My Dreadful Bump of Order
I have just been reading a “sweet” article, headed “Coming Home After the Summer Vacation,” in which the writer looks through his “glory spectacles” upon the delights of plenty of elbow-room in the dear old house; good fare, and one’s little personal hourly comforts generally. All very well. But what of the carpets to be shaken and steamed, or the new ones to be made? What of the painting and whitewashing, and cleaning out of cellars and closets? What of the new kitchen-range, and the new oilcloth for the floor? What of the plumbing and roof painting? What of the winter’s coal to get in, which paterfamilias always “forgets” to order till the fall house-cleaning is done? What of upholsterers and painters and plumbers, who begin a job, and finish it whenever the gods will? What of crisp, sunny, lovely autumn mornings spent in the delightful atmosphere of an “Intelligence Office” six feet by eight, while answering the following questions: “Any children in the family? Have you an English basement? Have you a servant’s parlor? Do you put out your washing? Does your cook wash the dishes? Do you use such and such a kitchen-range?” All of which questions, answered in the affirmative, giving you the inestimable boon of a poor cook, at sixteen, eighteen, or twenty dollars a month, with liberty to have her “cousins” visit her at will. After that comes your waitress, and if you want to preserve your senses you had better end there, without encumbering yourself with more “help.”
There is nothing said about all this in the “sweet” article alluded to, called “Coming Home After the Summer Vacation.” I didn’t see anything in it either about the children’s dilapidated wardrobe, to be then replenished, with dress-makers knee-deep in engagements, and “Furnishing Stores for Children’s Outfits,” containing only lace and ruffles, to wear to school. As to your own wardrobe, if you are possessed of a black silk, or alpaca, or Cashmere walking-suit, blessed are you among women—for then you at least are always presentable in public.
Well, after all this, there is a chance that the new cook, not admiring the new waitress, whom you happen to like, may conclude to quarrel her off, in order to fill the vacancy with a raw “cousin” just from shipboard: and directly, when you think the family machine is at last oiled, and in motion for the winter, and you are taking breath upon that idea, in comes the irate waitress, and you are “to choose, ma’am, if you please, between me and the cook, for indeed the house will not hold both of us,” and so on, and so forth.
Here most lady housekeepers come to the end of their calamities. But suppose you help to earn the family bread and butter as a writer? Then may the gods send you patience, or a new set of nerves and muscles and brains! May the gods preserve you from reading yourself the crudities you give to the public for base lucre! May the gods sustain you under the torturing reflection, how much better literary work you know yourself to be capable of, had you only a fair chance at your freshest moments, and could you inaugurate that “system” in your household to which Intelligence Offices are an insurmountable obstacle; which you, New England born and bred, adore and understand, but yet can never bring about with any “increase of wages,” or even personal supervision; not, at least, while the demand for household servants is always greater than the supply, and they can make their own terms, and exhaust your vitality much faster than they can their own vocabulary of abuse.
Knowing thoroughly this side of “Coming Home After the Summer Vacation,” I perused the article with this heading, with the corners of my mouth slightly drawn down, and the end of my nose slightly turned up. And if any lady remarks, in reply, that she “admires housekeeping in all its details,” I can only say, that I have observed that slack housekeepers generally do, as their topsy-turvy cupboards bear witness. And I also unhesitatingly affirm that no thorough housekeeper, in the present day of incompetent, careless servants, who desires time for anything else save the hourly needs of the body, can conscientiously make such assertion; although, as wife and mistress, she may not at the same time refuse to meet the consequent exhaustive demands upon her vitality; that is, so long as she can possibly bear the strain.
It is a trying thing to have the bump of order too fully developed. Now I have trotted across this room twenty times to pick up little bits of thread and shining pins, that offended my eye, upon this floor. I positively couldn’t write till I had done it. Then that vase was placed a little awry when the room was dusted, and I had to get up and settle its latitude and longitude. The hearth, too, had some ashes upon it, and there was a shawl on the sofa that should have been in the closet. Then there was an ink-spot on my thumb that had to be removed, and my desk had a speck or two of dust on the corner. All these things bothered me; and then I fell thinking whether it were not, after all, better not to have quite so sharp an eye for these things; that perhaps editors were right who had their office windows so thickly crusted with dirt that they could not tell whether it were a rainy or a sunshiny day from indoor observation. That perhaps they were right in heaping breast-high upon their office desks papers, books, MSS., letters, pencils, pens, gloves, hats, and cigar-stumps, varied with engravings and dirty pocket-handkerchiefs. Perhaps they were right in never sweeping their floors, and leaving it to their visitors to dust their chairs with their clothes. Really it is quite a question with me this morning, whether the bump of order is not a nuisance, even to a woman. Now at any chance table where I may lunch, I have regularly to re-locate the cups, saucers, and dishes, before I begin, placing them where their geographical relation will be most harmonious. If the folds in the table-cloth run the wrong way, I assure you I am quite miserable; and a missing stopper to the vinegar cruet drives me to despair. Then I endeavor so to regulate my bureau drawers and closets that a visit to them in the darkest night, without a light, for any article, would be eminently successful. Till, “Now, who has been here,” has come to be a miserable joke against me, by the happy creatures who cannot comprehend, that to misplace my gloves, or handkerchiefs, or ribbons, or veil, is to cause my too susceptible heart an exquisite anguish, beside wasting my precious time in fruitless hunts for the same.
Then I may be very tired when I return at twelve o’clock at night from some visit or place of amusement; but no amount of reasoning could avail to get me to bed till my bonnet, cloak, and dress were put away in their appropriate places. I am sorry to confess that unless I did this, visions of Betty and a broom in possible connection with them, the next morning, would quite interfere with my slumbers. You may laugh at all this; but ’tis I who would laugh at you in the morning, when you are spending the best hours of the day in flying distractedly round for some missing article which you cannot do without, and which, of course, nobody has seen. If “Order is Heaven’s first law,” as my school copy-book used to assert, my initiatory carefulness here below may not be, after all, without its value. Still, I do not forget that there was once a Martha who was rebuked for “being careful and troubled about many things.”
But stay a bit: can you tell me why, when one’s room is what they call “put to rights,” the table which has a drawer in it should always be so left by Bridget that the drawer side faces the wall? Or why, when a basin of water is in use, to cleanse spots from paint, it should always be placed near the door, that the first comer may enjoy an impromptu foot-bath? Why, in moving a vase, or any other fragile article, it is always so located, that breakage is inevitable? Why should dust-pans be left in dark entries, or stairways, to the sudden precipitation of some unsuspecting victim? Why, when a broom is off duty, should it be “stood up” where the handle is sure to make thumping acquaintance with one’s nose? Why should soiled towels be abstracted, before replacing them with fresh ones, and you left to make the harrowing discovery with dripping finger-ends? Oh! tell me why need your bonnet be put in the coal-scuttle, and your muddy gaiter-boots in the bandbox? Why should your “honey-soap” be used to wash the hearth? Why, when you beseech that blankets, and sheets, and coverlets, should be tucked harmoniously in at the bottom of the bed, should your toes make unwilling acquaintance, every night, with the cold foot-board? Why, when you request that a door should be kept shut, is it always left wide open? and why, when you are in a gasping condition, should it be carefully closed, spite of repeated remonstrance?
Gentle Shepherd, tell me, are pigs and Bridgets the only creatures whom heaven and earth can’t stop from going east, if you desire them to go west? And the Shepherd answers—Man.
Mothers of Many Children.—“Ponder every subject with careful attention, if you wish to acquire knowledge.” What is then to be the mental status of that mother who has a perpetual baby in her arms, and only time to “ponder” that baby, so weary is her body with its “ponder”-osity? Where is the Solomon to answer this question? Baby knowledge she may indeed have; but the baby will grow up by and by, and how is she to acquire “knowledge” under such circumstances, and be a fit intellectual companion for it then? That’s what some people want to know, when little brothers and sisters tread so fast on each other’s heels, that the mother has scarcely breathing time between.