[Footnote 1: Examiner.]
In short, we want common sense in cookery, as in most other things. Food should be used, and not abused. Much of it is now absolutely wasted, wasted for want of a little art in cooking it. Food is not only wasted by bad cooking; but much of it is thrown away which French women would convert into something savoury and digestible. Health, morals, and family enjoyments, are all connected with the question of cookery. Above all, it is the handmaid of Thrift. It makes the most and the best of the bounties of God. It wastes nothing, but turns everything to account. Every Englishwoman, whether gentle or simple, ought to be accomplished in an art which confers so much comfort, health, and wealth upon the members of her household.
"It appears to me," said Mrs. Margaretta Grey, "that with an increase of wealth unequally distributed, and a pressure of population, there has sprung up amongst us a spurious refinement, that cramps the energy and circumscribes the usefulness of women in the upper class of society. A lady, to be such, must be a lady, and nothing else…. Ladies dismissed from the dairy, the confectionery, the store-room, the still-room, the poultry-yard, the kitchen-garden, and the orchard" [she might have added, the spinning-wheel], "have hardly yet found for themselves a sphere equally useful and important in the pursuits of trade and art, to which to apply their too abundant leisure.
"When, at any time, has society presented, on the one hand, so large an array of respectably educated individuals, embarrassed for want of a proper calling, and, on the other, so ponderous a multitude of untrained, neglected poor, who cannot, without help, rise out of their misery and degradation? What an obstruction to usefulness and all eminence of character is that of being too rich, or too genteelly connected, to work at anything!"[1]
[Footnote 1: Memoir of John Grey, of Dalston. p. 290.]
Many intelligent, high-minded ladies, who have felt disgusted at the idleness to which "society" condemns them, have of late years undertaken the work of visiting the poor and of nursing—a noble work. But there is another school of usefulness which stands open to them. Let them study the art of common cookery, and diffuse the knowledge of it amongst the people. They will thus do an immense amount of good; and bring down the blessings of many a half-hungered husband upon their benevolent heads. Women of the poorer classes require much help from those who are better educated, or who have been placed in better circumstances than themselves. The greater number of them marry young, and suddenly enter upon a life for which they have not received the slightest preparation. They know nothing of cookery, of sewing or clothes mending, or of economical ways of spending their husbands' money. Hence slatternly and untidy habits, and uncomfortable homes, from which the husband is often glad to seek refuge in the nearest public-house. The following story, told by Joseph Corbett, a Birmingham operative, before a Parliamentary Committee, holds true of many working people in the manufacturing districts.
"My mother," he said, "worked in a manufactory from a very early age. She was clever and industrious, and, moreover, she had the reputation of being virtuous. She was regarded as an excellent match for a working man. She was married early. She became the mother of eleven children: I am the eldest. To the best of her ability she performed the important duties of a wife and mother. But she was lamentably deficient in domestic knowledge. In that most important of all human instruction—how to make the home and the fireside to possess a charm for her husband and children—she had never received one single lesson. She had children apace. As she recovered from her lying-in, so she went to work, the babe being brought to her at stated times to receive nourishment. As the family increased, so everything like comfort disappeared altogether. The power to make home cheerful and comfortable was never given to her. She knew not the value of cherishing in my father's mind a love of domestic objects. Not one moment's happiness did I ever see under my father's roof. All this dismal state of things I can distinctly trace to the entire and perfect absence of all training and instruction to my mother. He became intemperate; and his intemperance made her necessitous. She made many efforts to abstain from shop-work; but her pecuniary necessities forced her back into the shop. The family was large; and every moment was required at home. I have known her, after the close of a hard day's work, sit up nearly all night for several nights together washing and mending clothes. My father could have no comfort there. These domestic obligations, which in a well-regulated house (even in that of a working man, where there are prudence and good management) would be done so as not to annoy the husband, were to my father a sort of annoyance; and he, from an ignorant and mistaken notion, sought comfort in an alehouse. My mother's ignorance of household duties; my father's consequent irritability and intemperance; the frightful poverty; the constant quarrelling; the pernicious example to my brothers and sisters; the bad effect upon the future conduct of my brothers,—one and all of us being forced out to work so young that our feeble earnings would produce only 1_s_. a week,—cold and hunger, and the innumerable sufferings of my childhood, crowd upon my mind and overpower me. They keep alive a deep anxiety for the emancipation of thousands of families in this great town (Birmingham) and neighbourhood, who are in a similar state of horrible misery. My own experience tells me that the instruction of the females in the work of a house, in teaching them to produce cheerfulness and comfort at the fireside, would prevent a great amount of misery and crime. There would be fewer drunken husbands and disobedient children. As a working man, within my own observation, female education is disgracefully neglected. I attach more importance to it than to anything else; for woman imparts the first impressions to the young susceptible mind; she models the child from which is formed the future man."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ART OF LIVING.
"Deem no man, in any age,
Gentle for his lineage.
Though he be not highly born,
He is gentle if he doth
What 'longeth to a gentleman."—Chaucer.