There are some men who cultivate white hands, with long fair nails. For nothing else do they care very particularly—all is well, if only their hands be neat. There is even a ridiculous notion that elegant hands are the most unequivocal test of what is called good birth. I can say, for my own part, that the finest hands I ever saw belonged to a woman who kept a butcher’s shop in Musselburgh. So much for the nonsense about fine hands. Then there is a set of people who cultivate a ring on a particular finger—evidently regretting, from their manner of managing it, that the South Sea fashion of wearing such ornaments in the nose has not ever come into this country. Some men cultivate neat ebony canes with golden heads, which, they tell you, cost a guinea. Some cultivate a lisp. A few, who fall under the denomination of stout gentlemen, rejoice in a respectable swell of the haunch, with three wrinkles of the coat lying upon it in majestic repose. Some cultivate a neckcloth—some a shirt-breast—some a jewelled pin, with a lesser pin at a little distance, which serves to it as a kind of anchor. There has also of late been a great fashion of cultivating chains about the waistcoat. Some only show about two inches of a gold or silver one between the buttons and the pocket; others, less modest, have themselves almost laced round and round with this kind of tracery. There is also to be detected, occasionally, a small patch of cultivation in the shape of a curious watch-key or seal, which depends from part of the chain, and is evidently a great pet. A not uncommon subject of cultivation is a gold watch.
There is a class who cultivate silk umbrellas. It is a prevalent idea among many men that a silk umbrella is an exceedingly genteel thing. They therefore have an article of this kind, which they are always carrying in a neat careful manner, so as to show that it is silk. They seem to feel as if they thought all right when they have their silk umbrella in their hand: it is a kind of patent of respectability. With a silk umbrella they could meet the highest personages in the land, and not be abashed. A silk umbrella is, indeed, a thing of such vast effect, that they would be content to go in humble guise in every other respect, provided they only had this saving clause to protect them. Nay, it is not too much to suppose them entertaining this belief, that five-and-twenty shillings put forth on a good silk umbrella produces as much value in dignity as five pounds spent upon good broad-cloth. How some men do fondle and cultivate silk umbrellas!
There is a species of cultivators who may in some cases be very respectable, and entitled to our forbearance, but are, in others, worthy of a little ridicule. I mean the health-seekers; the men who go out at five in the morning to cultivate an appetite, and regularly chill every sharp-set evening party they attend, by sitting like Melancholy retired, ostentatiously insisting that they “never take supper.” When a health-seeker takes a walk, he keeps his coat wide open, his vest half open—seems, in short, to woo the contact of the air—and evidently regrets very much that he cannot enjoy it in the manner of a bath. As he proceeds, he consumes air, as a steam-boat consumes coal; insomuch that, when he leaves the place, you would actually think the atmosphere has a fatigued and exhausted look, as if the whole oxygen had been absorbed to supply his individual necessities. Wherever this man goes, the wind rises behind him, by reason of the vacuum which he has produced. He puffs, pants, fights, strives, struggles for health. When he returns from his morning walk, he first looks in the glass to congratulate himself on the bloom which he has been cultivating in his cheek, and thereafter sits down to solace the appetite which he finds he has nursed into a kind of fury. At any ordinary time, he could spring from his bed at nine o’clock, and devour four cups of tea, with bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks, beyond reckoning. But he thinks it necessary to walk four hours, for the purpose of enabling himself to take eight cups, and a still more unconscionable proportion of bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks. He may be compared, in some measure, to the fat oxen which are sometimes shown about as wonders, though apparently there is nothing less wonderful, the obvious natural means being taken. These oxen, if left to themselves in a good park, would become very respectable oxen—a little en-bon-point, perhaps, but no more. But, being treated otherwise, they are rendered unnecessarily fat and unwieldy; and so it is with the appetite of the health cultivator.
Cultivations, it will thus be observed, is a subject of vast extent, and of great importance, not only to the landed interest, but to all the other interests of the country. I should be glad to treat it at full length in a separate volume, for which, I doubt not, ample materials might be found. But I must content myself with giving it in the meantime only a kind of topping, as the farmers say; and perhaps I may return to it next harvest.
FITS OF THRIFT.
Nothing is more common in the middle ranks of life than to find housewives taking what may be called fits of thrift. Though sensible women in their way, excellent advisers and charming gossips, and though by no means spenders on a great scale, they have no enduring principle of economy, but are only frugal by fits and starts. They take qualms of thriftiness now and then—sometimes from reading a string of plausible receipts for cookery on a cheap scale, or from being struck with the excellent arrangements in the household of a friend, who tells her that, by managing in such and such a manner, salting all her own beef, and making all her own preserves, she has, one way and another, saved a good deal of money, which is really a thing of some consequence in these bad times, when so little is coming in. This chronic frugality is common to single ladies, under as well as above one-and-twenty, and to married ladies with large families. The fits have different tendencies, although the prevailing symptoms are the same. Occasionally the furor seizes one single young lady in a family of sisters; and I have seen that it comes on most commonly in the spring. In such cases the disease perhaps takes the direction of butter and eggs. Some day about the month of April or May, and when breakfast is on the table, the young lady begins to make observations on the dearth and rancidity of the butter. “I declare for my part,” says she, “we have been poisoned for the last six months with that stuff that we get from the woman who keeps the little shop in the area on the opposite side of the street. You know it was only out of pity to her when her husband was burnt to death at the distillery, that we said that we would take some small things from her; but you see she does not keep wholesome articles; and really, in my opinion, it is high time we were looking about for something we can trust to.” With this sort of discourse the young notable opens the plan of her campaign. She says she is resolved to rise every morning at seven, and go with a basket herself to the market. The mornings, she says, are now greatly lengthened out, and, besides saving a penny a pound on the butter, and getting a better article, she is confident the walk will prove of great benefit to her health. It may always be observed, that the husband, father, or elder brother of the notable, never makes any objections when such schemes of saving are propounded. They know intuitively that the whole is a delusion, which will work itself off in a week or two; that the same disease has visited the family once every year about the same period ever since they can recollect, and that it will now, as formerly, only furnish a little harmless temporary excitement in the house. Armed with a negative approval from these relations, together with a pound note, the young notable starts next Saturday morning between seven and eight o’clock; and after taking half an hour to array herself in an undress, studiously selecting for the occasion a shabbyish shawl, and a pair of shoes that she puts on, only on “bad days,” also a straw bonnet faded both in the material and in the riband, she sallies forth with her basket to the market. With what an air of knowingness she goes from cart to cart, examining, and tasting, and smelling their contents! How she tries to elicit, by cross-questioning the man in the sky-blue coat, or the blowsky girl in the dimity head-gear, sitting amidst their savoury boxes with leather hinges, every particular in the history of the butter; where and when it was made, and why it happens to be up this morning, and so forth. How she wanders amidst the egg women, holding up the eggs between her and the light, asking if they be sure they are not Orkney eggs, and what their probable age may be? What with toiling up and down the market for three quarters of an hour, and beating down the prices in a most exemplary manner, she at last accomplishes her purchases, and brings home her cargo of native produce. When you come down to breakfast, you will be at once reminded of what has been going on, by the air of superiority and triumph assumed by Miss Notable. She thinks that by rising an hour sooner than any body else, and saving, as she thinks, the sum of twopence, she has purchased the character of a thrifty personage, and, consequently, is entitled to look down upon the whole house. There is no end to her account of how she managed to find out the best butter in the cart, and how she higgled the man out of a halfpenny in the pound. When she places a slice of this extraordinary butter before you, she takes care to show you how fresh the colour is, and waits with impatience to hear your expected, and not to be dispensed with, praise of its taste. The butter she has bought is, in fact, her pet for the whole week. She considers it as her butter: and if any visitor slight it, by not paying it the necessary compliments, he is of course not indebted to her for any future invitation to the house.
A fit of thrift of this nature lasts generally three or four weeks, seldom more. I have seen it continue a fortnight in tolerable strength; it then declines, and wears off towards the fourth Saturday. The decline of this household disease is as amusing in its way as its increase. The young lady begins to find, that, so far from improving her health or strength by such morning exercise, she only “makes herself out,” and is unfit to do any thing else the whole day. And then it is, after all, only to save a few halfpence. She also finds that her purchases do not always turn well out, and that she cannot coax her father, or the rest of them, to be perpetual admirers of her butter and eggs. As a get-off, she commences an eulogy on her butter, which, she says, is sold by a man in Rose Street—a person who was once a farmer, but was reduced by misfortunes to open a small shop in the town, and sell dairy produce. This man she says, is experienced in butter, and imports every week as much as will serve a dozen families. She has made interest with him through the servant to be counted one of his regular customers, and he will supply the family at all times exactly at the market price, not a farthing more. This new plan helps greatly as a solace to the conscience in abandoning her morning airings with her basket and dishabille; and so she gradually subsides into the ordinary routine of domestic arrangements.
The married notable is subject to fits of thrift in a greater or less degree about the months of October and November. Some day at dinner, when there happens to be rather a poorish leg of lamb on the table, and not much else, she opens her attack by saying, in a peevishly authoritative manner, that really the family has been long enough on fresh meat; that, for her part, the lamb that they have had so often does not agree with her, and that she would rather prefer a good salt herring. “Mrs Lockhart has just been telling me that the doctor has advised them to eat twice or thrice a-week a piece of salt meat—that is to say, a piece of beef newly powdered, just the fresh taste off it, and hardly having the appearance of the saltpetre at the bone; and I do think that we cannot do better than just follow such a sensible man’s advice, and get two or three pieces next Wednesday for salting—you know it will be a great saving of money.” The drift of all this is, that the husband shall forthwith exhibit on the table a couple of twenty shilling notes; but as he knows that these handy pieces of paper are sometimes not very easily got, he perhaps tries to throw an obstacle or two in the way of the salting project, and, for instance, mentions that his wife has no convenience for curing beef. “You observe,” says he, “it requires a tub, or something of that sort, and, besides, there is a great knack in curing the meat thoroughly; and if you do not take care, you will spoil the whole.” As a matter of course, these or similar observations cannot hold good in the face of a wife under a fit of thrift. All you can say is borne down, and the money is at length consigned with a groan to the steel purse of the good lady, who, next day—for she is in the fidgets till her purpose is executed—sets out in her muff and shawl (the first time for the season) on an expedition, first to lay in her beef, and then to buy a sufficient and commodious salting can. Well, the can, that darling object of a notable’s ambition, is purchased. The beef is salted; and the goodman and his family are shortly put on salt meat, whether they like such fare or otherwise. The thrifty lady all this time takes care, on every occasion, to show off her beef as well worthy of being tasted by visitors; and the short and long of it is, that the said beef is eaten up in half the time it is expected to last; fresh meat begins to show itself more frequently at your table, and the fit is put aside till another opportunity occurs of playing it off.
These are very ordinary instances of fits of thrift, but there are hundreds of the same description which I could mention. Sometimes the fit takes the direction of a new gown for going out with on bad days, to save others of a better sort; at another time it is “a house gown,” as “really my best black silk one is absolutely getting wasted with having to go so often into the kitchen.” Occasionally it is the hiring of two maid-servants, “so that the washings need not any longer be given out;” at other times it is the buying of a crumb-cloth, to save the carpet, or the purchasing of loads of old china and crockery at auctions. I have seen all the ladies in the house manifest this frenzy by working their own lace, or painting pictures which had to be hung in dear gilded frames. Again, I have noticed it in great vigour in a family in town resolving to have a garden, so as to grow their own vegetables. It comes on very frequently in a desire to dye old ribands, or feathers, or “dress” shawls; in which case the lady who is affected sets out on a voyage of discovery through all the obscure courts and alleys about the town, seeking for some old woman whom they have heard of as being “the best” at these processes of renovation. It may be remarked, that the fit visits the nation, like an epidemic, towards the end of July. Almost every house in the kingdom is then thrown into an uproar by the ladies, young and old, confederating to manufacture gooseberry jam or currant jelly. Such a requisition is there then in all quarters for “brass pans,” and such a deal of money is spent in this popular confectionary! At the approach and during the continuance of the epidemic, the husbands very wisely make no remonstrance, well knowing that such would be utterly thrown away. “You know, my dear,” would say the thrifty spouse, “we shall require at least two dozen pints this season; for nothing is more useful in a house, in case of colds; and you will remember how much good a spoonful or two did little George last February, when we thought he was going to take the fever; indeed, the doctor said it had been the very saving of his life.” Nothing, of course, can withstand an appeal to such authority; so the money is disbursed for the purchase of the fruit and other materials, although the goodman never can exactly see now some pounds’ worth of jelly should be laid up in store, all for the sake of needing two tea-spoonfuls.
Sometimes the family is so unfortunate as to get an oven, and a particularly economical Miss undertakes to bake what is called family bread. A great saving is expected from this source; but it soon turns out that so much of the article is given away to friends, as a kind of curiosity, or to impress them with a sense of the economy practised in the house, that a great deal more is lost than gained by the novelty. In fact, it always turns out, as in the case of the Vicar of Wakefield and his thrice notable spouse, that these chronic economists are not observed to make their husbands any richer by their contrivances, so much is lost by the expense of the experiment, compared with what is gained by the short duration of the practice.