HYGEIA IN THE DOG-DAYS.
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!