"My dear Chris," said my wife, "isn't it time to be writing the next
'House and Home Paper'?"
I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels luxuriously propped on
an ottoman, reading for the two-hundredth time Hawthorne's "Mosses from
an Old Manse," or his "Twice-Told Tales," I forget which,--I only know
that these books constitute my cloud-land, where I love to sail away in
dreamy quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and flour, the
rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of gold. What do all these
things matter, as seen from those enchanted gardens in Padua where the
weird Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gorgeous daughter
fills us with the light and magic of her presence, and saddens us with
the shadowy allegoric mystery of her preternatural destiny? But my wife
represents the positive forces of time, place, and number in our family,
and, having also a chronological head, she knows the day of the month,
and therefore gently reminded me that by inevitable dates the time drew
near for preparing my--which is it now, May or June number?
"Well, my dear, you are right," I said, as by an exertion I came
head-uppermost, and laid down the fascinating volume. "Let me see, what
was I to write about?"
"Why, you remember you were to answer that letter from the lady who does
her own work."
"Enough!" said I, seizing the pen with alacrity; "you have hit the exact
phrase:--
"'The _lady_ who _does her own work_.'"
* * * * *
America is the only country where such a title is possible,--the only
country where there is a class of women who may be described as _ladies_
who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education,
cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without
any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in
any circle of the Old World or the New.
What I have said is, that the existence of such a class is a fact
peculiar to American society, a clear, plain result of the new
principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality.
When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed
ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued
with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the
wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled
the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the ploughman, and thews
and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in proportion
as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest." So in the
interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin
together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the more
accomplished and stronger, took precedence of the mistress. It became
natural and unavoidable that children should begin to work as early as
they were capable of it. The result was a generation of intelligent
people brought up to labor from necessity, but turning on the problem of
labor the acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in
sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her superiority by skill and
contrivance. If she could not lift a pail of water, she could invent
methods which made lifting the pail unnecessary,--if she could not take
a hundred steps without weariness, she could make twenty answer the
purpose of a hundred.
Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England, but
it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root, or
spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were
opposed to it from conscientious principle,--many from far-sighted
thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised
the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the
thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated,
and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus
it came to pass that for many years the rural population of New England,
as a general rule, did their own work, both out doors and in. If there
were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically
only the _helps_, following humbly the steps of master and mistress, and
used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions of their
toil. The master and mistress with their children were the head workers.
Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country, because years ago
the first English travellers found that the class of persons by them
denominated servants were in America denominated _help_ or helpers. But
the term was the very best exponent of the state of society. There were
few servants, in the European sense of the word; there was a society of
educated workers, where all were practically equal, and where, if there
was a deficiency in one family and an excess in another, a _helper_, not
a servant, was hired. Mrs. Browne, who has six sons and no daughters,
enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has six daughters and no
sons. She borrows a daughter, and pays her good wages to help in her
domestic toil, and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones. These
two young people go into the families in which they are to be employed
in all respects as equals and companions, and so the work of the
community is equalized. Hence arose, and for many years continued, a
state of society more nearly solving than any other ever did the problem
of combining the highest culture of the mind with the highest culture of
the muscles and the physical faculties.
Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong females,
rising each day to their in-door work with cheerful alertness,--one to
sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the
breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly labor;
and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery, discussed the
last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver reading, or
perhaps a rural ball that was to come off the next week. They spun with
the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did all manner of fine
needle-work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short, in the
boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect health, set
themselves to any work they had ever read or thought of. A bride in
those days was married with sheets and table-cloths of her own weaving,
with counterpanes and toilet-covers wrought in divers embroidery by her
own and her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work done in our days by
girls who have nothing else to do will not equal what was done by these,
who performed besides, among them, the whole work of the family.
For many years these habits of life characterized the majority of our
rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and
position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a
conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former
days. Human nature is above all things--lazy. Every one confesses in the
abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind
is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they
can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than
circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not write this article, were
not the publication-day hard on my heels. I should read Hawthorne and
Emerson and Holmes, and dream in my arm-chair, and project in the clouds
those lovely unwritten stories that curl and veer and change like
mist-wreaths in the sun. So, also, however dignified, however
invigorating, however really desirable are habits of life involving
daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon at every one's
elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its weight with sullen,
discontented murmurs.
I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very moderately,
a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and discussed,
where there are no servants except the ladies of the household. I will
venture to say, also, that these households, many of them, are not
inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance to many which
are conducted by the ministration of domestics. I will venture to
assert, furthermore, that these same ladies who live thus find quite as
much time for reading, letter-writing, drawing, embroidery, and
fancy-work, as the women of families otherwise arranged. I am quite
certain that they would be found on an average to be in the enjoyment of
better health, and more of that sense of capability and vitality which
gives one confidence in one's ability to look into life and meet it with
cheerful courage, than three-quarters of the women who keep
servants,--and that on the whole their domestic establishment is
regulated more exactly to their mind, their food prepared and served
more to their taste. And yet, with all this, I will _not_ venture to
assert that they are satisfied with this way of living, and that they
would not change it forthwith, if they could. They have a secret feeling
all the while that they are being abused, that they are working harder
than they ought to, and that women who live in their houses like
boarders, who have only to speak and it is done, are the truly enviable
ones. One after another of their associates, as opportunity offers and
means increase, desert the ranks, and commit their domestic affairs to
the hands of hired servants. Self-respect takes the alarm. Is it
altogether genteel to live as we do? To be sure, we are accustomed to
it; we have it all systematized and arranged; the work of our own hands
suits us better than any we can hire; in fact, when we do hire, we are
discontented and uncomfortable,--for who will do for us what we will do
for ourselves? But when we have company! there's the rub, to get out all
our best things and put them back,--to cook the meals and wash the
dishes ingloriously,--and to make all appear as if we didn't do it, and
had servants like other people.
There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-belief and
self-respect,--an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts
and necessities of our situation in life,--this, after all, is the worst
and most dangerous feature of the case. It is the same sort of pride
which makes Smilax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves, and get
up a circuitous dinner-party on English principles, to entertain a
friend from England. Because the friend in England lives in such and
such a style, he must make believe for a day that he lives so too, when
in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment equal to a
removal or a fire, and threatens the total extinction of Mrs. Smilax.
Now there are two principles of hospitality that people are very apt to
overlook. One is, that their guests like to be made at home, and treated
with confidence; and another is, that people are always interested in
the details of a way of life that is new to them. The Englishman comes
to America as weary of his old, easy, family-coach life as you can be of
yours; he wants to see something new under the sun,--something American;
and forthwith we all bestir ourselves to give him something as near as
we can fancy exactly like what he is already tired of. So city-people
come to the country, not to sit in the best parlor, and to see the
nearest imitation of city-life, but to lie on the hay-mow, to swing in
the barn, to form intimacy with the pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to
eat baked potatoes exactly on the critical moment when they are done,
from the oven of the cooking-stove,--and we remark, _en passant_, that
nobody has ever truly eaten a baked potato, unless he has seized it at
that precise and fortunate moment.
I fancy you now, my friends, whom I have in my eye. You are three happy
women together. You are all so well that you know not how it feels to be
sick. You are used to early rising, and would not lie in bed, if you
could. Long years of practice have made you familiar with the shortest,
neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household office, so
that really for the greater part of the time in your house there seems
to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise in the morning and despatch
your husband, father, and brothers to the farm or wood-lot; you go
sociably about chatting with each other, while you skim the milk, make
the butter, turn the cheeses. The forenoon is long; it's ten to one that
all the so-called morning work is over, and you have leisure for an
hour's sewing or reading before it is time to start the
dinner-preparations. By two o'clock your house-work is done, and you
have the long afternoon for books, needle-work, or drawing,--for perhaps
there is among you one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you
reads aloud while the others sew, and you manage in that way to keep up
with a great deal of reading. I see on your book-shelves Prescott,
Macaulay, Irving, besides the lighter fry of poems and novels, and, if I
mistake not, the friendly covers of the "Atlantic." When you have
company, you invite Mrs. Smith or Brown or Jones to tea; you have no
trouble; they come early, with their knitting or sewing; your particular
crony sits with you by your polished stove while you watch the baking of
those light biscuits and tea-rusks for which you are so famous, and Mrs.
Somebody-else chats with your sister, who is spreading the table with
your best china in the best room. When tea is over, there is plenty of
volunteering to help you wash your pretty India teacups, and get them
back into the cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in all
this, though you have taken down the best things and put them back,
because you have done all without anxiety or effort, among those who
would do precisely the same, if you were their visitors.
But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her pretty daughter to spend
a week with you, and forthwith you are troubled. Your youngest, Fanny,
visited them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook and
chambermaid, and the servant in white gloves that waits on table. You
say in your soul, "What shall we do? they never can be contented to live
as we do; how shall we manage?" And now you long for servants.
This is the very time that you should know that Mrs. Simmons is tired to
death of her fine establishment, and weighed down with the task of
keeping the peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly loving
her ease, and hating strife; and yet last week she had five quarrels to
settle between her invaluable cook and the other members of her staff,
because invaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how to get up
state-dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries which her mistress
knows nothing about, asserts the usual right of spoiled favorites to
insult all her neighbors with impunity, and rule with a rod of iron over
the whole house. Anything that is not in the least like her own home and
ways of living will be a blessed relief and change to Mrs. Simmons. Your
clean, quiet house, your delicate cookery, your cheerful morning tasks,
if you will let her follow you about, and sit and talk with you while
you are at your work, will all seem a pleasant contrast to her own life.
Of course, if it came to the case of offering to change lots in life,
she would not do it; but very likely she _thinks_ she would, and sighs
over and pities herself, and thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are,
how snugly and securely you live, and wishes she were as untrammelled
and independent as you. And she is more than half right; for, with her
helpless habits, her utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning
the reciprocal relations of milk, eggs, butter, saleratus, soda, and
yeast, she is completely the victim and slave of the person she pretends
to rule.
Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and rehearsals in her family.
After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to
prove a perfect treasure,--neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited.
The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss! The
new-comer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the domestic
fates evolve the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur of distant
thunder in the kitchen; then a day or two of sulky silence, in which the
atmosphere seems heavy with an approaching storm. At last comes the
climax. The parlor-door flies open during breakfast. Enter seamstress,
in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook with a face swollen and red with wrath,
who tersely introduces the subject-matter of the drama in a voice
trembling with rage.
"Would you be plased, Ma'am, to suit yersilf with another cook? Me week
will be up next Tuesday, and I want to be going."
"Why, Bridget, what's the matter?"
"Matter enough, Ma'am! I niver could live with them Cork girls in a
house, nor I won't; them as likes the Cork girls is welcome for all me;
but it's not for the likes of me to live with them, and she been in the
kitchen a-upsettin' of me gravies with her flat-irons and things."
Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of denial, and the
altercation wages fast and furious, and poor, little, delicate Mrs.
Simmons stands like a kitten in a thunder-storm in the midst of a
regular Irish row.
Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows that a great dinner
is to come off Wednesday, and that her mistress has not the smallest
idea how to manage it, and that, therefore, whatever happens, she must
be conciliated.
Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor Mrs. Simmons
dismisses her seamstress with longing looks. She suited her mistress
exactly, but she didn't suit cook!
Now, if Mrs. Simmons had been brought up in early life with the
experience that _you_ have, she would be mistress in her own house. She
would quietly say to Madam Cook, "If my family-arrangements do not suit
you, you can leave. I can see to the dinner myself." And she _could_ do
it. Her well-trained muscles would not break down under a little extra
work; her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity with everything
that is to be done would enable her at once to make cooks of any bright
girls of good capacity who might still be in her establishment; and,
above all, she would feel herself mistress in her own house. This is
what would come of an experience in doing her own work as you do. She
who can at once put her own trained hand to the machine in any spot
where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave of a coarse, vulgar
Irish-woman.
So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be expected of servants in
a given time, and what ought to be expected of a given amount of
provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one six
months in her life she had been a practical cook, and had really had the
charge of the larder, she would not now be haunted, as she constantly
is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps of
the disappearance of provisions through secret channels of relationship
and favoritism. She certainly could not be made to believe in the
absolute necessity of so many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and
dozens of eggs, not to mention spices and wine, as are daily required
for the accomplishment of Madam Cook's purposes. But though now she does
suspect and apprehend, she cannot speak with certainty. She cannot say,
"_I_ have made these things. I know exactly what they require. I have
done this and that myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a
certain time." It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing
their own work become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of
the ground they stand on,--they are less open to imposition,--they can
speak and act in their own houses more as those "having authority," and
therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less
willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general error
lies in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for them as they
will do for themselves, and that an untrained, undisciplined human being
ever _can_ do house-work, or any other work, with the neatness and
perfection that a person of trained intelligence can. It has been
remarked in our armies that the men of cultivation, though bred in
delicate and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships of
camp-life better and longer than rough laborers. The reason is, that an
educated mind knows how to use and save its body, to work it and spare
it, as an uneducated mind cannot; and so the college-bred youth brings
himself safely through fatigues which kill the unreflective laborer.
Cultivated, intelligent women, who are brought up to do the work of
their own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make the head
save the wear of the muscles. By forethought, contrivance, system, and
arrangement, they lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less
expense of time and strength than others. The old New-England motto,
_Get your work done up in the forenoon_, applied to an amount of work
which would keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to sunset.
A lady living in one of our obscure New-England towns, where there were
no servants to be hired, at last by sending to a distant city succeeded
in procuring a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense bone
and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one fortnight she
established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the kitchen and
through the house, that her mistress, a delicate woman, incumbered with
the care of young children, began seriously to think that she made more
work each day than she performed, and dismissed her. What was now to be
done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring farmer was going to be
married in six months, and wanted a little ready money for her
_trousseau_. The lady was informed that Miss So-and-so would come to
her, not as a servant, but as hired "help." She was fain to accept any
help with gladness. Forthwith came into the family-circle a tall,
well-dressed young person, grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not
in the least presuming, who sat at the family-table and observed all its
decorums with the modest self-possession of a lady. The new-comer took a
survey of the labors of a family of ten members, including four or five
young children, and, looking, seemed at once to throw them into system,
matured her plans, arranged her hours of washing, ironing, baking,
cleaning, rose early, moved deftly, and in a single day the slatternly
and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance that so often
strikes one in New-England farm-houses. The work seemed to be all gone.
Everything was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, and stayed in
place; the floors, when cleaned, remained clean; the work was always
done, and not doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat neatly
dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing letters to her
betrothed, or sewing on her bridal outfit. Such is the result of
employing those who have been brought up to do their own work. That
tall, fine-looking girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a
fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will, we fear, prove
rather an exacting mistress to Irish Biddy and Bridget; but _she_ will
never be threatened by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or
two have tried the experiment.
* * * * *
Having written thus far on my article, I laid it aside till evening,
when, as usual, I was saluted by the inquiry, "Has papa been writing
anything to-day?" and then followed loud petitions to hear it; and so I
read as far, reader, as you have.
"Well, papa," said Jennie, "what are you meaning to make out there? Do
you really think it would be best for us all to try to go back to that
old style of living you describe? After all, you have shown only the
dark side of an establishment with servants, and the bright side of the
other way of living. Mamma does not have such trouble with her servants;
matters have always gone smoothly in our family; and if we are not such
wonderful girls as those you describe, yet we may make pretty good
housekeepers on the modern system, after all."
"You don't know all the troubles your mamma has had in your day," said
my wife. "I have often, in the course of my family-history, seen the day
when I have heartily wished for the strength and ability to manage my
household matters as my grandmother of notable memory managed hers. But
I fear that those remarkable women of the olden times are like the
ancient painted glass,--the art of making them is lost; my mother was
less than her mother, and I am less than my mother."
"And Marianne and I come out entirely at the little end of the horn,"
said Jennie, laughing; "yet I wash the breakfast-cups and dust the
parlors, and have always fancied myself a notable housekeeper."
"It is just as I told you," I said. "Human nature is always the same.
Nobody ever is or does more than circumstances force him to be and do.
Those remarkable women of old were made by circumstances. There were,
comparatively speaking, no servants to be had, and so children were
trained to habits of industry and mechanical adroitness from the cradle,
and every household process was reduced to the very minimum of labor.
Every step required in a process was counted, every movement calculated;
and she who took ten steps, when one would do, lost her reputation for
'faculty.' Certainly such an early drill was of use in developing the
health and the bodily powers, as well as in giving precision to the
practical mental faculties. All household economies were arranged with
equal niceness in those thoughtful minds. A trained housekeeper knew
just how many sticks of hickory of a certain size were required to heat
her oven, and how many of each different kind of wood. She knew by a
sort of intuition just what kinds of food would yield the most palatable
nutriment with the least outlay of accessories in cooking. She knew to a
minute the time when each article must go into and be withdrawn from her
oven; and if she could only lie in her chamber and direct, she could
guide an intelligent child through the processes with mathematical
certainty. It is impossible, however, that anything but early training
and long experience can produce these results, and it is earnestly to be
wished that the grandmothers of New England had only written down their
experiences for our children; they would have been a mine of maxims and
traditions, better than any other traditions of the elders which we know
of."
"One thing I know," said Marianne,--"and that is, I wish I had been
brought up so, and knew all that I should, and had all the strength and
adroitness that those women had. I should not dread to begin
housekeeping, as I now do. I should feel myself independent. I should
feel that I knew how to direct my servants, and what it was reasonable
and proper to expect of them; and then, as you say, I shouldn't be
dependent on all their whims and caprices of temper. I dread those
household storms, of all things."
Silently pondering these anxieties of the young expectant housekeeper, I
resumed my pen, and concluded my paper as follows.
* * * * *
In this country, our democratic institutions have removed the
superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants to
a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land of
liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is. They
are for the most part the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder
is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the Celtic
blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should be the
measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic arrangements.
But, so long as things are so, there will be constant changes and
interruptions in every domestic establishment, and constantly recurring
interregnums when the mistress must put her own hand to the work,
whether the hand be a trained or an untrained one. As matters now are,
the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest. She has very little
strength,--no experience to teach her how to save her strength. She
knows nothing experimentally of the simplest processes necessary to keep
her family comfortably fed and clothed; and she has a way of looking at
all these things which makes them particularly hard and distasteful to
her. She does not escape being obliged to do house-work at intervals,
but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused way, that makes it twice
as hard and disagreeable as it need be.
Now what I have to say is, that, if every young woman learned to do
house-work and cultivated her practical faculties in early life, she
would, in the first place, be much more likely to keep her servants,
and, in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would avoid all
that wear and tear of the nervous system which comes from constant
ill-success in those departments on which family health and temper
mainly depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our American life
which require a peculiar training. Why not face it sensibly?
The second thing I have to say is, that our land is now full of
motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at great expense to
have hired operators stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They
lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all the
different muscles of the body worked for them, because they are so
flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not be
quite as cheerful and less expensive a process, if young girls from
early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, ironing, rubbing
furniture, and all the multiplied domestic processes which our
grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified the
intervals with spinning on the great and little wheel, never came to
need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which
really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor economy to pay
servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then to pay operators
to exercise them for us? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in
a week went over every movement that any gymnast has invented, and went
over them to some productive purpose too.
Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain, if those ladies who have
learned and practise the invaluable accomplishment of doing their own
work will know their own happiness and dignity, and properly value their
great acquisition, even though it may have been forced upon them by
circumstances.