Pretty Michal

by Mór Jókai

Then he personally instructed his daughter in all good things from her babyhood upward. She never went to school. Everything, from the alphabet to the catechism, she learnt at home. Later on, as the damsel's mind grew stronger, he taught her not only the Latin and Greek tongues, but all the sciences which are useful and necessary in life; e. g., the tabular calculations as to how much meat, butter, meal, peas, grain, salt, etc., a prudent housewife should dispense for two, four, eight, sixteen, etc., persons per day, week, or month, so that the domestics may neither suffer hunger nor yet overload their stomachs (N. B., salt must be particularly well looked after lest the mice get at it, for everyone knows that when mice eat salt they multiply prodigiously); item, wherewith to feed the livestock; how much meal and bran should be got in exchange from the miller for so much wheat; how to prepare yeast, knead dough, bake bread, not forgetting to always turn the tub toward the north. And bread making in the Highlands of North Hungary was a serious business in those days, for rye meal was often scarce, and bread had to be made of spelt, buckwheat, sweet peas, and other disgusting things. Galen especially recommends bean meal bread. Dioscorides, on the other hand, prefers a judicious admixture of onions. Nay, in hard times, when no corn is to be had, poor people must be prepared to make bread of dried quinces, medlars, elderberries, hips and haws, and fungus, while the clergy and people of quality must be content with honey bread, maize bread, or even oil cakes. Flesh bread, too, of which Pliny so much approves, may be used occasionally, or curd bread, which was the favorite dish of Zoroaster. The Rev. Master Fröhlich also taught his daughter how to preserve fruit, and how to convert it into blue, green, red, and yellow jellies, without using any injurious pigments.

Moreover in these sciences beer brewing was also included, for the ladies of Keszmár were wont to make their own ale. Every citizen there owed his beer to his wife and daughter. No one ever thought of getting it from the inn.

Nor was that all. It was part of every good housewife's business in those days to keep in store all manner of medicines, and to know how to concoct health-giving cordials from hundreds of wonder-working herbs. To them the medical science was far from being the finger and thumb work which our modern doctors make it, who, after prescribing you a dozen doses or so of ipecacuanha against fever, hold themselves absolved from all further responsibility. Our grandmothers had efficacious cordials against every malady under the sun, and in cases of serious illness they dosed the patient with the infallible elixir known as Galen's specific, the principal ingredients of which were Oriental pearls, red coral, and emeralds powdered fine, cubeb balsam, lignum aloes, muscat blossoms, frankincense, musk, bezoar, manus Christi, flesh-colored rose leaves, oil of cinnamon, and kirmis berries. Extraordinary, indeed, was the amount of knowledge which the housewife of yore had to carry about in her noddle!

And besides the generally recognized alphabets of our own days there were, at that time, three-and-thirty other symbols, the signification whereof every good cook was bound to know by heart before she could mix her ingredients. An oval with a stroke through it meant "salt"; a square with a cross beneath it, "cream of tartar"; a square with a horn, "oil"; a horseshoe, "spirits of wine"; an oblong, "soap"; one triangle, "spring water"; two triangles, point to point, "distilled water"; a crown with a star, "regulus stellatus." Without a knowledge of this science, no woman was regarded as perfect.

And then again the various kinds of aquavitæ! Nowadays most of us do not even know the proper meaning of the term; then, their manifold and salutary effects were universally recognized and appreciated. Everyone knew, for instance, that they kept the blood warm and fluid; removed all venom; dried up all sluggish humors; strengthened the memory, etc. Then there were various mysterious oils, the most costly of which was victriol (quite a different thing from vitriol), which our great-grandmothers called "potable gold," to say nothing of a multitude of waters, vinegars, acids, antidotes, plasters, and pastils no reputable housewife could afford to be without, for was she not the natural doctor and nurse of the whole family?

And the art of cookery was not a whit less abstruse than the art of pharmacy. The stomachs of our ancestors were accustomed to very complicated dishes. Cookery was a more difficult science than metaphysics.

Then, too, the whole charge of the garden lay upon the housewife's shoulders, and gardening was by no means the simple affair it is nowadays. Our great-grandmothers, in their gardening capacity, knew a whole host of things which have long since been forgotten. To prevent the fruit falling from the tree before its time, they bored a hole in the roots and drove through it a whitethorn peg; to prevent the cherries from ripening too soon, they surrounded the roots with unslacked lime; when they wanted scarlet pippins, they softened the grafts in pike's blood, and when they wished to propagate aromatic fruit, they bored a hole in the trunk of the tree and filled it with fragrant oil. Our grandmothers were so clever that they could compel a pear tree to bring forth grapes; they could grow citrons as large as your head, figs with almond kernels inside and the letters of the alphabet outside, and even nuts without shells. They knew how to graft medlars on coffee trees, which then produced an entirely new fruit, exceedingly luscious and fragrant. When they wanted the bitter almond to bear sweet almonds, they took counsel of Theophrastus and drove iron nails into the roots. They knew the good and bad effects of winter upon all kinds of garden produce. Even the simple, unsophisticated potato, only just introduced from America, and called by them adenes cardensis, was powerless against their innumerable artifices. Our great-grandmothers knew and cultivated scores of vegetables the very names of which are unknown to their posterity. All their dishes were pungent with the most exquisite spices. They carried on a regular trade in all manner of wholesome herbs and pigment plants. Saffron alone was taken by the ton to the Zips markets, and thence exported to Turkey. The kitchen garden was a veritable gold mine to the thrifty housewife.

Nor must the flower garden be forgotten. In those days a speculation in tulips was going on which can only be compared with the Bourse speculations of our own days. The horticulturist had to carry about in his head a whole dictionary of French botanical terms if he meant to make a living. A lady gardener who understood her business had to know what species of flowers could be planted and sown under the zodiacal signs ♈, ♉, ♊, or ♋, ♌, ♍; to which the signs ♎, ♏, and ♐ are baleful; and how seldom those flourish which are planted under the signs ♑, ♒, and ♓; in fact, she had to have her almanac at her fingers' ends. The floral art had its own literature and its own professors, who disposed of tulips and carnations to the value of millions, and sent whole fleets laden with bulbs and plants to China and America. Nay, the most distinguished writers of Europe did not deem it beneath their dignity to dabble in the flower trade, just as the writers of our own day dabble in politics.

It was certainly much more beneficial for young women to read about such things than to fill their heads with the scandal and tomfoolery of these later times.

If, however, they must needs know something about love and antipathy, they could gather from these sage botanical records that the fig tree and the rue love each other, for which reason it is advisable to plant rue close to fig trees, especially as it keeps away those sworn enemies of figs, the frogs; that the asparagus loves the reed and the rosemary the sage, for which reason whoever sets about planting rosemary must first of all rub his hand well with sage leaves, so that the young transplants may thrive; that the orange tree loves the cypress and the vine the cherry tree, and that the lily thrives beside the rose, but also beside the garlic—'tis only a matter of taste. On the other hand, there are plants which hate, which absolutely cannot endure each other. For instance, when one plants the noble anthora close to the wild najollus, it dries up and withers, despite the most constant care; the angelica and the hemlock infallibly throttle each other; while the antipathy of the vine to the colewort goes so far that when a man who has drunk a little too much wine eats of the colewort he instantly becomes sober, and if you mix a little wine in the pot where the colewort is boiling it will never get soft, stew it as long as you will.