‘Two boxes of Sunlight Soap for cook—it’ll last ages.’
‘And this, “one brooks, 3d.”?’
‘Why, Brookes’ Soap, of course.’
‘Is that what we use? . . . Really I don’t see anything to laugh at.’
‘Excuse me, dear, I really couldn’t help it, the idea of us washing with Monkey Brand is too excruciatingly funny. Of course it’s for the pots and pans and sinks!’
‘You seem to use a great deal of soap in the house.’
‘No, dear, quite a little, as any housekeeper would tell you’ (Valeria could not resist this thrust), ‘and I don’t think you would like the result if we economised in soap. But why worry so, since the total is reasonable? You’ll find nothing there but absolute necessities. Why won’t you leave it all to me?’
In the end he was compelled to, but few wives would have shown Valeria’s patience under this very unnecessary infliction.
Of course this is an extreme case, but a great many men do interfere in their wives’ department to a most irritating extent. To my mind the perfect way is for the whole financial budget of the house to be left to the wife, just as the whole budget of the office or estate is left to the husband. I am now dealing of course with people of limited means. As a rule, a man has quite enough money worry during his day’s work and does not want any more of it when he gets home. To have to sit down to write cheques in the evening is a task that seems to bring out all the worst qualities in a husband. He may enter the house a devoted lover, and heap evening papers, flowers, and chocolates on his wife’s knee. During dinner he may be genial, witty, affectionate, delightful—but present him with a bundle of bills at ten P.M. with the remark that really these ought to be seen to—and at once he becomes a fierce, snarling, primitive, repulsive, and blasphemous creature. No matter if his balance at the bank be ever so satisfactory, no matter if every bill be for something he has personally required, and no single one incurred by his wife—these facts weigh not at all with him. Bills are bills, and at the sight of them husbands become savages. If I should call on Miranda one morning about the seventh or eighth of the month, I am sure to find her red-eyed and worn and to be told: ‘Last night Lysander said he’d do the bills and of course he’s been damning and blasting ever since, though they’re ridiculously small this month.’ Exactly the same with Isolda. ‘Launcelot wrote the month’s cheques last night,’ she will say, ‘and handling bills always has a terrible effect on him; it’s a kind of disease with him, poor dear, and I never can sleep after it.’ Yet both Launcelot and Lysander are in every other respect ideal husbands.
My advice to wives therefore is: Firstly, do away with all weekly or cash payments, which are a weariness to the wifely brain. Check all books once a week, examine the items with whatever degree of care your tradesmen’s moral standard requires. Enter these sums in an account-book. At the end of the month, when all the bills are in, prepare a monthly balance-sheet for your husband. He will assuredly glance first at the total and should it be satisfactory he will look no further if he be wise. Let him then write one cheque to cover the whole amount, pay it into your bank, and you do the rest. When the bills arrive for rates, and whatever else is sent in quarterly, include them in your monthly list, and thus your husband will only have to write twelve cheques a year on behalf of his home instead of scores. The fearful frenzies that beset him monthly will thus be reduced to a minimum. If you have stables or an extensive wine-cellar give orders that the bills for these and any other item which belongs to the man’s department should be sent to his office or club, together with his tailor’s and other personal bills. Thus you will not suffer when their settlement becomes necessary. It is a strange fact that a man sits down like a lamb to write cheques at his office, although at home the same business would cause him to raise the roof and shake the foundations.