Note 30 — Chapter II · CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. (Girls.)
Reading edition
It was an old English custom to put a toast, a roasted pippin or so, in a hot drink, such as a tankard of spiced ale, or of sack; and this is whimsically applied as the derivation of the word used to express the slavish adulation and worship of the fair sex, as embodied in this custom. [30]'Many of the Wits of the last age will assert that the word, in its present sense, was known among them in their youth, and had its rise from an accident at the town of Bath, in the reign of Charles the Second. It happened that, on a public day, a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood and drank her health to the Company. There was in the place a gay fellow half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the Toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a TOAST. Though this institution had so trivial a beginning, it is now elevated into a formal order; and that happy virgin, who is received and drunk to at their meetings, has no more to do in this life but to judge and accept of the first good offer. The manner of her inauguration is much like that of the choice of a Doge in Venice: it is performed by balloting; and when she is so chosen, she reigns indisputably for that ensuing year; but must be re-elected anew to prolong her empire a moment beyond it. When she is regularly chosen, her name is written with a diamond on a drinking glass. The hieroglyphic of the diamond is to shew her that her value is imaginary; and that of the glass to acquaint her, that her condition is frail, and depends on the hand which holds her.' Many of the members of the 'Kit Cat Club'—Lords Halifax, Wharton, Lansdowne, and Carbury, Mr. Maynwaring and others—thus immortalised their Toasts. One, by Lord Lansdowne, will amply serve as an illustration—