'Her Silence Which Performed the Cure'

Some words have been discarded and now demand recovery. Obsolescence need not be permanent. The reverse is also true: today’s clichés, we hope, will evaporate tomorrow. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is a great festive wordhoard and has been a reliable source of solace for this reader during the pandemic. Try not to think of it as an out-of-date medical manual. Burton’s volume, published in 1621 and revised and expanded five times during the author’s lifetime, possesses more vitality than most of the books published last week.

 

In its Third Partition, in the section titled “Jealousy,” Burton treats that sickness of the soul as both a cause and symptom of melancholy. Like many lifelong bachelors, Burton delivers pages of advice on the marital state, and instructs husbands on the proper management of their wives:

 

“Let them have their liberty in good sort, and go in good sort, modo non annos viginti aetatis suae domi relinquant, as a good fellow said, so that they look not twenty years younger abroad than they do at home, they be not spruce, neat, angels abroad, beasts, dowdies, sluts at home; but seek by all means to please and give content to their husbands:  to be quiet above all things, obedient, silent and patient; if they be incensed, angry, chid a little, their wives must not cample again, but take it in good part.”

 

Save your breath: I’m not defending Burton’s notions of intersexual relations, though I like his suggestion about being “quiet above all things.” It’s cample that interests me. I didn’t know what it meant. The OED defines it as an intransitive verb that means “to enter on a wordy conflict; to answer in anger; to wrangle, scold, or quarrel.” In modern parlance, to maintain a Twitter account, to whine. The Dictionary cites Burton’s usage as the first, and the most recent citation dates from 1811.

 

Chid is virtually a synonym of cample, and note that Burton applies it to husbands. The OED defines it as “to give loud and angry expression to dissatisfaction and displeasure; to scold.” Back to Twitter. Ours is the age of unsolicited scolding. The busybody is our mascot. Back, briefly, to the matter of blessed quiet. Here is the passage by Burton that immediately follows the one quoted above:

 

“An honest woman, I cannot now tell where she dwelt, but by report an honest woman she was, hearing one of her gossips by chance complain of her husband’s impatience, told her an excellent remedy for it, and gave her withal a glass of water, which when he brawled she should hold still in her mouth, and that toties quoties, as often as he chid; she did so two or three times with good success, and at length seeing her neighbour, gave her great thanks for it, and would needs know the ingredients, she told her in brief what it was, ‘fair water,’ and no more: for it was not the water, but her silence which performed the cure.”