In banketting, playing at cartis and dyce,
Into sic wysedome I was haldin wyse,
And spairit nocht to play with king nor knicht
Thre thousand crownes of golde upon ane night.
Though gardening and horticulture in general, as arts, were undergoing considerable improvement during this period, the garden itself appears to have been much more neglected, except as far as it was the scene of other pastimes. A bowling-green was the most important part of the pleasure garden in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and bowls, and exercises of a similar character, were the favourite amusements of all classes. The gardens themselves, which were apart from the house, and made more retired by lofty walls enclosing them, were usually adorned with alcoves and summer-houses, or, as they were then more usually termed, garden-houses, but these were chiefly celebrated, especially in the seventeenth century, as places of intrigue. There are continual allusions to this usage in the popular writers of the time. Thus, one of the personages in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman Hater” exclaims, “This is no garden-house: in my conscience she went forth with no dishonest intent.” And, in the play of the “Mayor of Quinsborough,”— Poor soul, she’s entic’d forth by her own sex
To be betray’d to man, who in some garden-house,
Or remote walk, taking his lustful time,
Binds darkness on her eyes, surprises her.
A character in another old play, “The London Prodigal,” seeking employment of a rather equivocal character, says, “Now God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or garden-house, where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all secret service.”
Amid the gaiety which was so especially characteristic of this age, a spirit of vulgar barbarity had arisen and spread itself very widely, and the popular games most practised were in general coarse and cruel. A foreign writer already quoted, but one who was evidently a very unprejudiced observer, has left us some rather amusing remarks on this subject which are worthy of being repeated. “The English,” he says, “have games which are peculiar to them, or at least, which they affect and practise more than people do elsewhere. To see cocks fight is a royal pleasure in England. Their combats of bulls and dogs, of bears and dogs, and sometimes of bulls and bears, are not combats to the last gasp, like those of cocks. Everything that is called fighting is a delicious thing to an Englishman. If two little boys quarrel in a street, the passers stop, make in a moment a ring round them, and encourage them to settle it by blows of the fist. If it comes to fighting, each takes off his cravat and his jacket, and gives them in charge to one of the company; then begin the blows of the fist, in the face if possible, the blows of the foot on their shins, the pulling of one another by the hair, &c. The one who has knocked the other down, may give him one blow or two when he is down, but no more, and every time the one who is down will rise, the other must return to the combat as long as he pleases. During the combat, the circle of spectators encourage the combatants to the great joy of their hearts, and never separate them, so long as things are done according to rule. And these spectators are not only other children, and street porters, but all sorts of respectable people, some of whom make their way through the crowd to see nearer, others mount upon the shops, and all would pay for places, if stages could be built up in a moment. The fathers and mothers of the little boys who are fighting look on like the others, and encourage the one who gives way, or is wanting in strength. These kind of combats are less frequent among grown-up men than among children, but they are not uncommon. If the driver of a hackney-coach has a dispute about his fare, with a gentleman whom he has carried, and the gentleman offers to settle the dispute by fighting, the coachman agrees to it willingly. The gentleman takes off his sword, disposes of it in some shop with his walking-stick, his gloves, and his cravat, and fights in the manner I have described. If the coachman is well beaten, which is almost always the case, he is considered as paid; but if he beats, he who is beaten must pay the sum that was in question, and that which caused the quarrel. I once saw the late duke of Grafton fighting in the open street in the middle of the Strand with a coachman, whom he thrashed in a terrible manner. In France, we treat such kind of people with blows of a stick or, sometimes, of the flat of the sword; but in England that is never done; they never use a sword or stick against those who are not similarly armed; and if any unlucky foreigner (for it would never come into the mind of an Englishman) should strike with the sword any one who had not got one, it is certain that in an instant a hundred persons would fall upon him, and perhaps beat him so that he would never recover. Wrestling is also one of the diversions of the English, especially in the northern provinces. Ringing the bells is one of their great pleasures, especially in the country; there is a way of doing it, but their peal is quite different from those of Holland and the Low Countries. In winter football is a useful and charming exercise; it is a ball of leather, as large as a man’s head, and filled with wind; it is tossed with the feet in the streets. To expose a cock in a place, and kill it at a distance of forty or fifty paces with a stick, is also a very diverting thing; but this pleasure only belongs to a certain season. This also is the case with the dances of the milkwomen, with the throwing at one another of tennis-balls by girls, and with divers other little exercises.” Such was the rude character of the amusement of all classes of our population during the seventeenth century.
The ladies still had their household pets, though they varied sometimes in their character, which perhaps arose in some measure from the circumstance that the discovery of or increased communication with distant countries, brought the knowledge of animals and birds which were not so well known before. Thus, in the sixteenth century, monkeys appear to have been much in fashion as domestic favourites, and we not unfrequently find them in prints in attendance upon ladies. Since the discovery of the West Indies, and the voyages of the Portuguese to the coast of Africa, parrots had become much more common than formerly. In pictures of the period of which we are speaking, we often find these, as well as smaller domestic birds, in cages of various forms. In our cut [No. 313], taken from Whitney’s “Emblems” (printed in 1585), we have a parrot in its cage, and a small bird (perhaps meant for a canary), the latter of which is drawing up its water to drink in a manner which has been practised in modern times, and supposed to be a novelty. It is very unsafe indeed to assume that any ingenious contrivances of this kind are modern, for we often meet with them unexpectedly at a comparatively early date.
No. 313. Birds and Birdcage.
With the multiplicity of new fashions in dress now introduced, the work of the toilette became much greater and more varied, and many customs were introduced from France, from Italy, and from the East. Among customs derived from the latter quarter, was the introduction of the eastern hot and sweating baths, which became for a considerable period common in England. They were usually known by the plain English name of hothouses, but their eastern origin was also sometimes indicated by the preservation of their Persian name of hummums. This name is still retained by the two modern hotels which occupy the sites of establishments of this description in Covent Garden. Sweating in hothouses is spoken of by Ben Jonson; and a character in the old play of “The Puritan,” speaking of a laborious undertaking, says, “Marry, it will take me much sweat; I were better go to sixteen hothouses.” They seem to have been mostly frequented by women, and became, as in the East, favourite places of rendezvous for gossip and company. They were soon used to such an extent for illicit intrigues, that the name of a hothouse or bagnio became equivalent to that of a brothel; and this circumstance probably led eventually to their disuse. A very rare and curious broadside woodcut of the reign of James I., entitled “Tittle-tattle, or the several branches of gossipping,” which in different compartments represents pictorially the way in which the women of that age idled away their time, gives in one part a sketch of the interior of a hothouse, which is copied in our cut [No. 314]. In one division of the hothouse the ladies are bathing in tubs, while they are indulging themselves with an abundance of very substantial dainties; in the other, they appear to be still more busily engaged in gossip. The whole broadside is a singularly interesting illustration of contemporary manners. A copy of it will be found in the print-room of the British Museum; and it may be remarked (which I think has not been observed before), that it is copied from a large French etching of about the same period, a copy of which is in the print department of the Imperial Library in Paris.
No. 314. A Hothouse.
This is sufficient to show the close resemblance at this time between manners in France and in England. In the former country, the resort of women in company to the hot-baths is not unfrequently alluded to, and their behaviour and conversation there are described in terms of satire which cannot always be transferred to our modern pages. In these popular satires, the bathers are sometimes chambrières, and at others good bourgeoises. The pic-nics, which had formerly taken place at the tavern, were now transferred to the hot-bath, each of a party of bathers carrying some contribution to the feast, which they shared in common. Thus, in the popular piece entitled “Le Banquet des Chambrières fait aux Estuves,” printed in 1541, it is the chamber-maidens who go to the bath, and they begin immediately to produce their contributions, one exclaiming— —j’ay du porc frais,
Une andouille et quatre saulcices.
To which a second adds,— —j’aye une cottelette,
Qui le ventre quasi m’eschaulde.
And a third,— Moy, un pasté à sauce chaulde.
The women are seen eating their pic-nic feast in one compartment of our cut. This practice soon passed from the servant maids of the bourgeoisie to their mistresses, and from the burghers’ wives to ladies of higher condition. Our word pic-nic, representing the French piquenique, the origin or derivation of which word seems not to be clearly known, appears to have come into use at the latter end of the last century, when people of rank formed evening parties at which they joined in such pic-nic suppers, to which each brought his or her contribution. The term is now applied almost solely to such collations in the fields, or in the open air.