Some Private Views Part 8

Another doctor:

'Twenty-nine, of a loving and amiable disposition, and who has at present an income of 120 a year, is desirous to make an immediate engagement with a lady about his own age, who must be possessed of a little money, so that by their united efforts he may soon become a member of a lucrative and honourable profession.'

How the 'united efforts' of two young people, however enthusiastic, can make a man an M.D. or an M.R.C.S. (except that love conquers all things) is more than one can understand. The last advertis.e.m.e.nt I shall quote affects me nearly, for it is from an eminent member of my own profession:

'ALEXIS, a popular author in the prime of life, of an affectionate disposition, and fond of home, and the extent and pressing nature of whose work have prevented him from mixing much in society, would be glad to correspond with a young lady not above thirty. She must be of a pleasing appearance, amiable, intelligent, and domestic.'

If it is with the readers of penny fiction that Alexis has established his popularity, I would like to know how he did it, and who he is. To discover this last is, however, an impossibility. These novelists all write anonymously, nor do their works ever appear before the public in another guise. There is sometimes a melancholy pretence to the contrary put forth in the 'Answers to Correspondents.' 'PHOENIX,' for example, is informed that 'The story about which he inquires will not be published in book form at the time he mentions.' But the fact is it will never be so published at all. It has been written, like all its congeners, for the unknown millions and for no one else.

Some years ago, in a certain great literary organ, it was stated of one of these penny journals (which has not forgotten to advertise the eulogy) that 'its novels, are equal to the best works of fiction to be got at the circulating libraries.' The critic who so expressed himself must have done so in a moment of hilarity which I trust was not produced by liquor; for 'the best works of fiction to be got at the circulating libraries' obviously include those of George Eliot, Trollope, Reade, Black, and Blackmore, while the novels I am discussing are inferior to the worst. They are as crude and ineffective in their pictures of domestic life as they are deficient in dramatic incident; they are vapid, they are dull. Indeed, the total absence of humour, and even of the least attempt at it, is most remarkable. There is now and then a description of the playing of some practical joke, such as tying two Chinamen's tails together, the effect of the relation of which is melancholy in the extreme, but there is no approach to fun in the whole penny library. And yet it attracts, it is calculated, four millions of readers--a fact which makes my mouth water like that of Tantalus.

When Mr. Wilkie Collins wrote of the Unknown Public it is clear he was still hopeful of them. He thought it 'a question of time' only. 'The largest audience,' he says, 'for periodical literature in this age of periodicals must obey the universal law of progress, and sooner or later learn to discriminate. When that period comes the readers who rank by millions will be the readers who give the widest reputations, who return the richest rewards, and who will therefore command the services of the best writers of their time.' This prophecy has, curiously enough, been fulfilled in a different direction from that antic.i.p.ated by him who uttered it. The penny papers--that is, the provincial penny newspapers--_do_ now, under the syndicate system, command the services of our most eminent novel writers; but Penny Fiction proper--that is to say, the fiction published in the penny literary journals--is just where it was a quarter of a century ago.

With the opportunity of comparison afforded to its readers one would say this would be impossible, but as a matter of fact, the opportunity is _not_ offered. The readers of Penny Fiction do not read newspapers; political events do not interest them, nor even social events, unless they are of the cla.s.s described in the _Police News_, which, I remark--and the fact is not without significance--does not need to add fiction to its varied attractions.

But who, it will be asked, _are_ the public who don't read newspapers, and whose mental calibre is such that they require to be told by a correspondence editor that 'any number over the two thousand will certainly be in the three thousand'?

I believe, though the vendors of the commodity in question profess to be unable to give any information on the matter, that the majority are female domestic servants.

As to what attracts them in their favourite literature, that is a much more knotty question. My own theory is that, just as Mr. Tupper achieved his immense popularity by never going over the heads of his readers, and showing that poetry was, after all, not such a difficult thing to be understood, so the writers of Penny Fiction, in clothing very conventional thoughts in rather high-faluting English, have found the secret of success. Each reader says to himself (or herself), 'That is _my_ thought, which I would have myself expressed in those identical words, if I had only known how.

_HOTELS._

The desire for cheap holidays--as concerns going a long distance for little money--is no doubt very general, but it is not universal. It demands, like the bicycle, both youth and vigour. In mature years, not only because we are more fastidious, but because we are less robust, the element of cheapness, though always agreeable, is subsidiary to that of comfort. For my own part, if the chance were offered me to travel night and day for forty-eight hours anywhere--though it was to the Elysian Fields--and that in a Pullman car, and for nothing, I would rather go to Southend at my own expense from Sat.u.r.day to Monday.

Suppose the former journey to be commenced by a Channel pa.s.sage and continued in a third-cla.s.s carriage, I would rather stop at home. Or if, in addition to the other discomforts, I am to be a unit among 100 excursionists, with a coupon that insures my being lodged on the sixth floor everywhere, I had rather take a month's quiet holiday in London at the House of Detention.

These things are matters of taste; but it is certain that a very large number of people, who, like myself, are neither rich nor in a position which justifies them in giving themselves airs, consider quiet, comfort, and the absence of petty cares the most essential conditions of a holiday. These views necessitate some expense and generally limit the excursions of those who entertain them to their native land; but, on the other hand, they have their advantages. They give one, for example, a great experience in the matter of hotels.

As I idly flutter the yellow leaves of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of inns in 'Bradshaw,' they call up pictures in my mind quite undreamt of by the proprietors. I have been a sojourner in almost all of these which are described as 'situated in picturesque localities.' They are all--it is in print and must be true--'first-cla.s.s' hotels; they have most of them 'unrivalled accommodation;' not a few of them have been 'patronised by Royalty,' and one of them even by 'the Rothschilds.' These last, of course, are great caravanserais, with 'magnificent ladies'

drawing-rooms' and 'replete' (a word that seems to have taken service with the licensed victuallers) 'with every luxury.' They make up (a term unfortunately suggestive of transformation) hundreds of beds; they have equipages and 'night chamberlains;' '_On y parle francais_;' '_Man spricht Deutsch_.' Of some of these there is quite a little biography, beginning with the year of their establishment and narrating their happy union with other agreeable premises, like a brick and mortar novel. I remember them well: their 'romantic surroundings' or 'their exclusive privilege of meeting trains upon the platform;' their accurate resemblance to 'a gentleman's own house' (with 'a reception-room 80 feet by 90 feet'); their 'douche and spray baths;'

their 'unexceptionable tariff;' and even their having undergone those 'extensive alterations,' through which I also underwent something, which they did not allow for in the bill.

These hotels are all more or less satisfactory as to appearance; furnished, not, indeed, with such taste, nor so lavishly, as their rivals on the Continent, but handsomely enough; they are much cleaner than foreign inns; and if their reference to 'every sanitary improvement which science can suggest' is a little tall, even for an advertis.e.m.e.nt, one never has cause to shudder as happens in some places in France proper and in Brittany everywhere. Though it must be admitted that _tables d'hote_ abroad are not the banquets which the travelling Briton believes them to be, our own hotel public dinners are inferior to their originals, and, what is very hard, those who pay for an entertainment in private suffer from them. The guest who happens to dine later than the _table d'hote_ in his own apartment can hardly escape getting things 'warmed up;' and if he dines at the same time he has n.o.body to wait on him. There is one thing that presses with great severity on paterfamilias--the charge which is made at many of the large hotels of 1s. 6d. a day for attendance on each person. Half a guinea a week for service is a high price even for a bachelor; but when this has to be paid for every member of the family, it is ruinous.

Young ladies who dine at the same table and do not give half the trouble of 'single gentlemen' ought not to be taxed in this way. It is urged by many that since attendance is charged in the bill,' there should be no other fees. But the lover of comfort will always cheerfully pay for a little extra civility; nor do I think that this practice--any more than that of feeing our railway porters--is a public disadvantage. The waiter does not know till the guest goes whether he is a person of inflexible principles or not, and, therefore, hope ameliorates his manners and shapes his actions to all. As to getting 'attendance' out of the bill, now it has once got into it, that I believe to be impossible. There it is, like the moth in one's drawing-room sofa. And yet I am old enough to remember how poor Albert Smith plumed himself on the benefit he bestowed upon the public, as he had imagined, by introducing a fixed charge for all services and doing away with 'Please, sir, boots.' In this country, and, to say truth, in most others, 'Please, sir, boots,' is indigenous and not to be done away with. We did very much better under the voluntary system, although a few people who did not deserve it, but simply could not afford to be lavish, were called in consequence 'screws.'

To pay the wages of another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one of the 'plate, gla.s.s, and linen' that used to be charged for at the posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established and family hotel' near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting the _Times_ upon a guest's breakfast-table was 6d. up to this present year of grace. 'Gentlemen and families had always been supplied with it at that price,' said the landlord, when remonstrated with, 'and it was his principle, and his customers approved it, to keep things as they were.'

It must be admitted, however, that matters have changed for the better in this respect elsewhere; and, at all events, the printed tariff that may now be consulted in every modern hotel enables you to know what you are spending.

Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. The 'skimpy'

mattress, the sheet that used to come untucked through shortness, leaving the feet tickled by the blanket, and the thin, limp thing that called itself a feather bed, are only to be found in ancient hostelries.

On the other hand, it must be confessed that the food has deteriorated; the bill of fare, indeed, is more pretentious, but the materials are inferior, and so is the cooking. The well-browned fowl, with its rich gravy and the bread-sauce that used to be its homely but agreeable attendant, has disappeared. The bird appears now under a French t.i.tle, and is in other respects unrecognisable; as an Irish gentleman once explained it to me, it is not only that the thing appears under an _alias_, but the _alias_ comes up instead of the thing. There is one essential which the old hotel often omitted to serve with your chicken, and which the new hotel supplies--the salad. This, however, few hotel cooks in England--and far less hotel waiters--can be trusted to prepare. Their simple plan is to deluge the tender lettuce with some hateful ingredient called 'salad mixture,' poured out of a peculiarly shaped bottle, such as the law now compels poisons to be sold in; and the jewel is deserving of its casket--it is almost poison. Nor, alas!

is security always to be attained by making one's salad for one's self.

For supposing even that the lettuce is fresh and white, and not manifestly a cabbage that is pretending to be a lettuce, how about the oil? Charles d.i.c.kens used to say that he could always tell the character of an inn from its cruets; if they were dirty and neglected, all was bad. The cruets are now clean enough in all hotels of pretension; but alas for that bottle which should contain (and perhaps did at some remote period contain) the oil of Lucca! On the fingers of one hand I could count all the hotels in England which have not given me bad oil. Whether it was never good, or whether it has gone bad, I leave to those philosophers who investigate the origin of evil. I only know that it tastes as hair-oil smells. As to the soups, they are no worse than they used to be, and no better; there is soup and there is hotel soup.

'Gravy soup, fried sole, _entree_, leg of mutton, and apple tart' used to be the unambitious _menu_ of the old-fas.h.i.+oned inn. The _entree_ was terrible, but the fish, meat, and sweet were excellent. I will say nothing of the _entrees_ now; I am not in a position to say anything, for not being of a sanguine temperament, and having but a few years to live, I do not venture upon them. But it is undeniable that our bill of fare is greatly more varied than it used to be, and that the way in which the table is arranged is much more attractive. At the great hotels in the neighbourhood of London where rich, or at all events prodigal people, go to dine in the summer months, this is especially the case. All these establishments affect fine dinners, yet how seldom it is they give you good ones! Their wines, though monstrously dear, are very fair; indeed, of the champagnes at least you may make certain by looking at the corks; but the food! How many of their fancifully named dishes might be included under the common t.i.tle, Fiasco!

It was once suggested to a decayed man of fas.h.i.+on that an excellent profession for him to take up would be the proprietors.h.i.+p of an hotel of this cla.s.s. 'You know what is really worth eating,' said an influential friend of his, 'and these caterers for your own cla.s.s evidently don't; if you will undertake the management of the _Mammoth_ (naming an inn of very high repute), I will furnish the funds.' But the man of fas.h.i.+on, who had spent his all with very little to show for it, had at least acquired some knowledge of his fellow-creatures. 'I am deeply obliged to you,' he said, 'but were I to accept your offer I should only lose your money. There are but a very few people in the world who know a good dinner when it is set before them; and a very large cla.s.s (including all the ladies, who are only solicitous about its _looking_ good) do not care whether it is good or bad. In private life if a dinner consists of many courses, is given at a fine house, and is presumably expensive, nineteen-twentieths of those who sit down to it are satisfied. The twentieth alone says to himself, 'How much better I should have dined at home!' I have been at scores and scores of great dinner-parties where the very plates were cold and n.o.body but myself has observed it.'

I have no doubt the gentleman of fas.h.i.+on was right; delicate cooking would be entirely thrown away upon the general palate. The fair s.e.x, the young, the hungry, the easy-going, the ignorant--how large a majority of the 'frequenters' of hotels do these cla.s.ses embrace! And it must also be remarked that to cook food (except whitebait) delicately in large quant.i.ties is a very difficult operation indeed.

Upon the whole, I think, our large hotels, 'arranged on the Continental system,' are well adapted for those who frequent them, and they show a readiness to adopt improvements. An immense number of well-to-do people go to Brighton, to Scarborough, and scores of other places to get a change and fresh air, but also to find the same amus.e.m.e.nts to which they have been accustomed in London; and, on the whole, they get what they want without paying very much too much for it. But what drives many quiet folks abroad is their disinclination to meet with all this gaiety and public life; they do not mind it so much when it is mixed with the foreign element, and they are also under the impression that picturesque scenery is a peculiarity of the Continent. I believe that more English people have visited Switzerland than have seen the Lake District and the Channel Islands, and very many more than have travelled in North Devon and Cornwall. The chief reason of their abstinence in this respect is, however, their dread of the want of 'accommodation.' To the last two counties, with the exception of some towns, such as Ilfracombe, approachable by sea, or a direct railway route, folks never go in crowds, and never will go. It is true there are no mammoth hotels to be found there; but for picturesque situation and a certain homely comfort, that takes one not only into another world, but another generation, there is nothing equal to certain little inns in these out-of-the-way places. In Wales also, and even in the Isle of Wight, there are perfect bowers of bliss of this description, still undesecrated by the excursionist. Not ten years ago, in a part of North Devon which shall be nameless, I came, with my wife and daughter, upon an inn of this description. We were all enraptured with the exquisite beauty of its situation, and were so imprudent as to express, in the presence of the landlady, our wish to live and die there. 'Well, indeed, sir,' she said, 'I am delighted to see you, but I hope you are not going to stay very long.' 'My dear madam,' I remonstrated, aghast at this remark, 'are we, then, such very objectionable-looking persons?' 'Bless your heart, no, sir, it isn't that; but the fact is, we have only room for three, and if parties come and come, and always find us full (through your being here, you know), they will think it is no use coming, and we shall lose our custom.' We did stay on, however, a pretty long time--it was a place of ineffable beauty, such as one parts from almost with tears--and when on our departure I asked for my bill, the landlady said, 'Dear me, sir, would you kindly tell me what day you come upon, for I ha' lost my account of it?' The life we led at that inn was purely pastoral; the clotted cream was of that consistency that it was meat and drink in one; but although the fare was homely, it was good of its kind, and admirably cooked. There was fresh fish every day--for we were too far from railways for that Gargantuan ogre, 'the London market,' to deprive us of it--and tender fowls, and jams of all kinds such as no money could buy.

The landlady had a genius for making what she called 'conserves,' and every cupboard in the queer little house was filled with them. In the sitting-room was a quant.i.ty of old china and knick-knacks, brought by the sailors of the place from foreign lands; the linen was white as snow, and smelt of lavender. Outside the inn was a sea that stretched to Newfoundland, and cliffs that caught the sunset--such scenery as is not surpa.s.sed by that of the Tyrol (though, of course, in a very different line), and be sure I was afraid of no comparison between our 'Travellers' Rest' and any Tyrolean inn. It is noteworthy that this hostelry of ours was so peculiarly and picturesquely placed that it could only be approached on foot, which reminds me of another place of entertainment for man, but not for beast.

In appearance, 'The Strangers' Welcome' (as I will take leave to term it) is more ambitious than 'The Rest,' but it is of the same simple type. In some respects it is even more primitive; no sign hangs over its door, nor is any other symbol of its vocation visible, 'Liberty,'

not 'License,' as one may say without much metaphor, being its motto.

It is on an island, so insignificant in extent that horse exercise is impossible on it. What it lacks in superficial area is more than made up, however, in its stupendous height. From the 'Welcome,' though it lies in a dell, one looks down perhaps a hundred sheer feet upon the ocean. Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias grow against our walls and tap at our window-panes in the morning as though they were roses; they even make their homes in the rocks, like the conies. The island is a very garden of fuchsias, tall as trees; and there are no other trees. The 'Welcome' itself is a sort of farmhouse without the farm; there is a goat or two and a donkey to be seen about it, which would account for the milk having an alien flavour, if it had one. But the 'Welcome' has excellent milk, so that there must be some cows somewhere. From the cliff-top you may see Alderney, for our inn is among the Channel Islands. When a storm comes you must stop where you are; for until the last waves of it have ceased there is no approach to us from the world without. To the stranger it seems probable at such seasons that the little place will burst up from below, for beneath it are caverns innumerable, filled with furious waves like sea monsters roaring for our lives. The sea, in short, has honeycombed it, and renews her vows to be its ruin with every gale. Yet the 'Welcome' lasts our time, and will last that of many generations, who will continue, however, doubtless to believe that the sublimities of Nature are unattainable short of Switzerland.

My memory now transports me to a mountain district in the north, but on this side of the border; and here, again, the inn is signless, and has no appearance of an inn at all. It is situated on the last of a great chain of hills, with lakes among them. It has lawns and shrubberies, but few flowers; Nature frowns on every hand, even in suns.h.i.+ne, when the waterfalls flow like silver, and the crags are decked with diamonds.

There are no 'trencher-sc.r.a.ping, napkin-carrying,' waiters in the house, but country damsels attend upon you, and a motherly dame, their mistress, expresses her hope every morning that you have slept well. If you have not, it is the fault of your conscience: you have had a poet's recipe for it, for you have been 'within the hearing of a hundred streams'

all night. Will you go up the Fells, or will you row on the Lake?

These are your simple alternatives; there is no bra.s.s band, no promenade, no pier, no anything that the vulgar like. Yet once a week at least a great spectacle can be promised you without crossing the inn threshold (indeed, when the promise is kept it is better to be on the right side of it)--a thunder-storm among the hills. The arrangements for lighting the place, of which you may have complained, not without reason, are then in perfection, and the silence is broken with a vengeance. It is difficult to imagine the grandeurs of a sham-fight--a battle without corpses--but here you have them. First the musketry, then the guns, with the explosion of the powder-magazine--repeated about forty times by the mountain echoes--at the end of it. When all is over you sit down to such a supper as Lucullus would have given a year of life for, and which, in all probability--for he had no prudence--would have shortened it for him. At the 'Retreat,' as it is called, among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char cooked to a turn. I like to think that this was the fish that Monte Christo had sent him in a tank to Paris on the occasion of a certain banquet; but all the wealth of the Indies could not have accomplished that; the char (in spite of its name) does not travel.

One more reminiscence of country inns; and, though I have more of them in the picture-gallery of my memory, I have done. I conjure up an ivy-covered dwelling, long roofed but low, and sheltered by a lofty hill. Its situation is quite solitary, and, save for the cry of the seagull, there reigns about it an unbroken silence. It is on the very highway of the world, but the road is noiseless, for it is the sea.

From the windows, all day long, we can watch the s.h.i.+ps pa.s.s by that carry the pilgrims of the earth, for their freight is chiefly human. It is here 'the first ray glitters on the sail that brings our friends up from the under world, and the last falls on that which sinks with all we love below the verge.' Even at night there is no cessation to this coming and going; only, a red light or a white, and the distant strokes of a paddle-wheel in the hush of the moonless void are then the sole signs of all this motion. What hopes and fears contend in unseen hearts under those moving stars! Is it nothing to have the opportunity to watch them from the ivied porch of the 'Outlook,' and to welcome the thoughts they arouse within us? On land, too, there are stars, not made in heaven, but their s.h.i.+ning is intermittent. As I lie in my bed I can see the great revolving light on the farthest point of rock that juts to sea. That is the 'Outlook's' watchman, not of much use to it, indeed, in a practical way, but imparting a marvellous sense of guardians.h.i.+p and security.

The chief means of amus.e.m.e.nt at inns of this kind is supplied by science in the telescope. You note through it all that comes and goes, and after a day or two can tell-for yourself whither each stately s.h.i.+p is bound, or whence it comes. At the 'Outlook' the food is plain, but good; the prawns in particular (which the young people, by-the-bye, can catch for themselves) are of an exquisite flavour, and in size approach the lobster. Twice a week for four hours this earthly Paradise is as a town taken by a.s.sault and given over to pillage. An excursion steamer stops at the little pier and discharges a cargo of excursionists. But those to whom the happiness of their fellow-creatures is intolerable can withdraw themselves at these seasons to the neighbouring Downs and Bays, and on their return they will find peace with folded wing sitting as before on the 'Outlook's' flagstaff.

Such are the inns which I have known, and there are hundreds in beautiful England like them. On its rivers in particular there are many charming little inns, but, to say truth, although the gentlemen-fishermen are as quiet as mice (from their habits of caution in their calling), the disciples of the oar are noisy; they get up too early and go to bed too late, and are too much addicted to melody. Moreover, these houses of entertainment often carry the principle of home production to excess: their native fare is excellent; but, spring mattresses not growing in the neighbourhood, the stuffing of the beds is supplied, to judge by results, from the turnip-field. For the purpose for which they are intended, however, these little hostels are well fitted and have a river charm that is indescribable.

I could speak, too, of excellent hotels set in the grounds of ruined castles or abbeys; but the attractions of the latter interfere with the repose of the visitor. Moreover, it has been my chief object, while admitting the merits of the _Crown_ (and) _Imperial_, to paint the lily--to point out the violet half hid from the eye. It seems to me a pity that so many persons should leave their native land and spend their money among foreigners through ignorance of the quiet resting-places that await them at home. I have in no way exaggerated their merits, but it must be confessed that they have one serious drawback, which, however, only affects bachelors; if Paterfamilias is troubled by it he ought to be ashamed of himself. I allude to the happy couples on their honeymoon whom one is wont to meet with in these retired bowers. It is aggravating, no doubt, to see how Angelina and Edwin devote themselves to one another without the slightest regard for the feelings of the solitary stranger. The poor creature has no wish, of course, to thrust his company upon them, still he would like to have his existence acknowledged; and they ignore it. They have not a word to throw to him, nor even a glance. Then there are certain endearments, delightful, no doubt, to those who exchange them, but which to the spectator are distraction. What I would recommend to the bachelor as a remedy is a wife of his own. The good Mussulman's idea of future happiness is a perpetual honeymoon; and these little Paradises are the very places to spend it in. The customs of our own country forbid the agreeable variety which has such charms for the Faithful; but, even as it is, I have seen in these pleasant inns a great deal of human happiness, such as to the sober lover of his species only adds to their attraction.

_MAID-SERVANTS._

It is a common thing to hear the remark expressed by much-tried mistresses that servants are not 'reasonable beings.' The observation may either have been provoked by the misbehaviour of some particular domestic, or by the injudicious defence of the cla.s.s by one of the male s.e.x. For the gentlemen have more to urge in favour of our domestics than the ladies have, and, as the latter maintain, for a very obvious reason--'they have much less to do with them.' The statement is cynical, but correct. So long as a man finds his clothes brushed and his meals well and punctually cooked, he 'does not see much to complain of,' nor does he give much thought to the pains and trouble which even that moderate amount of service entails upon his wife. Unless in great households, where everything is delegated to a paid housekeeper, it is, indeed, certain that ladies who are resolved to keep a house as it should be have, now, from various causes, a very hard time of it. The old feeling of feudal service, though a few examples--both mistresses and servants--may still exist of it, is dead; and in its place we have the employer and the hireling. There are faults, of course, on both sides; mistresses are accustomed to look upon their servants too much as machines, and in the working thereof do not, perhaps, estimate sufficiently the advantages of the use of sweet oil; while servants are more p.r.o.ne to 'eye-service' than were ever the housemaids of Ephesus.

Which of the two began it I cannot tell, but a certain antagonism has grown up between these two cla.s.ses which shakes the pillars of domestic peace. At the root of it all, as at the root of most evils, lies ignorance, and in the servants' case ignorance of a stupendous nature.

I have had in my household an under-nurse, who, upon the family's leaving town for a short holiday, was enjoined to see that the birds in the nursery (canaries) were well supplied with sand. When we came back we found them all starved to death. She had given them sand, but, alas!

no seed. This was a girl from the country, who, one would think, would have known what birds fed upon; otherwise one does not expect much intelligence from Arcadia. When our last importation (an under-housemaid) 'turned on the gas' in the upper apartments as she was directed to do, but omitted to light it, I thought it very excusable; she had not been accustomed to gas. On the other hand, when her mistress told her to 'look to the fire' of a certain room, I contend we had a right to expect that that fire should be kept in. It was not so, however, and when the lady inquired, 'Why did you not look to it, as I told you?' the girl replied, 'Well, I did, mum; the door was open and I looked at the fire every time I pa.s.sed.' She appeared to attach some sort of igneous power to the human eye.

Each of these young ladies came to us very highly recommended by the wife of the clergyman of her native place. Surely, in the curriculum of the village school, something else beside the catechism ought to have been included; yet, of the things they were certain to be set to do--the merest first principles of domestic service--they had been taught nothing; and in learning them at our expense they cost us ten times their wages.

It may be said, indeed, that when you employ a young girl who has never been out to service before, you secure honesty, chast.i.ty, and sobriety, and must not look for the artificial virtues; but, unhappily, things are not very much better when you engage an experienced hand. The lady of the house should not, of course, expect too much (in these days she must be of a very sanguine temperament if she falls into _that_ error); she will think it necessary to warn the new arrival--although she 'knows her place' and is 'a thorough housemaid'--that a velvet pile carpet, for example, should not be brushed backwards. But on more obvious matters she will probably leave the 'thorough housemaid' to her own devices, the result of which is that the boards beside the stair-carpets are washed with soda the first morning, which takes the dirt off effectually--and the paint also. An hour or two before she was caught at this, she has, perhaps, utterly spoilt a polished grate or two by rubbing them with scouring paper instead of emery powder.

Paterfamilias feels these things when he has to pay the bill, but his wife feels them in the meantime, and it is more than is to be expected of human nature that she can welcome cordially such an addition to her household. A prejudice against the girl springs up in her mind, which is very promptly responded to, and the mutual respect that ought to grow up between them is nipped in the bud. I am sorry to say that good housewives are almost always opposed to having servants well educated; they think that 'knowledge puffs up,' blows them above their places, and encourages a taste for light literature which is opposed to the arts of brus.h.i.+ng and cleaning. What the 'higher education' of domestic servants is to be under the School Boards I know not; but I hope they will not imagine, as the Universities do, that their duty is only to teach their pupils how to educate themselves. I confess I agree with the housewives, that, for young persons intended for service, reading, writing, and arithmetic, with the use of the scrubbing and hearth brushes, are far preferable acquirements to those of the same three great principles with the use of the globes. Whether there are any handbooks in existence, other than cookery books, to teach the duties of servants I know not; but, even if there are, servants will never read them of their own free will. Not one in a hundred has a sufficiently strong desire to improve herself for that. They must be taught like children, and when they _are_ children, if any good is to come of it.

It is to me astounding, and certainly makes me very suspicious of the advocates of women's rights, that they have done little or nothing in this direction. Why should not some of that immense energy which is now expended on platforms be directed into this less ambitious but more natural channel? There are tens of thousands of persons of their own s.e.x, not indeed out of employment, but who are obtaining employment on false pretences, who would do so honestly enough if they had had but a little early training. Unfortunately, the ladies of the platform do not in general stoop to such small things as domestic matters; they do not care about mere comfort, they even perhaps resent it because it is so dear to tyrannous man. If they would only turn their attention to the education of their humbler sisters, they would win over all their enemies and put to shame the cynic who has a.s.sociated Man's Lefts with Women's Rights.

The only School for Servants I am acquainted with sent us the worst we ever had, and if it had not been for the very handsome fee it charged both us and her for our mutual introduction, I should not have recognised it as an educational establishment at all.