The Pleasures of Life

CHAPTER 8. THE PLEASURES OF HOME.

"There's no place like Home."——Old English Song.

It may well be doubted which is more delightful,—to start for a holiday which has been fully earned, or to return home from one which has been thoroughly enjoyed; to find oneself, with renewed vigor, with a fresh store of memories and ideas, back once more by one's own fireside, with one's family, friends, and books.

"To sit at home," says Leigh Hunt, "with an old folio book of romantic yet credible voyages and travels to read, an old bearded traveller for its hero, a fireside in an old country house to read it by, curtains drawn, and just wind enough stirring out of doors to make an accompaniment to the billows or forests we are reading of—this surely is one of the perfect moments of existence."

It is no doubt a great privilege to visit foreign countries; to travel say in Mexico or Peru, or to cruise among the Pacific Islands; but in some respects the narratives of early travellers, the histories of Prescott or the voyages of Captain Cook, are even more interesting; describing to us, as they do, a state of society which was then so unlike ours, but which has now been much changed and Europeanized.

Thus we may make our daily travels interesting, even though, like those of the Vicar of Wakefield, all our adventures are by our own fireside, and all our migrations from one room to another.

Moreover, even if the beauties of home are humble, they are still infinite, and a man "may lie in his bed, like Pompey and his sons, in all quarters of the earth." [1]

It is, then, wise to "cultivate a talent very fortunate for a man of my disposition, that of travelling in my easy chair; of transporting myself, without stirring from my parlor, to distant places and to absent friends; of drawing scenes in my mind's eye; and of peopling them with the groups of fancy, or the society of remembrance." [2]

We may indeed secure for ourselves endless variety without leaving our own firesides.

In the first place, the succession of seasons multiplies every home. How different is the view from our windows as we look on the tender green of spring, the rich foliage of summer, the glorious tints of autumn, or the delicate tracery of winter.

Our climate is so happy, that even in the worst months of the year, "calm mornings of sunshine visit us at times, appearing like glimpses of departed spring amid the wilderness of wet and windy days that lead to winter. It is pleasant, when these interludes of silver light occur, to ride into the woods and see how wonderful are all the colors of decay. Overhead, the elms and chestnuts hang their wealth of golden leaves, while the beeches darken into russet tones, and the wild cherry glows like blood-red wine. In the hedges crimson haws and scarlet hips are wreathed with hoary clematis or necklaces of coral briony-berries; the brambles burn with many-colored flames; the dog-wood is bronzed to purple; and here and there the spindle-wood puts forth its fruit, like knots of rosy buds, on delicate frail twigs. Underneath lie fallen leaves, and the brown brake rises to our knees as we thread the forest paths." [3]

Nay, every day gives us a succession of glorious pictures in never-ending variety. It is remarkable how few people seem to derive any pleasure from the beauty of the sky. Gray, after describing a sunrise—how it began with a slight whitening, just tinged with gold and blue, lit up all at once by a little line of insufferable brightness which rapidly grew to half an orb, and so to a whole one too glorious to be distinctly seen—adds, "I wonder whether any one ever saw it before. I hardly believe it." [4]

No doubt from the dawn of poetry, the splendors of the morning and evening skies have delighted all those who have eyes to see. But we are especially indebted to Ruskin for enabling us more vividly to realize these glorious sky pictures. As he says, in language almost as brilliant as the sky itself, the whole heaven, "from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every block bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind—things which can only be conceived while they are visible; the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all, showing here deep and pure, and lightness; there, modulated by the filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold."

It is in some cases indeed "not color but conflagration," and though the tints are richer and more varied toward morning and at sunset, the glorious kaleidoscope goes on all day long. Yet "it is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him, and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answer, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives when Nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure." [5]

Nor does the beauty end with the day. "It is nothing to sleep under the canopy of heaven, where we have the globe of the earth for our place of repose, and the glories of the heavens for our spectacle?" [6] For my part I always regret the custom of shutting up our rooms in the evening, as though there was nothing worth seeing outside. What, however, can be more beautiful than to "look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," or to watch the moon journeying in calm and silver glory through the night. And even if we do not feel that "the man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an Archangel at the creation of light and of the world," [7] still "the stars say something significant to all of us: and each man has a whole hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and befriend him"; [8] for it is not so much, as Helps elsewhere observes, "in guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but out of the dark waters of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to ourselves the most of their significance." Indeed,

"How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

  No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,

Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine

Rolls through the dark blue depths;

Beneath her steady ray

The desert circle spreads,

  Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky;

How beautiful is night!" [9]

I have never wondered at those who worshipped the sun and moon.

On the other hand, when all outside is dark and cold; when perhaps

"Outside fall the snowflakes lightly;

Through the night loud raves the storm;

In my room the fire glows brightly,

And 'tis cosy, silent, warm.

  "Musing sit I on the settle

By the firelight's cheerful blaze,

  Listening to the busy kettle

Humming long forgotten lays." [10]

For after all the true pleasures of home are not without, but within; and "the domestic man who loves no music so well as his own kitchen clock and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of." [11]

We love the ticking of the clock, and the flicker of the fire, like the sound of the cawing of rooks, not so much for any beauty of their own as for their associations.

It is a great truth that when we retire into ourselves we can call up what memories we please.

"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,

  When fond recollection recalls them to view.—

  The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood

  And every lov'd spot which my infancy knew." [12]

It is not so much the

"Fireside enjoyments,

And all the comforts of the lowly roof," [13]

but rather, according to the higher and better ideal of Keble,

"Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look,

     When hearts are of each other sure;

  Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,

     The haunt of all affections pure."

In ancient times, not only among savage races, but even among the Greeks themselves, there seems to have been but little family life. What a contrast was the home life of the Greeks, as it seems to have been, to that, for instance, described by Cowley—a home happy "in books and gardens," and above all, in a

"Virtuous wife, where thou dost meet

  Both pleasures more refined and sweet;

  The fairest garden in her looks

  And in her mind the wisest books."

No one who has ever loved mother or wife, sister or daughter, can read without astonishment and pity St. Chrysostom's description of woman as "a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill."

In few respects has mankind made a greater advance than in the relations of men and women. It is terrible to think how women suffer in savage life; and even among the intellectual Greeks, with rare exceptions, they seem to have been treated rather as housekeepers or playthings than as the Angels who make a Heaven of home.

The Hindoo proverb that you should "never strike a wife, even with a flower," though a considerable advance, tells a melancholy tale of what must previously have been.

In The Origin of Civilization I have given many cases showing how small a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no word for "to love," so that when the missionaries translated the Bible into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language, without love.

Yet in marriage even the rough passion of a savage may contrast favorably with any cold calculation, which, like the enchanted hoard of the Nibelungs, is almost sure to bring misfortune. In the Kalevala, the Finnish epic, the divine smith, Ilmarinnen, forges a bride of gold and silver for Wainamoinen, who was pleased at first to have so rich a wife, but soon found her intolerably cold, for, in spite of fires and furs, whenever he touched her she froze him.

Moreover, apart from mere coldness, how much we suffer from foolish quarrels about trifles; from mere misunderstandings; from hasty words thoughtlessly repeated, sometimes without the context or tone which would have deprived them of any sting. How much would that charity which "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things," effect to smooth away the sorrows of life and add to the happiness of home. Home indeed may be a sure haven of repose from the storms and perils of the world. But to secure this we must not be content to pave it with good intentions, but must make it bright and cheerful.

If our life be one of toil and of suffering, if the world outside be cold and dreary, what a pleasure to return to the sunshine of happy faces and the warmth of hearts we love.

[1] Sir T. Browne.

[2] Mackenzie, The Lounger.

[3] J. A. Symonds.

[4] Gray's Letters.

[5] Ruskin.

[6] Seneca.

[7] Emerson.

[8] Helps.

[9] Southey.

[10] Heine, trans. by E. A. Bowring.

[11] Emerson.

[12] Woodworth.

[13] Cowper.