Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1883-12-04
Gecrge Eliot on Servants.
WISE MASTERS AND MISTRRsSES WILL NOT
ARGUE WITH THEM
From the Pail Mall Gazette

From the Pail Mall Gazette.l
Some eighteen years ago we published in
this journal an article by the late George
Eliot on Servants Logic" which. if it
had appeared under her name, would have
| received much more notice than that which
was actually accorded it. Nor did many
people know at the time that the foremost
of female novelists was among the contrib
utors to this journal, The article, although
perhaps not in George Eliot's best style, is
nevertheless sufficiently characteristic to in
duce us to reproduce it in our columns to-day
After describing the dismay with which
hostess discovers that the scalloped oysters
with which she would fain load friends
plate have been served with their boards
on, and the troubles of dyspeptic physi-
ologist, with weakness for spinach, who
has vainly endeavored to impress on the
cook the Importance of thoroughly squeez-
ing green-vegetables, the writer proceeds:
again, you desire soup, but desire it
without fat. You are perhaps genius;
the world is in need of your new poem, or
you are evolving a momentous theory and
the evolution of fatty acids within yon is a
perfect impediment. Your mental activity
is reduced to the consciousness that inter
esting facts in animal chemistry are going
on within you; you begin to think you can
serve mankind only by leaving your body
for dissection. At length you ask your
wife, with hardly suppressed peevishness
and unusual emphasis ON my DEAR to in
quire into the making of the SOUP Your
wife, who is rather frightened at the cook,
tells her that Mr.. Queasy, in spite of his
orders. discerned fatty particles in the soup
yesterday. It's a thing impossible there
can be fat, mum-for skimming and every
thing-there's nothing neglected in nly
power" Show me your cold stock Exit
Sally, returning with vessel in one hand
and spoon in the other There is white
See, now, Sally, there is fatp La, mum, ,
says Sally, plunging her spoon in and turn
| ing up the .jellied soup from beneath as
gardener turns the soil when he is digging
for roots, the cold fat getting underneath
in the process, that's nothing; besides, l
| take my soup from under, and 1 take the
fat off with the spoon (The spoon itself
is studded plenteously with fragments of
cold fat.) But unless you wash your spoon
each time you dip it, there will be fat, and
however little, Mr.. Queasy suffers from it.
Besides (Mrs. 0. here exerts all her
| courage)-'it belongs to good cook to send
up her soup free from fat Sally smiles
bitterly. La, mum, do you think when l
was at Nunehamgate, and there was people
of all sorts coming to the house, as l could
have that satisfaction-an Scotch people
wanting things you might think no Chris
tian 'ud touch-aud Mr.. Tooley, the gen.
tleman with the wooden leg, praising my
soup and saying he never tasted better?
But there's stomachs will not stand soup,
and that's where it is (Here Sally shakes
her head and sighs, as is her won't when
Ic an 10 inf of
things.) 'And as I've said to Jane many
and many's the time, if gentlefolks' con-
stitutions are of that sort, it's no wonder
what comes. l said SO only yesterday,
when l was draining the rice, and the cat
eating the white sauce all the while, and
me not knowing. It's true what speak
every word" Here Sally sets down the
vessel OF stock emphatically, and tapping
the outside of it with her finger-ends, looks
hard out of the window. Mrs. Queasy is
nonplussed. If she says more, Sally will
give warning, she draws her dress round
her crinoline, and rustles up stairs again
"Servants are rich in intuitions. They
have a vast number of certainties which
are deep by reason of their groundlessness.
The postman brings letter for Maria; she
was sure he would-she didn't know from
whom it would come, and if you were to
knock her down she couldn't tell you why;
but this morning when she got out of bed
and drew up the blind and saw the wind
blowing the leaves about, she seemed to
see the postman coming with the letter in
his hand. You make great mistake if
you suggest certain conditions which might
have given rise to the expectation. She
rejects such low-minded analysis of her
certainty. No; there was no reason why
she should expect letter this morning
more than any other; but so it was-and it
was the same once before, when the dish
cover fell and got bruised; she had said at
breakfast something would happen that
day she knew. But as to your certainties
for which you allege arguments, the same
Maria considers them offensive unless they
are to be overcome by her assertion. If
you will not believe that looking-glass is
cloudy and spotty in spite of daily, diligent
rubbing, or that the steel of all your va
riously procured stoves happens to be of so
peculiar quality that it will not take
polish, she thinks she has right to feel
offended. If, however, she happens to be
in good humor she will, perhaps, observe
apropos of the steel, that at one place
where she lived there was a bright fender
with sharp edge, and the nurse let the
child fall on it and cut herself and when
she has given you all the circumstances at
| tendant on this event. the name Of the doc
! tor who was called in and what he said,
she will feel that she has readiusted her
position as polisher of stoves.
''On the whole, servants are little dis
posed to think that the opinions of gentle
folks can have any practical value for them,
Our remedies, our methods, our explana-
tions are like the drapery and tailoring we
pay so much for; they correspond to the
supposed scale of our income; but servants,
for their part get their stuffs and their
views from other quarters. The cure for
| gentleman's toothache is not likely to suit
Sally molar so well as the cure recommend
ed by the grocer's boy on the authority of
his first cousin, who went about with
blue handkerchief around his head for
weeks and weeks, And for the probabili-
ties concerning the dryness of the coming
summer, or the guilt of the man last taken
up for murder, the person to be consulted
who serves very good families, and whose
husband is in the carrying line.
''The moral of all this is, that wise mas
ters and mistresses will not argue with their
servants, will not give them reasons, will
not consult them. A mild yet firm author
| ity which vigorously demands that certain
things be done without urging motives or
entering into explanations, is both preferred
by the servants themselves and is the best
means OF educating them into any improve
ment of their methods and habits. Au-
thority and tradition are the chief, almost
the only safe guides of the uninstructed-
are the chief means of developing the
crude mind, whether childish or adult.
Reason about everything with your child,
you make him monster, without rever-
ence, without affections. Reason about
things with your servants, consult them,
give them the suffrage, and you produce no
other effect in them than sense OF an
archy in the house, suspicion of irreso-
luteness in you, the most opposed to that
spirit of order and promptitude which can
alone enable them to fill their places well
and make their lives respectable"
A newly married lady was telling another
how nicely her husband could write. ooh,
you should just see some of his love letters"
I