THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK

"My dear Chris," said my wife, "isn't it time to be writing the next

'House and Home Paper'?"

I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels luxuriously propped

on an ottoman, reading for the two-hundredth time Hawthorne's "Mosses

from an Old Manse," or his "Twice-Told Tales," I forget which,--I only

know that these books constitute my cloud-land, where I love to sail

away in dreamy quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and

flour, the rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of gold. What do

all these things matter, as seen from those enchanted gardens in Padua

where the weird Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his

gorgeous daughter fills us with the light and magic of her presence,

and saddens us with the shadowy allegoric mystery of her preternatural

destiny? But my wife represents the positive forces of time, place,

and number in our family, and, having also a chronological head, she

knows the day of the month, and therefore gently reminded me that by

inevitable dates the time drew near for preparing my--which is it,

now, May or June number?

"Well, my dear, you are right," I said, as by an exertion I came

head-uppermost, and laid down the fascinating volume. "Let me see,

what was I to write about?"

"Why, you remember you were to answer that letter from the lady who

does her own work."

"Enough!" said I, seizing the pen with alacrity; "you have hit the

exact phrase:--

"'The _lady_ who _does her own work_.'"

* * * * *

America is the only country where such a title is possible,--the only

country where there is a class of women who may be described as

_ladies_ who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of

education, cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas,

who, without any very material additions or changes, would be

recognized as a lady in any circle of the Old World or the New.

What I have said is, that the existence of such a class is a fact

peculiar to American society, a clear, plain result of the new

principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed

ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued

with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of

the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the

gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the

ploughman, and thews and sinews rose in the market. "A man was

deemed honorable in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high

trees of the forest." So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress

and maid, living in a log-cabin together, became companions, and

sometimes the maid, as the more accomplished and stronger, took

precedence of the mistress. It became natural and unavoidable that

children should begin to work as early as they were capable of it. The

result was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor

from necessity, but turning on the problem of labor the acuteness of

a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in sinews and muscles by

her maid, kept her superiority by skill and contrivance. If she

could not lift a pail of water she could invent methods which made

lifting the pail unnecessary; if she could not take a hundred steps

without weariness, she could make twenty answer the purpose of a

hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England,

but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root,

or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were

opposed to it from conscientious principle,--many from far-sighted

thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised

the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the

thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free,

educated, and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of

slavery. Thus it came to pass that for many years the rural population

of New England, as a general rule, did their own work, both out doors

and in. If there were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they

were emphatically only the _helps_, following humbly the steps of

master and mistress, and used by them as instruments of lightening

certain portions of their toil. The master and mistress with their

children were the head workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country because years ago

the first English travelers found that the class of persons by them

denominated servants were in America denominated help or helpers. But

the term was the very best exponent of the state of society. There

were few servants in the European sense of the word; there was a

society of educated workers, where all were practically equal, and

where, if there was a deficiency in one family and an excess in

another, a _helper_, not a servant, was hired. Mrs. Brown, who has six

sons and no daughters, enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has

six daughters and no sons. She borrows a daughter, and pays her good

wages to help in her domestic toil, and sends a son to help the labors

of Mr. Jones. These two young people go into the families in which

they are to be employed in all respects as equals and companions, and

so the work of the community is equalized. Hence arose, and for many

years continued, a state of society more nearly solving than any other

ever did the problem of combining the highest culture of the mind with

the highest culture of the muscles and the physical faculties.

Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong females,

rising each day to their indoor work with cheerful alertness,--one to

sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the

breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly

labor; and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery,

discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by

graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off the next

week. They spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did

all manner of fine needlework; they made lace, painted flowers, and,

in short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and

perfect health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or

thought of. A bride in those days was married with sheets and

tablecloths of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet-covers

wrought in divers embroidery by her own and her sisters' hands. The

amount of fancy work done in our days by girls who have nothing else

to do will not equal what was done by these, who performed besides,

among them, the whole work of the family.

For many years these habits of life characterized the majority of our

rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and

position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and

a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former

days. Human nature is above all things--lazy. Every one confesses in

the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and

mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all

they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more

than circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not write this

article were not the publication-day hard on my heels. I should read

Hawthorne and Emerson and Holmes, and dream in my armchair, and

project in the clouds those lovely unwritten stories that curl and

veer and change like mist-wreaths in the sun. So also, however

dignified, however invigorating, however really desirable, are habits

of life involving daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon

at every one's elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its weight

with sullen, discontented murmurs.

I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very

moderately, a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and

discussed, where there are no servants except the ladies of the

household. I will venture to say, also, that these households, many of

them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance

to many which are conducted by the ministration of domestics. I will

venture to assert furthermore that these same ladies who live thus

find quite as much time for reading, letter-writing, drawing,

embroidery, and fancy work as the women of families otherwise

arranged. I am quite certain that they would be found on an average to

be in the enjoyment of better health, and more of that sense of

capability and vitality which gives one confidence in one's ability to

look into life and meet it with cheerful courage, than three quarters

of the women who keep servants; and that, on the whole, their domestic

establishment is regulated more exactly to their mind, their food

prepared and served more to their taste. And yet, with all this, I

will _not_ venture to assert that they are satisfied with this way of

living, and that they would not change it forthwith if they could.

They have a secret feeling all the while that they are being abused,

that they are working harder than they ought to, and that women who

live in their houses like boarders, who have only to speak and it is

done, are the truly enviable ones. One after another of their

associates, as opportunity offers and means increase, deserts the

ranks, and commits her domestic affairs to the hands of hired

servants. Self-respect takes the alarm. Is it altogether genteel to

live as we do? To be sure, we are accustomed to it; we have it all

systematized and arranged; the work of our own hands suits us better

than any we can hire; in fact, when we do hire, we are discontented

and uncomfortable, for who will do for us what we will do for

ourselves? But when we have company! there's the rub, to get out all

our best things and put them back,--to cook the meals and wash the

dishes ingloriously,--and to make all appear as if we didn't do it,

and had servants like other people.

There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect, an

unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts and necessities

of our situation in life,--this, after all, is the worst and most

dangerous feature of the case. It is the same sort of pride which

makes Smilax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves, and get

up a circuitous dinner party on English principles, to entertain a

friend from England. Because the friend in England lives in such

and such a style, he must make believe for a day that he lives so,

too, when in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment

equal to a removal or a fire, and threatens the total extinction of

Mrs. Smilax. Now there are two principles of hospitality that people

are very apt to overlook. One is, that their guests like to be made

at home, and treated with confidence; and another is, that people

are always interested in the details of a way of life that is new to

them. The Englishman comes to America as weary of his old, easy,

family-coach life as you can be of yours: he wants to see something

new under the sun,--something American; and forthwith we all bestir

ourselves to give him something as near as we can fancy exactly like

what he is already tired of. So city people come to the country, not

to sit in the best parlor and to see the nearest imitation of city

life, but to lie on the haymow, to swing in the barn, to form intimacy

with the pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to eat baked potatoes,

exactly on the critical moment when they are done, from the oven of

the cooking-stove,--and we remark, _en passant_, that nobody has ever

truly eaten a baked potato unless he has seized it at that precise

and fortunate moment.

I fancy you now, my friends, whom I have in my eye. You are three

happy women together. You are all so well that you know not how it

feels to be sick. You are used to early rising, and would not lie in

bed if you could. Long years of practice have made you familiar with

the shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every

household office, so that really, for the greater part of the time in

your house, there seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise

in the morning and dispatch your husband, father, and brothers to the

farm or wood-lot; you go sociably about chatting with each other,

while you skim the milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The

forenoon is long; it's ten to one that all the so-called morning work

is over, and you have leisure for an hour's sewing or reading before

it is time to start the dinner preparations. By two o'clock your

housework is done, and you have the long afternoon for books,

needlework, or drawing,--for perhaps there is among you one with a

gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you reads aloud while the others

sew, and you manage in that way to keep up with a great deal of

reading. I see on your bookshelves Prescott, Macaulay, Irving, besides

the lighter fry of poems and novels, and, if I mistake not, the

friendly covers of the "Atlantic." When you have company, you invite

Mrs. Smith or Brown or Jones to tea: you have no trouble--they come

early, with their knitting or sewing; your particular crony sits with

you by your polished stove while you watch the baking of those light

biscuits and tea rusks for which you are so famous, and Mrs.

Somebodyelse chats with your sister, who is spreading the table with

your best china in the best room. When tea is over, there is plenty of

volunteering to help you wash your pretty India teacups, and get them

back into the cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in all

this, though you have taken down the best things and put them back,

because you have done all without anxiety or effort, among those who

would do precisely the same if you were their visitors.

But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her pretty daughter to

spend a week with you, and forthwith you are troubled. Your youngest,

Fanny, visited them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook

and chambermaid, and the servant in white gloves that waits on the

table. You say in your soul, "What shall we do? they never can be

contented to live as we do; how shall we manage?" And now you long for

servants.

This is the very time that you should know that Mrs. Simmons is tired

to death of her fine establishment, and weighed down with the task of

keeping the peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly

loving her ease and hating strife; and yet last week she had five

quarrels to settle between her invaluable cook and the other members

of her staff, because invaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how

to get up state dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries which her

mistress knows nothing about, asserts the usual right of spoiled

favorites to insult all her neighbors with impunity, and rule with a

rod of iron over the whole house. Anything that is not in the least

like her own home and ways of living will be a blessed relief and

change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet house, your delicate

cookery, your cheerful morning tasks, if you will let her follow you

about, and sit and talk with you while you are at your work, will all

seem a pleasant contrast to her own life. Of course, if it came to the

case of offering to change lots in life, she would not do it; but very

likely she _thinks_ she would, and sighs over and pities herself, and

thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how snugly and securely

you live, and wishes she were as untrammeled and independent as you.

And she is more than half right; for, with her helpless habits, her

utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning the reciprocal

relations of milk, eggs, butter, saleratus, soda, and yeast, she is

completely the victim and slave of the person she pretends to rule.

Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and rehearsals in her family.

After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to

prove a perfect treasure,--neat, dapper, nimble, skillful, and

spirited. The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive

bliss! The newcomer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the

domestic fates evolve the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur

of distant thunder in the kitchen; then a day or two of sulky silence,

in which the atmosphere seems heavy with an approaching storm. At last

comes the climax. The parlor door flies open during breakfast. Enter

seamstress in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook, with a face swollen and

red with wrath, who tersely introduces the subject-matter of the drama

in a voice trembling with rage.

"Would you be plased, ma'am, to suit yerself with another cook? Me

week will be up next Tuesday, and I want to be going."

"Why, Bridget, what's the matter?"

"Matter enough, ma'am! I niver could live with them Cork girls in a

house, nor I won't; them as likes the Cork girls is welcome for all

me; but it's not for the likes of me to live with them, and she been

in the kitchen a-upsettin' of me gravies with her flatirons and

things."

Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of denial, and the

altercation wages fast and furious, and poor, little, delicate Mrs.

Simmons stands like a kitten in a thunderstorm in the midst of a

regular Irish row.

Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows that a great dinner

is to come off Wednesday, and that her mistress has not the smallest

idea how to manage it, and that therefore, whatever happens, she must

be conciliated.

Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor Mrs. Simmons

dismisses her seamstress with longing looks. She suited her mistress

exactly, but she didn't suit cook!

Now, if Mrs. Simmons had been brought up in early life with the

experience that you have, she would be mistress in her own house. She

would quietly say to Madam Cook, "If my family arrangements do not

suit you, you can leave. I can see to the dinner myself." And she

could do it. Her well-trained muscles would not break down under a

little extra work; her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity with

everything that is to be done would enable her at once to make cooks

of any bright girls of good capacity who might still be in her

establishment; and, above all, she would feel herself mistress in her

own house. This is what would come of an experience in doing her own

work as you do. She who can at once put her own trained hand to the

machine in any spot where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave

of a coarse, vulgar Irishwoman.

So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be expected of servants

in a given time, and what ought to be expected of a given amount

of provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for

one six months in her life she had been a practical cook, and had

really had the charge of the larder, she would not now be haunted,

as she constantly is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense

wastefulness, perhaps of the disappearance of provisions through

secret channels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly could

not be made to believe in the absolute necessity of so many pounds of

sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, not to mention spices

and wine, as are daily required for the accomplishment of Madam

Cook's purposes. But though now she does suspect and apprehend,

she cannot speak with certainty. She cannot say, "_I_ have made

these things. I know exactly what they require. I have done this and

that myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a certain

time." It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing their

own work become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the

ground they stand on,--they are less open to imposition,--they can

speak and act in their own houses more as those "having authority,"

and therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and

less willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general

error lies in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for

them as they will do for themselves, and that an untrained,

undisciplined human being ever _can_ do housework, or any other

work, with the neatness and perfection that a person of trained

intelligence can. It has been remarked in our armies that the men of

cultivation, though bred in delicate and refined spheres, can bear

up under the hardships of camp-life better and longer than rough

laborers. The reason is, that an educated mind knows how to use

and save its body, to work it and spare it, as an uneducated mind

cannot; and so the college-bred youth brings himself safely

through fatigues which kill the unreflective laborer. Cultivated,

intelligent women, who are brought up to do the work of their own

families, are labor-saving institutions. They make the head save

the wear of the muscles. By forethought, contrivance, system, and

arrangement, they lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less

expense of time and strength than others. The old New England motto,

_Get your work done up in the forenoon_, applied to an amount of

work which would keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to

sunset.

A lady living in one of our obscure New England towns, where there

were no servants to be hired, at last by sending to a distant city

succeeded in procuring a raw Irish maid of all work, a creature of

immense bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one

fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the

kitchen and through the house that her mistress, a delicate woman,

incumbered with the care of young children, began seriously to think

that she made more work each day than she performed, and dismissed

her. What was now to be done? Fortunately, the daughter of a

neighboring farmer was going to be married in six months, and wanted a

little ready money for her trousseau. The lady was informed that Miss

So-and-so would come to her, not as a servant, but as hired "help."

She was fain to accept any help with gladness. Forthwith came into the

family circle a tall, well-dressed young person, grave, unobtrusive,

self-respecting, yet not in the least presuming, who sat at the family

table and observed all its decorums with the modest self-possession of

a lady. The newcomer took a survey of the labors of a family of ten

members, including four or five young children, and, looking, seemed

at once to throw them into system, matured her plans, arranged her

hours of washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, rose early, moved

deftly, and in a single day the slatternly and littered kitchen

assumed that neat, orderly appearance that so often strikes one in New

England farmhouses. The work seemed to be all gone. Everything was

nicely washed, brightened, put in place, and stayed in place: the

floors, when cleaned, remained clean; the work was always done, and

not doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat neatly dressed in

her own apartment, either writing letters to her betrothed, or sewing

on her bridal outfit. Such is the result of employing those who have

been brought up to do their own work. That tall, fine-looking girl,

for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a fine house on Fifth

Avenue; and, if she is, she will, we fear, prove rather an exacting

mistress to Irish Biddy and Bridget; but she will never be threatened

by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or two have tried the

experiment.

* * * * *

Having written thus far on my article I laid it aside till evening,

when, as usual, I was saluted by the inquiry, "Has papa been writing

anything to-day?" and then followed loud petitions to hear it; and so

I read as far, reader, as you have.

"Well, papa," said Jenny, "what are you meaning to make out there? Do

you really think it would be best for us all to try to go back to that

old style of living you describe? After all, you have shown only the

dark side of an establishment with servants, and the bright side of

the other way of living. Mamma does not have such trouble with her

servants; matters have always gone smoothly in our family; and, if we

are not such wonderful girls as those you describe, yet we may make

pretty good housekeepers on the modern system, after all."

"You don't know all the troubles your mamma has had in your day," said

my wife. "I have often, in the course of my family history, seen the

day when I have heartily wished for the strength and ability to manage

my household matters as my grandmother of notable memory managed hers.

But I fear that those remarkable women of the olden times are like the

ancient painted glass,--the art of making them is lost; my mother was

less than her mother, and I am less than my mother."

"And Marianne and I come out entirely at the little end of the horn,"

said Jenny, laughing; "yet I wash the breakfast cups and dust the

parlors, and have always fancied myself a notable housekeeper."

"It is just as I told you," I said. "Human nature is always the same.

Nobody ever is or does more than circumstances force him to be and do.

Those remarkable women of old were made by circumstances. There were,

comparatively speaking, no servants to be had, and so children were

trained to habits of industry and mechanical adroitness from the

cradle, and every household process was reduced to the very minimum of

labor. Every step required in a process was counted, every movement

calculated; and she who took ten steps, when one would do, lost her

reputation for 'faculty.' Certainly such an early drill was of use in

developing the health and the bodily powers, as well as in giving

precision to the practical mental faculties. All household economies

were arranged with equal niceness in those thoughtful minds. A trained

housekeeper knew just how many sticks of hickory of a certain size

were required to heat her oven, and how many of each different kind of

wood. She knew by a sort of intuition just what kind of food would

yield the most palatable nutriment with the least outlay of

accessories in cooking. She knew to a minute the time when each

article must go into and be withdrawn from her oven; and, if she could

only lie in her chamber and direct, she could guide an intelligent

child through the processes with mathematical certainty. It is

impossible, however, that anything but early training and long

experience can produce these results, and it is earnestly to be wished

that the grandmothers of New England had only written down their

experiences for our children; they would have been a mine of maxims

and traditions, better than any other traditions of the elders which

we know of."

"One thing I know," said Marianne, "and that is, I wish I had been

brought up so, and knew all that I should, and had all the strength

and adroitness that those women had. I should not dread to begin

housekeeping, as I now do. I should feel myself independent. I should

feel that I knew how to direct my servants, and what it was reasonable

and proper to expect of them; and then, as you say, I shouldn't be

dependent on all their whims and caprices of temper. I dread those

household storms, of all things."

Silently pondering these anxieties of the young expectant housekeeper,

I resumed my pen, and concluded my paper as follows:--

* * * * *

In this country, our democratic institutions have removed the

superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants

to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land

of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is.

They are for the most part the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the

wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the

Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should be

the measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic

arrangements. But, so long as things are so, there will be constant

changes and interruptions in every domestic establishment, and

constantly recurring interregnums when the mistress must put her own

hand to the work, whether the hand be a trained or an untrained one.

As matters now are, the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest.

She has very little strength,--no experience to teach her how to save

her strength. She knows nothing experimentally of the simplest

processes necessary to keep her family comfortably fed and clothed;

and she has a way of looking at all these things which makes them

particularly hard and distasteful to her. She does not escape being

obliged to do housework at intervals, but she does it in a weak,

blundering, confused way, that makes it twice as hard and disagreeable

as it need be.

Now what I have to say is, that, if every young woman learned to do

housework and cultivated her practical faculties in early life, she

would, in the first place, be much more likely to keep her servants,

and, in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would avoid

all that wear and tear of the nervous system which comes from constant

ill-success in those departments on which family health and temper

mainly depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our American life

which require a peculiar training. Why not face it sensibly?

The second thing I have to say is, that our land is now full of

motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at great expense to

have hired operators stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They

lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all

the different muscles of the body worked for them, because they are so

flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not

be quite as cheerful and less expensive a process if young girls from

early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, ironing,

rubbing furniture, and all the multiplied domestic processes which our

grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified the

intervals with spinning on the great and little wheel, never came to

need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which

really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor economy to pay

servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then to pay

operators to exercise them for us? I will venture to say that our

grandmothers in a week went over every movement that any gymnast has

invented, and went over them to some productive purpose, too.

Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain if those ladies who have

learned and practice the invaluable accomplishment of doing their own

work will know their own happiness and dignity, and properly value

their great acquisition, even though it may have been forced upon them

by circumstances.