ought not to live, when ruralising, in a Cottage. He ought to be
consistent. Nothing so beautiful as consistency. What then is so absurd
as to cram yourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, and your scarcely
less numerous menials, into a concern called a Cottage? The ordinary
heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees above that of a brown study,
during the month of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage. Then the
smell of the kitchen! How it aggravates the sultry closeness! A strange,
compounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegetable, and mineral matter.
It is at the worst during the latter part of the forenoon, when
everything has been got into preparation for cookery. There is then
nothing savoury about the smell--it is dull, dead--almost catacombish. A
small back-kitchen has it in its power to destroy the sweetness of any
Cottage. Add a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of the eternal
clashing of pots, pans, plates, trenchers, and general crockery, we now
say nothing; indeed, the sound somewhat relieves the smell, and the ear
comes occasionally in to the aid of the nose. Such noises are windfalls;
but not so the scolding of cook and butler--at first low and tetchy,
with pauses--then sharp, but still interrupted--by-and-by, loud and
ready in reply--finally a discordant gabble of vulgar fury, like maniacs
quarrelling in Bedlam. Hear it you must--you and all the strangers. To
explain it away is impossible; and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone,
or Megaera, will come flying into the parlour with a bloody cleaver,
dripping with the butler's brains. During the time of the quarrel the
spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the five-year-old
black-face burnt on one side to a cinder.--"To dinner with what appetite
you may."
It would be quite unpardonable to forget one especial smell which
irretrievably ruined our happiness during a whole summer--the smell of
a dead rat. The accursed vermin died somewhere in the Cottage; but
whether beneath a floor, within lath and plaster, or in roof, baffled
the conjectures of the most sagacious. The whole family used to walk
about the Cottage for hours every day, snuffing on a travel of
discovery; and we distinctly remember the face of one elderly
maiden-lady at the moment she thought she had traced the source of the
fumee to the wall behind a window-shutter. But even at the very same
instant we ourselves had proclaimed it with open nostril from a press in
an opposite corner. Terriers were procured--but the dog Billy himself
would have been at fault. To pull down the whole Cottage would have been
difficult--at least to build it up again would have been so; so we had
to submit. Custom, they say, is second nature, but not when a dead rat
is in the house. No, none can ever become accustomed to that; yet good
springs out of evil--for the live rats could not endure it, and
emigrated to a friend's house, about a mile off, who has never had a
sound night's rest from that day. We have not revisited our Cottage for
several years; but time does wonders, and we were lately told by a
person of some veracity that the smell was then nearly gone; but our
informant is a gentleman of blunted olfactory nerves, having been
engaged from seventeen to seventy in a soap-work.
Smoke too. More especially that mysterious and infernal sort, called
back-smoke! The old proverb, "No smoke without fire," is a base lie. We
have seen smoke without fire in every room in a most delightful Cottage
we inhabited during the dog-days. The moment you rushed for refuge even
into a closet, you were blinded and stifled; nor shall we ever forget
our horror on being within an ace of smotheration in the cellar. At
last, we groped our way into the kitchen. Neither cook nor jack was
visible. We heard, indeed, a whirring and revolving noise--and then
suddenly Girzie swearing through the mist. Yet all this while people
were admiring our Cottage from a distance, and especially this self-same
accursed back-smoke, some portions of which had made an excursion up the
chimneys, and was wavering away in a spiral form to the sky, in a style
captivating to Mr Price on the Picturesque.
No doubt, there are many things very romantic about a Cottage.
Creepers, for example. Why, sir, these creepers are the most mischievous
nuisance that can afflict a family. There is no occasion for mentioning
names, but--devil take all parasites. Some of the rogues will actually
grow a couple of inches upon you in one day's time; and when all other
honest plants are asleep, the creepers are hard at it all night long,
stretching out their toes and their fingers, and catching an
inextricable hold of every wall they can reach, till, finally, you see
them thrusting their impudent heads through the very slates. Then, like
other low-bred creatures, they are covered with vermin. All manner of
moths--the most grievous grubs--slimy slugs--spiders spinning toils to
ensnare the caterpillar--earwigs and slaters, that would raise the gorge
of a country curate--wood-lice--the slaver of gowk's-spittle--midges--
jocks-with-the-many-legs; in short, the whole plague of insects infest
that--Virgin's bower. Open the lattice for half an hour, and you find
yourself in an entomological museum. Then there are no pins fixing down
the specimens. All these beetles are alive, more especially the enormous
blackguard crawling behind your ear. A moth plumps into your tumbler of
cold negus, and goes whirling round in meal, till he makes absolute
porritch. As you open your mouth in amazement, the large blue-bottle
fly, having made his escape from the spiders, and seeing that not a
moment is to be lost, precipitates himself head-foremost down your
throat, and is felt, after a few ineffectual struggles, settling in
despair at the very bottom of your stomach. Still, no person will be so
unreasonable as to deny that creepers on a Cottage are most beautiful.
For the sake of their beauty, some little sacrifice must be made of
one's comforts, especially as it is only for one half of the year, and
last really was a most delightful summer.
How truly romantic is a thatch roof! The eaves how commodious for
sparrows! What a paradise for rats and mice! What a comfortable colony
of vermin! They all bore their own tunnels in every direction, and the
whole interior becomes a Cretan labyrinth. Frush, frush becomes the
whole cover in a few seasons; and not a bird can open his wing, not a
rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw like chaff. Eternal
repairs! Look when you will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on
the rigging; of all operatives the most inoperative. Then there is
always one of the number descending the ladder for a horn of ale.
Without warning, the straw is all used up; and no more fit for the
purpose can be got within twenty miles. They hint heather--and you sigh
for slate--the beautiful sky-blue, sea-green, Ballachulish slate! But
the summer is nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting back to the
city; so you let the job stand over to spring, and the soaking rains and
snows of a long winter search the Cottage to its heart's-core, and every
floor is ere long laden with a crop of fungi--the bed-posts are
ornamented curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the walls with their
various and inimitable lustre.
Everything is romantic that is pastoral--and what more pastoral than
sheep? Accordingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own mutton. Great
lubberly Leicesters or Southdowns are not worth the mastication, so you
keep the small black-face. Stone walls are ugly things, you think, near
a Cottage, so you have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the small
black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing through or over all impediments,
after an adventurous leader, and, despising the daisied turf, keep
nibbling away at all your rare flowering shrubs, till your avenue is a
desolation. Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is a rare
time for the nest-makers. You purchase a collie, but he compromises the
affair with the fleecy nation, and contents himself with barking all
night long at the moon, if there happen to be one--if not, at the
firmament of his kennel. You are too humane to hang or drown Luath, so
you give him to a friend. But Luath is in love with the cook, and pays
her nightly visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he step into the
kennel, he takes up his station, after supper, on a knoll within
ear-range, and pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music of the
spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. The gardener at last gets
orders to shoot him--and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts and blows
off his left hand--so that Andrew Fairservice retires on a pension.
Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the Alderney. They are slim,
delicate, wild-deer-looking creatures, that give an air to a Cottage.
But they are most capricious milkers. Of course you make your own
butter; that is to say, with the addition of a dozen purchased pounds
weekly, you are not very often out of that commodity. Then, once or
twice in a summer, they suddenly lose their temper, and chase the
governess and your daughters over the edge of a gravel-pit. Nothing they
like so much as the tender sprouts of cauliflower, nor do they abhor
green pease. The garden-hedge is of privet--a pretty fence, and fast
growing, but not formidable to a four-year-old. On going to eat a few
gooseberries by sunrise, you start a covey of cows, that in their alarm
plunge into the hot-bed with a smash, as if all the glass in the island
had been broken--and rushing out at the gate at the critical instant
little Tommy is tottering in, they leave the heir-apparent, scarcely
deserving that name, half hidden in the border. There is no sale for
such outlandish animals in the home-market, and it is not Martinmas, so
you must make a present of them to the president or five silver-cupman
of an agricultural society, and you receive in return a sorry red round,
desperately saltpetred, at Christmas.
What is a Cottage in the country, unless "your banks are all furnished
with bees, whose murmurs invite one to sleep?" There the hives stand,
like four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row. Not a more harmless insect
in all this world than a bee. Wasps are devils incarnate, but bees are
fleshly sprites, as amiable as industrious. You are strolling along in
delightful mental vacuity, looking at a poem of Barry Cornwall's, when
smack comes an infuriated honey-maker against your eyelid, and plunges
into you the fortieth part of an inch of sting saturated in venom. The
wretch clings to your lid like a burr, and it feels as if he had a
million claws to hold him on while he is darting his weapon into your
eyeball. Your banks are indeed well furnished with bees, but their
murmurs do not invite you to sleep; on the contrary, away you fly like a
madman, bolt into your wife's room, and roar out for the recipe. The
whole of one side of your face is most absurdly swollen, while the other
is _in statu quo_. One eye is dwindled away to almost nothing, and is
peering forth from its rainbow-coloured envelope, while the other is
open as day to melting charity, and shining over a cheek of the purest
crimson. Infatuated man! Why could you not purchase your honey? Jemmy
Thomson, the poet, would have let you have it, from Habbie's Howe, the
true Pentland elixir, for five shillings the pint; for during this
season both the heather and the clover were prolific of the honey-dew,
and the Skeps rejoiced over all Scotland on a thousand hills.
We could tell many stories about bees, but that would be leading us away
from the main argument. We remember reading in an American newspaper,
some years ago, that the United States lost one of their most upright
and erudite judges by bees, which stung him to death in a wood while he
was going the circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in the same
newspaper, "We are afraid we have lost another judge by bees;" and then
followed a somewhat frightful description of the assassination of
another American Blackstone by the same insects. We could not fail to
sympathise with both sufferers; for in the summer of the famous comet we
ourselves had nearly shared the same fate. Our Newfoundlander upset a
hive in his vagaries--and the whole swarm unjustly attacked us. The buzz
was an absolute roar--and for the first time in our lives we were under
a cloud. Such buzzing in our hair! and of what avail were
fifty-times-washed nankeen breeches against the Polish Lancers? With our
trusty crutch we made thousands bite the dust--but the wounded and dying
crawled up our legs, and stung us cruelly over the lower regions. At
last we took to flight, and found shelter in the ice-house. But it
seemed as if a new hive had been disturbed in that cool grotto. Again we
sallied out, stripping off garment after garment, till, _in puris
naturalibus_, we leaped into a window, which happened to be that of the
drawing-room, where a large party of ladies and gentlemen were awaiting
the dinner-bell--but fancy must dream the rest.
We now offer a set of _Blackwood's Magazine_ to any scientific character
who will answer this seemingly simple question--what is Damp?
Quicksilver is a joke to it, for getting into or out of any place.
Capricious as damp is, it is faithful in its affection to all Cottages
ornees. What more pleasant than a bow-window? You had better, however,
not sit with your back against the wall, for it is as blue and ropy as
that of a charnel-house. Probably the wall is tastily papered--a
vine-leaf pattern perhaps--or something spriggy--or in the aviary
line--or, mayhap, haymakers, or shepherds piping in the dale. But all
distinctions are levelled in the mould--Phyllis has a black patch over
her eye, and Strephon seems to be playing on a pair of bellows. Damp
delights to descend chimneys, and is one of smoke's most powerful
auxiliaries. It is a thousand pities you hung up--just in that unlucky
spot--Grecian Williams's Thebes--for now one of the finest water-colour
paintings in the world is not worth six-and-eightpence. There is no
living in the country without a library. Take down, with all due
caution, that enormous tome, the _Excursion_, and let us hear something
of the Pedlar. There is an end to the invention of printing. Lo and
behold, blank verse indeed! You cannot help turning over twenty leaves
at once, for they are all amalgamated in must and mouldiness. Lord Byron
himself is no better than an Egyptian mummy; and the Great Unknown
addresses you in hieroglyphics.
We have heard different opinions maintained on the subject of damp
sheets. For our own part, we always wish to feel the difference between
sheets and cerements. We hate everything clammy. It is awkward, on
leaping out of bed to admire the moon, to drag along with you, glued
round your body and members, the whole paraphernalia of the couch. It
can never be good for rheumatism--problematical even for fever. Now, be
candid--did you ever sleep in perfectly dry sheets in a Cottage ornee?
You would not like to say "No, never," in the morning--privately, to
host or hostess. But confess publicly, and trace your approaching
retirement from all the troubles of this life, to the dimity-curtained
cubiculum on Tweedside.
We know of few events so restorative as the arrival of a coachful of
one's friends, if the house be roomy. But if everything there be on a
small scale, how tremendous a sudden importation of live cattle! The
children are all trundled away out of the Cottage, and their room given
up to the young ladies, with all its enigmatical and emblematical
wall-tracery. The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a shake-down.
My lady's maid must positively pass the night in the butler's pantry,
and the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. Where the old
gentleman and his spouse have been disposed of, remains as controversial
a point as the authorship of Junius; but next morning at the
breakfast-table, it appears that all have survived the night, and the
hospitable hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, that small as
the Cottage appears, it has wonderful accommodation, and could have
easily admitted half-a-dozen more patients. The visitors politely
request to be favoured with a plan of so very commodious a Cottage, but
silently swear never again to sleep in a house of one story, till life's
brief tale be told.
But not one half the comforts of a Cottage have yet been enumerated--nor
shall they be by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to add, that the
strange coachman had been persuaded to put up his horses in the
outhouses, instead of taking them to an excellent inn about two miles
off. The old black long-tailed steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for
nearly twenty years, had been lodged in what was called the Stable, and
the horse behind had been introduced into the byre. As bad luck would
have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty was in his stall; and without
the slightest provocation, he had, during the night-watches, so handled
his heels against Mr Fox, that he had not left the senior a leg to stand
upon, while he had bit a lump out of the buttocks of Mr Pitt little less
than an orange. A cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an assault on
the roadster, and tore up his flank with her crooked horn as clean as if
it had been a ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with post-horses;
and although Mr Dick be at once one of the most skilful and most
moderate of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of autumn was
necessarily as long as that of a proctor. Mr Fox gave up the ghost--Mr
Pitt was put on the superannuated list--and Joseph Hume, the hack, was
sent to the dogs.
To this condition, then, we must come at last, that if you build at all
in the country, it must be a mansion three stories high, at the
lowest--large airy rooms--roof of slates and lead--and walls of the
freestone or the Roman cement. No small black-faces, no Alderneys, no
beehives. Buy all your vivres, and live like a gentleman. Seldom or
never be without a houseful of company. If you manage your family
matters properly, you may have your time nearly as much at your own
disposal as if you were the greatest of hunkses, and never gave but
unavoidable dinners. Let the breakfast-gong sound at ten o'clock--quite
soon enough. The young people will have been romping about the parlours
or the purlieus for a couple of hours--and will all make their
appearance in the beauty of high health and high spirits. Chat away as
long as need be, after muffins and mutton-ham, in small groups on sofas
and settees, and then slip you away to your library, to add a chapter to
your novel, or your history, or to any other task that is to make you
immortal. Let gigs and curricles draw up in the circle, and the wooing
and betrothed wheel away across a few parishes. Let the pedestrians
saunter off into the woods or to the hill-side--the anglers be off to
loch or river. No great harm even in a game or two at billiards--if such
be of any the cue--sagacious spinsters of a certain age, staid dowagers,
and bachelors of sedentary habits, may have recourse, without blame, to
the chess or backgammon board. At two lunch--and at six the dinner-gong
will bring the whole flock together, all dressed--mind that--all
dressed, for slovenliness is an abomination. Let no elderly gentleman,
however bilious and rich, seek to monopolise a young lady--but study the
nature of things. Champagne, of course, and if not all the delicacies,
at least all the substantialities, of the season. Join the ladies in
about two hours--a little elevated or so--almost imperceptibly--but
still a little elevated or so; then music--whispering in corners--if
moonlight and stars, then an hour's out-of-door study of astronomy--no
very regular supper--but an appearance of plates and tumblers, and to
bed, to happy dreams and slumbers light, at the witching hour. Let no
gentleman or lady snore, if it can be avoided, lest they annoy the
crickets; and if you hear any extraordinary noise round and round about
the mansion, be not alarmed, for why should not the owls choose their
own hour of revelry?
Fond as we are of the country, we would not, had we our option, live
there all the year round. We should just wish to linger into the winter
about as far as the middle of December--then to a city--say at once
Edinburgh. There is as good skating-ground, and as good curling-ground,
at Lochend and Duddingston, as anywhere in all Scotland--nor is there
anywhere else better beef and greens. There is no perfection anywhere,
but Edinburgh society is excellent. We are certainly agreeable citizens;
with just a sufficient spice of party spirit to season the feast of
reason and the flow of soul, and to prevent society from becoming
drowsily unanimous. Without the fillip of a little scandal, honest
people would fall asleep; and surely it is far preferable to that to
abuse one's friends with moderation. Even Literature and the Belles
Lettres are not entirely useless; and our Human Life would not be so
delightful as that of Mr Rogers, without a few occasional Noctes
Ambrosianae.
But the title of our article recalls our wandering thoughts, and our
talk must be of Cottages. Now, think not, beloved reader, that we care
not for Cottages, for that would indeed be a gross mistake. But our very
affections are philosophical; our sympathies have all their source in
reason; and our admiration is always built on the foundation of truth.
Taste, and feeling, and thought, and experience, and knowledge of this
life's concerns, are all indispensable to the true delights the
imagination experiences in beholding a beautiful _bona fide_ Cottage. It
must be the dwelling of the poor; and it is that which gives it its
whole character. By the poor, we mean not paupers, beggars; but families
who, to eat, must work, and who, by working, may still be able to eat.
Plain, coarse, not scanty, but unsuperfluous fare is theirs from
year's-end to year's-end, excepting some decent and grateful change on
chance holidays of nature's own appointment--a wedding or a christening,
or a funeral. Yes, a funeral; for when this mortal coil is shuffled off,
why should the hundreds of people that come trooping over muirs and
mosses to see the body deposited, walk so many miles, and lose a whole
day's work, without a dinner? And if there be a dinner, should it not be
a good one? And if a good one, will the company not be social? But this
is a subject for a future paper, nor need such paper be of other than a
cheerful character. Poverty, then, is the builder and beautifier of all
huts and cottages. But the views of honest poverty are always hopeful
and prospective. Strength of muscle and strength of mind form a truly
Holy Alliance; and the future brightens before the steadfast eyes of
trust. Therefore, when a house is built in the valley, or on the
hill-side--be it that of the poorest cottar--there is some little room,
or nook, or spare place, which hope consecrates to the future. Better
times may come--a shilling or two may be added to the week's
wages--parsimony may accumulate a small capital in the Savings-bank
sufficient to purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of drawers for
the wife, a curtained bed for the lumber-place, which a little labour
will convert into a bedroom. It is not to be thought that the
pasture-fields become every year greener, and the cornfields every
harvest more yellow--that the hedgerows grow to thicker fragrance, and
the birch-tree waves its tresses higher in the air, and expands its
white-rinded stem almost to the bulk of a tree of the forest--and yet
that there shall be no visible progress from good to better in the
dwelling of those whose hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into
rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, so does each individual
dwelling. Every ten years, the observing eye sees a new expression on
the face of the silent earth; the law of labour is no melancholy lot;
for to industry the yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding great
reward.