raised could only be consumed locally. Every place and season had its own peculiar delicacies. Our stout forebears, reckless of pot-belly and rubicund countenance, took care that they were not wasted. " My dinner (I love to repeat good ones)," wrote John Byng over his slippered ease in his inn at nightfall, " consisted of spitchcock'd eel, roasted pidgeons, a loyn of pork roasted, with tarts, jellies and custards."
1 On one of Coke of Holkham's farms he was told that the harvesters had meat three times a day and as much small beer as they could drink.— Roche foucauld, 230.
Woodforde, a Norfolk parson with a modest living, entertained his neighbours to such fare as " fish and oyster sauce, a nice piece of boiled beef, a fine neck of pork roasted and apple sauce, some hashed turkey, mutton stakes, salad, etc., a wild duck roasted, fried rabbits, a plumb pudding and some tardets, desert, some olives, nuts, almonds and raisins and apples." " The whole company," he added apologetically, " was pleased with their dinner, and considering we had not above three hours' notice of their coming, we did very well in that short time." Nor was such feasting confined to the days when the good parson entertained. He and his niece Nancy, and one can be sure his domestics below stairs, did themselves almost equally well on ordinary days. " We returned home about three o'clock to dinner. Dinner to-day boiled chicken and a pig's face, a bullock's heart roasted and a rich plumb pudding." Small wonder that Nancy sometimes felt ill of an afternoon " with a pain within her, blown up as if poisoned "; that the parson was forced to complain after a somewhat restless night " mince pie rose oft"; and that itinerant Torrington after his inn fare found himself so frequently battling—with true English stubbornness—against postprandial slumber.
They drank as deep: even when it was only tea. Miss Burney's mother once made Dr. Johnson twenty-one cups in succession. After dinner, bottles of spirits of various kinds—brandy, rum, shrub —moved in ceaseless procession round the table. At Squire Gray's— " a fine jolly old sportsman "—the cloth was not cleared until a bottle of port had been laid down before a mighty silver fox's head, out of which the squire filled a bumper and drank to fox-hunting preparatory to passing it about. 1 Parson Woodforde did not scruple to entertain five fellow-clergymen with eight bottles of port and one of Madeira besides arrack punch, beer and cider.
It was the hallmark of your true Englishman that he " loved his can of flip." In London alone there were more than five thousand licensed houses within the Bills of Mortality. From the Royal Family to the poor labourer " being in beer "—a state so habitual that it was ordinarily held to excuse almost any excess 2 —there was
1 Dyott, 1, 17.
2 Mr. Newton, Secretary of the Royal Academy, dining with some friends in Somerset and being " a little affected by liquor," found his coachman and footman much more so, so put them into the carriage and himself mounted the coachbox.— Farrin gton, I, 68.
a general contempt for heeltaps: the King's sailor son, the Duke of Clarence, whenever one of his guests stopped drinking, would call out, " I see some daylight in that glass, sir: banish it." " We m ade him welcome," wrote Ramblin Jack of the fo'c'sle, " as all Englishmen do their friends, damnabell Drunk, and saw him safe home to Dean's Square, Ratclife way." 1 Even the livestock on occasion seemed to partake of the national passion: a clergyman noted how two of his pigs, drinking some of the beer grounds out of one of his home-brewed barrels, got so drunk that they were not able to stand and remained like dead things all night: " I never saw pigs so drunk in my life."
Foreigners, less blessed with plenty, were profoundly impressed, if sometimes a little appalled. All this exuberant grossness seemed part of the genius of England: these robust
1 On one of Coke of Holkham's farms he was told that the harvesters had meat three times a day and as much small beer as they could drink.— Roche foucauld, 230.
Woodforde, a Norfolk parson with a modest living, entertained his neighbours to such fare as " fish and oyster sauce, a nice piece of boiled beef, a fine neck of pork roasted and apple sauce, some hashed turkey, mutton stakes, salad, etc., a wild duck roasted, fried rabbits, a plumb pudding and some tardets, desert, some olives, nuts, almonds and raisins and apples." " The whole company," he added apologetically, " was pleased with their dinner, and considering we had not above three hours' notice of their coming, we did very well in that short time." Nor was such feasting confined to the days when the good parson entertained. He and his niece Nancy, and one can be sure his domestics below stairs, did themselves almost equally well on ordinary days. " We returned home about three o'clock to dinner. Dinner to-day boiled chicken and a pig's face, a bullock's heart roasted and a rich plumb pudding." Small wonder that Nancy sometimes felt ill of an afternoon " with a pain within her, blown up as if poisoned "; that the parson was forced to complain after a somewhat restless night " mince pie rose oft"; and that itinerant Torrington after his inn fare found himself so frequently battling—with true English stubbornness—against postprandial slumber.
They drank as deep: even when it was only tea. Miss Burney's mother once made Dr. Johnson twenty-one cups in succession. After dinner, bottles of spirits of various kinds—brandy, rum, shrub —moved in ceaseless procession round the table. At Squire Gray's— " a fine jolly old sportsman "—the cloth was not cleared until a bottle of port had been laid down before a mighty silver fox's head, out of which the squire filled a bumper and drank to fox-hunting preparatory to passing it about. 1 Parson Woodforde did not scruple to entertain five fellow-clergymen with eight bottles of port and one of Madeira besides arrack punch, beer and cider.
It was the hallmark of your true Englishman that he " loved his can of flip." In London alone there were more than five thousand licensed houses within the Bills of Mortality. From the Royal Family to the poor labourer " being in beer "—a state so habitual that it was ordinarily held to excuse almost any excess 2 —there was
1 Dyott, 1, 17.
2 Mr. Newton, Secretary of the Royal Academy, dining with some friends in Somerset and being " a little affected by liquor," found his coachman and footman much more so, so put them into the carriage and himself mounted the coachbox.— Farrin gton, I, 68.
a general contempt for heeltaps: the King's sailor son, the Duke of Clarence, whenever one of his guests stopped drinking, would call out, " I see some daylight in that glass, sir: banish it." " We m ade him welcome," wrote Ramblin Jack of the fo'c'sle, " as all Englishmen do their friends, damnabell Drunk, and saw him safe home to Dean's Square, Ratclife way." 1 Even the livestock on occasion seemed to partake of the national passion: a clergyman noted how two of his pigs, drinking some of the beer grounds out of one of his home-brewed barrels, got so drunk that they were not able to stand and remained like dead things all night: " I never saw pigs so drunk in my life."
Foreigners, less blessed with plenty, were profoundly impressed, if sometimes a little appalled. All this exuberant grossness seemed part of the genius of England: these robust
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