"HIS MAIDSERVANT"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22084, 13 April 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

"HIS MAIDSERVANT"

VICTORIAN ROBOTS ROMANCE IN AN OLD CALLING BY BART SUTHERLAND It was very pleasant when young, and placed one on an equality with those who owned large retinues, to chant that one must not "covet one s neighbour's manservant, nor his maidservant, nor-anything that was his." We .English, at some period, seem to have neatly chopped the sonorous and impressive word "maidservant" in halves. We retain the flippant, ambiguous, pert, two-faced "maid," and have allowed the nice, solid "servant" part to be buried in a Victorian mausoleum with other unwanted goods. I cannot help thinking that the word "servant," beautiful in itself by its implication of long fidelity and service, died because of an unfortunate association, in the last century, with hard work, lowly station and little pay. Most of us, even those not so very old, have pathetic recollections of tho loyal general servant so feelingly described by Arnold Bennett —the Maggie of "The, Old Wives' Tale": " She lived seventeen hours of each day in an underground kitchen and larder, and the other seven in an attic, never going out except to chapel on Sunday evenings }/ and one© a month on Thursday afternoons. Followers were most strictly forbidden to her; but on rare occasions an aunt from Longshaw was permitted', as a tremendous favour, to see her in the subterranean den." Maggie's idea of perfect bliss was to be allowed to take the baby out for an airing;! The "Robots" of Victorian Days It is 'a pity that robots were unknown in the Victorian age; they would have suited the prim exactmgness of employers so well. I lately had occasion to turn out an old handbook for servants, and spent a good deal of time in part-loving, part-amused contemplation of the ancient information imparted. There are elevating proverbs not only on the cover and front page, but interspersed among the recipes, the fulfilment of which would place the humble pupil in the company of the angels—or rfibots! I very much fear that this book was responsible for the making of at least one good robot, who, in the manner of Karel. Capek's puppets, at last turned upon her employer; for inside the cover, in a woman's handwriting, there is pencilled: "E. DIXON, Esqre. —Ess end'was peace." Was this book presented to the cook by a pompous, ' exacting, mutton-chop-whiskered master? Did she at last, a machine maddened by injunctions to keep everything in its proper place, and not to give saucy .answers, turn on him and poison his food? Or is it just a simple j ironic statement on the terrors of her own cooking? This Victorian servant reveals a rather cruel humour; there was a gayer> more human spirit, in service, in, less well-behaved times. A Sense of Humour Don't you love Juliet's nurse—a true Tudor wench, for all she was allegedly a native of Verona ? She is the accepted companion who offers advice upon lovers: " Doth not rosemary and/ Romeo begin both with a letter? " and " I anger her sometimes and tell her Paris is the properer man " —those pleasant teasings before tragedy ensued, that must have taken place during idle hours 'or hair-brush-ing. How she must have embarrassed Romeo by recalling what a pretty little prating thing her lady once was*! And she could be exceedingly tactless — with that nice bluntness of the plebeian. " Well, death's the end of all," she remarked to the young lover in the midst of lis most serious complications. ' But she has time, amid breaking evii tidings to Juliet, to take the keys from Lady Capulet for "they call for dates and quinces in the pas- • try." ' In a Romantic Age If I were called on to be a servant, it is such that I would be —not the poor drudge to the Victorian middleclass; nor one of the prim, wellbehaved retinue of the aristocracy of those days, as jealous, in precedence as their masters; nor would I occupy the false position of the "maid", of today. If I could not be a Juliet's nurse, with the sweet record of years, I wish that I had been a manservant, one of the kind beloved by old romancers. In them their masters confided, as Orlando does to Adam, in the opening to "As You Like It." I should like to offer my master the savings of a, lifetime, as he does; five hundred crowns, hoarded against the'time when "unregarded age is in corners thrown." I should like to have shared hairraising adventures with my lord, my trusty blade never far behind his; rfny wits to his assistance in the capture of gold or gems, and the succour of damsels; and, at the end of the story, I should like just a little faint praise. Tt is all * ar to ° ro'iautic, you will say; but I assure you I would not mind being a plain, honest servant. Creatures superior ..to myself in wisdom do undoubtedly Walk the earth, and if, like kings,' they should send me commissions, addressing me as their "loyal and trusty servant," I would not mind living—or dying—to do them honour.