YORK HARBOR, _August 10_.
_Dear Penelope_:
It has been so long since your last letter that I feared you were ill
and was at my desk starting to write you when yours came and explained
the whole situation. What a picture of misery, and to think that that
nice-looking Mary turned out so unsatisfactory and that you have had
such a succession since her departure! So you feel degraded and as
though there was something the matter with you personally, do you? Well,
there is nothing the matter with you, and you are the same dear girl
that you have always been, and with your willingness to give the servant
question all the thought that it needs, these very experiences will help
you to cope with it more wisely. It made me laugh to hear how disgusted
your husband was because your present housemaid was such a fright! Don’t
let that worry you; just provide her with neat white aprons and a cap
and he won’t know her. Tell him I wish he had seen the little apparition
that came to me, when we were first married (we were living in the South
at the time), in answer to my advertisement for a housemaid. At least
forty-eight tiny little braids, each about four inches long, stood
straight out from her little black head and she was clad in bright red
plaid from top to toe, her face beaming all over with good nature. She
looked clean, as you say your new maid does, and the transformation was
complete when later, with hair smoothed out, and in a neat calico dress
and white apron, she stood before me for inspection. Since then, you can
imagine I have had all sorts and kinds and so many experiences that I
have gradually grown to look at domestic service in a broader way.
You have had enough discomfort already to make you feel that it is a
serious problem and I am so glad that what you have gone through has
only determined you to come out victorious in the end and not to follow
the example of so many women who go into apartments to get rid of
household cares. Undoubtedly they do reduce the number of their servants
and their worries in this way, but the family also loses much of the
home feeling. What would we think of our husbands if, when the men in
their employ gave them trouble, they said to us that they could not
manage their employees and would have to get rid of most of them which
would necessitate their reducing their business and our living in less
comfort in consequence? Wouldn’t we in our hearts think they were
failures in their vocations? And yet we women are just as much failures
in our vocation when we give up the privacy and comforts of home to go
into an apartment because we cannot manage our servants.
Every woman who tries to bring about a better understanding between
herself and her servants helps every other woman to make home life more
comfortable, so it really isn’t a little thing to do. On the contrary,
if enough women try, they may bring about great results. Nothing is so
absolutely destructive to an understanding between mistress and maid as
the habit, so common and so catching, of looking at servants as a class
by themselves, unlike other human beings and antagonistic to their
mistresses. What we should do is to try to get into a sympathetic mood
by remembering that human nature is the same the world over and in all
classes, the great difference being in education, early surroundings,
and training. If we only keep this in mind, while it really seems almost
impossible to understand the ignorance of many servants and to see
things from their point of view, yet we may at least realize that it
would be a disgrace if our ideals of conduct were not higher than
theirs.
When I tell you that you will need nearly every known virtue to keep
house well, you will expect to come out of the experience a piece of
absolute perfection! Certainly PATIENCE is one of the foremost needed.
It is so easy and natural for us to scold a servant when she has
neglected her duty or done something stupid, instead of patiently
following her up every time she neglects anything and with a pleasant
but decided manner seeing that she does it. And yet I know, from
experience, that the scolding produces no result except to make her
angry, while the other method will have one of two results; she will
either get into the habit of doing her work well to save herself the
mortification or irritation of being corrected or else she will show you
that she isn’t worth training and that you might as well let her go.
One’s patience, however, may cease to be a virtue in the case of a
sullen servant. I would not keep such a one, no matter how good her work
was, if after having spoken to her about it she did not change, for
nothing will wear you out sooner, and to no purpose, than having to
contend with that kind of a disposition. Tell her the reason that you
part with her and perhaps she will do better in her next place, in which
case you will have helped her and her future mistress.
UNSELFISHNESS—there’s plenty of opportunity for a mistress to show if
she is sincere in her desire to be fair. Just one instance: It isn’t
very pleasant, to say the least, if, after one has trained a servant to
be skillful and she has stayed for several years so that one has grown
dependent on her, she leaves for higher wages. Yet in every other
calling people are praised for what is called their ambition to rise,
and if we can’t pay high wages, how can we expect to keep the most
skillful servants? And why should we make them feel as though they were
not behaving well when they leave for more money?
How much WISDOM and THOUGHTFULNESS, too, we need to keep all the
different dispositions in the house in harmony, to know just the right
moment to correct and the time when extra work or a rainy wash-day or a
headache make it wisest to delay correction.
And then MORAL COURAGE—it is wonderful how that often will win the day.
It is fatal to be afraid of servants. If you have to reprove one of them
that you like and do not wish to lose, it is a good thing to fortify
yourself with the thought that it would be better to lose her than to
give in to any unreasonableness, for that would certainly put you in her
power. You will be surprised how the calm firmness that this thought
will give you will generally win the day, if it is backed by the fact
that the maid knows she is in a comfortable home and has a considerate
mistress.
But I know you want me to talk about your particular troubles, when
there _was_ a comfortable home and a considerate mistress. I can readily
believe how interested you were in making Mary happy and that you wanted
her to feel that your house was her home, and I can just picture how
sweet and nice your kitchen and her bedroom looked with everything so
neat and new. It was disappointing, in return for all your
thoughtfulness of her comfort, to have her show that all she apparently
wanted was to get away from her work as quickly and as often as
possible. And then after her departure to have such a series of
incompetents in quick succession, each with some new demand, was
perfectly disheartening. I do feel so sorry for you, for I know just how
discouraged you must have been. Of course I have no way of divining what
the cause of dissatisfaction was, but we always have to bear in mind
that there is so much of the antagonistic spirit between mistress and
maid that those of us who do not have it, but who want to be kind, have
to suffer for those who are unjust. At any time a maid may come to us
direct from a home where she has had a hard mistress, who gave her her
outings grudgingly, didn’t like her to have her friends come to see her,
and perhaps, while giving her an almost luxurious room, rarely spoke a
kind word to her and took it for granted she would be faithless and
perhaps even dishonest.
Or, she may have come from some good-natured but thoughtless mistress
where her room was miserably uncomfortable and where possibly she had to
share her bed, washstand, and bureau with a girl whom she had never seen
before or who wasn’t clean. From such places she would come to you
naturally in an antagonistic mood, and, suspecting that she would not be
looked out for, make demands for even more than she really wanted. She
would make the mistake that I have just advised you to avoid, of
classing all mistresses together as unkind or thoughtless. Of course it
is very unintelligent to do this, for we might as well class all lawyers
or all bankers together and expect no good from any of them because some
have such low standards. And yet we can hardly blame her when we
ourselves have heard so many mistresses talk of servants as though they
were all worthless. You seem to think you might have come to some
agreement with Mary if you hadn’t been so indignant at what seemed
ingratitude after all you had done for her. Possibly that is true, but
it is past now and it is useless to cry over spilt milk. What you can do
is to start out differently with your new maid in the light of your past
experience.
I think you will find yourself much happier if you don’t look for
gratitude, for it isn’t to be found very much in any class of life.
Above all things, don’t let what you have gone through make you
distrustful, for it is the part of wisdom as well as of kindness to let
the new maid feel that you expect well of her. If she has good stuff in
her, that is the way to bring it out. We ourselves show our best side to
those who believe in us.
You seem to have a vague feeling that Mary’s leaving you had something
to do with the outings she wanted. That may have been so, for very few
of us can enter into servants’ lives enough to realize the vital
importance of their outings to them. I can understand your being a
little distrustful of her when she wanted to go to a dance, for I used
to feel that way myself, but I don’t feel so any longer. Through
interest in social work I have learned to appreciate how important
recreation is to all classes and how natural is the taste for dancing
and the theater. Of course, if a maid wanted to go often, that couldn’t
be allowed, for it wouldn’t be compatible with good work.
While most of us are interested in helping to give recreation to the
less fortunate classes, we have hardly awakened to the fact that there
is one class, that of our servants, who are ridiculed if they want it.
It is really quite pathetic to think how little appreciation we have of
their need of amusement, and how many jokes are made at the expense of
those who want occasionally to go to a dance or to the theater. You and
I know some people who don’t even want to let them have their friends
come to call. If we desire good work from servants we shall have to be
more human and show them that we take an interest in their having a good
time.
Perhaps we have had such easy lives ourselves that we have to go back to
our childhood to remember the delicious sense of freedom from restraint
when school was out, in order to form some idea of the pleasure a maid
feels on her “afternoon” when she leaves all duties behind her and gets
beyond the sound of the bell. As a well-trained maid, she always has to
go about the house noiselessly, never raising her voice in speaking
unless spoken to. Perhaps she doesn’t like the other maids and longs for
some congenial friend and to talk and laugh unrestrainedly. Is it
surprising that she forgets that she doesn’t have to pay her board and
lodging as the girls do who are otherwise employed than in domestic
service, and that she only thinks of their greater freedom? She
naturally longs for that freedom and for some time that she can surely
call her own.
If any trouble crops up with this new maid, don’t (because you are so
sorry that you let the other one go) offer her higher wages or urge her
to stay. It will give you backbone to remember that she will be useless
if she stays while dissatisfied and also that offering her higher wages
when you are paying enough is only a bribe and simply makes her feel
more essential to you than she really is. It wouldn’t remove the cause
of her dissatisfaction but only delay its coming to the surface again.
Sometimes by a quiet talk you can find out what the trouble is and if
the complaint is reasonable you can remove the cause.
A case in point is an experience that I myself once had when there was
dissatisfaction among some servants whom I really liked. It was after I
had, with a great deal of trouble and study, tried to arrange all their
afternoons and evenings out and their Sundays to be, as I thought,
convenient for myself and comfortable for them. I was indignant at first
at what seemed ingratitude and felt ready to dismiss them all. But, on
sober thought, the idea occurred to me of trying to get at the bottom of
the trouble by calling them all together and letting each one in turn
tell me what was her cause of discontent. At the same time I told them
all that, while I might not be able to do what they wanted, still, as my
only thought in arranging their outings was to give them rest and have
them enjoy themselves, I was ready to consider making some changes so
long as they would not interfere with the proper and regular running of
the household. It seemed quite a new idea to them that their mistress
was really interested in their pleasure. They were nice women and with
the prospect of a sympathetic hearing, their antagonism seemed to pass
away.
To my surprise I found that it was not more outings that they wanted (in
fact they proposed fewer), but to be away from the house longer at a
time. I promised them nothing at the moment because I feared that I
should say something unwise, but impressed it upon them that they would
have to work together and help one another if they wanted these changes.
This conversation resulted in my arranging a programme that was
satisfactory to them and perfectly convenient to me, and one that I have
not had to change for years.
It may help you very much to find out what I learned from this
conversation, so here it is. _The first point was that servants need
their regular outings to be longer than they usually are_, because it
takes them so much longer than it does us to get dressed and to reach
the more remote parts of the town where they usually go. This seemed to
me reasonable as I thought over the work of the different servants.
Instead of just putting on her hat and coat as we do, a maid has to
change everything to make herself neat and fresh to go to church or
shopping or to visit her friends. If she has the ordinary two hours’
leave, in most cases she would have to turn around to come back almost
as soon as she reaches her destination. If she goes to church we know
the service will not be out till after twelve-thirty or even later; so
that in order to return in time to set the table by one o’clock, she
must leave the church instantly without a moment’s chat with her
friends. The waitress cannot get her breakfast things finished before
ten o’clock in many households and with the common habit of irregular
Sunday breakfasts generally it will be much later. With the chambermaid
the situation is probably worse if there are a number of rooms to make
up, and it seems almost impossible for the cook to get to morning church
unless some special arrangement is made for her.
_The second point was that servants would like to be able to count on an
absolutely certain, specified time to leave the house and to return_,
both on Sundays and week-days. This they cannot do if some of the family
stay in bed very late, if there is an invalid in the house, or if there
are extra people at the Sunday lunch, unless the mistress makes a very
definite plan for the servants to relieve one another, so that their
free time of going out or to church will not be interfered with and the
regular work will still go on.
_The third and last point that I can remember is that most servants
really do not care to go out so frequently_, but that, on the contrary,
they would sometimes rather stay at home on their day out if they could
be sure of the time to themselves and that they would not be called on
for work.
_These three points are always carefully conceded to them in hotels_,
and consequently hotel service is much desired by maids, as housekeepers
in small towns find to their great inconvenience.
This experience of mine may let light into your situation and give you a
basis for a good programme. In working it out it is necessary to be
careful not to make things comfortable for the servants at the expense
of the family. As the two points of making the outing longer and
starting at regular hours can only be accomplished by one servant taking
the duty of the other in her absence, it is important to impress on
their minds at the outset that these duties must be performed so well
that the household will not be inconvenienced. Since it is a fair
exchange, maids are usually contented to do this, and it is the duty of
the mistress to train them and to see that each servant carries out the
idea, doing her fair share of the work. Where there is more than one
servant, these outings can easily be arranged, even with a family of
irregular habits, so that they all will be able to get off promptly and
stay out long enough, without any inconvenience to the household. In the
case where there is only one maid, who does the cooking and all the work
of the house, the household is, of necessity, run more informally, and a
chafing-dish meal can take the place of one of the Sunday meals in order
to let her off. But if the mistress feels that she must have her meals
go on just as regularly on Sunday as any other day, she should hire some
one to come in for the time the servant is out. You can readily see that
she should not expect one servant to keep up the house unaided in just
the way that two or three servants do it.
I have heard nice women say, “I have only one servant, so of course I
can’t let her go out.” This is really cruel, though not intentionally
so, because, if the maid has all the work to do, she needs a complete
and regular rest all the more. The mistress should look upon the money
paid to some one for taking her place as one of the regular necessary
household expenses.
Whether there is one servant or many, each one is entitled to some
regular time to herself and if housekeepers were more careful about this
there would be less discontent among servants, I am sure. As I said
before, we need to be a great deal more human in our relationship with
them. How reasonable, for example, these three points seem when we take
the pains to see the servants’ point of view, and how easy it would be
to misjudge the situation otherwise. What most of them really want is to
have some time that they can actually call their own. You would be
surprised to know the calm that settled down upon my family and how much
more home life there appeared to be in the kitchen after I had arranged
a new programme of work and given them these three points that they
wanted. Just try it and you will see for yourself, and I am sure too,
that you will be glad to practice every virtue that good house
management requires if, in that way, you can bring about peace instead
of that uncomfortable atmosphere which constant dissatisfaction among
the servants causes. If a home is unhappy downstairs you can always feel
it upstairs, and, in fact, sometimes at the front door.
I believe I will enclose the plan for the outings of three servants that
has worked so well in my case. A simpler plan can be arranged for two
servants because they alternate. I have already said what I think is our
duty in case of one.
What a long letter I have written you! I send it on the “wings” of the
first mail hoping that it will reach you in time really to help you in
your present situation.
Affectionately yours,
_Jane Prince_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------