Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. Marion Harland
the
FAMILIAR TALK
WITH MY
FELLOW-HOUSEKEEPER AND READER.
A talk as woman to woman, in which each shall say, “I” and “you,” and “my dear,” and “you know,” as freely as she pleases. It would not be a womanly chat if we omitted these forms of expression. An informal preface to what I mean shall be an informal book—bristling with “I’s” all the way through. If said bristles offend the critic’s touch, let him remember that this work is not prepared for the library, but for readers who trouble themselves little about editorial “we’s” and the circumlocutions of literary modesty.
I wish it were in my power to bring you, the prospective owner of this volume, in person, as I do in spirit, to my side on this winter evening, when the bairnies are “folded like the flocks;” the orders for breakfast committed to the keeping of Bridget, or Gretchen, or Chloe, or the plans for the morrow definitely laid in the brain of that ever-busy, but most independent of women, the housekeeper who “does her own work.” I should perhaps summon to our cozy conference a very weary companion—weary of foot, of hand—and I should not deserve to be your confidant, did I not know how often heart-weary with discouragement; with much producing of ways and means; with a certain despondent looking forward to the monotonous grinding of the household machine; to the certainty, proved by past experience, that toilsome as has been this day, the morrow will prove yet more abundant in labors, in trials of strength and nerves and temper. You would tell me what a dreary problem this of “woman’s work that is never done” is to your fainting soul. How, try as you may and as you do to be systematic and diligent, something is always “turning up” in the treadmill to keep you on the strain. How you often say to yourself, in bitterness of spirit, that it is a mistake of Christian civilization to educate girls into a love of science and literature, and then condemn them to the routine of a domestic drudge. You do not see, you say, that years of scholastic training will make you a better cook, a better wife or mother. You have seen the time—nay, many times since assuming your present position—when you would have exchanged your knowledge of ancient and modern languages, belles-lettres, music, and natural science, for the skill of a competent kitchen-maid. The “learning how” is such hard work! Labor, too, uncheered by encouraging words from mature housewives, unsoftened by sympathy even from your husband, or your father or brother, or whoever may be the “one” to whom you “make home lovely.” It may be that, in utter discouragement, you have made up your mind that you have “no talent for these things.”
I have before me now the picture of a wife, the mother of four children, who, many years ago, sickened me for all time with that phrase. In a slatternly morning-gown at four in the afternoon, leaning back in the laziest and most ragged of rocking-chairs, dust on the carpet, on the open piano, the mantel, the mirrors, even on her own hair, she rubbed the soft palm of one hand with the grimy fingers of the other, and with a sickly-sweet smile whined out—
“Now, I am one of the kind who have no talent for such things! The kitchen and housework and sewing are absolutely hateful to me—utterly uncongenial to my turn of mind. The height of my earthly ambition is to have nothing to do but to paint on velvet all day!”
I felt then, in the height of my indignant disgust, that there was propriety as well as wit in the “Spectator’s” suggestion that every young woman should, before fixing the wedding-day, be compelled by law to exhibit to inspectors a prescribed number of useful articles as her outfit—napery, bed-linen, clothing, etc., made by her own hands, and that it would be wise legislation which should add to these proofs of her fitness for her new sphere a practical knowledge of housework and cookery.
If you have not what our Yankee grandmothers termed a “faculty” for housewifery—yet are obliged, as is the case with an immense majority of American women, to conduct the affairs of a household, bills of fare included—there is the more reason for earnest application to your profession. If the natural taste be dull, lay to it more strength of will—resolution born of a just sense of the importance of the knowledge and dexterity you would acquire. Do not scoff at the word “profession.” Call not that common and unclean which Providence has designated as your life-work. I speak not now of the labors of the culinary department alone; but, without naming the other duties which you and you only can perform, I do insist that upon method, skill, economy in the kitchen, depends so much of the well-being of the rest of the household, that it may safely be styled the root—the foundation of housewifery. I own it would be pleasanter in most cases, especially to those who have cultivated a taste for intellectual pursuits, to live above the heat and odor of this department. It must be very fine to have an efficient aide-de-camp in the person of a French cook, or a competent sub-manager, or an accomplished head-waiter who receives your orders for the day in your boudoir or library, and executes the same with zeal and discretion that leave you no room for anxiety or regret. Such mistresses do not need cookery-books. The few—and it must be borne in mind that in this country these are very few—born in an estate like this would not comprehend what I am now writing; would not enter into the depths of that compassionate yearning which moves me as I think of what I have known for myself in the earlier years of my wedded life, what I have heard and seen in other households of honest intentions brought to contempt; of ill-directed toil; of mortification, and the heavy, wearing sense of inferiority that puts the novice at such a woful disadvantage in a community of notable managers.
There is no use in enlarging upon this point. You and I might compare experiences by the hour without exhausting our store.
“And then”—you sigh, with a sense of resentment upon you, however amiable your disposition, for the provocation is dire—“cookery-books and young housekeepers’ assistants, and all that sort of thing, are such humbugs!—Dark lanterns at best—too often Will-o’-the-wisps.”
My dear, would you mind handing me the book which lies nearest you on the table there? “Dickens?” Of course. You will usually find something of his in every room in this house—almost as surely as you will a Bible. It rests and refreshes one to pick him up at odd times, and dip in anywhere. Hear the bride, Mrs. John Rokesmith, upon our common grievance.
“She was under the constant necessity of referring for advice and support to a sage volume, entitled ‘The Complete British Family Housewife,’ which she would sit consulting, with her elbows upon the table, and her temples in her hands, like some perplexed enchantress poring over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete British Housewife, however sound a Briton at heart, was by no means an expert Briton at expressing herself with clearness in the British tongue, and sometimes might have issued her directions to equal purpose in the Kamtchatkan language.”
Don’t