Householding Twaddle:
Mr Wrayburn
8 January 2015
There is, in Penelope Fitzgerald’s Cambridge novel, The Gate of Angels, an amusingly irritating character called Mr Wrayburn. Mr Wrayburn is a don, and so would his wife be, too, if the graduates of the women’s colleges were awarded degrees, which, in 1912, the year in which the novel is set, they were not. Mrs Wrayburn is not much of a housekeeper, but she keeps up appearances, and perhaps the most important appearance is indicated when Mr Wrayburn first comes on the scene.
It was clear that he had never been allowed to worry. That was not his work, worrying was done for him.
The context of this “worrying” is of course the world of household matters. Mr Wrayburn is surprised, and somewhat put out, to find that his wife has given shelter to two victims of a vehicular accident that occurred outside their suburban home. In fact, Mr Wrayburn does a lot of worrying; he is a worrywort. But what “worrying” means here is that he never has to make the beds or wash the dishes, or even to think about how beds might be made and dishes washed.
This was the secret of Victorian productivity. Men — dons and divines especially — were not to be disturbed from their high-minded work by so much as the idea of domestic travail. They wrote and researched, discussed and dissected, while such creature comforts as they desired were rolled before them, quite as if they were infants being looked after by a magic carpet. It is to be imagined that there must have been one or two things that they were forced to see to on their own. On the whole, though, their homes were little palaces, with at least one housemaid scurrying about with trays. Once a year, they would give their wives a certain sum of money, or inform them that such a sum was available at such and such a banker’s; and that would be that for their “worrying” about bills. No wonder the triple-decker novel and the multi-volume history flourished!
One thing I have never read about, however. I have never come across a scene or a passage in which one of these pampered gentlemen has to rearrange his library to accommodate new books. Perhaps new books were also part of the occluded worrying. Having been appointed to your more or less august post, you stopped the inflow of new books altogether, and simply enhanced your familiarity with the ones already on your shelves, the books that such a person as yourself ought already to own. New books might be disturbing. Mr Wrayburn certainly seems to be the kind of man who would not care to make surprising discoveries in later life. In any case, library management, like all matters of plumbing, goes unmentioned in the literature of the period.
As I say, Mrs Wrayburn is not very good at worrying, which means that she worries all the time instead of getting things done. “She looked at the sink, loaded down with all that was necessary when a husband had his daily meals in the house.” The contemplation of such drudgery is precisely what Mrs Wrayburn studied her way through Newnham to avoid. There follows a little catalogue aria of knickknacks (“knife-rests for knives, fork-rests for forks”) that I have seen quoted in toto at least twice. Although I had already decided against joining the party, I thought I’d have another look at the passage, which is full of stuff that I’d like to see (“cut glass blancmange dishes”), so I stood up to fetch the book. As I was getting up anyway, I took the bowl containing the dregs of this morning’s Purely O’s to the kitchen, where I soon found myself emptying the dishwasher. Almost everything belonged in the kitchen, but there were two pasta plates and, a leaf-shaped plate on which I’d served garlic toasts, that belonged in the dining ell, and I decided to put them away first. The moment I left the kitchen for the dining ell, I remembered that I was supposed to be writing, but when I came back to the desk I realized that I had forgotten to fetch The Gate of Angels, which, in the event, was on the writing table right behind me.
The writing table, as I mentioned yesterday, is in furious disarray. In the Victorian household, whose job would it be to tidy it up? Whose worry? I expect that there was always a handful of worthies gifted with intelligent spinster sisters-in-law who might be put to secretarial work. A sister-in-law would be better than a sister, I fancy, coming as she would under the yoke of matrimonial obedience; a sister might take an independent line. I wonder if there are any good, readable studies out there, applying sociology to literature, that canvas the domestic lives of prosperous scholarly men in the good old days.
The reason for the disarray on my desk — aside from the pile-up of minor negligences that precede and follow travel — is my decision to stop using Quicken to keep track of credit-card purchases. This sudden abandonment of software that I’ve been using for as long as I can remember was triggered by a nasty glitch, as the result of which I lost nearly a month’s inputs. The backup files were corrupted as well. Once again — as with saying sayonara to ReaderWare — I found that an application designed to “automate” everyday life was more trouble than it was worth. I shall continue to pay bills with checks printed by Quicken, but I’m going to keep track of the receipts in Evernote, just as soon as I decide how I want to do that. Meanwhile, the slips of paper pile up.
I accomplished yesterday’s job, to Kathleen’s satisfaction. I may now wrap up the Christmas tree in a plastic dropcloth and carry it down to the service elevator. Then I shall take a good broom to the carpet — no need to choke the vacuum cleaner with the bulk of the needles. By dinnertime, and without much fuss, the foyer will be back to normal. I’ll be having dinner by myself, actually, as Kathleen has one of her institutionary dinners.
No worries.