JEMIMA LEE.
TORD WARWICK, in his recent book of Memories, tells a I story of how the retort emphatic was given to Queen Victoria. She was paying a visit with her Consort to Warwick Castle, and the housekeeper, who was showing them through the armoury, pointed with pride to the target and pistols of Prince Charlie. " You mean, of course, the Pretender ? " commented the Queen. " He is not known by that name in our family," corrected the servant her Sovereign. When Queen Victoria died, there died with her that complete identification of the serving- woman with the family she served which Lord Warwick's story so forcibly illustrates. Jemima Lee, who died the other day at the ripe age of ninety-three, may have had a father and mother, and even brothers and sisters. If she had, she disclaimed them by silence. She lived for sixty years as the presiding genius of a corner-house in a London square, which she entered as lady's-maid to the young bride whom a Judge, just beginning to be touched with years, brought to it in the year 1850. The Judge was much given to vas fibres—as fibres as his period allowed—and light rhyming, and held that as a wise man chooses his mother-in-law before his wife, so he should also choose the name of the maid he is likely to be constantly encountering in his wife's bedroom before the maid herself. When he knew that a young woman had applied for his service named Jemima Lee, he told his wife that she must engage her straightway, even though her character were faulty ; and the maid, who had only to look at the Judge's handsome head to vow to him the fealty of the Table Round, identified herself forthwith so completely with his interests that, in her own phrase, " Judge and Jemima, Lee were just gummed together." Jemima Lee's philosophy of life held only two words : " gentleman " and " establishment." Ladies had their place in the social order— but as corollaries to gentlemen ; and when her mistress's sister married a soldier and prepared to spend her life in travel, Jemima Lee dismissed such a scheme with the contemptuous comment : " Shacking about, very different from an establishment," and never wanted to hear anything more about them. Once Jemima Lee hinted at a suitor herself. " And why didn't you marry ? " she was asked. " That would have been extreme," was her grave rebuke. She had an extraordinary idea of the power of the truth. Once, in the Bayswater Road, a man snatched at her purse. " Why," she exclaimed, throwing up both arms in horror, " you're a thief I " and the statement of fact was so impressive that the man promptly dropped the purse and ran. From this episode Jemima Lee developed a creed that when people were bad you had only to tell them about it and call them by their proper names to cure them ; and when she wondered a little why the Judge did not act on so easy a philo- sophy, she decided that it was because he was a gentleman before he was a Judge, and no gentleman called anybody names.
In a life of perfect happiness Jemima Lee tasted perhaps her fullest delight on Sunday mornings, when, dressed in a magnificent silk gown of crimson prune, or puce, a black mantle, and a flowered bonnet, she started out in good—even the best—time, so that from her seat in the gallery she could catch every detail of the entrance into church of her master and mistress. The servants of No. 42 in the square occupied a front seat in the gallery, and Jemima Lee sat in the seat consecrated to her, second from the end, with the butler guarding her. Once she found her place taken—an eve at as incredible as if she had found a stranger in her bed. In such a situation Jemima Lee, in her own boast, used no nonsense. She simply took the usurper by the shoulder and said sharply : " Come out, Sir ! " Then, shaking out a pocket- handkerchief, whose fine cambric was only equalled by the exceeding fineness of its laundrying, she entered the pew, and lifting her silk skirt with such a rustling and shimmering that for a second one might have thought the organ had begun, she went down in her stiff white petticoat on her hassock and made her orisons. If, in the course of these, the lesser servants arrived, they waited on the stairs until they were completed. The thought of them thus waiting gave Jemima Lee intense pleasure, and under the stress of it she would even say the Lord's Prayer twice over. Then her master would follow her mistress up the aisle, and at sight of them Jemima Lee's thoughts would swim in a happy ecstasy at the superb ordering of the world. And when, presently, she shut her eyes again to address her Maker, it was her earthly master's face and figure that still lingered. Jemima Lee tasted twenty years of such adoration. Then the Judge died, and though Jemima Lee comforted him on his death-bed by telling him that he had nothing in the world to think about except to make his exit as easy as possible, because he was leaving her behind and she would take care of the house and the mistress for him for ever and ever, she knew, even as she spoke the brave words, that on her life, too, the sun had set. The wonderful dresses in the vivid hues which the Judge had loved to see about his house were despatched to the dyer's, and in after-years few memories gave Jemima Lee greater delight than the thought of the crape which, in her own phrase, made both her and her mistress " as stiff as cardboard."
Only two tiny stains dimmed the white radiance of her master's memory. Once, when the Judge was at dinner, a whisper went round that a burglar had got into the house and was in one of the bedrooms. The Judge concealed himself in the hall, behind the bust of Disraeli, and presently a man was actually seen coming slithering down the banisters. " What have you been up there for, Sir ? " asked the Judge, jumping out upon him. The man rebounded. " I wanted to find George," he said very sheepishly. " Sir, who the devil's George ? " asked the Judge again, and looking round saw Jemima Lee standing just behind him. Though he had not known it, she had been behind the bust of Disraeli too. " The dear master was so ashamed," Jemima Lee whispered on just the one occasion in her life when she permitted herself to repeat this story—but with her own rendering : " Who the old gentleman is George ? " The second little spot was incurred when the family laundry went through a strange vicissitude and pawn-tickets for it were actually dropped through the letter-box. The Judge, with many apologies, said it would be necessary for Jemima Lee to go with him in the brougham to identify the articles, and when the two reached the pawnshop he suggested very kindly that perhaps Jemima Lee would like to go in by a side-door. " There are no aide-doors for Jemima Lee, Sir," and for the first and last
time in her life the maid actually preceded her master, walking in before him with her mouth scornful and her head at its greatest height.
In the reconstruction of the household Jemiina Lee added the duties of housekeeper to those of melding her mistress, and sho spent the last forty years of her life—a typical figure of her position and period in a black watered-silk dress, a black satin apron, and a black lace cap, with a jet watchchain round her neck—in living over again the twenty years of her glory. Once a visitor to whom she was describing the furnishings of the house when she first came to it remarked idly : " And I suppose from time to time things were added " Jemima Lee looked at her in blank amaze- ment. " There was nothing to add," she said with great emphasis ; " everything was complete from the first." Then she paused. " And I was with them from the beginning," she concluded. She told her stories over and over again. One that she liked particularly related to an evening party when, with many dresses spread upon the bed, neither she nor her mistress could decide which of them was best suited to the occasion. The Judge was brought into council. " It does not matter, so long as you are dressed as my wife ought to be dressed, and we do not forget the reputation of Jemima Lee," he said very gravely, and Jemima Leo had her own way of acknowledging such compliments. She shut her eyes very tightly and murmured, with her hands clasped :- " Not more than others I deserve, But God has given me more."
She liked, too, the tale of the Great Exhibition, when she had some difficulty in arranging her mistress's white Indian shawl in the way which showed best the dress of crimson poplin worn beneath it. When her mistress returned, Jemima Lee made inquiries about the French Empress, and was told that she wa undeniably very beautiful. " And what about our Queen ? " asked Jemima Lee again. " Our Queen," repeated her mistress— "Majesty itself." " Ah !" replied Jemima Lee, completely satisfied, and like a priest reciting his office she went up and down the house repeating, " Our Queen—Majesty itself." On the evening of the day of the opening of the Exhibition her mistress dined at the French Embassy, and the question of diamonds was debated. " If she wants diamonds," said the Judge, looking at his wife, " she can have them to a King's ransom ; but I want the fine proportions of her head to be admired and not the diamonds." For the rest of her life whenever Jemima Lee detected ladies in diamonds she assumed at once that there was something wrong with their proportions ! She was of a great naiveté, and this contrasted strangely with the massiveness which her face— like the face of all Victorian servants in authority—developed with the years. At a great bazaar at which the Judge's wife was a stall-holder, Jemima Lee, tying up parcels at the rate of twopence a parcel, heard her mistress exclaim : " I must put on my gloves—here comes the Princess," and forthwith laid the remark to a great humility which did not consider an ungloved hand worthy to lie for a second in a hand of Royal blood. " And the best bit about it," Jemima Lee confided later to her fellow- servants, " was that when the Princess came up she had her gloves on too, so she had thought just the same about our mistress as our mistress had about her ! "
In one respect the old servant lived just a little too long for her peace of mind. She had the Victorian love of concealment very deeply ingrained, and the sheath-skirt and the candour of advertisements at first distressed and then infuriated her against her own sex. She returned for soothing to the memory of her master, who so long as she was in the room would not remove even his dressing-gown. After the manner of her period, Jemima Lee herself wore an immense number of petticoats, and the con- trivances, lest they should ride up and thicken the waist of which she was inordinately proud, showed her strong on the mechanical side. Once a housemaid who was compelled to sleep for one night in her bedroom discovered her in the early morning—the secrecies of her toilet forced Jemima Lee in such circumstances to rill.: very early—straining, like the horses in Mr. Leader's pictures of " The Last Furrow," away from her four-poster bedstead while the lace of her corset was looped over one of the posts.
She protested a great affection for, and understanding of, children, though her treatment of them did not meet with very eager response. For whenever a little person was brought to her Jemima Lee would stoop down and ask : " Are you an obedient child " and if the answer was satisfactory the obedience was rewarded with what Jemima Lee considered " very good for juveniles " and exclusively for their use—a copy of Punch. If the child had courage and answered " No," Jemima Lee would reply, greatly shocked : " Then you must go away. I can't have anything to do with disobedience " ; and if the child asked again : " Where shall 1
go to ? " Jemima Lee shook her head gravely and said : " I'm afraid you must go to Satan." Jemima Lee had no doubts of to whom she was going herself. After ninety she faded gently away, until one morning she just folded her hands, and saying " The dear master," went to him with a smile on her lips. A.
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