Washington Winter Show 2019

57 ‘tis for want of a little Virginia Breeding: how much more like a Gentleman ‘tis, to drink as we do, brave Edifying Punch and Brandy. — but they say the young Noble-men now and Sparks in England begin to reform, and take it for their mornings. 10 Ebenezer Cooke’s 1708 satire, The Sot-Weed Factor, or a Voyage to Maryland , continued this image of Americans and punch: “A Herd of Planters on the ground/ O’er- whelmed with Punch, dead drunk we found.” 11 The popularity of the drink is revealed by probate inventories; thirty-six punch bowls are recorded in just one Virginia county (York) between 1701 and 1720. 12 Nor was punch overconsumption confined to the mid-Atlantic states; Massachusetts historian Alice Earle recorded, “when the Medford people built their second meeting-house, they provided the workmen and bystanders, The scalloped rim here is removable, to use the body as a punch bowl. At 71 ounces and 12 inches in diameter, a very grand expression of London style imported to the colonies. Monteith-form punch bowl, George Wickes, London, 1727, with the arms of Alexander Contee (1691–1740) of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Currently with S.J. Shrubsole, Inc., New York. The Generous Bowl The word “punchbowl” has been documented as early as 1658, 6 with the earliest dated English Delftware punch bowl being inscribed 1681, 7 and a probate inventory in York County, Virginia (the Tidewater county adjacent to Williamsburg) records one in 1682. 8 These show the consumer culture reacting quickly to the newest fashion in drinking. The Virginia bowl may have been Dutch Delft, like the example of 1680–1700 discovered in shards at Rosewell, the Page family plantation at Gloucester County, Virginia, and probably originally traded for bales of tobacco. 9 By 1690, the Tidewater love of punch had become a punchline, as in Mrs. Aphra Behn’s play “The Widow Ranter” (with a prologue by Dryden). Set in Virginia, the opening scene has the locals wondering how “gentlemen” can stomach claret: