r it may be that all those men
who might be footmen will prefer to earn their livelihood in other ways
of life. It may even be that no more parlourmaids and housemaids, even
for very illustrious houses, will be forthcoming. I do not profess to
foresee. Perhaps things will go on just as before. But remember: things
were going on, even then. Suppose that in the social organism generally,
and in the attitude of servants particularly, the decades after the War
shall bring but a gradual evolution of what was previously afoot. Even
on this mild supposition must it seem likely that some of us will live
to look back on domestic service, or at least on what we now mean by
that term, as a curiosity of past days.

You have to look rather far behind you for the time when 'the servant
question,' as it is called, had not yet begun to arise. To find servants
collectively 'knowing their place,' as the phrase (not is, but) was, you
have to look right back to the dawn of Queen Victoria's reign. I am not
sure whether even then those Georgian notice-boards still stood in the
London parks to announce that 'Ladies and Gentlemen are requested, and
Servants are commanded' not to do this and that. But the spirit of those
boards did still brood over the land: servants received commands, not
requests, and were not 'obliging' but obedient. As for the tasks set
them, I daresay the footmen in the great houses had an easy time: they
were there for ornament; but the (comparatively few) maids there, and
the maid or two in every home of the rapidly-increasing middle class,
were very much for use, having to do an immense amount of work for a
wage which would nowadays seem nominal. And they did it gladly, with no
notion that they were giving much for little, or that the likes of them
had any natural right to a glimpse of liberty or to a moment's more
leisure than was needed to preserve their health for the benefit
of their employers, or that they were not in duty bound to be
truly thankful for having a roof over their devoted heads. Rare and
reprehensible was the maid who, having found one roof, hankered after
another. Improvident, too; for only by long and exclusive service could
she hope that in her old age she would not be cast out on the parish.
She might marry meanwhile? The chances were very much against that.
That was an idea misbeseeming her station in life. By the rules of all
households, 'followers' were fended ruthlessly away. Her state was shee