In fact, he will
tell you even if you don't ask. To hold up my culinary failures to
ridicule is one of his newest forms of humour (new to Henry, I
mean--the actual jokes you will have learned already at your
grandmother's knee).
I had begun to see that I must either get a servant soon or a judicial
separation from Henry. That was the stage at which I had arrived.
Things were getting beyond me. By 'things' I mean the whole loathsome
business of housework. My _metier_ is to write--not that I am a great
writer as yet, though I hope to be some day. What I never hope to be
is a culinary expert. Should you command your cook to turn out a short
story she could not suffer more in the agonies of composition than I do
in making a simple Yorkshire pudding.
Henry does not like housework any more than I do; he says the
performance of menial duties crushes his spirit--but he makes such a
fuss about things. You might think, to hear him talk, that getting up
coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues, knives and
brasses were the entire work of a household instead of being mere
incidents in the daily routine. If he had had to tackle my
duties . . . but men never understand how much there is to do in a
house.
Even when they do lend a hand my experience is that they invariably
manage to hurt themselves in some way. Henry seems incapable of
getting up coal without dropping the largest knob on his foot.
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