To _The Rambler_.
Sir,
As you have allowed a place in your paper to Euphelia's letters from
the country, and appear to think no form of human life unworthy of
your attention, I have resolved, after many struggles with idleness
and diffidence, to give you some account of my entertainment in this
sober season of universal retreat, and to describe to you the
employments of those who look with contempt on the pleasures and
diversions of polite life, and employ all their powers of censure and
invective upon the uselessness, vanity, and folly of dress, visits,
and conversation.
When a tiresome and vexatious journey of four days had brought me to
the house where invitation, regularly sent for seven years together,
had at last induced me to pass the summer, I was surprised, after the
civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure and
tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if well
conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care and a
tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded and
every motion agitated. The old lady, who was my father's relation,
was, indeed, very full of the happiness which she received from my
visit, and, according to the forms of obsolete breeding, insisted that
I should recompense the long delay of my company with a promise not to
leave her till winter. But, amidst all her kindness and caresses, she
very frequently turned her head aside, and whispered, with anxious
earnestness, some order to her daughters, which never failed to send
them out with unpolite precipitation. Sometimes her impatience would
not suffer her to stay behind; she begged my pardon, she must leave me
for a moment; she went, and returned and sat down again, but was again
disturbed by some new care, dismissed her daughters with the same
trepidation, and followed them with the same countenance of business
and solicitude.
However I was alarmed at this show of eagerness and disturbance, and
however my curiosity was excited by such busy preparations as
naturally promised some great event, I was yet too much a stranger to
gratify myself with inquiries; but, finding none of the family in
mourning, I pleased myself with imagining that I should rather see a
wedding than a funeral.
At last we sat down to supper, when I was informed that one of the
young ladies, after whom I thought myself obliged to inquire, was
under a necessity of attending some affair that could not be
neglected: soon afterward my relation began to talk of the regularity
of her family and the inconvenience of London hours; and at last let
me know that they had purposed that night to go to bed sooner than was
usual, because they were to rise early in the morning to make
cheesecakes. This hint sent me to my chamber, to which I was
accompanied by all the ladies, who begged me to excuse some large
sieves of leaves and flowers that covered two-thirds of the floor, for
they intended to distil them when they were dry, and they had no other
room that so conveniently received the rising sun.
The scent of the plants hindered me from rest, and therefore I rose
early in the morning with a resolution to explore my new habitation. I
stole unperceived by my busy cousins into the garden, where I found
nothing either more great or elegant than in the same number of acres
cultivated for the market. Of the gardener I soon learned that his
lady was the greatest manager in that part of the country, and that I
was come hither at the time in which I might learn to make more
pickles and conserves than could be seen at any other house a hundred
miles round.
It was not long before her ladyship gave me sufficient opportunities
of knowing her character, for she was too much pleased with her own
accomplishments to conceal them, and took occasion, from some
sweetmeats which she set next day upon the table, to discourse for two
long hours upon robs and jellies; laid down the best methods of
conserving, reserving, and preserving all sorts of fruit; told us with
great contempt of the London lady in the neighbourhood, by whom these
terms were very often confounded; and hinted how much she should be
ashamed to set before company, at her own house, sweetmeats of so dark
a colour as she had often seen at Mistress Sprightly's.
It is, indeed, the great business of her life to watch the skillet on
the fire, to see it simmer with the due degree of heat, and to snatch
it off at the moment of projection; and the employments to which she
has bred her daughters are to turn rose leaves in the shade, to pick
out the seeds of currants with a quill, to gather fruit without
bruising it, and to extract bean flower water for the skin. Such are
the tasks with which every day, since I came hither, has begun and
ended, to which the early hours of life are sacrificed, and in which
that time is passing away which never shall return.
But to reason or expostulate are hopeless attempts. The lady has
settled her opinions, and maintains the dignity of her own
performances with all the firmness of stupidity accustomed to be
flattered. Her daughters, having never seen any house but their own,
believe their mother's excellence on her own word. Her husband is a
mere sportsman, who is pleased to see his table well furnished, and
thinks the day sufficiently successful in which he brings home a leash
of hares to be potted by his wife.
After a few days I pretended to want books, but my lady soon told me
that none of her books would suit my taste; for her part she never
loved to see young women give their minds to such follies, by which
they would only learn to use hard words; she bred up her daughters to
understand a house, and who ever should marry them, if they knew
anything of good cookery, would never repent it.
There are, however, some things in the culinary science too sublime
for youthful intellects, mysteries into which they must not be
initiated till the years of serious maturity, and which are referred
to the day of marriage as the supreme qualification for connubial
life. She makes an orange pudding, which is the envy of all the
neighbourhood, and which she has hitherto found means of mixing and
baking with such secrecy, that the ingredient to which it owes its
flavour has never been discovered. She, indeed, conducts this great
affair with all the caution that human policy can suggest. It is never
known beforehand when this pudding will be produced; she takes the
ingredients privately into her own closet, employs her maids and
daughters in different parts of the house, orders the oven to be
heated for a pie, and places the pudding in it with her own hands: the
mouth of the oven is then stopped, and all inquiries are vain.
The composition of the pudding she has, however, promised Clarinda,
that if she pleases her in marriage, she shall be told without
reserve. But the art of making English capers she has not yet
persuaded herself to discover, but seems resolved that secret shall
perish with her, as some alchymists have obstinately suppressed the
art of transmuting metals.
I once ventured to lay my fingers on her book of receipts, which she
left upon the table, having intelligence that a vessel of gooseberry
wine had burst the hoops. But though the importance of the event
sufficiently engrossed her care, to prevent any recollection of the
danger to which her secrets were exposed, I was not able to make use
of the golden moments; for this treasure of hereditary knowledge was
so well concealed by the manner of spelling used by her grandmother,
her mother, and herself, that I was totally unable to understand it,
and lost the opportunity of consulting the oracle, for want of knowing
the language in which its answers were returned.
It is, indeed, necessary, if I have any regard to her ladyship's
esteem, that I should apply myself to some of these economical
accomplishments; for I overheard her, two days ago, warning her
daughters, by my mournful example, against negligence of pastry, and
ignorance in carving; for you saw, said she, that, with all her
pretensions to knowledge, she turned the partridge the wrong way when
she attempted to cut it, and, I believe, scarcely knows the difference
between paste raised and paste in a dish.
The reason, Mr. Rambler, why I have laid Lady Bustle's character
before you, is a desire to be informed whether in your opinion it is
worthy of imitation, and whether I shall throw away the books which I
have hitherto thought it my duty to read, for _The Lady's Closet
opened_, _The complete Servant-maid_, and _The Court Cook_, and resign
all curiosity after right and wrong for the art of scalding damascenes
without bursting them, and preserving the whiteness of pickled
mushrooms.
Lady Bustle has, indeed, by this incessant application to fruits and
flowers, contracted her cares into a narrow space, and set herself
free from many perplexities with which other minds are disturbed. She
has no curiosity after the events of a war, or the fate of heroes in
distress; she can hear without the least emotion the ravage of a fire,
or devastations of a storm; her neighbours grow rich or poor, come
into the world or go out of it, without regard, while she is pressing
the jelly-bag, or airing the store-room; but I cannot perceive that
she is more free from disquiet than those whose understandings take a
wider range. Her marigolds, when they are almost cured, are often
scattered by the wind, the rain sometimes falls upon fruit when it
ought to be gathered dry. While her artificial wines are fermenting,
her whole life is restlessness and anxiety. Her sweetmeats are not
always bright, and the maid sometimes forgets the just proportion of
salt and pepper, when venison is to be baked. Her conserves mould, her
wines sour, and pickles mother; and, like all the rest of mankind, she
is every day mortified with the defeat of her schemes and the
disappointment of her hopes.
With regard to vice and virtue she seems a kind of neutral being. She
has no crime but luxury, nor any virtue but chastity; she has no
desire to be praised but for her cookery; nor wishes any ill to the
rest of mankind, but that whenever they aspire to a feast, their
custards may be wheyish, and their pie-crusts tough.
I am now very impatient to know whether I am to look on these ladies
as the great pattern of our sex, and to consider conserves and pickles
as the business of my life; whether the censures which I now suffer be
just, and whether the brewers of wines, and the distillers of washes,
have a right to look with insolence on the weakness of