CHAPTER XII[ToC]
HOUSEWIVES
"Frenchwomen are the best housewives in Europe," said a German lady who knew most European countries well; "the next best are the English; Germans come third." The lady speaking was one whose opinions were always uttered with much charm, but ex-cathedra; so that you found it impossible to disagree with her ... until you got home. But to hear the supreme excellence of the Hausfrau contested takes the breath away; to see her deposed from the first place by one of her own countrywomen dazzles the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live amongst Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and without argument.
"My son is in England," you hear a German mother say. "I am uneasy about him. I fear he may marry an Englishwoman."
"They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her head.
"It would break my heart. The women of that nation know nothing of housekeeping. They sit in their drawing-rooms all day, while their husband's hard-earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides ... mein armer Karl—he loves Nudelsuppe and Küken mit Spargel. What does an Englishwoman know of such things? She would give him cold mutton to eat, and he would die of an indigestion. I was once in England in my youth, and when I got back we had a Frikassee von Hähnchen mit Krebsen for dinner, and I wept with pleasure."
"Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, "your Karl will remember these things and fetch himself a German wife."