6 - English Between the Lines

Summary

Fynes Moryson began his account of Germany in the Itinerary with the observation that it experienced ‘farre greater cold then England lying more Northerly’. It does not say much for Moryson's sense of latitude, but the cultural implications were notable. Moryson described the ‘hot stoves’ or saunas used by Germans to counter their cold clime:

And as well to keepe out cold as to retaine the heate, they keepe the dores and windowes closely shut; so as they using not only to receive Gentlemen into these stoves, but even to permitt rammish clownes to stand by the oven till their wet clothes be dried, and themselves sweat, yea, to indure their little children to sit upon their close stooles, and ease themselves within this close and hot stove (let the Reader pardon my rude speech, as I bore with the bad smell), it must needes be, that these ill smelles, never purged by the admitting of any fresh ayre, should dull the braine, and almost choke the spirits of those who frequent the stoves.

Moryson did not at first enjoy the experience, but ‘after I had used them, custome became another nature, for I never injoyed my health in any place better then there’.

The importance of dried and stored fruit in the German diet followed, as did comments about clothing and climate that neatly segued into commodities:

The Italians have a Proverb … God gives cloathes according to the colds, as to the cold Muscovites hee hath given furres, to the English wooll for cloth, to the French divers light stuffes, and to Southerlie people stoore of silkes, that all Nations abounding in some things, and wanting others, might be taught, that they have neede of one anothers helpe …

Men of inferior rank tended to wear coarse German cloth. Gentlemen and the better sort enjoyed colourful clothing – they explained to Moryson that ‘the variety of colours shewed the variety of God's workes’. They liked English cloth of green or yellow rather than Italian silks and velvets. It was in the context of sober German apparel that Moryson would have expected his attack on English fashion and general approval of Scottish habits – women who dressed after the German fashion – to be read.