Chapter V

_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 company 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 wherever 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 lord 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. No 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 device 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 which 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 been 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 properties 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 them. 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 ones. [_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 upon 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 short 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 trips 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.