TRAINING THE MISTRESS.

BY A COOS..

BEFORE undertaking work as a domestic servant I had had considerable experience, as a member of the family, as guest, or as mistress, in a variety of establishments from a two-roomed cottage on the Gairloch, town and country houses and flats, to a Govern- ment House in an Eastern Province, with corresponding absence, or staff, of servants. Frankly, I was smugly complacent that I knew how to run a house in rather a competent manner.

To me household management from the point of view of the kitchen was distinctly illuminating.

The cook, she who now addresses the readers of the Spectator, was aware of several deficiencies in her equip- ment as a domestic servant ; for example, she had never scrubbed a floor, never cleaned a grate, nor swept flues, never done a day's washing, in spite of all her vaunted first- hand acquaintance with domestic work. She knew nothing of kitchen etiquette. Even her cooking (her strong suit) was imperfect, she had never had the courage to toss a pancake ; but of her deficiencies as a mistress she was sublimely ignorant.

In her first place—she was discreet enough to choose a bachelor establishment—she was working housekeeper, really a cook-general, with a young girl of seventeen to train.

Difficulty number one : How long should a girl take to tidy up a room each day, clean it out once a week, do the stairs and hall, steps, &c. ? She hadn't the remotest idea ; she had always either done the work herself, or employed trained servants. Before the War there were still sufficient to do everything that was required, if the money to pay their wages were available. When she did the work herself she was always able to do it how she liked, and when she liked. When she employed others she followed accepted traditions.

Now, if she were to be just to the little maid she had to have definite knowledge of the amount of work that should be required of her in a certain time. It wasn't fair to let the girl have too much margin for loitering, looking out of windows, or surreptitious reading of novelettes. No good upper servant would allow this. Most sincerely she wished she had- gone through the whole routine, as a girl in some large establishment. beginning as between-maid and going step by step through either kitchen or house. She never ceased to wish this during all her five years' service, and afterwards.

Whilst meditating on the subject, she remembered in a flash an incident of former days : a French maid-servant had aroused her wrath by neglecting a piece of work ; quick as lightning her mistress had done it herself from beginning to end.

" You see," she remarked, when she had finished, " it doesn't take long."

Quietly, but respectfully, Angele replied : " No, Madame, but if a servant worked as Madame does, she couldn't keep on."

Nota bene.—A mistress must know exactly how long every piece of cleaning in the house takes to do, always remembering that the day's work has to continue till the whole is finished. If it is done very quickly there must be corresponding intervals of rest.

At a training school work is taught in sections, some- times detached from its proper sequence. In a house the whole must be harmonized. It is not unusual for a highly certificated school-trained cook to be absolutely at a loss when first starting to prepare a meal for a moderate- sized household.

It is being part of a harmonious whole that is one of the chief values of household training compared with school class work.

The first business of a mistress is to set up a reasonable standard of method and time for each task. Until this is 'done no fair time-table can be made. It must also be remembered that a highly-trained worker will dispatch the work more quickly than a beginner ; the medium has to be sought and found.

American women who have suffered from servant shortage far longer than Englishwomen have made scientific studies of these problems, with relation to movement and fatigue as well as time, and experimental' stations have been set up for research work in these and other domestic matters. But no two households arc alike ; each mistress must solve her own problems. General principles only can be laid down.

As we have no Experimental Stations in Britain local associations or study-circles could do much to help individual mistresses and maids. It would be an inter- esting development for Women's Institutes and Women Citizen Associations.

To standardize any task we must study how we do it, and then see if we cannot improve and shorten this former method, and time of work. Bed-making, dish-washing, cleaning, especially, are purely routine pieces of work, and can easily be standardized.

Two experiments in dish-washing showed that a change of conditions resulted in a difference of twenty-two minutes in the time spent.

Cooking is another story. I found when working for one of the best and nicest mistresses in the world that ignorance of the processes of cooking and of the time necessary to carry them through led to " last straws " that almost broke the cook's back and certainly ruffled her temper. For example, one busy day, when work was all planned and every minute occupied, almost at the last minute the dear thing brought in triumphantly a small bag of shrimps. " They looked so nice, cook," she said, " I thought it would be a good idea to have shrimp sauce." Alas ! the shrimps had to be " picked," and they were small. Another mistress sent in a quantity of crab apples on a busy day to make jelly ; again, another asked for hot scones after luncheon on cook's afternoon out. Not one would have done any one of these things if she had known the trouble she was giving, and for this reason the task was cheerfully shouldered and carried through.

Such trifles, you will say. Yes, but trifles make up the sum of life. " A little thing is a little thing, but faith- fulness in little things is a very great thing." Misery is caused by want of knowledge as well as by want of heart.

At one time there was a great agitation about girls in shops being allowed to sit down. It may not be generally known that it is no uncommon thing for a servant's feet to ache and burn so frightfully that when night comes the weight of the bedclothes cannot be borne.

I remember a charwoman who had been a servant saying to me spitefully : " Ah ! now you know what it is." I am so glad, so very glad, I do.

It is the daughters of the generation to which this charwoman belongs who absolutely refuse to " sleep in." Their mothers' work as servants had never been finished, from early morning to late at night. From 1906 to 1914 we were so busy struggling to get the vote that servants had a particularly hard time.

" We sowed the wind, and are reaping the whirlwind." The well-trained mistress, and Applied Christianity, are the only solution of the present discontent.

ANN POPE.