cook, or nursemaid has to learn. And how do the young things learn it? Who can tell us? I, for one, never could make it out.
The children, at best, go to school for some years; and a good school here and there must have done much towards providing good servants within its own influence. It has awakened the children’s minds, and enabled them to form some ideas of duty, and some habits of neatness and order; it has enabled them to read and write, and to obtain conceptions of further knowledge; and it has taught them to sew. A very small proportion of the 300,000 country girls have obtained that much benefit from school. As for any training in house-work or cooking, that is a quite modern notion as a part of school-education, and it has hardly come into visible operation yet. Except an endowed school here and there, too often sunk into neglect and disrepute, there has hitherto been no established means, as far as I know, for the early training of domestic servants.
How, then, have they got trained? Of the half million, nearly every one must have been able to do something in the way of her vocation, on entering service: where did she learn it?
The wives of small shopkeepers and of artisans train some,—obtaining their services for their maintenance and teaching. This is the largest single resource that I know of. Next comes the old country practice of ladies sending for a school-child occasionally, to help in the house, and learn what she could; a process usually followed by the elevation of the most promising to permanent service. Ladies who take trouble in this direction are benefactresses of their generation; and I trust they usually find their reward in being themselves well suited. The happy relation existing between the Napier family and their servants has been so plainly spoken of in print that I need not scruple to refer to it here, nor to say that, in one of their households, the training of the fourth generation of one family of servants is now going on, with every prospect of continued domestic comfort and friendship. I may observe here (what it is highly necessary to observe somewhere), that, while we hear loud and multitudinous complaints of the nuisance of domestic service to both parties, we must not suppose the malcontents to be in the majority because they make the most noise. It is precisely the comfortable and satisfied parties that have nothing to say, unless asked. To them the relation is a simple and natural one, and unless appealed to, they do not think of telling the world that they are happy, any more than they would in their conjugal or parental relation. We are justified in hoping that, where we hear nothing to the contrary, employers and servants are satisfied.
While London newspapers have been showing up the sauciness, and incompetence, and personal folly of servants, there have been all degrees of comfort and discomfort throughout the country, as there have been all sorts of intellects and tempers at work. There are households where the servants arrived, years ago, indisputably respectable in character, but with serious drawbacks,—in health, in temper, in mental or outward habits; and where those same servants are now living, healthy, improved in temper, awakened intellectually, and thoroughly trained in their respective departments. To the back doors of those houses come respectable servants from the neighbourhood, just to ask whether there is no chance of a vacancy, and to petition that, if there should be one, they should be sent for, that they might “really settle,” which they find it so difficult to do. In the same neighbourhood, there may be a house or two, where the mistress complains that she has no peace, because “now-a-days no servant will stay.” She hires at a distance that the reputation of her service may not deter applicants; and she has no choice, for she cannot get a servant where she is known. She means to be kind, and promises rewards, if only the new cook and housemaid will stay; but in a little while she finds, some morning, that the fires are not lighted; or some evening, in returning from a visit, that the bell is not answered. Her maids have absconded, as usual; and she pokes questions about the precincts of other people’s houses, to learn how they make their servants stay on for years together. When the point of difference is found, she thinks herself right; and she goes on treating her maids as if they were in a nunnery, or teasing them about their work, or requiring undue homage from them, or stinting their comforts; and her complaints are much more likely to get into the newspapers than all the complacencies of all the comfortable.
Such differences belong to no particular period. The contrast is owing, not to distinctions of centuries, but to distinctions of human character. There have been reasonable and unreasonable mistresses in each generation, from the days of the patriarchs downwards: and there have been good and bad servants, satisfied and discontented, according to their position and temper. The peculiarity of the present time is, that the relation of labour to its employers is undergoing a change, and that the change is felt in the department of domestic service, though that department differs from all others in its conditions.
To take this last point first:—an employer of other kinds of labour has a right to expect good service in return for the pay agreed upon, while it is not clear that he has a right to expect the same thing in domestic service. Every agricultural labourer, every carpenter, blacksmith, or other artisan has received an express training for his business. He has worked in the field with his father from childhood, or he has been an apprentice in the workshop for five or seven years. He has had the means of learning his business; and his employer expects him to know it. If he does not, he is very properly sent away, and a better workman is easily found. Very different is the case of man or maid-servant; and especially the latter. There are no natural means of instruction for her; and she must be an ignorant and troublesome servant to somebody, before she can be a valuable one to anybody. In the native cottage she may be made honest, truthful, clean, and industrious; but she can learn nothing there of her business in life. How few cottagers’ wives can boil a potato, or make good bread! and in keeping the dwelling