It did not seem odd to us then, but I wonder now over the routine laid down by our father, and followed steadily by us during the next winter and summer. A room in the second story was fitted up as a “study” for the two girls. Each had her desk and her corner. Thither we repaired at 9 o’clock A.M. for five days of the week, and sat us down to work. When problem, French exercise, history, and rhetoric lessons were prepared, we gravely and dutifully recited them to each other; wrote French exercises as carefully as if Mr. Howison’s eye were to scan them; and each corrected that of her fellow to the best of her ability. We read history and essays upon divers topics aloud, and discussed them freely. The course of study was marked out for us by our beloved ex-tutor, who wrote to us from time to time, in the midst of other and engrossing cares, in proof of continued remembrance and interest in his whilom pupils.
We girls wrought faithfully and happily until one o’clock at our lessons. The rest of the day was our own, except afternoon hours which were passed with our mother, and in occupations directed by her. She had inherited from her mother taste and talent for dainty needlework, and, as all sewing was done by hand, her hands were always full, although her own maid was an expert seamstress. The Virginian matron of antebellum days never wielded broom or duster. She did not make beds or stand at wash-tub or ironing-table. Yet she was as busy in her line of housewifely duty as her “Yankee” sister.
Provisions were bought by the large quantity, and kept in the spacious store-room, which was an important section of the dwelling. Every morning the cook was summoned as soon as breakfast was fairly over, appearing with a big wooden tray under her elbow, sundry empty “buckets” slung upon her arm, and often a pail on her head, carried there because every other available portion of her person was occupied. The two went together to the store-room, and materials for the daily food of white and black households were measured into the various vessels. The notable housewife knew to a fraction how much of the raw products went to the composition of each dish she ordered. So much flour was required for a loaf of rolls, and so much for a dozen beaten biscuits; a stated quantity of butter was for cake or pudding; sugar was measured for the kitchen-table and for that at which the mistress would sit with her guests. Molasses was poured into one bucket, lard measured by the great spoonful into another; “bacon-middling” was cut off by the chunk for cooking with vegetables and for the servants’ eating; hams and shoulders were laid aside from the supply in the smoke-house, to which the pair presently repaired. Dried fruits in the winter, spices, vinegar—the scores of minor condiments and flavoring that were brought into daily use in the lavish provision for appetites accustomed to the fat of the land—were “given out” as scrupulously as staples. If wine or brandy were to be used in sauces, the mistress would supply them later. It was not right, according to her code, to put temptation of that sort in the way of her dependants. It was certainly unsafe. Few colored women drank. I do not now recall a solitary instance of that kind in all my experience with, and observation of negro servants, before or after the war. I wish I could say the same for Scotch, Irish, and German cooks whom I have employed during a half-century of active housewifery.
Negro men were notoriously weak in that direction. The most honest could not resist the sight and smell of liquor. The failing would seem to be racial. It is an established fact that when the solid reconstructed South “went dry” in certain elections, it was in the hope of keeping ardent spirits out of the way of the negroes.
To return to our housekeeper of the mid-nineteenth century: The second stage in the daily round appointed to her by custom and necessity was to superintend the washing of breakfast china, glass, and silver. In seven cases out of ten she did the work herself, or deputed it to her daughters. One of my earliest recollections is of standing by my mother as she washed the breakfast “things,” and allowed me to polish the teaspoons with a tiny towel just the right size for my baby hands.
Her own hands were very beautiful, as were her feet. To preserve her taper fingers from the hot water in which silver and glass were washed, she wore gloves, cutting off the tips of the fingers. The proper handling of “fragiles” was a fine art, and few colored servants arose to the right practice of it. I have in my memory the picture of one stately gentlewoman, serene of face and dignified of speech, who retained her seat at the table when the rest of us had finished breakfast. To her, then, in dramatic parlance, the butler, arrayed in long, white apron, sleeves rolled to the elbow, bearing a pail of cedar-wood with bright brass hoops, three-quarters full of hot water. This he set down upon a small table brought into the room for the purpose, and proceeded to wash plates, cups, glass, silver, etc., collected from the board at which madam still presided, a bit of fancy knitting or crocheting in hand, which did not withdraw her eyes from vigilant attention to his movements.
Like surveillance was exercised over each branch of housework. Every part of the establishment was visited by the mistress before she sat down to the sewing, which was her own especial task. Her daughters were instructed in the intricacies of backstitch, fell-seams, overcasting, hemstitching, herringbone, button-holes, rolled and flat hems, by the time they let down their frocks and put up their hair. The girl who had not made a set of chemises for herself before she reached her fourteenth birthday was accounted slow to learn what became a gentlewoman who expected to have a home of her own to manage some day. Until I was ten years old I knit my own stockings of fine, white cotton, soft as wool. Gentlemen of the old school refused to wear socks and stockings bought over a counter. In winter they had woollen, in summer cotton foot-gear, home-knit by wives or aunts or daughters. We embroidered our chemise bands and the ruffles of skirts, the undersleeves that came in with “Oriental sleeves,” and the broad collars that accompanied them.
Reading aloud more often went with the sewing-circle found in every home, than gossip. My father set his fine, strong face like a flint against neighborhood scandal and tittle-tattle. “‘They say’ is next door to a lie,” was one of the sententious sayings that silenced anecdotes dealing with village characters and doings. A more effectual quietus was: “Who says that? Never repeat a tale without giving the author’s name. That is the only honorable thing to do.”
I do not know that the exclusion of chit-chat of our friends drove us to books for entertainment, when miles of seams and gussets and overcasting lay between us and springtime with its outdoor amusements and occupations. I do say that we did not pine for evening “functions,” for luncheons and matinées, when we had plenty of books to read aloud and congenial companions with whom to discuss what we read. Once a week we had a singing-class, which met around our dining-table. My father led this, giving the key with his tuning-fork, and now and then accompanying with his flute a hymn in which his tenor was not needed.