Am I harsh and unsympathetic when I say, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, if a woman has genuine talent, she will find time to improve it even amid the clatter of household machinery? I could multiply instances by the thousand to prove this, did time permit.
But what of the poor rich woman who throws away her life in the vain endeavor to bring servants and children “up to time?” Two things. First, she dies of worry, not of work—a distinction with a difference.
Second, if she possess one-half enough strength of mind and strength of purpose to have made herself mistress of a single art or science, or sufficient tact to sustain her as a successful leader in society, or the degree of administrative ability requisite to enable her to conduct rightly a public enterprise of any note, be it benevolent, literary, or social, she ought to be competent to the government of her household; to administer domestic affairs with such wise energy as should insure order and punctuality without self-immolation.
“If they have run with the footmen and they have wearied them, how shall they contend with horses?”
Let us look at this matter fairly, and without prejudice on either side. I should contradict other of my written and spoken opinions; stultify myself beyond the recovery of your respect or my own, were I to deny that more and wider avenues of occupation should be opened to woman than are now conceded as their right by the popular verdict. But not because the duties of the housewife are overburdensome or degrading. On the contrary, I would have forty trained cooks where there is now one; would make her who looketh diligently to the ways of her household worthy, as in Solomon’s day, of double honor. Of co-operative laundries I have much hope. I would have washing-day become a tradition of the past to be shuddered over by every emancipated family in the land. In “co-operative housekeeping,” in the sense in which it is generally understood, I have scanty faith as a cure for the general untowardness of what my sprightly correspondent styles “the materials this country affords.” Somebody must get the dinners and somebody superintend the getting-up of these. I honestly believe that the best method of reforming American domestic service and American cookery is by making the mistress of every home proficient in the art and a capable instructress of others. I know—no one better—how women who have never cared to beautify their own tables, or to study elegant variety in their bills of fare, who have railed at soups as “slops,” and entrées as “trash,” talk, after the year’s travel in foreign lands their husband’s earnings and their own pinching have gained for them. How they groan over native cookery and the bondage of native mistresses, and tell how cheaply and luxuriously one can live in dear Paris.
“Will the time ever come,” they cry, “when we, too, can sit at ease in our frescoed saloons surrounded by no end of artificial flowers and mirrors, and order our meals from a restaurant?”
To which I, from the depths of my home-loving heart, reply, “Heaven forbid!”
Have you ever thought how large a share the kitchen and dining-room have in forming the distinctive characteristics of the home? It is no marvel that the man who has had his dinners from an eating-house all his life should lack a word to describe that which symbolizes to the Anglo-Saxon all that is dearest and most sacred on earth. I avow, without a tinge of shame, that I soon tire, then sicken of restaurant and hotel dainties. I like the genuine wholesomeness of home-fare.
“Madame,” said a Frenchman whom I once met at an American watering-place, “one of my compatriots could produce one grand repast—one that should not want for the beautiful effects, with the contents of that pail—tub—bucket—of what the peoples here call the svill,” pointing to a mass of dinner débris set just without a side door.
“Monsieur,” I rejoined, with a grimace that matched his, “moi, je n’aime pas le svill!”