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By Root 1398 0

dropped in that day as she prepared to take a nap, there was still more work to do. “I never was so tired in my life; every bone in my body felt as if it were ready to drop out, and my eyes were so heavy that I could hardly keep them open.” Finally, she confessed to herself, “I don’t find doing housework quite so much of a joke as I imagined it was going to be, especially when we have company to entertain at the same time, and want to make them enjoy themselves.” After dinner, Eliza reluctantly went off to a dance she had promised to attend. “I was so tired that I made Jim Bryan tell the boys not to ask me to dance.” The next morning, the same seemingly endless routine repeated itself. “I had to be up early and clean up my room, though half-dead with fatigue.” That evening, she went to bed as soon as she had eaten her supper.46

Like Eliza Andrews, the outspoken Emma Holmes of Camden, South Carolina, had performed her first household tasks with considerable zeal and a sense of personal commitment. “Of course it occupies a good deal of time,” she observed in May 1865, “but the servants find we are by no means entirely dependent on them.” That feeling in itself gave her immense satisfaction. Less than a month later, some of that enthusiasm had waned: “I was very tired yesterday, after my various pieces of manual labor, but hope they will drive off headache as medicine wont. I was up at five today …” Still, she persisted, trying to put the best face on her labors as still another servant left the household. “[W]e girls went to ironing, and though of course it was fatiguing, standing so long, it was not near as difficult nor as hard work as I fancied.” But by mid-August, after another day of household chores, she sounded a rather different note. “I dont like cooking or washing, even the doing up of muslins is great annoyance to me and I do miss the having all ready prepared to my hand. I generally rise at five or before, though sometimes not till six, when very tired, but often rouse servants and household by going to sweep the drawing room.” Later that month, the initial excitement had all but vanished. “I am very weary, standing up washing all the breakfast and dinner china, bowls, kettles, pans, silver, etc. and minding Sims, churning, washing stockings, etc.—a most miscellaneous list of duties, leaving no time for reading or exercise …”47

Never once did Emma Holmes or any of the other women who described their admittedly difficult experiences with housework think to question how their black help had for so many years performed these same duties, day after day, while also caring for a husband and children. Perhaps the question never even entered their minds. This was, as they had discovered, labor suited only for black hands—or, as Eliza Andrews suggested, for “negroes that are fit for nothing else.” Mary Chesnut, who never suffered these ordeals, seemed to understand better than most what housework entailed. “Ellen is a poor maid, but if I do a little work, it is quite enough to show me how dreadful it would be if I should have to do it all.” Only many years later, when she reflected over the black folks who had served her, did Kate Stone begin to realize the monstrous demands she had made on them.

Even under the best owners, it was a hard, hard life: to toil six days out of seven, week after week, month after month, year after year, as long as life lasted; to be absolutely under the control of someone until the last breath was drawn; to win but the bare necessaries of life, no hope of more, no matter how hard the work, how long the toil; and to know that nothing could change your lot. Obedience, revolt, submission, prayers—all were in vain. Waking sometimes in the night as I grew older and thinking it all over, I would grow sick with the misery of it all.

Nor, as she now realized, had the domestics escaped arduous labor. The seamstress always had “piles of work ahead,” while the washerwoman labored all week to keep the family in clean clothes. And the cook needed to prepare three abundant meals a day for the thirteen