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Stage-Land-Part5_Jerome K.Jerome(1859-1927)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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She never wants to be "unhanded" or "let to pass."



She is not always being shocked or insulted by people telling her that

they love her; she does not seem to mind it if they do. She is not



always fainting, and crying, and sobbing, and wailing, and moaning,

like the good people in the play are.



Oh, they do have an unhappy time of it--the good people in plays!

Then she is the only person in the piece who can sit on the comic man.



We sometimes think it would be a fortunate thing--for him--if they

allowed her to marry and settle down quietly with the hero. She might



make a man of him in time.

THE SERVANT-GIRL.



There are two types of servant-girl to be met with on the stage. This

is an unusualallowance for one profession.



There is the lodging-house slavey. She has a good heart and a smutty

face and is always dressed according to the latest fashion in



scarecrows. Her leading occupation is the cleaning of boots. She

cleans boots all over the house, at all hours of the day. She comes



and sits down on the hero's breakfast-table and cleans them over the

poor fellow's food. She comes into the drawing-room cleaning boots.



She has her own method of cleaning them, too. She rubs off the mud,

puts on the blacking, and polishes up all with the same brush. They



take an enormousamount of polishing. She seems to do nothing else

all day long but walk about shining one boot, and she breathes on it



and rubs it till you wonder there is any leather left, yet it never

seems to get any brighter, nor, indeed, can you expect it to, for when



you look close you see it is a patent-leather boot that she has been

throwing herself away upon all this time.



Somebody has been having a lark with the poor girl.

The lodging-house slavey brushes her hair with the boot brush and



blacks the end of her nose with it.

We were acquainted with a lodging-house slavey once--a real one, we



mean. She was the handmaiden at a house in Bloomsbury where we once

hung out. She was untidy in her dress, it is true, but she had not



quite that castaway and gone-to-sleep-in-a-dust-bin appearance that

we, an earnest student of the drama, felt she ought to present, and we



questioned her one day on the subject.

"How is it, Sophronia," we said, "that you distantly resemble a human



being instead of giving one the idea of an animated rag-shop? Don't

you ever polish your nose with the blacking-brush, or rub coal into



your head, or wash your face in treacle, or put skewers into your

hair, or anything of that sort, like they do on the stage?"



She said: "Lord love you, what should I want to go and be a bally

idiot like that for?"



And we have not liked to put the question elsewhere since then.

The other type of servant-girl on the stage--the villa



servant-girl--is a very different personage. She is a fetching little

thing, dresses bewitchingly, and is always clean. Her duties are to



dust the legs of the chairs in the drawing-room. That is the only

work she ever has to do, but it must be confessed she does that



thoroughly. She never comes into the room without dusting the legs of

these chairs, and she dusts them again before she goes out.



If anything ought to be free from dust in a stage house, it should be

the legs of the drawing-room chairs.



She is going to marry the man-servant, is the stage servant-girl, as

soon as they have saved up sufficient out of their wages to buy a



hotel. They think they will like to keep a hotel. They don't

understand a bit about the business, which we believe is a complicated



one, but this does not trouble them in the least.

They quarrel a good deal over their love-making, do the stage



servant-girl and her young man, and they always come into the

drawing-room to do it. They have got the kitchen, and there is the



garden (with a fountain and mountains in the background--you can see

it through the window), but no! no place in or about the house is good



enough for them to quarrel in except the drawing-room. They quarrel

there so vigorously that it even interferes with the dusting of the



chair-legs.

She ought not to be long in saving up sufficient to marry on, for the



generosity of people on the stage to the servants there makes one

seriously consider the advisability of ignoring the unremunerative



professions of ordinary life and starting a new and more promising

career as a stage servant.



No one ever dreams of tipping the stage servant with less than a

sovereign when they ask her if her mistress is at home or give her a



letter to post, and there is quite a rush at the end of the piece to

stuff five-pound notes into her hand. The good old man gives her ten.



The stage servant is very impudent to her mistress, and the master--he

falls in love with her and it does upset the house so.






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