THE APOSTLE OF EXIGENCY.
Who, of the present generation, knows anything of Count Rumford? At the mention of his name everybody thinks of stoves. In most people’s minds there is a sort of wonder whether he could be a real Count if his business in life was—stoves. Some of us elders of our day had fathers who knew Count Rumford, and who remembered and talked of him, not in connection with stoves, but as a nobleman of great knowledge, of an active inquiring spirit, of great administrative faculty, and the most indefatigable, resolute, vigilant and enterprising benevolence. Whenever society needs the largest amount of comfort at the smallest cost, the name and memory of Count Rumford come up again. In times of ordinary prosperity, when our workpeople are well employed and paid, and our gentry gather new luxuries about them, and entertain their minds with study and speculation, the man is forgotten, or spoken of only for this or that invention. When we have a particularly bad harvest, or any commercial adversity which throws millions of destitute people on our hands to be fed and cheered, Count Rumford’s name is heard where old people are talking together of the black years of their lives. There may be less and less of this as the old folks pass away; but it will be a good while yet before there is nobody left to quote the sayings and doings of the large-hearted and practical-minded man who fed the hungry in four countries of Christendom, and showed how the greatest number could be nourished and cheered at the smallest cost. He was an American citizen, active and charitable in the War of Independence. This made him a soldier. It was not from his military tastes that he entered the Bavarian service, but because that country was in a wretched condition,—in extreme need of a good soldiery amidst the revolutionary period in Europe, but too poor to support an army,—or indeed any other class. Count Rumford believed he could do something towards retrieving the military system at least; and he retrieved the whole economy of Bavaria. Then he came to England, and till the end of the century instructed our fathers in the ways of economy and comfort,—cut off as our country was by war from the intercourses by which nations help one another forward in civilisation. Then, in 1802, he married the widow of Lavoisier, the great chemist, and was as good a citizen in France as he had been everywhere else; and there he died just when the Emperor departed for Elba and the Bourbons returned.
The present Emperor gets great praise just now for the soldiers’ gardens, at the camp at Châlons; and we have been for some time congratulating ourselves on our regimental schools, and on the improved diet in barrack and camp; and we exclaim “how delightful!” when we hear of the plan of gardens laid out in Indian garrisons, and talked of here; but Count Rumford had done these very things with complete success eighty years ago.
He desired, considering the circumstances of the Bavarian State and population, to make the soldiers as much of citizens as possible, and to fit the citizens to become soldiers, in case of need. He obtained authority to do what he would: and in a little while the barracks were clean, well-aired, and bright-looking, outside and in; the soldiers were in school some part of the day; and their children and the peasantry, or town children were welcomed to the schools also; so that they were always full. The State paid for the books and writing-materials; and the copy-books were afterwards used for cartridges, which saved their cost. The gardens were, however, a still better school to such idle rascals as the soldiers were at the outset of the experiment. Every man who would till his ground had 365 square yards, with tools, an allowance of manure, and his old uniform for a working dress. Potatoes and other good vegetables, were almost unknown among the ignorant and slow peasantry of the country. The soldiers soon learned to enjoy the luxury of good vegetables, and the profit of selling them. When they had reached that point, Count Rumford instituted a plan of long furloughs, by which his soldiers introduced their new discoveries in the rural districts, and moreover they got married in their own neighbourhood,—to the great advantage of the morals of their regiments. During their absence other young men were getting into training; and thus, in a few years, the Bavarian soldier had introduced improvements, order, and discipline into rural life, and the Bavarian peasant had become not only a man of the world, but actually a better husbandman than if he had never attended to anything else. The same advantages were obtained by the townspeople; for there were industrial schools as well as gardens, so that every soldier, and all his sons, had the means of learning some handicraft, with the privilege of making profit by their craft in their leisure hours.
The soldiers were paid 2¾d. per day for food: and it was surprising, even to Count Rumford himself, to see how stout and healthy the men were upon such an allowance, out of which they even treated themselves with beer and tobacco. The odd three farthings were kept for these indulgences. The men, being left to their own devices about food, formed themselves into messes of twelve, one of whom was a non-commissioned officer who took the head of the table, and the lead in the affairs of the mess. They had been shown the wonderful effect of good cookery in increasing the amount of nourishment in food; and thus it was that they made their twopences go so far. In England, at the end of the last century, the people generally supposed that twopenn’orth of food was twopenn’orth of food—all the same thing, whatever it might be: so the labourer’s wife cut up a loaf among the children, and bade them go and eat it; and she and her husband ate their dry slices without any pleasure; and they were all soon hungry again. They could not understand, or would not believe, that the French prisoners in our military prisons obtained satisfying and agreeable meals for the same cost as this dry bread. These Frenchmen understood the virtues of barleymeal, and of the process of stewing, and how to make the most of
