The Expert Maid-Servant

by Christine Terhune Herrick

When the servant presents herself ready dressed for her work, the mistress should tell her as simply as possible what this will be. The instruction would better be given in broken doses. The workings of the untrained mind are peculiar, and in mental equipment the average servant is often on a level with a child of ten or twelve. Bestow too many facts at once and you produce only confusion. So it is not well to make an attempt to give the maid a bird's-eye view of what will be her whole duty, but rather to acquaint her by degrees with her occupations. The first step is for the mistress to show her where her work is to be and the instruments with which she is to perform it. Should she be a cook, she must be introduced to the kitchen, the management of the range explained to her, the whereabouts of the principal utensils made clear. If it is the waitress who is to be inducted into office, she should be taken to the china-closet, the contents of this and of the silver and linen drawers displayed, and the particular pieces pointed out that are in daily service. When the waitress is also the chambermaid, there are explanations required as to the upstairs work. But, as I have said, it is better to supply these little by little.

For example, if the cook comes into the house in the morning, give her time to get used to her kitchen and her tools before too much information is offered as to the preferences of the family in cookery. Since the first meal she will have to prepare will be luncheon, tell her about this, and do not burden her with the details of dinner until after lunch is over. Still less try to give her at one fell swoop all she will need to know about breakfast the next morning or what she will be expected to do on washing and ironing day.

These instructions may sound unnecessary to the trained and experienced housekeeper; but the world is not entirely made up of these. The majority of women are more or less lacking in sense of proportion and in perspective, and this lack leads to a jumbling of their ideas which makes life complex for those to whom the ideas are to be imparted. Of course, once in a while one finds an intelligent servant who understands herself well enough to slip at once into her place and do the work of it smoothly, but she is the rare exception to the rule. The housekeeper must plan for the average, not for the exception.

This way of giving orders naturally confines the housekeeper more or less during the first days of her new maid's arrival—but a domestic convulsion of any sort is attended with drawbacks. The mistress must appreciate the fact that she will have to sacrifice herself a little in order to train her new maid properly, and that the result will be worth the trouble.

This does not mean that the mistress should stand over a servant and dictate the way in which every duty is to be performed. The employer should bear in mind that there is more than one right way of doing nearly everything, and if the new maid has a special way of her own of accomplishing this or that, she should be allowed to follow her custom until she has proved that it is not so good as that of her mistress. This may sound reckless, but it has common-sense to commend it. When the maid is given a chance to prove or disprove the excellence of her method and it turns out to be as good as that of the mistress, there is the saving of just so much friction and effort in teaching and learning a new way.

In advocating this I am taking it for granted that the maid has some idea of the manner in which her work is to be done. If she is absolutely "green," she will have to be taught from the beginning, and then the mistress has no option. Such servants are discouraging and tiresome at the outset, but they often turn out the best in the long-run. In their cases the mistress has no bad impressions to efface and she can implant her own modes in virgin soil.

When, however, the maid has some knowledge of her duties, the mistress should show her where she is to work, give her directions for the services that come next, and then leave her to herself. She will learn her way about her domain much more quickly if she is unembarrassed by the presence of an observer.

The mistress must be prepared for blunders even after she has given explicit directions. As I have said, it is quite possible the maid may not understand the mistress at first, or, in the confusion of new impressions, she may forget or confound directions. Should she serve a dish in a different fashion from that in which it has been ordered, reproof should be reserved until the mistress has made sure of the reason for the variation. If the wrong china or silver or linen is used, corrections should be made judiciously. The fault may have been forgetfulness, it may have been misunderstanding, and, in any case, fresh confusion will be the result if too many blunders are commented upon at once. The maid should be directed to repair one or two omissions, and the rest should be ignored for the time being, to be put right later on.

Occasionally a maid will be found who seems chronically unable to set a table right. I have known of several who persisted in putting on crooked the square of damask that was used at breakfast and luncheon instead of the large cloth that covered the entire table at dinner. The square would be laid in a slanting, to-one-side fashion that gave the whole table a drunken look. The mistress finally hit upon a successful plan. She put four chairs on the four sides of the table, each exactly in the middle of a side, and then laid on the cloth with each of its four corners precisely in front of a chair. The object-lesson worked to a charm and crooked cloths became a thing of the past.

Forgetfulness of some piece of table-furniture is a more common fault and one more difficult to rectify. If it seems impossible to overcome it in any other way, the mistress may make a ground plan of the table as it should look when properly laid, or write a list of all the objects that should go on it for different meals. It is not necessary to resort to this, however, until several days' experience has proved the new maid's inability to grasp what is required.