Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper man to doff his livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This searching genius of philosophy and les petites moeurs solemnly warned that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of servile war. The famous farce of High Life below Stairs exposed with great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of the guest, this victim had to pass along a line of domestics, arranged in the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]
[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly; and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the household economy which led to such results.—ED.]
[Footnote B: These vails, supposed to be the free gratuity of the invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that persons paid servants by that mode only—levying a kind of black-mail on their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing," says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the vails are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having, owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play noted above.—ED.]
When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing marketable and transferable, the single principle judged sufficient to regulate the mutual conduct of the master and the domestic was, to command and to obey. It seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies of domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of its zeal. To be served well, we should be loved a little; the command of an excellent master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall, or an Adonis for the drawing-room; but at those times, when the domestic ceases to be an object in the public eye, he sinks into an object of sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are recklessly neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air; he is driven when he is already exhausted; he begins the work of midnight, and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, repine, and curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of servants congregated in our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the modes of fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own thoughts. The heart of the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the good-tempered into insolence.
South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval, the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote from all knowledge of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal manners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has since passed through a mighty evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings, of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, and communicated more frequently even with "his lord." The domestic is now not always a stranger to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor—their confidential counsellor—the mirror in which his lordship contemplates on his wishes personified.
This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures the laughter in "Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed such intense attention to affairs solely relating to servants. "Let him jest with dignity, and let him be ironical upon useful subjects, leaving poor slaves to eat their porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter Scott:—"The noble lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society." Such, in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.
Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with the interests of the house they inhabit. They are unconscious that they have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of the servant. But in small communities we perceive how the affections of the master and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient retired family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit, and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and endearing term of "our house." We discover this in whole countries where luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from each other, to deaden their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and in Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants of certain localities. Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual in Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. These domestics participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized and domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the heart. An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.
It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are most intense; all concentrating themselves in their private circles, in such localities there is no public—no public which extorts so many sacrifices from the individual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the warm attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys, at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading, and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of character for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal.
The mode of providing for the future comforts of their maidens is a little incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only practised in such limited communities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annales des Voyages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, on one great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the ample reward of their good conduct. On that happy day the mistress and all the friends of the family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every friend of the house sends some article; and the mistress notes down the gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. The donations consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and other useful articles for a young woman. These tributes of friendship are placed beside a silver basin, which contains the annual wages of the servant; her relatives from the country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets covered with ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural delicacies. They are received by the master himself, who invites them to the feast, where the company assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the presents are reviewed. The servant introduced kneels to receive the benediction of her mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of her good qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden that, having been brought up in the house, if it be her choice to remain, from henceforward she shall be considered as one of the family. Tears of affection often fall during this beautiful scene of true domesticity, which terminates with a ball for the servants, and another for the superiors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with their joyous musicians; and, if the maiden prefers her old domestic abode, she receives an increase of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years another jubilee provides her second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of the influence of this passion of domesticity in the servant;—its merit equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos Ayres, where our brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, slaves as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the invaders. On this signal occasion the city decreed a public expression of their gratitude to the negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded the freedom of eighty of their leaders. One of them, having shown his claims to the boon, declared, that to obtain his freedom had all his days formed the proud object of his wishes: his claim was indisputable; yet now, however, to the amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered freedom! The reason he alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt sensibility:—"My kind mistress," said the negro, "once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in her infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure she leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be tempted to abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom that she may know she possesses a slave who never will quit her side."
Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking illustrations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves. I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her old lady to her last day.