Oysters occupy an important chapter in English literature

By the 1820s, an “Oyster Row” of restaurants in Charleston, S.C., was thriving. They were selling more oysters than beef steaks, according to Suzannah Smith Miles of Charleston Living Magazine. 

One of the major players was David Truesdell, an entrepreneur who had relocated from New York City. He ran the best “oyster house” in Charleston and also perfected oyster farming on 200 acres of land that he leased on nearby Sullivan’s Island close to Breach Inlet. 

The locals dubbed Truesdell as the “Oyster King.” Miles wrote: “He had shown that, with care, oysters could be developed, improved upon and raised with the same scientific experimentation that cotton planters used to develop a finer product.”

 

“The unstoppable Truesdell accomplished what he set out to do. He made a tidy fortune through oysters. If one could give a fitting epitaph for this unique waterman, it would be that, indeed, ‘the world was his oyster.’” 

Curiously, that phrase was coined by legendary British poet and dramatist William Shakespeare in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” a comedy published in 1602. Ed Goldswain, who taught English literature for four decades in London, England, is a Shakespearian scholar. He explained:

William Shakespeare

 

“‘The world is your oyster’ saying is often offered as encouragement to young people about to embark on adult life. It simply means that everything is open to them, and if one is lucky, he or she could encounter something special.” 

“If you have an oyster, there is a chance that there may be a pearl in it. A nice fresh oyster can be hard to open, but once opened, it’s good,” Goldswain said. “And perhaps it may have a pearl in it, which would be a valuable addition to one’s life.” 

“So when we set out to seek our fortune, the pearl is the good luck we may have. If we’re lucky we will find it,” Goldswain said. 

The odds of finding a natural pearl in an oyster are said to be 1 in 10,000. The odds of it being a pearl of gemstone quality are 1 in 1,000,000. 

“Life can be hard, but if you keep at it, it will sometimes unexpectedly give you a reward,” Goldswain said. “That’s why Shakespeare’s original quote ‘the world’s mine oyster’ has evolved into a favourite metaphor for life.” 

Getting back to Truesdell, his oyster farming operation was “pearl worthy,” according to Robert F. Moss, a Charleston-based food writer. “Borrowing techniques from rice planting, he built brick abutments with floodgates to control the flow of the tide into his beds, which allowed him to cultivate and harvest even during high tides. 

“Truesdell’s beds were a tempting target for poachers, and the oyster farmer was reported to have stood guard nightly over his crop with a blunderbuss and a brace of pistols.” 

Yet, in order to keep his restaurant open, Truesdell “regularly received large shipments of between 600 and 1,000 bushels on sloops arriving down the coast from Beaufort, N.C., and up from the May River near Bluffton, S.C.” Moss said.

 

“A bushel contains about 100 oysters, so they must have been shucking a tremendous volume at Truesdell’s oyster house.” 

“But there were oyster houses in other parts of the Carolinas, too,” Moss said. “In 1823, Sarah Ransom converted her home in Washington, N.C., into an oyster house, serving oysters ‘dressed in any manner desired’ until 11 o’clock at night.” 

“By the 1830s, several oyster houses were in operation along the banks of the Neuse River in New Bern.”