Servants' hall

“ The hall has been slowly filling with courtiers and soldiers: a crowd of people begin to come up the steps at the rear, where they are halted by a chain guarded by servants of the palace. A bell tolls; the royal door is thrown open; the aged King crosses the hall slowly and takes his seat on the throne with the four tall sentinels standing behind him. ”

“ his lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants’ hall. ”

“ SERVANTS' HALL, CHIRK CASTLE.
The various apartments are ranged round a large quadrangle, parts of which remind one somewhat of Haddon. On one side is the great hall, and opposite the servants' hall. The former, with its minstrels' gallery, heraldic glass, and ancient furniture, is full of interest. The walls are hung with various pieces of armour, and weapons, and a Cavalier drum, saddle, and hat, the latter with its leather travelling case, [Pg 185] which is probably unique. ”

“ The centre of the hall is set apart for slaves and servants, who during these rude réunions are busily employed preparing food and drink for strangers. As often as a meeting is deemed necessary, invitations are sent off to the various chiefs requesting their co-operation. ”

“ Adjoining this noble room is a pile of building of exactly the same size and character, devoted to kitchen and other domestic purposes, with apartments over. The Kitchen is lofty, spacious, and well arranged, and fitted with every possible convenience; the Servants’ Hall, an admirable stone groined apartment, is near; and in the larders and other offices fountains of clear water keep the air admirably cool. From the Kitchen an underground railway with an hydraulic lift is constructed for conveying the comestibles for serving in the dining-rooms. ”

“ The servants never wait in the ante-room,—here called the hall,—which, like the overture of an opera, is designed to express the character of the whole: it is generally decorated with statues or pictures, and, like the elegant staircase and the various apartments, is appropriated to the use of the family and guests, who have the good taste rather to wait on themselves than to have an attendant spirit always at their heels. ”

“ The dinner is set on the table by the cook, and the beer is drawn by the under butler.
The servants’ table is usually provided with solid dishes, and with ale and table beer; and it is the business of the superior servants to see that their accommodation is comfortable and in plenty, but without extravagance, or waste and riot. In well-regulated families, the servants’ hall is distinguished by its decorum, [418] good order, and even good manners, which the servants who wait in the parlour imbibe, and convey to the kitchen. ”

“ No condition of poverty was imposed on the scholars of King’s Hall, nor was their life here penurious: they had a dining-hall, library, common room, chapel, kitchens, a brewery, a vineyard, a garden, and a staff of servants maintained by the Society, while a good many of them also kept their own private servants: they received a liberal allowance for daily commons, clothes and bedding were supplied from the royal wardrobe, and pocket-money was given to buy other things. ”

“ The commissioners, October 13, 1649, with their servants, being come to the manor-house, they took up their lodging in the king's own rooms, the bed-chamber, and withdrawing-room: the former whereof they also made their kitchen; the council-hall their brew-house; the chamber of presence, their place of sitting to dispatch business ”

“ The ivy that clustered and climbed to its loftiest pinnacles added a wild and peculiar interest to this remnant of ancient architecture. It contained a high carriage archway, and a lateral passage beneath it, both decorated with [8] numerous ornamental mouldings and columns, flanked at the angles by octagonal turrets of surpassing elegance. An apartment over the arch, which, during the reign of monastic power, had been used as a small oratory, for the celebration of early mass to the servants and labourers of the convent, was now appropriated to the accommodation of the porter and his family. ”

“ But fire shall burn in hall at meat
Until Cena Domini [227] men have eat.
There brought shall be a holly keen, [226]
That set shall be in arbour green;
And that shall be till All Hallows’ Day,
And off be shifted, as I you say.
In hall marshal all men shall set
After their degree, without let. De Pincernario, Panetario, et Cocis sibi Servientibus [228]
The butler, panter and cooks also
To him are servants without mo. [229]
99Therefore on his yard score [230] shall he,
All messes in hall that served shall be,
Command to set both bread and ale
To all men that served be in hall. ”

“ The obsequious attention of college servants, and the more unwilling "capping" of the undergraduates, to such a man are real luxuries.—Blackwood's Mag., Eng. ed., Vol. LVI. p. 572.
Used in the English universities.
CAPTAIN OF THE POLL. The first of the Polloi.
He had moreover been Captain (Head) of the Poll.—Bristed's
Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 96.
CAPUT SENATUS. Latin; literally, the head of the Senate. In Cambridge, Eng., a council of the University by which every grace must be approved, before it can be submitted to the senate. ”

“ Around the room on serried shelves, dressed in leather aprons, stood twenty-five thousand more servants of the centuries of the past ready to answer any question her heart or brain might ask of the world's life since the dawn of Time. ”

“ Every male and female servant in the establishment now came running towards the hall from all quarters, in a state of semi-nudity, anxious to assist in protecting the house or to escape from the supposed housebreakers. ”

“ The Lords’ committee hear appeals, and it is a wondrous sight to see those old boys snoozing and twiddling their thumbs on the crimson benches of their golden chamber. They seem not to listen to the elaborate word-entanglements of the bewigged pleaders; yet they make remarks full of sense and pregnant with acumen. You are a young man or woman, dear reader of this, I hope. You have not much time to lose. Go straight down to Palace Yard, pass through Westminster Hall, and up the stone stairs, by the giant brazen candelabra and the great stained-glass window. ”

“ It was a remarkable scene; a spectator could never have credited that this was an authoritative assembly into which the hermit had presented himself unbidden; it seemed rather as if that hall were the presence chamber of the wise and saintly man, and deputies from far and near—knight, merchant, and peasant—had gathered about him, and pressed forward to receive his judgment. With all the eloquence of wisdom, and a heartfelt interest, the venerable man addressed the assembly. ”

“ If the ground glass of the vestibule door be exposed and staring, the hall floor bare and cold, the hall chair hard and stiff, the doors to the reception or sitting-room all closed, rising black and grim before you, and the hall itself so dark that you can not see even where to lay down your companionable umbrella, does there not come over you a chill, as if you were being repelled by the spirit of inhospitality? ”

“ When going into the chamber of a superior, they shall knock at the door, and shall leave it as they find it, whether open or shut. Upon entering the chamber of a superior, they shall not speak until spoken to; they shall reply modestly to all questions, and perform their messages decently and respectfully. ”

“ On the ground floor is the national prison and the stables, where the members of the council have the privilege of putting up their horses during the sessions. The kitchen is on a grand scale, with immense hearts and cauldrons. A staircase, which savors of antiquity, leads to the chamber on the first floor, where the council meets. It is a vast hall of an imposing aspect. At one end is a chair for the syndic, who sits as president of the assembly; along either wall are benches of oak for the twenty-four councillors; and between the corridors is a picture of Jesus Christ. ”

“ In this hall are people seated near the walls, on benches, chairs and stools round little tables—people who look at their watches every minute, get up and go out, leaving their seats to others, letting one see each time through the half-open door a mob of bathers moving about in the brightly lit vestibule and the flowing white aprons of the serving women who dash here and there. ”

“ At one of the ends of the hall, the one where he was, judges with a vacant look, in shabby gowns, biting their nails or shutting their eye-lids; barristers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with honest harsh faces; old stained wainscoting, a dirty ceiling; tables covered with baize, which was rather yellow than green; doors blackened by hands; pot-house sconces that produced more smoke than light, hanging from nails driven into the wall; upon the tables brass candlesticks,—all was obscurity, ugliness, and sadness. ”

“ To preserve order and decorum at these public dinners, and to prevent crowding and jostling at the door of the dining-hall, the steward, or some other officer of the house of some authority, is always present in the hall during dinner; and two privates of the police guards, who know most of the poor personally, take post at the door of the hall, one on each side of it; and between them the poor are obliged to pass singly into the hall. ”

“ He seeth the hall right rich, for hall so rich and so fair had he seen never. It was hung about with right rich cloths of silk, and in the midst of the hall was imaged the Saviour of the World so as He is in His majesty, with the apostles about Him, and within were great galleries that were full of folk and seemed to be of great holiness, and so were they, for had they not been good men they might not there have remained.
IV. "Sir," say the two Masters to Perceval, "This house that you see here so rich, is the hall royal." ”

“ The long galleries, the superb chambers, the scenes of revelry or of pomp, were like the court companions who amuse, yet attach us not; but the hall, the old hall,—the old, hospitable hall,—had been as a friend in all seasons, and to all comers, and its mirth had been as open to all as the heart of its last owner! My eyes wandered from the place where it had been, and the tall, lone, gray tower, consecrated to my ill-fated namesake, and in which my own apartments had been situated, rose like the last of a warrior band, stern, gaunt, and solitary, over the ruins around. ”

“ The hall is a great place, where the flags that they take from their enemies are all hung up; and things to be sold, as in Westminster Hall, and not much unlike it, but that not so big, but much neater. ”

“ From the stable the priest watches the company in the hall through a window (fenestre) , which is evidently only another name for the pertuis. In one fabliau the gallant comes through the court or garden, and is let into the hall by the back door; in another a woman is introduced into the chamber by a back door, or, as it is called in the text, a false door (par un fax huis) , while the hall is occupied by company.
The arrangements of an ordinary house in the country are illustrated in the fabliau De Barat et de Haimet, printed in the collection of Barbazan. ”

“ Enter Westminster Hall by the great door, and the first indication that you are near the Grand Stand will be the presence of a group of firm-featured women at the right and upper hand of the hall by the steps leading into the old Chancellor’s Court. There they are—they know their power—they look at you just as a group of tall brawny Horse Guards might look at a feeble civilian. ”

“ With few exceptions, every one of these four thousand centres has a Hall in which, on every evening in the week and from early morning until nearly midnight on every Sabbath, services are being held; that nearly every service held indoors is preceded by one out of doors, the special purport of every one being the saving of these wretched crowds. ”

“ When the procession reaches the Grand Master's chair, the Grand officers are separately proclaimed by the Grand Marshal, according to rank, as they arrive at that station, and when the Grand Master is proclaimed, a grand piece of music is performed, while the procession is made three times round the Hall. The Lodge is then placed in the center, and the Grand Master having taken the chair, under a canopy of state, the Grand officers and the Masters and Wardens of the Lodges, etc., repair to the places previously prepared for their reception. ”

“ These institutions are established for the welfare of the inhabitants, and we begin with a religious service in order to impress on those who are going to use the Hall hereafter that, whatever is done inside the Hall should be done in a way which is really a Christian way. ”

“ This fine chamber, 152 ft. in length, is the scene of the state banquets and entertainments of the corporation, and of the municipal meetings “in common hall.” The building also contains a council chamber and various court rooms, with a splendid library, open to the public, a museum and art gallery adjoining. ”

“ The hall-door had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels under excitement sometimes indulge in nowadays, with a stamp or two of his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air. ”

“ The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a church—and with people hanging over the pews looking on—and with mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading the newspapers—and with some shining black portraits on the walls, which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and sticking-plaister. ”

“ If you give Society very good dinners, Society will never be so ill-bred as to see that side-door under your laurels.
Do drive out at the hall-door;—do;—for sake of les Bienséances—that is all Society asks of you; there are some things Society feels it owes to Itself, and this is one of them.
Of course, whether you come back again or not, can be nobody's business.
Society can swear to the fact of the hall-door.
Madame Mila was attentive to the matter of the hall-door; indeed, abhorred a scandal; it always made everything uncomfortable. She was always careful of appearances. ”