From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

We are no advocates for spoiling servants, any more than we should be for spoiling children, yet we are anxious that they should be happy; and that they may be happy it is necessary that we have a set of rules that must be kept, and that they should gradually learn that we wish to stand in the same relation to them, while they are in our house, as their parents would were they still in their care.

Rule the first is, that no young servant should be out alone after dark, giving reasons for this rule that are easily understood. Rule the second, that no one comes to the back door after a certain hour, because their friends are quite welcome to come to the front door, and once it is dark bad characters are about, and young girls are easily frightened; and rule the third, in which all the rest are comprehended, is that they must learn that we are always ready to hear all their hopes and fears, to help them choose their hats and dresses, to assist them in every way they wish, and to give them sympathy and kindness, which we will take from them in our turn should we be ill or in trouble.

How much more cheerfully will the cook help you to retrench if, instead of scolding about the waste, you ask her to help you to save what would otherwise be given or thrown away. And much more pleasantly will your housemaids help you when ‘company comes,’ if you tell them to look out for this or that celebrity, to listen if Miss Smith sings or if Mr. Brown plays; and how much they will do should you leave one or two of the pleasanter parts of preparing in their hands, preferring rather an ill-arranged flower vase than the idea that all the rough and none of the smooth falls to their share of the work. It will not hurt us to do a little dusting for once, or even to wash the china, and indeed it will do us good, for it will teach us how monotonous and wearisome is the work by which our ‘maidens,’ the dear old Dorset expression for our servants, earn their daily bread, but that ceases to have half its monotony and irksomeness should we help occasionally, when work is pressing, and there is more than usual to do. To have good and loving servants, then, it is necessary to have them tolerably young, to be firm, kind, and, above all, sympathetic, to know as much about their home life as is possible; and without telling them much, yet, when it is advisable, to take them into our confidence, secure in our turn of receiving sympathy, which is always precious, no matter from whom it is received.

Of course, this is not such an amusing life as the one lived by a mistress who is always enjoying herself, and thinking of little save her own garments, and the arrangement of the menu and that of the dinner-table, but it is a far more satisfactory one. We all have duties; it rests with ourselves whether or not we shall neglect them or do them. Still, if they are not done, if our servants turn out ‘thieves, liars, and wretches,’ as they were characterised by one female writer the other day, it were well to pause, and ask who should be blamed for such a dreadful state of things. Surely not those who come to us for training and care, but rather those who do nothing to earn the right to live, and who, taking but a low view of life, look upon it as a playground instead of regarding it as a field for work—a place where we can do as much good as in us lies.

Sympathy is the bond that binds men together—sympathy is the bond that should unite mistress and maid; on the lowest ground it is politic, on the highest it is ordained in a code of life given to all; and we shall none of us regret treating our servants well, for, speaking from experience, I can boldly state that, in trouble, sickness, and sorrow, one can rely implicitly for help on the maids whom we have trained ourselves, and whom we have treated exactly as we should wish them to treat us, and that I have found in a time when Fortune appeared to have turned her back on us, owing to matters on which we need not touch, that the servants stuck manfully to the ship, and did their best to help us weather a storm that, though sharp, was short, yet that might have stranded us hopelessly on a lee shore.

The only fault I cannot overcome at present is this bedroom question, and the breaking of the china &c. provided for their use, hence my advice about the simple furniture given to them; but I find daily improvement here, and I hope that the next generation will be able to give their servants pretty rooms as safely as they can at present give them healthy ones.

There is just one other point to touch upon, that of the meals of the kitchen. It is quite enough to allow an ordinary middle-class household good bread and butter, oatmeal porridge, and tea, coffee, or cocoa for breakfast; the kitchen dinner should be the same as the dining-room luncheon; tea might be supplemented by jam or an occasional home-made cake; and supper should be presumably bread and cheese, but any soup made from the receipts in the chapter on ‘entertaining,’ or odds and ends left at the late dinner, can be consumed if you can trust your cook; if you cannot, you must lay down a hard-and-fast rule of bread and cheese, and insist on its being kept, otherwise you will find yourselves in the case of a friend of mine, who went into her larder after an enormous dinner-party, expecting to find herself free from the necessity of ordering more food for at least a week, and discovered it empty, swept, and garnished, because, the cook informed her, they always had for their suppers any little thing ‘as was’ left over.

Never be afraid to praise your servants, as one lady is I know of, for fear they may think she cannot do without them: we can’t do without them—why should we pretend we can? They are far more likely to remain where they are appreciated and cared for than where they know they are only looked upon as so much necessary furniture; and do not be afraid to blame them, emulating another friend of mine, who saw her servant reading her letters at her desk, and stepped out of the room unobserved because she shrank from the disagreeable but emphatically necessary task of telling the maid of her odious and dishonourable fault; but say straight out to the delinquent servant herself what you have in your mind against her, never sending the message by another servant, nor nagging, but remarking firmly what you have to say yourself in such a way that she cannot avoid perceiving you mean emphatically what you say.

Let your maids have good books to read, and let them see newspapers, but do not keep a kitchen bookshelf. This they distrust at once, and look out for their own literature, which is generally pernicious; but if you yourself have read a good story, recommend it to them, and talk to them about it. You can always get a servant to read proper books by taking care to read them yourself, and by letting them see you are sharing your literature with them; even if they spoil or soil the book, books are cheap, and they had better do this than soil their minds by the rubbish they might buy, revolting naturally against ‘Lizzy, or a Parlourmaid’s Duties, described in a story,’ or ‘Grace, or How to Clean Silver,’ or the similar charming works which one generally finds in the houses of those who keep ‘kitchen bookshelves,’ regardless of the fact that Ouida and other exquisite feminine novelists are the favourite food of the drawing-room, and that they could not read one page of the ‘books’ themselves provided for the maid’s entertainment.

If you have a garden, encourage the servants to walk and sit and work in it; and, above all, take interest in their clothes, lend them patterns, and, in fact, do all in your power to raise them to your station. The lower classes, thanks to education, are rapidly climbing; they will rise whether we like it or not, and we had better, on the lowest grounds, assist them to share the place they will take and push us from, should they find we are antagonistic and jealous instead of helpful and sympathising.