Coachman: "Why—what's the matter, John Thomas?"
Footman: "Matter enuff! Here's the marchioness bin and giv me notice because I don't match Joseph, an' I must go, unless I can get my fat down in a week!"
The relations of masters, mistresses and servants is a never ending theme in the pages of Punch. His attitude was governed by the broad principles that the labourer was worthy of his hire, and that those who offered inadequate wages must expect neither character nor efficiency. But he draws a clear distinction between the domestic slave and the flunkey, holding that snobbery in employers was the chief cause of its prevalence amongst highly paid servants. Punch was the champion of the "slavey"—immortalized in Dickens's "Marchioness"—even of the much-maligned charwoman; the relentless critic of Jeames, his plush and powder and calves. As early as 1847 we find him supporting a reversal of the old régime: the mistress must be approved by the servant, and furnish a satisfactory character. The plea is not surprising, when advertisements for a kitchen-maid, "wages £3 a year," appeared in a fashionable paper and earned Punch's satire. Contrariwise, he never spares the arrogance of "servantgalism" the assumption of "my lady the housemaid." In this spirit Punch makes game of a school for servants at Bristol, where lessons on the pianoforte were given, but if servant girls and nurses were neglectful of their duties and their infant charges, mistresses were equally to blame for their indolence and disregard of parental responsibilities. But the keenest arrows in Punch's quiver were reserved for "Jeames." He quotes from the columns of The Times the advertisements of a footman, "tall, handsome, with broad shoulders and extensive calves," who "prefers Belgravia or the North Side of the Park," while a little later on another of this type insists on "six months a year in town, and if in an unfashionable neighbourhood, five guineas extra salary." If I refrain from quoting from Thackeray's constant variations on this theme in the pages of Punch, it is only because they are so familiar to readers of his collected works. The etiquette of flunkeydom was peculiar. These gorgeous and pampered menials had their grievances; they were "expected to sit in church in a position from which the clergyman could neither be seen nor heard," as Punch put it in 1851. Liveried servants were not allowed in Rawstorne Street Chapel, Brompton, in 1846, and a protest was made in the Press that at St. George's, Hanover Square, "the real aristocracy of the land are separated from their liveried domestics by a mere oak panelling." But in this war on flunkeyism "Jeames" was not the real enemy; it was rather the genius of snobbery which Punch impersonated in "Jenkins" of the Morning Post (or Morning Plush, as he called it), whose fulsome and lyrical rhapsodies are held up to ridicule in number after number. In this context two extracts may suffice, from an account of the galaxy of rank and fashion at the Opera which appeared in the Morning Post:
It is, above all, necessary that the middle classes and the poor should see and feel that if the aristocracy has the monopoly of titles and the lion's share of the dignities and offices of the State, instead of hoarding, it nobly expends its revenues in those luxuries which emanate from the ingenuity and labour of the industrious.
And again—the italics and capitals are Punch's:—
Ever since the Italian lyrical drama crossed the Alps in the suites of the tasteful Medicis, its vogue has daily increased, it has become a ruling passion—it is the quintessence of all civilized pleasures; and wherever its principal virtuosi hoist their standard, there for the time is the CAPITAL OF EUROPE, where the most illustrious, noble, elegant and tasteful members of society assemble.
These ornaments of society are in general absent at the too early opening of Her Majesty's Theatre; but on Saturday, as we surveyed the house previous to the overture, most of those who constitute society in England—those whom we respect, esteem or love—rapidly filled the house.
Every seat in every part of it was occupied, and if those objectionable spectators were there—those gentlemen of ambiguous gentility, the fashionable couriers, valets, tailors and shoemakers, who obtain admission to the pit on the strength of knowing the measure of some actor or actress's foot—they and their frowsy dames were so nailed to their benches as not to offend the eye.
These effusions, and others equally unbridled in their assertion of the divinity of kings and coronets, prompted Punch to adorn "Jenkins" with the alias of Lickspittleoff. It was not a nice name, but Punch might have retorted tâchez de ne pas le mériter.
The Underpaid Governess
From servants to governesses the transition in those days was only too easy. Punch's study of the advertisements in this branch of the "slave market" began early, and let us hope to good purpose, though as I write the comparative rates of remuneration for cooks and teachers are still open to criticism. In the autumn of 1843, commenting on an advertisement in The Times, in which "S. S." offered a salary of £2 a month to "a morning daily governess of ladylike manners for three or four young female pupils, capable of imparting a sound English education, with French, music and singing, dancing and drawing, unassisted by masters," Punch observes:—
How very much would it surprise the race of S.S.'s; what a look of offended virtue would they put on were somebody to exclaim to them, "It is such as you who help to fill our streets, and throng the saloons of our theatres; it is such as you who make the Magdalen indispensable." We have recently read the statistics of insanity, and have found governesses to be in a frightful disproportion to other educated classes. Can this be wondered at when we read such offers as those of S.S.?