Feminine Interests

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 21

Feminine Interests

Some Domestic Communism

A Job-of-Work for Our Ladies of High Station

Recently it was whispered that, when society returns to town after the holidays, two prominent hostesses intend to open a servants’ registry office. Everyone applying for a job-of-work will belong to the “leisured classes.” '

arately instituted servants’ menus? And “sacking" a stately Niobe dissolved in tears because of a hopeless setback at the dawn of her economic enfranchisement? And all manner of similar little contingencies that concern the immemorial relationship of domestic employer and employee? Or will all this go by the board, as it were, and our Best People establish the true communism on ,a domestic scale? This post-war world is ripe for anything. Imagine the position of the harassed dinner-party hostess, for instance, who senses an unnerving boredom among her younger guests, and is poignantly aware that a former member of the Bright Young People set, possessed of inspirational genius on the ukulele, is remotely engaged—at the moment of her mistress’s acutest discomfiture — in kitchen activities. Could she resist the uncontrollable impulse to requisition her kitchen maid’s services as social entertainer, imploring her to don an evening dress with all speed and save the situation? On the other hand, if the chatelaine of the ancient regime finds the prospect of drastic social readjustments disconcerting, if she clings to the old /)rder of the domestic staff in the face of aristocratic aspirations to cap-amj-apron status, how will the position work out then?

According to the same report it is calculated that, in a year’s time, the labour market will be deluged with servants from the best set, the majority of whom can find nothing to do in the professions or in clerical circles.

Well, well! It will be intriguing to see how this experiment works out in practice. Will the effect be to empty our best abodes of working democracy? For one jumps to the natural conclusion that the new domestic helps of the “leisured classes” will wish to confine their ministrations to their habitual haunts. It is a little difficult to visualise Miss (or Mrs.) Vere de Vere wu'estling with the intricate scullery problems of a typical suburban household.

Another Servant Problem

If, therefore, as seems the only likely probability, Mary Ann of The Best -Suburb has to make way for more illustrious company, will the further effect be to restock middleclass kitchens with The Best Suburb’s wholesale rejections? In a word, will the middle-class servant problem be solved at last? .

There is another aspect of the case that presents itself for piquant consideration. It may be that The Best chatelaines might experience certain qualms about welcoming to their kitchens the “deluge” of demoiselles declasses, so to speak. Not altogether enviable might be the position of a lady playing the role of domestic employer to a former vis-a-vis, let us say, at a bridge table, or an erstwhile acquaintance of a country-house party. . . . How will she feel about a social equal tajcing meals in the servants’ quarters, while the family dines above stairs? And the time-honoured, sep-

If the need of the feminine Upper Ten so urgent that the registry-office hostesses would be graciously “at home”—on behalf of distinguished employers—to Mrs. Ponsonby-Smythe and Mrs. Choimondeley-Walker? What a' flutter in suburban dovecotes'! Anyhow, and whatever the outcome, it’s all very quaint, this ultimate working out of the position that has left no room in the professions or in clerical circles for the impoverished ladies of the “leisured classes,” and that drives them into the one arena for which feminine democracy has no manner of use. Well, the ladies have pluck. Here’s wishing them the best of pot luck!