BARMAIDS.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 575, 23 September 1869, Page 4

BARMAIDS.

■ ♦ (From St. James's Maijazlne.) The substitution of women for men as servants in our taverns is a reform of comparatively recent date, The ancient " drawer" has no prototype at the present ! day. The potboy of the period is alto* gether an inferior creature, who discloses no possibility of literary or romantic inter rest. He is a mere subordinate, and renders suit and service to those peculiar products of the age which have developed in barmaids. We do not now refer to the maids of the inns who may linger at country hotels and taverns, As a rule, indeed, they have lost the sweet flavour of rusticity and those characteristics of mild flirtation which were onpe the theme even of poets. _ They are fast becoming like their town sisters, and in many cases only serve an apprenticeship, so to speak, in the provinces before adventuring upon the metropolitan stage of their career! Still, it is possible to pome across a few specimens of this cherry-ribboned and rubycheeked Hebe just as we occasionally turn up an old woman with the traditional red cloak so dear to painters, It is in Lonr don, however, and at the railway refreshment stations, that the barmaid of this paper is to be seen in fall bloom. The young ladies who officiate at a West -end restaurant are generally at the top of their profession. They study the costumes and graces of the calling with a certain feeling which might fairly be termed artistic. The hair is fearfully and wonderfully made ; the complexions are delicately perfumed ; the figure is designed with a knowledge of the anatomical eccentricities of fashion, which could only be acquired by constant study. Not that the West-end barmaids always requires the assistance of pads, paints, and powder. Sometimes, though very seldom, she leaves the effect to nature. We must remember that she, like an actress, is exposed to the glare of strong direct lights, and that she is worse off in one respect than the actress, inasmuch as she is viewed at much closer quarters. The two conditions impose on her a necessity for cosmetics, and a greater secretive faculty for the use of them. She manages, on the whole, to prodxice a most agreeable picture. Occasionally she dresses en suite with her associates, and the group (say a trio) will stand the most critical inspection on all points. Her life is a wearisome one enough. She must listen to the most stupid compliments, and accept them as a part of the business for which she is paid. Her working hours are long, and at night particularly arduous. She is usually, despite the supposed demoralising influence of frizzled hair, and the rest of it, an honest, hard-working girl, rather ignorant, and rather silly, though not perhaps half so much a fool as the man of little fashion who spends his time about the place with a view to an ignoble conquest. Another and quite a diflerent description of personage is the fast barmaid of the Haymarket and the musichall. She is not particular to a shade in the manipulation of the hare's foot, and lays on the red and white and the eyebrow pigment with the audacity of a scene-painter. Her manner is coarse and slangy. She expects to be invited to drink wine on being looked at. Words seem to have lost their signification to her as she never winces at what floats in the way of talk, with the vile tobacco of the place at which she presides. Still she must possess a wonderful temper. The class of snobs or cads who frequent fast bars must be the most irritating set of idiots on the face of the earth. Yet the barmaid ever greets them with a smile so broad and generous that you expect it to crackle the beautifying enamelling of hjr visage. Unless they are speechlessly drunk or unable to find any money in their pockets she has a pleasant word to say to them. Her great object is to get one of these fellows to order champagne. On each bottle of this stuff disposed of she has a per centage. She terms it " fizz," and will pretend to fall into ecstacies at the prospect of a glass of the chemical essence of gooseberry sweetened np with tartaric acid and sugar of lead. You can perceive her landlord with diamond rings sitting on a velvet sofa, and enjoying the stratiigems of the staff, while his wife, on the opposite side, exhibits the jewellery of a duchess on her fat fingers, and nods sleepily over an eleemosynary claret cup supplied at the instance of a semi-drunk dandy.