THE ADVANTAGES OF HAVING WET WEATHER IN THE COUNTRY.
BY ONE WHO “LOOKS UPON THE SUNNY SIDE,” EVEN WHEN IT RAINS.
There is no doubt that it is unpleasant when one goes into the country for sake of out-door exercise, to be shut up in the house by a succession of wet days; and if one happens to be somewhat of a sporting turn of mind, the moisture of the weather is most trying to one’s temper. One is blue-devilishly apt to come to breakfast with black looks, when the rain has all night long been beating hard against one’s window, and there seems to be no hope of its holding up ere dinner time. With foxes waiting to be hunted and pheasants to be shot, one can’t help feeling savage when one daily finds the glass midway between “Much rain,” and “Stormy,” and inclining, if one knocks it, to fall rather than to rise. To the people one is staying with the bore is not so great, inasmuch as they, one thinks, can take their sport at any time. But to an uncaged Cockney, whose country visits are like angels’, few and far between, it is no joke for a week to be swamped out of one’s shooting, and to find the happy hunting grounds, of which one has been dreaming, are of no earthly use to one, from being under water.
Nevertheless, sweet are the uses of adversity; and rightly balanced minds, when shut up in the country, may find something more than billiards to console them. It is surprising how a week’s wet freshens up the memory, and how reviving it is found to friendly correspondence. As one has gone our for a holiday, of course one cannot stoop to doing literary work; however much one sighs for one’s regular employment. But one filed to pen and paper as a means of killing time, that being the sole thing that the wet weather lets one kill; and for want of something better to occupy one’s thoughts, one thinks about responding to one’s long unanswered letters. One’s most distant correspondents are startled by next post at receiving the replies to their forgotten notes and queries; and friends one has done favours for, and by whom on has in consequence been subsequently cut, are surprised by the receipt of a long letter of inquiry, begging them to furnish the most minute particulars about their worldly welfare and spiritual health. Nay, to such a pitch sometimes in this letter-writing mania promoted by wet weather, that faute de mieux one finds oneself writing to one’s wife, and inquiring if baby has yet learnt to say “Melchisedek,” and whether thing in general have gone on smoothly since one left.
Again, too, being shut up by wet weather in the country, one has leisure to hold skeins of worsted for young ladies, and to assist in other feminine pursuits. One learns to feed the parrot, and the bullfinch, and the lap-dog, and is entrusted with the keep of the vivarium and fern-case, which none but female hands before have been allowed to touch. One becomes, in fact, a sort of male maid-of-all-work, and wins thereby, as wages, marks of feminine approval which,had one been out hunting, one would, of course, have missed. Moreover, when one passes a few days in a drawing-room, one obtains a clearer insight into feminine employments than a twelvemonth spent in shooting would ever have induced; and one feels by one’s experience enabled for the future to speak with some authority upon the often mooted point, as to “what on earth those women contrive to find to do, when-aw-fellahs are away, you know; and so, by Jove! they-aw-can’t flirt.”
As to exercise, of course if there be children in the house there will be no lack of chances for the stretching of one’s limbs. When a brace of bouncing boys, of three and five years old, mount upon one’s back and say they mean one to be “horse,” one may surely make one’s mind up to as stiff a bit of work as stalking old French birds in November on clay fallows, or taking half a score of “bullfinches” and clearing six or seven brooks.
Add to this, that, besides one’s exertions in the billiard-room, there are other occupations to which one may betake oneself, and which have both a bodily and mental good effect. For instance, when confined by stress of weather to the house, one has time to make oneself not unpleasant to its mistress, and to pay her that attention which is properly her due. It happens not infrequently that, when they have fine weather, male visitors go out directly after breakfast, and do not reappear until the summons of the dinner-bell; and that all the evening they talk of dogs or horses, unless they fall asleep, or else slink furtively to bed. Now, wet weather prevents such selfish want of gallantry, and makes gentlemen who visit her attentive to their hostess, if only for the cause that they have nothing else to do.
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