Curious Facts about Lobsters and Oysters in 18th Century North America

by Kathy Fischer-Brown

Eighteenth century America holds a certain fascination for me. An old mentor, who had a strong predilection for the spiritual world and reincarnation, once postulated that I had lived a previous life in that period. She told me she sensed it in my writing. (Whether or not this is true is not up for discussion here, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time that Norma thought so.) At any rate, I am drawn to the period, and now, as I call on years and years of previous research and knowledge, and travel new paths in preparation for writing a novel in Books We Love’s “Canadian Brides” series, I am steeped once again in discoveries.

Of the many details of life in a former age, we historical fiction writers find nothing too insignificant or mundane. In other words, everything has importance, from the fabric of the clothes they wore and how it was made, fastened, and laundered, to the way they lighted and heated their homes; how they traveled and where they stayed when away from home; the sights, smells, sounds; and, yes, the food they ate, and how it was procured and prepared.

As a modern day “foodie,” I love cooking (and eating) and trying recipes from other cultures, and even have dabbled in “receipts” from the era I find myself steeped in for the time it takes to research and write my book. So this sort of thing is right up my alley.

In matters of food, I am amazed at how trendy tastes can be. Take lobster, for example. Not to mention that I love lobster (boiled, broiled, baked, steamed, grilled, sautéed, stuffed, on a roll, in a salad or casserole…you name it), I was surprised to discover that back in colonial America, the lobster suffered from a terrible rep. The first settlers in New England went so far as to regard them as a problem. (Yikes, we should have such problems today!) Chalk it up to the lobster’s amazing abundance. They were so plentiful, for example, that following a storm, lobsters would be found washed up on beaches in piles up to two feet high. People literally pulled them from the water with their bare hands. And they grew to be humungous, some weighing in at 20 to 40 pounds and up to six feet long. (Imagine that tail, grilled, with drawn butter, garlic, and lemon juice.)

Of course, if you consider how stinky a pile of dead lobsters can be on the beach in the midday sun, you’d understand some of the 

An illustration by John White depicting Native American
men cooking fish on a wooden frame over a fire.
—Library of Congress

complaints of our ancestors. Other reasons for their shunning, I’m still scratching my head over. Because people literally grew sick and tired of eating them, time came when lobsters were considered unfit for anyone except the abject poor, criminals, indentured servants, and slaves. And even those people complained that having to eat them more than two or three times a week was harsh and inhuman treatment. To add insult to injury, lobsters were fed to livestock or ground up and used as fertilizer. Native Americans used them for bait and ate them only when the fish weren’t biting.

These days, as David Foster Wallace wrote in “Consider the Lobster,” his excellent article published in Gourmet Magazine (August, 2004), “lobster is posh, a delicacy, only a step or two down from caviar. The meat is richer and more substantial than most fish, its taste subtle compared to the marine-gaminess of mussels and clams. In the U.S. pop-food imagination, lobster is now the seafood analog to steak, with which it’s so often twinned as Surf ’n’ Turf on the really expensive part of the chain steak house menu.”

Sad to say, this increase in price and prestige is due in part to the fact that the once monumental populations of these delectable crustaceans is in steep decline. In Long Island Sound, where my uncle used to skin dive for them, their numbers are almost at extinction levels.

Oysters—which for over a thousand years—had been a delicacy on European menus, are mollusks that can be compared in sheer numbers to those of the lobster. They too were more prodigious and larger on the seventeenth- and eighteenth century North American shores than those we’re used to seeing these days and those in the settlers’ countries of origin. A staple in the diet of Native Americans living in coastal areas, oysters then could reach nearly a foot in size. Liberty Island—the site of the Statue of Liberty—was named by the Dutch as one of three “oyster islands” in New York Harbor due to the local Algonquians’ preference for a place over-flowing with oysters. These were the same natives who taught the Pilgrims and Jamestown settlers how to cook them in stews to stave off starvation, and they soon became a common item in our ancestors’ diets. Stewed or pickled, oysters also became a popular trade item.

For any daring enough, here is a “receipt” from Vincent La Chapelle (1690-1745) in his The Modern Cooks and Complete Housewife’s Companion, (curtesy of Colonial Williamsburg):

TAKE some Chibbols, Parsley, and Mushrooms, cut small, and toss them up with a little Butter; put in the Oysters, season them with pounded Pepper, sweet herbs, and all spices, leave them with a little Flour, and add a little Cullis or Essence; then take your small French Loaves, make a little Hole in the Bottom, take out the Crum, without hurting the Crust, fill them with your Oyster ragout, and stop the Holes with the Crust taken off; place your Loaves so filled in your dish, with a little Cullis or Gravy over them, let them get a Colour in the Oven, and serve them up hot for a dainty Dish.

I’m sorry to say that, with the exception of Winter Fire, my historical romance, and The Partisan’s Wife (book 3 of “The Serpent’s Tooth” historical trilogy), I haven’t incorporated the food of the era as much as I would have liked. This will not be the case in Where the River Narrows, my Canadian Historical Brides book (with BWL author Ron Crouch) based on the history of American Loyalists in Quebec during the American War for Independence (pub date August 2018).

American version of The Complete Housewife,by Eliza Smith

For my next blog, as I continue searching for the minutia of everyday life, I will post another snippet of the commonplace things that make eighteenth century North America so unique for me. So, please tune in again. And thanks for reading.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon, Kobo, and other on-line retailers.

Snails Instead of Match.com? Husband Hunting in the 18t c. by Diane Scott Lewis

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In these modern times with the internet (and women freely allowed to enter bars) females have choices in their search for a mate. But in eighteenth century England, my era of research, girls were superstitious, and quite limited, especially in the small country villages.

An English lass's search for a husband was vitally important. In bygone periods marriage was what most young women had to look forward to, or they’d be ridiculed and regulated to spinsters, farmed out as governesses, or forced to live on the charity of their already poor families.

To this end, many relied on ancient customs and folklore. Most of these search-for-true-love customs revolved around the seasons.

Cerne Abbas

At the ruined Abbey of Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire, girls flocked around the wishing-well in all seasons. To obtain their heart’s desire, they’d pluck a leaf from a nearby laurel bush, make a cup of it, dip this in the well, then turn and face the church. The girl would then "wish" for presumably a man she already has in mind, but must keep this wish a secret or it wouldn’t come true.

Other customs included, in Somersetshire on May Day Eve or St. John’s Eve, a lass putting a snail on a pewter plate. As the snail slithered across the plate it would mark out the future husband’s initials.

On another ritual to this end, writer Daniel Defoe remarked by saying: "I hope that the next twenty-ninth of June, which is St. John the Baptist’s Day, I shall not see the pastures adjacent to the metropolis thronged as they were the last year with well-dressed young ladies crawling up and down upon their knees as if they were a parcel of weeders,

Defoe

when all the business is to hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain to put under their heads that night that they may dream who should be their husbands."

Throwing an apple peel over the left shoulder was also employed in the hopes the paring would fall into the shape of the future husband’s initials. When done on St. Simon and St. Jude’s Day, the girls would recite the following rhyme as they tossed the peel: St. Simon and St. Jude, on you I intrude, By this paring I hold to discover, without any delay please tell me this day, the first letter of him, my true lover.

On St. John’s Eve, his flower, the St. John’s Wort, would be hung over doors and windows to keep off evil spirits, and the girls who weren’t off searching for coal or snails in the pastures, would be preparing the dumb cake. Two girls made the cake, two baked it, and two broke it. A third person would put the cake pieces under the pillows of the other six. This entire ritual must be performed in dead silence-or it would fail. The girls would then go to bed to dream of their future husbands.

On the eve of St. Mary Magdalene’s Day, a spring of rosemary would be dipped into a mixture of wine, rum, gin, vinegar, and water. The girls, who must be under twenty-one, fastened the sprigs to their gowns, drink three sips of the concoction, then would go to sleep in silence and dream of future husbands.

On Halloween, a girl going out alone might meet her true lover. One tale has it that a young servant-maid who went out for this purpose encountered her master coming home from market instead of a single boy. She ran home to tell her mistress, who was already ill. The mistress implored the maid to be kind to her children, then this wife died. Later on, the master did marry his serving-maid.

Myths and customs were long a part of village life when it came to match-making. Now they sound much more fun than the click of a mouse on a computer. But then as now, you never know what you'll end up with.

In my novel, Ring of Stone,which takes place in eighteenth-century Cornwall, my heroine Rose will experience magic on All Hallows Eve and glimpse her future husband over her sHoulder.  Click the cover at the top of this Blog to buy a copy of Ring of Stone. Thanks for reading my blog post, and I hope you will purchase and enjoy my novel(s) as well.

For more on Diane Scott Lewis’s novels, visit her website: http://www.dianescottlewis.org

Source: English Country Life in the Eighteenth Century, by Rosamond Bayne-Powell, 1935.

Where No One Has Gone Before: World Building

“It is necessary to create constraints, in order to invent freely… In fiction, the surrounding world provides the constraint. This has nothing to do with realism… A completely unreal world can be constructed, in which asses fly and princesses are restored to life by a kiss; but that world, purely possible and unrealistic, must exist according to structures defined at the outset (we have to know whether it is a world where a princess can be restored to life only by the kiss of a prince, or also by that of a witch, and whether the princess’s kiss transforms only frogs into princes or also, for example, armadillos).”— Umberto Eco, postscript to The Name of the Rose.

 One of my greatest pleasures as a writer of historical fiction is researching the period in which I’ve chosen to set my stories. At the same time it is my hope to re-create the worlds in which they take place as believably and accurately as possible. It’s fun and enlightening, and also sparks ideas for the plot as a whole or a concept for a particular scene I would not have otherwise imagined. For example, while doing some research for The Partisan’s Wife, the study of old maps and descriptions of New York City during the American Revolution prompted me to write a scene in which my main characters do a bit of shopping at a popular place of the time called the Oswego Market. Making this long gone place and time come alive was a  challenge. I wanted the reader to travel back there in time with Peter and Anne, experiencing the surroundings with them. I was also working within the constraints of  a few certain particulars, such as the fact that in 1777 Broadway in Manhattan ran south and north, the same as it does today.

Now that I’m working on an epic fantasy, I am faced with a different sort of “world building.” There are no resources online or in any library or history book where I can find details of a world that exists solely in my imagination. And yet, in order to bring this world to life and make it convincing, I must approach my “research” in the same way I do with a book based in an actual time and place. Because this constructed world is populated with recognizable beings—mostly human—their lives, desires, feelings, likes, dislikes, goals and obstacles must ring true to the reader in the context I’ve set down. And it must be consistent. There must be rules and constraints, which cannot be broken or overstepped. The planet rotates on its axis and revolves around a sun very much in the way our planet does. It has a moon, like ours (or if I choose, it can have two or three or more moons). Night follows day; seasons change. The people have a history, mythology and legends, whether recorded or handed down in an oral tradition. They have wants and desires, fears and comforts. Society has its customs and taboos. There are social strata in which the people live and work according their class. But all of this happens in a universe that is not quite ours, where aberrant (to us) behaviors are acceptable…even the norm.

Since I’ve chosen as this world one that is similar to ours, with a few differences, it is imperative that the dissimilarities be established right from the beginning (as Umberto Eco states in the quote at the top of the page). One difference in this universe is that something akin to magic exists. To make it real and acceptable, the source and execution of this magic must flow seamlessly within the physical and metaphysical laws I’ve created. Other differences involve the melding of cultures. For the “Lothrians,” a peaceful, learned, culturally advanced bunch, I’ve endowed them with characteristics drawn from Celtic and Native American cultures. For the “Notlunders,” a greedy, ruthless, warlike people, I’ve combined aspects of Roman and Viking culture and history. Although not Tolkien-esque “elves,” the “Milithos” or forest people are Lothrians who have evolved in an environment, which over time has changed their physical appearance and solidified their behaviors. And then there are the little “Skaddock,” who resemble primitive humans in a hunter-gatherer society. All invove research into the beliefs and nature of  these cultures.

In the quote above, Umberto Eco says that this process of world building has nothing to do with realism. Novelists by their very nature create new realities in every book they write. And readers are too smart to accept a world whose laws of nature and physics change at the author’s whim in order to make a plot device work. How the magic is called upon and brought into action depends on how believably these devices are set up in the creation of the fictional universe. How the “Milith” people changed in appearance over the centuries since their banishment to the forest calls upon the laws of evolution as we know them and is in itself an explanation for some of their extraordinary abilities. (Through use of a substance they’ve refined over centuries, they can make themselves invisible in certain conditions).

Working within the constraints of this created world and the people who inhabit it, I've established rules that define what is real and what can conceivably happen...hopefully, in a way that is not jarring or false, causing the reader to hurl the book across the room.

~*~

Following is a short excerpt from my work in progress, Sword of Names. I hope it is not only enjoyable, but presents an explanation for how a particular old wizard calls upon his magic:

On the other side of the fire pit, seated on a fallen tree trunk, his back to her, Gamba remained engrossed in his work. Moonbeams outlined his form against the smoldering embers, his closely cropped hair sparkling like a snowy crown, his bald pate shining in the silver light. Hunched over the gnarled root of the bracklenut shaft, her grandfather continued to whittle away. Save for his scraping and paring, he had hardly moved and made no sound for hours.

When the moon reached its apex, he pulled a dark cloth from his haversack. He unwrapped an object in his lap, regarded it for a moment, then held it up to the light. A multifaceted crystal the size of a toddling child’s fist flickered with a milky glow. He mumbled something in an ancient tongue and slipped the jewel into the roots of his bracklenut rod, which closed one-by-one, like fingers, around it.

She sat, hugging her knees to her chest. “Gamba,” she said quietly.

After a moment, her grandfather turned, his features masked by the night. He set down the knife and raised his staff to peer through the swath of murky light it cut through the darkness. “I thought you were asleep.”

She shielded her eyes with a hand against the unexpected brightness. “Is that a corrath?”

“I have not had a suitable staff for it since before you were born.” She sensed his smile in the soft tone of his voice.

Elthwen scrambled to her feet, and barely suppressing her eagerness, entered the pool of soft light spilling around him.

“Bracklenut…not too green, not too dry.” He let out a short, muffled laugh. “This was an auspicious find.”

She dropped beside him on the log. Enveloped by the crystal’s light, she basked in its warmth spreading through her aching bones. Like a weight, her head defied all attempts to keep it upright. She rested it on his shoulder and fixed her gaze on the stone’s radiance growing in intensity. “How does it do that?”

As he slowly rotated the staff between his palms, the crystal changed from opaque white to pink and back to white again. “I am a ghalthrach,” he said simply. “The staff is but a conduit. It connects us—the corrath and me—and the two of us to the earth. By the grace of Nirmanath, we are now one with the current of life.” The light sputtered, nearly going out. “Ach! Perhaps I should have said, ‘We soon shall be one….’ We are both old and woefully out of practice. It will take us a bit of time to…. ” Focusing full attention on his task, he rolled the staff between his hands until the stone flickered back into luminescence.

Kathy Fischer-Brown has published four historical novels with Books We Love, Ltd. To find out more about Kathy and her books, please visit her at her Books We Love author page. For updates on Sword of Names and for further information, check out her website.

The "nerve" of the English Domestic Servant, by Diane Scott Lewis

While we think of servants of the past being much abused (and many were) I found out different in my on-going research. In the eighteenth century, a time when domestic service was seen as easier than toiling in a shop or factory, a poor farmer’s sons and daughters would go happily into this type of work. Even a parson’s family did not look down on the occupation. However, the English domestics thought of themselves as a cut above.

The English servant was quite independent and rarely satisfied with low wages. Instead of being content in the early part of the century with £2 a year, they were demanding as much as £6 and £8. Writer Daniel Defoe wanted to see wages fixed at no more than £5, or soon this rabble would insist on as much as £20.

Lord Fermanagh, when writing to a friend about his butler, who had the audacity to ask for £10, said: "I would have a sightly fellow and one that has had the smallpox, and an honest man, for he is entrusted with store of plate, and can shave, but I will give no such wages as this."

The English servant stood up for himself, giving notice or running away if ill-treated. One servant, after being struck by his master, turned on the man and killed him with a pitchfork.

Foreigners were amazed—since they treated their servants like slaves—to see a nobleman like Lord Ferrers hanged in 1760 for the murder of his steward.

In the earlier part of the century there was a scarcity of women servants, but later, after years of bad harvests, starvation sent many girls into service.

One lady, upon advertising for another housemaid, had over 200 applicants.

If wages were low, servants in a large house could supplement their pay with vails (tips). One foreigner complained after dining with a friend at his home: "You’ll find all the servants drawn up in the passage like a file of musqueteers from the house steward, down to the lowest liveried servant, and each of them holds out his hand to you in as deliberate a manner as the servants in our inns on the like occasion."

One clergyman reported that when he dined with his Bishop, he spent more in vails than would have fed his family for a week.

At least the Duke of Ormonde, when inviting a poor relation to dine, always sent him a guinea ahead of time for the vails.

A movement, rumored to have started in Scotland, was put forth to abolish vails, but nothing came of it.

If servants believed themselves independent, striving for respect, their employers often demanded too much from them for little pay. Mrs. Purefoy advertised for a coachman, who can not only drive four horses, but must understand husbandry business and cattle, plus he’d also be expected to plough. She also required a footman who could "work in the garden, lay the cloth, wait at table, go to the cart with Thomas, and do any other business that he is ordered to do and not too large sized a man, that he may not be too great a load for the horse when he rides."

Servants were derided by their "betters" as being lazy and selfish, especially when they’d leave their positions for higher wages and vails.

Of course, many servants during the eighteenth century—especially in the larger towns and cities—were mistreated and far underpaid, if paid at all.

Still, some servants were honored and treated as members of the family, as shown by this epitaph on a coachman’s headstone: Coachman the foe to drink and heart sincere; Of manners gentle and of judgment clear; Safe through the chequered track of life he drove; And gained the treasure of his master’s love...


To learn more about my eighteenth-century novels, please visit my website:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org


Source: English Country Life in the Eighteenth Century, by Rosamond Bayne-Powell, 1937

A Colonial Christmas, Feast and Customs, by Diane Scott Lewis

For years I lived near the historic town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, named after the then Prince of Wales, Frederick Louis, father of George III. Poor Fred never did become king.

Fredericksburg was an important tobacco-shipping town on the Rappahannock River. I decided to write a Christmas story set during the dawn of the American Revolution, when Virginia, at the time of my story, was still part of England. Researching in the Virginiana Room at the local library, I came across many interesting Christmas customs from this time period—but I found that many originated from earlier eras before Christianity.

In the eighteenth century, the cooking would have been performed in a broad, deep hearth, with a wide chimney where meat could be smoked. Ham, an expensive cut of meat, was popular for a holiday feast.

On December 12th, the Yule Log would be put into the dining room fireplace. This log was kept burning until January sixth, with enough left over to kindle the following year’s Yule Log. The custom of burning the Yule Log dates back before medieval times and was originally a Nordic tradition left over from the pagan days of celebrating the Winter Solstice.

Mince pies were prepared, basically as they are today. But also a specialty called a "stack" cake would be served.

Sweetened, spiced dough was rolled into thin layers, and slices cut using a dinner plate to form a perfect circle. After baking, the cake rose but little. The colonials cooked dried apples and peaches separately, then spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg the fruit was mashed and spread like paste between the cake layers. The cake would be allowed to sit a few days to soak up the fruit.

Another cake would be prepared with a bean baked into one slice. The person who got that particular slice became the King of Misrule. He would rule from Christmas day to Twelfth Night, performing various trifling acts to ensure good weather for the next year. He’d also preside over celebrations, and sometimes cause mischief. This custom can be traced back to ancient Rome, when the King (or Lord) of Misrule was appointed for the feast of Saturnalia, and he represented the good god Saturn. During this time the ordinary rules of life were reversed as masters served their slaves.

Back to the eighteenth century, for holiday decoration, a Christmas Bush would be fashioned using two wooden rings. Binding the rings side by side, fresh cuttings of evergreen, boxwood and sweet William were added. Bright red apples, some rare lemons and pine cones were included for color.

On Christmas day, after dark, the bush was hung in the window with a candle at its center.

For a table centerpiece, a wooden cone adorned with headless nails was speared with apples. Boxwood was stuffed around the apples, and a pineapple put on the top.

On Christmas morning, the people attended church service. Returning to their residence, the home’s owner would enter the house with two sprigs of holly, thus ensuring he would remain master of his house for the coming year.

Then the meal would be laid out for family and friends who might drop by. A punchbowl filled with tea, sugar, pineapple juice and rum was placed next to the centerpiece. As well as the punch, another popular drink was "bumbo" made with rum and sweetened water.

Dried figs and nuts were available to snack on. The ham, smoking for hours, was brought out surrounded by sweet yams. Two roasted fowl would be added to the meat choices. The bread was usually cornbread, served with a hunk of butter.

Muskets and pistols would be fired outside to augment the Christmas festivity.

Celebrations and church attendance on specific days would last until Twelfth Night. This tradition marks the feast of Epiphany, when the three wise men brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

Sources: Wikipedia and the Virginiana Room at the Rappahannock Regional Library, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
And the Williamsburg Marketplace

For more information on my eighteenth-century novels, visit my website:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org