At Home

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Title: At Home – A Short History Of Private Life

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher: Doubleday 2010 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-385-60827-5

Pages: 483

A great book, even though it provides a short history of nothing in particular. The width is so huge, but more than offset by the shallowness of depth. Bryson is a best selling author, his A Short History of Nearly Everything is very popular. In this title, Bryson delves into private homes and reflects on the historical, social, scientific and economic development of the factors which constitutes a house. His own home, a rectory built in 1851 provides the author an ample prototype for extrapolating the intellectual tidbits to every aspect of private life. Readers will be mindboggled by the sheer number of ideas briefly looked into, in the voluminous 483 pages of the good work. Not only the subject matter, but the timeline too extends to the early paleolithic. Each room in the rectory is taken out sequentially and in detail, to provide charming narratives which enthrall the reader.

Development of individual homes began with the invention of farming in the neolithic age, aroung 10,000 years ago. The hunter gatherers started enjoying settled lives. Edible plants were cultivated, but the range is surprisingly low. Out of a total of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist in the world, just 11 – corn, rice, wheat, potato, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye and oats – account for 93% of what humans eat. Settled life initiated an exacting toll on the ancients, in the way of restricted diet and intake of nutrition. It is said that in the Middle East, where farming began, average height of people came down by 6 inches, a case of malnutrition. Infectious diseases spread due to close living quarters of the humans and animals they domesticated. The most surprising domestication of food was in Meso America where maize, the staple local food, is now not even seen in its wild state – so complete was the genetic engineering. Even the case with potato is amazing, the ingenious way in which toxic glycoalkaloids are removed from it.

‘Hall’ is a concept well known to people anywhere in the world, even in non-English speaking regions. The term came into being through the invasions of Anglo-Saxon tribesmen into England. These were central structures in which a hearth is set in the middle. The family, along with their retainers, slaves and attendants practically lived in the single room. The dining table was a board supported on trestles or even the knees of eaters. Eventually, the term ‘boarding’ came to signify the presence of food and it survives to this day. As construction sprawled, halls were downgraded to a mere entrance lobby with a staircase.

A delightful feature of the book is the pleasant detours the author takes from the main thread. In the chapter on kitchens, he peeps into the food and its preservation industry. Till 1840s, food (particularly meat and milk) were consumed near the production sites. There was no available method to preserve it. In 1844, ice from Lake Wenham in U.S. appeared in Britain in insulated ships. Rail cars, refrigerated with this ice revolutionized food transportation around the globe. Food could be grown anywhere and consumed anywhere. The led to severe crisis in Europe in general and in some places in America, where farmers were greatly impoverished in the competition with cheap food sourced from a plentiful place made possible then. Potato, an original inhabitant of Peru, was introduced in Europe after the discovery of the New World, and quickly took root to become the staple food of some countries like Ireland. The infamous potato blight, which scourged the nation in 1845-46 killed 1.5 million people.

19^th century was the age of the rich, with their homes full of servants. One-third of London women were servants and another third were prostitutes. Such were the limited choices available to women in that era. Work exceeded 12 hours on all days. The concept of a weekly offday or a holiday had not spread its root. The work experience was humiliating in the extreme for the hapless servants and handbooks were regularly published on how to discipline erring servants. Sometimes, they even had to change their names as the family found it difficult to call their new coachman by any name other than the one they had become familiarized with their old servant, who might have just died. The rich couldn’t be bothered to remember the names of people who served them. America had few servants, but more than compensated for it in the vast array of slaves.

The 19^th century aristocrats, however rich they might have been, couldn’t enjoy some conveniences even the most poor in today’s society can afford. Lighting was very poor in all homes. Even the light we discern in a present-day refrigerator is more than the total light many large homes employed. Candles made of tallow or beeswax were used but very expensive. Oil lamps used spermacetti from sperm whales, which went on the brink of extinction due to indiscriminate hunting. In 1846, kerosene was first extracted from coal tar and was found to be a good lighting agent. Rock oil (crude oil was called thus when it was discovered) became available in 1859, making extraction of kerosene cheaper and more reliable. Highly volatile liquids which were separated along with kerosene were simply drained off, as they had no useful purpose. After Hermann Sprengel invented the mercury pump, it became easy to create high vacuum in an enclosed glass tube, ushering in the era of incandescent, electric bulbs. After an epic struggle for finding a material suitable for the filament, Edison patented the invention. Incandescent bulbs were called ‘blazing miracles’ by the public.

The book houses a good commentary on the history of architecture and furniture working in England which involved names like Chippendale. A good diversion is availed to explain the intricacies of spice trade while dealing with the origin of salt and pepper condiments in dining tables. A quantum leap occurred after Columbus discovered America. The exchange between the old and new worlds is known as Columbian Exchange, in which potato, tomato, sunflower, peanuts, cashew, pineapple, papaya, guava, vanilla and chocolate sailed east. The Americans were rather poor in livestock, as their bounty was limited to only 5 domesicated breeds, namely, turkey, duck, dog, bee and cochinear insect.

Iron entered the world stage as a material of construction in the 19^th century. Its shortcomings were also apparent right from the beginning. Buildings and bridges made of cast or wrought iron regularly collapsed. In 1857, Henry Bessemer invented the steel making process which still continues with only minor modifications. Gardening also caught on people’s attention as several municipal parks were thrown open to the public which ameliorated the pains of a congested living. The poor conditions at home also led to spread of communicable diseases, smallpox and cholera among them. The story of the mysterious disease called ‘milk sick’ terrifies us even today. People who drank milk which didn’t taste any different grew delirious and swiftly died. It was late in the century that the cause was found to be a plant called white snakeroot upon which the cows grazed. The plant was harmless to cows, but made their milk toxic.

It provides amusing reading about the dressing material and habits of our predecessors. Linen, hemp, wool and silk were the material for dressing, with silk worth its weight in gold due to rarity as the Chinese jealously guarded the secrets of its manufacture, until an Englishman took it out of them. The miracle came in the form of cotton from India, which transformed England in the 18^th century. Spinning of cotton fibre and weaving it into cloth was problematic for the early practitioners. Their attempts to solve the problems resulted in the Industrial Revolution. John Kay invented the Flying Shuttle in 1733, for weaving, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny in 1764 for spinning and Edmund Cartwright brought forth the power loom in 1785. Britain never looked back.

Readers would find the book a pleasurable experience. It covers so wide a range that there is something which appeals to any class of readers. It explains the origins of several words which are so common in parlance that we don’t stop to reflect upon where or how it came into being. Words like boarding, in the lime light, curfew, bigwig are only a few among the dozens you would find in the book. What separates the work from others and keeps it in a high pedestal is the survey of the life of common people, which histories so painfully lack. Almost in every chapter we find the origin of a household item and how it affected the lives of the poor people. Bryson doesn’t mince words when describing the follies and whims of the rich. His sharp humour is visible in its fullest extreme. The book shows how the world became so interconnected from the 16^th century onwards – some form of globalization, as pointed out in Thomas L Friedman’s works – that events happening in a remote corner of an upstart economy began to affect even the wealthy in established nations of Europe. Hilaire Belloc’s doggerel on the dangers of electricity (p.144), when it slowly found usage in the 19^th century should really be a talisman for safety conscious engineers. It runs like,

Some random touch – a hand’s imprudent slip –

The Terminals – flash – a sound like ‘Zip!’

A smell of burning fills the startled Air –

The Electrician is no longer there!

One and only accusation which may be levelled against the book is that the focus is firmly on Europe (specifically Britain) and America alone. The outside world comes only in glimpses and that too in not so redeeming light. We read about China as the country which guarded its silk weaving techniques, how it was victimized by Britains lust for tea and how native Americans were arm twisted out of existence.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star