I am a historical buff, with interests ranging widely. I am also on a very limited income, and I read fast and copiously.
So once I got my Kindle, I needed things to put on it to beguile the time where I sit and donate plasma, and in the process discovered "Anna Maria's Housekeeping," by Mrs. S.D. Power. I find that I appreciate a lot more the simplicity of my own housework when I consider that I just ran all the laundry, with my contribution being "Separate into like colors....dump in washer with soap....remove from washer and dump in dryer....remove from dryer and fold before the cat sleeps on them." I don't have to black the iron stove every day, or clean and polish a house heated entirely by wood and coal fires, nor do I have to put vast Victorian breakfasts on the table at six am. And reading the Victorian housekeeping books, I am profoundly grateful for this. That is a better mindset to do housework in. I expected a new iteration of that when I picked up this book.
I didn't expect to discover a new friend.
You see, the book is laid out as conversations with a young lady in her late teens, named Anna Maria.
Anna Maria is our neighbor's daughter, a nice girl with shrewd, sensible ways, who goes to the High School, and stands well in the Latin class, and is specially good, her teacher says, in Political Economy and Rhetoric. She helps her mother, does most of the sewing, and has the finest cinerarias and cyclamens abloom in her windows this February of anybody in town. As Darius Perkins says, all her sense don't run to seed in books. She knows plenty about things, as well as other people's ideas about them.
And so the different topics are introduced, very conversationally....
Thank you dear, I'm glad you've run in this way while your folks are at the lecture; take the Shaker chair and let us be cozy. You would like to go over housekeeping accounts this evening when we are sure not to be disturbed? The High School girls would poke fun at that as poor entertainment, I'm afraid, but you begin to find an interest in such things.
And so with this gentle and friendly conversation, I not only learn many things about how to manage a Victorian household, but things about life that spoke to my own self-image.
There is too much to do, to enjoy to learn in life not to get the fullest of our privileges, and the most of our time.
It is no small thing to stand at the head of affairs, and be the motive power on which depend the welfare and credit, the health, temper, and spirit of the entire family.
No attitudinizing, no fine lady affectations over the griddles and saucepans; instead, cultivate the fine character which acts up to the need of the hour swifty, promptly, but with the quiet and certainty that keeps briskness from turning into vulgar hurry.
I never knew a woman of really fine spirit and breeding who could not without hesitation accept whatever duty was needful whether tending a sick person doing field or housework, or looking into details of business.
The loveliest, most refined women have always in reserve a fiber of steel to meet the inevitable without affectation or complaint.....I do not mean that one is to do rough work unnecessarily, but that you should learn a spirit which asks only, "is this necessary, is it best?" and thereupon make duty acceptable and becoming. Half the rough work in the world-- I will speak the truth and say most of the work in it-- is rough only in the matter of doing it...I would have you feel yourself so much of a lady, so thoroughly in love with what is fine and becoming that you are safe in doing whatever is convenient for you, whether digging the borders and filling the flowerpots, or doing the week's washing.
Yes. THAT is what I am, and what I aspire to. My spiritual practice as a pagan is largely comprised of the constant effort to be where I am supposed to be, that I may naturally do what I am supposed to to, to put myself in harmony with the flow of nature, and cultivate my higher self.
I daresay Mrs. Power didn't think she was writing for a pagan in the 21st century but it works for me.
You can find "Anna Maria's Housekeeping" online at the Internet Archive here.