To that class of women who toil not, neither spin, and who, like
contented ravens, are fed they know not how nor whence, it is
superfluous to speak of domestic service; for their housekeeping
consists in "giving orders," and their marketing is represented by
tradesmen's wagons and buff-colored pass-books. Yet I am far from
inferring that, because they can financially afford to be idle, they
have a right to be so. They surely owe to the world some free gift of
labor, else it would be hard to see why they came into it. Not for
ornaments certainly, since Parian marble and painted canvas would be
both more economical and satisfactory; not for housewives, for their
houses are in the hands of servants; not for mothers, for they
universally grumble at the advent and responsibility of children.
But to the large majority of women, domestic service ought to be a
high moral question, especially to those who are the wives of men
striving to keep up on limited incomes the reality and the appearance
of a prosperous home; all the more necessary, perhaps, because the
appearance is the condition on which the reality is possible.
Too often a false notion that usefulness and elegance are incompatible,
that it is "unladylike" to be in their kitchens, or come in contact
with the baker and butcher, makes them abrogate the highest honors of
wifehood. Or perhaps they have the misfortune to be the children of
those tender parents who are permitted without loss of reputation to
educate their daughters for drawing-room ornaments in their youth, and
yet do nothing to _insure_ them against a middle age of struggle and
privation, and an old age of misery.
To such I would speak candidly--not without thought--not without
practical knowledge of what I say--not without strong hopes that I may
influence many warm, thoughtless hearts, who only need to be once
alive to a responsibility in order to feel straitened and burdened
until they assume and fulfil it.
Is it fair, then, is it just, kind, or honorable, that the husband day
after day should be bound to the wheel of a monotonous occupation, and
the wife fritter away the results in frivolity or suffer them to be
wasted in extravagant and yet unsatisfactory housekeeping? Supposing
the magnificent affection of the husband makes him willing to coin his
life into dollars, in order that the wife may live and dress and visit
according to her ideal, ought she to accept an offering that has in it
so strong an odor of human sacrifice?
Even if it be necessary to keep up a certain style, it is still in the
wife's power to make the husband's service for this end a reasonable
one. Personal supervision of the marketing will save twenty per cent,
and I am afraid to say how much might be saved from actual waste in
the kitchen by the same means; and this is but the beginning.
Yet saving is only one item in the wife's lawful domestic service; if
her husband is to be a permanently successful man, she must take care
of his digestion. It may seem derogatory to thought, enterprise, and
virtue to assert that eating has anything to do with them. I cannot
help the condition; I only know that it exists, and that she is but a
poor wife who ignores the fact.
The days when men stuck to their "roast and boiled" as firmly as to
their creed are, of necessity, disappearing. The fervid life we are
all leading demands food that can be assimilated with the least
possible detriment to, or expenditure of, the vital powers. "Thoughts
that burn" are no poetic fancy; the planning, the calculating that a
business man performs during the day literally burns up the material
of conscious life. It is the wife's duty to replenish the fires of
intellect and energy by fuel that the enfeebled vitality can convert
most easily into the elements necessary to repair the waste.
The idea that it is derogatory for cultivated brains and white hands
to investigate the stock-jar and the stew-pan is a very mistaken one.
The daintiest lady I ever knew, the wife of a merchant who is one of
our princes, sees personally every day to the preparation of her
husband's dinner and its artistic and appetizing arrangement on the
table. I have not the smallest doubt that the nourishing soups, the
delicately prepared meats, the delicious desserts, are the secret of
many a clear-headed business transaction, household investments that
make possible the far-famed commercial ones. This mysterious
relationship between what we _eat_ and what we _do_ was dimly
perceived by Dr. Johnson when he said that "a man who did not care for
his dinner would care for nothing else."
Artistic cooking derogatory! Why, it is a science, an art, as sure to
follow a high state of civilization as the fine arts do. No persons of
fine feelings can be indifferent to what they eat, any more than to
what they wear, or what their household surroundings are. A man may be
compelled by circumstances to swallow half-cooked bloody beef and
boiled paste dumplings, and yet it may be as repugnant to him as it
would be to wear a scarlet belcher neckerchief, a brass watch-chain,
and a cotton-velvet coat. Yet his wife may be ignorant or indifferent;
he is too much occupied with other matters to "make a fuss about it,"
and so he shuts his eyes, opens his mouth, and takes whatever his cook
pleases to send him. I do not like to be uncharitable, but somehow I
can't help thinking that a wife who permits this kind of thing is
unworthy of her wedding ring.
Let her take a volume of F. W. Johnston's "Domestic Chemistry" in her
hand, and go down into her kitchen. She will be in a far higher region
of romance than Miss Braddon can take her into. She will learn that it
is her province to renew her husband physically and mentally by
dexterously depositing the right kind of nutriment upon the inward,
invisible frame. The wonders of science shall supersede then, for her,
the wonders of romance. To feed the sacred fire of life will become a
noble office; she will count it as honorable, in its place, to make a
fine soup or a delicate Charlotte Russe as to play a Beethoven sonata
or read a German classic.
Truly, I think that it is almost a sin for a housekeeper with all her
senses to be ignorant of the laws of chemistry affecting food. Yet the
subject is so large and complicated that I can only indicate its
importance; but I am sure that women of affection and intelligence who
may now for the first time accept the thought, will follow my hints to
all their manifold conclusions. One of these conclusions is so
important that I cannot avoid directing special attention to it,--the
moral effect of proper food.
Do not doubt that all through life high things depend on low ones; and
in this matter it must be evident to every observing woman that food
is often the _nerve_ of our highest social affections. There is an
acute domestic disorder which Dr. Marshall Hall used to call "the
temper disease." Need I point out to wives the wonderful sympathy
between this disease and the dining-table? Do they not know that a
fretful, belated, ill-cooked breakfast has the power to take all the
energy out of a sensitively organized man, and make his entire day an
uncomfortable failure?
On the contrary, a cheerful room, a snowy cloth, coffee "with the
aroma in," bread whose amber crust and light, white crumb is a
picture, in short, a well-appointed, quiet, comfortable first meal has
in it some subtle influence of strength and inspiration for work. I
have seen men rise from such tables _joyful_--full of such gratitude
and hope as I can well believe only found expression in that silent
uplifting of the heart to God which is, after all, our purest prayer.
Then when at evening he returns weary, faint and hungry, a fine sonata
or an exquisite painting will not much comfort him. I even doubt
whether a religious service could profitably take the place of his
dinner; for we _know_, if we will acknowledge it, that the importunate
demands of the flesh do cry down the still small voice of devotion.
But how different we feel after eating; then we are disposed for
something higher, the mind is elevated to gracious thoughts, the brain
gives reasonable counsel, the heart generous responses. And I speak
with all reverence when I say that many of our darkest hours in
spiritual things are not to be attributed to an angry God or a hidden
Saviour, but to physical repletion or inanition. But if these
wonderfully fashioned bodies be the "temple of the Holy Ghost," how
shall we expect the comforts of God in a disordered or ill-kept
shrine?
Thus it is in the power of the housewife to turn the work of the
kitchen into a sacrifice of gladness, and to make the offices of the
table a means of grace. Certain it is that she will decide whether her
husband is to be commercially successful or not; for if a man will be
rich, he must ask his wife's permission to be so. And if he will be
physically healthy, mentally clear, morally sweet, she must take care
that his home furnish the proper food and stimulus on which these
conditions depend. Nor will she go far wrong if she take as a general
rule, lying at the foundation, or in close connection with them all,
Sydney Smith's pleasant hyperbolic maxim, "Soup and fish explain half
the emotions of life."
We will suppose that the housewife is also the house-mother, and
that she is not content with apathetically remarking that "her
children are beyond her control," and so sending them away to
nurses and boarding schools; but that she really strives to
encourage every virtue, draw out every latent power, and make both
boys and girls worthy of the grand future to which they are heirs. Who
shall say now that woman's domestic sphere is narrow, or unworthy of
her highest powers? For if she accepts honestly and solemnly all her
responsibilities, she takes a position that only good women or
angels could fill.
Nor need house duties shut her out from all service except to those of
her own household. In these very duties she may find a way to help her
poorer sisters far more efficient than many of more pretentious
promise. When she has become a scientific, artistic cook, let her
permit some ignorant but bright and ambitious girl to spend a few
hours daily by her side, and learn by precept and example the highest
rules and methods of the culinary art. Girls so instructed would be
real blessings to those who hired them, and would themselves start
life with a real, solid gain, able at once to command respectable
service and high wages.
I am quite aware that such a practical philanthropist would meet with
many ungracious returns, and not a few insinuating assertions that her
charity was an insidious attempt to get work "for nothing." But a good
woman would not be deterred by this; she has had but small experience
of life who has not learned that it is often our very best and most
unselfish actions which are suspected, simply because their very
unselfishness makes them unintelligible; and if we do not reverence
what we cannot understand, we suspect it.
It may seem but a small thing to do for charity's sweet sake, but who
shall measure the results? Say that in the course of a year four young
girls receive a practical knowledge of the art of cooking, how far
will the influence of those four eventually reach? The larger part of
all our good deeds is hid from us,--wisely so, else we should be
overmuch lifted up. We have nothing to do with aggregate results, and
I believe that the woman who provides intelligently for her
household, makes it cheerful and restful, and finds heart and space to
help some other woman to a higher life, has the noblest of "missions,"
the grandest of "spheres," and is most blessed among women.
She who adds to household duties maternal duties fills also the
highest national office, since to her hands are committed--not indeed
the laws of the republic but the fate of the republic; for the
children of _to-day_ are the _to-morrow_ of society, and its men of
action will be nothing but unconscious instruments of the patient love
and prayerful thought of the mothers who taught them. And yet let the
women who are excused from this office be grateful for their
indulgence. Alas! how many shoulders without strength have asked for
heavy burdens.