In turning the leaves of the book one comes upon such naïve discourse as this:
“To make the face white and fair.
“Wash thy face with Rosemary boiled in white wine, and thou shalt be fair; then take Erigan and stamp it, and take the juyce thereof, and put it all together and wash thy face therewith. Proved.”
It was undoubtedly the success of “The Ladies Cabinet” and its cousins german that led to the publication of a fourth edition in 1658 of another compilation, which, according to the preface, was to go “like the good Samaritane giving comfort to all it met.” The title was “The Queens Closet opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery, As they were presented unto the Queen By the most Experienced Persons of our times.... Transcribedfrom the true Copies of her Majesties own Receipt Books, by W. M. one of her late Servants.” It is curious to recall that this book was published during the Cromwell Protectorate—1658 is the year of the death of Oliver—and that the queen alluded to in the title—whose portrait, engraved by the elder William Faithorne, forms the frontispiece—was Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., and at that time an exile in France.
During this century, which saw such publications as Rose’s “School for the Officers of the Mouth,” and “Nature Unembowelled,” a woman, Hannah Wolley, appears as author of “The Cook’s Guide.” All such compilations have enduring human value, but we actually gain quite as much of this oldest of arts from such records as those the indefatigable Pepys left in his Diary. At that time men of our race did not disdain a knowledge of cookery. Izaak Walton,“an excellent angler, and now with God,” dresses chub and trout in his meadow-sweet pages. Even Thomas Fuller, amid his solacing and delightful “Worthies,” thinks of the housewife, and gives a receipt for metheglin.
And a hundred years later Dr. Johnson’s friend, the Rev. Richard Warner, in his “Personal Recollections,” did not hesitate to expand upon what he thought the origin of mince pies. Warner’s Johnsonian weight in telling his fantasy recalls Goldsmith’s quip about the Doctor’s little fish talking like whales, and also Johnson’s criticism upon his own “too big words and too many of them.”
Warner wrote, “In the early ages of our country, when its present widely spread internal trade and retail business were yet in their infancy, and none of the modern facilities were afforded to the cook to supply herself ‘on the spur of the moment,’ ... it was the practice of all prudent housewives, to lay in, atthe conclusion of every year (from some contiguous periodical fair), a stock sufficient for the ensuing annual consumption, of ... every sweet composition for the table—such as raisins, currants, citrons, and ‘spices of the best.’
“The ample cupboard ... within the wainscot of the dining parlour itself ... formed the safe depository of these precious stores.
“‘When merry Christmas-tide came round’ ... the goodly litter of the cupboard, thus various in kind and aspect, was carefully swept into one common receptacle; the mingled mass enveloped in pastry and enclosed within the duly heated oven, from whence ... perfect in form, colour, odour, flavour and temperament, it smoked, the glory of the hospitable Christmas board, hailed from every quarter by the honourable and imperishable denomination of the Mince-Pye.”
In the eighteenth century women themselves, following Hannah Wolley, began cook-book compiling. So great was their success that we find Mrs. Elizabeth Moxon’s “English Housewifry” going into its ninth edition in the London market of 1764. All through history there have been surprises coming to prejudiced minds out of the despised and Nazarene. It was so about this matter of cook-books—small in itself, great in its far-reaching results to the health and development of the human race.
Women had been taught the alphabet. But the dogmatism of Dr. Johnson voiced the judgment of many of our forebears: a dominant power is always hard in its estimate of the capacities it controls. “Women can spin very well,” said the great Cham, “but they can not make a good book of cookery.” He was talking to “the swan of Lichfield,” little Anna Seward, when he said this, and also to a London publisher. The bookthey were speaking of had been put forth by the now famous Mrs. Hannah Glasse, said to be the wife of a London attorney.
The doctor—possibly with an eye to business, a publisher being present—was describing a volume he had in mind to make, “a book upon philosophical principles,” “a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written.” “Then,” wisely said the dogmatic doctor, “as you can not make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat, the best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil and compound.” This was the plan of a poet, essayist, lexicographer, and the leading man of letters of his day. His cook-book was never written.
But good Mrs. Glasse had also with large spirit aimed at teaching the ignorant, possibly those of a kind least oftenthought of by instructors in her art. She had, forsooth, caught her hare outside her book, even if she never found him in its page. “If I have not wrote in the high polite style,” she says, with a heart helpful toward the misunderstood and oppressed, and possibly with the pages of some pretentious chef in mind, “I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention is to instruct the lower sort, and therefore must treat them in their own way. For example, when I bid them lard a fowl, if I should bid them lard with large lardoons, they would not know what I meant; but when I say they must lard with little pieces of bacon, they know what I mean. So in many other things in Cookery the great cooks have such a high way of expressing themselves, that the poor girls are at a loss to know what they mean.”
Mrs. Glasse’s book was published in 1747—while Dr. Johnson had still thirty-seven years in which to “boast of theniceness of his palate,” and spill his food upon his waistcoat. “Whenever,” says Macaulay, “he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled and the moisture broke out on his forehead.” But within forty-eight years of the December his poor body was borne from the house behind Fleet Street to its resting-place in Westminster Abbey, a thin volume, “The Frugal Housewife,” written by our American Lydia Maria Child, had passed to its ninth London edition, in that day sales being more often than in our own a testimony of merit. This prevailing of justice over prejudice is “too good for any but very honest people,” as Izaak Walton said of roast pike. Dogmatism is always eating its own words.
Since the master in literature, Dr. Johnson, planned his cook-book manycooking men have dipped ink in behalf of instruction in their art. Such names as Farley, Carême, and Soyer have been written, if not in marble or bronze, at least in sugar of the last caramel degree—unappreciated excellencies mainly because of the inattention of the public to what nourishes it, and lack of the knowledge that the one who introduces an inexpensive, palatable, and digestible dish benefits his fellow-men.
The names of these club cooks and royal cooks are not so often referred to as that of the large and human-hearted Mrs. Glasse. A key to their impulse toward book-making must, however, have been that offered by Master Farley, chief cook at the London Tavern, who wrote in 1791, a hundred and fourteen years ago: “Cookery, like every other Art, has been moving forward to perfection by slow Degrees.... And although there are so many Books of this Kind already published, that onewould hardly think there could be Occasion for another, yet we flatter ourselves, that the Readers of this Work will find, from a candid Perusal, and an impartial Comparison, that our Pretensions to the Favour of the Public are not ill-founded.”
Such considerations as those of Master Farley seem to lead to the present great output. But nowadays our social conditions and our intricate and involved household arrangements demand a specialization of duties. The average old cook-book has become insufficient. It has evolved into household-directing as well as cook-directing books, comprehending the whole subject of esoteric economies. This is a curious enlargement; and one cause, and result, of it is that the men and women of our domestic corps are better trained, better equipped with a logical, systematized, scientific knowledge, that they are in a degree specialists—in a measure as the engineerof an ocean greyhound is a specialist, or the professor of mathematics, or the writer of novels is a specialist. And specialists should have the dignity of special treatment. In this movement, it is to be hoped, is the wiping out of the social stigma under which domestic service has so long lain in our country, and a beginning of the independence of the domestic laborer—that he or she shall possess himself or herself equally with others—as other free-born people possess themselves, that is.
And closely allied with this specialization another notable thing has come about. Science with its microscope has finally taught what religion with its manifold precepts of humility and humanity has failed for centuries to accomplish, thus evidencing that true science and true religion reach one and the same end. There are no menial duties, science clearly enunciates: the so-called drudgery is often the most importantof work, especially when the worker brings to his task a large knowledge of its worth in preserving and sweetening human life, and perfectness as the sole and satisfactory aim. Only the careless, thriftless workers, the inefficient and possessed with no zeal for perfection of execution, only these are the menials according to the genuine teachings of our day—and the ignorant, unlifted worker’s work is menial (using the word again in its modern English and not its old Norman-French usage) whatever his employment.
In verse this was said long ago, as the imagination is always forestalling practical knowledge, and George Herbert, of the seventeenth century, foreran our science in his “Elixir:”
“All may of thee partake:Nothing can be so mean,Which with this tincturefor thy sakeWill not grow bright and clean.“A servant with this clauseMakes drudgery divine;Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,Makes that and th’ action fine.“This is the famous stoneThat turneth all to gold:For that which God doth touch and ownCannot for less be told.”
“All may of thee partake:Nothing can be so mean,Which with this tincturefor thy sakeWill not grow bright and clean.“A servant with this clauseMakes drudgery divine;Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,Makes that and th’ action fine.“This is the famous stoneThat turneth all to gold:For that which God doth touch and ownCannot for less be told.”
“All may of thee partake:Nothing can be so mean,Which with this tincturefor thy sakeWill not grow bright and clean.
“A servant with this clauseMakes drudgery divine;Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,Makes that and th’ action fine.
“This is the famous stoneThat turneth all to gold:For that which God doth touch and ownCannot for less be told.”
Present-day, up-to-date books on housekeeping stand for the fact that in our households, whatever the estimates of the past and of other social conditions, all work is dignified—none is menial. For besides intelligent knowledge and execution, what in reality, they ask, gives dignity to labor? Weight and importance of that particular task to our fellow-beings? What then shall we say of the duties of cook? of housemaid? of chambermaid? of the handy man, or of the modest maid of all work? For upon the efficient performance of the supposedly humblest domestic servitordepends each life of the family. Such interdependence brings the employed very close to the employer, and no bond could knit the varied elements of a household more closely, none should knit it more humanly.
The human, then, are the first of the relations that exist between employer and employee, that “God hath made of one blood all nations of the earth.” It is a truth not often enough in the minds of the parties to a domestic-service compact. And besides this gospel of Paul are two catch-phrases, not so illuminated but equally humane, which sprang from the ameliorating spirit of the last century—“Put yourself in his place,” and “Everybody is as good as I.” These form the best bed-rock for all relations between master and servant. There is need of emphasizing this point in our books on affairs of the house, for a majority of our notably rich are new to riches and new to knowledge, and asemployers have not learned the limitation of every child of indulgence and also polite manners in early life.
It is after all a difference of environment that makes the difference between mistress and maid, between master and man. The human being is as plastic as clay—is clay in the hands of circumstance. If his support of wife and children depended upon obsequiousness of bearing, the master might, like the butler, approximate Uriah Heep. If the mistress’s love of delicacy and color had not been cultivated by association with taste from childhood, her finery might be as vulgar as the maid’s which provokes her satire. It is after all a question of surroundings and education. And in this country, where Aladdin-fortunes spring into being by the rubbing of a lamp—where families of, for example, many centuries of the downtrodden life of European peasant jump from direst poverty to untold wealth—environmenthas often no opportunity to form the folk of gentle breeding. Many instances are not lacking where those who wait are more gently bred than those who are waited upon.
In their larger discourse, then, up-to-date household books stand for the very essence of democracy and human-heartedness—which is also the very essence of aristocracy. After the old manner which Master Farley described, our women seem to have given their books to the public with the faith that they contain much other books have not touched—to stand for an absolutely equable humanity, for kindness and enduring courtesy between those who employ and those who are employed, the poor rich and the rich poor, the householders and the houseworkers—to state the relations between master and man and mistress and maid more explicitly than they have before been stated, and thus to help toward a more perfect organizationof the forces that carry on our households—to direct with scientific and economic prevision the food of the house members; to emphasize in all departments of the house thoroughgoing sanitation and scientific cleanliness.
Of questions of the household—of housekeeping and home-making—our American women have been supposed somewhat careless. Possibly this judgment over the sea has been builded upon our women’s vivacity, and a subtle intellectual force they possess, and also from their interest in affairs at large, and again from their careful and cleanly attention to their person—“they keep their teeth too clean,” says a much-read French author. Noting such characteristics, foreigners have jumped to the conclusion that American women are not skilled in works within doors. In almost every European country this is common report. “We German women are such devoted housekeepers,” said the wife ofan eminent Deutscher, “and you American women know so little about such things!” “Bless your heart!” I exclaimed—or if not just that then its German equivalent—thinking of the perfectly kept homes from the rocks and pines of Maine to the California surf; “you German women with your little haushaltungen, heating your rooms with porcelain stoves, and your frequent reversion in meals to the simplicity of wurst and beer, have no conception of the size and complexity of American households and the executive capabilities necessary to keep them in orderly work. Yours is mere doll’s housekeeping—no furnaces, no hot water, no electricity, no elevators, no telephone, and no elaborate menus.”
Our American women are model housekeepers and home-makers, as thousands of homes testify, but the interests of the mistresses of these houses are broader, their lives are commonly moreprojected into the outer world of organized philanthropy and art than women’s lives abroad, and the apparent non-intrusion of domestic affairs leads foreigners to misinterpret their interest and their zeal. It is the consummate executive who can set aside most personal cares and take on others efficiently. Moreover, it is not here as where a learned professor declared: “Die erste Tugend eines Weibes ist die Sparsamkeit.”
To have a home in which daily duties move without noise and as like a clock as its human machinery will permit, and to have a table of simplicity and excellence, is worth a pleasure-giving ambition and a womanly ambition. It is to bring, in current critical phrase, three-fourths of the comfort of life to those whose lives are joined to the mistress of such a household—the loaf-giver who spends her brains for each ordered day and meal. Moreover, and greatest ofall, to plan and carry on so excellent an establishment is far-reaching upon all men. It is the very essence of morality—is duty—i.e., service—and law.
The French aver that men of the larger capacity have for food a particularly keen enjoyment. Possibly this holds good for Frenchmen—for the author of Monte Cristo, or for a Brillat-Savarin, of whose taste the following story is told: “Halting one day at Sens, when on his way to Lyons, Savarin sent, according to his invariable custom, for the cook, and asked what he could have for dinner. ‘Little enough,’ was the reply. ‘But let us see,’ retorted Savarin; ‘let us go into the kitchen and talk the matter over.’ There he found four turkeys roasting. ‘Why!’ exclaimed he, ‘you told me you had nothing in the house! let me have one of those turkeys.’ ‘Impossible!’ said the cook; ‘they are all bespoken by a gentleman up-stairs.’ ‘He must have a large partyto dine with him, then?’ ‘No; he dines by himself.’ ‘Indeed!’ said the gastronome; ‘I should like much to be acquainted with the man who orders four turkeys for his own eating.’ The cook was sure the gentleman would be glad of his acquaintance, and Savarin, on going to pay his respects to the stranger, found him to be no other than his own son. ‘What! you rascal! four turkeys all to yourself!’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Savarin, junior; ‘you know that when we have a turkey at home you always reserve for yourself the pope’s nose; I was resolved to regale myself for once in my life; and here I am, ready to begin, although I did not expect the honour of your company.’”
The French may say truly of the famous “high-priest of gastronomy.” And a story which has lately appeared in Germany tells of a sensitive palate in Goethe: “At a small party at the court of Weimar, the Marshal asked permissionto submit a nameless sample of wine. Accordingly, a red wine was circulated, tasted, and much commended. Several of the company pronounced it Burgundy, but could not agree as to the special vintage or the year. Goethe alone tasted and tasted again, shook his head, and, with a meditative air, set his glass on the table. ‘Your Excellency appears to be of a different opinion,’ said the court marshal. ‘May I ask what name you give to the wine?’ ‘The wine,’ said the poet, ‘is quite unknown to me; but I do not think it is a Burgundy. I should rather consider it a good Jena wine that has been kept for some while in a Madeira cask.’ ‘And so, in fact, it is,’ said the court marshal. For a more discriminating palate, one must go to the story of the rival wine-tasters in ‘Don Quixote,’ who from a single glass detected the key and leather thong in a cask of wine.”
But that great capacity means alsodiscriminating palate could hardly be true for Americans of the old stock and simple life. Judge Usher, Secretary of Interior in Lincoln’s Cabinet at the time of the President’s death, said that he had never heard Abraham Lincoln refer to his food in any way whatever.
From a consideration of women’s cook-books springs another suggestion. Heaped upon one’s table, the open pages and appetiteful illustrations put one to thinking that if women of intelligence, and of leisure except for burdens they assume under so-called charity or a faddish impulse, were to take each some department of the household, and give time and effort to gaining a complete knowledge of that department—a knowledge of its evolution and history, of its scientific and hygienic bearings, of its gastronomic values if it touched upon the table—there would be great gain to the world at large and to their friends.For instance, if a woman skilled in domestic science and the domestic arts were to take some fruit, or some vegetable, or cereal, or meat, and develop to the utmost what an old author-cook calls, after those cook-oracles of ancient Rome, the “Apician mysteries” of the dish, her name would deserve to go down to posterity with something of the odor—or flavor—of sanctity. Hundreds of saints in the calendar never did anything half so meritorious and worthy of felicitous recognition from their fellow-men.
Take, for example, the democratic cabbage and its cousins german, and their treatment in the average cuisine. What might not such an investigation show this Monsieur Chou or Herr Kohl and his relations capable of!—the cabbage itself, the Scotch kale, the Jersey cabbage, and Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, and broccoli, and kohl-rabi, and cabbage palms, and still other species!Looked at in their evolution, and the part they have played in human history as far back as in old Persia and the Anabasis of the Greeks, and so late as the famine times of Ireland, these succulent and nutritious vegetables would be most interesting. And, even if chemically their elements vary, the fact that all the family are blessed with a large percentage of nitrogen might be shown to have increased their usefulness long before chemists analyzed their tissues and told us why men who could not buy meat so carefully cultivated the foody leaves. Under such sane and beneficent impulses every well-directed household would become an experiment station for the study of human food—not the extravagant and rare after the test and search of imperial Heliogabalus, but in the best modern, scientific, economic, gastronomic, and democratic manner.
Since making this foregoing suggestion I find this point similarly touchedby the man who dissertated on roast pig. “It is a desideratum,” says Lamb, “in works that treat de re culinaria, that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours: as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself unctious, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter—and why the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to parsnips.... We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that is in us.”
In speaking of modern household books one cannot have done without adding still one word more about the use of the word “servant” as these books seemto speak of it. Owing to an attempted Europeanizing of our ideas, and also to the fact that many of our domestics are of foreign birth and habits of thought—or of the lowly, velvet-voiced, unassertive suavity of the most loyal negro—the term has gradually crept to a quasi acceptance in this country. It is a word not infrequently obnoxious to Americans—employers—of the old stock, and trained in the spirit which wrote the Declaration of Independence and fought its sequent War. “From the time of the Revolution,” says Miss Salmon in her “Domestic Service,” “until about 1850 the word ‘servant’ does not seem to have been generally applied in either section [north or south] to white persons of American birth.”
The term indicates social conditions which no longer exist and represents ideas which no longer have real life—we have but to consider how the radical Defoe published, in 1724, “The GreatLaw of Subordination consider’d; or, the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour of Servants in England duly enquir’d into,” to be convinced of our vast advance in human sympathy—and a revival of our American spirit toward the word would be a wholesome course. In the mouths of many who use it to excess—those mainly at fault are innocently imitative, unthinking, or pretentious women—it sounds ungracious, if not vulgar, and distinctly untrue to those who made the country for us and desirable for us to live in; and untrue also to the best social feeling of to-day. It is still for a genuine American rather hard to imagine a person such as the word “servant” connotes—a lackey, a receiver of tips of any sort—with an election ballot in hand and voting thinkingly, knowingly, intelligently for the guidance of our great government. It would not have been so difficult for the old δοῦλοι of Athens to vote upon thePnyx as for such a man to vote aright for us. And not infrequently, in the ups and downs of speculation and the mushroom growth and life of fortunes among us, the “servant,” to use the old biblical phrase, is sometimes greater in moral, intellectual, and social graces than his “lord.” The term belongs to times, and the temperamental condition of times when traces of slavery were common, and when employers believed, and acted upon the faith, that they hired not a person’s labor but the person himself—or herself—who was subject to a sort of ownership and control.
Let us remand the word to the days of Dean Swift and such conditions as the tremendous satire of his “Directions to Servants” exhibited, in which—except perhaps in Swift’s great heart—there was neither the humanity of our times, nor the courtesy of our times, nor the sure knowledge of our times—whichendeavor to create, and, in truth, are gradually making trained and skilful workers in every department, and demand in return for service with perfectness as its aim, independence of the person, dignified treatment and genuine respect from the employer.
All these things the women’s household and cook-books will be, nay, are, gradually teaching, and that which Charles Carter, “lately cook to his Grace the Duke of Argyle,” wrote in 1730 may still hold good: “’Twill be very easy,” said Master Carter, “for an ordinary Cook when he is well-instructed in the most Elegant Parts of his Profession to lower his Hand at any time; and he that can excellently perform in a Courtly and Grand Manner, will never be at a Loss in any other.” When this future knowledge and adjustment come we shall be free from the tendencies which Mistress Glasse, after her outspoken manner, describes of her owngeneration: “So much is the blind folly of this age,” cries the good woman, “that they would rather be imposed upon by a French booby than give encouragement to a good English cook.”
Economic changes such as we have indicated must in measurable time ensue. The science and the art of conducting a house are now obtaining recognition in our schools. Not long, and the knowledge will be widespread. Its very existence, and the possibility of its diffusion, is a result of the nineteenth century movement for the broadening of women’s knowledge and the expansion of their interests and independence—this wedded with the humane conviction that the wisest and fruitfullest use of scientific deduction and skill is in the bettering of human life. Behind and giving potence to these impulses is the fellowship, liberty, and equality of human kind—the great idea of democracy.
Already we have gone back to the wholesomeness of our English forebears’ estimate that the physician and cook are inseparable. Further still, we may ultimately retrace our ideas, and from the point of view of economics and sociology declare that with us, as with the old Jews and Greeks, the priest and the cook are one.
And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell,I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.Sir Philip Sidney
And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell,I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.Sir Philip Sidney
And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell,I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.Sir Philip Sidney
Yet these mine owne, I wrong not other men,Nor traffique farther then this happy clime,Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen,A fault too common in this latter time.Divine Sir Philip, I avouch thy writ,I am no pick-purse of anothers wit.Michael Drayton
Yet these mine owne, I wrong not other men,Nor traffique farther then this happy clime,Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen,A fault too common in this latter time.Divine Sir Philip, I avouch thy writ,I am no pick-purse of anothers wit.Michael Drayton
Yet these mine owne, I wrong not other men,Nor traffique farther then this happy clime,Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen,A fault too common in this latter time.Divine Sir Philip, I avouch thy writ,I am no pick-purse of anothers wit.Michael Drayton
A thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.James Russell Lowell
Among the jocularities of literature none is greater than Squire Bickerstaff’s; and none has had greater results—with perhaps one exception. The practicality of the Squire’s jest and the flavor of it suited the century of Squire Western rather than our own. But its excuse was in the end it served of breaking the old astrologer’s hold upon the people.
Jonathan Swift is the writer to whom the original Bickerstaff squibs are in the main to be ascribed. It is due to Swift’s clarity and strength that they are among the best of literary fooling.
But Swift was not alone. He had the help of Addison, Steele, Prior, Congreve, and other wits of Will’s Coffee-House and St. James’s. Together theyset all London laughing. Upon Swift’s shoulders, however, falls the onus of the joke which must have been his recreation amid pamphleteering and the smudging of his ecclesiastical hand with political ink. It happened in 1708.
The English almanac was not in Swift’s day as in later times a simple calendar of guesses about the weather. It was rather a “prognosticator” in ambiguous phrase of war, pestilence, murder, and such horrors as our yellow press nowadays serves up to readers, like in development to the conning public of the old almanacs. It was at all times solemn and dogmatic. What the almanac prognosticated was its philomath’s duty to furnish. His science and pre-science builded a supposed influence of the stars and their movements upon the moral life of man.
Squire Bicker staff’s jest had to do with almanac-makers, and was directed against a chief pretender, Dr. Partridge,the astrologer and philomath Pope refers to when he speaks of the translation of the raped “Lock” to the skies:
“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes;And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoomThe fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.”
“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes;And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoomThe fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.”
“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes;And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoomThe fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.”
In the seventeenth century the ascendency of these charlatans had become alarming. One of the most adroit and unscrupulous of their number—William Lilly—had large following. They not only had the popular ear, but now and then a man like Dryden inclined to them. Nor did Sir Thomas Browne “reject a sober and regulated astrology.”
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the scandal of their excesses was growing, and it was then that Swift came forward—just as Swift was constantly coming forward with his great humanity, in one instance to save Ireland the infliction of Wood’s halfpence,and again in protest against English restriction of Irish trade; poor Swift’s heart was always with the poor, the duped and undefended—it was then that Swift came forward with “Predictions for the year 1708. Wherein the Month, and the Day of the Month, are set down, the Person named, and the great Actions and Events of next Year particularly related, as They will come to Pass. Written to Prevent the People of England from being farther imposed on by the vulgar Almanack-Makers.”
The surname of the signature, “Isaac Bickerstaff,” Swift took from a locksmith’s sign. The Isaac he added as not commonly in use.
“I have considered,” he begins, “the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors, who set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contendedthat the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine the stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever has not bent his studies that way may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean, illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater a height than their own brains....
“As for the few following predictions, I now offer the world, I forebore to publish them till I had perused the several Almanacks for the year we are now entered upon. I found them all in the usual strain, and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine: and here I make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit of my art upon thetruth of these predictions; and I will be content that Partridge and the rest of his clan may hoot me for a cheat and impostor, if I fail in any single particular of moment....
“My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it to show how ignorant these sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: it relates to Partridge, the Almanack-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time....”
An “Answer to Bickerstaff by a Person of Quality,” evidently from the hand of Swift and his friends, followed these “Predictions.”
“I have not observed for some years past,” it begins, “any insignificant paper to have made more noise, or be more greedily bought, than that of thesePredictions.... I shall not enter upon the examination of them; but think it very incumbent upon the learned Mr. Partridge to take them into his consideration, and lay as many errors in astrology as possible to Mr. Bickerstaff’s account. He may justly, I think, challenge the ’squire to publish the calculation he has made of Partridge’s nativity, by the credit of which he so determinately pronounces the time and manner of his death; and Mr. Bickerstaff can do no less in honour, than give Mr. Partridge the same advantage of calculating his, by sending him an account of the time and place of his birth, with other particulars necessary for such a work. By which, no doubt, the learned world will be engaged in the dispute, and take part on each side according as they are inclined....”
“The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions, being an Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge,the Almanack-Maker, upon the 29th instant in a Letter to a Person of Honour, written in the year 1708,” continues the jocularity.
“My Lord: In obedience to your Lordship’s commands, as well as to satisfy my own curiosity, I have some days past inquired constantly after Partridge the Almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions, published about a month ago, that he should die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.... I saw him accidentally once or twice, about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three days ago he grew ill, ... but when I saw him he had his understanding as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any seeming uneasiness or constraint [saying].... ‘I am a poor ignorantfellow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know that all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits for this manifest reason: because the wise and the learned, who can only judge whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor, ignorant vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or read.’...
“After half an hour’s conversation I took my leave, being almost stifled with the closeness of the room. I imagined he could not hold out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by, leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately and tell me, as near as he could, the minute when Partridge should expire, which was not above two hours after.”
The burlesque next before the public, “Squire Bickerstaff detected; or, theAstrological Impostor convicted, by John Partridge, student of physic and astrology, a True and Impartial account of the Proceedings of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against me,” was doubtless drawn up by Addison’s friend Yalden, whom Scott speaks of as “Partridge’s near neighbor.”
“The 28th of March, Anno Dom. 1708,” it begins, “being the night this sham prophet had so impudently fixed for my last, which made little impression on myself: but I cannot answer for my whole family; for my wife, with concern more than usual, prevailed on me to take somewhat to sweat for a cold; and between the hours of eight and nine to go to bed; the maid, as she was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young wenches, runs to the window, and asks of one passing the street who the bell tolled for? Dr. Partridge, says he, the famous almanack-maker, who died suddenly this evening: the poor girl,provoked, told him he lied like a rascal; the other very sedately replied, the sexton had so informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a stranger. She asked a second, and a third, as they passed, and every one was in the same tone. Now, I do not say these are accomplices to a certain astrological ’squire, and that one Bickerstaff might be sauntering thereabout, because I will assert nothing here, but what I dare attest for plain matter of fact. My wife at this fell into a violent disorder, and I must own I was a little discomposed at the oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks at my door; Betty runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly inquires if this was Dr. Partridge’s? She, taking him for some cautious city patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews him into the dining-room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to him, and was surprised to findmy gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions of the room. Pray, sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any business with me?—Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring me a better light, for this is a very dim one.—Sir, says I, my name is Partridge.—O! the doctor’s brother, belike, cries he; the staircase, I believe, and these two apartments hung in close mourning will be sufficient, and only a strip of bays round the other rooms. The doctor must needs die rich, he had great dealings in his way for many years; if he had no family coat, you had as good use the escutcheons of the company, they are as showish, and will look as magnificent, as if he was descended from the blood royal.—With that I assumed a greater air of authority, and demanded who employed him, or how he came there?—Why, I was sent, sir, by the company of undertakers, sayshe, and they were employed by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good doctor departed; and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been tacking up by this time.—Sir, says I, pray be advised by a friend, and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife’s voice (which, by the by, is pretty distinguishable), and in that corner of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt before now; if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very much to the detriment of your person.—Sir, cries he, bowing with great civility, I perceive extreme grief for the loss of the doctor disorders you a little at present, but early in the morning I will wait on you with all the necessary materials....
“Well, once more I got my door closed, and prepared for bed, in hopes of a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just as I was putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he can knock; I open the window and ask who is there and what he wants? I am Ned, the sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the doctor left any orders for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and whether his grave is to be plain or bricked?—Why, sirrah, say I, you know me well enough; you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront me after this manner?—Alackaday, sir, replies the fellow, why it is in print, and the whole town knows you are dead; why, there is Mr. White, the joiner, is fitting screws to your coffin; he will be here with it in an instant: he was afraid you would have wanted it before this time.... In short, what with undertakers, embalmers, joiners, sextons, and your damnedelegy hawkers upon a late practitioner in physic and astrology, I got not one wink of sleep the whole night, nor scarce a moment’s rest ever since....
“I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, but presently one comes up to me in the street, Mr. Partridge, that coffin you was last buried in, I have not yet been paid for: Doctor, cries another dog, how do you think people can live by making of graves for nothing? next time you die, you may even toll out the bell yourself for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow, and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying my funeral expenses.—Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend, but, poor man, he is gone.—I beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he is gone the way of all flesh.—Look, look,look, cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour, the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave, to take the other peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improved in fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?...
“My poor wife is run almost distracted with being called widow Partridge, when she knows it is false; and once a term she is cited into the court to take out letters of administration. But the greatest grievance is a paltry quack that takes up my calling just under my nose, and in his printed directions, with N. B.—says he lives in the house of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, physic, and astrology....”
The astrologer, forgetting to refer to the stars for evidence, indignantly declared himself to be alive, and Swift’s returning “Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff,Esq., against what is objected to by Mr. Partridge in his Almanack for the present year, 1709, by the said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,” complains:
“Mr. Partridge has been lately pleased to treat me after a very rough manner in that which is called his almanack for the present year ... [regarding] my predictions, which foretold the death of Mr. Partridge to happen on March 29, 1708. This he is pleased to contradict absolutely in the almanack he has published for the present year....
“Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of his death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive. And my first argument is this: about a thousand gentlemen having bought his almanacks for this year, merely to find what he said against me, at every line they read, they would lift up their eyes, and cry out betwixt rage and laughter, ‘they were sure no man alive ever writ such damned stuff asthis.’ Neither did I ever hear that opinion disputed: ... Therefore, if an uninformed carcase walks still about and is pleased to call himself Partridge, Mr. Bickerstaff does not think himself any way answerable for that. Neither had the said carcase any right to beat the poor boy who happened to pass by it in the street, crying, ‘A full and true account of Dr. Partridge’s death,’ etc.
“... I will plainly prove him to be dead, out of his own almanack for this year, and from the very passage which he produces to make us think him alive. He there says ‘he is not only now alive, but was also alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on’: by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And indeed there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert he was alive ever since that 29th of March, but that he ‘is now alive and was so on that day’: Igrant the latter; for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death, in a letter to a lord; and whether he be since revived, I leave the world to judge....”
The joke had gained its end; the astrologer and philomath had been ridiculed out of existence. But the name of the “astrological ’squire” was in everybody’s mouth; and when in April, 1709, Steele began “The Tatler,” Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, spoke in the dedication of a gentleman who “had written Predictions, and Two or Three other Pieces in my Name, which had render’d it famous through all Parts of Europe; and by an inimitable Spirit and Humour, raised it to as high a Pitch of Reputation as it could possibly arrive at.”
The Inquisition in Portugal had, with utmost gravity, condemned Bickerstaff’s predictions and the readers of them, and had burnt his predictions. The Companyof Stationers in London obtained in 1709 an injunction against the issuing of any almanac by John Partridge, as if in fact he were dead.
If the fame of this foolery was through all parts of Europe, it must also have crossed to the English colonies of America, and by reference to this fact we may explain the curious literary parallel Poor Richard’s Almanac affords. Twenty-five years later Benjamin Franklin played the selfsame joke in Philadelphia.
Franklin was but two years old when Swift and his Bickerstaff coadjutors were jesting. But by the time he had grown and wandered to Philadelphia and become a journeyman printer—by 1733—Addison, Steele, Prior, and Congreve had died, and Swift’s wonderful mind was turned upon and eating itself in the silent deanery of St. Patrick’s.
Conditions about him gave Franklin every opportunity for the jest. The almanac in the America of 1733 had even greater acceptance than the like publication of England in Isaac Bickerstaff’s day. No output of the colonial press, not even the publication of theological tracts, was so frequent or so remunerative. It was the sole annual which commonly penetrated the farmhouse of the colonists, where it hung in neighborly importance near the Bible, Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” and Jonathan Edwards’s tractate on “The Freedom of the Human Will.” And it had uses. Besides furnishing a calendar, weather prophecies, and jokes, it added receipts for cooking, pickling, dyeing, and in many ways was the “Useful Companion” its title-page proclaimed.
So keen, practical, and energetic a nature as Franklin’s could not let the opportunity pass for turning a penny, and with the inimitable adaptabilitythat marked him all his life he begins his Poor Richard of 1733:
“Courteous Reader, I might in this place attempt to gain thy favour by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other view than that of the publick good, but in this I should not be sincere; and men are now-a-days too wise to be deceiv’d by pretences, how specious soever. The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she can not bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments), if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offer’d me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus began to comply with my dame’s desire.
“Indeed, this motive would have hadforce enough to have made me publish an Almanack many years since, had it not been overpowered by my regard for my good friend and fellow-student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose interest I was extreamly unwilling to hurt. But this obstacle (I am far from speaking it with pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable death, who was never known to respect merit, has already prepared the mortal dart, the fatal sister has already extended her destroying shears, and that ingenious man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by my calculation, made at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho. 29 m.,P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact, a little time will now determine.As, therefore, these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his performances after this year, I think myself free to take up my task, and request a share of publick encouragement, which I am the more apt to hope for on this account, that the buyer of my Almanack may consider himself not only as purchasing an useful utensil, but as performing an act of charity to his poor
“Friend and servant,“R. Saunders.”
Franklin had a more eager biter than Partridge proved to Bickerstaff’s bait, and Titan Leeds, in his American Almanack for 1734, showed how uneasy was the hook:
“Kind Reader, Perhaps it may be expected that I should say something concerning an Almanack printed for the Year 1733, said to be writ by Poor Richard or Richard Saunders, who for want of other matter was pleased to tellhis Readers, that he had calculated my Nativity, and from thence predicts my Death to be the 17th of October, 1733. At 29 min. past 3 a-clock in the Afternoon, and that these Provinces may not expect to see any more of his (Titan Leeds) Performances, and this precise Predicter, who predicts to a Minute, proposes to succeed me in Writing of Almanacks; but notwithstanding his false Prediction, I have by the Mercy of God lived to write a diary for the Year 1734, and to publish the Folly and Ignorance of this presumptuous Author. Nay, he adds another gross Falsehood in his Almanack, viz.—That by my own Calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said Month (October), which is as untrue as the former, for I do not pretend to that Knowledge, altho’ he has usurpt the Knowledge of the Almighty herein, and manifested himself a Fool and a Lyar. And by the mercy of God I have lived to survive this conceitedScriblers Day and Minute whereon he has predicted my Death; and as I have supplyed my Country with Almanacks for three seven Years by past, to general Satisfaction, so perhaps I may live to write when his Performances are Dead. Thus much from your annual Friend, Titan Leeds, October 18, 1733, 3 ho. 33 min.P.M.”
“... In the preface to my last Almanack,” wrote Franklin, in genuine humor, in Poor Richard for 1734, “I foretold the death of my dear old friend and fellow-student, the learned and ingenious Mr. Titan Leeds, which was to be the 17th of October, 1733, 3 h., 29 m.,P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation, he was to survive till the 26th of the same month, and expire in the time of the eclipse, near 11 o’clockA.M.At which of these times he died, or whether he be really yet dead, I cannot at this present writing positively assure my readers;forasmuch as a disorder in my own family demanded my presence, and would not permit me, as I had intended, to be with him in his last moments, to receive his last embrace, to close his eyes, and do the duty of a friend in performing the last offices to the departed. Therefore it is that I cannot positively affirm whether he be dead or not; for the stars only show to the skilful what will happen in the natural and universal chain of causes and effects; but ’tis well known, that the events which would otherwise certainly happen, at certain times, in the course of nature, are sometimes set aside or postpon’d, for wise and good reasons, by the immediate particular disposition of Providence; which particular disposition the stars can by no means discover or foreshow. There is, however (and I can not speak it without sorrow), there is the strongest probability that my dear friend is no more; for there appears in his name, as I amassured, an Almanack for the year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner, in which I am called a false predicter, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool and a lyar. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover his esteem and affection for me was extraordinary; so that it is to be feared that pamphlet may be only a contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes, perhaps, to sell two or three years’ Almanacks still, by the sole force and virtue of Mr. Leeds’ name. But, certainly, to put words into the mouth of a gentleman and a man of letters against his friend, which the meanest and most scandalous of the people might be ashamed to utter even in a drunken quarrel, is an unpardonable injury to his memory, and an imposition upon the publick.
“Mr. Leeds was not only profoundly skilful in the useful science he profess’d,but he was a man of exemplary sobriety, a most sincere friend, and an exact performer of his word. These valuable qualifications, with many others, so much endeared him to me, that although it should be so, that, contrary to all probability, contrary to my prediction and his own, he might possibly be yet alive, yet my loss of honour, as a prognosticate, cannot afford me so much mortification as his life, health, and safety would give me joy and satisfaction....”
Again, Leeds, in The American Almanack for 1735, returns Franklin’s jest:
“Courteous and Kind Reader: My Almanack being in its usual Method, needs no Explanation; but perhaps it may be expected by some that I shall say something concerning Poor Richard, or otherwise Richard Saunders’s Almanack, which I suppose was printed in the Year 1733 for the ensuing Year 1734, wherein he useth me with suchgood Manners, I can hardly find what to say to him, without it is to advise him not to be too proud because by his Prædicting my Death, and his writing an Almanack....
“But if Falsehood and Inginuity be so rewarded, What may he expect if ever he be in a capacity to publish that that is either Just or according to Art? Therefore I shall say little more about it than, as a Friend, to advise he will never take upon him to prædict or ascribe any Person’s Death, till he has learned to do it better than he did before....”
To this exhortation Franklin makes the following gay sally in Poor Richard for 1735.
“... Whatever may be the musick of the spheres, how great soever the harmony of the stars, ’tis certain there is no harmony among the star-gazers: but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one another like strange curs, orlike some men at their wives. I had resolved to keep the peace on my own part, and offend none of them; and I shall persist in that resolution. But having receiv’d much abuse from Titan Leeds deceas’d (Titan Leeds when living would not have used me so): I say, having receiv’d much abuse from the ghost of Titan Leeds, who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of me and my predictions, I can not help saying, that tho’ I take it patiently, I take it very unkindly. And whatever he may pretend, ’tis undoubtedly true that he is really defunct and dead. First, because the stars are seldom disappointed, never but in the case of wise men, sapiens dominabitur asties, and they foreshadowed his death at the time I predicted it. Secondly, ’twas requisite and necessary he should die punctually at that time for the honor of astrology, the art professed both by him and his father before him. Thirdly, ’tisplain to every one that reads his two last Almanacks (for 1734 and ’35), that they are not written with that life his performances used to be written with; the wit is low and flat; the little hints dull and spiritless; nothing smart in them but Hudibras’s verses against astrology at the heads of the months in the last, which no astrologer but a dead one would have inserted, and no man living would or could write such stuff as the rest. But lastly, I shall convince him from his own words that he is dead (ex ore suo condemnatus est); for in his preface to his Almanack for 1734, he says: ‘Saunders adds another gross falsehood in his Almanack, viz., that by my own calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said month, October, 1733, which is as untrue as the former.’ Now if it be as Leeds says, untrue and a gross falsehood, that he survived till the 26th of October, 1733, then it is certainly true that he died before that time; and if he died before that time he is deadnow to all intents and purposes, anything he may say to the contrary notwithstanding. And at what time before the 26th is it so likely he should die, as at the time by me predicted, viz., the 17th of October aforesaid? But if some people will walk and be troublesome after death, it may perhaps be borne with a little, because it cannot well be avoided, unless one would be at the pains and expense of laying them in the Red Sea; however, they should not presume too much upon the liberty allowed them. I know confinement must needs be mighty irksome to the free spirit of an astronomer, and I am too compassionate to proceed suddenly to extremities with it; nevertheless, tho’ I resolve with reluctance, I shall not long defer, if it does not speedily learn to treat its living friends with better manners.
“I am,“Courteous reader,“Your obliged friend and servant,“R. Saunders.”
Here for the nonce the jeu d’esprit ended. In carrying the matter further Franklin hardly showed the taste of Bickerstaff. The active, bristling, self-assertive ὕβρις which characterized his early manhood led him further on to stand over the very grave of Leeds. Before he made his Almanac for 1740 his competitor had died. But even Leeds dead he seemed to deem fair play.
“October 7, 1739.
“Courteous Reader: You may remember that in my first Almanack, published for the year 1733, I predicted the death of my dear friend, Titan Leeds, Philomat, to happen that year on the 17th day of October, 3 h. 29 m.P.M.The good man, it seems, died accordingly. But W. B. and A. B.6have continued to publish Almanacks in his name ever since; asserting for some years that hewas still living. At length when the truth could no longer be concealed from the world, they confessed his death in their Almanack for 1739, but pretended that he died not till last year, and that before his departure he had furnished them with calculations for 7 years to come.—Ah, my friends, these are poor shifts and thin disguises; of which indeed I should have taken little or no notice, if you had not at the same time accused me as a false predictor; an aspersion that the more affects me as my whole livelyhood depends on a contrary character.
“But to put this matter beyond dispute, I shall acquaint the world with a fact, as strange and surprising as it is true; being as follows, viz.:
“On the 4th instant, toward midnight, as I sat in my little study writing this Preface, I fell fast asleep; and continued in that condition for some time, without dreaming any thing, to myknowledge. On awaking I found lying before me the following, viz.:
“‘Dear Friend Saunders: My respect for you continues even in this separate state; and I am griev’d to see the aspersions thrown on you by the malevolence of avaricious publishers of Almanacks, who envy your success. They say your prediction of my death in 1733 was false, and they pretend that I remained alive many years after. But I do hereby certify that I did actually die at that time, precisely at the hour you mention’d, with a variation only of 5 min. 53 sec, which must be allow’d to be no great matter in such cases. And I do further declare that I furnish’d them with no calculations of the planets’ motions, etc., seven years after my death, as they are pleased to give out: so that the stuff they publish as an Almanack in my name is no more mine than ’tis yours.
“‘You will wonder, perhaps, how thispaper comes written on your table. You must know that no separate spirits are under any confinement till after the final settlement of all accounts. In the meantime we wander where we please, visit our old friends, observe their actions, enter sometimes into their imaginations, and give them hints waking or sleeping that may be of advantage to them. Finding you asleep, I enter’d your left nostril, ascended into your brain, found out where the ends of those nerves were fastened that move your right hand and fingers, by the help of which I am now writing unknown to you; but when you open your eyes you will see that the hand written is mine, tho’ wrote with yours.
“‘The people of this infidel age, perhaps, will hardly believe this story. But you may give them these three signs by which they shall be convinced of the truth of it.—About the middle of Junenext, J. J——n,7Philomat, shall be openly reconciled to the Church of Rome, and give all his goods and chattels to the chappel, being perverted by a certain country schoolmaster. On the 7th of September following my old Friend W. B——t shall be sober 9 hours, to the astonishment of all his neighbours:—And about the same time W. B. and A. B. will publish another Almanack in my name, in spight of truth and common sense.
“‘As I can see much clearer into futurity, since I got free from the dark prison of flesh, in which I was continually molested and almost blinded with fogs arising from tiff, and the smoke of burnt drams; I shall in kindness to you, frequently give you information of things to come, for the improvement of your Almanack: being, Dear Dick, Your Affectionate Friend,“‘T. Leeds.’
“For my own part, I am convinced that the above letter is genuine. If the reader doubts of it, let him carefully observe the three signs; and if they do not actually come to pass, believe as he pleases. I am his humble Friend,“R. Saunders.”
In this wise ended Poor Richard’s jest. Franklin’s style throughout is so simple and direct that one is at first inclined to scout the suggestion that the joke is not entirely original. It is impossible, however, to suppose that Franklin, with his broad reading, did not know Squire Bickerstaff’s. The development of the humor is wholly imitated. But Franklin made the method his own so thoroughly that his wit has those keener, subtler, more agile qualities which have distinguished American from the slower and sedater humor of the English. In the Bickerstaff jocularity evidences of the death of Partridge are enumeratedin material surroundings of a not too prosperous London quack. Franklin, on the other hand, ironically and graphically reasons upon supposititious traits and qualities of character and breeding.
In England, Swift’s squib having given the death-blow to astrology, “Merlinus Liberatus, by John Partridge,” was published years after, but shorn of its specious and misleading pretences. Franklin’s jesting was more self-seeking.
Not one of Franklin’s biographers or editors has referred to the Bickerstaff joke. Upon the contrary, in an “Introduction to Fac-simile of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1733,” published by The Duodecimos in 1894, it is asserted that Franklin “in a strain of delightful satire upon the already venerable pretensions of almanac-makers to foretell the future, ... disposes of this difficulty by a method so novel, so ingenious, and withal of an illuminating power so far-reachingas to set the whole colony talking about it.”
It need hardly be added that none of Swift’s biographers—all being English—have hinted at Franklin’s pleasantry.
The inextinguishable laughter—the true Homeric ἄσβεστος γέλως—which is the atmosphere of both incidents, fits them to rank with the imaginary durance of Sancho Panza upon his island, or with Tartarin in Tarascon, or, to go to the first humor of literature, with the advance and retreat of Thersites in the council of Zeus-nourished kings. And in Britain and America all our heroes were real.
Upon other occasions than the Saunders-Leeds jesting Franklin loved playful feint; he had “Bagatelles” for his delight. It was a quizzical side of the character which made him the first of our notable American humorists. To amuse himself with an oriental apologuewhich he called “The Parable of Persecution,” he had the story bound with a Bible. From this book he would read the legend aloud, amazing his auditors that so beautiful a scriptural passage had escaped their knowledge.
The form in which Franklin cast the tale is this:
“And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun.
“And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness, leaning on a staff.
“And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, ‘Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early on the morrow, and go thy way,’
“But the man said, ‘Nay, for I will abide under this tree.’
“And Abraham pressed him greatly:so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.
“And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, ‘Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, Creator of heaven and earth?’
“And the man answered and said, ‘I do not worship the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth alway in mine house, and provideth me with all things.’
“And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness.
“And at midnight God called unto Abraham, saying, ‘Abraham, where is the stranger?’
“And Abraham answered and said, ‘Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name;therefore have I driven him out from before my face into the wilderness.’
“And God said, ‘Have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?’
“And Abraham said, ‘Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; lo, I have sinned; forgive me, I pray thee.’
“And Abraham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought diligently for the man, and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had treated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts.
“And God spake again unto Abraham, saying, ‘For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land.
“‘But for thy repentance will I deliverthem; and they shall come forth with power, and with gladness of heart, and with much substance.’”
Franklin’s fine literary sense and feeling would doubtless have told him that the tale was oriental, even if Jeremy Taylor, whose “Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying” it brings to a finish, had not introduced it with the words, “I end with a story which I find in the Jews’ book.8
“When Abraham sat at his tent-door, according to his custom, waiting toentertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, coming toward him, who was a hundred years of age; he received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but, observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other god. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, ‘I thrust him away because he did not worship thee.’ God answered him, ‘I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst not thou endure him one night,when he gave thee no trouble?’ Upon this saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.”