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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Comfort, the acceptable face of luxury - an eighteenth-century cultural etymology

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The introduction of modern amenities into European homes has been extensively studied by sociologists and historians, who have stressed the rise in consumption during the Georgian period.1 Some objects, such as mirrors, stoves, or umbrellas, were made available by technical innovations; others, such as tea, sugar, or mahogany furniture, became accessible thanks to the expansion of global trade. Other amenities, such as carpets, curtains, or marble chimney-pieces, were no longer restricted to the aristocracy, as living standards rose.2 As the British nation became richer, the number of affluent households grew as did their capacity to spend more on material objects. This signaled a change in attitude toward luxury: the view that luxury was sinful was gradually abandoned in favor of another paradigm, that it was legitimate to desire and own luxuries.3 Historians have generally considered the terms comforts, decencies, and conveniences as synonyms for luxuries. It is true that all these words referred to the same material objects, but I argue that the word comfort provided a more acceptable alternative to luxury when referring to this increase in consumption, since the term never lost its original meaning of mental solace and reassurance and was not as negatively loaded as the word luxury. This view should enable us to get away from the notion that luxuries in the course of the eighteenth century were rapidly transformed into something positive. In fact, luxury, whose etymology goes back to the Latin luxus, was associated with vicious indulgence in the Christian tradition and carried a connotation of lust and sin which never totally disappeared. Luxuries were still presented as negative indulgence, and so for many people, comforts were something quite different from luxuries.I shall first give a sketch of how the term comfort was presented in the works of writers on economics. Was it recognized as something intrinsically different from necessaries on the one hand, and luxuries on the other hand? In other words, was it presented as something more acceptable? Then, I shall examine the way novelists used the term to criticize both the upper and the lower classes. As representatives of the rising middle-class, novelists were likely to advocate a comfortable lifestyle as a virtuous alternative to both misery and opulence. Finally, the political undertones of the term, and its introduction into the French language, will be studied, to uncover how much comforts came to represent the view held by the British that progress was all about making comforts widely available.The Oxford English Dictionary traces the idea that the word comfort could refer to material ease and not simply to spiritual assistance to the Westminster divine John Arrowsmith in Armilla Catechetica, or A Chain of Principles (1659), in which he writes, "The Scripture useth diminishing terms when it speaks of creature-comforts" (def. 7). We notice here that to distinguish between moral solace and physical well-being, the author used the expression "creaturecomforts." This term recurs in seventeenth-century theological books and collections of sermons to refer to physical indulgences to be condemned, along with the alternative "comforts of life," contrary to comfort on its own, which only referred to spiritual and mental contentment. George Gillespie, a Presbyterian preacher, provides this distinction:there is a good strong foundation of comfort, if a soul convinced of its own sinful estate, and of the vanity of creature comforts, does so far settle its thoughts upon Christ that as he is the only saviour so an all-sufficient saviour. (279)Gillespie is positive about "comfort" as spiritual content, and has a negative view of "creature comforts," material well-being. The opposition between the mental and the physical is clearly drawn. However, Gerrard Winstanley's Digger pamphlets, written during the same period, abundantly use the term comfort and its derivatives to refer to material well-being in a positive manner, as in the following example:Will you be slaves and beggars still when you may be Freemen? …