SHORTLY INTO Blanche Ebbutt’s little book I began to suspect that the name was a pseudonym, and that Don’ts For Wives hadn’t been first published in 1913 at all, but in fact written by my own dear husband, quite possibly after our last trip to Ikea. The give-away was this: “Don’t take your husband on a laborious shopping expedition and expect him to remain good-tempered throughout . . . men, as a rule, hate indiscriminate shopping.”

You’re telling me. My husband requires a detailed list and aisle-planner just to pop to our local Cost-cutter for some milk and eggs. The Ikea incident happened when I made the mistake of going off-piste.

We were looking for a sofa. They were all horrid, so I bought a new mattress, some bedding, a set of cutlery and a packet of Swedish biscuits instead (oh all right, and some other stuff too; I can’t really remember what). But they were definitely all things that we really needed (especially the biscuits).

Problem was, my husband was there to buy a sofa. A sofa was what had been agreed; and a sofa was what we should have bought. Either that, or nothing. At least it wasn’t a wasted trip, I tried to point out, manoeuvring my “indiscriminate” purchases into the back of the car. “But we came to buy a sofa,” he said, in a quiet, precise sort of a voice. “Instead you made me trail around Ikea looking at stuff – for two hours.” It was not a harmonious drive home – although he did eat most of the biscuits.

The real Ebbutt was a contemporary of Marie Stopes. Her Don’ts (for both husbands and wives) remained in print for 20 years. Not being nearly as explicit or notorious as Stopes’s Married Love,these insightful yet gentle tips faded into obscurity. A shame.

Tempting as it would be to dismiss this as just another nostalgic cash-in, a collection of bossy, old-fashioned homilies designed to make us scoff at the stiffness of middle-class life, they remain surprisingly relevant.

Also Ebbutt writes with a sense of poetry unseen in most modern advice books – and can also be extremely funny (see the tip about the humble potato in our panel. Is she really talking about vegetables or is there a subtle double meaning there?). “Life is not a bed of roses, but love will help to extract the thorns,” she says. Lovely. It doesn’t actually make sense (if life is not a bed of roses, where will you find the thorns to extract from it?); but such a sweet way of putting it.

She may also have been, in her subtle yet firm way, as much an advocate of female emancipation as any of her more strident sisters. “Your husband has no right to control your individuality,” she writes, adding, “Don’t let your husband feel that you are a ‘dear little woman’, but no good intellectually. If you find yourself getting stale, wake up your brain . . . and don’t be talked down by your husband . . . you have a right to be heard.”

Perhaps one reason why she never found lasting fame was her acceptance of the constraints of her sex and time, and her determination to work around them. In other words, she was more of a live-and-let live proto-feminist than a hunger-striker.

Much of her advice stems from the apparent belief that men are infinitely more manageable when properly fed, clothed and watered; and that if their wives would only take steps to ensure this blissful state, everyone, male and female, could get on with fulfilling their potential. ”

She compares a husband to a particularly tricky musical instrument (“the most difficult instrument in the world, in fact”), one that a wife must learn to play to her advantage. She talks about the importance of “feeding the brute”, adding, “much depends on the state of his digestion”, and counsels against arguing directly with a stubborn husband (as the owner of a particularly stubborn specimen, I can vouch for that).

She adds, characteristically, “Drop the matter before argument leads to temper. You can generally gain your point in some other way.”

There are also some wonderful period eccentricities. She takes a dim view of tea; but is a great fan of smoking. A sulky wife is, apparently, as bad as a termagant: what, can anyone tell me, is a termagant? And I will try to remember not to criticise the length of my husband’s moustache.

However old-fashioned it may appear, this book is underpinned by that very modern quality, emotional intelligence. Ginger Rogers once said: “When two people love each other, they don’t look at each other; they look in the same direction.” Ebbutt would agree. As for me, I wouldn’t dare pick a fight with either of them.

Tips for wives

Don’t consent to be treated as a child who cannot be expected to take any responsibility. Insist on hearing bad news as well as good. You did not marry your husband to be wrapped in cotton wool; you married him to the partner of his joys and sorrows.

Don’t vegetate as you grow older . . . Some women are like cows but there is really no reason to stagnate. Keep both brain and body on the move.

Three, or even two, meat meals a day tend to make the world look very black to the middle-aged. The ever-flowing teapot is as bad.

Don’t cease to call him by his Christian name and begin to address him always in the children’s presence and out of it as “Father” or “Daddy”.

Don’t despise the domestic potato. There are a hundred appetising ways of cooking it; but unless you take it firmly in hand, it will arrive at table with the consistency of half-melted ice . . . mushy without, stony within. The boiled potato is the rock on which many a happy home barque has foundered.

DON’TS FOR WIVES by Blanche Ebbutt

A. & C. Black, £2.99 each; 80pp each

Buy the book here for the offer price of £2.84 (free p&p)

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