I was getting well as quick as ever I decently could, when I was nearly thrown back; and I really thought I should be obliged to have a relapse. The fact is, we had a nasty tiff about the livery; for, upon my word, if Mr. Edward was not for putting the fellow into plain clothes—a likely thing! I said, and perhaps have him mistaken for some of my relations. But I pretty soon gave my gentleman to understand that I would have nothing short of a livery in my house; when, of course, off he went, talking some more of his highflown radical slang about liveries being “low things,” and “badges of servitude.” Badges of servitude, indeed! as if I did not know they were, long ago; and, to confess the truth, that was just the very reason—as I told him—why I stood out for one. Did he for one moment fancy that I was such a great big silly as to go to the expense of a man-servant to have him going in and out of my house, looking as disreputable as a country curate. For my part, I said, nothing would please me better—if it was only the fashion—than to put a beautiful brass collar round his neck, with our name and address nicely engraved on it, so that he might go about like a Newfoundland dog, and people know whose property he was. So I begged I might hear no more of such fal-lal nonsense; and that, if he did not wish to make me ill again, he would drop the subject without saying another word about it.
Well, I suppose, if I saw one, I saw a hundred great, big, hulking fellows, who came after my situation, and who were so grand, that, bless us and save us! one would have fancied that they had been brought up as clerks in some government office, and had been in the habit of receiving large salaries for doing nothing all their lives. Out of the bunch, I picked that John Duffy—drat him!—for he was the best, to my way of thinking. When he applied for the place, he was a nice, decent, genteel-looking body, of rather a slim figure than otherwise, and he seemed so willing—assuring me that he was ready to make himself generally useful, (all of which I can now very well understand—especially the thinness—for he had been six months out of a situation.)
The livery I had made for that dirty Duffy was one of the sweetest things when it was new, certainly. Every article of the entire suit was of a different colour. I ordered the tailor to make me a love of a white coat, and a pet of a canary waistcoat, and a perfect duck of a pair of bright crimson plush knee what-d’ye-call-’ems—the name of the things escapes me just at the present moment. Mr. Edward, in his nasty, perverse way, would have it that Duffy would look more like a Macaw in such fine feathers than a Christian; but I soon put a stop to his sneers, for I asked him pretty plainly, what the dickens that was to me? Of course I wanted all the world to know that I had got a footman, and as I didn’t see anything to be ashamed of in it, I took good care to publish it as conspicuously, and in as many colours, as a Vauxhall posting-bill.
But it seemed as if Fate had put me down in her black books, for really and truly that John Duffy couldn’t have been in the house above a month, before he got so gross and so fat, and did make flesh so fast, that I’m sure it would have required nothing short of a suit of vulcanized india-rubber to have kept pace with him. As for asking him to pick up anything, bless you! I no more dared to do it than—than I don’t know what; for as sure as the porpoise stooped for anything, bang! would go either the strings of his waistcoat or else crack! would fly all the beautiful silver buttons off the knees of his—a—of his thing-me-jigs, (dear me, I shall forget my own name next.) When that monkey of a Wittals was with me, he nearly drove me out of my mind by growing upwards, but that pig of a Duffy fairly sent me stark staring mad, by growing sideways—drat him! Wittals, to have looked any way decent, wanted trousers made to pull out like telescopes; but that abominable Duffy, in order to have been kept merely respectable, must have had a coat and waistcoat made to expand like an accordion. If Wittals’s mulberry pantaloons required a tuck to be let out at the bottom at least once a month, I’m sure that Duffy’s canary vest needed another gore to be let in at the back quite as often. Really, the sixth week after the great whale had been in my kitchen, if he hadn’t grown nearly five waistcoat buttons stouter upon the good things out of my larder, and, before two months were over my head, if I hadn’t to put in behind a great wedge of shalloon—in the shape of a large sippet, to get it to meet anyhow. The way in which the man’s chin, too, kept on increasing was positively frightful for a thrifty housewife to behold. Chin upon chin, did I see grow under my very eyes, until at last they bulged out over his neckcloth, for all the world like half a mellon. And no wonder! for the quantity that man would eat was positively as if he was going into training for an apoplexy; and it wasn’t quantity alone he wanted, but, bless me! quality as well! As for cold meat, over and over again, have I seen him trying to turn his nose up at it; but, unfortunately for him, it was a snub, and do what he would, he couldn’t turn it up any higher. But, though Mr. Duffy objected to cold meat for dinner, yet he could manage to make away with a pound or two of it for his breakfast and supper. And, mercy-on-me! even the common household bread wasn’t good enough for his royal highness’s delicate stomach! Oh, no! he must needs go pampering himself with the digestive cottages I had expressly for myself of a morning. As for good wholesome salt butter, too, at one-and-one, I declare he wouldn’t so much as soil his mouth with it; not he! but he’d wait till our butter-dish came down, and then wouldn’t he fall to at our fresh at one-and-eight, and spread it on a large bit of my digestive cottage—yes! as thick as stucco!
The beauty of it was, too, the fatter he got upon my food, the lazier he grew over my work, for really it seemed as difficult for him to crawl along, as if he was one of those heavy inactive things your city folks will call “lively turtle;” and all the way up stairs one might hear him breathing as hard as a pavior, and puffing and blowing away like a railway engine. When he came up, too, there he’d be, with his face looking as greasy and dirty as the newspaper we have half price from the coffee-shop, and his forehead as dewy as our kitchen window on a washing day. But what annoyed me more than all was, that, do what I would, I could not for the life of me get the nasty bristly pig to shave his filthy red beard of a morning; and there I should have him bringing the dinner things up with his four chins looking as rough and rusty as so many rasped French rolls.
The fellow, too, was so conceited, that really there was no bearing with him; for instance, if I left him in the parlour dusting the chairs, or rubbing the tables, directly my back was turned, off he’d be to the pier glass, and get attitudinizing before it, and arranging the nasty, greasy, figure 6 curl he had in the middle of his forehead, with his nasty oily fingers, or else—drat his impudence!—nothing would suit him, but he must go to the sideboard, and take out the clothes-brush, or, if that wasn’t handy, the semicircular one we had to sweep the crumbs off the table-cloth with, and begin scrubbing away at his hair with it. And the nuisance of it was, bother take it! I would make the fellow wear powder, so that, if ever I went to brush my beautiful black German velvet dress, there I should have it with long white streaks upon it like the inside of a backgammon board, and all smelling of hair-powder and pomatum as strong as that Duffy’s livery-hat.
Then of an evening, nothing would suit my lord duke but he must needs go lolling against the post of the street-door with his great big lumpy legs—like the ballustrades on Waterloo Bridge—crossed one over the other, picking his teeth with a bit of one of my pens, and ogling the girls, and making a noise with his lips after them as they went by—as if he was a perfect Adonis in plush—a—in plush—(tut! tut! it is very strange! I never can remember the name of those what-d’ye-call-’ems). Or if he wasn’t at the street door, wasting my time against the post, there the monkey would be perched up on the top step of the area ladder, with his cauliflower head poked over the rails, and either in full gossip with what he made me believe was his washerwoman (the wretch!) or else sneering away at the policeman, or making game of the soldiers as they passed the house,—both of whom, he told our cook, who told me, were low-class hanimals, and people that he could not condescend to sit down to table with—so there was no use hasking on ’em. The consequence of this was, that if I had to ring once of an evening for him, I had to ring at least a hundred times before I could get him to hear me. And when he did hear me, sneak-to would go the street door, and in he would come all of an imitation hurry, buttoning up his waistcoat as if he had been dressing. Only let me stir out of the house, too, for a minute, and as sure as eggs are eggs, I should find him when I came back with his four chins resting comfortably on the top of our parlour blinds, and staring out of window with all his might—as if he was a lord bishop of the land, and had nothing to do, and there were no such things as teacups to wash up, or British plate to clean,—which latter article, as every married lady knows, is only a cheap substitute for silver, provided you’re rubbing it up every quarter of an hour, and if you’re not, why it looks more like a very expensive substitute for brass. Though, as for washing up the tea-things! I really don’t suppose the corpulent puppy did it above half-a-dozen times, at most, all the while he was with me. For, what do you think, gentle Reader, the nasty good-for-nothing, deceitful, carneying peacock used to do? Why if he usen’t to give that stupid, stupid cook of mine—who ought to have known better at her time of life—a filthy kiss, to get her to do it for him; and I suppose that he must have thought his slobberings particularly precious, for, positively, if the red-haired monkey didn’t go offering the same high terms to the maids, if they would only fill his coal scuttles for him, and—I blush for my sex when I say it—the minxes used to do it at the paltry price. What they can have seen, in the man, I’m sure I can’t make out; and I’m certain they didn’t know one thing—any more than I myself did at that time—or they never could have allowed him to trifle with their very best affections in the shameful way he did—a nasty, wicked, deceitful, liquorish-toothed “Married Man!”—and that’s what he was! When the wretch came to me, he told me he was a confirmed bachelor; but his livery, though shamefully spotted was not half worn out, when, to my horror, I discovered that the brute was a hopeless, inextricable Benedict, with not only a fond wife to support—out of my larder, drat her!—but no less than seven little incumbrances to bring up—on my cold meat, hang ’em! As a woman, of course, I’m for universal matrimony all over the world—though with regard to those necessary evils called servants, I must confess, I am of a totally different opinion. For my part, I would have them all bound by law to remain as single, all their days, as spiders. But from the parental turn of the Footmen, Housemaids, and Cooks of the nineteenth century, I’m afraid no Act of Parliament could be made binding enough to prevent the fond stupids from plunging headlong into wedlock and a chandler’s shop; and when they find that a bountiful Providence doesn’t send customers as quick as it does children to such people, then of course the husband and the father again becomes the footman and the bachelor, drat him!—while the wife and the mother gets her daily bread for her children out of her mangle, and her daily meat for them out of your pantry! In my eyes, the only way to prevent this frightful state of things, is for us housekeepers to see whether or not, by the high wages we are now giving for men-servants, we couldn’t prevail upon some of the poor Catholic priests—who everybody knows have taken the vow of perpetual celibacy—to put on a toupée, and enter our service as footmen,—though, of course, from the proverbial warm-hearted disposition of the inhabitants of the “imirald isle,” it might be as well to give notice—even in such a case—that “no Irish need apply.”
For more than a month I thought that Duffy was as single as the very Gloucester he had for cheese, and so I should have believed him to my dying day, had I not noticed that he not only seemed too attentive by half to his washerwoman—who afterwards turned out to be his draggle-tail hussey of a wife—but also that the bundles of dirty clothes he sent to the wash, were considerably more corpulent, than, from the usual filthy state of his linen, I should have been led to expect. And it wasn’t long before I found out the cause of it all; for one fine Monday morning, I happened to go into the pantry, and there lay the usual stout bundle of dirty linen, belonging to John Duffy, Esquire. When I opened it on the sly, I thought I should have fainted. There they were—very pretty indeed!—two pair of cotton stockings—one pair of cold fried soles—one cotton night-cap—half a raspberry jam tart—one day shirt—a large piece of a beef-steak pie—two dickies—six tallow candles—four white cravats—a hunk of cold bacon—one pair of drawers—and upon my honour, near upon half a hundred weight of coals stuffed inside of them.
But the beauty of it was, that not content with robbing me of my meat and coals, and candles and things, the villain must set to work pilfering our wine as well; and whenever Mr. Sk—n—st—n told him to decanter a bottle of port, or even sherry, I declare if the fellow didn’t, while he stood at the sideboard with his back turned to us, fill a good sized physic bottle out of it every time, for his own private drinking. For a long time it struck me, that less wine went to the quart bottle than is usual even with wine-merchants; but I attributed this to the improvements which are going on in glass manufactories so rapidly, that bottles, apparently the same size as they used to be, are made, by some invisible arrangement at the bottom, to hold twice as little as they used to do; while they seem to be getting less and less so fast, that soon, instead of two pints making one quart, in wine and beer measure, as our schoolmasters foolishly taught us to believe, we shall find it just the very reverse; for shortly, the “Honourable Company of Free Vintners” will teach us that two quarts make one pint.
Of course, from this I suspected something was wrong, and longed for the time when I should find my gentleman out. Accordingly, one day seeing that Mr. Duffy was out of his pantry, and the key in his cupboard door, I just took the liberty of looking into it, and there, to my great delight, I saw several rows of physic bottles packed one a-top of another—with sawdust, too, as I’m a Christian! and lying on their sides for all the world like a miniature bin of wine. I took up one of them, labelled “this draught to be taken at bed time;” and I declare if it wasn’t some of our very best port—then another, ticketed, “the mixture as before,” and hang me, if that wasn’t a phial full of our very choicest brown sherry! and on reaching down a bottle divided into quarters, with directions, ordering, “a fourth part of this gargle to be used whenever the throat is troublesome,” and if that one wasn’t filled to the cork—I never knew such impudence!—with some of our very primest Cogniac brandy! “Hoity toity!” cried I, “so Mr. Duffy must needs have a private cellar of his own. No wonder Mr. Edward is always telling me, in his nasty, mean, insinuating way, as if he thought I drank them, that the wine and spirits go very fast.”