Then came afternoon work, and at last supper. Here the mistress might unbend somewhat; for, as Tusser puts it:
Whatever God sendeth, be merry withal.
She had still, however, an eye for the servants:
No servant at table use sauc'ly to talk,
Lest tongue set at large out of measure do walk;
No lurching, no snatching, no striving at all,
Lest one go without, and another have all.
And then a final word:
Declare after supper—take heed thereunto—
What work in the morning each servant shall do.
And then—bed!
There were feast days, of course: Christmas to Epiphany was one long feast; then Plow Monday, Shrovetide, Sheep-shearing, Wake-Day, Harvest Home, Seed-Cake—these as the times came round. But there was a weekly regale too, which was known as Twice-a-Week-Roast. On Sundays and Thursdays a hot joint was the custom at supper. Tusser is clear about the value and sanction at once:
Thus doing and keeping such custom and guise,
They call thee good huswife—they love thee likewise.
Those days are past and done, with much to regret and much to be thankful for. You trained good servants that way—but did you make good men and women? Some think so, and I among them; but such training is two-edged, and while I feel sure that the girls and lads were the better for the discipline, I cannot believe that the masters and mistresses were. They nursed arrogance; out of them came the tyrants and gang-drivers of the eighteenth century, Act of Settlement, the Enclosure Acts, Speenhamland, rick-burning, machine-breaking, and the Bloody Assize of 1831. Well, now the reckoning has come, and Hodge will have Farmer Blackacre at his discretion.