A few ladies of great taste dress their maids according to individual
becomingness; some faces look well under a cap, others look the contrary.
A maid whose hair is rather fluffy--especially if it is dark--looks pretty
in a cap, particularly of the coronet variety. No one looks well in a
doily laid flat, but fluffy fair hair with a small mat tilted up against
a knot of hair dressed high can look very smart. A young woman whose hair
is straight and rebellious to order, can be made to look tidy and even
attractive in a headdress that encircles the whole head. A good one for
this purpose has a very narrow ruche from 9 to 18 inches long on either
side of a long black velvet ribbon. The ruche goes part way, or all the
way, around the head, and the velvet ribbon ties, with streamers hanging
down the back. On the other hand, many extremely pretty young women with
hair worn flat do not look well in caps of any description--except "Dutch"
ones which are, in most houses, too suggestive of fancy dress. If no caps
are worn the hair must be faultlessly smooth and neat; and of course where
two or more maids are seen together, they must be alike. It would not do
to have one wear a cap and the other not.
=THE LADY'S MAID=
A first class lady's maid is required to be a hairdresser, a good packer
and an expert needlewoman. Her first duty is to keep her lady's clothes in
order and to help her dress, and undress. She draws the bath, lays out
underclothes, always brushes her lady's hair and usually dresses it, and
gets out the dress to be worn, as well as the stockings, shoes, hat, veil,
gloves, wrist bag, parasol, or whatever accessories go with the dress in
question.
As soon as the lady is dressed, everything that has been worn is taken to
the sewing room and each article is gone over, carefully brushed if of
woolen material, cleaned if silk. Everything that is mussed is pressed,
everything that can be suspected of not being immaculate is washed or
cleaned with cleaning fluid, and when in perfect order is replaced where
it belongs in the closet. Underclothes as mended are put in the clothes
hamper. Stockings are looked over for rips or small holes, and the maid
usually washes very fine stockings herself, also lace collars or small
pieces of lace trimming.
Some maids have to wait up at night, no matter how late, until their
ladies return; but as many, if not more, are never asked to wait longer
than a certain hour.
But the maid for a débutante in the height of the season, between the
inevitable "go fetching" at this place and that, and mending of party
dresses danced to ribbons and soiled by partner's hands on the back, and
slippers "walked on" until there is quite as much black part as satin or
metal, has no sinecure.
_Why Two Maids?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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