At the end of May I went to the University of Reading Special Collections for the day, where I’d requested two books from the Reserve Collection. For some reason I expected them to be enormous, but they’re actually rather petite – around the size of a modern paperback.
The one nestled on the cushion is Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, printed in 1585.
Honestly, I could have just looked at the title page all day. Isn’t it lovely?
The text begins with a poem about how you should read the book before you do any work, so you don’t waste your valuable time:
“In euerie month, yer in aught be begun,
Read over that month, what avails to be dun:
So neither this travell, shall seeme to be lost,
Nor thou to repent, of this trifling cost.”
In fact the entire book turned out to be in verse, which took me by surprise! I don’t know whether this was a common learning technique, making the information easier to recall, or whether Tusser was simply a frustrated poet at heart. He certainly wasn’t a great farmer, having failed several times and ended up bankrupt, but he makes no secret of this. The book contains not one, but two versions of his life story (all in rhyme) and cautions that if you do as he says, not as he did, you should have much better luck!
There was a pop-up exhibition about the Tusser a little while ago, called “How To Be Rural”. Sadly I couldn’t make it on the day, but this blog post tells you all about it.
The reason I requested this book is because as well as the Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, it also contains, right at the back, A Hundred Good Points of Housewifery. I’ve been trying to establish exactly what women’s roles were during this period, not so much in the house, but rather on the farm and in the garden. Some books are extremely vague, saying frustrating and unhelpful things along the lines of “a good huswife will know what to do”… which I’m sure she would have done at the time, but four hundred years later I’d be grateful for a bit more of a hint! Generally speaking, men were largely in charge of outdoor work, and women’s domains were the house, dairy and garden, but it’s turning out to be quite challenging (so far) to find out the exact details of the women’s work.
The book does indicate that women were in charge of medicine, as there is a section titled The good huswiferie physicke. It begins:
“God huswife provides, yer an sickness doo come,
Of sundrie good things, in hir house to have some:”
and goes on to describe effectively a list of ingredients that a good huswifeshould have on hand, as well as some remedies that she should know how to prepare. Unhelpfully for me, however, Tusser doesn’t actually provide any recipes or instructions for these cures, so I’ll need to look elsewhere.
I do still need to read the Huswiferie section in more detail, as I only had time on this occasion to give it a bit of a skim through. However, Tusser is certainly convinced that Husbandrie and Huswiferie are nothing without one another, as he explains in the preface to the Booke of Huswiferie:
“Take weapon away, or what force is a man?
Take huswife from husband, and what is he than?
As lovers do covet, together to dwell,
So husbandrie loveth, good huswiferie well.
Though husbandrie seemeth, to bring in the grains,
Yet huswiferie labours, seeme equall in pains.
Some respite to husbands, the weather may send,
But huswifes affaires, have never an end.”
Where the Tusser was absolutely pristine, this copy of Barnaby Googe’s The Whole Art and Trade of Husbandry, from 1614 (a translation and expansion of Heresbach’s Foure Bookes of Husbandry) is… not.
The book has been re-bound at some point in its history, and the damaged and discoloured title page has been re-mounted onto the new endpapers.
This copy has had several lives before it reached the University’s Special Collections. I particularly like the detail of this official stamp having been inked in, where the letters in the middle didn’t quite make their mark.
This is part of the contents page, which has been used for (sadly smudged beyond legibility) handwriting practice in the margins. Much as I’d never write in my own books, I love the fact that this one is covered with notes and references and stains. A proper working book!
I requested it so that I could read the second part, which is “of gardens, orchards and woods”. Up to this point, gardening – and particularly food production – had been the domain of women, even in the poorest of households. According to Googe/Heresbach:
“Herein were the olde husbands very careful, and used, alwayes to judge, that where they found the garden out of order, the wife of the house, (for unto her belonged the charge thereof) was no good huswife, for they should be forced to have their victuals from the Shambles or the Market…”
Which would, of course, cost money.
Whilst browsing through the contents page I spotted an entry for planting according to the phases of the moon (which turned out to be on page 51, not 70a) – a practice which is still the subject of several modern almanacs. However, Googe/Heresbach aren’t as prescriptive as modern books on the subject. In fact they’re just the tiniest bit vague:
“In sowing beside some think, you must have regard to the Moone, and to sow and set in the encrease and not in the wane. Some againe think it best from that she is foure dayes old, till she bee eighteene: some after the third, other from the tenth, till the twentieth: and best (as they all suppose) the Moone being aloft and not set.”
I’m also disappointed that I didn’t notice until I looked again at this photo, the section titled “Plants prospering with cursing”. I wish I’d read that – I have so many questions! Do your plants do better if you’re mean to them? Are they plants that you can use to curse people? I’m definitely going to have to find out!
It’s also noticeable throughout the contents that Googe/Heresbach had something of an obsession with plants and harvests “of great bignesse”. I suppose that’s what you want from a book about how to get the best out of your garden, although having grown radishes myself, I’m not entirely sure that “great bignesse” is necessarily a desirable quality in that particular instance.
Googe/Heresbach do talk about herbs – specifically in great detail about how to grow them. The first two pages of this section are all about asparagus – how to prepare the ground, how to grow it, how to harvest it, and how to cook and eat it. The book often says that particular plants are used “in Phisicke”, but not how, or what for.
I presume that this is the point at which the husbandry books hand over to the herbals, so for now I’m going to go back to where I started. In particular, I’m going to go and have a look at my own (facsimile) editions of Culpeper’s The English Physitian (1652). Culpeper is one of the few herbalists who acknowledges the work and expertise of women in the compilation of his books, so I think it will be useful to go back and have a look at exactly what he has to say.