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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
THE ETHICS OF HOUSEKEEPING.
IN ALL SHADES.
TWO EVENINGS WITH BISMARCK.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
THE FLOATING ISLAND ON DERWENTWATER.
POPULAR LEGAL FALLACIES.
THE MOTHER’S VIGIL.
No. 110.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1886.
THE ETHICS OF HOUSEKEEPING.
The cry is everywhere the same—the badnessof our modern servants. But who is really toblame—the mistresses or the maids? the mastersor the employed? The one class are educated, theother are comparatively ignorant; and influencefilters downwards—it does not permeate thesocial mass from below. We cast longing looksbackward to the bygone times when servantswere the humble friends of the family, readyto serve for love and bare maintenance if badtimes came, and identifying themselves with thefortunes of their masters. But we forget thatwe ourselves have changed even more thanthey, since the days when mistresses overlookedthe maids in closer companionship than is warrantednow by the conditions of society—whendaily details were ordered by the lady, and theexecution of her orders was personally supervised—whenhousekeeping was at once an artand a pleasure, a science and a source of pride.Then young servants were trained immediatelyunder the eye of the mistress and by her directinfluence; as now they are trained under thehead servant of their special department. Andin this change of teachers alone, if no othercause were wanting, we could trace the source ofthe deterioration complained of.
The lady who, two generations ago, taughtthe still-room maid the mysteries of sirupsand confections, of jams and jellies and daintysweetmeats—who knew the prime joints, and thesigns of good meat, tender poultry, and freshfish, as well as the cook herself—who could goblindfold to her linen press and pick out thebest sheets from the ordinary, and knew byplace as well as by touch where the finer huckabacktowels were to be found and where thecoarser—who could check as well as instructthe housemaid at every turn—such a mistressas this, for her own part diligent, refined, truthful,God-fearing, was likely to give a highertone, infuse a more faithful and dutiful spiritinto her servants, than is possible now, whenthe thing is reduced to a profession like anyother, and the teacher is only technically, notmorally, in advance of the pupil. It is themistresses who have let the rein