THE DOMESTIC.
The French Servant, as described by Léon Gozlan and by Mercier--The Cook
and the Cordon Bleu--The Valet.
It has already been seen that domestics have at different periods been
employed in Paris as spies.--According to Léon Gozlan, writing of his
own period, “the police of Paris is almost entirely occupied with the
misdeeds of domestics. Nearly all domestics are thieves or spies, and
they get more so as they grow older. The most honest amongst them steals
at least ten sous a day from his master.” It is to be hoped that if they
steal in this amusingly regular fashion, they at least observe the kind
of morality which has been noticed in some of the inferior state
officials of Russia. One of these complained that a colleague of his was
dishonest and helped himself to things which belonged to the State. “But
you do the same thing yourself,” suggested a friend. “True,” was the
reply; “but this fellow steals too much for his place.”
Let us, however, turning from drollery and from Léon Gozlan--who can
hardly have been quite serious--glance at the household servant of Paris
as a factor in the Parisian community. The French domestic, whether
valet, lackey, or lady’s-maid, is more important and influential than
the domestic of England. It is true that occasionally in an English
house some servant practically rules the family, and that the
relationship between employer and employed becomes so reversed that the
mistress is afraid to ring her drawing-room bell. As a rule, however, in
England the domestic is a nonentity. The man-servant or maid-servant who
waits at an English table is absolutely ignored, and is not even
supposed to understand the conversation which accompanies dinner, nor to
laugh at jokes indulged in by the host or his guests. An English servant
nowadays who shook with laughter at what he overheard in the
dining-room, like black Sambo at Mr. Sedley’s, would be cautioned if not
cashiered. The French domestic is a personage and a power. The “trade of
lackey,” according to Fabrice, in “Gil Blas,” requires a man of superior
intellect. The true lackey “does not go through his duties like a ninny;
he enters a house to command rather than to serve. He begins by studying
his master: he notes his defects, gains his confidence, and ultimately
leads him by the nose.... If a master has vices, the superior genius who
waits upon him flatters them, and often indeed turns them to his own
advantage.” Awaiting the day when he shall himself be great, the
liveried aspirant takes the name of his master when he is with other
lackeys, adopts his manners and apes his gestures; he carries a gold
watch and wears lace; he is impertinent and foppish. “Bon chien se forme
sur maître,” says the French proverb, and the Parisian domestic
religiously takes after his master, even though, as far as intrinsic
resemblance goes, he might simply be an ape in his master’s clothes.
[Illustration: A FAIR.]
That vanity characterises French servants is undeniable. Against the
charge of cupidity, however, which is brought against them, even by
French writers, must be set off one or two famous instances in which
valets have supported their ruined masters for ten or twenty years out
of their own savings. Mercier, all the same, represents the Paris
domestic as hardly less a rogue than does Léon Gozlan. “Out of ten
servants,” he assures us, “four are thieves.” Another native writer,
while not undertaking to combat this proposition, finds a defence for
the accused domestics. “If they are thus, who,” he asks, “has perverted
them? Who, either by example or complicity, has made them thieves and
spies? Every year is committed, to the prejudice of the country and of
agriculture, an abominable crime, namely, the stealing of individuals,
strong and useful, snatched at once from the sunlight and from
simplicity of manners, to be degraded, and sullied with a livery; to
have imposed upon them their master’s vices and follies, and to be
turned into idlers and good-for-nothings, flatterers and procurers.”
Paul Louis Courier looked forward to the time when domestic servitude
would be replaced by household service rendered freely, as if in virtue
of a contract between man and man; and in Paris, as in other capitals,
this state of things seems to be fast approaching, not as the result of
any benignant feeling on the part of the rich towards the poor, but
because, with the spread of education and of democratic ideas, a
disinclination to remain constantly at the orders of another person is
gradually extending. Already servants demand a greater number of
holidays than in ancient times; and there are many who, like the London
charwoman and the “laundress” of the Inns of Court, are ready to give
their services during the day-time, and even until a late hour in the
evening, while reserving to themselves the right of returning, after
their labours, to their own domicile.
There is much to be said, no doubt, on the other side. If there are
masters and mistresses without consideration for their servants, there
are servants who, having kind masters and mistresses, show themselves
without gratitude. But we are dealing specially with French servants,
who, apart from all question of good conduct or bad, enjoy certain
privileges not formally recognised as lawfully belonging to servants in
England. The bonne, for instance, or the cook, who goes to market to
purchase provisions considers herself entitled to “make the handle of
the basket dance”--“fair danser l’anse du panier”--to appropriate, that
is to say, a portion of the things she has bought, or of the money she
has nominally spent, to her own uses. In like manner the house-porter,
or “concierge,” takes for himself, as a matter of course, so many logs
out of every basket of wood ordered by the different tenants, of whom
there are often some half-dozen in the same house. In France, as in
other countries, a valet will sometimes wear his master’s clothes, and
the Parisian lady’s-maid asserts and enforces, more perhaps than in any
other capital, her claims to her mistress’s cast-off apparel.
The cook--both the “cuisinier” and the “cuisiniêre”--has already been
dealt with in a special chapter. It may here, however, be remarked, that
though the best cooks, and certainly the most expensive ones, are in
France, as in other countries, men, the female cook is far indeed from
being held in disesteem. The “cordon bleu,” or blue ribbon, was a
distinction conferred upon the female, not upon the male cook; and a
woman who cooks particularly well is called to this day a “cordon bleu.”
Such a woman was in the service for many years of the well-known
“bourgeois de Paris,” as Dr. Véron loved to describe himself.
If every French servant looks for some particular perquisite, they all
expect a gratuity at the New Year. One of the greatest curses and
greatest blessings which rest upon Paris is the custom of presenting New
Year’s gifts. The word “étrenne” is at once a terror and a joy to
Parisians, according as they belong to the class who give or the class
who receive. In London no gentleman would venture to omit at
Christmas-time to “tip” any one of the underlings who had ever cleaned
his boots, lifted his portmanteau, or twisted the ends of his moustache.
But in Paris, if a gentleman failed at the new year to present
“étrennes” to his boot-black, his messenger, or his valet, derision and
infamy would, according to a French writer, pursue him, not merely
throughout this life, but even beyond the tomb.
Cardinal Dubois, who had a reputation for niggardliness, used to give
his servants their “étrennes” in a manner which they could hardly have
relished. His major-domo came to him one New Year’s Day to demand the
annual gratuity. “Étrennes!” exclaimed the cardinal; “yes, I will give
you your étrennes. You may keep everything you have stolen from me
during the last twelvemonth.”
Let us, before quitting the subject of the Parisian domestic, relate an
anecdote or two. “When I come home,” said a master to his servant, “I
often find you asleep.” “That, sir,” replied the man, “is because I
don’t like to remain doing nothing.”
A nobleman paid a visit to Fontenelle one day, and found him in a very
bad humour. “What is the matter with you?” he asked. “The matter?”
replied Fontenelle; “I have a valet who serves me as badly as if I had
twenty.”
The Abbé de Voisenon preserved his gay humour to his very last gasp.
Just before his death he caused the leaden coffin which he had ordered
beforehand to be brought to his bedside. “There,” said he, “is my last
overcoat.” Then, turning towards one of his servants of whom he had had
reason to complain, he added, “I hope you will not wish to steal that
too.”
A certain high official of Paris lived in the country, and, thanks to
railway facilities, went home every evening to dine. On one occasion he
arrived earlier than usual, and going into his kitchen found the cook in
a decidedly unequivocal position, with a bottle in his hand,
three-fourths of whose contents had already found their way into his
stomach. “Ah, my fine fellow,” exclaimed the master, “I have caught you
drinking my wine.” “It is your own fault, sir,” was the reply. “You were
not due till four o’clock, and it is now hardly three.”
* * * * *
Our gallery of Paris types would scarcely be complete without a sketch
of a very familiar personage who, though not peculiar to Paris, abounds
there more than in other capitals. This is the “rentier,” the man of
“small, independent means.” According to the etymology of the word,
anyone should be called a rentier who lives on his “rentes”--the income,
that is to say, derived from the letting of houses or farms; or the
interest of money invested in the Funds. In practice, however, the name
is given exclusively to the man who lives on the interest of money which
he has invested in government securities. He has been described as the
corresponding type, in English society, to the man retired from
business. He lives modestly in the quarter of the Marais or of the
Batignolles, as in England he might live at Clapham or Brixton, at
Holloway, or Camden Town; and he passes a considerable portion of his
time in some favourite café, reading a newspaper of moderate-liberal
politics, or playing at dominoes. Condemned to economy, sometimes of the
most parsimonious kind, he counts every lump of sugar brought to him by
the waiter, and shows a great predilection for halfpenny rolls. In
politics, without being an aristocrat, he is something of a
conservative; and, while stickling for his rights, hates revolutions as
sure to cause perturbations in the securities of the state.
It was doubtless a rentier from whose pocket the thief in Lord Lytton’s
“Pelham” extracted, in a Paris café, a tiny packet which he had seen the
owner put carefully away in his coat-tail pocket, and which, on being
adroitly stolen and curiously examined, was found to contain, not a
precious stone, but a lump of sugar. In the rentier’s defence it may be
mentioned that during the great Napoleonic war, when a universal
blockade had been declared against English exports, and when colonial
produce was everywhere excluded from the ports of France, the price of
sugar rose to such a height as to render this luxury difficult for
persons of straitened means to indulge in.
The existence of such a number of rentiers in Paris goes far to
demonstrate the prudence of the ordinary Frenchman. An Englishman with a
few thousand pounds in his possession would, as a rule, speculate with
it, instead of burying it in the Funds. The speculation would furnish
him with active employment, whereas the permanent investment preferred
by the average Frenchman involves an idle and somewhat ignoble life.
[Illustration]