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Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh
page 30 of 173 (17%)
room when any of the leading couples retired prematurely from their
duties, and did not condescend to dance up and down the whole set. We
may rejoice that these causes of irritation no longer exist; and that if
such feelings as jealousy, rivalry, and discontent ever touch celestial
bosoms in the modern ball-room they must arise from different and more
recondite sources.

I am tempted to add a little about the difference of personal habits. It
may be asserted as a general truth, that less was left to the charge and
discretion of servants, and more was done, or superintended, by the
masters and mistresses. With regard to the mistresses, it is, I believe,
generally understood, that at the time to which I refer, a hundred years
ago, they took a personal part in the higher branches of cookery, as well
as in the concoction of home-made wines, and distilling of herbs for
domestic medicines, which are nearly allied to the same art. Ladies did
not disdain to spin the thread of which the household linen was woven.
Some ladies liked to wash with their own hands their choice china after
breakfast or tea. In one of my earliest child's books, a little girl,
the daughter of a gentleman, is taught by her mother to make her own bed
before leaving her chamber. It was not so much that they had not
servants to do all these things for them, as that they took an interest
in such occupations. And it must be borne in mind how many sources of
interest enjoyed by this generation were then closed, or very scantily
opened to ladies. A very small minority of them cared much for
literature or science. Music was not a very common, and drawing was a
still rarer, accomplishment; needlework, in some form or other, was their
chief sedentary employment.

But I doubt whether the rising generation are equally aware how much
gentlemen also did for themselves in those times, and whether some things
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