All these conceptions and applications of a universal precedence and
much else I drank in at Bladesover, as I listened to the talk of valets,
ladies'-maids, Rabbits the butler and my mother in the much-cupboarded,
white-painted, chintz-brightened housekeeper's room where the upper
servants assembled, or of footmen and Rabbits and estate men of all
sorts among the green baize and Windsor chairs of the pantry--where
Rabbits, being above the law, sold beer without a license or any
compunction--or of housemaids and still-room maids in the bleak,
matting-carpeted still-room or of the cook and her kitchen maids and
casual friends among the bright copper and hot glow of the kitchens.
Of course their own ranks and places came by implication to these
people, and it was with the ranks and places of the Olympians that the
talk mainly concerned itself. There was an old peerage and a Crockford
together with the books of recipes, the Whitaker's Almanack, the Old
Moore's Almanack, and the eighteenth century dictionary, on the little
dresser that broke the cupboards on one side of my mother's room; there
was another peerage, with the covers off, in the pantry; there was a
new peerage in the billiard-room, and I seem to remember another in the
anomalous apartment that held the upper servants' bagatelle board and in
which, after the Hall dinner, they partook of the luxury of sweets.
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