Here is the marvelous farmer’s wife Mrs Poyser, always straight to the point and with an opinion, richly expressed, about everyone and everything.  I loved this dismissal of upper class servants being like ladies’ fat dogs, only for show, and useless for anything else.

‘Gentlefolk’s servants – they’re mostly like the ladies’ fat dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher’s meat, but on’y for show’

Source: George Eliot, Adam Bede (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (1859)), p. 338

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