Finishing My Novel and Submitting My Application To Become A Wealthy Peasant In An Old Painting

Please enjoy this unlocked post from November 2022 while I contend with some light carpal tunnel syndrome and finish my novel this week! My hands hurt so much!

I’m still offering a 20% discount on paid subscriptions for the remaining “cucumber days” of late summer:

“When the gay world is no longer gathered together in London…the great men have gone out of town, work is left to feebler hands…In the dead of autumn, when the second and third rate hands are on, we sink from nonsense written with a purpose to nonsense written because the writer must write either nonsense or nothing.”

Previously in this series: Please accept my application to become a bog body.

• Not so much land and money that I have to start carrying a sword and go to war with the Burgundians, or worry about politicking within a great monastic order, or spend half the year holding the pharaoh’s cup at court which is allegedly a great “honor” due to the rare puissance of my noble blood but is in actuality a real hassle

• Nor so little land and money that I’m the kind of peasant who looks like a joke in old medieval illustrations, like a guy in the corner of a page of Piers Plowman or The Knight in the Panther’s Skin who’s wearing an onionskin for a hat, looking like a fool and you find out he’s called something like Onionskin Ivar and his wife is a cabbage

• I want to be in The Sweet Spot of The Wealthy Pre-Industrial Peasant

• He doesn’t really show up in Western art much before the 17th century (if he does it’s as Silenus) but once he does, he absolutely dominates it

• Like this guy

• Or these guys

• Or these guys

• Or them

• Where there’s a girl whose only job is to balance a big sheaf of wheat peaceful on her head, or a big vase

• Just enough money for a big barn, an orchard, a pond, few dogs, herd of pigs, merry broad-smock wife smoke a pipe out the window, six daughters, two sons, one big, one little, butter-cow

• Maybe my best friend owns a mill

• I’m qualified because I love not getting involved, leave me out of this, not too much physical labor, not trying to upend the social hierarchy, just getting a few extra chickens, take it easy

• Eat most meals with a big wooden spoon except for special occasions (weddings etc) when there is a plate

• Sit back in a chair for nonchalance in my tallest boots

• Some big iron keys for my storehouse and sense of medium authority

• Whatever a burgher is

• Ditto franklin, reeve, yeoman, burgess (same as burgher?)

• Maybe a squire but let’s not get carried away

• I saw a boat once’t and it were full fair

• Also I’m allowed to touch money

• You won’t believe the things I’ve got hanging from the roof

• To begin with cured hams, also hanging pewter jug, big basket obviously, big pot for stew later, some extra keys, cheerful dead ducks, big wheel of cheese, more sheaves

• Most of the things on my walls at any given time are hanging to dry (laundry, cheese like I said before, cured hams ditto, sheaves of things, herbs, cereals, herbs for poultices, linens), pretzels, drying is an important component of my rustic wealth

• You’d better believe I live my life in accordance with the seasons and the cycle of birth and death

• I am in alignment with the forces of nature like you wouldn’t believe

• You could paint a skull next to one of my wheels of cheese and I would not even bat an eye

• I would say “While there is life, there is cheese; after life, the death makes cheese of men” or something else similarly wise and homespun if you painted a skull next to one of my wheels of cheese (I have several)

• I have no grand family name I wish to pass on to my sons after me, but I do have several comfortable straw mattresses and rye fields that will do much good once I am dead

• Lunch is half a partridge, torn apart by honest hands

• Dinner is big dish of pease and a haunch

• I have two shirts

• Always tucking potatoes into the hearth-ash underneath the fire

• I have never heard of a “factory” but there will be three musicians at the wedding to-morrow, stranger, and we are not reckoned among the worst dancers, if you will stay

• Always inviting travelers to stay the night, where they are welcome to sleep on the sweet-hay in my barn

• I pay tax once a year by sending the king a fat goose, straightforward

• Never have to do more math than “one fat goose for king”

• I don’t personally have a book but I know where we could get one

• Just the right amount of power where I’m allowed to carry a big walking-stick on the highway, but I don’t have to go serve on committees in any imperial free states, or do anything a seneschal or a chamberlain would do

• You’d better believe there’s a little dog curled up at my feet whenever I’m smoking a pipe in the evening

• Sometimes bending over in the field to harvest barley, sometimes directly engaging the viewer’s gaze while wearing a gold ring and drinking ale, as markers of newly-acquired wealth and leisure

• Food laid out directly on tablecloth, no plates, eat apple from point of knife for authenticity

• Rooster and cat both standing on baby’s cradle in corner of room, signifying workfulness

• Purse on my belt full of fresh forest mushrooms, not gold

• Simple food is big food and big food is good and good and simple is me