But it was not company that occupied all the hours of so busy a dame as our diarist. Though she had not to remodel her dresses in hot chase after the last novelty of the fashion-weekly, she had to superintend the manufacture of the stuff of which her maids' gowns and her own morning-gowns were made, to say nothing of bed-and table-linen, etc. Bridget in our day seems to think that to do a family washing is a labor of Hercules. Yet seventy years ago before a towel could be washed the soap wherewith to cleanse it must be made at home; and this not by the aid of condensed lye or potash, but with lye drawn by a tedious process of filtering water through barrels or leach-tubs of hard-wood ashes. The "setting" of these tubs was one of the first labors of the spring, and to see that Silvy or Jim poured on the water at regular intervals, and did not continue pouring after the lye had become "too weak to bear up an egg," was a part of Betsey's daily duty for some weeks. Then came the soap-boiling in great iron kettles over the fire in the wide fireplace. Apparently, this was not always a certain operation. Science had not yet put her meddling but useful finger into the soap-pot, for madam sadly records that on the twenty-first of May she had superintended the soap-boiling, but had not been blessed with "good luck;" and on the third of June we find the suggestive entry, "Finished the soap-boiling to-day." Eleven days—for we must of course count out the two Sundays—eleven days of greasy, odorous soap-boiling! We think that if we had been in madam's slippers we should have allowed Sally, Silvy and the rest to try the virtues of the unaided waters of heaven upon the family washing, and when this ceased to be efficacious should have let the clothes be purified by fire. But upon second thoughts, no: it was too much trouble to make those clothes.
We are not yet through with the preparations for the washing. The ancient housewife could not do without starch for her "ruffs and cuffs and fardingales," and for her lord's elaborately plaited ruffles. Yet she could not buy a box of "Duryea's best refined." The starch, like the soap, must be made at home. "On this day," writes our diarist, "had a bushel of wheat put in soak for starch;" and in another place we find the details of the starch-making process. The wheat was put into a tub and covered with water. As the chaff rose to the top it was skimmed off. Each day the water was carefully turned off, without disturbing the wheat, and fresh water was added, until after several days there was nothing left but a hard and perfectly white mass in the bottom of the tub. This mass was spread upon pewter platters and dried in the sun.
Another sore trouble was the breadmaking. The great wheat-fields of the West were not then opened, and we find that the wheat was frequently "smutty;" hence, that "the barrel was bad," which must sorely have tried the soul of the good housewife. Woe be to Silvy if that damsel did not carry herself gingerly on the baking-day when the long, flat shovel removed from the cavernous brick oven only heavy and sticky lumps of baked dough, in place of the light white loaves which the painstaking housewife had a right to expect!
In the absence of husband and son the care of a large farm fell upon our madam's shoulders, and the details of cost and income are dotted through the little journal. We can imagine the lady, gracious in her stateliness, marshaling old General T—— and Colonel C——, two veterans of the Revolution, out into her barnyard to get their opinion as to the value of her fat cattle, and the concealed disapproval with which she received their judgment that forty-five dollars was a fair price for the pair, "when," as she quietly remarks, "I considered that fifty dollars was little enough for so fine a pair of fat cattle; and in fact I got my own price for them the next day."
Fifty dollars was a much larger sum then than now. Imagine how many things could be bought for fifty dollars, when butter brought but ten, veal three or four, beef six or seven cents respectively per pound, and a pair of fat young chickens brought but twenty-five cents! There is one article upon whose accession of price we can dwell with pleasure. Madam records discontentedly that it "took two men all day to kill four hogs, notwithstanding that she had spent fifty cents for a half gallon of rum for them to drink." Fancy the sort of liquor that could now be bought for a dollar the gallon, and the sort of men that could drink two quarts thereof and live!
It is heretical, of course, to hint a syllable against the open wood-fire which crackled and flickered so beautifully while our madam wrote about her cattle and pigs and Jim and Silvy, but in truth we cannot envy our ancestors the care of those fires. With three yawning, devouring fireplaces constantly to be fed, and an additional one for each of the guest-rooms so often occupied during the winter—for this was the visiting season—there was no lack of business for Ralph, a white man; and his colored coadjutors, Jack and Jim. When we look at the still existing kitchen fireplace, nine feet in width and four in depth, we cease to blame Jack for neglecting to mend the barn floor. We only wonder that he found time to whip Silvy.
Among the occupations of the women one great time-consumer must have been the daily scouring, so much woodwork was left unpainted to be kept as white as a clean sea-beach by applications of soap and sand. Probably a good deal of this hand-and-knee work fell upon the unfortunate Silvy, as well as the polishing of the pewter plates, the brass fenders, andirons, tongs, shovels, door-knobs, knockers, and the various brazen ornaments which bedecked the heavy sideboards and tall secretaries.
Seventy years ago, when gas and kerosene were not, and wax candles were an extravagance indulged in only on state occasions, even by the wealthy, the tallow dip was an article of necessity, and "candle dip-day" was as certain of recurrence as Christmas, though perhaps even less welcome than the equally certain annual Fast Day. Fancy an immense kitchen with the before-mentioned fireplace in the centre of one side. Over the blaze of backlog and forestick, and something like half a cord of "eight-foot wood," are swinging the iron cranes laden with great kettles of melting tallow. On the opposite side of the kitchen two long poles about two feet apart are supported at their extremities upon the seats of chairs. Beside the poles are other great kettles containing melted tallow poured on the top of hot water. Across the poles are the slender candle-rods, from which depend ranks upon ranks of candle-wicks made of tow, for cotton wick is a later invention. Little by little, by endlessly repeating the slow process of dipping into the kettles of melted tallow and hanging them to cool, the wicks take on their proper coating of tallow. To make the candles as large as possible was the aim, for the more tallow the brighter the light. When done, the ranks of candles, still depending from the rods, were hung in the sunniest spots of a sunny garret to bleach.
But all these employments were as play compared with the home manufacture of dry goods. Ralph, Jack and Jim had no time for such work, so two other men were all winter kept busy in the barn at "crackling flax" and afterward passing it through a coarse hetchel to separate the coarsest or "swingling tow." After this the flax was made up into switches or "heads" like those which we see in pictures, or that which Faust's Marguerite so temptingly wields. These were deposited in barrels in the garret. During the winter the "heads" were brought down by the women to be rehetcheled once and again, removing first the coarser, and then the finer tow. This must have been a fearfully dusty operation. It makes one cough only to think of "the inch depth of flax-dust" which settled upon Betsey's protecting handkerchief while she "hetcheled."
The finest and best of the flax was saved for spinning into thread, for cotton thread there was none, excepting, possibly, a little of very poor quality in small skeins. The small wheel that we see in the far corner of the garret—just like Marguerite's—was used for spinning the fine thread. A larger wheel was used to spin the tow into yarn for the coarse clothing for boys and negroes or for "filling" in the coarser linens. All the boys, and very often the men—perhaps even our M.C. himself—wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, for which the yarn was spun at home by the maids, and was then taken to the weaver's to be made into cloth. Part of the linen yarn was dyed blue, and, mingled with white or unbleached yarn, was woven into a chequered stuff for the curtains of servants' beds and for dresses for the maids and aprons for their mistresses. In view of the fact that all the bed-linen and most of the table-linen was thus made at home, one cannot wonder that a house-wife's linen-closet was an object of special care and pride.