Part 3
At that time, though vessels and their cargoes were insured, the underwriters frequently did not make their appearance down the coast at the scene of the wreck for many days and even weeks after the ship broke up or came ashore. And when the tardy officials did arrive, Barnegat natives, even from far inland—honest men and knavish rogues alike—had always managed to capture everything of value that came ashore or could be taken from the vessel. In order to conceal their stolen salvage, indestructible merchandise or articles that were not affected by the action of the soil and water were frequently buried until after the baffled insurance company and the ship’s owners had left the scene. The arrest and sentence of the leader of this gang of wreckers caused much apprehension and excitement in every Barnegat home, and much fine china was pounded up or thrown into the water, as well as buried, lest its presence seem proof of complicity in the convict’s guilt. Our pieces of “Beach ware” remained under ground for years—it is said until the wicked old convict served out his term in prison, since he alone could find the spot where he had buried it. The green-ribboned and pink-sprigged teapots and teacups look too innocent to have known aught of such wickedness and violence, but bear no more guileless face than did the patriarchal old wrecker in the peaceful prosperous days of his later years when he unblushingly and unwincingly sold to us this “Beach ware,” of which his gossiping neighbors had told to us the tale.
Shall I have the dire name of “fence” applied to me when it is told that I am the receiver of stolen goods?
The best piece of Wedgwood jasper ware that I own was bought from an old Englishman of mild appearance and junk proclivities. A second visit to his den found it closed. A friendly plumber in the adjacent shop explained with effusion that the junk-man was a wretched old thief, and no one but thieves sold to him or bought of him (I winced at the accusation); that “he broke into a museyum in England and stole a lot of china and brought it over here to sell, and had kep’ stealin’ ever sense,” and he (the plumber) was “glad the perlice had chased him out, for he was a disgrace to the neighborhood.” Was not my pretty Flaxman-designed piece of Wedgwood stolen from that English collection?
A beautiful cup and saucer of old Worcester in the “Japan taste,” rich without and within in red and gold and blue, has long been regarded by me with intense suspicion of my honest and legal right to its possession. It was sold to me with the assurance that it had belonged to Lucien Bonaparte; I did not doubt that part of the story, for I had seen its sister in the possession of a family who I knew inherited it through a gift of that Bonaparte. But how should my cup and saucer have been offered for sale to anyone? By a curious chain of circumstances, too tedious to repeat, I discovered that the pretty cup and saucer had been stolen by a servant, and sold long ago to an old merchant in New York, who should have and doubtless did know better, but who loved old china. Shall I tell his name? Shall I hunt up the lawful heir and owner of my Worcester teacup?
Only one possibility mars the pleasure of a day’s china hunt—the necessity of obtaining a midday meal “upon the road,” in any chance farm-house you may be within at high noon. The old hunter fights shy of such repasts by carrying her lunch with her, but when a drive of several days is taken this course is not very attractive or possible. She must then succumb to fate, accept the hospitality which is invariably and cordially offered to her, and eat, or, at least, try to eat. I think June is the most trying month for such ventures. Spring vegetables are unknown in the land of their supposed birth. Fruits and berries are not ripe. You are given a mysterious repast, flavored throughout with sour milk and smelling of sour milk, which reaches its highest and sourest point in the bread. I always plead dyspepsia and cling to a milk diet, thus eliciting much sympathy, and hygienic and medical advice. Doubtless in late fall or in winter, country fare might be more endurable, but, with keen and most vivid fancy, I cannot imagine going china hunting in the country in the winter time. Even glorious sleighing or the promise of vast treasure trove could not englamour it with an enticing charm. Think of shivering over snow-blocked roads under leaden skies, through dreary, wind-wailing, naked woods, struggling up icy, snow-swept, and blast-beaten hills to that lonely hill-top home, a New England farm-house! Hope would perish on the road. Think of entering that drear abode; of sitting, while you unfolded your wishes and went through the stereotyped china questions with the stereotyped china smile, with bursting veins and flushed face, in a stuffy, torrid, unaired room, in front of a red-hot, air-tight stove, for there are no glorious open wood fires nowadays in the great chimneys of country houses in New England. Think of going from that super-heated, stifling atmosphere to a frigid pantry or icy best room to look at china! How the congealed plates would clatter in your trembling stiffened fingers; how you would hurry through the repelling ordeal; never, as in summer, climbing upon chairs to peer on upper shelves, never exploring in old window-seats, never lingering to examine separately and lovingly each plate in a great pile. Above all, think of ransacking a farm-house garret, “in cobwebbed corners, dusty and dim,” with the thermometer below zero—it is beyond my power of fancy to fathom such a scene. A fellow china hunter tells me a tale of a lonely drive and Arctic exploration, and of riding gayly home therefrom in the winter twilight, warming the cockles of her heart with four Baltimore & Ohio plates pressed closely to her side, with two Lafayette pepper-boxes and half a dozen Lowestoft custard-cups packed snugly in her muff, and with a Pennsylvania Hospital platter in the fur robe at her feet. I never believed her; it could not be true. China does not grow in winter, ’tis a fair summer flower, and must be gathered under summer suns.
But to what out-of-the-way, simple, rustic scenes has our china hunting led us through the long summer days, scenes to be painted by Miss Wilkins or Mrs. Slosson. To country auctions—not the ill-ventilated, Hebrew-jostled, bawling arenas of city life, but auctions in country villages, on old farms, where the auctioneer, if the day be warm, stands outside the house on a door taken from its hinges and laid across two barrels on the green, or among the beds of flowering phlox and marigolds; where the lots for sale, unnumbered, uncatalogued, and unclassified are handed out, a heterogeneous company, to the presiding seller through the open windows behind him; where every small parcel of value is neatly tied up and labelled with the names of past owners—Aunt Hepsy, Mrs. Catey Doten, Old Job Greening; where every queer-gowned and queer-coated neighbor for miles around has driven over in every kind of vehicle to look at, if not to buy, the scattering house treasures. At these country auctions, china and ancient underclothes, or pewter porringers with feather pillows, may form a single “lot,” and you must buy all or none. If you purchase you pay your money at once to the auctioneer, with much friendly change-making by hard-fisted old farmers on either hand; the china is delivered to your eager hands, the underclothes are thrown to you or at you by the auctioneer over the heads of the audience; the hay-rakes, or churns, or quilting-frames, or whatever addenda may have been tacked to your porcelain, are brought around and piled in a little heap by the side of your chair, or if you have “backed up” your country wagon, are placed therein. I once bought six large bundles of neatly labelled pieces of woollen cloth, pieces of all the old petticoats and breeches and greatcoats that had been worn in that house for forty years, just to get one India china plate. A rugmaking—or I should say, “mat-braiding”—dame at my left, seeing my dismay at my unsought treasures and noting my love of china, offered to give me a modern match-box for the tidy bundle of pieces, which kindly exchange I gladly accepted as being less cumbersome, if not more beautiful.
Surely the summer sunlight never flickered down on a more typical New England scene than a country auction. Sad are the faces around, quiet reigns; no one smiles, no one jests as the hoarse-voiced auctioneer holds up, explains, and extols some very mirth-provoking “lots.” This breaking up and disbanding of a home has no droll side to country minds. The last country auction I attended was at an old house in Rutland. At it were sold the effects of an ancient lady of ninety years, who had just died. Her nephew, a lively lad of eighty, carried away by the excitement of the sale, or by the sight of so much ready money, recklessly handed out to the auctioneer, as he stood under the dusty lilac bushes, a large number of articles of furniture and table-ware which had been temporarily stored in the house by the old lady’s housekeeper, an equally ancient matron. The unconscious theft was discovered late in the afternoon, just as we were about to drive off, and the old man, overcome with horror at his unwitting crime, or dread of the results of its discovery, tearfully forced us to disgorge half a dozen McDonough’s Victory plates and several mugs and pitchers which we had eagerly purchased and gleefully packed away. He “comforted us with apples,” however, pressing upon us a peck of red-streaked, spicy Sapsons to console us for our evident disappointment—and our sorrow that we had not sensibly and cannily departed at an earlier hour.
But do not fancy that every gathering of country wagons in country door-yards, every row of patient horses hitched at barn doors and along the fence, denotes an auction within the doors of the farm-house. Draw no such rash conclusion, and make no hasty and unheralded entrance within, else you may find yourself, with china smiles on your lips and china inquiries on your tongue, an impetuous and mortified intruder at the saddest of all sad scenes, a country funeral. I cannot resist telling that, after one such impertinent intrusion on that solemn function, we returned in a few hours, when on our way home, to apologize and explain our infelicitous and uninvited entrance at so unfitting a time. When we stated that we were hunting for old-fashioned china, a gleam of comprehension entered the faces of the two elderly women who sat rocking by the fireside in the lonely kitchen, and as a result a china-closet was raided, and we bought a number of pieces of unusually fine Canton and Lowestoft china. At the time of purchase, we innocently fancied that we gained this treasure honestly from the new-made heirs, but have since then had harassing suspicions that the china was sold to us by temporary care-takers who remained to “redd the house,” while the mourning relatives had driven to the country graveyard, and who thus snatched from the jaws of death a most dishonest penny.
Nor can you be over-confident that all auctions held in the country are true country auctions. The ways of “antique men” are past finding out. A sale of the household furnishings of an old farm-house in the heart of the White Mountains, attracted a vast number of summer travellers, and brought forth purchase sums that bewildered the farm residents for miles around. Ere the sun went down on the day of the sale, a thrifty dealer who happened to be present had had a conference with the farm-wife, and as a result it was announced that she had a reserve stock of furniture and china in her garret, which would be sold the following week. Back to town sped the dealer, packed up a vast collection of unsalable débris which he chanced to have on hand, and an “assorted lot” of modern willow-pattern ware, freshly imported Canton china, new copper-lustre and painted tea-sets, with a sparse sprinkling of old pieces. He sent the entire lot by rail to the New Hampshire town; conveyed it by dead of night to the farm-house; placed the crockery in the cupboards, the brand-new brass candlesticks on the mantels, and the flimsy new andirons in the old fireplaces, arranged all the furniture in judicious shadow, and had a successful auction of “rare old colonial furniture and family china.”
A famous starting-point, or rather rallying-point, on a china hunt is the district school. Driving along the quiet country road, you chance, in some barren and unlovely spot, often at some lonely cross-roads, upon a small unshaded, single-storied building, whose general ugliness and the beaten earth of whose door-yard tell to you its purpose and character without the proof of the high-pitched and precise chorus of monotonous three-syllabled words that vibrates shrilly out through the open window. Hitch your steed to a tree, a fence, by the roadside, and enter one of the twin portals of the abode of learning, passing by the low-hanging rows of ragged straw hats, gingham sun-bonnets, and chip “Shakers,” over the “warping floor,” in front of the “battered seats, with jack-knife’s carved initial.” “Teacher” is glad to see you, the children are gladder still. She sends a grinning barefooted boy out to draw a pail of fresh well-water. You are asked, as a distinguished visitor, to address the scholars. If you are a man, and thus of course an orator, you do so with fluent tongue. If you are a woman, and thus tongue-tied in public, you can ask for “recess” to be given, and make your address informally to each little freckled face. You are, of course, anxious to refurnish a house like the one in which you lived when you attended the village school in the days of your youth. Do the children know of any old blue china plates with trees and houses on them? Have their mothers or grandmothers any pitchers with pictures of soldiers, or sailors, or ships? Of course the children know; they know everything—far more than grown people. You soon have an exact ceramic report from every house in town whose little sons and daughters are in the school, and of the homes of all their neighbors too. You have extracted an unbiassed account from a set of little ready-tongued and keen-eyed spies, whose penetration is acute, and whose memory is active. If you can draw you can quickly show the children with chalk and blackboard the kind of china you wish, and can depart with a long list of houses which will repay you to visit.
But why do I longer tell the story of the chase, or vainly try to give advice and rules for china-finding? I can only “pay you my penny of observation,” knowing well that “Gutta fortunæ præ dolio sapientiæ.” Nor can I fitly paint the pleasures, nor tell the pains of the search, more than I could mould and shape the treasures it has brought to my home. Nor can I hope to fire in other veins the fever that burns in mine; I must be content to say with Olivia, “’Tis a most _extracting_ frenzy of mine own.”
II. TRENCHER TREEN AND PEWTER BRIGHT
The history of the use of china as table-ware in America would be incomplete and ill-comprehended, without some reference to the preceding forms of table furnishings used by the earliest colonists, the dishes of wood and pewter, which so long influenced the form and even the decoration of their china successors. As in the “Life of Josiah Wedgwood” we are given an account of the pottery and porcelain of all times, so in my story of china in America I tell of the humble predecessors that graced the frugal boards of our ancestors.
In a curious book, Newbery’s “Dives Pragmaticus,” written in 1563, a catalogue of English cooking utensils and table-ware is thus given by a chapman:
“I have basins, ewers of tin, pewter, and glass, Great vessels of copper, fine latten, and brass, Both pots, pans, and kettles such as never was. I have platters, dishes, saucers, and candlesticks, Chafers, lavers, towels, and fine tricks; Posnets, frying pans, and fine pudding pricks; Fine pans for milk, trim tubs for souse.”
These were practically the table and kitchen furnishings brought by the Pilgrims to New England, and for similar furnishings they sent to old England for many years.
The time when America was settled was the era when pewter ware had begun to take the place of wooden ware for table use, just as the time of the Revolutionary War marked the victory of porcelain over pewter. Governor Bradford found the Indians using “wooden bowls, trays, and dishes,” and “hand baskets made of crab shells wrought together.” Both colonists and Indians used clam-shells for plates, and smaller shells set in split sticks as spoons and ladles.
The Indians made in great quantities for their white neighbors, even in the earliest days, bowls from the knots of maple-trees that went by the name of “Indian bowls,” and were much sought after and used. One large bowl taken from the wigwam of King Philip is now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The settlers also established factories for dish-turning. One thrifty New England parson eked out his scanty and ill-paid salary by making wooden bowls and plates for his parishioners. Wooden “noggins,” low bowls with handles, are often mentioned in early inventories, and Mary Ring, of Plymouth, thought in 1633 that a “wodden cupp” was quite valuable enough to leave “as a token of friendship.”
In Vermont bowls and plates of poplar wood were used until Revolutionary times, and fair white dishes did that clean hard wood make. Sometimes the wooden plates used by the poor planters were only square blocks slightly hollowed out by hand—whittled, without doubt. Wooden trenchers, also made by hand, were used on the table by the colonists for more than a century. I find them advertised for sale with pewter and china in the _Connecticut Courant_ of May, 1775. These trenchers were either square or oblong. From an oblong trencher two persons, relatives or intimate friends, sometimes ate in common, just as they had done in old England. Two children frequently ate from the same trencher, thus economizing table furnishings. In earlier times man and wife ate from a single trencher or plate. Walpole relates that the aged Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, in the middle of the last century, sat upon a dais together at the head of their table and ate from the same plate—a tender tribute to unreturnable youth, a clinging regard for past customs, and a token of present affection and unity in old age.
A story is told of a Connecticut planter, that having settled in a quickly-growing town and having proved himself to be a pious God-fearing man, his name was offered to his church for election or ordination as a deacon. Objection was made to him, on the ground that he had shown undue pride and luxury of living in allowing his children each to use and eat from a single plate at the table, instead of doing as his neighbors did—have two children eat from one trencher. He apologized for his seemingly vain manner of living, and gave in excuse the fact that previous to his settlement near New Haven he had been a dish-turner, so it had not then been extravagant for the members of his family to have a dish apiece; and having grown accustomed to that manner of “feeding,” he found it more peaceable and comfortable; but he was willing to change his ways if they considered it desirable and proper, as he did not wish to put on more airs than his neighbors.
But wooden trenchers, even in the first half of the first New England century, gave place to pewter, and the great number of pieces of pewter table-ware still found in New England country homes would alone prove to how recent a date pewter utensils were universally used. The number would doubtless be much larger if it were not deemed by metal-workers that new pewter is of much better substance if the metals composing it are combined with a certain amount of old pewter. Hence old pewter always has commanded a good price, and many fine old specimens have been melted up to mould over again for the more modern uses for which pewter is employed by printers and lapidaries.
The trade of pewterer was for two centuries a very respectable and influential one. The Guild of Pewterers in London was a very large and powerful body, and English pewterers, men of worth, came with other tradesmen at once to the Colonies. Richard Graves was a pewterer of Salem in 1639, and Henry Shrimpton, an influential merchant who died in Boston in 1666, made large quantities of pewter ware for the Massachusetts colonists. The pewterers rapidly increased in numbers in America, until the War of Independence, when, of course, the increasing importation of Oriental and English china and stone-ware, and the beauty and interest of the new table-ware, destroyed forever the pewterer’s trade. Advertisements of pewter table furnishings appear frequently, however, in American newspapers until well into this century.
Nor was it different in England at the same date. Englishmen and Englishwomen clung long to pewter. In a poem written in 1828 by J. Ward, of Stoke-upon-Trent, upon the Potter’s Art, he says:
“The housewife, prim in days we know ourselves, Display’d her polished pewter on her shelves; Reserv’d to honour most the annual feast, Where ev’ry kinsman proved a welcome guest. No earthen plates or dishes then were known, Save at the humble board as coarse as stone, And there the trencher commonly was seen, With its attendant ample platter treen.” (Wooden.)
It is a curious fact that in the inventory of the household possessions of Thomas Wedgwood, the potter, made at Burslem in 1775, we find that he had forty-four pewter plates worth seven pence half penny each, and twenty-four pewter dishes worth two shillings each, though the inventory of the goods at his factory at that time included two hundred and ninety-five dozen table plates of best white ware.
At a very early date all well-to-do colonists had plenty of “latten ware,” which was brass, as well as pewter. All kinds of household utensils were made, however, of the latter metal; even “pewter bottles, pints, and quarts,” were upon a list of goods to be sent from England to the Massachusetts Colony in 1629. I have never seen an old pewter bottle, even in a collection or museum, and they must soon have been superseded by glass.
In the Boston _Evening Post_ of July 26, 1756, appeared this advertisement: “London pewter dishes, plates, basons, porringers, breakfast bowls, table spoons, pint and quart pots, cans, tankards, butter cups, newest fashion teapots, table salts, sucking bottles, plates & dish covers, cullenders, soop kettles, new fashion roased plates, communion beakers and flagons, & measures.” A vast number of names of other articles might be added from other lists of sales of pewter at that time—“quart & pint jacks,” “bottle crains,” “ink pots,” “ink chests,” “ink horns,” “ink standishes,” and “ink jugs.”
Pewter “cans for beer, cyder, and metheglin,” were in every household; pewter mugs and pewter “dram-cups with funnels,” pewter “basons,” cisterns, and ewers graced the “parlour,” which contained also the best state bed, with its “harrateen” or “cheney” curtains. Pewter candlesticks held the home-made, pale-green candles of tallow and spicy bayberry wax. “Savealls,” too, were of pewter and iron. “Savealls” were the little round frames with wire points which held up the last short ends of dying candles for our frugal ancestors.