A few months ago I had the honour of passing a day in England with a
gentleman of considerable property, who took the trouble of showing me a
very extensive park and tillage farm near his manor-house, around which
every thing indicated good taste and abundant wealth in the possessor.
It has rarely been my good fortune to view more beautiful scenery than
that which the demesne of F---- possesses within itself, or a place in
which it would be more difficult to find a want, either in the nature or
extent of the landscape: yet as we walked along, and were admiring some
undulating land, about six miles distant, Mr F---- suddenly stopped, and
remarked “that he had long wished for that hill, in order to plant on it
a clump or two of trees, as a picturesque termination to his prospect: it
would be such a comfort to have it! I have offered forty years’ purchase
for that land,” said he; “but the possessor is an obstinate fellow, and
won’t part with it.”
I ventured to suggest that he should endeavour to prevail upon the owner
of the hill to plant the desired clumps; but to this he gave a decided
negative, saying, that it would be very uncomfortable indeed to be
indebted to such an unaccommodating person for any thing.
At dinner, the lady of the house, after asking me if I had been pleased
with Mr F----’s farming, and proposing some other questions of that
nature, which she considerately accommodated to my capacity, in order
to relieve me if possible from the embarrassment natural to a man of my
station in life when sitting at table with his betters, and surrounded
with luxuries quite new to him, inquired with great suavity of manner if
I did not think that the owner of the hill property was very “tiresome”
in refusing Mr F---- the little comfort on which his heart was fixed; and
in the course of the dessert informed me that the governess was a very
“comfortable” person to have about children: that the King of the French
had no “comfort” in his ministers, and must find the attempts upon his
life very “tiresome” indeed.
Having got over the dinner business, during which _I_ had been really
uncomfortable from the dread of doing something very awkward, I became
composed and familiar by degrees, and asked questions in my turn; and
was assured that there is very little comfort to be had in a mere
country life without a first-rate bailiff and gardener, newspapers, new
publications, a billiard table, and society of a certain class within
visiting distance; that hot baths are indispensable comforts within the
house, and that one adjoining the stables is also a great comfort to a
hunter after a hard day’s work.
It was also among their comforts to have the nursery in a remote wing,
where the cry of a child could not reach the seniors of the family in
their apartments, and a _very_ great comfort to have a pew in the church
with a fireplace in it.
My host, who would not allow me to leave Castle F---- that night, passed
much of the evening in reading the papers of that day, standing at
intervals with his back to the fire, which comfort he seemed to enjoy
extremely, while I threw in a word now and then to him or his lady, to
whom I detailed the receipt for making catsup from nettles, as it appears
in my Cyclopædia of Agriculture. “This economical method of making
catsup,” she was pleased to say, “would be a great comfort to the poor;”
and so it would, as I ventured to observe, if they had any thing to eat
that required such sauce.
I was conducted at night to a bedroom, with large mirrors, a pair of wax
candles on the dressing-table, a luxurious chair placed opposite the
fire, and an immensely high bedstead, curtained with damask satin. Being
subject to the nightmare, I mounted this (by a step-ladder) with fear and
trembling, lest I should roll out in the night; and the apprehension of
this calamity in a strange house, and among great people, kept me from
sleeping all night, and rendered me extremely uncomfortable.
I could not help thinking what Mrs Doyle and the children would say if
they saw me tucked under such fine bed-clothes, and stretched under such
a grand canopy; and to tell the truth, I wished myself safely out of it,
and in my own crib at Ballyorley. Yet to the obliging inquiries of my
entertainers, on the ensuing morning, “if my bed had been comfortable?”
I was unable to say No. But what _are_ comforts? thought I to myself all
the time. Indeed, the consideration of this question has occupied my mind
a good deal since, for I find the notions attached to the term “comfort”
are infinitely varied.
When I left Castle F----, the weather was cold; I mounted, however, the
roof of a coach, and proceeded with many other passengers for Salisbury.
We had not gone far when rain fell in torrents, driven by a piercing
blast; umbrellas and coats were not waterproof, and when we alighted at
the inn-door at Salisbury, there were none of the _outsides_ who were not
more or less wet and miserable.
Four of us determined to remain at the inn all night; and as we threw off
dripping cloaks and mufflers, and approached a blazing fire in a small
snug parlour, where a cloth, and knives and forks, and a plate-warmer,
gave indications of a hot dinner, we all agreed that this was true
comfort; nor was this opinion changed when soon afterwards we sat in dry
clothes by a fire, with--but let no one mention this to Father Mathew--a
hot tumbler of brandy punch before each of us.
But though we were unanimous on this occasion, I soon found that the
utmost difference of opinion prevailed on other points, as to real
comfort. One of the gentlemen, who sat at my right hand, whispered to me
in confidence that there was no comfort in a single life, that his house
was cheerless, his servants great plagues from want of a mistress to keep
them in order, and his furniture going to destruction. My companion on
the other side, whose wife I understood to be a virago, gave a groan,
shook his head two or three times, and whispered to me, “If the gentleman
wishes to enjoy comfort, he will leave matrimony alone.”
Having occasion to hire a good brickmaker to bring over with me to teach
my workmen how bricks ought to be made, I went into several cottages
inhabited by labourers in Shropshire. In the first into which I went, and
this was very well furnished, were a man and his wife at breakfast. They
had tea and sugar, a large white quartern loaf, and some crock butter.
Very good, said I to myself; these people are exceedingly comfortable.
The man was a common field labourer, and earned twelve shillings a-week
the year round. They had a piece of meat every day at dinner with their
greens or potatoes, and bread into the bargain, and bread and butter in
the evening.
There stood a little boiler in a back kitchen, which I understood was for
brewing small beer occasionally; and nothing seemed wanting in the way of
comforts to this couple.
I was not offered a chair, nor did either of them ask me to sit down, but
they answered such questions as I put to them.
“I’m glad to see you so comfortable,” said I. “May I ask if you have any
others in family?”
“No, we’re only ourselves. We ha’n’t no children, boys nor girls,” said
the woman in rather a dissatisfied tone.
“Well, then,” I rejoined, “you have the less cause for anxiety. Children
are uncertain blessings, though certain cares: and depend upon it, you
are much better off than many parents who have them.”
“That is very true,” replied the woman; “but still a child or two would
be a great comfort to us in our old age.”
Their next-door neighbours had four noisy children and the same weekly
wages. Here I was told by the parents, who were also at a tea breakfast,
that their childless neighbours were far better off than they, as they
had comforts beyond their own reach. “We can’t drink no beer,” said the
man--(this was a lie, by the way, for he spent a shilling every week in
the jerry-shop, to the real discomfort of his family), “nor eat no good
wittals, nor have nothing comfortable.”
In short, in every house into which I went there was something wanting to
constitute comfort.
In the dwelling of an artizan it was the want of a hot joint and a
pudding on Sundays, or the substitution of an occasional dish of potatoes
for bread or meat; and sometimes it was the _house_ itself which was
uncomfortable from some cause or other. One or two of the very poorest
families which I visited were disposed to think they would have comforts
in the Union house which they could not afford under their own roofs,
although those who were within that establishment declared that they had
no comforts at all.
An old woman in one of the cottages complained to me that John Snook
had stolen one of her geese when it was just ready for the market, and
that it would be a great comfort to her if John Snook could be taken and
transported.
A parish schoolmaster assured me that he had no perfect comfort except in
vacation time; the boys when at school were so unruly that he had little
peace or comfort except by flogging them. The boys, on the other hand,
derived no comfort from being flogged.
A sick man told me that a bowl of wine whey would be of the greatest
comfort to him; and a woman recovering from fever, whose bed linen had
been just changed, spoke within my hearing to her sister of the comfort
which she felt in consequence.
I hired a brickmaker in the course of that tour, and set off with him
for Ireland. When I reached Liverpool, a steamer was about to leave for
Wexford. Into this I entered. The steward showed me a comfortable berth,
in which I was dreadfully sick during a passage of twenty hours, loathing
the sight and smell of food; yet he often came to ask me if there was any
little comfort in the way of meat and drink that he could supply.
A few days after I had reached home, I went into the cottages of my own
workpeople, and there the distinction between them and those of the
corresponding class in England in their estimate of what is comfortable,
struck me very forcibly.
Although the principle which leads most of us to desire something more
than we possess in the way of comforts, as they are called--but of
extreme luxuries in many instances--operates in the Irish labourer as
among nine-tenths of his fellow men, _his_ notions of what is comfortable
are truly moderate.
One of my ploughmen was at breakfast as I walked into his house. He
and his family were seated round a table--it had no cloth I must
admit--helping themselves at pleasure from a dish of stirabout, and
dipping each spoonful into a mug of milk. This I thought a far more
suitable breakfast for them than weak and adulterated tea and white
bread, at a much greater expense than an oatmeal diet.
I asked Pat what he would think of bread and tea every morning and
evening, to which he very sensibly replied that it wasn’t fit for him
nor the likes of him! but that a cup of tea and some bread would be very
agreeable to them every Sunday evening, especially so to his old mother,
who would think a little tea now and then a great comfort. As to meat, he
would like that once or twice a-week, but was not so unreasonable as to
wish for it oftener. As long as the potatoes and the milk stood to him,
he had no reason to complain!
Then what _are_ comforts? I again asked myself.
Returning home, I called at the house of a dying widow whose character I
had long respected. She was very poor, but always contented, though she
could hardly be said at any time to have enjoyed what are considered the
blessings of this life. I asked her if she wanted anything that I could
send her--any little comforts. The word excited her languid spirit. “I
have wanted for nothing,” said she, “that was really needful for me; and
now, O God! ‘_thy_ comforts delight my soul.’” After a little time she
said, “Blessed be the God of all comfort;” and again, “I am filled with
comfort.”
These words gave another turn to my thoughts: the subject was placed in a
new point of contemplation. Let my reader now in his turn, entering into
the widow’s application of the term comfort, ponder upon the question,
“What is comfort?” and I am much mistaken if he does not discover that it
is something which the world cannot give.
* * * * *
MALARIA.--It is not a mere theory, but a well-founded opinion, that all
the destructive epidemics that have afflicted this globe have had their
origin in malaria, which in a cold climate has produced typhus fever,
in a more temperate one plague and yellow fever, and within the tropics
cholera, each modified according to the idiosyncratic state of the
sufferers. A few examples may be enumerated. Ancient Rome was subject to
frequent epidemics, generally caused by inundations of the Tiber; but in
the year 81 of the Christian era, after a severe rainy season succeeded
by intense heat, the mortality was so great as to carry off 10,000
citizens daily. It is narrated by historians that the year 1374 was
marked by a comet, by excessive rain and heat, and succeeded by the most
dreadful mortality that we have any record of, and by which two-thirds of
the human race were destroyed in a very brief period; many places were
entirely depopulated; 20,000,000 died in the east in one year, 100,000
perished in Venice, 50,000 were buried in one graveyard in London, grass
grew up in the streets of cities hitherto most populous, and people fled
in boats and ships to sea, regardless of property and friends.
* * * * *
Printed and published every Saturday by GUNN and CAMERON, at
the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane,
College Green, Dublin--Agents:--R. GROOMBRIDGE, Panyer Alley,
Paternoster Row, London; SIMMS and DINHAM, Exchange Street,
Manchester; C. DAVIES, North John Street, Liverpool; J. DRAKE,
Birmingham; SLOCOMBE & SIMMS, Leeds; FRAZER and CRAWFORD,
George Street, Edinburgh; and DAVID ROBERTSON, Trongate,
Glasgow.