Letter XI: Housekeeping, and other matters.


Broomielaw, September 1866.
I am writing to you at the end of a fortnight of very hard work, for
I have just gone through my first experience in changing servants;
those I brought up with me four months ago were nice, tidy girls and
as a natural consequence of these attractive qualities they have
both left me to be married. I sent them down to Christchurch in the
dray, and made arrangements for two more servants to return in the
same conveyance at the end of a week. In the meantime we had to do
everything for ourselves, and on the whole we found this picnic life
great fun. The household consists, besides F--- and me, of a cadet,
as they are called--he is a clergyman's son learning sheep-farming
under our auspices--and a boy who milks the cows and does odd jobs
out of doors. We were all equally ignorant of practical cookery, so
the chief responsibility rested on my shoulders, and cost me some
very anxious moments, I assure you, for a cookery-book is after all
but a broken reed to lean on in a real emergency; it starts by
assuming that its unhappy student possesses a knowledge of at least
the rudiments of the art, whereas it ought not to disdain to tell
you whether the water in which potatoes are to be boiled should be
hot or cold. I must confess that some of my earliest efforts were
both curious and nasty, but E ate my numerous failures with the
greatest good-humour; the only thing at which he made a wry face was
some soup into which a large lump of washing-soda had mysteriously
conveyed itself; and I also had to undergo a good deal of "chaff"
about my first omelette, which was of the size and consistency of a