It is one of the most delightful things about Miss Edgeworth’s immortal
tales for children that the incidents they relate have a knack of
remaining indelibly fixed in our memories, long after we have succeeded
in forgetting the more severely acquired information of our schooldays.
Why, for instance, do I vex my temper and break my finger-nails in a
vain effort to untie the knotted cord of every bundle that comes to
the house, save that I have still before me the salutary example of
that prudent little Ben, who so conscientiously and cheerfully devoted
himself to unfastening his uncle’s package? “You may keep the string
for your pains,” says Mr. Gresham, with pleasing liberality. “Thank
you, sir,” replies Ben, with more effusion than I think he feels. “What
an excellent whipcord it is!” And so, pocketing his fee, it wins for
him, as we all know, the prize at Lady Diana Sweepstake’s great archery
contest, while poor Hal forfeits his shot, and loses his hat, and gets
covered with mud and disgrace, and sprains his little cousin Patty’s
ankle, and all because he has been rash enough to cut his piece of
cord. Never was moral more sternly pointed, not even in the case of
Miss Jane Taylor’s heedless little Emily, who will not stoop to pick up
a pin, and is punished by the loss of a whole day’s pleasure, because,
owing to some unexplained intricacy of her toilet,--
“She could not stir,
For just a pin to finish her.”
But was whipcord such a costly article in Miss Edgeworth’s time, that
a small piece of it was worth so much trouble and pains? We have Hal’s
testimony that twice as much could have been bought for twopence;
and though Hal is but a graceless young scamp, who cannot be induced
to look upon twopence with becoming reverence, and who plainly has a
career of want and misery before him, yet his word on this matter may
be accepted as final. At the present day, the value of a bit of string
saved by patient dexterity from the scissors is so infinitesimal that
the hoarding up of match stumps, after the fashion of a certain great
banker, would really seem the quicker road to wealth. But the true gain
in these minute economies is of a strictly moral nature, and serves,
when we know we have been extravagant, to balance our account with
conscience. The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to
our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp. I have known
wealthy men who grudged themselves and their families nothing that
money could buy, yet were made perfectly miserable by the amount of gas
burned nightly in their homes. They roamed around with manifest and
pitiful uneasiness, stealthily turning down a burner here and there,
whenever they could do so unperceived, dimming the glories of their
glass and gilding, and reducing upper halls and familiar stairways into
very pitfalls for the stumbling of the unwary. The advent of lamps has
brought but scant solace to these sufferers, for their economy is, in
fact, much older than the gas itself, and flourished exceedingly in the
days of wax tapers and tallow-dips. We read in the veracious chronicles
of “Cranford” how Miss Matty Jenkyns, so thoughtlessly generous in
all other matters, had for her one pet frugality the hoarding of her
candles, and by how many intricate devices the dear old lady sought to
cherish and protect these objects of her tender solicitude.
“They (the candles) were usually brought in with tea, but we only
burned one at a time. As we lived in constant preparation for a friend
who might come in any moment (but who never did), it required some
contrivance to keep them of the same length, ready to be lighted,
and to look as if we burned two always. They took it in turns, and,
whatever we might be talking about or doing, Miss Matty’s eyes were
habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish it,
and to light the other, before they had become too uneven in length to
be restored to equality in the course of the evening.”
This little scene of innocent deception is finer, in its way, than the
famous newspaper paths on which Miss Deborah’s guests step lightly
over her new carpet to their respective chairs. We sympathize with
Miss Matty’s anxiety about her tapers because it represents one phase
of a weakness common to all mankind, and far remote, we trust, from
mere vulgar parsimony, which, seeking to stint in all things, is, by
its very nature, incapable of a nice spirit of selection. Even the
narrator of “Cranford,” that shadowy, indistinguishable Mary Smith, who
contrives so cleverly to keep her own identity in the background,--even
she consents to emerge one moment from her chosen dimness, and to
claim a share in this highly discriminating economy. String, she
acknowledges, is her foible. Like the excellent Mr. Gresham, she would
preserve it from destruction at the most liberal expenditure of other
people’s time and trouble. “My pockets,” she confesses, “get full of
little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that
never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a
parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How
people can bring themselves to use India-rubber rings, which are a sort
of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To
me an India-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which is not
new; one that I picked up off the floor six years ago. I have really
tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the
extravagance.”
It would be a pity to spoil this vivacious description by a touch of
odious modern realism, and to hint that an India-rubber ring which had
knocked about the world for six years must have parted with much of its
youthful elasticity, and would be of comparatively little use to any
one.
Illustrious examples are not lacking to give dignity and weight to
these seemingly trivial frugalities. The great, and wise, and mean
Duke of Marlborough, he who held the fate of Europe in his hands,
and who was, without doubt, the first of English-speaking generals,
did not disdain to bend his mighty mind to the contemplation of his
candle-ends, or to the tender protection of his luggage. Who understood
so well as he how to spend a thousand pounds, and save a shilling? When
Prince Eugene came to a conference in his tent, the duke’s servant,
anxious no doubt for an ostentatious display, had the temerity to light
four wax tapers in honor of the royal guest, which, when Marlborough
perceived, he promptly extinguished, rating the unlucky attendant
with such caustic severity that the offense ran little likelihood of
being soon repeated. While the great pile of Blenheim was absorbing
countless thousands in its slow process of erection, the duke walked
every morning from the public rooms at Bath to his own lodging,
thereby saving sixpence daily, and affording a shining model to those
whose favorite economy is cab-hire. He walked to the very end, this
consistent old warrior; walked while the pangs of illness were creeping
over his disabled frame; and at last, when he could save no more
sixpences, he died, and left nearly two million pounds to be squandered
briskly by his heirs.
His wife, too, the beautiful, brilliant, high-tempered Duchess Sarah,
was every bit as thrifty as her lord. She built the triumphal arch of
Blenheim at her own expense, and wrangled mightily all the while over
the price of lime, “sevenpence half-penny per bushel, when it could
be made in the park.” She was the richest peeress in England, but her
keen blue eyes, as fiery as Marlborough’s own, were ever awake to any
attempted depredation. Her dressmaker, one Mrs. Buda, essayed, not
knowing with whom she had to deal, to hold back from her some yards of
cloth; whereupon the duchess borrowed Mrs. Buda’s diamond ring “for a
pattern,” and refused to give it up until the stuff was returned. She
understood also the admirable art of utilizing her friends, and there
is a delightful letter written by her to Lord Stair, then minister at
France, commissioning him to buy her a night-gown, or more properly a
dressing-gown, “easy and warm, with a light silk wadd in it, such as
are used to come out of bed and gird round, without any train at all,
but very full. ’Tis no matter what color, except pink or yellow--no
gold or silver in it; but some pretty striped satin or damask, lined
with a tafetty of the same color.” She also desires for her daughter,
Lady Harriet, then a child of thirteen, “a monto and petticoat to go
abroad in, no silver or gold in it, nor a stuff that is dear, but a
middling one that may be worn either in winter or in summer.” The canny
duchess prudently adds that she will wait for the things until “no
one need be troubled with the custom-house people,” a euphuism worthy
of an American conscience, and she thanks Lord Stair at the same time
for sending her “a pair of bodyes,” which were so well-fitting, and
evidently so cheap, that she will have two more pairs of “white tabby
from the same taylor.” Fancy asking a foreign minister to purchase
one’s stays, and wrappers, and little daughter’s petticoats, and to
please wait his opportunity to smuggle them in without duty!
Yet “Queen Sarah” was capable of sudden deeds of generosity that
quite take away our breath by their magnificence, and so, for the
matter of that, was another noble termagant, Queen Elizabeth, who gave
away right royally with one hand, even while she held out the other
for beggarly gratuities. We see her heaping riches into Sir Walter
Raleigh’s lap, and managing to get a great deal of it back again, when
his treasure-laden ships came slowly to port. Nay, did she not seize
on “a waistcoat of carnation colour, curiously embroidered,” which
the brave navigator, always passionately addicted to fine clothes,
had snatched from some Spanish galleon for the adornment of his own
handsome figure, and which the queen straightway proceeded to flaunt as
a stomacher before his injured eyes? If we read a list of Elizabeth’s
New Year gifts, we are both astonished and edified by their number
and variety. Here is Fulke Greville presenting his sovereign with a
night-dress; not a wrapper this time, but a genuine night-dress, “made
of cambric, wrought about the collar and sleeves with Spanish work of
roses and _letters_, and a night-coif with a forehead-cloth of the
same work.” And here is Mrs. Carre offering her majesty an embroidered
cambric sheet; and Dr. Bayly, one of the court physicians, arriving
brisk and early with a pot of green ginger under his arm; and Mrs. Amy
Shelton with six handkerchiefs all edged with gold and silver braid;
and Sir Philip Sidney with a most beautiful cambric smock, “and a suite
of ruffs of cut-work, flourished with gold and silver, and set with
spangles containing four ounces of gold.” And here, best of all, are
several gentlemen of rank, who, being unacquainted with the intricacies
of the female toilet, feel afraid to venture upon smocks, and ruffs,
and night-dresses, so solve their dilemma by plumply handing down ten
pounds apiece, a practical donation which the virgin monarch accepts
with all possible alacrity and good-will.
Elizabeth, moreover, was known to be a costly and often a sadly
unremunerative guest when it pleased her to visit her loyal people.
There is a letter written by the Earl of Bedford to Lord Burleigh that
is positively pathetic in its apprehension of the impending honor. “I
trust truly,” says the expectant host, “that your lordship will have
in remembrance to provide and help that her majesty’s tarrying be not
above two nights and a day, for so long time do I prepare.” As it was
one of the queen’s whims to give scant warning of her coming, the
unfortunate gentlemen suddenly called upon to harbor their sovereign
and her suite often found themselves at their wits’ end for food and
entertainment; and not unfrequently it happened that, after days
of ruinous expenditure, they had the satisfaction of seeing their
prospects as blighted as their larders. Lord Henry Berkely lamenting
the loss of his good red deer, twenty-seven of which were slain in one
day--in their owner’s absence, be it noted--for Elizabeth’s diversion,
was at least a happier man than the luckless young Rookwood of Euston
Hall, whom her majesty requited for his hospitality by cruel insult and
imprisonment. Even King John, who has come down to us in history as the
least profitable of royal guests, could not well do worse than this,
though his visits, being occasionally of longer duration, were just so
much harder to be borne. In the chronicles of Jocelin of Brakelond, we
read how once the king came with a large retinue to the convent of St.
Edmundsbury, and stayed there for two whole weeks, eating up the monk’s
provisions at a fearful rate, emptying the cellars of their choicest
wines, and making, no doubt, what with drunken, swearing soldiers and
insolent court parasites, sad riot and confusion within those peaceful
walls. At last, however, the weary fortnight was over, and the guests
stood marshaled to depart; but not before his gracious majesty had made
offering, as guerdon for two weeks’ entertainment, of a silk cloak
to cover St. Edmund’s shrine, which same cloak was promptly borrowed
back again by one of the royal train, and the monks beheld it no more.
In addition to this elusive legacy, which left the shrine as bare as
it found it, Jocelin records that the monarch, ere he rode forth,
presented the convent with the handsome sum of thirteen pence, in
consideration of a mass being said for his soul, which sorely needed
all the spiritual aliment the good monks could furnish it. We can
fancy Abbot Samson standing at his monastery door, and regarding those
thirteen pence very much as the Genoese consul must have regarded the
Duke of Kingston’s old spectacles, which the dowager duchess tendered
him in return for his hospitality; or as Commodore Barnet regarded the
paste emerald ring with which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu gracefully
acknowledged the valuable services of his man-of-war.
“Lady Mary’s avarice seems to have been generally credited at the time,
though we have no proofs of it,” says one of her recent biographers,
who is disposed, and rightly, to put scant faith in Walpole’s malicious
jibes. But if the story of the ring be a true one, she can hardly be
acquitted of amazing thrift, and of a still more amazing assurance. It
is said that the gallant commodore, never doubting the worth of her
token, was wont to show it with some ostentation to his friends, until
one of them, who knew the lady well, stoutly maintained that if the
stone were genuine she would never have parted with it, and a closer
inspection proved the melancholy accuracy of his suspicions. As for
much of her so-called greed, it was not without solid justification.
If she drove a hard bargain with Mr. Wortley, stipulating most
unromantically for her marriage settlement before she ran away with
him, be it remembered that upon this auspicious occasion she was
compelled to act as her own guardian; and if she had an inexplicable
fancy for wearing her old clothes, the dimity petticoat, and the gray
stockings, and the faded green brocade riding-jacket which so deeply
offended Walpole’s fastidious eyes, let us deal charitably with a fault
in which she has but few feminine successors. Those were times when
fashions had not yet learned to change with such chameleon-like speed,
and people did occasionally wear their old clothes with an unblushing
effrontery that would be well-nigh disgraceful to-day. Silks and
satins, laces and furbelows, were all of the costliest description,
and their owners were chary of discarding them, or even of lightly
exposing them to ruin. Emile Souvestre’s languid lady, who proves the
purity of her blood, somewhat after the manner of the princess and
the rose leaf, by supercilious indifference to the fate of her velvet
mantle in a snowstorm, could hardly have existed a few hundred years
ago. We have in Pepys’s diary a most amusing record of his disgust at
being over-persuaded by his wife to wear his best suit on a certain
threatening May Day, and how of course it rained, and all their
pleasure was spoiled. The guilty Eve was quite as unfortunate as her
husband, for she too had gone forth “extraordinary fine in her flowered
tabby gown,” which we are greatly relieved to learn a little later was
two years old, but smartly renovated with brand-new lacings. Only fancy
being so careful of a two-year gown as to begrudge it to the sight of
court and commoners on May Day!
The same frugal spirit extended down to the last century, and was of
infinite value to the self-respecting poor. Artisans had not yet found
it imperative to dress their wives and children in imitation finery,
and farmers were even less awake to the exigencies of fashionable
attire. We read of rural couples placidly wearing their wedding clothes
into their advanced old age, and we are lost in hopeless speculation as
to how they accommodated their spreading proportions to the coats and
gowns which presumably had fitted the comparative slimness of their
youth. With what patient ingenuity did the good dames of Miss Mitford’s
village, aided occasionally by an itinerant tailoress, turn and return
their husbands’ cast-off clothing, until, from seeming ruin, they had
evolved sound garments for their growing boys; and with what pardonable
pride did the strutting youngsters exhibit on the village streets
these baggy specimens of their mothers’ skill! Among the innumerable
anecdotes told of George III., it is said that, strolling once with
Queen Charlotte in the woods of Windsor, he met a little red-cheeked,
white-haired lad, who proved, on examination, to be the son of one of
his majesty’s beef-eaters. The gracious king, always well pleased with
children, patted the boy’s flaxen head, and bade him kneel and kiss
the queen’s hand, but this the sturdy young Briton declined flatly to
do; not, be it said, from any desire to emulate the examples of Penn
and Franklin, by illustrating on a minor scale the heroic principles
of democracy, but solely and entirely that he might not spoil his
new breeches by contact with the grass. So thrifty a monarch, says
Thackeray, should have hugged on the spot a child after his own heart;
and even if the royal favor failed to manifest itself in precisely
this fashion, I make no doubt that the beef-eater’s wife, who had
stitched those little breeches with motherly solicitude, found ample
comfort in such a judicious son.
Perhaps, indeed, he was a worthy scion of the race of Dodsons, with
whom it was an honorable tradition to preserve their best clothes, very
much as the inhabitants of Ceylon preserved their sacred Bo-trees, by
guarding them jealously from the desecrating touch of man. Who that
has ever had the happiness of reading “The Mill on the Floss” can
forget the dim seclusion of the shrouded room, where, far from the
madding crowd, reposes in dignified seclusion Mrs. Pullet’s new bonnet?
To go to see it is in itself a pilgrimage; to try it on, a solemn
ceremonial; what, then, must have been the profound emotions with which
it was actually worn! Little Maggie Tulliver, watching with breathless
interest while it is lifted reverently from the shrine, feels oppressed
with a sense of mystery, and is childishly indignant because no one
will tell her what it means. The Dodsons are all fond of fine raiment,
but not for the mere vulgar pleasure of self-adornment. Less favored
families may take a coarse delight in exhibiting their clothes, but
it remains for them to derive a higher gratification from keeping
them unseen. Even a third-best front is felt to be much too good for
a sister’s dinner party, while in the matter of frocks and trimmings
they are as adamant. “Other women, if they liked, might have their
best thread lace in every wash; but when Mrs. Glegg died, it would
be found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer
of her wardrobe in the spotted chamber, than ever Mrs. Wooll of St.
Ogg’s had bought in her life, although Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before
it was paid for.” Here, in a humble way, we have the same sentiment
that thrilled the heart of Elizabeth Petrovna, when she gazed at the
thousand and one gowns hanging up in the royal closets, and felt a true
womanly satisfaction in knowing they were there.
It is in fact a curious and edifying circumstance that the great
ones of this earth, if they must be held responsible for much of its
unwarranted luxury, have at the same time afforded us many shining
examples, not only of that general and indiscriminate parsimony which
induced old Frederic William, for instance, to feed his family on
pork and cabbage, but also of that more refined and esoteric species
of economy which it is our task to recognize and encourage. George
III. was frugal in all things, but his particular saving appears to
have been in carpets, for, summer or winter, he never permitted these
effeminate devices upon his bedroom floor. His great-grandfather,
George I., does not figure as an austere or self-denying character;
but he, too, stinted bravely in one direction,--the family wash. In
that beloved court of Hanover, which he exchanged so reluctantly for
the glories of St. James, there was evidently no lack of well-fed,
well-paid attendants. Looking down the list, we see seventy odd
postilions and stable-men, twenty cooks with six assistants,
seven “officers of the cellar,” twenty-four lackeys in livery,
sixteen trumpeters and fiddlers,--and only two washerwomen. Think
of it,--twenty-six people to cook, and only two to wash! “But one
half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!” Yet the
chances are that, of all the officials in that snug, jolly, dirty
little Hanoverian court, those two washerwomen alone led comparatively
idle lives. When balanced with the arduous labors of the seven officers
of the cellar, I am convinced their position was a sinecure.
Of much the same temper as royal George was that great Earl of
Northumberland, whose expense-book, which may be consulted to-day,
gives us a delightful insight into some of the curious methods of
past housekeeping. Germany, be it confessed, has always been a trifle
backward in the matter of cleanliness, but England, until within the
last two centuries, was very nearly as conservative. Appalling stories
are told of the fine ladies and gentlemen who glittered in the courts
of the Tudors and Stuarts, and who, in their light-hearted indifference
to dirt, very nearly rivaled the prowess of the Spanish Isabella, when
she vowed away her clean linen until Ostend should fall, and gave the
honor of her name to that delicate yellow tint which her garments
assumed in the interval. The Earl of Northumberland, however, aspired
to no such uneasy asceticism. He was simply the model housekeeper of
his age. Every item of expenditure in his immense establishment was
rigorously defined, and no less rigorously overlooked. With his own
noble hands he wrote down the exact proportion of food, fuel, and
candles which each body of retainers was expected to consume; and while
the upper servants appear to have fared tolerably well, the commoner
sort enjoyed an unbroken monotony of salt meat, black bread, and beer.
But it is in the matter of tablecloths that his grace chiefly excelled,
and that he merits an honorable mention in the ranks of esoteric
parsimony. For his own needs, and for the service and pleasure of
his many guests,--and let us remember that he kept open house after
the hospitable fashion of his day,--eight of these valuable articles
were deemed amply sufficient; while in the servants’ hall one cloth a
month was the allowance. Granted, if you please, that in this rather
effeminate age we have grown unduly fastidious about such trivialities;
yet who, looking back through the long vista of years, can contemplate
without a shudder the condition of that tablecloth when its month’s
servitude was over?
It is easier, however, to jeer at the honorable efforts of mankind
than to arrange our own economies on a strictly satisfactory basis.
Beyond a rational and healthy impulse to save on others rather than on
ourselves, few of us can boast of much enlightenment in the matter,
and even our one unerring guide is, in a measure, neutralized by the
consistent determination of others to exert their own saving powers on
us. The out-and-out miser is at best a creature of little penetration.
He cheats himself sorely throughout life, and gains a sort of shabby
posthumous distinction only when he is long past enjoying it. The
true economist is, if we may believe Mrs. Oliphant, a _rara avis_,
as exceptional in his way as the true genius. She endeavors, indeed,
with much humility, to describe for us such a character in “The Curate
in Charge;” but, while laying all possible stress on Mrs. St. John’s
extraordinary proficiency, she does not for a moment venture to hint
at the secret of her power. “I don’t pretend to know how she did it,”
confesses this discriminating authoress, “any more than I can tell you
how Shakespeare wrote ‘Hamlet.’ It was quite easy to him and to her,
but if one knew how, one would be as great a poet as he was, as great
an economist as she.” This is a degree of perfection to which we may
not well aspire. Shakespeare and Mrs. St. John lie equally beyond our
humble imitation. We do not even feel ambitious of such excellence, but
cherish the more contentedly those few finely selected frugalities,
those car-fares and match-stumps, those postage stamps and half sheets
of paper, those dimly-lighted rooms and evaded custom-house duties,
which, while they may not leave us much richer at the year’s end,
have yet a distinct ethical value of their own, and, breathing an
indescribable air of conscious rectitude, serve to keep us in harmony
with ourselves.