 | OLD SERVANTS. The Crayon miscellany |  |
OLD SERVANTS.
In an old, time-worn, and mysterious looking
mansion like Newtead Abbey, and one so haunted
by monkish, and feudal, and poetical associations,
it is a prize to meet with some ancient
crone, who has passed a long life about the
place, so as to have become a living chronicle
of its fortunes and vicissitudes. Such a one is
Nanny Smith, a worthy dame, near seventy
years of age, who for a long time served as
housekeeper to the Byrons. The Abbey and
its domains comprise her world, beyond which
she knows nothing, but within which she has
ever conducted herself with native shrewdness
and old fashioned honesty. When Lord Byron
sold the Abbey her vocation was at an end, yet
still she lingered about the place, having for it
the local attachment of a cat. Abandoning her
comfortable housekeeper's apartment, she took
shelter in one of the “rock houses,” which are
nothing more than a little neighbourhood of
cabins, excavated in the perpendicular walls of
a stone quarry, at no great distance from the
Abbey. Three cells, cut in the living rock,
formed her dwelling; these she fitted up humbly
the neighbourhood, and aided to support her,
and Nanny Smith maintained a cheerful aspect
and an independent spirit. One of her gossips
suggested to her that William should marry and
bring home a young wife to help her and take
care of her. “Nay! nay,” replied Nanny, tartly,
“I want no young mistress in my house.” So
much for the love of rule—poor Nanny's house
was a hole in a rock!
Colonel Wildman, on taking possession of the
Abbey, found Nanny Smith thus humbly nestled.
With that active benevolence which characterizes
him, he immediately set William up in a
small farm on the estate, where Nanny Smith
has a comfortable mansion in her old days. Her
pride is roused by her son's advancement. She
remarks with exultation that people treat William
with much more respect now that he is a
farmer, than they did when he was a labourer.
A farmer of the neighbourhood has even endeavoured
to make a match between him and his
sister, but Nanny Smith has grown fastidious,
and interfered. The girl, she said, was too old
for her son, besides, she did not see that he was
in any need of a wife.
“No,” said William, “I ha' no great mind to
marry the wench; but if the Colonel and his lady
wish it, I am willing. They have been so kind
them.” The Colonel and his lady, however, have
not thought proper to put honest William's gratitude
to so severe a test.
Another worthy whom Colonel Wildman found
vegetating upon the place, and who had lived
there for at least sixty years, was old Joe Murray.
He had come there when a mere boy in
the train of the “old lord,” about the middle of
the last century, and had continued with him
until his death. Having been a cabin boy when
very young, Joe always fancied himself a bit of
a sailor, and had charge of all the pleasure boats
on the lake, though he afterwards rose to the
dignity of butler. In the latter days of the
old Lord Byron, when he shut himself up from
all the world, Joe Murray was the only servant
retained by him, excepting his housekeeper
Betty Hardstaff, who was reputed to have an
undue sway over him, and was derisively called
Lady Betty among the country folk.
When the Abbey came into the possession of
the late Lord Byron, Joe Murray accompanied
it as a fixture. He was reinstated as butler in
the Abbey, and high admiral on the lake, and
his sturdy honest mastiff qualities won so upon
Lord Byron as even to rival his Newfoundland
dog in his affections. Often when dining, he
would pour out a bumper of choice Madeira,
In fact, when he built the monumental tomb
which stands in the Abbey garden, he intended
it for himself, Joe Murray, and the dog. The
two latter were to lie on each side of him.
Boatswain died not long afterwards, and was
regularly interred, and the well known epitaph
inscribed on one side of the monument. Lord
Byron departed for Greece; during his absence,
a gentleman to whom Joe Murray was showing
the tomb, observed, “Well, old boy, you will
take your place here some twenty years hence.”
“I don't know that, sir,” growled Joe, in
reply, “if I was sure his Lordship would come
here, I should like it well enough, but I should
not like to lie alone with the dog.”
Joe Murray was always extremely neat in
his dress, and attentive to his person, and made
a most respectable appearance. A portrait of
him still hangs in the Abbey, representing him
a hale fresh looking fellow, in a flaxen wig, a
blue coat and buff waistcoat, with a pipe in his
hand. He discharged all the duties of his station
with great fidelity, unquestionable honesty, and
much outward decorum, but, if we may believe
his contemporary, Nanny Smith, who, as housekeeper,
shared the sway of the household with
him, he was very lax in his minor morals, and
used to sing loose and profane songs as he presided
taking his ale and smoking his pipe by the
evening fire. Joe had evidently derived his
convivial notions from the race of English country
squires who flourished in the days of his
juvenility. Nanny Smith was scandalized at his
ribald songs, but being above harm herself,
endured them in silence. At length, on his
singing them before a young girl of sixteen, she
could contain herself no longer, but read him
a lecture that made his ears ring, and then
flounced off to bed. The lecture seems, by her
account, to have staggered honest Joe, for he
told her the next morning that he had had
a terrible dream in the night. An Evangelist
stood at the foot of his bed with a great Dutch
bible, which he held with the printed part towards
him, and after a while pushed it in his
face. Nanny Smith undertook to interpret the
vision, and read from it such a homily, and
deduced such awful warnings, that Joe became
quite serious, left off singing, and took to reading
good books for a month; but after that, continued
Nanny, he relapsed and became as bad as
ever, and continued to sing loose and profane
songs to his dying day.
When Colonel Wildman became proprietor of
the Abbey he found Joe Murray flourishing in a
green old age, though upwards of fourscore, and
man was rejoiced at the extensive repairs that
were immediately commenced, and anticipated
with pride the day when the Abbey should rise
out of its ruins with renovated splendour, its
gates be thronged with trains and equipages,
and its halls once more echo to the sound of
joyous hospitality.
What chiefly, however, concerned Joe's pride
and ambition, was a plan of the Colonel's to
have the ancient refectory of the convent, a great
vaulted room, supported by gothic columns, converted
into a servants' hall. Here Joe looked
forward to rule the roast at the head of the servants'
table, and to make the gothic arches ring
with those hunting and hard drinking ditties
which were the horror of the discreet Nanny
Smith. Time, however, was fast wearing away
with him, and his great fear was that the hall
would not be completed in his day. In his
eagerness to hasten the repairs, he used to get
up early in the morning, and ring up the workmen.
Notwithstanding his great age, also, he
would turn out half dressed in cold weather to
cut sticks for the fire. Colonel Wildman kindly
remonstrated with him for thus risking his health,
as others would do the work for him.
“Lord, sir,” exclaimed the hale old fellow,
“it's my air bath, I'm all the better for it.”
Unluckily as he was thus employed one morning,
a splinter flew up and wounded one of his
eyes. An inflammation took place; he lost the
sight of that eye, and subsequently of the other.
Poor Joe gradually pined away, and grew melancholy.
Colonel Wildman kindly tried to
cheer him up—“Come, come, old boy,” cried he,
“be of good heart, you will yet take your place
in the servants' hall.”
“Nay, nay, sir,” replied he, “I did hope once
that I should live to see it—I looked forward to
it with pride, I confess, but it is all over with me
now—I shall soon go home!”
He died shortly afterwards, at the advanced
age of eighty-six, seventy of which had been
passed as an honest and faithful servant at the
Abbey. Colonel Wildman had him decently
interred in the church of Hucknall Torkard, near
the vault of Lord Byron.
| OLD SERVANTS. The Crayon miscellany | |