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COMMENTARY
October 18, 2006
Reality, The need for
I’ve been reading, desultorily since May, Le Ménagier de Paris (The Goodman of Paris), a treatise on moral and domestic economy written late in the 14th century. Tempted, indeed, to write an updated version, from my own harvest of moral aphorisms and household hints, to be entitled, perhaps, Instructions to the Ladies. There being few books written like this any more, at least by men.This mediaeval one is a collection of practical notes to his young wife of 15, for running his household, and for conducting herself both publicly and privately, presented by an old husband of 61 (the “Goodman” in question). On the principle, first things first, it begins with how to salute and thank God on waking and rising, then proceeds by entertaining exempla from literary and Biblical sources to distinguish good mistresses from bad. The seven deadly sins and the corresponding virtues are especially well done. The second half of the manuscript is mostly a cookery book, with preparatory notes on gardening (mediaeval man grew much of what he ate), and how to direct the varlets, servants, and chambermaids at the Goodman’s town and country estates. It concludes, usefully, with recipes for beverages and pottages to serve the old and infirm -- the last words explaining how to hull barley or corn, to make frumenty. The manuscript was never intended for publication. That is part of its charm -- the candour it shares in different ways with books like the Paston Letters, or Pepys’s Diary, or even Margery Kempe. The author is not trying so hard to avoid looking like an idiot to his own and future ages, that he suppresses any truth. The scandal of a teenaged girl marrying an old man, was, all points considered, a little less then than now. But the kind of “marriage” that might result is radically different. Circa 1393, the old man is doing a favour to an orphan girl, raising her in society, and endowing her with wealth, in return for nursing him through his dotage. Lust is not confessed in his calculations; there is a real paternal tenderness instead. There are poignant moments, as when the Goodman notes his young wife has begged him not to correct her mistakes in public. Could he please be patient, and wait till they are alone? For she is trying her best to obey him. The Goodman has no heirs, and his end is nearing. It is a “mariage de convenance”. That is what is most poignant in the book, but also, where it touches on my moral for today. For the Goodman has a clear sense of reality. Several times he mentions the girl’s “next husband” -- the one more her own age she will surely marry after he dies -- for instance, when declaring, “What will your next husband think of me, if I haven’t taught you to cook properly?” I do not myself aspire to have such a young wife in my old age, incidentally. For one thing, they don’t make them the way they used to. For another, I am too modern, and too North American, and therefore too used to associating intimacy with equality. We have lost too much of the ability to “condescend” in the fine old sense of that word, as it was used when people could be close without being similar or equal. That comes, I suppose, from losing our varlets, servants, and chambermaids; but also from a desiccation of spirit. We have become homogenized and pasteurized and democratized and -- interchangable. But I do aspire to the Goodman’s solid, stoical, prudential sense of what must happen, starting with the observation that he will die and yet, life will go on. That is not the whole story, even of mortality, but it is the beginning of the story of “common sense”. A friend in Texas writes about a difficult son-in-law, showing his first confident signs of adulthood, a little after getting married and having a kid. There is also a mortgage in there somewhere, and even a small business. My friend mentions the son-in-law is suddenly coming around politically, too, that he is “getting out from under the spell of the [bad word for a liberal Democrat] pied pipers”. It is one of innumerable such anecdotes I’ve heard -- for a person’s political views do, nearly invariably, reflect his degree of maturity. The same can be demonstrated in the demographics of any democracy: that as people acquire responsibilities and stakes, their voting shifts “progressively” rightward on the political spectrum, and away from the narcissistic dream-world offered by what I call the leftoids and gliberals. The conditions in which we manifest our adulthood may change over the centuries; yet throughout, the sense of reality is formed and cultivated at the personal and domestic level. This is the connexion between so-called “family values”, or "social conservatism", and common sense in public life. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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