“I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set it a running for twelve days to every one that calls for it. I have always a piece of cold beef and a mince-pie upon the table, and am wonderfully pleased to see my tenants pass away a whole evening in playing their innocent tricks, and smutting one another.* Our friend Will Wimble is as merry as any of them, and shows a thousand roguish tricks upon these occasions.”
I was very much delighted with the reflection of my old friend, which carried so much goodness in it. He then launched out into the praise of the late Act of Parliament for securing the Church of England,* and told me, with great satisfaction, that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid Dissenter,* who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas Day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge.*
From an essay in ‘The Spectator’ No. 269 (Tuesday January 8th, 1712) collected in ‘The Spectator’ (1841) by Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729).
* This very line is quoted in Samuel Johnson’s English Dictionary to illustrate the verb ‘smut’, in the sense of ‘to stain; to mark with soot or coal’. Samuel Pepys speaks of a party on August 14th, 1666, at which the guests smutted one another “with candle grease and soot till most of us were like devils”.
* This was the Occasional Conformity Act (1711). At the time, public offices were restricted to members of the Church of England, disqualifying e.g. Roman Catholics, Congregationalists and Baptists from civil service. Some of these evaded the restriction by ostentatiously attending a Church of England service once a year. The Occasional Conformity Act tried to close the loophole by punishing office-holders who attended Roman Catholic services or Non-Conformist meetings during their tenure. The new law was not very effective and was repealed in 1719.
* Dissenter or Non-Conformist was a term for Protestants, such as Congregationalists and Baptists, who rejected the Act of Uniformity (1662) passed two years after the restoration of the monarchy. The Act had restored the Book of Common Prayer as the only lawful service book in the Church of England. Dissenters not only regarded Bishops and the Prayer Book as Popish, but in many cases also regarded Christian feasts such as Christmas as superstitious, and its party food as a sinful self-indulgence. See also Christmas Under Cromwell and The Return of Plum Pudding.
* Sir Roger implies that in consequence of the Occasional Conformity Act, one Non-Conformist in the neighbourhood had begun to attend the Church of England parish regularly, and was already less sober in his habits. Plum porridge was a beef stew. The beef was boiled in a stock, thickened with bread and seasoned with spices, to which the cook added handfuls of dried currants, raisins and plums, all sweetened with sugar and fortified with wine.