Part 35

It is very difficult to define for an American household the duties of servants, which are so well defined in England and on the continent. Every lady has her own individual ideas on this subject, and servants have their individual ideas, which they do not have in Europe. I heard an opulent gentleman who kept four men-servants in his house, and three in his stable, complain one snowy winter that he had not one who would shovel snow from his steps, each objecting that it was not his business; so he wrote a note to a friendly black man, who came around, and rendered it possible for the master of the house to go down to business. This was an extreme case, but it illustrates one of the phases of our curious civilization.

The butler is the important person, and it will be well for the lady to hold him responsible; he should see to it that the footmen are neat and clean. Most servants in American houses wear black dress-coats, and white cravats, but some of our very rich men have now all their flunkies in livery, a sort of cut-away dress-coat, a waistcoat of another colour, small clothes, long stockings, and low shoes. Powdered footmen have not yet appeared.

If we were in England we should say that the head footman is to attend the door, and in houses where much visiting goes on he could hardly do anything more. Ladies, however, simplify this process by keeping a "buttons," a small boy, who has, as Dickens says, "broken out in an eruption of buttons" on his jacket, who sits the livelong day the slave of the bell.

The second man seems to do all the work, such as scrubbing silver, sweeping, arranging the fireplaces, and washing dishes; and what the third man does, except to black boots, I have never been able to discover. I think he serves as valet to the gentlemen and the growing boys, runs with notes, and is "Jeames Yellowplush" generally. I was once taken over her vast establishment by an English countess, who was most kind in explaining to me her domestic arrangements; but I did not think she knew herself what that third man did. I noticed that there were always several footmen waiting at dinner.

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

One thing I do remember in the housekeeper's room. There sat a very grand dame carving, and giving the servants their dinner. She rose and stood while my lady spoke to her, but at a wave of the hand from the countess all the others remained seated. The butler was at the other end of the table looking very sheepish. The dinner was a boiled leg of mutton, and some sort of meat pie, and a huge Yorkshire pudding,--no vegetables but potatoes; pitchers of ale, and bread and cheese, finished this meal. The third footman, I remember, brought in afternoon tea; perhaps he filled that place which is described in one of Miss Mulock's novels:--

"Dolly was hired as an off maid, to do everything which the other servants would not do."

The etiquette of the stable servants was also explained to me in England. The coachman is as powerful a person in the equine realm as is the butler in the house. The head groom and his assistants always raise their finger to their hats when spoken to by master, or mistress, or the younger members of the family, or visitors, and in the case of royalty all stand with hats off, the coachman on the box slightly raising his, until the Prince of Wales, or his peers, are seated.

In some houses I was told that the upper servants had their meals prepared by a kitchen maid, and that they had a different table from the scullery maids.

The nursery governess was a person to be pitied; she was an educated girl, still the servant of the head nurse. She passed her entire life with the children, yet ate by herself, unless perhaps with the very young children. The head governess ate luncheon with the family, and came in to the parlour with the young ladies in the evening. Generally this personage was expected to sing and play for the amusement of the company. Now, imagine a set of servants thus trained, brought to America. The men soon learn that their vote is as good as the master's, and if they are Irishmen it is a great deal better. They soon cease to be respectful. This is the first break in the chain. A man, a Senator, was asked out to dinner in Albany; the lady of the house said, "I have a great respect for Senator ----; he used to wait on this table."

That is a glorious thing for the flag, for the United States, but there is a missing link in the golden chain of household order. It is a difficult task to produce here the harmony of an English household. Our service at home is like our diplomatic service; we have no trained diplomats, no gradation of service, but in the case of our foreign ministers, they have risen to be the best in the world. We have plenty of talent at top; it is the root of the tree which puzzles us.

We may make up our minds that no longer will the American girl go out to service. It is a thousand pities that she will not. It is not ignoble to do household work well. The châtelaines of the Middle Ages cooked and served the meals with their own fair hands. Training-schools are greatly needed; we should follow the nurses' training-school.

Our dinner-tables in America are generally long and narrow, fitted to the shape of the dining-room. Once I saw in England, in a great house, a table so narrow that one could almost have shaken hands with one's opposite neighbour. The ornaments were high, slender vases filled with grasses and orchids, far above our heads. One or two matchless ornaments of Dresden, the gifts of monarchs, alone ornamented the table. This was a very sociable dinner-table and rather pleasing. Then came the round table, so vast that the footmen must have mounted up on it to place the centre piece, like poor distraught Lady Caroline Lamb, whose husband came in to find her walking up and down the table, telling the butler to "produce pyramidal effects." There is also the fine broad parallelogram, suited to a baronial hall; and this is copied in our best country houses. As no conversation of a confidential character is ever allowed at an English table until all the servants have left the room, so it is not considered good-breeding to allow a servant to talk to the mistress or the young ladies of what she hears in the servants' hall. The gossip of couriers and maids at a foreign watering-place reaches American ears, and unluckily gets into American newspapers sometimes. It is a wise precaution on the part of the English never to listen to this. As we have conquered everything else in America, perhaps we shall conquer the servant question, to the advantage of both parties. We should try to keep our servants a longer time with us.

There are some houses where the law of change goes on forever, and there are some where the domestic machine runs without friction. The hostess may be a person with a talent for governing, and may be inspired with a sixth sense. If she is she can make her composite family respectful, helpful, and happy; but it must be confessed that it is as yet a vexed question, one which gives us trouble and will give us more. Those people are the happiest who can get on with three or four servants, and very many families live well and elegantly with this number, while more live well with two.

To mark the difference in feeling as between those who employ and those who serve, one little anecdote may apply. At a watering-place in Europe I once met an English family, of the middle class. The lady said to her maid, "Bromley, your master wishes you to be in at nine o'clock this evening."

Bromley said, "Yes, my lady."

An American lady stood near with her maid, who flushed deeply.

"What is the matter, Jane?" asked her lady.

"I never could stand having any one called my master," said the American.

This intimate nerve of self-love, this egotism, this false idea of independence affects women more than men, and in a country where both can go from the humblest position to the highest, it produces a "glistering grief." The difficulty of getting good servants prevents many families from keeping house. It brings on us the foreign reproach that we live in hotels and boarding-houses. It is at this moment the great unsolved American Question. What shall we do with it?

SOMETHING ABOUT COOKS.

"Last night I weighed, quite wearied out, The question that perplexes still; And that sad spirit we call doubt Made the good naught beside the ill.

"This morning, when with rested mind, I try again the selfsame theme, The whole is altered, and I find The balance turned, the good supreme."

What amateur cook has not had these moments of depression and exaltation as she has weighed the flour and sugar, stoned the raisins, and mixed the cake, or, even worse in her young novitiate, has attempted to make a soup and has begun with the formula which so often turns out badly:--

"Take a shin of beef and put it in a pot with three dozen carrots, a dozen onions, two dozen pieces of celery, twelve turnips, a fowl, and two partridges. It must simmer six hours, etc." Yes, and last week and the week before her husband said, "it was miserable." How willingly would she allow the claim of that glorious old coxcomb, Louis Eustache Ude, who had been cook to two French kings and never forgave the world for not permitting him to call himself an artist.

"Scrapers of catgut," he says, "call themselves artists, and fellows who jump like a kangaroo claim the title; yet the man who has under his sole direction the great feasts given by the nobility of England to the allied sovereigns, and who superintended the grand banquet at Crockford's on the occasion of the coronation of Victoria, was denied the title prodigally showered on singers, dancers, and comedians, whose only quality, not requiring the microscope to discern, is vanity."

Ude was the most eccentric of cooks. He was maître d'hôtel to the Duke of York, who delighted in his anecdotes and mimicry. In his book, which he claims is the only work which gives due dignity to the great art, he says: "The chief fault in all great peoples' cooks is that they are too profuse in their preparations. Suppers are after all only ridiculous proofs of the extravagance and bad taste of the givers." He mentions great wastes which have seared his already seared conscience thus:

"I have known balls where the next day, in spite of the pillage of a pack of footmen, which was enormous, I have seen thirty hams, one hundred and fifty to two hundred carved fowls, and forty or fifty tongues given away. Jellies melt on all the tables; pastries, patties, aspics, and lobster salads are heaped up in the kitchen and strewed about in the passages; and all this an utter waste, for not even the footmen would eat this; they do not consider it a legitimate repast to dine off the remnants of a last night's feast. Footmen are like cats; they only like what they steal, but are indifferent to what is given them."