Longitude and a Christmas lark

29 Dec 2012

The first time I came across an intersection of longitude and Christmas, it was while studying the changing usage of the term 'longitude' over the centuries.

The first time I came across an intersection of longitude and Christmas, it was while studying the changing usage of the term 'longitude' over the centuries. In the London newspaper The Instructor of 29 January 1724, a commentator employed the word in a fictional conversation between a table and a sideboard, which was intended to criticise the miserly meals being laid out by pious Englishmen (whom he otherwise deemed admirable):

Here I must subjoin a Dialogue sent me out of Yorkshire, between the Table and the Side-Board. DIALOGUE. Side-Board. Methinks you have a rate Time of it. I remember the Time when upon a Christmas Day you have has as many Plates upon you as would furnish an ordinary Pewterer’s Shop, and now there’s only Four set, to shew your Longitude and Latitude; and anon we shall see a fricassed Lark in the centre.

For centuries, 'longitude' and 'latitude' had been used to refer to the length and width of objects, land or people, and even to the extent of human characteristics such as mental capacities. Larks had been eaten in England for centuries as well and were often roasted on small spits or sometimes baked in pies or preserved in jellies. Charlotte Mason's The lady's assistant for regulating and supplying her table of 1777 described a number of styles of roasting them, including this simple version: 'To roast Larks. LET them be put upon a small bird-spit : they will take fifteen minutes : fry some crumbs of bread, and strew all over them. For sauce - plain butter in a boat.' The effect of the Christmas season, from 25 December to 5 January (Twelfth Night), upon the workings of the Board of Longitude and its associates appears to have been limited. Before the Victorian era, the holiday season mainly involved some additional churchgoing, some better-than-normal repasts, more social gatherings, and increased charity far more than reciprocal gift-giving. There was also some of the raucous behavior which had characterised the holiday before the Protestant Reformation, such as youths and servants acting outside of their normal spheres. After the Reformation, many religious groups including the Puritans had opposed the celebration of Christmas because of its purported ties to Catholicism. Its celebration as a feast or festival was banned from the conclusion of the Civil War until the restoration of Charles II to the throne, although many people ignored or objected to this constraint including through public protest. After the Restoration, many groups and religious officials continued to oppose Christmas revelry, including observant Quakers. Most evidence points to the holiday season having had a limited effect on the Board of Longitude and associated actors and institutions. Their correspondence and relevant meetings often continued through late December and into early January. For example, the openly Catholic projector Jane Squire first wrote to Lord Torrington, First Lord of the Admiralty, on 24 December 1731 to seek feedback on her scheme for finding the longitude. Many of the longitude actors with commercial concerns, including 'scientific' instrument makers with retail shops, seem to have only abstained from work entirely on Christmas Day. The end of the year also typically saw them settling accounts, paying off employees and otherwise trying to put their books to right. A taste of Christmas in early modern London can be had from the slightly earlier record of the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, who described his Christmas-time celebrations in the wake of the Restoration. The season repeatedly prompted some soul-searching and New Year's resolutions from Pepys and featured additional churchgoing, but was otherwise different because of the making or purchasing of treats including Christmas or mince pies and fine cuts of meat, the sharing of small holiday meals with friends, and briefly a greater closeness between master or mistress and servants. There seems to have been limited gift-giving between Pepys and his wife and relatives, but money was regularly given to the servants and tradesmen. (This was sometimes called 'box money', which later leant its name to Boxing Day.)

The diarist and politician Samuel Pepys in 1666, as painted by John Hayls.

 

On 25 December 1660, Pepys visited church twice, enjoyed a dinner of 'a good shoulder of mutton and a chicken' with his wife and brother, and then retired alone to read and to play the lute until midnight. Two years later, the diarist attended church with the Court and then 'dined by my wife’s bed-side with great content, having a mess of brave plum-porridge and a roasted pullet for dinner, and I sent for a mince-pie abroad, my wife not being well to make any herself yet. After dinner sat talking a good while with her, her [pain] being become less, and then to see Sir W. Pen a little, and so to my office, practising arithmetique alone and making an end of last night’s book with great content till eleven at night, and so home to supper and to bed.' In 1663, he also 'began to read to my wife upon the globes with great pleasure and to good purpose' before returning to the office. New Year's Eve and Twelfth Night were special dates in the early modern holiday calendar as well. On 31 December 1664, Pepys recorded that: 'Soon as ever the clock struck one, I kissed my wife in the kitchen by the fireside, wishing her a merry new yeare, observing that I believe I was the first proper wisher of it this year, for I did it as soon as ever the clock struck one. This Christmas I judged it fit to look over all my papers and books; and to tear all that I found either boyish or not to be worth keeping, or fit to be seen, if it should please God to take me away suddenly.' That Twelfth Night, after the diarist finally returned from the office, his wife celebrated with the servants and the traditional cake all night while he retired to bed. In archives related to the Board of Longitude, one of the places in we can see mentions of the celebration of the Christmas holidays is in the records of voyages of exploration and science, since these ships were at sea for months at a time and typically over one or more winters. These reveal that Christmas could be a time for sailors to let off some steam for a brief period and, if possible, to indulge in special food and drink as would their land-bound counterparts. The journals of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks both describe the festivities aboard the Endeavour in the holiday seasons which passed during Cook's first voyage to the Pacific. Banks noted on 25 December 1768: 'Christmas day; all good Christians that is to say all hands get abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship, wind thank god very moderate or the lord knows what would have become of us.' On 24 December a year later he wrote that, 'myself in a boat shooting in which I had good success, killing cheifly several Gannets or Solan Geese so like Europaean ones that they are hardly distinguishable from them. As it was the humour of the ship to keep Christmas in the old fashiond way it was resolvd of them to make a Goose pye for tomorrows dinner.' On Christmas Day, 'Our Goose pye was eat with great approbation and in the Evening all hands were as Drunk as our forefathers usd to be upon the like occasion' - but on the 26th, 'all heads achd with yesterdays debauch'.

A satellite image of Tierra del Fuego.

 

In 1774, during Captain Cook's second voyage to the Pacific, the entire crew of the Resolution was able to dine on Christmas goose after hunting parties landed 76 of the birds in a cove on the western side of Tierra del Fuego. (The cove was within a sound which the captain later named Christmas Sound - just as on the third voyage to the Pacific, he named Christmas Harbour on one of the Kerguelen or Desolation Islands for the date on which the ship first anchored there.) Cook recorded that, 'I was able to make distribution to the whole crew, which was the more acceptable on account of the approaching festival. For had not Providence thus singularly provided for us, our Christmas cheer must have been salt beef and pork. ... we had not experienced such fare for some time. Roast and oiled geese, goose-pye, etc. was a treat little known to us; and we had yet some Madeira wine left, which was the only article of our provision that was mended by keeping. So that our friends in England did not, perhaps, celebrate Christmas more cheerfully than we did.' Image sources: Lark - Wikimedia Commons / Daniel Pettersson, Pepys - National Portrait Gallery, Tierra del Fuego - MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.