THE SERVANTS’ ROOMS.
Before I proceed to touch on the most important question of all, that of
the nurseries, I will say a few words on the subject of the servants’
bedrooms, for these are far too seldom seen by the mistress, who ought
to have a regular time for visiting them, and for seeing that all the
bedding and furniture generally is in a proper hygienic condition; for,
notwithstanding the School Board and the amount of education given
nowadays to the poorer classes, I am continually astonished at the
careless disregard of the simplest rules of health and cleanliness shown
by girls who ought to know a great deal better, and who will keep their
kitchens &c. beautifully, yet will heedlessly allow their bedrooms to
remain in a state that _ought_ to disgrace a resident, nowadays, in
Seven Dials.
In the first place, the ceilings of all servants’ rooms should be
whitewashed once a year, and the walls colour-washed, unless these are
papered with the washable sanitary wall-papers that are really hygienic,
and which would look well, and are rather nicer than the colour-wash,
which is apt to come off on one’s clothes; and the floor should be bare
of all covering, and should simply have dhurries laid down by each bed,
and by the washing-stands &c. Those wash splendidly, and always keep
clean and nice, while the curtains at the window should be some cheap
cretonne that would wash nicely, and draw and undraw easily, or else
they will soon be rendered too shabby for use.
Each servant should have a separate bed, if possible, and that bed
should be as comfortable as can be, without being unduly luxurious. The
perfection of a bed for a servant, as for any one else, is the chain or
wooden-lath mattress arrangement, with a good mattress on it, a pillow
or two, and a bolster. No valances or curtains of any kind should be
allowed, neither should their own boxes be kept in their rooms. One can
give them locks and keys to their chests of drawers and wardrobes; but
if their boxes are retained in the room, they cannot refrain somehow
from hoarding all sorts of rubbish in them.
I should like myself to give each maid a really pretty room, but at
present they are a little hopeless on this subject--as witness the
smashed china and battered furniture that greets our alarmed sight at
the inspection that should take place at least twice a year--but, alas!
it is impossible. No sooner is the room put nice than something happens
to destroy its beauty; and I really believe servants only feel happy if
their rooms are allowed in some measure to resemble the homes of their
youth, and to be merely places where they lie down to sleep as heavily
as they can.
The simpler, therefore, a servant’s room is furnished the better, and,
if possible, a cupboard of some kind should be provided for them where
they can hang up their dresses; this will enable them to keep them nice
longer than they otherwise would were chairs or a hook on the door the
only resting-place provided for the gowns. But, if this be impossible, a
few hooks must supplement the chest of drawers, washing-stand, bedchair,
and toilet-table with glass, which is all that is required in the room
of a maid-servant, whose sheets, pillows, blankets, and other ‘portable
property’ should all be marked with her name, and should be in her
individual care as long as she is in your service--that is to say, that
the property should be marked ‘Cook,’ ‘Housemaid,’ ‘Parlourmaid,’ &c.;
this individualises each single thing, and makes the temporary owner
responsible for it, and her alone. The sheets should be changed once in
three weeks, also the pillow-cases, while three towels to each maid a
week are none too much to allow them to use, do we desire them to be
clean. If two or more servants share one room, the washstands and chests
of drawers must be as many in number as the inmates of the room; this
will save endless discussions and disagreeables, for after all maids are
but mortal, and squabbles will arise out of small matters like these,
which, ridiculous as they sound, are very often at the bottom of the
troubles of those who are constantly changing their servants.
And, while we are on the subject of servants’ rooms, I will just make a
few remarks on this most intricate subject of domestic management, and
will whisper what I really think is at the bottom of a good many of the
troubles anent servants that undoubtedly exist. In the first place,
mistresses are all too often like the parents of grown-up sons and
daughters, who cannot remember that the curled and frilled darlings of
the nurseries have become young men and women, and are exchanging the
control of the schoolroom for the kindly advice that should never be out
of place between parent and children, who, grow as tall as they will,
can _never_ be as old as those to whom they owe their existence. And
inasmuch as parents all too often exercise this control when advice
would be so much more in place, so do mistresses control and fret the
maids, who would not fret at all were the silk chain, ‘Don’t you think?’
used instead of the arbitrary command, ‘I insist on the work being done
as I order it.’ Then, too, we are all apt to forget how dull the
ordinary routine of a servant’s life is. True, she has the joy of her
morning gossip with the tradesman, and her few hours on Sunday; but that
is not much for a young healthy girl, who appreciates pleasure as well
as do our tennis-playing, ball-going daughters, and it is much better to
try and give her some amusement oneself, instead of winking at the
‘evenings out’ and furtively stolen absences which most mistresses
allow, because, otherwise, their maids would not stay. This can easily
be done in these days by any one who lives in or near town; while even
in the country there are always excursions to be made, or the county
town to be visited, even if there are no picture-galleries or
exhibitions as there are in London.
Besides which, servants like to know what is going on, even if they
cannot go to things themselves. They fully appreciate being told of what
one has seen oneself, and a cheerful account of a visit to London or to
the theatre, &c., is as much appreciated by a maid as by the friends we
regale with our experiences, who no doubt do not care for the account at
all, and only wonder at our foolishness in wasting our time and money.
We have to face a great fact, also: in olden days our mothers as well as
their maids were content with very much less than we are. They may have
been, and no doubt were, much happier, but that is beside the question,
more especially as we cannot return to the ‘good old days’ even if we
would; but the fact remains the same. We have advanced, so have our
servants; and when they can beat us at sums and geography, stand too
much on our level to be thought of merely as the servants, who are to be
content with anything we may choose to give them, and therefore must be
treated in an entirely different manner to the old style.
Realise this, and domestic management is much simplified, because if we
treat our maids just as we treat ourselves we shall find our trouble
almost disappear. I invariably leave my maids a good deal to themselves
about their work; and once they know what has to be done, I find it _is_
done without my constantly being after them to see whether they have
finished what I have told them to do or not; and it is well also to
carefully consider what one’s housekeeping bills ought to be once and
for all, and if the books are less than that, praise the cook; if more,
_at once_ and firmly demonstrate that this is not right; but be prepared
with your facts, and let her see that you really do understand your
business, which is to carefully administer your income, and to see that
no waste is allowed. It is impossible for one person to tell another
what sum she ought to spend per week on her household, as one can only
make a guess; individual tastes must be consulted, and people do not eat
alike--for example, two or three people in my household never touch
butter, one or two never use sugar or tea, and therefore what does for
us does not do for the world at large; but for a household of ten
persons, including washing, and allowing for a constant flow of
visitors, the bills should never exceed 6_l._, and can very often be
very much less. It is not well to ‘allowance’ servants, it is not a nice
way of managing, and is no real save; honest servants do not require
allowancing, and dishonest ones will not refrain from taking your
property because they are only supposed to use just so much, on
themselves.
To insure good servants, it is imperative that we should make real
friends of those who live under our roof. We may be deceived once now
and then; we may even be tricked and cheated, and be tempted to say in
our haste that ‘the poor in a loomp is bad’; but we must take courage
and go on again, being quite sure that sooner or later we shall be
rewarded by the love and care of one, if not more, of those who, while
dwelling in our midst, too often are quite strangers to us, and are no
more to us than the chairs on which we sit, and the tables at which we
write.
How often, for example, do we understand the feelings with which a
servant enters a new place? Do we recollect that she comes a stranger to
strangers; that we have no idea of the hopes and fears, the thoughts and
dreads, with which she enters our portals; that she is wondering whether
we shall be distrustful or unkind or fairly sympathetic; and that she
may spend her first night in tears by the side of a girl who was a
complete stranger to her a few hours before, but with whom she will be
obliged to spend most of her days and nights, whether she be nice or
nasty, clean or the reverse?
We may not be able to save our new maid from this, but we can help her
over a very ‘tight place’ if, when she arrives, we are at home to
welcome her, to point out her place in the domestic routine, and to give
her a few hints about those with whom she will have to live for the
future.
If we had a guest coming among us on equal terms, free of all our
pleasures and amusements, would not this be done? Much more, then,
should we hold out a welcoming hand to those on whom so very much of our
pleasure and comfort depend.
To know how much this is, we must, once now and then, be left without
one of our staff--which is, of course, not a very extensive one, or
those remarks would not apply. In an extensive staff the relations
between mistress and maid are only represented by a housekeeper, who has
all on her shoulders, and who must replace the missing maid in the
household or do the necessary work herself.
Let, for example, our housemaid be laid aside by illness, or go home for
one of her well-earned holidays, and straightway we are miserable. A
thousand and one small omissions show us how much she remembered for us.
And as we gaze at our dusty writing-table, our chair put in exactly the
angle that most offends our eye, our breakfast-table laid in an
unaccustomed manner, our letters put just where they never are in
ordinary, we feel inclined to count the days that stretch unendingly, it
seems to us, between now and her return to work, and we wonder what is
before us when that ‘young man’ claims his bride, who, we are certain,
cannot be half as much wanted by him as by us.
Or our cook may suddenly fall out of the ranks, and we get in temporary
help. Oh dear! chaos then has most certainly come again. Butter flees,
and is conspicuous for its vanishing powers; things have to be told in
detail, and we have not succeeded in getting the ‘help’ into our ways
before our own domestic comes back, to show us on what trifles depends
the easy-going roll of the chariot wheels of life, that never seem to go
so easily as after the jar occasioned by a temporary change of
charioteer.
Looking back over a long stretch of life covered by many years of
domestic duties, and calmly and dispassionately thinking over the
mistakes--how many!--and the successes that have characterised it, I
freely confess that when I have failed with our servants (and thankful
am I to chronicle only two failures and one of these has since been
redeemed by an early marriage), it has been entirely my own fault. A
keener insight into character than I possess would have prevented our
engaging a girl spoiled for us by a too careless mistress and a wicked
master; and more judicious watchfulness would have saved a false step
that, as it happened, was discovered in time, but not before the
consequences were too apparent to be passed over, and which said false
step was entirely due to the evil influence of a fellow-servant, from
which we of course should have shielded her. We may accept it as an
axiom that we cannot have nice, good servants unless we take the trouble
of either training them ourselves, or get them from a mistress who has
had an eye over the well-being of her maidens. It is impossible to
obtain nice service from those who have never been taught how to serve,
who come to us from careless or bad mistresses, and of whom we know no
more than they do of us, and our likes and dislikes. If we, when
requiring a servant, take the first, or even the second, that applies to
us, not heeding where she was born, what her parents are, and knowing
still less of her disposition, how can we expect success? We may be
lucky enough to hit upon a good servant like this, but we very much
doubt that it is likely we should. If mistresses have a large
acquaintance it is possible to have a continual supply of good servants
without applying to the registry offices; but they themselves must have
as good a character as the required domestic, or else they will not be
easily suited.
‘As good a character, indeed! What is the world coming to?’ says one
indignant reader.
It is coming, we reply, to a better state of things--ay, even returning
to the time when servants were of the household, and in consequence
remained years in one place, when nowadays as many months are irksome to
them.
Why? Because they like change. And so do we. Do we not go about from
place to place, entertaining and being entertained, when the presence of
a friend in the kitchen results in a reprimand and a pointing out of
some duty, neglected, say we, that the friend may be entertained?
Are we never dull--we who have our music and our books? And are they
never to be dull, whose work is always going on, and who have no
relaxation unless we provide it for them?
We are no advocates for spoiling servants, any more than we should be
for spoiling children, yet we are anxious that they should be happy; and
that they may be happy it is necessary that we have a set of rules that
must be kept, and that they should gradually learn that we wish to stand
in the same relation to them, while they are in our house, as their
parents would were they still in their care.
Rule the first is, that no young servant should be out alone after dark,
giving reasons for this rule that are easily understood. Rule the
second, that no one comes to the back door after a certain hour, because
their friends are quite welcome to come to the front door, and once it
is dark bad characters are about, and young girls are easily frightened;
and rule the third, in which all the rest are comprehended, is that they
must learn that we are always ready to hear all their hopes and fears,
to help them choose their hats and dresses, to assist them in every way
they wish, and to give them sympathy and kindness, which we will take
from them in our turn should we be ill or in trouble.
How much more cheerfully will the cook help you to retrench if, instead
of scolding about the waste, you ask her to help you to save what would
otherwise be given or thrown away. And much more pleasantly will your
housemaids help you when ‘company comes,’ if you tell them to look out
for this or that celebrity, to listen if Miss Smith sings or if Mr.
Brown plays; and how much they will do should you leave one or two of
the pleasanter parts of preparing in their hands, preferring rather an
ill-arranged flower vase than the idea that all the rough and none of
the smooth falls to their share of the work. It will not hurt us to do a
little dusting for once, or even to wash the china, and indeed it will
do us good, for it will teach us how monotonous and wearisome is the
work by which our ‘maidens,’ the dear old Dorset expression for our
servants, earn their daily bread, but that ceases to have half its
monotony and irksomeness should we help occasionally, when work is
pressing, and there is more than usual to do. To have good and loving
servants, then, it is necessary to have them tolerably young, to be
firm, kind, and, above all, sympathetic, to know as much about their
home life as is possible; and without telling them much, yet, when it is
advisable, to take them into our confidence, secure in our turn of
receiving sympathy, which is always precious, no matter from whom it is
received.
Of course, this is not such an amusing life as the one lived by a
mistress who is always enjoying herself, and thinking of little save her
own garments, and the arrangement of the _menu_ and that of the
dinner-table, but it is a far more satisfactory one. We all have duties;
it rests with ourselves whether or not we shall neglect them or do them.
Still, if they are not done, if our servants turn out ‘thieves, liars,
and wretches,’ as they were characterised by one female writer the other
day, it were well to pause, and ask who should be blamed for such a
dreadful state of things. Surely not those who come to us for training
and care, but rather those who do nothing to earn the right to live, and
who, taking but a low view of life, look upon it as a playground instead
of regarding it as a field for work--a place where we can do as much
good as in us lies.
Sympathy is the bond that binds men together--sympathy is the bond that
should unite mistress and maid; on the lowest ground it is politic, on
the highest it is ordained in a code of life given to all; and we shall
none of us regret treating our servants well, for, speaking from
experience, I can boldly state that, in trouble, sickness, and sorrow,
one can rely implicitly for help on the maids whom we have trained
ourselves, and whom we have treated exactly as we should wish them to
treat us, and that I have found in a time when Fortune appeared to have
turned her back on us, owing to matters on which we need not touch, that
the servants stuck manfully to the ship, and did their best to help us
weather a storm that, though sharp, was short, yet that might have
stranded us hopelessly on a lee shore.
The only fault I cannot overcome at present is this bedroom question,
and the breaking of the china &c. provided for their use, hence my
advice about the simple furniture given to them; but I find daily
improvement here, and I hope that the next generation will be able to
give their servants pretty rooms as safely as they can at present give
them healthy ones.
There is just one other point to touch upon, that of the meals of the
kitchen. It is quite enough to allow an ordinary middle-class household
good bread and butter, oatmeal porridge, and tea, coffee, or cocoa for
breakfast; the kitchen dinner should be the same as the dining-room
luncheon; tea might be supplemented by jam or an occasional home-made
cake; and supper should be presumably bread and cheese, but any soup
made from the receipts in the chapter on ‘entertaining,’ or odds and
ends left at the late dinner, can be consumed if you can trust your
cook; if you cannot, you must lay down a hard-and-fast rule of bread and
cheese, and insist on its being kept, otherwise you will find yourselves
in the case of a friend of mine, who went into her larder after an
enormous dinner-party, expecting to find herself free from the necessity
of ordering more food for at least a week, and discovered it empty,
swept, and garnished, because, the cook informed her, they always had
for their suppers any little thing ‘as was’ left over.
Never be afraid to praise your servants, as one lady is I know of, for
fear they may think she cannot do without them: we _can’t_ do without
them--why should we pretend we can? They are far more likely to remain
where they are appreciated and cared for than where they know they are
only looked upon as so much necessary furniture; and do not be afraid to
blame them, emulating another friend of mine, who saw her servant
reading her letters at her desk, and stepped out of the room unobserved
because she shrank from the disagreeable but emphatically necessary task
of telling the maid of her odious and dishonourable fault; but say
straight out to the delinquent servant herself what you have in your
mind against her, never sending the message by another servant, nor
nagging, but remarking firmly what you have to say yourself in such a
way that she cannot avoid perceiving you mean emphatically what you
say.
Let your maids have good books to read, and let them see newspapers, but
do not keep a kitchen bookshelf. This they distrust at once, and look
out for their own literature, which is generally pernicious; but if you
yourself have read a good story, recommend it to them, and talk to them
about it. You can always get a servant to read proper books by taking
care to read them yourself, and by letting them see you are sharing your
literature with them; even if they spoil or soil the book, books are
cheap, and they had better do this than soil their minds by the rubbish
they might buy, revolting naturally against ‘Lizzy, or a Parlourmaid’s
Duties, described in a story,’ or ‘Grace, or How to Clean Silver,’ or
the similar charming works which one generally finds in the houses of
those who keep ‘kitchen bookshelves,’ regardless of the fact that Ouida
and other exquisite feminine novelists are the favourite food of the
drawing-room, and that they could not read one page of the ‘books’
themselves provided for the maid’s entertainment.
If you have a garden, encourage the servants to walk and sit and work in
it; and, above all, take interest in their clothes, lend them patterns,
and, in fact, do all in your power to raise them to your station. The
lower classes, thanks to education, are rapidly climbing; they will rise
whether we like it or not, and we had better, on the lowest grounds,
assist them to share the place they will take and push us from, should
they find we are antagonistic and jealous instead of helpful and
sympathising.
I have had twenty years’ experience of household management. I have had
three cooks in the time, and have never had a maid give me ‘warning’;
and though, no doubt, some day I shall find servants a ‘bother,’ because
they will get married, and I cannot expect to keep mine all their lives,
I think my twenty years of success entitle me to lay down the law on the
subject of the management of one’s maids just a little. But, lest my
readers should tire of the subject, I will pass on to the nurseries,
which, after all, are much more interesting to the young housekeeper.