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S i d e b a r
New World Hospitality
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This Rock
Volume 17, Number 2
 February 2006 
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Hospitality was the pride of colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and the symbol of that hospitality was the pineapple. The tradition had its origin in Williamsburg, where an arriving guest was given a pineapple as a welcome gift. Even as Williamsburg became the political capital of the colony in1699, it also became the center of hospitality and the prototype for what came to be known as Southern hospitality.
A visitor to restored Colonial Williamsburg—which is very beautiful and hospitable, indeed—can buy a reprint (in exact eighteenth-century typeset) of a 1742 book, The Williamsburg Art of Cookery or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, wherein both recipes and rules of "polite society" are set forth. The opening chapter is entitled "Of Virginia Hospitality" and begins: "The Inhabitants are very courteous to Travellers. . . . A Stranger has no more to do, but to inquire upon the Road, where any Gentleman, or good Housekeeper lives, and there he may depend upon being received with Hospitality."
A more exact description of what that hospitality consisted appeared in the London Magazine (July 1746) and is vivid enough to set our own hearts yearning: All over the Colony, an universal Hospitality reigns; full Tables and open Doors, the kind Salute, the generous Detention. . . . What is said here is most strictly true, for their Manner of living is quite generous and open: Strangers are fought after with Greediness, as they pass the Country, to be invited. . . . Their Dinner, good Beef, Veal, Mutton, Venison, Turkies and Geese, wild and tame, Fouls, boil’d and roasted; and perhaps somewhat more, as Pies, Puddings &c., for Dessert: Suppers the fame, with some small Addition, and a good hearty Cup to precede a Bed of Down: And this is the constant Life they lead, and to this Fare every Comer is welcome (The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, p. 2).
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