The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 41, April 10, 1841Various
History
The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 41, April 10, 1841
Various
Ireland -- Periodicals
THE DOMESTIC MAN.--There is no being of the masculine gender whom “the
sex” so heartily despise as the domestic man. He is an anomaly--a sort
of half-way house between the sexes--a concentration of weaknesses--a
poor driblet of humanity--a vile caudle-drinker--an auditor of
laundress’s bills--an inquisitor of the nursery--a fellow that likes
his bed warmed, and takes note of the decay of carpets--a reader of
works on “cookery” and a “treatise on teething”--a pill bolter--a man
that buys his wife’s gowns and his children’s dresses--a scolder of
maid-servants--a frequenter of the kitchen--a person who can tell you the
price of treacle, and how long a mop should last--a gazer at butchers’
windows--a consumer of ginger wine--a slop eater--a market visitor--a
tea maker--Faugh! He looks like the aborigine of a bed-room. He is lean
and bilious--delights in black gaiters and a brown greatcoat. He gives
his little bandy-legged child a walk in the Park, where he is taken for
a brother of one of the nursery maids in delicate health. He entertains
his visitors with his discoveries of the tricks of bakers and the
machinations of grocers--_ennuies_ them to death with long stories about
bad bread, and “coffee without adulteration.” He always knows what is
to be for dinner, what remains in the larder--and employs his gigantic
intellect in considering the best mode of cooking it. He is naturally
fretful and peevish, and in cold weather has a helplessness of aspect
peculiar to himself. These men never look like Englishmen. They never
acquire that manly bluff appearance which is the character of our nation.
God knows what is the matter with them, but they always seem out of
sorts. Their features are sharp--their voices are effeminate, and they
are nearly all of them “troubled with colds.” The business of life with
them is to regulate the affairs of housekeeping--their tastes, habits,
thoughts, and rivalries, are womanish. Their conversation is about “poor
Mrs” this, and “poor Lady” that--antiquated matrons, with whom they
occasionally compare notes in matters of condolence--yet who have enough
of the spirit of their sex in them to despise their male coadjutor, and
in their souls they think “poor Mr” so-and-so the greatest bore alive.
They are always complaining; if not positively unwell themselves--a case
of rare occurrence--some of their family is sure to be so--or, if all
that should fail, then, at least, a dish has been broken, and there is
always a number of standing grievances ready to be produced when occasion
requires. “Well, heaven help them!” as Shakspeare says, “for they are sad
fools.” They live a long time, these fellows, but they die at last--all
the pills and possets in the world will not avert death. The passenger
who sees the hearse and mutes, thinks some rational being has died--the
stranger, who reads the tombstone, thinks that a man moulders below. But
are they deceived? We think so.--COURT GAZETTE.
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