It’s intriguing to compare our attitudes to hearth and home here in Bali with those of our grandparents in more conservative times and temperate climes.
I have beside me a copy of ‘Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management’, a curious tome of over 2000 pages published in 1906 and targeted to the young English housewife of the times; it was considered an ideal wedding present. The contents reflect an era almost unbelievably conservative by contemporary standards. The book’s opening words are, ‘The functions of the mistress of the house resemble those of the general of an army or the manager of a great business concern.’ The first chapter covers the important topics of a century ago -- The Housewife, Home Virtues, Hospitality, Good Temper, Dress and Fashion, Engaging Domestics, Visiting Cards etc -- in painstaking detail. The worlds of formal Edwardian England and modern small-town tropics could not be further apart. I grope for commonalities and find a few by stretching a point. I am a virtuous, hospital householder of good temper though lamentably lacking in the departments of dress, fashion and visiting cards. I have however, Engaged a Domestic. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. She engaged me.
Wayan Manis has been my housekeeper six years now. She cleans and cooks and washes and irons and solves problems before I know I have them. Wayan Manis is cheerful, smart and full of initiative; I’m deeply grateful every day that she’d rather be my pembantu than pursue a more interesting career. Just to put the icing on the cake, she comes with a happy husband who landscapes, renovates, drives me to Denpasar and fixes things. For someone who would rather be gardening than doing any of the above, this arrangement is heaven on toast. Mrs. Beeton devotes several pages to the selection, treatment, wages and moral welfare of Domestics. Wayan Manis selected me herself, in fact, and announced her own requirements in terms of salary and working hours.
I’m sure Mrs Beeton would deeply disapprove of my slackly run little household. It’s not until I go back to Canada on my annual pilgrimage that I realize we Ubud expatriates are living way, way outside the housekeeping box even by contemporary standards. Until they come and see for themselves people can’t imagine keeping house in a situation where there is no hot water in the kitchen, no glass in the windows, no clothes dryer and an endless parade of wildlife wandering through every room.
Although housework has evolved a lot since I reluctantly first picked up a duster, the basic essentials of cleaning floors, doing laundry and washing dishes never ends. When my mother was a girl in the days before modern conveniences, housekeeping was a full-time job. Last year she handed me a dog-eared little brown book entitled ‘Foods, Nutrition and Home Management’ issued by the British Columbia Department of Education in 1933. Written for the daughters of Mrs Beeton’s brides, this was a textbook for the proper running of a Canadian household -– the only employment many women of her generation would ever know.
It’s fascinating to peruse this 75-year old document on household management and contrast it to keeping house in Bali today. Many of the articles in the book no longer exist, so that the part on ‘Care of the Bread-box, the Bake Board and Glass Milk Bottles’ can be safely set aside. The section on laundry is discouragingly long, detailing the separate uses of washing-soda, lye, borax, ammonia and soap. The ‘General Rules for Washing’ run to 21 steps, followed by special sections on washing woolens, sweaters and silk stockings. The washing machines in those days were open tubs of hot water that churned the laundry around for a few minutes to loosen the dirt, followed by several hand rinses. Then the clothes were passed through a wringer to remove as much of the water as possible and hung outside to dry. I remember watching my grandmother doing this, it took a very long time and quite a lot of muscle.
Until I bought a simple washing machine five years ago Wayan Manis did the washing by hand in a bucket, scorning my suggestion of sending it all to the laundry as being extravagant. I have no idea how the machine works as Wayan won’t let me anywhere near it; it has its own small house and she makes offerings to it daily.
The books’ sections on food are particularly intriguing, coming from an era where all dishes were conservative and bland. Fish was steamed, boiled or baked. Beets, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage were to be boiled in large quantities of water. The recipe for chili sauce includes tomatoes, onion, peppers, sugar, vinegar… no chili at all… boiled together. In an era where you’re likely to find goat cheese and sun dried tomato between your slices of whole grain bread, it’s interesting to learn that the recommended sandwich fillings of the 1930s included chopped almonds and celery with salad dressing, chopped dates with fruit juice or cottage cheese with olives. One directive: ‘Never serve two foods of pronounced flavour at the same meal. The combination of salmon, onions and prunes is an unpardonable error.’ These are strong words indeed and of considerable interest in our kitchen, where almost every dish explodes with chilies, ginger, garlic and shallots... one unpardonable error after the other.
Carefully I put the old books back on the shelf. So much has changed, but the essentials stay the same. Good housekeeping, I believe, is keeping things reasonably clean, eating well and preventing tree frogs from sleeping in your sneakers. After making allowances for the environment, I’m sure Mrs Beeton would agree.
