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Travel Piece  by Ida Nasatir

Letter from Paris  by Ida Nasatir,  August 3, 1951

August 3, 1951—Ida Nasatir, "A Letter from Paris,"  Southwestern Jewish Press, page 5,  Dear Julia and Mac:.  If you want to solve the "eternal maid problem," hop the next boat for Paris. So many notes rom the folks at home te3ll me their maids and their housekeepers are leaving to enter the more lucrative and perhaps more interesting work of aircraft factories, office, industries, etc...Come what may in France, the Parisian "maid" sticks to her job, and she performs her tasks faultlessly...French servants are better than English ones and do more. They can all sew beautifully, and are expected t do the household mending They can all cook, and the English "cold Sunday supper" is unknown, because when the cook is out the housemaid does the cooking, and she detests cold meats. No friendliness on the part of a mistress, though it will be greatly appreciated, will lead to offensive familiarity on the part of French servants. They often have remarkable philosophies which are well worth listening to. Thus, one Normandy cook, finding herself the cause of annoyance to her mistress because she had thrown away some valuable China that could have been mended, remarked: "Madame mustn't make herself any bad blood about this, because that is dreadfully tiring, especially in this heat, and Madame doesn't like being angry; and after all, I thought Madame would never know the things had been broken if I threw them away, so then she would have been spared all annoyance. Now if I had meant to deliberately annoy Madame..." By the time Madame had found her way through this tangle of cajolery, sophistry, cunning, solicitude and common sense, there seemed nothing for it but a shrug and an indulgence in our national monosyllable. Thus does philosophy breed philosophy!  Once out of the flat where she works, the Paris servant expects to be at complete liberty, and the kindliest supervision by the3 mistress, even though directed entirely toward the welfare of the servants, will be resented. French servants dress very well, and with good taste. On their days out they wear clothes quite as discreetly chosen as those of their mistresses; their best hat is never afflicted with "Besthattishness" of an English Sunday-outer... I have not meant to imply that there is no servant problem in France. There is, but it depends less on scarcity of labor and competence than on the housing question. Most people have to live in smaller flats nowadays, many of which have no servant's room in the house...The servant is paid a very small salary—an expert maid, who cooks, washes and irons all the linens (including table and bed linens), darns, sews and orders supplies earns on the average: 80 francs an hour! That is less than twenty -five cents an hour; generous mistresses pay her 100 francs, not quite thirty cents... Didn't I tell you to come to Paris for a good, able and most inexpensive maid?   Fondly, Ida Nasatir.

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