Colonial memories

My very first experience of the eccentricities of colonial servants dates a good deal more than half a century ago, and the scene was laid in Jamaica, where my father then held the office of “Island Secretary” under Sir Charles—afterwards Lord Metcalfe—the Governor. It was Christmas day, and I had been promised as a great treat that my little sister and I should sit up to late dinner. But the morning began with an alarm, for just at breakfast-time an orderly from one of the West Indian regiments, then stationed in Spanish Town, had brought a letter to my father which had been sent upstairs to him. I was curled up in a deep window-seat in the shady breakfast-room, enjoying a brand-new story-book and the first puffs of the daily sea-breeze, when I heard a guttural voice close to my ear whispering, “Kiss, missy, kiss.” There stood what seemed a real black giant compared with my childish stature, clad in gorgeous Turkish-looking uniform with a big white turban and a most benignant expression of face, holding his hand out, palm upwards.

I gazed at this apparition—for I had only just returned to Jamaica—with paralysed terror, while the smiling ogre came a step nearer and repeated his formula in still more persuasive tones. At this moment, however, my father appeared and said, “Oh yes, all right; he wants you to give him a Christmas-box. Here is something for him.” It required even then a certain amount of faith as well as courage to put the silver dollar into the outstretched palm, but the man’s joy and gratitude showed the interpretation had been quite right. I did not dare to say what my alarm had conjured up as the meaning of his request, for fear of being laughed at.

As well as I remember, at that Christmas dinner-party—and it was a large one—the food was distinctly eccentric, edibles usually boiled appearing as roasts and vice versâ. The service also was of a jerky and spasmodic character, and the authorities wore an air of anxiety, which, however, only added to the deep interest I took in the situation. But things came to a climax when the plum-pudding, which was to have been the great feature of the entertainment, did not appear at its proper time and place, and a tragic whisper from the butler suggested complications in the background. My father said laughingly, “I am sorry to say the cook is drunk and will not part with the plum-pudding,” so we went on with the dinner without it. But just as the dessert was being put on the table there was a sound as of ineffectual scrimmaging outside, and the cook—a huge black man clad in spotless white—rushed in bearing triumphantly a large dish, which he banged down in front of my father, saying, “Dere, my good massa, dere your pudding,” and immediately flung himself into the butler’s arms with a burst of weeping. I shall always see that pudding as long as I live. It was about the size of an orange and as black as coal. Every attempt to cut it resulted in its bounding off the dish, for it was as hard as a stone. Though not exactly an object of mirth in itself, it certainly was “a cause that mirth was in others,” and so achieved a success denied to many a better pudding.

Several years passed before I again came across black servants, and the next time was in India. I was not there long enough, nor did I lead a sufficiently settled life, to be able to judge of the Indian servant of that day. Half my stay in Bengal was spent under canvas, and certainly the way in which the servants arranged for one’s comfort under those conditions was marvellous. The camp was a very large one, for we were making a sort of military promenade from Lucknow up to Lahore—my husband being the Commanding Officer of Royal Artillery in Bengal—but I only went as far as the foot of the Hills and then up to Simla. It was amazing the way in which nothing was ever forgotten or left behind during four months’ continuous camp-life. All my possessions had to be divided, and, where necessary, duplicated, for what one used on Monday would not be get-at-able until Wednesday, and so on all through the week. No matter how interesting my book was, I could not go on with it for thirty-six hours—i.e. from, say Monday night till breakfast-time on Wednesday morning. I could have a new volume for Tuesday, but the interest of that had also to remain in abeyance until Thursday. Still, I would find the book precisely where I laid it down, and if I had put a mark, even a flower, it would be found exactly in the right place.

I always wondered when and how the servants rested, for they seemed to me to be packing and starting all night long, and yet when the new camping-ground was reached the head-servants would always be there in snowy garments, as fresh and trim as if they came out of a box. There were two sets of under-servants, but the head ones never seemed to be off duty.

We started with the first streak of daylight, and there was no choice about the matter, for if you did not get up when the first bugle blew, your plight would be a sorry one when the canvas walls of the large double tent fell flat at the sound of the second bugle, half-an-hour later. The roof of the tent was left a few moments longer, so one had time for hot fragrant coffee and bread and butter before starting either on horse or elephant back. I generally rode on a pad on the hathi’s back for the first few miles while it was still dark, and mounted my little Arab some six or eight miles further on. The marches were as near twenty-five miles daily, as could be arranged to suit the Commander-in-Chief’s convenience as to inspections, &c.

Everything was fresh and amusing, but I think I most delighted in seeing the modes of progression adopted by the various cooks. Our head-cook generally requisitioned a sort of gig, in which he sat in state and dignity, with many bundles heaped around him. Part of his cavalcade consisted of two or three very small ponies laden with paniers, on top of which invariably stood a chicken or two, apparently without any fastenings, who balanced themselves in a precarious manner according to the pony’s gait. No one seemed to walk except those who led the animals, and as the camp numbered some 5000 soldiers and quite as many camp-followers the supply-train appeared endless.

Just as we neared the foot of the Himalayan range, where the camp was to divide, some of us going up to Simla, leaving a greatly lessened force to proceed to Lahore, smallpox appeared among our servants. I wonder it did not spread much more, but it was vigorously dealt with at the outset. I had as narrow an escape as anybody, for one morning, while I was drinking my early coffee and standing quite ready to start on our daily march, one of the servants, a very clever, useful Madras “boy” whom I had missed from his duties for several days, suddenly appeared and cast himself at my feet, clutching my riding-habit and begging for some tea. He was quite unrecognisable, so swollen and disfigured was his poor face, and I had no idea what was the matter with him. He was delirious and apparently half-mad with thirst. The doctor had to be fetched to induce him to let me go, and as more than once the poor lad had seized my hands and kissed them in gratitude for the tea I at once gave him, I suppose I really ran some risks, for it turned out to be a very bad case of confluent smallpox. However, all the same, he had to be carried along with us in a dhooly until we reached a station where he could be put into a hospital.

But certainly the strangest phase of colonial domestics within my experience were the New Zealand maid-servants of some thirty-five years ago. Perhaps by this time they are “home-made,” and consequently less eccentric; but in my day they were all immigrants, and seemed drawn almost entirely from the ranks of factory girls. They were respectable girls apparently, but with very free and easy manners. However, that did not matter. What seriously inconvenienced me at the far up-country station where my husband and I had made ourselves a very pretty and comfortable home was the absolute and profound ignorance of these damsels. They took any sort of place which they fancied, at enormous wages, and when they had at great cost and trouble been fetched up to their new home I invariably discovered that the cook, who demanded and received the wages of a chef, knew nothing whatever of any sort of cooking and the housemaid, had never seen a broom. They did not know how to thread a needle or wash a pocket-handkerchief, and, as I thought, must have been waited on all their lives. Indeed, one of my great difficulties was to get them away from the rapt admiration with which they regarded the most ordinary helps to labour. One day I heard peals of laughter from the wash-house, and found the fun consisted in the magical way in which the little cottage-mangle smoothed the aprons of the last couple of damsels. So I—who was extremely ignorant myself, and had no idea how the very beginnings of things should be taught—had to impart my slender store of knowledge as best I could. The little establishment would have collapsed entirely had it not been for my Scotch shepherd’s wife, a dear woman with the manners of a lady and the knowledge of a thorough practical housewife. What broke our hearts was that we had to begin this elementary course of instruction over and over again, as my damsels could not endure the monotony of their country life longer than three or four months, in spite of the many suitors who came a-wooing with strictly honourable intentions. But the young ladies had no idea of giving up their liberty, and turned a deaf ear to all matrimonial suggestions, even when one athletic suitor put another into the water-barrel to get him out of the way, and urged that this step must be taken as a proof of his devotion.

After the New Zealand experiences came a period of English life, and I felt much more experienced in domestic matters by the time my wandering star led me forth once more and landed me in Natal. In spite, however, of this experience, I fell into the mistake of taking out three English servants, whom I had to get rid of as soon as possible after my arrival. They had all been with me some time in England, and I thought I knew them perfectly; but the voyage evidently “wrought a sea change” on them, for they were quite different people by the time Durban was reached. Two developed tempers for which the little Maritzburg house was much too small, and when it came to carving-knives hurtling through the air I felt it was more than my nerves could stand. The third only broke out in folly, and showed an amount of personal vanity which seemed almost to border on insanity. However, I gradually replaced them with Zulu servants, in whom I was really very fortunate. They learned so easily, and were so good-tempered and docile, their only serious fault being the ineradicable tendency to return for a while—after a very few “moons” of service—to their kraals. At first I thought it was family affection which impelled this constant homing, but it was really the desire to get back to the savage life, with its gorges of half-raw meat and native beer, and its freedom from clothes. It is true I had an occasional very bad quarter of an hour with some of my experiments, as, for instance, when I found an embryo valet blacking his master’s socks as well as his boots, or detected the nurse-boy who was trusted to wheel the perambulator about the garden stuffing a half-fledged little bird into the baby’s mouth, assuring me it was a diet calculated to make “the little chieftain brave and strong.”

I think, however, quite the most curious instance of the thinness of surface civilisation among these people came to me in the case of a young Zulu girl who had been early left an orphan and had been carefully trained in a clergyman’s family. She was about sixteen years old when she came as my nursemaid, and was very plump and comely, with a beaming countenance, and the sweetest voice and prettiest manners possible. She had a great love of music, and performed harmoniously enough on an accordion as well as on several queer little pipes and reeds. She could speak, read, and write Dutch perfectly, as well as Zulu, and was nearly as proficient in English. She carried a little Bible always in her pocket, and often tried my gravity by dropping on one knee by my side whenever she caught me sitting down and alone, and beginning to read aloud from it. It was quite a new possession, and she had not got beyond the opening chapters of Genesis and delighted in the story of “Dam and Eva,” as she called our first parents. She proved an excellent nurse and thoroughly trustworthy; the children were devoted to her, especially the baby, who learned to speak Zulu before English, and to throw a reed assegai as soon as he could stand firmly on his little fat legs. I brought her to England after she had been about a year with me, and she adapted herself marvellously and unhesitatingly to the conditions of a civilisation far beyond what she had ever dreamed of. After she had got over her surprise at the ship knowing its way across the ocean, she proved a capital sailor. She took to London life and London ways as if she had never known anything else. The only serious mistake she made was once in yielding to the blandishments of a persuasive Italian image-man and promising to buy his whole tray of statues. I found the hall filled with these works of art, and “Malia” tendering, with sweetest smiles, a few pence in exchange for them. It was a disagreeable job to have to persuade the man to depart in peace with all his images, even with a little money to console him. A friend of mine chanced to be returning to Natal, and proposed that I should spare my Zulu nurse to her. Her husband’s magistracy being close to where Maria’s tribe dwelt, it seemed a good opportunity for “Malia” to return to her own country; so of course I let her go, begging my friend to tell me how the girl got on. The parting from the little boys was a heart-breaking scene, nor was Malia at all comforted by the fine clothes all my friends insisted on giving her. Not even a huge Gainsborough hat garnished with giant poppies could console her for leaving her “little chieftain”; but it was at all events something to send her off so comfortably provided for, and with two large boxes of good clothes.

In the course of a few months I received a letter from my friend, who was then settled in her up-country home, but her story of Maria’s doings seemed well-nigh incredible, though perfectly true.

All had gone well on the voyage and so long as they remained at Durban and Maritzburg; but as soon as the distant settlement was reached, Maria’s kinsmen came around her and began to claim some share in her prosperity. Free fights were of constant occurrence, and in one of them Maria, using the skull of an ox as a weapon, broke her sister’s leg. Soon after that she returned to the savage life she had not known since her infancy, and took to it with delight. I don’t know what became of her clothes, but she had presented herself before my friend clad in an old sack and with necklaces of wild animals’ teeth, and proudly announced she had just been married “with cows”—thus showing how completely her Christianity had fallen away from her, and she had practically returned, on the first opportunity, to the depth of that savagery from which she had been taken before she could even remember it. I soon lost all trace of her, but Malia’s story has always remained in my mind as an amazing instance of the strength of race-instinct.

My next colonial home was in Mauritius, and certainly the servants of that day—twenty years ago, alas!—were the best I have ever come across out of England. I am told that this is no longer the case, and that that type of domestic has been improved and educated into half-starved little clerks. The cooks were excellent, so were the butlers. Of course, they had all preserved the Indian custom of “dustoor” (I am not at all sure of the spelling) or perquisite. In fact, a sort of little duty was levied on every article of consumption in a household.

I never shall forget the agony of mind of one of my butlers at having handed me a wrong statement of the previous day’s “bazaar.” I had really not yet looked at it, but he implored me with such dreadful agitation to let him have it back again to “correct” that I read it aloud before him, to his utter confusion and abasement. The vendor had first put down the price paid him for each article, and then the “dustoor” to be added; needless to say, I was to pay the difference, and the tax had been amply allowed for in the price charged. As “Gyp” would say, Tableau!

Curiously enough, it was the dhoby or washerman class which gave the most or rather the only trouble. They—i.e. the washerman and his numerous wives—fought so dreadfully. Once I received a petition requesting me in most pompous language to give the youngest or “last-joined” wife a good talking to, for in spite of all corrections—that is, beatings—she declined entirely to iron her share of the clothes, and had the effrontery to say she had not married an ugly old man to have to work hard. The dhoby on his side declared he had only incurred the extra expense and bother of a fourth and much younger wife in order that the “Grande Madame’s” white gowns might be beautifully ironed, fresh every day.

I handed the letter—almost undecipherable on account of its ornate penmanship and flourishes—to the A.D.C. who was good enough to help me with my domestic affairs, and he must have arranged it satisfactorily, for when he left us hurriedly to rejoin his regiment, which had been ordered on active service, he received a joint letter of adieu from all the dhobies, wishing him every sort of good fortune in the campaign, and expressing a hope that he might soon return with “le croix de la reine Victoria flottant de sa casaque.” Rather a confusion of ideas, but doubtless well meant.

In spite, however, of the general excellence of Mauritius servants, my very dignified butler at Réduit cost me the most trying experience of my party-giving career. Once upon a time I had an archery meeting at Réduit, and a dance afterwards for the young people. This programme—combining, as it did, afternoon and evening amusements—required a certain amount of organisation as to food. The shooting was to go on as long as the light lasted, and it was thought better to have the usual refreshments in the tents during that time, and then an early and very substantial supper indoors so soon after the dancing began as the guests liked to have it.

There used in those days to be an excellent restaurant in Port Louis which furnished all the ball suppers. The cost was high, but all trouble was saved, and the food provided left nothing to be desired. The manager of the “Flore Mauricienne” never made a mistake, and only needed to be told how many guests to provide for; everything was then sure to be beautifully arranged. So I had no anxieties on the score of ample supplies of every obtainable dainty being forthcoming. Great, therefore, was my surprise, when, after the first batch of guests had been in to the supper-room, I was informed in a tragic whisper that everything looked very nice in there, but that there was no second supply of food to replenish the tables. This seemed impossible, and I sent for the butler and demanded to know what had become of the supper. “Monsieur Jorge” smiled blandly and, waving his hands in despair, ejaculated “Rien, rien, Madame,” repeatedly. So, although I had not intended to go in to supper myself just then, I hastened to the scene. There were the lovely tables as usual, a mass of flowers and silver, but with empty dishes. I felt as if it must be a bad dream from which I should presently awake, but that did not make it less terrible at the moment. Of course the A.D.C.s were active and energetic, but they could not perform miracles and produce a supper which they had themselves ordered and knew had arrived, but which seemed to have vanished into thin air. Tins of biscuits were found and sandwiches were hastily cut, and every one was most kind and good-natured and full of sympathy for me.

If “Monsieur Jorge” and his myrmidons had appeared in the least tipsy, the situation would have been less perplexing, but except a profound and impenetrable gravity of demeanour every servant seemed quite right. My guests danced merrily away, and hunger had no effect on their gay humour, but the staff and I (who had had no supper) were plunged in melancholy.

The moment our telegraph clerk came on duty next morning a message was sent to Port Louis (eight miles off) asking the manager of the “Flore” what had become of his supper, and by the time I came down to breakfast that worthy had appeared on the scene, and, more versed in the ways of Mauritian servants than any of us were, had elicited from Monsieur Jorge that he remembered putting the numerous boxes of supper away carefully, but where, he could not imagine. The night before he had insisted that he had placed all the supper there was, on the tables. So a search was instituted, and very soon the melancholy remains of the supper were discovered hidden away in an unused room. All the packing ice had, of course, melted, and jellies, &c., were reduced to liquid. There was about fifty pounds’ worth of food quite spoiled and useless, most of it only fit to be thrown away. The manager’s wrath really exceeded mine, and he stipulated that not one of the crowd of servants should have a crumb of the remains of that supper, which I heard afterwards had been given to the garden coolies. As a matter of fact, I believe Monsieur Jorge was somewhat tipsy, and it took the form of complete loss of memory. But it was a dreadful experience.

From the “belle isle de Maurice” we went to Western Australia, where we arrived in the middle of winter, and the contrast seemed great in every way, especially in the domestic arrangements, for servants were few and far between and of a very elementary stamp of knowledge. I tried to remedy that defect by importing maid-servants, but succeeded only in acquiring some very strange specimens. In those days Western Australia was such an unknown and distant land that the friends at home who kindly tried to help me found great difficulty in inducing any good servant to venture so far, and although the wages offered must have seemed enormous, the good class I wanted could not at first be induced to leave England. Later, things improved considerably and we got very good servants, but the first importations were very disheartening. I used to be so amazed at their love of finery. To see one’s housemaid at church absolutely covered with sham diamonds, large rings outside her gloves, huge solitaire earrings, and at least a dozen brooches stuck about her, was, to say the least of it, startling; so was the apparition of my head-cook, whom I sent for hurriedly once, after dinner, and who appeared in an evening dress of black net and silver. I also recognised the kitchen-maid at a concert in a magnificent pale green satin evening dress, which, taken in conjunction with her scarlet hair, was rather conspicuous. Of one gentle and timid little housemaid, who did not dazzle me with her toilettes, I inquired what she found most strange and unexpected in her new home—which, by the way, she professed to like very much.

“The lemons, my lady, if you please.”

“Lemons!” I said; “why?”

“Well, it’s their growin’ on trees as is so puzzlin’ like, if you please.”

“Where else did you expect them to grow?” I inquired.

“I thought they belonged to the nets. I’d always seen them in nets in shops, you know; and lemons looks strange without nets.”

My next and last experience of colonial servants was in Trinidad. By this time I had gained so much and such varied experience that there was no excuse for things not working smoothly, and as I was fortunate in possessing an excellent head-servant who acted as house-steward I had practically no trouble at all, beyond a little anxiety at any time of extra pressure about the head-cook, who had not only heart disease, but when drunk flew into violent rages. Our doctor had warned the house-steward that this man—who was a half-caste Portuguese from Goa—might drop dead at any moment if he gave way to temper and drink combined. So it was always an anxious time when balls and banquets and luncheons followed each other in quick succession. On these occasions, besides his two permanent assistants, G. was allowed a free hand as to engaging outside help. But he seemed to take that opportunity to bring in his bitterest foes, to judge by the incessant quarrels, all of long standing, which poor Mr. V. (the house-steward) had to arrange. I only did the complimenting, and after each ball supper or big dinner sent for the cook and paid him extravagant compliments on his efforts. That was the only way to keep him going, and things went well on the surface; but there were tragic moments to be lived through when the said cook had refreshed himself a little too often, and about midday would declare he had no idea what all these people were doing in his kitchens, and, arming himself with a rolling-pin, would drive them forth with much obloquy. I chanced to be looking out of my dressing-room window one day when he started a raid on the corps d’armée of black girls who were busily picking turkeys and fowls for the next night’s ball supper. I never saw anything so absurd as the way the girls fled into the neighbouring nutmeg-grove, each clasping her half-picked fowls and scattering the feathers out of her apron as she ran with many “hi! hi’s!”

I really began to think it would be necessary to summon the police sentries to protect them, for G. was flinging all sorts of fruit and vegetables at them, and had quite got their range. However, as Mr. V. emerged from his office and began to inquire of the cook if he was anxious to die on the spot, I only looked on. At first there was nothing but rage and fury on the cook’s part, to which Mr. V. opposed an imperturbable calm and the emphatic repetition of the doctor’s warning. Then came a burst of weeping, caused, G. declared, by his sense of the wickedness of the human race in general and “dem girls” in particular. After that a deep peace seemed to suddenly descend on the scene, and the cook returned to his large and airy kitchens, still weeping bitterly. Mr. V. vanished, the picking girls reappeared one by one, and, cautiously looking round to see if it was safe to do so, took up their former positions under shady trees. Presently I saw other forms stealing back into the kitchens, from which they too had been forcibly ejected; and then I heard the cook’s voice start one of Moody and Sankey’s hymns, with apparently fifty verses and a rousing chorus. After that I had no misgivings as to the success of the supper.

We succeeded, as it were, to most of our servants, for they had nearly all been at Government House for some years, and at all events knew their duties. I met one functionary, whose face I did not seem to know, on the staircase one day, and inquired who he was. “Me second butlare, please,” was the answer. The first “butlare” was an intensely respectable middle-aged man, of apparently deeply religious convictions, and I always saw him at church every Sunday, and he was a regular and most devout communicant. Judge, then, of my surprise and dismay, when, poor Jacob having died rather suddenly of heart disease, I was assured that four separate and distinct Mrs. Jacobs had appeared, each clad in deepest widow’s weeds, and each armed with orthodox “lines” to claim the small arrears of his monthly pay. But I am afraid that similar inconsistencies between theory and practice are by no means uncommon in those “Summer Isles of Eden.”