THE HOMEMAKING ACTIVITIES OF SOME DISTINGUISHED WOMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 896, 13 February 1930, Page 4

THE HOMEMAKING ACTIVITIES OF SOME DISTINGUISHED WOMEN

THOSE of us women who are disposed to think that we are too much occupied with our homes to have any time for work outside them may find it interesting and useful to give a little attention to the lives of six among many distinguished women who have devoted an immense amount of thought and care to philanthropic work, and who have, at the same time, made their homes patterns of what homes may and should be. H.M. Queen Mary: The absolutely efficient manner in which Queen Mary performs the many public duties of her exalted position is well known to all her subjects. What is not so generally known, is that her Majesty visits her own kitchens personally, inspects her linen cupboards, washes her own priceless china, arranges for the comfort of her guests, and of every member of her household, and is an excellent cook, with a particularly light hand for pastry. It is difficult to he domesticated in a palace, but Queen Mary has triumphantly turned a palace into a home. During the King’s illness, he would accept no nourishment except from his wife’s hands, and once, when she was feeding him, he managed to whisper. “I know you made this: it.is so delicious.” The Queen’s great idea for a home is that it should be comfortable, and she includes a great many things in the word comfort. There must, for instance, be nothing that is merely showy, and does not serve some purpose; chairs must be comfortable; fireplaces must be big enough to allow for a big fire; there must be no glaring colour schemes; and there must be punctuality in everything. H.R.H. Princess Alice of Hesse: Before Princess Alice, the second daughter of Queen Victoria, married Prince Louis of Hesse at the age of 19* she had been taught by her good mothers directions how to do household work, and to manage an establishment; and the Prince Consort impressed upon all his children that the duties of high rank were more to be considered than its rights. She nobly fulfilled the expectations of both parents. She did an immense amount of public work. She keenly interested herself in nursing as a branch of female industry; in the provision of better schools for girls; in kindergartens; in obtaining the admission of women to the post and telegraph service; in the finding of proper localities for the exhibition and sale of women’s handwork of all kinds; in the improvement necessary in the education of nursery maids, and in the knowledge of mothers in the treatment of little children. She was a warm admirer of Miss Octavia Hill, and worked earnestly to follow her plans in providing better housing for the poor in Darmstadt. But slip did not make these public activities an excuse for neglecting her own home. She made that home such a happv one to all who came within its sunnv influence that the greatest treat possible to her young brothers and sisters was to be allowed by Queen Victoria to pay a visit to their sister Alice. Her husband was a comparatively poor man, and, when she had been married four > ears and had a little family growing up around lier, she writes to her mother: “I have made all the summer out-walking dresses, seven in number, with paletots for the girls, not embroidered, hut entirely made from beginning to cud; likewise the neccssarv flannel shawls for the habv. 1 manage ftll the nursery accounts, and evervthing myself, which gives me plentv to~ do ” George Eliot (Mrs Cross)': George Lliot is generally admitted to he the greatest woman novelist the world has yet known; but, in Elizabeth Halden’s George Eliot and Her Times” she writes of her: “A more feminine woman it would be almost impossible to find ” AH her biographers speak of her as a thoroughly efficient housewife, and we aever could have had her wonderfully

graphic accounts of domestic activities if she had not herself been an expert homemaker. As a girl, she especially excelled in all kinds of dairy work, and in the making of jams and preserves. Mrs Gaskell: In Mrs Ellis Chadwicks “Life of Mrs Gaskell,” it is said that the author of “Cranford" was prouder of her pigs and poultry, cows and vegetables, than of her literary successes. She rejoiced in keeping a good table with the best of food, well cooked and nicely served. From 1849 until her death she led the dual life of a model housewife and a busy novelist, and yet she managed, by keeping strictly to a daily routine, to plan out her work so as to be a tower of strength, not onh to her husband and four beautiful daughters, hut to many sad and sorrowful ones outside her own immediate circle. Harriet Martineau: For many yeaff Harriet Martineau was regarded as one of the leaders of cultured thought in England. She was employed by tb# London “Daily News” as a regular contributor of leading articles. She also wrote many articles and reviews for “The Westminster Review,” “Chamber’? Journal,” “Household Words,” and other important magazines. She was as gifted a homemaker as she was a writer, and graphic records have been left by distinguished contemporaries who enjoyed the hospitality of her beautifn home in the Lake District, o ,r the per feet way in which that happy household was managed by its busy mistress. Florence Nightingale: Florence Nightingale’:? wonderful work in the Crimea: War is a matter of world history. What is not, perhaps, so generally known are the two main directions in which she applied a woman’s insight to the conditions she found prevailing when she reached Scutari. Efficient nursing required, she well kntrw, cleanliness and delicately cooked food. She found Tic a basin, nor a towel, nor a bit of soap nor a broom,” and she instantly requisitioned 300 scrubbing brushes. To show how much these were needed the following sentence is quoted from one of Miss Nightingale’s letters to Mr Sidney Herbert, Secretary of War: "Th* vermin might, if they had but ‘unity of purpose* carry of? the four miles beds on their hacks, and march with them into the War Office.” Miss NigM* ingale soon discovered that, up to the t ime of her arrival, the bedding had been washed in cold water, and that the number of shirts washed during a month was six (and this in a hospital where there were four miles of b>?<b not 18 inches ap>art). Miss Nightingale also found that many of the articles sent back from the wash »* clean had to he destroyed as being, in fact, verminous. She rented a house or.t of her private fonds, had boilers supplied in it by the engineers* office, employed the soldiers* wives to do the washing, and thus gave the sick and wounded the unutterable comfort « clean linen. Yet more important, P^ r * haps, to the comfort and recovery the sick was her practical knowledge of cookery and of the food necessar? for invalids. “It is safe to say," write? Sir Edward Cook, “that many saved by the application of Miss Nigh*' ingale of the good housewife’s care the kitchen of the hospital.” There wa s another sphere in which Miss Nightingale came to the rescue of the sic* and wounded from the blunders official administration. She clou*® then, 50,000 shirts in all being isso*® from her store. Of her a fellow workc* wrol c: “We cannot prevent her selfsacrifice for the dying—boys and bra' e men dying, who can he saved by ing and proper diet.” One poor fellow who had been nursed by her wrote:--“What a comfort it was to see net pass even : she would speak to one an® nod and smile to as many more: hut she could not do it to all. you knov. We lav there by hundreds: but could kiss her shadow as it fell, an “ lay our hcadv on the pillow again, con* tent.”