From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

Now, I think, that 2l., or, at the most, 2l. 10s., should keep Angelina, Edwin, and the model maid per week in comfort, and yet allow of no scrimping; but in this case Angelina must put a good deal of common-sense in her purse as well as money. Meat for three people need not be more than 12s., 4s. for bread and flour, 2s. for eggs, 4s. for milk, half a pound of tea at 2s. 6d.—if they will drink tea—1lb. of coffee made of equal proportions of East India, Mocha, and Plantation, comes to about 1s. 7d., sugar 6d., butter (2lbs., enough for three people) 3s., and the rest can be kept in hand for fruit, fish, chickens, washing; and the thousand and one odds and ends that are always turning up at the most unpropitious moments; such as stamps, boot-mending (two items that have largely assisted in turning my hair grey), ink, paper, string, and, in fact, all those things that an unmarried girl rather fancies grow in the house, and that she is very much surprised to find have to be purchased.

In any case, let me implore Angelina to pay her books every week herself, and never on any account to run up bills anywhere for anything. Let her never be tempted to have any single thing that she cannot pay for on the spot; and she will live happily, and be able to ‘speak with her enemies’—if she have any—‘in the gate’; that is to say, she can boldly interview her tradespeople, knowing she owes them nothing, and coming cash in hand can demand the best article in the market, which is, after all, the due of those who go and buy for ready money and should never be given to those who will have credit. There is nothing so dear as credit—please remember that, my readers, and start as you mean to go on by paying for everything as you have it; and, above all, know from your husband what he can give you, and have this regularly once a month. If you are fit to be his wife at all, you are fit to spend his money, and to spend it, moreover, without the haggling and worrying over each item that is considered necessary by some men to show their superiority over their women folk, but which should never be allowed for a moment; and should our bride have a small income of her own, this should be retained for her dress, personal expenses, &c., and should not be put into the common fund, for the man should keep the house and be the bread-winner; but, alas! middle-class brides have seldom anything to call their own, their parents thinking they have done all they need for them, should they find them a husband and a certain amount of clothes.

I very much myself disapprove of the way middle-class parents have of marrying off their daughters and giving them nothing beyond their trousseaux; and I do hope that soon fathers and mothers will copy the French more in this matter of a dowry than they do now. I maintain that they are bound to give their daughters, beyond and over such an education as shall allow them to keep themselves, the same sum when married as they received when unmarried, so shall they be to a certain extent independent and have a little something to call their own. Why, in most cases, if Angelina wants to give Edwin a present she has to buy it out of his own money! Can there be a more unenviable position for a young wife, to whom very often the mere asking for money is as painful as it is degrading? It would not hurt any father to give his daughter 50l. a year, and the difference it would make in that daughter’s comfort and position is unspeakable; and would not be more than half what she would cost him were she to remain on his hands a sour old maid.

Another thing I disapprove of is placing the household books week by week or month by month under the husband’s inspection; it leads to endless jars and frets, and discussions; therefore, having talked matters over once and for all, discuss money no more until you require additions to your allowance as the family increases; or can do with less; only know always how matters are going in business, so as to increase or retrench in a manner suitable, should circumstances alter.

Domestic matters must, of course, be discussed now and again between husband and wife; but a sensible woman keeps these subjects in the background, and no more troubles her husband with the price of butter, or the cook’s delinquencies, than he does his wife over the more intimate details of his office, which he keeps for his clerks and his partners generally; while the day’s papers, the book on hand, people one has seen, are all far more interesting things than Maria’s temper, Jane’s breakages, or than the grocer’s bill, which, if higher than it ought to be, is Angelina’s own fault, and can only be altered by herself, and not by worrying Edwin.

Common-sense housekeeping can only be done if the eyes be constantly open to see and the ears to hear. Waste must never be allowed. No servant should be kept who wastes, and if there be no dust-bin, save for cinders, no pig’s tub, no man calling at the door for bottles, and, above all, if there be a mistress who is always on the alert to use anyone else’s experience, housekeeping need be nothing of a bugbear, and can be done at one quarter the price that it usually costs. But most girls marry in perfect ignorance of everything save the plot of the last novel, the music of the last opera, the fashion of the last dress, and undertake duties they neither care for nor mean to understand, seeing nothing beyond the wedding finery, which is far too often an occasion of almost criminal display, and that must indeed appear a mockery to the poor bride, who contemplates her foolish wedding dress and wishes profoundly she had the money it cost her.

The great curse now of English households is this seeming to be what you are not, this wretched pretending of 400l. to be 800l.; the shirking of work, domestic details, and common-sense housekeeping that characterises the bride of this day, who only wants to enjoy herself and spend a little more, see a little more gaiety than the last bride did, and who sees nothing holy in the name of wife, only a mere emancipation from the schoolroom; who wants to decorate a house, not make a home; and who sees in her children, not human souls to train for time and for eternity, but pretty dolls to dress, to attract attention, or tiresome objects to be got rid of at school at the earliest opportunity.

That marriage means much more than this is gradually borne in upon the butterfly, who either sobers down in the course of years, and becomes faded and worn and peevish; or else, impatient of control, she breaks all bounds, and the whole family is disgraced by an esclandre that is as terrible as it is preventible. With such women as this we have nothing to do; but many of these poor creatures would have been saved had they been brought up properly, so I trust, after all, my words on the subject of common-sense housekeeping will not be considered out of place.

Though they are certainly a little discursive, still they have to do with money emphatically, and that was the first part of the subject I proposed to treat of in this chapter, so before I leave it let me say just a few words on the best system of keeping accounts, a most necessary portion of any woman’s business as mistress of a household.

The best authority I know on the subject of accounts is a personal friend who began housekeeping many years ago on a very small and uncertain income. Her husband was a literary man, and had of course that most tiresome and extravagance-encouraging income—a fluctuating one; yet she told me only the other day she could tell to a sixpence what she had spent ever since she was married; that at the end of the year she always sat down, first with her husband, then with her grown-up daughters, and carefully went over each month’s expenditure, and in this way she was enabled to manage well, for a glance would show her, if she had spent too much, where she could retrench, or where, if the income had increased, she could best ‘launch out’ in order to insure more comforts and less forethought and worry: in consequence of her arrangements she was always beforehand with the world, and never owed a sixpence she could not pay. A young housekeeper is often bewildered between account books. She buys one, of course, and then is bothered by detail, or begins to find ‘sundries’ a most convenient entry—and so, alas! it is. But our model housekeeper shrinks from sundries, or any of these somewhat mean subterfuges, and boldly discovers how she has spent her money, although I must confess I myself am such a bad hand at this sort of thing that, could I be seen, I feel convinced I should be found to be blushing violently at giving advice which I far too often do not follow; indeed, I always feel inclined to imitate the old woman-servant whose balance sheet consisted of so many ‘foggets,’ among other items, that her master (of course he was a bachelor), confused with the idea of having so much firewood, begged her for an explanation, when she remarked, ‘ ’Taint faggots, master; ’tis forgets.’ Fortunately her honesty had been tried by many a long year’s service, or she might have got into serious trouble; and I think when we too have ‘forgets’ we are not unlikely to get into trouble when at last we have to face boldly a day of reckoning, which must come sooner or later.