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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Tuesday, 18th March 2008

Quality for dinner. Pass the Fairy Liquid, Old Boy

It is poignant to think that, until quite recently, men never did washing up, and even women had to be pretty far down the social scale to be forced to the sink, even in emergencies. We know from Jane Austen’s letters that from time to time she did various forms of household work even in the kitchen, but there is never a mention of washing up. In Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price, in temporary disgrace for refusing to marry Henry Crawford, is sent back to her poverty-stricken natural family in Portsmouth, she finds that even they can afford to employ a slatternly maid of all work. She would do the washing up. If Jane Austen herself had ever been called on to wash up, we should certainly have known about it. Jane Welsh Carlyle describes in detail her troubles with servants, and what maids would and would not do, but there is never any suggestion of her being forced to wash up Mr Carlyle’s dinners. A man would go through life without ever knowing where or how washing up was done. I suspect there is no cartoon in Punch showing a man washing up until at least the second world war.

Can you imagine Lytton Strachey helping with the washing up at Garsington? Or Aldous Huxley? I suspect the first writer who knew all about it was D.H. Lawrence, under the direction of his hausfrau Frieda. Who was the first prime minister to do it? Harold Wilson. Ramsay MacDonald would never have stooped so low. Princess Diana said: ‘I don’t mind washing up. Prefer it to making beds.’ ‘What about Prince Charles?’ ‘Never, never, never.’ Is there any reader who has never done the washing up? If so, time to take the plonge.