Chapter XIX

THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE AND USES.--BEDS.--HUTCHES AND
COFFERS.--THE TOILETTE; MIRRORS.

The chambers were now, except in smaller houses, mostly above the ground-floor; and, as I have already observed, the privacy of the chamber was much greater than formerly. In the poem of “Lady Bessy,” quoted in a former chapter (the whole poem is given in Mr. Halliwell’s privately printed “Palatine Anthology”), when the earl of Derby was plotting with the lady Bessy for calling in the earl of Richmond, he proposed to repair secretly to her in her chamber, in order to prepare the letters:--

_“We must depart_ (separate), _lady,” the earle said then;_
_“Wherefore keep this matter secretly,_
_And this same night, betwix nine and ten,_
_In your chamber I think to be._
_Look that you make all things ready,_
_Your maids shall not our councell hear,_
_For I will bring no man with me_
_But Humphrey Brereton, my true esquire.”_
_He took his leave of that lady fair,_
_And to her chamber she went full light,_
_And for all things she did prepare,_
_Both pen and ink, and paper white._

The earl, on his part,--

----_unto his study went,_
_Forecasting with all his might_
_To bring to pass all his intent;_
_He took no rest till it was night,_
_And when the stars shone fair and bright,_
_He him disguised in strange mannere;
_He went unknown of any wight,_
_No more with him but his esquire._
_And when he came her chamber near,_
_Full privily there can he stand;_
_To cause the lady to appeare_
_He made a sign with his right hand._
_And when the lady there him wist,_
_She was as glad as she might be;_
_Charcoals in chimneys there were cast,_
_Candles on sticks standing full high._
_She opened the wickett, and let him in,_
_And said, “Welcome, lord and knight soe free!”_
_A rich chair was set for him,_
_And another for that fair lady;_
_They ate the spice, and drank the wine,_
_He had all things at his intent._

The description given in these lines agrees perfectly with the representations of chambers in the illuminated manuscripts of the latter part of the fifteenth century, when the superior artistic skill of the illuminators enabled them to draw interiors with more of detail than in former periods. We have almost invariably the chimney, and one “rich chair,” if not more. In our cut No. 256, we have a settle in the chamber, which is turned to the fire. This picture is taken from a manuscript of the early French translation of Josephus, in the National Library in Paris (No. 7015), and represents the death of the emperor Nero, as described by that writer. All the furniture of this chamber is of a superior description. The large chair by the bed-side is of very elegant design; and the settle, which is open at the back, is ornamented with carved panels. Our next cut (No. 257), taken from a manuscript of Lydgate’s metrical Life of St. Edmund (MS. Harl. No. 2278), represents the birth of that saint. This room is more elaborately furnished than the former. The fittings of the bed are richer; the chimney is more ornamental in its character, and is curious as having three little recesses for holding candlesticks, cups, and other articles; and we have a well-supplied cupboard, though of simple form. From the colours in the manuscript, all the vessels appear to be of gold, or of silver-gilt. The seat before the fire in this cut (No. 257) seems to be the hutch, or chest, which in Nos. 261 and 262 we shall see placed at the foot of the bed, from which it is here moved to serve the occasion.

The lady seated on this chest appears to be wrapping up the new-born infant in swaddling-clothes; a custom which, as I have remarked on a former occasion, and as we shall see again further on, prevailed universally till a comparatively recent period. Infants thus wrapped up are frequently seen in the illuminated manuscripts; and their appearance is certainly anything but picturesque. We have an exception in one of the sculptures on the columns of the Hôtel de Ville at Brussels (represented in our cut No. 258), which also furnishes us with a curious example of a cradle of the latter part of the fifteenth century.

It will, no doubt, have been remarked that in these cuts we observe no traces of carpets on the floor. In our cut No. 256, the floor is evidently boarded; but more generally, as in our cuts Nos. 257, 260, and 261, it appears chequered, or laid out in small squares, which may be intended to represent tiles, or perhaps parquetry. There is more evidence of tapestried or painted walls; although this kind of ornamentation is only used partially, and chiefly in the dwellings of the richer classes. The walls in the chamber in cut No. 257 appear to be painted. In the same cut we have an example of an ornamental mat.

The most important article of furniture in the chamber was the bed, which began now to be made much more ornamental than in previous times. We have seen in the former period the introduction of the canopy and its curtains, under which the head of the bed was placed. The _celure_, or roof, of the canopy, was now often enlarged, so as to extend over the whole bed; and it, as well as the _tester_, or back, was often adorned with the arms of the possessor, with religious emblems, with flowers, or with some other ornament. There were also sometimes _costers_, or ornamental cloths for the sides of the bed. The curtains, sometimes called by the French word _ridels_, were attached edgeways to the tester, and were suspended sometimes by rings, so as to draw backwards and forwards along a pole; but more frequently, to judge by the illuminations, they were fixed to the celure in the same manner as to the tester, and were drawn up with cords. At the two corners of the celure portions of curtain were left hanging down like bags. The curtains which draw up are represented in our cuts Nos. 259 and 260. Those in cuts Nos. 261 and 262, if not in Nos. 256 and 257, are evidently drawn along poles with rings. The latter method is thus alluded to in the old metrical romance of “Sir Degrevant:”--

_That was a mervelle thynge,_
_To se the riddels hynge,_
_With many red golde rynge_
_That thame up bare._

The celure and tester were fixed to the wall and ceiling of the apartment, and were not in any way attached to the bed itself; for the large four-post bedsteads were introduced in the sixteenth century. In some illuminations the bed is seen placed within a square compartment separated from the room by curtains which seem to be suspended from the roof. This appears to have been the first step towards the more modern four-post bedsteads. In one of the plates to D’Agincourt’s “Histoire de l’Art” (Peinture, pl. 109), taken from a Greek fresco of the twelfth or thirteenth century in a church at Florence, we have the curtains arranged thus in a square tent in the room, where the cords are not suspended from the roof, but supported by four corner-posts. The bed is placed within, totally detached from the surrounding posts and curtains. The space thus left between the bed and the curtains was perhaps what was originally called in French the _ruelle_ (literally, the “little street”) of the bed, a term which was afterwards given to the space between the curtains of the bed and the wall, which held rather an important place in old French chamber life, and especially in the stories of chamber intrigue.

The bedstead itself was still a very simple structure of wood, as shown in our cut No. 259, which represents the bed of a countess. It is taken from the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” which has already furnished subjects for our previous chapters on the manners of the fifteenth century. The lady’s footstool is no less rude than the bedstead. The bed here evidently consists of a hard mattress. It was still often made of straw, and the bed is spoken of in the glossaries as placed upon a _stramentum_, which is interpreted by the English word “litter;” but feather-beds were certainly in general use during the whole of the fifteenth century. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, Chaucer (Dreme, v. 250) thus described a very rich bed:--

_Of downe of pure dovis white_
_I wol yeve him a fethir bed,_
_Rayid with gold, and right well cled_
_In fine blacke sattin d’outremere,_
_And many a pilowe, and every bere_ (pillow cover)
_Of clothe of Raines to slepe on softe;_
_Him thare_ (need) _not to turnen ofte_.

Agnes Hubbard, a lady of Bury, in Suffolk, who made her will in 1418, left among other things, “one feather-bed” (_unum lectum de plumis_). A rich townsman of the same place bequeathed, in 1463, to his niece, “certeyne stuffe of ostilment,” among which he enumerates “my grene hanggyd bedde steynyd with my armys therin, that hanggith in the chambyr ovir kechene, with the curtynez, the grene keveryng longgyng therto; another coverlyte, ij. blanketts, ij. peyre of good shetes, the trampsoun, the costerys of that chambyr and of the drawgth chambyr next, tho that be of the same soort, a grete pilve (_pillow_) and a smal pilve; the fethirbeed is hire owne that hire maistresse gaf hire at London.” After enumerating other articles of different kinds, the testator proceeds--“And I geve hire the selour and the steynyd clooth of the coronacion of Our Lady, with the clothes of myn that long to the bedde that she hath loyen (_lain_) in, and the beddyng in the draught chamber for hire servaunth to lyn in; and a banker of grene and red lying in hire chambyr with the longe chayer (_a settle, probably_); and a stondyng coffre and a long coffre in the drawth chambyr.” William Honyboorn, also of Bury, bequeathed to his wife in 1493, “my best ffether bedde with the traunsome, a whyte selour and a testour theron, with iij. white curteyns therto, a coverlight white and blewe lyeng on the same bedde, with the blankettes.” The same man leaves to his daughter, “a ffether bedde next the best, a materas lyeng under the same, iiij. peyr shetys, iij. pelowes, a peyr blankettes.” John Coote, who made his will at Bury in 1502, left to his wife, for term of her life, “alle my plate, brasse, pewter, hanggynges, celers, testers, fetherbeddes, traunsoms, coverlytes, blankettes, shetes, pelows, and all other stuff of hussold (_household_);” and afterwards bequeaths these articles separately to his son and daughter, after their mother’s death:--“I will that William Coote have my beste hanged bede, celer, testor, and curteyns longgyng to the same, the beste fetherbede, the beste coverlyght, the beste peyer of blankettes, the beste peyer shetes; and Alys Coote to have the next hanged bede, celer, and testour, wyth the ij^{de} fetherbede, blankettes, and the ij^{de} peyer shetes.” In the will of Anne Barett, of Bury, dated in 1504, we read, “Item, I bequeth to Avyse _my servaunte_ x. marc, a ffether bed, a traunsom, a payre shetes, a payre blankettes, a coverlyght.” Lastly, the will of Agar Herte, a widow of the same town, made in 1522, contains the following items:--“Item, I bequethe to Richard Jaxson, my son, a ffetherbed, ij. trawnsoms, a matras, ij. pelowes, iiij. payer of schetes, a payer of blankettes, and a coveryng of arasse, and a secunde coverlyght, a selour and a testour steynyd with fflowers, and iij. curteyns;” ... “Item, I bequethe to Jone Jaxson, my dowghter, a fetherbed, a matras, a bolster, ij. pelowes, iiij. payer of schetes, a payer of blankettes, a coverlyght with fflowre de lyce, a selour and a testour steynyd with Seynt Kateryn at the hed and the crusifix on the selour, ... a secunde coverlyght, ij. pelow-beris (_pillow-covers_), the steynyd clothes abowte the chamber where I ly;” ... “Item, I bequethe to Fraunces Wrethe a ffetherbed, a bolster, a payer of blankettes, my best carpet, a new coverlyght with fflowers, ij. payer of schetes, ij. pelows with the berys.”

These extracts from only one set of wills are sufficient to show the great advance which our forefathers had made during the fourteenth century in the comfort and richness of their beds, and how cautious we ought to be in receiving general observations on the condition of previous ages by those who write at a subsequent period. I make this observation in allusion to the account so often quoted from Harrison, who, in the description of England written in Essex during the reign of Elizabeth, and inserted in Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” informs us that “our fathers (yea, and we our selves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats, covered onelie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain,[52] or hopharlots (I use their owne termes), and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster. If it were so that our fathers, or the good-man of the house, had, within seven years after his mariage, purchased a matteres, or flocke bed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to reste his heade upon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, so well were they contented. Pillowes, said they, were thought meete onelie for women in child-bed. As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them it was well, for seldom had they anie under their bodies to keepe them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides.” A description like this could only apply to the lower classes in society, who had as yet participated but little in the march of social improvement.

As the privacy of the chamber had become greater, it seems now to have been much less common in private mansions for several people to sleep in the same room, which appears more rarely to have had more than one bed. But a bed of a new construction had now come into use, called a truckle or trundle bed. This was a smaller bed which rolled under the larger bed, and was designed usually for a valet, or servant. The illuminations in the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” already quoted more than once, furnish us with the early example of a truckle-bed represented in our cut No. 260. The count d’Artois lies in the bed under the canopy, while the truckle-bed is occupied by his valet (in this case, his wife in disguise). The truckle-bed is more frequently mentioned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Every reader will remember the speech of mine host of the Garter, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (act iv. sc. 5), who says of Falstaff’s room, “There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing bed and truckle-bed.” It was the place allotted to the squire, when accompanying the knight on “adventures.” So in Hudibras (part ii. canto ii.)--

_When Hudibras, whom thoughts and aking_
_’Twixt sleeping kept all night and waking,_
_Began to rub his drowsy eyes,_
_And from his couch prepared to rise,_
_Resolving to dispatch the deed_
_He vow’d to do, with trusty speed;_
_But first, with knocking loud and bawling,_
_He roused the squire, in truckle lolling._

In the English universities, the master-of-arts had his pupil to sleep in his truckle-bed.

The chamber, as the most private part of the house, was stored with chests and coffers, in which the person who occupied it kept his money, his deeds and private papers, and his other valuables. Margaret Paston, writing from Norwich to her husband about the year 1459, gives a curious account of the preparations for his reception at home. “I have,” she says, “taken the measure in the drawte chamber, there as ye would your coffers and your cowntewery (_supposed to mean a desk for writing_) should be set for the while, and there is no space beside the bed, though the bed were removed to the door, for to set both your board (_table_) and your coffers there, and to have space to go and sit beside; wherefore I have purveyed that ye shall have the same drawte chamber (_withdrawing room--the origin of our name of drawing-room for the salon_) that ye had before, thereat ye shall lye to yourself; and when your gear is removed out of your little house, the door shall be locked, and your bags laid in one of the great coffers, so that they shall be safe, I trust.” The hucches (_hutches_) or chests, and coffers, in the bed-chamber, are frequently mentioned in old writings. The large hutch seems to have been usually placed at the foot of the bed. In one of our preceding cuts (No. 257) we have seen it moved from its place to make a temporary seat before the fire. The cut annexed (No. 261), taken from a manuscript Latin Bible in the National Library in Paris (No. 6829), shows us the hutch in its usual place, and opened so as to expose its contents to our view. It is here evidently filled with money, and the persons who have entered the chamber seem to be plundering it. In a very popular old story, the same in substance as that of Macbeth and his daughters, an old man, on the marriage of his daughter, weakly gives up all his property to the young married pair, trusting to their filial love for his sustenance, and they go on treating him worse and worse, until he is saved from actual destitution by a deception he practises upon them. In one version of the story, given in English verse in a manuscript of the fifteenth century, the father goes to a friend and borrows a large sum of money in gold, which he places in his coffer, and, having invited them to his dwelling, and persuaded them to remain all night, he contrives that early in the morning they shall, as by accident, espy him counting his gold. The unfilial children, who supposed that he had given them all he possessed, were astonished to find him still rich, and were induced, by their covetousness, to treat him better during the rest of his life. The poem describes the old man leaving his bed to count the gold in his chest:--

_But on the morow, at brode daylight,_
_The fadir ros, and, for they shulden here_
_What that he dide in a boistous manere,_
_Unto his chest, which thre lokkes hadde,_
_He went, and therat wrethed he ful sadde,_
_And whan it was opened and unshit,_
_The bagged gold bi the merchaunt hym lent_
_He hath untied, and streight forth with it_
_Unto his beddis feete gone is and went,_
_What doth thanne this sel man and prudent_
_But out the gold on a tapit hath shot,_
_That in the bagges left ther no grot._
--MS. Harl. 372, fol. 88, v^o.

Robbers, or plunderers in time of war, when breaking into a house, always made direct for the chamber. Among the letters of the Paston family, is a paper by a retainer of sir John Fastolf, who had a house in Southwark, giving an account of his sufferings during the attack upon London by Jack Cade and the commons of Kent in 1450, in which he tells how “the captain (Cade) sent certain of his meny to my chamber in your rents, and there broke up my chest, and took away one obligation of mine that was due unto me of 36_l._ by a priest of Paul’s and one other obligation of one Knight of 10_l._, and my purse with five rings of gold, and 17_s._ 6_d._ of gold and silver; and one harness (_suit of armour_) complete of the touch of Milan; and one gown of fine perse blue, furred with martens; and two gowns, one furred with bogey (_budge_), and one other lined with frieze.” One of John Paston’s correspondents, writing from London on the 28th of October, 1455, gives the following still more pertinent account of the robbing of a man’s house:--“Also there is great variance between the earl of Devonshire and the lord Bonvile, as hath been many day, and much debate is like to grow thereby; for on Thursday at night last past, the earl of Devonshire’s son and heir came, with sixty men of arms, to Radford’s place in Devonshire, which (Radford) was of counsel with my lord Bonvile; and they set a house on fire at Radford’s gate, and cried and made a noise as though they had been sorry for the fire; and by thet cause Radford’s men set open the gates and yede (_went_) out to see the fire; and forthwith the earl’s son aforesaid entered into the place, and entreated Radford to come down of his chamber to speak with them, promising him that he should no bodily harm have; upon which promise he came down, and spoke with the said earl’s son. In the mean time his meny (_retinue_) rob his chamber, and rifled his hutches, and trussed such as they could get together, and carried it away on his own horses.” As soon as this was done, Radford, who was an eminent lawyer residing at Poghill, near Kyrton, and now aged, was led forth and brutally murdered. In the stories and novels of the middle ages, the favoured lover who has been admitted secretly into the chamber of his mistress is often concealed in the hutch or chest.

Our cut No. 262, taken from the same manuscript of the Bible which furnished our last illustration, represents the hutch also in its place at the foot of the bed. This sketch is interesting, both as showing more distinctly than the others the rings of the bed-curtains, and the rods attached to the celure, and as a particularly good illustration of the habit which still continued in all classes and ranks of society, of sleeping in bed entirely naked. The same practice is shown in several of our other cuts (see Nos. 256, 260, and 261), and, indeed, in all the illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth century which contain bedroom scenes. Wherever this is not the case, there is some evident reason for the contrary, as in our cut No. 257. During this period we have not so many pictorial illustrations of the toilet as might be expected. The ladies’ combs were generally coarse and large in the teeth, but often very elaborately and beautifully ornamented. The mirror was, as at former periods, merely a circular piece of metal or glass, set in a case, which was carved with figures or ornaments externally. The vocabularies mention the mirror as one of the usual objects with which a chamber should be furnished.

Our cut No. 263 is taken from a manuscript (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, A. vii. fol. 93, r^o) of the English translation of the singular work of the French writer, Guillaume de Deguilleville, entitled “Le Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine,” a poem which bears a striking resemblance in its general character to the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of Bunyan. The English version, which is in verse, and entitled simply the “Pilgrim,” has been ascribed to Lydgate. In the course of his adventures, the pilgrim comes to the lady Agyographe, who is represented as dealing in “mercerye,” but the enumeration of articles embraced under that term is rather singular:--

_Quod sche, “Geve_ (if) _I schal the telle,_
_Mercerye I have to selle;_
_In boystes_ (boxes) _soote_ (sweet) _oynementis,_
_Therewith to don allegementis_ (to give relief)
_To ffolkes whiche be not glade,_
_But discorded and mallade,_
_And hurte with perturbacyouns_
_Off many trybulacyouns._
_I have knyves, phylletys, callys,_
_At ffeestes to hang upon wallys;_
_Kombes mo than nyne or ten,_
_Bothe ffor horse and eke ffor men;_
_Merours also, large and brode,_
_And ffor the syght wonder gode;_
_Off hem I have fful greet plenté,_
_For ffolke that haven volunté_
_Byholde hemsilffe therynne.”_

Our cut represents the interior of the house of the lady mercer, with the various articles enumerated in the text; the boxes of ointment, the horse-combs, the men’s combs, and the mirrors. She first offers the pilgrim a mirror, made so as to flatter people, by representing them handsomer than they really were, which the pilgrim refuses:--

_“Madame,” quod I, “yow not displeese,_
_This myroure schal do me noon eese;_
_Wherso that I leese or wynne,_
_I wole nevere looke thereinne.”_
_But ryght anoon myne happe it was_
_To loken in another glasse,_
_In the whiche withouten wene_ (without doubt)
_I sawe mysylff ffoule and uncleene,
_And to byholde ryght hydous,_
_Abhomynabel, and vecyous._
_That merour and that glas_
_Schewyd_ (showed) _to me what I was_.

In the celebrated “Romance of the Rose,” one of the heroines, Belacueil, is introduced, adorning her head with a fillet, and with this head-dress contemplating herself in a mirror:--

_Belacueil souvent se remire,_
_Dedans son miroer se mire,_
_Savoir s’il est si bien seans._

There is a representation of this scene in the beautiful illuminated manuscript of the “Romance of the Rose” in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 4425), in which, singularly enough, the mirror itself, which is evidently of glass, is represented as being convex, though perhaps we must attribute this appearance to the unskilfulness of the designer, who in his attempt to show that the mirror was round, failed in perspective. In our first cut, from Guillaume de Deguilleville, it will be observed that the artist, in order to show that the articles intended to be represented are mirrors, and not plates, or any other round implements, has drawn the reflections of faces, although nobody is looking into them. Another peculiarity in the illumination of the “Romance of the Rose,” a portion of which is represented in our cut No. 264, is that the mirror is fixed against the wall, instead of being held in the hand when used, as appears to have been more generally the case. Standing-mirrors seem not to have been yet in use; but before the end of the fifteenth century, glass mirrors, which appear to have been invented in Belgium or Germany, came into use.