No. 248.—Ladies Seated.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN-DOOR LIFE AND CONVERSATION.—PET ANIMALS.—THE DANCE.—RERE-SUPPERS.—ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE “NANCY” TAPESTRY.
As people began to have less taste for the publicity of the old hall, they gradually withdrew from it into the parlours for many of the purposes to which the hall was originally devoted, and thus the latter lost much of its former character. The parlour was now the place commonly used for the family meals. In a curious little treatise on the “most vyle and detestable use of dyce play,” composed near the beginning of the sixteenth century, one of the interlocutors is made to say, “So down we came again,” i.e. from the chambers above, “into the parlour, and found there divers gentlemen, all strangers to me; and what should I say more, but to dinner we went.” The dinner hour, we learn from this same tract, was then at the hour of noon; “the table,” we are told, “was fair spread with diaper cloths, the cupboard garnished with much goodly plate.” The cupboard seems now to have been considered a necessary article of furniture in the parlour; it had originally belonged to the hall, and was of simple construction. One of the great objects of ostentation in a rich man’s house was his plate; which, at dinner time, he brought forth, and caused to be spread on a table in sight of his guests; afterwards, to exhibit the plate to more advantage, the table was made with shelves, or steps, on which the different articles could be arranged in rows one above another. It was called in French and Anglo-Norman a buffet, or a dressoir (dresser), the latter name, it is said, being given to it because on it the different articles were dressés, or arranged. The English had, in their own language, no special name for this article of furniture, so that they called it literally a cup-board, or board for the cups. In course of time, and especially when it was removed from the hall into the parlour, this article was made more elaborately, and doors were added to it, for shutting up the plate when not in use. It thus became equivalent to our modern sideboard. We have seen a figure of a cupboard of this more complicated structure in a cut in our last chapter; and we shall have others of different forms in our next.
No. 249. A Sick Room.
Our cut [No. 249] is a good representation of the interior of a parlour furnished with the large seat, or settle, and with rather an elaborate and elegant cupboard. The latter, however, does not belong to the picture itself, having been introduced from another in the same manuscript by Mr. Shaw, in his beautiful work the “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” from which it is here taken. It is found in a fine manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 D. 1), containing the French translation of the “Historia Scholastica” of Peter Comestor, and written in the year 1470. The subject of this illumination is taken from the Scriptural story of Tobit, who here lies sick and blind on the settle, having just despatched his son Tobias on his journey to the city of Rages. The lady cooking is no doubt intended for his wife Anna; it will be observed that she is following the directions of a book. Cookery books and books of medicinal receipts were now common. The kettle is suspended over the fire by a jack of a construction that occurs not unfrequently in the manuscripts of this period. The settle is placed with its back to the window, which is covered with a large curtain.
As the parlours saved the domestic arrangements of the household from the too great publicity of the hall, so on the other hand they relieved the bedchambers from much of what had previously been transacted in them, and thus rendered them more private. In the poem of the “Lady Bessie,” when the earl of Derby and Humphrey Brereton visit the young princess, they are introduced to her in her bower, or chamber, but she immediately conducts the latter into the parlour, in order to converse with him:— She took him in her arms, and kissed him times three;
“Welcome,” she said, “Humphrey Brereton;
How hast thou spedd in the west countrey?
I pray thee tell me quickly and anon.”
Into a parlour they went from thence,
There were no more but hee and shee.
The female part of the family now passed in the parlour much of the time which had been formerly passed in their chambers. It was often their place of work. Young ladies, even of great families, were brought up not only strictly, but even tyrannically, by their mothers, who kept them constantly at work, exacted from them almost slavish deference and respect, and even counted upon their earnings. The parental authority was indeed carried to an almost extravagant extent. There are some curious instances of this in the correspondence of the Paston family. Agnes Paston, the wife of sir William Paston, the judge, appears to have been a very harsh mother. At the end of June 1454, Elizabeth Clere, a kinswoman who appears to have lived in great intimacy with the family, sent to John Paston, the lady’s eldest son, the following account of the treatment of his sister Elizabeth, who was of marriageable age, and for whom a man of the name of Scroope had been proposed as a husband. “Therefore, cousin,” writes Jane Clere, “meseemeth he were go for my cousin your sister, without that ye might get her a better; and if ye can get a better, I would advise you to labour it in as short time as ye may goodly, for she was never in so great a sorrow as she is now-a-days, for she may not speak with no man, whosoever come, nor even may see nor speak with my man, nor with servants of her mother’s, but that she beareth her on hand otherwise than she meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week, or twice, and sometimes twice in a day, and her head broken in two or three places. Wherefore, cousin, she hath sent to me by friar Newton in great counsel, and prayeth me that I would send to you a letter of her heaviness, and pray you to be her good brother, as her trust is in you.” In spite of her anxiety to be married, Elizabeth Paston did not succeed at this time, but she was soon afterwards transferred from her paternal roof to the household of the lady Pole. It was still the custom to send young ladies of family to the houses of the great to learn manners, and it was not only a matter of pride and ostentation to be thus surrounded by a numerous train, but the noble lady whom they served did not disdain to receive payment for their board as well as employing them in profitable work. In a memorandum of errands to London, written by Agnes Paston on the 28th of January, 1457, one is a message to “Elizabeth Paston that she must use herself to work readily, as other gentlewomen do, and somewhat to help herself therewith. Item, to pay the lady Pole twenty-six shillings and eightpence for her board.” Margaret Paston, the wife of John Paston, just mentioned, and daughter-in-law of Agnes, seems to have been equally strict with her daughters. At the beginning of the reign of Edward IV., she wrote to her son John concerning his sister Anne, who had been placed in the house of a kinsman of the name of Calthorpe. “Since ye departed,” she says, “my cousin Calthorpe sent me a letter complaining in his writing that forasmuch as he cannot be paid of his tenants as he hath been before this time, he proposeth to lessen his household, and to live the straitlier, wherefore he desireth me to purvey for your sister Anne; he saith she waxeth high (grows tall), and it were time to purvey her a marriage. I marvel what causeth him to write so now, either she hath displeased him, or else he hath taken her with default; therefore I pray you commune with my cousin Clare at London, and weet (learn) how he is disposed to her-ward, and send me word, for I shall be fain to send for her, and with me she shall but lose her time, and without she will be the better occupied she shall oftentimes move (vex) me and put me in great inquietness; remember what labour I had with your sister, therefore do your part to help her forth, that may be to your worship and mine.” There certainly appears here no great affection between mother and daughter.
Among other lessons, the ladies appear to have been taught to be very demure and formal in their behaviour in company. Our cut [No. 250] represents a party of ladies and gentlemen in the parlour engaged in conversation. It is taken from an illumination in the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” formerly in the possession of M. Barrois. They are all apparently seated on benches, which seem in this instance to be made like long chests, and placed along the sides of the wall as if they served also for lockers. These appear to be the only articles of furniture in the room. There is a certain conventional position in most of the ladies of the party which has evidently been taught, even to the holding of the hands crossed. The four ladies with the gentleman between them are no doubt intended to be the attendants on the lady of the house, holding towards her the position of Elizabeth and Anne Paston. We have precisely the same conventional forms in the next cut ([No. 251]), which is taken from an illumination in a manuscript of the “Legenda Aurea,” in the National Library in Paris (No. 6889). We see here the same demureness and formal crossing of the hands among the young ladies, in presence of their dame. It may be observed that, in almost all the contemporary pictures of domestic scenes, the men, represented as visitors, keep their hats on their heads.
