Some of the nasans at the up-country hotels are charming little creatures. How well I can still see the row of merry, laughing faces that always greeted us when we arrived at the delightful hotel up at Myanoshita, where we went sometimes for a change of air and rest after the gaieties of Tokio. Before we knew it, our muddy boots would be taken off, warm slippers given us, hot baths prepared; to say nothing of an excellent meal always ready at whatever hour we arrived--and all without any fuss or noise but the patter of small feet up and down the long corridors, as the little maidens hastened to do our bidding.
Once or twice at Christmas time, when games were the order of the evening, we would request the company of half a dozen of our little handmaidens to join in a game of ‘hunt the slipper,’ How they laughed and entered into the fun, and yet never forgot their polite manners, nor failed to treat us with the greatest deference and respect!
Soon after our arrival in Tokio we had a difficulty in getting servants, and it was suggested that we should obtain the services of Mrs. Peter Potts, whose duties as ‘charwoman’ at the English Legation only occupied her one day a week. When I first made the old lady’s acquaintance she was about sixty-five years old, still hale and hearty, in spite of a somewhat strong predilection, I grieve to say, for ‘old Tom.’ Her face always reminded me of a dried russet apple, furrowed and lined by years of toil and constant exposure. Her complexion was fresh and ruddy, and shone from a lavish application of soap-suds and much polishing. Her scanty gray locks were generally hidden in the house by a red cotton handkerchief, tied under the chin, out of doors by an appalling erection which was once a bonnet, but which the ravages of time and weather had reduced to a confused jumble of faded blue velvet, jellow flowers, and souvenirs from a deceased rooster’s tail.
Her clothes, though shabby through much wear and faded from many introductions to the wash-tub, were always scrupulously clean and neat. A rusty black silk dress and mantle, relics of former mistresses, only appeared at weddings and funerals; and the wonderful violet silk garment kept expressly for Royal functions--for the old lady was nothing if not loyal--was the above-mentioned garment turned inside out!
From many years’ employment at the Legation, Mrs. Peter Potts had come to consider herself one of the ‘staff,’ and expected to be treated as such. Her respect for the authorities, from the English Minister downwards, was immense, and she had a scale of reverence with which she greeted them--the Court curtsey to His Excellency was a sight to be remembered and wondered at. It could hardly be properly accomplished in an ordinary-sized room, although I have seen the old woman, interrupted in the midst of cleaning a grate, her face and hands black with soot, rise to her feet, catch a piece of rough holland apron in either hand, and sweep backwards across the room in a style a Duchess of the eighteenth century could not have surpassed.
History, however, relates that a former Minister many years previously had come under ban of Mrs. Peter Potts’ displeasure, and, in a moment of indignation too strong to be suppressed, she grasped His ‘Excurrency’--as she called His Excellency--by the beard and shook it violently, much to the great man’s surprise and alarm. Since then, either the Corps Diplomatique became more cautious as to their dealings with their ‘colleague,’ or our friend learnt prudence with age. In any case, of late years the Legation has had no firmer ally than Mrs. Potts. ‘I allus makes my h’inclinations to them of the Corps ’cause I knows my dooty, Miss,’ she said to me one day.
The late lamented Mr. Peter Potts had departed this life some years before our arrival in Japan. He was a pensioner, having been sent out as gate-keeper to the Legation, then in Yokohama, early in the sixties. Mrs. Potts surrounded the memory of her ‘poor Peter’ with such a halo of romance, and attributed his death to such a marvellous number of mortal diseases, that the ex-sergeant of Marines became a glorified figure in her imagination. As a matter of fact, I believe he was a weak sort of creature, very hen-pecked, who died from too great an affection to the gin bottle.
Mrs. Potts has no family living, and seems to rejoice in the fact.
‘I did once ’ave a little bit of a thing not worth mentioning, but, thank the Lord, it was took arter three days. My mother, she ’ad eleven of us, pore soul! all told, and I was the only one as lived to grow up. I was a twin, too, and born with three teeth, and they do say as ’ow they allus are vixens--I know I was when a gal.’
She treated our little Japanese maid-servants with condescension and secret contempt. How could anyone under sixty know how to do things in the proper way?