The Diary of a Chambermaid

by Octave Mirbeau

  I already had a good eye for such things. I had only to walk into any Parisian household, and it was enough to give me a pretty shrewd idea of the kind of people that lived there and, though furniture can sometimes be as deceptive as faces, I wasn’t often far out … Here, in spite of the lavishness of everything, I felt at once that something was wrong, that relations were strained. There was an air of hurried, feverish existence, of some kind of intimate, hidden rottenness … though not so well hidden that I couldn’t detect the smell of it… That’s always the same … Besides, a new servant has only to exchange glances with the old ones and a kind of masonic sign passes between them —usually quite spontaneous and involuntary—that immediately warns you of what to expect. As in all jobs, servants tend to be jealous of one another, and are prepared to defend themselves savagely against newcomers … I myself, although I’m so easy going, have had to put up with plenty of jealousy and dislike, particularly from the women, who are furious because I’m so attractive … Though I must say, in fairness to them, that the men have always made me welcome … perhaps for the same reason.

  From the expression on the footman’s face, when he first opened the door to me, I had clearly understood what he meant … ‘It’s a rum kind of a joint here … Not much security, but plenty of fun, all the same … You’ll soon find your feet, my dear …’ And by the time I reached Madame’s boudoir I was therefore prepared for something out of the usual, at least to the extent that such vague and summary impressions can be relied upon. But, I admit, I had no very clear idea of what exactly I might expect.

  Madame de Tarves was seated at a sweet little desk, writing letters. Instead of a carpet, the floor was covered with white astrakhan rugs, and, on the cream-coloured walls, I was struck by the coarse, almost obscene, eighteenth-century engravings that hung alongside antique enamels depicting scenes from the bible. There was a glass case, containing jewels, ivories, miniatures, snuff boxes and gay, charmingly delicate little Dresden figures; and a table, covered with costly toilet necessities made of silver and gold. On a sofa, between two mauve silk cushions, a little dog was curled up, a tiny ball of brown fur, silky and shining.

  ‘So you’re Célestine? That’s right, isn’t it?’ enquired Madame. ‘Well, that’s a name I can’t stand … I shall call you Mary … in English. Don’t forget now … Mary. Yes, that’s much more becoming.’

  That’s how it usually goes … We servants haven’t even the right to use our own names, because there’s nearly always one of the daughters, cousins, dogs or parrots that have the same one.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I replied.

  ‘Can you speak English, Mary?’

  ‘No, ma’am … I told you before, when you asked me, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course . .. That’s a pity … Turn round a little, Mary, and let me have a look at you!’

  She examined me from every angle, front, back and sideways, murmuring to herself:

  ‘Yes, not bad … pretty good.’

  Then suddenly she asked:

  ‘Tell me something, Mary … What about your figure? Would you say you were really well made?’

  Her question surprised and upset me: I could see no connection between the fact that I was working for her and the shape of my body. But, without waiting for a reply, and coolly running her lorgnettes over me from head to foot, she said to herself:

  ‘Yes, she seems to be pretty well made.’

  Then, turning to me with a contented smile, she explained:

  ‘You see, Mary, I can’t stand anyone waiting on me unless they are well made … It’s more becoming.’

  But this was not to be the last of my surprises, for, continuing her minute examination of me, she suddenly exclaimed:

  ‘Ah, your hair! You’ll have to do that differently. Your present style isn’t at all smart. You have lovely hair, and you ought to show it off to best advantage … The way a woman does her hair is always most important … See, like this … Yes, that’s much better.’

  And rumpling my hair over my forehead, she repeated:

  ‘Yes, that’s much better … She’s charming. Look at me, Mary. Yes, quite charming … That’s much more becoming.’

  And she went on patting my hair, until I began to wonder whether she was either a bit cracked, or whether, perhaps, she had unnatural tastes … Honestly, that would have been about the last straw! … At last, when she had finished, and was satisfied about my hair, she asked:

  ‘Is this your best dress you’re wearing?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, for a best dress, I can’t say it’s up to much. I must let you have one of mine, and you can alter it … And what about your petticoat?’

  She lifted up my skirt, and commented:

  ‘Oh, I see … Not at all becoming … And your underclothes?’

  Annoyed by this impertinent inspection, I replied dryly:

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what Madame means by “becoming”.’

  ‘I want to see your underclothes … Go and fetch some … But first, let me see how you walk. Come back here … now turn around … again. Well, she walks all right. She’s certainly got style.’

  But, as soon as she saw my underwear, she pulled a face.

  ‘What ghastly material! And your stockings, your slips? Terrible … As for those corsets, I simply couldn’t allow anyone in my house to wear such things … Here, Mary, come and help me.’

  She opened a red lacquer wardrobe and, pulling out a huge drawer full of perfumed frills and furbelows, she emptied them all out on the floor in a heap.

  ‘You can have this one, Mary … No, you’d better take the lot … You may probably find you’ll have to alter them a little, and some of them may need mending … but you can manage that. Take them all. You should find all you need there … enough to make yourself a pretty trousseau … Take the lot.’

  There was, in fact, everything I could possibly want … silk corsets and stockings, shifts made of silk and finest cambric, the sweetest little knickers, charming fronts, and lovely, frilly petticoats. And the most delicious perfume, a mixture of delicate femininity and love, arose from this pile of lacy garments, which, like a basket of freshly gathered flowers, shimmered with every colour of the rainbow. I simply couldn’t get over it, but stood there stupidly, delighted, though also embarrassed, by this gorgeous array of clothes—pink, mauve, yellow, red, with here and there a bit of more brightly coloured ribbon or delicate lace—while Madame sorted over these charming cast-offs, most of which had scarcely been worn, holding them up for me to see, suggesting which ones I should choose and indicating her own preference.

  ‘I always like the maids who wait on me to be smart and elegant… and to smell nice. You are a brunette … Here’s a red skirt that will suit you marvellously. But the fact is they all suit you admirably … You may as well take the lot …’

  I was completely overwhelmed, and, not knowing what to do or say, I could only repeat mechanically:

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. It’s most kind of you, ma’am, thank you.’

  But, without giving me time to pull myself together, Madame kept on talking and talking, alternately familiar, shameless, maternal … and sometimes like an old bawd.

  ‘It’s like cleanliness, Mary … taking care of your body … washing properly … That’s one thing I insist upon above everything … I am most particular about it … It’s almost a mania with me.’

  And off she went into the most intimate details, continually using the word ‘becoming’, even when, to me, it seemed quite inappropriate. As we were finishing sorting out the underclothes, she suddenly said:

  ‘A woman, no matter who she is, always ought to take care of herself properly … So you will always do as I do, Mary. It’s important … Tomorrow you must have a bath … I’ll show you where.’

  She then took me into her bedroom, showed me the wardrobes and cupboards where her clothes were kept, and explained my duties, all the time keeping up a running commentar
y that struck me as being funny and quite unnatural.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’ll take you to Monsieur Xavier’s room, for you’ll be waiting on him as well, Mary … He’s my son.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Monsieur Xavier’s bedroom was at the far end of the huge apartment, a charming room, hung with blue silk trimmed with yellow braid. There were coloured English engravings on the walls, depicting scenes of hunting and racing, carriages and castles, and the whole of one panel was taken up by a rack containing an elaborate panoply of riding crops, with a hunting horn in the centre between two pairs of crossed coach horns … On the mantelpiece, amongst all sorts of knick-knacks, cigar boxes and pipes, stood a photograph of a good-looking youth, young and clean-shaven, with the insolent features of a precocious dandy and the dubious grace of a young girl, which at once attracted my attention.

  ‘That’s Monsieur Xavier,’ Madame informed me.

  I could not help exclaiming, perhaps rather too warmly:

  ‘Oh, isn’t he handsome!’

  ‘Now, now, Mary,’ said Madame, though I could see from her smile that my words had not upset her. And she went on:

  ‘Like most young people, Monsieur Xavier isn’t very orderly in his habits, so I expect you to tidy up after him and see that his room is kept absolutely spotless. You will call him every morning at nine o’clock, and take him a cup of tea … At nine, you understand, Mary. Maybe he won’t be too pleased to see you for he sometimes gets home very late. But don’t let that worry you. A young man ought to be up by nine o’clock.’

  She showed me where Monsieur Xavier kept his linen, ties, shoes and so on, accompanying each detail with some such remark as, ‘My son is rather quick-tempered, but he’s a dear boy all the same,’ or, ‘Do you know how to fold trousers properly? Monsieur Xavier is most particular about his trousers …’ As for his hats, it was agreed that I should not be expected to see to them, since it was the footman’s special glory to iron them every day. I found it extremely odd that, in a household where a footman was kept, it should be I who had the job of looking after Monsieur Xavier.

  ‘It will be rather a lark … though perhaps not altogether becoming,’ I said to myself, parodying my mistress’s favourite expression.

  The fact of the matter is, everything about this peculiar house seemed to me to be extremely odd.

  That evening in the servants’ hall I was to learn a good deal more.

  ‘An extraordinary joint,’ they told me. ‘A bit of a shock to begin with, but you’ll soon get used to it. Sometimes nobody in the house has a penny to bless themselves with. Then Madame starts running about all over the place, and when she gets back she’s worn out and nervous, and starts using the foulest language … As for the master, he’s forever ever on the telephone, shouting, threatening, begging, playing the very devil… And then the bailiffs! Often the butler has to pay the shopkeepers something on account, out of his own pocket, because they get so angry that they refuse to deliver anything. One day, in the middle of a party, the electricity and gas were both cut off! … And then, suddenly, the whole place is simply bursting with money again, though where it all comes from nobody actually knows … As for us servants, sometimes we have to wait months and months for our wages. True, we always end up by getting paid, but only as a result of all sorts of rows and swearing matches. You’d never believe …’

  I could see that I had properly let myself in for it. Just my luck, when for once in a way I was getting really, good wages.

  ‘Monsieur Xavier didn’t come home again last night,’ said the footman.

  ‘Oh well,’ commented the cook, looking pointedly in my direction, ‘maybe in future we shall find he does.’

  And the footman went on to describe how, that very morning, one of Monsieur Xavier’s creditors had called again and kicked up a hell of a row.

  ‘It must have been some pretty dirty business, for the old man soon knuckled under, and agreed to pay him a huge sum at least 4,000 francs.’

  ‘But was he furious!’ he added. ‘I heard him saying to Madame: “This simply can’t go on any longer. He’ll end up by dragging our name in the mud … in the mud”.’

  The cook, who seemed to be a philosophical body, merely shrugged her shoulders and said in a sneering tone of voice:

  ‘A fat lot that’ll worry them … It’s having to pay out that they don’t like.’

  This conversation made me feel uneasy. It struck me vaguely that there might be a connection between some of the things Madame had said to me, and all the clothes she’d given me, and Monsieur Xavier … though I couldn’t exactly see how … ‘It’s having to pay out that they don’t like.’

  That night I slept badly, haunted by the strangest dreams, impatient to see Monsieur Xavier. The footman wasn’t exaggerating—it was a funny set-up all right!

  Monsieur de Tarves was something in the pilgrim business … I don’t know exactly what, but some kind of president or director. He dug up pilgrims wherever he could, Jews, Protestants, tramps, even Catholics, and once a year used to conduct a party of them to Rome or Lourdes —at considerable profit to himself, of course. The Pope was delighted, and it was another triumph for religion. Monsieur de Tarves also had an interest in charitable and political organizations. The League Against Secular Education … The League for the Suppression of Obscene Publications .. . The Society for the Promotion of Religious Literature … The Association of Catholic Wet-Nurses for the Feeding of Working-class Children … I can’t even remember them all. Then he was president of all kinds of orphanages, old boys’ associations, schools of needlework, employment bureaux . .. anything like that… Oh he had plenty of jobs! He was a plumpish, lively little chap, always well shaved and very particular about his appearance, with the plausible, cynical manners of a sly, jolly priest. Now and then there were references to him and his organizations in the papers, some of them praising him for his humanitarian and devout way of life, others describing him as just an old crook. We servants used to get a lot of fun out of these contradictory reports, though it is usually regarded as rather flattering to work for people who get their names in the papers.

  Every week, Monsieur de Tarves used to give a formal dinner party, followed by a reception attended by all kinds of celebrities—academicians, reactionary senators, catholic deputies, protestant priests, intriguing monks, archbishops and so on. There was one of them in particular, I remember, who always used to go out of his way to be nice to me … an aged Assumptionist father, whose name I forget, a poisonously sanctimonious old chap, who was always saying the most malicious things while maintaining an expression of the utmost piety. And all over the place, in every room, were portraits of the Pope … Oh, he must have seen some pretty funny goings-on in that household, the Holy Father!

  I didn’t take to Monsieur de Tarves. He had a finger in too many pies and liked too many people, and though no one knew half the things he really was up to, he was certainly an old shyster. The day after my arrival, as I was helping him to put on his overcoat, he asked me:

  ‘Are you a member of my society? The Society of the Servants of Jesus?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, you ought to be, it’s essential. I shall put your name down.’

  ‘Thank you, sir … May I ask what the society is, sir?’

  ‘An admirable society for rescuing unmarried mothers and giving them a Christian education …’

  ‘But I don’t happen to be an unmarried mother, sir.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. It also provides for women who have been in prison, prostitutes who have turned over a new leaf … anybody, in fact. I shall certainly make you a member.’

  Then he took some carefully folded newspapers from his pocket and handed them to me.

  ‘Hide these, and read them when you are by yourself. You’ll find them very interesting.’ And, chucking me under the chin, he added: ‘Tut! tut! tut! But she’s an amusing little creature. Yes, indeed … very amusing.’


  After he had gone, I had a look at the papers he had given me … Le Fin de Siècle, Rigolo, Petites femmes de Paris … Sheer filth, the lot of them!

  Oh, these bourgeois! Always the same old comedy! I’ve come across a good many of them in my time, and at bottom they’re all the same. For instance, there was a republican deputy I used to work for. He used to spend most of his time railing against the priests … And he didn’t half think a lot of himself! … He wouldn’t hear a good word about religion or the Pope, or the holy Sisters … Why, if anybody had paid any attention to him, there wouldn’t have been a single church left standing, and all the convents would have been blown up … Yet every Sunday he used to go to mass, secretly, in churches where he wasn’t known … If the slightest thing was wrong with him, he would immediately call in the priest, and he sent all his children to Jesuit schools. And just because his brother had refused to be married in church, he wouldn’t speak to him … In one way or another, they are all just a bunch of hypocrites; disgusting, cowardly hypocrites.

  Madame de Tarves also interested herself in good works. She was chairman of all sorts of religious committees and benevolent societies, and was always organizing charity bazaars, with the result that she was never at home and the household was left to get along as best it could. Often enough, after having been God knows where, she would arrive home very late, her underclothes all anyhow, and smelling of some scent that certainly wasn’t her own … Oh, she couldn’t fool me! I soon realized the kind of benevolent works she was engaged in … some pretty fishy committee meetings, if you ask me … But she was always nice to me … never a harsh word or a complaint. On the contrary, she would often get quite familiar with me, even friendly, so that sometimes, forgetting all about her dignity and my respect, we’d talk about everything under the sun … She would advise me about my personal affairs and encourage my coquettish tastes, smothering me with glycerine and eau-de-cologne, rubbing cold cream on my neck and shoulders and powdering my cheeks. And all the time she was performing these operations she would keep on: