Florence Caddy

“ May we not strive, by the culture of our manners and discourse, to make our simpler social entertainments as highly prized as the feasts of our richer neighbours? The years of prosperity have passed away, and we seem to have entered upon a phase of society when scarcity and insecurity overwhelm or threaten us all; when the wealth of yesterday has crumbled into dust, the paper money shrivelled as if it had been burnt. We still have the same high culture, the tastes and feelings of yesterday; and unfortunately, the same habits of Idleness, Helplessness, Waste, and Luxury. ”

“ After this, can we wonder at the weakness or the folly of girls, or be surprised that society is at a dead-lock, or that our women eat bitter bread?
Can we marvel that women ruin their husbands by their dress and extravagance; that they drive them to their clubs for companionship, and freedom from the wretchedness of home; that they tyrannize over their milliners, and are in their turn tyrannized over by their servants; that their sons drink the brandy and smoke the tobacco of idleness, and that their daughters grow up the patterns of themselves? ”

“ I would on no account depreciate the efforts made for the higher education of women. No one rejoices more than I do at seeing things more thoroughly taught. Still, we cannot rest content with crumbs of science; female education must be filled with the milk of human kindness. It is not the nature of woman to stand Alp-like alone, with one peak seeming to pierce the heavens; she should be like the spreading tree which gives shelter and enjoyment to all within its influence, its roots being firmly fixed in the good ground.
The nursery training for children is merely repressive. ”

“ The window, made with diamond panes mingled with a few lozenges of bright colour, is mostly open in summer, and wreathed with climbing plants—as vines, and ornamental gourds, with their curious black or scarlet fruit, the rich foliage intercepting the sunshine—or closed if it be winter, and draped in pleasant muslin. I would take great pains to make my kitchen the most picturesque and cheerful room in the house, as it is one of the most important. ”

“ If we had to go back to the old flint-and-tinderbox days, when it was an hour's hard work in the dark to strike a light, when gas was unknown, when water was not laid on, when all bread must be made at home, all stockings knitted; when there was no such thing as a ready made shirt, much less gowns and polonaises; no perambulators, nor washing machines;—we should not heap upon ourselves superfluous work in the thoughtless way we do at present, and then leave all to the attention of the most careless and irresponsible members of the community. ”

“ But if our lives are to be spent in pleasure, we shall ourselves degenerate; for pleasure wears out the body more than work, and excitement more than both. Let us take our appointed burden of steady work, and bear it onwards cheerfully and patiently. By so doing we shall feel it grow gradually lighter. It is not such slavery as the oar to which we chain ourselves. The artificial strain on our lives must be kept up by stimulants, and idleness must be roused by excitement. But our routine of gaiety is no idleness ”

“ We may well ask why we have drifted into this enormous expenditure, and for what purpose we have gradually let our houses be filled up by a greedy and destructive class, who, notwithstanding many bright exceptions, seem to combine the vices of dirt, disorder, extravagance, disobedience, and insolence. Why, indeed? For this simple reason, that we are idle. Gloss it over as we may, by calling it a desire to secure time for higher ends, the truth remains the same; we have neglected our duty in order that we may live in idleness and devote ourselves to pleasure. ”

“ This simple yet ingenious contrivance is far prettier than our somewhat vulgar cruet-stand. Moorish brass salvers add colour and brightness to the sideboard, in families where silver salvers and presentation plate are not matters of course.
A simple style of dinner is more elegant, as well as more healthful, than one more elaborate. Let it vary with each day rather than with every course: the dinner will thus preserve a character of its own, better than where this is frittered away among so many dishes that you cannot remember off what you have dined. ”

“ In our parties we carelessly lose Nature's purest delights: those which appeal most strongly to our finest perceptions. Is it not true enjoyment to sit among the roses on a balcony listening to a sweet voice within singing an air of Schubert or Mozart? And if the charm be enhanced by moonlight, it is a pleasure for the gods!
It is true that roses will not flourish on London balconies, the coal-smoke being so injurious to them ”

“ Mincing-machines, apple-paring-machines, and toys of this kind, are all very well when ladies use them themselves; but they represent so much idleness, waste, and destruction in the hands of careless cooks, who like to sit over their letter writing, or their weekly paper, while the kitchen-maid does the work. And when a fragile machine breaks or gets out of order under her heavy hand, she only "drats the nasty thing" and throws away the broken part, pushing the rest aside to become a portion of the dreadful accumulation of lumber to be seen in every house. ”

“ Why need there be three servants to every house, when servants are the greatest drain to the fortune of a family, worse even than the dress and society of its lady members, or than the tobacco of the men? ”

“ In houses where there are grown-up daughters it is not necessary, nor even advisable, to employ any labour outside of the family beyond that of the charwoman, as previously described.
The work may be so divided as to press too heavily on none, always bearing in mind, however, that, as "Life is real, life is earnest," there is real work to be done in every household, the aim being to lighten it by contrivance, and by utilizing modern inventions; in fact, making of science and social economy two valuable servants, instead of exalting them to be our masters, as we have all been doing lately. ”

“ Although it may not be so pure in taste, the style of the Renaissance is eminently adapted for comfortable household service. The delicate arabesques and grotesques followed from Raffaelle's adornments of the Vatican are not too precious for use in household decoration—where painting cannot be expected to last as long as pictures framed and out of reach of daily handling—and yet they are graceful enough to refresh without exciting a tired mind. ”

“ Although wealth may be taken from us, we have our education and energy left, which, if properly used, will not allow us to sink into a lower condition than we have hitherto enjoyed; and while we hold our ground we shall strengthen our health, develop our ability, and increase our happiness.
Let us, the women of England, encourage and support the men in an endeavour to return to simplicity of life, to a more manly condition; call it Spartan, Roman, republican, what you will, it is, in fact, the training of soul and body. ”

“ We see what priceless possessions we lose by our misuse of time, or waste of it in inanities, when we look at the embroideries and other work of our ancestresses, and compare these with the poor results of our months and years. We see splendid embroideries of the time of Titian, with the needlework still strong enough to outlast all our nonsense in "leviathan stitch" and "railroad stitch;" and old lace, by the side of which our work of mingling woven braids and crochet in such a manner as to get most show for the least cost of taste, labour, and invention, is worth nothing at all. ”

“ We should let our divine life so permeate through every hour of our stay here, that it may be the vivifying light shed upon everything we are concerned with, making the trifles of this life unfold their beauties, comforting sadness and gilding poverty, as the southern sunshine lights up squalid dwellings till they shine like gold and silver, and makes rags glow with light and colour.
Our ideas have changed lately, and now we seem to think that all girls who are not born to high position here must of necessity be trained to professional life. ”

“ As regards the invasion of domestic privacy, which has ever been found such a disadvantage where a companion, or a governess, is always the sharer of our meals and conversation, it is by no means necessary, hardly even possible, that this should be the case with a lady-help; except at breakfast, when it is surely no hardship, but the contrary—indeed, it must be a pleasure—to have at our children's most important meal the assistance of a lady whose care of their wants prevents our own breakfast being uncomfortably hurried. ”

“ It is easy enough to get servants of the superior grades—ladies'-maids, parlour-maids, and even house-maids, where two footmen are kept; but is there such a being as a really good plain cook, or has a servant-of-all-work been heard of lately? Although it is truly said that servants themselves are beginning to feel the pressure of the times, this is not from their actual losses by money-market panics, but from the fact that many domestics are out of place on account of those families who have met with losses dispensing with unnecessary assistance. ”

“ The wise woman does not fear the cold when her household is clothed in scarlet. This is the time when we may gather round the lamp or the fireside, and draw closer the family links under the influence of social warmth and progress.
Simplicity in our meals and dress is another point in which we may unite economy of money, time, and trouble, with comfort to ourselves and a regard for the beautiful. We need not drift into the carelessness of the picnic style of living, which is but the parody of simplicity. ”

“ In a room crowded with furniture the guests cannot circulate—one because there is not space enough to pass between a lady's dress and the small table with a vase upon it that is so likely to be upset; another because an ottoman just before her keeps her a prisoner on the sofa where she was planted on entering the room—until ladies are thankful to do a little something inaudible at the piano as a pretext for moving, and gentlemen are only too glad to be required to force a passage in the service of a lady. ”

“ Good taste has no false shame; so we need not add the vexations of concealment to the accumulation of cares we have heaped upon our houses, till they are so encumbered with impedimenta of all kinds that our whole strength is taken to keep them in order, and the household machine has to move through such a mass of difficulties that it is like a loaded carriage lumbering through a Turkish road. ”

“ What chance has any lady of our time of emulating the graceful manner in which Madame Récamier held her salon, although she may have as much learning as Madame de Staël?
We are too heavily weighted, our social intercourse is too complicated, too much clogged with ceremony, to move easily; and where our highest faculties should be allowed full play, we find so much hard work and consequent fatigue, that we look upon every dinner and evening party in the light of an uphill road with a difficult team to drive. ”

“ The engagement of half-educated or pretentious daughters of small tradespeople is by no means desirable, either for themselves or for us. We do not wish them to be our companions, yet they must be treated with a greater degree of familiarity than ordinary servants; and if they are allowed to be on a nominal footing of equality, it can only tend to lower the tone of the whole household. But the lady-help, in an establishment suited to the feelings of such an one, may easily be a gentlewoman by birth and education, and not a lady in name merely. ”

“ Instead of which cheerful appearance, here is a sketch of a regulation dining-room in one of London's broadest brown streets: a room always dark in winter, but in summer exposed to glaring sun and a plague of flies. ”

“ We squander our money on frippery—not in dress merely, but in hideous ornaments for our fire-places, in antimacassars of disagreeably suggestive name, in toys and trinkets and imitation rubbish of all kinds, which encumber our table-surfaces, and are dust-traps occupying the minds and mornings of our parlour-maids to keep them clean. ”

“ We need not fear that the routine of daily handiwork—which will become interesting to us as we try to make it agreeable—will interfere with our further intellectual culture. And even should it do so, are not our leaders of thought beginning to perceive that manual labour is more commercially valuable than mental labour; that the demand for the former is greater as the supply becomes perceptibly less? The deadness of machine work causes us to prize the spirited and varied touch that can only be imparted by the hand. ”

“ Plants growing outside the windows, especially climbers wreathing the window-frames, give an appearance of size to rooms by bringing air into the perspective. The picturesque effect of the forms of foliage relieved against the paler sky is very pleasing, and it breaks the stiff straight lines of the window better than any drapery.
The glory of the dining-room is its large sideboard. This, where there is a second sideboard, may be either in the same style or in complete contrast to it. Here the larger pieces of earthenware and porcelain should be displayed to advantage. ”

“ It is because we fear to show less well to the eyes of our acquaintance if our own habits seem less expensive than theirs. A low purse-pride is at the bottom of it all. Our dress must be costly and perpetually changing, our servants and establishment must be displayed, if we are ourselves smothered beneath their weight.
So we give up our precious daylight to morning calls, as we ridiculously call those visits of ceremony which are paid in the afternoon. These afford us no pleasure, while they are an infliction to the people called upon. ”

“ What is the best training for girls? That is the question. What are they to be, or not to be?
We have tried hitherto to bring up our girls so that they may be fitted for the high position here that we all wish they may attain, making their education tend solely to pleasure; forgetting how easily the nature of woman adapts itself to any superior station, and how soon it seems like everyday life, however high the rank or great the wealth to which a girl may be suddenly raised. ”

“ Is it that we may become "tolerably harmless dolls?" How shall we answer for having used our endurance only so much as may make us wait with common patience for next month's number of Belgravia; our foresight in choosing a pattern for a mantle which shall be fashionable enough to be worn next autumn; our skill in crochet-work, and our strength in skating on the outside edge. ”