastical councils and ordinations; hardly a trade was made at the village without 'something to wash it down.' . . . Drunkenness, while not encouraged, was tolerated, carrying with it no special disgrace.

Like it or not, heavy drinking was among "the fundamentals upon which [t]his country is founded." As the late historian Eugen Weber wrote, the decent folk in the Anglo-American world of that era were drunk all the time, dead drunk most of the time, and apparently none the worse for it except in the long run, and perhaps not even then. Mrs. Harris--whose drinking habits we do not know (though she lived to the ripe old age of 93)--might not have put it quite that way to the prim dames of the DAR, but her point was the same.


Cheers.


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