1. Nobody must be morally the worse for living under our roof, if we can possibly help it. It is the minimum of our duties to make sure that temptations to misconduct or intemperance are not left in any one’s way, or bad feelings suffered to grow up, or habits of moroseness or domineering formed, or quarrels kept hot, as if they were toasts before the kitchen fire. As much as possible, on the contrary, everybody must be helped to be better—not made better by act of the drawing-room, remember—that is impossible—but helped to be better. The way to do this, I apprehend, is neither very much to scold, or exhort, or insist on people going to church whether they like it or not, or reading family prayers (excellent though that practice may be), but rather to spread through the house such an atmosphere of frank confidence and kindliness with servants, and of love and trust with children and relations, that bad feelings and doings will really have no place, no temptation, and, if they intrude, will soon die out.
One such point out of many I may cite as specially concerning us women. Is it not absurd for a lady who spends hundreds of pounds and thousands of hours on her toilet, and takes evident pleasure in attracting admiration in fashionable raiment not always perfectly decent, to turn and lecture poor Mary Ann, her housemaid, on sobriety in attire, and set forth to her the peril and folly of flowers in her bonnet? The mistress who dresses modestly and sensibly may reasonably hope in time that her servants will dress modestly and sensibly likewise; but certainly they will not do so while she exhibits to their foolish young eyes the example of extravagance and folly.
2. Next to the virtue of those who live in our homes, their happiness should occupy us. In the first place, no creature under our roof should ever be miserable, if we can prevent it. In how many otherwise happy homes is there not one such miserable being? Sometimes, it is the sufferers’ own fault; their minds are warped and despairful, and our utmost efforts perhaps can only cheer them a little. But much oftener there is to be found in a large household some poor creature who has fallen, through no fault, into the miserable position of the family butt—the object of ill-natured and unfeeling jests and rude speeches, the last person to be given any pleasure, and the first person to be made to suffer any privation or ill-temper. Sometimes, it is a poor governess or tutor; sometimes, an old aunt or poor relation; now and then, but rarely in these days, a stupid servant; most often of all, a child, who is, perhaps, a step-child or nephew or niece of the mistress of the house, or, alas! her own child, only deformed in some way, or deficient in intellect. Then, the hapless, frightened creature, afraid of punishment, looks with furtive glances at the frowning faces about it, tries to escape by some little transparent deception, and only incurs the heavier penalty of falsehood and the name of a liar; and so the evil goes on growing day by day. It is astonishing and horrible to witness how the deep-seated, frightful human passion, which I have elsewhere named heteropathy, develops itself in such circumstances—the sight of suffering and down-trodden misery exciting not pity, but the reverse—a sort of cruel aversion in the bystanders, till the whole household sometimes joins in hating the poor, helpless, and isolated victim.
My friends, if you ever see anything approaching to this in your homes, for God’s sake, set your faces like a flint against it! If you dislike and mistrust the poor victim yourself, as you probably will do at first, never mind! Take my word for it, the first thing to be done in the Kingdom of God is to do justice to all—to secure that no creature, however mean or even loathsome, should be treated with injustice. If you are, as I am supposing, mistress of the house, stop this persecution with a high hand; and if you have been in any way to blame in it, if it be your dislike which you see thus reflected in the faces of your dependants, repent your great fault, and make amends to your victim. If you are not mistress, only a guest perhaps, or a humble friend, even then you can and ought to do much; you can look grave and pained whenever the butt is laughed at and jeered; and you can deliberately fix your eyes on him or her with sympathy, and treat him with respect. Even these little tokens of condemnation of what is going on will have (you may be sure) a startling effect on those whose custom it has become to treat the poor soul with contempt; and they will probably be angry with you for exhibiting them. You will never have borne resentment for a better cause.
Nor is it only human beings who are thus made too often household victims. You must all know houses where some unlucky animal—a cat or dog—beginning by being the object of somebody’s senseless antipathy, becomes the general souffre-douleur of masters and servants. The dog or cat (especially if it happens to be cherished by the human victim) is spoken to so roughly, driven out of every room, and perhaps punished for all sorts of offences it has never committed, that the animal assumes a downcast, sneaking aspect, which inevitably produces fresh and fresh heteropathy. You attempt, perhaps, to give it a little pat of sympathy, and the poor frightened beast snaps at you, expecting a blow, or runs off to hide under a sofa. Mistresses of homes, don’t let there be a dog or a cat or a donkey or any other creature, in or about your homes, which shrinks when a man or woman approaches it. And here I may add that, without thus specially victimizing the animals through dislike, a household frequently makes the life of some poor brute one long martyrdom through neglect. The responsibility for this neglect lies primarily with the mistress of the house. She must not only direct her servants, but see that her directions be carried out, in the way of affording water and food and needful exercise. A pretty “Kingdom of Heaven” some houses would be, if the poor brutes could speak—houses, possibly, with prayers going on twice a day, and grace said carefully before long, luxurious meals, and all the time the children’s birds and rabbits left untended in foul cages, without fresh food; mice thrown out of the traps on the fire, aged or diseased cats or superfluous puppies given to boys to destroy in any way their cruel invention may suggest, fowls for the consumption of the house carelessly and barbarously killed; and, worst of all, the poor house-dog, perhaps some loving-hearted little Skye or noble old mastiff or retriever, condemned for life to the penalties which we should think too severe for the worst of malefactors; chained up by the neck through all the long, bright summer days, under a burning sun, with its water-trough unfilled for days, or through the winter’s frost in some dark, sunless corner, freezing with cold and in agonies of rheumatism for want of straw or the chance of warming itself at a fire or by a run in the snow. And all this as a reward for the poor brute’s fidelity! When this kind of thing goes on for a certain time, of course the dog becomes horribly diseased. His longing to bound over the fresh grass, expressed so affectingly by his leaps and bounds when we approach his miserable dungeon, is not merely a longing for his natural pleasure, but for that which is indispensable to his health—namely, exercise and the power to eat grass; and, if refused, he very soon falls into disease; his beautiful coat becomes mangy and red; he is irritable, and becomes revolting to everybody, and the nurse cries to the children, who were his only friends and visitors, “Don’t go near that dog!”
I say it deliberately, the mistress of a house in whose yard a dog is thus kept like a forçat—only worse treated than any murderer is treated in Italy—is guilty of a very great sin; and till she has taken care that the dog has his daily exercise and water, and that the cat and the fowls and every other sentient creature under her roof is well and kindly treated, she may as well, for shame’s sake, give up thinking she is fulfilling her duties by reading prayers and subscribing to missions.
I assume that the master of the house, where there is one, will, as usual, look after the stable department. Where there is no master, or he does not interfere, the mistress is surely responsible for humane treatment of the horses, if she keep any. Further, I think every lady is bound to insist that any horse which draws her shall be free from the misery of a bearing-rein. She ought not to allow her vanity and ambition to be fashionable to induce her to connive at her coachman’s laziness and cruelty.
When the mistress of a house has done all she can to prevent the suffering, mental or physical, of any creature, human or infra-human, under her roof, there remains still a delightful field for her ability in actually giving pleasure. We all know that life is made up chiefly of little pleasures and little pains, and how many of the former are in the power of the mistress of a house to provide, it is almost impossible to calculate. But let any clever woman simply take it to heart to make everybody about her as happy as she can, and the result I believe will always be wonderful. Let her see that, so far as possible, they have the rooms they like best, the little articles of furniture and ornament they prefer. Let her order meals with a careful forethought for their tastes and for the necessities of their health, seeing that every one has what he desires, and making him feel, however humble in position, that his tastes have been remembered. Let her not disdain to pay such attention to the position of the chairs and sofas of the family dwelling-rooms as that every individual may be comfortably placed, and feel that he or she has not been left out in the cold. And, after all these cares, let her try not so much to make her rooms splendid and æsthetically admirable as to make them thoroughly habitable and comfortable for those who are to occupy them; regarding their comfort rather than her own æsthetic gratification. A drawing-room bright and clean, sweet with flowers in summer or with dried rose leaves in winter, with tables at which the inmates may occupy themselves, and easy chairs wherever they are wanted, and plenty of soft light and warmth, or else of coolness adapted to the weather—this sort of room belongs more properly to a woman who seeks to make her house a province of the Kingdom of Heaven than one which might be exhibited at South Kensington as having belonged to the Kingdom of Queen Anne!
Then, for the moral atmosphere of the house, which depends so immensely on the tone of the mistress, I will venture to make one recommendation. Let it be as gay as ever she can make it. There are numbers of excellent women—the salt of the earth—who seem absolutely oppressed with their consciences, as if they were congested livers. They are in a constant state of anxiety and care; and perhaps, with the addition of feeble health, find it difficult to get through their duties except in a certain lachrymose and dolorous fashion. Houses where these women reign seem always under a cloud, with rain impending. Now, I conceive that good and even high animal spirits are among the most blessed of possessions—actual wings to bear us up over the dusty or muddy roads of life; and I think that to keep up the spirits of a household is not only indefinitely to add to its happiness, but also to make all duties comparatively light and easy. Thus, however naturally depressed a mistress may be, I think she ought to struggle to be cheerful, and to take pains never to quench the blessed spirits of her children or guests. All of us who live long in great cities get into a sort of subdued-cheerfulness tone. We are neither very sad nor very glad.
One word in concluding these remarks on woman’s duties as a Hausfrau. If we can not perform these well, if we are not orderly enough, clear-headed enough, powerful enough, in short, to fulfil this immemorial function of our sex well and thoroughly, it is somewhat foolish of us to press to be allowed to share in the great housekeeping of the State. My beloved and honored friend, Theodore Parker, argued for the admission of women to the full rights of citizenship and share in government, on the express grounds that few women keep house so badly or with such wastefulness as Chancelors of the Exchequer keep the State, and womanly genius for organization applied to the affairs of the nation would be extremely economical and beneficial. But, if we can not keep our houses and manage our servants, this argument, I am afraid, will be turned the other way; and we shall be told that, not having used our one talent, it is quite out of question to give us ten. Having shown ourselves incapable in little things, nobody in their senses will trust us with great ones.