Rustic Manners and Customs. 8i 



Kalm describes supper^ not as a general custom, but as a 

 habit indulged in by some Englishmen, who eat sparingly of 

 cold roast meats and a little cheese, after the day's work was 

 over.*^ "Our first mess," says Taylor,^ alluding to the same 

 meal in Hamburgh, " was great platters of black broth, in 

 shape like new tar, and in taste cousin-german to slut 

 pottage ; our second was dishes of eels, chopped as small as 

 herbs, and the broth they were in as salt as brine ; then had 

 we a boiled goose, with choak pears and carrots buried in a 

 deep dish." The fact was that in England the late civil wars 

 had accustomed men to one repast only per diem.^ The four 

 meals of the earlier age had been replaced by the one substan- 

 tial dinner in the middle of the day, and an evening refection, 

 better described by the term " beverage " than supper — in 

 which coffee from the Levant, tea from India, and tobacco from 

 the American colonies, had become substitutes for the solid 

 foods and potent drinks still indulged in by the Germans before 

 going to bed,^ At the earlier and heavier meal the English 

 taste was as faithful to plain boiled and roast as it is now ; and 

 French kickshaws are held up to scorn by a literary author of 

 1690, as viands "calculated to gratify the palate while they 

 cheat the stomach," ^ According to John Taylor, whose fre- 

 quent wanderings constitute him a fair judge, comestibles 

 were not costly in the seventeenth century. He especially 

 extols Carmarthen'^ as the " plentifullest " town that "ever he 

 set foot in." Nothing was scarce, dear, or hard to come by 

 but tobacco-pipes; butter, "as good as the world affords," was 

 twopence-halfpenny or threepence the pound ; a salmon two 



^ Kalm's England, p. 16. 



- By 10 Ed. III. c. 3 only two courses and four kinds of food, except on 

 festive days, were allowed at dinner or supper. The sumptuary laws 

 were, however, never really obligatory. 



3 " Travels from London to Hamburgh." The Old Book Collector's 

 Miscellany, vol. i. p. 27. 



* The repeal of the sumptuary laws by 1 Jas. I. c. 25 had probably 

 little influence on people's appetites and fashions. 



* The New State of England, Part II. ch. iii. p. 34. 

 « Id. Ibid. 



' " A Short Relation of a Long Journey." Old Book Collector's Mis- 

 cellany, vol. iv. p. 15. 



II. G 



