HOW MISTRESS ALICE BRADFORD INTRODUCED HER SISTER PRISCILLA CARPENTER
TO PLYMOUTH SOCIETY.
“Goodman, I’ve heavy news for you; so set your mind to bear it as best
you may.”
“Nay, goodwife, your winsome face is no herald of bad news, and certes,
I’ll not cross the bridge until it comes in sight.”
“Well, then, since words won’t daunt you, here’s a fact, sir! We are to
have a merry-making, and gather all the young folk of the village, and
Master Bradford will have to lay off the governor’s mantle of thought
and worry, that he may be jocund with the rest.”
“Nay, then, Alice, ’tis indeed heavy news!” And the governor pulled a
long face, and looked mock-miserable with all his might. “And is it a
dispensation not to be gainsaid? Is there good cause that we should
submit ourselves to an affliction that might, as it would seem, be
spared?”
“Well, dear, you know that my sister Pris has come”--
“Do you tell me so! Now _there_ is news in very deed! And how did
Mistress Priscilla Carpenter reach these parts?”
“Now, Will! if you torment me so, I’ll e’en call in Priscilla Alden to
take my part. _She’ll_ give you quip for crank, I’ll warrant me.”
“Nay, nay, wife, I’ll be meek and good as your cosset lamb, so you’ll
keep me under your own hand. Come now, let us meet this enemy face to
face. What is it all?”
Alice, who, tender soul that she was, loved not even playful and mock
contention, sighed a little, and folding her hands in her lap gently
said,--
“It is all just as thou pleasest, Will, but my thought was to call
together all the young people and make a little feast to bring those
acquainted with Pris, who, poor maid, has found it a trifle dull and
straitened here, after leaving her merry young friends in England.”
“Ever thinking of giving pleasure to others even at cost of much toil
to thyself, sweetheart!” And the governor, placing a hand under his
wife’s round chin, raised her face and kissed it tenderly again and
again, until the soft pink flushed to the roots of the fair hair.
“Do as thou wilt, darling, in this and everything, and call upon me for
what thy men and maids cannot accomplish.”
“Nay, I’ve help enough. Christian Penn is equal to two women, and
sister Pris herself is very notable. Then Priscilla Alden will kindly
put her hand to some of the dainty dishes, and she is a wonder at
cooking, as you know.”
“Yes, she proved it in--early days,” interrupted Bradford, the smile
fading off his face. “Had it not been for her skill in putting a savory
touch to the coarsest food, I believe some of our sick folk would have
died,--I am sure Dame Brewster would.”
“Oh, you poor souls! How you suffered, and I there in England eating
and drinking of the best, and--oh, Will, you should have married good
dear Priscilla to reward her care of what I held so carelessly.”
“Wonderful logic, madam! I should, to reward Mistress Molines for her
care, have married her, when she loved another man, and I another
woman, which latter was to thus be punished for carelessness in a
matter she knew naught about!”
And with a tender little laugh, the governor pressed another kiss
upon his wife’s smooth cheek, before he went out to his fields, while
she flew at once to her kitchen and set the domestic engine throbbing
at double-quick time. Then she stepped up the hill to John Alden’s
house, and found Priscilla, her morning work already done, washing and
dressing her little Betty, while John and Jo watched the operation with
unflagging interest.
“Come and help you, Alice? I shall be gay and glad to do it, dear, just
as soon as Betty is in her cradle, and I have told Mary-à-Becket what
to do about the noon-meat. John, you and Jo run up the hill to the
captain’s, and ask Mistress Standish if Alick and Myles may come down
and play with you in front of the governor’s house so I may keep an eye
on you.”
“Two fine boys, those of Barbara’s,” said the governor’s wife, and then
affectionately, “yet no finer than your sturdy little knaves.”
“Oh, ours are well enough for little yeomen, but the captain says his
Alick is heir to a great estate, and is a gentleman born!” And the two
young women laughed good-naturedly, while Priscilla laid her baby in
the cradle, and Alice turned toward the door saying, “Well, I must be
at home to mind the maids.”
“And I’ll be there anon. I trust you’ve good store of milk and cream.
We did well enow without it for four years, but now we’ve had it for a
while, one might as well be dead as lack it.”
“I’ve plenty, and butter beside, both Dutch and fresh,” replied Alice
from outside the door, and in another ten minutes the wide kitchen
recently added to William Bradford’s house on the corner of Leyden
Street and the King’s Highway, now called Main Street, hummed again
with the merry sounds of youthful voices, of the whisking of eggs, and
grinding of spices, and stirring of golden compounds in wooden bowls,
and chopping suet, and stoning raisins, and slicing citron, and the
clatter of pewter dishes, which, by the way, with wooden ware were
nearly all the “pottery” the Pilgrims possessed, hypothetical teapots
and china cups to the contrary; for, since we all know that tea and
coffee were never heard of in England until about the year 1666, and
the former herb was sold for many years after at from ten to fifteen
dollars per pound (Pepys in 1671 mentions it as a strange and barbaric
beverage just introduced), it is improbable that either tea, teapot,
or teacups ever reached America until after Mary Allerton, the last
survivor of the Mayflower, rested upon Burying Hill.
All that day and part of the next the battle raged in the Bradford
kitchen, for delicate appetites were in those times rather a defect
than a grace, and hospitality largely consisted in first providing
great quantities and many varieties of food, and then over-pressing
the guests to partake of it. An “afternoon tea” with diaphanous bread
and butter, wafer cakes, and Cambridge salts, as the only solid
refreshment, would have seemed to Alice Bradford and her guests either
a comic pretense or a niggardly insult, and very different was the
feast to which as many as could sat down at a very early hour of the
evening of the second day.
The company was large, for in the good Old Colony fashion it included
both married and single persons, and would, if possible, have made no
distinctions of age or position, but this catholicity had in the growth
of the colony become impossible, and Mistress Bradford’s invitations
were, with much searching of spirit and desire to avoid offense,
confined principally to young persons, married and unmarried, likely to
become associates of her sister Priscilla, a fair-haired, sweet-lipped,
and daintily colored lass, reproducing Dame Alice’s own early charms.
“The Brewster girls must come, although I cannot yet be reconciled to
Fear’s having married Isaac Allerton, and calling herself mother to
Bart, and Mary and Remember--great grown girls!” exclaimed the hostess
in consultation with her husband, and he pleasantly replied,--
“Oh, well, dame, we must not hope to guide all the world by our own
wisdom; and certes, if Fear’s marriage is a little incongruous, her
sister Patience is well and fitly mated with Thomas Prence. It does one
good to see such a comely and contented pair of wedded sweethearts.”
“True enough, Will, and your thought is a rebuke to mine.”
“Nay, wife, ’tis you that teach me to be charitable.”
And the two, come together to reap in the glorious St. Martin’s summer
of their days the harvest sown amid the chill tears of spring, looked
in each other’s eyes with a smile of deep content. The woman was the
first to set self aside, and cried,--
“Come, come, Sir Governor! To business! Mistress Allerton, and her
_daughters_, Mary and Remember, Bartholomew, and the Prences,
Constance Hopkins with Nicholas Snow, whom she will marry, the Aldens,
the captain and his wife”--
“He is hardly to be ranked with the young folk, is he?”
“No, dear, no more than Master Allerton, or, for that matter, the
governor and his old wife; but there, there, no more waste of time,
sir! Who else is to come, and who to be left at home?”
“Nay, wife, I’m out of my depth already and will e’en get back to firm
land, which means I leave all to your discretion. Call Barbara and
Priscilla Alden to council, and let me know in time to put on my new
green doublet and hose, for I suppose I am to don them.”
“Indeed you are, and your ruffles and your silk stockings that I
brought over. I will not let you live altogether in hodden gray, since
even the Elder goes soberly fine on holidays.”
“Well, well, I leave it all to you, and must betake myself to the
woods. Good-by for a little.”
“Good-by, dear.”
And as the governor with an axe on his shoulder strode away down Market
Street and across the brook to Watson’s Hill, Dame Alice, a kerchief
over her head, once more ran up the hill to Priscilla Alden’s.
As the great gun upon the hill boomed out the sunset hour, and Captain
Standish himself carefully covered it from the dews of night, Alice
Bradford stood in the great lower room of her house and looked about
her. All was done that could be done to put the place in festal array,
and although the fair dame sighed a little at the remembrance of
her stately home in Duke’s Place, London, with its tapestries and
carvings and carpets and pictures, she bravely put aside the regret,
and affectionately smoothed and patted the fine damask “cubboard cloth”
covering the lower shelf of the sideboard, or, as she called it, the
“buffet,” at one side of the room, and placed and replaced the precious
properties set out thereon:--
A silver wine cup, a porringer that had been her mother’s, nine silver
teaspoons, and, crown of all, four genuine Venetian wine-glasses, tall
and twisted of stem, gold-threaded and translucent of bowl, fragile and
dainty of shape, and yet, like their as dainty owner, brave to make the
pilgrimage from the home of luxury and art to the wilderness, where a
shelter from the weather and a scant supply of the coarsest food was
all to be hoped for.
But Dame Bradford, fingering her Venice glasses, and softly smiling at
the touch, murmured to herself and to them, “’Tis our exceeding gain.”
“What, Elsie, not dressed!” cried Priscilla Carpenter’s blithe voice,
as that young lady, running down the stairs leading to her little loft
chamber, presented herself to her sister’s inspection with a smile of
conscious deserving.
“My word, Pris, but you are fine!” exclaimed Dame Alice, examining
with an air of unwilling admiration the young girl’s gay apparel and
ornaments. It was indeed a pretty dress, consisting of a petticoat of
cramoisie satin, quilted in an elaborate pattern of flowers, leaves,
and birds; an open skirt of brocade turned back from the front, and
caught high upon the hips with great bunches of cramoisie ribbons; a
“waistcoat” of the satin, and a little open jacket of the brocade.
Around the soft white throat of the wearer was loosely knotted a satin
cravat of the same dull red tint with the skirt, edged with a deep
lace, upon which Alice Bradford at once laid a practiced finger.
“Pris, that _jabot_ is of Venise point! Where did you get it?”
“Ah! That was a present from”--
“Well, from whom?”
“Nay, never look so cross on’t, my lady sister! Might not I have a
sweetheart as well as you?”
“Priscilla, I’m glad you’re here rather than with those gay friends of
yours in London. I suppose Lady Judith Carr or her daughters gave you
these clothes, did they not?”
“Well, I earned them hard enough putting up with all my lady’s humors
and the girls’ jealous fancies,” pouted Pris. “I was glad enough when
you and brother Will wrote and offered me a home,--not but what Lady
Judith was good to me and called me her daughter; but, Elsie, ’twas not
they who gave me the laced cravat, ’twas--’twas”--
“Well, out with it, little sister! Who was it, if not our mother’s old
friend?”
“Why, Elsie, ’twas a noble gentleman that I met with them down at Bath,
and--sister--he is coming over here to marry me right soon.”
“Nay, then, but that’s news indeed! And what may be his name, pet?”
“Sir Christopher Gardiner, and he’s a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.”
And Pris, fondling the lace of her cravat, smiled proudly into her
sister’s astonished face; but before either could speak, Barbara
Standish and Priscilla Alden appeared at the open door, the latter
exclaiming in her blithe voice,--
“What, Alice, still in your workaday kirtle! Barbara and I came thus
betimes to see if aught remained that we might do before the folk
gather.”
“Thank you, both; I--I--nay, then, I’m a little put about, dear
friends; I hardly know,--well, well! Priscilla Carpenter, come you
into my bedroom and help me do on my clothes, and if you two will look
about and see what is ready and what is lacking, I shall be more than
grateful. Come, Pris!”
“Something has chanced more than we know about!” suggested Priscilla
Alden, as the bedroom door closed behind the sisters.
“Likely. But ’tis their affair and not ours,” replied Barbara quietly.
“Now let us see. Would you set open the case holding the twelve
ivory-handled knives?”
“Yes, they’re a rarity, and some of the folk may not have seen them.
Alice says that in London they put a knife to every man’s trencher now,
and nobody uses his own sheath-knife as has been the wont.”
“You tell me so! Well, one knife’s enough for Myles and me, yes, and
the boys to boot. But then I cut the meat in morsels, and spread the
bread with butter, or ever it goes on the table.”
“Of course; so we all do, I suppose. Well there, all is ready now, and
here come the folk; there’s Patty Brewster, or Patience Prence as she
must now be called, and along with her Fear Allerton and Remember and
Mary,--her daughters indeed! Marry come up! _I_ might have had Isaac
Allerton for myself, but”--
“And there is Constance Hopkins, and Nicholas Snow,” interrupted
Barbara, who was a deadly foe to gossip, “and John and Elizabeth
Howland; then there’s Stephen Dean with Betsey Ring, and Edward Bangs
and Lyddy Hicks, and Mary Warren and Robert Bartlett, three pair of
sweethearts together, and here they all are at the door.”
But as the more lively Priscilla ran to open it, the governor’s hearty
voice was heard without, crying,--
“Welcome! Welcome, friends! I was called out for a moment, but have
come home just in the nick of time and brought the captain with me.”
“Now I do hope Myles has put on his ruff, and his other doublet that I
laid out,” murmured Barbara in Priscilla’s ear. “When the governor and
he get together, the world’s well lost for both of them.”
“Nay, he’s all right, and a right proper man, as he always was,”
returned Priscilla, with a quick glance at the square figure and
commanding head of the Captain of Plymouth, as he entered the room and
smiled in courtly fashion at Dame Bradford’s greeting.
“And here’s your John, a head and shoulders above all the rest,” added
Barbara good-naturedly, as Alden, the Saxon giant, strode into the room
and looked fondly across it at his wife.
Another half hour and all were gathered about the three long tables
improvised from boards and barrels, but all covered with the fine
napery brought from Holland by Alice Bradford, who had the true
housewife’s love of elegant damask, and during Edward Southworth’s life
was able to indulge it, laying up such store of table damask, of fine
Holland “pillowbers”[1] and “cubboard cloths,” towels of Holland, of
dowlas, and of lockorum, and sheets of various qualities from “fine
Holland” to tow (the latter probably spun and woven at home), that the
inventory of her personal estate is as good reading to her descendants
as a cookery book to a hungry man.
Plenty of trenchers both of pewter and wood lined the table, and by
each lay a napkin and a spoon, but neither knives nor forks, the
latter implement not having yet been invented, except in the shape
of a powerful trident to lift the boiled beef from the kettle, while
table knives, as Priscilla Alden had intimated, were still regarded as
curious implements of extreme luxury. A knife of a different order,
sometimes a clasp-knife, sometimes a sheath-knife, or even a dagger,
was generally carried by each man, and used upon certain _pièces de
resistance_, such as boar’s head, a roasted peacock, a shape of brawn,
a powdered and cloved and browned ham, or such other triumphs of the
culinary art as must be served whole.
Such dishes were carried around the table, and every guest, taking
hold of the morsel he coveted with his napkin, sliced it off with his
own knife, displaying the elegance of his table manners by the skill
with which he did it. But as saffron was a favorite condiment of the
day, and pearline was not yet invented, one sighs in contemplating the
condition of these napkins, and ceases to wonder at the store of them
laid up by thrifty housekeepers.
Ordinarily, however, the meat was divided into morsels before appearing
on the table, and thus was easily managed with the spoon,--_or_ with
the fingers.
Between each two plates stood a pewter or wooden basin of clam chowder,
prepared by Priscilla Alden, who was held in Plymouth to possess a
magic touch for this and several other dishes.
From these each guest transferred a portion to his own plate, except
when two supped merrily from the same bowl in token of friendly
intimacy. This first course finished and the bowls removed, all eyes
turned upon the governor, who rose in his place at the head of the
principal table, where were gathered the more important guests, and,
looking affectionately up and down the board, said,--
“Friends, it hardly needs that I should say that you are welcome, for
I see none that are ever less than welcome beneath this roof; but I
well may thank you for the cheer your friendly faces bring to my heart
to-night, and I well may pray you, of your goodness, to bestow upon
my young sister here the same hearty kindness you have ever shown
to me and mine.” A murmur of eager assent went round the board, and
the governor smiled cordially, as he grasped in both hands the great
two-handled loving-cup standing before him,--a grand cup, a noble cup,
of the measure of two quarts, of purest silver, beautifully fashioned,
and richly carved, as tradition said, by the hand of Benvenuto Cellini
himself; so precious a property that Katharine White, daughter of an
English bishop, was proud to bring it as almost her sole dowry to John
Carver, her husband. With him it came to the New World, and was used at
the Feast of Treaty between the colonists and Massasoit, chief of the
native owners of the soil. Katharine Carver, dying broken hearted six
weeks after her husband, bequeathed the cup to William Bradford, his
successor in the arduous post of Governor of the Colony, and from him
it passed down into that Hades of lost and all but forgotten treasures,
which may, for aught we know, become the recreation-ground for the
spirits of antiquarians.
Filled to the brim with generous Canary, a pure and fine wine in those
days, it crowned the table, and William Bradford, steadily raising
it to his lips, smiled gravely upon his guests, adding to his little
speech of welcome,--
“I pledge you my hearty good-will, friends!” then drank sincerely yet
modestly, and giving one handle to Myles Standish, who sat at his left
hand, he retained his hold at the other side while the captain drank,
and in his turn gave one handle to Mistress Winslow, who came next, and
so, all standing to honor the pledge of love and good-will, the cup
passed round the board and came to Elder Brewster, at the governor’s
right hand; but he, having drank, looked around with his paternal smile
and said,--
“There is yet enough in the loving-cup, friends, for each one to wet
his lips, if nothing more, and I propose that we do so with our hearty
welcome and best wishes to Mistress Priscilla Carpenter.”
Once more the cup went gayly round, and reached the Elder so dry that
he smiled, as he placed it to his lips, with a bow toward Pris savoring
more of his early days in the court of Queen Bess than of New England’s
solitudes.
“And now to work, my friends, to work!” cried the governor. “I for one
am famished, sith my dame was so busy at noontide with that wonderful
structure yonder that she gave me naught but bread and cheese.”
Everybody laughed, and Alice Bradford colored like a red, red rose, yet
bravely answered,--
“The governor will have his jest, but I hope my raised pie will suffer
roundly for its interference with his dinner.”
“Faith, dame, but we’ll all help to punish it,” exclaimed Stephen
Hopkins, gazing fondly at the elaborate mass of pastry representing,
not inartistically, a castle with battlements and towers, and a
floating banner of silk bearing an heraldic device. “Standish! we call
upon you to lead us to the assault!”
“Nay, if Captain Standish is summoned to the field, my fortress
surrenders without even a parley,” said Alice Bradford, as she
gracefully drew the little banner from its place, and, laying it aside,
removed a tower, a bastion, and a section of the battlement from the
doomed fortress, and, loading a plate with the spoils of its treasury,
planted the banner upon the top, and sent it to the captain, who
received it with a bow and a smile, but never a word.
“Speak up, man!” cried Hopkins boisterously. “Make a gallant speech in
return for the courtesy of so fair a castellaine.”
“Mistress Bradford needs no speech to assure her of my devoir,” replied
the captain simply, and the governor added,--
“Our captain speaks more by deeds than words, and Gideon is his most
eloquent interpreter. You have not brought him to-day, Captain.”
“No; Gideon sulks in these days of peace, and seldom stirs abroad.”
“Long may he be idle!” exclaimed the Elder, and a gentle murmur around
the board told that the women at least echoed the prayer.
But Hopkins, seated next to Mistress Bradford, and watching her
distribution of the pie, cared naught for war or peace until he secured
a trencher of its contents, and presently cried,--
“Now, by my faith, I did not know such a pye as this could be concocted
out of Yorkshire! ’Tis perfect in all its parts: fowl, and game, and
pork, and forcemeat, and yolks of eggs, and curious art of spicery, and
melting bits of pastry within, and stout-built walls without; in fact,
there is naught lacking to such a pye as my mother used to make before
I had the wit to know such pyes sing not on every bush.”
“You’re Yorkshire, then, Master Hopkins?” asked John Howland, who with
his young wife, once Elizabeth Tilley, sat opposite.
“Yes, I’m Yorkshire, root and branch, and you’re Essex, and the captain
and the governor Lancashire, but all shaken up in a bag now, and turned
into New Englanders, and since the Yorkshire pye has come over along
with us I’m content for one.”
A general laugh indorsed this patriotic speech, but Myles Standish,
toying with the silken banner of the now sacked and ruined fortress,
said in Bradford’s ear,--
“All very well for a man who has naught to lose in the old country. But
for my part I mean to place at least my oldest son in the seat of his
fathers.”
The governor smiled, and then sighed. “Nor can I quite forget the lands
of Austerfield held by Bradfords and Hansons for more than one century,
and the path beside the Idle, where Brewster and I walked and talked in
the days of my first awakening to the real things of life”--
“Real things of life, say you, Governor?” broke in Hopkins’s strident
voice; “well, if there is aught more real in its merit than this
roasted suckling, I wish that I might meet with it.”
And seizing with his napkin the hind leg of the little roasted pig
presented to him by Christian Penn, the old campaigner deftly sliced
it off with his sheath-knife and devoured it in the most inartificial
manner possible.
It was probably about this epoch that our popular saying, “Fingers were
made before forks,” took shape and force.
To the chowder, and the “pye,” and the roasted suckling succeeded a
mighty dish of succotash, that compound of dried beans, hulled corn,
salted beef, pork, and chicken which may be called the charter-dish of
Plymouth; then came wild fowl dressed in various ways, a great bowl of
“sallet,” of Priscilla Alden’s composition, and at last various sweet
dishes, still served at the end of a meal, although soon after it was
the mode to take them first.
“Oh, dear, when will the dignities stop eating and drinking and making
compliments to each other?” murmured Priscilla Carpenter to Mary Warren
at the side table where the girls and lads were grouped together,
enjoying themselves as much as their elders, albeit in less ceremonious
fashion.
“There! Your sister has laid down her napkin, and is gazing steadfastly
at the governor, with ‘Get up and say Grace’ in her eye,” replied
Mary, nudging Jane Cooke to enforce silence; whereat that merry maid
burst into a giggle, joined by Sarah and Elizabeth Warren, and Mary
Allerton, and Betsey Ring, while Edward Bangs, and Robert Bartlett, and
Sam Jenney, and Philip De la Noye, and Thomas Clarke, and John Cooke
chuckled in sympathy, yet knew not what at.
A warning yet very gentle glance from Dame Bradford’s eyes stifled the
noise, and nearly did as much for its authors, who barely managed to
preserve sobriety, while the governor returned thanks to the Giver
of all good; so soon, however, as the elder party moved away, the
painfully suppressed giggle burst into a storm of merriment, which as
it subsided was renewed in fullest vigor by Sarah Warren’s bewildered
inquiry,--
“What _are_ we all laughing at?”
“Never mind, we’ll laugh first, and find the wherefore at our leisure,”
suggested Jane Cooke, and so the dear old foolish fun that seems to
spring up in spontaneous growth where young folk are gathered together,
and is sometimes scorned and sometimes coveted by their elders, went
on, and, after the tables were cleared, took form in all sorts of
old English games, not very intellectual, not even very refined, but
as satisfactory to those who played as Buried Cities, and Twenty
Questions, and Intellectual Salad, and capping Browning quotations are
to the children of culture and æsthetics.
The elders, meanwhile, retiring to the smaller room at the other
side of the front door, seated themselves to certain sober games of
draughts, of backgammon, of loo, and beggar-my-neighbor, or picquet,
while Elder Brewster challenged the governor to a game of chess which
was not finished when, at ten o’clock, the company broke up, and with
many a blithe good-night, and assurance of the pleasure they had
enjoyed, betook themselves to their own homes.
Thus, then, was Priscilla Carpenter introduced into Plymouth society.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Pillow-biers, now called pillow-cases.