_Jonathan's Domestics.--Reduced Duchesses.--Queer Ideas of
Equality.--Unchivalrous Man.--The Ladies of the
Feather-broom.--Mr. Vanderbilt's Cook.--Negroes.--Pompey's
Wedding.--Where is my coat?--Kitchen Pianists.--"Punch's"
Caricatures Outdone by Reality.--A Lady seeks a Situation as
Dishwasher.--Why it is Desirable not to Part with your
Servants on Bad Terms._
Jonathan's domestics all appear to me to be reduced duchesses and
noblemen in livery.
When you speak to a man-servant, before replying he scans you from head
to foot, and seems to say:
"Who may you be? Be careful how you talk to me! We are a free nation:
all equals here, and I am as good as you, sir!"
And you feel inclined to say to him:
"I congratulate you, young man, upon living in a free country; but since
we are all equals here, and I am civil to you, why on earth cannot you
be civil to me?"
The fellow is lacking in logic.
The manner of the maid-servant is different; she wears a look of
contempt and profound disgust: she seems to say with a sigh:
"How can men be such brutes as to allow women to work! What despicable
creatures they are, to be sure!"
She moves about the room frowning, and as she goes out, darts at you a
look full of vengeance. It is especially in the hotels of country towns
that you observe the traits above mentioned.
To get an idea of the prodigious labour undertaken by an American
servant-girl, one has but to see her at work _doing_ a room,
feather-broom in hand.
The coal most used in America is the anthracite kind; it has its good
qualities: it throws out great heat and burns for many hours; but it
makes a quantity of light ashes, which cover the furniture of a room
with a thick coating of dust every day.
Whenever I chanced to see the chambermaid in the morning shaking my
curtains, and making a cloud of dust, enough to prevent one from seeing
across the room, it was all I could do to refrain from calling out to
her, "My good girl, you are giving yourself a great deal of trouble for
nothing; don't meddle with the dust, it is better where it is." Thanks
to the feather-broom, my parlour was always done in a twinkling; but
before I dared go into it, I was obliged to wait until the dust had
returned to its place again.
A day or two after this remarkable manner of dusting had attracted my
attention, I came across the following in _Puck_:
Sarah is doing the drawing-room. Enters the mistress of the house,
evidently fearing to be choked by the cloud of dust that fills the
room.
"Sarah, what are you doing?"
"I'm dusting the room."
"I see. When you've finished, please to undust it."
* * * * *
Servants' wages range from L40 to L60 a year--I mean, of course, in good
ordinary houses, and not in millionaire's mansions. Mr. C. Vanderbilt
pays his chief cook two thousand pounds a year. I write the sum in
letters that the reader may not exclaim, "Surely there is an error here;
the printer has put one nought too many."
In spite of the enormously high wages they pay, the Americans have so
much trouble in getting good servants that numbers of them are, so to
speak, driven from their homes, and obliged to take refuge in hotels and
apartment-houses.
Negro servants are the only ones at all deferential in manner, or who
have a smile on their faces from time to time; but many people have an
objection to them, and charge them with serious faults, such as finding
things which are not lost, and breaking the monotony of life by dressing
up in their employers' raiment when occasion offers.
An American of my acquaintance, upon going to his room one evening to
dress for a dinner-party, found his dress-coat and waistcoat missing
from the wardrobe. Guessing their whereabouts, he went upstairs, and
there, in his negro-butler's room, were the missing garments. He rang
for the culprit.
"Pompey, I have found my dress-clothes in your room. What is the meaning
of it?"
"I forgot to put dem back, sah."
"You have had them on, you rascal?"
"Yes, sah."
"How dare you wear my clothes?"
"Please, massa, I got married yesterday," and the broad black face of
Pompey was lit up with a rather sheepish-looking grin.
* * * * *
All the caricatures of the comic papers are outdone by realities in
America.
These, for instance, are not caricatures, but facts:
Servant-maids will often refuse to enter your service if there is not a
piano in the basement.
Others will demand folding-beds. They will give you to understand that,
when they receive their "gentlemen" friends, it is not proper and
becoming to entertain them in a room where the bed on which they repose
their charms at night is spread out.
I know a lady who, losing her patience with her housemaid one day, said
to her:
"I expect my servants to do so and so."
"Your what?" cried the indignant damsel. "I'll just tell you what I
think of you. You ain't no lady, that's certain."
* * * * *
Needless to say that American "helps" vie with their mistresses in
display of toilette. Everyone knows that. Their diamonds are false, of
course; but there are so many rhinestones worn by ladies who are not
"helps" (even to their husbands), that it is difficult to distinguish
the wife of a millionaire from her kitchenmaid by their diamonds.
Here are two advertisements which I extract from an Indianapolis
newspaper:
"Situation as dishwasher required by a lady.--Apply _Sentinel_ Office."
"A lady (white) undertakes washing at home."--(Address follows.)
Democracy can no further go.
* * * * *
"I take care never to part on bad terms with my servants when they leave
me." This was said to me one day by a clever Boston lady, who, to my
thinking, lacks sufficient admiration for the democratic institutions of
America.
I guessed that she intended a covert satire on the greatest Republic in
the world.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because, when one of those girls leaves me, it is quite within the
range of possibility that she will marry some Western ranchman; and one
day, when her husband becomes a Senator, she may be useful to me at
Washington."