He describes a sweet bucolic scene of centuries past in which a family sat together, read the bible, ate basic food and enjoyed chaste, natural pleasures. He then retorts: Oh please! … Father’s scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at – not helped by the wood smoke of the fire – 53 (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be the chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbors’ lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to the orphanage. The stew is grey and grisly, yet meat is a rare change from the gruel; there is no fruit or salad this season…