It is a curious old world we get glimpses of, at once barbarous, simple, and extravagant, when great ladies were expected to see to the milking of their cows, as closely as Joan Cromwell supervised her milch-kine in St. James's Park, and to the cleanliness of their servants' arms and hands, and when huntsmen rode at the bidding of the cook; for in order that venison be in good condition, "before the deer be killed he ought to be hunted and chased as much as possible." The perusal of the section, "To Feed Chickens," will shock our poultry-breeders. "To make them prodigiously fat in about twelve days," "My Lady Fanshawe gives them strong ale. They will be very drunk and sleep; then eat again. Let a candle stand all night over the coop, and then they will eat much all the night."
"Lord Denbigh's Almond Marchpane," and the 'current wine' of which it is said "You may drink safely long draughts of it," will appeal perhaps only to the schoolboy of our weaker generation. Yet there are receipts, doubtless gathered in Sir Kenelm's later years, that have the cautious invalid in view. Of these are the "Pleasant Cordial Tablets, which are very comforting and strengthen nature much," and the liquor which is called "smoothing." "In health you may dash the Potage with a little juyce of Orange" is in the same low key. The gruels are so many that we must wish Mr. Woodhouse had known of the book. If the admixture of "wood-sorrel and currens" had seemed to him fraught with peril, he could have fallen back on the "Oatmeal Pap of Sir John Colladon."
Where are all the old dishes vanished to? Who has ever known "A smoothening Quiddany of Quinces?" Who can tell the composition of a Tansy? These are tame days when we have forgotten how to make Cock-Ale. They drank 'Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers' at the "Mermaid," I am sure. What is Bragot? What is Stepony? And what Slipp-coat Cheese? Ask the baker for a Manchet. The old names call for a Ballade. Où sont les mets d'antan? And, cooks, with all your exactness about pounds and ounces and minutes of the clock, can you better directions like these? Watch for "a pale colour with an eye of green." "Let it stand till you may see your shadow in it"; or "till it begin to blink." Your liquid may boil "simpringly," or "in a great ebullition, in great galloping waves." "Make a liaison a moment, about an Ave Maria while." And all the significance of the times and seasons we have lost in our neglect to kill male hogs "in the wane of the moon!" For there is a lingering of astrology in all this kitchen lore. The irascible Culpeper, Digby's contemporary, poured scorn on such doctors as knew not the high science, "Physick without astronomy being like a lamp without Oil."
As for the poetry I promised—well, I have been quoting it, have I not? But there is more, and better. Surely it was a romantic folk that kept in its store-rooms the "best Blew raisins of the sun," or "plumpsome raisins of the sun," and made its mead with dew, and eagerly exchanged with each other recipes for "Conserve of Red Roses." And now we come to an essential feature of the whole. It is a cuisine that does not reek of shops and co-operative stores, but of the wood, the garden, the field and meadow. Like Culpeper's pharmacopeia, it is made for the most part of "Such Things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies." Is it any wonder that the metheglin should be called the "Liquor of Life," which has these among its ingredients: Bugloss, borage, hyssop, organ, sweet-marjoram, rosemary, French cowslip, coltsfoot, thyme, burnet, self-heal, sanicle, betony, blew-button, harts-tongue, meadowsweet, liverwort, bistort, St. John's wort, yellow saunders, balm, bugle, agrimony, tormentilla, comfrey, fennel, clown's allheal, maidenhair, wall-rue, spleen-wort, sweet oak, Paul's betony, and mouse-ear?
The housewife of to-day buys unrecognisable dried herbs in packets or bottles. In those days she gathered them in their season out of doors. The companions to The Closet Opened should be the hasty and entertaining Culpeper, the genial Gerard, and Coles of the delightful Adam in Eden, all the old herbals that were on Digby's bookshelves, so full of absurdities, so full of pretty wisdom. They will tell you how to mix in your liquor eglantine for coolness, borage, rosemary, and sweet-marjoram for vigour, and by which planet each herb or flower is governed. Has our sentiment for the flowers of the field increased now we no longer drink their essence, or use them in our dishes? I doubt it. It is surely a pardonable grossness that we should desire the sweet fresh things to become part of us—like children, who do indeed love flowers, and eat them. In the Appendix I have transcribed a list of the plants referred to. Most cooks would be unable to tell one from another; and even modern herbalists have let many fall out of use, while only a few are on the lists of the English pharmacopeia. To go simpling once more by field and wood and hedgerow would be a pleasant duty for country housewives to impose upon themselves; and as to the herbalists' observations on their virtues, we may say with old Coles, "Most of them I am confident are true, and if there be any that are not so, yet they are pleasant."
There is an air of flippancy about that reflexion of Coles you will never find in Sir Kenelm. Of the virtues of each plant and flower he used he was fully convinced; and when he tells of their powers, as in his "Aqua Mirabilis," the tale is like a solemn litany, and we are reminded of Clarendon's testimony to "the gravity of his motion." And so, his Closet once more open, he stands at the door, his majesty not greatly lessened; for the book contains a reminiscence of his rolling eloquence, something of his romance, and not a little of his poetry.
ANNE MACDONELL.
Chelsea, 1910.