Advice to young men, and (incidentally) to young women, in the middle and higher ranks of life
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Title: Advice to young men, and (incidentally) to young women, in the middle and higher ranks of life
in a series of letters, addressed to a youth, a bachelor, a lover, a husband, a father, a citizen, or a subject.
Author: William Cobbett
Release date: March 30, 2005 [eBook #15510]
Most recently updated: December 14, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15510
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Gutenber Online Distributed Proofreading Team
COBBETT'S ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN
And (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life.
In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover,
a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
by
WILLIAM COBBETT
(From the Edition of 1829)
London
Henry Frowde
1906
Oxford: Horace Hart
Printer to the University
INTRODUCTION
1. It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience
to warn and instruct youth and to come to the aid of inexperience. When
sailors have discovered rocks or breakers, and have had the good luck to
escape with life from amidst them, they, unless they be pirates or
barbarians as well as sailors, point out the spots for the placing of
buoys and of lights, in order that others may not be exposed to the
danger which they have so narrowly escaped. What man of common humanity,
having, by good luck, missed being engulfed in a quagmire or quicksand,
will withhold from his neighbours a knowledge of the peril without which
the dangerous spots are not to be approached?
2. The great effect which correct opinions and sound principles, imbibed
in early life, together with the good conduct, at that age, which must
naturally result from such opinions and principles; the great effect
which these have on the whole course of our lives is, and must be, well
known to every man of common observation. How many of us, arrived at
only forty years, have to repent; nay, which of us has not to repent, or
has not had to repent, that he did not, at an earlier age, possess a
great stock of knowledge of that kind which has an immediate effect on
our personal ease and happiness; that kind of knowledge, upon which the
cheerfulness and the harmony of our homes depend!
3. It is to communicate a stock of this sort of knowledge, in
particular, that this work is intended; knowledge, indeed, relative to
education, to many sciences, to trade, agriculture, horticulture, law,
government, and religion; knowledge relating, incidentally, to all
these; but, the main object is to furnish that sort of knowledge to the
young which but few men acquire until they be old, when it comes too
late to be useful.
4. To communicate to others the knowledge that I possess has always been
my taste and my delight; and few, who know anything of my progress
through life, will be disposed to question my fitness for the task. Talk
of rocks and breakers and quagmires and quicksands, who has ever escaped
from amidst so many as I have! Thrown (by my own will, indeed) on the
wide world at a very early age, not more than eleven or twelve years,
without money to support, without friends to advise, and without
book-learning to assist me; passing a few years dependent solely on my
own labour for my subsistence; then becoming a common soldier and
leading a military life, chiefly in foreign parts, for eight years;
quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion, and with, for
me, a large sum of money; marrying at an early age, going at once to
France to acquire the French language, thence to America; passing eight
years there, becoming bookseller and author, and taking a prominent part
in all the important discussions of the interesting period from 1793 to
1799, during which there was, in that country, a continued struggle
carried on between the English and the French parties; conducting
myself, in the ever-active part which I took in that struggle, in such a
way as to call forth marks of unequivocal approbation from the
government at home; returning to England in 1800, resuming my labours
here, suffering, during these twenty-nine years, two years of
imprisonment, heavy fines, three years self-banishment to the other side
of the Atlantic, and a total breaking of fortune, so as to be left
without a bed to lie on, and, during these twenty-nine years of troubles
and of punishments, writing and publishing, every week of my life,
whether in exile or not, eleven weeks only excepted, a periodical paper,
containing more or less of matter worthy of public attention; writing
and publishing, during _the same twenty-nine years_, a grammar of the
French and another of the English language, a work on the Economy of the
Cottage, a work on Forest Trees and Woodlands, a work on Gardening, an
account of America, a book of Sermons, a work on the Corn-plant, a
History of the Protestant Reformation; all books of great and continued
sale, and the _last_ unquestionably the book of greatest circulation in
the whole world, the Bible only excepted; having, during _these same
twenty-nine years_ of troubles and embarrassments without number,
introduced into England the manufacture of Straw-plat; also several
valuable trees; having introduced, during _the same twenty-nine years_,
the cultivation of the Corn-plant, so manifestly valuable as a source of
food; having, during the same period, always (whether in exile or not)
sustained a shop of some size, in London; having, during the whole of
the same period, never employed less, on an average, than ten persons,
in some capacity or other, exclusive of printers, bookbinders, and
others, connected with papers and books; and having, during these
twenty-nine years of troubles, embarrassments, prisons, fines, and
banishments, bred up a family of seven children to man's and woman's
state.
5. If such a man be not, after he has survived and accomplished all
this, qualified to give Advice to Young Men, no man is qualified for
that task. There may have been natural _genius_: but genius _alone_, not
all the genius in the world, could, without _something more_, have
conducted me through these perils. During these twenty-nine years, I
have had for deadly and ever-watchful foes, a government that has the
collecting and distributing of sixty millions of pounds in a year, and
also every soul who shares in that distribution. Until very lately, I
have had, for the far greater part of the time, the whole of the press
as my deadly enemy. Yet, at this moment, it will not be pretended, that
there is another man in the kingdom, who has so many cordial friends.
For as to the _friends_ of _ministers_ and the _great_, the friendship
is towards the _power_, the _influence_; it is, in fact, towards _those
taxes_, of which so many thousands are gaping to get at a share. And, if
we could, through so thick a veil, come at the naked fact, we should
find the subscription, now going on in Dublin for the purpose of
erecting a monument in that city, to commemorate the good recently done,
or alleged to be done, to Ireland, by the DUKE of WELLINGTON; we should
find, that the subscribers have _the taxes_ in view; and that, if the
monument shall actually be raised, it ought to have _selfishness_, and
not _gratitude_, engraven on its base. Nearly the same may be said with
regard to all the praises that we hear bestowed on men in power. The
friendship which is felt towards me is pure and disinterested: it is not
founded in any hope that the parties can have, that they can ever
_profit_ from professing it: it is founded on the gratitude which they
entertain for the good that I _have done_ them; and, of this sort of
friendship, and friendship so cordial, no man ever possessed a larger
portion.
6. Now, mere _genius_ will not acquire this for a man. There must be
something more than _genius_: there must be industry: there must be
perseverance: there must be, before the eyes of the nation, proofs of
extraordinary exertion: people must say to themselves, 'What wise
conduct must there have been in the employing of the time of this man!
How sober, how sparing in diet, how early a riser, how little expensive
he must have been!' These are the things, and _not genius_, which have
caused my labours to be so incessant and so successful: and, though I do
not affect to believe, that _every young man_, who shall read this work,
will become able to perform labours of equal magnitude and importance, I
do pretend, that _every_ young man, who will attend to my advice, will
become able to perform a great deal more than men generally do perform,
whatever may be his situation in life; and, that he will, too, perform
it with greater ease and satisfaction than he would, without the advice,
be able to perform the smaller portion.
7. I have had, from thousands of young men, and men advanced in years
also, letters of thanks for the great benefit which they have derived
from my labours. Some have thanked me for my Grammars, some for my
Cottage Economy, others for the Woodlands and the Gardener; and, in
short, for every one of my works have I received letters of thanks from
numerous persons, of whom I had never heard before. In many cases I have
been told, that, if the parties had had my books to read some years
before, the gain to them, whether in time or in other things, would have
been very great. Many, and a great many, have told me, that, though long
at school, and though their parents had paid for their being taught
English Grammar, or French, they had, in a short time, learned more from
my books, on those subjects, than they had learned, in years, from their
teachers. How many gentlemen have thanked me, in the strongest terms,
for my Woodlands and Gardener, observing (just as Lord Bacon had
observed in his time) that they had before seen no books, on these
subjects, that they could _understand_! But, I know not of anything that
ever gave me more satisfaction than I derived from the visit of a
gentleman of fortune, whom I had never heard of before, and who, about
four years ago, came to thank me in person for a complete reformation,
which had been worked in his son by the reading of my two SERMONS on
_drinking_ and on _gaming_.
8. I have, therefore, done, already, a great deal in this way: but,
there is still wanting, in a compact form, a body of ADVICE such as that
which I now propose to give: and in the giving of which I shall divide
my matter as follows. 1. Advice addressed to a YOUTH; 2. Advice
addressed to a BACHELOR; 3. Advice addressed to a LOVER; 4. To a
HUSBAND; 5. To a FATHER; 6. To a CITIZEN or SUBJECT.
9. Some persons will smile, and others laugh outright, at the idea of
'Cobbett's giving advice for conducting the affairs of _love_.' Yes, but
I was once young, and surely I may say with the poet, I forget which of
them,
'Though old I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.'
I forget, indeed, the _names_ of the ladies as completely, pretty nigh,
as I do that of the poets; but I remember their influence, and of this
influence on the conduct and in the affairs and on the condition of men,
I have, and must have, been a witness all my life long. And, when we
consider in how great a degree the happiness of all the remainder of a
man's life depends, and always must depend, on his taste and judgment in
the character of a lover, this may well be considered as the most
important period of the whole term of his existence.
10. In my address to the HUSBAND, I shall, of course, introduce advice
relative to the important duties of _masters_ and _servants_; duties of
great importance, whether considered as affecting families or as
affecting the community. In my address to the CITIZEN or SUBJECT, I
shall consider all the reciprocal duties of the governors and the
governed, and also the duties which man owes to his neighbour. It would
be tedious to attempt to lay down rules for conduct exclusively
applicable to every distinct calling, profession, and condition of life;
but, under the above-described heads, will be conveyed every species of
advice of which I deem the utility to be unquestionable.
11. I have thus fully described the nature of my little work, and,
before I enter on the first Letter, I venture to express a hope, that
its good effects will be felt long after its author shall have ceased to
exist.
LETTER I
TO A YOUTH
12. You are now arrived at that age which the law thinks sufficient to
make an oath, taken by you, valid in a court of law. Let us suppose from
fourteen to nearly twenty; and, reserving, for a future occasion, my
remarks on your duty towards parents, let me here offer you my advice as
to the means likely to contribute largely towards making you a happy
man, useful to all about you, and an honour to those from whom you
sprang.
13. Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed on your mind,
that you have no right to live in this world; that, being of hale body
and sound mind, you have _no right_ to any earthly existence, without
doing _work_ of some sort or other, unless you have ample fortune
whereon to live clear of debt; and, that even in that case, you have no
right to breed children, to be kept by others, or to be exposed to the
chance of being so kept. Start with this conviction thoroughly implanted
on your mind. To wish to live on the labour of others is, besides the
folly of it, to contemplate a _fraud_ at the least, and, under certain
circumstances, to meditate oppression and robbery.
14. I suppose you in the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your
great object, and it is to be found only in _independence_. Turn your
back on Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to
the feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to
partiality, to friendship, or to what is called _interest_: write it on
your heart, that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own
exertions. Think not, neither, of any of those situations where gaudy
habiliments and sounding titles poorly disguise from the eyes of good
sense the mortifications and the heart-ache of slaves. Answer me not by
saying, that these situations '_must be_ filled by _somebody_;' for, if
I were to admit the truth of the proposition, which I do not, it would
remain for you to show that they are conducive to happiness, the
contrary of which has been proved to me by the observation of a now
pretty long life.
15. Indeed, reason tells us, that it must be thus: for that which a man
owes to favour or to partiality, that same favour or partiality is
constantly liable to take from him. He who lives upon anything except
his own labour, is incessantly surrounded by rivals: his grand resource
is that servility in which he is always liable to be surpassed. He is in
daily danger of being out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice;
and he lives in a state of uncertainty and never-ceasing fear. His is
not, indeed, the dog's life, '_hunger_ and idleness;' but it is worse;
for it is 'idleness with _slavery_,' the latter being the just price of
the former. Slaves frequently are well _fed_ and well _clad_; but slaves
dare not _speak_; they dare not be suspected to _think_ differently from
their masters: hate his acts as much as they may; be he tyrant, be he
drunkard, be he fool, or be he all three at once, they must be silent,
or, nine times out of ten, affect approbation: though possessing a
thousand times his knowledge, they must feign a conviction of his
superior understanding; though knowing that it is they who, in fact, do
all that he is paid for doing, it is destruction to them to _seem as if
they thought_ any portion of the service belonged to them! Far from me
be the thought, that any youth who shall read this page would not rather
perish than submit to live in a state like this! Such a state is fit
only for the refuse of nature; the halt, the half-blind, the unhappy
creatures whom nature has marked out for degradation.
16. And how comes it, then, that we see hale and even clever youths
voluntarily bending their necks to this slavery; nay, pressing forward
in eager rivalship to assume the yoke that ought to be insupportable?
The cause, and the only cause, is, that the deleterious fashion of the
day has created so many artificial wants, and has raised the minds of
young men so much above their real rank and state of life, that they
look scornfully on the employment, the fare, and the dress, that would
become them; and, in order to avoid that state in which they might live
_free_ and _happy_, they become _showy slaves_.
17. The great source of independence, the French express in a precept of
three words, '_Vivre de peu_,' which I have always very much admired.
'_To live upon little_' is the great security against slavery; and this
precept extends to dress and other things besides food and drink. When
DOCTOR JOHNSON wrote his Dictionary, he put in the word pensioner thus:
'PENSIONER--_A slave of state_.' After this he himself became a
_pensioner_! And thus, agreeably to his own definition, he lived and
died '_a slave of state_!' What must this man of great genius, and of
great industry too, have felt at receiving this pension! Could he be so
callous as not to feel a pang upon seeing his own name placed before his
own degrading definition? And what could induce him to submit to this?
His wants, his artificial wants, his habit of indulging in the pleasures
of the table; his disregard of the precept '_Vivre de peu_.' This was
the cause; and, be it observed, that indulgences of this sort, while
they tend to make men poor and expose them to commit mean acts, tend
also to enfeeble the body, and more especially to cloud and to weaken
the mind.
18. When this celebrated author wrote his Dictionary, he had not been
debased by luxurious enjoyments; the rich and powerful had not caressed
him into a slave; his writings then bore the stamp of truth and
independence: but, having been debased by luxury, he who had, while
content with plain fare, been the strenuous advocate of the rights of
the people, became a strenuous advocate for _taxation without
representation_; and, in a work under the title of '_Taxation no
Tyranny_,' defended, and greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and
bloody war which finally severed from England that great country the
United states of America, now the most powerful and dangerous rival that
this kingdom ever had. The statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was
put into St. PAUL'S CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look upon
monuments in honour of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for here we
see St. PAUL'S CHURCH holding up to the veneration of posterity a man
whose own writings, together with the records of the pension list, prove
him to have been '_a slave of state_.'
19. Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit
having been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable, by their
imaginary wants. Seldom has there been a man with a fairer prospect of
accomplishing great things and of acquiring lasting renown, than CHARLES
FOX: he had great talents of the most popular sort; the times were
singularly favourable to an exertion of them with success; a large part
of the nation admired him and were his partisans; he had, as to the
great question between him and his rival (PITT), reason and justice
clearly on his side: but he had against him his squandering and
luxurious habits: these made him dependent on the rich part of his
partisans; made his wisdom subservient to opulent folly or selfishness;
deprived his country of all the benefit that it might have derived from
his talents; and, finally, sent him to the grave without a single sigh
from a people, a great part of whom would, in his earlier years, have
wept at his death as at a national calamity.
20. Extravagance in _dress_, in the haunting of _play-houses_, in
_horses_, in everything else, is to be avoided, and, in youths and young
men, extravagance in _dress_ particularly. This sort of extravagance,
this waste of money on the decoration of the body, arises solely from
vanity, and from vanity of the most contemptible sort. It arises from
the notion, that all the people in the street, for instance, will be
_looking at you_ as soon as you walk out; and that they will, in a
greater or less degree, think the better of you on account of your fine
dress. Never was notion more false. All the sensible people that happen
to see you, will think nothing at all about you: those who are filled
with the same vain notion as you are, will perceive your attempt to
impose on them, and will despise you accordingly: rich people will
wholly disregard you, and you will be envied and hated by those who have
the same vanity that you have without the means of gratifying it. Dress
should be suited to your rank and station; a surgeon or physician should
not dress like a carpenter! but there is no reason why a tradesman, a
merchant's clerk, or clerk of any kind, or why a shopkeeper or
manufacturer, or even a merchant; no reason at all why any of these
should dress in an _expensive_ manner. It is a great mistake to suppose,
that they derive any advantage from exterior decoration. Men are
estimated by other _men_ according to their capacity and willingness to
be in some way or other _useful_; and though, with the foolish and vain
part of _women_, fine clothes frequently do something, yet the greater
part of the sex are much too penetrating to draw their conclusions
solely from the outside show of a man: they look deeper, and find other
criterions whereby to judge. And, after all, if the fine clothes obtain
you a wife, will they bring you, in that wife, _frugality, good sense_,
and that sort of attachment that is likely to be lasting? Natural beauty
of person is quite another thing: this always has, it always will and
must have, some weight even with men, and great weight with women. But
this does not want to be set off by expensive clothes. Female eyes are,
in such cases, very sharp: they can discover beauty though half hidden
by beard and even by dirt and surrounded by rags: and, take this as a
secret worth half a fortune to you, that women, however personally vain
they may be themselves, _despise personal vanity in men_.
21. Let your dress be as cheap as may be without _shabbiness_; think
more about the colour of your shirt than about the gloss or texture of
your coat; be always as _clean_ as your occupation will, without
inconvenience, permit; but never, no, not for one moment, believe, that
any human being, with sense in his skull, will love or respect you on
account of your fine or costly clothes. A great misfortune of the
present day is, that every one is, in his own estimate, _raised above
his real state of life_: every one seems to think himself entitled, if
not to title and great estate, at least _to live without work_. This
mischievous, this most destructive, way of thinking has, indeed, been
produced, like almost all our other evils, by the Acts of our Septennial
and Unreformed Parliament. That body, by its Acts, has caused an
enormous Debt to be created, and, in consequence, a prodigious sum to be
raised annually in taxes. It has caused, by these means, a race of
loan-mongers and stock-jobbers to arise. These carry on a species of
_gaming_, by which some make fortunes in a day, and others, in a day,
become beggars. The unfortunate gamesters, like the purchasers of blanks
in a lottery, are never heard of; but the fortunate ones become
companions for lords, and some of them lords themselves. We have, within
these few years, seen many of these gamesters get fortunes of a quarter
of a million in a few days, and then we have heard them, though
notoriously amongst the lowest and basest of human creatures, called
'_honourable gentlemen_'! In such a state of things, who is to expect
patient industry, laborious study, frugality and care; who, in such a
state of things, is to expect these to be employed in pursuit of that
competence which it is the laudable wish of all men to secure? Not long
ago a man, who had served his time to a tradesman in London, became,
instead of pursuing his trade, a stock-jobber, or gambler; and, in about
_two years_, drove his _coach-and-four_, had his town house and country
house, and visited, and was visited by, _peers of the highest rank_! A
_fellow-apprentice_ of this lucky gambler, though a tradesman in
excellent business, seeing no earthly reason why _he_ should not have
his coach-and-four also, turned his stock in trade into a stake for the
'Change; but, alas! at the end of a few months, instead of being in a
coach-and-four, he was in the _Gazette_!
22. This is one instance out of hundreds of thousands; not, indeed,
exactly of the same description, but all arising from the same copious
source. The words _speculate_ and _speculation_ have been substituted
for _gamble_ and _gambling_. The hatefulness of the pursuit is thus
taken away; and, while taxes to the amount of more than double the whole
of the rental of the kingdom; while these cause such crowds of idlers,
every one of whom calls himself a _gentleman_, and avoids the appearance
of working for his bread; while this is the case, who is to wonder, that
a great part of the youth of the country, knowing themselves to be as
_good_, as _learned_, and as _well-bred_ as these _gentlemen_; who is to
wonder, that they think, that they also ought to be considered as
_gentlemen_? Then, the late _war_ (also the work of the Septennial
Parliament) has left us, amongst its many legacies, such swarms of
_titled_ men and women; such swarms of '_Sirs_' and their '_Ladies_';
men and women who, only the other day, were the fellow-apprentices,
fellow-tradesmen's or farmers' sons and daughters, or indeed, the
fellow-servants, of those who are now in these several states of life;
the late Septennial Parliament war has left us such swarms of these,
that it is no wonder that the heads of young people are turned, and that
they are ashamed of that state of life to act their part well in which
ought to be their delight.
23. But, though the cause of the evil is in Acts of the Septennial
Parliament; though this universal desire in people to be thought to be
above their station; though this arises from such acts; and, though it
is no wonder that young men are thus turned from patient study and
labour; though these things be undoubted, they form no reason why I
should not _warn you_ against becoming a victim to this national
scourge. For, in spite of every art made use of to avoid labour, the
taxes will, after all, maintain only _so many_ idlers. We cannot all be
'_knights_' and '_gentlemen_': there must be a large part of us, after
all, to make and mend clothes and houses, and carry on trade and
commerce, and, in spite of all that we can do, the far greater part of
us must actually _work_ at something; for, unless we can get at some of
the taxes, we fall under the sentence of Holy Writ, 'He who will not
_work_ shall not _eat_.' Yet, so strong is the propensity to be thought
'_gentlemen_'; so general is this desire amongst the youth of this
formerly laborious and unassuming nation; a nation famed for its pursuit
of wealth through the channels of patience, punctuality, and integrity;
a nation famed for its love of solid acquisitions and qualities, and its
hatred of everything showy and false: so general is this really
fraudulent desire amongst the youth of this now '_speculating_' nation,
that thousands upon thousands of them are, at this moment, in a state of
half starvation, not so much because they are too _lazy_ to earn their
bread, as because they are too _proud_! And what are the _consequences_?
Such a youth remains or becomes a burden to his parents, of whom he
ought to be the comfort, if not the support. Always aspiring to
something higher than he can reach, his life is a life of disappointment
and of shame. If marriage _befal_ him, it is a real affliction,
involving others as well as himself. His lot is a thousand times worse
than that of the common labouring pauper. Nineteen times out of twenty a
premature death awaits him: and, alas! how numerous are the cases in
which that death is most miserable, not to say ignominious! _Stupid
pride_ is one of the symptoms of _madness_. Of the two madmen mentioned
in Don Quixote, one thought himself NEPTUNE, and the other JUPITER.
Shakspeare agrees with CERVANTES; for, Mad Tom, in King Lear, being
asked who he is, answers, 'I am a _tailor_ run mad with _pride_.' How
many have we heard of, who claimed relationship with _noblemen_ and
_kings_; while of not a few each has thought himself the Son of God! To
the public journals, and to the observations of every one, nay, to the
'_county-lunatic asylums_' (things never heard of in England till now),
I appeal for the fact of the vast and hideous _increase of madness in
this country_; and, within these very few years, how many scores of
young men, who, if their minds had been unperverted by the gambling
principles of the day, had a probably long and happy life before them;
who had talent, personal endowments, love of parents, love of friends,
admiration of large circles; who had, in short, everything to make life
desirable, and who, from mortified pride, founded on false pretensions,
_have put an end to their own existence_!
24. As to DRUNKENNESS and GLUTTONY, generally so called, these are vices
so nasty and beastly that I deem any one capable of indulging in them to
be wholly unworthy of my advice; and, if any youth unhappily initiated
in these odious and debasing vices should happen to read what I am now
writing, I refer him to the command of God, conveyed to the Israelites
by Moses, in Deuteronomy, chap. xxi. The father and mother are to take
the bad son 'and bring him to the elders of the city; and they shall say
to the elders, This our son will not obey our voice: he is a _glutton_
and a _drunkard_. And all the men of the city shall stone him with
stones, that he die.' I refer downright beastly gluttons and drunkards
to this; but indulgence short, _far short_, of this gross and really
nasty drunkenness and gluttony is to be deprecated, and that, too, with
the more earnestness because it is too often looked upon as being no
crime at all, and as having nothing blameable in it; nay, there are many
persons who _pride_ themselves on their refined taste in matters
connected with eating and drinking: so far from being ashamed of
employing their thoughts on the subject, it is their boast that they do
it. St. Gregory, one of the Christian fathers, says: 'It is not the
_quantity_ or the _quality_ of the meat, or drink, but the _love of it_
that is condemned;' that is to say, the indulgence beyond the absolute
demands of nature; the hankering after it; the neglect of some duty or
other for the sake of the enjoyments of the table.
25. This _love_ of what are called 'good eating and drinking,' if very
unamiable in grown-up persons, is perfectly hateful in _a youth_; and,
if he indulge in the propensity, he is already half ruined. To warn you
against acts of fraud, robbery, and violence, is not my province; that
is the business of those who make and administer _the law_. I am not
talking to you against acts which the jailor and the hangman punish; nor
against those moral offences which all men condemn; but against
indulgences, which, by men in general, are deemed not only harmless, but
meritorious; but which the observation of my whole life has taught me to
regard as destructive to human happiness, and against which all ought to
be cautioned even in their boyish days. I have been a great observer,
and I can truly say, that I have never known a man, 'fond of good eating
and drinking,' as it is called; that I have never known such a man (and
hundreds I have known) who was worthy of respect.
26. Such indulgences are, in the first place, very _expensive_. The
materials are costly, and the preparations still more so. What a
monstrous thing, that, in order to satisfy the appetite of a man, there
must be a person or two _at work every day_! More fuel, culinary
implements, kitchen-room; what! all these merely to tickle the palate of
four or five people, and especially people who can hardly pay their way!
And, then, the _loss of time_: the time spent in pleasing the palate: it
is truly horrible to behold people who ought to be at work, sitting, at
the three meals, not less than three of the about fourteen hours that
they are out of their beds! A youth, habituated to this sort of
indulgence, cannot be valuable to any employer. Such a youth cannot be
deprived of his table-enjoyments on any account: his eating and drinking
form the momentous concern of his life: if business interfere with that,
the business must give way. A young man, some years ago, offered himself
to me, on a particular occasion, as an _amanuensis_, for which he
appeared to be perfectly qualified. The terms were settled, and I, who
wanted the job dispatched, requested him to sit down, and begin; but he,
looking out of the window, whence he could see the church clock, said,
somewhat hastily, 'I _cannot_ stop _now_, sir, I must go to _dinner_.'
'Oh!' said I, 'you _must_ go to dinner, must you! Let the dinner, which
you _must_ wait upon to-day, have your constant services, then: for you
and I shall never agree.' He had told me that he was in _great distress_
for want of employment; and yet, when relief was there before his eyes,
he could forego it for the sake of getting at his eating and drinking
three or four hours, perhaps, sooner than I should have thought it right
for him to leave off work. Such a person cannot be sent from home,
except at certain times; he _must_ be near the kitchen at three fixed
hours of the day; if he be absent more than four or five hours, he is
ill-treated. In short, a youth thus pampered is worth nothing as a
person to be employed in business.
27. And, as to _friends_ and _acquaintances_; they will _say_ nothing to
you; they will _offer_ you indulgences under their roofs; but the more
ready you are to accept of their offers, and, in fact, the better
_taste_ you discover, the less they will like you, and the sooner they
will find means of shaking you off; for, besides the _cost_ which you
occasion them, people do not like to have _critics_ sitting in judgment
on their bottles and dishes. _Water-drinkers_ are universally _laughed
at_; but, it has always seemed to me, that they are amongst the most
welcome of guests, and that, too, though the host be by no means of a
niggardly turn. The truth is, they give _no trouble_; they occasion _no
anxiety_ to please them; they are sure not to make their sittings
_inconveniently long_; and, which is the great thing of all, their
example teaches _moderation_ to the rest of the company. Your notorious
'lovers of good cheer' are, on the contrary, not to be invited without
_due reflection_: to entertain one of them is a serious business; and as
people are not apt voluntarily to undertake such pieces of business, the
well-known 'lovers of good eating and drinking' are left, very
generally, to enjoy it by themselves and at their own expense.
28. But, all other considerations aside, _health_, the most valuable of
all earthly possessions, and without which all the rest are worth
nothing, bids us, not only to refrain from _excess_ in eating and
drinking, but bids us to stop short of what might be indulged in without
any apparent impropriety. The words of ECCLESIASTICUS ought to be read
once a week by every young person in the world, and particularly by the
young people of this country at this time. 'Eat modestly that which is
set before thee, and _devour_ not, lest thou be _hated_. When thou
sittest amongst many, reach not thine hand out first of all. _How little
is sufficient for man well taught! A wholesome sleep_ cometh of a
temperate belly. Such a man _riseth up in the morning_, and is _well at
ease with himself_. Be not too hasty of meats; for excess of meats
bringeth sickness, and choleric disease cometh of gluttony. By surfeit
have many perished, and he that _dieteth himself prolongeth his life_.
Show not thy valiantness in wine; for wine hath destroyed many. Wine
measurably taken, and in season, bringeth gladness and cheerfulness of
mind; but drinking with excess maketh bitterness of mind, brawlings and
scoldings.' How true are these words! How well worthy of a constant
place in our memories! Yet, what pains have been taken to apologise for
a life contrary to these precepts! And, good God! what punishment can be
too great, what mark of infamy sufficiently signal, for those pernicious
villains of talent, who have employed that talent in the composition of
_Bacchanalian songs_; that is to say, pieces of fine and captivating
writing in praise of one of the most odious and destructive vices in the
black catalogue of human depravity!
29. In the passage which I have just quoted from chap. xxxi. of
ECCLESIASTICUS, it is said, that 'wine, _measurably_ taken, and in
_season_,' is a _proper thing_. This, and other such passages of the Old
Testament, have given a handle to drunkards, and to extravagant people,
to insist, that _God intended_ that _wine_ should be _commonly_ drunk.
No doubt of that. But, then, he could intend this only _in countries in
which he had given wine_, and to which he had given no cheaper drink
except _water_. If it be said, as it truly may, that, by the means of
the _sea_ and the _winds_, he has given wine to all _countries_, I
answer that this gift is of no use to us _now_, because our government
steps in between the sea and the winds and us. _Formerly_, indeed, the
case was different; and, here I am about to give you, incidentally, a
piece of _historical knowledge_, which you will not have acquired from
HUME, GOLDSMITH, or any other of the romancers called historians. Before
that unfortunate event, the _Protestant Reformation_, as it is called,
took place, the price of RED WINE, in England, was _fourpence a gallon_,
Winchester measure; and of WHITE WINE, _sixpence a gallon_. At the same
time the pay of a labouring man per day, as fixed by law, was
_fourpence_. Now, when a labouring man could earn _four quarts of good
wine in a day_, it was, doubtless, allowable, even in England, for
people in the middle rank of life to drink wine _rather commonly_; and,
therefore, in those happy days of England, these passages of Scripture
were applicable enough. But, _now_, when we have got a _Protestant_
government, which by the taxes which it makes people pay to it, causes
the _eighth part of a gallon_ of wine to cost more than the pay of a
labouring man for a day; _now_, this passage of Scripture is not
applicable to us. There is no '_season_' in which we can take wine
without ruining ourselves, however '_measurably_' we may take it; and I
beg you to regard, as perverters of Scripture and as seducers of youth,
all those who cite passages like that above cited, in justification of,
or as an apology for, the practice of wine-drinking in England.
30. I beseech you to look again and again at, and to remember every word
of, the passage which I have just quoted from the book of
ECCLESIASTICUS. How completely have been, and are, its words verified by
my experience and in my person! How little of eating and drinking is
sufficient for me! How wholesome is my sleep! How early do I rise; and
how '_well at ease_' am I 'with myself!' I should not have deserved such
blessings, if I had withheld from my neighbours a knowledge of the means
by which they were obtained; and, therefore, this knowledge I have been
in the constant habit of communicating. When one _gives a dinner to a
company_, it is an extraordinary affair, and is intended, by sensible
men, for purposes other than those of eating and drinking. But, in
_general_, in the every-day life, despicable are those who suffer any
part of their happiness to depend upon what they have to eat or to
drink, provided they have _a sufficiency of wholesome food_; despicable
is the _man_, and worse than despicable the _youth_, that would make any
sacrifice, however small, whether of money or of time, or of anything
else, in order to secure a dinner different from that which he would
have had without such sacrifice. Who, what man, ever performed a greater
quantity of labour than I have performed? What man ever did so much?
Now, in a great measure, I owe my capability to perform this labour to
my disregard of dainties. Being shut up two years in Newgate, with a
fine on my head of a thousand pounds to the king, for having expressed
my indignation at the flogging of Englishmen under a guard of German
bayonets, I ate, during one whole year, one mutton chop every day. Being
once in town, with one son (then a little boy) and a clerk, while my
family was in the country, I had during some weeks nothing but legs of
mutton; first day, leg of mutton boiled or _roasted_; second, _cold_;
third, _hashed_; then, leg of mutton _boiled_; and so on. When I have
been by myself, or nearly so, I have _always_ proceeded thus: given
directions for having _every day the same thing_, or alternately as
above, and every day exactly at the same hour, so as to prevent the
necessity of any _talk_ about the matter. I am certain that, upon an
average, I have not, during my life, spent more than _thirty-five
minutes a day at table_, including all the meals of the day. I like, and
I take care to have, good and clean victuals; but, if wholesome and
clean, that is enough. If I find it, by chance, _too coarse_ for my
appetite, I put the food aside, or let somebody do it, and leave the
appetite to gather keenness. But the great security of all is, to eat
_little_, and to drink nothing that _intoxicates_. He that eats till he
is _full_ is little better than a beast; and he that drinks till he is
_drunk_ is quite a beast.
31. Before I dismiss this affair of eating and drinking, let me beseech
you to resolve to free yourselves from the slavery of the _tea_ and
_coffee_ and other _slop-kettle_, if, unhappily, you have been bred up
in such slavery. Experience has taught me, that those slops are
_injurious to health_: until I left them off (having taken to them at
the age of 26), even my habits of sobriety, moderate eating, early
rising; even these were not, until I left off the slops, sufficient to
give me that complete health which I have since had. I pretend not to be
a 'doctor;' but, I assert, that to pour regularly, every day, a pint or
two of _warm liquid matter_ down the throat, whether under the name of
tea, coffee, soup, grog, or whatever else, is greatly injurious to
health. However, at present, what I have to represent to _you is the
great deduction, which the use of these slops makes, from your power of
being useful_, and also from your _power to husband your income_,
whatever it may be, and from whatever source arising. I am to suppose
you to be desirous to become a clever and a useful man; a man to be, if
not admired and revered, at least to be _respected_. In order to merit
respect beyond that which is due to very common men, you must do
something more than very common men; and I am now going to show you how
your course _must be impeded_ by the use of the _slops_.
32. If the women exclaim, 'Nonsense! come and take a cup,' take it for
that once; but hear what I have to say. In answer to my representation
regarding the _waste of time_ which is occasioned by the slops, it has
been said, that let what may be the nature of the food, there must _be
time_ for taking it. Not _so much_ time, however, to eat a bit of meat
or cheese or butter with a bit of bread. But, these may be eaten in a
shop, a warehouse, a factory, far from any _fire_, and even in a
carriage on the road. The slops absolutely demand _fire_ and a
_congregation_; so that, be your business what it may; be you
shopkeeper, farmer, drover, sportsman, traveller, to the _slop-board_
you must come; you must wait for its assembling, or start from home
without your breakfast; and, being used to the warm liquid, you feel out
of order for the want of it. If the slops were in fashion amongst
ploughmen and carters, we must all be starved; for the food could never
be raised. The mechanics are half-ruined by them. Many of them are
become poor, enervated creatures; and chiefly from this cause. But is
the positive _cost_ nothing? At boarding-schools an _additional price is
given_ on account of the tea slops. Suppose you to be a clerk, in hired
lodgings, and going to your counting-house at nine o'clock. You get your
dinner, perhaps, near to the scene of your work; but how are you to have
the _breakfast slops_ without _a servant_? Perhaps you find a lodging
just to suit you, but the house is occupied by people who keep no
_servants_, and you want a servant to _light a fire_ and get the slop
ready. You could get this lodging for several shillings a week less than
another at the next door; but _there_ they keep a servant, who will
'_get_ you your breakfast,' and preserve you, benevolent creature as she
is, from the cruel necessity of going to the cupboard and cutting off a
slice of meat or cheese and a bit of bread. She will, most likely, toast
your bread for you too, and melt your butter; and then muffle you up, in
winter, and send you out almost swaddled. Really such a thing can hardly
be expected ever to become a _man_. You are weak; you have delicate
health; you are '_bilious_!' Why, my good fellow, it is these very slops
that make you weak and bilious; And, indeed, the _poverty_, the real
poverty, that they and their concomitants bring on you, greatly assists,
in more ways than one, in producing your 'delicate health.'
33. So much for indulgences in eating, drinking, and dress. Next, as to
_amusements_. It is recorded of the famous ALFRED, that he devoted eight
hours of the twenty-four to _labour_, eight to _rest_, and eight to
_recreation_. He was, however, _a king_, and could be _thinking_ during
the eight hours of recreation. It is certain, that there ought to be
hours of recreation, and I do not know that eight are too many; but,
then observe, those hours ought to be _well-chosen_, and the _sort_ of
recreation ought to be attended to. It ought to be such as is at once
innocent in itself and in its tendency, and not injurious to health. The
sports of the field are the best of all, because they are conducive to
health, because they are enjoyed by _day-light_, and because they demand
early rising. The nearer that other amusements approach to these, the
better they are. A town-life, which many persons are compelled, by the
nature of their calling, to lead, precludes the possibility of pursuing
amusements of this description to any very considerable extent; and
young men in towns are, generally speaking, compelled to choose between
_books_ on the one hand, or _gaming_ and the _play-house_ on the other.
_Dancing_ is at once rational and healthful: it gives animal spirits: it
is the natural amusement of young people, and such it has been from the
days of Moses: it is enjoyed in numerous companies: it makes the parties
to be pleased with themselves and with all about them; it has no
tendency to excite base and malignant feelings; and none but the most
grovelling and hateful tyranny, or the most stupid and despicable
fanaticism, ever raised its voice against it. The bad modern habits of
England have created one inconvenience attending the enjoyment of this
healthy and innocent pastime, namely, _late hours_, which are at once
injurious to health and destructive of order and of industry. In other
countries people dance by _day-light_. Here they do not; and, therefore,
you must, in this respect, submit to the custom, though not without
robbing the dancing night of as many hours as you can.
34. As to GAMING, it is always _criminal_, either in itself, or in its
tendency. The basis of it is covetousness; a desire to take from others
something, for which you have given, and intend to give, no equivalent.
No gambler was ever yet a happy man, and very few gamblers have escaped
being miserable; and, observe, to _game for nothing_ is still gaming,
and naturally leads to gaming for something. It is sacrificing time, and
that, too, for the worst of purposes. I have kept house for nearly forty
years; I have reared a family; I have entertained as many friends as
most people; and I have never had cards, dice, a chess-board, nor any
implement of gaming, under my roof. The hours that young men spend in
this way are hours _murdered_; precious hours, that ought to be spent
either in reading or in writing, or in rest, preparatory to the duties
of the dawn. Though I do not agree with the base and nauseous
flatterers, who now declare the army to be _the best school for
statesmen_, it is certainly a school in which to learn experimentally
many useful lessons; and, in this school I learned, that men, fond of
gaming, are very rarely, if ever, trust-worthy. I have known many a
clever man rejected in the way of promotion only because he was addicted
to gaming. Men, in that state of life, cannot _ruin_ themselves by
gaming, for they possess no fortune, nor money; but the taste for gaming
is always regarded as an indication of a radically bad disposition; and
I can truly say, that I never in my whole life knew a man, fond of
gaming, who was not, in some way or other, a person unworthy of
confidence. This vice creeps on by very slow degrees, till, at last, it
becomes an ungovernable passion, swallowing up every good and kind
feeling of the heart. The gambler, as pourtrayed by REGNARD, in a comedy
the translation of which into English resembles the original much about
as nearly as Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S plagiarisms resembled the Registers on
which they had been committed, is a fine instance of the contempt and
scorn to which gaming at last reduces its votaries; but, if any young
man be engaged in this fatal career, and be not yet wholly lost, let him
behold HOGARTH'S gambler just when he has made his _last throw_ and when
disappointment has bereft him of his senses. If after this sight he
remain obdurate, he is doomed to be a disgrace to his name.
35. The _Theatre may be_ a source not only of amusement but also of
instruction; but, as things now are in this country, what, that is not
bad, is to be learned in this school? In the first place not a word is
allowed to be uttered on the stage, which has not been previously
approved of by the Lord Chamberlain; that is to say, by a person
appointed by the Ministry, who, at his pleasure, allows, or disallows,
of any piece, or any words in a piece, submitted to his inspection. In
short, those who go to play-houses _pay their money to hear uttered such
words as the government approve of, and no others_. It is now just
twenty-six years since I first well understood how this matter was
managed; and, from that moment to this, I have never been in an English
play-house. Besides this, the meanness, the abject servility, of the
players, and the slavish conduct of the audience, are sufficient to
corrupt and debase the heart of any young man who is a frequent beholder
of them. Homage is here paid to every one clothed with power, be he who
or what he may; real virtue and public-spirit are subjects of ridicule;
and mock-sentiment and mock-liberality and mock-loyalty are applauded to
the skies.
36. 'Show me a man's _companions_' says the proverb, 'and I will tell
you _what the man_ is;' and this is, and must be true; because all men
seek the society of those who think and act somewhat like themselves:
sober men will not associate with drunkards, frugal men will not like
spendthrifts, and the orderly and decent shun the noisy, the disorderly,
and the debauched. It is for the very vulgar to herd together as
singers, ringers, and smokers; but, there is a class rather higher still
more blamable; I mean the tavern-haunters, the gay companions, who herd
together to do little but _talk_, and who are so fond of talk that they
go from home to get at it. The conversation amongst such persons has
nothing of instruction in it, and is generally of a vicious tendency.
Young people naturally and commendably seek the society of those of
their own age; but, be careful in choosing your companions; and lay this
down as a rule never to be departed from, that no youth, nor man, ought
to be called your _friend_, who is addicted to _indecent talk_, or who
is fond of the _society of prostitutes_. Either of these argues a
depraved taste, and even a depraved heart; an absence of all principle
and of all trust-worthiness; and, I have remarked it all my life long,
that young men, addicted to these vices, never succeed in the end,
whatever advantages they may have, whether in fortune or in talent. Fond
mothers and fathers are but too apt to be over-lenient to such
offenders; and, as long as youth lasts and fortune smiles, the
punishment is deferred; but, it comes at last; it is sure to come; and
the gay and dissolute youth is a dejected and miserable man. After the
early part of a life spent in illicit indulgences, a man is _unworthy_
of being the husband of a virtuous woman; and, if he have anything like
justice in him, how is he to reprove, in his children, vices in which he
himself so long indulged? These vices of youth are varnished over by the
saying, that there must be time for 'sowing the _wild oats_,' and that
'_wildest colts_ make the _best horses_.' These figurative oats are,
however, generally like the literal ones; they are _never to be
eradicated from the soil_; and as to the _colts_, wildness in them is an
indication of _high animal spirit_, having nothing at all to do with the
_mind_, which is invariably debilitated and debased by profligate
indulgences. Yet this miserable piece of sophistry, the offspring of
parental weakness, is in constant use, to the incalculable injury of the
rising generation. What so amiable as a steady, trust-worthy boy? He is
of _real use_ at an early age: he can be trusted far out of the sight of
parent or employer, while the 'pickle,' as the poor fond parents call
the profligate, is a great deal worse than useless, because there must
be some one to see that he does no harm. If you have to choose, choose
companions of _your own rank in life_ as nearly as may be; but, at any
rate, none to whom you acknowledge _inferiority_; for, slavery is too
soon learned; and, if the mind be bowed down in the youth, it will
seldom rise up in the man. In the schools of those best of teachers the
JESUITS, there is perfect equality as to rank in life: the boy, who
enters there, leaves all family pride behind him: intrinsic merit alone
is the standard of preference; and the masters are so scrupulous upon
this head, that they do not suffer one scholar, of whatever rank, to
have more money to spend than the poorest. These wise men know well the
mischiefs that must arise from inequality of pecuniary means amongst
their scholars: they know how injurious it would be to learning, if
deference were, by the learned, paid to the dunce; and they, therefore,
take the most effectual means to prevent it. Hence, amongst other
causes, it is, that their scholars have, ever since the existence of
their Order, been the most celebrated for learning of any men in the
world.
37. In your _manners_ be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are
preferable to simpering and crawling. I wish every English youth could
see those of the United States of America; always _civil_, never
_servile_. Be _obedient_, where obedience is due; for, it is no act of
meanness, and no indication of want of spirit, to yield implicit and
ready obedience to those who have a right to demand it at your hands. In
this respect England has been, and I hope always will be, an example to
the whole world. To this habit of willing and prompt obedience in
apprentices, in servants, in all inferiors in station, she owes, in a
great measure, her multitudes of matchless merchants, tradesmen, and
workmen of every description, and also the achievements of her armies
and navies. It is no disgrace, but the contrary, to obey, cheerfully,
lawful and just commands. None are so saucy and disobedient as slaves;
and, when you come to read history, you will find that in proportion as
nations have been _free_ has been their reverence for the laws. But,
there is a wide difference between lawful and cheerful obedience and
that servility which represents people as laying petitions 'at the
_king's feet_,' which makes us imagine that we behold the supplicants
actually crawling upon their bellies. There is something so abject in
this expression; there is such horrible self-abasement in it, that I do
hope that every youth, who shall read this, will hold in detestation the
reptiles who make use of it. In all other countries, the lowest
individual can put a petition into the _hands_ of the chief magistrate,
be he king or emperor: let us hope, that the time will yet come when
Englishmen will be able to do the same. In the meanwhile I beg you to
despise these worse than pagan parasites.
38. Hitherto I have addressed you chiefly relative to the things to be
_avoided_: let me now turn to the things which you ought _to do_. And,
first of all, the _husbanding of your time_. The respect that you will
receive, the real and _sincere respect_, will depend entirely on what
you are able _to do_. If you be rich, you may purchase what is called
respect; but it is not worth having. To obtain respect worth possessing,
you must, as I observed before, do more than the common run of men in
your state of life; and, to be enabled to do this, you must manage well
_your time_: and, to manage it well, you must have as much of the
_day-light_ and as little of the _candle-light_ as is consistent with
the due discharge of your duties. When people get into the habit of
sitting up _merely for the purpose of talking_, it is no easy matter to
break themselves of it: and if they do not go to bed early, they cannot
rise early. Young people require more sleep than those that are grown
up: there must be the number of hours, and that number cannot well be,
on an average, less than _eight_: and, if it be more in winter time, it
is all the better; for, an hour in bed is better than an hour spent over
fire and candle in an idle gossip. People never should sit talking till
they do not know what to talk about. It is said by the country-people,
that one hour's sleep before midnight is worth more than two are worth
after midnight, and this I believe to be a fact; but it is useless to go
to bed early and even to rise early, if the time be not well employed
after rising. In general, half the morning is _loitered_ away, the party
being in a sort of half-dressed half-naked state; out of bed, indeed,
but still in a sort of bedding. Those who first invented _morning-gowns_
and _slippers_ could have very little else to do. These things are very
suitable to those who have had fortunes gained for them by others; very
suitable to those who have nothing to do, and who merely live for the
purpose of assisting to consume the produce of the earth; but he who has
his bread to earn, or who means to be worthy of respect on account of
his labours, has no business with morning gown and slippers. In short,
be your business or calling what it may, _dress at once for the day_;
and learn to do it _as quickly_ as possible. A looking-glass is a piece
of furniture a great deal worse than useless. _Looking_ at the face will
not alter its shape or its colour; and, perhaps, of all wasted time;
none is so foolishly wasted as that which is employed in surveying one's
own face. Nothing can be of _little_ importance, if one be compelled to
attend to it _every day of our lives_; if we _shaved_ but once a year,
or once a month, the execution of the thing would be hardly worth
naming: but this is a piece of work that must be done once every day;
and, as it may cost only about _five minutes_ of time, and may be, and
frequently is, made to cost _thirty_, or even _fifty minutes_; and, as
only fifteen minutes make about a fifty-eighth part of the hours of our
average day-light; this being the case, this is a matter of real
importance. I once heard SIR JOHN SINCLAIR ask Mr. COCHRANE JOHNSTONE,
whether he meaned to have a son of his (then a little boy) taught Latin.
'No,' said Mr. JOHNSTONE, 'but I mean to do something a great deal
better for him.' 'What is that?' said Sir John. 'Why,' said the other,
'teach him _to shave with cold water and without a glass_.' Which, I
dare say, he did; and for which benefit I am sure that son has had good
reason to be grateful. Only think of the inconvenience attending the
common practice! There must be _hot water_; to have this there must be
_a fire_, and, in some cases, a fire for that purpose alone; to have
these, there must be a _servant_, or you must light a fire yourself. For
the want of these, the job is put off until a later hour: this causes a
stripping and _another dressing bout_; or, you go in a slovenly state
all that day, and the next day the thing must be done, or cleanliness
must be abandoned altogether. If you be on a journey you must wait the
pleasure of the servants at the inn before you can dress and set out in
the morning; the pleasant time for travelling is gone before you can
move from the spot; instead of being at the end of your day's journey in
good time, you are benighted, and have to endure all the great
inconveniences attendant on tardy movements. And, all this, from the
apparently insignificant affair of shaving! How many a piece of
important business has failed from a short delay! And how many thousand
of such delays daily proceed from this unworthy cause! '_Toujours pret_'
was the motto of a famous French general; and pray let it be yours: be
'_always ready_;' and never, during your whole life, have to say, '_I
cannot go till I be shaved and dressed_.' Do the whole at once for the
day, whatever may be your state of life; and then you have a day
unbroken by those indispensable performances. Begin thus, in the days of
your youth, and, having felt the superiority which this practice will
give you over those in all other respects your equals, the practice will
stick by you to the end of your life. Till you be shaved and dressed for
the day, you cannot set steadily about any business; you know that you
must presently quit your labour to return to the dressing affair; you,
therefore, put it off until that be over; the interval, the precious
interval, is spent in lounging about; and, by the time that you are
ready for business, the best part of the day is gone.
39. Trifling as this matter appears upon _naming_ it, it is, in fact,
one of the great concerns of life; and, for my part, I can truly say,
that I owe more of my great labours to my strict adherence to the
precepts that I have here given you, than to all the natural abilities
with which I have been endowed; for these, whatever may have been their
amount, would have been of comparatively little use, even aided by great
sobriety and abstinence, if I had not, in early life, contracted the
blessed habit of husbanding well my time. To this, more than to any
other thing, I owed my very extraordinary promotion in the army. I was
_always ready_: if I had to mount guard at _ten_, I was ready at _nine_:
never did any man, or any thing, wait one moment for me. Being, at an
age _under twenty years_, raised from Corporal to Serjeant Major _at
once_, over the heads of thirty Serjeants, I naturally should have been
an object of envy and hatred; but this habit of early rising and of
rigid adherence to the precepts which I have given you, really subdued
these passions; because every one felt, that what I did he had never
done, and never could do. Before my promotion, a clerk was wanted to
make out the morning report of the regiment. I rendered the clerk
unnecessary; and, long before any other man was dressed for the parade,
my work for the morning was all done, and I myself was on the parade,
walking, in fine weather, for an hour perhaps. My custom was this: to
get up, in summer, at day-light, and in winter at four o'clock; shave,
dress, even to the putting of my sword-belt over my shoulder, and having
my sword lying on the table before me, ready to hang by my side. Then I
ate a bit of cheese, or pork, and bread. Then I prepared my report,
which was filled up as fast as the companies brought me in the
materials. After this I had an hour or two to read, before the time came
for any duty out of doors, unless when the regiment or part of it went
out to exercise in the morning. When this was the case, and the matter
was left to me, I always had it on the ground in such time as that the
bayonets glistened in the _rising sun_, a sight which gave me delight,
of which I often think, but which I should in vain endeavour to
describe. If the _officers_ were to go out, eight or ten o'clock was the
hour, sweating the men in the heat of the day, breaking in upon the time
for cooking their dinner, putting all things out of order and all men
out of humour. When I was commander, the men had a long day of leisure
before them: they could ramble into the town or into the woods; go to
get raspberries, to catch birds, to catch fish, or to pursue any other
recreation, and such of them as chose, and were qualified, to work at
their trades. So that here, arising solely from the early habits of one
very young man, were pleasant and happy days given to hundreds.
40. _Money_ is said to be _power_, which is, in some cases, true; and
the same may be said of _knowledge_; but superior _sobriety_, _industry_
and _activity_, are a still more certain source of power; for without
these, _knowledge_ is of little use; and, as to the power which _money_
gives, it is that of _brute force_, it is the power of the bludgeon and
the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue and pen. Superior sobriety,
industry, activity, though accompanied with but a moderate portion of
knowledge, command respect, because they have great and visible
influence. The drunken, the lazy, and the inert, stand abashed before
the sober and the active. Besides, all those whose interests are at
stake prefer, of necessity, those whose exertions produce the greatest
and most immediate and visible effect. Self-interest is no respecter of
persons: it asks, not who knows best what ought to be done, but who is
most likely to do it: we may, and often do, admire the talents of lazy,
and even dissipated men, but we do not trust them with the care of our
interests. If, therefore, you would have respect and influence in the
circle in which you move, be more sober, more industrious, more active
than the general run of those amongst whom you live.
41. As to EDUCATION, this word is now applied exclusively to things
which are taught in schools; but _education_ means _rearing up_, and the
French speak of the education of _pigs_ and _sheep_. In a very famous
French book on rural affairs, there is a Chapter entitled '_Education du
Cochon_,' that is, _education of the hog_. The word has the same meaning
in both languages; for both take it from the Latin. Neither is the word
LEARNING properly confined to things taught in schools, or by books;
for, _learning_ means _knowledge_; and, but a comparatively small part
of useful knowledge comes from books. Men are not to be called
_ignorant_ merely because they cannot make upon paper certain marks with
a pen, or because they do not know the meaning of such marks when made
by others. A ploughman may be very _learned_ in his line, though he does
not know what the letters _p. l. o. u. g. h_ mean when he sees them
combined upon paper. The first thing to be required of a man is, that he
understand well his own _calling_, or _profession_; and, be you in what
state of life you may, to acquire this knowledge ought to be your first
and greatest care. A man who has had a new-built house tumble down will
derive little more consolation from being told that the architect is a
great astronomer, than this distressed nation now derives from being
assured that its distresses arise from the measures of a long list of
the greatest orators and greatest heroes that the world ever beheld.
42. Nevertheless, book-learning is by no means to be despised; and it is
a thing which may be laudably sought after by persons in all states of
life. In those pursuits which are called _professions_, it is necessary,
and also in certain trades; and, in persons in the middle ranks of life,
a total absence of such learning is somewhat disgraceful. There is,
however, one danger to be carefully guarded against; namely, the opinion
that your genius, or your literary acquirements, are such as to warrant
you in disregarding the calling in which you are, and by which you gain
your bread. Parents must have an uncommon portion of solid sense to
counterbalance their natural affection sufficiently to make them
competent judges in such a case. Friends are partial; and those who are
not, you deem enemies. Stick, therefore, to _the shop; _rely upon your
mercantile or mechanical or professional calling; try your strength in
literature, if you like; but, _rely_ on the shop. If BLOOMFIELD, who
wrote a poem called the FARMER'S BOY, had placed no _reliance_ on the
faithless muses, his unfortunate and much-to-be-pitied family would, in
all probability, have not been in a state to solicit relief from
charity. I remember that this loyal shoemaker was flattered to the
skies, and (ominous sign, if he had understood it) feasted at the tables
of some of the great. Have, I beseech you, no hope of this sort; and, if
you find it creeping towards your heart, drive it instantly away as the
mortal foe of your independence and your peace.
43. With this precaution, however, book-learning is not only proper, but
highly commendable; and portions of it are absolutely necessary in every
case of trade or profession. One of these portions is distinct reading,
plain and neat writing, and _arithmetic_. The two former are mere
child's work; the latter not quite so easily acquired, but equally
indispensable, and of it you ought to have a thorough knowledge before
you attempt to study even the grammar of your own language. Arithmetic
is soon learned; it is not a thing that requires much natural talent; it
is not a thing that loads the memory or puzzles the mind; and it is a
thing of _every-day utility_. Therefore, this is, to a certain extent,
an absolute necessary; an indispensable acquisition. Every man is not to
be a _surveyor_ or an _actuary_; and, therefore, you may stop far short
of the knowledge, of this sort, which is demanded by these professions;
but, as far as common accounts and calculations go, you ought to be
perfect; and this you may make yourself, without any assistance from a
master, by bestowing upon this science, during six months, only one half
of the time that is, by persons of your age, usually wasted over the
tea-slops, or other kettle-slops, alone! If you become _fond_ of this
science, there may be a little danger of wasting your time on it. When,
therefore, you have got as much of it as your business or profession can
possibly render necessary, turn the time to some other purpose. As to
_books_, on this subject, they are in everybody's hand; but, there is
_one book_ on the subject of calculations, which I must point out to
you; 'THE CAMBIST,' by Dr. KELLY. This is a bad title, because, to men
in general, it gives no idea of what the book treats of. It is a book
which shows the value of the several pieces of money of one country when
stated in the money of another country. For instance, it tells us what a
Spanish Dollar, a Dutch Dollar, a French Frank, and so on, is worth in
English money. It does the same with regard to _weights_ and _measures_:
and it extends its information to _all the countries in the world_. It
is a work of rare merit; and every youth, be his state of life what it
may, if it permit him to pursue book-learning of any sort, and
particularly if he be destined, or at all likely to meddle with
commercial matters, ought, as soon as convenient, to possess this
valuable and instructive book.
44. The next thing is the GRAMMAR of your own language. Without
understanding this, you can never hope to become fit for anything beyond
mere trade or agriculture. It is true, that we do (God knows!) but too
often see men have great wealth, high titles, and boundless power heaped
upon them, who can hardly write ten lines together correctly; but,
remember, it is not _merit_ that has been the cause of their
advancement; the cause has been, in almost every such case, the
subserviency of the party to the will of some government, and the
baseness of some nation who have quietly submitted to be governed by
brazen fools. Do not you imagine, that you will have luck of this sort:
do not you hope to be rewarded and honoured for that ignorance which
shall prove a scourge to your country, and which will earn you the
curses of the children yet unborn. Rely you upon your merit, and upon
nothing else. Without a knowledge of grammar, it is impossible for you
to write correctly, and it is by mere accident if you speak correctly;
and, pray bear in mind, that all well-informed persons judge of a man's
mind (until they have other means of judging) by his writing or
speaking. The labour necessary to acquire this knowledge is, indeed, not
trifling: grammar is not, like arithmetic, a science consisting of
several distinct departments, some of which may be dispensed with: it is
a whole, and the whole must be learned, or no part is learned. The
subject is abstruse: it demands much reflection and much patience: but,
when once the task is performed, it is performed _for life_, and in
every day of that life it will be found to be, in a greater or less
degree, a source of pleasure or of profit or of both together. And, what
is the labour? It consists of no bodily exertion; it exposes the student
to no cold, no hunger, no suffering of any sort. The study need subtract
from the hours of no business, nor, indeed, from the hours of necessary
exercise: the hours usually spent on the tea and coffee slops and in the
mere gossip which accompany them; those wasted hours of only _one year_,
employed in the study of English grammar, would make you a correct
speaker and writer for the rest of your life. You want no school, no
room to study in, no expenses, and no troublesome circumstances of any
sort. I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of
sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my
seat to study in; my knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board, lying on
my lap, was my writing-table; and the task did not demand any thing like
a year of my life. I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in
winter-time it was rarely that I could get any evening-light but that of
_the fire_, and only my _turn_ even of that. And if I, under such
circumstances, and without parent or friend to advise or encourage me,
accomplished this undertaking, what excuse can there be for _any youth_,
however poor, however pressed with business, or however circumstanced as
to room or other conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was
compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of
half-starvation; I had no moment of time that I could call my own; and I
had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing,
whistling and brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless
of men, and that too in the hours of their freedom from all control.
Think not lightly of the _farthing_ that I had to give, now and then,
for ink, pen, or paper! That farthing was, alas! a _great sum_ to me! I
was as tall as I am now; I had great health and great exercise. The
whole of the money, not expended for us at market, was _two-pence a
week_ for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion
I, after all absolutely necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, made shift
to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of
a _red-herring_ in the morning; but, when I pulled off my clothes at
night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that
I had _lost my halfpenny_! I buried my head under the miserable sheet
and rug, and cried like a child! And, again I say, if I, under
circumstances like these, could encounter and overcome this task, is
there, can there be, in the whole world, a youth to find an excuse for
the non-performance? What youth, who shall read this, will not be
ashamed to say, that he is not able to find time and opportunity for
this most essential of all the branches of book-learning?
45. I press this matter with such earnestness, because a knowledge of
grammar is the foundation of all literature; and because without this
knowledge opportunities for writing and speaking are only occasions for
men to display their unfitness to write and speak. How many false
pretenders to erudition, have I exposed to shame merely by my knowledge
of grammar! How many of the insolent and ignorant great and powerful
have I pulled down and made little and despicable! And, with what ease
have I conveyed upon numerous important subjects, information and
instruction to millions now alive, and provided a store of both for
millions yet unborn! As to the course to be pursued in this great
undertaking, it is, first, to read the grammar from the first word to
the last, very attentively, several times over; then, to copy the whole
of it very correctly and neatly; and then to study the Chapters one by
one. And what do this reading and writing require as to time? Both
together not more than the tea-slops and their gossips for _three
months_! There are about three hundred pages in my English Grammar. Four
of those little pages in a day, which is a mere trifle of work, do the
thing in _three months_. Two hours a day are quite sufficient for the
purpose; and these may, in any _town_ that I have ever known, or in any
village, be taken from that part of the morning during which the main
part of the people are in bed. I do not like the evening-candle-light
work: it wears the eyes much more than the same sort of light in the
morning, because then the faculties are in vigour and wholly
unexhausted. But for this purpose there is sufficient of that day-light
which is usually wasted; usually gossipped or lounged away; or spent in
some other manner productive of no pleasure, and generally producing
pain in the end. It is very becoming in all persons, and particularly in
the young, to be civil, and even polite: but it becomes neither young
nor old to have an everlasting simper on their faces, and their bodies
sawing in an everlasting bow: and, how many youths have I seen who, if
they had spent, in the learning of grammar, a tenth part of the time
that they have consumed in earning merited contempt for their affected
gentility, would have laid the foundation of sincere respect towards
them for the whole of their lives!
46. _Perseverance_ is a prime quality in every pursuit, and particularly
in this. Yours is, too, the time of life to acquire this inestimable
habit. Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of
talent and of good disposition: as the race was not to the hare but to
the tortoise, so the meed of success in study is to him who is not in
haste, but to him who proceeds with a steady and even step. It is not to
a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to
ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient
perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of
high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the
subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the _great
end_ be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of
the _ample reward_, indifference begins, that is followed by weariness,
and disgust and despair close the book. To guard against this result be
not in _haste_; keep _steadily on_; and, when you find weariness
approaching, rouse yourself, and remember, that if you give up, all that
you have done has been done in vain. This is a matter of great moment;
for out of every ten, who undertake this task, there are, perhaps, nine
who abandon it in despair; and this, too, merely for the want of
resolution to overcome the first approaches of weariness. The most
effectual means of security against this mortifying result is to lay
down a rule to write or to read a certain fixed quantity _every day_,
Sunday excepted. Our minds are not always in the same state; they have
not, at all times, the same elasticity; to-day we are full of hope on
the very same grounds which, to-morrow, afford us no hope at all: every
human being is liable to those flows and ebbs of the mind; but, if
reason interfere, and bid you _overcome the fits of lassitude_, and
almost mechanically to go on without the stimulus of hope, the buoyant
fit speedily returns; you congratulate yourself that you did not yield
to the temptation to abandon your pursuit, and you proceed with more
vigour than ever. Five or six triumphs over temptation to indolence or
despair lay the foundation of certain success; and, what is of still
more importance, fix in you the _habit of perseverance_.
47. If I have bestowed a large portion of my space on this topic, it has
been because I know, from experience as well as from observation, that
it is of more importance than all the other branches of book-learning
put together. It gives you, when you possess it thoroughly, a real and
practical superiority over the far greater part of men. How often did I
experience this even long before I became what is called an author! The
_Adjutant_, under whom it was my duty to act when I was a Serjeant
Major, was, as almost all military officers are, or at least _were_, a
very illiterate man, perceiving that every sentence of mine was in the
same form and manner as sentences in _print_, became shy of letting me
see pieces of _his_ writing. The writing of _orders_, and other things,
therefore, fell to me; and thus, though no nominal addition was made to
my pay, and no nominal addition to my authority, I acquired the latter
as effectually as if a law had been passed to confer it upon me. In
short, I owe to the possession of this branch of knowledge everything
that has enabled me to do so many things that very few other men have
done, and that now gives me a degree of influence, such as is possessed
by few others, in the most weighty concerns of the country. The
possession of this branch of knowledge raises you in your own esteem,
gives just confidence in yourself, and prevents you from being the
willing slave of the rich and the titled part of the community. It
enables you to discover that riches and titles do not confer merit; you
think comparatively little of them; and, as far as relates to you, at
any rate, their insolence is innoxious.
48. Hoping that I have said enough to induce you to set resolutely about
the study of _grammar_, I might here leave the subject of _learning_;
arithmetic and grammar, both _well learned_, being as much as I could
wish in a mere youth. But these need not occupy the whole of your spare
time; and, there are other branches of learning which ought immediately
to follow. If your own calling or profession require book-study, books
treating of that are to be preferred to all others; for, the first
thing, the first object in life, is to secure the honest means of
obtaining sustenance, raiment, and a state of being suitable to your
rank, be that rank what it may: excellence in your own calling is,
therefore, the first thing to be aimed at. After this may come _general
knowledge_, and of this, the first is a thorough knowledge of _your own
country_; for, how ridiculous is it to see an English youth engaged in
reading about the customs of the Chinese or of the Hindoos, while he is
content to be totally ignorant of those of Kent or of Cornwall! Well
employed he must be in ascertaining how Greece was divided and how the
Romans parcelled out their territory, while he knows not, and apparently
does not want to know, how England came to be divided into counties,
hundreds, parishes and tithings.
49. GEOGRAPHY naturally follows Grammar; and you should begin with that
of this kingdom, which you ought to understand well, perfectly well,
before you venture to look abroad. A rather slight knowledge of the
divisions and customs of other countries is, generally speaking,
sufficient; but, not to know these full well, as far as relates to our
own country, is, in one who pretends to be a gentleman or a scholar,
somewhat disgraceful. Yet how many men are there, and those called
_gentlemen_ too, who seem to think that counties and parishes, and
churches and parsons, and tithes and glebes, and manors and courts-leet,
and paupers and poor-houses, all grew up in England, or dropped down
upon it, immediately after Noah's flood! Surely, it is necessary for
every man, having any pretensions to scholarship, to know _how these
things came_; and, the sooner this knowledge is acquired the better;
for, until it be acquired, you read the _history_ of your country in
vain. Indeed, to communicate this knowledge is one main part of the
business of history; but it is a part which no historian, commonly so
called, has, that I know of, ever yet performed, except, in part,
myself, in the History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION. I had read HUME'S
History of England, and the Continuation by SMOLLETT; but, in 1802, when
I wanted to write on the subject of the _non-residence of the clergy_, I
found, to my great mortification, that I knew nothing of the foundation
of the office and the claims of the parsons, and that I could not even
guess at the _origin of parishes_. This gave a new turn to my inquiries;
and I soon found the romancers, called historians, had given me no
information that I could rely on, and, besides, had done, apparently,
all they could to keep me in the dark.
50. When you come to HISTORY, begin also with that _of your own
country_; and here it is my bounden duty to put you _well on your
guard_; for in this respect we are _peculiarly_ unfortunate, and for the
following reasons, to which I beg you to attend. Three _hundred years
ago_, the religion of England had been, during _nine hundred years_, the
Catholic religion: the Catholic clergy possessed about a third part of
all the lands and houses, which they held _in trust_ for their own
support, for the _building and repairing of churches_, and for the
relief of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; but, at the
time just mentioned, the king and the aristocracy changed the religion
to _Protestant_, took the estates of the church and the poor _to
themselves as their own property_, and _taxed the people at large_ for
the building and repairing of churches and for the relief of the poor.
This great and terrible change, effected partly by force against the
people and partly by the most artful means of deception, gave rise to a
series of efforts, which has been continued from that day _to this_, to
cause us all to believe, _that that change was for the better_, that it
was for _our good_; and that, _before that time_, our forefathers were a
set of the most miserable slaves that the sun ever warmed with his
beams. It happened, too, that the _art of printing_ was not discovered,
or, at least, it was very little understood, until about the time when
this change took place; so that the books relating to former times were
confined to manuscript; and, besides, even these manuscript libraries
were destroyed with great care by those who had made the change and had
grasped the property of the poor and the church. Our '_Historians_,' as
they are called, have written under _fear_ of the powerful, or have been
_bribed_ by them; and, generally speaking, both at the same time; and,
accordingly, their works are, as far as they relate to former times,
masses of lies unmatched by any others that the world has ever seen.
51. The great object of these lies always has been to make the main body
of the people believe, that the nation is now more happy, more populous,
more powerful, _than it was before it was Protestant_, and thereby to
induce us to conclude, that it was _a good thing for us_ that the
aristocracy should take to themselves the property of the poor and the
church, and make the people at large _pay taxes for the support of
both_. This has been, and still is, the great object of all those heaps
of lies; and those lies are continually spread about amongst us in all
forms of publication, from heavy folios down to halfpenny tracts. In
refutation of those lies we have only very few and rare ancient books to
refer to, and their information is incidental, seeing that their authors
never dreamed of the possibility of the lying generations which were to
come. We have the ancient acts of parliament, the common-law, the
customs, the canons of the church, and _the churches themselves_; but
these demand _analyses_ and _argument_, and they demand also a _really
free press_, and _unprejudiced and patient readers_. Never in this
world, before, had truth to struggle with so many and such great
disadvantages!
52. To refute lies is not, at present, my business; but it is my
business to give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking
proof that they are lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard
for the whole of the rest of your life. The opinion sedulously
inculcated by these '_historians_' is this; that, before the
_Protestant_ times came, England was, comparatively, an insignificant
country, _having few people in it, and those few wretchedly poor and
miserable_. Now, take the following _undeniable facts_. All the parishes
in England are now (except where they have been _united_, and two,
three, or four, have been made into one) in point of _size_, what they
were _a thousand years ago_. The county of Norfolk is the best
cultivated of any one in England. This county has _now_ 731 parishes;
and the number was formerly greater. Of these parishes 22 _have now no
churches at all_; 74 contain less than 100 souls each: and 268 have _no
parsonage-houses_. Now, observe, every parish had, in old times, a
church and a parsonage-house. The county contains 2,092 square miles;
that is to say, something less than 3 square miles to each parish, and
that is 1,920 statute acres of land; and the _size_ of each parish is,
on an average, that of a piece of ground about one mile and a half each
way; so that the churches are, even now, on an average, only about _a
mile and a half from each other_. Now, the questions for you to put to
yourself are these: Were churches formerly built and kept up _without
being wanted_, and especially by a poor and miserable people? Did these
miserable people build 74 churches out of 731, each of which 74 had not
a hundred souls belonging to it? Is it a sign of an augmented
population, that 22 churches out of 731 have tumbled down and been
effaced? Was it a country _thinly_ inhabited by miserable people that
could build and keep a church in every piece of ground a mile and a half
each way, besides having, in this same county, 77 monastic
establishments and 142 free chapels? Is it a sign of augmented
population, ease and plenty, that, out of 731 parishes, 268 have
suffered the parsonage houses to fall into ruins, and their sites to
become patches of nettles and of brambles? Put these questions calmly to
yourself: common sense will dictate the answers; and truth will call for
an expression of your indignation against the lying historians and the
still more lying population-mongers.
LETTER II
TO A YOUNG MAN
53. In the foregoing Letter, I have given my advice to a Youth. In
addressing myself to you, I am to presume that you have entered upon
your present stage of life, having acted upon the precepts contained in
that letter; and that, of course, you are a sober, abstinent,
industrious and well-informed young man. In the succeeding letters,
which will be addressed to the _Lover_, the _Husband_, the _Father_ and
the _Citizen_, I shall, of course, have to include my notion of your
duties as a _master_, and as a person employed by _another_. In the
present letter, therefore, I shall confine myself principally to the
conduct of a young man with regard to the management of his means, or
money.
54. Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your
misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to this matter; for
it very frequently happens, it has happened to thousands upon thousands,
not only to be ruined, according to the common acceptation of the word;
not only to be made poor, and to suffer from poverty, in consequence of
want of attention to pecuniary matters; but it has frequently, and even
generally, happened, that a want of attention to these matters has
impeded the progress of science, and of genius itself. A man, oppressed
with pecuniary cares and dangers, must be next to a miracle, if he have
his mind in a state fit for intellectual labours; to say nothing of the
temptations, arising from such distress, to abandon good principles, to
suppress useful opinions and useful facts; and, in short, to become a
disgrace to his kindred, and an evil to his country, instead of being an
honour to the former and a blessing to the latter. To be poor and
independent, is very nearly an impossibility.
55. But, then, poverty is not a positive, but a relative term. BURKE
observed, and very truly, that a labourer who earned a sufficiency to
maintain him as a labourer, and to maintain him in a suitable manner; to
give him a sufficiency of good food, of clothing, of lodging, and of
fuel, ought not to be called _a poor man_; for that, though he had
little riches, though his, _compared_ with that of a lord, was a state
of poverty, it was not a state of poverty in itself. When, therefore, I
say that poverty is the cause of a depression of spirit, of inactivity
and of servility in men of literary talent, I must say, at the same
time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from their having
created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having indulged in
unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to be poverty,
which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate in their
enjoyments.
56. As it may be your lot (such has been mine) to live by your literary
talent, I will here, before I proceed to matter more applicable to
persons in other states of life, observe, that I cannot form an idea of
a mortal more wretched than a man of real talent, compelled to curb his
genius, and to submit himself in the exercise of that genius, to those
whom he knows to be far inferior to himself, and whom he must despise
from the bottom of his soul. The late Mr. WILLIAM GIFFORD, who was the
son of a shoemaker at ASHBURTON in Devonshire; who was put to school and
sent to the university at the expense of a generous and good clergyman
of the name of COOKSON, and who died, the other day, a sort of
whipper-in of MURRAY'S QUARTERLY REVIEW; this was a man of real genius;
and, to my certain personal knowledge, he detested, from the bottom of
his soul, the whole of the paper-money and Boroughmongering system, and
despised those by whom the system was carried on. But, he had imaginary
wants; he had been bred up in company with the rich and the extravagant;
expensive indulgences had been made necessary to him by habit; and, when
in the year 1798, or thereabouts, he had to choose between a bit of
bacon, a scrag of mutton, and a lodging at ten shillings a week, on the
one side, and made-dishes, wine, a fine house and a footman on the other
side, he chose the latter. He became the servile Editor of CANNING'S
Anti-jacobin newspaper; and he, who had more wit and learning than all
the rest of the writers put together, became the miserable tool in
circulating their attacks upon everything that was hostile to a system
which he deplored and detested. But he secured the made-dishes, the
wine, the footman and the coachman. A sinecure as '_clerk of the Foreign
Estreats_,' gave him 329_l._ a year, a double commissionership of the
lottery gave him 600_l._ or 700_l._ more; and, at a later period, his
Editorship of the Quarterly Review gave him perhaps as much more. He
rolled in his carriage for several years; he fared sumptuously; he was
buried at _Westminster Abbey_, of which his friend and formerly his
brother pamphleteer in defence of PITT was the _Dean_; and never is he
to be heard of more! Mr. GIFFORD would have been full as happy; his
health would have been better, his life longer, and his name would have
lived for ages, if he could have turned to the bit of bacon and scrag of
mutton in 1798; for his learning and talents were such, his reasonings
so clear and conclusive, and his wit so pointed and keen, that his
writings must have been generally read, must have been of long duration!
and, indeed, must have enabled him (he being always a single man) to
live in his latter days in as good style as that which he procured by
becoming a sinecurist, a pensioner and a _hack_, all which he was from
the moment he lent himself to the Quarterly Review. Think of the
mortification of such a man, when he was called upon to justify the
power-of-imprisonment bill in 1817! But to go into particulars would be
tedious: his life was a life of luxurious misery, than which a worse is
not to be imagined.
57. So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and
raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. _The shame of poverty_,
the shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though
arising, in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. When
a _good man_, as in the phraseology of the city, means a _rich man_, we
are not to wonder that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is.
When adulation is sure to follow wealth, and when contempt would be
awarded to many if they were not wealthy, who are spoken of with
deference, and even lauded to the skies, because their riches are great
and notorious; when this is the case, we are not to be surprised that
men are ashamed to be thought to be poor. This is one of the greatest of
all the dangers at the outset of life: it has brought thousands and
hundreds of thousands to ruin, even to _pecuniary_ ruin. One of the most
amiable features in the character of American society is this; that men
never boast of their riches, and never disguise their poverty; but they
talk of both as of any other matter fit for public conversation. No man
shuns another because he is poor: no man is preferred to another because
he is rich. In hundreds and hundreds of instances, men, not worth a
shilling, have been chosen by the people and entrusted with their rights
and interests, in preference to men who ride in their carriages.
58. This shame of being thought poor, is not only dishonourable in
itself, and fatally injurious to men of talent; but it is ruinous even
in a _pecuniary_ point of view, and equally destructive to farmers,
traders, and even gentlemen of landed estate. It leads to everlasting
efforts to _disguise one's poverty_: the carriage, the servants, the
wine, (oh, that fatal wine!) the spirits, the decanters, the glasses,
all the table apparatus, the dress, the horses, the dinners, the
parties, all must be kept up; not so much because he or she who keeps or
gives them, has any pleasure arising therefrom, as because not to keep
and give them, would give rise to a suspicion _of the want of means_ so
to give and keep; and thus thousands upon thousands are yearly brought
into a state of real poverty by their great _anxiety not to be thought
poor_. Look round you, mark well what you behold, and say if this be not
the case. In how many instances have you seen most amiable and even most
industrious families brought to ruin by nothing but this! Mark it well;
resolve to set this false shame at defiance, and when you have done
that, you have laid the first stone of the surest foundation of your
future tranquillity of mind. There are thousands of families, at this
very moment, who are thus struggling to keep up appearances. The farmers
accommodate themselves to circumstances more easily than tradesmen and
professional men. They live at a greater distance from their neighbours:
they can change their style of living unperceived: they can banish the
decanter, change the dishes for a bit of bacon, make a treat out of a
rasher and eggs, and the world is none the wiser all the while. But the
tradesman, the doctor, the attorney, and the trader, cannot make the
change so quietly, and unseen. The accursed wine, which is a sort of
criterion of the style of living, a sort of _scale_ to the _plan_, a
sort of _key_ to the _tune_; this is the thing to banish first of all;
because all the rest follow, and come down to their proper level in a
short time. The accursed decanter cries footman or waiting maid, puts
bells to the side of the wall, screams aloud for carpets; and when I am
asked, 'Lord, _what_ is a glass of wine?' my answer is, that, in this
country, it is _everything_; it is the pitcher of the key; it demands
all the other unnecessary expenses; it is injurious to health, and must
be injurious, every bottle of wine that is drunk containing a certain
portion of ardent spirits, besides other drugs deleterious in their
nature; and, of all the friends to the doctors, this fashionable
beverage is the greatest. And, which adds greatly to the folly, or, I
should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties themselves,
nine times out of ten, do not drink it by _choice_; do not like it; do
not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be
seen even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I
am writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who
daily have wine upon their tables, and who _drink_ it too, merely
because their own servants should not suspect them to be poor, and not
deem them to be genteel; and thus families by thousands are ruined, only
because they are ashamed to be thought poor.
59. There is no shame belonging to poverty, which frequently arises from
the virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, indeed, as
from vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as
the Scripture tells us, that we are not to 'despise the poor _because_
he is poor'; so we ought not to honour the rich because he is rich. The
true way is, to take a fair survey of the character of a man as depicted
in his conduct, and to respect him, or despise him, according to a due
estimate of that character. No country upon earth exhibits so many, as
this, of those fatal terminations of life, called suicides. These arise,
in nine instances out of ten, from this very source. The victims are, in
general, what may be fairly called insane; but their insanity almost
always arises from the dread of poverty; not from the dread of a want of
the means of sustaining life, or even decent living, but from the dread
of being thought or known to be poor; from the dread of what is called
falling in the scale of society; a dread which is prevalent hardly in
any country but this. Looked at in its true light, what is there in
poverty to make a man take away his own life? he is the same man that he
was before: he has the same body and the same mind: if he even foresee a
great alteration in his dress or his diet, why should he kill himself on
that account? Are these all the things that a man wishes to live for?
But, such is the fact; so great is the disgrace upon this country, and
so numerous and terrible are the evils arising from this dread of being
thought to be poor.
60. Nevertheless, men ought to take care of their means, ought to use
them prudently and sparingly, and to keep their expenses always within
the bounds of their income, be it what it may. One of the effectual
means of doing this is to purchase with ready money. ST. PAUL says,
'_Owe no man any thing_:' and of his numerous precepts this is by no
means the least worthy of our attention. _Credit_ has been boasted of as
a very fine thing: to decry credit seems to be setting oneself up
against the opinions of the whole world; and I remember a paper in the
FREEHOLDER or the SPECTATOR, published just after the funding system had
begun, representing 'PUBLIC Credit' as a GODDESS, enthroned in a temple
dedicated to her by her votaries, amongst whom she is dispensing
blessings of every description. It must be more than forty years since I
read this paper, which I read soon after the time when the late Mr. PITT
uttered in Parliament an expression of his anxious hope, that his 'name
would be inscribed on the _monument_ which he should raise to '_public
credit_.' Time has taught me, that PUBLIC CREDIT means, the contracting
of debts which a nation never can pay; and I have lived to see this
_Goddess_ produce effects, in my country, which Satan himself never
could have produced. It is a very bewitching Goddess; and not less fatal
in her influence in private than in public affairs. It has been carried
in this latter respect to such a pitch, that scarcely any transaction,
however low and inconsiderable in amount, takes place in any other way.
There is a trade in London, called the 'tally-trade,' by which,
household goods, coals, clothing, all sorts of things, are sold upon
credit, the seller keeping _a tally_, and receiving payment for the
goods, little by little; so that the income and the earnings of the
buyers are always anticipated; are always gone, in fact, before they
come in or are earned; the sellers receiving, of course, a great deal
more than the proper profit.
61. Without supposing you to descend to so low a grade as this, and even
supposing you to be lawyer, doctor, parson, or merchant; it is still the
same thing, if you purchase on credit, and not, perhaps, in a much less
degree of disadvantage. Besides the higher price that you pay there is
the temptation to have what you _really do not want_. The cost seems a
trifle, when you have not to pay the money until a future time. It has
been observed, and very truly observed, that men used to lay out a
one-pound note when they would not lay out a sovereign; a consciousness
of the intrinsic value of the things produces a retentiveness in the
latter case more than in the former: the sight and the touch assist the
mind in forming its conclusions, and the one-pound note was parted with,
when the sovereign would have been kept. Far greater is the difference
between Credit and Ready money. Innumerable things are not bought at all
with ready money, which would be bought in case of trust: it is so much
easier to _order_ a thing than to _pay_ for it. A future day; a day of
payment must come, to be sure, but that is little thought of at the
time; but if the money were to be drawn out, the moment the thing was
received or offered, this question would arise, '_Can I do without it_?'
Is this thing indispensable; am I compelled to have it, or suffer a loss
or injury greater in amount than the cost of the thing? If this question
were put, every time we make a purchase, seldom should we hear of those
suicides which are such a disgrace to this country.
62. I am aware, that it will be said, and very truly said, that the
concerns of merchants; that the purchasing of great estates, and various
other great transactions, cannot be carried on in this manner; but these
are rare exceptions to the rule; even in these cases there might be much
less of bills and bonds, and all the sources of litigation; but in the
every-day business of life; in transactions with the butcher, the baker,
the tailor, the shoemaker, what excuse can there be for pleading the
example of the merchant, who carries on his work by ships and exchanges?
I was delighted, some time ago, by being told of a young man, who, upon
being advised _to keep a little account_ of all he received and
expended, answered, 'that his business was not to keep account books:
that he was sure not to make a mistake as to his income; and that, as to
his expenditure, the little bag that held his sovereigns would be an
infallible guide, as he never bought anything that he did not
immediately pay for.'
63. I believe that nobody will deny, that, generally speaking, you pay
for the same article a fourth part more in the case of trust than you do
in the case of ready money. Suppose, then, the baker, butcher, tailor,
and shoemaker, receive from you only one hundred pounds a year. Put that
together; that is to say, multiply twenty-five by twenty, and you will
find, that, at the end of twenty years, you have 500_l._, besides the
accumulating and growing interest. The fathers of the Church (I mean the
ancient ones), and also the canons of the Church, forbade selling on
trust at a higher price than for ready money, which was in effect to
forbid _trust_; and this, doubtless, was one of the great objects which
those wise and pious men had in view; for they were fathers in
legislation and morals as well as in religion. But the doctrine of these
fathers and canons no longer prevails; they are set at nought by the
present age, even in the countries that adhere to their religion.
ADDISON'S Goddess has prevailed over the fathers and the canons; and men
not only make a difference in the price regulated by the difference in
the mode of payment; but it would be absurd to expect them to do
otherwise. They must not only charge something for the want of the _use_
of the money; but they must charge something additional for the _risk_
of its loss, which may frequently arise, and most frequently does arise,
from the misfortunes of those to whom they have assigned their goods on
trust. The man, therefore, who purchases on trust, not only pays for the
trust, but he also pays his due share of what the tradesman loses by
trust; and, after all, he is not so good a customer as the man who
purchases cheaply with ready money; for there is his name indeed in the
tradesman's book; but with that name the tradesman cannot go to market
to get a fresh supply.
64. Infinite are the ways in which gentlemen lose by this sort of
dealing. Servants go and order sometimes things not wanted at all; at
other times, more than is wanted; at others, things of a higher quality;
and all this would be obviated by purchasing with ready money; for,
whether through the hands of the party himself, or through those of an
inferior, there would always be an actual counting out of the money;
somebody would _see_ the thing bought and see the money paid; and, as
the master would give the housekeeper or steward a bag of money at the
time, he would _see_ the money too, would set a proper value upon it,
and would just desire to know upon what it had been expended.
65. How is it that farmers are so exact, and show such a disposition to
retrench in the article of labour, when they seem to think little, or
nothing, about the sums which they pay in tax upon malt, wine, sugar,
tea, soap, candles, tobacco, and various other things? You find the
utmost difficulty in making them understand, that they are affected by
these. The reason is, that they _see_ the money which they give to the
labourer on each succeeding Saturday night; but they do not see that
which they give in taxes on the articles before mentioned. Why is it
that they make such an outcry about the six or seven millions a year
which are paid in poor-rates, and say not a word about the sixty
millions a year raised in other taxes? The consumer pays all; and,
therefore, they are as much interested in the one as the other; and yet
the farmers think of no tax but the poor tax. The reason is, that the
latter is collected from them in _money_: they _see_ it go out of their
hands into the hands of another; and, therefore, they are everlastingly
anxious to reduce the poor-rates, and they take care to keep them within
the smallest possible bounds.
66. Just thus would it be with every man that never purchased but with
ready money: he would make the amount as low as possible in proportion
to his means: this care and frugality would make an addition to his
means, and therefore, in the end, at the end of his life, he would have
had a great deal more to spend, and still be as rich as if he had gone
in trust; while he would have lived in tranquillity all the while, and
would have avoided all the endless papers and writings and receipts and
bills and disputes and law-suits inseparable from a system of credit.
This is by no means a lesson of _stinginess_; by no means tends to
inculcate a heaping up of money; for the purchasing with ready money
really gives you more money to purchase with; you can afford to have a
greater quantity and variety of things; and I will engage that, if
horses or servants be your taste, the saving in this way gives you an
additional horse or an additional servant, if you be in any profession
or engaged in any considerable trade. In towns, it tends to accelerate
your pace along the streets; for the temptation of the windows is
answered in a moment by clapping your hand upon your thigh; and the
question, 'Do I really want that?' is sure to occur to you immediately,
because the touch of the money is sure to put that thought in your mind.
67. Now, supposing you to have a plenty; to have a fortune beyond your
wants, would not the money which you would save in this way be very well
applied in acts of real benevolence? Can you walk many yards in the
streets; can you ride a mile in the country; can you go to half-a-dozen
cottages; can you, in short, open your eyes, without seeing some human
being, some one born in the same country with yourself, and who, on that
account alone, has some claim upon your good wishes and your charity;
can you open your eyes without seeing some person to whom even a small
portion of your annual savings would convey gladness of heart? Your own
heart will suggest the answer; and, if there were no motive but this,
what need I say more in the advice which I have here tendered to you?
68. Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or,
rather from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing
which has been honoured by the name of '_speculation_;' but which ought
to be called Gambling. It is a purchasing of something which you do not
want either in your family or in the way of ordinary trade: a something
to be sold again with a great profit; and on the sale of which there is
a considerable hazard. When purchases of this sort are made with ready
money, they are not so offensive to reason and not attended with such
risk; but when they are made with money _borrowed_ for the purpose, they
are neither more nor less than gambling transactions; and they have
been, in this country, a source of ruin, misery, and suicide, admitting
of no adequate description. I grant that this gambling has arisen from
the influence of the '_Goddess_' before mentioned; I grant that it has
arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of making the
purchases; and I grant that that facility has been created by the system
under the baneful influence of which we live. But it is not the less
necessary that I beseech you not to practise such gambling; that I
beseech you, if you be engaged in it, to disentangle yourself from it as
soon as you can. Your life, while you are thus engaged, is the life of
the gamester; a life of constant anxiety; constant desire to over-reach;
constant apprehension; general gloom, enlivened, now and then, by a
gleam of hope or of success. Even that success is sure to lead to
further adventures; and, at last, a thousand to one, that your fate is
that of the pitcher to the well.
69. The great temptation to this gambling is, as is the case in other
gambling, the _success of the few_. As young men who crowd to the army,
in search of rank and renown, never look into the ditch that holds their
slaughtered companions; but have their eye constantly fixed on the
General-in-chief; and as each of them belongs to the _same profession_,
and is sure to be conscious that he has equal merit, every one deems
himself the suitable successor of him who is surrounded with _Aides des
camps_, and who moves battalions and columns by his nod; so with the
rising generation of 'speculators:' they see the great estates that have
succeeded the pencil-box and the orange-basket; they see those whom
nature and good laws made to black shoes, sweep chimnies or the streets,
rolling in carriages, or sitting in saloons surrounded by gaudy footmen
with napkins twisted round their thumbs; and they can see no earthly
reason why they should not all do the same; forgetting the thousands and
thousands, who, in making the attempt, have reduced themselves to that
beggary which, before their attempt, they would have regarded as a thing
wholly impossible.
70. In all situations of life, avoid the _trammels of the law_. Man's
nature must be changed before law-suits will cease; and, perhaps, it
would be next to impossible to make them less frequent than they are in
the present state of this country; but though no man, who has any
property at all, can say that he will have nothing to do with law-suits,
it is in the power of most men to avoid them in a considerable degree.
One good rule is to have as little as possible to do with any man who is
fond of law-suits, and who, upon every slight occasion, talks of an
appeal to the law. Such persons, from their frequent litigations,
contract a habit of using the technical terms of the Courts, in which
they take a pride, and are, therefore, companions peculiarly disgusting
to men of sense. To such men a law-suit is a luxury, instead of being as
it is, to men of ordinary minds, a source of anxiety and a real and
substantial scourge. Such men are always of a quarrelsome disposition,
and avail themselves of every opportunity to indulge in that which is
mischievous to their neighbours. In thousands of instances men go to law
for the indulgence of mere anger. The Germans are said to bring
_spite-actions_ against one another, and to harass their poorer
neighbours from motives of pure revenge. They have carried this their
disposition with them to America; for which reason no one likes to live
in a German neighbourhood.
71. Before you go to law consider well the _cost_; for if you win your
suit and are poorer than you were before, what do you accomplish? You
only imbibe a little additional anger against your opponent; you injure
him, but do harm to yourself. Better to put up with the loss of one
pound than of two, to which latter is to be added all the loss of time,
all the trouble, and all the mortification and anxiety attending a
law-suit. To set an attorney to work to worry and torment another man is
a very base act; to alarm his family as well as himself, while you are
sitting quietly at home. If a man owe you money which he cannot pay, why
add to his distress without the chance of benefit to yourself? Thousands
of men have injured themselves by resorting to the law; while very few
ever bettered themselves by it, except such resort were unavoidable.
72. Nothing is much more discreditable than what is called _hard
dealing_. They say of the Turks, that they know nothing of _two prices_
for the same article; and that to ask an abatement of the lowest
shopkeeper is to insult him. It would be well if Christians imitated
Mahometans in this respect. To ask one price and take another, or to
offer one price and give another, besides the loss of time that it
occasions, is highly dishonourable to the parties, and especially when
pushed to the extent of solemn protestations. It is, in fact, a species
of lying; and it answers no one advantageous purpose to either buyer or
seller. I hope that every young man who reads this, will start in life
with a resolution never to higgle and lie in dealings. There is this
circumstance in favour of the bookseller's business: every book has its
fixed price, and no one ever asks an abatement. If it were thus in all
other trades, how much time would be saved, and how much immorality
prevented!
73. As to the spending of your time, your business or your profession
is to claim the priority of everything else. Unless that be _duly
attended to_, there can be no real pleasure in any other employment of
a portion of your time. Men, however, must have some leisure, some
relaxation from business; and in the choice of this relaxation much of
your happiness will depend. Where fields and gardens are at hand, they
present the most rational scenes for leisure. As to company, I have
said enough in the former letter to deter any young man from that of
drunkards and rioting companions; but there is such a thing as your
quiet '_pipe-and-pot-companions_,' which are, perhaps, the most fatal
of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more the
contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting,
over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and
articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things. Seven
years service as a galley-slave would be more bearable to a man of
sense, than seven months confinement to society like this. Yet, such is
the effect of habit, that, if a young man become a frequenter of such
scenes, the idle propensity sticks to him for life. Some companions,
however, every man must have; but these every well-behaved man will find
in private houses, where families are found residing and where the
suitable intercourse takes place between women and men. A man that
cannot pass an evening without drink merits the name of a sot. Why
should there be drink for the purpose of carrying on conversation? Women
stand in need of no drink to stimulate them to converse; and I have a
thousand times admired their patience in sitting quietly at their work,
while their husbands are engaged, in the same room, with bottles and
glasses before them, thinking nothing of the expense and still less of
the shame which the distinction reflects upon them. We have to thank the
women for many things, and particularly for their sobriety, for fear of
following their example in which men drive them from the table, as if
they said to them: 'You have had enough; food is sufficient for you; but
we must remain to fill ourselves with drink, and to talk in language
which your ears ought not to endure.' When women are getting up to
retire from the table, men rise _in honour of_ them; but they take
special care not to follow their excellent example. That which is not
fit to be uttered before women is not fit to be uttered at all; and it
is next to a proclamation, tolerating drunkenness and indecency, to send
women from the table the moment they have swallowed their food. The
practice has been ascribed to a desire to leave them to themselves; but
why should they be left to themselves? Their conversation is always the
most lively, while their persons are generally the most agreeable
objects. No: the plain truth is, that it is the love of the drink and of
the indecent talk that send women from the table; and it is a practice
which I have always abhorred. I like to see young men, especially,
follow them out of the room, and prefer their company to that of the
sots who are left behind.
74. Another mode of spending the leisure time is that of books. Rational
and well-informed companions may be still more instructive; but books
never annoy; they cost little; and they are always at hand, and ready at
your call. The sort of books must, in some degree, depend upon your
pursuit in life; but there are some books necessary to every one who
aims at the character of a well-informed man. I have slightly mentioned
HISTORY and Geography in the preceding letter; but I must here observe,
that, as to both these, you should begin with your own country, and make
yourself well acquainted, not only with its ancient state, but with the
_origin_ of all its principal institutions. To read of the battles which
it has fought, and of the intrigues by which one king or one minister
has succeeded another, is very little more profitable than the reading
of a romance. To understand well the history of the country, you should
first understand how it came to be divided into counties, hundreds, and
into parishes; how judges, sheriffs, and juries, first arose; to what
end they were all invented, and how the changes with respect to any of
them have been produced. But it is of particular consequence that you
ascertain the _state of the people_ in former times, which is to be
ascertained by _comparing the then price of labour with the then price
of food_. You hear enough, and you read enough, about the _glorious
wars_ in the reign of KING EDWARD the THIRD; and it is very proper that
those glories should be recorded and remembered; but you never read, in
the works of the historians, that, in that reign, a common labourer
earned threepence-halfpenny a day; and that a _fat sheep_ was sold, at
the same time, for one shilling and twopence, and a fat hog, two years
old, for three shillings and fourpence, and a fat goose for
twopence-halfpenny. You never read that women received a penny a day for
hay-making or weeding in the corn, and that a gallon of red wine was
sold for fourpence. These are matters which historians have deemed to be
beneath their notice; but they are matters of real importance: they are
matters which ought to have practical effect at this time; for these
furnish the criterion whereby we are to judge of our condition compared
with that of our forefathers. The poor-rates form a great feature in the
laws and customs of this country. Put to a thousand persons who have
read what is called the history of England; put to them the question,
how the poor-rates came? and nine hundred and ninety-nine of the
thousand will tell you, that they know nothing at all of the matter.
This is not history; a list of battles and a string of intrigues are not
history, they communicate no knowledge applicable to our present state;
and it really is better to amuse oneself with an avowed romance, which
latter is a great deal worse than passing one's time in counting the
trees.
75. History has been described as affording arguments of experience; as
a record of what has been, in order to guide us as to what is likely to
be, or what ought to be; but, from this romancing history, no such
experience is to be derived: for it furnishes no facts on which to found
arguments relative to the existing or future state of things. To come at
the true history of a country you must read its laws: you must read
books treating of its usages and customs in former times; and you must
particularly inform yourself as to _prices of labour and of food_. By
reading the single Act of the 23rd year of EDWARD the THIRD, specifying
the price of labour at that time; by reading an Act of Parliament passed
in the 24th year of HENRY the EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and
then reading the CHRONICON PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows
the price of food in the former reign, you come into full possession of
the knowledge of what England was in former times. Divers books teach
how the divisions of the country arose, and how its great institutions
were established; and the result of this reading is a store of
knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for the whole of your life.
76. History, however, is by no means the only thing about which every
man's leisure furnishes him with the means of reading; besides which,
every man has not the same taste. Poetry, geography, moral essays, the
divers subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on
sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before
you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is,
not to admire and applaud anything you read, merely because it is the
_fashion_ to admire and applaud it. Read, consider well what you read,
form _your own judgment_, and stand by that judgment in despite of the
sayings of what are called learned men, until fact or argument be
offered to convince you of your error. One writer praises another; and
it is very possible for writers so to combine as to cry down and, in
some sort, to destroy the reputation of any one who meddles with the
combination, unless the person thus assailed be blessed with uncommon
talent and uncommon perseverance. When I read the works of POPE and of
SWIFT, I was greatly delighted with their lashing of DENNIS; but
wondered, at the same time, why they should have taken so much pains in
running down such a _fool_. By the merest accident in the world, being
at a tavern in the woods of America, I took up an old book, in order to
pass away the time while my travelling companions were drinking in the
next room; but seeing the book contained the criticisms of DENNIS, I was
about to lay it down, when the play of 'CATO' caught my eye; and having
been accustomed to read books in which this play was lauded to the
skies, and knowing it to have been written by ADDISON, every line of
whose works I had been taught to believe teemed with wisdom and genius,
I condescended to begin to read, though the work was from the pen of
that _fool_ DENNIS. I read on, and soon began to _laugh_, not at Dennis,
but at Addison. I laughed so much and so loud, that the landlord, who
was in the passage, came in to see what I was laughing at. In short, I
found it a most masterly production, one of the most witty things that I
had ever read in my life. I was delighted with DENNIS, and was heartily
ashamed of my former admiration of CATO, and felt no little resentment
against POPE and SWIFT for their endless reviling of this most able and
witty critic. This, as far as I recollect, was the first _emancipation_
that had assisted me in my reading. I have, since that time, never taken
any thing upon trust: I have judged for myself, trusting neither to the
opinions of writers nor in the fashions of the day. Having been told by
DR. BLAIR, in his lectures on Rhetoric, that, if I meant to write
correctly, I must 'give my days and nights to ADDISON,' I read a few
numbers of the Spectator at the time I was writing my English Grammar: I
gave neither my nights nor my days to him; but I found an abundance of
matter to afford examples _of false grammar_; and, upon a reperusal, I
found that the criticisms of DENNIS might have been extended to this
book too.
77. But that which never ought to have been forgotten by those who were
men at the time, and that which ought to be _made known to every young
man of the present day_, in order that he may be induced to exercise his
own judgment with regard to books, is, the transactions relative to the
writings of SHAKSPEARE, which transactions took place about thirty years
ago. It is still, and it was then much more, the practice to extol every
line of SHAKSPEARE to the skies: not to admire SHAKSPEARE has been
deemed to be a proof of want of understanding and taste. MR. GARRICK,
and some others after him, had their own good and profitable reasons for
crying up the works of this poet. When I was a very little boy, there
was a _jubilee_ in honour of SHAKSPEARE, and as he was said to have
planted a _Mulberry tree_, boxes, and other little ornamental things in
wood, were sold all over the country, as having been made out of the
trunk or limbs of this ancient and sacred tree. We Protestants laugh at
the _relics_ so highly prized by Catholics; but never was a Catholic
people half so much duped by the relics of saints, as this nation was by
the mulberry tree, of which, probably, more wood was sold than would
have been sufficient in quantity to build a ship of war, or a large
house. This madness abated for some years; but, towards the end of the
last century it broke out again with more fury than ever. SHAKSPEARE'S
works were published by BOYDELL, an Alderman of London, at a
subscription of _five hundred pounds for each copy_, accompanied by
plates, each forming a large picture. Amongst the mad men of the day was
a MR. IRELAND, who seemed to be more mad than any of the rest. His
adoration of the poet led him to perform a pilgrimage to an old
farm-house, near Stratford-upon-Avon, said to have been the birth-place
of the poet. Arrived at the spot, he requested the farmer and his wife
to let him search the house for papers, _first going upon his knees_,
and praying, in the poetic style, the gods to aid him in his quest. He
found no papers; but he found that the farmer's wife, in clearing out a
garret some years before, had found some rubbishy old papers which she
had _burnt_, and which had probably been papers used in the wrapping up
of pigs' cheeks to keep them from the bats. 'O, wretched woman!'
exclaimed he; 'do you know what you have done?' 'O dear, no!' said the
woman, half frightened out of her wits: 'no harm, I hope; for the papers
were _very old_; I dare say as old as the house itself.' This threw him
into an additional degree of _excitement_, as it is now fashionably
called: he raved, he stamped, he foamed, and at last quitted the house,
covering the poor woman with very term of reproach; and hastening back
to Stratford, took post-chaise for London, to relate to his brother
madmen the horrible sacrilege of this heathenish woman. Unfortunately
for MR. IRELAND, unfortunately for his learned brothers in the
metropolis, and unfortunately for the reputation of SHAKSPEARE, MR.
IRELAND took with him to the scene of his adoration _a son, about
sixteen years of age_, who was articled to an attorney in London. The
son was by no means so sharply bitten as the father; and, upon returning
to town, he conceived the idea of _supplying the place of the invaluable
papers_ which the farm-house heathen had destroyed. He thought, and he
thought rightly, that he should have little difficulty in writing plays
_just like those of Shakspeare_! To get _paper_ that should seem to have
been made in the reign of QUEEN ELIZABETH, and _ink_ that should give to
writing the appearance of having the same age, was somewhat difficult;
but both were overcome. Young IRELAND was acquainted with a son of a
bookseller, who dealt in _old books_: the blank leaves of these books
supplied the young author with paper; and he found out the way of making
proper ink for his purpose. To work he went, _wrote several plays_, some
_love-letters_, and other things; and having got a Bible, extant in the
time of SHAKSPEARE, he wrote _notes_ in the margin. All these, together
with _sonnets_ in abundance, and other little detached pieces, he
produced to his father, telling him he got them from a gentleman, who
had _made him swear that he would not divulge his name_. The father
announced the invaluable discovery to the literary world: the literary
world rushed to him; the manuscripts were regarded as genuine by the
most grave and learned Doctors, some of whom (and amongst these were
DOCTORS PARR and WARTON) gave, _under their hands_, an opinion, that the
manuscripts _must have been written_ by SHAKSPEARE; for that _no other
man in the world could have been capable of writing them_!
78. MR. IRELAND opened a subscription, published these new and
invaluable manuscripts at an enormous price; and preparations were
instantly made for _performing one of the plays_, called VORTIGERN. Soon
after the acting of the play, the indiscretion of the lad caused the
secret to explode; and, instantly, those who had declared that he had
written as well as SHAKSPEARE, did every thing in their power _to
destroy him_! The attorney drove him from his office; the father drove
him from his house; and, in short, he was hunted down as if he had been
a malefactor of the worst description. The truth of this relation is
undeniable; it is recorded in numberless books. The young man is, I
believe, yet alive; and, in short, no man will question any one of the
facts.
79. After this, where is the person of sense who will be guided in these
matters by _fashion_? where is the man, who wishes not to be deluded,
who will not, when he has read a book, _judge for himself_? After all
these jubilees and pilgrimages; after BOYDELL'S subscription of 500_l._
for one single copy; after it had been deemed almost impiety to doubt of
the genius of SHAKSPEARE surpassing that of all the rest of mankind;
after he had been called the '_Immortal Bard_,' as a matter of course,
as we speak of MOSES and AARON, there having been but one of each in the
world; after all this, comes a lad of sixteen years of age, writes that
which learned Doctors declare could have been written by no man but
SHAKSPEARE, and, when it is discovered that this laughing boy is the
real author, the DOCTORS turn round upon him, with all the newspapers,
magazines, and reviews, and, of course, the public at their back, revile
him as an _impostor_; and, under that odious name, hunt him out of
society, and doom him to starve! This lesson, at any rate, he has given
us: not to rely on the judgment of Doctors and other pretenders to
literary superiority. Every young man, when he takes up a book for the
first time, ought to remember this story; and if he do remember it, he
will disregard fashion with regard to the book, and will pay little
attention to the decision of those who call themselves critics.
80. I hope that your taste would keep you aloof from the writings of
those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in
debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present
their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great virtue
and resolution to withstand their temptations; and, they have, perhaps,
done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels
and atheists put together. These men ought to be called _literary
pimps_: they ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken
of but with execration. Any appeal to bad passions is to be despised;
any appeal to ignorance and prejudice; but here is an appeal to the
frailties of human nature, and an endeavour to make the mind corrupt,
just as it is beginning to possess its powers. I never have known any
but bad men, worthless men, men unworthy of any portion of respect, who
took delight in, or even kept in their possession, writings of the
description to which I here allude. The writings of SWIFT have this
blemish; and, though he is not a teacher of _lewdness_, but rather the
contrary, there are certain parts of his poems which are much too filthy
for any decent person to read. It was beneath him to stoop to such means
of setting forth that wit which would have been far more brilliant
without them. I have heard, that, in the library of what is called an
'_illustrious_ person,' sold some time ago, there was an immense
collection of books of this infamous description; and from this
circumstance, if from no other, I should have formed my judgment of the
character of that person.
81. Besides reading, a young man ought to write, if he have the capacity
and the leisure. If you wish to remember a thing well, put it into
writing, even if you burn the paper immediately after you have done; for
the eye greatly assists the mind. Memory consists of a concatenation of
ideas, the place, the time, and other circumstances, lead to the
recollection of facts; and no circumstance more effectually than stating
the facts upon paper. A JOURNAL should be kept by every young man. Put
down something against every day in the year, if it be merely a
description of the weather. You will not have done this for one year
without finding the benefit of it. It disburthens the mind of many
things to be recollected; it is amusing and useful, and ought by no
means to be neglected. How often does it happen that we cannot make a
statement of facts, sometimes very interesting to ourselves and our
friends, for the want of a record of the places where we were, and of
things that occurred on such and such a day! How often does it happen
that we get into disagreeable disputes about things that have passed,
and about the time and other circumstances attending them! As a thing of
mere curiosity, it is of some value, and may frequently prove of very
great utility. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four
hours; and that minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It
tends greatly to produce regularity in the conducting of affairs: it is
a thing demanding a small portion of attention _once in every day_; I
myself have found it to be attended with great and numerous benefits,
and I therefore strongly recommend it to the practice of every reader.
LETTER III
TO A LOVER
82. There are two descriptions of Lovers on whom all advice would be
wasted; namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers reason
as to deprive the party of his sober senses. Few people are entitled to
more compassion than young men thus affected: it is a species of
insanity that assails them; and, when it produces self-destruction,
which it does in England more frequently than in all the other countries
in the world put together, the mortal remains of the sufferer ought to
be dealt with in as tender a manner as that of which the most merciful
construction of the law will allow. If SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY'S remains
were, as they were, in fact, treated as those of a person labouring
under '_temporary mental derangement_,' surely the youth who destroys
his life on account of unrequited love, ought to be considered in as
mild a light! SIR SAMUEL was represented, in the evidence taken before
the Coroner's Jury, to have been _inconsolable for the loss of his
wife_; that this loss had so dreadful an effect upon his mind, that it
_bereft him of his reason_, made life insupportable, and led him to
commit the act of _suicide_: and, on _this ground alone_, his _remains_
and his _estate_ were rescued from the awful, though just and wise,
sentence of the law. But, unfortunately for the reputation of the
administration of that just and wise law, there had been, only about two
years before, a _poor_ man, at Manchester, _buried in crossroads_, and
under circumstances which entitled his remains to mercy much more
clearly than in the case of SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.
83. This unfortunate youth, whose name was SMITH, and who was a
shoemaker, was in love with a young woman, who, in spite of all his
importunities and his proofs of ardent passion, refused to marry him,
and even discovered her liking for another; and he, unable to support
life, accompanied by the thought of her being in possession of any body
but himself, put an end to his life by the means of a rope. If, in any
case, we are to _presume_ the existence of insanity; if, in any case, we
are led to believe the thing _without positive proof_; if, in any case,
there can be an apology in human nature itself, for such an act; _this
was that case_. We all know (as I observed at the time); that is to say,
all of us who cannot wait to calculate upon the gains and losses of the
affair; all of us, except those who are endowed with this provident
frigidity, know well what youthful love is; and what its torments are,
when accompanied by even the smallest portion of jealousy. Every man,
and especially every Englishman (for here we seldom love or hate by
halves), will recollect how many mad pranks he has played; how many wild
and ridiculous things he has said and done between the age of sixteen
and that of twenty-two; how many times a kind glance has scattered all
his reasoning and resolutions to the winds; how many times a cool look
has plunged him into the deepest misery! Poor SMITH, who was at this age
of love and madness, might, surely, be presumed to have done the deed in
a moment of '_temporary mental derangement_.' He was an object of
compassion in every humane breast: he had parents and brethren and
kindred and friends to lament his death, and to feel shame at the
disgrace inflicted on his lifeless body: yet, HE was pronounced to be a
_felo de se_, or _self-murderer_, and his body was put into a hole by
the way-side, with a stake driven down through it; while that of ROMILLY
had mercy extended to it, on the ground that the act had been occasioned
by '_temporary mental derangement_' caused by his grief for the death of
his wife!
84. To _reason_ with passion like that of the unfortunate SMITH, is
perfectly useless; you may, with as much chance of success, reason and
remonstrate with the winds or the waves: if you make impression, it
lasts but for a moment: your effort, like an inadequate stoppage of
waters, only adds, in the end, to the violence of the torrent: the
current must have and will have its course, be the consequences what
they may. In cases not quite so decided, _absence_, the sight _of new
faces_, the sound _of new voices_, generally serve, if not as a radical
cure, as a mitigation, at least, of the disease. But, the worst of it
is, that, on this point, we have the girls (and women too) against us!
For they look upon it as right that every lover should be _a little
maddish_; and, every attempt to rescue him from the thraldom imposed by
their charms, they look upon as an overt act of treason against their
natural sovereignty. No girl ever liked a young man less for his having
done things foolish and wild and ridiculous, provided she was _sure_
that love of her had been the cause: let her but be satisfied upon this
score, and there are very few things which she will not forgive. And,
though wholly unconscious of the fact, she is a great and sound
philosopher after all. For, from the nature of things, the rearing of a
family always has been, is, and must ever be, attended with cares and
troubles, which must infallibly produce, at times, feelings to be
combated and overcome by nothing short of that ardent affection which
first brought the parties together. So that, talk as long as Parson
MALTHUS likes about 'moral _restraint_;' and report as long as the
Committees of Parliament please about preventing '_premature_ and
_improvident_ marriages' amongst the labouring classes, the passion that
they would _restrain_, while it is necessary to the existence of
mankind, is the greatest of all the compensations for the inevitable
cares, troubles, hardships, and sorrows of life; and, as to the
_marriages_, if they could once be rendered universally _provident_,
every generous sentiment would quickly be banished from the world.
85. The other description of lovers, with whom it is useless to reason,
are those who love according to the _rules of arithmetic_, or who
measure their matrimonial expectations by the _chain of the
land-surveyor_. These are not love and marriage; they are bargain and
sale. Young men will naturally, and almost necessarily, fix their choice
on young women in their own rank in life; because from habit and
intercourse they will know them best. But, if the length of the girl's
purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with the man, or the
length of his purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with her,
it is an affair of bargain and sale. I know that kings, princes, and
princesses are, in respect of marriage, restrained by the law: I know
that nobles, if not thus restrained by positive law, are restrained, in
fact, by the very nature of their order. And here is a disadvantage
which, as far as real enjoyment of life is concerned, more than
counterbalances all the advantages that they possess over the rest of
the community. This disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and
riches downwards, till you approach very nearly to that numerous class
who live by manual labour, becoming, however, less and less as you
descend. You generally find even very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice
of their natural and rational taste to their mean and ridiculous pride,
and thereby providing for themselves an ample supply of misery for life.
By preferring '_provident_ marriages' to marriages of love, they think
to secure themselves against all the evils of poverty; but, _if poverty
come_, and come it may, and frequently does, in spite of the best laid
plans, and best modes of conduct; _if poverty come_, then where is the
counterbalance for that ardent mutual affection, which troubles, and
losses, and crosses always increase rather than diminish, and which,
amidst all the calamities that can befall a man, whispers to his heart,
that his best possession is still left him unimpaired? The
WORCESTERSHIRE BARONET, who has had to endure the sneers of fools on
account of his marriage with a beautiful and virtuous servant maid,
would, were the present ruinous measures of the Government to drive him
from his mansion to a cottage, still have a source of happiness; while
many of those, who might fall in company with him, would, in addition to
all their other troubles, have, perhaps, to endure the reproaches of
wives to whom poverty, or even humble life, would be insupportable.
86. If marrying for the sake of money be, under any circumstances,
despicable, if not disgraceful; if it be, generally speaking, a species
of legal prostitution, only a little less shameful than that which,
under some governments, is openly licensed for the sake of a tax; if
this be the case generally, what ought to be said of a young man, who,
in the heyday of youth, should couple himself on to a libidinous woman,
old enough, perhaps, to be his grandmother, ugly as the nightmare,
offensive alike to the sight and the smell, and who should pretend to
_love_ her too: and all this merely for the sake of her money? Why, it
ought, and it, doubtless, would be said of him, that his conduct was a
libel on both man and womankind; that his name ought, for ever, to be
synonymous with baseness and nastiness, and that in no age and in no
nation, not marked by a general depravity of manners, and total absence
of all sense of shame, every associate, male or female, of such a man,
or of his filthy mate, would be held in abhorrence. Public morality
would drive such a hateful pair from society, and strict justice would
hunt them from the face of the earth.
87. BUONAPARTE could not be said to marry for _money_, but his motive
was little better. It was for dominion, for power, for ambition, and
that, too, of the most contemptible kind. I knew an American Gentleman,
with whom BUONAPARTE had always been a great favourite; but the moment
the news arrived of his divorce and second marriage, he gave him up.
This piece of grand prostitution was too much to be defended. And the
truth is, that BUONAPARTE might have dated his decline from the day of
that marriage. My American friend said, 'If I had been he, I would, in
the first place, have married the poorest and prettiest girl in all
France.' If he had done this, he would, in all probability, have now
been on an imperial throne, instead of being eaten by worms at the
bottom of a very deep hole in Saint Helena; whence, however, his bones
convey to the world the moral, that to marry for money, for ambition, or
from any motive other than the one pointed out by affection, is not the
road to glory, to happiness, or to peace.
88. Let me now turn from these two descriptions of lovers, with whom it
is useless to reason, and address myself to you, my reader, whom I
suppose to be a _real_ lover, but not so smitten as to be bereft of your
reason. You should never forget, that marriage, which is a state that
every young person ought to have in view, is a thing to last _for life_;
and that, generally speaking, it is to make life _happy_, or
_miserable_; for, though a man may bring his mind to something nearly a
state of _indifference_, even _that_ is misery, except with those who
can hardly be reckoned amongst sensitive beings. Marriage brings
numerous _cares_, which are amply compensated by the more numerous
delights which are their companions. But to have the delights, as well
as the cares, the choice of the partner must be fortunate. I say
_fortunate_; for, after all, love, real love, impassioned affection, is
an ingredient so absolutely necessary, that no _perfect_ reliance can
be placed on the judgment. Yet, the judgment may do something; reason
may have some influence; and, therefore, I here offer you my advice with
regard to the exercise of that reason.
89. The things which you ought to desire in a wife are, 1. Chastity; 2.
sobriety; 3. industry; 4. frugality; 5. cleanliness; 6. knowledge of
domestic affairs; 7. good temper; 8. beauty.
90. CHASTITY, perfect modesty, in word, deed, and even thought, is so
essential, that, without it, no female is fit to be a wife. It is not
enough that a young woman abstain from everything approaching towards
indecorum in her behaviour towards men; it is, with me, not enough that
she cast down her eyes, or turn aside her head with a smile, when she
hears an indelicate allusion: she ought to appear _not to understand_
it, and to receive from it no more impression than if she were a post. A
loose woman is a disagreeable _acquaintance_: what must she be, then, as
a _wife_? Love is so blind, and vanity is so busy in persuading us that
our own qualities will be sufficient to ensure fidelity, that we are
very apt to think nothing, or, at any rate, very little, of trifling
symptoms of levity; but if such symptoms show themselves _now_, we may
be well assured, that we shall never possess the power of effecting a
cure. If _prudery_ mean _false_ modesty, it is to be despised; but if it
mean modesty pushed to the utmost extent, I confess that I like it. Your
'_free and hearty_' girls I have liked very well to talk and laugh with;
but never, for one moment, did it enter into my mind that I could have
endured a 'free and hearty' girl for a wife. The thing is, I repeat, to
_last for life_; it is to be a counterbalance for troubles and
misfortunes; and it must, therefore, be perfect, or it had better not be
at all. To say that one _despises_ jealousy is foolish; it is a thing to
be lamented; but the very elements of it ought to be avoided. Gross
indeed is the beast, for he is unworthy of the name of man; nasty indeed
is the wretch, who can even entertain the thought of putting himself
between a pair of sheets with a wife of whose infidelity he possesses
the proof; but, in such cases, a man ought to be very slow to believe
appearances; and he ought not to decide against his wife but upon the
clearest proof. The last, and, indeed, the only effectual safeguard is,
to _begin_ well; to make a good choice; to let the beginning be such as
to render infidelity and jealousy next to impossible. If you begin in
grossness; if you couple yourself on to one with whom you have taken
liberties, infidelity is the natural and _just_ consequence. When a
_Peer of the realm_, who had not been over-fortunate in his matrimonial
affairs, was urging MAJOR CARTWRIGHT to seek for nothing more than
'_moderate_ reform,' the Major (forgetting the domestic circumstances of
his Lordship) asked him how he should relish '_moderate_ chastity' in a
wife! The bare use of the two words, thus coupled together, is
sufficient to excite disgust. Yet with this '_moderate_ chastity' you
must be, and ought to be, content, if you have entered into marriage
with one, in whom you have ever discovered the slightest approach
towards lewdness, either in deeds, words, or looks. To marry has been
your own act; you have made the contract for your own gratification; you
knew the character of the other party; and the children, if any, or the
community, are not to be the sufferers for your gross and corrupt
passion. '_Moderate_ chastity' is all that you have, in fact, contracted
for: you have it, and you have no reason to complain. When I come to
address myself to the _husband_, I shall have to say more upon this
subject, which I dismiss for the present with observing, that my
observation has convinced me, that, when families are rendered unhappy
from the existence of '_moderate_ chastity,' the fault, first or last,
has been in the man, ninety-nine times out of every hundred.
91. SOBRIETY. By _sobriety_ I do not mean merely an absence of _drinking
to a state of intoxication_; for, if that be _hateful_ in a man, what
must it be in a woman! There is a Latin proverb, which says, that wine,
that is to say, intoxication, _brings forth truth_. Whatever it may do
in this way, in men, in women it is sure, unless prevented by age or by
salutary ugliness, to produce a moderate, and a _very moderate_, portion
of chastity. There never was a drunken woman, a woman who loved strong
drink, who was chaste, if the opportunity of being the contrary
presented itself to her. There are cases where _health_ requires wine,
and even small portions of more ardent liquor; but (reserving what I
have further to say on this point, till I come to the conduct of the
husband) _young_ unmarried women can seldom stand in need of these
stimulants; and, at any rate, only in cases of well-known definite
ailments. Wine! '_only_ a _glass or two_ of wine at dinner, or so'! As
soon as have married a girl whom I had thought liable to be persuaded to
drink, habitually, '_only_ a glass or two of wine at dinner, or so;' as
soon as have _married_ such a girl, I would have taken a strumpet from
the streets. And it has not required _age_ to give me this way of
thinking: it has always been rooted in my mind from the moment that I
began to think the girls prettier than posts. There are few things so
disgusting as a guzzling woman. A gormandizing one is bad enough; but,
one who tips off the liquor with an appetite, and exclaims '_good!
good!_' by a smack of her lips, is fit for nothing but a brothel. There
may be cases, amongst the _hard_-labouring women, such as _reapers_, for
instance, especially when they have children at the breast; there may be
cases, where very _hard-working_ women may stand in need of a little
_good_ beer; beer, which, if taken in immoderate quantities, would
produce intoxication. But, while I only allow the _possibility_ of the
existence of such cases, I deny the necessity of any strong drink at all
in every other case. Yet, in this metropolis, it is the general custom
for tradesmen, journeymen, and even labourers, to have regularly on
their tables the big brewers' poison, twice in every day, and at the
rate of not less than a pot to a person, women, as well as men, as the
allowance for the day. A pot of poison a day, at fivepence the pot,
amounts to _seven pounds and two shillings_ in the year! Man and wife
suck down, in this way, _fourteen pounds four shillings_ a year! Is it
any wonder that they are clad in rags, that they are skin and bone, and
that their children are covered with filth?
92. But by the word SOBRIETY, in a young woman, I mean a great deal more
than even a rigid abstinence from that love of _drink_, which I am not
to suppose, and which I do not believe, to exist any thing like
generally amongst the young women of this country. I mean a great deal
more than this; I mean _sobriety of conduct_. The word _sober_, and its
derivatives, do not confine themselves to matters of _drink_: they
express _steadiness, seriousness, carefulness, scrupulous propriety of
conduct_; and they are thus used amongst country people in many parts of
England. When a Somersetshire fellow makes too free with a girl, she
reproves him with, 'Come! be _sober_!' And when we wish a team, or any
thing, to be moved on _steadily_ and with _great care_, we cry out to
the carter, or other operator, '_Soberly, soberly_.' Now, this species
of sobriety is a great qualification in the person you mean to make your
wife. Skipping, capering, romping, rattling girls are very amusing where
all costs and other consequences are out of the question; and they _may_
become _sober_ in the Somersetshire sense of the word. But while you
have _no certainty_ of this, you have a presumptive argument on the
other side. To be sure, when girls are _mere children_, they are to play
and romp like children. But, when they arrive at that age which turns
their thoughts towards that sort of connexion which is to be theirs for
life; when they begin to think of having the command of a house, however
small or poor, it is time for them to cast away the levity of the child.
It is natural, nor is it very wrong, that I know of, for children to
like to gad about and to see all sorts of strange sights, though I do
not approve of this even in children: but, if I could not have found a
_young woman_ (and I am sure I never should have married an _old_ one)
who I was not _sure_ possessed _all_ the qualities expressed by the word
sobriety, I should have remained a bachelor to the end of that life,
which, in that case, would, I am satisfied, have terminated without my
having performed a thousandth part of those labours which have been, and
are, in spite of all political prejudice, the wonder of all who have
seen, or heard of, them. Scores of gentlemen have, at different times,
expressed to me their surprise, that I was '_always in spirits_;' that
nothing _pulled me down_; and the truth is, that, throughout nearly
forty years of troubles, losses, and crosses, assailed all the while by
more numerous and powerful enemies than ever man had before to contend
with, and performing, at the same time, labours greater than man ever
before performed; all those labours requiring mental exertion, and some
of them mental exertion of the highest order; the truth is, that,
throughout the whole of this long time of troubles and of labours, I
have never known a single hour of _real anxiety_; the troubles have been
no troubles to me; I have not known what _lowness of spirits_ meaned;
have been more gay, and felt less care, than any bachelor that ever
lived. 'You are _always in spirits_, Cobbett!' To be sure; for why
should I not? _Poverty_ I have always set at defiance, and I could,
therefore, defy the temptations of riches; and, as to _home_ and
_children_, I had taken care to provide myself with an inexhaustible
store of that '_sobriety_,' which I am so strongly recommending my
reader to provide himself with; or, if he cannot do that, to deliberate
long before he ventures on the life-enduring matrimonial voyage. This
sobriety is a title to _trust-worthiness_; and _this_, young man, is the
treasure that you ought to prize far above all others. Miserable is the
husband, who, when he crosses the threshold of his house, carries with
him doubts and fears and suspicions. I do not mean suspicions of the
_fidelity_ of his wife, but of her care, frugality, attention to his
interests, and to the health and morals of his children. Miserable is
the man, who cannot leave _all unlocked_, and who is not _sure_, quite
certain, that all is as safe as if grasped in his own hand. He is the
happy husband, who can go away, at a moment's warning, leaving his house
and his family with as little anxiety as he quits an inn, not more
fearing to find, on his return, any thing wrong, than he would fear a
discontinuance of the rising and setting of the sun, and if, as in my
case, leaving books and papers all lying about at sixes and sevens,
finding them arranged in proper order, and the room, during the lucky
interval, freed from the effects of his and his ploughman's or
gardener's dirty shoes. Such a man has no _real cares_; such a man has
_no troubles_; and this is the sort of life that I have led. I have had
all the numerous and indescribable delights of home and children, and,
at the same time, all the bachelor's freedom from domestic cares: and to
this cause, far more than to any other, my readers owe those labours,
which I never could have performed, if even the slightest degree of want
of confidence at home had ever once entered into my mind.
93. But, in order to possess this precious _trust-worthiness_, you must,
if you can, exercise your _reason_ in the choice of your partner. If she
be vain of her person, very fond of dress, fond of _flattery_, at all
given to gadding about, fond of what are called _parties of pleasure_,
or coquetish, though in the least degree; if either of these, she never
will be trust-worthy; worthy; she cannot change her nature; and if you
marry her, you will be _unjust_ if you expect trust-worthiness at her
hands. But, besides this, even if you find in her that innate
'_sobriety_' of which I have been speaking, there requires on your part,
and that at once too, confidence and trust without any limit. Confidence
is, in this case, nothing unless it be reciprocal. To have a trust-worthy
wife, you must begin by showing her, even before you are married, that
you have no suspicions, no fears, no doubts, with regard to her. Many a
man has been discarded by a virtuous girl, merely on account of his
querulous conduct. All women despise jealous men; and, if they marry
such their motive is other than that of affection. Therefore, _begin_ by
proofs of unlimited confidence; and, as _example_ may serve to assist
precept, and as I never have preached that which I have not practised, I
will give you the history of my own conduct in this respect.
94. When I first saw my wife, she was _thirteen years old_, and I was
within about a month of _twenty-one_. She was the daughter of a Serjeant
of artillery, and I was the Serjeant-Major of a regiment of foot, both
stationed in forts near the city of St. John, in the Province of
New-Brunswick. I sat in the same room with her, for about an hour, in
company with others, and I made up my mind that she was the very girl
for me. That I thought her beautiful is certain, for that I had always
said should be an indispensable qualification; but I saw in her what I
deemed marks of that sobriety of _conduct_ of which I have said so much,
and which has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now
dead of winter, and, of course, the snow several feet deep on the
ground, and the weather piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had done
my morning's writing, to go out at break of day to take a walk on a hill
at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about three mornings after I
had first seen her, I had, by an invitation to breakfast with me, got up
two young men to join me in my walk; and our road lay by the house of
her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on the snow,
scrubbing out a washing-tub. 'That's the girl for me,' said I, when we
had got out of her hearing. One of these young men came to England soon
afterwards; and he, who keeps an inn in Yorkshire, came over to Preston,
at the time of the election, to verify whether I were the same man. When
he found that I was, he appeared surprised; but what was his surprise,
when I told him that those tall young men, whom he saw around me, were
the _sons_ of that pretty little girl that he and I saw scrubbing out
the washing-tub on the snow in New-Brunswick at day-break in the
morning!
95. From the day that I first spoke to her, I never had a thought of her
ever being the wife of any other man, more than I had a thought of her
being transformed into a chest of drawers; and I formed my resolution at
once, to marry her as soon as we could get permission, and to get out of
the army as soon as I could. So that this matter was, at once, settled
as firmly as if written in the book of fate. At the end of about six
months, my regiment, and I along with it, were removed to FREDERICKTON,
a distance of a _hundred miles_, up the river of ST. JOHN; and, which
was worse, the artillery were expected to go off to England a year or
two before our regiment! The artillery went, and she along with them;
and now it was that I acted a part becoming a real and sensible lover. I
was aware, that, when she got to that gay place WOOLWICH, the house of
her father and mother, necessarily visited by numerous persons not the
most select, might become unpleasant to her, and I did not like,
besides, that she should continue to _work hard_. I had saved a _hundred
and fifty guineas_, the earnings of my early hours, in writing for the
paymaster, the quartermaster, and others, in addition to the savings of
my own pay. _I sent her all my money_, before she sailed; and wrote to
her to beg of her, if she found her home uncomfortable, to hire a
lodging with respectable people: and, at any rate, not to spare the
money, by any means, but to buy herself good clothes, and to live
without hard work, until I arrived in England; and I, in order to induce
her to lay out the money, told her that I should get plenty more before
I came home.
96. As the malignity of the devil would have it, we were kept abroad
_two years longer_ than our time, Mr. PITT (England not being so tame
then as she is now) having knocked up a dust with Spain about Nootka
Sound. Oh, how I cursed Nootka Sound, and poor bawling Pitt too, I am
afraid! At the end _of four years_, however, home I came; landed at
Portsmouth, and got my discharge from the army by the great kindness of
poor LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD, who was then the Major of my regiment. I
found my little girl _a servant of all work_ (and hard work it was), at
_five pounds a year_, in the house of a CAPTAIN BRISAC; and, without
hardly saying a word about the matter, she put into my hands _the whole
of my hundred and fifty guineas unbroken_!
97. Need I tell the reader what my feelings were? Need I tell
kind-hearted English parents what effect this anecdote _must_ have
produced on the minds of our children? Need I attempt to describe what
effect this example ought to have on every young woman who shall do me
the honour to read this book? Admiration of her conduct, and
self-gratulation on this indubitable proof of the soundness of my own
judgment, were now added to my love of her beautiful person.
98. Now, I do not say that there are not many young women of this
country who would, under similar circumstances, have acted as my wife
did in this case; on the contrary, I hope, and do sincerely believe,
that there are. But when _her age_ is considered; when we reflect, that
she was living in a place crowded, literally _crowded_, with
gaily-dressed and handsome young men, many of whom really far richer and
in higher rank than I was, and scores of them ready to offer her their
hand; when we reflect that she was living amongst young women who put
upon their backs every shilling that they could come at; when we see her
keeping the bag of gold untouched, and working hard to provide herself
with but mere necessary apparel, and doing this while she was passing
from _fourteen to eighteen years of age_; when we view the whole of the
circumstances, we must say that here is an example, which, while it
reflects honour on her sex, ought to have weight with every young woman
whose eyes or ears this relation shall reach.
99. If any young man imagine, that this great _sobriety of conduct_ in
young women must be accompanied with seriousness approaching to _gloom_,
he is, according to my experience and observation, very much deceived.
The _contrary_ is the fact; for I have found that as, amongst men, your
jovial companions are, except over the bottle, the dullest and most
insipid of souls; so amongst women, the gay, rattling, and laughing,
are, unless some party of pleasure, or something out of domestic life,
is going on, generally in the dumps and blue-devils. Some _stimulus_ is
always craved after by this description of women; some sight to be seen,
something to see or hear other than what is to be found _at home_,
which, as it affords no incitement, nothing '_to raise and keep up the
spirits_', is looked upon merely as a place _to be at_ for want of a
better; merely a place for eating and drinking, and the like; merely a
biding place, whence to sally in search of enjoyments. A greater curse
than a wife of this description, it would be somewhat difficult to find;
and, in your character of Lover, you are to provide against it. I hate a
dull, melancholy, moping thing: I could not have existed in the same
house with such a thing for a single month. The mopers are, too, all
giggle at other times: the gaiety is for others, and the moping for the
husband, to comfort him, happy man, when he is alone: plenty of smiles
and of badinage for others, and for him to participate with others; but
the moping is reserved exclusively for him. One hour she is capering
about, as if rehearsing a jig; and, the next, sighing to the motion of a
lazy needle, or weeping over a novel and this is called _sentiment_!
Music, indeed! Give me a mother singing to her clean and fat and rosy
baby, and making the house ring with her extravagant and hyperbolical
encomiums on it. That is the music which is '_the food of love_;' and
not the formal, pedantic noises, an affectation of skill in which is
now-a-days the ruin of half the young couples in the middle rank of
life. Let any man observe, as I so frequently have, with delight, the
excessive fondness of the labouring people for their children. Let him
observe with what pride they dress them out on a Sunday, with means
deducted from their own scanty meals. Let him observe the husband, who
has toiled all the week like a horse, nursing the baby, while the wife
is preparing the bit of dinner. Let him observe them both abstaining
from a sufficiency, lest the children should feel the pinchings of
hunger. Let him observe, in short, the whole of their demeanour, the
real mutual affection, evinced, not in words, but in unequivocal deeds.
Let him observe these things, and, having then cast a look at the lives
of the great and wealthy, he will say, with me, that, when a man is
choosing his partner for life, the dread of poverty ought to be cast to
the winds. A labourer's cottage, on a Sunday; the husband or wife having
a baby in arms, looking at two or three older ones playing between the
flower-borders going from the wicket to the door, is, according to my
taste, the most interesting object that eyes ever beheld; and, it is an
object to be beheld in no country upon earth but England. In France, a
labourer's cottage means _a shed_ with a _dung-heap_ before the door;
and it means much about the same in America, where it is wholly
inexcusable. In riding once, about five years ago, from Petworth to
Horsham, on a Sunday in the afternoon, I came to a solitary cottage
which stood at about twenty yards distance from the road. There was the
wife with the baby in her arms, the husband teaching another child to
walk, while _four_ more were at play before them. I stopped and looked
at them for some time, and then, turning my horse, rode up to the
wicket, getting into talk by asking the distance to Horsham. I found
that the man worked chiefly in the woods, and that he was doing pretty
well. The wife was then only _twenty-two_, and the man only
_twenty-five_. She was a pretty woman, even for _Sussex_, which, not
excepting Lancashire, contains the prettiest women in England. He was a
very fine and stout young man. 'Why,' said I, 'how many children do you
reckon to have at last?' 'I do not care how many,' said the man: 'God
never sends mouths without sending meat.' 'Did you ever hear,' said I,
'of one PARSON MALTHUS?' 'No, sir.' 'Why, if he were to hear of your
works, he would be outrageous; for he wants an act of parliament to
prevent poor people from marrying young, and from having such lots of
children.' 'Oh! the brute!' exclaimed the wife; while the husband
laughed, thinking that I was joking. I asked the man whether he had ever
had _relief from the parish_; and upon his answering in the negative, I
took out my purse, took from it enough to bait my horse at Horsham, and
to clear my turnpikes to WORTH, whither I was going in order to stay
awhile, and gave him all the rest. Now, is it not a shame, is it not a
sin of all sins, that people like these should, by acts of the
government, be reduced to such misery as to be induced to abandon their
homes and their country, to seek, in a foreign land, the means of
preventing themselves and their children from starving? And this has
been, and now is, actually the case with many such families in this same
county of Sussex!
100. An _ardent-minded_ young man (who, by-the-by, will, as I am afraid,
have been wearied by this rambling digression) may fear, that this great
_sobriety of conduct_ in a young woman, for which I have been so
strenuously contending, argues a want of that _warmth_, which he
naturally so much desires; and, if my observation and experience
warranted the entertaining of this fear, I should say, had I to live my
life over again, give me the _warmth_, and I will stand my chance as to
the rest. But, this observation and this experience tell me the
contrary; they tell me that _levity_ is, ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, the companion of _a want of ardent feeling_. Prostitutes never
_love_, and, for the far greater part, never did. Their passion, which
is more _mere animal_ than any thing else, is easily gratified; they,
like rakes, change not only without pain, but with pleasure; that is to
say, pleasure as great as they can enjoy. Women of _light minds_ have
seldom any _ardent_ passion; love is a mere name, unless confined to one
object; and young women, in whom levity of conduct is observable, will
not be thus restricted. I do not, however, recommend a young man to be
_too severe_ in judging, where the conduct does not go beyond _mere
levity_, and is not bordering on _loose_ conduct; for something depends
here upon constitution and animal spirits, and something also upon the
manners of the country. That levity, which, in a French girl, I should
not have thought a great deal of, would have frightened me away from an
English or an American girl. When I was in France, just after I was
married, there happened to be amongst our acquaintance a gay, sprightly
girl, of about seventeen. I was remonstrating with her, one day, on the
facility with which she seemed to shift her smiles from object to
object; and she, stretching one arm out in an upward direction, the
other in a downward direction, raising herself upon one foot, leaning
her body on one side, and thus throwing herself into _flying_ attitude,
answered my grave lecture by singing, in a very sweet voice
(significantly bowing her head and smiling at the same time), the
following lines from the _vaudeville_, in the play of Figaro:
Si l'amour a des _ailles_;
N'est ce pas pour _voltiger_?
That is, if love has _wings_, is it not _to flutter about_ with? The
wit, argument, and manner, all together, silenced me. She, after I left
France, married a very worthy man, has had a large family, and has been,
and is, a most excellent wife and mother. But that which does sometimes
well in France, does not do here at all. Our manners are more grave:
steadiness is the rule, and levity the exception. Love may _voltige_ in
France; but, in England, it cannot, with safety to the lover: and it is
a truth which, I believe, no man of attentive observation will deny,
that, as, in general, English wives are _more warm_ in their conjugal
attachments than those of France, so, with regard to individuals, that
those English women who are the _most light_ in their manners, and who
are the _least constant_ in their attachments, have the smallest portion
of that _warmth_, that indescribable passion which God has given to
human beings as the great counterbalance to all the sorrows and
sufferings of life.
101. INDUSTRY. By _industry_, I do not mean merely _laboriousness_,
merely labour or activity of body, for purposes of gain or of saving;
for there may be industry amongst those who have more money than they
know well what to do with: and there may be _lazy ladies_, as well as
lazy farmers' and tradesmen's wives. There is no state of life in which
_industry_ in the wife is not necessary to the happiness and prosperity
of the family, at the head of the household affairs of which she is
placed. If she be lazy, there will be lazy servants, and, which is a
great deal worse, children habitually lazy: every thing, however
necessary to be done, will be put off to the last moment: then it will
be done badly, and, in many cases, not at all: the dinner will be _too
late_; the journey or the visit will be tardy; inconveniencies of all
sorts will be continually arising: there will always be a heavy _arrear_
of things unperformed; and this, even amongst the most wealthy of all,
is a great curse; for, if they have no _business_ imposed upon them by
necessity, they _make business_ for themselves; life would be unbearable
without it: and therefore a lazy woman must always be a curse, be her
rank or station what it may.
102. But, _who is to tell_ whether a girl will make an industrious
woman? How is the purblind lover especially, to be able to ascertain
whether she, whose smiles and dimples and bewitching lips have half
bereft him of his senses; how is he to be able to judge, from any thing
that he can see, whether the beloved object will be industrious or lazy?
Why, it is very difficult: it is a matter that reason has very little to
do with; but there are, nevertheless, certain outward and visible signs,
from which a man, not wholly deprived of the use of his reason, may form
a pretty accurate judgment as to this matter. It was a story in
Philadelphia, some years ago, that a young man, who was courting one of
three sisters, happened to be on a visit to her, when all the three were
present, and when one said to the others, 'I _wonder_ where _our_ needle
is.' Upon which he withdrew, as soon as was consistent with the rules of
politeness, resolved never to think more of a girl who possessed a
needle only in partnership, and who, it appeared, was not too well
informed as to the place where even that share was deposited.
103. This was, to be sure, a very flagrant instance of a want of
industry; for, if the third part of the use of a needle satisfied her
when single, it was reasonable to anticipate that marriage would banish
that useful implement altogether. But such instances are seldom suffered
to come in contact with the eyes and ears of the lover, to disguise all
defects from whom is the great business, not only of the girl herself,
but of her whole family. There are, however, certain _outward signs_,
which, if attended to with care, will serve as pretty sure guides. And,
first, if you find the _tongue_ lazy, you may be nearly certain that the
hands and feet are the same. By laziness of the tongue I do not mean
_silence_; I do not mean an _absence of talk_, for that is, in most
cases, very good; but, I mean, a _slow_ and _soft utterance_; a sort of
_sighing out_ of the words instead of _speaking_ them; a sort of letting
the sounds fall out, as if the party were _sick at stomach_. The
pronunciation of an industrious person is generally _quick_, _distinct_,
and the voice, if not strong, _firm_ at the least. Not masculine; as
feminine as possible; not a _croak_ nor a _bawl_, but a quick, distinct,
and sound voice. Nothing is much more disgusting than what the sensible
country people call a _maw-mouthed_ woman. A maw-mouthed man is bad
enough: he is sure to be a lazy fellow: but, a woman of this
description, in addition to her laziness, soon becomes the most
disgusting of mates. In this whole world nothing is much more hateful
than a female's under jaw, lazily moving up and down, and letting out a
long string of half-articulate sounds. It is impossible for any man, who
has any spirit in him, to love such a woman for any length of time.
104. Look a little, also, at the labours of the _teeth_, for these
correspond with those of the other members of the body, and with the
operations of the mind. 'Quick at _meals_, quick at _work_,' is a saying
as old as the hills, in this, the most industrious nation upon earth;
and never was there a truer saying. But fashion comes in here, and
decides that you shall not be quick at meals; that you shall sit and be
carrying on the affair of eating for an hour, or more. Good God! what
have I not suffered on this account! However, though she must _sit_ as
long as the rest, and though she must join in the _performance_ (for it
is a real performance) unto the end of the last scene, she cannot make
her _teeth_ abandon their character. She may, and must, suffer the slice
to linger on the plate, and must make the supply slow, in order to fill
up the time; but when she _does_ bite, she cannot well disguise what
nature has taught her to do; and you may be assured, that if her jaws
move in slow time, and if she rather _squeeze_ than bite the food; if
she so deal with it as to leave you in doubt as to whether she mean
finally to admit or reject it; if she deal with it thus, set her down as
being, in her very nature, incorrigibly lazy. Never mind the pieces of
needle-work, the tambouring, the maps of the world made by her needle.
Get to see her at work upon a mutton chop, or a bit of bread and cheese;
and, if she deal quickly with these, you have a pretty good security for
that activity, that _stirring_ industry, without which a wife is a
burden instead of being a help. And, as to _love_, it cannot live for
more than a month or two (in the breast of a man of spirit) towards a
lazy woman.
105. Another mark of industry is, a _quick step_, and a somewhat _heavy
tread_, showing that the foot comes down with a _hearty good will_; and
if the body lean a little forward, and the eyes keep steadily in the
same direction, while the feet are going, so much the better, for these
discover _earnestness_ to arrive at the intended point. I do not like,
and I never liked, your _sauntering_, soft-stepping girls, who move as
if they were perfectly indifferent as to the result; and, as to the
_love_ part of the story, whoever expects ardent and lasting affection
from one of these sauntering girls, will, when too late, find his
mistake: the character runs the same all the way through; and no man
ever yet saw a sauntering girl, who did not, when married, make a
_mawkish_ wife, and a cold-hearted mother; cared very little for either
by husband or children; and, of course, having no store of those
blessings which are the natural resources to apply to in sickness and in
old age.
106. _Early-rising_ is another mark of industry; and though, in the
higher situations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere
pecuniary point of view, it is, even there, of importance in other
respects; for it is, I should imagine, pretty difficult to keep love
alive towards a woman who _never sees the dew_, never beholds the
_rising sun_, and who constantly comes directly from a reeking bed to
the breakfast table, and there chews about, without appetite, the
choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure this for a
month or two, without being disgusted; but that is ample allowance of
time. And, as to people in the middle rank of life, where a living and a
provision for children is to be sought by labour of some sort or other,
late rising in the wife is _certain ruin_; and, never was there yet an
early-rising wife, who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to
late rising, she will like it; it will be her _habit_; she will, when
married, never want excuses for indulging in the habit; at first she
will be indulged without bounds; to make a _change_ afterwards will be
difficult; it will be deemed a _wrong_ done to her; she will ascribe it
to diminished affection; a quarrel must ensue, or, the husband must
submit to be ruined, or, at the very least, to see half the fruit of his
labour snored and lounged away. And, is this being _rigid_? Is it being
_harsh_; is it being _hard_ upon women? Is it the offspring of the
frigid severity of age? It is none of these: it arises from an ardent
desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate,
and salutary influence, of the female sex. The tendency of this advice
is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration
of their beauty; to cause them to be beloved to the last day of their
lives; and to give them, during the whole of those lives, weight and
consequence, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.
107. FRUGALITY. This means the contrary of _extravagance_. It does not
mean _stinginess_; it does not mean a pinching of the belly, nor a
stripping of the back; but it means an abstaining from all _unnecessary_
expenditure, and all _unnecessary_ use, of goods of any and of every
sort; and a quality of great importance it is, whether the rank in life
be high or low. Some people are, indeed, so rich, they have such an
overabundance of money and goods, that how to get rid of them would, to
a looker-on, seem to be their only difficulty. But while the
inconvenience of even these immense masses is not too great to be
overcome by a really extravagant woman, who jumps with joy at a basket
of strawberries at a guinea an ounce, and who would not give a straw for
green peas later in the year than January; while such a dame would
lighten the bags of a loan-monger, or shorten the rent-roll of
half-a-dozen peerages amalgamated into one possession, she would, with
very little study and application of her talent, send a nobleman of
ordinary estate to the poor-house or the pension list, which last may be
justly regarded as the poor-book of the aristocracy. How many noblemen
and gentlemen, of fine estates, have been ruined and degraded by the
extravagance of their wives! More frequently by their _own_
extravagance, perhaps; but, in numerous instances, by that of those
whose duty it is to assist in upholding their stations by husbanding
their fortunes.
108. If this be the case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw
upon, what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle
and lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially amongst
that description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the
_receiving_ as well as the expending of money. In such a case, there
wants nothing but extravagance in the wife to make ruin as sure as the
arrival of old age. To obtain _security_ against this is very difficult;
yet, if the lover be not _quite blind_, he may easily discover a
propensity towards extravagance. The object of his addresses will, nine
times out of ten, not be the manager of a house; but she must have her
_dress_, and other little matters under her control. If she be _costly_
in these; if, in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of
it; if she purchase all she is _able_ to purchase, and prefer the showy
to the useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more
durable, he may be sure that the disposition will cling to her through
life. If he perceive in her a taste for costly food, costly furniture,
costly amusements; if he find her love of gratification to be bounded
only by her want of means; if he find her full of admiration of the
trappings of the rich, and of desire to be able to imitate them, he may
be pretty sure that she will not spare his purse, when once she gets her
hand into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her charms, the
sooner he does it the better.
109. The outward and visible and vulgar signs of extravagance are
_rings_, _broaches_, _bracelets_, _buckles_, _necklaces_, _diamonds_
(real or mock), and, in short, all the _hard-ware_ which women put upon
their persons. These things may be proper enough in _palaces_, or in
scenes resembling palaces; but, when they make their appearance amongst
people in the middle rank of life, where, after all, they only serve to
show that poverty in the parties which they wish to disguise; when the
nasty, mean, tawdry things make their appearance in this rank of life,
they are the sure indications of a disposition that will _always be
straining at what it can never attain_. To marry a girl of this
disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either
property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn
the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a
coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will torment you to the
end of her or your days; for, still there will be somebody with a finer
equipage than you can give her; and, as long as this is the case, you
will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that she could never be at
the _top_; that she must stop at some point short of that; and that,
therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much thrown away. But,
_reason_ and broaches and bracelets do not go in company: the girl who
has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured, and not
beautified, by parcels of brass and tin (for they are generally little
better) and other hard-ware, stuck about her body; the girl that is so
foolish as not to perceive, that, when silks and cottons and cambrics,
in their neatest form, have done their best, nothing more is to be done;
the girl that cannot perceive this is too great a fool to be trusted
with the purse of any man.
110. CLEANLINESS. This is a capital ingredient; for there never yet was,
and there never will be, love of long duration, sincere and ardent love,
in any man, towards a '_filthy mate_.' I mean any man _in England_, or
in those parts of _America_ where the people have descended from the
English. I do not say, that there are not men enough, even in England,
to live _peaceably_ and even contentedly, with dirty, sluttish women;
for, there are some who seem to like the filth well enough. But what I
contend for is this: that there never can exist, for any length of time,
_ardent affection_ in any man towards a woman who is filthy either in
her person, or in her house affairs. Men may be careless as to their own
persons; they may, from the nature of their business, or from their want
of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be slovenly in their own dress
and habits; but, they do not relish this in their wives, who must still
have _charms_; and charms and filth do not go together.
111. It is not _dress_ that the husband wants to be perpetual: it is not
_finery_; but _cleanliness_ in every thing. The French women dress
enough, especially when they _sally forth_. My excellent neighbour, Mr.
JOHN TREDWELL, of Long Island, used to say, that the French were 'pigs
in the parlour, and peacocks on the promenade;' an alliteration which
'CANNING'S SELF' might have envied! This _occasional_ cleanliness is not
the thing that an English or an American husband wants: he wants it
always; indoors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor
as well as on the table; and, however he may grumble about the '_fuss_'
and the '_expense_' of it, he would grumble more if he had it not. I
once saw a picture representing the _amusements_ of Portuguese Lovers;
that is to say, three or four young men, dressed in gold or silver laced
clothes, each having a young girl, dressed like a princess, and
affectionately engaged in hunting down and _killing the vermin in his
head_! This was, perhaps, an _exaggeration_; but that it should have had
the shadow of foundation, was enough to fill me with contempt for the
whole nation.
112. The _signs_ of cleanliness are, in the first place, a clean _skin_.
An English girl will hardly let her lover see the stale dirt between her
fingers, as I have many times seen it between those of French women, and
even ladies, of all ages. An English girl will have her _face_ clean, to
be sure, if there be soap and water within her reach; but, get a glance,
just a glance, at her _poll_, if you have any doubt upon the subject;
and, if you find there, or _behind the ears_, what the Yorkshire people
call _grime_, the sooner you cease your visits the better. I hope, now,
that no young woman will be offended at this, and think me too severe on
her sex. I am only saying, I am only telling the women, that which _all
men think_; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed
of _our thoughts_ on the subject. If any one, who shall read this, find,
upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, there is
plenty of time for correcting the defect.
113. In the _dress_ you can, amongst rich people, find little whereon to
form a judgment as to cleanliness, because they have not only the dress
prepared for them, but _put upon them_ into the bargain. But, in the
middle rank of life, the dress is a good criterion in two respects:
first, as to its _colour_; for, if the _white_ be a sort of _yellow_,
cleanly hands would have been at work to prevent that. A _white-yellow_
cravat, or shirt, on a man, speaks, at once, the character of his wife;
and, be you assured, that she will not take with your dress pains which
she has never taken with her own. Then, the manner _of putting on_ the
dress is no bad foundation for judging. If it be careless, slovenly, if
it do not fit properly, no matter for its _mean quality_: mean as it may
be, it may be neatly and trimly put on; and, if it be not, take care of
yourself; for, as you will soon find to your cost, a sloven in one thing
is a sloven in all things. The country-people judge greatly from the
state of the covering of the _ancles_ and, if that be not clean and
tight, they conclude, that all out of sight is not what it ought to be.
Look at the _shoes_! If they be trodden on one side, loose on the foot,
or run down at the heel, it is a very bad sign; and, as to _slip-shod_,
though at coming down in the morning and even before day-light, make up
your mind to a rope, rather than to live with a slip-shod wife.
114. Oh! how much do women lose by inattention to these matters! Men, in
general, say nothing about it to their wives; but they _think_ about it;
they envy their luckier neighbours; and in numerous cases, consequences
the most serious arise from this apparently trifling cause. Beauty is
valuable; it is one of the ties, and a strong tie too; that, however,
cannot last to old age; but, the charm of cleanliness never ends but
with life itself. I dismiss this part of my subject with a quotation
from my 'YEAR'S RESIDENCE IN AMERICA,' containing words which I venture
to recommend to every young woman to engrave on her heart: 'The sweetest
flowers, when they become putrid, stink the most; and a nasty woman is
the nastiest thing in nature.'
115. KNOWLEDGE OF DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. Without more or less of this
knowledge, _a lady_, even the wife of a peer, is but a poorish thing. It
was the fashion, in former times, for ladies to understand a great deal
about these affairs, and it would be very hard to make me believe that
this did not tend to promote the interests and honour of their husbands.
The affairs of a great family never can be _well_ managed, if left
_wholly_ to hirelings; and there are many parts of these affairs in
which it would be unseemly for the husband to meddle. Surely, no lady
can be too high in rank to make it proper for her to be well acquainted
with the characters and general demeanour of all the _female servants_.
To receive and give them characters is too much
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