Why Missus Wants an Up-Stairs Girl: 1882

The Maidservant, William Arthur Breakspeare, 1881

The Cook’s Story.

Yes, dear, it was; Eliza Murphy was her name, and she was an upstairs girl, my dear, and came with a good character as ever you read, my dear, though to be sure my missus did say as it was singular it was spelt so poorly by a lady as lived in the Fifth avenue and gone to Europe for her ’elth. But that’s something I don’t know anything about, my love, for even bad spellin’ always did come hard to me owin’ to a dizziness in my ’ed as I’m subject to; but the character was good, I know, and it said as how Eliza was a good worker and handy and obliging, and very pious, and, why, bless your ’art, I happroves of piousness in this wicked world, where’s there’s such need of it—a wicked, wicked world indeed, as you can’t buy a pound of beef in it without being cheated; and measure your calico, after you fetch it home, why, it will turn out ’alf a quarter short; I gives you my word, my dear.

Well, ’owever that may be, it was of a Monday night as Eliza brought her box, and there she sat opposite me, as serious as you please, with a blue worsted stocking to knit, when she had nothing else to do, and her hymn book and Bible on the dresser.

Well, she was neat as a new pin, was Eliza, and we all liked her; and there was her character, as I said, but she ’adn’t been in the ’ouse a week, my love, before things began to go mysterious like, and now it was a napkin and now it was a ’andkerchief, and now it was my hapron or missus’ cuffs; but you couldn’t suspect Eliza. She was halways the first to find out the loss, and it was, “Ho, dear! whatever shall I do? this is gone;” or, “Ho, dear! what will become of me, new to the ’ouse and sich things ’appening!”

And she’d think it might be the soap-fat man was a thief, or may be the ice-man wasn’t honest—and though the things did go we never laid it on Eliza. Missus said such a good, pious person, and so steady, she couldn’t suspect.

So we turned away the man that came to fix the heater, and the woman that did odd scrubbing, but change didn’t ’elp us—-things kept a goin’.

At last, I know it was a Wednesday evening, because that was the evening as Eliza always begged to go to meetin’, when, all of a sudden, things having been going so fast that I was quite upset in my wits, heard Eliza calling out:

“Oh, cook, cook, what have you done with the clock?”

And I, bein’ at the refrigerator at the time, came flyin’ in, and says I:

“With the clock! and whatever should I do with it, Eliza?”

Says she:’ “Say you’ve hid it to frighten me, cook.”

Says I: “Far be it from me to do sich an action; but the clock is not there on the wall, Eliza, and where is it?”

It was a little round clock as you could put any way without stopping it, and it was hanging on the wall at six, for I’d looked at it.

But now it was gone, and the door fastened and all, and it frightened me so that I went off into hysterics, and missus heard them, and down she came, and there she stood in her black silk, Eliza, with a gray merino, and so big a pannier, and her hat and shawl on, all ready for meeting.

“And what ’as ’append?” says missus.

And says I: “Oh, I believe the kitchen is bewitched, mum.”

And says Eliza:

“Saving your presence, mum, I believe Satan is abroad, mum. And however will you believe me honest, comin’ into this house a stranger, when things go like this. The clock is gone, mum?”

Missus looks at the wall and looks at me.

“Them’s the keys of my box, mum,” says I, handing ’em out.

“And there’s mine,” says Eliza. “And if you’ll do me the favor to look in my pocket, mum, I’ll feel obliged, for my conscience is clear, and they’ll speak of me as knows me.”

“Oh, dear,” said missus, “I don’t suspect any one—but who has been here?”

“Not a soul,” says I.

“Not a soul,” says Eliza.

“And I’m so glad,” says Eliza, “it ’appened afore I went out. I might ’ave been suspected. But when a body does right, why I think the angels watches over ’em, mum. And may I go out as usual, mum, for ef I don’t have my evening at meeting, I shan’t be able to control my evil passions as I’d like when cook scolds me?”

“Oh, yes; go, Eliza,” said missus. “I’m glad you are so anxious to improve yourself; but about the clock. Do you think—hark!”

I said “hark!” too; for hall of a sudden we heard a kind of whir~and—-one—struck a clock somewhere.

Eliza turned pale, and sat down on a chair.

“Two,” says the clock—“three—four—five— six.” It was our clock. I knowed its voice—for a clock has a voice of its own, as you may say, like a human being; but where did it come from? “Seven,” says the clock, and all of a sudden I knew where it was. It was under that Eliza’s dress, my dear, tied on to the pannier, and when she stole it, my love, she’d forgot about the striking. I’m a strong woman when I’m aroused, and have a will of my own. Eliza didn’t like my taking off that pannier very much, but I took it all the same, and I sot it before missus, and I says, “Let your own senses convince you, mum, of depravity sich as has no equal,” before I went off again in hysterics.

“And that’s why Eliza is gone, my love, and why missus wants an up-stairs girl again. And it’s upset me so, my dear, that I’m obliged to strengthen myself a little, and that’s why you see me putting a little of the best in my tea. Will you have a cup?”

The Elocutionist’s Journal: A Repository of the Choicest Standard and Current Pieces for Readings and Declamations.  June 1882: p. 14

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  This was an alarmingly common crime. Mrs Daffodil has counted several dozen entries in the newspapers, relating how a clock-thief was betrayed by a chiming clock. Here is a striking example:

STOLEN CLOCK STRUCK FOUR.

Betrays Man on the Street, With Policeman Standing Near.

Pittsburg, Pa., October 21. A policeman in search of a clock which had just been stolen from a North Side jewelry store accosted Frank Roper of Canton, Ohio, on a street nearby.

“Got something you don’t want to have seen?” queried the policeman, as he noted a bulge in Roper’s coat.

“Oh, only a box of candy for my girl,” the man replied.

Just at that moment the “box of candy” loudly struck the hour of four. Roper is in the police station waiting his turn to explain how it happened.

Evening Star [Washington DC] 21 October 1910: p. 1

Still, Mrs Daffodil will not judge Cook for putting a little of the best in her tea. Depravity sich as has no equal always raises a thirst.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

She Asked for His Photograph: 1897

The New Photograph, Robert W. Wright https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-new-photograph-152939/view_as/grid/search/keyword:photograph/page/1

WHY SHE WAS GRACIOUS.

A Lover Who Easily Fell Into an Ingenious Trap.

She was particularly gracious that night, and he was correspondingly happy.  He felt that he had made an impression at last.

She let him hold her hand a minute when she welcomed him, and he thought–in fact, he was quite sure–that she responded to the gentle squeeze he gave it, and heretofore she had been so distant, so cold, although always courteous. Surely it was enough to make him feel happy. Then she laughed at his witticisms, and there was something in her manner that invited him to draw his chair closer to hers. Of course he accepted the invitation, and almost before he knew it he found himself whispering all sorts of silly things to her, while she listened with downcast eyes.

It was blissful, and yet there was a greater pleasure in store for him. She blushed and hesitated a little as she asked if he had a photograph of himself.

Of course he had, and she should have one that very night. He would go for one at once. She protested that that was not necessary, but he insisted. She should have anything that she wanted and have it at once.

She thanked him so coyly and sweetly when he brought it that the boy was nearly insane with joy, and when he left she let him hold her hand again for a minute.

Then, as he walked away with a light step and a light heart, she handed the photograph to her maid and said with decision:

“Mary, hang that in the servants’ hall, where every one can see it, and remember that I am never home when he calls. I must stop this thing somehow, and mamma changes servants so often he gets in every week or two now.”

The Copper County Evening News [Calumet MI] 19 August 1897: p. 7

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  A little-known consequence of the Servant Problem…

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Mr Greenleaf’s New Cook: 1859

The Betty

Pattie Parsley

Allow me to introduce to you Mr. John Greenleaf, “a man, sir,” he will tell you, “who has made his own money, and doesn’t care who knows it—none of your heirs to property; no, sir! A self-made man.” There he stands by the fireplace, looking as pompous as if all mankind were his glares, and he was monarch of the universe. He is very rich, worth, they will tell you on ‘Change, any amount of money. He has a fine house, as the peep we are taking into the parlor will convince you. You can see that all the furniture is rich, tho paintings rare, the carpets velvet, and the lights brilliant. He has three children. The little, pale-looking girl at the piano is his daughter. He has determined to give her a splendid education, “the best, sir, that money can buy.” Never mind if they are cramming her young brain beyond its capabilities, making her pale, puny, and old, she must study, practise, and be worthy to take her place in society as the daughter of John Greenleaf. The two little boys crouched down by the window, playing chess, though older than their sister, are as pale, weak, and overtasked. Who is the lady by the piano, guiding the little girl’s fingers? Bless your innocence! that’s nobody! That is only Mr. Greenleaf’s wife, “a person,” he will tell you, with a shrug, “of amiable disposition, but no strength of character.”

“My dear,” said Mr. Greenleaf, in a voice as if he were calling his wife from the garret, although she really stands within arm’s length.

“Yes, John.”

“My dear, I have given the cook warning. Last week, the beef was twice overdone.”

“Well, John,” said Mrs. Greenleaf, with a sigh, “this is the sixth cook we have had within a month.”

“If she did not suit me, she should go, even if she were the sixtieth. She goes to-night; and the new one comes to-morrow.”

Now let me introduce you to Mr. Greenleaf’s kitchen. All is in order; every new invention for facilitating the servant’s work stands on the shelves; but did you ever see such discontented faces? Miss Fannie’s nurse stands by the table, looking at the new cook with a cross expression; while the waiter scours the knives in a spiteful, vigorous manner; and the chambermaid sets down her bucket with a bang, and looks too at the cook.

“You won’t stay here long,” says Maria, the nurse.

“No, that you won’t !” echoes Lizzie, the waiter.

“You’ll be a simpleton if you do,” chimes in Sallie, the chambermaid.

“Why, what’s the matter? Mrs. Greenleaf cross?”

“No, indeed,” cries Maria, screwing up her lips. “Mrs. Greenleaf’s a martyred angel; that’s what she is. It’s Mr. Greenleaf. Oh! Won’t you have to dance to the music? He’s hard on us all; but he’s hardest of all on the cooks.”

“Mr. Greenleaf ! what! what’s he got to do with me? I won’t have no men fooling round in my kitchen.”

“Oh! won’t you?”

“Well,” cried a loud, harsh voice at the door, “is there no work to do? What are you all idling here in the kitchen for at this time in the morning?”

Before he had finished speaking, cook stood alone in the kitchen.

“Humph !” said Mr. Greenleaf, setting down his basket; “so you’ve come. What’s your name?”

“Jane.”

“Well, Jane, here’s the dinner. Now, I want you to listen particularly to my directions. I want that piece of beef roasted. Don’t let it stay in the fire more than half an hour. I hate meat overdone”

“It won’t be fit to eat in half an hour.”

“Obey my directions, if you please. The chickens I want boiled; and there will be some oysters here soon for sauce. Don’t put any butter or salt in the oyster-sauce.” And so he went on until each article had been condemned to utter ruin, and then left the kitchen.

“I’ll serve him up a dinner,” muttered the cook.

“Jane,” said a sweet, low voice.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Jane, what has come for dinner?” Jane named the articles.

“Mr. Greenleaf has given you his directions, I presume?”

“Yes, ma’am. Everything in that ‘ere basket will be sp’iled complete.”

“Well, Jane, you must make everything as nice as you can; but don’t contradict Mr. Greenleaf, if he thinks you followed his directions.”

“Well, ma’am,” said the cook, rather discontentedly.

Dinner-time came, and with it Mr. Greenleaf. “Ah!” said he, throwing himself back in his chair, after finishing a hearty meal, “now, this is a dinner! everything cooked precisely after my directions. The new cook is a jewel. All the others have contradicted me; and the consequence was we have not had a dinner fit to eat for months. This beef is done to a charm; and that oyster-sauce is magnificent. I hate butter in oysters, spoiling the children’s complexions.”

Mrs. Greenleaf said nothing, though inwardly smiling at the success of her new stratagem.

Washing-day came. There, beside the tubs, stood Mr. Greenleaf, criticizing the proceedings. Jane had a large basket of clothes ready to put on the line; but, as she was leaving the kitchen, Mr. Greenleaf stood before her. “Do you call this white?”  he asked, fishing up a towel with the end of his cane, “or this, or this? Faugh! they are as dirty as when they came down stairs ! Here!” And, taking the basket from Jane, he launched the contents into Maria’s tub.

“Oh, Mr. Greenleaf ! these are colored clothes!” cried Maria.

“Well, they want washing, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir; but you’ve pitched all them white ones a top o’ them! Oh, he! he!  he!” And Maria fled into the yard, and burst out a laughing.

Mr. Greenleaf looked at her with magnificent astonishment. Jane had contrived to pin a half-dried towel to his coat; and her sudden view of it had caused Maria’s laughter.

“Giddy-headed goose!” cried Mr. Greenleaf. “I declare I believe I could wash myself better than the whole of you put together!”

“Suppose you try,” suggested Jane, accidentally flirting a quantity of soapsuds upon his black clothes. “Oh, sir, I beg your pardon; I did not see you.”

“Um! Um! these clothes in the boiler are only half washed. ‘Pon my word, servants, now-a-days, are enough to wear one’s life out. Here! take these things out and give them another rub.”

“Certainly, sir,” cried the obliging Jane; and before Mr. Greenleaf knew what was coming, a long stick was thrust into the boiler and a pile of clothes fished out. The hot steam rushed into his face, and the boiling water spattered over his hands, and, as he was springing aside to avoid them, down went the stick, full of hot clothes, upon his foot. “Oh, my gracious!” cried Jane. “Oh, sir, I did not mean to! Oh, you did give me sich a turn, sir, jumping round so, that the stick fell! Oh, I hope it don’t burn, sir.”

Mr. Greenleaf was obliged to make a very undignified exit, hopping on one foot, with the white towel dangling from his coat, and his vest and pants covered with soapsuds.

“I’ll teach him to come into my kitchen, washing-days,” cried Jane, as soon as he was out of hearing. “Now, I’ll go and see what his lordship wants for dinner.”

Jane found the unfortunate victim of her spite sitting in his wife’s room, holding the scalded foot in his hand, and the wet slipper and stocking lying beside him. Her face assumed an expression of profound sympathy, as she suggested a remedy for the burn. Then the subject of dinner was discussed. Among the marketing articles was a steak, and Jane, in her innocence, suggested onions.

“Onions!” cried Mr. Greenleaf. “Onions! I’d as leave eat arsenic. Onions! I detest onions! the flavor is the most horrible in the world. Remember, Jane, I will never have an onion on my table, or its flavor in anything I eat.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jane, mentally adding, “won’t you, though?”

The next morning, Jane left the house early and secretly, and returned with a number of large onions, which she carefully concealed. She and the waiter had a long private conversation soon after.

“Jane!” cried Mr. Greenleaf, at dinner-time, in a voice of thunder.

“Yes, sir,” said Jane, coming up hastily from the kitchen.

“Jane, did I not tell you never to put onion on the table?”

“There ain’t none, sir.”

“There is; the whole dinner tastes of onion. There is that detestable flavor in every dish on the table. You taste it, my dear.”

“I can’t taste it,” said Mrs. Greenleaf.

“Nor I, nor I,” cried the children.

The governess could not taste it, nor the friend who was dining with them. Mr. Greenleaf, in a towering passion, limped into the kitchen, and put his nose into every pot on the range. Everything was free from the fearful smell, yet his whole dinner tasted of it. Day after day, it was the same thing; breakfast, dinner, and supper tasted of onions. Even his tea and coffee had the flavor: and Mrs. Greenleaf began to think her husband was insane on the subject of onions. Jane and the waiter alone could have explained the mystery. Every day, before each meal, Jane took Mr. Greenleafs cup, saucer, and plate, and rubbed them with raw onion, then, standing them on the stove until the moisture dried on the china, she sent them up-stairs thoroughly impregnated with onion.

Mr. Greenleaf would have parted with Jane after his foot was scalded, but, acting on Mrs. Greenleaf’s hints, she served up the most splendidly-cooked meals, persuading him, by her submissive air and attention to his directions, that she was following all his absurd whims.

“Jane,” said Mr. Greenleaf, coming into the kitchen, one morning, “I have had a present of a pair of prairie hens, and I want them fricasseed. Now, I am not going out to-day, and I will show you exactly how to do them.”

“Yea, sir,” said Jane.

“Well, we will begin now.”

“Why, lors, sir, they will be all cold, if you cook them now.”

“Not at all; they need a good deal of cooking. First, cut them up.”

“Hadn’t I better clean them, sir?”

“Yes, of course; I meant clean them. Now, cut them up.”

“But they ought to be parboiled whole.”

“No, they are not to be parboiled; it makes them tough. They will cook enough in the gravy.”

Determined to let him see what a fine mess he was making, Jane followed his directions implicitly. The result was, a mess that would have disgusted a starving savage. Dinner-time came, and Mr. Greenleaf stood rubbing his hands, over his dish; it remained on every plate untouched. He put one mouthful into his own mouth, and then called Jane, in a tone that threatened to take the roof off the house. “What is that?” he asked, pointing to the dish before him.

“Them’s the prairie hens, sir.”

“What have you been putting in them?”

“Nothing but what you seed yourself, sir.”

Mr. Greenleaf looked at the dish, then at the cook; there was no appearance of deceit in her face. “Here!” he cried, “bring me a clean plate, and take this down stairs; throw it into the swill-pail, or give it to any beggar that will eat it.”

“I guess he won’t come down to get dinner himself again, in my kitchen,” muttered the triumphant cook, as she threw away the offending dish.

Godey’s Lady’s Book March 1859:  : pp.   249-251

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil has been fortunate that she has never had a master so overweening as Mr Greenleaf, but she will mentally file away that masterful trick with the onions.

See also, “Twelve Golden Rules for Women Cooks.”

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Girl Wanted: 1874

Lady: “But I very much dislike dogs in the kitchen!”
Cook: “Then it would be no use my engaging of myself, Ma’am—for my object is to get a comfortable home for Tiny and myself!”
Punch 10 April 1875: p. 159

GIRL WANTED

Yes, I want another—”A tidy girl to do house-work in a small family—good wages and a good home.” That’s the way my advertisement always reads, and as soon as the paper is out the girls commence coming. Tidy girls from ten to sixty-five years old come pulling the bell, and when told that they won’t suit they put on such a look of contempt for the door, the door-plate, the front gate and the entire institution, that the world seems three degrees hotter than before.

I always engage the girl. This is because of an idea of mine that I can read human nature, and because I do not fear to tell them in plain English what is expected of them. After the door-bell has been pulled about five times, the right-looking sort of a girl makes her appearance. She says she saw the advertisement, and is invited in. She says she can do any kind of cooking; loves to wash; is fond of children; can never sleep after five o’clock in the morning; never goes out evenings; does not know a young man in Detroit, and she’d be willing to work for low wages for the sake of getting a good home.

She is told to drop her bundle, lay off her things and go to work, and a great burden rolls off my mind as I congratulate myself that the prize-medal girl has arrived at last. She’s all right up to about seven in the evening, when she is suddenly missed, and returns about ten o’clock to say that she “just dropped out” to get a postage-stamp. The next day she begins to scatter the tea-spoons in the back-yard, stops her ironing to read a dime novel, and at supper-time wants to know if I can’t send the children off to live with their grandfather, get a cook stove with silver-plated knobs and have an addition built to the kitchen. That evening a big red-headed butcher walks in, crosses his legs over the kitchen table, and proceeds to court Sarah. She doesn’t last but a day or two longer, and then we secure another.

This one is right from New Hampshire, and doesn’t know a soul in Michigan, and yet she hasn’t finished the dinner dishes before a cross-eyed young man rings the bell and says he’d like to see Hannah for a moment. After seeing him, Hannah concludes not to stay, as we are so far from St. John’s church, and as we don’t appear to be religious people.

The next one especially recommends herself as being “just like their own mother” to the children, and isn’t in the house half a day before she draws Small Pica over her knee and gives him a regular old Canadian waltz.

The next one has five recommendations as a neat and tidy girl, and yet it isn’t three days before she bakes the shoe brush with the beef, washes her hands in a soup tureen, or drops hairpins into the pudding.

I growl about these things after a while, but I am met with the statement that they had worked five years for Governor this, or Lord that, and that in all that time no one had so much as looked cross-eyed at them. I am called mean, ill-tempered, particular, fault-finding, and all that, and the girl goes away wondering why the Lord has spared me as long as He has.

We’ve been wanting “a good, tidy girl” for these last twelve years, and I suppose that we may go another dozen and still be wanting.

“Quad’s Odds” M. Quad, 1874: p. 173

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Domestics come and domestics go, but The Servant Question is eternal….

Mrs Daffodil has been fortunate in her selection and retention of staff, but the many jokes on saucy servants and demanding domestics hide the pain of those in suburban villas and New York brownstones longing for a Girl.

Mrs. Hiram Daly — “And so you’ve got your old cook back! I thought you told me she was married about three months ago, and had gone to housekeeping.”

Mrs. Riverside Rives — “She has given up housekeeping and has come back to me.”

Mrs. Hiram Daly — “What was the matter?”

Mrs. Riverside Rives — “She couldn’t get a girl.” — Puck, 1893

Mistress (severely) — “If such a thing occurs again, Norah, I shall have to get another servant.”

Norah — “I wish yer would; there’s easily enough work fer two of us.” — Tit-Bits. 1901

Binks: Oh, yes, she carries herself like an empress, and bosses me around all she likes now; but wait until we are married, and then see how she’ll fawn and cringe.

Winks: To you?

Binks: No, to the servant girl.

The Philipsburg [MT] Mail 15 August 1895: p. 7

Mrs. A: “I see you have got a new servant girl.”

Ms. B. “Yes, I make it a point to get a new one every month.”

Mrs. A: “But that must be very inconvenient.”

Mrs. B: “Yes, but there’s nothing going on in this town that I don’t know all about it.”

Illinois State Register [Springfield, IL] 28 August 1887: p. 2

First suburban — ” Hello, Smith! You are got up regardless. Going to a wedding?”

Second suburban— “No. I’m going in town to try to engage a cook, and I wish to create a good impression.” — Bazar, 1892

Mistress (trying to be agreeable) “What are your favorite dishes, Bridget?”

The new cook: “To ate or to break, mum?” 

Daily Illinois State Register [Springfield IL] 2 April 1907: p. 10

 

Mrs Daffodil has previously written on How to Spoil Servants

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

The Spirits and “The Servant Problem:” 1892

The age-old Servant Question.

ONE OF MR. STEAD’S “PRACTICAL GHOSTS”

The following account has been handed to us by a correspondent. The details are trivial enough in themselves, but by no means unworthy of consideration as indicating watchful care on the part of those who acted as guardians of the family.

The narrative is given as it was sent. It is evidently written with a strong sense of the protective guardianship of unseen friends, and will interest many of our readers, and perhaps set some “Cui bono?” critics thinking:

A short time since I lost my cook, and knowing the difficulty of obtaining servants immediately before Christmas I decided not to try as I had a temporary helper, so excellent in every way that I deemed it wiser to wait till after Christmas. This woman, whom we will designate Mrs. B., was a quiet, seemingly respectable, married woman, who came to my bedroom every morning for orders and executed them in the most satisfactory manner. I must here mention that I was confined to my room with a sprained ankle, and so my daughters had to give all extra small orders and look after the general comfort.

A week passed, and so pleased was I that I had B.‘s husband to dinner on Sunday, and wrote to a country friend desiring her not to trouble about me as I was settled, feeling half inclined to continue with Mrs. B. until we should leave this house. On the Monday she came as usual to my room. I asked her how she felt, as she looked peculiarly heavy, and I imagined she had a headache, but she said she was quite well and we had a few pleasant words, in which she thanked me for my kindness to her husband. On Tuesday the same distinguished politeness marked our proceedings.

An hour afterwards, up came my elder daughter to say that her own father, my first husband, had seized her hand and told her. “That B. is a beast, don’t let her worry your mother.” I laughed at the idea and bade her tell him he must be mistaken. At twelve o’clock both my daughters went out for their daily constitutional, but in less than five minutes my younger child (who is a very strong psychic) rushed up to me, saying that neither she nor her sister found it easy to walk, but her legs actually refused to move, and her hand was seized and she wrote on her dress, “Go back! Go back!” They came back, got pencil and paper, and again the same spirit wrote, “Don’t leave your mother, that beast B. will go and abuse her and upset her.”

Now, to my shame be it recorded, I was quite cross, and said “Really, this is too ridiculous. A quiet, orderly woman like that: I am afraid, my dear, you are getting fanatical.”

However, as they had already arranged that one should go out one half-hour, and the other the next, so that one remained with me. I made no further demur. Now comes the sequel. Within half an hour my elder daughter returned.

This woman B. picked a quarrel with her over nothing, and rushed up to me. My housemaid rushed after her, begging her not to come to me. But my daughter having been forewarned ran so fast as to get in front of her and then dared her to go to my room. The woman seemed quite beside herself, but my daughter’s decision quelled her. Our unseen friends then made rather sarcastic remarks upon my incredulity, and begged me to pay her and send her off, assuring me she was a drunkard and a desperate woman.

They said, “She drinks rum, and has a bottle now in her pocket,” so I followed their advice, and she went; and now comes the test of their perfect veracity. I said to my house maid. “Did you know she drank?” “No, ma’am: but on Sunday her husband brought her a bottle of something, I couldn’t make it out; it was not whisky nor brandy; it was darker, and had such an odd smell. She offered me some, and it did smell so nasty!” I think this amply proves the rum’s identity, and I presume I need make no comment on the value of our dear spirit friends’ warning, for all helped, though my first husband was the first to speak. This is not a dreamy experience, and is the more astonishing to us as we are not used to such phenomena, but rather have spiritual teachings. N.S.

Light, 13 February 1892

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  This instructive anecdote appeared in the Spiritualist journal Light. Many Spiritualists were tee-total. They might call up spirits, but they did not drink them.

“Mr Stead” was journalist and psychic researcher, William Thomas Stead , who died when the Titanic sank, but, undeterred by death, continued to deliver séance communications.

The Drunken Servant was a figure of fun to the comic papers and the terror of mistresses everywhere.  It was bad enough when the intoxicated servant was a man, but a female inebriate was not to be borne. Of course, being the sole domestic (saving the house-maid) over Christmas in a household with an incapacitated mistress might have driven the woman to drink.  Mrs Daffodil does not speak from personal experience, one understands. Mrs Daffodil, although she has had her share of trying lady employers, has found that one needs a clear head to either deal with or dispose of overly-demanding mistresses.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Pretty Maids All in a Row: 1888

PRETTY FACES UNDER WHITE CAPS.

The Prevailing Fashion for Employing Attractive Ladies’ Maids.

From the New York Mail and Express

It is a fashionable fad at present to employ the prettiest and nattiest hand-maidens that money can hire. On a fine afternoon in the crosstown streets and parks the stroller may see some really charming specimens of young womanhood. A general daintiness of attire, which is further increased by the demure white cap, is their chief characteristic. These maids form a privileged class among our modern servants. They look with equal scorn upon the old-fashioned Southern  nurse, whom they have gradually supplanted, and the recently-landed Irish girl, who is much their social inferior. Most of them, too, are bright, intelligent young women, who understand thoroughly all the mysteries of the toilet, the packing of trunks, and the art of sewing, and on some occasions even the keeping of their mistresses’ private accounts.

For these maids the policeman, with all his advantages of uniform and authority, has little charms, it is the natty English groom, or the smooth-faced butler, with the manners of Lord Chesterfield, that they are naturally attracted towards, and who generally, in time, becomes the successful suitor for her hands.

Their life is a very pleasant one. In summer they visit the best watering places of this country, and a European trip affords no novelty to this privileged class. When one compares the arduous duties and long hours of the shop-girl with the easy fortunes of the modern ladies’ maid, it is a wonder that more young girls do not adopt the latter calling, even at the sacrifice of a little personal pride.

St. Louis [MO] Post-Dispatch 5 March 1888: p. 7

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil has served several ladies in the capacity of lady’s maid and is pursing her lips dubiously at the author’s assertion about the life being a “very pleasant one.” Certainly some mistresses are more amiable than others—Mrs Daffodil has had the unpleasant duty of committing one, the wife of one of the wealthiest men in England, to a lunatic asylum after the young Duchess attempted to “frame,” as the Americans say, Mrs Daffodil for a murder, which, uncharacteristically, she had not committed. And “easy fortunes?” If the work is not physically heavy, one is still a slave to the mistress’s lace and lingerie and the hours may often be longer than those of the shop-girl.

LADIES’ MAIDS KEPT GOING

New York Society Women See That They Get Little Leisure.

A New York letter to the new Orleans Picayune says: The duties of a lady’s maid, says one of them, are almost constant, if seldom heavy. One may have leisure for half a day or scarcely get a breathing spell of ten minutes in twenty-four hours. There is not a great deal of variation. I get up at 7 in the morning and am through my bath and toilet in time for breakfast at 8. Immediately afterward I take a pot of chocolate and the morning papers to my mistress, and while she drinks the chocolate I read from the papers aloud. Her mail is brought up at 9, and I manicure her hands while she reads it. Then I prepare her bath, and afterward arrange her hair and dress her for her 10 o’clock breakfast.

While the chambermaid is doing up her room I arrange her toilet brushes and boxes and get out her afternoon dress. I have my dinner at noon. If my mistress feels like napping after luncheon I read her to sleep. If she goes shopping I usually accompany her. At 3 I dress her for her afternoon drive and at 6 for dinner. I have supper at 7, and the evening is generally my own, but I go to bed early when my mistress is out, because when she comes home I have to undress her, brush out her hair, give hr a cup of hot bouillon, and read her to sleep. Brushing, mending, and making over her dresses, attending to her laces, and looking after her linen, take up most of my spare time. Sunday afternoon I always have to myself, and altogether I am very well satisfied. Ladies who require the attendance of maids have to treat them with a certain degree of consideration in order to keep them.

Once I lived with a woman who would not open her eyes in the morning until I had bathed them with rose water, and who compelled me to brush her feet for her. I found out that before her marriage she did all the housework for her father and a family of several children, and the discovery so irritated me that I soon conjured up a pretext for leaving her.

New Haven [CT] Register 10 January 1890: p. 1

Some of the more outré or unpleasant duties of a lady’s maid Mrs Daffodil has either performed or heard of: injecting perfume into the lady’s veins via hypodermic syringe, seeking out gossip at summer resorts and whispering flattering rumours about one’s mistress, evading the attentions of the son of the household, and lending money to one’s employer at 25 per annum.

Of course the usual duties involve clear-starching, sitting up to all hours until one’s mistress returns from the ball, and reading over letters received from the lady’s admirers. One never knows when such innocent communications may be useful. Mrs Daffodil, who is something of a connoisseuse of that class of literature, has added substantially to her savings merely by neglecting to burn several little ribbon-tied packets, as instructed by various mistresses. She often grieves for her carelessness on wet afternoons.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

How to Spoil Servants: 1884

The Servant Question

When two lady-housekeepers meet it rarely happens that conversation does not drift in the direction of servants and the trouble they occasion in the household. A good servant, one who is faithful to duty and who identifies herself with the interests of the family, is the exception, and the indifferent, wasteful, and slovenly the rule. A much better state of things would doubtless prevail if more care were given to the orderly arrangement of servants’ work and duties as well as to their personal needs and comfort. Too often they are treated as mere working machines, and not as human beings with human needs, weaknesses, inherited peculiarities, and defective training. Nothing is done to lift them into self-respect or into a grateful sense of kindness and consideration. Until there is a great change in the way the average mistress treats the average servant, she will not get a better service than that of which she now so loudly complains.

The following, the source of which we do not know, is so excellent an example of the way in which to make good servant that we give it a place in our magazine. It will bear careful reading and cannot fail to lead some, who have not been as thoughtful as they might have been, to change their manner of treating domestic dependents:

“I never shall forget the servants’ sleeping-rooms in a very simple household I once was in. Everything was fresh and clean and wholesome-looking. The two iron bedsteads comfortably made, the window-curtains spotless, the two bureaus neatly arranged, the floor nicely matted, and with a strip of carpet before each bed, and on the wall some pretty colored pictures. The mistress of this genial, simple house told me that she labored for a year before she could induce her two maids to see the beauty and comfort of such order, but that now they felt it keenly, and it had affected their work and spirits very visibly. Near their kitchen was a small room, which Mrs. had fitted up snugly for a sitting-room and a place to take their meals in. There was a chest of drawers, in which were their napkins and tablecloths and their own bed-linen, and a nice glass-doored case showed their china. My friend told me that for some time her maids actually preferred to use the kitchen, but she finally won them over to a great pride in their neat little room, and she said the effect upon their characters and work was speedily visible. Occasionally she would bring in some flowers or pretty, inexpensive ornament for them; she took a good, illustrated weekly paper entirely for their use, requiring them to file it, and before long a genuine taste for refinement of surroundings and manner had developed. These two servants had come to her very uncouth and untutored, but certainly when I saw them, after three years’ residence with Mrs.___, they were by far the most refined, respectful, and well-mannered servants I have ever seen in America. Of course, some people would-aver this sort of consideration would ‘spoil’ a servant, but it seems to me that the very first means of teaching the servant to-day what she ought to do is to make her feel that her mistress’ house is her home, the place in which she is to live, not the place she is to work in as little as possible and escape from during every possible hour. A servant should be taught to respect the Lares and Penates about her as if they were her very own.”

Arthur’s Home Magazine, Volume 52, 1884

 

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  How very fortunate Mrs. ___ was, in having refined, respectful, and well-mannered servants! Mrs Daffodil wishes that she could say the same for the staff in the many various households in which she has served. There was Nancy, the still-room maid, decapitated in a romp with the young master. And Robert, a handsome footman, who became emeshed with Her Grace, the spoilt young American-born Duchess of Spofford and was fished out of the Thames, in a singularly less handsome state. To speak frankly, in the complex rush of life between master and staff, the staff seems doomed to end up dead or dismissed without a character.

One of the greatest evils of the Great War was that it demonstrated to many otherwise useful parlour-maids that there were occupations offering far more scope for pleasure than a life in service.

However, our plucky American cousins rose to the occasion. Here is the “servant co-operative,” which they developed:

The vexatious servant-girl question has at last been solved, at least to the satisfaction of fifteen Binghampton [New York, one presumes] women. They are the wives of clerks and small merchants who, owing to the hard times are not able to keep a corps of servants ; neither are they able to do their own house-work. They have organized what is called the “Housewife’s Circuit.” each member contributing two dollars a week. This furnishes them with a chamber-maid, who comes in every morning and does the house-work, and a cook, who calls and prepares the meals ready for placing over the fire, making the cooking process an ordinary and simple matter for the housewife. The sum thus realized allows the payment of eight dollars a week to the chamber-maid, twelve dollars a week to the cook, and five dollars a week to a woman who superintends affairs, sees that the customers are properly served, and makes collections. The plan has worked so well that it will doubtless be widely imitated. The Argonaut [San Francisco, CA] 2 May 1898

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales