The Champagne Standard Part 6

The restlessness of the English servants, fanned by the Board Schools and higher aspirations towards department stores, has produced the temporary servant. She flits from one distressed family to the other, and is at anyone's beck and call at a moment's notice; nor does she harrow her lady's feelings by staying that awful last month, when having done her worst she is invulnerable.

She has, of course, her disadvantages, along with her advantages. She takes naturally no earthly interest in her place (but none of them do!) for she flits like a grubby b.u.t.terfly from one area to the other; she is, however, usually quite competent. Her example, on the other hand, is bad, for she gets high wages, a varied existence, and plenty of holidays, and, being temporary and independent, she does not work too hard.

There is really nothing so fatal as aspirations in the wrong place; to them we owe the servant problem. Now, the average man will sniff at the servant problem and, unless he has a great, broad mind, he will say to the partner of some of his joys and all of his sorrows, "You don't know how to treat your servants. My clerks don't bother me."

As if that were the same thing at all! Men's places are easily filled, and the average man is so anch.o.r.ed by domestic ties that he thinks several times before he gives warning, as indeed would a servant if she had a family depending on her earnings. But a servant usually has no ties. Her clothes are in her tin trunk, and her hopes in the registry office; thus, accompanied by the one and protected by the other, she goes on her winding way. If she had an idle or sick husband and half-a-dozen children to support, her att.i.tude towards service would be less lofty.

Coming often from very poor homes, it is a curious fact that servants are always extravagant, at any rate with other people's belongings. Lady Macbeth, under whose dominion I languished for over three years, once confessed to me that she prided herself on her economy, which, she said, proved her to be of a different cla.s.s from other servants.

Once, in a gracious moment, she also told me she preferred being a good cook rather than a poor nursery governess who, in the delicate and unwritten code of service, is on a higher social scale, hovering, I believe on the outskirts of the lady pinnacle. She was kind enough to add that she would rather cook for some one she could look up to than teach a lot of stupid young ones. I was highly flattered, and so was the other member of my family, and we tried hard to live up to her good opinion. But no man is a hero to his valet, and she never repeated the compliment.

It is unfortunately true that domestic troubles, like rheumatism, toothache, and sea-sickness, from which one can suffer untold agonies, never arouse a proper sympathy. A man takes his business seriously enough, but he never takes his wife's housekeeping seriously.

"What in the world do you do all day long?" is his kindly, scornful cry; as if there were nothing to do! Yet it is that which gives women grey hairs and nervous prostration, and forms an endless topic of conversation among those who would gladly avoid the subject. It requires cast-iron, steel-bound nerves to confront rebellion in the kitchen, simply because of the terror of going from bad to worse. That awful pilgrimage to the registry office, those hideous interviews, that terrible month of probation--your probation as well as hers. I defy two women to get together and not talk "servants" before the end of the conversation. Not even intellect will save you the flight to that inferno, the Registry Office.

There is one figure the dramatist of the future will never again be able to employ, and that is the ancient retainer. Never again will he follow his unfortunate master and mistress into exile, or lay down his life for them, or give up to them his humble earnings. Not only will the species be extinct, but the very tradition of it will have pa.s.sed away.

The twenty-first century baby is destined to be rocked and cradled by electricity, warmed and coddled by electricity, perhaps fathered and mothered by electricity. Probably the only thing he will be left to do unaided will be to make love; and yet, possibly, that also is another form of electricity. At any rate, the ancient retainer is doomed, and it is the ancient retainer's fault. He has shown his decreasing interest in the family, so no wonder the family takes no further interest in him.

Job servants supply his place, and in illness a trained nurse does as well, if not much better.

Alas, it is a materialistic, utilitarian age and, if they did but know it, neither master nor servant can afford to stifle what remains of loyalty and affection. There are some things for which money will not pay, strange though it may seem in these days when everything has its price. The life which cultivates no feeling but indifference is to be deplored both for master and man.

There is something which makes of labour a higher thing than a mere barter. If that something really existed, we would not have that ceaseless, perpetually changing procession with tin trunks; personally, I should not feel so much that I was keeping a boarding-house for strangers, whom I pay instead of their paying me. If any of the old spirit were still left, servants would not be sent adrift to shift for themselves when their best days are over, and we should still see that phenomenon, an old servant.

What becomes of old servants? It is a mystery. Some possibly become meek, and keep lodging-houses; others, meeker still, become caretakers.

Can human imagination conjure up a more dismal fate? To be the companion of beetles and mice; to vegetate in a bas.e.m.e.nt, gloomy with the abysmal gloom of London, and silent with the monumental silence of a deserted house!

Why not think of the possible future, that giddy, independent day, when to give notice, and feast on the consequent anguish, is a cool rapture?

Once only I met an ex-parlour maid who rose superior to fate. She had become useful by the day. Then, unexpectedly, a subtle change came over her--she also aspired. She couldn't give warning, which would have been her natural outlet, but she felt that she owed something to her dignity before the other servants. From henceforth, she announced, she would really have to come in by the front door. I submitted, and the area steps know her no more.

It is a comfort not to be required to solve the problems of a future generation. I saw, however, yesterday, the thin end of the wedge in the form of a little red cart, in front of a house before which the usual "Sidewalk Committee," as they call it in America, was gathered, lazily critical. Rubber tubes led from the cart into the open windows of a room, and a gentleman, apparently of elegant leisure, in uniform, superintended proceedings. For a moment I suspected fire, but seeing the calm, unruffled, unsoiled, unwatered appearance of everything, it suddenly flashed through my mind that what I so often had predicted was being fulfilled. Science was solving the domestic problem!

If we can clean a house by air, without the presence of a servant, before long some great man will teach us to cook in the same way. Some day electricity will release us from bondage. A cook will then be as unnecessary as a 'bus horse. Then let the young person, who now aspires to the factory and the department stores, threaten; we shall not care.

Indeed, then may come our sweet time of revenge, for the department stores will be undoubtedly overcrowded, and the young person with the yellow tin trunk will then join a different procession in the days of that happy millennium.

Gladly would I have shaken hands with the gentleman who was superintending the red cart, as the outward and visible promise of a new liberty, but I feared he might not understand.

If one might offer a suggestion to our great and glorious Republic across the sea in regard to any possible change in her coinage, it would be that, rather than the worthy lady with the Phrygian cap, it should bear the figure of the new "vacuum-cleaner," with its attendant Man; that represents something real, something up-to-date. The lady with the cap and stars is a myth, but what have we poor sufferers to do with myths? Let us, rather, give credit where credit is due.

The other day there was sent to me a voluminous list of the eminent scientists who are to lecture before the Royal Inst.i.tution. As I read their famous names it did seem to me that if these giants of science would abstract their gaze from discovering new planets, new continents, new gases, and new rays, and would bring their mighty intellects to bear on what might be called kitchen science, the results would be incalculable.

Does not the old nursery wisdom declare, "Great oaks from little acorns grow?" Invent an electrical cook, an electrical parlour-maid, an electrical housemaid, and an electrical boy for the boots. Think of the peace that will enter our homes; think of the just retribution that will overtake those awful offices that pocket our fees and supply worse than nothing! Think of the joy of millions of crushed housekeepers who, for the first time in the history of the world, will be able to look a cook squarely in the face and give her warning! Surely that is an aim which should satisfy the greatest intellect, because the greatest intellect (presumably a man, a brother, a father, or a husband) demands to be fed, not only often, but well.

Columbus was undoubtedly a great man, and the product of his time; was he not the first to do that little egg trick, and did he not afterwards discover the United States of America? But his fame, mighty and enduring though it is, will pale before his, the product of our time, the product of our dire necessity, who will give to the world what is greater even than a new continent--and that is Peace.

The greatest man of the future will be the Columbus of the Kitchen.

_Entertaining_

I once met an Englishman in America who quite unconsciously explained to me the vital difference between English and American society.

He was so quiet, so gentlemanly, and so bored, and I had tried my best to say things. At last I cried in despair, "You Englishmen are so hard to entertain!" To which he replied, in slow surprise, "But we don't want to be entertained!" and that is it! And as man moulds the woman, and the woman makes society--therefore the English woman makes the society of which her Englishman approves, just as the American makes a society suitable for her "men folks."

Society is an elusive expression, and the human beings who const.i.tute it are spread out in layers like the chocolate cake of our childhood, and every layer aspires to be the top one with the sugar frosting. In a kingdom the only ones who ever reach that sugar-coated eminence are of course the august reigning family besides a very precious and select few, who must be horribly bored at having reached an alt.i.tude where there is no need of further aspiration. After all, it does add a zest to life to triumph over one's dearest friends and snub them. Of course a reigning family has the superlative privilege of snubbing, but they have to take it out in that, for to them is denied the joy of "climbing."

In America we are still in the beginning of things, and society is less complex, though more so than formerly, as the unfortunate result of increasing wealth. There was a golden age in America, when different cities each required of its votaries different qualifications to enable them to enter what is called "Society." In those days, it is pleasant to testify, it was what a man had done, intellectually or morally, that opened to him the iron-bound gates of Boston. You might be shabby and poor, and rattle up to Society in an exceedingly inelegant vehicle called a "herdic" (which shot you out like coal), but you were welcome if you were literary or scientific, musician or philanthropist. Money looked on respectfully at the great and shabby, and was distinctly elbowed into a corner.

Something grips at my heart as I recall those bygone days when, as a very young girl, with a b.u.mp of reverence as high as the Himalayas, I sat in the corner of a splendid, shabby Boston drawing-room, and watched the great men and women, whose genius has left its imprint on American history and literature. They talked to each other, like ordinary human beings, and refreshed themselves with cold coffee and heavy cake, which was pa.s.sed by such of the younger generation as the wonderful hostess could press into service. It is remembering this wonderful hostess that I am impressed by the truth that entertaining is not a fine art, but genius; it is not acquired, it is inborn.

In this shabby old mansion, with its relics of a bygone splendour, I saw for the first time the greatest hostess it has ever been my good fortune to meet. She was neither beautiful, witty, nor young, but she had the subtle quality which made you at once at home in her genial presence; which made you feel that you were the one guest in whom she was interested, and this impression she made on everybody. Such was her magnetism that her spirit inspired every one, at least for the time being; a charming intercourse was the result, a geniality among her guests who, the very next day, in an overwhelming flood of shyness, would cut each other dead.

I have come to the conclusion that it is this abominable shyness which makes human beings so repellent to each other. It is one of the minor martyrdoms of existence resulting in an antagonistic att.i.tude, not so much because one doubts the eligibility of the other, but rather that one doubts one's self. The agony of self-consciousness that surrounds one as with a thin coating of ice, out of which frosty prison one breathes ice. Did the other but know what one suffers!

It is often very difficult to distinguish between shyness and reserve, for one can be reserved without being shy, and one can be shy and in an excess of shyness frightfully unreserved. Though the English are rightly credited with having brought reserve and self-control--those characteristics of the highest civilization as well as the lowest--to the greatest mastery, yet some of their amazing silence and immobility I believe to be shyness. It is a comfort to think so because, when one's vivacious disposition occasionally hurls one against an icy obstacle, it pains.

The English self-control--the result of generations of self-controlled ancestors--makes heroes in the battlefield, but sometimes it also makes of its bravest officers but foolhardy leaders of men. On the other hand, the national pride to suppress emotion retaliates on nature in a perfectly legitimate way; the emotion one suppresses, like all unused functions, ends by weakening, then disappearing. Not that the English are without emotion, but compared to other nationalities, the average Englishman's emotions are not easily stirred. Self-control is a very inspiring quality, but it is not so wonderful when the nature exercising it is tuned to a low key. English supremacy is so great that English self-control is the fashion, but while an Englishman's self-control is the icy covering to a quiet, placid mountain; the control a Frenchman or an Italian a.s.sumes is the ice veneering a volcano.

Human nature is, to a certain extent, everywhere the same, and its simple and primal virtues are the same, only modified by race and climate. A man may be panic-stricken in disaster, not through cowardice, but because of uncontrolled imagination. No one will deny the superlative bravery of the French, but it is equally impossible to deny that in panics they sometimes lose their heads. In such circ.u.mstances the Frenchman does not show to the same advantage as the Englishman, not because of a lack of bravery, but because he possesses a fiery imagination. A Frenchman sees not only the present disaster, but he sees the results far into the dim future; the Englishman, with controlled imagination, if any, applies himself to a hurried view of the situation, and wastes no time on a thought of the future.

I knew an American of English descent who found himself in a burning German theatre one night. In the instant there was a panic, and a frantic woman clung to his arms and implored him to save her. He was very near-sighted, and in the confusion his eyegla.s.ses had fallen off.

"I certainly will," he said, rea.s.suringly, "if you will just let me put on my gla.s.ses." Then he climbed upon the seat, calmly gauged a possible chance of escape, and rescued his companion and himself. Yet the imagination which in certain circ.u.mstances results in disaster, under others gives a man a charm which makes his companionship a delight.

We Americans are a composite race; we have the coolness of the English, as well as the nervous tension of multiples of races, exaggerated by that glowing air, which has been wittily called "free champagne." The warring of these various elements promises results that cannot be foreseen in a nation which boasts of being Anglo-Saxon, whatever that may mean.

Years ago I remember the wrecking of a little pleasure boat near a famous island on the coast of Maine, and with what heroism the young men of the party saved themselves; that is where the foreign element brought with it a too active imagination. Now the atmosphere and the foreign element in our blood make us a nervous, high-strung people, aggressively entertaining, and clamouring to be entertained.

In no way has the American invasion proved more triumphant than in the subtle change it is producing in the new generation of English girls.

The English woman, like the clever antagonist she is, studies the skilful weapons with which the other has established her captivating supremacy, and is proceeding to use the same.

The new English girl has a charm and a vivacity, when she is not hampered by tradition, which must make the American girl look to her laurels. It will, of course, take her some time to let her spirit sparkle behind those statuesque features; still, she is undoubtedly on the road to vivacity. But the unbending and expressionless matron and immovable and monosyllabic young girl are still to the fore. A wintry smile on the matron's lips, enough to chill the most cordial guest, and the strangled remarks of the young girl and her slow, cold eyes, are the triumphant results of the nation of the self-controlled. Those cold eyes and that slow smile that have in them not the ghost of humour. To get behind the eyes and the smile, to discover some inward fire! Is there any? One looks with envy at those faces which, from the lowest up, possess that in common that it is impossible to penetrate into the real self.

It must be confessed that what might be called the national manner is not conducive to geniality of intercourse.

The power a hostess has to blight a crowd of people with her own frost!

There is the hostess who greets you as if she had never seen you before, and accepts your hand as if it were a slice of cold fish; there is the haughty hostess who shakes hands limply while she looks over your head at a superior guest; there is the vague hostess who smiles liberally, but sees you not; then there is the hostess with the surface geniality, who, with a hurried glance at you, gushes inquiries across you at the nearest man. There are as many varieties of hostesses as there are women, and they one and all drop you, and you merge into the army of starers, sometimes saved by an introduction to some other shipwrecked mariner with whom you escape to the tea-room.

The American fashion of dispensing afternoon tea is very pretty, and should be introduced here. Instead of leaving the serving of light refreshments to the servants, the American hostess chooses several of the prettiest girls she knows, and gives them the task of pouring out the tea, coffee, and chocolate at a centre table decorated with flowers, lighted candles, and all that coquettish art of which the American woman is past-mistress. The table should accommodate four girls, who, in their smartest party toilettes, are at once ornamental and useful, and the centre of attraction. They take away something of the stiffness which is inevitable among a crowd of people, many of whom are strangers to each other. Having to ask for a cup of tea from a pretty girl instead of a servant is pleasant, and generally leads to conversation, and it is considered the greatest compliment a hostess can confer if she asks you to "pour" for her. The more original the hostess, the more charming can she make her "teas," and what is usually a rather dreary function may be made entertaining and graceful.

The English hostess, ignoring her pretty chance, leaves the tea-table, if there are many guests, to her servants. I once invited an English girl to "pour" tea for me, and she discomfited me exceedingly by asking why I did not get the servants to do it! And I had meant to pay her a compliment!

What a social comfort a hat is! It gives one so much moral courage. It is less terrible to encounter society in a hat; one can take refuge in it from the coldest blast. But in the evening, garlanded with roses and deserted, so to speak, by G.o.d and man, society is a trial.

There is no greater martyrdom for the middle-aged than baring their shoulders to the bitter air and transporting them to an evening function. To shiver for an instant in the smile of the hostess, and then subside against the wall, while the young and ardent flirt about with members of the other s.e.x; or if they don't flirt, they appear to, which is just as well. A very beautiful woman once confessed to me in a moment of sincerity that she would be ashamed to be seen talking to another woman at an evening party. "I would rather be with the most idiotic man, and look as if I were flirting hard, than talk to the most brilliant woman in the room. I always avoid women at parties."