Category Archives: 18th century

John Newbery Proposes an Unorthodox Way to Celebrate Valentine’s Day

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A Book for Jennifer, (Cotsen 7267)

With this newspaper advertisement in 1764, the famous publisher John Newbery launched five new books.  Naturally only good children who visited his shop in St. Paul’s Church Yard would be allowed to purchase them:

The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the Learned in every Faculty are desired to observe, that on the First of January, being New Year’s Day (Oh that we may all lead new Lives!) Mr. Newbery intended to publish the following important Volumes, bound and gilt…

  1. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, a little Boy who lived upon Learning
  2. The Easter Gift; or the Way to be very good
  3. The Whitsuntide Gift, or the Way to be very happy
  4. The Valentine’s Gift, or how to behave with Honour, Integrity, and Humanity; Very useful in a trading Nation
  5. The Fairing; or a Golden Toy for Children of all Sizes and Denominations.

The second, third, and fourth titles were integral parts of a plan to make young people good people in spite of the disadvantage of growing up in a degenerate decade.  In an essay to parents and governesses, he declared that “Any Design, that is calculated to mend the Heart and inforce a Contrary Conduct, must surely claim the Attention and Encouragement of the Public.”  The Valentine’s Gift was supposed to change the way people celebrated the holiday by disassociating from traditional practices of gifting of ribbons, love knots, gloves, and stockings and restoring to its original Christian purity.  Newbery got this idea from a group of authorities who claimed that St. Valentine had urged his followers to choose their partners by lot and devote themselves the next year to advising, not romancing them.  Specialists today are quick to point out there is no proof of this practice was associated with the saint.

The author of The Valentine Gift laid out the new, more sober way of enjoying the day, which would last for an entire year and be highly beneficial. On the morning  of Valentine’s Day, partners would be chosen by this method:  the first boy, girl, man, or woman a person saw would be the year’s companion for whom he or she would be responsible.  The couple would keep their running moral accounts in order with copies of Newbery’s Important Pocket-book, which contained a ledge to track expenses and behavior.  One of the stories in the volume, “A Remarkable Cure effected by the Valentine’s Ledger (i.e., the Pocket-book) showed how the inveterate liar Sally Brown, changed her ways after being turned out of her parents’ house, thanks to the gift of the book by the kind Mrs. Jewson.  A more interesting one revolved around a princess who was not especially pleased with her lower-class valentine, the palace mason.  When he uncovered a plot to assassinate her by wicked ministers, she discovered his true worth and that of having valentines for a year.Hearts, flowers, and birds are not included in any of the book’s illustrations. The Valentine’s Day Gift and its companion volumes were less popular than The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread,  probably because it was a shorter and a more cheerful story.  But The Valentine’s Gift does have one claim to fame and that is the story of Old Zigzag, a little appreciated predecessor of Dr. Dolittle. Mrs. Trimmer remembered Zigzag fondly as “the renowned translator of the language of Birds and Beasts, who in former days so successfully moved the hearts of Infancy for the distress of the animal world.”   With the help of a magic horn, Zigzag interviewed birds, insects, and mammals about their treatment at the hands of men.  So moved by what he heard, he may have destroyed the horn so that he would not have to listen to such terrible tales again.  But he might have left it to Mr. Newbery so their stories could be transcribed for little readers.

Newbery’s book may not have discouraged the romantic observance of Valentine’ Day, but it was, on the other hand, an early attempt to monetize a holiday by selling products, albeit ones to improve rather than gratify.

A Recipe for Mince Pies in The Lilliputian Magazine (1752)

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English Christmas continues to be associated with mince pies, even though the recipe has changed a good deal over the centuries.  There are no shortage of recipes in the eighteenth century, but the one in verse submitted by “Miss Taste” to the first number of The Lilliputian Magazine, the first children’s periodical, seems to have been overlooked by historians of holidays and of English food ways. The issue was published in March 1752, not December 1751, which may explain why Miss Taste says nothing about Christmas.

Here it is:

A Receipt to make Mince-Pies, of such Materials as are cheap, agreeable to every Palate, and will not offend the Stomach.  Communicated by Miss Taste.

Take golden pippins pared, two pound,

                Two pounds of well-shred beef suet,

Two pounds  of raisins, chop’t and ston’d,

                And put two pounds of currants to it;

Half an ounce of cinnamon, well beat,

                Of sugar, three-fourths of a pound,

And one green lemon peel shred neat,

                So it can’t with ease be found;

Add sack or brandy, spoonfuls, three,

                And one large Seville orange squeeze;

Of sweet-meats a small quantity,

                And you’ll the nicest palate please.

Although a relatively small recipe yielding around eight pounds of mincemeat, it represents hours of work peeling the apples, seeding and chopping the dried fruit, and shredding the suet, a task the doyenne of English Christmas cookery, Elizabeth David, hated so much that she substituted ready made.  With just a cup and a half of sugar, a touch of sherry or brandy, a couple spoonfuls of cinnamon, some orange juice, and green lemon peel (a kind of Italian lemon which stays green when ripe then much appreciated), Miss Taste’s mincemeat would not have been especially sweet, alcoholic, or spicy.

Her recipe does look relatively digestible and inexpensive compared to some others circulating in steady selling cookbooks.  The “best way” Art of Cookery author Hannah Glasse recommended in 1747 called for “half a hundred apples,” a pound more suet, a full pint of liquor, mace, cloves, nutmeg, citron, and orange peel–but only half a pound of sugar. For a more hearty pie, Glasse directed that filling be laid on top of two pounds of ox tongue or beef sirloin. This variation required doubling the amount of fruit!  This surely would have produced enough for more than one baking and any extra stored in crocks.

The Compleat Housewife  (1727) by Eliza Cook contained a recipe for a much richer mixture: four pounds of meat cut off a leg of veal, nine pounds of beef suet, seven pounds of currants, four pounds of raisins, eight pippins, nutmeg, mace, cloves, grated and candied lemon peel, citron and a speck of sherry or red wine.  Martha Custis Washington’s recipe was very similar, except for the addition of rosewater.

Instructions are  terrifyingly short on details, compared to modern ones which specify yield, precise quantities of ingredients, oven temperature, and baking time and much more.  Not a word is said by the eighteenth-century ladies about the crust—they seem to assume that any cook will know that the pan should be lined with the preferred type of pastry and baked blind before filling.  Or should the cook make hand pies instead of large ones?

Of the three recipes, that of Miss Taste is certainly the most affordable, as it calls just for suet instead of pounds of suet and meat.  Why did she make such a point of promoting her way with mincemeat as “cheap?”  A clue may lie in the introductory “Dialogue between a Gentleman and the Author.”  The author points out to the gentleman that educational books “are to be made as cheap as possible; for there are a great many poor people in his majesty’s dominions, who would not be able to afford to purchase it at a larger price, and yet these are the king’s subjects, and in their station, as much to be regarded as the rest.”   Would the inclusion of a grander recipe for mincemeat of the sort circulating at the time been regarded as excluding a certain class of reader, which was a natural constituent for it?  Certainly John Newbery  expressed more faith in social advancement through merit rather than birth, so perhaps it was no idle sentiment…