In the words of Dr. A. P. Peabody, “It was the largest culinary establishment of which the New England mind then had knowledge or conception, and it attracted curious visitors from the whole surrounding country; while the students felt in large part remunerated for coarse fare and rude service by their connection with a feeding-place that possessed what seemed to them a world-wide celebrity.”[1]
From the very beginning, in fact, the domain of Master Cook appears to have been one of the show places of the College, proudly exhibited by the undergraduates to whatever sightseers visited Cambridge. In the “Laws” of 1650 it is laid down that scholars are not to go into the kitchen “save with their parents or guardians, or with some grave and sober strangers.” This rule hints at one of the collateral difficulties which the system of Commons entailed upon the harassed Corporation. (The Faculty, it must be remembered, is a comparatively modern body.) Nothing shows more quaintly the youth and immaturity of the old-time collegians than their thoroughly boy-like propensity for hanging around the kitchen. It was impossible to keep them out. Law after law was passed, fines were imposed, a “bar” was put across the door, and still they returned to the forbidden paradise which the flaming
- ↑ Harvard Reminiscences, 199.
