My father asked: “Is that not the same Goodwin who made a public protest two years ago, against Archbishop Laud’s canons?”
“That is the man,” answered my husband, “who is also learned in Hebrew antiquities and esteemed the best preacher in the City. Alderman Pennington, Member of Parliament and Colonel of the White Regiment, is his parishioner and friend, and another is the mother of Mr. John Hampden, M.P.”
“Why, then,” my father replied, “I think that I shall take my family to St. Botolph’s, for I confess that I am myself a rank Prelatist.”
The service at St. Stephen’s differed in many points from that to which I was wont; but what struck me with the most force was the demeanour of the congregation. At Forest Hill our people bustled into the Church with as little ceremony as into an inn, calling cheerful greetings across the nave and eating bread and butter; some women knitted stockings and some men had dogs at their feet, and bottles of beer went thick from mouth to mouth; and all this was done in the eye of my father and the curate. Once in poor Fulker’s time there was a rat chased in sermon-time, which was done to death in the corner by the font; and even Woodman Luke had not altogether subdued the people’s boisterous ways. But here the congregation entered the Church with fear and trembling and trod delicately down the alley between the pews and sat stock still until the preacher entered; yet I marvelled that the men kept their hats upon their heads during the singing of the psalms, and afterwards the sacrament was taken sitting, not kneeling.
The Reverend Goodwin was a vigorous yet calm person with a cannon-ball head bound in a tight skull cap, and a scornful nose. In his sermon he did not rant and rage or strive to excite his congregation by pounding and drumming on his pulpit-ledge, as (I believe) did most of his fellow preachers; nor did he split his text like Woodman Luke, but, as he himself confessed to us, he held that the care of a true orator should not be to cajole his listeners to believe him by any artifice or ornament, but simply to convey to them those arguments by which they would be persuaded.
He preached upon the text: “Oh, what a joyful thing it is, Brethren, to dwell together in unity!” and enlarged upon the word “unity.” Unity, said he, could not be brought about unless the whole congregation took thought together as one man, rejecting from among them any who was of a heterodox or schismatic mind. He made a comparison between a congregation and a company of soldiers; showing how needful a thing it was for each soldier to observe his exact station in the ranks and to keep his due distance, and to be distinguished by the same badge or coat as his fellows and, when the Captain gave an order to move to the right, for none perversely to turn about to the left. He praised the behaviour of the Scots in the Bishops’ War, whose discipline had proved what power the English soldiers too could achieve upon the field of battle if they wished, being (man against man) the equals of the Scots in any enterprise. Yet such a unity, he held, must be a willing and natural unity, not a uniformity forced upon his flock by fear of punishment. He would punish no man because he could not stretch his conscience to worship in this parish church or that; but, if reason and kindness failed to restore him, then the man should be given leave to depart and mend his conscience in another. And he would be so bold as to suggest that within the Church of England, toleration of small, though very-very small, differences of opinion might wisely be allowed between the several congregations; as in an Army some regiments wore blue favours, some white, some red, some purple, but all fought together as brothers under the same Captain-General and agreed in the same general Covenant.
This was a very daring speech for those Presbyterial days; and my husband was not altogether pleased with it, arguing that Toleration might become so great an evil as Tyranny, and give licence to the Devil to spawn an innumerable of sects, each presumptuously hugging to itself some trivial and absurd article of difference. However, he changed his mind a year or two later, as will appear, when the boot of uniformity had galled his heel.
Place had been found for us to sit close under the pulpit and, hearing a stir behind me so soon as the text was named, and glancing over my shoulder, I could not but think it ludicrous how the whole congregation leaned forward and, every man and woman, cupped their hands behind their ears under pretence of hearing the better; which, since most of the men wore their hair short and the women confined theirs under plain hats, gave them a ridiculous bat-like appearance, the ears showing so large that it put me in mind of the Island Arucetto (written of by Purchas in his Pilgrim) where there are men and women having ears of such extraordinary bigness that they lie upon one as upon a bed and cover themselves with the other as with a blanket.
That evening my father conversed with my husband, enquiring of him what course of instruction in Latin he gave Johnny and Ned, for he doubted whether the Reverend Proctor, under whose instruction his own boys were now, had chosen their authors well. My husband answered that, so soon as the boys had gone through Lilly’s Grammar and could read a little Latin, they should be set to study the four great ancient writers upon Agriculture, namely Cato, Varro, Palladius and Columella; and then the use of globes and maps; and presently they might read Vitruvius upon Architecture, Mela upon Geography, Geminus (Latinized) upon Astrology, Celsus upon Medicine, Pliny upon Natural History—
“Hold hard, Son,” cried my father. “Cato, Varro and Columella were well enough in their own time and place; but England is not Italy, being of a climate more chill and moist by far. If my sons were to follow such antique directions as these authors give, I could not expect that the annual yield of my Oxfordshire lands would be large. If they must read writers upon agriculture, I would have them read such modern English writers as Gervase Markham and Leonard Mascall, and then they would have the less to unlearn. As for Mela, the New World would have been news indeed to him; and were Geminus living he would call Galileo a mad paradoxist or pitiful jester; and Celsus would shudder to hear from our Dr. Harvey so monstrous a truth as that the blood circulates in the body against the fixed laws that the ancients assigned to it. Why should my sons not study Cicero and Sallust and Livy, even as I did?”
To which my husband replied only: “What you term Dr. Harvey’s truth is but a wild speculation, unconfirmed as yet by experimental proof; and though I would not forbid enlightened modern comment upon Columella, where Columella nods, yet I would not call in such lewd drummers as Markham and Mascall to awaken him; and though the excellent Galileo, lately deceased, whose acquaintance I enjoyed in my visit to Italy, made notable discoveries with optic glasses of his own contrivance, yet he spoke wildly when, forgetting the scripture (how the foundations of the Earth are planted so sure that they cannot be moved), he asserted the Earth to be a mere satellite of the Sun. But enough: I cannot permit myself to argue a case with a disputant who knits together so wretched a tissue of error and half-truth; only, this I will say, that if you know better than either your curate or myself what Latin authors are proper for your boys to study, why then, go your own way about it, for it is no concern of mine!”
My father asked his pardon, and would have redargued the question; but my husband took a book from the shelf and studied it with so bold an ostentation of interest that he forbore. Then, to cast a bridge over an awkward piece of water, my father-in-law went to a cabinet and unlocked it with ceremony and pulled out a gold medal and chain which he asked us to admire, and which we passed from hand to hand. They were presented to him by a Polander, a Prince, at whose desire he had composed a great piece of sacred music, an In Nomine, in forty parts. “This is but an ostentatious trifle, though of fine gold,” said he. “I am happier by far in the thought that when my frame corrupts, the music that I have made will sing on for a great while longer.”
There were many other skirmishes between my husband and my family, yet neither side wished for open battle, and old Mr. Milton usually mediated with a laugh or a worn homely jest. Thus my father and mother were able to take their leave, when the week was over, with professions of gratitude and good-will. My moth
er called me to her before she went away, and “Dear Child,” said she, “from the bottom of my heart I pity you that you have so ungracious a husband. But do not let him crush your spirit; stand up for yourself boldly, and give him nothing in return for nothing, and mighty little for his pennyworth. Certain it is that he dotes upon your beauty, which if you use prudently, I believe that you can make him almost your toad-eater. Doubtless in our company he is ashamed to show his fawning affection for you; but when we are gone I warrant you he will go on his belly along the ground to win the smallest favour from you that you choose to withhold.”
However, I knew better than to believe this, and it was with a heavy heart that I said good-bye to her and to the rest of my family.
Now that the household could resume its customary course, with old Mr. Milton back in his own bed-chamber, of which my parents had dispossessed him, the diet altered. Bread, cheese, butter, honey and garden stuff, with small beer or water, and a flesh-meal but every second day, and neither pastries nor pies, neither jellies nor junkets, nor any tasty fricassees—such was the rule in Aldersgate Street. My husband was not a small eater, but he ate whatever was set before him, indiscriminately, without seeming to taste of it, and never stayed long at a table unless to dispute or discourse. Jane Yates, though she swept and scrubbed with almost a religious fury, was a wretched kitchen manager. She spoilt the peas and cabbages and cauliflowers by her cooking of them and brought home lean, stringy meat from the butcher’s stall, which some days stank so ill that neither Trunco nor I could stomach her stew. However, my husband swallowed the mess down voraciously, having a book propped before him as he ate, which he annotated with a pencil of black lead; and the two boys and the old gentleman stood too deep in awe of him and of Jane Yates to question that it was not the choicest meat that Smithfield could provide.
When I told my husband, a few days after my parents’ departure, that I was willing to take over the management of the household from Jane, and would try to please him by a variation of our diet, he told me that he was content with things as they were. He was no belly-slave, he said, and I must neither waste time unprofitably nor put him to unnecessary charges, nor yet pervert the taste of his pupils, by introducing into the house a greater luxuriousness of living than had hitherto sufficed to keep them in health and well-being. He told me at the same time that Jane Yates had complained to him of Trunco, that she was a loose-mouthed, ill-natured, idle, contentious, ignorant country woman, not worthy of her hire; and warned me to wean myself of Trunco’s company, since he had the same opinion of her as Jane Yates, and to remember that Trunco was a servant and without breeding. He said that, because of the undertaking made to my parents, he would not turn her away yet, if she would accept the place and wage of the little cook-wench (whom he had that day dismissed) and he at night on straw in the kitchen.
I grew indignant, declaring that Trunco was almost more a friend than a servant, that she wanted not breeding and was a skilled stilling-room maid, and that though, for the love she bore me, she would not herself make any complaint if she were degraded to be a cook-wench and lie upon straw, yet I felt in honour bound to speak up and demand more honourable treatment for her.
“We have no stilling-room here,” he said, “in this modest suburban home of ours, and therefore your Trunco cannot be a stilling-room maid. You are neither so rich and curious in your dress nor (I hope) so idle in your ways as to need the services of a tire-woman; wherefore, since I abhor idle hands, either she must be cook-wench or else she must depart. I am master here.”
I remembered my mother’s advice and answered: “Aye, husband, you are Jane Yates’s master, but I am Trunco’s mistress and I am resolved on her honourable treatment.”
He laughed at me with a show of pleasantness. “That would be a generous and laudable sentiment,” he said, “were it you who found her in victuals and paid her wages.”
“I would rather sell my few brooches and rings,” said I, “than make Trunco subservient to your old woman, who must herself be of a nasty, contentious nature to go with tales to you against her.”
“Jane Yates,” said he composedly, “is a very faithful and devoted servant to me. When I was a schoolboy, going every day to St. Paul’s School, and sat up with my books until past midnight, it was Jane who sat up for me and had a cup of warm milk ready against I went to bed, and a warming-pan for the cold sheets. I will not suffer her to be abused.”
“Your faithful Jane has abused my dear Trunco, whom I love,” said I stubbornly. “If one of the two must rule the other and sleep on a flock mattress in the garret, then Trunco is the more proper woman. At least she is not buffle-head enough to go to market and bring back a fore-rib of abominationly stinking beef; or to spoil a pair of good cauliflowers by leaving them too long in the water and stinting the salt. And she would have been at pains to pick out the fat, green caterpillars—”
He smiled at me, being resolved that day not to let me force him out of his good humour. “You take too much upon yourself, my dear,” he said, “and so forget yourself.”
“I must ask your pardon,” said I, “if I have spoken hastily; but this I will say, without fear of contradiction, that at Forest Hill, if ever a meal had been served as to-day’s was, my mother would have cast it at the cook’s head.”
“I do not doubt it,” he said. “Your mother is a very conceited and passionate woman.”
At this I burst out weeping, and ran up the dark stairs to our chamber. My husband did not follow, either to comfort or chide me, but sent for Trunco at once and told her of the choice before her; whereupon the good-natured woman vowed that it was all one to her whether she sewed cushions or beat hemp, so long as she might continue in the same house with me. She undertook to yield her fellow-servant perfect obedience. “And as for sleeping on straw,” said she, “with a good conscience one woman sleeps as sweetly upon straw as another upon down; and as for the wages, Master, you may pay me what you please.”
When I came downstairs again, having, in the dark, washed my eyes and composed my spirit, I found my husband reading a treatise on Divinity. I did not disturb him, but took up another book and began to read it; it was Britannia’s Pastorals, by William Browne, which choice he noddingly approved. My husband had some time before written notes in the margins of this book, and I laughed to myself when I saw what verses of old Browne’s had caught his fancy. He had written in one place “A beautiful virgin undressing herself.” This was set against the verses:
And as a lovely maiden, pure and chaste,
With naked ivory neck and gown unlaced,
Within her chamber, when the day is fled,
Makes poor her garments to enrich her bed:
First puts she off her lily-silken gown,
That shrieks for sorrow as she lays it down, etc., etc.
(“Heigh-ho!” I sighed). And against other verses stood such pithy sentiments as these: “Poets live for ever,” and “Good Poets are envied, yet in spite of envy get immortal praise,” and “Men strive to get fair Mistresses,” and “The Miseries of those that marry for beauty,” and “All are born for love.” But the clearest mirror of his mind was his “Very beautiful” written over against the lines concerning a shepherd asleep:
His arms a cross, his sheep-hook lay beside him;
Had Venus passed this way and chanced to have spied him,
With open breast, locks on his shoulders spread,
She would have sworn (had she not seen him dead)
It was Adonis. Or, if e’er there was
Held transmigration, by Pythagoras,
Of souls, that certain then her lost love’s spirit,
A fairer body never could inherit.
(Heigh-ho, again, for his fruitless journey to Italy! Had he thought to meet there with Venus herself?)
When he had read to the end of a chapter in his book, he addressed me, telling me that Trunco had consented to serve as his cook-wench at a yearly wage of £15s., but hoped that she would not
make trouble in the house. “And,” says he, “if she prove to be an honest and capable woman I undertake, when your father shall have paid the marriage portion promised me, to give her as much as £115s. per annum.”
I cried: “Was there indeed a marriage portion promised? It was not a large one, I hope, for my father is not of a great fortune and has many charges upon his estate.”
“Nay,” said he, “not so handsome as I had expected; indeed, no more than £1,000. Your father will pay me at Michaelmas, when a large sum falls due to him on account of his lands in the Dominion of Wales; and at the same time he will repay me certain other moneys long due to me, but unaccountably overlooked.”
I was amazed at this news: for I could have taken my oath that my father owned not an inch of land in Wales. And if he had lands there, why had he cozened me into this marriage by his plea of absolute poverty? Could it be that he had also cozened my husband by a promise of money that he knew well was not to be found?
I thanked my husband for his undertaking in respect of Trunco, and returned to my reading, but with my mind still puzzling over this riddle of my portion.
Presently he closed his book and came behind my chair and ran his fingers combingly through my hair and parting two tresses of it with his hands (as one might draw apart a pair of curtains), he printed a kiss upon the nape of my neck. I knew not what to say, and continued my pretence of reading; but he sportively took the book from me and clapped it shut, and having locked and bolted the doors of the house, bade me come upstairs, where a surprise awaited me.
Wife to Mr. Milton Page 24