Chapter XXIII · OCCUPATIONS OF THE LADIES.—GAMES AND ENJOYMENTS.—ROUGHNESS OF ENGLISH SPORTS AT THIS PERIOD.—THE HOT-HOUSES, OR BATHS.—THE ORDINARIES.—DOMESTIC PETS.—TREATMENT OF CHILDREN.—METHODS OF LOCOMOTION.—CONCLUSION.

During the period at which we are now arrived, almost all the relations of domestic life underwent a great change, and nothing hardly could produce a wider difference than that between the manners and sentiments of the reign of Henry VII., and those of Charles II. This was especially observable in the occupations of the female sex, which were becoming more and more frivolous. At the earlier portion of the period referred to, women in general were confined closely to their domestic labours, in spinning, weaving, embroidering, and other work of a similar kind. A hand-loom was almost a necessary article of furniture in a well regulated household, and spinning was so universal an occupation, that we read sometimes of an apartment in the house set apart for it—a family spinning room. Even to this present day, in legal language, the only occupation acknowledged, as that of an unmarried woman, is that of a spinster. Our cut (No. 306) represents a party of ladies at their domestic labours; it is taken from Israel van Mechelin’s print of “The Virgin Ascending the Steps of the Temple,” where this domestic scene is introduced in a side compartment. Two are engaged at the distaff, the old poetical emblem of the sex. Another is cutting out the cloth for working, with a pair of shears of very antiquated form. The shape of the three-cornered joined chair in this group is worthy of remark. The female in our cut No. 307 is also seated in a chair of rather peculiar construction, though it has occurred before at an earlier period (cut No. 245, p. 375), and we meet with it again in our next cut (No. 308). It is what was sometimes called a folding chair. This cut is taken from one of the illustrations to the English edition of Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” printed in 1676, but it is a copy of the earlier originals. The great weaving establishments in England appear to have commenced in the sixteenth century, with the Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands.

The old domestic games continued to be practised in the middle and upper classes of society, although they were rather extensively superseded by the pernicious rage for gambling which now prevailed throughout English society. This practice had been extending itself ever since the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had been accompanied with another evil practice among the ladies, that of drinking. It need hardly be observed that these two vices furnished constant themes to the dramatists and satirists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the example set by the court under James I. caused them to increase greatly, and they rose to the highest pitch of extravagance under Charles II. Barclay’s “Ship of Fools” (the early English edition) has furnished us with the group of female gamesters, represented in our cut No. 308. It will be seen that the ladies are playing with cards and dice, and that the ale jug is introduced as an accompaniment. In fact we must look upon it as a tavern party, and the round table, as far as we can judge, appears to be fixed in the ground. The same book furnishes us with an illustration (cut No. 309), in which two gamblers are quarrelling over a game at backgammon. A child is here the jug-bearer or guardian of the liquor. Our cut No. 310 represents a gambling scene of a rather later period, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” printed in 1586; dice are here the implements of play.

A very curious piece of painted glass, now in the possession of Mr. Fairholt, of German manufacture, and forming part, apparently, of a series illustrative of the history of the Prodigal Son, represents a party of gamblers, of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, in which they are playing with two dice. It is copied in our cut No. 311. The original bears the inscription, “Jan Van Hassell Tryngen sin hausfrau,” with a merchant’s mark, and the date, 1532. Three dice, however, continued to be used long after this, and are, from time to time, alluded to during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

I have, in a former chapter, traced the history of playing-cards down to the latter half of the fifteenth century. After that time, they are frequently mentioned. They formed the common amusement in the courts of Scotland and England under the reigns of Henry VII. and James IV.; and it is recorded that when the latter monarch paid his first visit to his affianced bride, the young princess Margaret of England, “he founde the quene playing at the cardes.”

In Germany at this time card-playing was carried to an extravagant degree, and it became an object of attack and satire to the reformers among the clergy. Our cut No. 312 represents a German card-party in a tavern, taken from an early painted coffer in the Museum of Old German Art at Nuremberg. The design of the cards is that of packs of fancifully ornamented cards made in Germany at the close of the fifteenth century. The German satirists of that age complain that the rage for gambling had taken possession of all classes of society, and levelled all ranks, ages, and sexes; that the noble gambled with the commoner, and the clergy with the laity. Some of the clerical reformers declared that card-playing as well as dice was a deadly sin, and others complained that this love of gambling had caused people to forget all honourable pursuits.

A similar outcry was raised in our own country; and a few years later it arose equally loud. A short anonymous poem on the ruin of the realm, belonging apparently to the earlier part of the reign of Henry VIII. (MS. Harl. No. 2252, fol. 25, v^o), complains of the nobles and gentry:— Before thys tyme they lovyd for to juste, And in shotynge chefely they sett ther mynde, And ther landys and possessyons now sett they moste, And at cardes and dyce ye may them ffynde. “Cardes and dyce” are from this time forward spoken of as the great blot on contemporary manners; and they seem for a long time to have driven most other games out of use. Roy, in his remarkable satire against cardinal Wolsey, complains that the bishops themselves were addicted to gambling:— To play at the cardes and dyce Some of theym are no thynge nyce, Both at hasard and mom-chaunce. The rage for cards and dice prevailed equally in Scotland. Sir David Lindsay’s popish parson, in 1535, boasts of his skill in these games:— Thoch I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche; I wot there is nocht ane amang yow all Mair ferylie can play at the fute-ball; And for the cartis, the tabels, and the dyse, Above all parsouns I may beir the pryse. The same celebrated writer, in a poem against cardinal Beaton, represents that prelate as a great gambler:—

Though gardening and horticulture in general, as arts, were undergoing considerable improvement during this period, the garden itself appears to have been much more neglected, except as far as it was the scene of other pastimes. A bowling-green was the most important part of the pleasure garden in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and bowls, and exercises of a similar character, were the favourite amusements of all classes. The gardens themselves, which were apart from the house, and made more retired by lofty walls enclosing them, were usually adorned with alcoves and summer-houses, or, as they were then more usually termed, garden-houses, but these were chiefly celebrated, especially in the seventeenth century, as places of intrigue. There are continual allusions to this usage in the popular writers of the time. Thus, one of the personages in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman Hater” exclaims, “This is no garden-house: in my conscience she went forth with no dishonest intent.” And, in the play of the “Mayor of Quinsborough,”— Poor soul, she’s entic’d forth by her own sex To be betray’d to man, who in some garden-house, Or remote walk, taking his lustful time, Binds darkness on her eyes, surprises her. A character in another old play, “The London Prodigal,” seeking employment of a rather equivocal character, says, “Now God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or garden-house, where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all secret service.”

Amid the gaiety which was so especially characteristic of this age, a spirit of vulgar barbarity had arisen and spread itself very widely, and the popular games most practised were in general coarse and cruel. A foreign writer already quoted, but one who was evidently a very unprejudiced observer, has left us some rather amusing remarks on this subject which are worthy of being repeated. “The English,” he says, “have games which are peculiar to them, or at least, which they affect and practise more than people do elsewhere. To see cocks fight is a royal pleasure in England. Their combats of bulls and dogs, of bears and dogs, and sometimes of bulls and bears, are not combats to the last gasp, like those of cocks. Everything that is called fighting is a delicious thing to an Englishman. If two little boys quarrel in a street, the passers stop, make in a moment a ring round them, and encourage them to settle it by blows of the fist. If it comes to fighting, each takes off his cravat and his jacket, and gives them in charge to one of the company; then begin the blows of the fist, in the face if possible, the blows of the foot on their shins, the pulling of one another by the hair, &c. The one who has knocked the other down, may give him one blow or two when he is down, but no more, and every time the one who is down will rise, the other must return to the combat as long as he pleases. During the combat, the circle of spectators encourage the combatants to the great joy of their hearts, and never separate them, so long as things are done according to rule. And these spectators are not only other children, and street porters, but all sorts of respectable people, some of whom make their way through the crowd to see nearer, others mount upon the shops, and all would pay for places, if stages could be built up in a moment. The fathers and mothers of the little boys who are fighting look on like the others, and encourage the one who gives way, or is wanting in strength. These kind of combats are less frequent among grown-up men than among children, but they are not uncommon. If the driver of a hackney-coach has a dispute about his fare, with a gentleman whom he has carried, and the gentleman offers to settle the dispute by fighting, the coachman agrees to it willingly. The gentleman takes off his sword, disposes of it in some shop with his walking-stick, his gloves, and his cravat, and fights in the manner I have described. If the coachman is well beaten, which is almost always the case, he is considered as paid; but if he beats, he who is beaten must pay the sum that was in question, and that which caused the quarrel. I once saw the late duke of Grafton fighting in the open street in the middle of the Strand with a coachman, whom he thrashed in a terrible manner. In France, we treat such kind of people with blows of a stick or, sometimes, of the flat of the sword; but in England that is never done; they never use a sword or stick against those who are not similarly armed; and if any unlucky foreigner (for it would never come into the mind of an Englishman) should strike with the sword any one who had not got one, it is certain that in an instant a hundred persons would fall upon him, and perhaps beat him so that he would never recover. Wrestling is also one of the diversions of the English, especially in the northern provinces. Ringing the bells is one of their great pleasures, especially in the country; there is a way of doing it, but their peal is quite different from those of Holland and the Low Countries. In winter football is a useful and charming exercise; it is a ball of leather, as large as a man’s head, and filled with wind; it is tossed with the feet in the streets. To expose a cock in a place, and kill it at a distance of forty or fifty paces with a stick, is also a very diverting thing; but this pleasure only belongs to a certain season. This also is the case with the dances of the milkwomen, with the throwing at one another of tennis-balls by girls, and with divers other little exercises.” Such was the rude character of the amusement of all classes of our population during the seventeenth century.

The ladies still had their household pets, though they varied sometimes in their character, which perhaps arose in some measure from the circumstance that the discovery of or increased communication with distant countries, brought the knowledge of animals and birds which were not so well known before. Thus, in the sixteenth century, monkeys appear to have been much in fashion as domestic favourites, and we not unfrequently find them in prints in attendance upon ladies. Since the discovery of the West Indies, and the voyages of the Portuguese to the coast of Africa, parrots had become much more common than formerly. In pictures of the period of which we are speaking, we often find these, as well as smaller domestic birds, in cages of various forms. In our cut No. 313, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems” (printed in 1585), we have a parrot in its cage, and a small bird (perhaps meant for a canary), the latter of which is drawing up its water to drink in a manner which has been practised in modern times, and supposed to be a novelty. It is very unsafe indeed to assume that any ingenious contrivances of this kind are modern, for we often meet with them unexpectedly at a comparatively early date.

With the multiplicity of new fashions in dress now introduced, the work of the toilette became much greater and more varied, and many customs were introduced from France, from Italy, and from the East. Among customs derived from the latter quarter, was the introduction of the eastern hot and sweating baths, which became for a considerable period common in England. They were usually known by the plain English name of hothouses, but their eastern origin was also sometimes indicated by the preservation of their Persian name of hummums. This name is still retained by the two modern hotels which occupy the sites of establishments of this description in Covent Garden. Sweating in hothouses is spoken of by Ben Jonson; and a character in the old play of “The Puritan,” speaking of a laborious undertaking, says, “Marry, it will take me much sweat; I were better go to sixteen hothouses.” They seem to have been mostly frequented by women, and became, as in the East, favourite places of rendezvous for gossip and company. They were soon used to such an extent for illicit intrigues, that the name of a hothouse or bagnio became equivalent to that of a brothel; and this circumstance probably led eventually to their disuse. A very rare and curious broadside woodcut of the reign of James I., entitled “Tittle-tattle, or the several branches of gossipping,” which in different compartments represents pictorially the way in which the women of that age idled away their time, gives in one part a sketch of the interior of a hothouse, which is copied in our cut No. 314. In one division of the hothouse the ladies are bathing in tubs, while they are indulging themselves with an abundance of very substantial dainties; in the other, they appear to be still more busily engaged in gossip. The whole broadside is a singularly interesting illustration of contemporary manners. A copy of it will be found in the print-room of the British Museum; and it may be remarked (which I think has not been observed before), that it is copied from a large French etching of about the same period, a copy of which is in the print department of the Imperial Library in Paris.

This is sufficient to show the close resemblance at this time between manners in France and in England. In the former country, the resort of women in company to the hot-baths is not unfrequently alluded to, and their behaviour and conversation there are described in terms of satire which cannot always be transferred to our modern pages. In these popular satires, the bathers are sometimes chambrières, and at others good bourgeoises. The pic-nics, which had formerly taken place at the tavern, were now transferred to the hot-bath, each of a party of bathers carrying some contribution to the feast, which they shared in common. Thus, in the popular piece entitled “Le Banquet des Chambrières fait aux Estuves,” printed in 1541, it is the chamber-maidens who go to the bath, and they begin immediately to produce their contributions, one exclaiming— —j’ay du porc frais, Une andouille et quatre saulcices. To which a second adds,— —j’aye une cottelette, Qui le ventre quasi m’eschaulde. And a third,— Moy, un pasté à sauce chaulde. The women are seen eating their pic-nic feast in one compartment of our cut. This practice soon passed from the servant maids of the bourgeoisie to their mistresses, and from the burghers’ wives to ladies of higher condition. Our word pic-nic, representing the French piquenique, the origin or derivation of which word seems not to be clearly known, appears to have come into use at the latter end of the last century, when people of rank formed evening parties at which they joined in such pic-nic suppers, to which each brought his or her contribution. The term is now applied almost solely to such collations in the fields, or in the open air.

We have already seen how, at an earlier period, men of a superior rank in London, and probably in at least the larger country towns, lived much in the taverns and cooks’ shops or eating-houses. This practice continued, and underwent various modifications, the principal of which was the establishment of houses where a public table was served at fixed hours, at which a gentleman could take his place on payment of a certain sum, much in the same style as our modern tables d’hôte. Gradually these establishments became gambling-houses, and men settled down after dinner to cards, dice, and other games. They were called ordinaries, and in the reign of Elizabeth they had become an important part of the social system. It was here that people went to hear the news of the day, or the talk of the town, and to frequent the ordinary became gradually considered as a necessary part of the education of a gentleman of fashion. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the usual price of an ordinary appears to have been two shillings; but there were ordinaries at eighteen-pence, and at some fashionable ordinaries the price was much higher.

The general treatment of children, their costume, and their amusements, remained much as formerly, and closely resembled those of France and Germany as they were then, and as they have existed in some parts even to our own days. The pernicious practice of swathing or swaddling the child as soon as it was born prevailed everywhere, and the infant was kept in this condition until it became necessary to teach it the use of its limbs. The process of swaddling is shown in our cut No. 315, taken from one of the prints by Bosse, published in 1633, which furnish such abundant illustration of contemporary manners. The period during which boys were kept in petticoats was very short, for at a very early age they were dressed in the same dress as up-grown people, like little miniature men. Our only representatives of the appearance of little boys in the sixteenth century, is found in one or two educational establishments, such as the Blue-Coat School in London. The costume of a child during the short transition period between his swathes and his breeches is represented in our cut No. 316, of a boy riding upon his wooden horse. It is taken from a German woodcut of the date of 1549.

In the sixteenth century little improvement had taken place in the means of locomotion, which was still performed generally on horseback. Coaches, by that name, are said to have been introduced into England only towards the middle of the sixteenth century. They were made in various forms and sizes, according to fashion or caprice, and towards the end of the century they were divided into two classes, known by the foreign names of coaches and caroches. The latter appear to have been larger and clumsier than the former, but to have been considered more stately; and from the old play of “Tu Quoque,” by Green (a drama of Elizabeth’s reign), we learn that it was considered more appropriate to the town (and probably to the court), while the coach was left to the country:—

Ben Jonson, in his comedy of “The Devil is an Ass,” gives us a great notion of the bustle attending a caroch:— Have with them for the great caroch, six horses, And the two coachmen, with my ambler bare, And my three women. Coaches of any kind, however, were evidently not in very common use until after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Women in general, at least those who were not skilful horsewomen, when the distance or any other circumstance precluded their going on foot, rode on a pillion or side-saddle behind a man, one of her relatives or friends, or sometimes a servant. The accompanying cut (No. 317) represents a couple thus mounted, the lady holding in her hand the kind of fan which was used at the period. From a comparison of the figure of the Anglo-Saxon ladies on horseback, who were evidently seated in the saddle as in a chair, sideways to the horse, we are led to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon lady’s saddle, and probably the saddle for females in general during the middle ages, was the same as that which was known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the name of a pillion. The rider placed her feet usually on a narrow board, which was called in French the planchette. It is evident that a woman could not be very solidly seated in this manner, and not only did she want the command over the horse which would enable her to take part in any very active exercises, but it was considered almost necessary to place a man on a saddle before her. We have, accordingly, seen that, from a very early period, when engaged in hunting and in any sort of active riding, the lady used a saddle, as at present, in which she raised one leg over a part of the saddle-bow, made for that purpose, and placed the other foot in the stirrup, by which she obtained a firm seat, and a command over the horse. Different writers have ascribed, without any reason, the introduction of this mode of riding for ladies to various individuals, and Brantôme seems to have thought that this practice was first brought into fashion by Catherine de Medicis. The last cut is taken from a drawing in the curious Album of Charles de Bousy, containing dates from 1608 to 1638, and now preserved among the Sloane manuscripts (No. 3415) in the British Museum; and the same manuscript has also furnished us with the annexed cut (No. 318) of a lady of rank carried in her chair, with her chair-bearers and attendants. Ladies, and especially persons suffering from illness, were often carried in horse-litters, and there are instances of chairs mounted somewhat like the one here represented, and carried by horses. The first attempt towards the modern gig or cabriolet appears to have been a chair fixed in a cart, something in the style of that represented in our cut No. 319, which in its ornamentation has a very mediæval character, although it is given as from a manuscript in the Imperial Library in Paris (No. 6808), of the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The close of the period of which we are here speaking introduces us to one in which the manners and customs of our forefathers were less widely different from those of our own days; and the history of domestic manners since that time, characterised less by broad outline of the general features in its revolutions than by a gradual succession of minute changes, and fashions which must be traced from day to day, is less capable of being treated in the comprehensive style of these pages. Having now, therefore, brought down our sketch of the History of the Domestic Manners of our forefathers to the middle of the seventeenth century, we shall here, for the reason just stated, conclude it, and leave to some worthier labourer, or to some future occasion, the task of tracing more minutely the history of domestic manners and sentiments during the period which followed the middle ages.