Novel-reading Servants
P. S.—When I got back from Astley to-night, I had the greatest difficulty to get into the house. No one answered the bell, and finally Perkins, who has a key to the kitchen, let me in that way. I went into the dining-room and rang and called; still no one came. I then went upstairs and found Thérèse, the two maids, the cook, and the new page, sitting round a blazing wood fire in my bed-room, and cook was reading "The Master Christian" to them aloud!
I cried from pure vexation, for one can't send all one's servants away at the same time. I am sure I can't see why the lower classes should have novelists, but they have everything just like us now-a-days. And when I was in town last month, at Claridge's, the Duchess of Rougemont told me she didn't know what the world was coming to, for her maid belonged to a Corelli Society, and she had actually sat next her own footman at a Paderewski Recital the last time the pianist was in London.
LETTER XXIII
Monk's Folly, 2nd November
Darling Elizabeth:
Theatricals