I almost titled this: Lice, Syphilis and Rabbit Stew but it’s a clean family blog and I wouldn’t want to offend someone - at least not blatantly in the title. But, here’s the story. We visited Colonial Williamburg today. We had decided that we wanted to buy only the one-day pass so had to decide what we wanted to see and, with so much to see and do, it was hard. We finally narrowed it all down to the shops: the wigmaker, the shoe maker, the jeweler and silversmith, the Governor’s Palace kitchen, the apothecary with a stop at the Magazine. I think with a bit of fast walking we can do it.
The routine is that wherever you stop, there is a re-enactor dressed in period clothing who is working at the trade and can answer any questions you might have. Unfortunately, what you hear depends upon what questions are asked and this depends upon who entered the room when you did - and what questions they ask. Sometimes the re-enactor elaborates and you hear lots more and sometimes they just answer the question and volunteer nothing else. I’m sure that every group of people has different questions and the information you might get varies all day. I don’t know how to get around this but it is what it is. Just ask good questions yourself and hope others in the room with you ask good questions too.
Our first visit was in the kitchen of the Governor’s Palace and the cook answered all questions and elaborated on her answers. We learned a lot. She had an array of food on the table clockwise from the upper left: beef stew, mac and cheese, rabbit stew, peach tart and last but not least, ‘squab in a hole’. She told us that they were using up the last of all the foods canned the previous fall and summer to get ready for the this year’s produce. Then they emptied each crock so they could wash it and ready it for this year. They prepared a meal for the mid-day meal at 2 pm. It was a heavy meal and had lots of dishes. At dinner, they would serve the left-overs and for breakfast the next day they would serve the final left-overs - all ready to begin cooking for the 2 pm meal.
I asked about refrigeration and she told me they had none and needed none. Everything was fresh: the meat killed just today, the eggs laid just today, the milk was from today - everything was fresh - even fresher than what we get since our food was picked several days ago, transported to the packing plant then to a grocery store probably cross country and then it sat in the store for a day or two. No wonder we need refrigeration - by the time we get our food, it is already old.
Hey, lets get back to that ‘squab in a hole’ - what in the world is that? Well, it’s a baby dove plucked and cooked whole in a pancake batter. When I say ‘whole’ I mean whole - beak, claws and all. When it is served, it is carved and you get a bit of meat and a bit of the baked pancake batter. I’ve heard of sausage in a hole and I’ve cooked baked apple pancakes. But doves? Not at my kitchen table.
Look at the self-turning rotisserie in back of her, on the upper left side of the fireplace. It’s a chain on a track with a big stone at the bottom (behind her). Pull the stone down and the chain moves to lift it, turning the spit. Cute. Wait until QVC hears about this and puts it on TV.
Have you heard the old story that Columbus tried to find a shorter route to Asia for spices to put on bad meat? I’ve heard that story. Well, the cook dispelled that story: anyone who was rich enough to buy spices from Asia could afford good meat. And, that’s that. Spices merely livened up the meat and provided different tastes. But they tossed bad meat.
OK, we’ve learned about the ‘Squab in a Hole’, let’s learn about defense.
Our next stop was the armory where we saw a range of pistols and guns that might have been stored here during colonial times. These guns are not light - imagine carrying this into battle. I've got it balanced, I’m not sure I can let it down. Don't count on me to protect you. I can't even hold the gun.
Let’s get to the wigmaker’s shop. When we got there she was in the process of making a row of curls for a wig that she had half done.
The people at Williamsburg really do know their stuff. They’ve served ‘apprenticeships’ and studied their trade and its history. In our experience today, they could answer any question thrown at them - both about their particular trade but also about the town and its times. And, her story about the history and importance of wigs is interesting. It begins with syphilis and royal pride and ends with lice. First the syphilis - which was spreading like a plague in the 1580’s. Unfortunately, there were no antibiotics to cure this and so it ran its full course which wasn’t pretty: open sores, rashes, blindness, dementia and - hair loss. Baldness was not the style statement that it is today: no one wanted to be bald - it was shameful and implied that you had syphilis. And, thus the custom of wigs began and spread as quickly as syphillis itself. However, wigs were not the style rage that they became until kings began to go bald..
Yes, even kings can go bald, even kings as powerful as King Louis XIV of France and King Charles II of England. Did they both have syphilis? Possibly but no matter the reason, the result was they same - baldness. And, thus wigs became the fashion - if the king wears a wig - by golly, so is everyone else. Peruke makers were in heavy demand and their skills needed by many.
Finally, wigs also solved a nitty problem: lice in hair. If you don’t wash your hair much, and people back then didn’t, you might grow a fine crop of lice. And, nit-picking or getting the lice out of a head of hair is not easy. It’s much easier to get the lice out of a wig - just send this dirty, lousy old wig to the wigmaker who also cleaned wigs. He would boil it to remover the nits, recomb it, fill it in if necessary, powder it, and maybe add a sweet aroma to it before he returned it to you.
Wigs were not only a style statement, they also told the world that you were rich. Some had a public wig and a smaller home wig. They were expensive and only the upper classes could afford them. If you weren’t able to afford a wig or two, you could comb your hair to make it look as if you had a wig on. Let it grow long, pull it back and tie a bow on it. Looks pretty wiggy. Ironically, to wear a wig properly meant that you had to shave your head. Even Louis XIV consented to having his head shaved for his wig to fit well. And, if you wore a wig daily, you would have to shave your head daily. Was George Washington bald beneath that wig?
A wig was made out of yak, horse, goat hair or hair from the rural working classes in Europe. American hair was too dry and didn’t shape well. There, more about wigs than I ever knew and a most interesting stop on our tour.
Next the bookbinders. During this time, most ‘paper’ was made out of old cloth and was also very expensive. Only the very rich had books which were leather bound but the rich and tradesmen might be able to afford books like this with out binding and only held with a string.
Getting gold leaf onto a book binding was a long process only done by those with a steady hand. Here is the Williamsburg bookbinder using a tool to imprint the front of a bound book with gold leaf.
But the big entertainment was the reading of the Declaration of Independence, the calling of the guard and a play in the streets that included even George Washington.
We almost stopped for ice cream in the little village shoppes, until we remembered that tomorrow was Friday, the day that the store in the campground opened up for the weekend. They have Hershey’s ice cream in wonderful flavors - last week I had - well let me start at the beginning. I ordered a single scoop of the strawberry cheesecake but when I saw her reach back into the bucket for another scoop, I asked if I could have a second flavor with my second scoop.
‘Sure, but I haven’t even begun to scoop out your strawberry cheesecake.’ And, she put in another scoop of strawberry cheesecake. Then she scooped out 2, count them, 2 scoops of the cappuccino fudge crunch. Holy cow! I’ve got 4 scoops here. Ummm. Did I get a picture? Nope, my eyes were too star filled to even think about a picture.
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