There is one lady in literature and in life whom all men are said, not
without gentle sarcasm if a woman says it, to wish especially to know.
She is declared to be the vision that haunts the youth as his heart
opens to the soft influences of love, and her figure, trim and
debonair, that allures the older fancy of the man who sits "alone and
merry at forty year," having seen his earlier Gillian and Marian and a
score more happily married. She is, in fact, the domestic magician,
the good fairy, the genius of home, the thoughtful, tactful, careful,
intelligent house-keeper, the very she whom Milton sings, introducing
us to
"Herbs and other country messes
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses."
Her name is Phillis--not exactly a romantic name, nor, indeed, is it
meant by the poet to be a romantic name; for he has just before
sketched another kind of woman:
"Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes."
Such a cynosure could not possibly have been named Phillis: Artemis,
perhaps, or Hildegarde; Constance, Una, Mildred, or Cunigunda, but by
no possibility Phillis. That is a pastoral name, a shepherd's
sweetheart. Indeed, the two kinds of women are perfectly indicated and
distinguished in these lines of _L'Allegro_, which have no detail of
description. The impression of womanly difference is nowhere more
completely given. One picture is that of the lofty, haughty, "highborn
Helen," the superb Lady Clara Vere de Vere; the other is that of the
thrifty Baucis, the gardener Adam's wife. And the two are as near in
the young man's heart as they are in the poem.
When Mr. William Guppy raised his eyes from the pit of the theatre to
Miss Esther Summerson sitting in the boxes, the "image imprinted on
his 'art" was that of the cynosure of neighboring eyes, stately among
stately towers and ancestral trees. But doubtless when Mr. William
Guppy, as lovers will, abandoned himself to blissful dreams of the
possible home that should grow out of his lofty passion, it was
another vision that he saw; it was the high-born Helen coming down to
breakfast in a sweet morning-cap, a neat-handed Phillis. For love,
which soars and sings, also builds its nest. The one instinct is as
deep and sure as the other. The cynosure of worshipping hearts and
eyes is but the romantic aspect of Phillis: and because she is so
lofty and so lovely will she be the miracle-worker in the household.
The secret sorrow of a thousand homes is that the lady of the towers
and battlements does not prove in fact to be also the neat-handed
Phillis.
Indeed, it is a kind of national complaint and lamentation that the
neat-handed Phillis is disappearing altogether. This is the
significance of the servant-girl question. This is the root of the
alarming conviction that Phillis is changing into Biddy, whose fit
epithet is not neat-handed. This is the meaning of the cry for
bread--light, sweet, well-baked bread; not the clammy dough which is
served to a despairing land. This is the reason of the wondering
question, What has become of roast meat? and of the melancholy
conviction that henceforth baked beef is to replace the juicy sirloin
of tradition, history, and elegant literature.
Of the accomplished and intelligent young women who honor the Easy
Chair at this moment with their attention, of course the immense
majority can broil a steak to a turn, or mix the airiest bread, or
boil potatoes as new-fallen snow. But there are some unfortunates who
cannot do it. Let us pity them. They would probably tell us that they
have not studied poetry and music, the French language, crochet, and
the Boston, to become kitchen drudges: and they will not fail to
remind us that Cinderella did not charm the prince as a kitchen-maid,
and that she had ceased to be Cinderbreech, and had emerged from the
chimney-corner when she married him. But will they please to curb
their wrath for a moment and listen to Dr. Clarke? "Unless men and
women both have brains, the nation will go down. As much brain is
needed to govern a household as to command a ship; as much to guide a
family aright as to guide a Congress aright; as much to do the least
and the greatest of woman's work as to do the least and the greatest
of man's work."
Now, the dressing of messes by the neat-handed Phillis is one of the
important elements of governing a household; and the Princess
Cinderella was the better housewife because she had once been
Cinderbreech. Nelson was the better admiral because he had once been
cabin-boy. Dickens was the better story-teller because he had once
been reporter. If, indeed, Darby can afford to pay a hundred dollars
monthly to a _chef_, Joan need know nothing of messes; but how many
such Darbys are there?
These remarks, or similar ones, have been often heard by the gentler
reader, and are somewhat familiar to her, not to say wearisome. "Oh
yes," she says, "I know all this: men want women in the family to be
angels and French cooks rolled into one. Heaven save the mark! Suppose
that women on their side were to expect men in the family to be heroes
and gentlemen as well as 'good providers?'"
Well, madame, they ought to expect it and to insist upon it. Perhaps
you have played the little game of parlor magic? There are homes in
which that game is always played, and they are the happiest of all. In
them the real value of neatness and order, of thrift and taste and
temperance, is understood, and the Beauty who once lay lapped in lofty
towers knows that the romance which enshrined her amid those
battlements and tufted trees is preserved and forever refreshed by the
art of the neat-handed Phillis. And, madame, upon _his_ side _he_ does
not reverse the order of the story and of nature, and sink from the
Prince into the Beast.