THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTIC HELP.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3, 3 January 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTIC HELP.

• article in an English f/A\ximii excnan S' e shows that in %t| tlie matter d° m estic AtNeßßßjitf service the difficulties T ex P er i encec l i- 11 getting domestic servants in

English-speaking communities are not possibly as unpleasant as the peculiarities of the servants of some foreign countries. To learn the value of the British domestic, says the writer, one must go abroad. In the households of the Czarina of Russia, the German Empress, the Queen of Sweden and Norway, and the young Queen Helena, of Italy, the English nursery governess is a power behind the throne, and pretty nearly every reigning Sovereign of Europe seems to have been nursed and taught by an English maid before he passed on to the throne.

And the lead of royalty is followed by the great nobles, especially in Kussia. The Consort of the Grand Duke Michael, resident in England, has commended English nurses to many a Russian household. All over Europe there are English nurses in the great houses, just as there are Englishmen in charge of the great stables.

In the United States the best servants are English, but the most numerous are the Irish. They are always full of fun, lavish in. smashing crockery, deeply religious, never silent, the mainstay of the comic papers and the Irish Parliamentary funds, subscribing liberally for cathedrals or any conspiracy which uses dynamite. They promote cheerfulness, but marry politicians. In the colonies the British maid is a "problem." She engages with a family outward bound from Home, is seasick until she lands, cheerful when she sniffs the colonial air. Then she looks round and marries to her great advantage and the despair, of her deserted mistress. It is announced that 70,000 English maids are urgently needed in South Africa. They will go, they will marry, and they will return, some of them loaded with diamonds. That has been done before. The Sherifa of Wazan, in Morocco, and Florence, Maharanee

of Patiala, reigning princesses, went out as nursery governesses from England.

But with all the foreign demand for English maids there are conditions in many countries from which the most daring would shrink.

Even a downtrodden "stop-gap" would not go to France at the French wages of £5 a year for the good domestic, or the 4d an hour of the visiting maid who corresponds in Paris with our Saturday charwoman.

The French maM is very clever, and if she can get permission to pay the weekly bills, collects 5 per cent, commission from all the family tradesmen. But English wages would eeem to her like a fortune. Only in wealthy households has she a chance to get plump. ; ■ We scarcely know in rural England such tragic poverty as that which ; rives women from many parts of Europe to abandon their own children and seek employment as nurse-

maids in the cities.

The mountain women of the Pyrenees have a monopoly of nursing the children of the rich in Madrid, the from the valley of the Spree uipply the like want in Berlin, and Breton or Norman women are the nurses of Paris, while Montenegrin peasants swarm to Rome. In Paris one may know the nursemaid's prosperity uy the length ami splendour of her cap ribbons, trailing to the heels,

A task which occupies the somewhat leisurely Mexican domestic the greater part of the working day.

and in the other capitals they wear beautiful peasant costumes. These "costume nurses," however they may have suffered by the wrench which tore them from their native districts, have a very good time in service. By doctor's orders the "nurse" must not be crossed or contradicted, so rules both her mistress and the household with iron rigour, making herself as disagreeable as she pleases. She adopts the children, who are barred by etiquette from knowing their own

mother except as a visiting stranger,

The quaintest of all domestic service is in Russia, where the peasants have only lately been released from slavery, and for fear of starvation in winter flock to the houses of the nobles, where they smash the crockery in grateful return for mere board and lodging. The Russian lady, always merciful to the poor., finds her house overrun by useless but humble retainers with swarms of children, and when she hopes to rest there is sure to be a forlorn maid scratching the door like a little rat because she dare not knock.

To stop the scratching she is admitted, then, falling on her knees, kisses the foot of the mistress, pleading with tears that she did not know it was wrong to boil potatoes in a silver dish.

As to the upper servants, they march into the most private rooms, disdaining to knock at the door, and if a guest is dressing the maids think nothing of taking a short cut through the room rather than go round by the passage. If the guest is displeased they will abjectly kiss his hands, wondering wnat on earth has put him out of temper.

In Japan the maids are so courteous that in the master's absence they take his place, doing the honours to any stranger who calls, and placing the house at his disposal. In Mexico the maids spend more than half their day grinding the Indian corn between two stones for the thin cakes of meal which taste like damp brown paper, and together with brown beans and peppers form almost the whole national diet.

But in every country, amid endless diversity ojE habits and manners, one finds loyal and devoted service, except among the American "lady" helps of the United States. That peculiar service may be summed up in the experience of the writer, who once in a western hotel left a note on his empty water-jug, "Water wanted here," and went away with the delusion that the omission would be promptly remedied by the chambermaid. On his return the paper was reversed, and a reply had been written on the back, "Pump in the backyard." That is why the American household engages Irish, Swede, Chinese, negro, anybody, anything, to escape the "lady" help.