“Not What They Used to Be”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17835, 1 May 1926, Page 17 (Supplement)

“Not What They Used to Be”

Servant Problem is Very Old One.

JpVERYONE nowadays is convinced A that servants are not what they were, and makes the complaint as if it were peculiar to the present age. As a matter of fact, similar regrets have always been expressed. Listen to Orlando addressing old Adam in "As You Like It":

O goQd old man how well in thee

appears The constant service of the antique

world, When service sweat for duty, not for

Thou art not for the fashion of these

Where none will sweat, but for pro-

Of course, the fact is that in every age there have been good servants and

bad servants, just as there have been good masters and bad masters. Thus in the Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby (1601-58) he complains that some of his cooks have “been without all measure disordered," says a writer in a British weekly-' “ When they have sometimes stolen abroad I should not hear of them for three or four days together,” and so forth. But on the other hand, we learn from another entry that his gardener “by extreme labour shortened his days." In the seventeenth century, and even in the eighteenth century, employers had no compunction in inflicting personal chastisement on their servants. Adam Eyre, another early diarist, confesses: “This night I whipped Jane for her foolishness, as yesterday I had done for her slothfulness, and hence I am induced to bewavle my sinfull life, for my failings in the presence of God Almighty are questionless greater than hers to me.” But this could have been no consolation to the unhappy girl. Pepys began housekeeping with a single maid, but as he prospered he added by degrees a cook, lady's maid,

page, coachman, etc. In IG6O he writes: “ Obesrving some things to be laid up not as they should be by my girl, I took a broom and basted her till she cried exceedingly, which made me vexed.” But his vexation did not save the girl from another beating, though apparently to save his own feelings he made his "wife to beat my little girl, and then we shut her down into the cellar, and there she lay all night.” Such brutality almost makes the reader gloat when a few years later he finds that Pepys was "troubled to sec that my servants should be the greatest trouble I have in the world.” Jti would be very unfair, however, to dwell too heavily on the severity of the and omit the other side of the picture. To a degree we find it difficult to imagine the servants formed part of the family as well as of the household. When Pepys took his wife and the two Mercers to Jamaica House for an outing he also took two of his maids, and the girls ran races for wagers. Their master naively relates how he enjoyed himself. ,