Lady of the house

“ The lady of the house, where there is but one servant kept, frequently takes charge of the drawing-room herself, that is to say, dusting it; the servant sweeping, cleaning windows, looking-glasses, grates, and rough work of that sort. If there are many ornaments and knick-knacks about the room, it is certainly better for the mistress to dust these herself, as a maid-of-all-work's hands are not always in a condition to handle delicate ornaments. ”

“ Often and often have I wished that it was not so, and that in going to a house I could talk with the wistful young daughters-in-law, who glance at me from under their eyelids, and look as if they would be so receptive of new ideas, being, like most ill-used people, quite ready for a revolt of some sort. But it is the elder lady who does the honours, entertains the guests, and regulates the household. ”

“ The housemaid would be more of a step in advance if the housewife, released from her former duties, then entered the ranks of productive labour, paid her substitute, and contributed something further to the world's wealth. But nothing could be farther from the thoughts of the Lady of the House. Her husband being able to keep more than one woman to do the work of the house ”

“ This breeds humility in the visitor, and indulgence for the poor lady who is doing her best to set her house to rights. It is a splendid house, and a distinctly clever lady; and certainly in time they will adjust themselves to one another and to the world outside. For the present they loftily enjoy a gorgeous chaos. ”

“ A lady living in one of our obscure New England towns, where there were no servants to be hired, at last by sending to a distant city succeeded in procuring a raw Irish maid of all work, a creature of immense bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the kitchen and through the house that her mistress, a delicate woman, incumbered with the care of young children, began seriously to think that she made more work each day than she performed, and dismissed her. ”

“ We shall find, in actual practice, that it makes very little difference to their opinion of us, if when we are at home we have the courage to tell them so ourselves; or if a dirty maid-servant, after an interval of waiting, receives their cards in the corner of her apron because her hands are black, and says she will go and see if "missis" is at home, or even if a neat parlour-maid fulfils the same office, and ushers visitors into a brown holland-encased room, leaving them to remark the time the lady of the house takes arranging her dress and her smiles previous to appearing. ”

“ She is a personage of much importance in the house. She generally dresses in moire antique, and is lofty in her manners. She alone, except the maid, approaches the mistress, and receives such general orders as that lady may choose to give. The house-keeper has her own room, where she takes her meals alone, or invites those whom she wishes to eat with her. Thus we see in English novels that the children sometimes take tea "in the house- keeper's room." ”

“ Lady visitors were always accompanied by colored maids, although sure of finding a superfluity of these at each establishment. The mistress of the house always received her guests in the front porch, with a sincere and cordial greeting. ”

“ You shall enjoy all the worldly advantages you have sought in your marriage with me—all the happiness which wealth—your own wealth—can bestow; and it shall be my endeavour, as far as I can, to make your life happy. You shall be completely mistress in your own house, and of all your actions. Your comfort shall ever be consulted; and I think can venture to say for myself, that you may depend on my kindness, and even on my friendship; but my affections as a lover, as a husband, while the same heart beats in my breast, can never be yours. ”

“ She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. ”

“ The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. ”

“ LA MÉNAGÈRE.
ANDRÉ THEURIET.
When the house-mistress comes in sight,
Holy light
Enters the house wherein she dwells,
Crackle the brands, the flames rise proud,
And more loud
Repeats the bird his canticles. ”

“ The house had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night’s hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments) , had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell’s wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; ”

“ There is very little ceremony, but much more heartiness in their welcome, and, rather than allow their guests to return home at night, they will put themselves to any inconvenience, and turn every apartment in the house into a sleeping-room, cause beds to be made up on sofas and chairs, and find accommodation for a couple of dozen acquaintances with as little care about the trouble it gives them as if it were merely a shake-down of straw in the stable: their principal concern is that everybody should be as comfortable as possible and sans gêne in their house ”

“ During the summer the inhabitants of a Russian château live almost entirely out of doors; they pass their time in sitting under the trees, reading or smoking (for many of the ladies smoke) , embroidering, and chatting, or they stroll into the woods in parties to look for mushrooms, which form a favourite dish at their tables. Nothing indeed can be more pleasant than the life at a country-house; everything is easy and without restraint. ”

“ Here is the active housewife, whose hand was always busily employed sewing, darning, scouring, never idle for one minute, keeping her house clean, and her children tidy. "The fashion changeth." She can stir no hand, can think for no one any more. ”

“ The tidy little housewife, who, in neat little breakfast-cap and dressing-gown, overlooks the short-comings of careless cook and house-maid; explores cupboards, cellars, pantries, and closets; disembowels old bags, old boxes, old barrels, old kegs, old firkins; who, with her own dainty hand, prepares the favourite morsel for the dear, absent, toiling husband, or, by the cheerful nursery fire, sews on the missing string or button, or sings to soothing slumbers a pair of violet eyes, whose witching counterpart once stole her girlish heart away. ”

“ I had recently in my service a pretty little house-maid barely nineteen years old, neat, capable, and good-tempered, but so perpetually down-cast that she threw a cloud over our unreasonably cheerful household. ”

“ Whoever has travelled in Russia cannot fail to have admired the great skill of the peasantry in using their axes: it is no exaggeration to say that a common boor can build and furnish his house with the help of that instrument alone. Nothing can be more interesting than to watch a number of these poor people engaged in constructing their dwellings, and very much goodwill is also to be remarked among them in assisting each other. ”

“ There will be no pretense of style—if that is what you mean, no vain endeavor to conceal poverty or ignorance, but a delightful Arcadian candor and simplicity that will leave the mistress of the house, who is also housekeeper, nurse, cook, dairymaid, butler, waitress, laundress, seamstress, governess and family physician, abundant time and strength for such other occupations and amusements as may be most congenial. It would be a delightful way of living, and I should not hesitate to try it if I felt certain that I had a soul above dress trimmings. ”

“ Emmeline having a general invitation to the house of Lady Mowbray—one of her new acquaintance, who was at-home on a stated day every week; and never 47having yet been to any of her soirées, she one evening exerted herself to pay her a visit. There were not many people assembled, owing to the many things to be done, a phrase in the fashionable slang of London, expressive of that delightful prospect of busy pleasure, which consists in passing the greatest part of the night in a carriage, fighting in and out of a dozen houses, the owners of which are, perhaps, never seen by their visitors. ”

“ There indeed the man may often command or rebuke, but there the woman rules. The husband will live there, but the wife will work there, will govern and provide. Her heart, her eye and her mouth are the true homes of domestic peace, that beautiful jewel of a happy home. As was said of old, she is the ‘house honor;’ [101] that is, upon her rests the honor of the house, and to her is due the honor of the house. ”

“ Well, it’s really a great thing to have a home. I’ve always felt sorry for women who lived in their boxes, and had nowhere of their own. And being mistress of the house all these years—I’ve liked that, and been fairly interested in it. ”

“ The house's 'blessing', men pronounce the house-wife excellent;
The gain of blessed children is its goodly ornament.
The excellence of a wife is the good of her husband; and good children are the jewels of that goodness. ”

“ A place like this is truly a home, and the woman at the head of it deserves the respect and admiration of everybody. I have seen such homes among the rich and among the poor, for neither wealth nor poverty prevents the right person from filling with the atmosphere of comfort and happiness the house of which she is the mistress.
A housekeeper’s duties are many, and, to one nervous and fretful, they are exhausting. ”

“ That ugly couple on the porch of the apple-sauce and wash-pitcher boarding-house—the mother a mute, dwarfish punchinello, and the daughter a drab woman of forty with a mole, a wart, a silence. That charming mother of white hair and real lace with the well-groomed daughter. That comfortable mother at home and daughter in an office, but with no suitors, no ambition beyond the one at home. ”

“ It ought not to be an effort for him to rise to his feet when she enters the room, and to comport himself at her table and in her drawing-room as he would at the board and in the parlor of his neighbor's wife. Each of these slight civilities elevates her in her own and in others' eyes, and tends to give her her rightful place as queen of the home and of his heart. She may be maid-of-all-work in a modest establishment, worn and depressed by over-much drudgery, but in her husband's eyes she is the equal of any lady in the land. ”

“ A few minutes later there tripped down the garden-walk a trimly attired young housemaid.
The mistress had seen her from the window and thought she looked cold and tired. Would she come into the house to rest? ”

“ Benson, surlily, “but Lady Fitzhenry can scarcely look worse than she does.”
Lord Arlingford not seeming to heed the incivility of his answer, continued—“Ernest, too, did well to leave London, for he knocked himself up in the House of Commons. No constitution can stand it; and I was quite glad when I heard he had obtained leave of absence to take a little trip on the continent, with his friend Mr. Pelham,”—and Lord Arlingford glanced at Emmeline, with a look 157which meant to express gallant pleasantry, but the anxiety which accompanied it, was very perceptible. ”

“ In the house, over floors marble and matted, through rooms green with the light that came through the blinds, cool in shadow, but from which the world without looked like a glittering fairyland, so they went passing from one to another, till they found the mistress of the house. ”

“ How often do we see women who have lived for years in liberal comfort in the wedded state—the mistresses of pleasant homes, whose varied range of floors and apartments made them little worlds in themselves, and with the assured and dignified position in society that nothing but "one's own house" can give—suddenly stripped in widowhood of all their ample surroundings, and portioned off into one room, or at the most two, in some son or daughter's house, there to live as a supernumerary all the rest of their days. ”

“ Who is in the kitchen and who is in the parlour does not alter that.”
“No servant gets her name prefixed with ‘Mistress’ except housekeepers in great mansions,” asserted Mrs. Brand.
Lucy laughed in her turn. “Then, instead of her being general servant of my house,” she said, “we will say she is the housekeeper in my little mansion.”
Mrs. Brand took no notice of her sister’s words, but went on: “And those housekeepers themselves are called ‘mistress’ only by convention, not because they have been married. They are generally really ‘miss.’”
“I know that quite well!” cried Lucy. ”

“ The dignified and graceful influence which married women, among us, exercise over the tone of manners, uniting the duties of home to the charms of social life, and bearing, at once, like the orange-tree, the fair fruits of maturity with the blossoms of their spring, is utterly unknown here. Married women are either house-drudges and nursery-maids, or, if they appear in society, comparative ciphers ”

“ Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating. ”

“ She knows how to run a house as a home—and she’s about the only woman I know in our class who does. She’s got a good mind—not for a woman, but for anybody. And she needs a husband and children and a home. ”