No. 122. A Dinner tête-à-tête.
The franklin, in Chaucer, is put forward as an example of great liberality in the articles of provisions:—
An householdere, and that a gret, was he,
Seynt Julian he was in his countré,
His breed, his ale, was alway after oon;
A bettre envyned man was nowher noon.
Withoute bake mete was never his hous,
Of fleissch and fissch, and that so plentyvous,
It snewed in his hous of mete and drynke,
Of alle deyntees that men cowde thynke.
Aftur the sondry sesouns of the yeer,
He chaunged hem at mete and at soper.
Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewe,
And many a brem and many a luce in stewe (fish pond),
Woo was his cook, but if his sauce were
Poynant and scharp, and redy al his gere;
His table dormant in his halle alway
Stood redy covered al the longe day.
—Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 341.
A story in the celebrated collection of the Cent. Nouvelles Nouvelles (Nouv. 83), composed soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, gives us some notion of the store of provisions in the house of an ordinary burgher. A worthy and pious demoiselle—that is, a woman of the respectable class of bourgeoisie, who was, in this case, a widow—invited a monk to dine with her, out of charity. They dined without other company, and were served by a chambrière or maid-servant, and a man-servant or valet. The course of meat, which was first placed on the table, consisted of porée, or soup, bacon, pork tripes, and a roasted ox’s tongue. But the demoiselle had miscalculated the voracity of her guest, for, before she had made much progress in her porée, he had devoured everything on the table, and left nothing but empty dishes. On seeing this, his hostess ordered her servants to put on the table a piece of good salt beef, and a large piece of choice mutton; but he ate these also, to her no little astonishment, and she was obliged to send for a fine ham, which had been cooked the day before, and which appears to have been all the meat left in the house. The monk devoured this, and left nothing but the bone. The course which would have followed the first service was then laid on the table, consisting of a “very fine fat cheese,” and a dish well furnished with tarts, apples, and cheese, which also quickly followed the meat. It appears from this story that the ordinary dinner of a respectable burgher consisted of a soup, and two or three plain dishes of meat, followed by cheese, pastry, and fruit. An illumination, illustrative of another tale in this collection, in the unique manuscript preserved in the Hunterian Library, at Glasgow, and copied in the annexed cut ([No. 123]), represents a dinner-table of an ordinary person of this class of society, which is not over largely furnished. We see only bread in the middle, what appears to be intended for a ham at one end, and at the other a dish, perhaps of cakes or tarts. The lower classes lived, of course, much more meanly than the others; but we have fewer allusions to them in the earlier mediæval literature, as they were looked upon as a class hardly worth describing. This class was, no doubt, much more miserable in France than in England. A French moral poem of the fourteenth century, entitled “Le Chemin de Pauvreté et de Richesse,” represents the poor labourers as having no other food than bread, garlic, and salt, with water to drink:—
N’y ot si grant ne si petit
Qui ne preist grant appetit
En pain sec, en aux, et en sel,
Ne il ne mengoit riens en el,
Mouton, buef, oye, ne poucin;
Et puis prenoient le bacin,
A deux mains, plain d’eaue, et buvoient.
No. 123. A Frugal Repast.
As I have said, the dresser (dressoir) or cupboard was the only important article of furniture in the hall, besides the tables and benches. It was a mere cupboard for the plate, and had generally steps to enable the servants to reach the articles that were placed high up in it, but it is rarely represented in pictured manuscripts before the fifteenth century, when the illuminators began to introduce more detail into their works. The reader may form a notion of its contents, from the list of the service of plate given by Edward I. of England to his daughter Margaret, after her marriage with the duke of Brabant; it consisted of forty-six silver cups with feet, for drinking; six wine pitchers, four ewers for water, four basins with gilt escutcheons, six great silver dishes for entremets; one hundred and twenty smaller dishes; a hundred and twenty salts; one gilt salt, for her own use; seventy-two spoons; and three silver spice-plates with a spice-spoon.
The dresser, as well as all the furniture of the hall, was in the care of the groom; it was his business to lay them out, and to take them away again. It appears to have been the usual custom to take away the boards and tressels (forming the tables) at the same time as the cloth. The company remained seated on the benches, and the drinking-cups were handed round to them. So tells us the “Boke of Curtasye”—