Cooks -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Housekeeping -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
The bedrooms surprised us. They were called bedrooms, because nobody had
yet thought out any other name for them. We were both loud in praise of
their coziness. They were simply full of coziness. There was no room for
anything else. Furnished with ledges or bunks as on board ship, they
would have been most spacious and agreeable. With beds in them they
bulged. Letitia admitted this, when I called her attention to it. She
laughed and quoted Ben Jonson's memorable words: "I will not lodge thee
by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie a little further to make
thee a room." And, as usual, I kissed her. Her splendid thoughts were
independent of mere space. They rose above and superior to close
modernity. Thank goodness, again, for the lack of a sense of humor! With
it, I might have said things about Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont, at
which the groundlings, would, perchance, have smiled. The humorists,
so-called, would sell their souls for a laugh.
We never once looked at the kitchen. Not for worlds would we have
betrayed so mean and petty a spirit. Undoubtedly there are women who
would have peered into this food-resort, and have held forth on such
disgusting topics as "tubs" and "hot and cold water." Ugh! How
nauseating! Letitia simply passed it by with a shrug. It _had_ to be
there, of course, but it had nothing to do with our case. Cook would
probably know if it were properly appointed. This was what cook was for.
The agent had told us that a bedroom for a cook was conveniently
adjoining. To which Letitia had replied, in evident amusement, "No
doubt. Why not?" I thought it clever, and I believe that the agent did,
for he turned his face quickly away.
Aunt Julia had supplied the cooking utensils, I am thankful to say. We
had no interest in them. We agreed that they were necessary, but we were
willing to pay, and to pay well, for a careful custodian of that sort of
thing. But as I began to say before, Aunt Julia, after having wisely
dropped the "servant question," became rampant and interfering on the
subject of our apartment. She asked distressing questions about "dumb
waiters," and "janitors," and "washing."
Letitia was reading Cicero's _De Amicitia_ at the time, I remember,
while I was making notes of some incidents in the life of Goethe that I
meant to incorporate in my book. I bore with Aunt Julia most patiently.
As I could not answer her questions, I parried them very good-naturedly.
After all, she was Letitia's only relative, and she was old, and rather
infirm. One must be polite, even when it would be excruciatingly
exquisite to be otherwise.
"I must say," remarked Aunt Julia, "that you don't seem to have looked
at anything. You have taken an apartment, and you know nothing at all
about it. You are a couple of silly children."
"Pardon me," I said, "but we have looked at all that it was necessary to
look at. I don't expect Letitia to grovel."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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