Old Country Life

In the very heart of Dartmoor lives a very aged blind man, by name Jonas Coaker, himself a poet, after an illiterate fashion. He is only able to leave his bed for a few hours in the day. He has a retentive memory, and recalls many very old ballads. From being blind he is thrown in on himself, and works on his memory till he digs out some of the old treasures buried there long ago. Unhappily his voice is completely gone, so that melodies cannot be recovered through him.

There is a Cornishman whose name I will give as Elias Keate – a pseudonym – a thatcher, a very fine, big-built, florid man, with big, sturdy sons. This man goes round to all sheep-shearings, harvest homes, fairs, etc., and sings. He has a round, rich voice, a splendid pair of bellows; but he has an infirmity, he is liable to become the worse for the liquor he freely imbibes, and to be quarrelsome over his cups. He belongs to a family of hereditary singers and drinkers. In his possession is a pewter spirit-bottle – a pint bottle – that belonged to his great-grandfather in the latter part of the last century. That old fellow used to drink his pint of raw spirit every day; so did the grandfather of Elias; so did the father of Elias; so would Elias – if he had it; but so do not his sons, for they are teetotalers.

Another minstrel is a little blacksmith; he is a younger man than the others, but he is, to me, a valuable man. He was one of fourteen children, and so his mother sent him, when he was four years old, to his grandmother, and he remained with his grandmother till he was ten. From his grandmother he acquired a considerable number of old dames' songs and ballads. His father was a singer; he had inherited both the hereditary faculty and the stock-in-trade. Thus my little blacksmith learned a whole series which were different from those acquired from the grandmother. At the age of sixteen he left home, finding he was a burden, and since that age has shifted for himself. This man tells me that he can generally pick up a melody and retain it, if he has heard it sung once; that of a song twice sung, he knows words and music, and rarely, if ever, requires to have it sung a third time to perfect him.

On the south of Dartmoor live two men also remarkable in their way – Richard Hard and John Helmore. The latter is an old miller, with a fine intelligent face and a retentive memory. He can read, and his songs have to be accepted with caution. Some are very old, others have been picked up from song-books. Hard is a poor cripple, walking only with the aid of two sticks, with sharply-chiselled features, – he must have been a handsome man in his youth, – bright eyes, a gentle, courteous manner, and a marvellous store of old words and tunes in his head. He is now past stone-breaking on the roadside, and lives on £4 per annum. He has a charming old wife; and he and the old woman sing together in parts their quaint ancient ballads. That man has yielded up something like eighty distinct melodies. His memory, however, is failing; for when the first lines of a ballad in some published collection is read to him, he will sometimes say, "I did know that some forty years ago, but I can't sing it through now." However, he can very generally "put the tune to it."

The days of these old singers is over. What festive gatherings there are now are altered in character. The harvest home is no more. We have instead harvest festivals, tea and cake at sixpence a head in the school-room, and a choral service and a sermon in the church. Village weddings are now quiet enough, no feasting, no dancing. There are no more shearing feasts; what remain are shorn of all their festive character. Instead, we have cottage garden produce shows. The old village "revels" linger on in the most emaciated and expiring semblance of the old feast. The old ballad-seller no more appears in the fair. I wrote to a famous broadside house in the west the other day, to ask if they still produced sheet-ballads, and the answer was, "We abandoned that line thirty years ago;" and no one else took it up.

"I love a ballad but even too well," says the Clown in Winter's Tale, and "I love a ballad in print, a'-life!" sighs Mopsa; but there are no Clowns and Mopsas now. Clever Board School scholars and misses who despise ballads, and love dear as life your coarse, vulgar, music-hall buffoonery.

"I reckon the days is departedWhen folks 'ud 'a listened to me;I feels like as one broken-hearted,A thinking of what used to be.And I dun' know as much is amendedThan was in them merry old times,When, wi' pipes and good ale, folks attendedTo me and my purty old rhymes.To me and my purty old rhymes.'Tes true, I be cruel asthmatic,I've lost ivry tooth i' my head,And my limbs be crim'd up wi' rheumatic —D'rsay I were better in bed.But Lor'! wi' that dratted blue ribbon,Tay-totals and chapels – the lot!A leckturing, canting and fibbin',The old zinging man is forgot.The old zinging man is forgot.I reckon, that wi' my brown fiddle,I'd go from this cottage to that,All the youngsters 'ud dance in the middle,Their pulses and feet pit-a-pat.I cu'd zing – if you'd stand me the liquor,All night, and 'ud never give o'er;My voice – I don't deny't getting thicker,But never exhausting my store.But never exhausting my store.'Tes politics now is the fashion,As sets folks about by the ear,And slops makes the poorest o' lushing,No zinging for me wi'out beer.I reckon the days be departedFor such jolly gaffers as I;Folks will never again be light-hearted,As they was in the days that's gone by.As they was in the days that's gone by.O Lor! what wi' their edi'cation,And me – neither cipher nor write;But in zinging the best in the nation,And give the whole parish delight.I be going, I reckon, full mellow,To lay in the churchyard my head;So say – God be wi' you, old fellow!The last o' the singers is dead.The last o' the singers is dead."

CHAPTER XII

OLD SERVANTS

WHEN Doomsday Book was drawn up, there was but one female domestic servant in the county of Devon, that covers one million six hundred and fifty-five thousand acres. When I mentioned that fact to a lady of my acquaintance, she heaved a deep-drawn sigh, and said, "I wish I had lived in the times of Doomsday, and had not been the mistress of that one servant-maid."

I believe that, were we lords of creation to have earlet holes communicating with our lady's bowers, as in the middle ages the ladies of creation had openings into their lords' halls, we would hear that much of their conversation turned on the restlessness and misdemeanours of their female servants. I do not mean for a moment to deny or excuse these defects, but to explain the cause of the restlessness complained of. Polly is out of a situation, she can neither boil a potato properly nor cook a mutton-chop. She advertises in the local paper for a situation as cook, from her parents' cottage, where the whole family pig in one room. The post arrives next morning with forty or fifty answers from ladies asking, pleading for her services. Half an hour later up drives a squire's carriage with coach and footman on the box, then the humble pony carriage of the rector, next the jingle of a maiden lady who lives two miles off. All day long carriages of every description are staying at the door, and ladies are visiting, entreating for the services of Polly. Polly spreads the forty or fifty letters she has received on the table.

1. "Is there a kitchen-maid kept?" "No." "Then I won't go to you."

2. "What wages?" "Twenty pounds." "I take nothing under twenty-eight, and all found."

3. "Any men-servants?" "A butler." "Married or single?" "Married – wife lives out." "I can go nowhere where there are not one or two unmarried and agreeable footmen."

4. "You want a character, ma'am? Very sorry – if you doubts my respectability we shan't agree."

5. "How many in family?" "Thirteen." "No good. I go nowhere but to a single gentleman who waits on himself, and cooks his own dinner."

6. "Church or chapel, ma'am, did you ask? I keeps my religious opinions to myself, and won't be dictated to. No female Jesuits for me."

7. "Early riser? No, ma'am, I am not an early riser, and don't intend to demean myself by being such. I expecks a cup o' tea and a slice of bread and butter brought me in bed by the kitchen-maid afore I gets up."

8. "Do I know how to cook entrées? There's nothink I can't do; I can do better than a thousand perfessionals."

9. "Don't allow but alternate Sunday evenings out? I expecks to have wot evenings out I likes."

10. "Object to waste, do you, ma'am. Very sorry, you must go elsewhere. I wastes on principle. I wouldn't be so unladylike as to save what belongs to others. Chuck away what I can't use is my scripture, praises be."

Now is it to be wondered at that with such a crowd of applicants Polly's head should be turned, and that she should think herself the greatest person in the world, so that she will not stay in any place where she has not everything her own way?

Anciently but few people kept servants, and the servants they kept were to a large extent drawn from their own class, were often their own relatives. Pepys took his own sister to be servant in his house. 1660, Nov. 12. "My father and I discoursed seriously about my sister coming to live with me, and yet I am much afraid of her ill-nature. I told her plainly my mind was to have her come, not as a sister but as a servant, which she promised me she could, and with many thanks did weep for joy." 1660-1, Jan. 2. "Home to dinner, where I found Pal (my sister) was come; but I do not let her sit down at the table with me, which I do at first that she may not expect it hereafter from me."

Sister Paulina's temper proved unendurable. On November 12, 1662, Pepys writes – "By my wife's appointment came two young ladies, sisters, acquaintances of my wife's brothers, who are desirous to wait upon some ladies, and who proffer their services to my wife. The youngest hath a good voice, and sings very well, besides other good qualitys, but I fear hath been bred up with too great libertys for my family, and I fear greater inconveniences of expenses – though I confess the gentlewoman being pretty handsome and singing, makes me have a good mind to her." This girl, the younger Gosnell, was engaged. On the 22nd he writes, "This day I bought the book of country dances against my wife's woman Gosnell comes, who dances finely."

On November 29. "My wife and I in discourse do pleasantly call Gosnell over Marmotte."

On January 4, 1662-3. "My wife did propound my having of my sister Pal again to be her woman, since one we must have." – Gosnell had been required to attend on her uncle, a justice. – "It being a great trouble to me that I should have a sister of so ill a nature, that I must be forced to spend money upon a stranger, when it might better be upon her if she were good for anything."

Here are a couple of entries that came close together in the register of Ottery St. Mary concerning marriages —

"1657, September 7. George Trobridge, Gentleman, servant unto John Vaughan, Esq., married Elizabeth, daughter of Nicolas Hancock."

"1658, April 8. Jonathan Browne, of Bridport, Gent, and Margaret Harris, servant to Richard Arundell, gent."

That Margaret Harris was a gentlewoman admits of little doubt. In the register of Woolbrough I remember seeing that the Yarde family of Bradley had a cousin or two of the same name in service in their house.

The usual term for a valet to a man of estate was – his gentleman, and a lady's maid-servant was – her gentlewoman. The apostle commands, "By love serve one another," and our forefathers do not seem at one time to have thought that domestic service was derogatory to gentility; and I do not myself see how that any one who considers that his supreme Master and Lord humbled Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and stooped to wash His disciples feet, can sneer at menial service. Nothing is menial but what is done in a base, cantankerous, unloving spirit. It is usually found that such domestics as come out of the lowest slums are they who are most particular not to do anything that is not precisely their work, who are most choice and most exacting. When the relatives of the family ceased to be servants in the house, then came in the daughters of farmers, the cleanest, most thrifty, obliging, sensible, and altogether admirable domestics that ever were. Who that is over fifty does not remember them? They were conscientious, they took an interest in the family, their mistresses liked – even loved them.

Then the farmers became too grand in their ideas to send out their girls into service, and consequently one class alone was drained of its young women, the labourer class, the uneducated, undisciplined, the class that had no idea of thrift; and is it to be wondered at that the girls' heads should be turned when they find in what demand they were? I do not mean to say that, taken as a whole, a more respectable, nice, honest, cleanly set of girls is anywhere to be found than our English serving lasses; but we live in an age of transition – they who were formerly only required as drudges in farm-houses, suddenly discover themselves in huge request, and that has upset them.

The trouble there is in households now about domestic servants is said by some to be due to the mistresses – they do not make friends of their slavies, as did the ancient mistresses of theirs. But how can they, when the girl does not stay in the house over three months or half a year, and when she belongs to a class intellectually, socially, educationally removed from her mistress by a great cultural gulf as wide as that which separated Lazarus from Dives?

There are few more charming figures in fiction and in retrospect than the "old blue-coated serving-man," devoted to his master's interests, and living and dying in his service; but I doubt whether he deserved the halo with which he has been invested. He was a bit of an imposture. Devoted he was to his master's interests, because he lived on his master, and just on the same principle as any parasite desires the welfare, the fatness, and full-bloodedness of the mammal on which it is itself battening. A French cynic in his will bequeathed to his valet "all that of which he has robbed me." There have been old and faithful servants, but that there were many of them unselfseeking I do not believe; and I remember a very considerable number of them who became intolerable nuisances – exacting, despotic, believing that the family on which they depended could not get on without them, as the fly said of itself when it sat on the coach, "How I am getting the carriage along!" I also know that a good many have carried on gross depredations on their masters for many years unsuspected and undetected, all the while believed to have but one object of love and care in the world – the master and his house.

If we were to make a graduated scale of servants, according to their merits and demerits, I should put the butler at one end and the coachman at the other; in the former the imposition reaches its maximum, and the minimum is in the coachman, or, to put it the other way, I think that the dear old coachman is the most genuine, true-hearted, and deepest imbued with love of his master and the family, and that there is the least of this unselfish love in the butler. Very ungrateful and unjust would I be were I not to acknowledge the excellence in the old coachman, for have I not one of my own, now indeed for his age dethroned from his box but not from my service, who carried me in his arms to the hayfield when I was a little fellow, hardly able to toddle, and who now loves above everything to take my youngest into the stables, and perch the little fellow on the back of one of the carriage horses. A worthy old servant, who had been with my grandfather, then my father, then with me, and – who knows? for he is green still – may serve my son.

The old notion was, that a servant was engaged for a year, and that a servant could not leave, nor a master discharge a servant, under a quarter's notice. The servants within a house were recognized by law as menials, from the Latin intra menia, within walls. As late as last century, all single men between twelve years old and sixty, and married ones under thirty years of age, and all single women between twelve and forty, not having any visible livelihood, were compellable by two justices to go into service of some sort. The apprentice, from the French apprendre, to learn, was usually bound for a term of years, by indenture, to serve the master, and be maintained and instructed by him. Landowners and farmers had their apprentices as well as their menials. Orphan children were apprenticed by the parish, and an almost filial relation and affection grew up between master and mistress and their apprentices. This was specially noticeable among farm-servants. I knew an old man who had been apprenticed to my great-great-grandmother, that died at the end of last century, and he always spoke of her with the tenderest respect, and was proud to the last hour of his life that he had been apprenticed to the old madame.

The farm-servants and the inferior servants to the gentry were hired at certain fairs, generally at Martinmas; in the west of England these are called giglet fairs, but they exist in Yorkshire, and indeed in many other parts of England. The word giglet means a girl. The girls and young men were wont to stand in rows in the market-place, to be looked at and selected. They wore ribands according to the sort of service they desired to enter upon. A carter carried in his hat a tuft of white ribands, a cook wore a red riband, and a housemaid a bunch of blue. The giglet fairs continue, and are attended by all the labouring population of the country side, especially by the young of both sexes, but there is very little hiring now done at them.

One of the most perplexing facts to the student of genealogy, in making out the pedigree of an important family from registers of births, deaths, and marriages in a parish, is that wherever a great family was seated, there are found also a shoal of individuals, distinctly of an inferior social class, bearing the same patronymic. That these were no blood relatives is almost certain, for they are not mentioned in the wills of those belonging to the aristocratic family; and we find no evidence in registers or elsewhere of any family relation. It has often been conjectured, that these individuals and families did really derive from the main aristocratic stem, perhaps not legitimately but left-handedly. But the evidence for this is wanting – it may be forthcoming here and there in individual cases, but there is no proof that this was generally so. To this day we find among the labourers names of historical and great landed families, and we are disposed to think that these are actual lineal offshoots from such families, and sometimes fancy we trace a certain dignity of bearing and aristocratic cast in their features. But I believe that these humble Courtenays, Cliffords, Veres, Devereux, &c., have not a drop of the blood in their veins belonging to these great families, that, in fact, they are descendants of menial servants, who were once in the castle or manor-house of these barons and knights and squires, and that they ate their beef and drank their ale, but drew no blood from their veins. In the fifteenth century surnames were by no means general, and even in the sixteenth were not of general adoption. To this day in the western hills of Yorkshire, separating that county from Lancashire, persons are known by their pedigrees, and very often their surnames are generally unknown. Tom is not Tom Greenwood, but Tom o' Jakes, that is, Tom the son of Jack; and if there be two Toms in a parish both sons of Jack, then one is distinguished from the other by carrying the pedigree further back a stage. One is Tom o' Jakes o' Will's, and the other is Tom o' Jakes o' Harry's. In early parish registers such an entry as this may occur —

"1596, 3 July. Buried, William, servant to Arthur Carew, Esq., commonly called William Carew."

Later than that – in 1660-1 – Pepys enters on Feb. 14, "My boy Wareman (his servant lad) hath all this day been called young Pepys, as Sir W. Pen's boy (servant) is young Pen."

At the end of last century and the beginning of this it was a common custom for servant men to assume the titles of their masters, and to address each other under their master's names. This was not an affectation, it was a survival of the old custom of every servant taking his master's surname, as he wore his livery.

In High Life Below Stairs we have this scene —

"The Park

Duke's servant. What wretches are ordinary servants, that go on in the same vulgar track every day! eating, working, and sleeping! – But we, who have the honour to serve the nobility, are of another species. We are above the common forms, have servants to wait upon us, and are as lazy and luxurious as our masters. Ha! – my dear Sir Harry —

(Enter Sir Harry's Servant.)

How have you done these thousand years?

Sir H.'s serv. My Lord Duke! – your grace's most obedient servant!

Duke's serv. Well, Baronet, and where have you been?

Sir H.'s serv. At Newmarket, my Lord. – We have had dev'lish fine sport.

After a while they retire, then enter Lady Bab's Maid and Lady Charlotte's Maid.

Lady B.'s maid. O fie, Lady Charlotte! you are quite indelicate. I am sorry for your taste.

Lady C.'s maid. Well, I say it again, I love Vauxhall."

The Spectator (June 11th, 1711) says, "Falling in the other Day at a Victualling-House near the House of Peers, I heard the Maid come down and tell the Landlady at the Bar, That my Lord Bishop swore he would throw her out at Window, if she did not bring up more Mild Beer, and that my Lord Duke would have a double Mug of Purle. My Surprize was encreased, in hearing loud and rustick Voices speak and answer to each other upon the publick Affairs, by the Names of the most Illustrious of our Nobility; till of a sudden one came running in, and cry'd the House was rising. Down came all the Company together, and away! The Alehouse was immediately filled with Clamour, and scoring one Mug to the Marquis of such a Place, Oyl and Vinegar to such an Earl, three Quarts to my new Lord for wetting his Title, and so forth… It is a common Humour among the Retinue of People of Quality, when they are in their Revels, … to assume in a humorous Way the Names and Titles of those whose Liveries they wear."

What was done in a "humorous Way" in the days of Addison, was a relic of what was actually done in sober seriousness a couple of centuries earlier, when surnames were possessed by the few only, and these men of consequence.

Does the reader remember the charming account of the servants in the household of Sir Roger de Coverly? "There is one Particular which I have seldom seen but at Sir Roger's; it is usual in all other Places, that Servants fly from the Parts of the House through which their Master is passing; on the contrary, here they industriously place themselves in his way; and it is on both Sides, as it were, understood as a Visit, when the Servants appear without calling… Thus Respect and Love go together; and a certain Chearfulness in Performance of their Duty is the particular Distinction of the lower Part of his Family. When a Servant is called before his Master, he does not come with an Expectation to hear himself rated for some trivial Fault, threatned to be stripped, or used with any other unbecoming Language, which mean Masters often give to worthy Servants; but it is often to know, what Road he took that he came so readily back according to Order; whether he passed by such a Ground; if the old Man who rents it is in good health: or whether he gave Sir Roger's Love to him, or the like.

"A Man who preserves a Respect, founded on his Benevolence to his Dependants, lives rather like a Prince than a Master in his Family; his Orders are received as Favours, rather than Duties; and the Distinction of approaching him is Part of the Reward for executing what is commanded by him."

It is singular to see how small the wages paid were formerly for domestics, and what a leap up they have made of late, synchronous with deterioration of quality and character. For a farmer's daughter £7 was a high wage, and now £17 is sniffed at by a ploughman's wench. Pepys took a cook from the house of his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, and paid her £4 per annum, and complains at the wage. He says he never before did spend so big a sum on a wage. She must have been an energetic and active woman, for here is the menu of a dinner she cooked. "We had a fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie, a most rare pie, a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts – most neatly dressed by our own only mayde." How did she manage it without a kitchen range with hot plates?