Lady's-maid

“ Many strange things have I seen in my journey through this life, but the strangest of all, I think, my friend, is a maid. One mind to-day; another to-morrow. I had as lieve try to account for the storm, as to say what a lady would do to-day or to-morrow. I cannot say what the maiden will do—perhaps she will marry Dunraven, but this much I repeat, deep down in her heart she loves thee. ”

“ As the duties of a lady's-maid, where there are young ladies, include attending them in the streets and to parties, she should be a person of unquestioned respectability. The maid should bring up the hot water for her ladies, and an early cup of tea, prepare their bath, assist at their toilet, put their clothes away, be ready to aid in every change of dress, put out their various dresses for riding, dining, walking, and for afternoon tea, dress their hair for dinner, and be ready to find for them their gloves, shoes, and other belongings. ”

“ The cast-off dresses, boots, pieces of finery, and many other things which would be her perquisites would be a little fortune to her, and greatly excited her cupidity. But there were other more important considerations: she would occupy a much higher position in the social scale, and dress well, her hands and skin would grow soft and white, and her appearance and conversation would be that of a lady; for to be a lady's-maid is, of course, the nearest thing to being a lady. ”

“ The only way in which I should care to employ you would be as lady's-maid, and for that you are unfit. Perhaps I shall have you taught needlework and that kind of thing by-and-by, but I am not going to bother about it just now. For the present we must jog along just how we can, and you must try to make yourself as happy as you can by yourself.”
Just then the housemaid came up with tea for her mistress.
“Get me another cup—a large one, and some more bread-and-butter,” said Miss Starbrow.
“The young person's tea is in the back room, ma'am,” returned Rosie, with a tremor in her voice. ”

“ Perhaps I'll make a lady's-maid of her, though it doesn't seem quite the right thing to do.”
“No, it doesn't. Don't go and spoil what you have done by any such folly as that.”
“Do you want me to make a lady of her—or what?”
“A lady? Well that is a difficult question to answer; but I have heard that sometimes ladies, like poets, are born, not made. At all events, it would not be right, I fancy, to keep the girl here. It might give rise to disagreeable complications, as you always have a parcel of fellows hanging about you.” ”

“ All seat themselves but one, who is called the lady's-maid, and who stands in the centre. When the maid calls for any article of dress, the one who has that name instantly rises, repeats the word, and seats herself again directly. ”

“ I expect there are all sorts of things a lady's maid has got to do and not do."
"My dear Aline, I know them all. You can't stump me on below-stairs etiquette. I've been a lady's maid!"
"Joan!"
"It's quite true—three years ago, when I was more than usually impecunious. The wolf was glued to the door like a postage stamp; so I answered an advertisement and became a lady's maid."
"You seem to have done everything."
"I have—pretty nearly. It's all right for you idle rich, Aline—you can sit still and contemplate life; but we poor working girls have got to hustle." ”

“ THE LADY’S-MAID.
When one thinks of the pompous damsels who in England claim the title of Lady’s-Maid, or of the coquettish and pert French aspirant to that situation, an Italian “cameriera” is almost unworthy of such a distinction. In the first place, she is not above making herself generally useful; she does not consider it violates the dignity of her calling to “fare il servizis,” that is, to sweep and clean her lady’s bedroom, as well as to adorn her lady’s person. Secondly, she can not only dress hair, make dresses, and trim bonnets and caps, but she washes and irons, and sews ”

“ So difficult to get a maid of her complexion to marry? Difficulty in fattening [382] —a pig! baiting a hook for a bagrel!—a stickleback!—a perch! I'll do it in two days—in one day—in half a day, else never call me Mary Kirkmichael of Balmedie again. Difficulty in marrying a maid with light blue eyes—golden locks and rosy cheeks—with a languishing smile always on her countenance? and that maid an English one too? Peugh! Goodbye, my lady, Lady Black Douglas. I'm off. (Opening the door again.) It is a shame and a disgrace for any gentleman not to die for his mistress! ”

“ She thinks there’s nothing belongs to being a lady’s maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I’ll be bound. It’s what rag she can get to stick on her as she’s thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn’t like to be the mawkin i’ the field, for then she’d be made o’ rags inside and out. ”

“ When traveling with her mistress, the lady's maid should wear only very simple and inconspicuous clothes. A tweed suit worn with a neat blouse, or a tweed coat worn over a simple dress, is the best form. Anything gaudy or elaborate worn by a lady's maid is frowned upon by polite society. ”

“ The vulgar Stage hands call her Little Eva. What does she do On the Stage? She is the Leading lady's maid. No Leading lady could act if she had not got a Maid. A maid is an Absolute necessity. Also, she is sometimes Useful. She can tell in One minute whether her Mistress' hat is on Straight or not. ”

“ Question her maid, cook, coachman, dressmaker, and the labourers on her estate: all those who for one reason or another serve and obey her.
No one knows us better than those who serve us, for whom we make no pretence to hypocrisy or ostentation of false virtues, and if a lady’s maid does not know how to make a psychological analysis of the young lady she can show us the most intimate secrets of her character. Noble, generous, and good [Pg 148] natures never ill treat their servants ”

“ Plenty of young girls who wouldn't dream of being found drowned in such a thing as a cap! Looks so menial, they said. Several of the girls at the Orphanage said they'd never put such a thing on their heads once they got away. And a lady's-maid, well, 'tisn't even the same as a parlour-maid! And you with such a nice head of hair of your own, Miss [Pg 70] Beatrice!" Million expostulated with almost tearful incoherence. "A reel lady's-maid isn't required to wear a cap, even if she does slip on an apron!" ”

“ I think it can, even with our present maids, whose taste for the beautiful is not largely developed; it most certainly could if we are given the maid of the future, the real lady-maid, who may come forward to the rescue of those unhappy beings who at present haunt the precincts of registry offices and spend small fortunes on advertisements which can have only the most barren results. ”

“ A lady, who has no maid, and who has the gift of orderliness, will put things away when done with, and so leave her room a picture of neatness. I don't think, however, it would for a moment occur to her to pull things so as to be conveniently ready for her to use the next time she dresses in that room. This would be what a maid, accustomed to arrange a room for her mistress's use, would do mechanically. Miss Monroe's room was the neatness of a maid—not of a lady, and I was assured by Mrs. Hawke's maid that it was a neatness accomplished by her own hands. ”

“ But a cook, a kitchen-maid, and a scullery-maid were indispensable to prepare those meals, a still-room maid to provide cakes and rolls for tea and breakfast, a butler and two footmen to serve them, a lady’s maid to look after Lady Whittlemere, a steward’s room boy to wait on the cook, the butler, and the lady’s maid, two housemaids to dust and tidy, a coachman to drive Lady Whittlemere, and a groom and a stable-boy to look after the horses and carriages. ”

“ So all men stared upon them, and praised their great beauty, saying that if the maid was so fair, what then must be the loveliness of the dame. When, therefore, the demoiselle came in her turn, the King's household stood upon their feet to give her greeting. Never did woman show so queenly to men's sight as did this lady riding to the hall. ”

“ I have known good maids who were never made to feel for one minute that it was a question of mistress and maid, and who gained this confidence and love by good work and consideration. Personally I would much rather be maid to a lady than stand behind a shop counter. I know that many of my girls will disagree with me, but I can assure them that the life is much easier. ”

“ Secondly, By their extravagance in dress, they put our wives and daughters upon yet greater excesses, because they will, as indeed they ought, go finer than the maid; thus the maid striving to outdo the mistress, the tradesman’s wife to outdo the gentleman’s wife, the gentleman’s wife emulating the lady, and the ladies one another; it seems as if the whole business of the female sex were nothing but an excess of pride, and extravagance in dress. ”

“ From the comparatively inferior value of the second woman's dress, be concluded her to be the hand-maid of the young lady, yet more well-to-do than the ordinary run of maid-servants. Her age might be thirty-five. ”

“ But, soft ! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!—
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief, ⁠5
That thou her maid [E 3] art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick [C 2] and green, [E 4]
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.—
It is [E 5] my lady; O, it is my love! ”

“ The gentle maid, whose hapless tale
These melancholy pages speak;
Say, gracious lady, shall she fail
To draw the tear adown thy cheek? ”

“ In that period of their lives, on the point, so grave for their sex, of becoming maids, they are assailed by unaccountable fears, by a vague sense of sadness, by an imperious demand for solitude where to give a loose rein to languorous reveries, novel sensations at which their chaste instincts take alarm, symptoms of the awakening of the virginal heart, first and shadowy aspirations of the maid for the sweet pleasures and austere duties of the wife and mother—the sacred destinies of woman. ”

“ Sir, the Lord made the female less comely than her mate; witness the peahen and the pullet in their russet garb compared with the splendor of their male. This, I take it, is the reason why women continually seek by some new fashion or device to remove the inequality, and, if possible, to overtop their lords as well as each other. As for me, I have always loved a maid in her simplicity, her hair falling in curls about her lovely face, and her shape visible instead of hidden under ruffs and hoops. But, alas! what hath a man of eighty to do with maidens? ”

“ CYRIL, HILARION, and FLORIAN
HILARION. I am a maiden, cold and stately, Heartless I, with face divine. What do I want with a heart, innately? Every heart I meet is mine! Every heart I meet is mine! ALL. Haughty, humble, coy, or free, Little care I what maid may be. So that a maid is fair to see, Ev'ry maid is the maid for me! Dance.
CYRIL. I am a maiden, frank and simple, Brimming with joyous roguery; Merriment lurks in ev'ry dimple Nobody breaks more hearts than I! Nobody breaks more hearts than I! ”

“ WOULD you know the kind of maid
⁠Sets my heart a flame-a?
Eyes must be downcast and staid,
Cheeks must flush for shame-a!
She may neither dance nor sing,
But, demure in everything,
Hang her head in modest way,
With pouting lips that seem to say
"Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,
Though I die of shame-a,"
Please you, that's the kind of maid
Sets my heart a flame-a!
When a maid is bold and gay
With a tongue goes clang-a,
Flaunting it in brave array,
Maiden may go hang-a! ”

“ I—it’s a lover’s heart that speaks to you, remember—a heart that loves mightily, a heart that yearns mightily. But is not docility on a maid’s part a sign of love? Might it not be? It seems to me that if I were a maid and I’d fallen desperately and woefully in love, I’d be all for gentleness and quiet, I’d sew with my maids and dream of love, I’d give all of my time to my father from whom love was so soon to take me. That’s what I should think a maid would do, and that is what Mistress Judith has done for a week past. ”

“ Presently her mother comes in to me, and kissing [FN#668] my head and hand, says to me, 'O my lord, look upon thine handmaid who longs for thy favour; so heal her broken spirit!' I give her no answer; and when she sees this she rises and busses my feet many times and says, 'O my lord, in very sooth my daughter is a beautiful maid, who hath never known man; and if thou show her this backwardness and aversion, her heart will break; so do thou incline to her and speak to her and soothe her mind and spirit.' Then she rises and fetches a cup of wine ”

“ So that the maiden two ways very modestly both extenuates her own condition and extols the munificence of the Divine Being, not being content to style herself a handmaid, but also a humile one, one of the meanest circumstances. According to the old proverb, there is difference in servants ; so in maid-servants, one is better than another as to the dignity of their office a waiting- gentlewoman is more honourable than a laundrymaid. ”

“ But would our English girls like, for the satisfaction of escaping the chance of being an old maid, to give up the dear right of awaiting in maiden dignity till they are chosen—selected from out the entire world—and then of saying yes or no, as may please their fancy best? ”