IN PRAISE OF CHARWOMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3994, 30 September 1930, Page 63

IN PRAISE OF CHARWOMEN.

If one might add a word to the praise which is at last won by those dear ladies whom we call charwomen, then life would not be quite vain. There was a time when the word “ charwoman ” suggested the ludicrous exaggerations of the comedy stage. She was a “ property,” her mark was the red jovial face; she was one of a sort of domestic Harlequinade which included the outrageous mother-in-law and the meek curate. Already the laughter has gone out of these three stock comic characters. They are now remote from daily life. In London (a town 1 did not visit for four years, and so came to it almost as a stranger) I found that in most households a charwoman was a daily and blessed fact. She stood for help and peace. She was, in so many cases, a friend. Her home life and its affairs were matters of profound interest to all. She managed to preserve her personality intact while cleaning other people’s gas stoves, floors, and pans. One half of the world makes a mess and the other naif tidies it up again. Charwomen are the priestesses of order. Our Lady of Chores—no mean title that! Do you remember Mary Coleridge’s lines?

Mother of God! No Lady thou, Common woman of common earth

Such is the patroness of the charwoman. At last the poets and dramatists have discerned her worth, and one f 'lows the other in praise of her. But lately I heard Mr Stephen Gwynn describe “ The Charwoman’s Daughter,” by Mr James Stephens, as worthy to set by “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Then you have Sir James Barrie praising her. And in a portrait which may prove classical you have the Dublin charwoman drawn as Juno in “ Juno and the Paycock.” Mr Sean O’Casey can never surpass himself in the truth and beauty and tenderness of this picture of a woman who inhabits every slum street in Dublin. Juno is, 1 believe, the ordinary Irish charwoman. Perhaps we knew her tbo well to notice her until

Mr Sean . O’Casey caught us, and made ns notice her. Necessity is the mother of charwomen. They do not, of course, conform to any type. I know one as beautiful as she is good. It seems to he her cheerfully accepted lot to do all that has not been done in the week by others; “Annie will do it on Friday” becomes a household saying. We regard Friday as a day when Annie will tackle all that has dismayed us. From her arrival to her departure she works at high pressure, and then leaves us that she may work for someone else. She “ has not time to be ill,” she explains, when a cough is bad. She must make a home for a young brother. She accepts all work as her portion, and seems unmindful of beauty which might demand some recognition. Then I think of another, a little greyhaired woman whom I have known for many years. Always she sang in the basement kitchen, sang to the swish of her scrubbing brush. One day we talked of foreign travel. “ I’d love to go round the world,” she said. “ I love fun and gaiety and sight-seeing.” She paused on the word. “ Still an’ all while I have my Harry I’m the happiest woman in the world.” So she was. Every evening a blind man tapped his way up the road and waited patiently, unless bidden to enter, at the gate where soon she would join him. Then, with more than the joy of lovers at a tryst, the charwoman and her blind husband would meet and set off homewards arm-in-arm. With . a fine delicacy she preserved his posi! : on as master of the house. All wages earned Were handed to him at the end of the week, and he laid out the money for their expenses. He was never to feel himself put aside by working son or daughter. He was to be “Father,” the counsellor and administrator.

There came a time when he was very ill, and she had no time for other people’s work, and then the time when she came back to scrub and did not sing, a grave little woman who must work to pass the lonely day. There was no one to meet her now, no stick tap-tapping down the road to her. She is, unbelievably to those who see her fresh face and trim figure, 70 years of age, and one of those who draw a richly deserved pension. But she must work for her own happiness. 1 heard a wise young doctor say: “It is the charwomen I like to get for patients, and I devote my time to them, for they are the really influential people. A lady talks to her charwoman about her ill-health, and then my patient will say, ‘Oh ! ma’am, you should try Dr X;- he’s wonderful; he cured me of so-and-so.’ Yes, charwomen are the patients to cultivate ! ’’ He was right in thinking that many turn to their charwomen for wisdom, women whose experience of life is deep. They have that knowledge of human nature which comes in a basement, a knowledge unbiased by passion or romance, but almost maternal in its acceptance of the foibles, the untidiness, the sheer dirt-pertaining to that nature. There is an awful sanity in those who wield a scrubbing brush. I remember a charwoman, rather weary from her work, looking in to tell us: “I have overcome the boys’ room,” and adding in a flash of deep wisdom which I hold to be charwomanly: “ Mankinds are a great contention.” Think that over. It is really the theme of “Juno and the Paycock.” It is the cause of war, international, civil, domestic. Yes, our charwomen are oracles, and you may pause and lay their words to heart. Know too that you are summed up dispassionately and kindly by one whose eyes are made clear by labour and necessity.—W. M. Letts, in the Spectator.