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Updated: May 7, 2025
I was washing, I was starching, I was scouring, I was quilting God help me! I never saw it I never touch'd it! would I had been a centinel, a bandy-legg'd drummer, a trumpeter, a trumpeter's wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street and corner of Strasburg.
Margaret Bean was famous for her fine starching in the village; it was her chief domestic talent, and she was faithful in its application in all possible directions. "I wish he would speak if he could," said Mrs. Gordon. "I do, if it's for the best," returned Margaret Bean. She hesitated; there were red rings around her tearful eyes, like a bird's.
And next morning she was up betimes, starching and ironing and goffering dainty little frills with such a look of love and satisfaction on her face, that he had not the heart to hint that she had availed herself somewhat liberally of his permission, and that less dainty care and crispness might do equally well for the baby, bundled up in Mrs Gray's kind but crumpling arms, to take the place of Bill's faded pinafore.
I declare our household is in her eyes sinfully free! If she can hammer out a text of Scripture, and write her name in characters as big and gawky as herself, 'tis as far as her education has carried her, save in pickling, preserving, stitchery, and clear starching, the only arts not sinful in her eyes.
When ladies delighted in lace-working, and in starching and preparing their produce most carefully, they showed their good housewifery in washing and ironing it with their own hands. It was gallantry on the part of their spouses to make befitting presents of all things requisite for their labours, and worthy their use.
Washing, starching, ironing, darning, patching, and an immense deal of talk and consultation, occupied that and a good deal of the following day, the rest of which was given up to the repairing of an immense pair of green baize shoes, without which Aunt Patsy could not be persuaded to go into the outer air.
M. and the proper starching of the bands of his shirts were almost the only trials that Mrs. Moulder was doomed to suffer. "What the d are you for?" he would say, almost throwing the displeasing viands at her head across the table, or tearing the rough linen from off his throat.
The actual process of hand starching may be learned in less than one hour. Speed in the work may be acquired in about ten days.
Would it not have been wiser as well as neater, for her to have plain, untrimmed underwear, and iron it without starching? For here comfort is also to be considered. Is not smooth, neat linen to take the precedence of trimming and starch? Another thing which must not be crowded out is rest, and the care of the health, and the one includes the other.
But I, to my misfortune, always served place-hunters and adventurers, whose keep and wages were so miserable and scanty that half went in paying for the starching of one's collars; it would be a miracle indeed if a page volunteer ever got anything like a reasonable bounty."
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