The comfort and respectability of a house depend, in a great degree, upon the servants. Clean, neatly-dressed, and well-behaved servants, always impress a visitor with a favourable idea of the mistress of a house; while it is scarcely possible not to be somewhat prejudiced against her, if they be the reverse.
Servants who understand their work, and do it without being continually looked after, are invaluable; and, as regards wages, not to be compared with ignorant and incapable ones, who perform their services only as they are directed at every turn. A few pounds a year more to a good servant is not, therefore, a consideration; the addition in wages will occasion little additional cost; for, the bad servant consumes as much as the other, and she wastes or damages more.
The hours of meals should vary as little as possible; particularly the first meal of the day; for the work may be said to commence immediately after breakfast, and when that takes place one hour only, after the usual time, the whole business of the house is retarded. In even the most regular families, the time of dining may unavoidably be postponed. But this should happen as seldom as possible: for if the dinner ordered for five, be kept waiting till half-past six, one day, and, perhaps, later still another day, the cook may be prevented from performing some other part of her work, for which she had allotted the time; she will naturally be dissatisfied in having to consume that time in watching over the dinner; and if the dinner upon which she has, perhaps, exerted her utmost skill, be spoiled by waiting, she may be excused if she reproach herself for having taken so much trouble in its preparation. If the trial of her patience and temper be repeated, she will soon take little interest in pleasing her employers; she will take her turn to be irregular, and that, perhaps, on some occasion when it may produce inconvenience to the family. Under such circumstances, it would be unreasonable to find fault with the cook, who would only be following the bad example of those whose duty it is to preserve regularity. Their hours for going to bed, and getting up, should be as early as other arrangements will permit. But, those ought to be so regulated as to make it unnecessary that the servants should be kept up late, except on extraordinary occasions. Late dinners have, in a great measure, done away with hot suppers. Where these are not eaten, the labours of the twenty-four hours may be ended by ten o'clock at night; and that is the latest hour at which the servants of a family of the middle rank, and of regular habits, ought to remain up. Some one of the family should see that fires have been put out, and doors and windows secured.
The honesty of servants depends, principally, upon their bringing up. But it also depends much, with young servants especially, upon the temptations to be dishonest they may have had to contend with; and it is the duty of every master and mistress to put all such temptations out of their way, as much as possible. The practice of locking up does not, as a matter of course, imply distrust, but it denotes care; and surely carefulness is one of the first principles to impress upon the mind of a poor person. I would as scrupulously avoid anything which should lead a servant to imagine that a drawer or tea-chest was locked up from her, as I would avoid giving the same idea to an acquaintance; but it is a culpable practice to leave tea, sugar, wine, or other things, open at all times, or only now and then locked up. The habit is bad; and it is the result, not of generosity, but of negligence; it is also a habit which cannot fail to excite, in the minds of experienced and well-disposed servants, feelings rather of contempt, than of respect for their employers; while to the young, and more particularly to those of unsettled principles, it is nothing less than a temptation to crime. Little pilferings at the tea-chest, perhaps, have been the beginning of that which has ended in depriving a poor girl of her character, and, consequently, of all chance of gaining her bread by honest means. To suspect servants of being disposed to be dishonest merely because they are servants, is as silly as it is unfeeling. I should never hesitate to give my keys to a servant, when it happened to be inconvenient to me to leave company, any more than I should hesitate to entrust them to one of my own family; but such an act of confidence is far different in its effects, from that neglect which often proceeds from mere idleness, and, while it proclaims a disregard of the value of property, is the occasion of much waste, and, in the end, proves as ruinous to the employer as it is fatal in the way of example to servants.
That "servants are plagues" may be the fact; but when the hardships which belong to the life of a maid-servant are taken into consideration, the wonder is, that they are not less obedient to the will of their employers, and more callous to their displeasure, than we really find them. It is too much the habit to regard servants as inferior beings, hired and paid to perform certain services, but whose feelings are unworthy of the consideration of those upon whom they wait, for whom they cook, and whom they enable to sit at their ease, or to go about, and take their pleasure. True, they are paid for what they do; but how paid? Not in a degree adequate to their services. The double or the treble of what they are paid, would not compensate us for the discomfort of having to work for ourselves. Yet, "they are paid for it," is said in justification of unreasonable demands upon the time, strength, and patience of servants; when, in fact, the whole of the pay to a female servant consists of that food, without which she would be unable to work, and of a sum of money, barely sufficient to keep her clothed, which she is required to be, for the credit of the house she lives in. Ladies who shudder as they meet the cold air, in descending to their breakfast rooms, forget the sufferings of the female servant, who has, perhaps, gone to bed over-night exhausted by fatigue, but whose duty compels her to rise again, some hours before she is rested, to begin her work afresh, and to do over again all that had been done the day before. A lady who thinks her servant sufficiently paid for all she endures, has never known what it is to get up in the dark of a cold winter morning, and to spend half-an-hour on her knees, labouring to produce a polish on the bars of a grate, which bars were burnt black yesterday, and will be burnt black again to-day. Such a lady has never suffered from the drudgery of a kitchen, not from the scorching of a kitchen fire, either of which is sufficient to impair the constitution of any woman, independently of all that wearing of the spirits, which those exposed to such trials must experience.
It is true, also, that it is by their own choice that servants go to service; they are not compelled to do so by any other law than that of necessity; but starvation is their only alternative; and we should think it hard to be reduced to the alternative of either starving to death, in the bloom of our youth, and of quitting a world which was made for us, as well as for our more fortunate fellow beings, or of yielding up the whole of our lives, to promote the ease of those who deem us amply rewarded, in being fed and clothed, and suffered to repose from toil, at those times only when their wants happen not to require our attention.
The apprehension of lowering our dignity and encouraging disrespect, by giving way to familiarity with inferiors, is pleaded by some as an excuse for haughty and overbearing demeanour towards servants. But such as adopt that kind of demeanour are mistaken. There are few better judges of good breeding than servants. Their ideas upon this subject are not formed by rules, or by fashions; but they have generally, from observation, a remarkably correct knowledge both of what is due to themselves, and of what is most becoming to the dignity of their superiors. I have occasionally been astonished at the quickness with which a servant has made the discovery, that some upstart person, notwithstanding her lofty bearing, "was no lady." The behaviour which characterises such persons is more likely to give rise to contempt, in those who are beneath them, than any behaviour that is unaffectedly conciliating and kind. To be loved, and to be cheerfully served, is for those only who respect the feelings, and consult the comfort of their dependents; and, as a single trait is often sufficient to reveal the whole character, they will most assuredly be disappointed, who expect to meet with the qualities which conduce to the happiness of domestic life, in a woman who considers the feelings of a female servant as unworthy of the same consideration as that which she gives to the feelings of others of her own sex.
With regard to the general character and merits of servants, nothing is more common than the remark, that "servants are not so good as they used to be." This is surely an error. There cannot be a greater predisposition to misconduct in them now than formerly. It may be said, that there are more frequent instances of bad conduct; but this does not warrant the idea, that the servants of the present day have a degree of inborn viciousness from which those of times past were free. If all who rail at the negligences, the waste, the want of care, the dislike of work, and the liking for dress and for gadding, to which servants are as much addicted as their betters; if all such were themselves as free from fault as they would have their servants be, it would probably be found that the effect, what with precept and example combined, would be quite enough to banish this commonplace remark. The truth is, that the change which has taken place in the habits of the middle class, has produced a change, but a very natural change, in the habits of those of a more humble station. There exists now a greater degree of high living than formerly; and consequently, a want of frugality, a waste in all sorts of ways, formerly unknown. Persons of moderate income keep more company than persons of the same class used to keep; they imitate the late hours, and other fashionable habits which used to be reckoned among the privileges of their superiors in fortune, instead of wisely avoiding emulation in such things, and keeping to their own more simple, and less hazardous mode of life. What wonder, then, if we find the most humble copying those of the middling, when the middling are doing all they can to rival those of the highest rank.
Servants were formerly more the object of care with their employers than they have been of late. When ladies gave a considerable portion of their time to domestic duties, and prided themselves on their skill in household matters, they were not above maintaining a certain degree of friendly intercourse with their servants. This afforded opportunities for giving good counsel, and for superintending their conduct, and was a more efficient check upon them than "a good scolding now and then," which many think better than "being always on the watch."
In addressing myself to young persons, it may not be considered impertinent or foreign to the general purpose of this work, to offer a few remarks upon the subject of company. I do not mean in respect to the selection of friends and acquaintance, or the kind of visitors proper to be invited, but simply as to the mode of entertaining them, which must, necessarily, be a matter of importance in housekeeping, and, therefore, comes properly within the scope of domestic economy.