Tags
18th century, authenticity, cleaning, common soldier, cooking, Drunk Tailor, Fort Ticonderoga, interpretation, living history, Revolutionary War, servants
With 400 miles between us, Drunk Tailor and I have few chances to explore the past together, so I was both delighted and nervous when he agreed to join the British Garrison 1775 event at Fort Ticonderoga as one of Captain Delaplace’s servants. Even better, we were also joined by the itinerant Deep North Yankee who wandered around the Fort (possibly seeking roofing shingles, of which he is much in need).
Friday nights are always magical, candle and firelight (and only the warmth of the fire) as we drink cider and talk about history. But morning always comes: Saturday, cold and clear, Mr S and I woke and blinked across the room at each other, and I wondered to what degree I really wanted to ever crawl out of bed…only hunger and an eventual need to pee (and fear of a Sergeant) propelled me.
Yup, you cook ’em on a board.
First order of business: breakfast. Mr S, supplied with his corn meal of choice, made us johnnycakes, which provided perhaps more interpretive than nutritive value. Still, they were warm and tasty and he is the only person I know who can make them; my efforts end up as FEMA disaster sites.
Captain Delaplace’s servants were tasked with cooking for his mess, so Mr S and I got a start. We had a chicken, an onion (I traded onion # 2 for some bacon), butter, carrots, potatoes, a butternut squash, salt, and some port. I don’t know where this English serving woman of 1775 encountered mis en place, but she accidentally introduced coq au vin to the Captain’s table with the dinner meal.
Captain and Mrs Delaplace dining, manservant in attendance
The Captain and his Lady dined on chicken braised in butter and bacon with root vegetables in a port sauce; we servants waited until they were done before we could eat. (Confession: I need to eat a lot, and have a sensory overload problem, so when visitors fully crowded the room, I had to dash across the parade ground for a Clif Bar and an Ativan before I could continue to wait for my dinner.) In the afternoon, dishes were washed at the table, as was common (at least in early New England), dried, and set away, while the Captain’s lady and child played in the cabbage patch between the beds.
When the room was empty, servants were able to eat (huzzay!) and found the meal very tasty indeed. I would certainly make this again, and learned more about cooking– a typically female task I generally try to avoid– than I had expected to. Then we had yet another round of dishes before it was time to tidy the room and make ready for tea or supper.
To that end, we cleared the table and broke it apart to reveal the floor and hearth, which needed to be swept of bread crumbs, squash peels, dead leaves, and other detritus. The best way to sweep an unfinished floor in the 18th century (per Hannah Glasse et al) is to strew the floor with wet sand and then sweep. I mixed sand with lavender-infused vinegar and threw it on the floor; this keeps the dust down as you sweep months of dust and dirt out of the corners and from behind tables and chests.
The trick is to sweep in one direction (more or less) from the back of the room to the front, and then to gather up the sand (here in a shovel) and pitch it off the landing. Much was thrown out the door and over the stair rail, just as servants would have done in 1775. (And I am told it is soothing to nearly hit the sergeant, but perhaps that’s merely hearsay, if not heresy.)
When we were done, we restored the table (Drunk Tailor noticed the height of the ceiling, and wondered about hanging birds in cages whist awaiting the return of the tabletop), fully reset with cloth, candlesticks, plates, and knives, ready for the supper we didn’t cook, as we skipped away at the close of the day to find our own meal in Glens Falls, where live music is inescapable on a Saturday night.
Or, Confusion into Confusion.
