PASTON LETTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 147, 19 December 1933, Page 22

PASTON LETTERS

A PICTURE OF LIFE

THE ENGLAND THAT PASSED

FIVE OENTUKI&S AGO

The Paston letters, .which the Jj'ricn4s of the National Libraries arc endeavouring to purchase for the British Museum, are an .extensive accumulation of many .sorts of papers which wero sent to or camo into tho bands of the Pastons, a well-to-do middle-class Norfolk family of tho fifteenth century, writes H. C. Charlton in. tho "Manchester Guardian." ' Amongst thorn are documents which belong to the public and political life of those troubled days—articjes of the, Duke of Suffolk's impeachment, an ac-' count of the Battle of St. Albans, etc. There are also many items of a purely' legal nature—tho will of Sir John Fastolf,' a neighbour of the Pastons, an inventory of his goods, petitions to this or that Court, and so forth. But by far the most interesting things in the Collection arc the letters written from one Paston to anothor through three generations. William Paston tho Judge and his wife Agnes are first on (lie list; then their son John and his wife Margaret, whose correspondence is most fully preserved; and for a third group the three sons of John and Margaret. But, besides these folks, thcro are aunts and cousins, friends, agents, servants, and others who swell tho index of correspondents. Most of the domestic letters in these files are more occupied with practical affairs than with fireside chatter. John, for instance, for many years spent most of the law-terms in London, leaving hia •wifo Margaret to bring up their large family and. to run tho estate in daya when tho preservation of property moant the exercise of much legal astuteness, alertness in currying the . right authority's favour, resisting armed inroada of rival claimants, and' then, in one's spare time, selling the harvest or the wool crop and replenishing stock and larder as cheaply as possible. DIFFERENT STRAIN. John's letters to his wife are matter-of-fact instructions which he might have sent to a professional steward. But hers to him have the savour of a strong and delightful character. Perhaps by no definition could they be called literature: Margarot's syntax is almost as odd and as variable as her spelling. Yet these old forms have a curious charm for the eye, even when they aro a temporary confusion, to tho mind; and at times one is arrested by a striking phrase. A political correspondent reports to John that "here is great heaving and shoving by my lord of Suf; folk," and Margaret. herself uses a neo-Americanism-to describe the breakdown of a business deal—"l am through with hjm." But Margarot's personality pierces through her bad grammar and her queer spelling. She is, in * fact, the perfect wife. "Ryth reverent and worsepful lusbon," she normally heads her letters, and though she laments his lengthy absences she is always sure that it is his business which keeps him in town, although she was certainly wise eiough, to know that some husbands pleaded the law-terms for less reputable intents. There is, for instance, an amusing letter hero which has no obvious connection with 'Paston affairs: Ulveston is steward of the Middle Inn, and. Isley of the Inner Inn "be cause thei wold have ofßcz for exeuso for dwellyng this tyme from ther wyves." But Margarot never complains: "as for all other eronds that ye have commandid for to be do, tliei shal be do als sone as thei may be do." Sometimes, and no wonder, she seems to have', mado • some ismall mistake or other, and ono imagined John's rather unintelligent reproof; he certainly could neither have deserved nor appreciated, her reply: "Bight worchipfull hosbond, I recomawned me to yow, beseching yow that ye be not displeasid with me, thow my symplenesse cawsed yow for to be ( displeasid with me. Be my trowth, it is not my will nother to do no sey that shuld cawse yow for, to bo displeasid; and if I have do, I am sory therof and vril amend itt. Wherefor I besecho you to forgeve mej and that ye bore none hevynosse in your hert ayens me, for your displeasans shuld be to hevy to me to indufenwith." SHOPPING. Naturally, John would execute little commissions for her in London. She Ijegs him to buy something for her rieck, as she is ashamed of her beads and has, in fact, borrowed a necklace • to wear at a Norfolk reception to the Qileen. Also (but we. must reluctantly make her write English henceforward), "I pray you that you will vouchsafe to sent! me another sugar loaf, for my old .one is done, and also that you will have a girdle made for •mr daughter.?' Eyen. with much more important commissions she was still as trustingly unexactirig: "As for cloth for my gown, I can. get none in this town, bettor than that is that I send you a sample of, which methink too simple, both in colour and in. cloth. .Wherefore I pray you that you will •vouchsafe to 'buy for me 3-J yards of such as if pleases you that I should have, and of. what colour pleases you, for here is right feeble choice." ■" As-a mother; too, there is more grace & Margaret than there is in her husband's mother. Agnes Paston, indeed, must have;becn vory hard in the home. When one of her sons, Clement, was a law student in London, she wrote to his tutor for a Teport: "If he hath not done well and will not amend, pray, the tutov that ho will truly belash him till he do amend, and so did the last mastor and the best that ever he had at Cambridge," And she concludes with the Spartan moral, "I had rather he were fairly buried than lost for default." But her daughters suffered most. Girls in the fifteenth century had an unbelievably hard and unpleasant life of it. The main object was to get them married as soon and as cheaply as possible, and tho parents fixed tho contract on a purely solfish basis. . A WRETCHED LIFE. Agnes Paston's daughter Elizabeth had a wretched life with her mother, arid all her relatives intervened tnctfully and secretly to find her a husband if for no other reason than to savo her from her mothor's matronly violence: "She hath since Easter for tho most part been beaten once a week or twice, and sometimes twice iv ono day, and her head broken in two or threo places." Yet when 'at length Elizabeth was married she bears no malice against her mother; it was apparently all part of the accepted custom of the good old days. "Eight worshipful and my most entirely beloved mother, in the most lovely manner I recommend me to your good motherhood. ... And as for my master (her husband), my best' beloved as you call him, and I must needs call him so now, for I find no other cause that I should not, and as I trust to Jesus never shall."

The third generation of Paston boys seem' to have found life a little less arduous. Perhaps they lacked something of their father's earnestness or his stolidity. One of them, indeed, was Tather a gay dog," much fonder, of fashionable London than of his Norfolk home. He seems, too, to have liked the ladies, and the tale hidden behind one letter to him from a lady inspires curious speculations. But it is too long to quote here. Moreover, there are a score of others which have an equal interest. Such is tho variety in this