WANTED: A COOK
WANTED: A COOK
Domestic Dialogues
_By_
ALAN DALE
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1904
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
_To_ JENNIE SHALEK: _housewife_,
who, in my hour of drab and dreary cooklessness, when my heart
fainted, and tragedy impended, sent her four fair daughters to my
aid, with an ancient Hibernian curio destined to eke out a
livelihood at my expense; who knows the true inwardness of this
tragic topic, and who would gladly lend a willing hand and an
unwilling cook to any sufferer, I gratefully dedicate these simple,
plaintive dialogues.
ALAN DALE
_New York City_,
_September, 1904_
WANTED: A COOK
CHAPTER I
My Letitia! It was indeed a proud and glowing moment when I slipped the
little golden circlet on her fair, slim, girlish finger, and realized
that she was assuredly mine. We were so eminently suited to each
other--both young, enthusiastic, and unspotted from the world. We had
our own pet theories, and long before marriage we had communed on that
favorite, misunderstood topic--the sanctity of the home.
Letitia was exceedingly well-read, and the polish upon her education
shone. It was no mere thin veneer, to be worn off by a too brutal
contact with the rough edges of the world. It was an ingrained polish.
She adored the classics. Other girls would sit down and pore over the
Sarah-Jane romances of the hour. My Letitia liked Virgil. In French she
was fearfully familiar with Molière and Racine. In German she coquetted
with Schiller in the most delightful manner. She knew most of the
students' readings of Shakespeare. In fact, she fascinated me by her
arch refinement.
We were both great sticklers for refinement. We pitied the poor silly
things who knew how to sew and cook. Refinement--we were both certain of
it--was the cultivation of the gloriously useless. We despised the
abominably useful. It was so sordid. We felt convinced that our "home"
could be conducted upon suave and easy lines, without abandoning even
one of our theories. Letitia told me that "home" was the Anglo-Saxon
_ham_, and I was so much in love with her, that I didn't mind in the
least. In fact, I hinted that I had suspected as much. How could "home"
be anything else but Anglo-Saxon?
My little girl had been "finished" in Paris, at a select, and pleasingly
dismal, _pension_ in the Avenue du Roule. I, myself, had taken a B. A.
at Oxford. Yet we were triumphantly patriotic Americans. We returned to
these shores absolutely convinced that they were beyond criticism. After
all, people only go abroad in order that they may realize the
inferiority of Europe. They never go for a "good time," or for mere
frivolous amusement. The great armies of Americans in London and Paris
are there simply because they prefer America and want that fact brought
home to them. If you don't believe me, ask them. Nail them down to their
patriotism.
However, both Letitia and I grudgingly admitted that in England home
life did seem a bit more potent than on this side.
"It naturally would," said Letitia, "because you see 'home' is really an
Anglo-Saxon idea."
But we were going to have a home of our own in the very midst of
seething New York. The mere notion of a vulgar, degrading
"boarding-house" was detestable to us, while as for the "apartment
hotel," where you sat at dinner in your best clothes with a crowd of
unsympathetic strangers, we sniffed at the bare suggestion. We wanted a
little refuge, tiny yet dainty, where we could be alone to live our
lives. "To live our lives" was one of Letitia's expressions. She
abstracted it unconsciously, I believe, from Ibsen. A chaste and
cherishable resort, where of an evening my wife could read _The Iliad_
in the original, and I, in a becoming smoking-jacket and velvet
slippers, could work at my _Lives of Great Men_, was what we clamored to
possess. And possess it we fully intended to do.
I may add that Letitia also believed in the "new thought." She was of
the opinion that you could will anything you wanted. She doted on
sitting still, and sending out telepathic waves from her cunning little
brain, and I loved to look at her telepathing. She was at her
prettiest.
Aunt Julia Dinsmore, Letitia's only relative, and a sedate old lady with
drab ideas, mentioned something about the "servant question" as she
listened to our domestic rhapsodies. She suggested to us that there must
be some satisfactory reason to explain the lack of well-appointed homes
in New York. Americans liked comfort just as well as other people, said
she. Did we suppose that they were uncomfortable because they preferred
discomfort? And again she referred to the "servant question."
The "servant question"! How we laughed! Letitia nudged me under the
table and arched her eyebrows. She turned to Aunt Julia and quoted one
of Shakespeare's most beautiful passages:
"How well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!"
It is one of the many charming things in _As You Like It_. Aunt Julia
said that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the case. Perhaps it
hadn't. In fact, as I think it over now, I can't quite see its
relevancy. Yet what mattered relevancy? It was a treat to listen to
Letitia when she quoted.
"Your Shakespeare will die when your cook comes in," said Aunt Julia,
and she laughed. People are so fond of laughing at their own epigrams.
It is most irritating--just as though the utterance of this perverted
form of philosophy were a relief.
"You dear silly old thing!" exclaimed Letitia to her aunt, "we shall not
worry. We don't read the comic papers. Americans believe all the
wretched jokes, dished up for them, to be founded on fact. Americans
believe anything. They have no time to think for themselves. Have they,
Archie?"
All I could reply was: "No." I should like to have been pungent and
clever, but somehow or other, I never can follow Letitia. She generally
appeals to me with a deft query, destined to color her own delightful
train of thought, and I have nothing better to say than "no"--or
occasionally "yes."
After that, Aunt Julia dropped the "servant question," as she called it.
The "servant question"! As though there could be such a question! How
could refined and educated people elect to permit the mere matter of
domestic drudgery to be a "question"? Art might be a question. Science
was certainly a question. But to allude to the handmaiden, who opens
your front door, or to the person who Marylands your terrapin, as a
"question" was too ludicrous. It was making mountains out of molehills.
Ah! Letitia and I were for the glorious mountains, with their sun-kissed
peaks and their exultant elevation.
We were neither of us freighted with that detestable thing dubbed a
"sense of humor." Thank goodness for that! A sense of humor is a
handicap in the world's race. People afflicted with it seem to spend
their time laughing at their friends, scoffing at serious situations,
and extracting spurious merriment from the gravity and dignity of life.
We both believed that a sense of humor was unrefined. Comic
story-tellers, comic poets, comic critics--how we loathed them! They
were parasites on the face of things, giving you stones when you craved
bread--furnishing nasty, sickly ridicule in lieu of delicate,
intellectual analysis. Thank goodness, that both Letitia and I had been
spared the curse of a "sense of humor." We had been educated beyond it.
Aunt Julia, as I said, was henceforth silent--or comparatively
silent--on her banal, squalid "servant question." But she was rampant
and interfering again when we selected the pretty little apartment--in a
beautiful neighborhood--that was to be our home--Letitia's and mine! We
took it without a question, there being nothing that we wanted to know.
It was not one of those American institutions in which, to get from the
drawing-room to the dining-room, you were forced to walk through the
bedrooms, no matter who happened to be in them, asleep, or dressing. It
had a "private hall," and each room possessed a window. Why each room
shouldn't possess a window, I can't explain, but windows in up-to-date
apartments are a luxury, and not a necessity. I dare say that they are
very old-fashioned, but they are one of the last remnants of old fashion
to which I cling.
It was a small apartment with "six rooms and bath"--very cozy, and quite
light and cheerful without furniture. After we had seen our dainty
"belongings" moved in, we were bound to admit that some people might say
that it all looked "stuffy." Letitia didn't think so; nor did I. Much we
cared!
Still, it was quite remarkable what a difference furniture made. It
really seemed to be in the way. The drawing-room was almost blocked up
with its chairs and sofas, what-nots, and ottomans. It had seemed quite
a spacious apartment when in its natural state. One would have thought
that it mutely rebelled at the indignity of furniture. Yet one must
furnish!
The only thing to do in our drawing-room was to sit down. It was quite
comfortable sitting down. It seemed like refuge to get to a chair--out
of harm's way. When up and doing, you had to dodge and to steer
yourself. We often went there before we were married, just to get used
to the position of the furniture. In front of the fireplace--where there
would never be any fire, as everything was steam-heated--we placed the
tiger-rug, with the real tiger-head, that Aunt Julia gave us. It was
rather dark by the fireplace, as a bookcase, a what-not, a dear little
_tête-à-tête_ chair and a "cosy corner" were in its vicinity and we
always fell over the tiger's head. It was most amusing at first. I
laughed when it brought Letitia down. Letitia laughed when she saw me
prone. But one tires so quickly of innocent pleasure! The last time we
visited the apartment before the gorgeous day when it literally became
"ours," I fell over the tiger-head, and--it palled. For the first time
it didn't seem so funny. I am glad to say that Letitia laughed just the
same, her mind being more ingenuous than mine.
In the dining-room, too, there was a wealth of furniture. It was such a
cheerful room when we first saw it, but when curtained and upholstered,
it was necessary to switch on the electric light in order to see where
the table was. Of course, this didn't matter at all. It was merely a new
experience and deliciously odd. Still, we both agreed that if we
preferred air and light to material, bodily comfort, our "home" was
infinitely brighter unfurnished. As a matter of fact, the simplest
necessities of domestic life were encumbrances. We had to ponder over an
extra chair. The disposal of a small footstool called for a
mathematical mind. As for the table, it had--like most other
tables--four legs, but three of them were ridiculously in the way. They
seemed like abnormal growths.
We were delighted at all this innovation. We prattled about our "home"
by the hour. These--or rather, this--might be the ancestral halls of our
great-great-grandchildren, though at present it seemed destined for one
generation at a time--and a small generation, too. There was scarcely
room for even an ancestor, and I couldn't help feeling thankful that
ancestors were not usual in New York.
The bedrooms surprised us. They were called bedrooms, because nobody had
yet thought out any other name for them. We were both loud in praise of
their coziness. They were simply full of coziness. There was no room for
anything else. Furnished with ledges or bunks as on board ship, they
would have been most spacious and agreeable. With beds in them they
bulged. Letitia admitted this, when I called her attention to it. She
laughed and quoted Ben Jonson's memorable words: "I will not lodge thee
by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie a little further to make
thee a room." And, as usual, I kissed her. Her splendid thoughts were
independent of mere space. They rose above and superior to close
modernity. Thank goodness, again, for the lack of a sense of humor! With
it, I might have said things about Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont, at
which the groundlings, would, perchance, have smiled. The humorists,
so-called, would sell their souls for a laugh.
We never once looked at the kitchen. Not for worlds would we have
betrayed so mean and petty a spirit. Undoubtedly there are women who
would have peered into this food-resort, and have held forth on such
disgusting topics as "tubs" and "hot and cold water." Ugh! How
nauseating! Letitia simply passed it by with a shrug. It _had_ to be
there, of course, but it had nothing to do with our case. Cook would
probably know if it were properly appointed. This was what cook was for.
The agent had told us that a bedroom for a cook was conveniently
adjoining. To which Letitia had replied, in evident amusement, "No
doubt. Why not?" I thought it clever, and I believe that the agent did,
for he turned his face quickly away.
Aunt Julia had supplied the cooking utensils, I am thankful to say. We
had no interest in them. We agreed that they were necessary, but we were
willing to pay, and to pay well, for a careful custodian of that sort of
thing. But as I began to say before, Aunt Julia, after having wisely
dropped the "servant question," became rampant and interfering on the
subject of our apartment. She asked distressing questions about "dumb
waiters," and "janitors," and "washing."
Letitia was reading Cicero's _De Amicitia_ at the time, I remember,
while I was making notes of some incidents in the life of Goethe that I
meant to incorporate in my book. I bore with Aunt Julia most patiently.
As I could not answer her questions, I parried them very good-naturedly.
After all, she was Letitia's only relative, and she was old, and rather
infirm. One must be polite, even when it would be excruciatingly
exquisite to be otherwise.
"I must say," remarked Aunt Julia, "that you don't seem to have looked
at anything. You have taken an apartment, and you know nothing at all
about it. You are a couple of silly children."
"Pardon me," I said, "but we have looked at all that it was necessary to
look at. I don't expect Letitia to grovel."
"Grovel!" cried Aunt Julia, "grovel! I like that. In my time, a
housewife knew what she was doing--"
"That's just it," I interrupted. "In your time, Aunt Julia, there were
housewives. I hate the phrase. Housewife--wife of the house. I want my
wife for myself, not for my house. In your time, I dare say, women so
far forgot themselves--yes, forgot themselves, Aunt Julia--as to discuss
the laundry, or the market, with their husbands. That, I may say, is not
our idea. I want your dear little niece to stay in her drawing-room--"
"Stay in her--what?" cried Aunt Julia ferociously.
"I repeat: her drawing-room. Oh, I know that you would prefer that I say
'parlor.' I decline to do so. It is a word that grates on my nerves. In
England, they have 'parlors' in hovels. You enter the 'parlor' direct
from the street. It is quite unnecessary to cast a stigma on a room.
Drawing-room sounds much more refined. With us it will be drawing-room."
"I think Archie is right, Aunt Julia," said Letitia, looking up from _De
Amicitia_, and smiling at me--dear little girl! "It is a prettier term,
isn't it? 'Parlor' sounds so awfully poor, and--well, dear, we are
really not awfully poor. It is the little refinements of life that
count. I don't think I could feel at home in a parlor. I just adore the
notion of my drawing-room."
Aunt Julia laughed. It wasn't one of those laughs that signify
merriment. It was that contemptuous something that we call a laugh for
want of a better word. I should classify it as a snortch, or a sniffth.
It angered me considerably.
"There are no drawing-rooms," continued Letitia's relative, "in
One-Hundred-and-Fourth Street, near Columbus Avenue. I should think you
would be satisfied to hear them called 'parlors.' Cubby-holes would be
more appropriate. Of course, I may be all wrong. Of course. Ha! Ha! To
talk as though you owned Marlborough House, or Buckingham Palace, or
Vanderbilt's mansion! Ha! Ha! It is too preposterous."
I saw a flush on my Letitia's face. She had closed her Cicero with a
sigh. All this small-talk was nerve-racking.
"A drawing-room," persisted Aunt Julia, "is literally the room to which
the guests withdraw after dinner. I imagine that your guests will
withdraw to it not only after dinner, but after luncheon and breakfast
as well. In fact they will be obliged to withdraw there or sit on the
fire-escape. By-the-by, have you a fire-escape?"
As though I knew or cared! Fancy selecting a home, and inquiring if
there were any means by which you could escape from it. I did not
answer. My mind was brooding over the question of withdrawing from the
dining-room. Next to our dining-room was the bathroom. It was rather an
odd arrangement, especially as bathing is considered dangerous
immediately after eating. The man who designed our "home" evidently
thought that a bath after a meal was a good thing. Otherwise, why place
the bathroom next to the dining-room?
I recovered my equanimity instantly. "You are trying to discourage us,
Aunt Julia," I said, "but it won't work. You can call the drawing-room a
'parlor' if you like. But we shan't. Nor are we trying to ape Buckingham
Palace. We are too American for that. The trouble here is that whenever
you try to be nice, refined, and courteous, you are accused of aping
something. We ape nothing at all. We prefer a drawing-room because it
has a more cultured sound. Just as we intend to call the china-closet a
'pantry.' This is a free country."
"Fiddlesticks!" cried Aunt Julia. "You are very devoted to your
drawing-room and your pantry, but I'm grieved to think that a sensible
girl like Letitia, and an able-bodied young man, like yourself, haven't
thought it worth while to ask the janitor about the disposition of the
garbage."
That settled it. I had endured a good deal. I had been patient, polite,
kindly, and amused. Yes, I had been half-amused. When I heard Aunt Julia
sully her lips with a word so coarse as "garbage" in the presence of my
innocent little unsophisticated Letitia, I decided that the time for
protest had indeed arrived.
"Mrs. Dinsmore," I said--not even "Aunt Julia"--"I must really ask you
to avoid such disgusting words and topics, or, if you must mention them,
to do so to me alone. I can stand it--perhaps. But it is not nice for
your niece. There may be such a thing as garbage in the world--I believe
that there is--but one does not care to allude to it at home."
I looked at Letitia. A slight expression of disgust manifested itself on
her face, although she tried for my sake to conceal it.
"It is a word that has come to us, Archie, from the old French _garbe_,"
she said quickly, with her own admirable tact. "It was once more
disgusting than it now seems to be. Americans use it to express kitchen
refuse or anything of that sort. Of course, our cook will have no
refuse, for we shall get a good one. Probably, in low, unrefined
households they do have refuse. It is possibly quite general--for
average people do not understand the refinement of living. Aunt Julia
meant nothing, I am sure."
Letitia, the sweetest and most diplomatic girl I have ever met, rose and
kissed Aunt Julia, and I was bound to feel mollified. Not that Aunt
Julia was in the least upset by my dignity. In fact, she was convulsed
with laughter, but it was the same sort of laughter that I prefer to
call a snortch, or a sniffth.
"If you ever eat oranges," she persisted in continuing, "what are you
going to do with the peel? And your potato skins? And your melon rinds?
And your old bones? And your tin cans? And your grocery boxes? That is
what we unrefined people call garbage. But I dare say that you and
Letitia will put it all in your drawing-room and make a cozy corner of
it, or tie it up with blue ribbons. You silly children!" she cried,
drying the laughter from her eyes, "if you weren't so amusing I could be
angry with you."
Letitia looked at me. I looked at Letitia. She put her index finger to
her lips to signify silence. It dawned upon us both that Aunt
Julia--poor old thing--was cursed with the terrible commodity known as
the "sense of humor." That is the way it always manifests itself. It is
irrelevant laughter at serious subjects. My opinion is that it is a
disease, and that a remedy for it will be found one day. They seem to be
discovering that remedy in the comic papers, which no longer, I have
heard, appeal to the afflicted.
Letitia went on reading _De Amicitia_; I renewed my acquaintance with
Goethe, and Aunt Julia fell asleep with a book in her hands. I couldn't
help seeing that it was called _Hints to Housewives_. Certainly
Letitia's only relative was a bit disenchanting.