The Old English Herbals Part 15

"I received a letter and horse from Long on Thursday (Jan.

31) and will use meine [endeavour] to send Procter's horse to Denton. I did nott so much rejoys att thy safe pa.s.sage as at that Bleised and al suficiente gide whoss thou art, and whom I know thou truely sarves yt hath for a small time parted us, and I fearmly hope will give us a joyfull meeting. Dear heart, take ea.s.sy jernays and preferr thy owne heilth before all other worldly respects whatsoever.... I pray y{u} beg a blessing for us all, for I must needs comitt y{u} to his gracious protection yt will never fail us nor forsake us. Thine ever,

"MARY FAIRFAX.

"_Ashton, February 2, 1632._"

I quote only three recipes from this attractive MS.: "A Bath for Melancholy," "Balles for the face" and "For them theyr speech faileth."

"To make a bath for Melancholy. Take Mallowes, pellitory of the wall, of each three handfulls; Camomell flowers, Mellilot flowers, of each one handfull; hollyhocks, two handfulls; Isop one greate handfull, senerick seede one ounce, and boil them in nine gallons of Water untill they come to three, then put in a quart of new milke and go into it bloud warme or somthing warmer."

"Balles for the face. Take greate Allecant reasons [raisins]

a quarter of a pounde, stone them but wash them not and beate them in a morter very fine, take as many almonds, not Jordans, but of ye comon sort and blanch them and drye them in a cloth very well and beate them in a stone morter also very fine, when you have done thus to them bothe, mingle them bothe together and beate them againe, and putt to it half a quarter of a pounde of browne leavened bread, wheaten bread, and beate them altogeather and mingle them well togeather and then take it and make it in little balles and then wash yor face at night with one of them in fayre water. Yf you will have this only to wash yor hands put in a little Venice soape but putt none of that in for youre face."

"For them theyr speech faileth. Take a handfull of ye cropps of Rosemary, a handfull of sage and a handfull of Isop and boile them in malmsey till it be soft, then put them into Lynen clothes and laye about the nape of the neck and the pulses of the armes as whott [hot] as it may be suffred daily, as it shal be thought mete and it will help it by G.o.d's grace. For the same. Take staves acre and beate it and sowe it in a linnen cloth and make a bagg noe bigger than a beane; if he can chow it in his mouth lett hym, if not then lay it upon his tongue."

To the modern mind the medical recipes to be found in these still-room books sound truly alarming, but in _The Lady Sedley her Receipt book_ they are not more so than the prescriptions which were contributed by the most eminent physicians of that day. In his paper[129] on this MS.

Dr. Guthrie quotes many of these recipes, amongst them one from the famous Dr. Stephens,[130] so frequently quoted by Sir Kenelm Digby and in other still-room books of the period. In Lady Sedley's book his recipe is introduced thus: "A copy to make the sovreigns't water that ever was devised by man, which Dr. Stephens a physician of great cuning and of long experience did use and therewith did cure many great cases, and all was kept in secret until a little before his death; when the Archbishop of Canterbury got it from him." Amongst the other contributors to this MS. were no fewer than three of the doctors who attended Charles II. in his last illness, and if they gave the king even in a mild form medicines resembling those we find in this book, Macaulay's description that "they tortured him for some hours like an Indian at the stake" can hardly have been exaggerated. There is a "Receipt for Convulsion Fitts" from Sir Edward Greaves (the first physician to be created a baronet) consisting of peony roots, dead man's skull, hoofs of a.s.ses, white amber and bezoar; and the famous Dr. Sydenham contributed a "Prescription for the head" in which, not content with the seventy-two ingredients of which Venice treacle consisted, he added Wormwood, orange peel, angelica and nutmeg.

Another distinguished contributor to this MS. was the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth. A prescription for stone from Judge Ellis consisted of Venice turpentine distilled with various herbs and spices in small ale. It was to be made only in June and taken "three days before the full and three days before the change of the Moone" (incidentally a survival of Saxon moon lore), but the Duke of Monmouth's prescription for the same complaint is quite different and is compounded of ripe haws and fennel roots distilled in white wine and taken with syrup of elder. Lady Sedley, the first owner, and presumably author of the book, was the wife of Sir Charles Sedley, one of Charles II.'s intimate friends and notorious for his mad pranks. Between her husband and her daughter her life must have been almost unbearable, and it is not surprising that the unfortunate woman ended her days in a mad-house.

Of the MS. still-room books in the British Museum undoubtedly the most interesting is _Mary Doggett: Her Book of Receipts_, 1682.[131] On the first page is affixed a note: "This Mary Doggett was the wife of Doggett the Player who left a legacy of a yearly coat and badge to be rowed for."[132] The MS. is beautifully written and contains an astonishing amount of information on every housewifely art, from washing "parti-coloured stockings" to making perfumes and "Sweete Baggs." Indeed the reading of the headlines alone gives one some idea of the multifarious duties of a mistress of a large house in those days. We find--and I quote only a few--recipes "to make morello cherry cakes," "apric.o.c.k marmalett," "to preserve Cherrys white," "to candy oranges or lemons or any kind of sucketts," "to preserve almonds," "to preserve damsons," "orange b.u.t.ter," "pippin creame," "to make molds for apric.o.c.k Plumbs," "apric.o.c.k wine," "to keep cherrys all the year,"

"to make cowslip wine," "cakes of clove gilly flowers," "curran wine,"

"grapes in jelly," "cleer cakes of goosberys," "fine cakes of lemons,"

"to preserve Rasps whole," "to make Lemon Creame," "lemon Syllibub,"

"orange biskett," "cheese caks of oranges," "to preserve pippins in slices," "to make plumb biskett," "to pickle Quinces," "to preserve Wallnutts," "to preserve double blew violetts for Salletts," "to candy Double marygold, Roses, or any other flowers," "to make good sorrell wine," "sweet powders for linnen," "to perfume gloves after the Spanish maner," "to souse a pigg," "Almond milk," "to pickle cuc.u.mbers," "drinks to cause sleep," "snaile broth," "plasters for bruises," "to make pomades" and "past for the hands." The receipts for "A Pomander," for "Balme water," "to dry roses for sweet powder," and "a perfume for a sweet bagg" are particularly attractive, and I give them below.

"A Pomander. Take a quarter of an ounce of Civitt, a quarter and a half-quarter of an ounce of Ambergreese, not half a quarter of an ounce of ye Spiritt of Roses, 7 ounces of Benjamin, allmost a pound of Damask Rose buds cutt. Lay gumdragon in rose water and with it make up your Pomander, with beads as big as nutmegs and color ym with Lamb [_sic_] black; when you make ym up wash your hands wth oyle of Jasmin to smooth ym, then make ym have a gloss, this quant.i.ty will make seaven Braceletes."

"A receipt for Balme. Take 6 or 7 handfulls of balme, cut it a little, put it in an Earthen pott wth a handfull of cowslip flowers, green or dry, half an ounce of Mace, a little bruised pow[d]er in ym, 4 quarts of strong ale, let ym stand a night to infuse: in ye morning put it into your still, poure upon it a quart of brandy. Past up your Still; you may draw about 2 quarts of water. Sweeten it with Sugar to your Tast and tye up too pennyworth of Saffron in a ragg, put it into ye water and let it lye till it be colored. Squeeze it out and bottle it for your use."

"To dry Roses for sweet powder. Take your Roses after they have layen 2 or 3 days on a Table, then put them into a dish and sett ym on a chafering dish of Charcole, keeping them stirred, and as you stir ym strew in some powder of orris, and when you see them pretty dry put them into a gally pot till you use them."

"A perfume for a sweet bagg. Take half a pound of Cypress Roots, a pound of Orris, 3 quarters of a pound of Rhodium, a pound of Coriander Seed, 3 quarter of a pound of Calamus, 3 orange stick wth cloves, 2 ounces of Benjamin, and an ounce of Storax and 4 pecks of Damask Rose leaves, a peck of dryed sweet Marjerum, a pretty stick of Juniper shaved very thin, some lemon pele dryed and a stick of Brasill; let all these be powdered very grosely for ye first year and immediately put into your baggs; the next year pound and work it and it will be very good again."

The "Countesse of Kent's" still-room book, which was one of the first to be published, contains more recipes against the Plague than most, and with one of these we find the instruction that it must be taken three times, "for the first helpeth not." Amongst much that is gruesome there is a pleasant recipe ent.i.tled "A comfortable cordial to cheer the heart," which runs thus: "Take one ounce of conserve of gilliflowers, four grains of the best Musk, bruised as fine as flower, then put it into a little tin pot and keep it till you have need to make this cordial following: Viz.: Take the quant.i.ty of one Nutmeg out of your tin pot, put to it one spoonful of cinnamon water, and one spoonful of the sirrup of gillifloures, ambergreece, mix all these together and drink them in the morning, fasting three or four hours, this is most comfortable." The _chef d'uvre_ of the collection, at least in the author's opinion, is one introduced with this flourish, but it is too long for me to quote more than the comprehensive t.i.tle:--"The Countesse of Kent's powder, good against all malignant and pestilent diseases, French Pox, Small Pox, Measles, Plague, Pestilence, Malignant or Scarlet Feavers, good against melancholy, dejection of Spirits, twenty or thirty grains thereof being exhibited in a little warm Sack or Hartshorn Jelly to a Man and half as much or twelve grains to a Childe."

Far more attractive than the volume which bears the "Countesse of Kent's" name are the little-known books by Tryon. They are full of discourses and sermons, introduced at the most unexpected moments.

Indeed, there are few subjects on which Tryon does not lecture his readers, from giving servants extra work on Sundays by having "greasy platters and b.l.o.o.d.y-Bones more on Sunday than any other Day," to sleeping in feather beds. It is interesting to find that women had already taken to smoking in the seventeenth century, and Tryon admonishes them thus:--"Nor is it become infrequent, for women also to smoak Tobacco. Tobacco being an Herb of Mars and Saturn, it hath its fiery Quality from Mars, and its Poysonous fulsome attractive Nature from Saturn: the common use of it in Pipes is very injurious to all sorts of people but more especially to the Female s.e.x." Tryon seems to have been somewhat of a Socialist, and he takes great delight in commiserating "Lords, Aldermen, the Rich and the Great," who are driven to "heartily envying those Jolley Swains, who feed only with Bread and Cheese, and trotting up to the knees in Dirt, do yet with l.u.s.ty limbs, and vigorous stomach, and merry Hearts, and undisturbed Heads, whistle out more sollid joys than the others, with all their Wealth and State can purchase."

The most famous of all still-room books was that written by Sir Kenelm Digby, the friend of Kings and philosophers and himself a man of science, a doctor, an occultist, a privateer and a herbalist. Indeed it would be impossible to catalogue his activities, and he has always been recognised as the type _par excellence_ of the gifted amateur.

Sir Kenelm was the elder son of the Digby who was one of the leaders in the Gunpowder Plot. Himself a man of European reputation, he numbered among his friends Bacon, Ben Jonson, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey and Cromwell. Queen Marie de' Medici was only one of many women who fell in love with him, but his one love was his wife, one of the most beautiful women of her day--Venetia Anastasia Stanley, immortalised by Van Dyck and Ben Jonson. Sir Kenelm Digby was the intimate friend of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, and after the Restoration he was a prominent figure at the Court of Charles II. When the Royal Society was inaugurated in 1663, he was one of the Council, and his house in Covent Garden was a centre where all the wits, occultists and men of letters forgathered. Aubrey tells us that after the Restoration he lived "in the last faire house westward in the north portico of Covent Garden where my lord Denzill Hollis lived since. He had a laboratory there."[133] One reads so much of the extravagances and excesses of Restoration days that it is all the pleasanter to remember the people of whom little has been written, the thousands of quiet folk who loved their homes and gardens and took delight in simple pleasures. It is of these people Sir Kenelm Digby's book reminds us, and even the names of his recipes are soothing reading--syllabubs, hydromel, mead, quidannies, tansies, slipp-coat-cheeses, manchets, and so forth. Moreover, there is no savour of the shop in these recipes, the book being full rather of flowers and herbs. It is also very leisurely, and in these days that, too, is soothing. Time we frequently find measured thus:--"Whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very slowly" or "about an Ave Maria while."

It takes us back to a simple old world when great ladies not only looked well to the ways of their households, but attended themselves to the more important domestic matters. Sir Kenelm collected these recipes a.s.siduously from his friends, and each housekeeper's pride in her speciality is very evident. To mention only a few of these, we find:--"Scotch Ale from my Lady Holmeby," "A very pleasant drink of Apples," "Master Webb's Ale and Bragot," "Apples in Gelly," "To make Bisket," "Sir Paul Neal's way of making Cider," "My Lord of St.

Alban's Cresme Fouettee," "The Queen's Barley Cream," "To pickle capons my Lady Portland's way," "Pickled Champignons," "A Flomery-Caudle," "My Lord Hollis Hydromel," "Master Corsellises Antwerp Meath," "My own considerations for making of Meathe," "Meathe from the Muscovian Amba.s.sadors Steward," "White Metheglin of my Lady Hungerford's which is exceedingly praised," "My Lord of Denbigh's Almond March-pane," "My Lord Lumley's Pease-pottage," "Pease of the seed, buds of Tulips," "A soothing Quiddany or Gelly of the Cores of Quinces," "Sack with clove gilly-flowers," "My Lord of Carlile's Sack-posset," "To make a whip Syllabub," "Sucket of Mallow-stalks,"

"The Countess of Newport's Cherry Wine." We may forget the recipes themselves, but the memory of them is a.s.sociated with the fragrance of gillifiowers, roses, cowslips, elder flowers, violets, thyme, marjoram and the like. I give but these few below, and I wish there were s.p.a.ce for more; for not only are they excellent in themselves, but, in common with all those in Sir Kenelm Digby's book, they give more, perhaps, of the atmosphere of the old still-rooms than is to be found in any other collection.

"Sweet meat of Apples. My Lady Barclay makes her fine Apple-gelly with slices of John apples. Sometimes she mingles a few pippins with the Johns to make the gelly. But she liketh best the Johns single and the colour is paler.

You first fill the gla.s.s with slices round-wise cut, and then the Gelly is poured in to fill up the vacuities. The Gelly must be boiled to a good stiffness. Then when it is ready to take from the fire, you put in some juyce of Lemon, and of Orange too, if you like it, but these must not boil; yet it must stand a while upon the fire stewing in good heat, to have the juyces incorporate and penetrate well. You must also put in some Ambergreece, which doth exceeding well in this sweet-meat."

"Wheaten Flommery. In the West Country they make a kind of Flommery of wheat flower, which they judge to be more harty and pleasant then that of Oat-meal, thus; take half, or a quarter of a bushel of good Bran of the best wheat (which containeth the purest flower of it, though little, and is used to make starch), and in a great wooden bowl or pail, let it soak with cold water upon it three or four days. Then strain out the milky water from it, and boil it up to a gelly or like starch. Which you may season with Sugar and Rose or Orange-flower-water and let it stand till it be cold, and gellied. Then eat it with white or Rhenish-wine, or Cream, or Milk, or Ale."

"A Flomery Caudle. When Flomery is made and cold, you may make a pleasant and wholesome caudle of it by taking some lumps and spoonfuls of it, and boil it with Ale and White wine, then sweeten it to your taste with Sugar. There will remain in the Caudle some lumps of the congealed flomery which are not ungrateful."

"Conserve of Red Roses. Doctor Glisson makes his Conserve of red Roses thus: Boil gently a pound of red Rose-leaves (well picked, and the nails cut off) in about a pint and a half (or a little more, as by discretion you shall judge fit, after having done it once; the Doctor's Apothecary takes two pints) of Spring water; till the water have drawn out all the Tincture of the Roses into itself, and that the leaves be very tender, and look pale like Linnen; which may be in a good half hour, or an hour, keeping the pot covered whiles it boileth. Then pour the tincted Liquor from the pale leaves (strain it out, pressing it gently, so that you may have Liquor enough to dissolve your Sugar) and set it upon the fire by itself to boil, putting into it a pound of pure double refined Sugar in small Powder; which as soon as it is dissolved, put into it a second pound, then a third, lastly a fourth, so that you have four pounds of sugar to every pound of Rose-leaves. (The Apothecary useth to put all the four pounds into the Liquor altogether at once.) Boil these four pounds of Sugar with the tincted Liquor, till it be a high Syrup, very near a candy height (as high as it can be not to flake or candy). Then put the pale Rose-leaves into this high Syrup, as it yet standeth upon the fire, or immediately upon the taking it off the fire. But presently take it from the fire, and stir them exceeding well together, to mix them uniformly; then let them stand till they be cold, then pot them up. If you put your Conserve into pots whiles it is yet thoroughly warm, and leave them uncovered some days, putting them in the hot Sun or stove, there will grow a fine candy on the top, which will preserve the conserve without paper upon it, from moulding, till you break the candied crust to take out some of the conserve.

"The colour both of the Rose-leaves and the Syrup about them, will be exceedingly beautiful and red, and the taste excellent, and the whole very tender and smoothing, and easie to digest in the stomack without clogging it, as doth the ordinary rough conserve made of raw Roses beaten with Sugar, which is very rough in the throat. The worst of it is, that if you put not a Paper to lie always close upon the top of the conserve, it will be apt to grow mouldy there on the top; especially apres que le pot est entame."

Under another "conserve of red roses" we find this note:--"Doctor Bacon useth to make a pleasant Julip of this Conserve of Roses, by putting a good spoonful of it into a large drinking gla.s.s or cup; upon which squeeze the juyce made of a Lemon, and slip in unto it a little of the yellow rinde of the Lemon; work these well together with the back of a spoon, putting water to it by little and little, till you have filled up the gla.s.s with Spring water: so drink it. He sometimes pa.s.seth it through an Hypocras bag and then it is a beautiful and pleasant Liquor."

These still-room books are as much part of a vanished past as the old herb-gardens, those quiet enclosures full of sunlight and delicious scents, of bees and fairies, which we foolish moderns have allowed to fall into disuse. The herb garden was always the special domain of the housewife, and one likes to think of the many generations of fair women who made these gardens their own, tending them with their own hands, rejoicing in their beauty and peace and interpreting in humble, human fashion something of the wonder and mystery of Nature in the loveliness of a garden enclosed. For surely this was the charm of these silent secluded places, so far removed from turmoil that from them it was possible to look at the world with clear eyes and a mind undisturbed by clamour. And what of the fairies in those gardens? We live in such a hurrying, material age that even in our gardens we seem to have forgotten the fairies, who surely have the first claim on them. Does not every child know that fairies love thyme and foxgloves and the lavish warm scent of the old cabbage rose? Surely the fairies thronged to those old herb-gardens as to a familiar haunt. Can you not see them dancing in the twilight?

The dark elves of Saxon days have well-nigh vanished with the bogs and marshes and the death-like vapours which gave them birth. With the pa.s.sing of centuries the lesser elves have become tiny of stature and friendly to man, warming themselves by our firesides and disporting themselves in our gardens. Perhaps now they even look to us for protection, lest in this age of materialism they be driven altogether from the face of the earth. As early as the twelfth century we find mention of creatures akin to the brownies, whom we all love; for the serious Gervase of Tilbury tells us of these goblins, less than half an inch high, having faces wrinkled with age, and dressed in patched garments. These little creatures, he a.s.sures us, come and work at night in the houses of mankind; but they had not lost their impish ways and elvish tricks, "for at times when Englishmen ride abroad in the darkness of night, an unseen Portunos [Brownie?] will join company with the wayfarer; and after riding awhile by his side will at length seize his reins and lead his horse into the slough wherein he will stick and wallow while the Portunos departs with mocking laughter, thus making sport of man's simplicity." Perhaps they still make sport of our simplicity, but we shall be the losers if they vanish altogether from the earth. If in impish mood they lead the wayfarer into sloughs, do not the sheen-bright elves lighten some of the darkest paths of pain which human beings are forced to tread? Are not these Ariel-like creatures links between the flowers of earth which they haunt and the stars of heaven whence they seem to derive their radiance? The fairies have almost deserted us, but perhaps they will one day come back to our gardens and teach us that there is something true, though beyond what we can know, in the old astrological lore of the close secret communion between stars and flowers. Do not flowers seem to reflect in microscopic form those glorious flowers which deck the firmament of heaven? In many flowers there is something so star-like that almost unconsciously our minds connect them with the luminaries in the great expanse above us, and from this it seems but a short step to the belief that there is between them a secret communion which is past our understanding.

"This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, The all-compensating wonder, Giving to common things wild kindred With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove; Linking such heights and such humilities, Hand in hand in ordinal dances, That I do think my tread, Stirring the blossoms in the meadow-gra.s.s Flickers the unwithering stars."[134]

Mystics of all ages and of all civilisations have felt this secret bond between what are surely the most beautiful of G.o.d's creations--flowers and stars; and its fascination is in no small part due to the exquisite frailty and short-lived beauty of the flowers of earth and the stupendous majesty of the flowers in the heavens, those myriad worlds in whose existence a thousand years is but as a pa.s.sing dream.

G.o.ddis grace shall euer endure.

(_Inscription at the end of "The vertuose boke Of Dystyllacyon of the waters of all maner of Herbes." 1527._)

FOOTNOTES:

[124] John Archer (one of the Physicians in Ordinary to Charles II.) also a.s.serts in his _Compendious Herbal_ (1673) that "the Sun doth not draw away the Vertues of Herbs, but adds to them." Archer gives full astrological directions for the gathering of herbs:--

"I have mentioned in the ensuing Treatise of Herbs the Planet that Rules every Herb for this end, that you may the better understand their Nature and may gather them when they are in their full strength, which is when the Planet is especially strong, and then in his own Hour gather your Herb; therefore that you may know what hour belongs to every Planet take notice that Astrologers do a.s.sign the seven days of the week to the seven planets, as to the Sun or ? Sunday; to the Moon or ? Monday; to Mars or ? Tuesday; to Mercury or ? Wednesday; to Jupiter or ? Thursday; to Venus or ? Friday; to Saturn or ? Sat.u.r.day.

And know that every Planet governs the first Hour after Sun Rise upon his day and the next Planet to him takes the next Hour successively in this order, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?. So be it any day every Seventh Hour comes to each Planet successively, as if the day be Thursday then the first hour after Sun Rising is Jupiter's, the next ?, the next ?, next ?. So on till it come to ? again. And if you gather Herbs in their Planetary Hour you may expect to do Wonders, otherwise not; to Astrologers I need say nothing; to others this is as much as can easily be learnt."--_The Compendious Herbal_, by John Archer, One of his Majesties Physicians in Ordinary.

[125] In this connection he quotes Dr. Pinck, Warden of New College, Oxford, who, when he was "almost fourscore yeares old, would rise very betimes in the morning and going into his Garden he would take a Mattock or Spade, digging there an hour or two, which he found very advantageous to his health."

[126] Published 1651. The earliest copy in the British Museum is the second edition, 1653.

[127] See _Arcana Fairfaxiana_.

[128] Lord Fairfax had only a daughter (who married the Duke of Buckingham), and the son of Henry and Mary Fairfax succeeded to the t.i.tle.

[129] Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1913.

[130] Dr. Stephens was the author of the _Catalogue of the Oxford Botanical Gardens_.

[131] Sloane 27466.

[132] The compet.i.tion for "Doggett's Coat and badge" amongst Thames Watermen still takes place every August.

[133] This house is to be seen in Hogarth's "Morning."

[134] Francis Thompson, _An Anthem of Earth_.