CULTIVATIONS.
All men are not agriculturists, horticulturists, or arboriculturists; but yet almost all men arecultivators. By this it is meant that men in general cultivate, or coax, or unduly appreciate and fondle, some particular feature of their persons, or else, perhaps, some integument connected with their persons, to such a degree as to be rather conspicuous, while to every thing else they only give the ordinary degree of attention. There are many features of human nature which remain to be detected and described; and this is one—Cultivations. So far as I am aware, no one ever thought of pointing it out to mankind: the subject of cultivation has hitherto remained totallyuncultivated. So it shall be no longer.
Hair, as the only part of the person which actually grows like a vegetable, is naturally a large subject of cultivation. The Cavaliers long ago cultivated love-locks, which they kept hanging down in graceful fashion from their temples. These locks, or curls, are now changed for tufts or bunches of hair, which the young men cultivate at the same place, and are ever shaking up and tedding, exactly as if it were a crop of hay instead of hair. Mark a modern beau as he walks along the street, and you will observe at one glance that the principal part of the man—the heart—the sensorium—the cynosure—the point from which all the rest evolves—the root of the man, in short, is the tuft under the right rim of his hat. All the rest of him is a mere pendulum, vibrating from this axis. As he walks along, he hardly feels that any other part of him is in existence, besides that. But he feels his tuft most intensely. Thought, feeling, every thing, lies concentrated in that: head, body, and limbs, are all alike mere members devolved from it. If you were to cut off the side-bunch of a modern beau in his sleep, he would, for the time, be utterly ruined. It would be like the polypus, deprived of every thing but a single leg; and he would require several months of dormant existence—that is, retirement from the streets—to let the better part of him grow out again from the worse, which had remained behind. Let not the demure Puritan, however, think that the joke lies all against the gay Cavalier or beau. There may be as much of the sin of cultivation in the stroked and glossy hair of the Roundhead orplain man, as in the love-locks and bunches of their antipodes in sentiment. I have seen some men, who affected to be very unaffected, cultivate a peak on the top and centre of their brows as sedulously, and with as much inward gratulation on account of it, as ever I saw a dandy cultivate a tuft, or train a side-curl. It must be understood that there are cultivations of a negative character, as well as of a positive, and he who is guiltless of cultivation in his heart is alone guiltless. Next to curls stand whiskers. What afield of cultivation have we there! The whisker is a bounty of nature, which man does not like to refuse taking advantage of. The thing presses upon him—it isthere; and to put it altogether aside, except upon the demand of temporary fashion, is scarcely to be thought of. Some men, however, are more able to resist the demon of whiskers than others. There are some men so prone to the temptations of this fiend, that they enlarge and enlarge their field of cultivation, by small and imperceptible degrees, till at length the whole chin falls a prey, excepting, perhaps, a small bit about the mouth, just enough to preserve the cultivator within the pale of the Christian church. Sometimes the Whisker Fiend makes an insidious advance or sally up towards the corners of the mouth; and there—in those small creeks or promontories—does the sin of cultivation invariably flourish more proud and rampant than any where else. The whisker of the cheek is a broad, honest, candid, downright cultivation, but that down about the corners of the mouth is a sly and most impish one—a little pet sin, apt to beset its cultivator in a far less resistible fashion than any other; and it may indeed be said, that he who has given himself fairly up to this crime is almost beyond redemption.
There are some men who cultivate white hands, with long fair nails. For nothing else do they care very particularly—all is well, if only their hands be neat. There is even a ridiculous notion that elegant hands are the most unequivocal test of what is called good birth. I can say, for my own part, that the finest hands I ever saw belonged to a woman who kept a butcher’s shop in Musselburgh. So much for the nonsense about fine hands. Then there is a set of people who cultivate a ring on a particular finger—evidently regretting, from their manner of managing it, that the South Sea fashion of wearing such ornaments in the nose has not ever come into this country. Some men cultivate neat ebony canes with golden heads, which, they tell you, cost a guinea. Some cultivate a lisp. Afew, who fall under the denomination of stout gentlemen, rejoice in a respectable swell of the haunch, with three wrinkles of the coat lying upon it in majestic repose. Some cultivate a neckcloth—some a shirt-breast—some a jewelled pin, with a lesser pin at a little distance, which serves to it as a kind of anchor. There has also of late been a great fashion of cultivating chains about the waistcoat. Some only show about two inches of a gold or silver one between the buttons and the pocket; others, less modest, have themselves almost laced round and round with this kind of tracery. There is also to be detected, occasionally, a small patch of cultivation in the shape of a curious watch-key or seal, which depends from part of the chain, and is evidently a great pet. A not uncommon subject of cultivation is a gold watch.
There is a class who cultivate silk umbrellas. It is a prevalent idea among many men that a silk umbrella is an exceedinglygenteelthing. They therefore have an article of this kind, which they are always carrying in a neat careful manner, so as to show that it is silk. They seem to feel as if they thought all right when they have their silk umbrella in their hand: it is a kind of patent of respectability. With a silk umbrella they could meet the highest personages in the land, and not be abashed. A silk umbrella is, indeed, a thing of such vast effect, that they would be content to go in humble guise in every other respect, provided they only had this saving clause to protect them. Nay, it is not too much to suppose them entertaining this belief, that five-and-twenty shillings put forth on a good silk umbrella produces as much value in dignity as five pounds spent upon good broad-cloth. How some men do fondle and cultivate silk umbrellas!
There is a species of cultivators who may in some cases be very respectable, and entitled to our forbearance, but are, in others, worthy of a little ridicule. I mean the health-seekers; the men who go out at five in the morning to cultivate an appetite, and regularly chill every sharp-setevening party they attend, by sitting like Melancholy retired, ostentatiously insisting that they “never take supper.” When a health-seeker takes a walk, he keeps his coat wide open, his vest half open—seems, in short, to woo the contact of the air—and evidently regrets very much that he cannot enjoy it in the manner of a bath. As he proceeds, he consumes air, as a steam-boat consumes coal; insomuch that, when he leaves the place, you would actually think the atmosphere has a fatigued and exhausted look, as if the whole oxygen had been absorbed to supply his individual necessities. Wherever this man goes, the wind rises behind him, by reason of the vacuum which he has produced. He puffs, pants, fights, strives, struggles for health. When he returns from his morning walk, he first looks in the glass to congratulate himself on the bloom which he has been cultivating in his cheek, and thereafter sits down to solace the appetite which he finds he has nursed into a kind of fury. At any ordinary time, he could spring from his bed at nine o’clock, and devour four cups of tea, with bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks, beyond reckoning. But he thinks it necessary to walk four hours, for the purpose of enabling himself to take eight cups, and a still more unconscionable proportion of bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks. He may be compared, in some measure, to the fat oxen which are sometimes shown about as wonders, though apparently there is nothing less wonderful, the obvious natural means being taken. These oxen, if left to themselves in a good park, would become very respectable oxen—a littleen-bon-point, perhaps, but no more. But, being treated otherwise, they are rendered unnecessarily fat and unwieldy; and so it is with the appetite of the health cultivator.
Cultivations, it will thus be observed, is a subject of vast extent, and of great importance, not only to thelandedinterest, but to all the other interests of the country. I should be glad to treat it at full length in a separate volume, for which, I doubt not, ample materials might be found. But I must content myself with giving it in themeantime only a kind of topping, as the farmers say; and perhaps I may return to it next harvest.