Harper's Weekly/The Housewife

by John Galsworthy

 

The Housewife

By JOHN GALSWORTHY

Illustrated by by Guy Pene Du Bois

WE think of the extravagant as those who are a hit eccentric. But extravagance " in the solid virtues is common too. Mr. Galsworthy has described with wit and might the most ardent defender of a woman's sphere—the housewife herself

THOUGH frugal by temperament, and instinctively aware that her sterling nature was the Bank in which the true national wealth was deposited, she was of benevolent disposition: and when, as occasionally happened, a man in the street sold her one of those jumping toys for her children, she would look at him and say:

"How much? You don't look well?" And he would answer: "Tuppence, lidy. Truth is, lidy, I've gone 'ungry this lawst week." Searching his face shrewdly she would reply; "That's bad—it's a sin against the body. Here's threepence. Give me a ha'penny. You don't look well." And, taking the ha'penny, she would leave the man inarticulate.

Food appealed to her, not only in relation to herself, but to others. Often to some friend she would speak a little bitterly, a little mournfully, about her husband. "Yes, I quite like my 'hubby' to go out sometimes where he can talk Art and War and things that women can't. He takes no interest in his food." And she would add, bitterly: "What he'd do if I didn't study him. I really don't know." She often felt with pain that he was very thin. She studied him incessantly—that is, in due proportion to their children, their position in Society, their Christianity, and herself. If he was her "hubby" she was his "hub"—the housewife, that central pivot of Society, that national pivot which never could or would be out of gear. Devoid of conceit, it seldom occurred to her to examine her own supremacy, quietly content to be integer ritae, sceleriaque pura—just the one person against whom nobody could say anything. Sub-consciously. no doubt, she must have valued her worth and reputation, or she would never have felt such salutary gusts of irritation and contempt towards persons who had none. Like cows when a dog comes into a field, she would herd together whenever she saw a woman with what she suspected was a past, and advance upon her, horns down. If the offending creature did not speedily vacate the field, she would if possible trample her to death. When by any chance the female dog proved too swift and lively, she would remain sullenly, turning and turning her horns in the direction of its vagaries. Well she knew that If she once raised those horns, and let the beast pass, her whole herd would suffer. There was something almost magnificent about her virtue, based as it was entirely on self-preservation, and her remarkable power of rejecting all premises except those peculiar to herself. This gave it a fiber and substance hard as concrete. Here indeed, was something one could build on; here indeed was the strait thing. Her husband would sometimes say to her: "My dear, we don't know what the poor woman's circumstances were, we really don't, you know. I think we should try to put ourselves in her place." And she would fix his eye and say: "John, it's no good. I can't imagine myself in that woman's place, and I won't. Do you think that I would ever leave you?" And watching till he shook his head, she would go on: "Of course not. No. Nor let you leave me." And pausing a second, to see if he blinked, because men were rather like that (even those who had the best of wives), she would go on: "She deserves all she gets. I have no personal feeling, but if once decent women begin to get soft about this sort of thing, then goodbye to family life and Christianity and everything. I'm not hard, but there are things I feel strongly about, and this Is one of them." And secretly she would think: "That's why he keeps so thin—always letting himself doubt, and sympathize, where one has no right to. Men!" Next time she passed the woman she would cut her deader than the last time. And seeing her smile, would feel a sort of divine fury. More than once this had led her into courts of law on charges of libel and slander. But knowing how impregnable was her position, she almost welcomed that opportunity. For it was ever transparent to judge and jury from the first that she was that crown of pearls, a virtuous woman, and so she was never cast in damages.

ON one such occasion her husband had been so ill-advised as to remark: "My dear. I have my doubts whether our duty does not stop at what we are ourselves, without throwing stones at others."

"John," she had answered, "if you think that just because there's a chance that you may have to pay damages. I'm going to hold my tongue when vice flaunts itself, you make a mistake. I always put your judgment above mine, hut this is not a matter of judgment, it is a matter of Christian and womanly conduct. I can't admit even your right to dictate."

She hated that expression, "The gray mare is the better horse"; it was vulgar, and she would never recognize its truth in her own case—for a wife's duty was to submit herself to her husband, as she had already said. After this little incident she took the trouble to take down her New Testament and look up the story of the woman taken in adultery. There was not a word in it about women not throwing stones; it referred entirely to men. Exactly! No one knew better than she the difference between men and women in the matter of moral conduct. Probably there were no men without that kind of sin, but there were plenty of women, and without either false or true pride she felt she was one of them. And there the matter rested.

HER views on political and social questions, on the whole very simple, were to be summed up in the words: "That man—! " And so far as it lay in her power, she saw to it that her daughters should not have any views at all. She found this, however, an increasingly hard task, and on one occasion was almost terrified to find her first and second girls abusing "that man—!" not for going too fast, but for not going fast enough. She spoke to her husband about it, but found him hopeless, as usual, where bis daughters were concerned. It was her principle to rule them with good motherly sense, as became a woman in whose hands the family life of England centered; and it was satisfactory on the whole to find that they obeyed her whenever they wished to. On this occasion, however, she spoke to them severely: "The place of woman" she said, "is in the home—the whole home—and nothing but the home." "Ella! The place of woman is by the side of man; counselling, supporting, ruling, but never competing with him. The place of woman is in the shop, the kitchen, and—" "The—bed!" "Ella!" "In the soup!" "Beatrice! I wish—I do wish you girls would be more respectful. The place of woman is in the home. Yes, I've said that before, and I shall say it again, and don't you forget it! The place of woman is—the most important thing in national life. If you want to realize that, just think of your own mother; and—" "Our own father." "Ella! The place of woman is in the—!" She ceased speaking, feeling that, for the moment, she had said enough.

In disposition sociable, and no niggard of her company, there was one thing she liked to work at alone—her shopping, an art which she had long reduced to a science. The principles she laid down are worth remembering: Never grudge your time to save a ha'penny. Never buy anything until you have turned it well over, recollecting that the rest of you will have turned it over, too. Never let your feelings of pity interfere with your sense of justice, bearing in mind that the girls who sell to you are paid for doing it—if you can afford the time to keep them on their legs, they can afford the time to let you. Never read pamphlets, for you don't know what may be in them about furs, feathers, and forms of food. Never buy more than your husband can afford to pay for; but on the whole, buy as much. Never let any seller see that you think you have bought a bargain, but buy one if you can; you will find it pleasant afterwards to talk of this. Shove, shove, and shove again!

In the perfect application of these principles she had found, after long experience, that there was absolutely no one to touch her.

IN regard to meat, she had sometimes thought she would like to give it up because she had read in her paper that being killed hurt the poor animals; but she had never gone beyond thought, because it was very difficult to do that. John was thin, and distinctly pale; the girls were growing girls; Sunday would hardly seem Sunday without; besides, it did not do to believe what one read in the paper, and it would hurt her butcher's feelings—she was sure of that. Christmas, too, stood in the way. It was one's duty to be cheerful at that season, and Christmas would have seemed so strange and difficult without the cheery, ruddy butchers' shops. She had once read some pages of a disgraceful book that seemed going out of its way all the time to prove that she was just an animal, a dreadful book, not at all nice. As if she would eat those creatures if they were really her brother animals, and not just sent by God to feed her. And at Christmas she felt especially grateful to the good God for His abundance, for all the good things he gave her to eat. For all these reasons she swallowed her scruples religiously. But it was very different in regard to dairy produce; for here there was, she knew, a real danger—not indeed to the animals, but to her family and herself. She was for once really proud of the thoroughness with which she dealt with that important nourishment. None came into her house except in sealed bottles with the name of the cow, spiritually speaking, on the outside. Some wag had suggested in her hearing that hens should he compelled to initial their eggs, when they were delivered, as well as to put the dates on them. This she had thought ribald; one could go too far.

SHE was before all things an altruist; and in nothing more so than in her relations with her servants. If they did not do their duty, they went. It was the only way, she had found, to really benefit them. Country girls and London girls, they passed from her in a stream, having learned once for all the standard that was expected from them. She christened and educated more servants perhaps than any one in the kingdom. The Marthas went first, being invariably dirty; the Marys and Susans lasted on an average perhaps four months, and then left for many reasons. Cook seldom hurried off before her year was over, because it was so difficult to get her before she came, and to replace her after she was gone; but when she did go it was in a gale of wind. The "day out" was perhaps the most fruitful source of disillusionment—girls of that class, no matter how much they protested their innocence, seemed utterly unable to keep away from man's society. It was only once a fortnight that she required them to exercise their self-control and self-respect in that regard, for on the other thirteen days she took care that they had no chance, suffering no male footstep in her basement. And yet—would you believe it?—on those fourteenth days she was never able to be easy in her mind. However kindly and considerate she might be in her dealings with those of lowly station, she found always the same ingratitude, the same incapacity, or, as she had reluctantly been forced to believe, the same deliberate unwillingness to grasp her point of view. It was as if they were always rudely saying to themselves: What do you know of us? We wish you'd leave us alone! The idea! As if she could, or would! As if it were not an almost sacred charge on her. in her station, with the responsibilities that attached to it, to look after her poorer neighbors, and see that they acted properly in their own interests. The drink and immorality and waste amongst the poor was notorious, and anything she could do to lessen it she always did. dismissing servants for the least slip, and never failing to point a moral. All that new-fangled talk about the rich getting off the backs of the poor, about the law not being the same for both, about how easy it was to be moral and clean on two thousand a year, she put aside as silly. It was just the sort of thing that discontented people would say. In this view she was supported daily by her newspaper, and herself, wherever she might be. No, no! If the well-to-do did not look after and control the poor, no one would, which was just what they wanted. They were in her estimation incurable; but so far as lay in her power she would cure them, however painful it might be.

A RELIGIOUS woman, she rarely missed the morning, and seldom went to evening, service; feeling that in daylight she could best set an example to her neighbors.

God knew her views on Art, for she was not prodigal of them—her most remarkable pronouncement being delivered on hearing of the disappearance of the "Mona Lisa": "Oh! that dreadful woman—I remember her picture perfectly. Well, I'm glad she's gone. I thought she would one day." When asked why, she would only answer: "She gave me the creeps."

She read such novels as the library sent, to save her daughters from reading a second time those which did not seem to her suitable, and promptly sent them back. In this way she preserved purity in her home. As to purity outside the home, she made a point of never drawing John's attention to female beauty; not that she felt that she had any real reason to be alarmed, for she was a fine woman; but because men were so funny.

THERE were no things in life of which she would have so entirely disapproved, if she had known about them, as Greek ideals; for she profoundly distrusted any display of the bare limb, and fully realized that, whatever beauty may have meant to the Greeks, to her and John it meant something very different. To her, indeed, nature was a "hussy" to be tied to the wheels of that chariot which she was going to keep as soon as motor cars were just a little cheaper.

It was often said that she was a vanishing type, but she knew better. Pedantic fools murmured that Ibsen had destroyed her, but she had not yet heard of him. Literary folk and artists. Socialists and society people might talk of types, and liberty, of brotherhood, and new ideas, and sneer at Mrs. Grundy. With what unmoved solidity she dwelt among them! They were but as gadflies buzzing and darting on the fringes of her solid hulk. To those flights and stinging she paid less attention than if she had been cased in leather. In the words of her favorite Tennyson: "They may come, and they may go, but—whatever you may think—I go on for ever!"