Fever: 1793

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

August 16th, 1793

“. . . the first and most principal to be, a perfect skill and knowledge in cookery... because it is a duty well belonging to women.”

—Gervase Markham

The English House Wife, 1668

As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, Mother started her lecture.

 “Too much sleep is bad for your health, Matilda.” She slipped a freshly made ball of butter into a stone crock. “It must be a grippe, a sleeping sickness.”

 I tried not to listen to her. I had not cleared the wax from my ears all summer, hoping it would soften her voice. It had not worked.

 “You should be dosed with fish oil. When I was a girl . . .” She kept talking to herself as she carried a steaming pot of water outside to rinse the butter churn.

 I sat down at the table. Our kitchen was larger than most, with an enormous hearth crowded with pots and kettles, and two bake ovens built into the brickwork beside it. The size of the room did not match the size of our family. We were only three: Mother, Grandfather, and me, plus Eliza who worked for us. But the roomy kitchen could feed one hundred people in a day. My family owned the Cook Coffeehouse.

The soon-to-be famous Cook Coffeehouse, Grandfather liked to say.

 My father had built our home and business after the War for Independence ended in 1783. I was four years old. The coffeehouse sat just off the corner of Seventh and High Streets. At first we were lucky if a lost farmer strayed in, but business improved when President Washington’s house was built two blocks away.

 Father was a carpenter by trade, and he built us a sturdy home. The room where we served customers filled most of the first floor and had four large windows. The kitchen was tucked into the back, filled with useful shelves and built-in cupboards to store things. We could have used a sitting room, truth be told.

 Father would have added one on if he had lived. But he fell off a ladder and died of a broken neck two months after the coffeehouse opened. That’s when Grandfather joined us.

 A coffeehouse was a respectable business for a widow and her father-in-law to run. Mother refused to serve spirits, but she allowed card games and a small bit of gambling as long as she didn’t have to see it.

 By midday the front room was usually crowded with gentlemen, merchants, and politicians enjoying a cup of coffee, a bite to eat, and the news of the day.

Father would have been proud. I wondered what he would have thought of me.

“Good morning,” Eliza said loudly, startling me. “I thought you were going to sleep the day away. Have you eaten?” She set a sack of coffee beans on the table.

“I’m starving,” I said, clutching my stomach.

“As usual,” she said with a smile. “Let me get you something quick.”

 Eliza was the coffeehouse cook. Mother couldn’t prepare a meal fit for pigs. I found this amusing, considering our last name was Cook. In a manner, though, it was serious. If not for Eliza’s fine victuals, and the hungry customers who paid to eat them, we’d have been in the streets long ago.

 Mothers family had washed their hands of her when she ran off to marry a carpenter, a tradesman (the horror!), when she was but seventeen. So we were very fond of Eliza.

 Like most blacks in Philadelphia, Eliza was free. She said Philadelphia was the best city for freedslaves or freeborn Africans. The Quakers here didn’t hold with slavery and tried hard to convince others that slavery was against Gods will. Black people were treated different than white people, that was plain to see, but Eliza said nobody could tell her what to do or where to go, and no one would ever, ever beat her again.