Portrait of a Good Provider

‘MR. Bailey,’ my grandfather’s housekeeper used to say, ‘is a very particular man, but a good provider.’

We children did n’t know exactly what the phrase meant, though we connected it with his starting out in the morning, erect and well brushed, a large market basket on his arm, prepared to bring back in person that part of the day’s eating not produced by the garden or the chicken house. We did n’t guess that Grandfather with the market basket represented an ancient philosophy of living. To us it was just part of summer in the country, where things were different.

We did n’t even think of Grandfather as old, though he must have been seventy-five. He was small and straight, and stepped out briskly, using his walking stick only to fend off inquiring dogs. Aunt Lucinda, his elder sister, was really old — a tiny, bent figure with bright, beady eyes blinking at us over the top of her cane. Finished with a tall, pointed cap, she could have impersonated one of the cantankerous old fairies in Grimm’s. She had been a school-teacher for forty-five years before coming to live with Grandfather, Mother told us. Privately, I resolved never to have anything to do with the profession.

Well, Grandfather provided for her, too, as he had for many others in his life — his sisters in their youth, his father and mother in their old age, my own mother, and her mother. All in their turn had had shelter in that comfortable house in which my grandfather reigned as benevolent despot.

Kind though he was, Mr. Bailey definitely ruled his household. I see him bent over his desk, busy with microscope and acid, testing the quality of samples for sheets, or blankets, or tablecloths, which he, the master, would buy, and the available womenfolk would hem. I see him standing squirming in front of the long mirror, finding fault with the fit of shirts made to his order. I see him bringing in the garden truck, all carefully washed, and announcing briefly that we would have beans to-day and squash to-morrow; or suddenly appearing in the pantry and laying down the law because the housekeeper did not hang the cooking spoons exactly in their appointed order.

Then there was the summer-long contest between him and my mother on the subject of raspberries. Mother loved raspberries, and Grandfather did not. Each morning Mother would say hopefully, ‘How about some raspberries for lunch?’ But each day, when the market basket was unpacked, there would be strawberries, or blueberries, or pears, but never raspberries. He did not refuse outright, but somehow he could never find any raspberries worth buying.

Why, I wonder, did my mother stand for it? Why did n’t she walk downtown and buy herself a box of raspberries? I don’t know. I only know that she never did. She, so much the mistress of her own home, slipped back into this older patriarchal existence without a struggle. Perhaps she found it restful, for, after all, Mr. Bailey was a good provider.

Grandfather was not one of those hearty New Englanders who had beefsteak for breakfast, topped off with pie twice a day. On the contrary, although he ordered the cooking and serving precisely, he was very abstemious. He demanded in his providing an element of artistic satisfaction. For instance, he would never permit a cup with a chipped edge to be brought to the table. If one did get there by mistake, Grandfather would seize the offending bit of crockery, take it out to the chicken yard, and hurl it violently against the barn. ‘There,’ he would say, as it broke into a hundred pieces, ‘that will never plague me again.’

I was with him the day that he first encountered a morris chair in the local furniture store. He stared, pointing at it with his cane, and demanded of the clerk what it might be. All attention, the clerk told him, adding that it was a recent importation from New York. Grandfather eyed the novelty with furrowed brows. ‘ Great, gorming thing,’ he announced, and removed himself rapidly from its vicinity.

Then there was Grandfather’s pet rosebush, the Duke of Edinburgh, especially beloved because it alone, of all the oldfashioned roses, flowered throughout the summer. There were never more than one or two buds at a time, but each was cherished tenderly. When a blossom reached perfection, Grandfather would cut it, place it in a small vase, and set it on the mantelpiece. Then he would stand back and say, ‘There, I call that handsome.’ No one but Grandfather ever cut a blossom from the Duke of Edinburgh.

There was little fastidiousness in my great-aunt, and its lack must have been a daily penance to Grandfather. When her tea or coffee was too hot, Aunt Lucinda would pour some out into her saucer to cool, country-fashion. Or she would demand doughnuts and cheese with any meal that was served. Grandfather would say pointedly, ‘There are rolls and bread on the table, Lucinda.’ With black eyes snapping, she would retort, ‘Doughnuts were good fifty years ago, Bradbury, and they are good to-day.’ Sometimes, too, he would quarrel with her diction, for, although she had been the school-teacher, he was the more precise in speech. Rolling a warning eye at us children, he would rebuke our city slang, ending, ‘The best of English is none too good.’

With us grandchildren he arranged a happy compromise. At least, we were happy in it. He provided playrooms for us over the woodshed and the summer kitchen, with simple gymnastic apparatus on which he would demonstrate his own neat skill. I remember that he could still chin himself at eighty. Gymnastics, however, were for weekdays. Sundays were different. Liberal as was his theology, Grandfather enjoined a decorous Sabbath.

On one point he relaxed. That was the ice cream for Sunday dinner. This was made, by hand as it were, down cellar, for no freezer was permitted to drip within my grandfather’s kitchen. But the housekeeper would not descend to the depths, and the Irish maid always let salt get in. So we children were excused from church before the sermon, to dash home and turn the crank of the ice-cream freezer. My brother would break the ice, and mix it with salt. The housekeeper would hand us the container, filled with dilute cream and chopped fruit, tightly covered. Then, turn and turn about, one small girl would sit on the freezer, to hold it steady, while the other would turn the crank till her arms tired.

Then, upstairs for Sunday dinner, with Grandfather in black broadcloth and very white linen, Aunt Lucinda in black silk and her best white organdie cap, handembroidered. At that meal not even Aunt Lucinda dared ask for her doughnut, though its loss was compensated for by a private dish of pickles. ‘I relish a little acid with my food,’ Aunt Lucinda would say defiantly, for she knew that Grandfather did not approve of pickles with a Sunday dinner, with ice cream to follow.

The feast over, my mother and the housekeeper would tactfully retire upstairs, ‘to write letters.’ Grandfather would then seat himself in his straight-backed armchair, upholstered in black horsehair. Aunt Lucinda would be seated opposite in hers. All would be furnished with some approved reading. Heads were bowed over books. That pleasant torpor induced by summer warmth and well-filled stomachs would descend upon us. We children struggled valiantly, watching our elders. Gradually Aunt Lucinda’s tight lips would part, and her chin hang loose. Grandfather’s fly swatter would swing less briskly. His head would fall jerkily, till finally a fly would light, unheeded, on his white curls. That was our signal. Clasping our Sunday books to us, more silent than the Arabs, we would slip away to our playroom.