Addressed to a Lady: "The Admirable Virtues of Generosity and Economy"

Hester Mulso Chapone, an Englishwoman born in 1727, was an accomplished reader and writer and she studied French, Italian and Latin—pursuing an Enlightenment education. She married in 1760, but her husband died of illness less than a year after the wedding. Grieving and a young widow, Chapone stayed with extended family who were well-connected in British society. She wrote some poetry and many essay-like letters which were later published. She died in 1801.

One of Chapone’s most popular published works was Letters on the Improvement of the Mind which went into print in 1773. Originally written to a beloved niece with advice for girlhood, womanhood, marriage and women’s roles in society, this volume offers a glimpse of advice and ideals for women in 1770s European and Colonial culture.

Spelling and emphasis is original.

LETTER VII. ON ECONOMY.

MY DEAREST NIECE,

Economy is so important a part of a woman's character, so necessary to her own happiness, and so essential to her performing properly the duties of a wife and of a mother, that it ought to have the precedence of all other accomplishments, and take its rank next to the first duties of life. It is, moreover, an art as well as a virtue; and many well-meaning persons, from ignorance, or from inconsideration, are strangely deficient in it. Indeed it is too often wholly neglected in a young woman's education; and she is sent from her father's house to govern a family, without the least degree of that knowledge which should qualify her for it: this is the source of much inconvenience; for though experience and attention may supply, by degrees, the want of instruction, yet this requires time: the family in the meantime may get into habits, which are very difficult to alter; and, what is worse, the husband's opinion of his wife's incapacity may be fixed too strongly to suffer him ever to think justly of her gradual improvements. I would therefore earnestly advise you to make use of every opportunity you can find, for the laying in some store of knowledge on this subject, before you are called upon to the practice; by observing what passes before you—by consulting prudent and experienced mistresses of families—and by entering in a book a memorandum of every new piece of intelligence you acquire; you may afterwards compare these with more mature observations, and you can make additions and corrections, as you see occasion. I hope it will not be long before your mother entrusts you with some part, at least, of the management of your father's house. Whilst you are under her eye, your ignorance cannot do much harm, though the relief to her at first may not be near so considerable as the benefit to yourself.

Economy consists of so many branches, some of which descend to such minutenesses, that it is impossible for me in writing to give you particular directions. The rude outlines may be perhaps described, and I shall be happy if I can furnish you with any hint that may hereafter be usefully employed.

The first and greatest point is, to lay out your general plan of living in a just proportion to your fortune and rank: if these two will not coincide, the last must certainly give way; for, if you have right principles, you cannot fail of being wretched under the sense of the injustice as well as danger of spending beyond your income, and your distress will be continually increasing. No mortifications, which you can suffer from retrenching in your appearance, can be comparable to this unhappiness. If you would enjoy the real comforts of affluence, you should lay your plan considerably within your income; not for the pleasure of amassing wealth—though, where there is a growing family, it is an absolute duty to lay by something every year—but to provide for contingencies, and to have the power of indulging your choice in the disposal of the overplus, either in innocent pleasures, or to increase your funds for charity and generosity, which are in fact the true funds of pleasure. In some circumstances indeed this would not be prudent: there are professions in which a man's success greatly depends on his making some figure, where the bare suspicion of poverty would bring on the reality. If by marriage you should be placed in such a situation, it will be your duty to exert all your skill in the management of your income: yet, even in this case, I would not strain to the utmost for appearance, but would choose my models among the most prudent and moderate of my own class; and be contented with slower advancement, for the sake of security and peace of mind.

A contrary conduct is the ruin of many; and, in general, the wives of men in such professions might live in a more retired and frugal manner than they do, without any ill consequence, if they did not make the scheme of advancing the success of their husbands an excuse to themselves for the indulgence of their own vanity and ambition.

Perhaps it may be said, that the settling the general scheme of expenses is seldom the wife's province, and that many men do not choose even to acquaint her with the real state of their affairs. Where this is the case, a woman can be answerable for no more than is entrusted to her. But I think it a very ill sign, for one or both of the parties where there is such a want of openness, in what equally concerns them. As I trust you will deserve the confidence of your husband, so I hope you will be allowed free consultation with him on your mutual interest; and I believe there are few men, who would not hearken to reason on their own affairs, when they saw a wife ready and desirous to give up her share of vanities and indulgences, and only earnest to promote the common good of the family.

In order to settle your plan, it will be necessary to make a pretty exact calculation: and if, from this time, you accustom yourself to calculations, in all the little expenses entrusted to you, you will grow expert and ready at them, and be able to guess very nearly, where certainty cannot be obtained. Many articles of expense are regular and fixed: these may be valued exactly; and, by consulting with experienced persons, you may calculate nearly the amount of others: any material article of consumption, in a family of any given number and circumstances, may be estimated pretty nearly. Your own expenses of clothes and pocket-money should be settled and circumscribed, that you may be sure not to exceed the just proportion. I think it an admirable method to appropriate such a portion of your income, as you judge proper to bestow in charity, to be sacredly kept for that purpose, and no longer considered as your own. By which means you will avoid the temptation of giving less than you ought, through selfishness, or more than you ought, through good-nature or weakness. If your circumstances allow of it, you might set apart another fund for acts of liberality or friendship, which do not come under the head of charity. The having such funds ready at hand, makes it easy and pleasant to give; and when acts of bounty are performed without effort, they are generally done more kindly and effectually. If you are obliged in conscience to lay up for a family, the same method of an appropriated fund for saving will be of excellent use, as it will prevent that continual and often ineffectual anxiety, which a general desire of saving, without having fixed the limits, is sure to create.

Regularity of payments and accounts is essential to Economy:—your house-keeping should be settled at least once a week, and all the bills paid: all other tradesmen should be paid, at furthest, once a year. Indeed I think it more advantageous to pay oftener: but, if you make them trust you longer, they must either charge proportionally higher, or be losers by your custom. Numbers of them fail, every year, from the cruel cause of being obliged to give their customers so much longer credit than the dealers, from whom they take their goods, will allow to them. If people of fortune considered this, they would not defer their payments, from mere negligence, as they often do, to the ruin of whole families.

You must endeavour to acquire skill in purchasing: in order to this, you should begin now to attend to the prices of things, and take every proper opportunity of learning the real value of every thing, as well as the marks whereby you are to distinguish the good from the bad.

In your table, as in your dress, and in all other things, I wish you to aim at propriety and neatness, or, if your state demands it, elegance, rather than superfluous figure. To go beyond your sphere, either in dress or in the appearance of your table, indicates a greater fault in your character than to be too much within it. It is impossible to enter into the minutiæ of the table; good sense and observation on the best models must form your taste, and a due regard to what you can afford must restrain it.

Ladies, who are fond of needle-work, generally choose to consider that as a principal part of good housewifery: and though I cannot look upon it as of equal importance with the due regulation of a family, yet, in a middling rank, and with a moderate fortune, it is a necessary part of a woman's duty, and a considerable article in expense is saved by it. Many young ladies make almost every thing they wear; by which means they can make a genteel figure at a small expense. This, in your station, is the most profitable and desirable kind of work; and, as much of it as you can do, consistently with a due attention to your health, to the improvement of your mind, and to the discharge of other duties, I should think highly commendable. But, as I do not wish you to impose upon the world by your appearance, I should be contented to see you worse dressed, rather than see your whole time employed in preparations for it, or any of those hours given to it, which are needful to make your body strong and active by exercise, or your mind rational by reading. Absolute idleness is inexcusable in a woman, because the needle is always at hand for those intervals in which she cannot be otherwise employed. If you are industrious, and if you keep good hours, you will find time for all your proper employments. Early rising, and a good disposition of time, is essential to Economy. The necessary orders, and examinations into household affairs, should be dispatched as soon in the day and as privately as possible, that they may not interrupt your husband or guests, or break in upon conversation, or reading, in the remainder of the day. If you defer any thing that is necessary, you may be tempted by company, or by unforeseen avocations, to forget or to neglect it: hurry and irregularity will ensue, with expensive expedients to supply the defect.

There is in many people, and particularly in youth, a strange aversion to regularity—a desire to delay what ought to be done immediately, in order to do something else, which might as well be done afterwards. Be assured it is of more consequence to you than you can conceive, to get the better of this idle procrastinating spirit, and to acquire habits of constancy and steadiness, even in the most trifling matters: without them there can be no regularity, or consistency of action or character—no dependence on your best intentions, which a sudden humour may tempt you to lay aside for a time, and which a thousand unforeseen accidents will afterwards render it more and more difficult to execute: no one can say what important consequences may follow a trivial neglect of this kind. For example—I have known one of these procrastinators disoblige and gradually lose very valuable friends, by delaying to write to them so long, that, having no good excuse to offer, she could not get courage enough to write at all, and dropped their correspondence entirely.

The neatness and order of your house and furniture is a part of Economy, which will greatly affect your appearance and character, and to which you must yourself give attention, since it is not possible even for the rich and great to rely wholly on the care of servants, in such points, without their being often neglected. The more magnificently a house is furnished, the more one is disgusted with that air of confusion, which often prevails where attention is wanting in the owner. But, on the other hand, there is a kind of neatness, which gives a lady the air of a housemaid, and makes her excessively troublesome to every body, and particularly to her husband: in this, as in all other branches of Economy, I wish you to avoid all parade and bustle. Those ladies who pique themselves on the particular excellence of neatness, are very apt to forget that the decent order of the house should be designed to promote the convenience and pleasure of those who are to be in it; and that, if it is converted into a cause of trouble and constraint, their husbands and guests would be happier without it. The love of fame, that universal passion, will sometimes show itself on strangely insignificant subjects; and a person who acts for praise only, will always go beyond the mark in every thing. The best sign of a house being well governed is, that nobody's attention is called to any of the little affairs of it, but all goes on so well of course, that one is not led to make remarks upon any thing, nor to observe any extraordinary effort that produces the general result of ease and elegance, which prevails throughout.

Domestic Economy, and the credit and happiness of a family, depend so much on the choice and proper regulation of servants, that it must be considered as an essential part both of prudence and duty. Those who keep a great number of them, have a heavy charge on their consciences, and ought to think themselves in some measure responsible for the morals and happiness of so many of their fellow-creatures, designed like themselves for immortality. Indeed the cares of domestic management are by no means lighter to persons of high rank and fortune, if they perform their duty, than to those of a retired station. It is with a family, as with a commonwealth, the more numerous and luxurious it becomes, the more difficult it is to govern it properly. Though the great are placed above the little attentions and employments, to which a private gentlewoman must dedicate much of her time, they have a larger and more important sphere of action, in which, if they are indolent and neglectful, the whole government of their house and fortune must fall into irregularity. Whatever number of deputies they may employ to overlook their affairs, they must themselves overlook those deputies, and be ultimately answerable for the conduct of the whole. The characters of those servants, who are entrusted with power over the rest, cannot be too nicely inquired into; and the mistress of the family must be ever watchful over their conduct; at the same time that she must carefully avoid every appearance of suspicion, which, whilst it wounds and hinders a worthy servant, only excites the artifice and cunning of an unjust one.

None, who pretend to be friends of religion and virtue, should ever keep a domestic, however expert in business, whom they know to be guilty of immorality. How unbecoming a serious character is it, to say of such an one, "He is a bad man, but a good servant!" What a preference does it show of private convenience to the interests of society, which demand that vice should be constantly discountenanced, especially in every one's own household; and that the sober, honest, and industrious, should be sure of finding encouragement and reward, in the houses of those who maintain respectable characters! Such persons should be invariably strict and peremptory with regard to the behaviour of their servants, in every thing which concerns the general plan of domestic government; but should by no means be severe on small faults, since nothing so much weakens authority as frequent chiding. Whilst they require precise obedience to their rules, they must prove by their general conduct, that these rules are the effect, not of humour but of reason. It is wonderful that those, who are careful to conceal their ill-temper from strangers, should be indifferent how peevish and even contemptibly capricious they appear before their servants, on whom their good name so much depends, and from whom they can hope for no real respect, when their weakness is so apparent. When once a servant can say, "I cannot do any thing to please my mistress to-day," all authority is lost.

Those, who continually change their servants, and complain of perpetual ill usage, have good reason to believe that the fault is in themselves, and that they do not know how to govern. Few indeed possess the skill to unite authority with kindness, or are capable of that steady and uniformly reasonable conduct, which alone can maintain true dignity, and command a willing and attentive obedience. Let us not forget that human nature is the same in all stations. If you can convince your servants, that you have a generous and considerate regard to their health, their interest, and their reasonable gratifications—that you impose no commands but what are fit and right, nor ever reprove but with justice and temper—why should you imagine that they will be insensible to the good they receive, or whence suppose them incapable of esteeming and prizing such a mistress? I could never, without indignation, hear it said, that "servants have no gratitude;" as if the condition of servitude excluded the virtues of humanity! The truth is, masters and mistresses have seldom any real claim to gratitude. They think highly of what they bestow, and little of the service they receive: they consider only their own convenience, and seldom reflect on the kind of life their servants pass with them: they do not ask themselves, whether it is such an one as is consistent with the preservation of their health, their morals, their leisure for religious duties, or with a proper share of the enjoyments and comforts of life. The dissipated manners, which now so generally prevail, perpetual absence from home, and attendance on assemblies or at public places, is, in all these respects, pernicious to the whole household, and to the men-servants absolutely ruinous. Their only resource, in the tedious hours of waiting, whilst their masters and ladies are engaged in diversions, is to find out something of the same kind for themselves. Thus they are led into gaming, drinking, extravagance, and bad company; and thus, by a natural progression, they become distressed and dishonest. That attachment and affiance, which ought to subsist between the dependant and his protector, are destroyed. The master looks on his attendants as thieves and traitors, whilst they consider him as one whose money only gives him power over them, and who uses that power without the least regard to their welfare.

"The fool saith, I have no friends—I have no thanks for all my good deeds, and they that eat my bread speak evil of me." Thus foolishly do those complain, who choose their servants, as well as their friends, without discretion, or who treat them in a manner that no worthy person will bear.

I have been often shocked at the want of politeness, by which masters and mistresses sometimes provoke impertinence from their servants: a gentleman, who would resent to death an imputation of falsehood, from his equal, will not scruple, without proof, to accuse his servant of it in the grossest terms. I have heard the most insolent contempt of the whole class expressed at a table, whilst five or six of them attended behind the chairs, who the company seemed to think were without senses, without understanding, or the natural feelings of resentment: these are cruel injuries, and will be retorted in some way or other.

If you, my dear, live to be at the head of a family, I hope you will not only avoid all injurious treatment of your domestics, but behave to them with that courtesy and good breeding, which will heighten their respect as well as their affection. If, on any occasion, they do more than you have a right to require, give them, at least, the reward of seeing that they have obliged you. If, in your service, they have any hardship to endure, let them see that you are concerned for the necessity of imposing it. When they are sick, give them all the attention and every comfort in your power, with a free heart and kind countenance; "not blemishing thy good deeds, not using uncomfortable words when thou givest any thing. Is not a word better than a gift? but both are with a gracious man. A fool will upbraid churlishly, and a gift of the envious consumeth the eyes."

Whilst you thus endear yourself to all your servants, you must ever carefully avoid making a favourite of any; unjust distinctions, and weak indulgences to one, will of course excite envy and hatred in the rest. Your favourite may establish whatever abuses she pleases; none will dare to complain against her, and you will be kept ignorant of her ill practices, but will feel the effects of them, by finding all your other servants uneasy in their places, and, perhaps, by being obliged continually to change them.

When they have spent a reasonable time in your service, and have behaved commendably, you ought to prefer them, if it is in your power, or to recommend them to a better provision. The hope of this keeps alive attention and gratitude, and is the proper support of industry. Like a parent, you should keep in view their establishment in some way, that may preserve their old age from indigence; and to this end, you should endeavour to inspire them with care to lay up part of their gains, and constantly discourage in them all vanity in dress, and extravagance in idle expenses. That you are bound to promote their eternal as well as temporal welfare, you cannot doubt, since, next to your children, they are your nearest dependants. You ought therefore to instruct them as far as you are able, furnish them with good books suited to their capacity, and see that they attend the public worship of God: and you must take care so to pass the sabbath-day as to allow them time, on that day, at least, for reading and reflection at home, as well as for attendance at church. Though this is part of your religious duty, I mention it here, because it is also a part of family management: for the same reason I shall here take occasion earnestly to recommend family prayers, which are useful to all, but more particularly to servants, who, being constantly employed, are led to the neglect of private prayer, and whose ignorance makes it very difficult for them to frame devotions for themselves, or to choose proper helps, amidst the numerous books of superstitious or enthusiastic nonsense, which are printed for that purpose. Even, in a political light, this practice is eligible, since the idea which it will give them of your regularity and decency, if not counteracted by other parts of your conduct, will probably increase their respect for you, and will be some restraint at least on their outward behaviour, though it should fail of that inward influence, which in general may be hoped from it.

The prudent distribution of your charitable gifts may not improperly be considered as a branch of Economy, since the great duty of almsgiving cannot be truly fulfilled without a diligent attention so to manage the sums you can spare as to produce the most real good to your fellow-creatures. Many are willing to give money, who will not bestow their time and consideration, and who therefore often hurt the community, when they mean to do good to individuals. The larger are your funds, the stronger is the call upon you to exert your industry and care in disposing of them properly. It seems impossible to give rules for this, as every case is attended with a variety of circumstances, which must all be considered. In general, charity is most useful, when it is appropriated to animate the industry of the young, to procure some ease and comforts to old age, and to support in sickness those, whose daily labour is their only maintenance in health. They, who are fallen into indigence, from circumstances of ease and plenty, and in whom education and habit have added a thousand wants to those of nature, must be considered with the tenderest sympathy by every feeling heart. It is needless to say, that to such the bare support of existence is scarcely a benefit, and that the delicacy and liberality of the manner, in which relief is here offered, can alone make it a real act of kindness. In great families, the waste of provisions, sufficient for the support of many poor ones, is a shocking abuse of the gifts of Providence: nor should any lady think it beneath her to study the best means of preventing it, and of employing the refuse of luxury in the relief of the poor. Even the smallest families may give some assistance in this way, if care is taken that nothing be wasted.

I am sensible, my dear child, that very little more can be gathered from what I have said on Economy, than the general importance of it, which cannot be too much impressed on your mind, since the natural turn of young people is to neglect and even to despise it; not distinguishing it from parsimony and narrowness of spirit. But, be assured, my dear, there can be no true generosity without it; and that the most enlarged and liberal mind will find itself not debased but ennobled by it. Nothing is more common than to see the same person, whose want of Economy is ruining his family, consumed with regret and vexation at the effect of his profusion; and, by endeavouring to save, in such trifles as will not amount to twenty pounds in a year, that which he wastes by hundreds, incur the character and suffer the anxieties of a miser, together with the misfortunes of a prodigal. A rational plan of expense will save you from all these corroding cares, and will give you the full and liberal enjoyment of what you spend. An air of ease, of hospitality, and frankness, will reign in your house, which will make it pleasant to your friends and to yourself. "Better is a morsel of bread," where this is found, than the most elaborate entertainment, with that air of constraint and anxiety, which often betrays the grudging heart through all the disguises of civility.

That you, my dear, may unite in yourself the admirable virtues of Generosity and Economy, which will be the grace and crown of all your attainments, is the earnest wish of

Source: 

Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Lady by Hester Chapone (London, 1820).