My own work includes some hours of daily drudgery. What busy man's or woman's doesn't? Why discriminate against the kitchen? Read Marion Harland's delightful little book on Household Management (New York: Home Topics Publishing Co., 23 Duane St.); you can do it in an hour and you will benefit particularly by the chapter on "Fine Art in 'Drudgery,'" in which, writes the distinguished author, "I give a recipe for dishwashing as carefully and with as much pleasure as I would write out directions for making an especially delicious entrée or dessert."
Women and men who prepare for the stage, dramatic or musical, have to undergo an enormous amount of drudgery and keep it up all their lives. In the summer of 1912 I heard the greatest of all pianists, Paderewski, daily practising elementary "five-finger" exercises, and he admitted that it took great strength of will to keep it up; but he knows the truth of the remark once made by Hans von Bülow that if he neglected his practicing one day he knew it; if two days, his friends knew it; if three days, the public knew it.
That is a kind of drudgery compared with which dishwashing is a picnic. Most dishwashers, moreover, dawdle dreadfully. They could do their work in one half if not one quarter the time it takes them. See the remarks of the astonished Isabella Bird Bishop in her book on the Rocky Mountains on the way she saw two young bachelors disposing of their kitchen work in the twinkle of an eye.
ROYALTY IN THE KITCHEN.
England is in a state of transition. As the London "Times" (October 29, 1910) remarked, there are in that country many women who would be proud, and even consider it rather smart, to cook a dish of savory eggs in a chafing-dish on a silver-strewn sideboard, but who would nevertheless be ashamed to say that they could knead and bake a loaf of bread which could rival that made by their cooks.
A change is, however, impending, and the good example comes from those socially highest up. Queen Victoria's daughters had to spend many hours in the kitchen, and the present Queen also is, as the "Times" informs us, an expert cook, and altogether "a pattern mother and a skilled housekeeper, who would put many middle-class mistresses to shame by her accurate and up-to-date knowledge of details."
Queen Alexandra was the chief patroness of the Universal Cookery and Food Association, founded in 1885.
Noblesse oblige. The English royal family feels that it is its duty to set a good example to the women of the whole country in this matter, and the example is being followed widely. There is, indeed, a nationwide awakening in the United Kingdom regarding the importance of the culinary art, as we shall see in a moment, in considering the subject of cooking in schools.
Sarah baked and cooked for Abraham, though she could command as many servants as a queen.
It would be easy to give a long list of queens and other women of the highest nobility who recognized the nobility of the art of cooking by their interest and participation in it.