Service

There is a wonderful expression you can use when you feel a friend is asking for an unwarranted amount of help from you: “WHAT DID YOUR LAST SERVANT DIE OF?” Unhappily, this humorous form of complaint was based on the true fact that at one time, a large portion of the population made their living as servants to the much smaller portion who could afford to hire them. 

There are, of course, many degrees and kinds of servants, from those in abject slavery, to the few who might rise to being some high-class person’s companion or valet. The Latin word “servus” could actually mean “servant” or “slave.” Many of the earliest English settlers in the American colonies came over as what were called “indentured servants.” These were not, like the slaves, captives from Africa, but ordinary Europeans who were possibly being punished for some crime. An indenture was a kind of contract in which one person agreed to act as a servant, or “apprentice,” to another for a number of years, after which he or she would be free to seek other employment.

This idea figures prominently in one of my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, The Pirates of Penzance. The hero, Frederick, has been apprenticed to the leader of a group of pirates. This is, of course, in itself absurd. (It came about through his hard-of-hearing nurserymaid mistaking the word “pilot” for “pirate.”) Under his indentures, Frederick was to be free after reaching his 21st birthday. However, it turns out that Frederick was born on the 29th of February, a leap-year. So his 21st birthday won’t come for more than another 50 years! 

Fortunately or unfortunately, this dilemma is never resolved. At the end of the play, all is forgiven, since it is revealed that the whole pirate gang are simply British noblemen who have gone wrong.

It used to be one of the accepted forms of signature to a formal letter to call oneself “your obedient servant;” From this, we can gather that it was a primary duty of a servant to obey. Somewhat ironically for me, one early memory I have of my father is his emphasis upon my being “an obedient child.” Of course, parents and children are not required to swear any vows to each other – but husbands and wives usually are. And traditionally in many jurisdictions and religious rites, those vows include promises to not only “love,” and “cherish,” (or “honor”) but also to “obey” the other partner. What this comes down to in practice I hesitate to speculate. It is much clearer when it comes to dogs, especially those who must go through a course of training with their owner in what’s called an “Obedience School.” But at least dogs are trainable in that way. Cats are another matter, and it has become a byword for hopeless disorder when you say it’s like trying to herd a group of cats. The only trained cats we are accustomed to seeing are usually big ones, like lions, who perform in circuses.

But, getting back to human servants, the fact that they were considered as property goes back at least as far as the Old Testament’s “Ten Commandments,” of which Number Ten specifically forbids wanting to have or take your neighbor’s male or female servant.

It is probably economic conditions which have largely determined who would be servant to whom. During my first five years, while there was still peace, just before World War II, England was more prosperous than Ireland – so, many young Irish women came over to work for English families. Although my own family was far from upper-class, I myself had a live-in Irish nanny, whom I liked and felt very close to. Her name was Molly.

Then, when we lived in a small apartment in Washington D.C., it was quite common for families to hire women to come and help with the housework. But Washington was a “Southern” town, with segregation still very much in effect. The employers were all “white,” and the “maids” were always what were then generally termed “colored.” Our neighbors, the Menshes, in a house across the alley, had a colored live-in maid named Henrietta, from whom young Nathan Mensh and I learned some of the popular songs of the day. One I particularly remember had the refrain “I don’t know how he does it, but he does it” – which might apply to me now, somehow always getting to this end of the article.