Good Housewife – Frederick Smallfield (1856) ~ source Wikimedia Commons

Well, after so much neglect and inattention, I decided to start up my Deal Me In Challenge again.  This time I drew the six of spades ♠️ and what better person to begin with than Samuel Johnson.  An essay from Mr. Johnson will always be enlightening and humorous.

——Stultus labor est ineptiarum.
Mart. Lib. ii. Ep. lxxxvi. 10.

How foolish is the toil of trifling cares!
Elphinston.

Johnson relates that after seven years he finally accepted an invitation to visit a relative of his father’s in the country.  He expected to find “leisure and tranquillity, which a rural life always promises”, but instead he found “a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded, and every motion agitated.”  In fact, there was so much coming and going by the lady and her daughters that Johnson expected some great event to be imminent.

Instead Johnson learns they all must go to bed early to rise to make cheesecakes in the morning and then discovers his room filled with sieves of leaves and flowers, as his room is the only one sunny enough to dry them.

Preserving Jam – Frederick Daniel Hardy (1864)
~ source Wikimedia Commons

The next morning in the garden, the gardener boasts of his lady producing the most pickles and conserves anywhere, and later, the lady herself boasts for two hours of her robs and jellies and disparages a nearby London lady for her sweetmeats.  And thus the days pass by such menial tasks in Johnson’s eyes.

“But to reason or expostulate are hopeless attempts. The lady has settled her opinions, and maintains the dignity of her own performances with all the firmness of stupidity accustomed to be flattered. Her daughters, having never seen any house but their own, believe their mother’s excellence on her own word. Her husband is a mere sportsman, who is pleased to see his table well furnished, and thinks the day sufficiently successful, in which he brings home a leash of hares to be potted by his wife.”

When Johnson requests books, the housewife dissuades him and claims her girls need nothing more than good housekeeping skills to further themselves in life.  In fact, she has a secret ingredient to her exemplary orange pudding and goes to extreme machinations to keep it secret.  She has promised to reveal it to her older daughter upon her marriage, however, the secret of the preparation of English capers will go with her to the grave.

Woman Making Cakes – Adriaan de Lelie (c. 1800)
~ source Wikimedia Commons

Once, Johnson was able to find the housewife’s book of receipts (recipes) but the undecipherable writing of his hostess, her mother and grandmother foils any attempt at learning the secrets of her excellent cooking.

Johnson wishes to know from the Rambler if his career in reading and learning has been poorly employed, and instead he should be learning the culinary arts, as this housewife has been sheltered from any curiosity as to wars, fates of heroes, fire, flood and disaster.  But her distress over the fermenting of her artificial wines, the curing of marigolds, the curing of pickles and the rain falling on fruit is almost on the same level intensity as the aforementioned.

Daily Picayune with Wine and Apples – Louis A. Winterhalder (1905)
~ source Wikimedia Commons

With regard to vice and virtue, she is rather neutral and has no desire to be praised for her cooking although she will criticize the failings of others in this area.

He finishes with: “I am now very impatient to know whether I am to look on these ladies as the great patterns of our sex, and to consider conserves and pickles as the business of my life; whether the censures which I now suffer be just, and whether the brewers of wines, and the distillers of washes, have a right to look with insolence on the weakness of                                                 Cornelia.”

The Old Gardener – Sir Hubert von Herkomer
~ source Wikimedia Commons

It was rather an entertaining story which shows that the pride and condescension of the upper classes is just as strong in the common people.  And the contrast between Johnson’s expectations and actually reality produces an irony that runs throughout the whole essay. Bravo, Mr. Johnson!

The next up in the Deal Me In Challenge will be a short story, Le Chêne et le Roseau (The Oak and the Reed) by Jean de la Fontaine.