The Gold that Glitters / The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender

by Emily Sarah Holt

Supper was spread in the large kitchen of the farmhouse. Jenny’s father was a tenant farmer, his landlord being Colonel Lane, of Bentley Hall, and it was to be maid (or, as they said then, “lady’s woman”) to the Colonel’s sister, that Jenny was going to the Hall. Mrs Jane was much younger than her brother, being only six years older than Jenny herself. In the present day she would be called Miss Jane, but in 1651 only little girls were termed Miss. Jenny had always been rather a pet, both with Mrs Lane and her daughter; for she was a bright child, who learned easily, and could repeat the Creed and the Ten Commandments as glibly as possible when she was only six years old. Unhappily, lessons were apt to run out of Jenny’s head as fast as they ran in, except when frequently demanded; but the Creed and the Commandments had to stay there, for every Saturday night she was called on to repeat them to her Grandmother, and every Sunday afternoon she had to say them at the catechising in church. In Jenny’s head, therefore, they remained; but down to Jenny’s heart they never penetrated.

It was only now that Mrs Jane was setting up a maid for herself. Hitherto she had been served by her mother’s woman; but now she was going on a visit to some relatives near Bristol, and it was thought proper that she should have a woman of her own. And when the question was asked where the maid should be sought, Mrs Jane had said at once—“Oh, let me have little Jenny Lavender!”

Farmer Lavender was not quite so ready to let Jenny go as Mrs Jane was to ask it. Bristol seemed to him a long way off, and, being a town, most likely a wicked place. Those were days in which people made their wills before they took a journey of a hundred miles; and no wonder, when the roads were so bad that men had frequently to be hired to walk beside a gentleman’s carriage, and give it a push to either side, when it showed an inclination to topple over; or oxen sometimes were fetched, to pull the coach out of a deep quagmire of mud, from which only one half of it was visible. So Farmer Lavender shook his head, and said “he didn’t know, no, he didn’t, whether he’d let his little maid go.” But Mrs Jane was determined—and so was Jenny; and between them they conquered the farmer, though his old mother was on the prudent side. This was Friday, and Mrs Jane was to leave home on Tuesday; and on Saturday afternoon, Robert Featherstone, Colonel Lane’s valet, whom Jenny thought such a gentleman, was to come for her and her luggage.

If a gentleman be a man who never does any useful thing that he can help, then Mr Robin Featherstone was a perfect gentleman—much more so than his master, who was ready to put his hand to any work that wanted doing. Mr Featherstone thought far more of his elegant white hands than the Colonel did of his, and oiled his chestnut locks at least three times as often. He liked the Colonel’s service, because he had very little to do, and there were plenty of people in the house as idle and feather-pated as himself. Colonel Lane was in Robin’s eyes a good master, though old Mrs Lavender thought him a bad one. That is, he allowed his servants to neglect their work with very little censure, and took no notice of their employments during their leisure hours. And Satan was not a bit less busy in 1651 than he is in 1895, in finding mischief for idle hands to do. Leisure time is to a man what he chooses to make it—either a great blessing or a great curse. And just then, for those who chose the last, the disturbed and unsettled state of the country offered particular opportunities.

The war between the King and the Parliament was just over. Charles the First had been beheaded at Whitehall nearly two years before; and though his son, Charles the Second, was still in England, fighting to recover his father’s kingdom, it was pretty plainly to be seen that his struggle was a hopeless one. The great battle of Worcester, which ended the long conflict, had been fought about three weeks before, and the young King had only just escaped with his life, through the bravery of his gallant troops, who made a desperate stand in the street, keeping the victors at bay while their commander fled to a place of concealment.

The Cavaliers, as Charles’s troops were called, had few virtues beyond their loyalty and courage. After their dispersion at Worcester, they spread over the country in small parties, begging, stealing, or committing open ravages. Many of the Parliamentary troops—not all—were grave, sensible, God-fearing men, who were only concerned to do what they believed was right and righteous. Much fewer of the Cavaliers had any such aim, beyond their devotion to the monarchy, and their enthusiastic determination to uphold it. They were mostly gay, rollicking fellows, with little principle, and less steadfastness, who squandered their money on folly, if nothing worse; and then helped themselves to other people’s goods without any uneasiness of conscience.

Colonel Lane was a Cavalier, and devoted to the King, and most of his tenants were Cavaliers also. A few were Roundheads—staunch adherents of the Parliament; and a few more had no very strong convictions on either side, and while they chiefly preferred the monarchy, would have been content with any settlement which allowed them to live honest and peaceable lives. Old Mrs Lavender belonged to this last class. If asked which side she was on, she would have said, “For the King”; but in her heart she had no enmity to either. Her son was a warmer politician; Jenny, being sixteen, was a much warmer still, and as Robin Featherstone, her hero, was a Cavalier, so of course was she.

We have given the worthy farmer and his family a good while to sit down to supper, which that night included a kettle of furmety, a mermaid pie, and a taffaty tart. What were they? A very reasonable question, especially as to the mermaid pie, since mermaids are rather scarce articles in the market. Well, a mermaid pie was made of pork and eels, and was terribly rich and indigestible; a taffaty tart was an apple-pie, seasoned with lemon-peel and fennel-seed; and the receipt for furmety—a very famous and favourite dish with our forefathers—I give as it stands in a curious little book, entitled, The Compleat Cook, printed in 1683.

“Take a quart of cream, a quarter of a pound of French barley, the whitest you can get, and boyl it very tender in three or four several waters, and let it be cold; then put both together. Put into it a blade of mace, a nutmeg cut in quarters, a race of ginger cut in four or five pieces, and so let it boyl a good while, still stirring, and season it with sugar to your taste; then take the yolks of four eggs, and beat them with a little cream, and stir them into it, and so let it boyl a little after the eggs are in: then have ready blanched and beaten twenty almonds (kept from oyling), with a little rosewater; then take a boulter strainer, and rub your almonds with a little of your furmety through the strainer, but set on the fire no more: and stir in a little salt, and a little sliced nutmeg, pickt out of the great pieces of it, and put it in a dish, and serve it.”

The farmhouse family consisted only of Farmer Lavender, his mother, and his two daughters, Kate and Jenny. But fifteen people sat down to supper: for the whole household, including the farmer’s men down to the little lad who scared the crows, all ate together in the big kitchen. Mrs Lavender sat at the head of the table, the farmer at the other end, with Jenny on his right hand: for there was in the father’s heart a very warm place for his motherless Jenny.