The material culture of dining is perhaps one of the most fascinating and immediate ways to relate to the ‘foreign country’ of the past. By comparing our own ways of eating and the objects we employ to feed ourselves and our guests, we can relate and distinguish the subtle differences and meanings of the men and women who came before us, and the meanings behind different customs of the table that divided town and country, Europe and Britain; gentleman and women from unrefined plebians.
Elites in England favored long mahogany tables in good taste, notably in the Queen Anne or Chippendale style. These were covered with layers of tablecloths that could be removed at different times to reveal another layer of cloth. At the conclusion of the meal, the removal of the last cloth indicated that port was to be served and the mixed company separated. When the table cloth was removed and the mahogany surface of the table revealed, the ladies withdrew for a cup of tea in the parlor, withdrawing room, or saloon, and the gentleman drank at the dining table. Continental and British ideals of good taste could differ considerably, however, and a French visitor to an upper class English dinner was utterly horrified when chamber pots were removed from the buffet and passed around so that the gentleman present could relieve themselves after drinking.
Historians and anthropologists tend to focus on the stratification of dining tables, plates, serving utensils and objects, and the differences between the material culture of the average American colonist or early citizen and her European or British counterpart were stark. Interestingly, however, the dividing line between rich and poor in Britain and the Continent was the presence or absence of meat, while in colonial and Federal America it was the serving dishes, tables, and chairs.
The urban poor, country peasants, and industrial laborers in England subsisted on grains and could not afford much meat. A roast joint was such a symbol of abundance and prosperity and a universal signifier of wealth and good living. The artist William Hogarth used it to mock the starving French in his 1748 painting ‘O, The Roast Beef of Old England’ where starving French soldiers gaze wistfully at a sirloin being delivered to and English inn at the port of Calais. Unlike the starving French soldiers, urban poor, and peasants, American colonists and later citizens could easily hunt their own game, fowl, and have enough abundant land to raise pigs and cows. Meat, then, did not serve to stratify society as it did in the old world.
While even the poorest could afford enough meat at their table to content themselves, however, visitors from Europe and Britain were horrified at the material conditions of the table, where they might be asked to share a common drinking vessel, passed around, or stand while eating at a rough board on trestles due to a lack of chairs. By the eighteenth century, refined people expected a dining table, individual place settings, and were accustomed to glass, silver and pewter plates, wine glasses, and serving dishes. The leather jack handed around the rough board horrified a gentleman who had been asked to lunch by the ferryman. Jacks had been common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but had not been common even amongst the poorest in England for quite some time.
This combination of rough objects and abundant food made for an unusual social situation for visitors. What would you prefer?