'With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days'. Loredano's 'Life of Adam', 1659.

Writing purported or speculative biographies of Adam had gone on since Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend in the 13^th century. I’ve been reading a late example, by Gian Francesco Loredan, published in Venice in 1640, and appearing in England, translated by ‘J.S.’ in 1659.

Loredan was widely translated into English, with five different works appearing between 1654 and 1682. As for The life of Adam, it’s hard to define what the original appeal was: was it, beneath its ostensible subject, actually enjoyed as a wittily anti-feminist account of that age-old target, Eve? Maybe in a work like this we get some sense of how many pictures of Adam and Eve (or some of the manifold other depictions of them) were received, in a mixture of salacity and moralization. If you think of Loredan himself as accustomed to seeing the two Tintoretto paintings of the Fall of Man in Venice (in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and that in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, above), well, they are both Eve-centered versions. Adam has his back to us in both paintings, provoking us to our own incriminating reaction to the temptation offered by Eve.

Loredan was born into a minor branch of the Venetian clan who provided three Doges. He was founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti, noblemen who were in their way free-thinkers (and promoters of opera). Loredan’s writings emerge from that group: novellas, collections of witty essays, a romance, and a ‘scala sancta’, an ascent of the soul based on fifteen psalms.

The tone of ‘The Life of Adam’ - at least in English - is of bland moralization, as God’s intentions behind each detail of that scanty narrative in Genesis are speculated upon in a series of ‘because’ / ‘or else…’ extrapolations. Like the medieval example, the work is utterly anti-feminist, an aspect it has in common with other parts of Loredan’s writings. His view of women seems to compound an exaggerated sense of the persuasive power of female beauty with an extreme view of female moral frailty - nothing very novel about that, of course. He was himself forced into marriage (apparently).

‘The Life of Adam’ deals with Adam’s fall after some general scene-setting which seems to have been derived as much from Ovid’s Metamorphoses as from the Bible: “God had, with Ideas suitable to his own omnipotence, compiled the machine of Heaven and of the World. The Chaos retained no longer either confusion, or darkness. The Elements, though proud of their variety of qualities, united themselves for the conservation of the Whole …”

After a speech of suitable gratitude for having been created, Adam names the animals: “His Divine Majesty made all Birds and other Animals of the earth to come before Adam, that from him (who had received from God the knowledge of their Natures) they should receive their Names. The Lord did this, to make Adam see by comparison how much he was obliged, in seeing himself so different, and so upright above all other Creatures. Or, because God having created Man Prince of all creatures, would have him know his vassalls and the Animals reverence him as their Prince…” Again, the detail about the distinct human erectness among the animal creation is Ovidian, though it was a common enough observation about humankind. (Obviously, there are lots of animals you have to ignore: plenty of flightless birds are upright in stance.) Milton makes much of it.

But we progress rapidly to the nemesis of this grateful and knowledgeable Adam, his wife. Loredan has a speculation about why Adam was made to fall asleep prior to the removal of his rib: Adam had after all been granted a prophetic spirit by God, and so, if he had been awake, he might well have objected:

“Or else it might be, that he cast Adam into a sleep, as if he feared that he would contradict him; whilst with the spirit of prophesy given him, he might foresee the mischiefs accruing to mankind in the making of Eve.”

Loredan wonders why God, wanting his new world populated, didn’t create multiple humans. As answers to his own idle question, he produces both a democratic and an anti-feminist speculation: “God for the more expeditious population of the World, could have made many men, & many Women, but would, that all should descend from one Father, and one Mother, to the end Men should conserve Love, peace, and concord amongst themselves. And who knows … he would not permit Adam multiplicity of Wives for that he might not thereby multiply his miseries…”

Eve once created, and Adam revived (with his opportunity for prophetic objection missed), Loredan now turns to the dangerous and total allure of women, which he expresses in Petrarchan or Marinist cliches: “Adam stood stupefied in contemplating two Suns under one pair of eyebrows, whilst he saw no more but one in Heaven … The by-Nature-plaited tresses, so nearly resembled Gold in tincture, and purity, that they pleaded Adams excuse, if he did not refuse so honourable a prison … Her flesh appearing like a lovely composure of scarlet and milk, although at the touch it would be taken for marble. Her age was about the fourth lustre, (accompting five years to a Lustre) proper for a woman in reference to Procreation and Love.”

Adam nearly idolizes her: “Adam was about to have adored her as a Goddess. For but only that it was infused into him by revelation, that the woman was a part of himself, doubtless disobedience should not have been the first of his sins.”

Once acquainted, Adam duly informs Eve about the one prohibition under which they are to live. Eve immediately sets off, on her own, in quest to see the forbidden fruit. The novelisation of Genesis treats this as yet unfallen Eve as though all post-lapsarian accusations of women apply to her: “The Woman became at those prohibitions the more curious. To forbid a woman, is to increase her appetite … The Woman therefore, transported by those impatiencies, that interposed between them and their felicity, left Adam; desiring to enjoy … the sight of that fruit, which being forbidden, was to be supposed the more exquisite.”

In a particularly breathtaking piece of misogyny, Loredan manages to imply that Eve provokes her own temptation: “Having found the tree, she beheld the fruits with so much curiosity, that it induced the Devil to tempt her.”

The serpent itself is in the shape of that familiar monster, the serpentine female: “Amongst the infinite forms of animals there was a Serpent with the face of a Damsel, which God had replenished with all subtility.” I think this notion goes all the way back to the Venerable Bede. It set off, no doubt, in a mixture of anti-feminism and crack-brained rationalization: for it provides an answer of sorts to questions about why Eve wasn’t alarmed by a serpent that spoke to her: the serpent-tempter had in part assumed her shape. As Loredan puts it: “She started not at the sight of a Serpent; for seeing it resemble her self in countenance she rather rejoiced then feared”. It seems nobody dared to suggest either to the Venerable Bede, or any of those who repeated him, that this half-human serpent would in fact be a far more alarming sight.

The serpent-maiden flatters Eve. Eve repeats the terms of the prohibition, and Loredan does not fail to score a point against women by exploiting the disparity between Genesis 2, 17 and Genesis 3,3: “His Divine Majesty had commanded only that they should not eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but the Woman moreover adds the Touching it: because as a Woman she could not discourse without aggravating or over-reaching.”

The narrative briefly pauses to suggest the more perceptive things Eve might have said to refute her tempter (“How came I to merit so much of thy affection that thou shouldst desire, that I should first obtain a benefit so great, a prerogative so rare, as to be divine?”) before noting her precipitate belief: “The unfortunate woman believed all for truth, because she desired all to be true.”

When Eve eats the fruit, Loredan introduces another piece of anti-woman needling, now taking offence that “She called not Adam to eat of the Apple before her, as was the duty of her subjection; because believing divinity to be reposed in that fruit, she would not admit any to have the precedence of her.”

When Eve, having failed in her duty to give the fruit first to her husband, eventually gets back to Adam with her story, Loredan gives Adam a firmly reasoned refusal to join her in disobedience:

“Content your self with having your self alone transgressed the commands of God’s law. Desire not company in evil. Lead not others into your precipices. I am your companion, I am your Lover; but will know how to be your Enemy.”

But Eve resorts (what else?) to “sighs and tears, the wonted artifices with which women betray the honour, liberty, and safety of men”, and to allurement: “Casting therefore her arms about the neck of Adam, she so besieged his constancy, with her glances, caresses, and kisses that, after some small resistance, he yielded himself overcome …What cannot women do in an amorous soul!”

As soon as Adam has a morsel of the fruit going down his throat, he repents, and he sees their nakedness. Loredan makes a firmly Augustinian point about how, previously, “lust had not ability to suscitate sensual affects, without the consent of Man”. Adam now knows his, and his wife’s, nakedness, and doesn’t like the effect it has.

God appears in the Garden, and finds Adam, in his fig-leaves, hiding with all the self-exculpatory wiles of, say, Captain Francesco Schettino, beneath the forbidden tree itself. Adam stoutly blames God for making Eve too alluring: “Who can resist the power of beauty? The commands of her, that thou gavest me for a Companion, hath in such manner tyrannized over my reason, and intellectuals, that I have not power to dispose of my self … He that can withstand the importunate solicitude of the fairest piece that ever came out of thy hands, either knows not how to Love or deserves not to be Beloved. Alone I should not have known sin, for bad-company is a fomenter of the greatest sins. Lord, turn against her thy reproofs and chastisements.”

Eve perhaps makes a rather better job of self-exculpation “I could not persuade my self that there were treacheries in Paradise, nor deceits in the face of a Damsel. Thunder therefore, O Lord, thy punishments upon the Serpent, as upon the author of all evil.”

God passes his curses on the serpent, the earth, Eve and Adam (“With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days”), and expels them, addressing Adam in particular: “Get thee packing therefore out of the Paradise of delights, and fix thine abode where thou wast formed, cultivating that earth from whence thou hast derived thy being.”

Loredan asserts that the expulsion counts as one of God’s acts of mercy: “It was one of the wonted effects of God’s benignity to drive Adam out of Paradise, because, if he had continued amongst those delights without enjoying them, he would have received too much torment; there being no greater punishment to be found then to be in the midst of felicities and to be denied the fruition.”

He then proceeds to sum up. There’s the usual notion that Adam and Eve were only in Paradise for a few hours: “Poor Adam! that didst not scarce one whole day enjoy the gifts of Gods favour. His felicity being shorter then that of an Ephemeris [a mayfly]. About three of clock he was brought into the Garden; at six a clock, he sinned; and in the Evening, was expulsed.”

Once outside Eden, Eve is given a speech of thorough contrition, which is undermined by Adam turning lustful: “ ‘The sorrow for my sin shall die with my heart, which I believe shall be the last part of me alive’ … Adam, with a smile begot by the stimulations of sensuality, thus replied, ‘I need no longer now to fear your company (my Eve) since you become to me an incentive to good’ …Thus saying & with glances, and kisses having thrown his arms about his wife’s neck they gave themselves wholly up to delight, which peradventure for the time begot in them an oblivion of all the accidents past.”

Loredan then spells out the underlying belief, the prejudice that constrained the duration of man’s unfallen state to less than a day. You had to get them out of Paradise before they can have sex, and beget any offspring without the taint of original sin: “Till this instant Adam had been kept a Virgin, to intimate unto us that Matrimony fills the earth, but Virginity Paradise.”

After sex, Eve has an instant awareness that she is pregnant: “Scarce had Eve satisfied the instinct of nature, and appeased in part the allurements of sense, when with the signs of pregnancy, she was assaulted by repentance, the indivisible companion of fleshly delights.”

Loredan lobs in another of his quite appalling misogynistic observations. The pregnancy proves to be a difficult one: “Here I will not mention the extremes of her passions, in loathing, and longing for every thing; in the burden of her belly, in her vigils, and in the acerbity of those pangs, the more grievous, by how much the more strange: because the most that I can speak, would be the least part of what they were. Much less will I speak of the sufferance of Adam; because it is known that to have a wife, and a wife pregnant, is a species of martyrdom.”

Poor Eve gives birth to a boy and a girl. In these quotations, I suppose the daughters’ names are derived from Rabbinical lore: “Eve brought forth two births, Cain was the name of the male, and Calamana that of the female … Eve afterwards bore Abel, and Delbora, whereby she increased the joy of Adam.”

Meanwhile, Adam emerges as well worth a place on the radio show ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’: “Adam, not content with what the Earth repaid him with interest for the seed received, employed himself also in continual grafting. He transplants wild trees into the meliorated, makes the sterile fructiferous, and dulcorates the insipid … He transmutes one species into another, and inoculates many species upon one sole stock.” And he progresses from living in caves to mud huts: “Poor Adam sheltered himself (necessity constraining him) in certain Caverns, the palaces of Nature … He learnt, for his greater shame [his] first Architecture from the Swallow.”

After Cain slays Abel, Adam vows to give up being fruitful and multiplying, but God releases him from his vow, and so Seth is born, from whom Christ will descend.

Adam finally dies aged 930, and we get a specific day for his death: “It is the opinion of many that he dyed on Friday the 3^d of March, being the day on which he was created, to hint that misery comes in the very instant of our felicity.” We also are told where he was buried, and subsequently re-buried: “He was buried in Hebron, in a Sepulcher of Marble, and was afterwards transported to Calvary, to the very place where Christ died.”

Of Eve’s death, Loredan makes the following typically hostile remarks: “Of Eve’s age the Scriptures make no mention; perhaps because we ought not to know the death of her, that deserved to die before she was born; all the miseries of mankind taking rise from her. It’s probable that she was oppressed by age, and passion, for Adam’s death. It pleased his Divine Majesty, perhaps, that she should survive Adam to double her punishment, in beholding the death of the dearest part of herself.”

This suavely nasty work was, as I say, translated into English, and dedicated to the ‘Lady S.B.’, the translator affirming that the first of men made a suitable subject for the ‘best of women’. I suppose one should never be surprised at the crassness of 17^th century men, and their view of what women might want to read.

An elegy on a 17th century centenarian

‘An Elegy upon Dr. Chaderton, the first Master of Emanuel College in Cambridge being above an hundred years old when he died. Occasioned by his long deferred Funeral.’

Pardon (dear Saint) that we so late
With lazy sighs bemoan thy fate;
And with an after-shower of Verse,
And Tears, we thus bedew thy Hearse:
Till now (alas!) we did not weep,
Because we thought thou didst but sleep:
Thou liv’dst so long, we did not know
Whether thou couldst now die or no:
We looked still, when thou shouldst arise,
And ope the Casement of thine eyes:
Thy feet which have been us’d so long
To walk, we thought must still go on;
Thine ears after an hundred year,
Might now plead custom for to hear.

Upon thy head that reverend snow
Did dwell some fifty years ago,
And then thy Cheeks did seem to have
The sad resemblance of a Grave.

Wert thou e’re young? For truth I hold,
And do believe thou wert born old.
There’s none alive I am sure can say
They knew thee young, but always gray:
And dost thou now, venerable Oak,
Decline at death's unhappy stroke?

Tell me (dear Sir) why didst thou die,
And leave’s to write an Elegy?
We’are young (alas!) and know thee not,
Send up old Abraham and grave Lot:
Let them write thine Epitaph, and tell
The World thy worth, they ken’d thee well:
When they were Boys they heard thee preach,
And thought an Angel did them teach.

Awake them then, and let them come,
And score thy Virtues on thy Tomb;
That we at those may wonder more,
Than at thy many years before.

~ Possibly the satirist John Cleveland writing in surprisingly affectionate terms about the (very) old Puritan divine, Laurence Chaderton. If it was Cleveland, his subject’s great age, and reverence for the dead, must have granted the subject immunity from the poet’s habitually vehement anti-Puritan satire. It might also be argued that Cleveland would have been writing not so much for himself as for the university, a community which (one gathers from the sub-title) had been reprehensibly slow to organize a funeral (there were probably disputes about details of the formalities the deceased would have preferred, and the normally observed ritual gestures).

Thomas Fuller’s brief biography of the deceased centenarian in his Worthies shares some of the same thoughts: so what we are seeing is, perhaps, the way the old man was talked about in a University then dominated by Cleveland’s wit: “What is said of Mount Caucasus, that it was never seen without Snow on the Top, was true of this Reverend Father, whom none of our Fathers generation knew in the University, before he was gray headed, yet he never used Spectacles till the day of his death.”

Still, there is either something impish about the poem, or perhaps it responds to something impish about great old age. A really old person is mildly subversive, at least of ‘three score years and ten’, liable to be seen these disrespectful times as being a ‘coffin-dodger’. When the elegy suggests, by way of excuse for delay, that they had all half-expected the dead Chaderton to open his eyes again, get up and resume shuffling about, a mental picture forms of the ageless college fellow, sometimes very still, resting a while, but liable to switch back on to full alertness, not having actually missed anything at all.

Cleveland’s imitator ( or Cleveland himself) then allows truth to stretch into hyperbole, though with provocation in this case, for Chaderton was remarkably old. Reasonably enough, the poem observes that there’s nobody around remaining to testify to his youth, if he ever had one. The witticism follows: maybe the Bible patriarchs would have heard Chaderton preach when they were boys. After this faint guying (for Chaderton was “a man famous for Gravity, Learning and Religion”, and would not have treated Old Testament figures so lightly), the poem turns to its final, rather graceful compliment: the young Abraham and Lot might have thought “an Angel did them teach”: if they could return and incise Chaderton’s tomb with the virtues they had witnessed, they would be more wonderful and numerous than his years.

Chaderton’s preaching had been (Fuller says) “plain but effectual ”. Thomas Fuller includes a relatively well known anecdote about those pious times: “It happened that he visiting his friends, preached in this his Native Countrey, where the Word of God (as in the days of Samuel) was very precious. And concluded his Sermon, which was of two hours continuance at least, with words to this effect That he would no longer trespass upon their Patience. Whereupon all the Auditory cried out, (wonder not if hungry people craved more meat) For God’s sake Sir, Go on Go on. Hereat Mr. Chaderton was surprised into a longer Discourse, beyond his expectation, in Satisfaction of their importunity, and (though on a sudden) performed it to their contentment and his commendation.”

Laurence Chaderton’s ‘native country’ was Lancashire, where he had been born at Chatterton ‘about the year 1546’. The county that clung to Catholicism, and his parents were Catholics. Sent to the Inns of Court to learn law (something always useful for any Catholic family under recurrent state-backed legal assault), the young Chaderton switched faiths, began to study divinity, and had then been disinherited: “his Father disliking his change of place and studies, but especially of Religion, sent him a Poke with a groat in it, to go a begging withall; further signifying to him, that he was resolved to disinherit him, which he also did.” Despite the groat, Chaderton did well. He represented non-conformity at the Hampton Court conference in 1604 (though in dignified silence rather than in any outspoken engagement for his cause), and was one of the 1611 AV Bible translators. As the first Master of Emmanuel, he used a network of sympathetic contacts to build up the thinly-endowed foundation. His methods of assessing his college’s students were far more sensible and rigorous than anything that ever happened to me: “After he was Master of Emanuel, his manner was not to suffer any young Scholars to go into the Country to Preach, till he had heard them first in the College Chapel”.

I have blogged before about Thomas Sheafe’s Vindiciae senectutis, or, A plea for old-age. It was most appropriately dedicated to “THE WORTHY AND LIVELY Pattern of a good OLD-AGE, M^r. Doctor CHADERTON, all the blessed comforts of it: and after it, everlasting happiness.”

Among the poems attributed to Cleveland in the 17^th century are many elegies, in Latin or English. Some are about other heads of Cambridge colleges, others are highly political and very angry (Archbishop Laud, and of course, those about the King). Mid-17^th century England was a great time of elegy-writing, as the studies by Dennis Kay and Gary Pigman testify, and Cleveland was for a while the master to follow. Cleveland himself had the dubious pleasure of having elegies written on him during his own healthy lifetime, by elegists who jumped the gun and tried to be witty on the topic of the passing of the reigning ‘monarch of wit’. One ‘J Parry’ wrote verses about ‘The Elegy made upon Mr. John Clevelands Death cry’d i’th’Streets, he being then in good Disposition of Health’ (in the 1687 Works of Cleveland): “He whom the Muses have forbid to die / Durst Ignorance (Arts Enemy) belie, / To rhyme him dead? …” So there’s the faint chance that the lines about everyone expecting Laurence Chaderton to carry on as he always had as long as anyone could remember were suggested by Cleveland having himself been reported dead, and found to be alive.

The elegy was rejected by Brian Morris and Eleanor Withington from the 1967 Clarendon Press edition of Cleveland, on the grounds that it didn’t get reprinted (after its appearance in 1651) in the 1677 text of ‘Cleveland’s genuine poems’. Nor is it ascribed to the satirist in any manuscript, say the editors, but the poem only seems to have been transcribed in one manuscript anyway. I’d like to think Cleveland could turn off the satire and acknowledge some virtue in a puritan. Mainly, I’d like the poem to have an author, so it can be a 17^th century pairing to John Betjeman’s ‘I.M. Walter Ramsden’, another ever-so faintly satirical poem about a revered old college fellow (Betjeman talks about his poem with some anxiety to assert that he meant it sincerely: his metrical innovation of long lines mixed with lines consisting of a single metrical foot (a superb mime of truncation) just sound a bit bouncy, perhaps.

‘I.M. Walter Ramsden ob. March 26, 1947, Pembroke College, Oxford’

Dr Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary to-day,
He’s dead.
Let monographs on silk worms by other people be
Thrown away
Unread
For he who best could understand and criticize them, he
Lies clay
In bed.

The body waits in Pembroke College where the ivy taps the panes
All night;
That old head so full of knowledge, that good heart that kept the brains
All right,
Those old cheeks that faintly flushed as the port suffused the veins,
Drain’d white.

Crocus in the Fellows’ Garden, winter jasmine up the wall
Gleam gold.
Shadows of Victorian chimneys on the sunny grassplot fall
Long, cold.
Master, Bursar, Senior Tutor, these, his three survivors, all
Feel old.

They remember, as the coffin to its final obsequations
Leaves the gates,
Buzz of bees in window boxes on their summer ministrations,
Kitchen din,
Cups and plates,
And the getting of bump suppers for the long-dead generations
Coming in,
From Eights.

My images are from Simon Goulart, The wise old man or A treatise touching the miseries incident both to the bodies and mindes of old men, 1621, and, as Walter Ramsden liked to read them, his own obituary from The Times Thursday, Mar 27, 1947.

“Don’t forget the good old way” … “Nappy Ale both brown and stale”. The ideal Christmas, 1688.

My festive text is an anonymous late 17^th century book of carols A Cabinet of choice jewels, or, The Christians joy and gladness set forth in sundry pleasant new Christmas-carrols, 1688.

That’s the title page woodcut: a nativity scene. The oxen in the byre aren’t bad, but as for the rest of it, well, the artist has hardly risen to the subject, with a very large Mary, and a micro cephalic Christ-child. Perhaps one should not expect much, as this is only the cheapest end of the popular market, and our anonymous author most probably spent the rest of his year turning out ballads. Even so, it’s a dire woodcut: one feels that the Dutch wood block cutters of this era would have been astonished and derisive.

We are in the reign of James II, and there’s a precarious insistence on everyone being loyal, with a kind of rallying cry implied, that England can, despite everything, still be like it was in the old days. That nostalgia for Christmas past is typographically rendered: when he remembers to do so, the compositor puts words like ‘Christmas’ or ‘wassail’ into black letter (along with refrains and Bible names).

The author gets the religious material over quite quickly, with two carols for Christmas Day. They say this kind of thing:

Let Christians now with joyful mirth

Both young and old, yes great and small,

Still think upon our Saviours Birth

Who brought Salvation to us all…

Upon this day let none be found

To practice any idle game,

And though thy mirth do much abound

Yet let it not be so prophane …

He can then turn to his real subject, copious Christmas food and strong drink. The two are often taken together, in that distinctive early modern way of loading foodstuffs into their drink. If you drank small ale all the time as your main liquid intake, the festive versions would be tend to end up as ale spiced, strengthened, and thickened. Noticeable about the carols is that way of demanding ‘wassail’ with mild menaces: loyal addresses to the gentry, and effusive good wishes are extended to them, but apparently on the understanding that now’s the time for the rich folk to divvy up, and let the plain folk in to feast mightily and meatily, and drink ‘bumpers’ (vessels full to the very brim) of strong (‘nappy’) beer, or ‘lamb’s wool’ (“A drink consisting of hot ale mixed with the pulp of roasted apples, and sugared and spiced”). At least that’s what the gentry should do if they want to keep things sweet. That metaphorical turn about laying siege to the roast goose allows talk about ‘fury’ if there’s any resistance or grudging.

We complain annually these days about the Christmas season starting around October in our shops. The early modern Christmas season may have not had the long commercial lead-in, but they did sustain the festive season. My author bids farewell to Christmas at Candlemas day (usually February 2nd).

So, after the religious carols, here’s the author getting down to the important matter for his target readership of songs to elicit seasonal food and drink:

A Carrol for Christmas Day at Night

My Master your Servants

and Neighbours this Night,

Are come to be merry,

with love and delight.

Now therefore be Noble,

and let it appear,

That Christmas is still

the best time of the Year:

To sit by the fire,

rehearse an old tale,

And taste of a bumper

of nappy old Ale.

It flows from the Barley,

that fruit of the Earth,

Which quickens the fancy,

for pastime and mirth;

And therefore be jolly,

now each bonny Lad,

For we have no reason

at all to be sad:

remember the season,

and then you’l ne’er fail,

To bring in a bumper

of nappy brown Ale.

Now some of your dainties,

let us freely taste,

My stomach is ready,

I am now in haste;

And therefore sweet Mistress,

I hope you’ll be brief,

To bring out the Sirloin

or Ribs of Roast Beef;

With other choice dainties,

I hope you’ll not fail,

At this happy season,

with nappy brown Ale.

And now let me tell you

what dainties I prize,

I long to be doing

with curious minc’d pies;

Where plumbs in abundance,

lies crowding for room,

But if I come near it,

I’le tell you its doom;

I’d soon part the quarrel,

But hold, let’s not fail,

To think of a bumper

of nappy brown Ale.

The Pig, Goose and Capon,

I’de like to forgot,

But yet I do hope they’ll

come all to my lot;

We’ll lay a close siege

to the walls of the Goose,

And storm her strong Castle,

there is no excuse

Shall hinder our fury,

therefore let’s not fail,

To have a full bumper

of nappy brown Ale.

All those that are willing

to honour this day,

I hope that they never

will fall to decay;

But always be able,

their Neighbours to give,

And keep a good Table,

as long as they live;

That love, peace and plenty,

with them may ne’er fail,

And we may ne’er miss

of good nappy Ale.

It is rather stridently demanding: detailed and specific about what is wanted, drifting from a collective and festive ‘we’ into the voice of the individual and greedy-sounding food-fantasist. Only ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’, supposedly 16^th century, preserves into our present repertoire of carols that note (‘we won’t go until we’ve got some’).

A clutch of brief carols then carries the revellers towards the main gift-giving day at the New Year. All these saints remind us that a Catholic king was on the throne:

A Carrol for St Stephens Day (December 26^th)

A carrol for St John’s Day (December 27^th)

A Carrol for Innocents Day (‘Tune of, Bloody fate’) (December 28^th)

Then a fuller length ‘A Carrol for New-Years-day’ (‘Tune of, Caper and Jerk it’), full of this kind of sentiment about gift-giving:

“The young men and maids on New Years day,

Their loves they will present,

With many a gift both fine and gay,

Which gives them true content,

And though the gift be great or small,

Yet this is the custom still,

Expressing their loves in Ribbons and Gloves,

It being their kind good will …

Young Batchelors will not spare their coins,

But thus their love is shown,

Yoing Richard will buy a Bodkin fine,

And give it honest Jone…”

Twelfth Night returns us to hectoring the gentry for more supplies of drink: ‘What the House doth now afford / Should be plac’d upon the board’, etc.:

A Carrol for twelfth-Day

(‘Tune of, O mother, Roger’)

Sweet Master of this Habitation,

with my Mistress, be so kind,

As to grant an Invitation,

if we may this favour find:

To be invited in,

Then in mirth we will begin

Many a sweet and pleasant Song,

Which doth to this time belong,

Let every Loyal honest Soul,

Contribute to the Wassail Bowl.

So may you still enjoy the Blessing,

of a loving virtuous Wife,

Riches, honour still possessing,

with a long and happy life;

Living in Prosperity,

Then let Generosity,

Always be maintained I pray,

Don’t forget the good old way,

Let every Loyal honest Soul,

Contribute to the Wassail-bowl.

Before this season is departed,

in your presence we appear,

Therefore be so noble-hearted,

to afford some dainty cheer;

Freely let us have it now,

Since the season doth allow,

What the House doth now afford,

Should be plac’d upon the board,

Whether it be Roast Beef or Fowl,

And liquor well the Wassel-bowl.

For now it is a time of leisure,

then to those that kindness show,

May they have Wealth, peace and pleasure,

and the spring of bounty flow,

To enrich them while they live,

That they may afford to give,

To maintain the good old way,

Many a long and happy day;

Let every Loyal honest soul,

Contribute to the Wassail Bowl.

You worthy are to be commended,

if in this you will not fail,

Now our song is almost ended,

fill our bowl with nappy Ale;

Then we’ll drink a full carouse,

To the Master of the House,

Aye, and to our Mistress dear,

Wishing both a happy Year,

In peace and love without control,

Who brought joy to our wassel-bowl.

By February 2^nd, our author is finally ready to say farewell to Christmas. That’s quite a spell on the lash. ‘Nappy Ale both brown and stale’ does rather capture this fag-end of the revels, a dogged effort by faded celebrants to down every drop.

A Carrol for Candlemas-Day

Now Candlemas is come at last,

therefore my dearest friend,

Since Christmas time is almost past,

I mean to an end

Of this our mirth and merriment,

and now the truth to tell,

He must be m our presence sent,

O Christmas now farewell.

Now Christmas will no longer stay,

my very heart doth grieve,

Before from us he take his way,

of him I’ll take my leave:

It is a time none of the least,

as I the truth may tell,

For him we’ll make a worthy Feast,

Then Christmas now farewell.

I do declare as I am true,

I’ll love him while I die,

I’ll call my Friends and Neighbours too,

to keep him company:

With nappy Ale and dainty Cheer,

our grief we will expel;

And Christmas while another year,

We’ll bid thee now farewell.

To make our joys the more complete,

we court the charming bowl,

In Merriment and music sweet,

let e’ry loyal soul

Drink off his glass, and let it pass,

in mirth we will excel,

In sweet delight we’ll spend the night,

Then Christmas now farewell.

With nappy Ale both brown and stale,

we’ll fill our Bumpers full;

And pippins too, as I am true.

they make the best Lambs wool:

So fast and smooth it will go down,

They sorrow to expel,

And then as last, when all is past,

Christmas we’ll bid farewell.

Earlier in the century, Robert Herrick was the verse-anthropologist or sociologist of all these customs: the bad luck of keeping up Christmas trimmings after Candlemas, the Christmas brand burned again, and then extinguished to be used to kindle the fire next Christmas.

Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve.

Down with the Rosemary and Bays,
Down with the Mistletoe;
In stead of Holly, now up-raise
The greener Box (for show.)

The Holly hitherto did sway;
Let Box now domineer;
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easters Eve appear.

Then youthful Box which now hath grace,
Your houses to renew;
Grown old, surrender must his place,
Unto the crisped Yew.

When Yew is out, then Birch comes in,
And many Flowers beside;
Both of a fresh, and fragrant kin
To honour Whitsontide.

Green Rushes then, and sweetest Bents,
With cooler Oaken boughs;
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.

The Ceremonies for Candlemas day.

Kindle the Christmas Brand and then
Till Sun-set, let it burn;
Which quenched, then lay it up agen,
Till Christmas next return.

Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas Log next year;
And where 'tis safely 'kept, the Fiend,
Can do no mischief (there.)

Upon Candlemas day.

End now the White-loaf, & the Pie,
And let all sports with Christmas dye.

Herrick’s two wassail poems are far more alive to the grateful tour of all the food-production sites of the parish, with libations to secure another year of the same, and less anxious than the anonymous writer to bully a good welcome for the wassailers. In his poem, they take offence at not having been given the expected drink, and leave with an expression of certainty that the inhospitable household shall come to know dearth:

The Wassail.

1. Give way, give way ye Gates, and win
An easy blessing to your Bin,
And Basket, by our entering in.

2. May both with manchet stand replete;
Your Larders too so hung with meat,
That though a thousand, thousand eat;

3.Yet, ere twelve Moons shall whirl about
Their silv'rie Spheres, ther’s none may doubt,
But more’s sent in, then was serv’d out.

4. Next, may your Dairies Prosper so,
As that your pans no Ebb may know;
But if they do, the more to flow.

5. Like to a solemn sober Stream
Banked all with Lillies, and the Cream
Of sweetest Cow-slips filling Them.

6. Then, may your Plants be pressed with Fruit,
Nor Bee, or Hive you have be mute;
But sweetly sounding like a Lute.

7. Next may your Duck and teeming Hen
Both to the Cocks-tread say Amen;
And for their two eggs render ten.

8. Last, may your Harrows, Shares and Ploughs,
Your Stacks, your Stocks, your sweetest Mows,
All prosper by your Virgin-vows.

9. Alas! we bless, but see none here,
That brings us either Ale or Beer;
In a dry-house all things are near.

10. Let's leave a longer time to wait,
Where Rust and Cobwebs bind the gate;
And all live here with needy Fate.

11. Where Chimneys do for ever weep,
For want of warmth, and Stomachs keep
With noise, the servants eyes from sleep.

12. It is in vain to sing, or stay
Our free-feet here; but we'll away:
Yet to the Lares this we'll say,

13. The time will come, when you’ll be sad,
And reckon this for fortune bad,
T’have lost the good ye might have had.

A monumental henosis

This is the attractive wall monument in Romsey Abbey, Hampshire, to John St Barbe and his wife Grissell. (‘Griselda’, for here’s a 17^th century Englishwoman whose name testifies that the martyrdom in matrimony suffered by ‘Patient Griselda’ was still considered a suitable reference and example). Everyone looks somewhat alike on the monument: John is Grissell with a wispy Cavalier moustache and tuft, the boys below look like two pairs of twins – which they may have been, of course.

But the monument does so much with symmetry that whoever penned the epitaph attempted, with some success, a symmetrical poem for this symmetrical couple.

I have been puzzling over how best to read the interlaced verses on the monument. Read strictly left to right and then downwards, in the normal fashion of eye movement across a text, it is mainly a jumble that strongly suggests that you have to do something else:

Earth’s Rich in Mines of Precious Dust

Whom Nature Wedlock Grace did tie

And faithfull ones

Since in her Bowels rest these Just

In one fast Chain of unity

Whose silent bones

Dead here do Rest yet Left not Earth

Because such Righteous & theire seed

In fame & state

But brought fower sonns to Perfect Birth

Shall Florish here and shall in Deed

Tryumph o’re fate

It goes a bit better if, after a long line on the left, you dip to the short central line beneath, and then rise to the long line on the right:

Earth’s Rich in Mines of Precious Dust

And faithfull ones

Whom Nature Wedlock Grace did tie

Since in her Bowels rest these Just

Whose silent bones

In one fast Chain of unity

Dead here do Rest yet Left not Earth

In fame & state

Because such Righteous & theire seed

But brought fower sonns to Perfect Birth

Tryumph o’re fate

Shall Florish here and shall in Deed

If you think of the verses as corresponding to his left side of the monument, and her right side, then you can read just down the left and centre to produce the verses for John St Barbe (I editorialise a little):

Earth’s Rich in Mines of Precious Dust

And faithful ones

Since in her Bowels rest these Just

Whose silent bones

Dead here do Rest yet Left not Earth

In fame & state

But brought four sons to Perfect Birth:

Triumph o’re Fate!

It doesn’t work at all for a composite of centre lines and Grissell’s right hand side. One might say that is as you’d expect: that it makes sense from the man’s side, no sense at all from the woman’s.

I tried to produce an optimum text in which the reading eye jiggles up and down. I am now editing the verses more heavily still, and introducing a repetition for effect:

Earth’s rich in mines of precious dust

and faithful ones

Since in her bowels rest these Just

whom Nature, Wedlock, Grace did tie

in one fast chain of unity.

Whose silent bones

Dead here do rest, yet left not Earth

but brought four sons to perfect birth

shall flourish here and shall indeed

in fame & state

Triumph o’re Fate:

Because such righteous & their seed

Triumph o’re Fate!

I suppose that the poet wanted you to do something like this, and the point of the poem wasn’t so much sequential sense as an interlacing that paid tribute to two lives lived as one flesh, so we have two poems as one poem.

He (or she) then produced an interlacing of two into one in an anagram that is fairly strict by the generally loose 17^th century standards. Again, as a product from their two names, the poet produces an idea of unity, them both partaking equally of glory. I think there’s an A left over from the names, an E from the anagram.

All this reminded me of George Herbert’s poem, ‘The Watercourse’, in that it’s a poem you can’t actually read out loud, but which exists for the eye, as we take in visually those alternatives which can’t be simultaneously pronounced, but which are the rhyme, ‘life’ and ‘strife’, ‘salvation’ and ‘damnation’.

The St Barbe family were Hampshire gentry, perhaps originally from Somerset, but living at Broadlands. How the married couple came to be buried on the same day (2^nd Sept 1658) is a minor mystery. Smallpox might have done for them both.

'O, Mr Carter, what shall I do?' The worthy life of John Carter 1554-1635

After another term in which work made it impossible for me to add to my blog here, I finally return to ‘Early Modern Whale’.

Here’s a work of filial and religious piety to start off again with, THE TOMB-STONE, OR, A broken and imperfect Monument, of that Worthy Man (who was just and perfect in his Generations;) M^r. JOHN CARTER, Pastor first of Bramford, and last of Belsted in SUFFOLK.BY His unworthy Son JOHN CARTER, Preacher of the Gospell, and as yet sojourning in the City of NORWICH.

When I came across this one, I was actually thinking about a post on the centenarian puritan divine Laurence Chaderton (which will follow one day), an associate of Carter. But this memoir by the younger Carter struck me as so unusually intimate, giving us a real sense of what it might have been like to live with one who was genuinely ‘godly’. John Carter senior was a credit to his faith, egalitarian and charitable. His son’s effort to memorialize his father has such sense of godly community that at the end of his account he had this printed: “I leave these ensuing Pages vacant, that so as thou remembrest any of his holy sayings, and doings, not mentioned before, thou mayst write them down, for thine own benefit, and the good of others.” It would be fascinating to come across a copy with reader annotations, like a pious version of the descriptions Sterne invites of the reader’s ideal Widow Wadman.

Carter was born “about the year of our Lord 1554”, near Canterbury (one notices that even his son isn’t sure of the exact date – how often we partly confirm our identities to banks and the like with recital of a date of birth, and how little they cared!). A wealthy citizen funded his education in Cambridge, where he was a member of a very elite seminar (we’d call it): “all that while he continued a gremial in the bosom, and Lap of his Mother the University, he had constant meetings with divers of his famous contemporaries, and that weekly: Doctor Chaderton, Doctor Andrews (afterwards a Prelate) Master Culverwell, Master Knewstubs, &c. and divers others, whom God raised up, and fitted to send forth into his Harvest, to gather his Corn, then ripe for the Sickle, into his Barne. At their meetings they had constant exercises. They prayed together: they bent themselves to the study of the Scriptures: one was for the original Tongues, another’s task was the Grammatical interpretations; another for the Logical Analysis: another for the true sense, and meaning: another to gather Doctrines. Thus led they their several employments”.

A ‘gremial’ is a ‘resident member’. That’s quite clearly a hostile note about Lancelot Andrewes becoming a bishop. Carter’s son, preacher himself, evidently takes some pride that his father “was always a Nonconformist, one of the good old Puritans of England. He never swallowed any of the Praelatical Ceremonies against his Conscience. He was often in trouble by the Bishops; but God ever raised him up friends that brought him off.”

As pastor of Bramford, “Every Lord’s day [Carter] preached twice very powerfully, and catechised the younger sort. He preached a Lecture every Thursday; to which multitudes from Ipswich and other adjacent places did resort.” When obliged to shift parish to Belsted, Carter carried on as though he was still serving the larger parish: “His Church at Belsted stood in a very solitary place: He always kept a Key of it, and would often resort thither all alone. A Gentleman once espying him going to the Church-ward on a private day, hid himself till my Father was past, and in the Church; then he came close up to the Church wall, desirous to peep in at some Window to see what he did, and to listen him, if he said any thing. And the Gentleman told me … that he prayed, then read a Chapter, and after that prayed largely, and very heavenly, as if he had been in his Family, or in the public Congregation.”

It is what the son tells us about his father’s daily life that is more striking. It was of course a very devout household: “his house was a Church. Twice a day he had Scripture read, and after the Psalm or Chapter were ended, he would ask of all his Children and Servants, what they remembered; and whatsoever sentences they rehearsed, he would speak something to them that tended to edification.”

Carter starts his account with a remark that his father’s “lively voice … cannot be recalled”. It was clearly a voice that dominated his upbringing. His father’s private prayers were deliberately loud, pour encourager les autres:

“Besides his Family prayers, and duties, he prayed constantly in his Closet, whensoever he went into his study, and before he came out to Dinner or Supper. He prayed very loud, and mostly very long. For the extension of his voice (I conjecture) he had a double reason; one, that by his earnest speech he might quicken up his own heart and devotion: the other, that he might be a pattern of secret prayer to his Children and Servants.”

John Carter senior gradually comes to life for us as we learn the little things: his clothes he wore, the even tenor of his married life, how he ate:

“For his habit, and my dear Mother’s apparrelling, it was very plain, and homely; of the old fashion, yet very cleanly and decent; insomuch that all that came to the house would say, they had seen Adam and Eve, or some of the old Patriarchs.

“He and my Mother were married together well-nigh sixty years; and I am confident in all that time, there never was a distasteful word between them. And indeed, how could there be? He lived with her as a man of knowledge; he was a wise, faithful, and tender guide; and she was humble and meek, did reverence, and highly esteem him: Every word he spake was an Oracle to her, and her will ever closed with his Judgment.”

“In all his House there was nothing but honest plainness … He never used Plate in his house, but Vessels of Wood, and Earth: Pewter and Brass were the highest Metals for his utensils. All the days of his housekeeping he used constantly at his Table a little wooden Salt, which with age was grown to be of a duskish black, which was much taken notice of by all comers.”

“He never feasted, but always had wholesome, full, and liberal diet in the house. And all fared alike: He, and my Mother, never thought his Children, and Servants, and poor folks, did eat enough.” (Carter adds later that his father in fact fasted regularly, just taking on those days toast and beer ‘to sustain nature.’)

Old Carter treated his servants as friends, and his son almost finds a fault in just how egalitarian his father was: “if he failed in any thing, it was in his carriage to his Servants; for truly he did not carry himself as a Master to Servants, but as a familiar friend to his friends. He would make them to sit down with him, and drink to them at meat … On the Sabbath day he never had any thing roast to Dinner, because he would have none detained at home from the public Ordinances. The Pot was hung on, and a piece of Beef and a Pudding in it; that was their constant Lords-day Dinner for well-nigh sixty years.”

Carter senior was charitable in ways that puritans are sometimes supposed not to be: “He never went to the house of a poor creature, but he left a Purse-Alms, as well as a spiritual Alms of good Heavenly advice, and Prayer.” Nor did he exercise a lordly dominion over the rest of creation: “The righteous man is merciful to his Beast: he was careful even for the brute Creatures, that they should be fed to the full. All his Cattle were like the first Kine that Pharoah saw feeding in the Meadow, they were fat-fleshed, and well-favoured; in so much that I have heard some godly people say merrily, If they would be a Cow, or a Horse, or a Hog, or a Dog, they would choose Mr. Carters house.”

The local people (besides their jocular wishes to be as well-treated as Old Carter’s livestock) knew that their pastor was a life-long specialist on the Book of Revelations (“His pains in the study of the Revelation were indefatigable”, says his son), and, assuming - as 17^th century protestants would do - that the book foretold their times, consulted him about what his studies led him to deduce:

“When others came to him, and pressed him with importunity, to tell them his judgement concerning the future state of the Church; saying to him, That he had traveled much in the Revelation, and they were persuaded, God had revealed something more then ordinary to him: What do you think? Shall we have Popery once again, or no? He answered, You shall not need to fear fire and faggot any more, but such dreadful divisions will be amongst Gods people, and professors, as will equalize the greatest persecutions.”

Carter junior gives other examples of the distressed coming to him for advice (“O Mr. Carter! what shall I do?”): it usually came down to him urging them to pray, and of course joining them in prayers.

The habit of prayer became obsessive with the old man. In his last days, as he became mentally confused at last, he would ask his daughter, who was by then his housekeeper, “shall we not go to Prayer? and when she should answer him, you have been at Prayer already, and you are weary; he would answer, I fear we have not done what we should do.” He had invested so much in prayer: there’s a tremor of anxiety there that his account nevertheless needed topping up. Old John Carter died on a Sunday morning, February 22^nd, 1635 (new style). He was unable to eat his usual frugal Sunday breakfast, an egg. He had written his sermon for the day, but realized that he could not manage to get to church. His daughter helped him into bed: laid his head down, then lifted one leg in, but discovered when she went to lift up the other leg up and into the bed, that her father had that instant passed away.

His son describes his own experiences after being summoned (it’s a very moving account):

“He had given order before he died, that his body should not be put in the Coffin till his Son John came. God carried me through the journey in hard weather: and through his good providence, I arrived at Belsted early on the Tuesday. And going to the house of mourning, I found the body of my deceased Father still lying upon the Bed. They uncovered his face: Sweetly he lay, and with a smiling countenance, and no difference to the eye between his countenance alive and dead, save only that he was wont to rejoice and bless me at my approach, now he was silent. I fell upon his face, I confess, and kissed him, and lift up my voice and wept, and so took my last leave of him, till we meet in a better World.”

The funeral was an occasion restrained by the dead man’s own scrupulousness: “Old Mr. Samuel Ward, that famous Divine, and the glory of Ipswich, came to the Funeral, brought a mourning Gown with him, and offered very respectively to Preach his funeral Sermon, now that such a Congregation were gathered together, and upon such an occasion. But my Sister and I durst not give way to it: For so our Father had often charged us in his life time, and upon his blessing, that no Sermon should be at his burial. ‘For’, said he, ‘it will give occasion to speak some good of me that I deserve not, and so false things will be uttered in the Pulpit’.

My image is a page from John Carter senior’s Winter-evenings communication with young novices in religion. Or Questions and answers about certaine chiefe grounds of Christian religion wherein every answer, rightly understood, hath the force of an oracle of God (1628). The title one imagines quite typical: when he cannot himself get out to talk to his younger parishioners, they can look at his little book. There's maybe a touch of the old man’s humour too: none of the answers are ‘his’ answers at all, every answer is in fact a bible text. My image is the section he gives to ‘Good Works’: he was clearly quite certain that they had to be performed. And, as we hear, his put his theory (supposedly uncharacteristic of a Puritan) continually into practice.