University of Virginia Library

TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER.

I have a detail of very homely grievances to
present, but such as they are, many a heart will
feel them to be heavy—the trials of a housekeeper.

“Poh!” says one of the lords of creation, taking
his cigar out of his mouth, and twirling it between
his two first fingers, “what a fuss these women do
make of this simple matter of managing a family!
I can't see, for my life, as there is anything so extraordinary
to be done in this matter of housekeeping:
only three meals a day to be got and
cleared off, and it really seems to take up the whole
of their mind from morning till night. I could
keep house without so much of a flurry, I know.”

Now prithee, good brother, listen to my story,
and see how much you know about it. I came to
this enlightened West about a year since, and was
duly established in a comfortable country residence
within a mile and a half of the city, and there commenced
the enjoyment of domestic felicity. I had
been married about three months, and had been
previously in love in the most approved romantic
way with all the proprieties of moonlight walks,

serenades, sentimental billet-doux, and everlasting
attachment.

After having been allowed, as I said, about three
months to get over this sort of thing, and to prepare
for realities, I was located for life as aforesaid.
My family consisted of myself and husband,
a female friend as a visiter, and two brothers of
my good man, who were engaged with him in business.

I pass over the two or three first days spent in
that process of hammering boxes, breaking crockery,
knocking things down and picking them up
again, which is commonly called getting to housekeeping.
As usual, carpets were sewed and
stretched, laid down, and taken up to be sewed
over; things were reformed, transformed, and con
formed, till at last a settled order began to appear.
But now came up the great point of all. During our
confusion, we had cooked and eaten our meals in a
very miscellaneous and pastoral manner, eating now
from the top of a barrel, and now from a fireboard
laid on two chairs, and drinking, some from teacups,
and some from saucers, and some from tumblers,
and some from a pitcher big enough to be
drowned in, and sleeping, some on sofas, and some
on straggling beds and mattresses, thrown down
here and there, wherever there was room. All
these pleasant barbarities were now at an end:

the house was in order; the dishes put up in their
places; three regular meals were to be administered
in one day, all in an orderly, civilized form;
beds were to be made; rooms swept and dusted;
dishes washed; knives scoured, and all the et cetera
to be attended to. Now for getting “help,”
as Mrs. Trollope says; and where and how were
we to get it? We knew very few persons in the
city, and how were we to accomplish the matter?
At length the “house of employment” was mentioned,
and my husband was despatched thither regularly
every day for a week, while I, in the mean
time, was very nearly despatched by the abundance
of work at home. At length, one evening, as I was
sitting completely exhausted, thinking of resorting
to the last feminine expedient for supporting life,
viz., a good fit of crying, my husband made his appearance,
with a most triumphant air, at the door:
“There, Margaret, I have got you a couple at last
—cook and chambermaid!” So saying, he flourished
open the door, and gave to my view the picture
of a little, dry, snuffy-looking old woman, and
a great staring Dutch girl in a green bonnet with
red ribands—mouth wide open, and hands and feet
that would have made a Greek sculptor open his
mouth too. I addressed forthwith a few words of
encouragement to each of this cultivated-looking
couple, and proceeded to ask their names, and
forthwith the old woman began to snuffle and to
wipe her face with what was left of an old silk
pocket-handkerchief preparatory to speaking, while
the young lady opened her mouth wider, and looked
around with a frightened air, as if meditating an
escape. After some preliminaries, however, I found
out that my old woman was Mrs. Tibbins, and my
Hebe's name was Kotterin; also, that she knew
much more Dutch than English, and not any too
much of either. The old lady was the cook. I
ventured a few inquiries: “Had she ever cooked?”

“Yes, ma'am, sartin; she had lived at two or
three places in the city.”

“I suspect, my dear,” said my husband, confidently,
“that she is an experienced cook, and so
your troubles are over;” and he went to reading
his newspaper. I said no more, but determined to
wait till morning. The breakfast, to be sure, did
not do much honour to the talents of my official; but
it was the first time, and the place was new to her
After breakfast was cleared away, I proceeded to
give directions for dinner: it was merely a plain
joint of meat, I said, to be roasted in the tin oven.
The experienced cook looked at me with a stare of
entire vacuity: “the tin oven,” I repeated, “stands
there,” pointing to it.

She walked up to it, and touched it with such
an appearance of suspicion as if it had been an

electrical battery, and then looked round at me with
a look of such helpless ignorance that my soul was
moved: “I never see one of them things before,”
said she.

“Never saw a tin oven!” I exclaimed. “I
thought you said you had cooked in two or three
families.”

“They does not have such things as them,
though,” rejoined my old lady. Nothing was to be
done, of course, but to instruct her into the philosophy
of the case; and, having spitted the joint, and
given numberless directions, I walked off to my
room to superintend the operations of Kotterin, to
whom I had committed the making of my bed and
the sweeping of my room, it never having come into
my head that there could be a wrong way of making
a bed, and to this day it is a marvel to me how
any one could arrange pillows and quilts to make
such a nondescript appearance as mine now presented.
One glance showed me that Kotterin also
was “just caught,” and that I had as much to do in
her department as in that of my old lady.

Just then the door-bell rang: “Oh, there is the
door-bell!” I exclaimed; “run, Kotterin, and show
them into the parlour.”

Kotterin started to run, as directed, and then
stopped, and stood looking round on all the doors,
and on me with a wofully puzzled air: “The

street-door,” said I, pointing towards the entry.
Kotterin blundered into the entry, and stood gazing
with a look of stupid wonder at the bell ringing
without hands, while I went to the door and let in
the company before she could be fairly made to understand
the connexion between the ringing and the
phenomenon of admission.

As dinner-time approached, I sent word into my
kitchen to have it set on; but, recollecting the
state of the heads of department there, I soon followed
my own orders. I found the tin oven standing
out in the middle of the kitchen, and my cook
seated à la Turk in front of it, contemplating the
roast meat with full as puzzled an air as in the
morning. I once more explained the mystery of
taking it off, and assisted her to get it on to the
platter, though somewhat cooled by having been so
long set out for inspection. I was standing holding
the spit in my hands, when Kotterin, who had
heard the door-bell ring, and was determined this
time to be in season, ran into the hall, and soon
returning, opened the kitchen door, and politely
ushered in three or four fashionable-looking ladies,
exclaiming, “Here she is.” As these were strangers
from the city, who had come to make their
first call, this introduction was far from proving an
eligible one—the look of thunderstruck astonishment
with which I greeted their first appearance,

as I stood brandishing the spit, and the terrified
snuffling and staring of poor Mrs. Tibbins, who
again had recourse to her old pocket-handkerchief,
almost entirely vanquished their gravity, and it was
evident that they were on the point of a broad
laugh; so, recovering my self-possession, I apologized,
and led the way to the parlour.

Let these few incidents be a specimen of the four
mortal weeks that I spent with these “helps,” during
which time I did almost as much work, with
twice as much anxiety, as when there was nobody
there; and yet everything went wrong besides.
The young gentlemen complained of the patches
of starch grimed to their collars, and the streaks
of black coal ironed into their dickies, while one
week every pocket-handkerchief in the house was
starched so stiff that you might as well have carried
an earthen plate in your pocket; the tumblers
looked muddy; the plates were never washed clean
or wiped dry unless I attended to each one; and
as to eating and drinking, we experienced a variety
that we had not before considered possible.

At length the old woman vanished from the
stage, and was succeeded by a knowing, active, capable
damsel, with a temper like a steel-trap, who
remained with me just one week, and then went off
in a fit of spite. To her succeeded a rosy, good-natured,
merry lass, who broke the crockery, burned

the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and
knocked down everything that stood in her way
about the house, without at all discomposing herself
about the matter. One night she took the
stopper from a barrel of molasses, and came singing
off up stairs, while the molasses ran soberly
out into the cellar-bottom all night, till by morning
it was in a state of universal emancipation. Having
done this, and also despatched an entire set of
tea-things by letting the waiter fall, she one day
made her disappearance.

Then, for a wonder, there fell to my lot a tidy,
efficient-trained English girl; pretty, and genteel,
and neat, and knowing how to do everything, and
with the sweetest temper in the world. “Now,”
said I to myself, “I shall rest from my labours.”
Everything about the house began to go right, and
looked as clean and genteel as Mary's own pretty
self. But, alas! this period of repose was interrupted
by the vision of a clever, trim-looking young
man, who for some weeks could be heard scraping
his boots at the kitchen door every Sunday night;
and at last Miss Mary, with some smiling and
blushing, gave me to understand that she must leave
in two weeks.

“Why, Mary,” said I, feeling a little mischievous,
“don't you like the place?”

“Oh, yes, ma'am.”

“Then why do you look for another?”

“I am not going to another place.”

“What, Mary, are you going to learn a trade?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Why, then, what do you mean to do?”

“I expect to keep house myself, ma'am,” said
she, laughing and blushing.

“Oh ho!” said I, “that is it;” and so, in two
weeks, I lost the best little girl in the world: peace
to her memory.

After this came an interregnum, which put me in
mind of the chapter in Chronicles that I used to
read with great delight when a child, where Basha,
and Elah, and Tibni, and Zimri, and Omri, one after
the other came on to the throne of Israel, all in
the compass of half a dozen verses. We had one
old woman who stayed a week, and went away with
the misery in her tooth; one young woman who
ran away and got married; one cook, who came at
night and went off before light in the morning; one
very clever girl, who stayed a month, and then went
away because her mother was sick; another, who
stayed six weeks, and was taken with the fever herself;
and during all this time, who can speak the
damage and destruction wrought in the domestic
paraphernalia by passing through these multiplied
hands?

What shall we do? Shall we go for slavery, or

shall we give up houses, have no furniture to take
care of, keep merely a bag of meal, a porridge-pot,
and a pudding-stick, and sit in our tent door
in real patriarchal independence? What shall
we do?