Still, I admit that our cramped surroundings and jaded, strained existence in cities do not always make a round of domestic duties seem alluring to the woman who has to cram her belongings and her aspirations into a small modern flat, or who has to do her cooking in one of the unhealthy, sunless basements that prevail in the older houses in towns. A woman needs fresh air, sunshine and a garden if the best is to be brought out of her. Oh, yes, I know some few women have done great things without one or another of these items—but probably they would have done still more if they had had the opportunity to come to their full development under more favourable circumstances.
I’m not surprised that women, whose existence is limited by the narrow environment of towns, so continually beat the air with a longing to do something more than seems possible in the flat or dull suburban villa. Civilization has taken out of their hands so many of the useful occupations that formerly kept women busy—and worthily busy too; and it is not to be wondered at that they cry out for something to do, and invent Causes on which to expend their zeal and energy. The preparation of food, the laundry work, and indeed most household duties are now done for us in cities on the “penny-in-the-slot” principle (only we have to put a shilling in the slot, as a rule, for the pennyworth of result that we receive); and it is small wonder that so few of us can work up any interest in the process.
But how are matters to be altered? you ask me. I don’t know! Pray don’t think I’m proposing to find solutions for grave problems in these stories! I’m only giving you a record of facts, just simple everyday little happenings “of no value to anyone save the owner.” And we’ll leave it at that, if you don’t mind, and return to the garden.
Before the War labour was not so scarce, and there was no need for us to plant the vegetables ourselves, unless we desired to do so. Now, however, one’s own personal work was a valuable asset, and we put our backs into it—at least Ursula and I did; Virginia was engaged most of the time in describing the sort of tools she would make, if she were in that line of business, to obviate the grave spinal trouble she was certain she was developing.
I don’t mean to imply that Virginia isn’t a good gardener; she can be an excellent one when she likes, for she knows what gardening really stands for in the way of hard work. Whereas some of my would-be assistant gardeners seem to think the chief requisites are a comfortable hammock and a book; or, at most, a “picture” muslin frock and a pretty basket and a pair of baby scissors. Such girls remind me of many who write and inquire if I have a vacancy for a sub-editor in my office, the chief qualification stated in their letters being that they “do so love to browse among books.”
Virginia isn’t like that; she puts on a business-like garb, and knows—and annexes—a good tool when she sees it. But it is her bright ideas that are the hindrance to progress. She wasted ten minutes that morning explaining to me that she was sure, if I would only have turnips planted in the mint bed, it would be another war economy, as the mint flavour might permeate the turnips, and thus save double expense with lamb.
And then another ten minutes went in enlarging on the grasping nature of the makers of gardening gloves in not supplying four pairs of extra thumbs with each pair, since any intelligent gardener could wear out eight thumbs with one pair in the simplest day’s gardening. She offered to let me use the idea free of charge in my magazine, if I would undertake to keep her supplied with gardening gloves for the rest of her natural life; but she stipulated that they must be proper leather ones, not the four-and-sixpenny war variety she was then wearing, composed of unbleached calico, with merely a chamois postage-stamp stuck on the front of each finger and thumb.
In the intervals of conversation she aided us with our digging, yet, in spite of the National Call to spend as much on seed potatoes as would keep the family in vegetables for a couple of years, we continually found ourselves drifting away from the ground we were trenching, for the violets were already out, also some early primroses, and little white stars were showing on the wild strawberry trails in sheltered corners under walls that faced south.