University of Virginia Library

6. VI.
THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK.

“MY dear Chris,” said my wife, “is n't it time
to be writing the next `House and Home
Paper'?”

I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels
luxuriously propped on an ottoman, reading for the
two-hundredth time Hawthorne's “Mosses from an
Old Manse,” or his “Twice-Told Tales,” I forget
which, — I only know that these books constitute
my cloud-land, where I love to sail away in dreamy
quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and
flour, the rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of
gold. What do all these things matter, as seen from
those enchanted gardens in Padua where the weird
Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gorgeous
daughter fills us with the light and magic of
her presence, and saddens us with the shadowy allegoric
mystery of her preternatural destiny? But my
wife represents the positive forces of time, place, and
number in our family, and, having also a chronological
head, she knows the day of the month, and therefore

gently reminded me that by inevitable dates the
time drew near for preparing my — which is it now,
May or June number?

“Well, my dear, you are right,” I said, as by an exertion
I came head-uppermost, and laid down the
fascinating volume. “Let me see, what was I to
write about?”

“Why, you remember you were to answer that letter
from the lady who does her own work.”

“Enough!” said I, seizing the pen with alacrity;
“you have hit the exact phrase: —

“`The lady who does her own work.'”

America is the only country where such a title is
possible, — the only country where there is a class of
women who may be described as ladies who do their
own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education,
cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and
ideas, who, without any very material additions or
changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle
of the Old World or the New.

What I have said is, that the existence of such a
class is a fact peculiar to American society, a clear,
plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine
of universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of
however mixed ingredients their ranks might have

been composed, and however imbued with the spirit
of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the
wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level;
the gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side
by side with the ploughman, and thews and sinews
rose in the market. “A man was deemed honorable
in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high
trees of the forest.” So in the interior domestic
circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin together,
became companions, and sometimes the maid,
as the more accomplished and stronger, took precedence
of the mistress. It became natural and unavoidable
that children should begin to work as early
as they were capable of it. The result was a generation
of intelligent people brought up to labor from
necessity, but turning on the problem of labor the
acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone
in sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her
superiority by skill and contrivance. If she could
not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods
which made lifting the pail unnecessary, — if she
could not take a hundred steps without weariness,
she could make twenty answer the purpose of a hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced
into New England, but it never suited the genius of
the people, never struck deep root, or spread so as to

choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were
opposed to it from conscientious principle, — many
from far-sighted thrift, and from a love of thoroughness
and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled
work of barbarians. People, having once felt
the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which
came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could
not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus it came
to pass that for many years the rural population of
New England, as a general rule, did their own work,
both out doors and in. If there were a black man or
black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically
only the helps, following humbly the steps of master
and mistress, and used by them as instruments of
lightening certain portions of their toil. The master
and mistress with their children were the head
workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country,
because years ago the first English travellers
found that the class of persons by them denominated
servants were in America denominated help or helpers.
But the term was the very best exponent of the
state of society. There were few servants, in the
European sense of the word; there was a society of
educated workers, where all were practically equal,
and where, if there was a deficiency in one family
and an excess in another, a helper, not a servant, was

hired. Mrs. Browne, who has six sons and no daughters,
enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has
six daughters and no sons. She borrows a daughter,
and pays her good wages to help in her domestic toil,
and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones.
These two young people go into the families in which
they are to be employed in all respects as equals and
companions, and so the work of the community is
equalized. Hence arose, and for many years continued,
a state of society more nearly solving than
any other ever did the problem of combining the
highest culture of the mind with the highest culture
of the muscles and the physical faculties.

Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome,
strong females, rising each day to their in-door
work with cheerful alertness, — one to sweep the
room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared
the breakfast for the father and brothers who were
going out to manly labor; and they chatted meanwhile
of books, studies, embroidery, discussed the last
new poem, or some historical topic started by graver
reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off
the next week. They spun with the book tied to
the distaff; they wove; they did all manner of fine
needlework; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in
short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention,
and perfect health, set themselves to any

work they had ever read or thought of. A bride in
those days was married with sheets and table-cloths
of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toiletcovers
wrought in divers embroidery by her own and
her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work done
in our days by girls who have nothing else to do will
not equal what was done by these, who performed besides,
among them, the whole work of the family.

For many years these habits of life characterized
the majority of our rural towns. They still exist
among a class respectable in numbers and position,
though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction
and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness
of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above
all things — lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract
that exertion which brings out all the powers
of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but
practicaly most people do all they can to get rid of
it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than
circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not
write this article, were not the publication-day hard
on my heels. I should read Hawthorne and Emerson
and Holmes, and dream in my arm-chair, and
project in the clouds those lovely unwritten stories
that curl and veer and change like mist-wreaths in the
sun. So, also, however dignified, however invigorating,
however really desirable are habits of life involving

daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon
at every one's elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to
bear its weight with sullen, discontented murmurs.

I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak
very moderately, a hundred houses where these humble
lines will be read and discussed, where there are
no servants except the ladies of the household. I
will venture to say, also, that these households, many
of them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and
refined elegance to many which are conducted by the
ministration of domestics. I will venture to assert,
furthermore, that these same ladies who live thus find
quite as much time for reading, letter-writing, drawing,
embroidery, and fancy-work as the women of
families otherwise arranged. I am quite certain that
they would be found on an average to be in the enjoyment
of better health, and more of that sense of
capability and vitality which gives one confidence in
one's ability to look into life and meet it with cheerful
courage, than three quarters of the women who
keep servants, — and that on the whole their domestic
establishment is regulated more exactly to their
mind, their food prepared and served more to their
taste. And yet, with all this, I will not venture to
assert that they are satisfied with this way of living,
and that they would not change it forthwith, if they
could. They have a secret feeling all the while that

they are being abused, that they are working harder
than they ought to, and that women who live in their
houses like boarders, who have only to speak and it is
done, are the truly enviable ones. One after another
of their associates, as opportunity offers and means
increase, deserts the ranks, and commits her domestic
affairs to the hands of hired servants. Self-respect
takes the alarm. Is it altogether genteel to live as
we do? To be sure, we are accustomed to it; we
have it all systematized and arranged; the work of
our own hands suits us better than any we can hire;
in fact, when we do hire, we are discontented and uncomfortable,
— for who will do for us what we will do
for ourselves? But when we have company! there 's
the rub, to get out all our best things and put them
back, — to cook the meals and wash the dishes ingloriously,
— and to make all appear as if we did n't
do it, and had servants like other people.

There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect,
— an unwillingness to face with dignity the
actual facts and necessities of our situation in life, —
this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature
of the case. It is the same sort of pride which makes
Smilax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves,
and get up a circuitous dinner-party on English principles,
to entertain a friend from England. Because
the friend in England lives in such and such a style,

he must make believe for a day that he lives so too,
when in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment
equal to a removal or a fire, and threatens the
total extinction of Mrs. Smilax. Now there are two
principles of hospitality that people are very apt to
overlook. One is, that their guests like to be made
at home, and treated with confidence; and another is,
that people are always interested in the details of a
way of life that is new to them. The Englishman
comes to America as weary of his old, easy, family-coach
life as you can be of yours; he wants to see
something new under the sun, — something American;
and forthwith we all bestir ourselves to give him
something as near as we can fancy exactly like what
he is already tired of. So city-people come to the
country, not to sit in the best parlor, and to see the
nearest imitation of city-life, but to lie on the haymow,
to swing in the barn, to form intimacy with the
pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to eat baked potatoes
exactly on the critical moment when they are done,
from the oven of the cooking-stove, — and we remark,
en passant, that nobody has ever truly eaten a baked
potato, unless he has seized it at that precise and fortunate
moment.

I fancy you now, my friends, whom I have in my
eye. You are three happy women together. You are
all so well that you know not how it feels to be sick.

You are used to early rising, and would not lie in bed,
if you could. Long years of practice have made you
familiar with the shortest, neatest, most expeditious
method of doing every household office, so that really
for the greater part of the time in your house there
seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise
in the morning and despatch your husband, father,
and brothers to the farm or wood-lot; you go sociably
about chatting with each other, while you skim the
milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The forenoon
is long; it 's ten to one that all the so-called
morning work is over, and you have leisure for an
hour's sewing or reading before it is time to start the
dinner preparations. By two o'clock your house-work
is done, and you have the long afternoon for books,
needlework, or drawing, — for perhaps there is among
you one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you
reads aloud while the others sew, and you manage in
that way to keep up with a great deal of reading. I
see on your book-shelves Prescott, Macaulay, Irving,
besides the lighter fry of poems and novels, and, if
I mistake not, the friendly covers of the “Atlantic.”
When you have company, you invite Mrs. Smith or
Brown or Jones to tea; you have no trouble; they
come early, with their knitting or sewing; your particular
crony sits with you by your polished stove while you
watch the baking of those light biscuits and tea-rusks
for which you are so famous, and Mrs. Somebodyelse
chats with your sister, who is spreading the table
with your best china in the best room. When tea is
over, there is plenty of volunteering to help you wash
your pretty India teacups, and get them back into the
cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in
all this, though you have taken down the best things
and put them back, because you have done all without
anxiety or effort, among those who would do precisely
the same, if you were their visitors.

But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her
pretty daughter to spend a week with you, and forthwith
you are troubled. Your youngest, Fanny, visited
them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook
and chambermaid, and the servant in white gloves that
waits on table. You say in your soul, “What shall we
do? they never can be contented to live as we do;
how shall we manage?” And now you long for servants.

This is the very time that you should know that
Mrs. Simmons is tired to death of her fine establishment,
and weighed down with the task of keeping the
peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly
loving her ease, and hating strife; and yet last week
she had five quarrels to settle between her invaluable
cook and the other members of her staff, because
invaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how to get

up state-dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries
which her mistress knows nothing about, asserts the
usual right of spoiled favorites to insult all her neighbors
with impunity, and rule with a rod of iron over
the whole house. Anything that is not in the least
like her own home and ways of living will be a blessed
relief and change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet
house, your delicate cookery, your cheerful morning
tasks, if you will let her follow you about, and sit
and talk with you while you are at your work, will
all seem a pleasant contrast to her own life. Of
course, if it came to the case of offering to change
lots in life, she would not do it; but very likely she
thinks she would, and sighs over and pities herself,
and thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how
snugly and securely you live, and wishes she were as
untrammelled and independent as you. And she is
more than half right; for, with her helpless habits,
her utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning
the reciprocal relations of milk, eggs, butter, saleratus,
soda, and yeast, she is completely the victim and slave
of the person she pretends to rule.

Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and rehearsals
in her family. After many trials, she at last
engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect
treasure, — neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited.
The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven.

Illusive bliss! The new-comer proves to be no favorite
with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates evolve
the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur of
distant thunder in the kitchen; then a day or two of
sulky silence, in which the atmosphere seems heavy
with an approaching storm. At last comes the climax.
The parlor-door flies open during breakfast. Enter
seamstress, in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook with a
face swollen and red with wrath, who tersely introduces
the subject-matter of the drama in a voice trembling
with rage.

“Would you be plased, Ma'am, to suit yerself with
another cook? Me week will be up next Tuesday,
and I want to be going.”

“Why, Bridget, what 's the matter?”

“Matter enough, Ma'am! I niver could live with
them Cork girls in a house, nor I won't; them as likes
the Cork girls is welcome for all me; but it 's not for
the likes of me to live with them, and she been in the
kitchen a-upsettin' of me gravies with her flat-irons
and things.”

Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of
denial, and the altercation wages fast and furious, and
poor, little, delicate Mrs. Simmons stands like a kitten
in a thunder-storm in the midst of a regular Irish row.

Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows
that a great dinner is to come off Wednesday, and

that her mistress has not the smallest idea how to
manage it, and that, therefore, whatever happens, she
must be conciliated.

Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor
Mrs. Simmons dismisses her seamstress with longing
looks. She suited her mistress exactly, but she did n't
suit cook!

Now, if Mrs: Simmons had been brought up in early
life with the experience that you have, she would be
mistress in her own house. She would quietly say
to Madam Cook, “If my family arrangements do not
suit you, you can leave. I can see to the dinner
myself.” And she could do it. Her well-trained muscles
would not break down under a little extra work;
her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity with everything
that is to be done would enable her at once to
make cooks of any bright girls of good capacity who
might still be in her establishment; and, above all,
she would feel herself mistress in her own house.
This is what would come of an experience in doing
her own work as you do. She who can at once put
her own trained hand to the machine in any spot
where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave
of a coarse, vulgar Irishwoman.

So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be
expected of servants in a given time, and what ought
to be expected of a given amount of provisions, poor

Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one
six months in her life she had been a practical cook,
and had really had the charge of the larder, she would
not now be haunted, as she constantly is, by an indefinite
apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps
of the disappearance of provisions through secret channels
of relationship and favoritism. She certainly
could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity
of so many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens
of eggs, not to mention spices and wine, as are
daily required for the accomplishment of Madam
Cook's purposes. But though now she does suspect
and apprehend, she cannot speak with certainty. She
cannot say, “I have made these things. I know
exactly what they require. I have done this and that
myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a
certain time.” It is said that women who have been
accustomed to doing their own work become hard
mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the
ground they stand on, — they are less open to imposition,
— they can speak and act in their own houses
more as those “having authority,” and therefore are
less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less
willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness.
Their general error lies in expecting that any servant
ever will do as well for them as they will do for themselves,
and that an untrained, undisciplined human
being ever can do house-work, or any other work, with
the neatness and perfection that a person of trained
intelligence can. It has been remarked in our armies
that the men of cultivation, though bred in delicate
and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships
of camp-life better and longer than rough laborers.
The reason is, that an educated mind knows how to
use and save its body, to work it and spare it, as an
uneducated mind cannot; and so the college-bred
youth brings himself safely through fatigues which
kill the unreflective laborer. Cultivated, intelligent
women, who are brought up to do the work of their
own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make
the head save the wear of the muscles. By forethought,
contrivance, system, and arrangement, they
lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less
expense of time and strength than others. The old
New England motto, Get your work done up in the
forenoon, applied to an amount of work which would
keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to
sunset.

A lady living in one of our obscure New England
towns, where there were no servants to be hired, at
last by sending to a distant city succeeded in procuring
a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense
bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain.
In one fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos

and old Night in the kitchen and through the house,
that her mistress, a delicate woman, encumbered with
the care of young children, began seriously to think
that she made more work each day than she performed,
and dismissed her. What was now to be
done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring
farmer was going to be married in six months, and
wanted a little ready money for her trousseau. The
lady was informed that Miss So-and-so would come
to her, not as a servant, but as hired “help.” She
was fain to accept any help with gladness. Forthwith
came into the family-circle a tall, well-dressed young
person, grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not in
the least presuming, who sat at the family-table and
observed all its decorums with the modest self-possession
of a lady. The new-comer took a survey of the
labors of a family of ten members, including four or
five young children, and, looking, seemed at once to
throw them into system, matured her plans, arranged
her hours of washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, rose
early, moved deftly, and in a single day the slatternly
and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance
that so often strikes one in New England
farm-houses. The work seemed to be all gone. Everything
was nicely washed, brightened, put in place,
and stayed in place; the floors, when cleaned, remained
clean; the work was always done, and not
doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat neatly
dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing
letters to her betrothed, or sewing on her bridal outfit.
Such is the result of employing those who have been
brought up to do their own work. That tall, fine-looking
girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a
fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will,
we fear, prove rather an exacting mistress to Irish
Biddy and Bridget; but she will never be threatened
by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or
two have tried the experiment.

Having written thus far on my article, I laid it
aside till evening, when, as usual, I was saluted by
the inquiry, “Has papa been writing anything to-day?”
and then followed loud petitions to hear it;
and so I read as far, reader, as you have.

“Well, papa,” said Jenny, “what are you meaning
to make out there? Do you really think it would be
best for us all to try to go back to that old style of
living you describe? After all, you have shown only
the dark side of an establishment with servants, and
the bright side of the other way of living. Mamma
does not have such trouble with her servants; matters
have always gone smoothly in our family; and if we
are not such wonderful girls as those you describe,
yet we may make pretty good housekeepers on the
modern system, after all.”

“You don't know all the troubles your mamma has
had in your day,” said my wife. “I have often, in the
course of my family-history, seen the day when I have
heartily wished for the strength and ability to manage
my household matters as my grandmother of notable
memory managed hers. But I fear that those remarkable
women of the olden times are like the ancient
painted glass, — the art of making them is lost; my
mother was less than her mother, and I am less than
my mother.”

“And Marianne and I come out entirely at the
little end of the horn,” said Jenny, laughing; “yet I
wash the breakfast-cups and dust the parlors, and have
always fancied myself a notable housekeeper.”

“It is just as I told you,” I said. “Human nature
is always the same. Nobody ever is or does more
than circumstances force him to be and do. Those
remarkable women of old were made by circumstances.
There were, comparatively speaking, no servants to be
had, and so children were trained to habits of industry
and mechanical adroitness from the cradle, and
every household process was reduced to the very minimum
of labor. Every step required in a process was
counted, every movement calculated; and she who took
ten steps, when one would do, lost her reputation for
`faculty.' Certainly such an early drill was of use in
developing the health and the bodily powers, as well

as in giving precision to the practical mental faculties.
All household economies were arranged with equal
niceness in those thoughtful minds. A trained housekeeper
knew just how many sticks of hickory of a
certain size were required to heat her oven, and how
many of each different kind of wood. She knew by
a sort of intuition just what kinds of food would yield
the most palatable nutriment with the least outlay of
accessories in cooking. She knew to a minute the
time when each article must go into and be withdrawn
from her oven; and if she could only lie in her chamber
and direct, she could guide an intelligent child
through the processes with mathematical certainty. It
is impossible, however, that anything but early training
and long experience can produce these results,
and it is earnestly to be wished that the grandmothers
of New England had only written down their experiences
for our children; they would have been a mine
of maxims and traditions, better than any other traditions
of the elders which we know of.”

“One thing I know,” said Marianne, — “and that
is, I wish I had been brought up so, and knew all that
I should, and had all the strength and adroitness that
those women had. I should not dread to begin housekeeping,
as I now do. I should feel myself independent.
I should feel that I knew how to direct my
servants, and what it was reasonable and proper to

expect of them; and then, as you say, I should n't
be dependent on all their whims and caprices of temper.
I dread those household storms, of all things.”

Silently pondering these anxieties of the young
expectant housekeeper, I resumed my pen, and concluded
my paper as follows.

In this country, our democratic institutions have
removed the superincumbent pressure which in the
Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit.
They come here feeling that this is somehow a land
of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of
what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw,
untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder is, that,
with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the
Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness,
there should be the measure of comfort and success
there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long
as things are so, there will be constant changes and
interruptions in every domestic establishment, and
constantly recurring interregnums when the mistress
must put her own hand to the work, whether the hand
be a trained or an untrained one. As matters now
are, the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest.
She has very little strength, — no experience to teach
her how to save her strength. She knows nothing
experimentally of the simplest processes necessary to

keep her family comfortably fed and clothed; and she
has a way of looking at all these things which makes
them particularly hard and distasteful to her. She
does not escape being obliged to do house-work at
intervals, but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused
way, that makes it twice as hard and disagreeable
as it need be.

Now what I have to say is, that, if every young
woman learned to do house-work and cultivated her
practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first
place, be much more likely to keep her servants, and,
in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would
avoid all that wear and tear of the nervous system
which comes from constant ill-success in those departments
on which family health and temper mainly
depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our American
life which require a peculiar training. Why not
face it sensibly?

The second thing I have to say is, that our land is
now full of motorpathic institutions to which women
are sent at great expense to have hired operators
stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They lie
for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed,
and all the different muscles of the body worked for
them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the
powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite
as cheerful and less expensive a process, if young

girls from early life developed the muscles in sweeping,
dusting, ironing, rubbing furniture, and all the
multiplied domestic processes which our grandmothers
knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified
the intervals with spinning on the great and
little wheel, never came to need the gymnastics of
Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which
really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor
economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow
feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for
us? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in
a week went over every movement that any gymnast
has invented, and went over them to some productive
purpose too.

Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain, if those
ladies who have learned and practise the invaluable
accomplishment of doing their own work will know
their own happiness and dignity, and properly value
their great acquisition, even though it may have been
forced upon them by circumstances.