Meeting Servants Outside the Home

American cooking expert and teacher, Fannie Farmer, was the first cookbook author to use strict standardized measurements. Called “the mother of level measurements,” Fannie helped popularize a more scientific approach to cooking and housekeeping, and inspired doctors and nurses with her innovative teachings on convalescent diet and nutrition. Her legacy is the renowned, late 19th century, “Fannie Farmer Cookbook.” – Photo source, Pinterest

“A suburban bachelor” writes to a London periodical begging to be informed on a question of etiquette — “How to greet one’s irreproachable maid servant on meeting her as occasionally happens on the highway.” “I smile suavely,” he confesses; “so does Ann or Ellen. But they no more than myself are reconciled to an incongruous position. How do you manage, my brethren?” This question seems absurdly simple. Why not smile and nod, with or without a civil, “How d’ye do?” or “Well, ‘Ann.’ or ‘Ellen.’” as one’s amiability or temperament dictates. That salutation ought not to be too friendly, not yet too incongruous.

The discussion gives point to a recent little experience of a New Yorker. He is a suburban householder from May to November, and the other day, a week’s unpleasantness on the part of the cook of his domain terminated in an intolerable impertinence one morning, just as he was leaving the house to catch a train for the city. He stopped long enough to interfere on his wife’s behalf, and sternly dismissed the delinquent maid coming in, telling her as a final word on no account to let him find her in his house when he should come home at night. Then he caught his train, and in the press of office affairs forgot all about the mornings moil. 

As he was leaving the car in the evening, however, he saw a woman of genteel appearance, whose face was strangely familiar, waiting at the station to board an inbound train which had just arrived. As their eyes met there came over her countenance the peculiar expression, which means, ‘I don’t believe you’re going to recognize me!’ and thinking it was someone whom he knew, but could not place, he hurried forward with a cordial salutation. 

He was about to take her satchel and assist her on the train when the curious familiarity of her appearance resolved itself into identity, and he saw that she was his late-cook. “Which gave me,” he said telling about it, “the comfortable sensation one has, to be left facing the onlookers after a run down a ferry bridge, to catch a retreating boat and finding the jump too wide.” — The New York Times, 1892

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia