SERVANTS' CHARACTERS.
IT isprobably not very often that a lady will be quite so im- prudent, and we must add so unscrupulous, in her mani- festations of good-will to a person in want of a place, as was Mrs. Webster Bias, who recently "presented her compliments to Mrs. Edward Helm," and assured that lady that a woman who had never been in her service at all, but who had been known to her as a visiting acquaintance before she fell into dis- tressed circumstances, had "lived with her as cook and house- keeper for two years, and during that time she found her thoroughly sober and an excellent cook, capable of making all kinds of side-dishes, soups, jellies, &c." Further, Mrs. Bias went on to say that "Mrs. Bias would not have parted with her, only that she is about returning to India, and wishes to see her comfortably settled before she leaves," thereby evincing a fancy for seductive, though purely imaginary details quite worthy of an experienced novelist. If Mrs. Bias had not been a very young lady, she would, however, have been more careful to learn the name of the caller who had recently asked her for the char- acter of the same person, and who bad then been told the truth. It never occurred to her that the lady who had heard from her already all she knew on the subject of the applicant for a char- acter, would write to her in order to get the same facts in black and white, and this without making any reference to her call. So that, having in the meantime learned the necessitous condition of her former acquaintance and her urgent need of a good situation, Mrs. Bias invented this little romance of kitchen experience for the benefit of the very visitor who had been told a day or two before a very different story. Of course, the truth came out, and Mrs. Bias was fined /5 for giving a false character to the applicant for Mrs. Helm's place, and no one will think the penalty too severe. Indeed, except that Mrs. Bias, by acting on the maxim, Pecea fortiter, showed a certain contempt for half-and-halfness which may perhaps suggest thatlif she went near the truth at all, she would tell it outright and in the barest form, we should say that she deserved for her kindly intentioned but very false little romance, the extreme penalty for this sort of deception of which the law admits,—which appears to be a fine of 120,—and that the 24 penalty should be inflicted pretty freely on those feebler sinners who give equivocating characters,—telling white lies, or grey,— instead of indulging in complete romances of Mrs. Bias's type. Few persons, we should suppose, are really tempted to invent such romances. But persons are tempted every day to suppress what they know, out of good-nature to the servant who is just leaving them, and whose chances of amendment, if he or she has been gravely in fault, probably depend on the suppression of the exact delinquencies of which they have been guilty. Indeed there are no more difficult casuistic questions than those which present themselves even to people who would warmly condem n Mrs. Bias's heroic contempt for fact on the subject of character- giving. Such people would generally agree that it is notallowable to give a false answer on the smallest detail, or even by implication, to any question which you are asked at all. But are you bound to answer every question put ? Supposing there be one the true answer to which would be fatal to the servant's chances, and you honestly believe the servant in question to be a good one, and likely to amend in the one particular of which you had had to complain, would it be always wrong to leave the question to which the reply must be unfavourable unanswered, and answer only the other questions put? Clearly the questioner, if he be acute, will not accept silence as a favourable answer,—indeed, is more likely to regard it as an unfavourable one, and yet it is two to one that he will not trouble himself to write again, unless the one answer omitted seems to him the most important of all. Is a man bound to tell all he knows to the disadvantage of a servant who has been with him, supposing the questions put to him fairly to cover the ground of such disadvantageous particu- lars? We do not think he is. He is bound, above everything, not to say anything false. He is bound also, we think, not to keep silence on anything true which comes within the scope of the questioner's interrogations, if it be clearly of vital importance to an employer. For instance, if the character-giver have proof of a servant's dishonesty, and is asked, as he is always asked, as to honesty, he is bound to give the intelligence asked for, fatal as it must usually be to the servant's chances, though of course he may add, if he honestly can, the expression of any opinion he has formed as to the prospect of amendment. Again, if he is asked as to sobriety, and the servant has not been immaculate in that respect, but has not been a serious offender, the obligation of answering instead of passing over the question, might depend in some degree on the superficial or serious character of the intemper- ance, and still more on the nature of the duties to be entrusted to the servant. To pass over in silence evidence of even superficial intemperance in a coachman, or any one on whose strict sobriety life and personal safety depend, would be, we think, wrong. But we do not think it would be wrong to be silent as to slight evidences of such a fault in a servant otherwise good and faithful, who was not to fill any capacity especially- demanding strict sobriety. It cannot be denied that we owe it to the servant not to shut him out needlessly from future openings for amendment, as much as we owe it to the inquirer not to deceive him ; and since details of the faults of an unknown person are apt to produce a much greater relative influence on the mind of the intending employer than they do on the mind of the former master who knows exactly what they mean, silence is perhaps not unfrequently the nearest practicable approach to truth.
A still more difficult question is how to deal with faults suspected, and even so strongly-suspected as to exercise a great deal of influence in inducing you to part with a servant, but only suspected, and not proved. On the one hand, it is very unjust,—knowing, as every master does, how often he is mistaken in even shrewd suspicions, —to injure the prospects of a servant who may be quite inno- cent of all of which he is suspected. On the other hand, it seems very unjust to a new employer to give him no warning at all of the nature of suspicions which are so grave as to influence you at all seriously in parting with a servant. Of course, the difficulty arises chiefly in relation to honesty. No one of any ex- perience can have failed to have often entertained suspicions which could not be verified of dishonesty in a servant ; and nothing seems more difficult than to reconcile in such a case your duty to the servant with your duty to the intending employer.. Clearly, in such cases, nothing can be more unscrupulous than to write, "I have every reason to believe him to be honest," &c. Yet it would often be exceedingly unjust to write, "I have grave reasons to doubt his honesty, though I am unable to substantiate any charge against him." No one who knows the world would take a servant with such a character. And therefore, if we were really in doubt as to the truth of our suspicions, we should take it to be very unjust so to express them. Perhaps the safest solution of this difficulty is to use some formula of this kind,—" I have never detected him in any act of dishonesty," or something equivalent, a form of speech which clearly leaves you uncommitted to per- sonal belief in his honesty, and yet does not partake of the nature of an innuendo agaiost it.
Perhaps, however, the commonest offence against morality in character-giving is one which rather partakes of the nature of Mrs. Bias's romancing, though without being so well-marked a defiance of historical fact. Servants are very keen in using the good-nature of former employers to get out of them vague words which, while they might cover nothing more than qualities actually tested, would appear to the new employer to cover a much larger range of qualities. We remember, for instance, the case of a stable- boy, who had never driven anything more than a very quiet pony in a pony-carriage, and who was ambitious of an under-coach- man's place—for which, very likely, he was qualified, though his last employer had no evidence at all of such qualification—scan- ning his character with much disgust, simply because it gave him credit for all his employer knew, and for no more. "Could you. not say, Sir, that I had driven you safely and well, without mention- ing that it was only in a single pony-carriage, was his appeal?" And he evidently thought himself ill-used because his former employer adhered to the exact limits of his experience of his qualities as. charioteer. It may be asked why we would permit silence in some cases as to unfavourable experience of a servant, and yet strongly condemn anything Bo vague as to mislead the new master in reference to his positive qualifications. We might be asked, if you rely on the new employer's observation to notice that you passed over one of his questions without an answer, why not rely on it to notice that the words of your positive testimony do not necessarily cover so much as the servant may wish to make them appear to cover ? The answer is very simple,—it can never be anything but mis- leading to use words which by the servant's unscrupulousness may be strained to mean more than they do mean. But it may be, and often is, far the least misleading course to leave a question which you cannot answer satisfactorily, and yet which if answered truly will seem to mean much more than it does, altogether un- answered. The difficulty of character-giving is to reproduce the impression you really have of a servant on the mind of a stranger, without including in it more than you ought, either on the favour- able or the unfavourable side. It will not unfrequently happen that silence will help you to effect this better in relation to certain ques- tions, than speech. But speech which is likely to be misconstrued into more than it means can never help you at all. We would just as soon "sin strongly" with Mrs. Bias, and write out a. romance instead of a character, as state what is true in one sense, but may be read by the new master in quite another sense, only to please the servant.
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