Winter XIII. English comfort

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Winter XII. Comfort in the roaring dark

If some stranger from abroad asked me to point out to him the most noteworthy things in England, I should first of all consider his intellect. Were he a man of everyday level, I might indicate for his wonder and admiration Greater London, the Black Country, South Lancashire, and other features of our civilization which, despite eager rivalry, still maintain our modern pre-eminence in the creation of ugliness. If, on the other hand, he seemed a man of brains, it would be my pleasure to take him to one of those old villages, in the midlands or the west, which lie at some distance from a railway station, and in aspect are still untouched by the baser tendencies of the time, Here, I would tell my traveller, he saw something which England alone can show. The simple beauty of the architecture, its perfect adaptation to the natural surroundings, the neatness of everything though without formality, the general cleanness and good repair, the grace of cottage gardens, that tranquility and security which makes a music in the mind of him who gazes -- these are what a man must see and feel if he would appreciate the worth and the power of England...

The Englishman’s need of “comfort” is one of his best characteristics; the possibility that he may change in this respect, and become indifferent to this old ideal of physical and mental ease, is the gravest danger manifest in our day. For “comfort,” mind you, does not concern the body alone; the beauty and orderliness of an Englishman’s home derive their value, nay, their very existence, from the spirit which directs his whole life. Walk from the village to the noble’s mansion. It, too, is perfect of its kind; it has the dignity of age, its walls are beautiful, the gardens, the park about it are such as can be found only in England, lovely beyond compare; and all this represents the same moral characteristics as the English cottage, but with greater activities and responsibilities. If the noble grow tired of his mansion, and, letting it to some crude owner of millions, go to live in hotels and hired villas; if the cottager sicken of his village roof, and transport himself to the sixth floor of a “block” in Shoreditch; one sees but too well that the one and the other have lost the old English sense of comfort, and, in losing it, have suffered degradation alike as men and as citizens. It is not a question of exchanging one form of comfort for another; the instinct which made an Englishman has in these cases perished. Perhaps it is perishing from among us altogether, killed by new social and political conditions, one who looks at villages of the new type, at the working-class quarters of towns, at the rising of “flats” among the dwellings of the wealthy, has little choice but to think so. There may soon come a day when, though the word “comfort” continues to be used in many languages, the thing it signifies will be discoverable nowhere at all.

Alpha.

One problem with having read so much military writing is that it is hard to remember just where you picked up a certain idea or story. In some account of a British war, after The Great War, and I’m almost certain this was non-fiction, there was an officer paired with -- as always in these cases -- an enlisted man who saw to the officer's dietary needs. This particular assistant had a knack for producing a cup of hot tea in the most unlikely circumstances. Weather, lack of supplies, enemy fire, seemed to have no effect on his ability to manifest boiling hot tea at a moment’s notice. I think Ryecroft would have approved this sign of English comfort under trying circumstances. But Ryecroft -- or, in this case, let’s just say Gissing -- seems to be getting at something else here, and I’m not entirely sure what it is. Ryecroft never mentions the Roman paragon Marcus Furius Camillus, but I rather think Gissing has in mind here the kind of rural/agricultural virtues aristocratic England shared with early Republican Rome. In Plutarch, and also Livy, Camillus is the symbol of this agrarian virtue. I hesitate to suggest Lord Redesdale (David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale) -- fictionalized as Uncle Matthew, Lord Alconleigh, in Nancy Mitford’s novels -- as the English equivalent of Camillus, but he does display many of the virtues, and also the dislike of living “in town,” that Ryecroft mentions above. And I'm sure Camillus would have been pleased to see, and hear the story of, the entrenching tool (though a quick search informs me that weapon actually belonged to Sir Iain Colquhoun, 7th Baronet -- a Scots "Hon" no less). It would actually be fascinating to quiz the author on this point, as the Mitford home seems not to have been particularly “comfortable” in the conventional sense of that term, and yet I would bet Gissing would have approved of it over the alternative of dwelling in a comparatively deluxe flat “in town.”

Next: Winter XIV. Lancashire.