Penelope's Experiences in Scotland: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton — John Shaqi
Penelope's Experiences in Scotland: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope HamiltonWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
General
Penelope's Experiences in Scotland: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Scotland -- Fiction
The Scotch butler is not in the least like an English one. No man could
be as respectable as he looks, not even an elder of the kirk, whom he
resembles closely. He hands your plate as if it were a contribution-box,
and in his moments of ease, when he stands behind the 'maister,' I am
always expecting him to pronounce a benediction. The English butler,
when he wishes to avoid the appearance of listening to the conversation,
gazes with level eye into vacancy; the Scotch butler looks distinctly
heavenward, as if he were brooding on the principle of co-ordinate
jurisdiction with mutual subordination. It would be impossible for me to
deny the key of the wine-cellar to a being so steeped in sanctity, but
it has been done, I am told, in certain rare and isolated cases.
As for toilets, the men dress like all other men (alas, and alas, that
we should say it, for we were continually hoping for a kilt!) though
there seems to be no survival of the finical Lord Napier's spirit.
Perhaps you remember that Lord and Lady Napier arrived at Castlemilk
in Lanarkshire with the intention of staying a week, but announced next
morning that a circumstance had occurred which rendered it indispensable
to return without delay to their seat in Selkirkshire. This was the only
explanation given, but it was afterwards discovered that Lord Napier's
valet had committed the grievous mistake of packing up a set of
neckcloths which did not correspond IN POINT OF DATE with the shirts
they accompanied!
The ladies of the 'smart set' in Edinburgh wear French fripperies
and chiffons, as do their sisters every where, but the other women of
society dress a trifle more staidly than their cousins in London,
Paris, or New York. The sobriety of taste and severity of style that
characterise Scotswomen may be due, like Susanna Crum's dubieties, to
the haar, to the shorter catechism, or perhaps in some degree to the
presence of three branches of the Presbyterian Church among them; the
society that bears in its bosom three separate and antagonistic kinds of
Presbyterianism at the same time must have its chilly moments.
In Lord Cockburn's time the 'dames of high and aristocratic breed'
must have been sufficiently awake to feminine frivolities to be both
gorgeously and extravagantly arrayed. I do not know in all literature
a more delicious and lifelike word-portrait than Lord Cockburn gives
of Mrs. Rochead, the Lady of Inverleith, in the Memorials. It is quite
worthy to hang beside a Raeburn canvas; one can scarce say more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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