in a just proportion to your fortune and rank: if these two will not
coincide, the last must certainly give way; for, if you have right
principles, you cannot fail of being wretched under the sense of the
injustice as well as danger of spending beyond your income, and your
distress will be continually increasing. No mortifications, which you
can suffer from retrenching in your appearance, can be comparable to
this unhappiness. If you would enjoy the real comforts of affluence, you
should lay your plan considerably within your income; not for the
pleasure of amassing wealth--though, where there is a growing family, it
is an absolute duty to lay by something every year--but to provide for
contingencies, and to have the power of indulging your choice in the
disposal of the overplus, either in innocent pleasures, or to increase
your funds for charity and generosity, which are in fact the true funds
of pleasure. In some circumstances indeed this would not be prudent:
there are professions in which a man's success greatly depends on his
making some figure, where the bare suspicion of poverty would bring on
the reality. If by marriage you should be placed in such a situation, it
will be your duty to exert all your skill in the management of your
income: yet, even in this case, I would not strain to the utmost for
appearance, but would choose my models among the most prudent and
moderate of my own class; and be contented with slower advancement, for
the sake of security and peace of mind.
A contrary conduct is the ruin of many; and, in general, the wives of
men in such professions might live in a more retired and frugal manner
than they do, without any ill consequence, if they did not make the
scheme of advancing the success of their husbands an excuse to
themselves for the indulgence of their own vanity and ambition.
Perhaps it may be said, that the settling the general scheme of expenses
is seldom the wife's province, and that many men do not choose even to
acquaint her with the real state of their affairs. Where this is the
case, a woman can be answerable for no more than is entrusted to her.
But I think it a very ill sign, for one or both of the parties where
there is such a want of openness, in what equally concerns them. As I
trust you will deserve the confidence of your husband, so I hope you
will be allowed free consultation with him on your mutual interest; and
I believe there are few men, who would not hearken to reason on their
own affairs, when they saw a wife ready and desirous to give up her
share of vanities and indulgences, and only earnest to promote the
common good of the family.
In order to settle your plan, it will be necessary to make a pretty
exact calculation: and if, from this time, you accustom yourself to
calculations, in all the little expenses entrusted to you, you will grow
expert and ready at them, and be able to guess very nearly, where
certainty cannot be obtained. Many articles of expense are regular and
fixed: these may be valued exactly; and, by consulting with experienced
persons, you may calculate nearly the amount of others: any material
article of consumption, in a family of any given number and
circumstances, may be estimated pretty nearly. Your own expenses of
clothes and pocket-money should be settled and circumscribed, that you
may be sure not to exceed the just proportion. I think it an admirable
method to appropriate such a portion of your income, as you judge
proper to bestow in charity, to be sacredly kept for that purpose, and
no longer considered as your own. By which means you will avoid the
temptation of giving less than you ought, through selfishness, or more
than you ought, through good-nature or weakness. If your circumstances
allow of it, you might set apart another fund for acts of liberality or
friendship, which do not come under the head of charity. The having such
funds ready at hand, makes it easy and pleasant to give; and when acts
of bounty are performed without effort, they are generally done more
kindly and effectually. If you are obliged in conscience to lay up for a
family, the same method of an appropriated fund for saving will be of
excellent use, as it will prevent that continual and often ineffectual
anxiety, which a general desire of saving, without having fixed the
limits, is sure to create.
Regularity of payments and accounts is essential to Economy:--your
house-keeping should be settled at least once a week, and all the bills
paid: all other tradesmen should be paid, at furthest, once a year.
Indeed I think it more advantageous to pay oftener: but, if you make
them trust you longer, they must either charge proportionally higher, or
be losers by your custom. Numbers of them fail, every year, from the
cruel cause of being obliged to give their customers so much longer
credit than the dealers, from whom they take their goods, will allow to
them. If people of fortune considered this, they would not defer their
payments, from mere negligence, as they often do, to the ruin of whole
families.
You must endeavour to acquire skill in purchasing: in order to this, you
should begin now to attend to the prices of things, and take every
proper opportunity of learning the real value of every thing, as well as
the marks whereby you are to distinguish the good from the bad.
In your table, as in your dress, and in all other things, I wish you to
aim at _propriety_ and _neatness_, or, if your state demands it,
_elegance_, rather than _superfluous figure_. To go beyond your sphere,
either in dress or in the appearance of your table, indicates a greater
fault in your character than to be too much within it. It is impossible
to enter into the _minutiae_ of the table; good sense and observation on
the best models must form your taste, and a due regard to what you can
afford must restrain it.
Ladies, who are fond of needle-work, generally choose to consider that
as a principal part of good housewifery: and though I cannot look upon
it as of equal importance with the due regulation of a family, yet, in a
middling rank, and with a moderate fortune, it is a necessary part of a
woman's duty, and a considerable article in expense is saved by it. Many
young ladies make almost _every thing_ they wear; by which means they
can make a genteel figure at a small expense. This, in your station, is
the most profitable and desirable kind of work; and, as much of it as
you can do, consistently with a due attention to your health, to the
improvement of your mind, and to the discharge of other duties, I should
think highly commendable. But, as I do not wish you to impose upon the
world by your appearance, I should be contented to see you worse
dressed, rather than see your whole time employed in preparations for
it, or any of those hours given to it, which are needful to make your
body strong and active by exercise, or your mind rational by reading.
Absolute idleness is inexcusable in a woman, because the needle is
always at hand for those intervals in which she cannot be otherwise
employed. If you are industrious, and if you keep good hours, you will
find time for all your proper employments. Early rising, and a good
disposition of time, is essential to Economy. The necessary orders, and
examinations into household affairs, should be dispatched as soon in the
day and as privately as possible, that they may not interrupt your
husband or guests, or break in upon conversation, or reading, in the
remainder of the day. If you defer any thing that is necessary, you may
be tempted by company, or by unforeseen avocations, to forget or to
neglect it: hurry and irregularity will ensue, with expensive expedients
to supply the defect.
There is in many people, and particularly in youth, a strange aversion
to regularity--a desire to delay what ought to be done immediately, in
order to do something else, which might as well be done afterwards. Be
assured it is of more consequence to you than you can conceive, to get
the better of this idle procrastinating spirit, and to acquire habits of
constancy and steadiness, even in the most trifling matters: without
them there can be no regularity, or consistency of action or
character--no dependence on your best intentions, which a sudden humour
may tempt you to lay aside for a time, and which a thousand unforeseen
accidents will afterwards render it more and more difficult to execute:
no one can say what important consequences may follow a trivial neglect
of this kind. For example--I have known one of these _procrastinators_
disoblige and gradually lose very valuable friends, by delaying to write
to them so long, that, having no good excuse to offer, she could not get
courage enough to write at all, and dropped their correspondence
entirely.
The neatness and order of your house and furniture is a part of Economy,
which will greatly affect your appearance and character, and to which
you must yourself give attention, since it is not possible even for the
_rich_ and _great_ to rely wholly on the care of servants, in such
points, without their being often neglected. The more magnificently a
house is furnished, the more one is disgusted with that air of
confusion, which often prevails where attention is wanting in the owner.
But, on the other hand, there is a kind of neatness, which gives a lady
the air of a housemaid, and makes her excessively troublesome to every
body, and particularly to her husband: in this, as in all other branches
of Economy, I wish you to avoid all parade and bustle. Those ladies who
pique themselves on the particular excellence of neatness, are very apt
to forget that the decent order of the house should be designed to
promote the convenience and pleasure of those who are to be in it; and
that, if it is converted into a cause of trouble and constraint, their
husbands and guests would be happier without it. The love of fame, that
universal passion, will sometimes show itself on strangely insignificant
subjects; and a person who acts for praise only, will always go beyond
the mark in every thing. The best sign of a house being well governed
is, that nobody's attention is called to any of the little affairs of
it, but all goes on so well of course, that one is not led to make
remarks upon any thing, nor to observe any extraordinary effort that
produces the general result of ease and elegance, which prevails
throughout.
Domestic Economy, and the credit and happiness of a family, depend so
much on the choice and proper regulation of servants, that it must be
considered as an essential part both of prudence and duty. Those who
keep a great number of them, have a heavy charge on their consciences,
and ought to think themselves in some measure responsible for the morals
and happiness of so many of their fellow-creatures, designed like
themselves for immortality. Indeed the cares of domestic management are
by no means lighter to persons of high rank and fortune, if they perform
their duty, than to those of a retired station. It is with a family, as
with a commonwealth, the more numerous and luxurious it becomes, the
more difficult it is to govern it properly. Though the great are placed
above the little attentions and employments, to which a private
gentlewoman must dedicate much of her time, they have a larger and more
important sphere of action, in which, if they are indolent and
neglectful, the whole government of their house and fortune must fall
into irregularity. Whatever number of deputies they may employ to
overlook their affairs, they must themselves overlook those deputies,
and be ultimately answerable for the conduct of the whole. The
characters of those servants, who are entrusted with power over the
rest, cannot be too nicely inquired into; and the mistress of the
family must be ever watchful over their conduct; at the same time that
she must carefully avoid every appearance of suspicion, which, whilst it
wounds and hinders a worthy servant, only excites the artifice and
cunning of an unjust one.
None, who pretend to be friends of religion and virtue, should ever keep
a domestic, however expert in business, whom they know to be guilty of
immorality. How unbecoming a serious character is it, to say of such an
one, "He is a bad man, but a good servant!" What a preference does it
show of private convenience to the interests of society, which demand
that vice should be constantly discountenanced, especially in every
one's own household; and that the sober, honest, and industrious, should
be sure of finding encouragement and reward, in the houses of those who
maintain respectable characters! Such persons should be invariably
strict and peremptory with regard to the behaviour of their servants, in
every thing which concerns the general plan of domestic government; but
should by no means be severe on small faults, since nothing so much
weakens authority as frequent chiding. Whilst they require precise
obedience to their rules, they must prove by their general conduct,
that these rules are the effect, not of humour but of reason. It is
wonderful that those, who are careful to conceal their ill-temper from
strangers, should be indifferent how peevish and even contemptibly
capricious they appear before their servants, on whom their good name so
much depends, and from whom they can hope for no real respect, when
their weakness is so apparent. When once a servant can say, "I cannot do
any thing to please my mistress to-day," all authority is lost.
Those, who continually change their servants, and complain of perpetual
ill usage, have good reason to believe that the fault is in themselves,
and that they do not know how to govern. Few indeed possess the skill to
unite authority with kindness, or are capable of that steady and
uniformly reasonable conduct, which alone can maintain true dignity, and
command a willing and attentive obedience. Let us not forget that human
nature is the same in all stations. If you can convince your servants,
that you have a generous and considerate regard to their health, their
interest, and their reasonable gratifications--that you impose no
commands but what are fit and right, nor ever reprove but with justice
and temper--why should you imagine that they will be insensible to the
good they receive, or whence suppose them incapable of esteeming and
prizing such a mistress? I could never, without indignation, hear it
said, that "servants have no gratitude;" as if the condition of
servitude excluded the virtues of humanity! The truth is, masters and
mistresses have seldom any real claim to gratitude. They think highly of
what they bestow, and little of the service they receive: they consider
only their own convenience, and seldom reflect on the kind of life their
servants pass with them: they do not ask themselves, whether it is such
an one as is consistent with the preservation of their health, their
morals, their leisure for religious duties, or with a proper share of
the enjoyments and comforts of life. The dissipated manners, which now
so generally prevail, perpetual absence from home, and attendance on
assemblies or at public places, is, in all these respects, pernicious to
the whole household, and to the _men-servants_ absolutely ruinous. Their
only resource, in the tedious hours of waiting, whilst their masters and
ladies are engaged in diversions, is to find out something of the same
kind for themselves. Thus they are led into gaming, drinking,
extravagance, and bad company; and thus, by a natural progression, they
become distressed and dishonest. That attachment and affiance, which
ought to subsist between the dependant and his protector, are destroyed.
The master looks on his attendants as thieves and traitors, whilst they
consider him as one whose money only gives him power over them, and who
uses that power without the least regard to their welfare.
"[26]The fool saith, I have no friends--I have no thanks for all my good
deeds, and they that eat my bread speak evil of me." Thus foolishly do
those complain, who choose their servants, as well as their friends,
without discretion, or who treat them in a manner that no worthy person
will bear.
I have been often shocked at the want of politeness, by which masters
and mistresses sometimes provoke impertinence from their servants: a
gentleman, who would resent to death an imputation of falsehood, from
his equal, will not scruple, without proof, to accuse his servant of it
in the grossest terms. I have heard the most insolent contempt of the
whole class expressed at a table, whilst five or six of them attended
behind the chairs, who the company seemed to think were without senses,
without understanding, or the natural feelings of resentment: these are
cruel injuries, and will be retorted in some way or other.
If you, my dear, live to be at the head of a family, I hope you will not
only avoid all injurious treatment of your domestics, but behave to them
with that courtesy and good breeding, which will heighten their respect
as well as their affection. If, on any occasion, they do more than you
have a right to require, give them, at least, the reward of seeing that
they have obliged you. If, in your service, they have any hardship to
endure, let them see that you are concerned for the necessity of
imposing it. When they are sick, give them all the attention and every
comfort in your power, with a free heart and kind countenance; "[27]not
blemishing thy good deeds, not using uncomfortable words when thou
givest any thing. Is not a word better than a gift? but both are with a
gracious man. A fool will upbraid churlishly, and a gift of the envious
consumeth the eyes."
Whilst you thus endear yourself to all your servants, you must ever
carefully avoid making a favourite of any; unjust distinctions, and weak
indulgences to one, will of course excite envy and hatred in the rest.
Your favourite may establish whatever abuses she pleases; none will dare
to complain against her, and you will be kept ignorant of her ill
practices, but will feel the effects of them, by finding all your other
servants uneasy in their places, and, perhaps, by being obliged
continually to change them.
When they have spent a reasonable time in your service, and have behaved
commendably, you ought to prefer them, if it is in your power, or to
recommend them to a better provision. The hope of this keeps alive
attention and gratitude, and is the proper support of industry. Like a
parent, you should keep in view their establishment in some way, that
may preserve their old age from indigence; and to this end, you should
endeavour to inspire them with care to lay up part of their gains, and
constantly discourage in them all vanity in dress, and extravagance in
idle expenses. That you are bound to promote their eternal as well as
temporal welfare, you cannot doubt, since, next to your children, they
are your nearest dependants. You ought therefore to instruct them as far
as you are able, furnish them with good books suited to their capacity,
and see that they attend the public worship of God: and you must take
care so to pass the sabbath-day as to allow them time, on that day, at
least, for reading and reflection at home, as well as for attendance at
church. Though this is part of your religious duty, I mention it here,
because it is also a part of family management: for the same reason I
shall here take occasion earnestly to recommend family prayers, which
are useful to all, but more particularly to servants, who, being
constantly employed, are led to the neglect of private prayer, and whose
ignorance makes it very difficult for them to frame devotions for
themselves, or to choose proper helps, amidst the numerous books of
superstitious or enthusiastic nonsense, which are printed for that
purpose. Even, in a political light, this practice is eligible, since
the idea which it will give them of your regularity and decency, if not
counteracted by other parts of your conduct, will probably increase
their respect for you, and will be some restraint at least on their
outward behaviour, though it should fail of that inward influence, which
in general may be hoped from it.
The prudent distribution of your charitable gifts may not improperly be
considered as a branch of Economy, since the great duty of almsgiving
cannot be truly fulfilled without a diligent attention so to manage the
sums you can spare as to produce the most real good to your
fellow-creatures. Many are willing to give money, who will not bestow
their time and consideration, and who therefore often hurt the
community, when they mean to do good to individuals. The larger are your
funds, the stronger is the call upon you to exert your industry and care
in disposing of them properly. It seems impossible to give rules for
this, as every case is attended with a variety of circumstances, which
must all be considered. In general, charity is most useful, when it is
appropriated to animate the industry of the young, to procure some ease
and comforts to old age, and to support in sickness those, whose daily
labour is their only maintenance in health. They, who are fallen into
indigence, from circumstances of ease and plenty, and in whom education
and habit have added a thousand wants to those of nature, must be
considered with the tenderest sympathy by every feeling heart. It is
needless to say, that to such the bare support of existence is scarcely
a benefit, and that the delicacy and liberality of the manner, in which
relief is here offered, can alone make it a real act of kindness. In
great families, the waste of provisions, sufficient for the support of
many poor ones, is a shocking abuse of the gifts of Providence: nor
should any lady think it beneath her to study the best means of
preventing it, and of employing the refuse of luxury in the relief of
the poor. Even the smallest families may give some assistance in this
way, if care is taken that nothing be wasted.
I am sensible, my dear child, that very little more can be gathered from
what I have said on Economy, than the general importance of it, which
cannot be too much impressed on your mind, since the natural turn of
young people is to neglect and even to despise it; not distinguishing
it from parsimony and narrowness of spirit. But, be assured, my dear,
there can be no true generosity without it; and that the most enlarged
and liberal mind will find itself not debased but ennobled by it.
Nothing is more common than to see the same person, whose want of
Economy is ruining his family, consumed with regret and vexation at the
effect of his profusion; and, by endeavouring to save, in such trifles
as will not amount to twenty pounds in a year, that which he wastes by
hundreds, incur the character and suffer the anxieties of a miser,
together with the misfortunes of a prodigal. A rational plan of expense
will save you from all these corroding cares, and will give you the full
and liberal enjoyment of what you spend. An air of ease, of hospitality,
and frankness, will reign in your house, which will make it pleasant to
your friends and to yourself. "Better is a morsel of bread," where this
is found, than the most elaborate entertainment, with that air of
constraint and anxiety, which often betrays the grudging heart through
all the disguises of civility.
That you, my dear, may unite in yourself the admirable virtues of
Generosity and Economy, which will be the grace and crown of all your
attainments, is the earnest wish of
Your ever affectionate.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Ecclus. xx. 16.
[27] Ecclus. xviii.
LETTER VIII.
ON POLITENESS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
WHILST you labour to enrich your mind with the essential virtues of
Christianity--with piety, benevolence, meekness, humility, integrity,
and purity--and to make yourself useful in domestic management, I would
not have my dear child neglect to pursue those graces and acquirements,
which may set her virtue in the most advantageous light, adorn her
manners, and enlarge her understanding: and this, not in the spirit of
vanity, but in the innocent and laudable view of rendering herself more
useful and pleasing to her fellow-creatures, and consequently more
acceptable to God. Politeness of behaviour, and the attainment of such
branches of knowledge and such arts and accomplishments as are proper to
your sex, capacity, and station, will prove so valuable to yourself
through life, and will make you so desirable a companion, that the
neglect of them may reasonably be deemed a neglect of duty; since it is
undoubtedly our duty to cultivate the powers entrusted to us, and to
render ourselves as perfect as we can.
You must have often observed, that nothing is so strong a recommendation
on a slight acquaintance as _politeness_; nor does it lose its value by
time or intimacy, when preserved, as it ought to be, in the nearest
connections and strictest friendships. This delightful qualification--so
universally admired and respected, but so rarely possessed in any
eminent degree--cannot but be a considerable object of my wishes for
you: nor should either of us be discouraged by the apprehension, that
neither I am capable of teaching, nor you of learning it, in
_perfection_; since whatever degree you attain will amply reward our
pains.