Letters to a Young Housekeeper

by Jane Prince

Every woman who tries to bring about a better understanding between herself and her servants helps every other woman to make home life more comfortable, so it really isn’t a little thing to do. On the contrary, if enough women try, they may bring about great results. Nothing is so absolutely destructive to an understanding between mistress and maid as the habit, so common and so catching, of looking at servants as a class by themselves, unlike other human beings and antagonistic to their mistresses. What we should do is to try to get into a sympathetic mood by remembering that human nature is the same the world over and in all classes, the great difference being in education, early surroundings, and training. If we only keep this in mind, while it really seems almost impossible to understand the ignorance of many servants and to see things from their point of view, yet we may at least realize that it would be a disgrace if our ideals of conduct were not higher than theirs.

When I tell you that you will need nearly every known virtue to keep house well, you will expect to come out of the experience a piece of absolute perfection! Certainly Patience is one of the foremost needed. It is so easy and natural for us to scold a servant when she has neglected her duty or done something stupid, instead of patiently following her up every time she neglects anything and with a pleasant but decided manner seeing that she does it. And yet I know, from experience, that the scolding produces no result except to make her angry, while the other method will have one of two results; she will either get into the habit of doing her work well to save herself the mortification or irritation of being corrected or else she will show you that she isn’t worth training and that you might as well let her go. One’s patience, however, may cease to be a virtue in the case of a sullen servant. I would not keep such a one, no matter how good her work was, if after having spoken to her about it she did not change, for nothing will wear you out sooner, and to no purpose, than having to contend with that kind of a disposition. Tell her the reason that you part with her and perhaps she will do better in her next place, in which case you will have helped her and her future mistress.

Unselfishness—there’s plenty of opportunity for a mistress to show if she is sincere in her desire to be fair. Just one instance: It isn’t very pleasant, to say the least, if, after one has trained a servant to be skillful and she has stayed for several years so that one has grown dependent on her, she leaves for higher wages. Yet in every other calling people are praised for what is called their ambition to rise, and if we can’t pay high wages, how can we expect to keep the most skillful servants? And why should we make them feel as though they were not behaving well when they leave for more money?

How much Wisdom and Thoughtfulness, too, we need to keep all the different dispositions in the house in harmony, to know just the right moment to correct and the time when extra work or a rainy wash-day or a headache make it wisest to delay correction.

And then Moral Courage—it is wonderful how that often will win the day. It is fatal to be afraid of servants. If you have to reprove one of them that you like and do not wish to lose, it is a good thing to fortify yourself with the thought that it would be better to lose her than to give in to any unreasonableness, for that would certainly put you in her power. You will be surprised how the calm firmness that this thought will give you will generally win the day, if it is backed by the fact that the maid knows she is in a comfortable home and has a considerate mistress.

But I know you want me to talk about your particular troubles, when there was a comfortable home and a considerate mistress. I can readily believe how interested you were in making Mary happy and that you wanted her to feel that your house was her home, and I can just picture how sweet and nice your kitchen and her bedroom looked with everything so neat and new. It was disappointing, in return for all your thoughtfulness of her comfort, to have her show that all she apparently wanted was to get away from her work as quickly and as often as possible. And then after her departure to have such a series of incompetents in quick succession, each with some new demand, was perfectly disheartening. I do feel so sorry for you, for I know just how discouraged you must have been. Of course I have no way of divining what the cause of dissatisfaction was, but we always have to bear in mind that there is so much of the antagonistic spirit between mistress and maid that those of us who do not have it, but who want to be kind, have to suffer for those who are unjust. At any time a maid may come to us direct from a home where she has had a hard mistress, who gave her her outings grudgingly, didn’t like her to have her friends come to see her, and perhaps, while giving her an almost luxurious room, rarely spoke a kind word to her and took it for granted she would be faithless and perhaps even dishonest.

Or, she may have come from some good-natured but thoughtless mistress where her room was miserably uncomfortable and where possibly she had to share her bed, washstand, and bureau with a girl whom she had never seen before or who wasn’t clean. From such places she would come to you naturally in an antagonistic mood, and, suspecting that she would not be looked out for, make demands for even more than she really wanted. She would make the mistake that I have just advised you to avoid, of classing all mistresses together as unkind or thoughtless. Of course it is very unintelligent to do this, for we might as well class all lawyers or all bankers together and expect no good from any of them because some have such low standards. And yet we can hardly blame her when we ourselves have heard so many mistresses talk of servants as though they were all worthless. You seem to think you might have come to some agreement with Mary if you hadn’t been so indignant at what seemed ingratitude after all you had done for her. Possibly that is true, but it is past now and it is useless to cry over spilt milk. What you can do is to start out differently with your new maid in the light of your past experience.

I think you will find yourself much happier if you don’t look for gratitude, for it isn’t to be found very much in any class of life. Above all things, don’t let what you have gone through make you distrustful, for it is the part of wisdom as well as of kindness to let the new maid feel that you expect well of her. If she has good stuff in her, that is the way to bring it out. We ourselves show our best side to those who believe in us.

You seem to have a vague feeling that Mary’s leaving you had something to do with the outings she wanted. That may have been so, for very few of us can enter into servants’ lives enough to realize the vital importance of their outings to them. I can understand your being a little distrustful of her when she wanted to go to a dance, for I used to feel that way myself, but I don’t feel so any longer. Through interest in social work I have learned to appreciate how important recreation is to all classes and how natural is the taste for dancing and the theater. Of course, if a maid wanted to go often, that couldn’t be allowed, for it wouldn’t be compatible with good work.

While most of us are interested in helping to give recreation to the less fortunate classes, we have hardly awakened to the fact that there is one class, that of our servants, who are ridiculed if they want it. It is really quite pathetic to think how little appreciation we have of their need of amusement, and how many jokes are made at the expense of those who want occasionally to go to a dance or to the theater. You and I know some people who don’t even want to let them have their friends come to call. If we desire good work from servants we shall have to be more human and show them that we take an interest in their having a good time.