Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866

I disliked fat meat and fat people. I used to like to be with the hired girls in the kitchen. I was entirely untouched by the often-repeated expositions made to me of the vulgarity of such habits, and of the low esteem in which I should be held in consequence. What is vulgarity to a child? Spontaneity, unconscious existence, has no vulgarities. Vulgarity comes of restraints and distortions; and a child's life is commonly for a time untouched by the girdling and compression of forms and conventionalities. Besides, to a child of positive traits, those persuasions are utterly forceless which, instead of being addressed to the prominent faculties, are directed to those comparatively deficient. It is no matter how well such considerations are suited to the character of the persuader, to a conventional human nature, to the a priori child. Thus, in the matter of kitchen-haunting, the appeal was made to my regard for the opinions of others. As I was naturally disregardful of the opinions of others, the appeal did not affect me.

Besides, we used to have hired girls as superior to the Biddies of to-day as a patriarch is to a laquais de place . Possibly hereditary friendly relations with a few individuals may have made us more fortunate than some other families. From whatever cause, we enjoyed through most of my childhood the ministrations of two or three women of American race, of intelligence, character, and self-respect. It is scarcely possible that the vulgarity which my parents apprehended was anything worse than colloquial New England provincialism. It is possible that they may have feared lest in time the kitchen-door should introduce me to that Devil's school for boys, the city street.

These domestics were themselves competent housekeepers, and could have maintained good repute and creditable hospitality, had they possessed the means, even among the far-renowned "old-fashioned H– housekeepers." My remembrances of them are scanty. There were Lois and Hannah, tall, thin, angular Yankee women, grave, trustworthy, and efficient. There was Emily, a dignified personage, portly and composed, an excellent and faithful woman and a good manager, unfailingly kind to us little folks, a wondrously skilful compounder of pies, cakes, and gingerbreads. She was wont to wear a white turban or similar head-dress of wreathed draperies; and often, with serious face, she puzzled me, and silenced my childish inquiries about the nature or purpose of ingredient or process, by saying that it was "Laro for meddlers." In those days I speculated deeply as to whether there did exist any such real substance as "Laro." In this mystic and apparently underived term, the a is broad, as in "ah!" It may be spelled "Lahro," for what I know.

I do remember, in particular, a tidy, laborious, parsimonious, pragmatical little Scotchwoman, Christiana. Once upon a time, in the days of allopathic rule, my mother compounded a mighty pitcher of senna mixture. This—its actual deglutition, by some blessed chance, not becoming necessary—she set up, with a housekeeper's saving instinct, on the pantry shelf, instead of pouring it into the gutter. So Christiana, thrifty soul, and still more saving, could not endure the wasting of so much virtue, and set herself stoutly to utilize the decoction by consuming it to her own sole use and behoof, which she accomplished by way of relaxation, so to speak, in single doses, at leisure times, within a few days. Her own and her employer's respective economies were fitly rewarded by an illness, through which my mother had to take care of her.

One morning, so early that it was not quite light, I hung about the kitchen table, slyly securing little lumps of the cold hasty-pudding which was being sliced in order to be fried for breakfast. Having snapped up a very nice one, as big as a walnut, lo and behold! when I chewed, it was lard. There was direful retching and hasty ejection. The disagreeable, cold, soft, greasy rankness of the morsel is extreme: if you don't believe it, try it. I think this affair may have been a cold-blooded scheme of the hired-girl. But it was years before I became so suspicious as to place this sad construction upon the occurrence, though I often remembered it.

Like all children, I was fond of candy, sweetmeats, and spices. Yet not of allspice or nutmeg, nor of mace, which tastes of soap. I have known of cases where parents claimed that their children were not fond of such things. Believe them not. I liked pie, but not pudding; the rich, heavy fruit-cake of weddings, good, honest gingerbread, the brisk, crispy heat of the brittle ginger-snap, but not "plain cake,"—absurd viand! It is of the essence of cake not to be plain. As well say, acid sweetness. Nor did I like the hereditary election-cake of my ancient State and city. Fat pork I could not swallow; nor onions nor cabbage,—gross, indelicate vegetables! And even now, as well present upon my table that other diabolic cabbage of the New England swamps,—in old legend said to have been conjured up out of the ground by the Indian pow-wows, to beautify and perfume the dank and gloomy resorts where Satan was wont to drill them in their hellish exercises,—as its grandchild, the big booby of the garden. For is it not deservedly, if disrespectfully, named a cabbage-head? That is because it is the Vegetable Booby.

Naturally, I did not like that concoction so dear to the heart of good old-fashioned Connecticut folks, a biled-dish (accent on biled ). This, O vast majority of ignoramuses, is corned beef and cabbage boiled together. As for onions, if I could not escape them in any other way, I would organize a party on the Great Wethersfield Question, and lead it, a Connecticut Cato, with the motto, "Censeo Wethersfieldiam delendam esse." Nor would I rest until that alliaceous metropolis was fairly tipped over into Connecticut River, and sent drowning down to Long Island Sound.

There is yet another cell in the cavern of memory,—a gloomy and horrid one,—the torture-chamber. It is the remembrance of sickness and its attendant pharmaceutic devils. O ye witch's oils, hell-broths red and black, pills, and electuaries! the unsuccessful experiments—instrumentalities of death too slow for the occasion, but masterly in their kind—of the Pandemoniac host in those Miltonian, infernal chemics which resulted in gunpowder and cannon-balls! What agonies from horrific stench and flavor, in close, dreary rooms, under hot, unwelcome blankets, do ye recall!

It is not that I complain of all those inexplicable diseases, opprobria medicinæ , so pusillanimously submitted to by civilized humanity and its physicians,—chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough, mumps. I complain, indeed, of no diseases, but of their treatment. But let me not delay longer than is needful amid such distressful recollections. Three hateful decoctions were known to me by the phonetics, Lixipro, Lixaslutis, and Lixusmatic. I don't know what they were, and I don't want to know. Devil's elixirs were they all. Rubbub and magnesia,—endless imprecations rest upon that obnoxious red mixture! And chiefest of them all—Arimanes of the whole bad crew, though Agag is the only really suitable royal name I can think of—is that slow, greasy horror, whose superhuman excess of unutterable abomination no words can express, and even inarticulate ejaculations made on purpose cannot at all show forth,—as urk! huk! agh!—chiefest among them all, castor oil!

I hurry away from the awful scene. Let me be thankful that I swallowed but little calomel. Let me be thankful that, after a time, I could not swallow castor oil. Spasmodic regurgitations, as if one had attempted to load a gun having a live coal at the far end, closed perforce that chapter of torments. And soon thereafter arose the benign genius of homœopathy, with healing in its neat little white-paper wings. Beautiful Homœopathy, the real Angel in the House, if Mr. Coventry Patmore had only known it! Hast thou not long ago appeared, veiled in an allegory, before an unrecognizing world? Surely, what but homœopathic medicine was that wondrous talisman with which Adonbec El Hakim cured the Melech Ric? To be taken in a tumbler about two thirds full of water, as now; but in those early times, and for such a very large man, at one gulp, instead of by hourly teaspoonfuls. Or perhaps the manuscripts may have been corrupted in that passage by unscrupulous mediæval physicians of the school of Salerno, or other regular institutions.