“All that a woman can learn,” she used to say, (expatiating on this maxim), “above the useful knowledge proper to her sex, let her learn. This will show that she is a good housewife of her time, and that she has not a narrow or confined genius. But then let her not give up for these those more necessary, and, therefore, not meaner, employments, which will qualify her to be a good mistress of a family, a good wife, and a good mother; for what can be more disgraceful to a woman than either, through negligence of dress, to be found a learned slattern; or, through ignorance of household-management, to be known to be a stranger to domestic economy?”
Then would she instance to me two particular ladies; one of which, while she was fond of giving her opinion, in the company of her husband and of his learned friends, upon difficult passages in Virgil or Horace, knew not how to put on her clothes with that necessary grace and propriety which should preserve to her the love of her husband and the respect of every other person; while the other, affecting to be thought as learned as men, could find no better way to assert her pretensions than by despising her own sex, and by dismissing that characteristic delicacy, the loss of which no attainment can supply.
She would have it indeed, sometimes, from the frequent ill use learned women make of that respectable acquirement, that it was no great matter whether the sex aimed at anything but excelling in the knowledge of the beauties and graces of their mother-tongue; and once she said, that this was field enough for a woman; and an ampler was but endangering her family usefulness. But I, who think our sex inferior in nothing to the other, but in want of opportunities, of which the narrow-minded mortals industriously seek to deprive us, lest we should surpass them as much in what they chiefly value themselves upon, as we do in all the graces of a fine imagination, could never agree with her in that. And yet I was entirely of her opinion, that those women, who were solicitous to obtain that knowledge of learning which they supposed would add to their significance in sensible company, and in their attainment of it imagined themselves above all domestic usefulness, deservedly incurred the contempt which they hardly ever failed to meet with.
Perhaps you will not think it amiss further to observe on this head, as it will now show that precept and example always went hand and hand with her, that her dairy at her grandfather’s was the delight of everyone who saw it; and she of all who saw her in it.
Her grandfather, in honour of her dexterity and of her skill in all the parts of the dairy management, as well as of the elegance of the offices allotted for that use, would have his seat, before known by the name of The Grove, to be called The Dairy-house.418 She had an easy, convenient, and graceful habit made on purpose, which she put on when she employed herself in these works; and it was noted of her, that in the same hour that she appeared to be a most elegant dairymaid, she was, when called to a change of dress, the finest lady that ever graced a circle.
Her grandfather, father, mother, uncles, aunt, and even her brother and sister, made her frequent visits there, and were delighted with her silent ease and unaffected behaviour in her works; for she always, out of modesty, chose rather the operative than the directive part, that she might not discourage the servant whose proper business it was.
Each was fond of a regale from her hands in her Dairy-house. Her mother and aunt Hervey generally admired her in silence, that they might not give uneasiness to her sister; a spiteful, perverse, unimitating thing, who usually looked upon her all the time with speechless envy. Now-and-then, however, the pouting creature would suffer extorted and sparing praise to burst open her lips; though looking at the same time like Saul meditating the pointed javelin at the heart of David, the glory of his kingdom. And now, methinks, I see my angel-friend, (too superior to take notice of her gloom), courting her acceptance of the milk-white curd, from hands more pure than that.
Her skill and dexterity in every branch of family management seem to be the only excellence of her innumerable ones which she owed to her family; whose narrowness, immensely rich, and immensely carking, put them upon indulging her in the turn she took to this part of knowledge; while her elder sister affected dress without being graceful in it; and the fine lady, which she could never be; and which her sister was without studying for it, or seeming to know she was so.
It was usual with the one sister, when company was expected, to be half the morning dressing; while the other would give directions for the whole business and entertainment of the day; and then go up to her dressing-room, and, before she could well be missed, (having all her things in admirable order), come down fit to receive company, and with all that graceful ease and tranquillity as if she had nothing else to think of.
Long after her, (hours, perhaps, of previous preparation having passed), down would come rustling and bustling the tawdry and awkward Bella, disordering more her native disorderliness at the sight of her serene sister, by her sullen envy, to see herself so much surpassed with such little pains, and in a sixth part of the time.
Yet was this admirable creature mistress of all these domestic qualifications, without the least intermixture of narrowness. She knew how to distinguish between frugality, a necessary virtue,
