Cavalier, p.14
Cavalier, page 14
Napkins being folded (top) and made into
strange shapes (bottom)
The spectators now clear a passage along the centre of the room to allow a solemn procession of ewer bearers (with towels over their shoulders) and servitors to make their way to the royal table. The former carry upon their shoulders basins of water for the washing of the royal hands, and the latter heavy chargers full of food (Plate 18). Once set down, the dishes will cover the entire royal table, overlapping each other at the edges. A book giving instructions to the waiters describes how they should mix the dishes up: a server must not
set them down as he received them, but setting the Sallats [salads] extravagantly about the Table, mix the Fricases about them, then the boyl'd meats amongst the Fricases, rost meats among the boyl'd, bak'd meats amongst the rost, and the Carbonados amongst the bak'd, so that before every Trencher may find a Sallet, a Fricase, a boyl'd meat, a rost meat, a bak'd meat, and a Carbonado, which will both give a most comely beauty to the Table, and very great contentment to the Guests.93
Wine is poured from bottles standing in a cooler and presented with further aplomb; even menial jobs such as wine-pouring or towel-holding are highly sought after among members of the household.
After dining, the king and queen rise and go through to the small chamber that lies immediately to their right. The Marble closet takes its name, obviously, from its striking vaulted ceiling in black and white marble, its black and white marble fireplace, and its black and white diamond-checked marble floor, all made with fine stone shipped from Italy. This room, another small closet, is richly hung with red silk ('Cremsson taffetie hangings' are described in a later inventory) against green-painted panelling.94 Semi-circular pictures, ornately framed with fruit and cherubs, hang on the upper parts of the walls (Plate 19). They show three pairs of naked ladies against pastoral backgrounds in which an occasional house or castle is scattered across rolling green hills very similar to those surrounding the castle. The ladies represent the virtues and have been copied from a series of engravings called The United Virtues by Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617).95 This is the room set aside for the king and queen to straighten themselves up in preparation for the afternoon's entertainment. Its furniture is appropriate for an interval of rest: a later inventory will mention '2 backed Chairs; 2 couches with taffeta quilts; 1 picture; 2 stands & 1 table' and '1 looking Glass'.96
There's a most ingenious explanation for William's choice of decoration in here, and he now accompanies the king and queen into the room in order to explain another elaborate and long-planned compliment. The erudite and observant guest will notice that there are two virtues missing from the series. The fourth wall of the room has no painting, but instead John Smithson has designed tall 'Frenche wyn-dows' opening onto a balcony from which the vast panorama of the Doe Lea valley can be seen.97 By inviting Henrietta Maria and Charles to step out onto the balcony and position themselves against this view, William will have the privilege of seeing the sequence complete for a few brief moments, the king and queen representing the missing virtues of 'Concord' and 'Peace' set against the pastoral background of their own realm of England.98
Now, with great ceremony, Charles and Henrietta Maria emerge from the Marble closet and are led down the main stair, its walls plastered yet lined out and washed with a golden colour to give the impression of further fortress-like masonry. In the lobby at the bottom of the stairs, panelled and painted in black, they detect the sound of musicians tuning their instruments. The inventory of William's musical instruments records 'Att boulsouer i harpsicall',99 and now 'two Tenors and A Base' are making themselves ready to sing. Beyond the heavily studded black door to the Pillar Parlour that opens off this lobby at the foot of the stairs the masque will now begin.
William sometimes eats alone, or with intimate friends, in his private dining rooms or parlours, and the most sumptuous of these is the Pillar Parlour in the Little Castle at Bolsover (Plate 15). Dim and north-facing, candlelight plays across the gilding of its walnut and black panelling, with its carved curlicues, flourishes, bosses, studs and stems. Winged horses decorate the ceiling, and William and Elizabeth's arms take pride of place on the alabaster fireplace of strange Gothic proportions and gleaming jewels. It is in this room - so richly redolent of the seventeenth-century court - that Charles and Henrietta Maria now seat themselves for a 'banquet of the senses'.
A world away from the mutton and porridge that the household customarily consume in the Great Hall, William's royal guests are now surrounded by music, food, delicious smells and fine fabrics, as well as the visual delights of the room, in an all-round sensory experience of private pleasure. What's more, the Pillar Parlour is itself decorated with panel paintings showing the five senses. The masque's first song explains that the king and queen are experiencing a banquet of the senses, and as the song begins a real banquet (pronounced 'banket') of sweet desserts is brought in. 'When were the senses in such order placed?' sings the first tenor, and the second tenor echoes:
The sight, the hearing, smelling, touching, taste,
All at one banquet?100
The room is set up with table, seats and perfume burners; later inventories will mention twelve cloth-of-silver chairs.101 The seats for the king and queen are richly upholstered and the table richly dressed. A banqueting table is covered with a silk carpet before two layers of linen tablecloth are spread upon it.
Perhaps the table is laid with some of the newfangled implements called forks. Thomas Coryat, the Jacobean traveller, brought back news of the table fork from Italy, and wrote about it in a book entitled Coryafs Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travels in France, Savoy, Italy [. . .] and the Netherlands (1611). He reported that 'the Italians do always at their meals use a little fork when they cut their meat [. . .] their forks being for the most part made of iron and steel and some of silver, but those are only used by gentlemen. The reason of their curious custom is because the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike clean.'102 (Coryat also brought back news of another novelty called the umbrella.)
William has likewise toured Italy, and like Coryat, may have seen the sense in this new way of eating, which is so much more hygienic than the knife and fingers. In the sixteenth century, napkins would have been conveniently draped over the shoulder of the diner for wiping greasy fingers. With the seventeenth-century invention of the fork and a less messy passage of food to mouth, napkins have descended to diners' laps to protect their clothes instead. The earliest English silver table fork dates from 1632, just two years prior to today's masque. It was made for a marriage feast and hidden under the floorboards of Haddon Hall, some twenty miles west of Bolsover Castle.103 With the introduction of forks, seventeenth-century knives will begin to change their shape: before now they have been pointed, used for skewering pieces of food as well as for cutting. In the next few years, knives with round blades, designed for use in conjunction with forks, will creep into fashion. Yet forks will not be in common use, even among aristocrats, until the very last decade of William Cavendish's life.
A later list of the family silverware indicates that the Cavendishes possess all the necessary equipment for dining and banqueting: they have '47 dyshes of severall sizes' for serving the dinner, '5 Basons and Vres [ewers] Silver' for washing hands, '1 Voyder knife' for clearing or voiding a table, and '12 ffruit dishes for crame [cream]'.104
The king and queen's olfactory passages are tickled by the burning of perfumed orange or lavender water rather than by fresh flowers on the table. Vases of flowers on a dining table will be an innovation of later centuries, though edible petals may well be on the table today as part of the menu. For the food that is now being served to the king and queen is the delicate banquet course, which is something quite distinct from the main feast of heavy dishes of flesh and fowl.
In medieval times the table was cleared after the main course to make room for the sweet course to be brought to the board. Clearing the table is called 'voiding' or 'deserting' it, hence the term 'dessert'. The job description of a medieval servitor indicates that the practice is by now centuries old: 'when men have well eaten and do begin to wax weary of eating, you shall take up the meat and void the table, and then set down cheese or fruits. Notice if your master is used to wash at the table or standing and cast a clean towel upon your table-cloth and set down your ewer and basin before him.'105 By the seventeenth century, the serving of this sweet or dessert course often takes place in another room, so that the table itself can be dismantled to allow dancing or the performance of an entertainment.
The food served as this afternoon's banquet in the Pillar Parlour will be a feast for the eye and mind as well as the belly. Often banqueting food consists of both rare and everyday objects remade in spun sugar, and the king and queen will be drinking spiced or sweet wines such as hypocras or muscadine.106 The writer Gervase Markham in 1615 recommends that for a banquet:
You shall first send forth a dish made for show only, as Beast, Bird, Fish or Fowl, according to invention; then your March-pane [marzipan], then Preserved Fruit, then a Paste, then a wet Sucket, then a dry Sucket, Marmalade, Comfets, Apples, Pears, Wardens, Oranges and Lemons sliced [. . .] no two dishes of one kind going or standing together, and this will not only appear delicate to the eye, but invite the appetite with the much variety thereof.107
There are instructions in the Cavendish family's recipe book for making almond butter, barley cream, white sugar candy, metheglin, essence of honey and other sweets to tempt the cloyed appetites of surfeited guests.108
One of the strangest parts of the banquet is its conclusion. Having eaten their fill of the sugar world set before them, the guests take great delight in throwing, crushing or smashing the remaining items, in something of the same spirit that the glasses drained for a toast are tossed over the shoulder. John Partridge, in his Good Huswives Closet (1584), outlines the fashions of the rich for those who wish to emulate their betters: 'At the ende of the Banquet they may eate all, and breake the Platters, Dishes, Glasses, Cups, and all things.'109 We do not know for certain that the king and queen today participate in one of these aristocratic food fights in the Pillar Parlour. It is a type of behaviour associated more with Charles's father, the riotous James I, who liked to drink and carouse. Yet it is possible, now, in the Pillar Parlour, that England's king and queen throw cakes into the air.110
'Would it ever last!' sings the bass, but the banquet of the senses draws to a close.
The king and queen leave the Pillar Parlour and climb the stairs once again to reach the russet-red door leading out onto the Stone Walk encircling the Fountain Garden. Ben Jonson's stage directions reveal that after the banquet, the king and queen must retire into the garden for the masque's magnificent climax.111
Once upon the Stone Walk, Charles and Henrietta Maria make a circuit of the garden, admiring the views over the hills before descending to the chairs set up beneath a cloth of estate rigged up on the lawn. Now they are ready to be entertained by Colonel Vitruvius and 'his Oration to the Mechanicks'.112
Colonel Vitruvius, a pastiche of a pernickety and pretentious architect, with his confused talk of the classical principles and his rather desperate encouragements to his troupe of dancing builders, makes his entrance to laughter. Everyone recognises that he is a parody of the court favourite Inigo Jones. 'Use holiday legs,' he cries to his dancers, 'tune the tickle-foot' in order to spring, leap and jingle.113
Now 'Dresser', the plumber in Colonel Vitruvius's troupe, capers onto the stage, bearing his clumsy 'dresser', the tool used for softly shaping lead.114 'Captain Smith' beats out the time of the dance on his anvil, unable to take part because of his club foot. 'Chisel', the 'curious carver', brandishes his chisel and mallet, while his colleague 'Master Maul' the freemason carries his maul or stone hammer. 'Squire Sumner' the carpenter and his man 'Twybil' carry a carpenter's square (sumner) and axe (twybil) respectively. 'Quarrel' the glazier takes his name from the term for a small pane of glass, and 'Fret' the plasterer takes his from fretwork, the kind of repetitive detail that covers ornate plaster ceilings. Finally, 'Beater' the mortar-man gestures with the beater or paddle that he uses to stir the sludgy lime. The sketches by Inigo Jones showing similar dance troupes of 'fiery spirits', animals, fairies, mountebanks, druids, Scots, Indians and magicians indicate the kind of motley ingenuity that will have gone into their costumes.
Inigo Jones's design for 'two lackeys', comic dancers who would have appeared (like the dancing builders) in the earlier part of a masque
The richly dressed spectators also contribute to the glowing splendour of this, the garden's finest moment, and the strange and colourful costumes of the courtiers clustered along the battlemented wall's walk are not dissimilar to those of the performers. At a time when even a simple black suit of a quality fit for court wear costs as much as the rent of a London house for a year, clothes are vital signifiers of rank and wealth.115 Everyday court dress itself is costly, bizarre and ornate, but even more splendid costumes are worn for masques. When one was planned at Hampton Court for Christmas, 1603, Charles I's mother Queen Anne gave permission for the late Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe at the Tower of London to be raided for costumes.116 Anne had a great weakness for dressing up, and in 'The Masque of Blackness' (1605) she even appeared in person as a negro nymph. One contemporary thought this 'a very loathsome sight', and found the dresses of the queen and her company 'too light and curtizan-like for such great ones'. For ease of dancing masque costumes do customarily reveal more of the feet and ankles than is common.117
Ben Jonson's entertainment is intended to celebrate the perfect love that exists between the king and queen. Inside this circular garden, then, the next scene is a debate on the nature of love, to take place between two cupids, Eros and Anteros. To gasps of surprise, Eros and Anteros now make their descent in the mechanical cloud, bearing with them yet another course of banqueting food. The king's cupid is garlanded with white and red roses, while the queen's wears a circlet 'of lilies interweau'd, Gold, Silver, Purple &c' The rest of their costumes are identical: 'arm'd and wing'd: with Bowes, and Quivers, Cassocks, Breeches, Buskins, gloves, and perukes alike'.118 Between them they snatch a frond of victory palm leaves as they squabble. Finally, they come to an agreement that the king's and queen's loves, which they represent, are in perfect harmony. Anteros exclaims that the royal court 'is circular, And perfect!', neatly aligning the Neoplatonic view of the universe as an ascending series of perfectly circular layers with the circular fountain court in which the masque is taking place.119
The masque draws to a close with a final declaration on the subject of love by an old philosopher. He draws out a last link between this magical circular garden of William Cavendish's and the love between the king and queen:
The Place I confesse, wherein (by the providence of your mother Venus) you are now planted, is the divine Schoole of Love. An Academie, or Court, where all the true Lessons of Love are throughlie read, and taught.120
The whole of Derbyshire accompanies the philosopher, he says, in wishing the king and queen a long and happy life, 'joined by holy marriage', 'To wch two words bee added, a zealous Amen, and ever rounded with a Crowne of welcome.'121
The philosopher's name is Philalethes, or 'truth lover'. His moving personal address to the king and queen praises them, flatters them, inspires them and seduces them with its promises of future success and fecundity. But will it be effective in encouraging them to reward their host?
The sun has travelled over the castle, and Venus's plump shadow now falls onto the lawn to the east of the fountain. The day has worn itself out, and the king and queen have departed in a cloud of dust and elation on their journey back to Welbeck Abbey for the night. William Cavendish himself appeared in this afternoon's masque, albeit in an oblique manner. In the speech that closed the show, Philalethes wished the king and queen's love for each other to be immeasurable, 'their felicity perfect'. William shared in these hopes, Philalethes declaimed: 'So wisheth the glad, and gratefull Client seated here; the over-joy'd Master of this House; and praieth that the whole Region about him, could speake but his language.'122
No doubt the love and honour that William feels so deeply for the king and queen do indeed make him feel 'glad and grateful' for their presence, and perhaps this is enough for his satisfaction. Yet one of the perpetual risks run in staging a masque is the sense of melancholy deflation when its magic is over. The aged magician Prospero in The Tempest captures the evanescence of a masque's charms, which leave behind nothing but a glorious memory tinged with regret for what has been and a sense of brevity and mortality. Perhaps, despite his proud pleasure in the success of his day, William likewise feels that:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
[. . .] We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
