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
in-gloriously,—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 hay-mow, 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 despatch
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 house-work 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 book-shelves 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. Somebody
else 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 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 untrammelled
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, skilful, and spirited.
The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss! The
new-comer 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 flat-irons 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 thunder-storm 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 house-work, 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, encumbered 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 new-comer 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 farm-houses. 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 quietly 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 kinds 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 house-work 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 house-work 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 practise 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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII.
WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA.
WHILE I was preparing my article for the “Atlantic,” our friend Bob
Stephens burst in upon us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper
in his hand.
“Well, girls, your time is come now! You women have been preaching
heroism and sacrifice to us,—‘so splendid to go forth and suffer and die
for our country,’—and now comes the test of feminine patriotism.”
“Why, what’s the matter now?” said Jenny, running eagerly to look over
his shoulder at the paper.
“No more foreign goods,” said he, waving it aloft,—“no more gold shipped
to Europe for silks, laces, jewels, kid gloves, and what-not. Here it
is,—great movement, headed by senators’ and generals’ wives, Mrs.
General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry Wilson, and so on, a long
string of them, to buy no more imported articles during the war.”
“But I don’t see how it _can_ be done,” said Jenny.
“Why,” said I, “do you suppose that ‘nothing to wear’ is made in
America?”
“But, dear Mr. Crowfield,” said Miss Featherstone, a nice girl, who was
just then one of our family-circle, “there is not, positively, much that
is really fit to use or wear made in America,—_is_ there now? Just
think; how is Marianne to furnish her house here without French papers
and English carpets?—those American papers are so very ordinary, and as
to American carpets, everybody knows their colors don’t hold; and then,
as to dress, a lady must have gloves, you know,—and everybody knows no
such things are made in America as gloves.”
“I think,” I said, “that I have heard of certain fair ladies wishing
that they were men, that they might show with what alacrity they would
sacrifice everything on the altar of their country: life and limb would
be nothing; they would glory in wounds and bruises, they would enjoy
losing a right arm, they wouldn’t mind limping about on a lame leg the
rest of their lives, _if they were John or Peter_, if only they might
serve their dear country.”
“Yes,” said Bob, “that’s female patriotism! Girls are always ready to
jump off from precipices, or throw themselves into abysses, but as to
wearing an unfashionable hat or thread gloves, that they can’t do,—not
even for their dear country. No matter whether there’s any money left to
pay for the war or not, the dear souls must have twenty yards of silk in
a dress,—it’s the fashion, you know.”
“Now, isn’t he too bad?” said Marianne. “As if we’d ever been asked to
make these sacrifices and refused! I think I have seen women ready to
give up dress and fashion and everything else, for a good cause.”