Family Servants

Verily old servants are the vouchers of worthy housekeeping.
They are like rats in a mansion, or mites in a cheese,
bespeaking the antiquity and fatness of their abode.

In my casual anecdotes of the Hall, I may often be tempted to dwell on
circumstances of a trite and ordinary nature, from their appearing to me
illustrative of genuine national character. It seems to be the study of
the squire to adhere, as much as possible, to what he considers the old
landmarks of English manners. His servants all understand his ways, and,
for the most part, have been accustomed to them from infancy; so that,
upon the whole, his household presents one of the few tolerable
specimens that can now be met with, of the establishment of an English
country gentleman of the old school. By the by, the servants are not
the least characteristic part of the household; the housekeeper, for
instance, has been born and brought up at the Hall, and has never been
twenty miles from it; yet she has a stately air that would not disgrace
a lady that had figured at the court of Queen Elizabeth.

I am half-inclined to think that she has caught it from living so much
among the old family pictures. It may, however, be owing to a
consciousness of her importance in the sphere in which she has always
moved; for she is greatly respected in the neighbouring village, and
among the farmers' wives, and has high authority in the household,
ruling over the servants with quiet but undisputed sway.

She is a thin old lady, with blue eyes, and pointed nose and chin. Her
dress is always the same as to fashion. She wears a small, well-starched
ruff, a laced stomacher, full petticoats, and a gown festooned and open
in front, which, on particular occasions, is of ancient silk, the legacy
of some former dame of the family, or an inheritance from her mother,
who was housekeeper before her. I have a reverence for these old
garments, as I make no doubt they have figured about these apartments in
days long past, when they have set off the charms of some peerless
family beauty; and I have sometimes looked from the old housekeeper to
the neighbouring portraits, to see whether I could not recognise her
antiquated brocade in the dress of some one of those long-waisted dames
that smile on me from the walls.

Her hair, which is quite white, is frizzed out in front, and she wears
over it a small cap, nicely plaited, and brought down under the chin.
Her manners are simple and primitive, heightened a little by a proper
dignity of station.

The Hall is her world, and the history of the family the only history
she knows, excepting that which she has read in the Bible. She can give
a biography of every portrait in the picture gallery, and is a complete