KITCHEN ARISTOCRACY

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 6, 12 August 1905, Page 6

KITCHEN ARISTOCRACY

CASTE IN THE CLOTHES PRESS AND SOCIETY IN THE CELLAR

T is still an open and an I anxious question whether the fashionable society that has grown up in America SETTwS within the last ten or fifteen years constitutes a genuine ■kjHbjM aristocracy. The society itPHMPI self hopes so and tries to believe so, and struggles to mSmMBU f or get its uncertain tenure, its sordid basis and its humble ancestry. And it is encouraged in its pretensions by many thousands of agile and aggressive climbers who would not for worlds lose their delusion that their climbing has a goal and a goal worth achieving. But the uneasy doubts remain, and whenever one of the fashionables says, with a brave essay at the careless, mat-ter-of-fact tone, “We of the upper classes,” he can’t refrain from a furtive glance to see whether any one within hearing is laughing at him. No such uncertainty, however, exists in t hr* ease of the servants of wealth and fashion. They know that they themselves are an aristocracy, and they are determined that there shall be no doubt about their being the dignified, if menial, bulwarks of an aristocracy of their employers. These servants, both male and female, are not Americans. Once in a while you will find among them a naturalised American; once in a long while you will find a shamefaced, apologetic American-born. But they are essentially an immigrant aristocracy. In Europe, the “upper class” and its haughty servants are born to their lofty stations; here, the "upper class” is manufactured, largely out of watered stock and bonds and stolen franchises, and its servants are imported. It is the natural instinct of small people, suddenly elevated in material wealth, to try to believe that the wealth which relieves them of the necessity for daily labour* also producs a chemical change, refining transformation in the clay itself whereof their singularly human-looking bodies are composed. Against this instinct is the good old American sense of humour that recognises in the unerasable brotherhood of man Nature’s mocking rebuke to the vanities of pose and pretence. But few people’s sense of humour extends to themselves; and if they get the least encouragement, off they go on a high horse. The rich people of this country get a good deal of encouragement from their fellow-citizens ami from foreigners in the delusion that it is not their bank-accounts but them selves that are superior. But the fashionable section would never have gone so fast or so far in this hallucination had it not been for this imported menial aristocracy. SERVANTS WHO CONTROL THEIR MASTERS. When rich Americans first began to go abroad the servility of English servants offended. But custom soon chang ed that. Servility is insidious. The Americans, longing to feel themselves the equals of the complacent and secure upper class in England, and realising that they could never hope to get deferential respect from their fellow-country men even from those willing to go into domestic service—began to import servants. “The English servants are so much better, you know; understand their business and their place.” But the English servant's “place” in the social hierarchy is dependent upon his master’s

place. Whoever seeks to lower the master iu the social scale seeks to lower the servant. On the other hand, whatever raises the master socially raises the servant.

Once the imported members of the servile aristocracy were among us in considerable numbers they began to plot and to compel an aristocracy above them. The general theory is that these rich Americans who have gone crazy about themselves were infected by associating with the aristocracies of the Old World, and no doubt that association is partly responsible. But the main cause of the malady is that every American family living ostentatiously, or even at ail luxuriously, soon found established within its gates an aristocracy of caste that compelled the family to seem to put on airs. And any American family that assembles a household staff of these aristocrats will soon be strutting and posing, however hard it may strive to remain sensible. The servants simply won’t have it, and it isn’t in human nature, weakened by the example of all round it, to resist the subtle and insinuating compulsion of the “well-bred" hints and innuendos of "well-bred” servants. A man and a woman are no longer master and mistress in then* own house when they have an English butler backed up by half a dozen English foo.men, an English coachman and three or four English grooms. He and she will begin to cut pigeon-wings like a gay coloured gentleman on the first warm day. He and she will do it because the servants expect it, because the servants have convinced them that it is the correct form, because the servants will not tolerate any departure from the pose of “my lord” and “my lady”—and because such posings are so titillating to the vanity. And from striving to seem a truly “my lord” and a truly “my lady” before the "well-bred” butler and coachman and their henchman, the man and the woman pass naturally and by imperceptible stages on to making the same ludicrous struggle in all seriousness before their associates, all of whom are doing precisely the same silly thing from precisely the same silly cause. THE SALARY-LIST OF A “MODEST” ESTABLISHMENT. Fully to realise what a tremendous pressure this servile aristocracy entrenched in the privacy of the home can exert, let us glance at the composition of a fashionable household in America to-day. Take a family of some aspiring money-lender or stock swindler or franchise grabber who has got together in one way and another—principally another—a fortune of a dozen millions or so. There are himself, his wife with the longing to be “in it” or to keep “in it” gnawing at her, the grown son ami the grown daughter. Papa is willing to have the family show off, but he is not quite ready to go the limit. So the establishment is what other fashionable people call modest, and what his wife and two children tell him is “mean.” Here is the schedule—the domestic pay-roll: General Staff: Per month. Housekeeper, a broken-down "gentlewoman” $125 Butler, fortnerly with the Earl of Tyne and still with him In spit It.. 75 I’bef, a Frenchman, but thoroughly Anglicized In soul, though not in accent or cooking 80 Coachman, an Englishman, recently with her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Doodles 00 Chauffeur, a Frenchman, who speaks to nobody unless spoken to and keeps clear of the w-hole mess as much as possible 100

Housekeeper’s Staff: Two English parlourmaids, from the best English houses, most expert in handling bric-a-biac and such perishables. $25 each 4C Two very humble, very impudent English chambermaids, $2O each.... 4< A French laundress, who disdains all but the butler and the coachman, ables, $25 each sii A seamstress, a great gossip and an authority on "fashionable intelligence 30 A linen woman, daughter of an English tavern-keeper, whose glory was that he had been valet to a duke.. 25 A useful woman, for packing, etc., etc., most "respectable,’’ most English 30 A useful man, for heavy work, windows, errands, etc., an Englishman who shows that he is spiritually prostrate whenever a superior speaks to him 35 Three chambermaids, very EnglishIrish, at $22 each 66 Butler's Staff: Two Englishmen to stand in the hall in immaculate livery, white silk stockings, etc., etc., $3O each Go Two Englishmen, equally immaculate, to assist at table, etc., $3O each.... 60 Two other English assistants, not at all times immaculate, $25 each 50 Coachman's Staff: Four English grooms at an average of $25 each I<> > Chauffeur’s Staff: One assistant, learning the profession 60 Chefs Staff: An assistant, a Frenchwoman 25 Two English kitchen-maids or “scullions" at $lB each 36 Personal Servants: Valet to the master, a quiet, wellbred, insolent Englishman 60 Valet to the young master, an understudy to the other valet 55 Maid to Madame (French) 30 Maid to Mademoiselle (French) 25 Valet to the upper caste men-ser-servants (English) 35 Valet to the lower class men-servants (English) 30 Maids to the seivants, 3 at $lB (English-Irish) 54 Laundress to the servants (English).. 22 SOME EXTRAS TO COUNT IN. Quite a staff'—and it does not note Madame’s private secretary at $4O a month, or Mademoiselle’s visiting governess at $2OO a month, or extra servants of all kinds that are constantly coming and going. The total monthly pay-rod is never below $l7OO a month; often, in the height of the winter season in New York or of the summer season at Newport, it climbs up to $2OOO. And, putting the feeding of all these people at $2O apiece a month, which is exceedingly, ridiculously low, the board-bill would be more than $BOO a month. Then, naturally, all of them are as careless and as wasteful as they dare to be, and, wherever possible, corrupt in the taking of commissions from the “tradespeople.” This means a squandering of more than their wages and board together. But it is indeed a most "modest” establishment—there are at least a thousand in this country far more imposing. Why, our hero has not even provided servants for the servants of his servants! And, as everybody knows, that is always done in a really, bang-up, swell, firstclass establishment. Also his liveries, although what the tradespeople would call elegant, are not nearly so sumptuous as those of the neighbouring establishments.

But. dissatisfied though the servants are, they do their best to keep up appearances and they fight strenuously for the caste system. They are, roughly speaking, divided into five ranks. At

the top stand the chauffeur and the housekeeper. They are almost ‘"gentlefolk.” Next come butler and coachman and chef. Each admits the right of the other two to high rank, but each feels toward the others as they fancy a marquis must feel toward an earl. Below these high haughtinesses is the main body of servants with the lowest rank made up of stablemen, scullions, servants’ servants. Each servant fiercely insists upon his own station, and still more fiercely insists upon the lower station of those whom the code of caste has assigned there. And all the servants insist upon the aristocratic principle being enforced from top to bottom of the household. The “master” and his wife, the boy and the girl, know that if they for an instant drop the pose they will be the butt of ridicule and contempt in the servants’ hall. English servants do not, as a rule, like to come to this country. Few of the best class will consent to give up the splendour and assured aristocracy of England and go to live among a lot of vulgarians. Those few of the best who do condescend to exile themselves wear sad faces and show that they keenly feel the humiliation. For they cannot blind themselves to the truth that their masters and mistresses, striving hard to please and to delude, are still not really ladies and gentlemen, but just Americans. Have they titles? No. Do the common people doff the hat to them? No. Have they “ancestry”? They pretend to have, but the genealogical trees look about as much like real trees as the papier-maehe palm looks like the genuine thing. No, they are not aristocrats, and it pains the aristocratic servants to serve them much as it would pain a first gentleman of the bedchamber to King Edward to get on his knees to some “big nigger” who called himself Emperor of Ashanteeland. The commiseration of all sympathisers with sorrowful souls belongs of right to these aristocrats of menialdom in exile. FROM THE GARDENS OF MENIALDOM. The great mass of these imported servants, excepting those that come here for the chance to become men and women and to shake off servitude, are a worthless lot, weedings from those perfect English gradens of menialdom. And a hard time their American masters have with them. Insolence, shiftlessness, drunkenness, petty thieving, are tolerated to and beyond the most asinine patience; then, one furious day, the housekeeper, under orders from an outraged master or mistress, ejects the whole crew and gets in an entirely new lot. But this revolt of the downtrodden “upper classes” is rare and dangerous and often disastrous. For this servile aristocracy is a close corporation, very limited in members and fully awake to its own power over the plutocrats who must at any cost in money, manhood and discomfort have servility and an imitation of the English way of living. Woe, woe, woe unto the plutocrat who gets himself on the imported servants* black list! He may have actually to close in whole or in part his vast houses, and to cease from inviting in his hordes of rich friends to see 'how much better he is showihg off than are they. He may have to , call in coloured or plain Irish or Swedish servants, mostly women, to save him and his family from the horrors of waiting on themselves. But—bhe shrinks from pushing inquiry in so harrowing a direction.

I low long will it be before we h ive a home-grown menial aristocracy to bolster up and make strong our fashionable aristocracy? It may be longer than, one might imagine. - The educated people, the lawyers, superintendents, merchants, social, political and financial hangerson. who serve the plutocracy fall easily into servile habits. The big corporation lawyer and his family, the $50,000 a year dummy railway president and his family, eagerly pay court to the great plutocrat, bow and scrape and mould themselves to his and his family's humours. But lhe “lower (lasses” here remain obstinately insolent. They go into plutocratic domestic service only under stress; they act in a manner that exasperates their servility-seeking employers: they leave as soon as they can get any sort of job anywhere. Also, they rouse the soundly sleeping or stunned manhood and womanhood of the imported aristocracyadoring servants, and so compel the constant recruiting of the ranks of the menial aristocracy by fresh importations. ('ntil tills obstinacy of the ‘’lower classes" is overcome, the plutocracy will not feel secure. The college graduate will crook the hinges o-f the knee for its benefit, in vain. It will see only the grin of the democratic “proletariat.” “Post,*’ Philadelphia.