A HISTORY OF EVERYDAY THINGS IN ENGLAND.*
ALL readers of the first volume of Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell's History of Everyday Things in England will welcome the second —and last. The second part is as original and as fascinating
as the first, and those who read the first will know that no higher praise can be given. The Middle Ages are now left behind.
Our authors deal with the period between 1500 and 1799. Delightful pictures and plans bring near to us the houses, castles, churches, ships, schools, and mills belonging to the three hundred years which take us from Henry VIII. to the latter yea:s of George III. Many pictures illustrate the varying fashions and inventions in costume, in armour, in weapons, in sport, in toys, in agricultural and musical instru- ments. The birth of industrialism in England is brought before us, and the substitution of the principle of competition for the principle of service explained in a spirit of fair criticism without undue bias, though we are left with a sense that the " merriness " of England was in a measure silenced by the inevitable change.
In the period dealt with in the earlier chapters, however much of the old order remained. The Englishman's house was still his castle, even if it could no longer stand a siege. Many branches of one family lived together under one roof as they had done in the past, and a wide and careless hospitality was exercised such as would have been impossible without a pooling of resources. A letter from Erasmus describes the London life of a gentleman in the time of Henry VIII. :—
" More hath built neare London, upon the Thames side, a commodious house, neither manna nor subject to envie, yet magnificent enough ; there he converseth affably with his family, his wife, his son and daughter-in-lawe, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren."
A curious will of the same period provides for the fair division of a joint tenancy of a house between a man's wife and brother.
She is to have half use of the hall with a fire in it at all times, half use of the kitchen with its various coppers and caldrons, and half the garden and orchard (the boundaries are minutely described) is to be reserved to her use, together with the western end of the large barn. One par:our is to be hers exclusively, one bedchamber, and one garret. The bed-linen and household utensils are also specifically divided. One cannot help wondering whether the inhabitants of the joint house lived in amity or quarrelled, how much time the widow spent in her parlour and how much in the hall. In the same will we read of legacies to servants. They consist chiefly of livestock, and prove that the legatees had small-holdings of their own.
There seems no doubt that our ancestors ate, when they could get it, about four times as much as we eat now ; but the quality of the food seems to have differed in name rather than in essentials. The "savoury knacks" of the sixteenth century may have tasted not unlike the hors d'auvre of to-day. How they were able to swallow the pounds of beef and mutton,
followed by more pounds of poultry and pastry, must remain a mystery for a less hungry generation.
Our authors have got together a great many very entertaining details about the life of seventeenth-century children. School life was evidently hard. Hours were long and comforts few, but the little children at home in the nursery seem to have been petted much as children are now. Mothers of young children will be interested in the wardrobes of our little ancestors. We have a detailed account of the everyday and best clothes of a little boy of eight, who, by the by, wore out five pairs of shoes a year. A charming description of the breeching of a little urchin of six at about the same period shows that the nursery then, as now, was the centre of interest in a middle-class house- hold. The picture is taken from a letter and runs as follows :—
"You cannot beleeve the great coneerne that was in the whole family here, last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to helpe to dress little Frank in his breeches, in order to the making an everyday suit by it. Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her wedding night more hands about her, some the legs and some the arms, the taylor butt'ning, and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on, that, had I not a ffinger amongst them I could not have seen him. .• . They are very fitt, everything, and he looks taller and • A History of Everyday Thing.‘ in England. Part II.. 1500-1799. Written and Illustrated by Marjorie aud V. K. B. Queunen. London : B. T. Batsford. 8d. net.) prettyer than in his coats (petticoats). Little Charles reiyoced as niudh as he did, for he jumpt all the while about him, and took notice of everything. I went to Bury and bo't every- thing for another suitt which will be finisht upon Saturday. So the coats are to be quite left off on Sunday. . . . When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion because they had not sent him one."
A good deal of space is devoted to the theatre. We learn exactly what the Elizabethan playhouses were like and those of the time of Charles II., and are amazed at how history repeats itself in the matter of popular taste. Masques were as much "the mode" as plays, and for the same reason that variety shows are now as popular as the legitimate drama :—
" Masques were spectacles rather than plays, and depended more on music, dancing, and transformation scenes, than plot. In the Masque of Blackness, given on Twelfth Night, 1606, the Queen and Court appeared with faces and arms blacked as Ethiopians ; in the Masque of Beauty, an island was shown floating on water with beautiful effects of lighting. Inigo Jones the architect was employed to stage those per- formances, and made a groat reputation by inventing the machinery which was necessary to effect the transformation scenes. Ben Jonson supplied the idea, and book of the words, and alas ! quarrelled with Jones, thinking that he obtained more than his fair share of credit."
We might quote indefinitely from a book which we should like to see in the hands of every boy and girl in the country. The reader cannot help wondering as he lays it down whether it would not be possible that its pictures should be shown upon the cinema, the letterpress being read or delivered in explanation of them. Such a show would do an immense deal to make the children of London realize the nature of the block whence they are hewn, and could not fail to give them a more intelligent interest in those much-discussed " conditions " of life in whose improvement their parents are so passionately interested, but of whose evolution up to the present they know so little.
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