When the meteorological question was despatched, ladies have long had a
habit of calling upon their servants to furnish them with small talk;
high wages, huge appetites, daintiness, laziness, breakage,
impertinence, are fruitful topics which they daily treat exhaustively;
always arriving at the hopeless conclusion: 'Did you ever hear of
anything like it?' and 'I wonder what we are coming to!'
Is it not possible that we may be coming to--no servants at all? To me
the signs seem to point that way. Cobbett said that in America public
servant means master: he might add, if he were writing now, and so does
private servant. Each house is divided against itself into two camps;
hostile, though perhaps not in open war with each other: and Camp
Kitchen has the advantage of position. Above stairs uneasy sits the
employer, timid, conciliating, temporizing; seeing as little as he can,
and overlooking half he sees; ready to change his habits and to subdue
his tastes to suit the whims of the _enemigos pagados_, as the Spaniards
call them, he has under his roof. Below stairs lounge the lordly
employes (a charming newspaper neologism for hotel waiters, street
sweepers, and railway porters), defiant, aggressive, and perfectly aware
that they are masters of the situation. Daily they become more like the
two Ganymedes of Griffith's boarding house: he called them Tide and
Tide--because they waited on no man. They have long ceased to be hewers
of wood and drawers of water, and yet they accomplish less than before
the era of modern improvements. It appears to be a law of domestic
economy that work is inversely as the increase of wages. Nowadays, if a
housekeeper visits a prison, he envies the whiteness of the floors and
the brightness of the coppers he sees there, and thinks, with a sigh,
how well it might be for his _subscalaneans_, if they could be made to
take a course of neatness for a few months in some such an institution.
Vain wish! The future is theirs, and they know it. Their services will
become gradually more worthless, until we shall find them only in grand
establishments: mere appendages kept for fashion and for show; as
useless as the rudimental legs of a snake, which he has apparently only
to indicate the distinguished class in animated nature he may claim to
belong to. We shall live to say, as Perrault sang:
'J'apercus l'ombre d'un cocher
Tenant l'ombre d'une brosse
Nettoyant l'ombre d'un carrosse.'
Alas! I fear that even these shadows of servants will one day vanish and
disappear from us altogether.
Time was when classes in society were as well defined as races still
are. The currents ran side by side, and never intermingled. Some were
born to furnish the blessings of life, and others to enjoy them. Some to
wait, and others to be waited upon. The producing class accepted their
destiny cheerfully, believed in their 'betters,' and were proud to serve
them. The last eighty years have pretty much broken down these
comfortable boundary lines between men. The feudal retainer, who was
ready to give his life for his lord, the clever valet, who took kicks
and caning as a matter of course when his master was in liquor or had
lost at cards, even the old family servants, are species as extinct as
the Siberian elephant, or the cave bear, or the dodo. And now the
advance of the Union armies southward has destroyed the last lingering
type of the servant post: the faithful black.
In this country there never was much distinction of classes. The
unwillingness of New England _help_ to admit of any superiority on the
part of their masters has furnished many amusing stories. Later, when
the Irish element penetrated into every kitchen, farmyard, and stable,
floating off the native born into higher stations, service became
limited to immigrants and to negroes. But the immigrant soon learned the
popular motto, 'I'm as good as you are,' and only remained a serving man
until he could save enough money to set up for himself: not a difficult
matter in the United States; and never so easy as at this moment. The
demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with
a _labor famine_ in spite of the large immigration. In Europe labor is
scarce and in demand. Commerce, manufactures, colonization have outrun
the supply. Wages have doubled in England and in France within the last
twenty years, and are rising. With increase of wages comes always
decrease of subordination. The knowledge of reading, now becoming
general, and exercised almost exclusively in cheap and worthless
newspapers, and the progress of the democratic movement, which for good
or for evil is destined to extend itself over the whole earth, make the
working classes restless and discontented. They chafe under restraints
as unavoidable as illness or death. What floods of nonsense have we not
seen poured out about the conflict between labor and capital? It is the
old fable over again: the strife of the members against the belly.
Gradually has sprung up the feeling that it is degrading to be a
servant; a terrible lion in the path of the quiet housekeeper in search
of _assistants_. There may arise some day a purer and a wiser state of
society, wherein the relation of master and man will be satisfactory to
both. A merchant exercises a much sharper control over his clerk than
over any servant in his house, and it is cheerfully submitted to. The
soldier, who is worse paid and worse fed than a servant, is a mere
puppet in the hands of his officers, obliged to obey the nod of twenty
masters, and to do any work he may be ordered to, without the noble
privilege of 'giving notice;' and yet there is never any difficulty in
obtaining a reasonable supply of soldiers--because clerks and soldiers
do not think themselves degraded by their positions, and servants _do_.
It may be a prejudice, but it is one which drives hundreds of women, who
might be fat and comfortable, to starve themselves over needlework in
hovels; and often to prefer downright vice, if they can hope to conceal
it, to virtue and a home in a respectable family. Any logic, you
perceive, is quite powerless against a prejudice of this size and
strength.
But is it altogether a prejudice? Is it not a sound view of that
condition of life?
I confess that it has long been a matter of surprise to me that men
should be found willing to hire themselves out for domestic service in a
country where bread and meat may so easily be obtained in other ways,
and where even independent manual labor is so often considered
derogatory to the dignity of the native born. To do our dirty work that
it disgusts us to do for ourselves, to stand behind our chairs at table,
to obey our whims and caprices, to have never a moment they can call
their own, to keep down their temper when we lose ours, to be compelled
to ask for permission to go out for a walk, seems to me a sad existence
even with good food and wages.
The fact is, my dear CONTINENTAL, that the relation between master and
servant has to be readjusted to suit the times. Indeed it is readjusting
itself. We see the signs, although we may not perceive their
significance. Our life is a dream. I use this venerable saying in
another sense than the one generally intended by it: I mean that we live
half our lives, if not more, in the imagination; and that the
imagination of every-day people is a dream made up of feelings brought
together from the habits, theories, and prejudices of the past of all
lands and all nations of men. The reality that was once in them has long
since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are
all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like
maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors.
With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and
threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few
who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and
wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class
cling in particular to the dream of an aristocracy, and love to look
down upon somebody. The man who made his fortune yesterday calls
to-day's lucky fellow a _nouveau riche_ and a _parvenu_. The counter
jumper who has snatched his thousands from a sudden rise in stocks, is
sure to invest some of his winnings in the tatters of feudalism, sports
a coat of arms on his carriage, has liveries, talks of his honor as a
gentleman, and expects from his servants the same respect that a baron
of the Middle Ages received from his hinds. It is a dream of most
baseless fabric. John and Thomas, with their dislike of the word
servant, their surliness and their impudence, swing too far, perhaps, in
the other direction, but they are more in unison with the spirit of the
age than their masters. I have seen an ardent democrat, who had roared
equal rights from many a stump, furious with the impertinence of a
waiter, whose answer, if it had come from an equal, he would scarcely
have noticed. And was not the waiter a man and a fellow voter? What
distinction of class have we in this country? It is true that the
property qualification we have discarded in our political system we have
retained as our test of social position. Indeed, no abstract rights of
man can make up the difference between rich and poor. But Fortune is
nowhere so blind nor so busy in twirling her wheel; and our two classes
are so apt to change places, that frequently the only difference between
the master and the footman who stands behind him, is the difference of
capital. And Europe is treading the same democratic path as ourselves,
limping along after us as fast as her old legs will carry her. The time
will come when the class from which we have so long enlisted recruits
for our _batteries de cuisine_ will find some other career better suited
to their expanded views.
What then? Do you suggest that we may lay a hand upon the colored
element, after the example of our honored President? But
'While flares the epaulette like flambeau
On Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'
can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the
service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent
contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to
ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly
impaired.
Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and
kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home
paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'
'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,
Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'
But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within
doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and
split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of
the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once proposed a society to
ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model
intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need
its aid.
What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says
that the _Formica rufescens_ would perish without its slaves; we are
almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization
is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we
understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is difficult to see
how any business of magnitude could be carried on. Briareus himself
could not take care of a large country place, with its stables, barns,
horses, cattle, and crops, even if Mrs. B. had the same physical
advantages, and was willing to help him. Must we tempt them back by
still larger salaries, or increase their social consideration, telling
them, as a certain clergyman once said of his order, that 'they are
supported, and not hired'?--changing the word help, as we have servant,
into household officer or assistant manager, or adopt a Chinese
euphemism, such as steward of the table or governor of the kitchen?
Fourier does something of this kind; in his system the class names of
young scullions are cherubs and seraphs! Or shall we adopt the
cooeperative plan of Mill and others, and offer John an interest in the
family--say, possibly, the position of resident son-in-law after ten
years of honesty, sobriety, and industry--with a seat at table in the
mean while? Or must all the work be done by women, and a proprietor have
to seal his Biddies _more sanctorum_ in Utah? Or might not poor
relations, now confessedly nuisances, be made useful in this way? Some
marquis asked Sophie Arnould why she did not discharge her stupid
porter? 'I have often thought of it,' she answered, '_mais que voulez
vous, c'est mon pere_.'
These resources failing, we must drop to the simplest form of existence:
hut, hovel, or shanty; where my lord digs and is dirty, and her
ladyship, guiltless of Italian, French, and the grand piano, cooks,
scrubs, darns, and keeps the peace between the pigs and the children. Or
else we must come to socialism, in the shape of Brook Farm communities,
or _phalansteres a la Fourier_, or, worse than either, to mammoth
hotels. American tastes incline that way. There we may live in huge
gilded pens, as characterless as sheep in the flock, attended upon by
waiters, chambermaids, and cooks, who will have a share in the profits,
and consequently will be happy to do anything to increase the income of
their house.
I see no other remedy, and I offer this great social problem to the
serious thoughts of your readers.
Yours ever, G. V.