Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

by William Dean Howells

  IX

  After Mrs. Makely had told me about the New York house, we began to talkof the domestic service, and I ventured to hint some of the things that Ihave so plainly said to you. She frankly consented to my whole view ofthe matter, for if she wishes to make an effect or gain a point she has amagnanimity that stops at nothing short of self-devotion. "I know it,"she said. "You are perfectly right; but here we are, and what are we todo? What do you do in Altruria, I should like to know?"

  I said that in Altruria we all worked, and that personal service washonored among us like medical attendance in America; I did not know whatother comparison to make; but I said that any one in health would thinkit as unwholesome and as immoral to let another serve him as to let adoctor physic him. At this Mrs. Makely and her husband laughed so that Ifound myself unable to go on for some moments, till Mrs. Makely, with afinal shriek, shouted to him: "Dick, do stop, or I shall die! Excuse me,Mr. Homos, but you are so deliciously funny, and I know you're justjoking. You _won't_ mind my laughing? Do go on."

  I tried to give her some notion as to how we manage, in our common life,which we have simplified so much beyond anything that this barbarouspeople dream of; and she grew a little soberer as I went on, and seemedat least to believe that I was not, as her husband said, stuffing them;but she ended, as they always do here, by saying that it might be allvery well in Altruria, but it would never do in America, and that it wascontrary to human nature to have so many things done in common. "Now,I'll tell you," she said. "After we broke up housekeeping in Thirty-thirdStreet, we stored our furniture--"

  "Excuse me," I said. "How--stored?"

  "Oh, I dare say you never store your furniture in Altruria. But here wehave hundreds of storage warehouses of all sorts and sizes, packed withfurniture that people put into them when they go to Europe, or get sickto death of servants and the whole bother of house-keeping; and that'swhat we did; and then, as my husband says, we browsed about for a yearor two. First, we tried hotelling it, and we took a hotel apartmentfurnished, and dined at the hotel table, until I certainly thought Ishould go off, I got so tired of it. Then we hired a suite in one of thefamily hotels that there are so many of, and got out enough of ourthings to furnish it, and had our meals in our rooms; they let you dothat for the same price, often they are _glad_ to have you, for thedining-room is so packed. But everything got to tasting just the same aseverything else, and my husband had the dyspepsia so bad he couldn't halfattend to business, and I suffered from indigestion myself, cooped up ina few small rooms, that way; and the dog almost died; and finally we gavethat up, and took an apartment, and got out our things--the storage costas much as the rent of a small house--and put them into it, and had acaterer send in the meals as they do in Europe. But it isn't the samehere as it is in Europe, and we got so sick of it in a month that Ithought I should scream when I saw the same old dishes coming on thetable, day after day. We had to keep one servant--excuse me, Mr. Homos:_domestic_--anyway, to look after the table and the parlor andchamber work, and my husband said we might as well be hung for a sheep asa lamb, and so we got in a cook; and, bad as it is, it's twenty milliontimes better than anything else you can do. Servants are a plague, butyou have got to have them, and so I have resigned myself to the will ofProvidence. If they don't like it, neither do I, and so I fancy it'sabout as broad as it's long." I have found this is a favorite phrase ofMrs. Makely's, and that it seems to give her a great deal of comfort.

  "And you don't feel that there's any harm in it?" I ventured to ask.

  "Harm in it?" she repeated. "Why, aren't the poor things glad to get thework? What would they do without it?"

  "From what I see of your conditions I should be afraid that they wouldstarve," I said.

  "Yes, they can't all get places in shops or restaurants, and they have todo something, or starve, as you say," she said; and she seemed to thinkwhat I had said was a concession to her position.

  "But if it were your own case?" I suggested. "If you had no alternativesbut starvation and domestic service, you would think there was harm init, even although you were glad to take a servant's place?"

  I saw her flush, and she answered, haughtily, "You must excuse me if Irefuse to imagine myself taking a servant's place, even for the sake ofargument."

  "And you are quite right," I said. "Your American instinct is too strongto brook even in imagination the indignities which seem daily, hourly,and momently inflicted upon servants in your system."

  To my great astonishment she seemed delighted by this conclusion. "Yes,"she said, and she smiled radiantly, "and now you understand how it isthat American girls won't go out to service, though the pay is so muchbetter and they are so much better housed and fed--and everything.Besides," she added, with an irrelevance which always amuses her husband,though I should be alarmed by it for her sanity if I did not find it socharacteristic of women here, who seem to be mentally characterized bythe illogicality of the civilization, "they're not half so good as theforeign servants. They've been brought up in homes of their own, andthey're uppish, and they have no idea of anything but third-rateboarding-house cooking, and they're always hoping to get married, sothat, really, you have no peace of your life with them."

  "And it never seems to you that the whole relation is wrong?" I asked.

  "What relation?"

  "That between maid and mistress, the hirer and the hireling."

  "Why, good gracious!" she burst out. "Didn't Christ himself say that thelaborer was worthy of his hire? And how would you get your work done, ifyou didn't pay for it?"

  "It might be done for you, when you could not do it yourself, fromaffection."

  "From affection!" she returned, with the deepest derision. "Well, Irather think I _shall_ have to do it myself if I want it donefrom affection! But I suppose you think I _ought_ to do itmyself, as the Altrurian ladies do! I can tell you that in America itwould be impossible for a lady to do her own work, and there are nointelligence-offices where you can find girls that want to work for love.It's as broad as it's long."

  "It's simply business," her husband said.

  They were right, my dear friend, and I was wrong, strange as it mustappear to you. The tie of service, which we think as sacred as the tie ofblood, can be here only a business relation, and in these conditionsservice must forever be grudgingly given and grudgingly paid. There issomething in it, I do not quite know what, for I can never place myselfprecisely in an American's place, that degrades the poor creatures whoserve, so that they must not only be social outcasts, but must leave sucha taint of dishonor on their work that one cannot even do it for one'sself without a sense of outraged dignity. You might account for this inEurope, where ages of prescriptive wrong have distorted the relation outof all human wholesomeness and Christian loveliness; but in America,where many, and perhaps most, of those who keep servants and call them soare but a single generation from fathers who earned their bread by thesweat of their brows, and from mothers who nobly served in all householdoffices, it is in the last degree bewildering. I can only account for itby that bedevilment of the entire American ideal through the retention ofthe English economy when the English polity was rejected. But at theheart of America there is this ridiculous contradiction, and it mustremain there until the whole country is Altrurianized. There is no otherhope; but I did not now urge this point, and we turned to talk of otherthings, related to the matters we had been discussing.

  "The men," said Mrs. Makely, "get out of the whole bother very nicely, aslong as they are single, and even when they're married they are apt torun off to the club when there's a prolonged upheaval in the kitchen."

  "_I_ don't, Dolly," suggested her husband.

  "No, _you_ don't, Dick," she returned, fondly. "But there are notmany like you."

  He went on, with a wink at me, "I never live at the club, except insummer, when you go away to the mountains."

  "Well, you know I can't very well take you with me," she said.

  "Oh, I couldn't leave my business, any
way," he said, and he laughed.