And Even Now
of solid comfort. Or perhaps, as he was so entirely an outside figure,
I might rather say that Hampstead itself is not what it was. His robust
but restful form, topped with that weather-beaten and chin-bearded face,
was the hub of the summit of Hampstead. He was as richly local as the
pond there--that famous pond which in hot weather is so much waded
through by cart-horses and is at all seasons so much barked around by
excitable dogs and cruised on by toy boats. He was as essential as it
and the flag-staff and the gorse and the view over the valley away to
Highgate. It was always to Highgate that his big blue eyes were looking,
and on Highgate that he seemed to be ruminating. Not that I think he
wanted to go there. He was Hampstead-born and Hampstead-bred, and very
loyal to that village. In the course of his life he had ‘bin down to
London a matter o’ three or four times,’ he would tell me, ‘an’ slep’
there once.’ He knew me to be a native of that city, and, for he was the
most respectful of men, did not make any adverse criticism of it. But
clearly it had not prepossessed him. Men and--horses rather than cities
were what he knew. And his memory was more retentive of horses than of
men. But he did--and this was a great thrill for me--did, after some
pondering at my behest, remember to have seen in Heath Street, when he
was a boy, ‘a gen’leman with summut long hair, settin’ in a small cart,
takin’ a pictur’.’ To me Ford Madox Brown’s ‘Work’ is of all modern
pictur’s the most delightful in composition and strongest in conception,
the most alive and the most worth-while; and I take great pride in
having known some one who saw it in the making. But my friend himself
set little store on anything that had befallen him in days before he
was ‘took on as stable-lad at the Castle.’ His pride was in the Castle,
wholly.
Part of his charm, like Hampstead’s, was in the surprise one had at
finding anything like it so near to London. Even now, if you go to
districts near which no great towns are, you will find here and there an
inn that has a devoted waiter, a house with a fond butler. As to butlers
elsewhere, butlers in general, there is one thing about them that I do
not at all understand. It seems to be against nature, yet it is a
fact, that in the past forty years they have been growing younger; and
slimmer. In my childhood they were old, without exception; and stout.
At the close of the last century they had gradually relapsed into middle
age, losing weight all the time. And in the years that followed they
were passing back behind the prime of life, becoming willowy juveniles.
In 1915, it is true, the work of past decades was undone butlers: were
suddenly as old and stout as ever they were, and so they still are.
But this, I take it, is only a temporary setback. At the restoration of
peace butlers will reappear among us as they were in 1915, and anon will
be losing height and weight too, till they shall have become bright-eyed
children, with pattering feet. Or will their childhood be of a less
gracious kind than that? I fear so. I have seen, from time to time,
butlers who had shed all semblance of grace, butlers whose whole
demeanour was a manifesto of contempt for their calling and of devotion
to the Spirit of the Age. I have seen a butler in a well-established
household strolling around the diners without the slightest droop, and
pouring out wine in an off-hand and quite obviously hostile manner. I
have seen him, towards the end of the meal, yawning. I remember another
whom, positively, I heard humming--a faint sound indeed, but menacing as
the roll of tumbrils.
These were exceptional cases, I grant. For the most part, the butlers
observed by me have had a manner as correctly smooth and colourless as
their very shirt-fronts. Aye, and in two or three of them, modern though
they were in date and aspect, I could have sworn there was ‘a flame of
old-world fealty all bright.’ Were these but the finer comedians?
There was one (I will call him Brett) who had an almost dog-like way
of watching his master. Was this but a calculated touch in a merely
aesthetic whole? Brett was tall and slender, and his movements were
those of a greyhound under perfect self-control. Baldness at the temples
enhanced the solemnity of his thin smooth face. It is more than twenty
years since first I saw him; and for a long period I saw him often, both
in town and in country. Against the background of either house he was
impeccable. Many butlers might be that. Brett’s supremacy was in the
sense he gave one that he was, after all, human--that he had a heart, in
which he had taken the liberty to reserve a corner for any true
friend of his master and mistress. I remember well the first time he
overstepped sheer formality in relation to myself. It was one morning in
the country, when my entertainers and my fellow guests had gone out in
pursuit of some sport at which I was no good. I was in the smoking room,
reading a book. Suddenly--no, Brett never appeared anywhere suddenly.
Brett appeared, paused at precisely the right speaking distance, and
said in a low voice, ‘I thought it might interest you to know, sir, that
there’s a white-tailed magpie out on the lawn. Very rare, as you know,
sir. If you look out of the window you will see the little fellow
hopping about on the lawn.’ I thanked him effusively as I darted to
the window, and simulated an intense interest in ‘the little fellow.’ I
greatly overdid my part. Exit Brett, having done his to perfection.
What worries me is not that I showed so little self-command and so much
insincerity, but the doubt whether Brett’s flawless technique was the
vehicle for an act of true good feeling or was used simply for the
pleasure of using it. Similar doubts abide in all my special memories
of him. There was an evening when he seemed to lose control over
himself--but did he really lose it? There were only four people
at dinner: my host, his wife, their nephew (a young man famous for
drollery), and myself. Towards the end of dinner the conversation had
turned on early marriages. ‘I,’ said the young man presently, ‘shall
not marry till I am seventy. I shall then marry some charming girl of
seventeen.’ His aunt threw up her hands, exclaiming, ‘Oh, Tom, what a
perfectly horrible idea! Why, she isn’t born yet!’ ‘No,’ said the young
man, ‘but I have my eye on her mother.’ At this, Brett, who was holding
a light for his master’s cigarette, turned away convulsively, with
a sudden dip of the head, and vanished from the room. His breakdown
touched and pleased all four beholders. But--was it a genuine lapse? Or
merely a feint to thrill us?--the feint of an equilibrist so secure that
he can pretend to lose his balance?
If I knew why Brett ceased to be butler in that household, I might be
in less doubt as to the true inwardness of him. I knew only that he was
gone. That was fully ten years ago. Since then I have had one glimpse of
him. This was on a summer night in London. I had gone out late to visit
some relatives and assure myself that they were safe and sound; for
Zeppelins had just passed over London for the first time. Not so much
horror as a very deep disgust was the atmosphere in the populous quiet
streets and squares. One square was less quiet than others, because
somebody was steadily whistling for a taxi. Anon I saw the whistler
silhouetted in the light cast out on a wide doorstep from an open door,
and I saw that he was Brett. His attitude, as he bent out into the dark
night, was perfect in grace, but eloquent of a great tensity--even of
agony. Behind him stood a lady in an elaborate evening cloak. Brett’s
back must have conveyed to her in every curve his surprise, his shame,
that she should be kept waiting. His chivalry in her behalf was such as
Burke’s for Marie Antoinette--little had he dreamed that he should have
lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant
men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. He had thought ten
thousand taxis must have leaped from their stands, etc. The whistle
that at first sounded merely mechanical and ear-piercing had become
heartrending and human when I saw from whom it proceeded--a very
heart-cry that still haunts me. But was it a heart-cry? Was Brett, is
Brett more than a mere virtuoso?
He is in any case what employers call a treasure, and to any one who
wishes to go forth and hunt for him I will supply a chart showing the
way to that doorstep on which last I saw him. But I myself, were I ever
so able to pay his wages, should never covet him--no, nor anything like
him. Perhaps we are not afraid of menservants if we look out at them
from the cradle. None was visible from mine. Only in later years and
under external auspices did I come across any of them. And I am
as afraid of them as ever. Maidservants frighten me less, but they
also--except the two or three ancients aforesaid--have always struck
some degree of terror to my soul. The whole notion of domestic
service has never not seemed to me unnatural. I take no credit for
enlightenment. Not to have the instinct to command implies a lack of
the instinct to obey. The two aptitudes are but different facets of one
jewel: the sense of order. When I became a schoolboy, I greatly disliked
being a monitor’s fag. Other fags there were who took pride in the
quality of the toast they made for the breakfasts and suppers of their
superiors. My own feeling was that I would rather eat it myself, and
that if I mightn’t eat it myself I would rather it were not very good.
Similarly, when I grew to have fags of my own, and by morning and by
evening one of them solemnly entered to me bearing a plate on which
those three traditional pieces of toast were solemnly propped one
against another, I cared not at all whether the toast were good or bad,
having no relish for it at best, but could have eaten with gusto toast
made by my own hand, not at all understanding why that member should be
accounted too august for such employment. Even so in my later life. Loth
to obey, loth to command. Convention (for she too frightens me) has made
me accept what servants would do for me by rote. But I would liefer have
it ill-done than ask even the least mettlesome of them to do it better,
and far liefer, if they would only be off and not do it at all, do it
for myself. In Italy--dear Italy, where I have lived much--servants do
still regard service somewhat in the old way, as a sort of privilege;
so that with Italian servants I am comparatively at my ease. But oh, the
delight when on the afternoon of some local festa there is no servant
at all in the little house! Oh, the reaction, the impulse to sing and
dance, and the positive quick obedience to that impulse! Convention
alone has forced me to be anywhere a master. Ariel and Caliban, had I
been Prospero on that island, would have had nothing to do and nothing
to complain of; and Man Friday on that other island would have bored me,
had I been Crusoe. When I was a king in Babylon and you were a Christian
slave, I promptly freed you.
Anarchistic? Yes; and I have no defence to offer, except the rather
lame one that I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about
doing just as he pleased--short of altering any of the things to which I
have grown accustomed. Domestic service is not one of those things, and
I should be glad were there no more of it.
GOING OUT FOR A WALK 1918.
It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I
have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter. Even while I
trotted prattling by my nurse’s side I regretted the good old days when
I had, and wasn’t, a perambulator. When I grew up it seemed to me that
the one advantage of living in London was that nobody ever wanted me