Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

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"Vitam si liceat mihi
Formare arbitriis meis:
Non fasces cupiam aut opes,
Non clarus niveis equis
Captiva agmina traxerim.
In solis habitem locis,
Hortos possideam atque agros,
Illic ad strepitus aquae
Musarum studiis fruar.
Sic cum fata mihi ultima
Pernerit Lachesis mea;
Tranquillus moriar senex."

And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a
period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old
English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal
captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor
prison,--

"the hymnis consecrat
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
That all the gardens and the wallis rung."

And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of
Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green
y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled
so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very
spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"

"plucked up his plowe
Whan midsomer mone was comen in
And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,
And honged his harnis on a pinne,
And said his beasts should ete enowe
And lie in grasse up to the chin."

But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry
(even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down
in grass of that height.

* * * * *

Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British
husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,--a certain
"Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among
them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British
farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has
the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord
Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early
experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the
legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had
not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.

I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I
have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of
that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a
Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of
graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than
the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter
on "graffynge"?

Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts,
among other headings of discourse, the following:--

"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."

"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."

"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."

"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."

"To bye lean cattel."

"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."

"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."

(_seq._) "To kepe measure in spendynge."

"What be God's commandments."

By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of
husbandry as did Xenophon.

Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve"
he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any
horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his
own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture
uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his
grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth
anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables
& wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at
nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For
this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot
wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."

Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be
encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was
expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.

"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte,
wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe
her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough,
to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell
butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al
maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging
to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what
she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to
market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke
maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he
disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be
true ether to other."

* * * * *

I come next to Master Tusser,--poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond,
happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:--

"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive;
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."

I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all
poetically inclined farmers.

He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good
voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford
College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after
impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for
some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four
stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had
some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go
up to London, where he remained some ten years,--possibly as
singer,--but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and
commenced as farmer in Suffolk,--

"To moil and to toil
With loss and pain, to little gain,
To cram Sir Knave";--

from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy
resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no
better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at
Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his
landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and
commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in
Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by
collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,--

"I spyed, if parson died,
(All hope in vain,) to hope for gain
I might go dance."

Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and
after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague,
we find him returned to London, to die,--where he was buried in the
Poultry.

There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good
sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely
safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such
capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all
the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The
instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of
acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for
successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet
even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated
hens.

What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire
resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count
his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us
of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly
impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us
strongly suspect that he deserved it all.

Fuller, in his "Worthies," says Tusser "spread his bread with all sorts
of butter, yet none would stick thereon." In short, though the poet
wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of
farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping,
and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring
mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant.
I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted
poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too
porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking
life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a
rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and
looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:--

"To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,
But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,
What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
(To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"

* * * * *

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of
English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is
elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two
estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an
enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries,
corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful
experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and
peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the
wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any
exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am
content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe
any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their
better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now
almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these
wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new
wine in France."

[Footnote 7: Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according
to Johnson, as late as 1606.]

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the
speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that
"delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by
a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had
gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or
couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then
with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by
witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew
both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect
cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he
remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full
maturities."

These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work,
entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates,
in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new
matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth,
moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust,
soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends
him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers,
is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."[8]

[Footnote 8: This is not mentioned either by Felton in his _Portraits_,
etc., or by Johnson in his _History of Gardening_. Donaldson gives the
title, and the headings of the chapters.]

In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which,
notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century[9] as a
new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively
in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of
Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and
improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed,
proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before
unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy
of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh,
in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the
corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the
new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes
and covering the grain.

[Footnote 9: See Young, _Annals of Agriculture_, Vol. III. p. 219, _et
seq._]

I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by
giving his own _envoi_ to the most considerable of his books:--"Thus,
gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and
laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary
conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by
the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of
Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without
her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some
encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee
to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature
proceedeth."

* * * * *

Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that
Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on "Soyles"; for, in 1591, he
had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in
behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors
current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which
weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I
suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about
the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote
books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost
every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books,
or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a
promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of
July, 1617:--

"I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to
write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of
any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In
witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.

"GERVIS MARKHAM."

He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one
who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the "Maison
Rustique" of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two
poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but
he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to
practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging,
compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received.
His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were
doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent
sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of
infirmities.

I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that
acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the "Country Housewife." In this
book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the
details of a "humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep
in his family."

"As thus:--first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd
capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef
rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted;
seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan
rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted;
twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the
belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the
sixteenth, a custard or dowsets."

This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment
of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about "Country
Contentments"?

* * * * *

My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all
the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of
English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The
mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them,
where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture
to my mind.

I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his
Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down
at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays,
which Sir Hugh must know,--in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens,
as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence,
Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been
brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is
making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day
to his friend, the French Ambassador.

I can fancy Gervase Markham "making a night of it" with those rollicking
bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the "Mermaid," or going with them
to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will
Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,--the latter taking the part of
Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His
friends say that this Will has parts.

Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to
thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward,
for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir
Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his
knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious "Arcadia,"
which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read
everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his
generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through
him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by
the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra
hills of Ireland.

And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that "shepherd of the sea,"
visited the poet, and found him seated

"amongst the coolly shade
Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore."

Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the
introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco?
Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or
upon the probable "clip" of the year?

Nothing of this; but

"He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd:
By chaunge of tunes each making other merry."

The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have
a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do
not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a
good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels
burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his
Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the
ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last
time,--

"bright with many a curl
That clustered round her head."

I wish I could love his "Shepherd's Calendar"; but I cannot. Abounding
art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be;
but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes,
no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no
sky-piercing falcon.

And as for the "Faery Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read
far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties.
It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,--with tender winds blowing over
it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast
that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from
its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming
curlew.

In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest--as we
farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil
that lifts heavily.

And so I leave the matter,--with the "Faery Queene" in my thought, and
leaning on my spade.

* * * * *

CIVIC BANQUETS.

It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to
reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the
earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to
believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the
immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during
which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not
an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of
dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest
characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened
itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with
Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and
ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less
complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.
Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which
his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to
conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for
the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was
of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a
delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents
the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at
Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only
because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more
acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English
taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and
poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately
implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though
still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of
virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in
midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which,
elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges
of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a
kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon
the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such
reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty
years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost
the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of
his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too
much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At
any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and
our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a
happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there
had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the
master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,
a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,
vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to
recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set
of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special
fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only
eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by
the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a
little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle,
delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most
exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through
which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was
worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,--the
production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
taste,--the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening
for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with
wine,--must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other
beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill
Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach,
is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch
of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the
guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our
part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find
it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.

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