Page 122 - Demo

Island merchants, whom Lord Loudoun, British commander in the North American theater
during the French and Indian War, called
“a lawless set of smugglers, who continually
supply the enemy with what provisions they want, and bring their goods in barter for them.” During the war a lot of New England goods—horses, flour, lumber and foodstuffs—were sold in Surinam for resale to the French (with whom the British empire was at war), and the Rhode Islanders bought up Dutch tea, sugar and molasses, most of which they smuggled in through one of the numberless coves in Narragansett Bay.
The painting was commissioned, apparently
by John Jenckes (in whose family it descended), as a keepsake of an evening of friendship thousands of miles from home, when mirth- inducing bowls and glasses of wine and cordials were filled and drained. The composition is plainly suggested by William Hogarth’s then-
widely-known engraving, A Midnight Modern Conversation, published in
1729 and widely republished and the scene painted by other artists.
It, too, depicts a room filled with hard drinking men, but in this case the derivative painting by John Greenwood is more interesting than the original work that inspired him. Hogarth’s men are simply drunk. They betray
no fellowship nor cordial affection. Scarcely any are making eye contact with the others.
The Original Members of the Society of the Cincinnati enjoyed an evening of mirth and cordial affection as much as the Rhode Island sea captain in Surinam. Perhaps we should drink our punch from cups rather than drink it straight from the bowl, and when we do, we should remember the heartfelt bond that tied our ancestors together and made them friends in war and peace—a bond they asked us to perpetuate.
Jack Duane Warren, Jr.
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