Verily
I swear, 't is better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perked up in a glistering grief
And wear a golden sorrow.
HENRY VIII.
It is impossible to do much with the art of entertaining without
servants, and where shall we get them? In a country village, not two
hundred miles from New York, I have seen well-to-do citizens going to
a little restaurant in the main street for their dinners during an
entire summer, because they could not get women to stay in their
houses as servants. They are willing to pay high wages, they are
generous livers, but such a thing as domestic service is out of the
question. If any lady comes from the city bringing two or three maids,
they are of far more interest in the village than their mistress, and
are besieged, waited upon, intrigued with, to leave their place, to
come and serve the village lady.
What is the reason? The American farmer's daughter will not go out to
service, will not be called a servant, will not work in another
person's house as she will in her own. The Irish maid prefers the
town, and dislikes the country, where there is no Catholic church.
Such a story repeated all over the land is the story of American
service.
We have, however, every day, ships arriving in New York harbour which
pour out on our shores the poor of all nations. The men seem to take
readily enough to any sort of work. Italians shovel snow and work on
railroads, but their wives and daughters make poor domestic servants.
The best that we can get are the Irish who have been long in the
country. Then come the Germans, who now outnumber the Irish. French,
Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, all come in shoals.
Of all these the French are by far the best. Of course, as cooks they
are unrivalled; as butler, waiter, footman, a well-trained French
serving-man is the very best. He is neat, economical, and respectful.
He knows his value and he is very expensive. But if you can afford
him, take him and keep him.
French maids are admirable as seamstresses, and in all the best and
highest walks of domestic service, but they are difficult as to the
other servants. They make trouble about their food; they do not tell
the truth, as a rule.
A good Irish nurse is the best and most tender, the most to be relied
on. Children love Irish servants; it is the best recommendation we can
give them. They are not good cooks as a rule, and are wanting in head,
management, and neatness; but they are willing; and a wise mistress
can make of them almost anything she desires.
The Germans surpass them very much in thrift and in concentration, but
the Germans are stolid, and very far from being as gentle and willing
as the Irish. If a housekeeper gets a number of German servants in
training and thinks them perfect, she need not be astonished if some
fine morning she rises and finds them gone off to parts unknown.
The Swedes are more reliable up to a certain point; they are never
stupid, they are rather fantastic, and very eccentric. They are also
full of poetry, and indulge in sublime longings. The Swedish language
is made up of eloquence and poetry as soft as the Italian; it has also
something of the flow and the magnificence of the Spanish. It is
freighted with picturesque and brilliant metaphor, and is richer than
ours in its expressions of gentleness, politeness, and courtesy. They
have a great talent for arguing with gentleness and courtesy, and of
protesting with politeness, and they learn our language with singular
ease. I once had a Swedish maid who argued me out of my desire to have
the dining-room swept, in better language than I could use myself. One
must, in hiring servants, take into account all these national
characteristics. The Swedes are full of talent, they can do your work
if they wish to, but ten chances to one they do not wish to.
Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. were two types of Swedish
character. The Swedes of to-day, like them, are full of dignity and
lofty aspiration; they love brilliant display; they have audacious and
adventurous spirits; one can imagine them marching to victory; but all
this makes them, in this country, "too smart" to be servants.
They are excellent cooks. A Swedish woman formerly came to my house to
cook for dinner parties, and she was equal to any French _chef_. Her
price was five dollars; she would do all my marketing for me, and
serve the dinner most perfectly,--that is, render it up to the men
waiters. I rarely had any fault to find; if I had, it was I who was in
the wrong. She came often to instruct my Irish cook; but had I
attempted any further intercourse, I felt that it would have been I
who would have had to leave the house, and not my excellent cook. They
have every qualification for service excepting this: they will not
obey,--they are captains.
The Norwegians are very different. We must again remember that at home
they are poor, frugal, religious, and capable of all sacrifice; they
will work patiently here for seven years in order to go back to
Norway, to that poetical land, whose beauty is so unspeakable. These
girls who come from the herds, who have spent the summer on the plains
in a small hut and alone, making butter and cheese, are strong,
patient, handsome, fresh creatures, with voices as sweet as lutes, and
most obedient and good,--their thoughts ever of father and mother and
home. Would there were more of them. If they were a little less
awkward in an American house they would be perfect.
As for the men, they are the best farm-laborers in the world. They
have a high, noble, patient courage, a very slow mind, and are fond of
argument. The Norwegian is the Scotchman of Scandinavia, as the Swede
is the Irishman. There are no better adopted citizens than the
Norwegians, but they live here only to go back to Norway when they
have made enough. Deeply religious, they are neither narrow nor
ignoble. They would be perfect servants if well trained.
The Danes are not so simple; they are a mercantile people, and are
desperately fond of bargaining. They are also, however, most
interesting. Their taste for art is vastly more developed than that of
either the Swedes or the Norwegians. A Danish parlour-maid will
arrange the _bric-à-brac_ and stand and look at it. To go higher in
their home history, they are making great painters. As servants they
are hardly known enough amongst us to be criticised; those I have seen
have been neat, faithful, and far more obedient than their cleverer
Swedish sisters.
Could I have my choice for servants about a country house they should
be Norwegians, in a city house, French.
In Chicago, the ladies speak highly of the German servants, if they do
not happen to be Nihilists, which is a dreadful possibility. At the
South they still have the negro, most excellent when good, most
objectionable when bad. Certainly freedom has not improved him as to
manners, and a coloured coachman in Washington can be far more
disagreeable than an Irishman, or a French cabby during the
Exposition, which is saying a great deal.
The excellence, the superiority, the respectful manners of English
servants at home has induced many ladies to bring over parlour maids,
nurses, cooks, from England, with, however, but small success. I need
but copy the following from the "London Queen," to show how different
is the way of speaking of a servant, and to a servant in London from
that which obtains in New York. It is _verbatim_:--
"The servants should rise at six-thirty, and the cook a little
earlier; she then lights the kitchen fire, opens the house, sweeps the
hall, cleans the steps, prepares upstairs and downstairs breakfast.
Meantime the house parlourmaid does the dining-room, takes up hot
water to bedrooms, lays the table, and so forth, while the housemaid
dusts the day nursery and takes up the children's breakfast. Supposing
the family breakfast is not wanted before eight-thirty, that meal
should be taken, in both kitchen and nursery, before eight o'clock.
As soon as this is over the cook must tidy her kitchen, look over her
stores, contents of pantry, etc., and be ready by nine-thirty to take
her orders for the day. She will answer the kitchen bell at all times,
and perhaps the front door in the morning, and will be answerable
besides for ordinary kitchen work, for the hall, kitchen stairs, all
the basement, and according to arrangement possibly the dining-room.
She must have fixed days for doing the above work, cleaning tins, etc.
The cook also clears away the breakfast. As soon as the housemaid has
taken up the family breakfast, she, the housemaid, must begin the
bedrooms, where the second scullery-maid may help her as soon as she
has done helping the cook. The house parlour-maid will be responsible
for the drawing-room and sitting-room and all the bedrooms, also
stairs and landing, having regular days for cleaning out one of each
weekly, being helped by the second scullery-maid. She should be
dressed in time for lunch, wait on it, and clear away. She will answer
the front door in the afternoon, take up five o'clock tea, lay the
table and wait at dinner. The scullery maid must clear the kitchen
meals and help in all the washing up, take up nursery tea, help the
cook prepare late dinner, carry up the dishes for late dinner, clear
and wash up kitchen supper. The nurse has her dinner in the kitchen.
Servants' meals should be breakfast, before the family, dinner
directly after upstairs lunch, tea at five, supper at nine. They
should go to bed regularly at ten o'clock. Now as to their fare. For
breakfast a little bacon or an egg, or some smoked fish; for dinner,
meat, vegetables, potatoes, and pudding. If a joint has been sent up
for lunch, it is usual for it to go down to the servants' table.
"Allow one pint and a half of beer to each servant who asks for it, or
one bottle. Tea, butter, and sugar are given out to them. The weekly
bills for the servants shall be about two dollars and a half."
The neatness of all this careful housekeeping would be delightful if
it could be carried out with us, or if the servant would accept it.
But imagine a New York mistress achieving it! The independent voter
would revolt, his wife would never accept it. English servants lose
all their good manners when they come over here, and do not appear at
all as they do in London.
American servants are always expected to eat what goes down from the
master's table, and there is no such thing as making one servant wait
upon another in our free and independent country. There are households
in America where many servants are kept in order by a very clever
mistress, but it is rarely an order which lasts for long. It is a
vexed question, and the freedom with which we take a servant, without
knowing much of her character, must explain a great deal of it.
Foreign servants find out soon their legal rights, and their
importance. Here where labour is scarce, it is not so easy to get a
good footman, parlour maid, or cook; the great variety and antipathy
of race comes in. The Irishman will not work on a railroad with the
Italian, and we all know the history of the "Heathen Chinee." That is
repeated in every household.
Mr. Winans, in Scotland, hires a place which reaches from the North
Sea to the Atlantic; he spends two hundred thousand dollars a year on
it. He has perhaps three hundred servants, every one of them perfect.
Imagine his having such a place here! How many good servants could he
find; how long would they stay? How long does a French _chef_, at ten
thousand dollars a year, stay? Only one year. He prefers to return to
France.
Indeed, French servants, poorly paid and very poorly fed at home, are
the hardest to keep in this country; they all wish to go back. It is a
curious fact that they grow impertinent and do not seem to enjoy the
life. They go back to Europe, and resume their good manners as if
nothing had happened. It must be in the air.
It is, however, possible for a lady to get good servants and to keep
them for a while, if she has great executive ability and a natural
leadership; but the whole question is one which has not yet been at
all mastered.
There is no "hook and eye" between the ship loaded down with those who
want work and those who want work done. The great lack of respect in
the manners of servants in hotels is especially noticeable to one
returning from Europe. A woman, a sort of care-taker on a third-story
floor, will sing while a lady is talking to her, not because she
wishes to sing at all, but to establish her independence. In Europe
she would say, "Yes, my Lady," or "No, my Lady" when spoken to.
It is to be feared that the Declaration of Independence is between us
and good service. We must be content if we find one or two amiable
Irish, or old negroes, who will serve us because of the love they bear
us, and for our children's sake, whom they love as if they were their
very own.
This is, however, but taking the seamy side, and the humbler side.
Many opulent people in America employ thirty servants, and their house
goes on with much of European elegance. It is not unusual in a fine
New York house to find a butler and four men in the dining-room; a
_chef_ and his assistants in the kitchen; a head groom and his men in
the stables; a coachman, who is a very important functionary; and
three women in the nursery besides the nursery governess, who acts as
the amanuensis of the lady; the lady's maid, whose sole duty is to
wait on her lady, and perhaps her young lady; a parlour maid or two;
and two chambermaids, a laundress and her assistants.
Of course the men in such a vast establishment do not sleep in the
house, perhaps with one or two exceptions; the valet and the head
footman may be kept at home, as they may be needed in the night, for
errands, etc. But our American houses are not built to accommodate so
many. One lady, the head of such an establishment, said that she had
"never seen her laundress." A different staircase led to the servants'
room; her maid did all the interviewing with this important personage.
If a lady can find a competent housekeeper to direct this large
household, it is all very well, but that is yet almost impossible, and
the life of a fashionable woman in New York, who is the head of such a
house, is apt to be slavery. The housekeeper and the butler are seldom
friends, therefore the hostess has to reconcile these two conflicting
powers before she can give a dinner; the head footman walks off
disgusted and leaves a vacant place, etc.
The households of men of foreign birth, who understand dealing with
different nationalities, are apt to get on very well with thirty
servants; doubtless such men import their own servants.
In a household where one man alone is kept, he is expected to open the
front door and to do all the work of the dining-room, and must have an
assistant in the pantry. The cook, if a woman, generally demands and
needs one; if a man, he demands two, for a _chef_ will not do any of
the menial work of cookery. He is a pampered official.
In England, the housekeeper engages the servants and supervises them.
She has charge of the stores and the house linen, and in general is
responsible for the economical and exact management of all household
details, and for the comfort of guests and the family. She is expected
to see that her employers are not cheated, and this in our country
makes her unpopular. A bad housekeeper is worse than none, as of
course her powers of stealing are endless.
The butler is responsible for the silver and wine. He must be absolute
over the footman. It is he who directs the carving and passing of
dishes, and then stands behind the chair of his mistress. All the
men-servants must be clean shaven; none are permitted to wear a
mustache, that being the privilege of the gentlemen.
A lady's maid is not expected to do her own washing, or make her own
bed in Europe; but in this country, being required to do all that, and
to eat with the other servants, she is apt to complain. A French maid
always complains of the table. She must dress hair, understand
dress-making, and clear starching, be a good packer, and always at
hand to dress her lady and to sit up for her when she returns from
parties. Her wages are very high and she is apt to become a tyrant.
It is very difficult to define for an American household the duties of
servants, which are so well defined in England and on the continent.
Every lady has her own individual ideas on this subject, and servants
have _their_ individual ideas, which they do not have in Europe. I
heard an opulent gentleman who kept four men-servants in his house,
and three in his stable, complain one snowy winter that he had not one
who would shovel snow from his steps, each objecting that it was not
his business; so he wrote a note to a friendly black man, who came
around, and rendered it possible for the master of the house to go
down to business. This was an extreme case, but it illustrates one of
the phases of our curious civilization.
The butler is the important person, and it will be well for the lady
to hold him responsible; he should see to it that the footmen are neat
and clean. Most servants in American houses wear black dress-coats,
and white cravats, but some of our very rich men have now all their
flunkies in livery, a sort of cut-away dress-coat, a waistcoat of
another colour, small clothes, long stockings, and low shoes. Powdered
footmen have not yet appeared.
If we were in England we should say that the head footman is to attend
the door, and in houses where much visiting goes on he could hardly do
anything more. Ladies, however, simplify this process by keeping a
"buttons," a small boy, who has, as Dickens says, "broken out in an
eruption of buttons" on his jacket, who sits the livelong day the
slave of the bell.
The second man seems to do all the work, such as scrubbing silver,
sweeping, arranging the fireplaces, and washing dishes; and what the
third man does, except to black boots, I have never been able to
discover. I think he serves as valet to the gentlemen and the growing
boys, runs with notes, and is "Jeames Yellowplush" generally. I was
once taken over her vast establishment by an English countess, who
was most kind in explaining to me her domestic arrangements; but I did
not think she knew herself what that third man did. I noticed that
there were always several footmen waiting at dinner.
"They also serve who only stand and wait."
One thing I do remember in the housekeeper's room. There sat a very
grand dame carving, and giving the servants their dinner. She rose and
stood while my lady spoke to her, but at a wave of the hand from the
countess all the others remained seated. The butler was at the other
end of the table looking very sheepish. The dinner was a boiled leg of
mutton, and some sort of meat pie, and a huge Yorkshire pudding,--no
vegetables but potatoes; pitchers of ale, and bread and cheese,
finished this meal. The third footman, I remember, brought in
afternoon tea; perhaps he filled that place which is described in one
of Miss Mulock's novels:--
"Dolly was hired as an off maid, to do everything which the other
servants would not do."
The etiquette of the stable servants was also explained to me in
England. The coachman is as powerful a person in the equine realm as
is the butler in the house. The head groom and his assistants always
raise their finger to their hats when spoken to by master, or
mistress, or the younger members of the family, or visitors, and in
the case of royalty all stand with hats off, the coachman on the box
slightly raising his, until the Prince of Wales, or his peers, are
seated.
In some houses I was told that the upper servants had their meals
prepared by a kitchen maid, and that they had a different table from
the scullery maids.
The nursery governess was a person to be pitied; she was an educated
girl, still the servant of the head nurse. She passed her entire life
with the children, yet ate by herself, unless perhaps with the very
young children. The head governess ate luncheon with the family, and
came in to the parlour with the young ladies in the evening. Generally
this personage was expected to sing and play for the amusement of the
company. Now, imagine a set of servants thus trained, brought to
America. The men soon learn that their vote is as good as the
master's, and if they are Irishmen it is a great deal better. They
soon cease to be respectful. This is the first break in the chain. A
man, a Senator, was asked out to dinner in Albany; the lady of the
house said, "I have a great respect for Senator ----; he used to wait
on this table."
That is a glorious thing for the flag, for the United States, but
there is a missing link in the golden chain of household order. It is
a difficult task to produce here the harmony of an English household.
Our service at home is like our diplomatic service; we have no trained
diplomats, no gradation of service, but in the case of our foreign
ministers, they have risen to be the best in the world. We have plenty
of talent at top; it is the root of the tree which puzzles us.
We may make up our minds that no longer will the American girl go out
to service. It is a thousand pities that she will not. It is not
ignoble to do household work well. The châtelaines of the Middle Ages
cooked and served the meals with their own fair hands. Training-schools
are greatly needed; we should follow the nurses' training-school.
Our dinner-tables in America are generally long and narrow, fitted to
the shape of the dining-room. Once I saw in England, in a great
house, a table so narrow that one could almost have shaken hands with
one's opposite neighbour. The ornaments were high, slender vases
filled with grasses and orchids, far above our heads. One or two
matchless ornaments of Dresden, the gifts of monarchs, alone
ornamented the table. This was a very sociable dinner-table and rather
pleasing. Then came the round table, so vast that the footmen must
have mounted up on it to place the centre piece, like poor distraught
Lady Caroline Lamb, whose husband came in to find her walking up and
down the table, telling the butler to "produce pyramidal effects."
There is also the fine broad parallelogram, suited to a baronial hall;
and this is copied in our best country houses. As no conversation of a
confidential character is ever allowed at an English table until all
the servants have left the room, so it is not considered good-breeding
to allow a servant to talk to the mistress or the young ladies of what
she hears in the servants' hall. The gossip of couriers and maids at a
foreign watering-place reaches American ears, and unluckily gets into
American newspapers sometimes. It is a wise precaution on the part of
the English never to listen to this. As we have conquered everything
else in America, perhaps we shall conquer the servant question, to the
advantage of both parties. We should try to keep our servants a longer
time with us.
There are some houses where the law of change goes on forever, and
there are some where the domestic machine runs without friction. The
hostess may be a person with a talent for governing, and may be
inspired with a sixth sense. If she is she can make her composite
family respectful, helpful, and happy; but it must be confessed that
it is as yet a vexed question, one which gives us trouble and will
give us more. Those people are the happiest who can get on with three
or four servants, and very many families live well and elegantly with
this number, while more live well with two.
To mark the difference in feeling as between those who employ and
those who serve, one little anecdote may apply. At a watering-place in
Europe I once met an English family, of the middle class. The lady
said to her maid, "Bromley, your master wishes you to be in at nine
o'clock this evening."