Mr. Kipling, as I say, is thinking more of highly trained and efficient operatives than of the quieter ministrants; but, after all, some of Mary's Sons—possibly the majority of them—stay at home and refrain from running the Empire, and these too count upon their cousins for assistance.
A very large number of Martha's Sons, for example, become waiters; and waiters are a race to whom insufficient justice has been done by men of letters. There should be a Book of Waiters, as there was a Book of Doctors and a Book of Lawyers by the late Cordy Jeaffreson, and a Book of the Table by the late Dr. Doran. Old waiters for choice: men who have mellowed in their calling; men who have tasted wines for themselves and studied human nature when it eats and is vulnerable. I wish somebody would compile it. It should be a cosmopolitan work: England's old waiters must be there, and France's, upon whom most clubmen of any age ought to be able to enlarge fruitily. In fact, all well-stored Bohemian memories in London and Paris should yield much. And Ireland's old waiters most conspicuously must be there; but whoever is to write this book must hasten to collect the material, for in Ireland, I am told, the old waiter is vanishing. An elderly Irish gentleman with whom I was talking recently—or, rather, to whom I was listening as he searched his memory for drolleries of the past—said that the disappearance, under modern conditions, of the old humorous independent waiters of his earlier day is the one which he personally most regretted. No longer, said he, are to be found, except very occasionally, these worthy friends of the traveller—Martha's Sons at their best, or, at any rate, at their most needed. Slow they may have been, not always strictly sober, and often despotic; but they were to be counted upon as landmarks: they extended a welcome, they fed the hungry (in time), they slaked the thirsty (more quickly), and they made remarks amusing enough to fortify their good points and palliate their bad. "There was an old fellow named Terence at Limerick," said my friend, and there followed two or three characteristic anecdotes of old Terence at Limerick. "There was old Tim at Tralee," and he painted old Tim for me in a few swift strokes—red nose, creaking legs, and all. What though his nose was red and his legs creaked, Tralee is no longer worth visiting, because Tim is not there. That was the burden of the lament. These old fellows have passed, and the new waiters, most of whom are foreigners or girls, can never mature into anything comparable with them.
Two of my friend's stories I may tell. One is of old Dennis at Mallow, who on being asked if the light in the coffee-room could not be made brighter, said, in that charming definitive Irish way, that it could not. "Is it always like this?" my friend then inquired. "It is not, sorr," said old Dennis; "it is often worse." Not a great anecdote, but you must brave the horrors of St. George's Channel to meet with these alluring unexpectednesses of speech. Imagine an English waiter thus surprising one! The other story is of old Florence, head waiter at a certain Irish yacht club. Some sojourners in the neighbourhood, having been elected honorary members for the period of their visit, asked a few American friends to dine there, and then, even while in the boat on their way to dinner, suddenly realised that honorary members are entitled to no such privileges. It was decided to put the case to old Florence. "Have you a rule against honorary members inviting guests?" "We have, sorr," said he. "Is it very strictly enforced? I mean, would there be any risk in breaking it?" "There would not, sorr. The only rule in this club that is never broken, sorr, is the one which forbids gratuities to be given to the waiters."
For those Sons of Martha who make their living—and not a bad one—by ministering to their hungry fellow-creatures there is no call to feel sorry. They are often not only richer but happier than their customers, and when the time comes they retire to snug little houses (of which they not infrequently own a row) with a competence, and pass the evening of life with their pipe and glass, their friends and grandchildren, moving serenely, if perhaps with a shade too plantigrade a step (the waiters' heritage), to the grave. No call, as I say, to feel sorry for them; but what of those other Sons of Martha, the railway porters, who while helping us to travel and get away from home never travel or get away from home themselves, and for ever are carrying or wheeling heavy trunks or searching for visionary cabs?
The mere fact of never having a holiday is not in itself distressing. Holidays often are overrated disturbances of routine, costly and uncomfortable, and they usually need another holiday to correct their ravages. Men who take no holidays must not, therefore, necessarily become objects of our pity. But I confess to feeling sorry for those servants of the public who apparently not only never take a holiday themselves, but who spend all their lives in assisting others to get away.
It is probably no privation to a bathing-machine man never to enter the sea; uproariously happy in that element as his clients can be, their pleasure, in which he has no share, does not, I imagine, embitter his existence. Similarly, since a waiter either has eaten or is soon to eat, we need not waste sympathy on his unending task of setting seductive dishes before others. But it is conceivable that some of those weary and dejected men whom one sees at Victoria Station, for example, in the summer, eternally making an effort, however unsuccessful, to cope with the exodus of Londoners to the south coast, really would like also to repose on Brighton beach. But they may not. Their destiny is for ever to help others to that paradise, and remain at Victoria themselves. Just as Moses was denied the Children of Israel's Promised Land, so are the porters. The engine-driver can go, the stoker can go, the guard can go,—indeed, they must go,—but the porters get no nearer than the carriage doors and then wheel back again. And if the plight of the porters at Victoria is unenviable, think of that of the porters at the big termini on the other side of London and elsewhere when they read the labels on the luggage which they handle!—labels for the west, for the land of King Arthur; labels for the north, for delectable Highland retreats; labels for Northumberland and Yorkshire; labels for the east coast; labels for Kerry and Galway and Connemara.
FREAKS OF MEMORY
It was my fortune not long since to meet again, in the flesh, the most famous of our prophets—Old Moore, whose cautious vaticination is on sale even in the streets. To my dismay he did not recognise me. Not that a want of recognition is so rare—very far from it—but the surprise is that a being gifted with such preternatural vision should thus fail, when I, who am only an ordinary person, knew him again instantly. Long habits of fixing his penetrating gaze on the murky future have no doubt rendered the backward look less simple to him. Anyway, there we stood, I challenging him to remember me and he failing to do so. This momentary superiority of my own poor wits over those of a man who (undismayed by the refusal of events always to fall into line) foretells so much, uplifted me; but the untrustworthiness of memory is so constant and lands one in such embarrassments that it is foolish for anyone to boast.