From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

We may not be able to save our new maid from this, but we can help her over a very ‘tight place’ if, when she arrives, we are at home to welcome her, to point out her place in the domestic routine, and to give her a few hints about those with whom she will have to live for the future.

If we had a guest coming among us on equal terms, free of all our pleasures and amusements, would not this be done? Much more, then, should we hold out a welcoming hand to those on whom so very much of our pleasure and comfort depend.

To know how much this is, we must, once now and then, be left without one of our staff—which is, of course, not a very extensive one, or those remarks would not apply. In an extensive staff the relations between mistress and maid are only represented by a housekeeper, who has all on her shoulders, and who must replace the missing maid in the household or do the necessary work herself.

Let, for example, our housemaid be laid aside by illness, or go home for one of her well-earned holidays, and straightway we are miserable. A thousand and one small omissions show us how much she remembered for us. And as we gaze at our dusty writing-table, our chair put in exactly the angle that most offends our eye, our breakfast-table laid in an unaccustomed manner, our letters put just where they never are in ordinary, we feel inclined to count the days that stretch unendingly, it seems to us, between now and her return to work, and we wonder what is before us when that ‘young man’ claims his bride, who, we are certain, cannot be half as much wanted by him as by us.

Or our cook may suddenly fall out of the ranks, and we get in temporary help. Oh dear! chaos then has most certainly come again. Butter flees, and is conspicuous for its vanishing powers; things have to be told in detail, and we have not succeeded in getting the ‘help’ into our ways before our own domestic comes back, to show us on what trifles depends the easy-going roll of the chariot wheels of life, that never seem to go so easily as after the jar occasioned by a temporary change of charioteer.

Looking back over a long stretch of life covered by many years of domestic duties, and calmly and dispassionately thinking over the mistakes—how many!—and the successes that have characterised it, I freely confess that when I have failed with our servants (and thankful am I to chronicle only two failures and one of these has since been redeemed by an early marriage), it has been entirely my own fault. A keener insight into character than I possess would have prevented our engaging a girl spoiled for us by a too careless mistress and a wicked master; and more judicious watchfulness would have saved a false step that, as it happened, was discovered in time, but not before the consequences were too apparent to be passed over, and which said false step was entirely due to the evil influence of a fellow-servant, from which we of course should have shielded her. We may accept it as an axiom that we cannot have nice, good servants unless we take the trouble of either training them ourselves, or get them from a mistress who has had an eye over the well-being of her maidens. It is impossible to obtain nice service from those who have never been taught how to serve, who come to us from careless or bad mistresses, and of whom we know no more than they do of us, and our likes and dislikes. If we, when requiring a servant, take the first, or even the second, that applies to us, not heeding where she was born, what her parents are, and knowing still less of her disposition, how can we expect success? We may be lucky enough to hit upon a good servant like this, but we very much doubt that it is likely we should. If mistresses have a large acquaintance it is possible to have a continual supply of good servants without applying to the registry offices; but they themselves must have as good a character as the required domestic, or else they will not be easily suited.

‘As good a character, indeed! What is the world coming to?’ says one indignant reader.

It is coming, we reply, to a better state of things—ay, even returning to the time when servants were of the household, and in consequence remained years in one place, when nowadays as many months are irksome to them.

Why? Because they like change. And so do we. Do we not go about from place to place, entertaining and being entertained, when the presence of a friend in the kitchen results in a reprimand and a pointing out of some duty, neglected, say we, that the friend may be entertained?

Are we never dull—we who have our music and our books? And are they never to be dull, whose work is always going on, and who have no relaxation unless we provide it for them?