Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, receives many rebuffs. She has numbers
of followers, who pretend to listen to her teachings, but who do not
quite understand her. She is a very simple and sweet goddess, and
it would do us all good to put ourselves under her gentle training
for a few of the hot weeks of summer. She would be pleased with our
patronage, although she is a reputed Pagan goddess. She is no worse
for that, as long as she is practical and poetical and teaches us how
to make ourselves comfortable. Oh, these reeking hot days of July! I
fear we break the commandments of the goddess by feeding too largely
upon them. I am ashamed to own that I have been regaling myself not
wisely but too well upon some of the hottest foods within reach, merely
because I liked them. I have dined, and am growing hotter and hotter,
in consequence of the dishes which appetite and not reason selected.
Whilst ruminating over a pipe on the evening of one of the dog-days,
the thermometer being above eighty degrees in the shade, I have
wondered what the goddess Hygeia would have done, and what she would
have recommended, under the circumstances, for purposes of health and
comfort. She wouldn’t have eaten roast duck, I know; but how would she
have combated the fierce heat, by way of keeping herself cool? Would
she have swallowed haggis and cockaleekie in North Britain, ham and
beef in Yorkshire, and tripe and onions in London? Not a bit of it.
Hygeia had too much respect for herself as a goddess to indulge in such
plebeian and delusive dainties in hot weather.
I can just see her in a scornful attitude, on the top of a marble
column such as Alma Tadema loves to paint—she waves her hand over the
smoking viands our good cooks are sending up for our delectation. She
preaches abstention in a way that makes one feel creepy, as her words
seem to come down from the cold marble. She is commanding her followers
to keep cool with milk and water, and grapes and strawberries, and
to leave all the alcohol and wine and beer for other occasions. I
beg Hygeia’s pardon, and shall renounce heat-producers on hot days
in future, although they are very good, and like everything else,
unfortunately, what dyspeptics like best.
What a dinner for a broiling day!—hot roast ducks and fowls, hot
vegetables, a pint of heating stout, hot fish and roast beef and soups
and plumpuddings, hot omelets, and a dozen more hot things, all washed
down with port wine and whisky toddy, as a nightcap, with hot tea at
intervals between! What would Hygeia say? She would say: Abandon all
hope of keeping cool, if you put such things into your receptacles.
There is only one thing unmentioned—a hot poker—and probably your punch
has been stirred up with it. Such is an average Englishman’s food on
the sweltering days of July and August. And yet the French say we can’t
cook! Only imagine the plethora-producing power of an ordinary dog-days
dinner.
As I know something about Hygeia, I may state that she will always
hold aloof from people who feed on hot meats and beverages such as I
have described. As for herself, she has (or had) an internal Limited
Liability Company, which contents itself with rice-puddings and other
innocent sustenance free from fats and sugars. She is, or was, a very
plain and wholesome and abstemious feeder, seldom aspiring to anything
beyond the regulation cup of tea, or a drink from the pump or pail, or
now and then a seltzer, potass or soda, varied with a dash of claret or
sherry or champagne. There is some use in these goddesses after all.
Hygeia promises (we are getting somewhat mixed with past and present)
that she will befriend any one in the dog-days who follows her rôle,
lives simply, eats the fruits of the season, and gives up a portion
of carbonaceous food, which adds fuel to the internal fires. She will
even bring Morpheus in her train, and tuck up a fellow who obeys her,
and give him happy rest and sweet dreams, without a headache in the
morning. In the night-watches, she will keep him cool as a frog or
a cucumber, without the fires of Vesuvius to make him kick against
unknown quantities, and wrestle with demons and dragons and other
enemies of sleep.
But if, like humble children, we would benefit by the goddess to the
full, there are other things to attend to besides food and drink to
make us comfortable in the dog-days. We are nearly all astray in the
kind of raiment we wear, both in weight and colour and quality and
substance. We draw down the divine caloric by dark, heat-producing
clothes in a way which shocks Hygeia. Why not take to nankeen and
cotton, and please the dear soul, and comfort ourselves as well?
She never wore funereal black in hot summers. She never had a hot
chimney-pot on her head; she was never seen in ebony coloured trousers
or a villainous hot mantle. She believes in white apparel, as angels
ought to do—white window blinds and knickerbockers, white wide-awakes
and sun-shades, white fish, white bread, white pulpy fruit, or as near
that colour as possible, and white curtains and covers.
And Hygeia is right. Why should we keep such big fires and jets of
lambent gas in the dog-days, consuming the life-giving oxygen, and yet
complain of being overheated? He would be a plucky man who dare ride
through public streets with white unmentionables, coat and vest, and
white umbrella, on a white horse. He would look cool, however, and feel
so; and if we could prevail upon ourselves to be a little lighter and
whiter on saddle, or rail or steamboat, Hygeia says we should derive
great joy thereby in July and August. At all events, we might make
some approach to it in our dishabille. We need not be mere blocks for
tailors and milliners to hang dresses upon, obliging us to be tight
and uncomfortable because Fashion wills it. We require loose, lightly
fitting garments, if we would keep cool.
Moreover, now that we are hobnobbing with goddesses and know their ways
and philosophies, let us inquire why we open our windows and let in the
broiling summer heat; and having let it in, why we do not allow it to
go out again by the chimney or the roof. Limp, flabby girls, familiar
to us all through Du Maurier’s pencil, spend much time in stuffing our
grates with lilies and peacocks’ feathers and sunflowers. They fill
the chimney with sacking and make the outside very pretty; thus no air
makes its exit by the chimney flue. Hygeia says the young ladies are
all wrong; and she doesn’t care a fig for sunflowers, if they prevent
the operations of nature. Hot air should ascend, and cool air come into
a house. ‘Dear girls,’ says Hygeia, ‘let these fads alone; pull out all
the stuffing, and be natural. You are hot; cool yourselves. Why do you
cram chimneys with flowers? It is not a festival. Make room for the
king—for air, light, and comfort. Perish the peacock plumes; down with
the gaudy flowers; and away with the fernery in front of them! Out with
the sooty sacking. Give air, and plenty of it, in the dog-days.’
Hygeia says we don’t make ourselves comfortable by the windows. We
ought to have more green and white sun-blinds. We open our morning
sashes and let in the bright heat all day, to make our bedrooms
unbearable at night. Nevertheless, everybody does it. Cottagers in the
country open their lattices amongst honeysuckles, roses, and stocks;
palaces are open amongst vines and trellises of wisteria and orange.
Never mind, says our authority. Let me teach you to close all windows
as closely as if they were glued, and let them remain so till the sun
begins to wester in the heavens. We might do much by way of cooling
our houses, if we attended to such sensible arrangements as closing
in a southerly aspect, and opening in a northern one, always opening
opposite the sun, and also by having free ventilation through the
attics.
Directly the sun begins to decline, let every maiden and housewife, and
man and woman and child, with an eye for the picturesque, and a feeling
for health and beauty, throw up the Venetian or Parisian blinds. Open
your rooms to the glories of the evening; throw up, and pull down the
sashes; open wide all your doors. Let cool breezes enter into corridor
and cellar and garret and room; let the ‘caller’ air circulate through
every inch of the house hour after hour, whilst you are getting your
evening meal, whilst you say your prayers, whilst you think of others
after the toils of the day. If it be your priceless lot to dwell apart
from city life, and have outside your cottage or villa or mansion,
flowers, those lovely gifts of Dame Nature, let scents of rose and
thyme come in at every gap in the hedge, at every rift of the wall,
at every cranny of the house—scents of rosemary and mignonette, and
lavender and bergamot, and lily and elderberry. Welcome the delicate
perfume on its cooling, refreshing, healthy mission. It is Hygeia’s
gift—a superlative boon for the dog-days.
Strawberries are waiting to be plucked in all the hot months. If we
have the possibility of enjoying a holiday, what can be better than a
strawberry garden and plenty of cream? whilst larks aloft, and cuckoos
in the shade, are singing in the plenitude of their full hearts, and
whilst nimble fingers are spreading the white tablecloth on the grass
to receive the dainty fruit.
Talk of lotos-eaters—we prefer strawberry gatherers. An old divine said
he believed the joys of paradise would consist of eating strawberries
to the sounds of a trumpet. We rejoice to think that we can have this
transcendental pastime nearer home. We have the strawberries in full
force, and there is generally a brass band round the corner to supply,
for a small gratuity, the trumpet. Unluckily, doctors have decided
that many of us derive no advantage from the strawberry; and alas!
and alack-a-day! even claret-cup and champagne and iced cream are
occasionally proscribed! When boys, we ate more ices than we could
afford; in maturity, we have the pocket-money—without the digestion. A
lady in France thought that if strawberry ices were only _sinful_, no
pleasure could exceed that which is to be enjoyed in the consumption
of the pleasant fruit. In the eyes of some people, eating strawberries
_has_ become almost sinful, so the French lady will be able to satisfy
her conscience, perhaps, on that score. Nevertheless, the old parson
that Izaak Walton speaks of was right: ‘Certainly, God might have made
a better berry than the strawberry, but certainly, God never did.’ So
let us enjoy this heaven-sent fruit in the dog-days.
Not that we are at a loss for juicy fruits as long as we have our
pine-apples and melons and tomatoes, our peaches and jargonelles,
grapes and nectarines, and plums and apricots, a very paradisiacal
melange, born of our glorious summer; all which indicates that
providence nurtured them for the dog-days that we may eat and be
satisfied. We may be sure that the sugar in fruits is modified by other
elements, wisely elaborated by a Beneficent chemistry.
After the dog-days comes ‘St Luke’s little summer,’ beginning on the
18th of October and lasting for an octave. Horses and cows feel the
heat, dogs whine, and cats show distress, birds sip the morning dew
on the leaves for refreshment, even our trees and flowers hang their
branches languidly. The Italians twit us by saying that only dogs and
Englishmen walk in the sun. Well, it is so little of it we get, that
we may be excused if we make the best of it, although we know we may
suffer for our imprudence, and go home with colds or neuralgia from too
free exposure and rapid cooling. Young dancing and gamboling Sylphs and
Cupids in gauze, like so many butterflies in the sunbeams, had better
be aware that they may get too much of it, although not often, and we
must have an administrative check upon them, so that they do not fly
into the heat and scorch their wings.
We are not an eminently sunny people; our fruit has not the rich orange
tints of sunnier climes, where warmth is perennial and perpetual; and
then dog-days come at last, and we go out to bask like lizards amongst
the sand of our shores, or to splash amongst salt water at our bathing
resorts. Our hot days ought to be an enjoyment, which they would be
if we prepared ourselves for them and attended to the changes of
temperature. We are not to throw off all our wraps in one grand effort
to be free, still less to court chills by foolishly hanging about damp
places merely to get cool, and losing our animal heat quicker than we
can replace it. Hygeia is the last person in the world to tolerate
such errors. She requires us to use common-sense, and not to use an
erroneous dietary; and if we obeyed her implicitly, our summers would
leave us not so relaxed and overdone and dull and full of languor as
they often do. If we will have heating food and heavy raiment, we
resist the precepts of Hygeia, and we shall fail to win her smile when
she draws the curtain for the season.
We must not tempt malaria by walking too late in dewy grass, when the
moon is up, and all nature looks bright and beautiful, and only the
nightingale sings or the willow-wren warbles amongst the osiers. We may
stay out too late, by way of getting cool, until we get quite hot, and
feverish with a cough that won’t let us sleep; and as blackbirds and
thrushes call upon us with dulcet notes about three o’clock A.M., we
cannot answer the polite and musical invitation, if our throats suffer
from the evening fog.
Young folk will pardon this dog-day talk, as it perhaps may benefit
them. It is very pleasant to see them enjoying themselves, wild with
the shimmering sunshine. We were all young once, ‘before Decay’s
effacing fingers had swept the lines where beauty lingers,’ and
before rheumatism caught us in its horrible grip. Long may they enjoy
themselves—and ourselves too enjoy our rollicking fun and nonsense
amongst wild-birds and flowers and hayricks, amongst the scents of
new-mown hay and clover and bean fields. What a lot of joy middle-aged
people have to renounce, and yet we can still appreciate our dog-days!
An old proverb says, ‘Every dog has his day;’ but there are only
forty dog-days in the calendar according to modern almanacs. They
begin on the 3d of July, and end on the 11th of August. Bailey, the
dictionary-maker of 1755, says the dog-days are ‘certain days in July
and August, commonly from the 24th of the former to the 28th of the
latter, so called from the star Canis or Dog-star, which then rises
and sets with the sun, and greatly increases the heat.’ This was
published three years after the introduction of new style, which took
the place of old style in 1752. Another authority, more recent, says:
‘The canicular or dog-days denote a certain number of days preceding
and ensuing the heliacal rising of the Canicula or the Dog-star in the
morning. Almanac-makers usually mark the beginning of the dog-days
from about the end of July, and end them about their first week in
September.’ Most people are accustomed to connect these days with mad
dogs and hydrophobia generally, and they begin to think of M. Pasteur
and his experiments at such times. There is evident confusion as to the
time they begin and end. One thing is plain—they indicate the hotter
portion of our year: some of them are so hot that we perspire if we
stand still, though an Arab would freeze. What are we to do at such
times? Simply, let us sit quietly if we can, and enjoy our siesta in a
rather darkened room, with a pretty girl at the piano to sing for us,
whilst we have our ‘hubble-bubble’ and rose-water or fragrant cigar and
a pleasant book, till the cool of the evening. A considerable number
of the dog-days are anything but hot; they are dashed by rain, as
picnic parties know to their sorrow. St Swithin, of pluvial notoriety,
bids us put up our umbrellas on the 15th of July, whilst he assuages
the heat, and acts the part of Aquarius for the good of the world,
spoiling all the custards and junkets and cheese-cakes, and taking
out the stiffening of the ladies’ curls and collars in a remarkably
disagreeable manner, by a sudden downpour, that often continues for
many hours together. What an ungallant, heartless, and stingy old saint
he must be!