CROMWELL’S HOME

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4346, 4 January 1938, Page 2

CROMWELL’S HOME

SOME DOMESTIC SECRETS I HIS WIFE’S 110 RECIPES On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died, on the anniversary ot two of his most glorious battles, Dunbar in 1650 and Worcester the following year, after which he entered London m triumph* on September 12, to be established there , with the powers, if not the name, of a king. Let us leave aside the greater issue of his character and his place m history and explore one of the attractive bvk.vs of history, »I> • London ‘ Observer.’ What sort of a figure did the blunt country Eentlensou cut in the historic Court of St. James. In the British Museum are two copies of a little duodecimo book called iiie Court and Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly Called Joan Cromwe , the Wife of the Late Usurper Commonly called Joan ” is to indicate that the Protectress was nicknamed with the cant name of that period for a diucge. The book is described as very rare. One of the copies contains as frontispiece an engraved portrait of the La Protectress, a charming picture ot a sober, sensible, plain woman with a small monkey above her left shoulder. Beneath the picture is the rhyme: —

From feigned glory and Usurped Throne, And all the Greatnesse to me falsly shown, And from the Arts of Government set free, See how Protectresse and a Drudge agree.

From the other copy the engraving is torn out. The date is 1664, four years after the Restoration, when the late Protector’s lady was living in obscuritv with her daughter-in-law, Mrs Richard Cromwell. We should not, therefore, expect anything laudatory to the Puritan regime, and the book is intended as an attack upon the frugality, parsimony, and simplicity of the Cromwell household.

It is evidently written, if not by a former servant, by someone who had received inside 'knowledge of the household, for it contains 110 of Mrs Cromwell’s recipes, including one brought from Huntingdon, and one for Scotch collops. described as “ almost Her Constant Dish.”

Although the main complaint against the Cromwells is their frugality, the writer cannot, for all his rhetorical vilification, give anything but an attractive picture of a well-run household, where it is obvious that Mrs Cromwell’s attempts to economise were sneered at by uppish servants who would have preferred the wastefulness of fashionable ladies. Even Oliver’s well-known temperance is explained away as “ cheaplyer referred to the sordid frugality and thrifty basenesse of his Wife.” In enumerating the menus the complaint is made that the usual meat and diet at her table was most of it “ ordinary and vulgar, except some few Itanties. We are told that for supper they had nothing but eggs and slops, and there is a rich recipe for scrambled eggs with 12 and a pound of sweet butter. A pathetic detail is that the Protectress put up partitions in her own apartments and in the domestic quaitor u not being y*ot accustomed to that roomy and August Dwelling) and perhaps afraid of the vastnesse and silentnesse thereof which presented o her thoughts the Desolution her Husband had caused, and the dreadful apparition of those Princes, whose incensed Ghosts wandred up and down, and did attend some avenging oppoitunitv ; and this was the more believable because . • ■ she could nevei endure any Whispering or to be alone bv herself in any of the Chambers. ' Since she did not like London beei, s he was intending, with her mother s advice, to establish a small breweiyone remembers the legend of the Himtinerdon brewery—for her own and Olivers drink. She abandoned the idea because just at that time a new drink became known, “ being a very small Ale of 7s Od a Barrel, well bo vied and well tasted and conditioned, called and known by the name ot Morning Dev (from the Brewers name as heard),” and this became the Uie Drink of this temperate Couple, and the cool, refreshing entertnmment of those bouncing lathes that ca weltring and wallowing in then ° When'tho coupdo first moved to London we arc told, the middle sort of the’ Religions Phanatique sent her <7 Xeats Tongues, Puncheons, and Tehees of French Wine, Runlets, and Bottles of Sack; all manner ot Preserves and Comfits to save her the trouble of the Town; the most ot which o-ifts, they being multiplied upon her she retailed by private hands at as good a rate as the Market would similar storv of thrift is that of the soodwife who picked the first peas of the season, and was advised by neighbours to take them to Whitehall •md fret an exorbitant price. On the way the cook at the Savoy offered her an angel for them, but she refused expecting more at Whitehall. Arrived there, however, the maid gave her a fcnwn, which she indignantly refused, H took back her peas for the original

lonfth the recipes are described Ip, most of them are good, and Ivon 1(1 stagger a modern cook by ■Laborateness They are described Hk very poetry of cookery iauto Bake a Pig ” beggars H cs Lamb’s famous descrip-

m experiment practised by ftngton Brewhouse, and is icf the only way of dresstake a good quantity of W~tey stop barrels’ bungs Hidng moulded it stick K blood him well, and Hirm. arm him Like a ■ft one of Cromwels i||Bkin. and all (his inHB’xdv sowed up again) |Hbd clay, thick everybelow the stoakand there let HBhim now and then, hardened for 12 sufficiently baked; |J»id break off the clay and you will have jV. and all the juice of dish; remember hut of sage, and a

little salt in the belly of it. and you need no other sauce.’’ Despite the writer’s intention to disparage, an agreeable picture of English life emerges all the more plainly for the contrast with Frenchified Whitehall. The gossip may be apocryphal, but it adds to our knowledge of seventeenth-century manners.