The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

A few days before my mammy’s death she made her will, dividing her “things,” for such wills were as strictly observed as if they had been admitted to probate. Among her bequests her feather-bed and pillows were left to my elder brother. She made my mother bring a pen and write his name on the bed and pillows. And these pillows are now in his rectory.

It was from our mammies that we learned those delightful stories of “Brer Fox” and “Brer Hyah,” which the children of a later generation have learned through the magic pen of “Uncle Remus.” It was from them also that we learned many of the lessons of morality and truth.

Next to the mammy in point of dignity was, of right, the butler. He held much the same position that is held by the butler in English houses. He was a person in authority, and he looked that every inch. He had his ideas, and they usually prevailed. He was the governor of the young children, the mentor of the young men, and their counsellor even after they had grown up.

Some of my readers may have seen in some hotel a Negro head-waiter who was a model of dignity and of grave authority—a field-marshal in ebony—doing the honors of his dining-room like a court chamberlain, and ruling his subordinates with the authority of a benignant despot. Such a one was probably some gentleman’s butler, who had risen by his abilities to be the chief of the dining-room.

More than one such character rises before me from the past, and the stories of their authority are a part of the traditional record of every family. The most imposing one that I personally remember was “Uncle Tom,” the butler of a cousin, whose stateliness impressed my childhood’s fancy in a way which has never been effaced. I have seen monarchs less impressive. His authority was so well recognized that he used to be called in to make the children take their physic.

It was said that one of the children, who is now a matron of great dignity and a grandmother, once, in an awed whisper, asked her grandmother, who was the mistress of “Uncle Tom” and of several hundred other servants, “Gran’ma, is you feared o’ Unc’ Tom?” And her grandmother, who told the story, used to add: “And you know the truth is, I am.”

It was a cousin of hers, Mrs. Carter, of Shirley, who used to say that when she invited company she always had to break it to Clarissy, her maid.

In truth, whatever limitation there was on the unstinted hospitality of the South was due to the fact that the servants were always considered in such matters.

This awe of the butler in his grandeur often did not pass away with youth. He both demanded and received his due respect even from grown members of the family. Of one that I knew it is told now by gray-headed men how, on occasion, long after they were grown, he would correct their manners, even at table, by a little rap on the head and a whispered reproof, as he leaned over them to place a dish. And I never knew one who did not retain his position of influence and exercise his right of admonition.

I have known butlers to take upon themselves the responsibility of saying what young gentlemen should be admitted as visitors at the house, and to whom the ladies should be denied. In fact, every wise young man used to be at pains to make friends with the old servants, for they were a sagacious class and their influence in the household was not inconsiderable. They had an intuitive knowledge, which amounted to an instinct, for “winnowing the grain from the chaff,” and they knew a “gent’man” at sight. Their acute and caustic comments have wrecked the chances of many an aspiring young suitor who failed to meet with their approval.