I have a detail of very homely grievances to present; but such as they
are, many a heart will feel them to be heavy--the trials of a
housekeeper.
"Poh!" says one of the lords of creation, taking his cigar out of his
mouth, and twirling it between his two first fingers, "what a fuss
these women do make of this simple matter of managing a family! I
can't see for my life as there is anything so extraordinary to be done
in this matter of housekeeping: only three meals a day to be got and
cleared off--and it really seems to take up the whole of their mind
from morning till night. _I_ could keep house without so much of a
flurry, I know."
Now, prithee, good brother, listen to my story, and see how much you
know about it. I came to this enlightened West about a year since, and
was duly established in a comfortable country residence within a mile
and a half of the city, and there commenced the enjoyment of domestic
felicity. I had been married about three months, and had been,
previously _in love_ in the most approved romantic way, with all the
proprieties of moonlight walks, serenades, sentimental billets doux,
and everlasting attachment.
After having been allowed, as I said, about three months to get over
this sort of thing, and to prepare for realities, I was located for
life as aforesaid. My family consisted of myself and husband, a female
friend as a visitor, and two brothers of my good man, who were engaged
with him in business.
I pass over the first two or three days, spent in that process of
hammering boxes, breaking crockery, knocking things down and picking
them up again, which is commonly called getting to housekeeping. As
usual, carpets were sewed and stretched, laid down, and taken up to be
sewed over; things were formed, and _re_formed, _trans_formed, and
_con_formed, till at last a settled order began to appear. But now
came up the great point of all. During our confusion we had cooked and
eaten our meals in a very miscellaneous and pastoral manner, eating
now from the top of a barrel, and now from a fireboard laid on two
chairs, and drinking, some from teacups, and some from saucers, and
some from tumblers, and some from a pitcher big enough to be drowned
in, and sleeping, some on sofas, and some on straggling beds and
mattresses thrown down here and there wherever there was room. All
these pleasant barbarities were now at an end. The house was in order,
the dishes put up in their places; three regular meals were to be
administered in one day, all in an orderly, civilized form; beds were
to be made, rooms swept and dusted, dishes washed, knives scoured, and
all the et cetera to be attended to. Now for getting "help," as Mrs.
Trollope says; and where and how were we to get it? We knew very few
persons in the city; and how were we to accomplish the matter? At
length the "house of employment" was mentioned; and my husband was
dispatched thither regularly every day for a week, while I, in the
mean time, was very nearly _dispatched_ by the abundance of work at
home. At length, one evening, as I was sitting completely exhausted,
thinking of resorting to the last feminine expedient for supporting
life, viz., a good fit of crying, my husband made his appearance, with
a most triumphant air, at the door. "There, Margaret, I have got you a
couple at last--cook and chambermaid." So saying, he flourished open
the door, and gave to my view the picture of a little, dry,
snuffy-looking old woman, and a great, staring Dutch girl, in a green
bonnet with red ribbons, with mouth wide open, and hands and feet
that would have made a Greek sculptor open _his_ mouth too. I
addressed forthwith a few words of encouragement to each of this
cultivated-looking couple, and proceeded to ask their names; and
forthwith the old woman began to snuffle and to wipe her face with
what was left of an old silk pocket-handkerchief preparatory to
speaking, while the young lady opened her mouth wider, and looked
around with a frightened air, as if meditating an escape. After some
preliminaries, however, I found out that my old woman was Mrs.
Tibbins, and my Hebe's name was _Kotterin_; also, that she knew much
more Dutch than English, and not any too much of either. The old lady
was the cook. I ventured a few inquiries. "Had she ever cooked?"
"Yes, ma'am, sartain; she had lived at two or three places in the
city."
"I suspect, my dear," said my husband confidently, "that she is an
experienced cook, and so your troubles are over;" and he went to
reading his newspaper. I said no more, but determined to wait till
morning. The breakfast, to be sure, did not do much honor to the
talents of my official; but it was the first time, and the place was
new to her. After breakfast was cleared away I proceeded to give
directions for dinner; it was merely a plain joint of meat, I said, to
be roasted in the tin oven. The experienced cook looked at me with a
stare of entire vacuity. "The tin oven," I repeated, "stands there,"
pointing to it.
She walked up to it, and touched it with such an appearance of
suspicion as if it had been an electrical battery, and then looked
round at me with a look of such helpless ignorance that my soul was
moved. "I never see one of them things before," said she.
"Never saw a tin oven!" I exclaimed. "I thought you said you had
cooked in two or three families."
"They does not have such things as them, though," rejoined my old
lady. Nothing was to be done, of course, but to instruct her into the
philosophy of the case; and having spitted the joint, and given
numberless directions, I walked off to my room to superintend the
operations of Kotterin, to whom I had committed the making of my bed
and the sweeping of my room, it never having come into my head that
there could be a wrong way of making a bed; and to this day it is a
marvel to me how any one could arrange pillows and quilts to make such
a nondescript appearance as mine now presented. One glance showed me
that Kotterin also was "_just caught_," and that I had as much to do
in her department as in that of my old lady.
Just then the doorbell rang. "Oh, there is the doorbell," I exclaimed.
"Run, Kotterin, and show them into the parlor."
Kotterin started to run, as directed, and then stopped, and stood
looking round on all the doors and on me with a wofully puzzled air.
"The street door," said I, pointing towards the entry. Kotterin
blundered into the entry, and stood gazing with a look of stupid
wonder at the bell ringing without hands, while I went to the door and
let in the company before she could be fairly made to understand the
connection between the ringing and the phenomenon of admission.
As dinner time approached, I sent word into my kitchen to have it set
on; but recollecting the state of the heads of department there, I
soon followed my own orders. I found the tin oven standing out in the
middle of the kitchen, and my cook seated _a la Turc_ in front of it,
contemplating the roast meat with full as puzzled an air as in the
morning. I once more explained the mystery of taking it off, and
assisted her to get it on to the platter, though somewhat cooled by
having been so long set out for inspection. I was standing holding the
spit in my hands, when Kotterin, who had heard the doorbell ring, and
was determined this time to be in season, ran into the hall, and,
soon returning, opened the kitchen door, and politely ushered in three
or four fashionable looking ladies, exclaiming, "Here she is." As
these were strangers from the city, who had come to make their first
call, this introduction was far from proving an eligible one--the look
of thunderstruck astonishment with which I greeted their first
appearance, as I stood brandishing the spit, and the terrified
snuffling and staring of poor Mrs. Tibbins, who again had recourse to
her old pocket-handkerchief, almost entirely vanquished their gravity,
and it was evident that they were on the point of a broad laugh; so,
recovering my self-possession, I apologized, and led the way to the
parlor.
Let these few incidents be a specimen of the four mortal weeks
that I spent with these "helps," during which time I did almost as
much work, with twice as much anxiety, as when there was nobody
there; and yet everything went wrong besides. The young gentlemen
complained of the patches of starch grimed to their collars, and the
streaks of black coal ironed into their dickies, while one week every
pocket-handkerchief in the house was starched so stiff that you
might as well have carried an earthen plate in your pocket; the
tumblers looked muddy; the plates were never washed clean or wiped dry
unless I attended to each one; and as to eating and drinking, we
experienced a variety that we had not before considered possible.
At length the old woman vanished from the stage, and was succeeded by
a knowing, active, capable damsel, with a temper like a steel-trap,
who remained with me just one week, and then went off in a fit of
spite. To her succeeded a rosy, good-natured, merry lass, who broke
the crockery, burned the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and
knocked down everything that stood in her way about the house, without
at all discomposing herself about the matter. One night she took the
stopper from a barrel of molasses, and came singing off upstairs,
while the molasses ran soberly out into the cellar bottom all night,
till by morning it was in a state of universal emancipation. Having
done this, and also dispatched an entire set of tea things by letting
the waiter fall, she one day made her disappearance.
Then, for a wonder, there fell to my lot a tidy, efficient, trained
English girl; pretty, and genteel, and neat, and knowing how to do
everything, and with the sweetest temper in the world. "Now," said I
to myself, "I shall rest from my labors." Everything about the house
began to go right, and looked as clean and genteel as Mary's own
pretty self. But, alas! this period of repose was interrupted by the
vision of a clever, trim-looking young man, who for some weeks could
be heard scraping his boots at the kitchen door every Sunday night;
and at last Miss Mary, with some smiling and blushing, gave me to
understand that she must leave in two weeks.
"Why, Mary," said I, feeling a little mischievous, "don't you like the
place?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am."
"Then why do you look for another?"
"I am not going to another place."
"What, Mary, are you going to learn a trade?"
"No, ma'am."
"Why, then, what do you mean to do?"
"I expect to keep house myself, ma'am," said she, laughing and
blushing.
"Oh ho!" said I, "that is it;" and so in two weeks I lost the best
little girl in the world: peace to her memory.
After this came an interregnum, which put me in mind of the chapter in
Chronicles that I used to read with great delight when a child, where
Basha, and Elah, and Tibni, and Zimri, and Omri, one after the other,
came on to the throne of Israel, all in the compass of half a dozen
verses. We had one old woman, who stayed a week, and went away with
the misery in her tooth; one young woman, who ran away and got
married; one cook, who came at night and went off before light in the
morning; one very clever girl, who stayed a month, and then went away
because her mother was sick; another, who stayed six weeks, and was
taken with the fever herself; and during all this time, who can speak
the damage and destruction wrought in the domestic paraphernalia by
passing through these multiplied hands?
What shall we do? Shall we give up houses, have no furniture to take
care of, keep merely a bag of meal, a porridge pot, and a pudding
stick, and sit in our tent door in real patriarchal independence? What
shall we do?