The American Reviver

I recently dived into a book I’d been keen to read for some time. ‘An American in Victorian Cambridge’ by Charles Astor Bristed – note the name ‘Astor’- was a revelation. Covering the period 1840-1845 he shines a light on the rarefied lives of the wealthy young men who ‘came up to Cambridge’.

As the grandson of one of the richest men in the world Bristed arrived at Trinity College, not as an ordinary fellow, but a young man, who in paying twice as much as other students, secured a place amongst the exclusive ranks of ‘Fellow Commoners’. Such ‘Fellows’, shared the same privileges as College Fellows, although they were usually a great deal wealthier than them. It was these privileged men who got to reside in gracious and spacious College apartments.

Not unsurprisingly Bristed was rapturous about the beautiful College buildings ornamenting the landscape of the world he inhabited. He was spell bound by the erudite professors he daily dined with. Using every nugget of wisdom to realise his dream of gaining the highest academic honours possible.

Sadly, he didn’t make the grade. But the author, whose late father had been a presbyterian minister, had the advantage of viewing Cambridge through the lens of a sober outsider. That legacy offers a priceless insight into town and gown relations and for the purpose of this piece a chance to introduce a drink famed for being the ‘American Reviver.’

Whilst this young American celebrated the chance to brush gowned shoulders with many of the greatest thinkers of the time, his presbyterian upbringing of self-control was at odds with what he witnessed around him. Despite many of those men, training for some of the highest positions in the Church of England, he was taken aback by their flexible approach to Christian behaviour.

It had been at his second evensong, on the third day after his arrival in Cambridge, as he bent to pray in one of the special carved seats reserved for Fellows, he received a discrete invitation. Would he like to walk to ‘Barnwell’ later that evening? A new friend enquired.

Barnwell was a newly built suburb on the edge of the town. Erected to house the multitude of workers flocking to Cambridge in search of a livelihood. It was in the tight streets of Barnwell that young women could be found. Woman willing, or ripe for persuading, to satisfy the carnal desires of charming young drunken men. Bristed declined the invitation.

Drinking, drinking to excess, fills many pages of ‘An American in Victorian Cambridge’. But a standout moment is Charles Astor Bristed’s introduction of ‘Sherry Cobbler’ to Cambridge and the vengeful saga surrounding it.

Charles Dickens

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit was published in twenty, monthly instalments, between January 1843 and July 1844, after which it came out as one bound volume. Dickens had visited America in 1842 in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade US publishers to honour international copyright laws. The lack of such an agreement enabled his books to be published in the United States without his permission, and, without royalties reaching his pocket. He wasn’t happy. In Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens ridicules the country as a place filled with self-promoting hucksters. But there was one thing he did appreciate about American culture. The drinking of Sherry Cobbler. He gave it a big endorsement in the novel. Thus, by the summer of 1844 the reading public were curious about the drink, also referred to as the ‘American Reviver’, which was prescribed for Martin by his friend Mark Tapley and told in the scene below:

‘I am quite knocked up – dead beat, Mark.’

‘You won’t say that to-morrow morning sir,’ returned Mr Tapley; ‘nor even to-night, sir, when you have made a trial of this.’ With which he produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appealed from the still depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.

‘What do you call this?’ said Martin.

But Mr. Tapley made no answer; merely plunging a reed into the mixture — which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice — and signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up through that agency by the enraptured drinker.

Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more until the goblet was drained to the last drop.

‘This wonderful invention, sir,’ said Mark, tenderly patting the empty glass, ‘is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long; cobbler when you name it short.

Cambridge, Summer 1844

In July 1844 when Charles Astor Bristed and his fellow, Fellows, languished in the cool comfort of his rooms overlooking the willow lined river Cam, the question of Sherry Cobbler arose.

“Bristed did you ever drink Sherry Cobbler?”

“I have.”

“Can you make it?”

He had to confess it had been many years since he’d concocted one. The real problem, he said, lay not in recalling the recipe – sherry, soda, lemon, and crushed ice – but the difficulty of procuring some of the requisite materials. First, he had to find large tumblers, which proved not too tricky. But obtaining clear ice presented a challenge. In England ‘ice’ was understood as being ‘ice-cream’. The idea of simple, clear ice garnishing a drink, caused much astonishment. One of their number claimed they had influence with a local confectioner who they believed could make clear ice. The next thing was to find straws for drinking the liquid.

Imagine the puzzlement and hilarity of the two milliners Bristed accosted on the Market Square, Cambridge, in his quest for straws to drink from. Of course, young women were strongly discouraged from fraternising with members of the university. It could lead to arrest and imprisonment if done once darkness fell. But on that bright sunny summer’s day innocent giggles, and an eagerness to fulfil the request of a wealthy gentleman, led to an enjoyable experiment. Wheat stalks were baked to hardness in the oven. It worked. Keeping straw pliable was the usual task of milliners, but in this case, they did the opposite.

Six days later the tasting took place. As Bristed poured and mixed- the cobbler shaker was yet to be invented – ten curious pairs of eyes watched his every move. He mixed and muddled, he tasted, made adjustments, until finally satisfaction was reached.

He took an experimental suck, to educate his friends on the use of the straw and handed over a glass to the designated tester. The eyes of the party were now directed to the brave young man. Using one had to hold the glass, the other steady the straw. He bent his head down and applied his lips to the curious drinking apparatus pausing for one short moment, before greedily taking a longer draught. ‘It will do,’ he announced. High praise from an English gentleman. Straightaway every man seized a knife and a lemon, and the manufacture of cobblers went on.

It might not have been the first Sherry Cobbler made in England, but it was the first at Oxford or Cambridge, and remains Charles Astor Bristed’s main claim to fame.

Dickens, Charles: Martin Chuzzlewit

Stray, Christopher (ed) An American in Victorian Cambridge

Away with the Clerics – Cambridge 1381

Flames flickered and sparked into the late afternoon air as a bonfire of royal charters, books of learning, and university documents were turned into wafers of ash. Three days of looting, arson, and murder had reached their climax. The rioters were certain of victory and the end of oppressive rules forced upon them since the arrival of a group of scholars just over a hundred years earlier.

Six months previously, in December 1380, the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge had instructed the mayor to deal with ‘divers evildoers’ who’d appeared in the town. The amiable Burgomaster, however, had already spotted these so-called ‘evil doers’ but had little inclination, or any real power, to expel every ‘suspicious’ character whose face unsettled senior members of the university.

Exactly what happened in Cambridge during the next few months is not fully known. But plots were plotted, and secrets kept. The violence of the Peasants’ Revolt was spreading its way across East Anglia. Old scores were being settled. The townspeople had had enough of the meddling ways of the masters and scholars of the university. Men and boys in holy orders, protected by ecclesiastical law and continuously favoured by kings and queens, were forcing the townspeople into servitude. Resentment and thoughts of rebellion had steadily increased since the arrival of a band of scholar’s in 1208. Now seditious reinforcements were eager to aid their brothers and sisters against every injustice that hampered their freedom. 

On the morning of 15 June 1381, the rhythmic tolling of the great bell of Great St Mary’s Church, on the Market Square, was heard. It was the rallying cry the rioters had been expecting. A large crowd of townsmen, and ‘wastours’ gathered. The first target was a house in Bridge Street where Roger Blankgreen, the collector of the detested poll tax, lived. Quickly the crowd set to work looting and searching for the detested man, but Blankgreen had fled. He’d made it across the river to St Giles Church. But the angry mob found his hiding place and dragged him into the churchyard, where he was shown no mercy as his head was brutally severed from his body. 

That night, ‘at about 10 de la clokke’, the house of William Wigmore, Bedall to the university, was ransacked and burned. Simultaneously, another mob, led by the mayor, advanced on Corpus Christi College. A fierce fight between scholars and townsmen resulted in much injury and the death of a townsman. The bloodied victors carried off all the documents and books they could find. In the darkness and confusion of that night, other break-ins and robberies occurred, for which no one was ever brought to justice.

On the Sunday morning, while some of the townsmen rode out into the countryside to bring in more rabble-rousers, another mob surged into Great St Mary’s Church while mass was being celebrated. There, they seized a chest belonging to the university. Next, they smashed into the nearby Carmelite Friary, where the Chancellor was known to keep documents. There, they stole anther chest full of books and documents.

The loot was hauled to the Market Square. There, the heavily secured chests were levered open. Inside, the looters found jewels and plate, charters and documents relating to university privileges. Royal seals were ‘mercilessly broken with knives, sticks and other weapons’, and the chests themselves were sold to the highest bidders.

A bonfire fuelled by hatred, charters, documents, and books of learning was built. The haul blazed on the Market Square, a favoured place of protest, as the protestors yelled and danced in glee. As the flames consumed the precious manuscripts, an old woman called Margaret Starre flung a handful of ashes up to the sky, crying out, ‘Away with the learning of clerks, away with it’.

On the 1 July, the machinery of the law swung into action. The Assize court devoted that entire month to bringing the ringleaders, who hadn’t fled or were dead, to justice. Some were hanged, but most were imprisoned in the castle jail.

But the greater punishment came later that year. The King granted the Chancellor and Scholars of the University of Cambridge the rights to the licencing of the sale of bread, wine and ale, and the control of weights and measures. The town was £100 a year worse off and even more tightly under the control of those they had planned to crush. There would be six centuries of bitter unrest before those rights were returned to their original owners.

Mrs Beeton documented the domestic and culinary aspirations of a Victorian household, but what rules and regulations were in force prior to that I wonder?  And what were people in Cambridge eating?

Two questions with somewhat elusive answers unless one has the inclination to take on a huge research project.

However, some fairly speedy research did uncover a 16^th century cookbook, reproduced by Corpus Christi College.  A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye was compiled around 1557-8 and written by Margaret Parker, the then Master’s wife.

The book gives us an insight into the daily routine of a medieval kitchen, albeit a College kitchen.  Books of that period were more like broad lists of ingredients and suggestions without detailed instructions for preparation and cooking.

However these were the days when there was elaborate protocol for ceremonial meals.  Etiquette was observed in the seating order and in the placing of the salt which divided the more important guests from the rest.

Care too was taken in the order in which dishes were to be sent out to the tables. In an age without refrigeration  seasonal local produce was essential to health and digestion. The main meal was usually served around midday, with a light supper in the evening.

Not surprisingly the cooks in the 16^th century used a large variety of fresh produce, combined with spices such as ginger, cinnamon, rosewater and saffron from the fields of Essex.  Only the wealthy used sugar.   Dried fruits such as raisons, prunes and dates were imported and an extraordinary variety of fish, meat and birds were prepared in the kitchens of the well to do.

 

Fish was always served on Fridays during Lent.  However, during Elizabeth 1’s reign Wednesday was also declared a fish day to encourage the fishing industry.

The seasons dictated what was on the table. Mrs Parker set the tone of the book with the following opening lines:

Declaring what manner of

Meats be best in season,

for all times of the year,

and how they ought

to be dressed, and

served at the table,

both for flesh

days and fish

days.

 

So we learn that ‘Brawn (usually wild board meat) is best from a fortnights before Michaelmas (about mid September) until Lent (between February and March). Beef and bacon are good all year round.  Lamb and young kid (goat) are best between Christmas and Lent, and good from Easter to Whitsun (April to June).’

‘Peacocks are always good and when young and of a good size are as good at pheasants.  Cygnets are best between All Hallows Day (1 November) and Lent.’ The list goes on and includes: blackbirds, thrushes and robins.

It seems that anything fury or feathery was a candidate for the cook-pot.

Cambridge’s proximity to the Fenland waterways meant that fish was also plentiful.  Herring, Ling, Conger, Shad, Mackerel, Perch, Tench, Mullet and Bass are some of the fish that were regularly eaten.

A fish recipe:

 

‘A Pyke Sauce for a Pyke, Breme, Perche, Roche, Carpe, Eles, Floykes, and al maner of Brouke Fyshe

Take a posy of rosemary and thyme and bind them together, add a quantity of unbound parsley and put it in a large pot of water.  Add salt and yeast to the herbs and boil for a good period of time.   Then put in the fish with a good quantity of butter and bring back to the boil, and you should have a good pike sauce.’

A meat recipe:

‘For to Stewe Mutton

Take a neck and a breast of mutton to make a strong broth and skim it clean.  After it has boiled for a while, take out some of the broth and put into another pot with a pound of raisins and boil until tender.  Then strain a little bread with the raisons and the broth and chop thyme, savory and parsley with the other small herbs.  Add these to the mutton and then put in the raisons and whole prunes, cloves and mace, pepper, saffron and a little salt.  If you like, you may also stew a chicken or else a sparrow or such other little birds.’

Like Mrs Beeton  much later, Mrs Parker’s cookery book was aimed at those could afford the luxury of  a regular meal and imported goods to flavour their food.

but also shows us how people relied on seasonal, trapped and foraged foods.  That sounds very topical at the highest end of haute cuisine in the 21st century.

 

 

 

 

The Nine Hills of Cambridge

 

Someone recently reminded me that there are 9 street names ending with hill in Cambridge.  Strange for a notoriously flat town.

 

So where are these hills?

 

Castle Hill

The hill is the site of the original Cambridge settlement, north of the River Cam. The Romans created a town called Durolipons here. It was a convenient place to cross the river. At the time it was at the head of the navigable part of the river, then known as the River Granta. As any local cyclist will know this is a ‘hill’.

 

Honey Hill

Possibly a joke about a muddy area.   Locals also mention the name as alluding to the Honey wagon – a euphorism for the vehicle that used to collect the night soil

It is located southwest of Castle Hill on the other side of Castle Street. To the south is Northampton Street.

Gogmagog Hills

Gog Magog Hills are a range of low chalk hills, extending for several miles to the southeast of Cambridge in England. A real hill – especially when trying to cycle up it!

Lime Kiln Hill

Another real hill. Running along a chalk outcrop near Cherry Hinton where there used to be a Limekiln.

A hoard of Roman coins were found around Lime Kiln Hill.

Market Hill

It is thought that this might have been called Cooks Row prior to being named Market Hill. Market Hill (aka the Market Square) is the location of the marketplace in central Cambridge.  Operating as a marketplace since Saxon times, a daily outdoor market with stalls continues to run there.

Peas Hill

This was the home of the fish market ‘peas’ may have come from the Latin pisces, a fish. Records state that this hill was once at the top of a hill that led from the River Cam.  Prior to the arrival of Kings College, and other Colleges along the famous Backs, the area along the river front was teaming with wharves and warehouses and bustling locals using the river for trading purposes.

Pound Hill

Was near the former Pound Green where stray animals were rounded up by the ‘pindar’.  Part of the old outer ring of the Roman settlement.

 

Senate House Hill

This is where the Senate House, designed by James Gibbs in 1722, stands.

King’s Parade, with Trinity Street, was the High Street in the C16 when it was lined with shops and tenements, even after King’s College Chapel was built. In 1828, King’s

College screen was erected, sweeping away the humble buildings, and creating a

dividing line between the colleges on the west and the town on the east.

St Andrew’s Hill

Hard to find evidence of this Hill! It runs along the side of St Andrew the Great 1842-3 built on the site of a medieval church.