Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 263, 27 January 1928, Page 5

Mundane Musings

To Be Chosen or Left I am In need of someone to do my chores. They are not very arduous chores, nor am I a mistress who floods her house with guests and expects a lady with the training of a “tweeny*> to do the work of a cordon bleu, a brace of footmen, one butler, one housemaid, one parlourmaid and one, gardener. I have a very little house, as houses go. A very well-behaved house in the matter of simplicity and a house that has been specially arranged with regard for the saving of labour. But the poor must live. Unless I write madly every day with my eye on the clock there is nothing for me to look forward to but Charitable Aid. I should hate to accept Charitable Aid, with its nasty capital C.A. I feel most strongly that if by getting up at 6 every morning and working till 1 or 2 or 3 next morning I can avoid Charitable Aid I am a lucky person. But this is only possible so long as I do not have to do any housework. Cooking and cleaning are to me what dancing is to my fortunate sisters. I seem to have come over from a last and royal incarnation with the desires of a passionate housemaid who has to expiate in this existence by an austere abstention from all those broomy and soapy lusts which fill her. A carefully-worked-out budget which eliminates all forms of pelasure necessitating the spending of money allows one hundred and twenty-five pounds a year for a henchwoman. Sixty-five pounds for salary, fifty pounds for food and the other ten for light washing and breakages. There is an optimism about that tenner a year which is surcharged with pathos.

For the lady in question there is a light, airy bedroom, a private sittingroom, the usual outings, and all my love if she will arrange things in such ways as will best suit herself, and give me at the same time freedom to earn that which shall pay her and afford me a certain degree of comfort in my home. If she wants the whole 65 she must do everything herself. If, on the other hand, she doesn’t want to do it herself, she can have an aide de camp for as many hours as she will give up gold. Her share in the partnership is a home comprised of the aforesaid private bedroom and sitting-room, freedom from anxiety, an assured income and specific holidays. Mine is all the anxiety, all the responsibility, and whatever is over in the matter of profits—if any. She has on her part the right to insist that there shall be no dud cheques handed to her, and I ought to have the right to ask, that there shan’t be any dud service. Q.E.D., if she does her work decently, I can make the money to pay her for it, and keep both her and myself in honour. If she doesn’t, perhaps she and I will receive C.A. Whatever may be said in favour of spirituality, it is a known fact that the army of workers and fighters travels on its stomach. On my return to this small paradise after a long absence, a nice-looking woman appeared on my doorstep the morning after. Did I need anyone

for cleaning? She worked next door, and had some time to spare. A daily worker. She is the little candle shining in my night of darkness, and until I can be sure of getting her equal permanently I cannot give her up. This being so, I went on advice to an agency and offered a home and board with the balance of the wages allotted in return for light duties. A lady appeared at once and took the job, and we startecLin. She came from Home, and would be returning 'Shortly. Till then she remained with me. Privately and personally she has a beautiful nature. If she had been engaged for this alone there would not bo a word to say about anything. But. unfortunately, no place outside of Heaven can be run on this sole qualification. The experience over, I am left with a still amaz© in my heart and mind that anyone should have stayed in the world for close on half a century and remained so unspotted from knowledge of things to do with every-day living. So long as she distrusted her own inspirations and did quietly and simply those things which I taught her, so long did peace reign. But she had ambitions. Triumphantly and with, shining eyes she brought to me the work of her imaginative moments. A silver tray cleaned with a saucepan brush made of copper wire. A metal dish-cover with its block-tin surfaces, reduced to a rough-cast through a process of her own, which was arrived at by placing the cover over a fierce gas flame and scouring it with a steel brush while the metal was soft. Placid as she seemed to be on the surface, she had he,r passions. Stainless steel knives were to her things that must be cared for daily with many caressings of the same steel brush with which she treated the dish cover. And brass taps. All that the daily woman might seek to do in the way of general upkeep had to go by the wall in order that the regiment of brass taps should turn out every day bright and shining. Floors might cry out, furniture grow dull and heavy-eyed. Taps must be done. Then one day she left me. And t, bfereft, placed my name at the various agencies and became one of the chosen or rather one of those employers who might be chosen, or might be left, asccording to the will of the choosers. » I set myself to work industriously to answer the questionnaires.