among many men that a silk umbrella is an exceedingly _genteel_ thing.
They therefore have an article of this kind, which they are always
carrying in a neat careful manner, so as to show that it is silk. They
seem to feel as if they thought all right when they have their silk
umbrella in their hand: it is a kind of patent of respectability. With
a silk umbrella they could meet the highest personages in the land,
and not be abashed. A silk umbrella is, indeed, a thing of such vast
effect, that they would be content to go in humble guise in every other
respect, provided they only had this saving clause to protect them.
Nay, it is not too much to suppose them entertaining this belief, that
five-and-twenty shillings put forth on a good silk umbrella produces as
much value in dignity as five pounds spent upon good broad-cloth. How
some men do fondle and cultivate silk umbrellas!
There is a species of cultivators who may in some cases be very
respectable, and entitled to our forbearance, but are, in others,
worthy of a little ridicule. I mean the health-seekers; the men who
go out at five in the morning to cultivate an appetite, and regularly
chill every sharp-set evening party they attend, by sitting like
Melancholy retired, ostentatiously insisting that they “never take
supper.” When a health-seeker takes a walk, he keeps his coat wide
open, his vest half open—seems, in short, to woo the contact of the
air—and evidently regrets very much that he cannot enjoy it in the
manner of a bath. As he proceeds, he consumes air, as a steam-boat
consumes coal; insomuch that, when he leaves the place, you would
actually think the atmosphere has a fatigued and exhausted look,
as if the whole oxygen had been absorbed to supply his individual
necessities. Wherever this man goes, the wind rises behind him, by
reason of the vacuum which he has produced. He puffs, pants, fights,
strives, struggles for health. When he returns from his morning walk,
he first looks in the glass to congratulate himself on the bloom which
he has been cultivating in his cheek, and thereafter sits down to
solace the appetite which he finds he has nursed into a kind of fury.
At any ordinary time, he could spring from his bed at nine o’clock,
and devour four cups of tea, with bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks,
beyond reckoning. But he thinks it necessary to walk four hours, for
the purpose of enabling himself to take eight cups, and a still more
unconscionable proportion of bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks. He may be
compared, in some measure, to the fat oxen which are sometimes shown
about as wonders, though apparently there is nothing less wonderful,
the obvious natural means being taken. These oxen, if left to
themselves in a good park, would become very respectable oxen—a little
_en-bon-point_, perhaps, but no more. But, being treated otherwise,
they are rendered unnecessarily fat and unwieldy; and so it is with the
appetite of the health cultivator.
CULTIVATIONS, it will thus be observed, is a subject of vast extent,
and of great importance, not only to the _landed_ interest, but to
all the other interests of the country. I should be glad to treat it
at full length in a separate volume, for which, I doubt not, ample
materials might be found. But I must content myself with giving it in
the meantime only a kind of topping, as the farmers say; and perhaps I
may return to it next harvest.
FITS OF THRIFT.
Nothing is more common in the middle ranks of life than to find
housewives taking what may be called _fits of thrift_. Though sensible
women in their way, excellent advisers and charming gossips, and though
by no means spenders on a great scale, they have no enduring principle
of economy, but are only frugal by fits and starts. They take qualms of
thriftiness now and then—sometimes from reading a string of plausible
receipts for cookery on a cheap scale, or from being struck with the
excellent arrangements in the household of a friend, who tells her
that, by managing in such and such a manner, salting all her own beef,
and making all her own preserves, she has, one way and another, saved
a good deal of money, which is really a thing of some consequence in
these bad times, when so little is coming in. This chronic frugality
is common to single ladies, under as well as above one-and-twenty,
and to married ladies with large families. The fits have different
tendencies, although the prevailing symptoms are the same. Occasionally
the furor seizes one single young lady in a family of sisters; and I
have seen that it comes on most commonly in the spring. In such cases
the disease perhaps takes the direction of butter and eggs. Some day
about the month of April or May, and when breakfast is on the table,
the young lady begins to make observations on the dearth and rancidity
of the butter. “I declare for my part,” says she, “we have been
poisoned for the last six months with that stuff that we get from the
woman who keeps the little shop in the area on the opposite side of
the street. You know it was only out of pity to her when her husband
was burnt to death at the distillery, that we said that we would take
some small things from her; but you see she does not keep wholesome
articles; and really, in my opinion, it is high time we were looking
about for something we can trust to.” With this sort of discourse the
young notable opens the plan of her campaign. She says she is resolved
to rise every morning at seven, and go with a basket herself to the
market. The mornings, she says, are now greatly lengthened out, and,
besides saving a penny a pound on the butter, and getting a better
article, she is confident the walk will prove of great benefit to her
health. It may always be observed, that the husband, father, or elder
brother of the notable, never makes any objections when such schemes
of saving are propounded. They know intuitively that the whole is a
delusion, which will work itself off in a week or two; that the same
disease has visited the family once every year about the same period
ever since they can recollect, and that it will now, as formerly, only
furnish a little harmless temporary excitement in the house. Armed
with a negative approval from these relations, together with a pound
note, the young notable starts next Saturday morning between seven
and eight o’clock; and after taking half an hour to array herself in
an undress, studiously selecting for the occasion a shabbyish shawl,
and a pair of shoes that she puts on, only on “bad days,” also a straw
bonnet faded both in the material and in the riband, she sallies forth
with her basket to the market. With what an air of knowingness she
goes from cart to cart, examining, and tasting, and smelling their
contents! How she tries to elicit, by cross-questioning the man in the
sky-blue coat, or the blowsky girl in the dimity head-gear, sitting
amidst their savoury boxes with leather hinges, every particular in the
history of the butter; where and when it was made, and why it happens
to be up this morning, and so forth. How she wanders amidst the egg
women, holding up the eggs between her and the light, asking if they
be sure they are not Orkney eggs, and what their probable age may
be? What with toiling up and down the market for three quarters of an
hour, and beating down the prices in a most exemplary manner, she at
last accomplishes her purchases, and brings home her cargo of native
produce. When you come down to breakfast, you will be at once reminded
of what has been going on, by the air of superiority and triumph
assumed by Miss Notable. She thinks that by rising an hour sooner than
any body else, and saving, as she thinks, the sum of twopence, she has
purchased the character of a thrifty personage, and, consequently, is
entitled to look down upon the whole house. There is no end to her
account of how she managed to find out the best butter in the cart,
and how she higgled the man out of a halfpenny in the pound. When she
places a slice of this extraordinary butter before you, she takes care
to show you how fresh the colour is, and waits with impatience to hear
your expected, and not to be dispensed with, praise of its taste. The
butter she has bought is, in fact, her pet for the whole week. She
considers it as her butter: and if any visitor slight it, by not paying
it the necessary compliments, he is of course not indebted to her for
any future invitation to the house.
A fit of thrift of this nature lasts generally three or four weeks,
seldom more. I have seen it continue a fortnight in tolerable strength;
it then declines, and wears off towards the fourth Saturday. The
decline of this household disease is as amusing in its way as its
increase. The young lady begins to find, that, so far from improving
her health or strength by such morning exercise, she only “makes
herself out,” and is unfit to do any thing else the whole day. And then
it is, after all, only to save a few halfpence. She also finds that her
purchases do not always turn well out, and that she cannot coax her
father, or the rest of them, to be perpetual admirers of her butter and
eggs. As a get-off, she commences an eulogy on her butter, which, she
says, is sold by a man in Rose Street—a person who was once a farmer,
but was reduced by misfortunes to open a small shop in the town, and
sell dairy produce. This man she says, is _experienced_ in butter, and
imports every week as much as will serve a dozen families. She has made
interest with him through the servant to be counted one of his regular
customers, and he will supply the family at all times exactly at the
market price, not a farthing more. This new plan helps greatly as a
solace to the conscience in abandoning her morning airings with her
basket and dishabille; and so she gradually subsides into the ordinary
routine of domestic arrangements.
The married notable is subject to fits of thrift in a greater or less
degree about the months of October and November. Some day at dinner,
when there happens to be rather a poorish leg of lamb on the table,
and not much else, she opens her attack by saying, in a peevishly
authoritative manner, that really the family has been long enough on
fresh meat; that, for her part, the lamb that they have had so often
does not agree with her, and that she would rather prefer a good salt
herring. “Mrs Lockhart has just been telling me that the doctor has
advised them to eat twice or thrice a-week a piece of salt meat—that
is to say, a piece of beef newly powdered, just the fresh taste off
it, and hardly having the appearance of the saltpetre at the bone;
and I _do_ think that we cannot do better than just follow such a
sensible man’s advice, and get two or three pieces next Wednesday for
salting—you know it will be a great saving of money.” The drift of
all this is, that the husband shall forthwith exhibit on the table
a couple of twenty shilling notes; but as he knows that these handy
pieces of paper are sometimes not very easily got, he perhaps tries to
throw an obstacle or two in the way of the salting project, and, for
instance, mentions that his wife has no convenience for curing beef.
“You observe,” says he, “it requires a tub, or something of that sort,
and, besides, there is a great knack in curing the meat thoroughly;
and if you do not take care, you will spoil the whole.” As a matter of
course, these or similar observations cannot hold good in the face of
a wife under a fit of thrift. All you can say is borne down, and the
money is at length consigned with a groan to the steel purse of the
good lady, who, next day—for she is in the fidgets till her purpose
is executed—sets out in her muff and shawl (the first time for the
season) on an expedition, first to lay in her beef, and then to buy a
sufficient and commodious _salting can_. Well, the _can_, that darling
object of a notable’s ambition, _is_ purchased. The beef _is_ salted;
and the goodman and his family are shortly put on salt meat, whether
they like such fare or otherwise. The thrifty lady all this time takes
care, on every occasion, to show off her beef as well worthy of being
tasted by visitors; and the short and long of it is, that the said beef
is eaten up in half the time it is expected to last; fresh meat begins
to show itself more frequently at your table, and the fit is put aside
till another opportunity occurs of playing it off.
These are very ordinary instances of fits of thrift, but there are
hundreds of the same description which I could mention. Sometimes the
fit takes the direction of a new gown for going out with on bad days,
to save others of a better sort; at another time it is “a house gown,”
as “really my best black silk one is absolutely getting wasted with
having to go so often into the kitchen.” Occasionally it is the hiring
of two maid-servants, “so that the washings need not any longer be
given out;” at other times it is the buying of a crumb-cloth, to save
the carpet, or the purchasing of loads of old china and crockery at
auctions. I have seen all the ladies in the house manifest this frenzy
by working their own lace, or painting pictures which had to be hung
in dear gilded frames. Again, I have noticed it in great vigour in a
family in town resolving to have a garden, so as to grow their own
vegetables. It comes on very frequently in a desire to dye old ribands,
or feathers, or “dress” shawls; in which case the lady who is affected
sets out on a voyage of discovery through all the obscure courts and
alleys about the town, seeking for some old woman whom they have heard
of as being “the best” at these processes of renovation. It may be
remarked, that the fit visits the nation, like an epidemic, towards
the end of July. Almost every house in the kingdom is then thrown into
an uproar by the ladies, young and old, confederating to manufacture
gooseberry jam or currant jelly. Such a requisition is there then in
all quarters for “brass pans,” and such a deal of money is spent in
this popular confectionary! At the approach and during the continuance
of the epidemic, the husbands very wisely make no remonstrance, well
knowing that such would be utterly thrown away. “You know, my dear,”
would say the thrifty spouse, “we shall require at least two dozen
pints this season; for nothing is more useful in a house, in case of
colds; and you will remember how much good a spoonful or two did little
George last February, when we thought he was going to take the fever;
indeed, the doctor said it had been the very saving of his life.”
Nothing, of course, can withstand an appeal to such authority; so the
money is disbursed for the purchase of the fruit and other materials,
although the goodman never can exactly see now some pounds’ worth of
jelly should be laid up in store, all for the sake of needing two
tea-spoonfuls.
Sometimes the family is so unfortunate as to get an oven, and a
particularly economical Miss undertakes to bake what is called family
bread. A great saving is expected from this source; but it soon turns
out that so much of the article is given away to friends, as a kind of
curiosity, or to impress them with a sense of the economy practised in
the house, that a great deal more is lost than gained by the novelty.
In fact, it always turns out, as in the case of the Vicar of Wakefield
and his thrice notable spouse, that these chronic economists are not
observed to make their husbands any richer by their contrivances, so
much is lost by the expense of the experiment, compared with what is
gained by the short duration of the practice.
SUSAN HAMILTON,
A TALE OF VILLAGE LIFE.
The village of Daldaff lay in a nook of the hills, in one of the most
rural districts of Scotland. Far from any of the great thoroughfares,
or any of the large manufacturing towns, it continued, down even to
the beginning of the present century, to be one of the most entire
specimens in existence of all that a Scotch village used to be. Its
situation was a deep hollow, upon the banks of a mountain stream,
and it looked from some points of view as if a parcel of children’s
toy-houses had been shaken promiscuously in a bowl, and suddenly fixed
in the way they happened to arrange themselves at the bottom. It was
all a confused mixture of gray old walls and brown thatch, with green
gardens, and arbours, and mountain-ash trees. When you looked down
from any of the surrounding heights, you wondered how communication
was carried on amongst neighbours, or how strangers found an entrance
into the village; for you saw no trace of streets, paths, or ways.
It was only when you descended into the place, that you saw here and
there a narrow road threading its way among the houses, somewhat after
the manner of the puzzle called the walls of Troy. Most of the little
dwellings had a long stripe of garden, running from behind them up the
hill; other houses had their sides or backs placed close against the
bank, so that you might have walked off the ground upon their roofs
without perceiving it—while the gardens spread downwards before them,
like aprons. These gardens bore large beds of refulgent cabbages, with
gooseberry bushes between; and always in some sunny and sheltered
place there were a few bee-hives, the tops of which were kept warm
either with a crown of straw or a mantle of turf. At morning hour you
would have seen the honest weavers, who peopled most of the houses,
busying themselves in delving and dibbling in these little patches
of ground. During the long day, perhaps nothing of life was to be
seen about them, except the circumspect and decent hen walking up the
avenue with her chirping brood, or the cock flapping his wings from
the top of the wall, and crowing a defiance to some distant foe of his
own kind: or the bees, as they one by one made themselves visible out
of the universal sunniness, in the immediate shadow of the hive. At
night, however, the weaver would be seen walking forth with his pipe
in his mouth, his Kilmarnock cowl brushed back from his forehead, and
his clothes loose at the knees, to observe the growth of the berries,
or pull a bunch of lily-oak for his children, who came prattling
behind him; or to hold converse through the evening stillness with a
neighbour perhaps four gardens off, respecting the last proceedings
of “that dreedfu’ fallow, Bonyparty.” When standing in the centre of
the village, you might have almost been persuaded that there was no
other place in the world. The rim of the horizon was within two hundred
yards of the eye all round, and nothing besides was to be seen but
the contracted sky. On the top of the bank, in one direction, stood
the church, with its little docked steeple, and its body-guard of old
trees. In another direction there was a peep of the turrets of an old
half-ruined mansion-house, which had not been occupied for many years,
except by the spirit of a murdered man, which was understood to occupy
a particular room, and always went by the horribly descriptive name
of _Spotty_. Beyond the edge of the surrounding banks, the country
swept downwards in extensive flats, generally sterile, but here and
there showing fine spots of pastoral green. Over these downs, groups
of children would sometimes be seen rambling hand in hand, in those
adventurous journeys of half a mile from home, which children are so
fond of taking; sometimes talking to each other of the novelties of the
created world, which were every now and then striking their eyes and
their imaginations; at other times pondering in silent and infantine
abstraction on the beauty of the gowans which grew by their sides, and
in the bosoms of which, as they gazed into them, they saw, reflected as
in a mirror, their own fairness and innocence. There, also, while the
wind even of summer carried its chill, the little neat-herd boy would
be seen sitting on the leeward side of the green knoll, with his sister
by his side, and a plaid drawn all around them, their arms laced round
each other’s necks, and their cheeks laid close together, as both read
from the same tattered story book, or partook of the same pease-bread
and milk, which served as their afternoon meal. Within the village all
was primeval simplicity. The houses already mentioned were arranged
without the least regard to each other’s convenience—some back to back,
some shoulder to shoulder, but as generally front to back, and shoulder
to front. The white manse sat half way up the bank, overlooking the
whole, like an idol presiding over a crowded group of worshippers. On
what might be considered the principal thoroughfare in the village,
stood the inn, a house distinguished from all the rest, by its being
two stories in height, not to speak of the still more remarkable
distinction of a hanging sign, on which was painted something dark
and grim, meant for a black bull, besides the frequent apparition of
a carrier’s cart resting with its beams high and rampant into the
air. Another house, rather better than the rest, was occupied by “a
merchant,” a man originally a haberdashery pedlar, but who, having here
at last set up his ellwand of rest, dealt not only in women’s attire,
but in a thousand things else besides, as if he had been
“Not one, but all _shopkeepers’_ epitome.”