Chapter 15

Chapter 154,272 wordsPublic domain

SERVANTS

The first thing that English people notice about German servants is, that they are allowed to dress anyhow, and that the results are most unpleasing. In Hamburg, the city that gives you ox-tail soup for dinner and has sirloins of beef much like English sirloins, the maids used to wear clean crackling, light print gowns with elbow sleeves. This was their full dress in which they waited at table, and fresh looking country girls from Holstein and thereabouts looked very well in it. This costume is being superseded in Hamburg to-day by the English livery of a black frock with a white cap and apron. But in other German cities, in the ordinary middle-class household, the servants wear what they choose on all occasions. In most places they are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decolletee, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating ends, and an enormous brooch of sham diamonds. In South Germany the servants wear a great deal of indigo blue: stuff skirts of plain blue woollen, with blouses and aprons of blue cotton that has a small white pattern on it. Some ladies keep smart white aprons to lend their servants on state occasions, but the laciest apron will not do much for a girl in a sloppy coloured blouse with a plaid neck-tie. But these same girls who look such slovens usually have stores of tidy well-made body linen and knitted stockings. In England a servant of the better class will not be seen out of doors in her working-dress. "In London," says the Idealist in her Memoirs, "no woman of the people, no servant-girl will stir a step from the house without a hat on her head, and this is one of the ugliest of English prejudices. While the clean white cap worn by a French maid looks pretty and suitable, the Englishwoman's hat which makes her "respectable" is odious, for it is usually dirty, out of shape, and trimmed with faded flowers and ribbons." It gives me pleasure to quote this criticism made by an observant German on our English servants, partly because it is true, and it is good for us to hear it, and partly because it encourages me to continue my criticism of German as compared with English servants. For it ought to be possible to criticise without giving offence. The Idealist has a very poor opinion of English lodging-house bedrooms and lodging-house keepers, and she states her opinion quite plainly, but I cannot imagine that anyone in this country would be hurt by what she says. On the contrary, it is amusing to find the ills from which most of us have suffered at times recognised by the stranger within our gates. None of us admire the battered tawdry finery we see in our streets every day, and I cannot believe that German ladies admire the shocking garments in which their servants will come to the door and wait at table. But though these clothes are sloppy looking and unsuitable, they are never ragged; and the girl who puts on an impossible tie and blouse will also wear an impeccable long white apron with an embroidered monogram you can see across the room. In most towns servants go shopping or to market with a large basket and an umbrella. They do not consider a hat or a stuff gown necessary, for they are not in the least ashamed of being servants. Some years ago they made no attempt to dress like ladies when they went out for themselves, and even now what they do in this way is a trifle compared to the extravagant get-up of an English cook or parlour-maid on a Sunday afternoon. A German girl in service is always saving with might and main to buy her _Aussteuer_, and as she gets very low wages it takes her a long time. She needs about _L_30, so husbands are not expensive in Germany in that class. German servants get less wages than ours, and work longer hours. Speaking out of my own experience, I should say that they were indefatigable, amiable, and inefficient. They will do anything in the world for you, but they will not do their own work in a methodical way. A lady whose uncle at one time occupied an important diplomatic post in London, told me that her aunt was immensely surprised to find that every one of her English servants knew his or her work and did it without supervision, but that none of them would do anything else. The German lady, not knowing English ways, used to make the mistake at first of asking a servant to do what she wanted done instead of what the servant had engaged to do; but she soon found that the first housemaid would rather leave than fill a matchbox it was the second housemaid's "place" to fill; and what surprised her most was to find that her English friends sympathised with the housemaids and not with her. "We believe in everyone minding his own business," they said.

"We believe that it is the servant's business to do what his employer wants," says the German.

"You must tell him what you want when you engage him," you say. "Then he can take your place or leave it."

"But that is impossible ... _Unsinn_ ... _Quatsch_...." says the German indignantly. "How can I tell what I shall want my servant to do three months hence on a Monday morning. _Das hat keinen Zweck._"

"I know exactly what each one of my servants will do three months hence on a Monday morning," you say. "It is quite easy. You plan it all out...."

But you will never agree. The German has his or rather her own methods, and you will always think her unmethodical but thrifty and knowledgeable, and she will always think you extravagant and ignorant, but "chic," and on these terms you may be quite good friends. In most German households there is no such thing as the strict division of labour insisted on here. Your cook will be delighted to make a blouse for you, and your nurse will turn out the dining-room, and your chambermaid will take the child for an airing. They are more human in their relation to their employers. The English servant fixes a gulf between herself and the most democratic mistress. The German servant brings her intimate joys and sorrows to a good _Herrschaft_, and expects their sympathy. When a girl has bad luck and engages with a bad _Herrschaft_ she is worse off than in England, partly because when German housekeeping is mean it sounds depths of meanness not unknown, but extremely rare here; and also because a German servant is more in the power of her employers and of the police than an English one. Anyone who has read Klara Viebig's remarkable novel, _Das Taegliche Brot_ (a story of servant life in Berlin) will remember the mistress who kept every bit of dainty food under lock and key, and fed the kitchen on soup-meat all the year round. The chambermaid gives way in a moment of hunger and temptation, manages to get the key, and is discovered by the worthless son of the house stealing cakes. He threatens her with exposure if she will not listen to his love-making. Even if there was no son and no love-making, a girl who once steals cakes in Germany may go from place to place branded as a thief. Because every servant has to have a _Dienstbuch_, which is under the control of the police, and has to be shown to them whenever she leaves her situation. There is no give and take of personal character in Germany. Ladies do not see the last lady with whom a girl has lived. They advertise or they go to a registry office where servants are waiting to be engaged. In Berlin every third house seems to be a registry office, and you hear as many complaints of the people who keep them as you hear here. So the government has set up a large Public Registry in Charlottenberg, where both sides can get what they want without paying fees. But servants are not as scarce in Germany yet as they are here and in America. German ladies tell you they are scarce, but it is only true in comparison with a former state of things. In comparison with London, servants are still plentiful in Germany. When a lady finds a likely looking girl at an office, she either engages her at once on the strength of the good character in her _Dienstbuch_, or, if she is very particular, she takes her home and discusses things with her there. The engagement is not completed until the lady has filled in several forms for police inspection; while the servant has to take her _Dienstbuch_ to the police station both when she leaves and when she enters a situation. It is hardly necessary to say that when a girl does anything seriously bad, and her employers record it in the book, the book gets "lost." Then the police interfere and make things extremely disagreeable for the girl. A friend told me that in the confusion of a removal her own highly valued servant lost her _Dienstbuch_, or rather my friend lost it, for employers usually keep it while a girl is in their service; and though she took the blame on herself, and explained that the book was lost, the police were most offensive about it. In the end the book was found, so I am not in a position to say what penalties my friend and her maid would have incurred if they had never been able to produce it. But Germans have often told me that servants as a class have real good reason to complain of police insolence and brutality. Here is an entry from a German servant's _Dienstbuch_, with nothing altered but the names. On the first page you found the following particulars:--

GESINDE-DIENSTBUCH

Fuer Anna Schmidt. Aus Rheinbeck. Alt Geb. 20 Juni 1885. Statur Schlank. Augen Grau. Nase } Gewoehnlich. Mund } Haare Dunkelblond. Besondere Merkmale

_Official stamp._ (_Official signature of Amtsvorsteher._)

Then came the record of her previous situations:--

Key: A: NR. B: NAME, STAND, UND WOHNUNG DER DIENERSCHAFT C: INHABER IST ANGENOMMEN ALS D: TAG DES DIENSTANTRITTS E: TAG DES DIENSTAUSTRITTS F: GRUND DES DIENSTAUSTRITTS UND DIENSTABSCHIEDS--ZEUGNISS G: BEGLAUBIGUNG UND BEMERKUNG DER POLIZEI-BEHOeRDE

It will be seen that the characters given tell nothing about a servant's qualities and knowledge; while the vague complaint that Anna Schmidt's behaviour no longer suited her mistress might mean anything or nothing. In this case it meant that a son of the house had annoyed the girl with his attentions, and she had in consequence treated him with some brusquerie. But ten minutes' talk with a lady who knows the best and the worst of a servant is worth any _Dienstbuch_ in Germany. And when English servants write to the _Times_ and ask to have the same system here, I always wonder how they would like their failings sent with them from place to place in black and white; every fresh start made difficult, and every bad trait recorded against them as long as they earn their daily bread.

Wages are much lower in Germany than here. Some years ago you could get a good cook for from L7 to L12, but those days are past. Now you hear of a general servant getting from L10 to L12, and a good plain cook from L15 upwards. These are servants who would get from L22 to L30 in England, and more in America. But the wages of German servants are supplemented at Christmas by a system of tips and presents that has in course of time become extortionate. Germans groan under it, but every nation knows how hard it is to depart from one of these traditional indefinite customs. The system is hateful, because it is neither one of free gift nor of business-like payment, but hovers somewhere between and gives rise to much friction and discontent. In a household account book that a friend allowed me to see I found the following entry. "Christmas present for the servant. 30 marks in money. Bed linen, 9.50. Pincushion, 1.5. Five small presents. In all 42 marks. _Was not contented._" This was a general servant in a family of two occupying a good social position, but living as so many Germans do on a small income. But then the servant's wages for doing the work of a large well-furnished, well-kept flat was L14, and these same friends told me that servants now expect to get a quarter of their wages in money and presents at Christmas. A German servant gets a great deal more help from her mistress, and is more directly under her superintendence, than she would be in a household of the same social standing in this country. I have heard an English lady say that when she had asked people to dinner she made it a rule to go out all day, because if she did not her servants worried her with questions about extra silver and other tiresome details. All the notable housewives in England will say that this lady was a "freak," and must not be held up to the world as an English type. But I think there is something of her spirit in many Englishwomen. They engage their servants to do certain work, and hold them responsible. The German holds herself responsible for every event and every corner in her husband's house, and she never for a moment closes her eyes and lets go the reins. The servants are used to working hand in hand with the ladies of the household, and do not regard the kitchen as a department belonging exclusively to themselves after an early hour in the morning.

"Why did you leave your last place?" you say to an English cook applying for yours.

"Because the lady was always in the kitchen," she replies quite soberly and civilly. "I don't like to see ladies in my kitchen at all hours of the day. It is impossible to get on with the work."

But in Germany the kitchen is not the cook's kitchen. It belongs to the people who maintain it, and they enter it when they please. It is always so spick and span that you sigh as you see it, because you think of your own kitchen at home with its black pans and unpleasant looking sink. _There are no black pans in a German kitchen_; you never see any grease, and you never by any chance see a teacloth or a duster with a hole in it. An English kitchen in a small household is furnished with more regard to the comfort of the servants than a German one, and with less concern for the work to be done there. We supply comfortable chairs, a coloured table-cloth, oil-cloth, books, hearth-rug, pictures, cushions, inkstand, and a roaring fire. The German kitchen lacks all these things. It does not look as if the women who live in it ever expected to pursue their own business, or rest for an hour in an easy chair. But the shining brightness of it rejoices you,--every vessel is of wood, earthenware, enamel, or highly polished metal, and every one of them is scrupulously clean. The groceries and pudding stuffs are kept in fascinating jars and barrels, like those that come to children at Christmas in toy kitchens made in Germany. The stove is a clean, low hot table at which you can stand all day without getting black and greasy. In this sensible spotless workshop a German servant expects to be busy from morning till night. Neither for herself nor for her fellow-servants will she ever set a table for a tidy kitchen meal. She eats anywhere and anywhen, as the fancy takes her and the exigencies of the day permit. Her morning meal will consist of coffee and rye bread without butter. In the middle of the morning she will have a second breakfast, rye bread again with cheese or sausage. In a liberal household she will dine as the family dines; in a stingy one she will fare worse than they. In an old-fashioned household her portion will be carved for her in the dining-room, because the joint will not return to the kitchen when the family has done with it, but be placed straightway in the _Speiseschrank_ under lock and key. In the afternoon she will have bread and coffee again, and for supper as a rule what the family has, sausage or ham or some dish made with eggs. One friend who goes out so much with her husband that they are rarely at home to supper, told me that she made her servant a monthly allowance to buy what she liked for supper. German servants are allowed coffee and either beer or wine, but they are never given tea. Except for the scarcity of butter in middle-class households, they live very well.

They go out on errands and to market a great deal, but they do not go out as much for themselves as our servants do. A few hours every other Sunday still contents them in most places. Their favourite amusement is the cheap public ball, and the careful German householder is actually in the habit of trusting the key of the flat to his maid-of-all-work, and allowing her to return at any hour of the night she pleases. This at any rate is the custom in Berlin and some other large German towns, and the evil results of such a system are manifold. Over and over again burglaries have been traced to it. One beguiling man engages your maid to dance and sup with him, while his confederate gets hold of her key and comfortably rifles your rooms. On the girls themselves these entertainments are said to have the worst possible influence, and most sensible Germans would put a stop to them if they could.

You must not expect in Germany to have hot water brought to you at regular intervals as you do in every orderly English household. The Germans have a curious notion that English life is quite uniform, and all English people exactly alike. One man, a notably wise man too, said to me that if he knew one English family he knew ten thousand. Another German told me that this account of German life would be impossible to write, because one part of Germany differed from the other part; but that a German could easily write the same kind of book about England, because from Land's End to John o' Groats we were so many peas in a pod. To us who live in England and know the differences between the Cornish and the Yorkshire people, for instance, or the Welsh and the East Anglians, this seems sheer nonsense. I have tried to understand how Germans arrive at it, and I believe it is by way of our cans of hot water brought at regular intervals every day in the year in every British household. I remember that their machine-like precision impressed M. Taine when he was in England, and certainly miss them sadly while we are abroad. Gretchen brings you no hot water unless you ask for it; but she will brush your clothes as a matter of course, though she does all the work of the household. She will, however, be hurt and surprised if you do not press a small coin into her hand at the end of each week, and one or two big ones at parting. One friend told me that when she stayed with her family at a German hotel her German relatives told her she should give the chambermaid a tip that was equal to 20 pf. for each pair of boots cleaned during their stay. It seems an odd way of reckoning, because the chambermaid does not clean boots. However, the tip came to L3, which seems a good deal and helps to explain the ease with which German servants save enough for their marriage outfit on small wages. It is usual also to tip the servant where you have supped or dined. Your opportunity probably comes when she precedes you down the unlighted stairs with a lantern or a candle to the house door. But you need not be at all delicate about your opportunity. You see the other guests make little offerings, and you can only feel that the money has been well earned when you have eaten the elaborate meal she has helped to cook, and has afterwards served to you.

Domestic servants come under the law in Germany that obliges all persons below a certain income to provide for their old age. The Post Office issues cards and 20 pf. stamps, and one of these stamps must be dated and affixed to the card every Monday. Sometimes the employers buy the cards and stamps, and show them at the Post Office once a month; sometimes they expect the servant to pay half the money required. Women who go out by the day to different families get their stamps at the house they work in on Mondays. If a girl marries she may cease to insure, and may have a sum of money towards her outfit. In that case she will receive no Old Age Pension. But if she goes on with her insurance she will have from 15 to 20 marks a month from the State after the age of 70. In cases of illness, employers are legally bound to provide for their domestic servants during the term of notice agreed on. At least this is so in Prussia, and the term varies from a fortnight to three months. In some parts of Germany servants are still engaged by the quarter, but in Berlin it has become unusual of late years. The obligation to provide for illness is often a heavy tax on employers, especially in cases when the illness has not been caused by the work or the circumstances of the situation, but by the servant's own carelessness and folly. Most householders in Berlin subscribe 7.50 a year to an insurance company, a private undertaking that provides medical help, and when necessary sends the invalided servant to a hospital and maintains her there. It even pays for any special food or wine ordered by its own doctor.

One cause of ill health amongst German servants must often be the abominable sleeping accommodation provided for them in old-fashioned houses. It is said that rooms without windows opening to the air are no longer allowed in Germany, and there may be a police regulation against them. Even this cannot have been issued everywhere, for not long ago I had a large well furnished room of this kind offered me in a crowded hotel. It had windows, but they opened on to a narrow corridor. The proprietor was quite surprised when I said I would rather have a room at the top of the house with a window facing the street. I know a young lady acting as _Stuetze der Hausfrau_ who slept in a cupboard for years, the only light and air reaching her coming from a slit of glass over the door. I remember the consumptive looking daughter of a prosperous tradesman showing us some rooms her father wished to let, and suggesting that a cupboard off a sitting-room would make a pleasant study. She said she slept in one just like it on a higher floor. Of course she called it a _Kammer_ and not a cupboard, but that did not make it more inviting. Over and over again I have known servants stowed away in holes that seemed fit for brooms and brushes, but not for creatures with lungs and easily poisoned blood. This is one of the facts of German life that makes comparison between England and Germany so difficult and bewildering. Everyone knowing both countries is struck by the amount of State and police surveillance and interference the Germans enjoy compared with us. I do not say "endure," because Germans would not like it. Most of them approve of the rule they are used to, and they tell us we live in a horrid go-as-you-please fashion with the worst results. I suppose we do. But I have never known an English servant put to sleep in a cupboard, though I have heard complaints of damp fireless rooms, especially in old historical palaces and houses. And I have never been offered a room in a good English inn that had no windows to the open air. These windowless rooms may be forbidden as bedrooms by the German police, but it would take a bigger earthquake than the empire is likely to sustain to do away with those still in use.