The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Sir Kenelm Digby [books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

and Represented and now made Publick for general Satisfaction, 1644. The preface is scurrilous beyond belief. Compiled from the gossip of servants, it is meant to cast ridicule on the housekeeping of the Protector's establishment. But the second part is a sober collection of by no means very penurious recipes from Joan's own kitchen books.

Hartman, his steward, made an excellent thing out of Digby's receipts-though the publishing of The Closet Opened was not his doing, I think. His Choice and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery had already appeared in 1668, which suggested to some other hanger-on of the Digby household that John Digby's consent might be obtained for printing Sir Kenelm's culinary as well as his medical note-books. Hartman followed up this new track with persistence and profit to himself. As a mild example of the "choice and experimented," I transcribe "An Approved Remedy for Biting of a Mad Dog": "Take a quart of Ale, and a dram of Treacle, a handful of Rue, a spoonful of shavings or filings of Tin. Boil all these together, till half be consumed. Take of this two spoonfuls in the morning, and at night cold. It is excellent for Man or Beast." I need not continue. The receipts are there for curious searchers. They were applied to aristocratic patients; and they are no more absurd or loathsome than those of other books of the time and kind. Even Bacon is fantastic enough with his "Grains of Youth" and "Methusalem Water." In 1682, George Hartman published, "for the Publike Good," The True Preserver and Restorer of Health . It is dedicated to the Countess of Sunderland, and is described as "the collection for the most part (which I had hitherto reserved) of your incomparable kinsman and my truly Honourable Master, Sir Kenelm Digby, whom I had the Honour to serve for many years beyond the Seas, as well as in England; and so continued with him till his dying Day, and of whose Generosity and Bounty I have sufficiently tasted, and no less of your illustrious Fathers, both before and after my Glorious Masters Decease." Of this book he says, "The world hath not yet seen such another Piece." Commend me to the forthright methods of seventeenth century advertisement! In the second part, "Excellent Directions for Cookery," The Closet Opened was largely drawn on. In 1696 appeared The Family Physician , by George Hartman, Phylo-Chymist ... who liv'd and Travell'd with the Honourable Sir Kenelm Digby in several parts of Europe, the space of Seven Years till he died. This other choice compilation owes much to the "incomparable" one, and is described as "the marrow of collections."

But Hartman is not the only witness to Digby's connoisseurship in the joint mysteries. Better to my mind than even Hartman's are the style and the spirit of Master May. In 1660 appeared The Accomplisht Cook, or the Art and Mystery of Cookery ... approved by the fifty years experience and industry of Robert May, in his attendance on Several Persons of Honour. It is dedicated to Lord Lumley, Lord Lovelace, Sir Wm. Paston, Sir Kenelme Digby, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis, "so well known to the Nation for their admired Hospitalities," and generally to

"the race
Of those that for the Gusto stand,
Whose tables a whole Ark command
Of Nature's plentie."

"He is an Alien, a meer Stranger in England that hath not been acquainted with your generous housekeeping; for my own part, my more particular Tyes of Service to you, my Honoured Lords, have built me up to the height of this experience." His preface is a heartrending cry of regret for the good old times before usurping Parliaments banished splendidly extravagant gentlemen across the seas, "those golden days of Peace and Hospitality, when you enjoy'd your own, so as to entertain and relieve others ... those golden days wherein were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery, then was Hospitality esteemed and Neighbourhood preserved, the Poor cherished and God honoured; then was Religion less talk't on and more practis't, then was Atheism and Schisme less in Fashion, and then did men strive to be good rather than to seem so." High-souled were the chefs of the seventeenth century!

The 1669 edition of The Closet Opened is evidently the first. The interleaved example mentioned in the Catalogue of the Digby Library is of the same date. Whoever prepared it for the press and wrote the egregious preface "To the Reader"-Hartman, or as I think, another-gave it the title; but it was a borrowed one. Some years earlier, in 1655, had appeared
The Queen's Closet Opened, Incomparable Secrets which were presented unto the Queen by the most Experienced Persons of the Times, many wherof were had in Esteem when she pleased to descend to Private Recreation . The Queen, of course, is Henrietta Maria, and chief among the "Experienced Persons" referred to was certainly her Chancellor, Digby. Possibly he may even have suggested the printing of the collection. Like titles are met with again and again. Nature's Cabinet Opened , a medical work, was attributed to Browne, though he repudiated it. Ruthven's book I have already alluded to. The Queen-like Closet , a Rich Cabinet, by Hannah Wolly, came out in 1670.

Of the two books, the Queen's and her Chancellor's, Digby's has afforded me by far the most delight. Though many of the receipts are evidently given as sent in, the stamp of his personality is on the whole; and he is the poet of all these culinary artists. But on the score of usefulness to the housewife I forbear all judgment. The recipes may be thought extravagant in these late hard times-though epicurism has changed rather than vanished. Lord Bacon's receipt for making "Manus Christi for the Stomach" begins, "Take of the best pearls very finely pulverised one drachm"; and a health resolution runs, "To take once during supper wine in which gold is quenched." Costly ingredients such as pearls and leaf gold appear only once among Digby's receipts. The modern housewife may be aghast at the thought of more than a hundred ways of making mead and metheglin. Mead recalls to her perhaps her first history-book, wherein she learnt of it as a drink of the primitive Anglo-Saxons. If she doubt the usefulness of the collection in her own kitchen, let her take the little volume to her boudoir, and read it there as gossiping notes of the beau monde in the days when James I and the Charleses ruled the land. She will find herself in lofty company, and on intimate terms with them. They come down to our level, without any show of condescension. Lords and ladies who were personages of a solemn state pageant, are now human neighbourly creatures, owning to likes and dislikes, and letting us into the secrets of their daily habits.

It pleases me to think of Henrietta Maria, in her exile, busying herself in her still-room, and forgetting her dangers and sorrows in simpling and stilling and kitchen messes; and of her devoted Sir Kenelm, in the moments when he is neither abeting her Royalist plots, nor diverting her mind to matters of high science, or the mysteries of the Faith, but bringing to her such lowlier consolations as are hinted in "Hydromel as I made it weak for the Queen Mother." We are not waiting in a chill ante-chamber when we read, "The Queen's ordinary Bouillon de Santé in a morning was thus," or of the Pressis which she "used to take at nights-of great yet temperate nourishment-instead of a Supper." And who can hint at Court scandals in the face of such evidence of domesticity as "The Queen useth to baste meat with yolks of fresh eggs, &c." or "The way that the Countess de Penalva makes the Portuguese eggs for the Queen is this"? We cannot help being interested in the habits of Lady Hungerford, who "useth to make her mead at the end of summer, when she takes up her Honey, and begins to drink it in Lent." My Lady Gower and her husband were of independent tastes. Each had their own receipts. It must be remembered that Dr. Johnson said no woman could write a cookery-book; and he threatened to write one himself. And Sir Kenelm had many serious rivals among his own sex.

In such an embarras de choix as given by all these drink receipts, we may be in doubt whether to try "My Lord Gorge's Meath," or "The Countess of Newport's" cherry wine, or "The sweet drink of my Lady Stuart," or of Lady Windebanke, or "Sir Paul Neile's way of making cider," or "my Lord Carlisle's Sack posset"; but one is strongly influenced by such a note as "Sir Edward Bainton's Receipt which my Lord of Portland (who gave it me) saith, was the best he ever drank." I had thought of Saint-Evremond as warrior and wit, delightful satirist and letter-writer. But here is a streak of new light upon him: "Monsieur St. Euvremont makes thus his potage de santé of boiled meat for dinner being very valetudinary.... When he is in pretty good health, that he may venture upon more savoury hotter things, &c." The most rigorous Protestants will relax to hear how "To make a Pan Cotto as the Cardinals use in Rome." And if "My Lord Lumley's Pease Pottage" sounds homely, be it known, on the word of the eloquent Robert May, that his lordship "wanted no knowledge in the discerning this mystery." What fastidious simplicity in the taste of the great is suggested by "My Lord d'Aubigny eats Red-herrings thus boiled"!

But if Sir Kenelm consorted only with the great, it was with the great of all social ranks. It was not merely on high questions of science he discoursed with the discoverer of the circulation of the blood-witness "Dr. Harvey's pleasant water cider." Then there was that "Chief Burgomaster of Antwerpe," with whom he must have been on pretty intimate terms, to learn that he "used for many years to drink no other drink but this [mead]; at Meals and all times, even for pledging of healths. And though He was an old man, he was of an extraordinary vigor every way, and had every year a Child, had always a great appetite, and good digestion; and yet was not fat." Digby was too great a gentleman to be above exchanging receipts with the professors of the "mystery," such as the Muscovian Ambassador's steward; and when "Master Webbe who maketh the King's meath," on the 1st of September, 1663, came to his house to make some for him, Sir Kenelm stood by, a little suspicious lest the other great artist was bamboozling him. He had an eye for all-though it may have been one of his correspondents who says of the remnants of a dish that it "will make good Water-gruel for the Servants."

The seriousness of the business is tremendous; and to ignore the fine shades in the 106 receipts for mead and metheglin would have been a frivolity unknown in Digby's circle. There is care; there is conscience; there is rivalry. The ingredients are mingled with a nice discrimination between the rights of the palate and the maintenance of health. "Use only Morello cherries (I think) for pleasure, and black ones for health." You may not wait your own convenience in such serious business. "It is best made by taking all the Canicular days into your fermentation." Now and again other methods of calculating than ours are used; but "whiles