[TO THE Eorron OF THE "SPECTATOR:]
Srn,—I have read with much interest the correspondence in your columns about "A Simpler Life." But I venture to suggest that the conclusions arrived at by some of your correspondents may be misleading rather than helpful to those who would like to see a spirit of greater simplicity pervading the ordinary existence of the well-to-do : it is dis- couraging, rather than the reverse, to be told that that result can be attained by only the most extreme measures. I am fully alive to the grace and charm of the English prairie home of which "M. G." writes in your issue of September 27th, but I doubt whether the atmosphere of family intercourse so delightfully described as "gay, refreshing, and honest" is entirely owing to the fact that the family do the housework themselves. That it is due to their being sanely and suffi- ciently occupied in their own home with something which affords a constant and common interest I have little doubt. That is the result, by whichever means arrived at, which seems to me the essential. In case of actual necessity, the plan of doing the housework oneself has no doubt many advantages : but where that necessity does not exist I cannot see why it should invariably be good that the mistress of the house should undertake duties the per- formance of which by others who are poorer would enable them to gain their livelihood,—duties which, properly ful- filled, must take up time and energy that might be spent by the educated with more profitable and illuminating results. The experiences of your other correspondent, "J. N. B.," who writes that she was miserable when she kept five servants, and from choice to. day keeps but one and is happy, seem to me, as to sequence of cause and effect, about as convincing as the report given in "Pickwick" of the Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association, respecting the gentleman who used to wear second-band wooden legs and drink a glass of hot gin-and-water every night, but now buys new wooden legs and drinks nothing but water and weak tea, and finds the legs last twice as long as the others used to. The letter is at the best but a confession of incapacity. Five servants is hardly an excessive household for any woman of sense and intelligence to have to deal with, and one who cannot cope with even that number, or find any occupation in her home without sending her servants away and doing their work herself, may well feel that life is out of gear. It should be possible for an educated woman, even if not engaged in housework, to find some occupation of sufficient interest to preserve her from idleness, of which the "degenerating effect," "J. N. B." pessimistically opines,
will presently make her "' flop ' and ' loll ' like an imperfectly organised rag-bag," surrounded, to boot, by "the make-believe, the sham, and affectation which characterise much of our modern home-life." This is a somewhat wholesale indictment. I ven- ture to say we all of us know many homes, even in the prosperous quarters of London—would that it were the custom when speaking of human beings to be allowed to give chapter and verse !—which are not steeped in make-believe, and where the mother of the family does not always "flop" and "loll." But these, obviously, who go through their lives in occupied con- tent do not need to write to the papers to record their fate. It is the case of the discontented that is generally brought before us, to our inevitable disheartening. It is the moping owl who complains to the moon who makes us conscious of her existence, and not her sister who blinks with content in her hollow tree and says nothing. Ma pur she exists, as well as many others like her ; and at intervals they too should lift up their voices and testify, to encourage one another with the evidence that life can be informed by a simple, earnest, and unworldly spirit even in households where the work of head and bands is apportioned on the ordinary lines. What we want to be told and what we want to hear is that it is possible even for people enjoying ordinary social inter- course with their fellows to lead their lives according to a straightforward, intelligent standard, filling up their time and their minds with worthy occupations which keep ignoble ambitions at bay, and taking the trouble to win the goodwill of their subordinates instead of incapably giving up the effort. "3'. N. B." asks: "'What would people think and say' if a lady opened her own door, lighted her own fire, or even boiled eggs and potatoes P " I imagine they would say that the gentle- woman who could not do all these things in case of need ought to be very much ashamed of herself, even though on ordinary occasions she prefers other occupations in which the housemaid could not so well replace her. I should have thought that nine women out of ten who have homes and children of their own have at one time or another, in case of illness for instance, been called on to do any and every one of these duties, and have accomplished them as a matter of course. Some no doubt fulfil them with more skill than others, and it is those whose special aptitudes lie in that direction who may find in such duties, undertaken from choice, the sovereign remedy for idleness and discontent, just as others may be restored to good temper by weeding their garden, others, again, be brought to serenity by learning a declension or playing a sonata. But let us not lightly assume that housework with the hands and not with the head is the only occupation which can save us from the meaner worldliness, for that would be too dis- couraging for those whose lives are arranged on the con- ventional lines. Let us rather maintain—and help one another by putting the conviction into words—that the spirit need not be entirely at the mercy of the outward surroundings, and that the simpler life can be led with a book, a pencil, or even a fan in the hand as earnestly and effectively as with a
Redcar, Yorkshire.
[Mrs. Hugh Bell writes with great good sense on the subject of the simpler life, but she, following others of our corre- spondents, has drifted away from the original contention, which we take to be this. In England people of limited means but cultivated minds are apt to spend too much of their worldly substance in hiring people to do work which they could do themselves, and in practising an elaboration in domestic economy which is not necessary to social happiness. If your means are small, it is better to simplify existence by all the members of the family doing a share of the daily work, and so leaving a good margin of free pocket-money, than to spend up to your last penny in an over-elaborate style of living. This sounds a mere truism, but it is one very often neglected. When it is realised, however, people are apt to grow lyrical about it, and to clothe their simple secret with moral attri- butes. A woman is, of course, not morally the better, for opening her own front-door and dusting her own dravnng- room, but if the family income is small she may gain a great deal of freedom from care and worry by doing so. We must now close this controversy.—En. Spectator.]
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