So he hastened to the bath-house,
Found therein a group of maidens
Working each upon a birch broom.
When this performance was over they redressed outside, which is a custom even when the ground is deeply covered with snow.
Our host, a finely-made young fellow, fondly nursing a baby of about two years old, seeing our interest in everything, was very anxious we should join the bath party, and begged Baron George to tell us of its charms, an invitation we politely but firmly refused. He showed his home. When we reached a room upstairs—for the house actually possessed two storeys—we stood back amazed. Long poles suspended from ropes hung from the ceiling, and there in rows, and rows, and rows, we beheld clothing, mostly under-linen. Some were as coarse as sacking; others were finer; but there seemed enough for a regiment—something like the linen we once saw in a harem in Tangier, but Tangier is a hot country where change of raiment is often necessary, and the owner was a rich man, while Finland is for most part of the year cold, and our landlord only a farmer. The mystery was soon explained; the farmer had to provide clothing for all his labourers—a strange custom of the country—and these garments were intended for eight or nine servants, as well as a large family. Moreover, as washing in the winter with ice-covered lakes is a serious matter, two or three big washes a year are all Finns can manage, the spring wash being one of the great events in their lives. The finer linen belonged to the master's family, the coarser to the labourers, and there must have been hundreds of articles in that loft.
When we left the room he locked the door carefully, and hung up the key beside it. This is truly Finnish. One arrives at a church; the door is locked, but one need not turn away, merely glance at the woodwork round the door, where the key is probably hanging. It is the same everywhere—in private houses, baths, churches, hotels; even in more primitive parts one finds the door locked for safety—from what peril we know not, as honesty is proverbial in Finland—and the key hung up beside it for convenience.
Why are the northern peoples so honest, the southern peoples such thieves?
Our night's lodging disclosed another peculiarity;—nothing is more mysterious than a Finnish bed. In the daytime every bed is shut up. The two wooden ends are pushed together within three feet of one another, kaleidoscope fashion, the mattress, pillows, and bedclothes being doubled between; but more than that, many of the little beds pull also out into double ones from the sides—altogether the capacities of a Suomi couch are wondrous and remarkable. Yet, again, the peasants' homes contain awfully hard straight wooden sofas, terrible-looking things, and out of the box part comes the bedding, the boards of the seat forming the soft couch on which weary travellers seek repose, and often do not find it.
Finnish beds are truly terrible; for wood attracts unpleasant things, and beds which are not only never aired, but actually packed up, are scarcely to be recommended in hot weather. One should have the skin of a rhinoceros and no sense of smell to rest in the peasant homes of Suomi during the hot weather. Seaweed was formerly used for stuffing mattresses on the coast in England; indeed some such bedding still remains at Walmer Castle; but the plant in use for that purpose in the peasant homes of Finland gives off a particularly stuffy odour.
The country and its people are most captivating and well worth studying, even though the towns are nearly all ugly and uninteresting. Hospitality is rife; but the peasants must keep their beds in better order and learn something of sanitation if they hope to attract strangers. As matters are, everything is painfully primitive, spite of the rooms—beds excepted—being beautifully clean.
In winter, sportsmen hunt the wild bear of Finland; at all seasons elk are to be seen, but elk-hunting was legally forbidden until quite recently. There are long-haired wild-looking pigs roving about that might do for an impromptu pig-stick. There are feathered fowl in abundance, and fish for the asking, many kinds of sport and many kinds of hunts, but, alas, there is a very important one we would all gladly do without—that provided by the zoological gardens in the peasant's bed. Possibly the straw mattresses or luikko may be the cause, or the shut-up wooden frames of the bedstead, or the moss used to keep the rooms warm and exclude draughts, still the fact remains that, while the people themselves bathe often and keep their homes clean, their beds are apt to shock an unhappy traveller who, though he have to part with all his comforts and luggage on a kärra ride, should, if he value his life, stick fast to insect powder and ammonia, and the joyful preventive of lavender oil.
Well we remember a horrible experience. We had driven all day, and were dead tired when we retired to rest, where big, fat, well-nourished brown things soon disturbed our peace; and, judging by the number of occupants that shared our couch, the peasant had let his bed out many times over. Sitting bolt up, we killed one, two, three, then we turned over and tried again to sleep; but a few moments and up we had to sit once more. Keating had failed utterly—Finnish bed-fiends smile at Keating—four, five, six—there they were like an advancing army. At last we could stand it no longer, and passed the night in our deck-chairs. Those folding deck-chairs were a constant joy. In the morning we peeped at the nice linen sheets; sprinkled on the beds were brown-red patches, here and there as numerous as plums in a pudding, each telling the horrible tale of murders committed by English women.