That they made no claim for wages of any kind seems quite curious when one considers what sort of servants, and in what sort of circumstances, do demand them. And, as a rule, masters and mistresses give in to the extortion. Yet the law is on their side, nor have they any reason to complain of it in other respects. The improvement that is needed is in themselves, and in their relations to those in their employment. Our young ladies are so engaged in their accomplishments and their amusements that they have no time to acquire a knowledge of domestic affairs, so that when they marry they know no more of a housewife's duties than their husbands. No wonder men of moderate means shrink from marriage when wives have become a source of discomfort and expense, instead of their contraries, and have lost the name of helpmate. How can they be in a position to teach their servants when they themselves are grossly ignorant of what they would have them learn? There are certain village schools, indeed, which profess to train their pupils for domestic service, but they only teach them to be maids-of-all-work, the least remunerated and the hardest-worked of all the daughters of toil. They offer no premium to diligence and perfection.
This state of things is very hard both upon mistresses and servants, but it is not irremediable, and the remedy must come from the upper of the two classes. Schools are as necessary for servants as they are for other people; they must be taught their calling before they can practise it; and schools for servants must therefore be instituted. With schools will come certificates of merit, and servants will then be paid for what they can really do, and not, as now, in proportion to their powers of audacity of assertion.
MEN-SERVANTS.
The subject of men-servants is by no means of such universal interest as that of maid-servants, and those who suffer from them are not only less numerous, but less deserving of pity; as a lady of limited means once put it in my hearing, 'They can better afford to be robbed and murdered' On the other hand, whatever truth may be in the dogma that where a woman is bad she is worse than a bad man, it is certain that when a man-servant is bad he can do more mischief than a bad maid-servant. In many cases he is a necessity, not because folks are rich, but because they have large families, and the service is consequently too heavy to be undertaken solely by women. I have known many householders who, weary of the trouble and annoyance given by men-servants, have resolved to engage only those of the other sex, and who have had to resort to men-servants again for what may be called physical reasons.
When this happens, however, both master and mistress should agree to the arrangement, or at all events be both informed that it has been made. Only last autumn a lady friend of mine adopted it in the absence of her husband abroad, and forgot to apprise him of it by letter. He arrived home late at night, and, letting himself in with a latch-key, took the strange man for a burglar, and was almost the death of him by strangulation before he could explain that he was the new butler.
No woman can bring up a luncheon or dinner tray for a dozen people twice a day without sooner or later coming to grief with it. And here it is appropriate to say that in places where there is much heavy work it is only reasonable that wages should be higher than where the work is light. Whereas, upon such irrational grounds is our whole system of domestic service built, that this is hardly ever taken into consideration. Since the servant is told beforehand what he or she will have to do, it is taken for granted that the conditions are acceptable to them; whereas, the fact is that the capability of performing their duties is the very last thing to enter their minds. They cannot afford to remain 'out of a situation,' and therefore take the first that offers itself as a stopgap, with no more intention of permanently remaining there than a European who accepts an appointment in Turkey, and with the same object—namely, to make as much as possible out of the Turks in the meantime.
In the case of a man-servant, especially in London, no written character should ever be held sufficient. A personal interview with his late master or mistress is indispensable. This gives a little trouble, no doubt, on both sides; but those who grudge it, for such a purpose, must indeed be grossly selfish, and when they engage a ticket-of-leave man for their butler get no worse than they deserve. One of the best butlers, however, I ever knew was a ticket-of-leave man—engaged on the faith of a written character, which was, of course, a forged one, and who remained with his employer no less than eighteen months. If his speculations on the turf had been successful, he might have parted with him the best of friends, and perhaps have purchased a residence in the same square; but something went wrong with the brother to Bucephalus, whom he had backed for the Derby, and the poor man had to dispose of the whole of his master's family plate to pay his own debts of honour and defray his travelling expenses—probably to some considerable distance, as the police could never hear of him. The risk in taking a butler without a personal guarantee of at least his honesty and sobriety can indeed hardly be exaggerated. If a clever fellow, his influence over his fellow-servants of the other sex is very great, and it is a recognised maxim of the class never 'to tell upon one another' so long as they remain good friends. I have heard an experienced housewife say there is nothing she dreads so much as an unbroken harmony below stairs; like silence in the nursery, it is ominous of all sorts of mischief.
Of course, the ticket-of-leave man was an extreme case; but it is certain that some butlers who are not thieves are always treading on the very confines of roguery. They are like trustees who, though they will not touch the principal entrusted to them, not only omit to put it out to the best advantage, but will sometimes even pocket a portion of the interest 'for their trouble.' I remember reading a curious case of this sort. A gentleman who had been with his family in Switzerland for nine months was met by a London acquaintance on his return, who expressed his regret at his having been in trouble at home. 'Nay, I have been in no trouble,' he replied, 'and, indeed, none of us have been at home.' 'But a month ago when I was passing down your street I surely saw a funeral standing at your door?' Nor had his eyes deceived him. The butler in charge had let the house for a couple of months, and but for his singular ill-luck in one of his tenants happening to die during their temporary occupation of it, he would have pocketed the rent (minus the money requisite to keep the maids' mouths shut) and his master would have been none the wiser. It is said that it is only when we have lost a friend that we come to value him at his true worth; and it is certain that it is only when one's butler has left us and the tongues of his fellow-servants are loosened that we come to learn his demerits—the difference between his real character and his written one. If he is a rogue, his evil influence remains behind him, and, next to the maidservants, it is the page who suffers most from it. He becomes—poor little fellow!—almost by necessity an accessory to his delinquencies, plays pilot-fish to the other's shark, and himself grows up to swell the host of bad servants and that army of martyrs their masters and mistresses.
A common cause of a butler's ruin, and for which he is much to be pitied, is his having married unfortunately. I had once a good servant whom I was very loth to lose, but whose departure became necessary from his constantly being visited by a wife in advanced stages of intoxication. Housewives generally prefer a married man for their servant, for reasons that are not inscrutable. I do not wish to differ from such good authorities. But though I have no objection to my butler being married, I do object to maintain his wife, which, if he be on good terms with the cook, there is a strong probability of my having to do. As to his own eating, Heaven forbid that I should grudge it to him; but it is curious and utterly subversive of all medical dogma that both men-servants and maidservants, who take, of course, comparatively little exercise, should, nevertheless, contrive to eat more apiece for dinner than two average Alpine climbers. Four meals a day, and three of them meat meals, is their usual rate of sustenance, and the food must not only be frequent and plentiful, but very good. It is a gratifying proof of the rapid influence of civilisation that the daughter of a farm-labourer, accustomed at home to consider bacon a treat and beef a windfall, will, after a month's experience of her London place, decline to eat cold meat of any kind, reject salt butter as 'not fit for a Christian,' and become quite a connoisseur as to the strength of bitter ale. Indeed, two of our present female domestics are 'recommended' to drink claret because beer makes them bilious. I do not mind giving them claret, but I think it hard that under such circumstances I should have had a butler give me warning because the female domestics are 'not select enough.' My own impression is, though I scarcely like to mention it, because he was a married man, that he considered them too plain.
The reasons, or at all events the professed reasons, which servants give for leaving their situations are sometimes very curious. One man left a family of my acquaintance because he said he was interfered with by the young ladies. 'Good gracious, what do you mean?' inquired his mistress. Her daughters, it appears, were accustomed to arrange the flowers for the dinner-table, whereas, as he imagined, he had a peculiar gift for that kind of decoration himself.