of yonder
parlourmaid; hark to the housemaid's light brisk tread in the corridor;
note well the slight droop of the footman's shoulders as he noiselessly
draws near. Such things, as being traditional, may pander to your sense
of the great past. Histrionically, too, they are good. But do you really
like them? Do they not make your blood run a trifle cold? In the thick
of the great past, you would have liked them well enough, no doubt.
I myself am old enough to have known two or three servants of the
old school--later editions of Ruskin's Anne. With them there was no
discomfort, for they had no misgiving. They had never wished (heaven
help them!) for more, and in the process of the long years had acquired,
for inspiration of others, much--a fine mellowness, the peculiar sort of
dignity, even of wisdom, that comes only of staying always in the same
place, among the same people, doing the same things perpetually. Theirs
was the sap that rises only from deep roots, and where they were you had
always the sense of standing under great wide branches. One especially
would I recall, who--no, personally I admire the plungingly intimate
kind of essayist very much indeed, but I never was of that kind, and
it's too late to begin now. For a type of old-world servant I would
recall rather some more public worthy, such as that stout old hostler
whom, whenever you went up to stay in Hampstead, you would see standing
planted outside that stout old hostelry, Jack Straw's Castle. He stands
there no more, and the hostelry can never again be to me all that it was
of solid comfort. Or perhaps, as he was so entirely an outside figure,
I might rather say that Hampstead itself is not what it was. His robust
but restful form, topped with that weather-beaten and chin-bearded face,
was the hub of the summit of Hampstead. He was as richly local as the
pond there--that famous pond which in hot weather is so much waded
through by cart-horses and is at all seasons so much barked around by
excitable dogs and cruised on by toy boats. He was as essential as it
and the flag-staff and the gorse and the view over the valley away to
Highgate. It was always to Highgate that his big blue eyes were looking,
and on Highgate that he seemed to be ruminating. Not that I think he
wanted to go there. He was Hampstead-born and Hampstead-bred, and very
loyal to that village. In the course of his life he had 'bin down to
London a matter o' three or four times,' he would tel