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 enquiries; 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 enquire, 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 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 brusing 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 whoever should marry them, if they knew any thing of good
cookery, would never repent it.
There are, however, some things in the culinary sciences 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 before-hand when this pudding will be
produced; she takes the ingredient 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 enquiries 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 disquiets than those whose understandings take a wider
range. Her marigolds, when they are almost cured, are often scattered by
the wind, and 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 proportions 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 patterns 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