REVOLUTION BELOW-STAIRS.
The relations of employer and employed in private life and in public are in a state of transition. The foundations of society itself are undergoing drastic modifications, which will either sap or enhance its strength. The air is charged with reform in every department of social life. The very conditions of existence are more or less in the crucible. The connection between man and man, between woman and man, between man and the State, or woman and the State, are every one of them passing through an ordeal of stringent examination. In no direction is the old order of things vanishing more rapidly than in the household. The relations of mistress and maid are not to-day what they were yesterday, or what they will be to-morrow. A hundred years ago, servants were more part and parcel of the establishment than they are now. They entered a family, in the majority of cases, whilst they were young, and marriage or death was the only cause of separation in general. It never occurred to the domestic of the past to ‘give notice,’ any more than it occurred to the mistress to dismiss her servants, on the slightest provocation.
We need not travel far to ascertain what are the agencies which have wrought the change. The same influences which are every day giving the working classes increased power have affected in at least an equally pronounced degree the domestic employee. In 1886, the footman or the housemaid, the butler or the cook, is perhaps as well educated as were many heads of households in 1786. If the upper classes are now more cultured than they were in the olden days, so are the lower classes. Advertising mediums, cheapness and ease of locomotion, and the ever-spreading education of the masses, were boons undreamed of by the ‘Jeames’ whom Thackeray portrayed. Before these results of our progress were realised, the sphere within which the energies of servants found play was exceedingly limited. Beyond the locality in which they lived and the immediate circle of their master’s acquaintances, the world was to them little more than a blank and a mystery. To-day, they are nearly as familiar with the world as are their masters.
The sooner this is understood and appreciated, the better for the peace and stability of households. It is an invariable rule that the most contented homes are those in which the servant is treated with the greatest respect. Servants must be servants. No one but a lunatic would suggest that they had any right to enter the drawing-room or the dining-room on a footing of equality with its owner. But not less idiotic is it to imagine that they will much longer consent to be regarded as only one degree removed from the beast of burden. Their opportunities for acquiring knowledge are so manifold that it would be wonderful if this were not the case. Ladies and gentlemen sitting round their table are apt to forget that the man or maid waiting upon them has ears, and that their comments on life and the way the world is wagging, cannot fail to excite attention on the part of the domestic. Topics thrashed out in the dining-room or drawing-room are frequently carried below-stairs, and there subjected to a similar process, though it may be on very different lines. The result, equally with that of love as defined by Kenelm Chillingly, must inevitably be ‘a disturbance of the mental equilibrium.’
The unrest which characterises society itself characterises every section of the community. To ‘better’ themselves is the lifelong aim of servants in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Good servants are already at a premium. The complaint is constantly made that whilst domestics are more independent than of yore, their work is less carefully attended to. Those who understand the forces at work in our midst have no difficulty in recognising that, as time goes on, first-class servants will become rarer still. Preposterous as it may seem, this phenomenon is only another phase of the ‘social status’ question. There is, quite without reason, attaching to service a certain disposition on the part of many of our domestics to resent the washing-up of dishes or the cleaning of a floor.
The rule is not, of course, absolute, and there are many really good servants who enter a family and stay in it a number of years. But the tendency of the period is nomadic. In some quarters, there is a disposition to account for the perpetual changing of servants on the ground that servants love change. This is not altogether accurate. Many dislike nothing so much as fresh faces and fresh work, and are by no means eager to enter upon the duties of their new home. Others, however, leave one situation with the express hope that they may never enter another, and if employment of a different kind offers, eagerly avail themselves of it, albeit generally to their own disadvantage. Thousands of young men and women in every way qualified for service are swamping many callings. Milliners, dressmakers, clerks, shop-assistants—what a host might be found in the ranks of these who would constitute first-class recruits for private service! It is a fact, that whilst their numbers are on the increase, the numbers of domestics are almost stationary. During the decade 1871 to 1881, the census proved that indoor servants had increased by only one per cent., and consequently, proportionately to the increase of population, were scarcer in 1881 than ten years before. On the other hand, clerks had doubled; milliners had increased by nearly nineteen per cent.; dressmakers, by nearly eight per cent.; and seamstresses, by over five per cent.
These figures afford food for reflection. A large proportion of the young men and women to whom they refer are earning barely enough to keep body and soul together. In most cases they are a load upon the shoulders of their friends. For some months of the year the majority are without work. When they are in work, their money will never more than cover immediate wants. Would they not be better off beneath the gentleman’s roof with regular food and regular money? No one who knows anything at all about them will hesitate for a moment to reply in the affirmative. ‘Why, then,’ it will be, and often is asked, ‘do they not go into service?’ It would be found that if they applied for a situation in the household to-morrow, they would want to become ladies’-maids or valets. This disposition is to be explained on two grounds. First, exceptional privileges attach to the personal attendant; secondly, the lower grades of the domestic calling are still regarded with the feelings to which George Eliot gave expression in her dissertation on servants’ logic. The ordinary servant is too frequently and often unjustly branded with the mark of servility and ignorance not only among the upper classes, but to some extent among the industrial classes. To be ‘only a servant’ is, in the society in which the artisan or the clerk moves, to be entitled to less consideration than is given to those who follow a more independent calling. Just as it is the genius of the stage who alone is recognised in the best society, so it is only a few servants who have the power of impressing those with whom they come in contact with their worth, who secure friends outside the domestic circle.
The growing antipathy to service is a sign of the times which has to be reckoned with. Nor is this wonderful. No class of the community are kept to so perpetual a round of labour as the domestic servant. With the exception of an occasional afternoon or evening—often it is not more than once in a fortnight—those who live below-stairs rarely have an hour which they can call entirely their own. They may perhaps frequently have an opportunity of getting through their work early in the day, but they must not leave the house till they have asked permission. Again, they may stay in the same family for many years. But what do they gain by it? There is in England no such recognition of long and faithful service as exists in Germany. Seven years ago, the Empress of the Fatherland instituted a Long Service Order, and since that time many hundreds of domestic servants who have lived with the same master and mistress for forty years, have received from royalty diplomas and golden crosses.
Is such an Order impossible in Great Britain? Could we not modify and adapt it to ourselves? If a person is to work well for any length of time, some motive must be found. Why should not a system of rewards be adopted? No one can doubt that if a lady, when engaging a domestic, said, ‘Supposing you stay with me and perform your duties to the best of your ability for ten years, I will, in consideration thereof, present you at the termination of your engagement with twenty-five pounds,’ the effect would be beneficial. On condition of being assured that the money was safe, many servants, for the sake of the bonus, would consent to accept lesser wages than they receive at present. Even though the plan now suggested cost a few pounds more than would be spent under existing circumstances, would not the freedom from worry and anxiety be ample compensation? The outlay, however, would probably amount to little more than is now expended in advertising, in paying fares to and from the house for the purpose of interviews, and in various other ways incidental to the constantly recurring necessity of engaging servants.
Further, there can be no reason why mistresses should not agree to let each of their servants have a certain number of hours during the week which they may consider their own. The one drawback to service, in the eyes of many who would be better off in service than they are now, is, that they cannot have the evenings which at present are at their disposal. If the housewife gives the matter a little thought, she will see that this is an enigma the solution of which is not impracticable. The future must be pregnant with reform in the relations between the occupants of the drawing-room and of the servants’ hall. If masters and mistresses are wise, they will rob the revolutionary spirit of the age of any force it may have, by anticipating in a generous and liberal-handed manner claims which, if ignored, may result in a condition of things as undesirable as that which to-day obtains in Australia, where servants, at least as they are known in the old country, are non-existent.