‘A good, clear fire’: A Frenchman’s View of Victorian Britain (Snippets: 5)

A Victorian home. Via Wikimedia Commons.

In a series of visits to Britain between 1862 and 1870, outspoken Frenchman Hippolyte Taine wrote lengthily about his impressions, and his comments-at-a-distance give us a clear and fascinating view of our ancestors in a way that no other source quite achieves.   

Taine considered the most important feature of our ancestors’ lives to be their indoor domestic existence, their home and their hearth: ‘The ideal, under these skies, is a dry, stoutly roofed, well-heated house; evenings tete a tete with a faithful wife, who must be a good house-wife and neatly dressed. The rosy cheeks of well-washed children in clean linen. The sight of a good, clear fire, an abundance of furniture, utensils, ornaments useful or otherwise agreeable, well set out, well-polished, and whose presence reminds a man that he is protected against rough weather and worry, provided with everything his body and mind may need. (61)’ 

Quotations are from: Notes on England by Hippolyte Taine, translated and with an introduction by Edward Hyams, London, Thames and Hudson, 1957 [Translated from the French Notes Sur L’Angleterre 1860-1870]