Chapter XIV

_Plate VII—Silver Spoons—Chocolate, Coffee and Tea—Japanese
Spoon—Old Dessert Spoons—A mark of meanness to be without
Plate—Northmen—Prizes at Races—Necklaces of Spoons—Plated and German
Silver Spoons—The World full of Plated Characters—Cheating—Swearers
and the Devil—Laws prohibiting Plating and Transmutation—English
Assay and Stamp—Proverb—Perpetual renewal of Forms—Brazen
Girdles—Shackles—Spoons bewitched—Salad Spoon—Knife, Fork, and
Spoon—Swiss—French—Shanks of Hams decorated—Carving—Boarding School
Usages—Presents—Whittling—Mat weaving Legislators._

PLATE VII.—The first eight figures are silver spoons, such as were in fashion 300 years ago. _Figs. 1_, _2_, are English, and _3_ French. The style of ornament on _2_, _3_, continued in vogue to the present century. Armorial shields, as in _3_, and other ensigns were anciently engraved on spoons. The Greeks and Romans had their initials cut on them, as we have. In the middle ages quaint devices, and with churchmen an Agnus Dei, or similar emblems were adopted. [Hogarth, it will be remembered, began his career with engraving arms and cyphers on spoons and plate.] The shape of _Fig. 4_ is quite modern—the fiddle head, molding of the handle, reversed bend of its tip, are now in fashion, but the figure is copied from an engraving a century old. A plain silver spoon of a like form is portrayed on Planche 8, of the ‘Distillateur and Liquoriste,’ in Arts et Metières, of the French Academy. _Fig. 5_—the ordinary spoon of the present day, and almost identical with _4_. _Fig. 6_—a recent pattern; the handle more ornamented and the point of the bowl rounded off. _Fig. 7_—modern French, from the pattern book of a Paris manufacturer. _Fig. 8_—a fancy tea spoon, from a set belonging to an antiquarian collector, and of English manufacture of the last century. [As table, dessert, and tea spoons differ only in size, each kind is sufficiently represented by the figures on the plate.]

Speaking of tea spoons—what a revolution in manners and customs have three beverages wrought in three centuries—chocolate, coffee, and tea! The first, an ordinary drink of Astec princes, (see page 113) was derived from Mexico in 1520. The second was unknown in western Europe till the close of the 16th century. Its early history is involved in fable. Employed by Arab monks to drive off sleep, and enable those insensates to spend their nights in watchings, it at length was universally adopted by Mussulmen for its refreshing properties. It was carried from Turkey to England in 1641, and the first coffee house opened by a Jew of Oxford, in 1650. A Greek set up another in London in 1652. Henry Blount, describing the diet of the Turks in 1634, observes, ‘They have another drinke, not good at meat, called _cauphe_, made of a berry as big as a small beane, dryed in a furnace and beat to powder, of a soote colour, in taste a little bitterish: they seethe and drinke it hote as may be endured ... it is thought to be the old _blacke broth_ used so much by the Lacedemonians.’ [_Voyage to the Levant_, p. 105.] The consumption of coffee throughout the world during the past year has been estimated at 453 millions of pounds.

But an infusion of leaves of the tea plant has eclipsed all other potations. Imparting tone to the stomach, soothing the irritated system, removing languor and slightly exhilarating, it has become a favorite beverage of civilized nations. Tea was first imported from China by the Dutch, and in the middle of the 17th century sold in England at sixty shillings per pound—a price equivalent to twenty dollars now. Notwithstanding the denunciations of dietists, the moral influence of tea has been manifestly beneficial. It has introduced elegance at meals and politeness at table, diminished gross feeding and abolished the grosser manners of former times. What barbarian would rob ladies of tea—what substitute could he propose—does he wish the fair sex to live as in times ere an infusion of the tea plant was known—to breakfast on beef, pork, and beer, and sup on pork, beer, and beef? The meal known as ‘tea’ is the most intellectual of repasts; no excess attends it; it rather invigorates the spirits than pampers the appetite. Coarse feeders eschew it, for the fluid is but slightly nutritive. No drunkard loves it, for it is the soberest of potations. To refined minds it is nectar which drives away gloom and makes the soul sparkle with joy—a divine cordial, the reverse of beastly malt liquors which the sensual guzzle. Doubtless Circe kept a porter house, and Hygeia drank hyson and bohea.

A fig for those philosophers who denounce tea and modestly ask us to take to cold water—requiring us to renounce that which has done so much towards polishing our manners, and rendering home attractive—pseudo-reformers, who start at a tea-pot and groan at the sight of a saucer. The tea spoon is justly caressed by old ladies, and more fondled by young ones than any thing else. It is to these the bearer of sweets and the medium of taste. Without coyness they reach out their mouths to meet it half way and pout with their lips till they give it a kiss. As they laugh and play with it, the vermillion of their lips is deepened in tone, and vivacity darts from their eyes.

Tea table equipages, and adjuncts in the form of cabinet, china, silver, iron, japanned and copper and other wares, give employment to millions and wealth to thousands. The original tea spoon came from Asia, where its shape often deviates considerably from ours. In the appendix to Kempfer’s Japan is figured a portable case about a foot square, containing every requisite for making tea, including a kettle, canister, cup, and a singular looking tea spoon. It may be compared to a curved and tapered marrow spoon, the small end being the handle. A tea apparatus is carried by the Japanese ‘on their journeyings, and wherever they go.’

It has already been stated that implements small as tea spoons were used in Europe long before tea: besides other duties, they performed those of modern desserts; were used in eating honey, sugar, and fruits preserved in sugar; sweetmeats were favorite dainties in former days. Paul Hentzer, who travelled in England in 1598, gives some interesting particulars relating to the English court and manners. Visiting the palace at Greenwich, he found the presence chamber hung with tapestry and strewed with hay or rushes. He noticed the servants carrying dishes into the queen’s dining room, and prostrating themselves before her empty chair. Of Elizabeth herself he observes, “Next came the queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, as we were told, very majestick; her face oblong, fair but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; a nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, and her _teeth black_; a defect the English seem subject to from their too _great use of sugar_.” In Nichols’ progresses of Elizabeth mention is made of comfit or preserve boxes, with “a litill spone of gold.” Aaron Hill, in his ‘Ottoman Empire,’ says the Turks take up sweetmeats ‘with little spoons like those we use for tea.’

With the ancients it was an indication of poverty or meanness not to possess spoons or some articles of plate. Suetonius observes of Domitian that he was born in Pomegranate street, and so reduced in his younger days as not to own a single utensil of gold or silver. Vespasian drank on solemn occasions out of a silver mug which belonged to his grandmother. She was probably poor, for the family was an obscure one, having no ancestral statues. The emperor himself once let out horses and mules for hire, and hence nicknamed _the muleteer_.

Silver, remarks Olaus Magnus, was anciently in great plenty with the Northmen. Household utensils and even cradles were made of it. Ladies wore chains, bracelets, and round their heads bands of silver four fingers broad. The men had girdles and buttons of the same metal. This display, the reverend historian rather uncanonically observes, did honor to the prince who thus ruled over a gallant people, and not over “poor indigent fellows that are but scabs and pilfering knaves.” [B. vi. cap. 12.] Gold and silver smiths, he says, exhibited their goods at the great annual fairs, held on the ice by the Goths, time out of mind. They furnished the prize cups and spoons distributed at the horse and foot races held yearly on the ice. The footmen wore skates made of the shank bones of the rein deer, and ran over a distance of from eight to twelve miles. The successful competitors were presented with “silver spoons, brass vessels, swords, new garments, and young horses.”

In northern Europe, young females on festival days adorn themselves with rows of silver spoons strung together and worn as a necklace or girdle—a singular proof of imperfect civilization.

To accommodate all tastes and purses, iron, brass and copper spoons are plated with silver, and silver ones with a coat of gold, fine as those ancient ladies’ dresses which were compared to woven wind. Plating and gilding are of unknown antiquity. In modern times a new and cheap factitious substance has been introduced, named _argentane_ or _German silver_. It is composed of copper, zinc and nickel, to which some add a dose of arsenic or antimony. It constitutes a tolerable imitation of real silver. Though slowly oxidized in air, the alloy rapidly corrodes in acids, and injurious effects have resulted from its employment in the kitchen and at the dining table. Recently its color and exterior qualities have been much improved. German silver and plated wares enable poor and economical people to imitate their betters in display, but the cost laid out in sterling goods is the true economy. ‘A poor squire,’ said a Spanish Æsop, ‘should have his cup of silver and his kettle of copper.’ Though they cost more than others, they last longer, and when worn out will buy fresh ones.

It is with men as with their jewels; all is not gold that glitters. Some put so thick a coat of virtue on that few detect the base material underneath—others wear so thin a film that the slightest friction rubs it through. The world is full of plated wares; streets are crowded as well as tradesmen’s shelves. With spoons and with their owners, iron, brass, lead and copper gilt, ape sterling metal. A like variety in both prevails—from tinseled things to catch the vulgar eye, to tasteful forms and ornaments that captivate politer circles. At the best, men are only like their buttons, _i. e._ single, double or treble gilt. Artists have a rule to distinguish between the true and false, and it applies to moral as well as to material merchandize. Plated goods, it is said, exhibit a darker hue, a stronger glare than native gold and silver; hence where there is excessive gloss, be sure there’s brass below. The art of plating human character preceded that of gilding metals. It soon reached perfection. Recent ages have added nothing, nor will future ages find aught to add.

Tricks of old roguish pewterers were noticed in the last chapter; the reader will be grieved to see in this that the morals of their contemporaries who wrought in finer metals were no better. That ancient Scottish poem, ‘_The Sweirers and the Devill_,’ gives a graphic account of the manner and wiles of tradesmen to sell their goods. The fiend is described perambulating a town _incog._ on a market day, and chuckling at the oaths and imprecations of dealers with a view to deceive purchasers. One wished “the devill mot stik him with a knyfe,” if what he said respecting his goods was not true. The malster renounced God, and hoped the ‘devill of hell might taik him, gif ony bettir malt may be.’ The tailor gave himself ‘to the feynd’ if bettir cloaks were ever made.

Ane merchand, his geir as he did sell,
Renuncit his part of hevin and hell.
The fleshour [butcher] swoir be the sacrament,
And be Chryst’s bluid maist innocent,
Nevir fatter flesch saw man with ee.
Ane _goldsmith_ said the gold’s sa fyne,
That all the warkmanschip I tyne, [lose]
The feynd ressaif me gif I lie.
... Quoth the devill, thow art mine.

Since the discovery of the electrotype process of coating one metal with another, spoons of German silver are made to appear so much like those of sterling silver as to be sold by cheats for such. Similar frauds were formerly practiced with plated goods. An English statute of 1403 is to this effect: “Whereas many fraudulent artificers, imagining to deceive common people, do daily make locks, [lockets] rings, beads, candlesticks, harneis for girdles, hilts, chalices and sword pomels, powder [pouncet] boxes, and covers for cups, of copper and of latin, and the same over gilt and silver, like to gold and silver, and the same sell and put in gage to many men not having full knowledge thereof, _for whole gold and whole silver_, to the great deceit, loss, and hindrance of the common people, and the _wasting_ of gold and silver; it is ordained and established that no artificer, nor other man whatsoever he be, from henceforth shall gilt nor silver any such, &c. upon pain to forfeit to the king one hundred shillings, and to make satisfaction to the party grieved for his damages.” Chalices and ornaments for the church were excepted—they might be gilt or plated with silver, but at the foot or underside the real material was to be exposed, “to the intent that a man may see whereof the thing is made, for to eschew the deceit aforesaid.”

By an act of the same year it was made felony to transmute lead, iron, copper, &c. into gold and silver! “It is ordained and established that none from henceforth shall use to multiply gold and silver, nor use the craft of multiplication; and if any the same do, that he incur the pain of felony in this case.” The 5th of Hen. V. allowed gilding but only on sterling silver; no inferior metal was to be covered with silver except “knight’s spurs and all the apparel that pertaineth to a baron.”

A. D. 1300, an act required all articles to be ‘of good and true alloy—of no worse gold than the touch of Paris,’ and silver to equal the current coin; no article to leave the workmen ‘untill it be essaied by the wardens of the craft, and marked with the leopard’s head.’ Under Edward III. every master was to stamp his own mark on the articles before submitting them for assay to the king’s officers. In 1423, another act required gold and silver vessels ‘to be essaied and touched by the keeper of the touch,’ then marked, if found good, ‘with the leopard’s head.’ No more ‘sowder’ was to be used than necessary—an intimation that it was not spared when every article was sold by weight. In 1294, Phillippe le Bel published regulations and renewed others, for the guidance of Paris gold and silver smiths.

The goldsmith’s profession furnishes a cutting rebuke to simpletons and impudent boasters:—“A fool of 24 carats” is one whose folly is without alloy: “a philosopher of 25 carats”—nature has exceeded herself in producing him.

Silver spoons are emblematical of that renewal of forms which organized matter perpetually undergoes. Vegetables, animals and men are composed of the same ingredients—alternately nourishing and imbibing nourishment from each other. Their figures and condition, not their substance, change. A portion of the reader’s person may have nerved the right arm of David, swelled the stature of Goliah, blushed in the cheek of Lucretia, handled the Crayons of Zeuxis, hunted with Meleager, or even been part of the wild boar he slew! Start not, gentle reader, for that which was a calf or pig, an ox or sheep, yesterday, is veal or pork, beef or mutton to-day, and to-morrow becomes assimilated to its human consumer; bone of thy bone, and flesh of thy flesh. It is humiliating to human glory that the proudest individuals are composed of such vile materials;—a courtier’s body may have toiled at Babel, and may again be a bricklayer’s clerk. The skull of a king may once have been a calabash, his nose a pullet’s gizzard; his blood may through a goose have trilled, his heart have panted in a deer; his lips may once have jabbered on a baboon’s face, and ages hence may do the like again: he yet may serve to grease a carriage axle, manure a cabbage or a radish bed, and be served up to clowns in salad. Princes, when sick, are fed sometimes on asses’ milk, or draw their nourishment from dugs of goats, and thus incorporate these animals with themselves.

If there never was a transmigration of souls, there has always been one of human bodies and of—silver spoons! As the elements of our ancestors exist in us, so do tons of ancient plate in our buffets. Human beings are dissolved in the grave, and the precious metals in the crucible; but the operation in both cases is preliminary to the reäppearance of the substances in new forms. The gold coin in the reader’s pocket may have constituted a part of the chain which Pharaoh put round Joseph’s neck, or of the bodkin which Fulvia thrust through Cicero’s tongue. Spoons used at our tables may once have been shekels of the sanctuary, or paid by Abraham for his field at Hebron. They may have entered the lips of Cleopatra, and been employed by Andromache or Artaxerxes at dinner. The ingenuity of antediluvian artists was perhaps expended on the substance of that goblet. Noah may have handled it, and Judas bore it in his scrip. A monarch’s table fork may once have picked the teeth of rebels, or in a surgeon’s hands punctured boils and sores. As with the past so with the future: Reader! ages hence thy silver plate may form the spoons of an individual, a portion of whose body may be identical with thine, and who, like thee, may sit speculating on the metamorphoses terrestrial beings undergo.

Before leaving this very curious subject we may be permitted to suggest, that the often quoted contest between two individuals of the feline race, at Kilkenny, which ended by each party eating up the other, _may_ be less akin to an Irish bull and more allied to a philosophical truth than is generally surmised.

As devices for diminishing a craving for food have been mentioned, some moral prescriptions for moderating a longing for rich furniture might here be quoted, but they would be of little avail. Neither one appetite nor the other can be tamed by medical or sacerdotal doctors. Few persons now prefer eating sand to filling the stomach with good things; yet except to such, table equipages, if emblazoned with fiends, snakes and toads, would exert no lasting influence. Though table cloths were winding sheets, knife hafts dead men’s bones, and spoons, cups and butter boats made of human skulls, the generality of mankind would soon eat and drink as heartily as if the service were of silver, and no arguments had been adduced against intemperance.

One device to make people stop when they had sufficient has not been noticed; it was the last mechanical resource, viz: a broad brass or iron band fitted to and worn around the abdomen; so that when the wearer could not stop putting food into his mouth there was not room for it below—the stomach no longer resembling an elastic sack, capable of extension, but a non-elastic barrel which could not be surcharged. An abbot in the 11th century, inordinately given to creature comforts, had his trunk thus cased with a brazen band. With these girdles, neither penitents nor those who loved short masses and long dinners could eat

‘Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
Were bent like drums.’

It often happened that those who indulged an inordinate taste for gold and silver plate wore shackles of another kind—according to the saying, ‘men of small means who eat from silver, fast and die in iron.’ Living beyond their income, they end their days in jail. A fondness for display, whether in the house or out of it, has caused no small share of human misery. Many a female has ruined her husband by longing for plate. The Italians say, the smiles of a woman are the tears of the purse—a rich sideboard and a fat kitchen make a lean will.

When those capricious goblins yclept ‘fairies’ used to assist their rustic friends, by kindling kitchen fires at early dawn, sweeping floors, milking cows, and churning butter, they played less pleasant pranks to those who slighted them. Puck scared dairy maids, skimmed their milk, and would not let their cheeses curdle nor the butter ‘come,’ “if a bowle of curds and creame” had not been offered him. Often he slipped boys’ stools away as they sat down:—

And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe.
Sometimes he lurk’d in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab, [apple]
And when she drank, against her lips he bobb’d,
And on her wither’d dew-lap pour’d the ale.

Worse things mischievous genii did to those obnoxious to their wrath. Spoons at supper time denied their aid, and either vanished in the steaming porridge or refused to leave the bowl or dish—more appalling still, they have, on entering a hungry boor’s mouth, stuck fast, and defied all human power to draw them thence, until the offended spirit was appeased, and ceased to press the rustic’s upper and under jaw against the implement! Legends such as these were often based on facts, and demons more tangible than ‘Pucks’ or ‘Robin Goodfellows’ were the authors. Fusible spoons are not of recent date, nor are metallic bowls with spoons cast to them and made to resemble earthenware. Moreover, spoons were as easily made to enter the mouth and remain a certain time as those “untoothsome pears,” cherries and plums, mentioned by old writers, “which being put into a body’s mouth, shall presently shoot forth such and so many bolts on every side, that without the owner’s key cannot be got out again.” The Cathayans had magical cups and we presume spoons too, which filled themselves and then went of their own accord “ten paces through the ayre into the hands of the Great Khan, and when he hath drunke, in like sort they return to their place”! [_Ewbank’s Hydraulics._]

_Fig. 9_—a French device, resembling a large pair of scissors; one blade being a fork, the other a spoon—a singular union. The screw or pivot is made to take out, that each implement may, when desirable, be separately handled. The whole is of ivory or buffalo’s horn and designed to transfer salads at table. The usual dressings, as vinegar, salt, oil, mustard, &c. corrode metallic substances. When used, the spoon or fork is held downwards, accordingly as a part of the fluid is required to be raised or not. That Warwickshire wizard who ranged through all nature and every art to cull flowers and collect ingredients for those spells by which he has bewitched the world, did not pass by salads:

’Twas a good lady; we may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such
another herb.

Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or rather the
herb of grace.—[_All’s well that ends well._]

_Fig. 10_—a pocket knife, fork and spoon united in one handle. Implements of this kind were formerly much in fashion; at present they are occasionally carried by travellers and by individuals on gunning or fishing excursions. Captain Head used one when traversing the Pampas and Andes. Supping at a wretched post, where table furniture was scarcely known, a black girl held the light in one hand and furnished salt with the other—artificial candlesticks and salt-cellars forming no part of the establishment. He drew from his pocket, ‘a clasp knife and fork,’ and picked up with the latter chopped pieces of beef from a pewter dish to the no small delight of the living candelabrum.

Peasants in Switzerland and other parts of the European continent, commonly carry a device like _Fig. 10_, or a sheath containing the separate implements. Before the revolution in France, it was customary when a gentleman was invited to dinner, to send a servant with his knife, fork and spoon; if he had no attendant, he took them in his breeches pocket, as a carpenter carries a rule. “A few of the ancient regime still follow the good old custom, because it is old.” Has not the reader noticed at public dinners, or when making ‘New-Year’s calls,’ the shank of a ham or leg of mutton tastefully decorated with gilt or cut paper and ribbons? This was a custom somewhat general before forks were introduced, and still is common in Germany and Italy. The carver grasped that part of the joint in his left hand while he shaved off slices with a pointed knife in his right. That he might hold it firmly and perform his duty more expeditiously and seemly, a piece of paper was neatly tied round the shank, and on great occasions set off with ribbons. Each slice as cut off was raised on the point of the knife and laid on a thin piece of bread, a pile of which was placed near the carver, who thus served the guests in rotation. Ovid has observed there was grace in using the fingers at table; so there is in handling a fork. In old engravings we see ladies holding it between the finger and thumb, as if afraid to touch it, or as people take snuff; others retain it in the hand in the manner of a pen, and some grasp the handle with a clenched fist, as a boy clutches an apple or a gentlemen the head of his walking cane.

Portable cases of morocco containing a separate knife, fork and spoon are for sale in our silver smiths’ shops. It is said gentlemen of the _ton_ would as soon go a journey without their dressing cases as some of them would take their seats at a _table d’hote_ without their own spoons and forks. In public gardens visitors sometimes take ice cream and other refreshments with their own apparatus; but a certain class prefer the proprietor’s spoons, which, when of silver, they have forgotten to return. We have heard of knives and forks being chained to plates, and spoons to bowls, in London chop and soup houses—imitating a practice introduced by Edwyn in the 7th century, of fastening by the same means iron cups to wells and springs, for the use of honest and dishonest travellers. As the ‘Transactions’ of the Society of Literary and Scientific Chiffonniers will no doubt be consulted in future times, the following extract from the circular of a fashionable female boarding school may interest young ladies and teachers a century hence:—“Parents to furnish each pupil with bed and bedding, six towels, napkins and a knife; a silver fork, _spoon_ and mug; a thimble and a pair of scissors; all to be marked in full: washing seven dollars a quarter.”

A portable knife has always been an acceptable present to boys. The first one is examined with rapture, and its possession sometimes forms an epoch in the life of its owner, as was the case with young Achilles. When disguised as a girl, and placed among the daughters of Lycomedes, the wily pedlar of Ithaca took an effectual mode to discover him. The pretended merchant unslinging his pack, displayed before the family of Lycomedes thread, tapes, ribbons, scissors and needles, with an assortment of neat daggers and knives; the females confined their purchases to articles appropriate to them, but the youth, forgetting the part his concealment required, eagerly pounced on the knives, &c. thus revealing the secret of his sex, and to the man above all others interested in finding him out. The Germans make annual presents to their godsons, till the lads reach the age of fourteen, when the last gift, invariably a pocket knife, is made. The instrument is considered symbolical of a youth cut loose from leading strings, and thenceforward accountable for his acts. Girls, we suppose, are treated with a pair of scissors.

Not a few modern devices are ancient inventions. There is one universally ascribed to Yankees, but which, so far from being of republican origin, is descended from royalty. An ancient writer, describing the manners and magnificence of the Persian king, says, when he rode in a chariot, instead of occupying his thoughts in reading or conversation, he spent the time “in whittling with a knife.” [_Purchas._] Major Harris, in his ‘Highlands of Ethiopia,’ mentions Arabian legislators platting date leaves into mats while sitting in council—the most useful, in his opinion, of their acts.