ABOUT four o’clock, in a cold frosty morning, when it was much better
being in a warm bed, with a good bedfellow, than upon a bier in the
churchyard; as I lay advising with my pillow, tumbling and tossing a
thousand love-toys in my head, I passed from one fancy to another, till
at last I fell into a slumber; and there appeared the genius of disabuse,
laying before me all the follies, and vanities of love, and supporting
her opinions with great authorities and reasons. I was carried then
(methought I knew not how) into a fair meadow: a meadow, pleasant and
agreeable infinitely beyond the very fictions of your half-witted poets,
with all their far-fetched gilding, and enamellings (for a paper of
verses is worth nothing with them, unless they force nature for’t, and
rifle both the Indies). This delicious field was watered with two
rivulets, the one bitter, the other sweet; and yet they mingled their
streams with a pretty kind of murmur, equal perhaps to the best music in
the world. The use of these waters was (as I observed) to temper the
darts of love; for while I was upon the prospect of the place, I saw
several of Cupid’s little officers, and subjects, dipping of arrows
there, for their entertainment and ease. Upon this, I fancied myself in
one of the gardens of Cyprus, and that I saw the very hive, where the bee
lived that stung my young master, and occasioned that excellent ode which
Anacreon has written upon the subject. The next thing I cast my eye upon
was a palace in the midst of the meadow; a rare piece, as well for the
structure as design. The porches were of the Doric order, excellently
wrought; and the pedestals, bases, columns, cornices, capitals,
architraves, friezes (and in short the whole front of the fabric) was
beautified with imaginary trophies, and triumphs of love, in half relief,
which as they were intermixed with other fantastic works and conceits,
carried the face of several little histories, and gave a great ornament
to the building. Over the porch, there was in golden letters, upon black
marble, this inscription:
This is called fools’ paradise,
From the loving fools that dwell in’t,
Where the great fools rule the less,
The rest obey, and all do well in’t.
The finishing and materials were pleasant to admiration. The portal
spacious, the doors always open, and the house free to all comers, which
were very many; the porter’s place was supplied by a woman; exquisitely
handsome, both for face and person; tall, delicately shaped, and set off
with great advantages of dress, and jewels. She was made up, in fine, of
charms, and her name (as I understood) was Beauty. She would let any man
in to see the house for a look; and that was all I paid for my passage.
In the first court, I found a many of both sexes, but so altered in habit
and countenance, that they could scarce know one another. They were sad,
pensive; and their complexions tinted with a yellow paleness (which Ovid
calls Cupid’s livery). There was no talk of being true to friends; loyal
to superiors; and dutiful to parents: but kindred did the office of
procurers; and procurers were called cousins. Wives loved their
husbands’ she friends, and husbands did as much for them, in loving their
gallants.
While I was upon the contemplation of these encounters of affection,
there appeared a strange extravagant figure, but in the likeness of a
human creature. It was neither perfectly man nor perfectly woman, but
had indeed a resemblance of both. This person I perceived was ever busy,
up and down, going and coming; beset all over with eyes and ears, and had
one of the craftiest distrustful looks (methought) that ever I saw. And
withal, (as I observed) no small authority in the place, which made me
inquire after this creature’s name, and office. “My name,” quoth she,
for now it proved to be a woman, “is Jealousy, and methinks, you and I
should be better acquainted, for how came you here else? However, for
your satisfaction, you are to understand that the greater part of the
distempered people you see here are of my bringing; and yet I am not
their physician, but their tormentor; and serve only to aggravate and
embitter their misfortunes. If you would know anything further of the
house, never ask me, for ’tis forty to one I shall tell you a lie; I have
not told you half the truth even of myself; and to deal plainly with you,
I am made up of inventions, artifice, and imposture: but the good old man
that walks there, is the Major Domo, and will tell you all, if you will
but bear with his slow way of discourse.”
Thereupon I went to the good man, whom I knew presently to be Time, and
desired him to let me look into the several quarters and lodgings of the
house, for there were some fools of my acquaintance there I’d fain visit;
he told me that he was at present so busy about making of caudles,
cock-broths, and jellies for his patients, that he could not stir; but
yet he directed me where I might find all those I inquired for, and gave
me the freedom of the house to walk at pleasure.
I passed out of the first court, into the maids’ quarter, which was the
very strongest part of the whole building; and so’t had need; for divers
of the young wenches were so extravagant and furious, that no other place
would have held them. (The wives and widows were in another room apart.)
Here ye should have one, sobbing and raging with jealousy of a rival.
There another, stark mad for a husband, and inwardly bleeding because she
durst not discover it. A third was writing of letters all riddle and
mystery, mending and marring, till at last the paper had more blots than
whole words in it. Some were practising in the glass the gracious smile,
the roll of the eye, the velvet lip, etc. Others again were in a diet of
oatmeal, clay, chalk, coal, hard wax, and the like. Some were
conditioning with their servants for a ball, or a serenade, that the
whole town might ring of the address. “Yes, yes,” they cried, “you can
go to the park with this lady, and to a play with that lady, and to
Banstead with t’other lady, and spend whole nights at beste or ombre with
my Lady Pen-Tweezel; but by my troth, I think you are ashamed to be seen
in my company.” Some I saw upon the very point of sealing and
delivering. “I am thine,” cries one, “and thine alone, or let all the
devils in hell, etc. But be sure you be constant.” “If I be not,” says
he, “let my soul,” etc., and the silly jade believes him. In one corner
ye should have them praying for husbands, that they might the better love
at random; in another, nothing would please them but to be married men’s
wives, and this disease was looked upon as a little desperate. Some
again stood ready furnished with love letters and tickets to be cast out
at the window, or thrust under the door, and these were looked upon not
only as fools but beasts.
I had seen as much already as I desired, for I had learned of old that he
that keeps such company seldom comes off without a scratched face; but if
he misses a mistress, he gets a wife, and stands condemned to a
repentance during life, without redemption, unless one of the two dies.
For women in the case are worse than pirates; a galley-slave may compound
for his freedom, but there’s no thought of ransom in case of wedlock. I
had a good mind to a little chat with some of them, but (thought I)
they’ll fancy I’m in love with them. And so I e’en marched off into the
married quarter, where there was such ranting, damning, and tearing, as
if hell had been broke loose. And what was all this? but a number of
women that had been locked up and shackled by their husbands, to keep
them in obedience, and had now broken their prisons, and their chains,
and were grown ten times madder than before. Some I saw caressing and
coaxing their husbands, in the very moment they designed to betray them.
Others were picking their husbands’ pockets to pay now and then for a
by-blow. Some again were upon a religious point, and all upon the humour
(forsooth) of pilgrimages and lectures; when alas! they had no other
business with the altars or churches than a sacrifice to Venus, or a love
meeting. Divers there were that went to the bath; but bathing was the
least part of their errand. Others to confession, that mistook their
martyr for their confessor: some to be revenged of jealous husbands were
resolving to do the thing they feared, and pay them in their own coin.
Others were for making sure aforehand by way of advance; for that’s the
revenge, they say, that’s as sweet as muscadine and eggs. One was
melancholy for a delay; another for a defeat; a third is preparing to
make her market at a play. There was one among the rest was never out of
her coach; and asking her the reason, she told me, she loved to be
jolted. In this crowd of women, you must know that there were no wives
of ambassadors, soldiers, or merchants that were abroad upon commission;
for such were considered in effect as single women, and not allowed as
members of this commonwealth.
The next quarter was that of the grave and wise, the right reverend
widows, women in appearance of marvellous severity and reserve, and yet
every one of them had her weak side, and ye might read her folly and
distemper through her disguise. One of them I saw crying with one eye
for the loss of one husband, and laughing with t’other upon him that was
to come next. Another, with the Ephesian matron, was solacing herself
with her gallant before her husband was thorough cold in the mouth,
considering, that he that died half an hour ago is as dead as William the
Conqueror. There were several others passing to and again, quite out of
their mourning, that looked so demurely (I warrant ye) as if butter would
not have melted in their mouths, and yet apostate widows (as I was told)
and there they were kept as strictly, as if they had been in the Spanish
Inquisition. Some were laying wagers whose mourning was most _à la
mode_, and best made, or whose peak or veil became her best, and setting
themselves off with a thousand tricks of ornament and dress. The widows
I observed that were marching off, with the mark out of their mouths,
were hugely concerned to be thought young, and still talking of masks,
balls, fiddles, treats; chanting and jigging to every tune they heard,
and all upon the hoity-toity like mad wenches of fifteen. The younger,
on the other side, made use of their time and took pleasure while ’twas
to be had. There were too of the religious strain; a people much at
their beads, and in private; and these were there in the quality of love
heretics, or platonics, and under the penance of perpetual abstinence
from the flesh they loved best (which is the most mortifying Lent of all
other). Some, that had skill in perspective, were before the glass with
their boxes of patch and paint about them; shadowing, drawing out,
refreshing, and in short, covering and palliating, all the imperfections
of feature and complexion, every one after her own humour. Now these
women were absolutely insufferable, for they were most of them old and
headstrong, having got the better of their husbands, so that they would
be taking upon them to domineer here, as they had done at home; and
indeed, they found the master of the college enough to do.
When I had tired myself with this variety of folly and madness, I went to
the devotees, where I found a great many women and girls that had
cloistered up themselves from the conversation of the world; and yet were
not a jot soberer than their fellows. These one would have thought might
have been easily cured, but many of them were in for their lives, in
despite of either counsel or physic. The room where they were was
barricaded with strong bars of iron; and yet when the toy took them,
they’d make now and then a sally; for when the fit was upon them, they’d
own no superior but love, come what would on’t in the event. The greater
part of these good people were writing of tickets and dispatches, which
had still the sign of the cross at the top, and Satan at the bottom,
concluding with this, or some such postscript: I commend this paper to
your discretion. The fools of this province would be twattling night and
day; and if it happened that any one of them had talked herself a-weary
(which was very rare), she would presently take upon her very gravely to
admonish the rest, and read a lecture of silence to the company. There
were some that for want of better entertainment fell in love with one
another; but these were looked upon as a sort of fops and ninnies, and
therefore the more favourably used; but they’d have been of another mind,
if they had known the cause of their distemper.
The root of all these several extravagances was idleness, which
(according to Petrarch’s observation) never fails to make way for
wantonness. There was one among the rest that had more letters of
exchange upon the credit of her insatiable desires than a whole regiment
of bankers. Some of them were sick of their old visitor, and called for
a freshman. Others, by intervals, I perceived, had their wits about
them, and contented themselves discreetly with the physician of the
house. In short, it e’en pitied my heart to see so many poor people in
so sad a condition and without any hope of relief, as I gathered from him
that had them in care; for they were still puddering and royling their
bodies; and if they got a little ease for the present, they’d be down
again as soon as they had taken their medicine.
From thence I went to the single women (such as made profession never to
marry) which were the least outrageous and discomposed of all; for they
had a thousand ways to lay the devil as well as to raise him. Some of
them lived like common highwaymen, by robbing Peter to pay Paul; and
stripping honest men to clothe rascals, which is (under favour) but a
lewd kind of charity. Others there were, that were absolutely out of
their seven senses, and as mad as March hares for this wit and t’other
poet, that never failed to pay them again in rhymes and madrigals, with
ruby lips, pearly teeth, so that to read their verses, a man would swear
the whole woman to be directly petrified.
Of sapphire fair, or crystal clear,
Is the forehead of my dear, etc.
I saw one in consultation with a cunning man to know her fortune;
another, dealing with a conjurer for a philter, or drink to make her
beloved. A third was daubing and patching up an old ruined face, to make
it fresh and young again; but she might as well have been washing of a
blackamoor to make him white. In fine, a world there were, that with
their borrowed hair, teeth, eyes, eyebrows, looked like fine folks at a
distance, but would have been left as ridiculous as Æsop’s crow, if every
bird had fetched away his own feather. ’Deliver me (thought I, smiling
and shaking my head) if this be woman.
And so I stepped into the men’s quarter, which was but next door, and
only a thick wall between. Their great misery was that they were deaf to
good advice, obstinately hating and despising both physic and physician;
for if they would have either quitted or changed, they might have been
cured. But they chose rather to die, and though they saw their error,
would not mend it. Which minded me of the old rhyme:
Where love’s in the case,
The doctor’s an ass.
These fools-male were all in the same chamber; and one might perfectly
read their humour and distemper in their looks and gestures. Oh! how
many a gay lad did I see there in his point band and embroidered vest
that had not a whole shirt to his back! How many huffs and highboys that
had nothing else in their mouths but the lives and fortunes they’d spend
in their sweet ladies’ service! that would yet have run five miles on
your errand, to have been treated but at a threepenny ordinary? How many
a poor devil that wanted bread, and was yet troubled with the rebellion
of the flesh! Some there were that spent much time in setting their
perukes, ordering the mustache, and dressing up the very face of Lucifer
himself for a beauty: the woman’s privilege, and in truth an
encroachment, to their prejudice. There were others that made it their
glory to pass for Hectors, sons of Priam, brothers of the blade; and
talked of nothing but attacks, combats, reverses, stramazons, stoccados;
not considering that a naked weapon is present death to a timorous woman.
Some were taking the round of their ladies’ lodgings, at midnight, and
went to bed again as wise as they rose. Others fell in love by contagion
and merely conversing with the infected. Some again went post from
church to chapel, every holy day, to hunt for a mistress; and so turned a
day of rest into a day of labour. Ye might see others skipping
continually from house to house, like the knight upon a chess-board,
without ever catching the (queen or) dame. Some, like crafty beggars,
made their case worse than ’twas: and others, though ’twere ne’er so bad,
durst not so much as open their mouths. Really it grieved me for the
poor mutes, and I wished with all my heart their mistresses had been
witches, that they might have known their meaning by their mumping; but
they were lost to all counsel, so that there was no advising them. There
was another sort of elevated, and conceited lovers; and these forsooth
were not to be satisfied without the seven liberal sciences, and the four
cardinal virtues, in the shape of a woman; and their case was desperate.
The next I observed were a generation of modest fools, that passed under
the notion of people diffident of themselves. They were generally men of
good understanding, but for the most part younger brothers, of low
fortunes, and such as for want of wherewithal to go to the price of
higher amours, were fain to take up with ordinary stuff, that brought
them nothing in the end, but beggary and repentance. The husbands, I
perceived, were horribly furious, although in manacles and shackles.
Some of them left their own wives, and fell upon their neighbours’.
Others, to keep the good women in awe and obedience, would be taking upon
them, and playing the tyrants, but upon the upshot they found their
mistake, and that though they came on as fierce as lions, they went off
as tame as muttons. Some were making friendships with their wives’
she-cousins, and agreeing upon a cross-gossiping whoever should have the
first child.
The widowers, that had bit of the bridle, passed from place to place,
where they stayed more or less, according to their entertainment, and so
were in effect, as good as married; for as long, or as little a while as
themselves pleased. These lived single, and spent their time in
visiting, first one friend, then another. Here they fell in love; there
they kindled a jealousy, which they contracted themselves in one place,
and cured it in another. But the miracle was, that they all knew, and
confessed themselves a company of mad fools, and yet continued so. Those
that had skill in music, and could either sing or fiddle, made use of
their gifts, to put the silly wenches that were but half moped before,
directly out of their wits. They that were poetical were perpetually
hammering upon the subjects of cruelty and disappointment. One tells his
good fortune to another, that requites him with the story of his bad.
They that had set their hearts upon girls were beating the streets all
day, to find what avenues to a lady’s lodgings at night. Some were
tampering and caressing the chamber-maid, as the ready way to the
mistress. Others chose rather to put it to the push, and attempt the
lady herself. Some were examining their pockets and taking a view of
their furniture, which consisted much in love-letters, delicately sealed
up with perfumed wax, upon raw silk; and a thousand pretty devices
within; all wrapt up in riddle, and cipher. Abundance of hair bracelets,
lockets, pomanders, knots of riband, and the like. There were others,
that were called the husband’s friends, who were ready upon all occasions
to do this, and to do that kindness for the husband. Their purse,
credit, coach and horses, were all at his service; and in the meantime,
who but they to gallant the wife? To the park, the gardens, a treat, or
a comedy, where forty to one, by the greatest good luck in the world,
they stumble upon an aunt, an old housekeeper of the family, or some such
reverend goer-between that’s a well-willer to the mathematics; she takes
the hint, performs the good office, and the work is done.
Now there were two sorts of fools for the widows: the one was beloved,
and the other not. The latter were content to be a kind of voluntary
slaves, for the compassing their ends; but the other were the happier,
for they were ever at perfect liberty to do their pleasure, unless some
friend or child of the house perchance came in, in the mischievous nick,
and then in case of a little colour more than ordinary, or a tumbled
handkercher: ’twas but changing the scene, and struggling for a paper of
verses, or some such business to keep all in countenance. Some made
their assaults both with love and money, and they seldom failed, for they
came doubly armed; and your Spanish pistols are a sort of battery hardly
to be resisted.
I came now to reflect upon what I had seen, and as I was walking (in that
meditation) toward another lodging, I found myself (ere I was aware) in
the first court again; where I entered, and in it I observed new wonders:
I saw that the number of the mad fools increased every moment; although
time (I perceived) did all that was possible to recover them. There was
Jealousy tormenting even those that were most confident of the faith of
what they loved. There was Memory rubbing of old sores. There was
Understanding, locked up in a dark cellar; and Reason with both her eyes
out. I made a little pause, the better to observe these varieties and
disguises. And when I had looked myself a-weary, I turned about and
spied a door; but so narrow that it was hardly passable; and yet strait
as it was, divers there were that ingratitude and infidelity had set at
liberty, and made a shift to get through. Upon which opportunity of
returning, I made what haste I could to be one of the first at the door,
and in that instant, my man drew the curtain of my bed, and told me the
morning was far spent. Whereupon I waked, and recollecting myself, found
all was but a dream. The very fancy however of having spent so much time
in the company of fools and madmen, gave me some disorder, but with this
comfort, that both sleeping and waking, I had experimented passionate
love to be nothing else than a mere frenzy and folly.
* * * * *