University of Virginia Library

DUTCH TEA PARTIES.

These fashionable parties were generally consigned to
the higher classes, or noblesse, that is to say, such as
kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons. The
company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went
away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the
fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies
might get home before dark. I do not find that they
ever treated their company to iced creams, jellies, or
syllabubs; or regaled them with musty almonds, mouldy
raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present
age of refinement. Our ancestors were fond of more
sturdy, substantial fare. The tea-table was crowned
with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat
pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming
in gravy. The company being seated round the genial
board, and each furnished with a fork, evinced their
dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces in this mighty
dish, in much the same manner as sailors harpoon perpoises

at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes.
Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple
pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but
it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of
sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough
nuts, or oly keoks: a delicious kind of cake, at present
scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch
families.

The tea was served out of a majestic delft tea-pot,
ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds
and shepherdesses, tending pigs—with boats sailing in
the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other
ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished
themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot,
from a hugh copper tea-kettle, which would have made
the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat,
merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump
of sugar was laid beside each cup—and the company,
alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an
improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic
old lady, which was, to suspend a large lump directly over
the tea table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could
be swung from mouth to mouth,—an ingenious expedient,
which is still kept up by some families in Albany; but
which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen,
Flat-Bush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and
dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting—no
gambling of old ladies, nor hoyden chattering
and romping of young ones—no self-satisfied struttings
of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets;
nor amusing conceits, and monkey divertisements of
smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. On the
contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in
their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen
stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say
yah Mynheer, or yah ya Vrouw, to any question that was
asked them; behaving, in all things, like decent well
educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them
tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation
of the blue and white tiles, with which the fire
places were decorated; wherein sundry passages of
scripture were piously pourtrayed: Tobet and his dog
figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously

on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing
out of the whale, like harlequin through a barrel of
fire.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion.
They were carried home by their own carriages,
that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided
them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep
a wagon. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair
ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them
with a hearty smack at the door: which, as it was an
established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity
and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time,
nor should it at the present—if our great grandfathers
approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of
reverence in their descendants to say a word against it.