Lesson XII The Gist of the Whole Matter
Now let us sum up what we have been trying to teach and to learn in this little book. To begin with, we will run through the first part, which is perhaps rather alarming on account of its hard words, and see what has been said.
No one will deny the importance of urging rich and poor alike, in the present state of things, to try and economize the fuel and food which they may have at their disposal. When I use the word economize, and apply it to rich people, I mean it to bear a wider significance than when I speak of the very poor, with whom it is an absolute necessity. It is just because there is not this absolute necessity on the score of expenditure, that a due attention to the principles of economy in food and fuel sits so gracefully on a rich person. I do not mean that only two fires should be lighted in a splendid mansion, or that its inmates should gather every day around a dinner of bonesoup or a lunch of bread and cheese. That would of course be absurd nonsense, and no one is so short-sighted as not to perceive that such economy would starve a good many thousand people in other grades of life. What I mean is, that in all households, beginning with those costly establishments where the duty devolves on a steward or housekeeper, there should be such arrangements, such training, such recognized principles, that the possibility of waste should be reduced to the lowest point. Everyone will acknowledge that in what are called “great kitchens,” the “waste,”—the broken victuals, scraps, crusts, bones, and so forth—would feed many a poor and hungry family. All I say, then, is: “Let it feed such families: don’t let it be thrown away, or sold as refuse.” When we have made the most of everything, there will still be quite enough refuse in the world, without adding to it portions of food which would be a boon and a blessing to a starving child. The same with fuel. Let people who can afford to pay for coals have as many fires as they choose, but let them take care that the coals are fairly used and made the most of, cinders and all, so will there be more left in the market for those to whom a hundredweight of coal is of more importance than is a ton to a rich man. Let such people have grates and stoves, and all the new inventions for the economy of fuel, and then, if everybody makes a conscience of being careful with their coals—economical without being stingy, but insisting on every cinder being duly used, or even given away, instead of finding its way into the dusthole—we shall not perhaps have constant alarms of scarcity and famine prices.
So much can rich people do to help; but those in the lower grades of society can do a great deal more; and I am persuaded that the chief reason a great deal more is not done is because people don’t know how to do it. The mistress of a middle-class household considers that she fulfils the whole duties of her position by giving a few languid orders to her servants, which they obey or not, according to their several dispositions. By all means let her confine herself to this feeble style of housekeeping until she knows how the things should be done, for until then it is better she should not interfere. If everything was exactly as it should be, if cooks knew not only how to lay and light fires, but to cook exquisitely, it would be very delightful, and we might all live happy ever after. But, unfortunately, we seem to be a long way from such a desirable state of things; and complaints of the bad, and an outcry for good, servants grow louder every year. Now, it appears to me that good mistresses are just as much needed as good servants, mistresses who are capable of explaining kindly and clearly to a servant how and why their duties—or such portion of their duties as they are ignorant of—should be performed. Explanation is a good deal better than scolding, and the practical knowledge from which such explanations should spring is quite compatible with the utmost refinement and cultivation of the mind. I don’t want ladies to do the servants’ work; I only want them to have the opportunity of learning to explain how such work should be performed, and to understand, even in theory, why and wherefore certain causes bring about certain results in domestic economy.
Let us take the mistress of an ordinary middle-class household, a household where the husband works hard to make an income of from 500l. to 1,000l. a year, on which four or five children have to be educated and set forth in the world, and perhaps relations to be helped besides (for poor people generally have to help their relations). Ten years ago it would have been, for that rank of life, almost a large income. Nowadays it is a very small one, and it has therefore become more than ever of grave importance that the person on whom its management chiefly depends should know something besides music and drawing. Well, then, this typical lady shall be amiable, intelligent, anxious to do her best for her family and household, and yet what state of things shall we be tolerably sure to find in such a house? In the nursery, “Missis” is all that is capable and useful. She thoroughly understands how to provide for the health and pretty toilettes of her nice little children. She and Nurse get on very well; they have a mutual respect and confidence in each other’s “knowledgeableness,” and a thorough belief in each other’s capacity. All is right at the top of the house. On the next story the lady is not quite so certain of her ground. She has indeed slender theories on the subject of dust, and, we will hope, a wholesome love of fresh air, but a new housemaid will probably find that she can do pretty much as she likes in her own department.
But it is not till we come down to the kitchen that we begin to suspect there is a screw loose somewhere. If our lady has been fortunate enough to stumble upon a cook who for 14l. or 16l. a year will cook savoury meals for her every day of her life; a cook who is as clean as she is clever, and as honest as she is sober, then indeed there will be peace and harmony in that establishment, unless the cook should happen to have a bad temper. But how is it if the cook be merely an ignorant, honest, “willing” young woman? Who is to teach her? How and where is she to be trained? That has hitherto been the great difficulty of English middle-class life, and it is to remove, or at all events to give those who wish it an opportunity of removing it, that the National School of Cookery is to be established at South Kensington. Everything cannot be done in a moment; unsuspected needs will crop up, an extended sphere will necessitate wider arrangements; but I can safely affirm that the point which will be steadily kept in view by the Committee is this great need of the English people—the want of some place where a girl or woman can be taught how to cook. It is not necessary for ladies to bend over the fire and harden their palms with saucepan handles, for it is easier to teach an educated person by theory than an uneducated one; and a lady will carry away a great deal of useful knowledge from a lecture where a cook-maid would have been swamped by words and phrases above her capacity. There will therefore be both forms of education; but, so far as my own experience goes, and speaking confidentially, I should have been very thankful for both opportunities of practical instruction before I went to New Zealand. I might then perhaps have been saved many an anxious moment, to say nothing of constant culinary discomfiture. I did go down to a friend’s kitchen more than once, and try what knowledge I could pick up, but I was so bewildered by the size and splendour of the batterie-de-cuisine, and the cook would persist in regarding my desire for information as either a whim or a joke on my part, so that it ended by my learning nothing whatever which proved of any practical use to me. To begin with, I could not explain to the cook what I wanted to know; I could not even say where my ignorance began or where it ended, though indeed I found out afterwards that it would have been well to have established some infallible test for ascertaining when the kettle boiled. What experiments even in this line were necessary when I set up for myself! including one recipe of turning the kitchen poker into a sort of tuning-fork, and holding the handle to my ear, whilst the poker-point rested on the lid of the kettle. That method soon fell into disfavour, for it used generally to result in upsetting the whole affair and extinguishing the kitchen fire.
Well, then, to return to the purpose of this slender volume. If it even awakens a sense of ignorance in its readers, something will have been gained, for I am much mistaken in my knowledge of women of my own class and position in life, as well as of those in a higher rank, if, when once they feel the need of practical instruction and improvement in their domestic arrangements, the next step will not be to endeavour to acquire that knowledge. Also, I hope and believe that the artisan’s young wife, who feels the commissariat and cooking a heavy burthen on her mind and her hands, will set to work to learn how and why certain food-substances are more wholesome and therefore more economical than others, and in what fashion they should be cooked so as to make them go further and render them palatable.
Lower than this grade in our social scale it seems hard to go. It is too much to expect the crowds whose daily bread is a perpetual miracle, to have the time and the means to learn to cook better. When it is generally a matter of chance and locality what sort of food they can provide for themselves and their children, it seems a bitter mockery to tell them this, that, and the other is the most nourishing diet, or to recommend rump-steaks to them instead of bread and dripping. But here, those rich and benevolent people, whose comforts and luxuries have been and will be secured to themselves and their families for many a day, may possibly find another outlet for that spring of human sympathy and charity which—whatever pessimists may say to the contrary—runs bright and sparkling beneath our natures, and wells up to make many a green and blessed spot in our own lives and those of others.
Let us look for a moment at our country villages, and think how often it happens that the Squire’s and the Rector’s wife is asked to take some well-behaved cottage-girl and “learn” her to cook.
With the best will in world, what can these kind ladies do? With a sigh they will consent, and return home to announce—probably with some trepidation—to their cook, that “a new girl” is coming. This means a year of misery and discomfort to everybody. The cook does not care about teaching the girl, and will most likely take but slender pains to do so. The girl feels that she is only on sufferance in the kitchen, and is in a false position there, besides. It will probably be very difficult, if not impossible, for her to get anything like a regular useful lesson from her aggrieved instructress. Everything that is broken in the kitchen is laid to her charge, and at the end of the year I question whether, even under the most favourable circumstances, such a girl can possibly have learned anything which will be of real practical value to her. As soon as ever she begins to have a dawning idea on the subject of a muttonchop, she must go elsewhere and make room for another beginner. Now, the same money which would keep this girl for a year, would give her proper instruction in a proper place.
How constantly it happens that a young woman who is happily placed as housemaid or nursemaid, or apprenticed to a trade, loses her mother, and it becomes absolutely necessary that she should give up her situation and return home to fill, as best she may, her mother’s vacant place. Such a girl has probably never cooked a meal for herself in her life. She may return home with an earnest and affectionate desire to do her best for her father’s and brothers’ comfort, but can she know by inspiration how to cook their meals? Even in my own limited experience I have repeatedly heard laments on this score, and felt myself at the same time quite powerless to help beyond the vague suggestion that the beginner should ask Mrs. So-and-so to show her a little how to cook; Mrs. So-and-so knowing probably very little herself.
Many hundreds and thousands of people in London and our other cities and watering-places live, at all events for a certain portion of the year, in lodgings, or, as they are more elegantly styled, furnished apartments. Imagine a monster meeting of lodgers in the Albert Hall, assembled to proclaim their greatest grievance. Would there not be one universal roar of “The food”?
I have occasionally lived in lodgings myself, and I can speak from my own experience, feeling confident that it will represent the experience of a considerable portion of the houseless community. I found invariably civility, generally cleanliness (or at all events that is a remediable evil), and, with scarcely any exception, vile food. When I complained, the stereotyped answer, given in a very hopeless tone, used to be: “Well, ma’am, I know it’s not exactly right, but it’s the gal; you see, she don’t know nothing, and I can’t cook myself, not to say well.” Now, why can’t the “gal” cook, poor soul? Has she ever been taught, or had even a chance of learning? Do we put ever so willing a man to fire an Armstrong gun or set up type without the slightest previous instruction on the subject? Why should a “gal” be taken from her school life (this is imagining the most favourable conditions), and suddenly be expected to know how to cook, especially when her teacher is confessedly as ignorant as herself? The only bright exception to this rule is when a girl has had the rare good fortune to be trained in some charitable institution, where she has been properly taught to cook as well as to scrub and clean, and to keep herself neat and tidy, even whilst she is working. Yet, as I write the words “rare good fortune,” a remorseful pang comes over me; for, however such training may benefit the poor child and her employers in after years, it has probably been necessary, in order for her to be admitted into such an institution, that she should have been a waif or stray, an orphan, or a poor deserted child, or exceptionally wretched in some way, and it is from her very homelessness and helplessness that what I find myself calling her “rare good fortune” has sprung.
I have already alluded in another place (page 36) to the case of the domestic servant who has been a housemaid or a nursemaid, or waited on ladies, and who perhaps marries and finds herself in a nice little home which it becomes her duty to keep bright and clean. She can do everything except cook, but I venture to say she will find this a great difficulty, and there will be a good deal of unconscious waste and extravagance before even the Rubicon of fried bacon is passed.
It would be a good opportunity for this class of servants to learn cooking at the National School when families go out of town for the autumn, and two or three servants are left in an empty house to while away a couple of months as best they can. I do not want to curtail or interfere with any one’s holiday, but it could scarcely be a grievance to a young woman who is perhaps looking forward to a little home of her own some not very distant day, to have the opportunity of taking lessons in the art of cooking her husband’s meals. Many of our subscribers may be fortunate enough to possess cooks who are masters or mistresses of their science, and to whom the word instruction dare not be mentioned. What I would venture to suggest to such people is, that although they may not need instruction for their cooks, they might utilize the advantages which their subscriptions will give them, for the benefit of their younger servants or even of their tenants’ daughters.
The great point which I have reason to believe the Committee of the National School of Cookery will insist upon is, thoroughness. No one will be allowed to run, or try to run, before she can walk. The elementary knowledge of how to light and manage a kitchen fire, of scrupulous cleanliness in pots and pans, of attention to a thousand small but all-important details, will be taught and insisted upon before the learner is allowed to do anything worthy of the name of cooking. She will then probably be surprised to find how comparatively easy it will be to acquire the art, and she may be very sure she will not be allowed to try a second thing until she can do the first, if it be only boiling a kettle or toasting a piece of bread to perfection.
Such is the plan for complete beginners—who, by the way, generally prove the most successful pupils;—but for servants or artisans’ wives who wish to “better” themselves in their kitchens, there will be a different mode of instruction, into which we need not enter here. Ladies will also have an opportunity either of sitting in a chair and listening to a lecture or series of lectures on cooking, beginning with a muttonchop and ending with a soufflé, or they may turn back their sleeves, take off their rings and bracelets, and try for themselves. It will be hard if any eager inquirer does not find some course or class to meet her needs; and it is to be hoped that whatever excuse may hereafter be urged for our national bad cookery, the reproach of the want of a place and opportunity of instruction will be done away with for ever.
There is but one parting remark I have to make. It is this. The National School of Cookery is not a mercantile undertaking. I have no wish to attempt to throw discredit upon such undertakings, but simply to state the School of Cookery at South Kensington is not one. There will be no question of dividends or bonuses, nor will there be shareholders whose interests and pockets must be considered. The School has every reason to expect that it will be liberally supported by contributions and donations; if it finds itself mistaken in that expectation, it will close its doors, and there will be no harm done to anybody. It is managed by a Committee of gentlemen whose names are a sufficient guarantee for their actions, and no one of them will be individually a penny the richer or the poorer, whether the undertaking succeeds or not. If the School be well and liberally supported, it will be a sign that the need of improvement in cooking is felt by all classes, and for every shilling subscribed it is the intention of the Committee to afford means of instruction. The more money which is forthcoming, the more widely-spread will be the benefit which the promoters of the National School of Cookery hope and believe it is capable of producing.
The End