Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1875 — English Domestics. [ARTICLE]

English Domestics.

Col Forney jots down these observations: “Take domestic service in England. There are almost as many grades in it as in high rank. Each is appointed to his or her place; each has definite privileges and deference to the one ahead is the rule. The butler or stew art is the chief and exacts respect from all below; and from him through all the grades of waiter, coachman, cook and dressingmaid there is always somebody above to follow and obey, lliere is a rude maxim that every Englishman is the idolater of some bigger Englishman right before him. The wages of a servant-of-all-work in London is about £l2 (sixty dollars) a year, and for this she does all the labor and is often the cook as well, getting few perquisites. I know some places in the great capital where one poor girl for this money is as utter a slave as ever worked on a Southern plantation. She washes, sews, scrubs, cooks the meals for the boarders, does chamber-work and tends the door for five dollars a month! If such a poor creature rebels the az., swer is prompt: ‘lf you leave me you shall never get another place, because I will give you no certificate of character.’ But it is a mistake to suppose that this rule has not many exceptions. In well-ordered private houses the seryvants are models of comfortable propriety. There the ladies’ maids and upper servants are rarely called by their Christian names; it is always ‘ Brown,’ or ‘ Jones,’ or ‘ Robinson,’ while the lady of the house is ‘ mistress,’ and the gentleman ‘ master.’ The cook is invariably ‘ cook’ when she is spoken to. The governess, no matter how gifted, rarely sits at the table with the family, and never When thcr® ta company. A lady friend advertised for a governess for her children, and the number of applicants was legion, proving the heavy struggle among girls Tyho are fighting the battle of life in a great city. Situations like these are well paid and comfortable. I have already referred to tbe generosity of the English Government in providing for hundreds of females in the General Postoffice Department. But nothing is more interesting than Lhe domestic establishments of the noblemen or gentry, especially when three or four hundred invited guests from London gather in one or the country palaces during the shooting season, each guest with his retinue of servants of both sexes. The quarter set apart for these latter is divided into as many grades and tortured by as many jealousies as their superiors’, and they live often as sumptuously. During the holidays the servants must be specially provided with presents according to their rank, but this rule has its exceptions in the humbler walks. There the one servant often gets little enough during the holidays.”