CLERGYMEN’S WIVES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3911, 26 February 1929, Page 32

CLERGYMEN’S WIVES.

HOUSEWORK OR CULTURE. | (From Our Own Correspondent.) . LONDON, January 5. r ollowing up the correspondence on the clergy and their homes the Rev. George "• ltt r takes exception to the letter ?! xoV > Carrington, Christchurch, Hants, who held up the New Zealand clergymen s wives as praiseworthy examples. I do not for a moment,” he writes in the Daily telegraph, “consider household work and gardening as unseemly pursuits or anything ‘menial,’ if that term be used only as a term of reproach, in which sense 1 had no intention of using it. What I have objected to is the com-, pulsion under the stress of very diminishing incomes, to which a commission has recently borne witness, of the time of the clergy and their wives in many instances being more and more overburdened with "hat in normal days, and in more reasonable, circumstances would not have arisen namely, the lack of freedom for cultural pursuits, and for developin'- that spiritual and intellectual leadership on which society generally so much depends tor its healthy advance. “ The People will not rise higher than they are led. Smartness, and neatness in dress, and small parties,’ are all very well in their way, but have little reference to the urgent matter under discussion. I would like to reiterate the excellent statement of the Rev. H. L. Fosbrooke, that ‘men who enter the ministry do not ask-for luxury, but they do ask tor a quiet mind,” with which to serve God, and fulfil their vocation.’ “ I know of a vicar’s wife in the Midi lands who through stress of housework and duties during the war lost her life through sleepy sickness* brought on by overwork. I know only too much of what 1 have witnessed, and to what others have borne eloquent testimony.” Another correspondet says:— “ While I sympathise heartily with anv woman having all her own work to do, a’s well as a family to bring up, I cannot help wondering whether, in the case of clergymen s wives, it is always an inadequate income which prevents the necessary help. Do the majority of clergymen’s wives make good, broad-minded, tolerant, modern mistresses? Are they not far more often more able to manage a parish than their own home and a maid? , one cannot but feel sorry for the lady who, through overwork, met her death, at the same time one realises that many women have done the same in all social scales. Menial duties do not stunt a cultured woman; they add to her greatness if she is strong-willed enough to work upwards to a higher ideal, and no * let the menial duties drag her down. But what is the sum total of the who e argument? Conceit. Most women think it degrading and beneath their dignity to do all the housework. Is it?” Candida, who evidently knows something about New Zealand, writes as follows:—

In reply to the letter from your correspondent, M. C. Carrington, as one who has experienced both the life of vicar’s wife in New Zealand and now rector’s wite m England, I must contend that the situations are not comparable. In a New Zealand parish, wlrere servants are not kept by the greater number of the ladies of the congregation, the position causes no embarrassments or difficulties. In an English parish, where servants are kept by all her friends and confreres, and she has none, the rector’s wife is quietly left out ”by her social equals, not unkindly, but merely as “ impossible,” while the poorer parishioners cannot help an equally quiet feeling of amiable contempt or one of resentment. ' The actual work and >is conditions are completely different in New Zealand, ror instance, there is the easily-worked small bungalow type of house, kept in repair and decorated by the parish, the invigorating, sunny climate, and the simple mode of entertaining. If I gave a party nearly every guest brought some delicious ready-to-serve dainty, and all the females shared in the washing up after the meal was over. Here I have been mortified time and j g ?- ln L x? y . the obvious anguish of really delightful men who did not know how to bear remaining seated at table while 1 changed the plates. In New Zealand the most polite man yet thinks of all women as being naturally accustomed to waiting and working, and the feminine totem does not stand so high as it does here. “In New Zealand a child is never ‘de trap, and the mother of a family can take hers with her anywhere and be sur ? of a welcome; not so here. But even taking into consideration all these points, there is no denying the hardness of the New Zealand life, and that is why my huge, inconvenient house, my lif e devoid of entertainment, and my ‘ unseemly ’ and nominal work are yet more to my taste in my own country than exile abroad. But there is no denying that under such circumstances there is no energy or spirit left for parochial work.”