Household Papers and Stories. Stowe Harriet Beecher
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.
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.”
“For that matter,” said I, “the history of all wars has shown women ready to sacrifice what is most intimately feminine in times of peril to their country. The women of Carthage not only gave up their jewels in the siege of their city, but, in the last extremity, cut off their hair for bowstrings. The women of Hungary and Poland, in their country’s need, sold their jewels and plate and wore ornaments of iron and lead. In the time of our own Revolution, our women dressed in plain homespun and drank herb-tea, – and certainly nothing is more feminine than a cup of tea. And in this very struggle, the women of the Southern States have cut up their carpets for blankets, have borne the most humiliating retrenchments and privations of all kinds without a murmur. So let us exonerate the female sex of want of patriotism, at any rate.”
“Certainly,” said my wife; “and if our Northern women have not retrenched and made sacrifices, it has been because it has not been impressed on them that there is any particular call for it. Everything has seemed to be so prosperous and plentiful in the Northern States, money has been so abundant and easy to come by, that it has really been difficult to realize that a dreadful and destructive war was raging. Only occasionally, after a great battle, when the lists of the killed and wounded have been sent through the country, have we felt that we were making a sacrifice. The women who have spent such sums for laces and jewels and silks have not had it set clearly before them why they should not do so. The money has been placed freely in their hands, and the temptation before their eyes.”
“Yes,” said Jenny, “I am quite sure that there are hundreds who have been buying foreign goods who would not do it if they could see any connection between their not doing it and the salvation of the country; but when I go to buy a pair of gloves, I naturally want the best pair I can find, the pair that will last the longest and look the best, and these always happen to be French gloves.”
“Then,”