PASTON LETTERS

Evening Star, Issue 21611, 5 January 1934, Page 12

PASTON LETTERS

A PICTURE OF LIFE THE ENGLAND THAT PASSED FIVE CENTURIES AGO The Paston letters, which the Friends of the National Libraries, are endeavouring to purchase for the British Museum, are an extensive accumulation of many sorts ,of paper which were sent to or came into the hands of the Pastons,. a well-to-do middle-class Norfolk family of the fifteenth century, writes H. C. Charlton; in' the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ Amongst them, are 'documents which belong to the'public and political life of those troubled days—articles of the Duke of Norfolk’s impeachment, an account of the Battle of St, Albans, etc. There are also many items of a purely legal nature—the wilj of Sir John Fastolf, a neighbour of the Pastons, an ihventorj T of his goods, petitions to this or that court, and so forth. But ,by far the most interesting things in the collection are the letters written from one Paston to another through three generations. William Paston the judge and pis wife Agnes are, first oh the list; then their son John and his wife Margaret, whose correspondence is most fully preserved; and for a third group the three ships of. John, and Margaret. But, besides these folk, there are aunts, cousins," friends/ agents, servants, . and . others who swell the index of correspondence. : 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 his wife Margaret to bring up their large' family and to run the estate in days when the preservation of property meant the exercise of much legal , astuteness,, alertness in currying the right authority’s favour, resisting armed inroads 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 defintion could they be called literature: Margaret’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 are a temporary confusion to the mind; and at times one is arrested by a striking phrasd. A political correspondent reports to John that “here is great' heaving and shoving by my lord of Suffolk,” and Margaret herself uses a neo-Americanism to describe the breakdown of a business deal—“ I am through with him.” ■ But Margaret’s personality pierces through her bad grammar and her queer spelling. She is, in fact, the perfect wife. “ Ryth’ . reverent and worsepful busbon,” she normally heads her letters, and though she laments his lengthy ab&ences_ she is_ always sure that it is his business which keeps him in town although she was certainly wise enough to know that some husbands pleaded the law terms for less reputable intents. There is, for instance, an amusing letter here which has no obvious connection with Fasten affairs: I'lveston is steward of the Middle Inn, and Isley r- the Inner Inn, “he cans? wold have offh- "er . for dwelling tin* mum .tout VCum vyve*.” But

Margaret never complains:.“ As for all other eronds that ye have commandid for-to be'do, thei shal he do als sone as\ thei may he do.” Sometimes, and no' wonder, she seems to have made some small mistake or other, and one imagines John’s rather . unintelligent reproof; he certainly could neither have deserved nor appreciated her reply: “ Right worchipfull- hoshond, I recomawned me to yow, beseching yow that ye be not displeasid with' me, thow my symplenesse cawsed yow for to be dis,pleasid with me. Be my trowth, it is not my will nother to do ne sey that shuld cawse yow for to be displeasid; and if I have do, I am sory therof, and will amend itt. Wherefor I beseche you to forgcve me, and that ye here none hevynesse in your hert ayens me, for your displeasans shuld be to bevy to.be to indure with.” SHOPPING, Naturally, John would execute little commissions for her in London. She begs him to buy something for her neck, as she is ashamed of her beads and has, in fact, borrowed , a necklace to wear at a Norfolk reception to the Queen. Also (but we .must reluctantly make her write English henceforward), “ I pray you that you will vouchsafe to send me ■ another sugar loaf, for my old one is done, and also that you will have a girdle made for our daughter.” Even with much more important commissions she was still as trustingly unexacting: “As for cloth for my gown, I can get none in this town better than that is that I send you a sample of, which methink too simple, both m colour and in cloth. Wherefore I pray you that you will vouchsafe to buy for me 3Jyds of such as it 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 in Margaret than there is in her hus band’s mother. Agnes Paston, indeed, must have been very hard in the home. When one of her sons, Clement,'was a law student in London, she wrote to Ins tutor for a report: “If he hath not done well and will not amend, pray the tutor that he will truly belash him till he, do ame'nd, and so did the last master 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 the parents fixed the contract on a purely selfish basis. A WRETCHED LIFE. Agnes Paston’s daughter Elizabeth had a wretched life with her mother, and all her relatives intervened tactfully and secretly to find her a husband if for no other reason than to save her from her mother’s matronly violence. “ She hath since Easter for the most part been beaten once a week or twice, and sometimes twice in one day, and her head broken in two or three 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. “ Right 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 1 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 rather a gay dog, much fonder of fashionable London than of bis 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 the variety in this rich gathering of a family’s muniments. They provide a cinematographic view of England immediately following Agincourt. They restore the past vividly and pleasantly, and one sets them down delighted above all that the past is indeed passed.