The articles in this installment of the comic newspaper articles of Ashley Sterne address the domestic topics of house, garden, and family life in the years right after the Great War.
Bulbing: All About My Passion for
Gardening [Jul 1915]
Household Upheavals: A Domestic
Fetish [Aug 1915]
My Sardine Dish [Jul 1920]
(linked to the previous article)
My Mulberry Tree [Jan 1916]
The Family Album [Mar 1916]
Underpinning a House [Nov 1916]
In a Spare Room [May 1917]
Painting The Bath [Jul 1920]
Should Husbands Be Hoofed? [May 1921]
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Household Upheavals: A Domestic Fetish
By Ashley Sterne
I refer to spring-cleaning. Such is the term given to the
solemn process of stirring up all the dust in your house from places where it
can't be seen, and allowing it to settle in other places where it can be seen.
The precise object of this is not easy to understand. Dust is perfectly
harmless when allowed to amuse itself in its own quiet way underneath the
furniture; there, at all events, it is out of the way and invisible, and—as the
ancient Roman sage Eureka has so truly remarked—Sapolio moratorium gorgonzola
rumpus, which (for the purposes of this article) may be roughly translated,
"What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over."
Nevertheless, the rite of spring cleaning is one that is so
firmly ingrained into our systems that the strict performance of it has become
a matter of instinct; no self-respecting housewife would ever feel she had
shaken all the dust off the curtains on to the furniture, shaken all the dust
off the furniture on to the carpet, shaken all the dust off the carpet into a
dust-pan, and thrown the contents of the dust-pan into the empty fire-grate;
whence, of course, the dust is promptly blown back into the room every time the
door or a window is opened.
Now, one of the most extraordinary things about spring-cleaning
is that it should be necessary invariably to employ a decrepit and
sinister-looking crone to assist in it. No matter how many servants you may
keep, it is apparently part of the performance to employ the services of a
sour-visaged beldame, though the functions exercised by this individual are not
quite clear. When my own spring cleaning is in progress I occasionally
encounter a nondescript kind of figure meandering about the premises either
proceeding to or returning from the direction of the cellar where my fine old
tawny ale is kept. The figure usually has a duster tied over its head, and
carries a domestic bucket in its hand with nothing in it. Consumed with
curiosity I once stopped this weird person and asked her what she was doing.
She replied that she was "going to get a bit o' dinner." An hour
later I met her again, and again I asked her what she was doing. Once more she
answered that she was "going to get a bit o' dinner," from which I
could only conclude that the duties allotted to the char-lady were to eat the
regular servants' dinners, since they—presumably—were too busy chivvying the
dust about to spare the time.
But other issues besides actual cleaning are involved in
this annual "dust-up" (if I may so employ the expression), amongst which
I must mention the observance of that irritating custom known as "putting
things straight." This, as you may imagine, usually results in putting
things where they can never be found. You can't think what a job I have, every
time my house is put in order, to find all the things that loving but misguided
hands have "put straight," and when found to mix them up sufficiently
efficiently to be able to put my finger on any one of them at a moment's
notice. In normal times—that is, when I am free to keep things where I like—I
can always find my own personal property without any bother at all. My
cigarettes, for example, I keep in a disused biscuit-box on the dining-room
sideboard; my tobacco in the interior of a bust of Claudius the Clear that
graces my study mantel piece (I might almost say it remains in statue quo);
while my pens recline on my writing-table in a chaste dish upon which a group
of intertwined sardines in picturesque attitudes is embossed. (I need scarcely
add that this pleasing piece of pottery was a wedding present which, like most
wedding presents, was totally unfitted for the sphere of labor originally
designed for it.)
However, in the passage of years I have grown
philosophically to accept spring-cleaning as one of the penalties cf existence,
and I have now "blacklisted" it—along with mumps, cold mutton,
squeaky boots, slow trains, and amateur tenors—as an ill that I am wiser to
bear than to fly to another with which I am not on speaking terms.
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My Sardine Dish
By
Ashley Sterne
Aunt Amelia bought the hideous
thing for me at a bazaar to which I had escorted her. What induced her to do it
I can't think, as she had only had three ices and two chocolate eclairs.
It was a sardine dish made of
twenty-four-carat earthenware. The lid of the dish was decorated with little
slimy heaps of vivid green vegetable matter, which I took to be French beans
until it was explained to me that they were intended to represent sea weed.
The appropriateness of the seaweed
didn't strike me at first. I didn't know sardines were sea-fish; I thought they
lived in oil-wells, and that you had to bore for them. However, from the moment
Aunt Amelia placed the thing tenderly in my hands I hated it with a bitter
hatred.
Aunt Amelia is very fond of
sardines. She occasionally comes over to cheer the loneliness of my bachelor
tea-table. She is very well off. I am her next-of kin. For years she has had a
nasty hacking cough that any moment may— You see, in short, I had to take it
home; I couldn't deliberately lose it in transit. An accidental breakage would
be quite a different matter.
Once I had got the dish home, the
obvious course was to arrange an accident; so I handed it over to Mrs. Danks,
my housekeeper, and told her to instruct the servant girl to wash it. This, I
felt sure, would settle its fate promptly and effectively. Had Cicely Muriel
lived in the days of Joshua, that warrior would have had no need to march round
the walls of Jericho for a week. He need only have instructed Cicely Muriel towash
them and she would have reduced them to tooth-powder in two shakes.
But, alas! Cicely Muriel's hands
lost their cunning that day, and the sardine dish emerged scathless from the
ordeal. Similar treatment at the hands of the char-lady was equally futile; and
so one day I took the thing into the coal-cellar and got to work on it with the
coke-hammer. In five minutes I had reduced the head of the coke-hammer to iron
filings. Then I got the axe from the tool-shed. In another five minutes the
blade of the axe resembled a fretwork pipe-rack. Finally I threw the dish out
of the window. There was a sound as if I had smashed the Crystal Palace, and
looking out, I saw three cucumber frames rendered useless for anything except
filling the ends of kaleidoscopes. The sardine dish lay unharmed on a
grass-plot.
* * *
Aunt Amelia had come unexpectedly
to tea. Cicely Muriel had been hurriedly dispatched for sardines. Mrs. Danks
had hastily retrieved the sardine dish from outside the back door, where it had
been serving the purpose of a drinking trough for the dog. Now at last would
the dish come into its own. I heard Cicely Muriel panting along the passage
with the tea-tray.
Suddenly a shrill shriek, an
ominous crash in the doorway, and in a moment the air was thick with flying
fish. I retrieved a handsome pair from Aunt Amelia's lap and another from her
hair net. When I had helped Cicely Muriel to her feet I noticed that the
sardine dish was a total wreck. I apologised so profusely to Aunt Amelia that
the old lady nearly threatened to buy me another. To this day Cicely Muriel
does not understand why I presented her with a bonus of ten shillings.
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My Mulberry Tree
By
Ashley Sterne
Early this summer I moved into a
new house, my old one being worn out. The new house has several advantages over
the old one. For instance, there is now room for me to swing a cat—should I
ever wish to indulge in this exhilarating recreation; there is sufficient space
in the bathroom for me to dry myself without having to open the door and the
window; I can now trip down to the coal collar whenever a Zeppelin is reported
in the offing without fetching my head a foul and cowardly blow against a low,
overhanging staircase; and I can now ask a friend to dinner, and dine not only
in the same room with him but off separate plates.
But it wasn't so much the extra
roominess of my present abode that appealed to rne. It was the fact that there
was a mulberry tree in the garden. And I must say that the possession of a
mulberry tree, even if one only possesses it on a three-years' agreement, gives
one a kind of cachet like having ancestors who came over with Julius Caesar, or
knowing somebody who has shaken hands with Mr Lloyd George or Charlie Chaplin;
and though I don't suppose there are a dozen men in England who are by nature
more unassuming and modest than I am, I really cannot help giving myself a
slightly superior air when I look over the hedge into my neighbors' gardens, and
find that one of them can only boast a moribund cactus as his piece de
resistance, and the other a monkey-puzzle which no self-respecting monkey would
deign to perplex himself with.
Ever since June my mulberry tree
has given me unalloyed pleasure. Every day I have inspected it carefully to see
how the fruit in progressing, and I have watched it turn from green to pink,
pink to crimson, and crimson to copying-ink; and I am able to state from actual
experience that the stain produced by a ripe mulberry failing upon one's linen
is almost as indelible as that occasioned by the last mentioned commodity. That
is the one fault I have to find with mulberries, They are attached so
carelessly to the stems that the least thing will bring them down. And the
extraordinary part about it is that they invariably fall on one's shirtcuffs or
collar, or one's white tennis flannels, leaving thereon an imperishable
memorial. Never by any chance do they fall upon anything which won't show the
gravy marks. A somewhat similar phenomenon is to be observed when, amid the
indecent hurry and scramble in which one usually takes breakfast, you have the
misfortune to drop a slice of buttered toast. It always falls with the buttered
side downwards, and, moreover, consistently falls on a portion of the carpet
where the whiskers are loose.
Often, as I have gazed with pride
on my tree, have I wished that Sidney my silkworm—of whose brief but (I trust)
happy life and untimely demise I have already written—were with me now. What
Lucullan banquets he would revel in! How useful, too, he would be—after a
little training—to climb to the highest and most inaccessible parts of the
tree, where all the ripest and largest mulberries grow, and shake them down!
Or, rather, he would have been
useful until yesterday morning. It is a well-known fact that it isn't everybody
who likes mulberries. They are what in called an acquired taste—like artichokes,
Wagner, ammoniated quinine, Bernard Shaw, and so forth. Now a few days ago I
had reason to think that someone was trying hard to acquire a taste for mulberries
and was practising on my tree; for on inspecting it as usual one morning I
happened to miss a very large mulberry that I had been encouraging to grow to
its utmost capacity with the idea of entering it at a show, besides several
smaller ones. However, I dismissed the unworthy thought, and dwelt no more upon
it until yesterday, when I was amazed to find on visiting the garden before
breakfast that my tree was as bare of mulberries as old Mother Hubbard's
cupboard of bones. Not one single specimen could I find anywhere. I went in to
breakfast heart-broken. When Mary brought in the coffee I noticed a peculiar
purple hue about her mouth and cheeks, and I at once taxed her with eating not
only Marmaduke—my prize mulberry—but all the rest of the tree as well. She
denied it indignantly, and, being a truthful girl, I was forced to believe her.
Then I remembered that she was engaged to the milkman—a fact which accounted
for the marks upon her face. For of course he was the miscreant. He calls at half-past
six, when the garden is empty, and— But I need say no more. I will only add
that the milkman will not call again. I have decided to keep a cow.
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The Family Album
By
Ashley Sterne
I am sorry to see that an old
familiar custom of domestic life is fast falling into desuetude. Families no
longer maintain any interest or pride in the family portrait-album; the pianola
ant the gramophone have superseded it as a domestic diversion; and the
illustrated papers have completely ousted it as a means of providing a little
light entertainment for the friend who has casually dropped in to tea, and is
kept waiting in the drawing-room while the lady of the house hurriedly changes
her gown and despatches her maid for six penn'orth of Swiss roll and three penn'orth
of fancy biscuits. As a record, too, of what our grandparents, parents,
relatives. friends, the family doctor, and the family solicitor (both before
and after he absconded) looked like in the Victorian era, the book was a
constant source of instruction and enlightenment. I remember the days when my
Aunt Louisa's portrait-album was the piece de resistance of her entertainment
whenever I used to visit her. It lay on top of a chiffonier upon a woollen mat
that vied with Joseph's coat in the rich variety of its color-scheme; and a
magnifying glass, to enable one to appreciate more fully the joys within, was
invariably laid beside it. And Aunt Louisa would seat herself in her antimacassared
arm-chair. place the book in her lap, and while I stood beside her take me for
a personally conducted tour through its pages. I liked it almost as much as a
visit to the Chamber of Horrors.
Then there was a portrait of Aunt
Louisa herself leaning upon a fragile stone pillar (made of cardboard) which,
were she to-day photographed under the same conditions, would most certainly
collapse like a concertina—Aunt Louisa's specific gravity not having exactly
declined with advancing years. After that I had obviously put in a not, I
trust, unwelcome appearance, for my mother is depicted looking with perplexity
mingled with amusement upon what at first sight one would take to be a
singularly unprepossessing watermelon upon her lap. The melon, Aunt Louisa
informed me, was myself, and, judging the portrait quite dispassionately, I do not
hesitate to say that, whatever I may be to-day, as a baby I did not possess
that marked facial beauty which artists would have raved over. At least, they
wouldn't have raved over it in the generally accepted sense of the expression.
Then came a photograph of an obscure
uncle whose sole claim to distinction rested on the fact that while on service
in Egypt he had the misfortune one dark night to trip over a Nile dam, and was neatly
bisected by a crocodile. After him succeeded numerous other melon-like children
bearing a distinct likeness to the former portrait of myself—evidence that my
parents were starting babe-keeping in earnest. Then the advent of a numerous
progeny, of course, meant that at various stages in our development we were all
photographed in the inevitable "group." Oh, those groups! Page after
page of Aunt Louisa's album was devoted to preserving these relics of our
childhood, and even.now I cannot think of them without a thrill.Our parents
(seated) with a look of patient resignation in their faces, such as that which
is depicted in the famous "Napoleon on board the Bellerophon"; on
either flank, their aggressively clean and obviously Sunday-clothed offspring
(standing), with hair that even in the photograph was redolent of pomade in
force, and all bearing that wan, sweet smile that is sometimes found on masks
about the period of the first week in November.
But Aunt Louisa's album is no more.
At any rate, it is not on view, and is never alluded to. This is perhaps a
little surprising, seeing that she is somewhat conservative in her notions, and
abhors the sight of both pianola and gramophone. I heard, however, that she was
recently seen exchanging cigarette-pictures with her gardener, which may perhaps
explain both the purpose to which her album has been put and her reluctance to
exhibit it.
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Underpinning a House
By
Ashley Sterne
I was lying in bed one morning
reading the 6.30 edition of an evening paper of the same day, when, without one
permonitory symptom, a large piece of plaster moulding fell down from the
ceiling. Fortunately, my head broke its fall, or it would have smashed my bed
into splinters. Then an ominous crack sounded behind me, and turning my head I
found myself gazing into the room next door through a gap in the wall large
enough to admit a horse and cart. Next, a whole avalanche of rubble rushed down
the chimney and blocked up the fireplace, while the other walls cracked and
gaped, and more ceiling came off.
I knew at once what the matter was.
The house—an old one, built in a mixture of Graeco-Roman and Catch-as-catch-can
styles, with Balbus's original walls—had got tired of standing so long, and was
trying to lie down. I dressed hurriedly, and ran down stairs to tell my
housekeeper. I found her sitting on the kitchen ceiling. (The ceiling, I should
add, was on the floor.) I explained the situation in a few words. "Now, if
you'll just hold the rest of the house up for a few minutes." I concluded,
"I'll go and fetch the builder-feller." And off I went.
In ten minutes I returned with him.
He went systematically all over the house, tapping the walls with a hammer, and
bringing down fresh masses of debris to swell the ranks of the fallen. Then at
last he became thoughtful, scratched his chin, his ear, and was about to
scratch his leg when I interposed.
"Well," I said,
"what about it?"
He looked very grave for about a
quarter of an hour, and then he said, "It's falling down."
"I almost suspected it,"
I observed, as the ceiling of the hall where we were standing came down with a
run and smashed my solid cocoanut-fibre doormat to atoms.
"It wants underpinning at
once," he continued.
"Good!" I exclaimed.
"While you're rolling up your shirt-sleeves, I'll roll down to the
draper's for a packet of underpins. Then no time will be wasted."
He then explained that there was no
need for reckless hurry, as in any case he'd have to go home first and fetch
his tools, and then when he'd got his tools he'd have to go back and fetch his
mate, and then when he'd fetched his mate it would be too late to start work for
the day, and he and his tools and his mate would all have to go home again. So
reluctantly I had to release him, and it was not until late in the afternoon
that the builder-feller and the tools and the mate were all on the premises
simultaneously; and then he only had time to tell me that the job was a far
bigger one than he had at first imagined, and that before he could tackle it he
would require a lot more tools and several more mates. And having spoken thus,
he and the tools and the mates all went off in a row.
Then one day, about a month later,
the builder-feller turned up with a hundred and fifty-nine tools of different
shapes and fourteen more mates of different sizes and commenced to underpin in
earnest. They dug a huge hole right under the scullery (so that the house
should have something to fall into when it finally collapsed, I suppose), and
then they got some nice long underpins the size of telegraph-poles and boosted
them against the outside walls in order, presumably, that they could push the building
over more easily. After that they knocked a few more holes through the brickwork,
and thrust in huge iron rods with which to pull down the more stubborn portions
of the masonry. Next they delved a network of trenches in the front garden and
stole the drains, and filled the back garden with Pelions of cement and Ossas of
mortar. Finally, after battering my premises about for six weeks, when the
house was leaning over at an angle of forty-five degrees, and when a more than
usually energetic knock from the postman would most certainly have resulted in
its being counted out by the referee, the builder-feller announced that the job
was done.
"Safe?" he said, in
answer to my inquiry. "It's as safe as a house. It may subside a little
during the next day or two, but don't worry about that. It merely indicates
that the building is settling down on its new foundations."
(For further particulars see the
auction mart advertisements of a "Desirable Villa Residence, newly underpinned,
guaranteed settled on its new foundations," etc., etc.).
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[NOTE: The following article
references the following: "seccotine", an adhesive; Paul Cinquevalli (1859-1918), a famous juggler
based in London; "stickleback", a fish about 2 or 3 inches long;
"Jack Johnson", the nickname for a black German 15-cm
artillery shell (after Jack Johnson, the African-American boxing champion).]
In a Spare Room
By
Ashley Sterne
I recently spent a night in a
friend's spare room, and I now know why it is so called. It's because it can be
easily spared. Nobody else in the house wants it. It is situated at the top of
five flights of stairs right under the roof, close to the Zeppelins. In summer
it has the temperature of an orchid-house; in winter that of an Alpine
crevasse. The ceiling, too, slopes in several different directions all at once,
with the result that the casual visitor, unacquainted with its architectural
vagaries, repairing to bed by the light of a wan and sickly candle, belabors
his head against it, and more often than not spends the night insensible upon
the floor.
However, the ceiling of the room I
occupied did not happen to slope very awkwardly on the night I was there, and I
put my candlestick on the mantelpiece and had walked thence nearly into the
centre of the room before I fell flat on my back. The cause of this was one of
those ridiculous patchwork floor-mats that are apparently made of small strips
of worn-out petticoats, discarded house-flannels, and old fancy waistcoats. On
the slippery floor these things are as treacherous as a butter slide, and I
should never be surprised to learn that, if a referendum of cripples were ever
taken, they owed their misfortunes to a night spent in an unfamiliar spare
room.
I fell down heavily, but I got off
lightly, all things considered. I only fractured my skull, ricked my back, and
dislocated my shoulder; and my doctor told me to-day that he is coming with a
shoe-horn next Friday to take me out of the plaster of Paris. Curiously enough,
I didn't feel very much injured at the time, and when I had regained my feet I
made a systematic tour of the room to try to discover the bed. I missed it the
first time round, but found it on the second journey. It was in a very dark
corner of the room, and the bed itself was very small. At first I mistook it
for a mousetrap. The more I looked at it the more I was convinced that I should
have to go to bed in it in instalments. A newly-born infant might have slept in
it fairly safely it it had first been stuck in with seccotine; but for a
fully-grown man to balance himself on that narrow couch would have taxed the
ingenuity and resource of Cinquevalli himself.
Nevertheless, I got two chairs and
placed them at the end of the bed to accommodate my legs, and then I started to
collect other pieces of furniture wherewith to erect a kind or barricade which
shoull prevent my falling out. First of all I found a large chest of drawers
that I would have stopped a steam-roller. It was so heavy that I thought I had
better remove the drawers before attempting to drag it across the room. But I
couldn't get them out. It was as hopeless as trying to pull out a crocodile's
tail. After struggling for half an hour I managed to coax one drawer open to
the extent of three or four inches. It was full of potential floor-mats in the
shape of old clothes, old curtains, and old bath-towels. There were also some
cases of cutlery, which I presumed were duplicate wedding presents that had not
yet been passed on. And then, as might be expected, I couldn't get the contents
out. Neither could I close the drawer again. In my efforts I kicked off one of
the brass handles and incidentally put my big toe out of joint. Eventually I
succeeded in painfully lugging the unwieldy piece of furniture inch by inch
across the floor.
Next I got the washing-stand—a
fragile, delicate affair in the Early Tottenham Court-road style, with a basin
in which a stickleback would have felt unduly crowded, and a totally
disproportionate water-jug that would easily have accommodated a school of
porpoises. These I placed on the other side of the bed, and my barricade being
then complete I made myself as small as possible and clambered in.
All went well until, half-past six
next morning. When I say all went well I mean that I did not fall out. Twice in
the night I started up in the bed and bludgeoned my head against the sloping
ceiling. I also kicked over both chairs at the end of the bed in the course of
my slumbers. Furthermore, I removed most of the skin from my left elbow through
cannoning at intervals against the sharp edges of the half open drawers of the
chest. But I did not fall out-not until half-past six. I was dreaming that I
was lying in a dug-out upon a bed of barbed wire and bayonets, and that a Jack
Johnson plopped on to my chest and exploded. What actually happened I don't
know, but the next moment I awoke to find myself swimming for dear life in
about four feet of water. The wreckage of the washing-stand was floating all
around me. I just managed to grab my tooth-brush as it was going down for the
third time, and then I struck out boldly for the mantelpiece.
* * *
An hour later a servant knocked at
the door.
"Your bath is ready,
sir,"'she said.
"Thanks," I replied.
"I've had it. Could you oblige me with a piece of blotting-paper?"
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Painting The Bath
By Ashley Sterne
My bath is rather an ancient one—one of those original old
Roman baths, I fancy, which were brought over by Julius Caesar to keep his
coals in.
Anyway, it's very old and very noisy. When it's filling it
sounds like Niagara falling into a crockery shop, and the noise it makes
emptying itself is like forty thousand school-children sucking oranges.
Unfortunately I have been having trouble with the enamel. It
began to come off in flakes and chips quite a while ago. Whenever I arose from
my matutinal ablutions it used to take me a long time to pick out all the bits
which had become firmly embedded in my flesh—a most painful process. My back and
limbs viewed in the wardrobe mirror gave me the impression that I had been shot
by a careless and inexperienced sportsman.
Indeed, so much enamel came off the bath that I began to
fear that the iron would rust and one day let me through—an exceedingly awkward
contingency, as my bathroom happens to be immediately above the breakfast room
of the flat below. The spectacle of me, clad only in a thin film of soap suds,
suddenly falling through the ceiling into the porridge or bacon dish would, I
feel sure, thoroughly scandalise the two pious old ladies who are my downstairs
neighbors.
Happily, my army training turned me into a handy man. I can
even sew on a button for myself with very little help from Mrs. Danks, my
housekeeper. When she has threaded the needle for me and fixed the button in
position with a dozen or so stitches, I can very often finish the job off quite
satisfactorily. So you will readily understand that I was not to be baulked by
so trifling a matter as enamelling my bath.
I procured a pot of white enamel and set to work. One of the
chief glories of this enamel was that it was alleged to dry and harden very
quickly.
So I slapped on the enamel as quickly as I could. For a
quarter of an hour the air of the bathroom was thick with flying paint, and in
my zeal I enamelled not only the bath but most of the other fittings as well.
Even Mrs. Danks, who looked in to see how I was getting on, narrowly escaped
being enamelled for life, and having to spend the remainder of her days as a
statue.
I finished the job at last, and must admit that I was very
pleased with my handiwork. It was all I could do to wait until the following
morning before trying what a pure white bath felt like.
I think I must have got the wrong sort of enamel after all;
or possibly the water next morning was unusually hot. Anyhow, I got into my
beautiful white bath and proceeded to make a noise like a lark in its watery
nest. Later I tried to get out. But unfortunately that beastly enamel had softened
somewhat, presumably with the extra hot water, and now that it was cooler it
had set again and fixed me firmly to the bottom end of the I bath.
How I eventually got free I don't know. Suffice it to say
that most of the enamel I had so painstakingly painted on to the bath had transferred
itself to me; and though I live in hopes that it will wear off in time, my one
consolation for the time being is that if there be any truth in the claims made
by the manufacturers for the wretched stuff, my back, shoulders, and nether
limbs will never rust.
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Should Husbands Be Hoofed?
By
Ashley Sterne
In order that the gentle (and I
trust constant) reader may labor under no misapprehension as to the meaning of
the title I have selected for the few well-chosen words which I have very
kindly arranged to address to him (or, if a lady, her; or, if a baby; it), I
must at once explain that it has nothing whatever to do with any proposed
reform in the nature of husbands' pedal extremities.
They may or may not share with the
chamois, the pig, the great elk, his Satanic Majesty, and other domestic
animals the distinction of having a cloven hoof beneath their spats. That is
not the point.
The question at issue is: Should
husbands be hoofed out of their homes? I gather from a lecture recently
delivered at the offices of the Women's Freedom League that many people are
apparently of the opinion that the father of a family should, after the first
five years of married life, automatically get the push out of the home
altogether, "thereafter supporting it, but not interfering in it."
Their contention is that he is "bad for the children"—just as if he
were a lobster salad, or a slab of cold Christmas pudding, or an epidemic of
rickets.
Now, at first sight this novel
suggestion seems, perhaps, a trifle callous; but (as the lady remarked whose
cat had just swallowed the canary whole) "there is more in that than meets
the eye."
When one comes to think of it, the
bread-winner of the family is so little in his home as it is that a few hours
less of his company every day—most of which are occupied in snoring—can not
make very much difference one way or the other; and hence there is much to be
said for the theory that the bread-winner needn't bother to come home at all so
long as he sends the "dough" along.
Take the case of that oft-quoted
person, "the average man." He remains wrapped in heavy slumber until
the last possible moment; then splashes into his bath, gashes into his chin,
dashes into his raiment, crashes into the breafast-room, lashes himself into a
fury because the food is cold, bashes on his hat, and finally flashes down the
street for the 8.25.
He returns home some fifteen hours
later, delayed at the office on account of its being either (a) stocktaking
day, (b) quarter day, (c) half-quarter day, (d) settling day, (e) mail day, or
(f) Armistice Day. He promptly retreats to bed, falls at once into a state of
profound coma, and only awakens to begin the same routine all over again.
By the time Saturday afternoon
comes he is so knocked up with the strain of stocktakings and half-quarter days
that it is scarcely surprising he finds it necessary to recoup his shattered
energies over the week-end at Brighton. Bognor, or Boxhill, accompanied only by
a bag of golf-laborer's tools.
To summarise, out of the 168 hours
comprising the week the "average man" spends in his home, he passes
forty five hours in a state of blissful unconsciousness that he owns a home at
all, and one and a quarter hours in cursing the inedibility of frigid American
bacon and tepid poached eggs. The rest of the time he is bread-winning and
recouping.
I agree with the lecturer that this
is bad for the children. It is bad for them to realise that father is virtually
only awake in his home for seventy-five minutes in seven days, splashing.
gashing, dashing, crashing, lashing. bashing, and flashing, owing to the
demands made upon his time and energies by stocktakings and mail days. It is
bad for them to realise that father hasn't even the time to pelmanise. It is
bad for them to realise that all this martyrdom is cheerfully undertaken in
order to win bread for them, and to keep the home fires burning so that they
can vary the monotony of bread with toast.
In short, I go even further than
the lecturer. Why should husbands be kept so long as five years? Why not grab
one, pinch all his ready money, sneak his watch, chain, collar-studs, coals and
butter ration, get a permanent garnishmnent on his salary, marry the blighter,
and then bimble out of the settling up the amusement tax with the church by the
back door while he's parson?
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