ARE WE COMFORTABLE?

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13942, 30 June 1909, Page 3

ARE WE COMFORTABLE?

(By Clarence Rook.) From America there Las come a man .who has heard of English "comfort," has sampled it, and found it not. And in England you often hear praises of the blazing fire, the feet on the hearth, and all the other picturesque and proverbial appurtenances of the happy home. There are few Englishmen, who do not honestly believe that their own country is the most comfortable in the world; and there is never an American who visits lis without wondering what wo mean by it. I am not going to "indict a nation "; I merely wish to advise my fellow-countrymen not to boast too freely of English comfort to the American cousin, or indeed any other visitor who has looked for it. For lie generally goes away with the impression that the Englishman is the most uncomfortable of civilised people. He is probably right; and possibly the Englishman is right from his own point of view. But I maintain that the average Englishman does not know what "comfort" is. An Englishman's Home. .

Comfort is a matter of indoor life, the digging of trenches and ranging of artillery against the assaults of the seasons and the regular recurrence of jiight after day. King Charles 11. averred that there was no country but England in which, a man might spend so many days in. the open air; but that silly remark was made by a man who had seen but few countries.

"We have our rainy days, our days of East wind, our periods of frost; we have, too, our sudden swoop of summer when the house holds us dutifully. And wo have not built our houses for all these changes. We have built our houses on the assumption that every day in the year is 'dated in the merry month of May, when neither fire nor icgis demanded. So* has the Englishman built his house, and erected to himself discomfort. "Home comforts" is a phrase that appears in many advertisements of the minor hotels and boardingiouses, which announce themselves dso as a " home from home." There is not space upon this page to describe all the discomforts to which tin Englishman subjects himself. I wil. take but a few that are convened with the internal struggle against the assaults of climate and darkness. Tin Englisliman is never warm and nevei cool at home, but in the rare advert of the equinoxes. In - winter he lives in a house or a flat that has ro warming apparatus but the coal fi.-e, which sends most of its heat up the chimney, and at its best will only keep liim warm on one side wluie Hie other side freezes. In winter the American wonders why the Englishman does not instal a central heating apparatus which would keep him warm all round. But the Englishman prefers to roast one side of himseli, and admit the draught to freeze the other.- He has seldom thought of the double windows that are the common objects of all other countries on the thermographic map from Vancouver to Vladivostok by the longer route. And those double windows shut out noise as well as draught, and noise is one of the main discomforts of the Englisliman's Home. Here and there, in expensive Piccadilly fiats, you may find the double window. But the average Englishman does not reckon it among his home comforts. The Seasons' Difference.

And while the Englishman cannot keep a warm home in winter, he lails equally to keep a cool home in summer. " A hot spell of weather finds him unprepared; he is still imagining himself in a temperate clime where snow, east winds, sunstroke, and heat apoplexy are unknown. The cold weatner Knocks him down, the hot weather knocks him up. But ho remains uncomfortably grumbling, while fire, ice, and air are at his disposal —if he would only organise their " services. On :i broiling summer day you will find the Englishman's Castle with no 2>ortcullis against the sun, and no ammunition of ice to combat the heat. There is no more pathetic sight in London than an American visitor who is panting "at noonday with love's sweet want" for iced water. And the British householder has not even an electric fan, or even a roof garden. For the British householder regards the temperature as temperate always, and the Englishman's homo on an occasional sweltering evening in July is a place to avoid.

You would think that the frequency of fog and the regularity of night would have taught the Englishman something in the way of combating discomfort. But no! When it is dark, as it so often is in London, the American visitor finds we do not know how to deal with the difficulty. We have our electrc light, it is true, and all decent hotels have the installation. Have you eve." noticed the studied discomfort which comes from that installation? .I'--' average hotel architect invariably places the light in such a nosition that when you try to read in bed the attempt' is a. "failure, since there is no reasonable relation between the light and the pollow; and when you adni't your failure, and determine to turn out the light, the switch is somewhere across the floor, and you have to tumble out of bed to turn twilight into darkness. One might forgive this if the light were so placed that one could shave by it and tie one's tie for dinner.. It never is. The light is always with due regard for English comfort — set so that it is of the least possible use.

More Light. This is by no means the monopoly of the artificial light. Did you over find a hotel bed room in which the lookingglass was so placed that you could get the right light upon your daily experiment of parting the hair. This particular grievance is, I think, acutely felt by women. Certainly it was my wife who the other day averred that she had never done her hair in a hotel bed room by any other light than that of faith. An avowal which suggests that as women spend more time indoors, than men, they should turn their atention to the devising of the life of the interior. •It would be interesting to see what a generation of women architects would produce in the way ol warmth, coolness and light, to say nothing of cupboards. Possibly, however, as I hinted above, the Englishman may he right after all. He is horribly uncomfortable indoors; and perhaps his notion of comfort is the feeling that drives him out of doors. Sitting over a coal fire with a draught at his back and talking of English comfort he suddenly rises, shivers, and decides to go and* play golf, or hunt, or catch fish, or do anything in order to escape from the comforts of a home. . It is, I firmly believe, our English home life which has driven the Englishman into the open air in desperation, made him a player of games, a walker, a stalker, a defier of storm, flood and ice, and even sent our Shackletons off to escape English comfort in the comparative delights'of the Antarctic regions.—"Daily Chronicle."