Читать книгу Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea - Marion Harland - Страница 4

Table of Contents

I should be indeed flattered could I believe that you hail with as much pleasure as I do the renewal of the “Common-Sense Talks,” to which I first invited you four years ago. For I have much to say to you in the same free-masonic, free-and-easy strain in which you indulged me then.

It is a wild March night. Winter and Summer, Spring-time and Autumn, the wind sings, or plains at my sitting-room window. To-night its shout is less fierce than jocund to my ear, for it says, between the castanet passages of hail and sleet, that neither friend nor bore will interrupt our conference. Shutters and curtains are closed; the room is still, bright, and warm, and we are no longer strangers.

The poorest man of my acquaintance counts his money by the million, has a superb mansion he calls “home,” a wife and beautiful children who call him “husband” and “father.” He has friends by the score, and admirers by the hundred, for human nature has not abated one jot in prudential sycophancy since the Psalmist summed up a volume of satirical truth in the pretended “aside”—“and men will praise thee when thou doest well unto thyself.” For all that, he of whom I write is a pauper, inasmuch as he makes his boast that he never experienced the emotion of gratitude. He has worked his own way in the world, he is wont to say: has never had helping hand from mortal man or woman. It is a part of his religion to pay for all he gets, and never to ask a favor. Nevertheless, he confesses, with a complacent smirk that would be amusing were it not so pitiable an exhibition of his real beggary—“that he would like to know what it feels like to be grateful—just for the sake of the novel sensation!”

Poor wretch! I am sorry I introduced him here and now. There is a savage growl in the wind; our snuggery is a trifle less pleasant since I began to talk of him. Although I only used him as a means of “leading up” to the expression of my own exceeding and abundant wealth of gratitude to you, dear Reader and Friend. If I had only time and strength enough to bear me through the full relation of the riches and happiness you have conferred upon me! There are letters in that desk over there between the windows that have caused me to look down with a sense of compassionate superiority upon Nathan Rothschild and the Duke of Brunswick. I am too modest (or miserly) to show them; but now and then, when threatened with a fit of self-depreciation, I come in here, lock the door, stop the keyhole, get them out and read them anew. For three days thereafter I walk on air. For the refrain of all is the same. “You have been a help to me!” And only He who knows the depths, sad and silent, or rich and glad, of the human heart can understand how much I wanted to help you. Verily, I have in this matter had my reward. Again, I say, I am grateful. Had I “helped” you a hundred times as well as I have, I should still be your debtor.

May I read you somewhat copious extracts from a letter I received, the other day, from a wide-awake New England girl? Not only wide-awake, but refined, original and sprightly; a girl whom though I have never seen her face, I know to be a worker in life as well as a thinker. She says some things much better than I could have put them, and others as noteworthy, which I wish to answer—or, try to answer—since I recognize in her a representative of a class, not very large, perhaps, but certainly one of the most respectable and honored of all those for whom I write the “Common-Sense Series.” I should like to give the letter in full, from the graphic touches with which she sketches herself, “sitting upon the kitchen-table, reading ‘Common Sense in the Household,’ ” one bright morning, when herself and sisters had taken possession of the kitchen to make preparation for “an old New England tea-party,” at which their only assistant was to be “a small maiden we keep to have the privilege of waiting upon, and doing our own work into the bargain; who, in waiting at table, was never known to pass anything on the right side, and has an invincible objection to learning how”—to the conclusion, over against which she has, like the frank woman she is, set her name and address in full.

But the modesty (or miserliness) aforesaid rises in sudden arms to forbid the reproduction at my hand of certain portions of the epistle, and it would be neither kind nor honorable to set down in prospective print her pictures of home life and dramatis personæ. Steering clear, when possible, of these visible rocks and sunken reefs, I will indulge you and myself with a part of that which has added sensibly to my treasures—not debt—mind you! of gratitude.

“I want to tell you how much your compilation does for those poor mortals whom it rescues from the usual class of cook-books.”

A reef, you see, before we are out of harbor! We will skip two pages to get at one of the well-said things I spoke of just now.

“You speak of ‘company china’ and ‘company manners.’ I detest company anything! This longing for show and display is the curse and failing of Americans. I abhor the phrase ‘Anything will do for us.’ I do not believe that a person can be true clear through and without affectations who can put on her politeness with her company china any more than a real lady can deliberately put on stockings with holes in them. I seriously think that, so far from its being self-sacrifice to put up with the meanest every day, and hospitality to use the best for company, it is a positive damage to one’s sense of moral fitness. I knew a woman once who used to surprise me with the deceptions in which she unconsciously and needlessly indulged. This ceased to be a surprise when I saw her wear a twenty-dollar hat and a pair of unmended hose, and not seem to know that it was not quite the proper thing.”

Orthodox, you perceive, thus far, is our New England correspondent. Honest and outspoken in her hatred of shams and “dodges” of all kinds; quick to see analogies and deduce conclusions. Now comes the pith of the communication:—

“I wish you could set me right on one point that often perplexes me. Is housekeeping worth while? I do not despise the necessary work. On the contrary, I hold that anything well done is worth doing. But with the materials this country affords, can housekeeping be well done? Is it worth while for a woman to neglect the talents she has, and can use to her own and her friends’ advantage, in order to have a perfectly appointed house? to wear herself out chasing around after servants and children that things may be always done well, and at the stated time? I have seen so many women of brains wear out and die in harness, trying to do their self-imposed duty; to see that the large establishments their husbands’ wealth, position and wishes place in their care shall be perfect in detail. And these women could have been so happy and enjoyed the life they threw away, if they had only known how not to keep house. While, on the other hand, with a small income and one servant the matter is so much worse. I should not mind if one could ever say ‘It is a well-finished thing!’ But you only finish one thing to begin over again, and so on, until you die and have nothing to show for your life’s work. It looks hopeless to me, I confess. I wish you would show me the wisdom—or the folly of it all.”

Now, I do not propose to show the folly of anything such as a girl that writes. She is a sincere inquirer after truth. When her letter came I tucked it under my inkstand, and said, “There is a text ready-written, and in clerkly hand, for my next ‘Familiar Talk!’ ” She is altogether too sensible and has too true a sense of humor to be offended when I tell her, as I shall, that her lament over unfinished work reminded me comically of the story of the poor fellow who cut his throat, because, as he stated in his letter of explanation and farewell—“He was tired of buttoning and unbuttoning!” There is a deal that is specious in the threadbare adage set forth in dolesome rhyme:—

“Man’s work is from sun to sun,

But woman’s work is never done.”

Nothing in this world, or in all time, is finished. Or, if finished, it is not well with it. We hear this truth reiterated in every stroke of the artisan’s hammer, employed—from the day he enters upon his apprenticeship to that on which the withered hand can no longer, by reason of age, lift the ponderous emblem of his craft—in beating upon what looks to the observer of to-day like that which engaged him yesterday; which to the spectator of twenty to-morrows will seem the same as that which calls out the full strength of the brawny arm this hour. When he dies, who will care to chronicle the circumstance that he made, in the course of a long and busy life, forty thousand horseshoes, or assisted in the manufacture of one thousand engine-boilers? We learn the same lesson from the patient eyes of the teacher while drilling one generation after another in the details that are the tedious forging of the wards of the key of knowledge;—the rudiments of “the three R’s,” which, laugh or groan as we may, must be committed to memories more or less reluctant. They were never, I am sure, “learned by heart.” It is well, so far as they are concerned, that the old phrase has gone out of fashion. We read the like tale of ever-renewed endeavor in the bent brows and whitening locks of brain-toilers, the world over. Nature were a false teacher were this otherwise. Birth, maturity, death; first, the blade then the ear, and, after the full corn in the ear, ripening and destruction for the good of man or beast, or decay in the earth that resurrection may come to the buried seed. Seed-time and harvest, summer and winter—none of these are “finished things.” God hold our eyes from seeing many things that are!

A life, the major part of which is spent in sweeping, that the dust may re-settle; in washing, that clothes may be again worn and soiled; in cooking, that the food prepared may be consumed; in cleansing plates and dishes, to put back upon the table that they may return, in grease and stickiness, to the hardly-dried pan and towel, does seem to the superficial spectator, ignoble even for the wife of a struggling mechanic or ill-paid clerk. But I insist that the fault is not that Providence has made her a woman, but that Providence has made and kept her poor. Her husband at his bench, or, rounding his shoulders over his ledger, has as valid cause of complaint of never done work. Is there any reason why he should stand more patiently in his lot, waiting to see what God the Lord will do, than she?

But—“Is it worth while for a woman to neglect the talents she has, and can use to her own and her friends’ advantage, in order to have a perfectly-appointed house, etc.?”

Certain visions that stir me to reverential admiration, arise before me, at that query. I see Emily Bronté reading German while she kneads the batch of home-made bread; Charlotte, laying down the pen upon an unfinished page of Shirley, to steal into the kitchen when poor blind Tabby’s back is turned, and bear off the potatoes the superannuated servant insists upon peeling every day, that the “dainty fingers” may extract the black “eyes” the faithful old creature cannot see. I see the Greek grammar fixed open in the rack above Elihu Burritt’s forge; and Sherman, reciting to himself by day over his lapstone and last, the lessons he learned at night after work-hours were over. I recollect that the biographer of the “marvellous boy” has written of him—“Twelve hours he was chained to the office; i.e., from eight in the morning until eight at night, the dinner-hour only excepted; and in the house he was confined to the kitchen; slept with the foot-boy, and was subjected to indignities of a like nature. Yet here it was, during this life of base humiliation, that Thomas Chatterton worked out the splendid creations of his imagination. In less than three years of the life of a poor attorney’s apprentice, fed in the kitchen and lodged with the foot-boy, did he here achieve an immortality such as the whole life of not one in millions is sufficient to create.”

Note here, too, that Chatterton died of a broken heart; was not driven to suicide by hard work.

Please be patient with me while I tell you of an incident that seems to me pretty, and comes in patly just at this point.

I have a friend—my heart bounds with prideful pleasure while I call her such!—who is the most scholarly woman, and also the best housekeeper I know. She is, moreover, one of the sweetest of our native poets—one to whose genius and true womanhood even royalty has done grateful honor; a woman who ‘has used her’ every ‘talent to her own and her friends’ advantage’ in more ways than one. She had a call one day from a neighbor, an eminent professor, learned in dead and spoken tongues. In the passage of the conversation from trifles to weightier matters, it chanced that she differed in opinion from him upon two points. He refused to believe that potatoes could ever be made into a palatable sweet by any ingenuity of the culinary art, and he took exception to her rendering of a certain passage of Virgil. In the course of the afternoon he received from his fair neighbor a folded paper and a covered dish. Opening the former, he read a metrical translation of the disputed passage, so beautiful and striking he could no longer doubt that she had discovered the poet’s meaning more truly than had he. The dish contained a delicious potato custard.

A foolscap page of rhymed thanks went back with the empty pudding-dish. It was mere doggerel, for the pundit was no poet, and meant his note for nothing more than jingle and fun, but his tribute of admiration was sincere. I forget the form of its expression, except that the concluding lines ran somewhat thus:—

“From Virgil and potatoes, too,

You bring forth treasures rich and new.”

Am I harsh and unsympathetic when I say, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, if a woman has genuine talent, she will find time to improve it even amid the clatter of household machinery? I could multiply instances by the thousand to prove this, did time permit.

But what of the poor rich woman who throws away her life in the vain endeavor to bring servants and children “up to time?” Two things. First, she dies of worry, not of work—a distinction with a difference.

Second, if she possess one-half enough strength of mind and strength of purpose to have made herself mistress of a single art or science, or sufficient tact to sustain her as a successful leader in society, or the degree of administrative ability requisite to enable her to conduct rightly a public enterprise of any note, be it benevolent, literary, or social, she ought to be competent to the government of her household; to administer domestic affairs with such wise energy as should insure order and punctuality without self-immolation.

“If they have run with the footmen and they have wearied them, how shall they contend with horses?”

Let us look at this matter fairly, and without prejudice on either side. I should contradict other of my written and spoken opinions; stultify myself beyond the recovery of your respect or my own, were I to deny that more and wider avenues of occupation should be opened to woman than are now conceded as their right by the popular verdict. But not because the duties of the housewife are overburdensome or degrading. On the contrary, I would have forty trained cooks where there is now one; would make her who looketh diligently to the ways of her household worthy, as in Solomon’s day, of double honor. Of co-operative laundries I have much hope. I would have washing-day become a tradition of the past to be shuddered over by every emancipated family in the land. In “co-operative housekeeping,” in the sense in which it is generally understood, I have scanty faith as a cure for the general untowardness of what my sprightly correspondent styles “the materials this country affords.” Somebody must get the dinners and somebody superintend the getting-up of these. I honestly believe that the best method of reforming American domestic service and American cookery is by making the mistress of every home proficient in the art and a capable instructress of others. I know—no one better—how women who have never cared to beautify their own tables, or to study elegant variety in their bills of fare, who have railed at soups as “slops,” and entrées as “trash,” talk, after the year’s travel in foreign lands their husband’s earnings and their own pinching have gained for them. How they groan over native cookery and the bondage of native mistresses, and tell how cheaply and luxuriously one can live in dear Paris.

“Will the time ever come,” they cry, “when we, too, can sit at ease in our frescoed saloons surrounded by no end of artificial flowers and mirrors, and order our meals from a restaurant?”

To which I, from the depths of my home-loving heart, reply, “Heaven forbid!”

Have you ever thought how large a share the kitchen and dining-room have in forming the distinctive characteristics of the home? It is no marvel that the man who has had his dinners from an eating-house all his life should lack a word to describe that which symbolizes to the Anglo-Saxon all that is dearest and most sacred on earth. I avow, without a tinge of shame, that I soon tire, then sicken of restaurant and hotel dainties. I like the genuine wholesomeness of home-fare.

“Madame,” said a Frenchman whom I once met at an American watering-place, “one of my compatriots could produce one grand repast—one that should not want for the beautiful effects, with the contents of that pail—tub—bucket—of what the peoples here call the svill,” pointing to a mass of dinner débris set just without a side door.

“Monsieur,” I rejoined, with a grimace that matched his, “moi, je n’aime pas le svill!”

He was right, without doubt, in the implication that very much is thrown away as refuse which could be reproduced upon the table to the satisfaction and advantage of host and guest. Perhaps my imagination was more to blame than he for my unlucky recollection of his countrywoman’s recommendation of a mayonnaise to a doubting guest:

“You need not fear to partake, madame. The fish has been preserved from putrefaction by a process of vinegar and charcoal!”

It is a substantial comfort to the Anglo-Saxon stomach for its owner to know what he is eating. Call it prejudice, if you like, but it may have something to do with making one “true clear through,” as my Yankee girl puts it.

“But such poetic repasts!” sighs my travelled acquaintance. “Such heavenly garnishes, and flowers everywhere, and the loveliest side-dishes, and everything so exquisitely served! When I think of them, I abominate our great, vulgar joints and stiff dinner-tables!”

Yet Mrs. Nouveau Riche dawdles all the forenoon over a piece of tasteless embroidery, and gives the afternoon to gossip; while Bridget or Dinah prepares dinner, and serves it in accordance with her peculiar ideas of right and fitness.

“Train American servants?” she says, in a transport of contemptuous incredulity at my suggestion that here is good missionary ground, “I have had enough of that! Just as soon as I teach them the rudiments of decent cookery they carry off their knowledge to somebody else, trade for double wages from my neighbor upon what they have gained from me!”

“But,” I remark, argumentatively, “do you not see, my dear lady, that so surely as ‘ten times one is ten,’ if all your neighbors were, in like manner, to instruct the servants who come to them and desert, so soon as they are taught their trade, the great work of securing wholesome and palatable cookery and tasteful serving would soon be an accomplished fact in your community? and, by the natural spread of the leaven, the race of incompetent cooks and clumsy waiters would before long become extinct? Would it not be worth while for housekeepers to co-operate in the attempt to secure excellence in these departments instead of ‘getting along somehow’ with ‘the materials’—i.e., servants—‘this country affords?’ Why not compel the country—wrong-headed abstraction that it is!—to afford us what we want? Would not the demand, thus enforced and persisted in, create a supply?”

“Not in my day,” she retorts, illogically. “I don’t care to wear myself out for the benefit of posterity.”

I do not gainsay the latter remark. If she had any desire that the days to come should be better than these, she would see to it that her daughters are rendered comparatively independent of the ungrateful caprices of the coming Celt or Teuton, or the ambitious vagaries of “the Nation’s Ward,” by a practical knowledge of housewifery. Perhaps she is deterred from undertaking their instruction by the forecast shadow of their desertion of the maternal abode for homes of their own.

The prettiest thing that has ever been said of the informal “talks” I had with you, my Reader, in former days, was the too-flattering remark of a Syracuse (N. Y.) editor, that they were “like a breath of fresh air blowing across the ‘heated term’ of the cook.”

I quote it, partly that I may thank the author, principally that I may borrow the illustration. The heavenly airs that really temper the torrid heats of the kitchen are loving thoughts of those for whom the house-mother makes the home. There is a wealth of meaning in the homely old saying about “putting one’s name in the pot.” It is one thing, I submit to the advocates of co-operative housekeeping, whether big John’s and little John’s and Mamie’s and Susie’s and Tommy’s meals are prepared according to the prescriptions of a salaried chef, in the mammoth boilers, steamers and bakers of an “establishment” along with the sustenance of fifty other families, or whether the tender mother, in her “order of the day,” remembers that while Papa likes smart, tingling dashes of cayenne, garlic, and curry, the baby-tongues of her brood would cry out at the same; that Mamie has an aversion to a dish much liked by her brothers and sisters; that Susie is delicate, and cannot digest the strong meat that is the gift of flesh and brains to the rest. So Papa gets his spiced ragoût under a tiny cover—hot-and-hot—and the plainer “stew,” which was its base, nourishes the bairns. Mamie is not forced to fast while the rest feast, and by pale Susie’s plate is set the savory “surprise,” which is the visible expression of loving kindness, always wise and unforgetting.

You remember the legend that tells how Elizabeth of Hungary, having been forbidden by her lord to carry food to the poor, was met one day by him outside the castle walls, as she was bearing a lapful of meat and bread to her pensioners. Louis demanding sternly what she carried in her robe, she was obliged to show him the forbidden burden. “Whereupon,” says the chronicler, “the food was miraculously changed, for his eyes, to a lapful of roses, red-and-white, and, his mind disabused of suspicion, he graciously bade her pass on whithersoever she would.”

I have bethought me many times of the legend when I have seen upon very modest tables such proofs of thoughtful recollection of the peculiar tastes and needs of the flock to which the home caterer ministered as made my heart warm and eyes fill, and threw, to my imagination, chaplets lovelier than Elizabeth’s roses around the platter and bowl. This is the true poetry of serving, and the loving appreciation of it is the reward, rich and all-sufficient, of thought, care, and toil.

A few words more before we proceed, in due order, to business. This volume is not an amendment to “General Receipts, No. 1 of the Common-Sense Series.” Still less is it intended as a substitute for it. I have carefully avoided the repetition, in this volume, of a single receipt which appeared in that. This is designed to be the second story in the edifice of domestic economy, the materials of which I have accumulated since the first was completed. As money makes money, and a snow-ball gathers snow, so receipts, new, valuable, and curious, flowed in upon me after “No. 1” was given to the world. Some of the earliest to reach me were so good that I began a fresh compilation by the time that book was fairly off the press.

Let me say here what you may find useful in your own researches and collections. My best ally in the classification and preservation of the materials for this undertaking has been the “The Household Treasury,” published by Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, Philadelphia, and arranged by a lady of that city. It is a pretty volume of blank pages, a certain number of which are devoted to each department of cookery, beginning with soups, and running through the various kinds of sweets, pickles, etc. Each is introduced by a handsome vignette and appropriate motto, with a title at the top of every page. The paper is excellent and distinctly ruled. I wish I could put a copy into the hands of every housekeeper who believes in system of details, and development of her individual capabilities. It has so far simplified and lightened the task of preparing “Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea” for my public, that I cannot withhold this recommendation of it to others.

Yet if “General Receipts” was written con amore, its successor has been, in a still higher degree, a work of love and delight. There were times during the preparation of the trial volume when I could not feel quite sure of my audience. There has not been a moment, since I began that which I now offer for your acceptance, in the which I have not been conscious of your full sympathy; have not tasted, in anticipation, your enjoyment of that which I have taken such pleasure in making ready.

Do not think me sentimental when I ask that the Maltese cross, marking, as in the former work, such receipts as I have tested and proved for myself to be reliable, may be to you, dear friend and sister, like the footprint of a fellow-traveler along the humble but honorable pathway of every-day and practical life, bringing comfort and encouragement, even in the “heated term.”