The woodcut above shows a man obviously enjoying himself: he has all the food (maybe some pies in the upper left) and drink he needs and has settled in for a good night. It comes from the printing of a broadside ballad called Old Christmass Returnd, Or, Hospitality REVIVED.* The last line of that song's chorus is merely a belted-out list of holiday food: “Plumb pudding, Goose, Capon, minc't pies & Roast beef.” You can hear how it was probably sung here.
However, the second half of the title alludes to something more serious and certainly a fair bit darker. The subtitle of the piece begins: “Being a Looking-glass for rich Misers, wherein they may see (if they be not blind) how much they are to blame for their penurious [stingy] house-keeping." Hospitality is warmly celebrated but its inverse is coldly condemned. The final verse of the ballad makes this point, clearly and more brutally:
Then let all Curmudgeons who dote on their wealth
And value their treasure much more than their health
Go hang themselves up, if they will be so kind,
Old Christmas with them but small welcome shall find
They will not afford to themselves, without grief
Plumb pudding, Goose, Capon, Minc't pies & Roast beef.
It reminded me of the darker elements of a Christmas Carol, how many spoke of Scrooge after he was gone in Christmas Future’s vision. I will return to the hospitality in the food of the above song tomorrow but today I would like to focus on the concept itself and why it provoked such strong feelings. It is hard to escape food entirely and we begin that exploration by looking back at a menu that includes many of the items named in Old Christmass Returnd, Or, Hospitality REVIVED.
Bills of fare, like the one covered in my entry last week, were not a rare thing to see in cookery books in the seventeenth century. These menus for a season, day or specific feast were included by most writers and publishers in the period. For instance, Hannah Woolley, in her Queen-Like Closet gives “A Bill of Fare for the Spring Season,” one for Midsomer and more specifically for “a Gentlemans House about Candlemas, as well as for a number of other “Extraordinary Occasions.” Her titles are basic, as are Robert May’s in his book, The Accomplisht Cook; except, as I noted last week, he adds a nostalgic politically-loaded rider. He does not present a menu for contemporary use but instead for “service, as it was used before hospitality left this Nation.”
This seasonal menu is not the only mention of “hospitality” found in the cook’s book. In fact, May or his publisher included the word in almost all of the introductory material that precede the actual recipes. The frontispiece, or the picture found opposite the title page, is a woodcut portrait of May. Below the representation of the author looking side-eyed at the reader is this (slightly modernised):
What? wouldst thou view but in one face
all hospitality, the race
of those that for the Gusto stand,
whose tables a whole Ark comand
of Natures plenty, wouldst thou see
this sight, peruse May’s book, 'tis he.
May is thus first introduced, representing all hospitality, all gusto or taste and one whose tables provides an ark’s-worth of nature’s plenty.
The title page is next and then a somewhat lengthy dedication. This was also common in the period: patronage of the wealthy could still be the primary source of income for authors and the dedication was usually addressed to them. Sometimes it was in acknowledgement of past support and sometimes it was an attempt to get a patron’s attention. May’s dedication heading reads: “To the Right Honourable my Lord Lumley, and my Lord Lovelace; and to the Right Worshipful Sir William Paston, Sir Kenelme Digby, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis; so well known to the Nation for their admired Hospitalities.” The cook is casting a pretty wide net and those named are important - who they are can be explored elsewhere - but to be short, again it is for hospitality they are lauded.
The historical context is partially explained in a line that follows, May says: “for my own part, my more particular years of service to you my Honoured Lords, have built me up to the height of this experience, for which this Book now at last dares appear to the world: those times which I attended upon your Honours were those golden dayes of Peace and Hospitality, when you enjoy'd your own, so as to entertain and relieve others.” The nobility addressed are not quite enjoying their own - they have suffered, at least somewhat, in the English Civil War and Cromwell’s rule that occurred in the two decades before. They were supporters of the executed King Charles. The word “hospitality” tended to identify those on the Royalist side of the bloody conflict.
The line of praise also explains part of what hospitality meant politically and practically in food and drink, especially at Christmas. In May’s remembrance, whether real or idealised, when the nobility were in their place, they entertained and relieved others. In the political ideal of hospitality being referenced, this entertainment and relief was not just for those of the ruling class. There was an order to the world, with the king at its head; peasants served the noble but the noble, especially at festive seasons took care of his peasants. (The seminal book on this ideal - often only ideal and not practical - relationship in the period is “Hospitality in Early Modern England” by Dr. Felicity Heal. It is from there I took my first real understanding of it.)
May hammers on this idea again: “Your country [ie. lands and people] hath reap't the plenty of your Humanity and charitable Bounties. Right Honourable, and Right Worshipful, Hospitality which was once a Relique of Gentry…hath lost her Title through the unhappy and cruel Disturbances of these Times." He also mentions noble hospitality in what is essentially an address to the reader - “To the Master Cooks, and to such young Practitioners of the Art of Cookery, to whom this Book may be useful.”
Finally, the concept is critical in the biographical section of the preface; if May’s politics were not clear before, he plants a flag with a statement that actually provided the name for this blog. The cook formerly worked in noble houses and according to him, “then were those golden days wherein were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery, then was Hospitality esteemed, Neighbourhood preserved, the Poor cherished, and God honoured; then was Religion less talk't on and more practised, then was Atheism and Schism less in fashion; and then did men strive to be good rather than to seem so.” This is a scathing condemnation of Parliament and Cromwell’s upsetting of a natural order and he makes hospitality, like that which should be practiced at Christmas, fundamental to the things most highly valued in the period.
More tomorrow on how this, and specifically Christmas, hospitality was seen before, during and after the period England was without a royal head - the seventeenth century Interregnum.
*Once again this ballad has been preserved electronically by the English Broadside Ballad Archive. The link for that entry is here.
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