A friend of mine visited America in 1876, the year of the Exhibition in Philadelphia. Provided with letters of introduction to several important personages in Washington, he looked forward to passing a pleasant time in American society. He soon received an invitation from a senator to go and pass a few days in his country-house near Washington. My friend accepted with alacrity, and repaired to the senator’s residence on the following Saturday: it was a fine country house, it appears. After a very pleasant evening, spent with the family, he retired to his room, and went to bed, charmed with the two pretty daughters of his host, between whom he had had the pleasure of sitting, at table. Next morning, he rose, and after making an irreproachable toilette, gently opened the door to seize his boots. Great was his surprise to see them just in the same condition as they were the night before, when he had put them outside the door. They had not been touched. Was it an oversight or a mystification? What was to be done? My good friend was lost in conjecture, when the senator happened to come up, and seeing his guest’s rueful countenance, tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and said: “My dear fellow, how careless I am! I quite forgot to tell you last night where to find the brushes and blacking.”
But let us return to the daughters of John Bull.
In France, a servant is recognised by her little clean and coquettish-looking muslin cap; here she is known rather by her feathers. The Frenchwoman of the lowest classes has the love of linen, it is her ambition to have her cupboards full of it; not so the Englishwoman, she ignores it: while she is washing her chemise, she has none to put on her body. The French servant, in the provinces at all events, puts by her wages, so as to be able one day to retire to her native village and live on her little income. The English servant spends her modest wages on feathers, furs and furbelows of all sorts. It is in the blood.
A French lady of my acquaintance had a young housemaid, in whom she took an interest. Seeing that the girl spent all her earnings on worthless finery, and that the remonstrances she addressed to her on the subject produced no effect, she wrote to the mother, begging her to give her daughter some good advice: “Your daughter may perhaps one day marry some steady workman: you should teach her to be economical and careful,” said she. The mother came in a furious state. “Mind your own business,” cried she to my friend; “my daughter is as good as you, I suppose. Can’t she be free to spend her money as she likes? I wonder what next! She does your work and doesn’t interfere with your affairs! It’s a pity you don’t stay in your parlour and leave the kitchen alone.” And this excellent mother, indignant, immediately took her daughter away.
In England, servants must be kept at a distance if you care in the least for your comfort; you give them their orders, you do not talk to them.
In France, we still have good old servants whom we can treat familiarly without fear of their taking any liberty on that account. In our good homely provincial life, which is not sufficiently admired and appreciated abroad, because it is ignored, it is not rare to see an old cook living on her five or six hundred francs a year, and to whom the children of her former master and mistress send a dainty dish or a bottle of old wine, whenever there is a fête in the family. No, our home life is not understood. Because we are light-hearted and see the sunny side of things, we are called frivolous: we, the most economical and hard-working nation in the world. If we are not colonists like the English, it is because we are too fond of our homes, it is because we cannot bear to leave our beloved country. No, our family life is a closed letter for foreigners; I repeat it. Yet, it is of our homes that we may justly be proud, for it is there that beat some of the warmest hearts on earth. In the humblest French families, we find love, freedom and happiness, thanks to the cheerfulness and charming bonhomie of the father, thanks to the kisses of the adorable mother; and it is not the coldness and solemnity of the British family circle, that a son leaves without a tear, or the slightest emotion, to go and settle in New Zealand or some other colony at the other end of the world, that can compare very advantageously with the charm of intimacy and unrestraint which reigns around the French hearth. The great problem to solve in life, is not only how to make colonies, but how to be happy and make happy those who live with us in the hallowed family circle.
This problem we have solved.
But there I am digressing again, I am very much afraid, and forgetting that I was going to talk to you, gentle reader, about English servants. Forgive me, but really I have my head stuffed full of all the things that I hear said about us by English people who study French life on the Boulevard des Italiens between eleven o’clock and midnight, or in novels of which all the heroes and heroines are stock exchange roués and disreputable women.
Upper servants ask from £30 to £50 a year. In an ordinary middle-class house, where you have to be content with the general servant, that is to say the maid-of-all-work, who does none properly, and that you pay from £15 to £20 a year, the ladies of the house have to make the beds and cook the dinner. Her acquaintance with culinary art seems to be confined to the boiling of potatoes, and she appears to pass the greater part of her time in scrubbing the kitchen floor and cleaning the steps in front of the house. This latter operation is performed, kneeling, by means of a stone ad hoc, and damp cloths that are dipped in a pail of water and wrung out with the hands. Why this hard work is not done with a broom, which would save half the labour, and all the lumbago and diseases of the knees that are the consequences of it, I cannot imagine.
There is no affection whatever between mistress and maid, not even the slightest attachment, and it is rare to see a servant longer than twelve months in the same house. According to the servant, one place is as good as another; according to the mistress there is not much to choose between the maids. For the slightest reason a change is made, “This won’t suit me. Good-day, good-bye.”