“Let us speak of a man as we find him,
And censure alone what we see;
And should any one blame, let’s remind him,
That from faults we are none of us free.”
“Let us speak of a Man as we find him.”
“She wander’d forlorn, without guardian or guide,
To the brink of the flood o’er the precipice side.”
“Ah! did you not hear of a poor Silly Maid.”
After Susan left me, I had one or two maids; but I really can’t say what on earth had come to all the creatures, for none of them would suit me. However, as there was nothing particular about their goings on, and the annoyances they caused me were not of sufficient consequence to interest my readers, I shall merely say that, as I wasn’t going to have any more pretty maids in my house so long as those dreadful barracks remained in the neighbourhood, I took good care to choose the very ugliest that I could pitch upon. I declare to goodness if the woman wasn’t the very image of an ourang-outang in petticoats! Goodness gracious! I never saw such a head on a woman’s shoulders before in all my life. Lord-a’-mercy upon the woman, if she hadn’t nose enough for six! and it was of that peculiar shape which mother calls a bottle, and hairs all growing on the end of it, just like a large ripe red gooseberry. But I’m sorry to say that I had overshot my mark this time; for, upon my word, the woman was so shamefully ill-favoured, and so frightfully bad-looking, that after she came into the house, instead of growing accustomed to her face, as I expected I should, it only seemed to me to grow more and more ugly every day; and Edward vowed that he couldn’t bear to look upon her, and wouldn’t have such a buck-horse, as he called her, in his service; and, more than that, I declare my little ducks-o’-diamonds of a Kate used to scream itself nearly into fits directly the woman came near her. So I was obliged to get rid of her, though I must do the woman the justice to say that she answered my purpose very well, and did capitally for what I had engaged her—viz., to scare all the life-guardsmen away from my larder, which she did so effectually, that from the day after she entered my service, till the time she left, I never saw but one near the place, and he was a red-headed Irishman, and, I suppose, thought that, as the woman was so ugly, she must have a good bit of money in the savings bank; but even he only came once.
The next maid I had was too grand by half to please me, and ought to have been a duchess instead of a servant; as she told me, plump and plain, “that she couldn’t a’bear the taste of ’ashes, and warn’t a-going to have none of the scraps warmed up twice, and shoved off upon her.” So, of course, I soon let the stuck-up thing know that she wouldn’t suit me, and that I only hoped that the day might come when she would be glad to jump out of her skin to get a dishful of sweet and wholesome mutton, instead of standing there turning up her nose at it, as if she were a lady of fashion.
The servant that I had after my fine lady was really a good one; but she objected to clean boots and knives, declaring that she had lived as maid-of-all-work in the first of families—(I never knew such first of families—I had her character from a tobacconist),—where every morning a man used to come in and do them. Indeed, she positively refused to touch either; so, as I wasn’t going to give into her—even if she had been the treasure that my mother promised to find me when I first got married—I determined to let her see who was mistress, and paying her a month in advance, I told her to go back and show her airs in her first of families, for she shouldn’t in mine.
Really, what with all this worry and bother, and what with my nursing at the time, I declare it was pulling me down so low, that my poor bones were all starting through my poor skin, and positively I hadn’t a bit of fat left upon my cheeks. If I drank one pint of porter throughout the day, I must have drunk near upon a dozen; and although the beer in the neighbourhood certainly was very good, still it seemed to be all thrown away upon me; and dear Edward very truly observed, that such a great big child as my Kitty was too much for me, and that either I must make up my mind to wean the poor little dear, (which I couldn’t bear the thoughts of,) or I must take more substantial food, and keep always having something strengthening, and a glass of port wine every two hours throughout the day; for he said, he didn’t wish me to go drinking so much porter; and that, as it was, there was nothing but one series of cries now at our door of “pots” and “beer,” from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night. Really, he felt quite ashamed to look at our area rails when he got up, for there wasn’t a spike that hadn’t got a pewter-pot hanging to it, so that any one to see the sight would imagine that porter after all was the real blessing to mothers, and that Barclay and Perkins ought to be looked upon as the gigantic wet-nurses to the infants of the metropolis, while Truman and Hanbury might, at the same time, be regarded in the light of the extensive purveyors of milk to the blessed babes of London.
I told him, for goodness’ sake, to hold his tongue, and talk about something that he understood, and that I was sure I didn’t take half as much stout as many ladies that I knew, for that ever since the little pet had been born, I had accustomed it to the bottle.
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he replied; “teaching a little innocent creature like that to fly for consolation to the bottle already. For my part,” he continued, “I shouldn’t at all wonder if she could, even now, at her tender age, manage her six bottles without being under the cradle.”
“Well, I’m sure!” I exclaimed. “I think you might find something better to joke upon, Mr. Sk—n—st—n, and not go turning your own flesh and blood into ridicule.”
“You know, my dear,” he continued, sipping his wine in the coolest way possible, “I’ve told you at least a hundred times that it’s one of the prettiest and most innocent little lambs I ever saw: so, come, my love, let’s drink the darling’s health; and I’ll give you a toast—‘May we ne’er want a baby, nor a bottle to give it!’”