CHAPTER XVII

The servant question not so acute as in England--Establishments of thirty servants--Five or six for professional people--Terms and duties of service--An unwilling bather--A highly recommended maid who waited at table barefooted--The reference books of servants--The servants’ quarters--A strange privilege: female servants may have their husbands or putative husbands and their families to live with them--Costly marriage fees are prohibitive--“Madam” and “Madame”--Linguistic pitfalls: a “master” or a “cake”?--When a bald-headed cook is wanted--Leaving cards on names-days--An omnibus round.

The servant question is not nearly so acute in Roumania as it is in England. Servants, of a kind, are always to be had, though really good ones are rare. It is generally acknowledged that Hungarians are much better workers than Roumanians, but in late years the Hungarian nation became jealous of the constant migration to the adjoining country (where better wages obtained) and absolutely forbade it.

Probably owing to the fact that the abolition of slavery only dates back some seventy years or thereabouts, Roumanian families require the services of a great number of servants. Prince G., for instance, had thirty servants in his establishment, although his house was of a very moderate size, not by any means what one would describe as “princely.” People lower down in the social scale, such as doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc., generally have establishments of five or six servants. The conditions of service are not at all similar to those prevailing in England. A maid is engaged at a fixed wage of from thirty francs monthly upwards, and her dinner. In addition she receives thirty _bani_ (3d.) a day, which is called bread-money, and with this she is supposed to provide herself with bread, tea or coffee, sugar, and anything she may require for extra meals. Any scraps or broken bread left over from the table the servants are at liberty to take. As there are generally a number of them clubbing their resources, they can feed themselves very well indeed on these terms. The servants are required to rise very early, at five o’clock generally, and to sweep and dust thoroughly all the rooms that have been occupied the day before. As the floors are of parquetry in most houses, and the carpets laid loosely over them, the work is not so very difficult. Nearly every family has a “randasch,” a man-servant who does the heavy work, beating carpets, cleaning windows, and such like. Sometimes the randasch waits at table, but more often it is a parlour-maid. It depends on the capabilities of the man, whether he is intelligent or not.

I once visited at a house and noticed that the randasch was a newcomer. Having remarked upon it, I was informed that he had only come for a short time, as in some weeks he was to become a “popa,” _i.e._ priest!

A few minutes before lunch or dinner is served a maid enters the salon bearing a tray on which are several small glasses of _țuica_ and a plate with tiny bits of bread, which she presents in turn to each visitor. _Țuica_ (pronounced _zweeka_) is a liqueur made from plums, and is supposed to act as a stimulant to the appetite. After dinner, when the guests return to the salon, the maid appears once more with small cups of Turkish coffee. This coffee is delicious, and is made exactly as one gets it in the bazaars in Constantinople.

Servants dress much better of late years; in some houses you may even meet maids with caps and aprons, but it is by no means general. When I first went to Roumania I was amazed to see the door of a quite imposing mansion opened by a creature of rather dirty appearance with a shawl over her head. Some ladies are lax and do not insist on either cleanliness or tidiness in their maids.

A Swiss lady of my acquaintance in Bucarest had great trouble once with a Roumanian maid whom she had engaged. The rule of this house was that each maid was to take a bath every week, but the difficulty was to enforce the rule in the case of this particular girl. She got out of it when she could, and when brought to book almost cried and said she had never been asked to do such a thing in any other house. Finally the mistress insisted upon the maid entering the bathroom, she herself remaining outside the door until the necessary but much dreaded ablutions had been performed.

I remember once a new maid being engaged at a house where I was staying. She said she had been some time with Mme. B. and Mme. N., well-known ladies in Bucarest society, and so it was taken for granted that if she had been in such good houses she would prove a first-class servant. But what was our astonishment, the first time she came to wait at table, to see her enter the dining-room with bare feet! At first we looked at each other in amazement, then the comical side of the situation struck us, and we laughed and laughed till we cried. We did enjoy our dinner that night, but we were not waited on by Mme. B.’s late maid-servant.

Servants are not required to have written references, but they are furnished by the police authorities with small books in which all particulars regarding themselves are recorded, and they are required to produce these on taking service anew. These records are always a hold upon them. Should they have a fancy to go off without permission or to take with them any property not lawfully theirs, they can easily be traced by means of these small books, duplicates of which remain in the possession of the police.

In very many houses the servants’ quarters are quite apart from the house. Sometimes a small house in the courtyard is provided for them; but even if they do live in the same house as the family, they occupy rooms which can be cut off from the rest of the dwelling by merely locking the door of communication. This indeed is very often done at night.

Roumanian mistresses never have the trouble of providing beds for their servants, as everyone arrives with her own. Bedsteads are provided, but nothing else. Bed and bedding form, of course, an indispensable part of the equipment of female servants, and some of them take pride in having a good show of pillows with the pillow-cases richly ornamented with crochet work. But with men-servants it is very different indeed; it very often happens that they have no beds at all! I heard once of a young fellow being brought fresh from the country to act as “randasch.” On the mistress being questioned by one of her friends as to where he would sleep, she replied, “Oh, anywhere at all; he does not need a bed.” Further investigation showed that he simply lay down on his own little trunk, and slept there quite well too.

Servants are permitted to have their husbands with them. They may be husbands only in name, and indeed very often are, but still no objection is made about giving them house-room. If the man has any occupation, he is away all day, only coming back at night, when his wife will have a meal ready for him, which is supposed to be provided by herself. Very often, therefore, there is quite a small colony housed together in the servants’ quarters, each one with her small family round her. It is very probable that this custom dates back to the time when serfdom was still in vogue in the country. I believe that when serfdom was finally abolished the step did not please many of the serfs themselves. They and their families had lived on the estates of their masters, fed, clothed, and housed, not badly treated and not overworked; and when they received their freedom (the want of which they had never felt) and were obliged in many cases to look out for work in order to keep wife and family, they found their new responsibilities very strange and did not relish them at all. Their sole disability as serfs, and one which I think we may imagine did not trouble them much, was that they were debarred from having their hair cut!

I have said that very often the marriage ceremony is dispensed with by the servant class, but this is not so much their fault as that of the authorities. Marriage fees are very high in Roumania; not only those given to priests, but also the fees required by the civil authorities. A man, let us say, from the country wishes to marry in town. He must write to his own village and get the certificate of his birth as well as the written consent of his parents, or, failing these, the consent of his grandparents. Even if a man is fifty years of age he is obliged to ask the consent of his parents if he has any. Should the parents not agree to the match, then he makes three “sommations.” That is, he is required by law to send three notices with a certain interval of time between them to his parents, informing them, first, of his intended marriage, and then of his intention to persist in the determination. After the third notice has been sent he is free to marry.

When the different certificates and written consent have finally been procured, they must be deposited at the town hall and stamped. The stamping and fees amount to a considerable sum, so one cannot wonder that a poor couple should prefer to keep the few francs they possess and dispense with the marriage tie.

A German maid in a house where I was staying once told me a pitiful tale. She had come to Roumania as a quite young girl. After some time she made the acquaintance of a Roumanian, with whom she fell in love. As he was not in a very good position they dispensed with the marriage ceremony and lived together as man and wife. A young family grew up around them, and their circumstances caused the utmost grief to the girl’s poor old mother in Germany, who felt keenly her daughter’s disgrace. From her poor resources she contrived to send 200 marks to enable the couple to get married. Alas! the sum was soon swallowed up in the cost of stamping, translating, etc., of various necessary or unnecessary papers, and the object remained unachieved. To the great grief of the poor old mother in her far-off village home, the situation of her daughter remained as it was, with no hope of any change, for whatever money the couple could hope to make would have to be used for the needs of their young family.

Good cooks are pretty well paid, receiving 50, 60, up to 100 francs monthly, but they have also a fair amount of work to do. Sugar in Roumania is bought by the loaf, and amongst her multitudinous duties the cook must see that it is cut into small pieces. She must roast and grind the coffee daily. Above all, she must go in good time to market (some go before 5 a.m.), otherwise the best of the country produce will have gone.

Servants are very respectful to each other, never using each other’s name without prefacing it with “Madam.” “Madam Anna has gone to market.” “Madam Marie is busy washing just now.” It is very curious that this title of “Madam,” as distinct from “Madame,” is almost entirely confined to the servant class. “Cocanitza” or “Cocoiana,” the Roumanian term for “mistress,” is only given to the lady of the house. The words “Coconash” (master) and “Cozonac” (a kind of cake), as it happens, resemble each other in the pronunciation. A friend of mine, an English lady, sent from time to time for this cake, as she liked it for tea, but could not understand why the servant seemed always so amused, till at last she found out that she had ordered her to fetch a _Master_ instead of a _cake_. Funny mistakes do occur when one does not know the language well, as was the case with another lady. She had a person to work by the day, who, on leaving, invariably said “Serat mana.” The English lady thought this meant “Good evening,” and very politely repeated it after her. But she was obliged to find a substitute for her response when she learned that the words meant “I kiss your hand.”

I think I must find space for an example of what I understand has come to be known here as a “howler.” It is really too good to be overlooked. I once gave a pupil a portion of the fourteenth chapter of St Mark to turn from French into English. In her translation I found this gem: “The ghost is agreeable, but the meat is feeble.”

A cake that is very popular in Roumania is one made of alternate layers of dough and a mixture of apples, currants, and sugar. It must be made in a very cool place, and one requires a large table for the task. When the dough is ready, it is rolled out very thin, then placed on the table and drawn out over it at every side till it is scarcely thicker than paper. The mixture of apples, currants, raisins, sugar, and spice stands ready, and a portion is spread over the paste, which is then doubled over and another layer of the mixture spread upon it. The process is repeated till the paste has assumed the form of a great sausage nearly a yard in length. It is then bent in the shape of a horse-shoe, put into the oven and baked. When it is cooked, no better cake could be desired. When I first became acquainted with this delicacy, I was rather curious as to how it was made. I was informed that the cake could only be made by a bald-headed cook, as he was obliged to put the paste on his head and draw it down and outwards in all directions in order to attain the requisite degree of thinness. Being at that time ripe for shocks, I suffered some qualms, but later realised that my Roumanian friends were not without a certain sense of humour.

One of the duties of a servant is to stand at the outer gate on his master’s names-day, and receive the visitors’ cards. It is very seldom that one receives on such occasions, and this is so well known that anyone can be sent just to drop a card at the house designated.

Cards of congratulation are sent in such numbers at New Year’s Day, for instance, that it is often quite impossible to post a letter, the pillar-boxes are so packed. It did not astonish me very much to hear that one poor postman quite lost patience, and threw all the letters into the river instead of delivering them. On such great fête-days it is almost impossible to get a decent carriage; every one is engaged hours, perhaps days, before it is needed. Everybody makes holiday, and when cards have been left where they are due, then a turn at the Chaussée is indulged in, or there may be a marriage at which one must appear.

I remember a gentleman from the country coming to Bucarest on such a great holiday. As he was seldom in town he wished to take the opportunity of paying a few visits. Not a carriage was to be had, so at last in despair he hired an omnibus to take him round. Now, the humour of the situation would not be so apparent to an English person. The Bucarest omnibus is not at all “chic.” It is permissible to travel by the tram, but the omnibus is quite _infra dig._; and so the spectacle of this gentleman, in kid gloves and tall hat, rattling up to the doors of various stately dwellings in the bumping vehicle was comical in the extreme, and caused much merriment.