Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863», sayfa 8

 
"I spyed, if parson died,
(All hope in vain,) to hope for gain
I might go dance."
 

Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague, we find him returned to London, to die,—where he was buried in the Poultry.

There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated hens.

What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us strongly suspect that he deserved it all.

Fuller, in his "Worthies," says Tusser "spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon." In short, though the poet wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping, and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant. I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:—

 
"To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,
But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,
What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
(To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"
 

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."⁷ He is elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries, corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new wine in France."

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that "delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full maturities."

These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work, entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates, in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth, moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust, soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers, is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."⁸

In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which, notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century⁹ as a new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed, proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh, in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes and covering the grain.

I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by giving his own envoi to the most considerable of his books:—"Thus, gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature proceedeth."

Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on "Soyles"; for, in 1591, he had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books, or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of July, 1617:—

"I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.

"GERVIS MARKHAM."

He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the "Maison Rustique" of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging, compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received. His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of infirmities.

I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the "Country Housewife." In this book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the details of a "humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep in his family."

"As thus:—first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted; twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or dowsets."

This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about "Country Contentments"?

My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them, where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture to my mind.

I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays, which Sir Hugh must know,—in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens, as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence, Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day to his friend, the French Ambassador.

I can fancy Gervase Markham "making a night of it" with those rollicking bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the "Mermaid," or going with them to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,—the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His friends say that this Will has parts.

Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward, for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious "Arcadia," which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra hills of Ireland.

And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that "shepherd of the sea," visited the poet, and found him seated

 
"amongst the coolly shade
Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore."
 

Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco? Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or upon the probable "clip" of the year?

Nothing of this; but

 
"He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd:
By chaunge of tunes each making other merry."
 

The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last time,—

 
"bright with many a curl
That clustered round her head."
 

I wish I could love his "Shepherd's Calendar"; but I cannot. Abounding art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be; but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes, no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no sky-piercing falcon.

And as for the "Faëry Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties. It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,—with tender winds blowing over it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming curlew.

In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest—as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil that lifts heavily.

And so I leave the matter,—with the "Faëry Queene" in my thought, and leaning on my spade.

CIVIC BANQUETS

It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,—the production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste,—the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with wine,—must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.

The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those public or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace, where an ox might lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St. Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient banqueting-room that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to the description of it.

In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediæval edifice, in the basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them, or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the earliest, hang on the walls; and on the daïs, or elevated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned New-England kitchens.

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery, while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound beneath,—why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as their palaces or cathedrals.

I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so. For example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls. It is also enriched with Holbein's master-piece, representing a grave assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups, including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where I spent several years.

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with English taste.

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company, but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.