Sat, May 19 2012
| TITLE: | Traditions and Gardens |
|---|---|
| AUTHOR: | Sherry Thornburg |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | Fun |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | G, Gen, Tame and somewhat educational |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | The cast of SAJV and my own creations. |
| DESCRIPTION: | Rebecca gets an education. |
| STATUS: | Complete |
| DISCLAIMER: | The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne is not mine, never will be and was only borrowed for my own fun and enjoyment. There may be references to shows but this is not based on or made from any of them. |
| AUTHOR'S NOTES: | As Tree says, it’s all about the babies. And I will never look at an English spring garden the same again after learning about this. |
Rebecca tried to get out of the house a third time that day on an errand she didn’t need to do, which caused Phileas to call her a coward to her face. That sent his wife into a fuming rage up the stairs to her room to await a group of relatives that had made it their business to come to the London townhouse this afternoon to teach Rebecca about setting up a proper kitchen garden.
“Of all the wastes of time!” Rebecca had complained after receiving the letter from her grand aunt announcing the visit. “Passepartout keeps the kitchen garden just fine. There is no reason for me to get involved in it. It’s not as if I actually do any cooking after all.”
Her complaints fell on deaf ears. This visit appeared to be something of a tradition for the older married ladies of the family. After the wedding trip they always came to teach the newest bride how to set up and maintain a kitchen garden. Rebecca had a fair knowledge of herbs and spices. She knew that no proper English household was complete without an herb garden, but she was no cook and had never had any intention of taking those duties from Passepartout when she married Phileas. “So why should I acquire knowledge I have no intention of using?’
In response, Phileas had argued and cajoled her and then had finally insisted that she stop complaining and accept this little tradition as part of the requirements of married life. There were times when Rebecca really hated that part of her marriage ceremony where she had had to promise to obey Phileas. Most of the time it wasn’t an issue. Most of the time Phileas knew better than to ask something of her she didn’t want to do. But most of the time was not this time.
Rebecca paced her room fuming at being prevented from getting out of this. She had never had any reason to become interested in such domestic matters before now. Sir Boniface’s servants had always handled such things and still did. It was all done in the country, the growing and preparation of herbs and spices as well as the candle and soap making. The servants then brought the products of their labor to the city to stock Sir Boniface’s primary residence. Rebecca had watched some of that done when she was a girl, but had never been very curious it.
“Shooting, and riding horses and preparing for becoming a spy like her guardian yes, but cooking? Never!” She admitted to the empty room. “All my fault for agreeing to marry,” Rebecca huffed flouncing down of the bed. “I’m going to be expected to do all sorts of things I’ve never bothered about now.”
Rebecca realized now that domesticity had snuck up on her when she wasn’t looking. The family ladies had descended on her within days of Phileas’s announcement of their engagement with helpful advice and offering their experience to her. Rebecca had been grateful of their help at first. The wedding had been amazingly complicated with hundreds of traditions to follow and little rituals to perform.
But when she and Phileas had returned from their wedding trip, a letter from Rebecca’s Grand Aunt had been waiting. It was an announcement of her imminent arrival. Aunt Jane and her daughter intended to spend a week in London with Rebecca going over all the duties of a proper wife and seeing to it that Rebecca was fully prepared. Several relatives living near and in London would join them as well.
“If you had had a mother or female relation around as you were growing up we wouldn’t worry dear,” the letter had said. “As that was not the case and I fear that you are not at all prepared for marriage. We will arrive in four days. Your cousins Freda and Brenda and Georgina will be coming into London too. We will all be bringing seeds for your garden and recipe cards.”
All of the ladies listed were near strangers to Rebecca. So many women descending on her to see if she knew how to be a proper wife... Rebecca felt terribly nervous and intimidated by it all and the admission made her angry. She was taking that anger out on helpless pillow shams when a knock came to her door. It was Passepartout.
“Miss Rebecca, your Auntie is here. She and the other ladies be waiting for you in parlor. I have already been setting out the refreshments.”
“Thank you Passepartout, I will be down in a moment.”
Resigned to her fate, Rebecca pasted on a smile checked her hair and headed downstairs. On her way she met Phileas heading up. He gave her a kiss and squeezed her hand. “Enjoy your day with the ladies. I’m going out. I should be back home around midnight or so.”
“Coward,” Rebecca accused.
“Not at all,” Phileas countered. “I am merely accepting the fact that this is a family event I was not invited to and will not likely be welcome at.” With that he continued up the stairs to dress for his outing. “Oh, Aunt Jane tells me that you ladies will not need Passepartout’s services this evening, so he will be accompanying me.”
‘Completely abandoned,’ Rebecca thought as she descended the last steps.
In the parlor, the ladies were all waiting for her. Cousin Georgina and Freda were with child, their third children each. Rebecca had never spent any time with either of them. Brenda was pouring tea. She was the only one in this group that Rebecca knew. They were of the same age and had debuted together. Brenda had married at eighteen and now had four children. Aunt Jane and her daughter Violet were sitting by the hearth. Violet was ten years Rebecca’s junior and had been married two years. Rebecca had spent a little time with Aunt Jane when she was growing up before Violet had been born. Aunt Jane had invited her to join them for trips to Bath in the summer. But then that fun had ended when her husband, an Army Officer, had been sent to North Africa when Rebecca had been twelve.
“So good to see you again dear,” Aunt Jane said as she entered the room. “We are going to have so much fun today! Violet, do bring the recipe box,” she called to her daughter. “Now let’s see what you know about herbs and spices already,” Aunt Jane began.
Rebecca sat down where she was bidden and set herself to endure this female inquisition.
For the next two hours, Rebecca went through the cards one by one answering questions and gaining information about how to spice meals, make breads softer, make scented soaps, mix tooth powder, add herbs to candle wax, and a hundred other things she had no intention of ever doing. There were also recipes for cosmetics, salves, shampoos, hair dies and wrinkle creams. Those she intended to move to the front of the box later as things she may actually have a use for. The recipes for medicines came next. Honey based mixtures for burns, Bearberry for diarrhea and dysentery and bladder infections.
“You should keep pot marigold on hand in the fall for sore throat pain,” Brenda said.
“And Chamomile,” Freda added. “It’s good for nearly everything, but mostly for stomach ailments, and topically to treat cuts and bruises.
You will need to keep Feverfew too, Violet added. “I brought you a bag of seeds. It’s wonderful for headache pains and fevers.
“I brought you some Passion flower,” Georgina said. “A friend from America swears by it as a sleeping aid when one is worried or overworked.” It has a beautiful big purple flower. It goes beautifully with Queen Anne’s lace as a backdrop in the garden too.
Oddly the women around her started giggling. It was obvious to Rebecca she had just been left out of some private joke. “And what is Queen Anne’s lace used for,” she asked? She knew that it was a common plant used in herb gardens but didn’t have any idea what it was good for.
The giggling increased in volume until all the women were openly laughing. Aunt Jane shushed the women. “Now now, this party is for her education. And didn’t I tell you she wouldn’t know about that. That was really too naughty of you to mention putting passion flower and Queen Anne’s lace together in the same row Georgina. Just terribly naughty!”
The giggling started again then quickly subsided. “Are you increasing yet Rebecca?” Aunt Jane asked gently.
Rebecca didn’t blanch or bat an eye at the question. She had wanted to become pregnant soon after marrying and had not been disappointed. It was just too soon for her to be certain so she had not spoken her suspicions. “I may be,” she answered.
“Wonderful!” Aunt Jane said. “Have you and Phileas spoken about children and how many you want?”
“Not how many, no, but I expect we would have at least two.” I’m not so young that I will be having very many,” she confessed. Rebecca had a vague understanding that fertility was a finite thing. She wouldn’t have forever to have the children they would want so she had done away with her womb cap as soon as she had married.
Avoiding pregnancy had been something Rebecca’s mentor in the Foreign office had told her about during her early training. Mrs. Young had been a spy during the wars with France. As such, Sir Boniface had turned his ward over to her to explain some of the more delicate matters. The grandmotherly woman had been very candid with Rebecca.
“Spying for the crown is serious business and you should never underestimate the dangers you face,” she had warned. Then Mrs. Young had gone into a very long explanation of the moral dangers and had given Rebecca weeks of training in how to avoid, put off and defend herself against men’s attentions. She had then stood as escort with Rebecca taking her to some of the less reputable London parties to give her young charge some practice at it.
Once satisfied that Rebecca could hold her own, Mrs. Young had sat her down and explained the use of womb caps and how to deal with them. “This is essential,” the older woman had said. “Some times there is just no avoiding the situation. In those times this will keep you safe from pregnancy. Never go into a dangerous situation without it! And I don’t mean rapped in a handkerchief in your reticule!”
Rebecca pulled herself back to the present wondering what Queen Anne’s Lace had to do with how many children she would have.
“My dear, you are quite right about having a limited time,” Aunt Jane was saying seriously. “One normally has had most of their children by your age, but as you are starting later, don’t think you have to have them one after another. In truth it is best to give oneself a year or two between children.”
“And that is were the Queen Anne’s lace comes in,” Brenda said. “Dear Rupert and I would have a house full of children if it weren’t for it. I seem to get pregnant so easily. I was out of the country and didn’t find out about setting up my garden until after I had had my first two. The first was conceived a month after we married and the second four months after my birthing.”
“Indeed,” Freda cautioned. “The women of our family are rather fertile. Always have been. Queen Anne’s lace seed will curb your fertility. After your child is born you should take a spoonful a day until you are ready to have another. You can tell dear Phileas the truth or just tell him it’s a supplement for vitality. That’s what I tell my Roger. Some men are rather touchy about such things.”
“True enough,” Aunt Jane said. “You decide how to handle that. But do keep a good supply in your garden. It takes at least twenty plant heads a year to make sure you have enough on hand. Now, enough of that.” She said pulling the next card in the box. “Let’s go on to the uses of Marigold, shall we?”
By the end of the night Rebecca and her relatives had gone through the whole box. It was truly amazing what all those plants would do. Brenda added to the night by cooking a roast dinner for them all with Freda doing a demonstration of various ways to give some of the more tasteless vegetables flavor. After dinner, the ladies left promising to come back the next day to help Rebecca plant. Passepartout had already dug up a new section of the back yard for the purpose. The next two days would be devoted to making a quilt. All the ladies had already made special squares for it. That Rebecca thought would be good fun. She loved needlework.
Rebecca retired for the night feeling a kinship she had never felt before toward the women of her family. Absently she wondered why the use of Queen Anne’s lace seed wasn’t something Mrs. Young had told her about. A spoonful of seeds a day seemed much less trouble than dealing with a womb cap. But then again sometimes she had been on missions that had gone over long. Missing doses, Aunt Jane had said, would make the effects questionable.
Phileas and Passepartout returned home at half past eleven.
“How was your hen party?” Phileas asked smiling as he dressed for bed.
“Quite enjoyable actually,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have been so worried about it. You couldn’t imagine all the good recipes I was given. They will be back tomorrow for an early lunch to help me plant my garden.”
Phileas smiled in amusement doing his best not to laugh. “Imagine, my Rebecca getting excited about how to cook a roast and plant herbs. It is too much to fathom.” He teased.
The End.