delightful kind of conversation this must be. For, if you are a proper housewife, you do not just say to the cook, “Kindly provide meals, as usual, for the household to-day. That is, in fact, what you are paid to do. So do it, and let me hear no more about it.” Instead, you go to the larder and see what is in it. You find a piece of meat, and try to guess what it is. You say, “We will have that neck of mutton, or loin of beef ”(or whatever youthink it is) “roasted, boiled, or fricasseed, for lunch. Then, of what is left of it, you will make some nice cutlets for dinner. Now how about sweets?”
Then you and the cook will settle down happily for a long gossip about sweets—a delightful topic. The cook says, “I had thought of a nice jam roll.” You say that you, for your part, had thought of something else, and so it goes on, like a drawing-room game, until you or the cook win, by sheer strength of will. Cooks usually have most of this, so they nearly always win. They can think of more reasons than you can why the thing suggested is impossible. They know there is not enough jam, or cream, or mushrooms, or breadcrumbs—not enough to make it
nice
, as it should be made. Rather would they suggest a nice apple charlotte. . . .
“Very well, cook, have it your own way. You have won, as usual. But it has been a good game, and I have Kept House.” That is what the good housewife (presumably) reflects as she leaves the kitchen.
Perhaps there is more to it than this; perhaps bills are also discussed, and butchers, and groceries, and the price of comestibles. No one who has not done it knows precisely what is done, or how. It is the cook’s hour, and the housewife’s, and no fifth ear overhears. Mrs. Garden, in the year 1887, had done it every day for thirty-one years. Whether as an Anglican, a Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, an Agnostic, a Quaker, an Irvingite, a Seventh-day Adventist, a Baptist, or an Ethicist, still she had daily Kept House. Magic phrase I What happens to houses unkept, Rome had idly asked. Mamma had shaken a dubious head. No house that she had ever heard of had been unkept.
16
UNA
UNA, staying in Essex with friends, contracted an engagement with a neighbouring young yeoman farmer, whom she used to meet out riding. The friends protested, dismayed at such a mésalliance having been arranged for under, so to speak, their auspices. But Una, now twenty-three, grandly beautiful, alternately lazy and amazingly energetic, looking like Diana or a splendid young Ceres, with no desires, it seemed, but for the healthy pleasures of the moment, held firmly to her decision. She loved her Ted, and loved, too, the life he led. She would wed him without delay. She went home and told her family so.
Papa said, “If you are sure of your love and his, that is all that matters, little Una ”(with the faint note of deprecation, even of remorse, with which he was wont to say her name, in these days when he believed once again in the Athanasian creed; for, though he might have bestowed this name in the most Trinitarian orthodoxy, the fact was that he had not; it had been a badge of incomplete belief).
Mamma said, “Well, child, you were bound to marry some one in the country. I always knew that. And you won’t mind that he and his people eat and talk a little differently from you, so I think you’ll be happy. Bless you.”
To Rome mamma said, “There’s one thing about Una; she always knows what she wants and goes straight for it. I wish she could have married a gentleman, but this young fellow is a good mate for her, I believe. She won’t care about the differences. There’s no humbug about Una. She’s the modern girl all through. Splendid, direct, capable children they are.”
That was in the year 1887, and mamma did not know that in the nineteen twenties there would still be girls like Una, and people would still be calling them the modern girl, and saying how direct, admirable and wonderful, or how
Then you and the cook will settle down happily for a long gossip about sweets—a delightful topic. The cook says, “I had thought of a nice jam roll.” You say that you, for your part, had thought of something else, and so it goes on, like a drawing-room game, until you or the cook win, by sheer strength of will. Cooks usually have most of this, so they nearly always win. They can think of more reasons than you can why the thing suggested is impossible. They know there is not enough jam, or cream, or mushrooms, or breadcrumbs—not enough to make it
nice
, as it should be made. Rather would they suggest a nice apple charlotte. . . .
“Very well, cook, have it your own way. You have won, as usual. But it has been a good game, and I have Kept House.” That is what the good housewife (presumably) reflects as she leaves the kitchen.
Perhaps there is more to it than this; perhaps bills are also discussed, and butchers, and groceries, and the price of comestibles. No one who has not done it knows precisely what is done, or how. It is the cook’s hour, and the housewife’s, and no fifth ear overhears. Mrs. Garden, in the year 1887, had done it every day for thirty-one years. Whether as an Anglican, a Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, an Agnostic, a Quaker, an Irvingite, a Seventh-day Adventist, a Baptist, or an Ethicist, still she had daily Kept House. Magic phrase I What happens to houses unkept, Rome had idly asked. Mamma had shaken a dubious head. No house that she had ever heard of had been unkept.
16
UNA
UNA, staying in Essex with friends, contracted an engagement with a neighbouring young yeoman farmer, whom she used to meet out riding. The friends protested, dismayed at such a mésalliance having been arranged for under, so to speak, their auspices. But Una, now twenty-three, grandly beautiful, alternately lazy and amazingly energetic, looking like Diana or a splendid young Ceres, with no desires, it seemed, but for the healthy pleasures of the moment, held firmly to her decision. She loved her Ted, and loved, too, the life he led. She would wed him without delay. She went home and told her family so.
Papa said, “If you are sure of your love and his, that is all that matters, little Una ”(with the faint note of deprecation, even of remorse, with which he was wont to say her name, in these days when he believed once again in the Athanasian creed; for, though he might have bestowed this name in the most Trinitarian orthodoxy, the fact was that he had not; it had been a badge of incomplete belief).
Mamma said, “Well, child, you were bound to marry some one in the country. I always knew that. And you won’t mind that he and his people eat and talk a little differently from you, so I think you’ll be happy. Bless you.”
To Rome mamma said, “There’s one thing about Una; she always knows what she wants and goes straight for it. I wish she could have married a gentleman, but this young fellow is a good mate for her, I believe. She won’t care about the differences. There’s no humbug about Una. She’s the modern girl all through. Splendid, direct, capable children they are.”
That was in the year 1887, and mamma did not know that in the nineteen twenties there would still be girls like Una, and people would still be calling them the modern girl, and saying how direct, admirable and wonderful, or how
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