I often think what a lot of bad turns you do sometimes to many people through trying to do one person a good turn. I’ve heard it said over and over again, “This comes of trying to do a man a good turn;” and it has always been about something unpleasant having happened.
It isn’t only that the person you try to do a good turn to brings trouble about, but the person himself or herself—for women are as bad as men in that respect—is generally ungrateful to you for what you’ve done, and very often “rounds” on you, as the common expression is, and tries to make out that you’ve done them, or I suppose I ought to say, to be grammatical, done him or her an injury.
“One good turn deserves another,” the proverb says; but my experience of doing anybody a good turn is, that it very seldom gets what it deserves; but generally the other thing.
I recollect one place, when I was in service, where the master was a most kind-hearted man, and a friend came to him one day, and told him a tale about an old lady of very superior education, whose husband had died, and left her in such reduced circumstances that if she did not soon get something to do, she would have to go in the workhouse. The friend told my master that this old lady was a most excellent housekeeper, and used to looking after servants, because she had had her own, and she spoke and wrote French, and would be very useful that way, when there were children learning the language, to talk to them, and give them an accent.
“I knew her husband in business,” said the friend to master, “and you’d be doing a deserving woman a good turn, if you could find her a situation where her talents would be appreciated.”
It happened just at that time that my mistress had been saying to master that, her health being so delicate, and they having to travel about a good deal through it, the awful London winter being too much for her, they ought really to have a housekeeper—a person they could leave at home, to look after the house and the servants while they were away.
Master came home and told missus about the old lady (Mrs. Le Jeune, her name was), and missus said that that was just the very sort of person they wanted. Why not give her a trial?
“Just what I was thinking myself,” said master; “only, my dear, I thought I would consult you first.”
He knew by experience that if he did’nt consult missus first about everything, the fat would be in the fire; for she was one of those ladies who don’t believe that a man can do anything right, and master used to say sometimes he wondered she let him manage his own business. Of course he didn’t say that to us servants; but we used to hear when they were having arguments at dinner, which was pretty often.
It happened that just at the time master’s friend told him about Mrs. Le Jeune, we were going to have a grand ball, and missus, who had nervous headaches, was grumbling a good deal, and saying she couldn’t attend to everything because of her health; so master said it would be a good thing to have the old lady engaged at once, and then she could take a lot of trouble off missus’s shoulders.