How differently things go with a woman like myself, with a small income, a house, servants, children, all as important as the daily round of wage-earning. By the time one gets settled down to one’s desk at nine-thirty or ten o’clock one has gone through the drudgery of it all. The orders and wants of cook, housemaid, parlourmaid, and nurse have all been attended to. The cheques for washing bills and grocers’ books have to be written, orders sent for coals, the soda-water telephoned for, with all the endless round of wearying details which every housekeeper knows. In the midst of one’s morning work, curtains return from the cleaners, and have to be paid for at the door, or a man comes to mend the bell, and one has to leave one’s desk to show him exactly what is wrong. In fact, the interruptions are incessant even in the best regulated households, and one has to bring one’s distracted mind back from domestic details to write important letters or articles for the Press.
A working woman’s life would be endurable were it not for the interruptions.
Yes! I have lived the ordinary woman’s life and the professional woman’s life as well, and I always say to myself that the professional part is a mere bagatelle, because of the larger rewards, in comparison with the ceaseless worries and endless interruptions that fall at the feet of every housekeeper.
Men do not half enough appreciate the amount of work (becoming every year more difficult), the extraordinary number of little details, necessary to run even the simplest home.
When one covers one’s own furniture, embroiders one’s own cloths, and trims one’s own hats into the bargain, the daily round becomes complicated indeed.
I believe in clubs for women. It is so heavenly to get away from an ordinary dinner. It is really a holiday to have a chop or a fried sole, that one has not ordered hours beforehand. Besides, at the club one sometimes learns new dishes, and certainly new ideas from the newspapers and magazines, all of which one could not afford to take in at home independently.
For the unmarried woman the club is absolutely indispensable. It gives her a place where she can receive her friends, and let it be known that women are more hospitable than men. They are poorer, but are more generous in giving invitations to tea or a meal. Men’s clubs are full of old women, and women’s clubs full of young men, nowadays.
A club is also a boon to the married woman, for there are days when country relations arrive in town, when, for instance, the sweep has been ordered at home; then the country or foreign friends can be taken to the club, and need not know that their hostess’s small household cannot tackle a luncheon because of the advent of the sweep.
I believe clubs encourage women to read, and I am sure that expands their ideas and opens their minds. Women’s clubs are certainly an advantage, and though I have been an original member of several, I always float back to my first love, the Albemarle, where our marble halls, once the Palace of the Bishop of Ely, receive both men and women members.
I love my own sex. They are the guiding stars of the Universe, and the modern girl tends to make the world much more interesting than it used to be. Youth must spread its wings, and if it is sound youth it will be gently guided by experience. Let the bird fly, or it will fret at the bars of its cage, break its wings, and languish.