"Is it very cold?" asks the Prince of Denmark, according to a familiar
reading. No one has any occasion to consult the thermometer before
answering the question, "Is it very hot?" All things combine to prove
that it is very hot. Even the man of metal who used, according to
legend, to patrol the coast of Crete, the man with only one vein from
head to heel, would admit (could he appear in the Machineries at present)
that it is very hot indeed. He might not feel any subjective sensation
of heat (for he seems to have been a mythical anticipation of the
Conquering Machine which is to dominate the world), but he would have
inferred the height of the temperature from a number of phenomena. He
would have seen the ticket-clerks in the railway stations with their
coats off. He would have observed imitation Japanese parasols at a penny
among the ware of enterprising capitalists in the streets. He would have
marked the very street-boys in wide, inexpensive straw hats of various
and astonishing colours. Woman he would have found in beautiful shades
of blue, in such light garments "woven wind" as Theocritus speaks of when
he presents the wife of his doctor with a new ivory distaff.
As to men, they in their attire do show their wit or their want of
courage, as the case may be. It is not easy for modern man, when he
"repairs to the metropolis," to dress up to the heat of the weather. An
ingenious though too hasty philosopher once observed that all men who
wear velvet coats are atheists. He probably overstated the amount of
intellectual and spiritual audacity to be expected from him who, setting
the picturesque before the conventional, dons a coat of velvet. But it
really does require some originality even to wear a white hat and a white
waistcoat in a London July. The heat is never so great but that the
majority of males endure black coats and black shiny hats. The others
are in a minority. The voice of public opinion is not on their side.
"Who stole the moke, Anna?" asked suspicion; and the answer came, "The
man in the _chapeau blanc_." There is something daring, something
distinctive in a white hat; and it may be doubted whether the amount of
comfort obtained by the revolutionary wearer is in a due ratio to the
conspicuousness which his action entails on him. Members of Parliament
are singularly emancipated from these fears of the brave; but members of
Parliament cannot supply the whole contingent of white-hatted men now to
be seen in the streets of the metropolis. Their presence proves that it
is very hot indeed. One swallow does not make a summer, but half a dozen
pairs of "ducks" beheld in public places would mark a summer of unusually
high temperature.
There are, of course, alleviations. Nature compensates all who can
afford to purchase the compensations. Strawberries, long waited for,
shy, retiring fruit, have now nearly approached the popular price of
sixpence a basket. A divine of a past generation declared that in his
opinion the joys of Paradise would consist of eating strawberries to the
sound of a trumpet. For a poor sixpence half of this transcendental
pastime may be partaken of, and probably the brass band which is usually
round the corner could supply the sound of the trumpet at a small extra
charge.
Unluckily, doctors have decided that many of us must not eat
strawberries, nor drink champagne cup, nor iced coffee. That is the way
with doctors. AEsculapius was originally worshipped in the form of a
serpent; in the guise of a serpent he came to Rome. Medical men still
hold of their heroic father, and physicians are the serpents in the
Paradise of a warm summer. Mortals, in their hands, are like Sancho
Panza with his medical adviser. Here is summer, provoking a gentle
interest in every method of assuaging thirst, and almost every method is
condemned by one member of the faculty or another. Champagne cannot be
so royally sound, nor is shandy-gaff so humble, that it 'scapes whipping.
How melancholy a thing is human life at best! In boyhood we can eat more
ices than our pocket-money enables us to purchase; in maturity we have
the pocket-money without the powers of digestion. The French lady said
that if strawberry ices were only sinful, no pleasure could exceed that
which is to be enjoyed in the consumption of the congealed fruit.
Strawberry ices are sinful now, and under the medical ban. The French
lady, were she living still, might be at ease on that score. But her
audacity is not given to all, and many fall back on that poor creature,
lemon-squash, when they are conscious of a thirst worthy of being
quenched by the most imperial beverages in imperial quarts.
Men, being reasonable, must hurry about town when the thermometer is at
something fabulous, wearing black clothes, going to parties, and larding
the lean earth. Beasts are not so foolish. To the pious Brahmin Vishnu
accords the power of becoming what animal he pleases, with a break in the
lease, so to speak, when circumstances alter. Had a sage this power at
this moment he would become a cow, standing up to her middle in the
clear, cool water of the Kennet, under the shade of a hanging willow
tree. What bliss can equal that of a cow thus engaged? Her life must,
indeed, be burning with a hard gem-like flame. She must be plucking the
flower of a series of exquisite moments. The rich, deep grass, with the
buttercups and forget-me-nots, is behind her, but she has had enough of
that, and is open to more spiritual pleasures. The kingfishers and water-
wagtails flit about her. The water-rat jumps into the stream with a soft
plash, and his black body scuttles along to the opposite bank. The green
dragon-flies float hither and thither; the beautiful frail-winged water-
flies float over trout too lazy to snatch at them. The cow, in her
sensuous nirvana, may see and marvel at the warm boating-man as he tows
two stout young ladies in a heavy boat, or labours with the oar. Her
pleasure is far more enduring than that of the bathers in the lasher up
stream, and she has an enormous advantage over the contemplative man
trying to lie on the grass and enjoy nature, for he really is not
enjoying nature. The pleasures of lying on the grass are chiefly those
of imagination. You cannot get into a truly comfortable position. Your
back has a lump of grass under it here, or your arm tingles and "falls
asleep," as children say. No attitude will enable you to read, and the
black flies hover around and alight on such of your features as are
tempting--to a fly. Then you begin to be quite sure it is damp, and, as
you have nothing else to sit on, you sit down on your book, which no one
can call comfortable.
The notion of reclining on cushions in a punt is equally fallacious, and,
while promising much, ends in a headache. Besides, the river does not
always smell very nicely now that it has so long been unrelieved by rain.
All through the hot day, in fact, civilized northern man finds loafing
very difficult, especially as his Aryan impetuosity is always urging him
to do something active. Cows in this climate are the only true lotus-
eaters. Next to them in enjoyment comes the angler who approaches the
river about eight o'clock, at the time of the "evening rise." He, like
the cow, is knee-deep in water, wading; he listens to the plash of big,
hungry trout, sucking down gnats under the alders; he casts over them,
and if he catches them, who more content than he, as the sky turns from
amber to purple and silvery grey, and the light fades till one cannot
thread the gut through the eye-hole of one of the new-fashioned hooks?
Certainly this man is more blessed than he who is just coming to the ices
at a big, hot London dinner, and knows that his physician has forbidden
him this form of enjoyment. What a struggle in that person's mind! and
how almost predestined is his fall! how sure his repentance next morning!