Suburban Sketches | Page 5

travel and
woodland camps arose from the relish of certain of the dishes, there
was yet the assurance of such power in the preparation of the whole,
that we knew her to be merely running over the chords of our appetite
with preliminary savors, as a musician acquaints his touch with the
keys of an unfamiliar piano before breaking into brilliant and
triumphant execution. Within a week she had mastered her instrument;
and thereafter there was no faltering in her performances, which she
varied constantly, through inspiration or from suggestion. She was so
quick to receive new ideas in her art, that, when the Roman statuary
who stayed a few weeks with us explained the mystery of various
purely Latin dishes, she caught their principle at once; and visions of
the great white cathedral, the Coliseum, and the "dome of Brunelleschi"

floated before us in the exhalations of the Milanese risotto, Roman
stufadino, and Florentine stracotto that smoked upon our board. But,
after all, it was in puddings that Mrs. Johnson chiefly excelled. She was
one of those cooks--rare as men of genius in literature--who love their
own dishes; and she had, in her personally child-like simplicity of taste,
and the inherited appetites of her savage forefathers, a dominant
passion for sweets. So far as we could learn, she subsisted principally
upon puddings and tea. Through the same primitive instincts, no doubt,
she loved praise. She openly exulted in our artless flatteries of her skill;
she waited jealously at the head of the kitchen stairs to hear what was
said of her work, especially if there were guests; and she was never too
weary to attempt emprises of cookery.
While engaged in these, she wore a species of sightly handkerchief like
a turban upon her head and about her person those mystical swathings
in which old ladies of the African race delight. But she most pleasured
our sense of beauty and moral fitness when, after the last pan was
washed and the last pot was scraped, she lighted a potent pipe, and,
taking her stand at the kitchen door, laded the soft evening air with its
pungent odors. If we surprised her at these supreme moments, she took
the pipe from her lips, and put it behind her, with a low mellow chuckle,
and a look of half-defiant consciousness; never guessing that none of
her merits took us half so much as the cheerful vice which she only
feigned to conceal.
Some things she could not do so perfectly as cooking, because of her
failing eyesight; and we persuaded her that spectacles would both
become and befriend a lady of her years, and so bought her a pair of
steel-bowed glasses. She wore them in some great emergencies at first,
but had clearly no pride in them. Before long she laid them aside
altogether, and they had passed from our thoughts, when one day we
heard her mellow note of laughter and her daughter's harsher cackle
outside our door, and, opening it, beheld Mrs. Johnson in gold-bowed
spectacles of massive frame. We then learned that their purchase was in
fulfillment of a vow made long ago, in the life-time of Mr. Johnson,
that, if ever she wore glasses, they should be gold-bowed; and I hope
the manes of the dead were half as happy in these votive spectacles as
the simple soul that offered them.
She and her late partner were the parents of eleven children, some of

whom were dead, and some of whom were wanderers in unknown parts.
During his life-time she had kept a little shop in her native town; and it
was only within a few years that she had gone into service. She
cherished a natural haughtiness of spirit, and resented control, although
disposed to do all she could of her own motion. Being told to say when
she wanted an afternoon, she explained that when she wanted an
afternoon she always took it without asking, but always planned so as
not to discommode the ladies with whom she lived. These, she said,
had numbered twenty-seven within three years, which made us doubt
the success of her system in all cases, though she merely held out the
fact as an assurance of her faith in the future, and a proof of the ease
with which places were to be found. She contended, moreover, that a
lady who had for thirty years had a house of her own, was in nowise
bound to ask permission to receive visits from friends where she might
be living, but that they ought freely to come and go like other guests. In
this spirit she once invited her son-in-law, Professor Jones of
Providence, to dine with her; and her defied mistress, on entering the
dining-room, found the Professor at pudding and tea