those who ‘oblige’, domestic helpers, working housekeepers, and charming young women who want to combine earning a little extra money with hours that will suit them and their children’s needs. They are amiable amateurs; they often become friends but they seldom command the awe with which we regarded our domestic staff.
Servants, of course, were not a particular luxury–it was not a case of only the rich having them; the only difference was that the rich had more.
They had butlers and footmen and housemaids and parlourmaids and between-maids and kitchen-maids and so on. As you descended the stages of affluence you would arrive eventually at what is so well described in those delightful books of Barry Pain, Eliza and Eliza’s Husband, as The girl’.
Our various servants are far more real to me than my mother’s friends and my distant relations. I have only to close my eyes to see Jane moving majestically in her kitchen, with vast bust, colossal hips, and a starched band that confined her waist. Her fat never seemed to trouble her, she never suffered from her feet, her knees or her ankles, and if she had blood pressure she was quite unaware of it. As far as I remember she was never ill. She was Olympian. If she had emotions, she never showed them; she was prodigal neither of endearments nor of anger; only on the days when she was engaged in the preparation of a large dinner-party a slight flush would show. The intense calm of her personality would be what I should describe as ‘faintly ruffled’-her face slightly redder, her lips pressed tight together, a faint frown on her forehead. Those were the days when I used to be banished from the kitchen with decision. ‘Now, Miss Agatha, I have no time today–I’ve got a lot on hand. I’ll give you a handful of raisins and then you must go out in the garden and not come and worry me any more.’ I left immediately, impressed, as always, by Jane’s utterances.
Jane’s principal characteristics were reticence and aloofness. We knew she had a brother, otherwise we knew little of her family. She never talked about them. She came from Cornwall. She was called ‘Mrs Rowe’, but that was a courtesy title. Like all good servants, she knew her place.
It was a place of command, and she made it clear to those working in the house that she was in charge.
Jane must have taken pride in the splendid dishes she cooked, but never showed it or spoke of it. She accepted compliments on her dinner on the following morning with no sign of gratification, though I think she was definitely pleased when my father came out into the kitchen and congratulated her.
Then there was Barker, one of our housemaids, who opened up to me yet another vista of life. Barkers’ father was a particularly strict Plymouth Brother, and Barker was very conscious of sin and the way she had broken away in certain matters. ‘Damned to all Eternity I shall be, no doubt of it,’ she would say, with a kind of cheerful relish. ‘What my father would say, I don’t know, if he knew I went to Church of England services.
What’s more, I enjoyed them. I enjoyed the Vicar’s sermon last Sunday, and I enjoyed the singing too.’
A child who came to stay was heard by my mother saying scornfully one day to the parlourmaid: ‘Oh! you’re only a servant!’ and was promptly taken to task.
‘Never let me hear you speak like that to a servant. Servants must be treated with the utmost courtesy. They are doing skilled work which you could not possibly do yourself without long training. And remember they cannot answer back. You must always be polite to people whose position forbids them to be rude to you. If you are impolite, they will despise you, and rightly, because you have not acted like a lady.’
‘To be a little lady’ was well rammed home in those times. It included some curious items.
Starting with courtesy to dependents, it went on to such things as:
‘Always leave something on your plate for Lady Manners.’ ‘Never drink with your mouth full.’ ‘Remember never to put two halfpenny stamps on a letter unless it is a bill to a tradesman.’ And, of course ‘Put on clean underclothes when you are going on a railway journey in case there should be an accident.’
Tea-time in the kitchen was often a social reunion. Jane had innumerable friends, and one or two of them dropped in nearly every day. Trays of hot rock cakes came out of the oven. Never since have I tasted rock cakes like Jane’s. They were crisp and flat and full of currants, and eaten hot they were Heaven. Jane in her mild bovine way was quite a martinet; if one of the others rose from the table, a voice would say: ‘I haven’t finished yet, Florence,’ and Florence, abashed, would sit down again murmuring, ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Rowe.’
Cooks of any seniority were always ‘Mrs’. Housemaids and parlourmaids were supposed to have ‘suitable’ names–e.g. Jane, Mary, Edith, etc. Such names as Violet, Muriel, Rosamund and so on were not considered suitable, and the girl was told firmly, ‘Whilst you are in my service you will be called “Mary’.’ Parlourmaids, if of sufficient seniority, were often called by their surnames.
Friction between ‘the nursery’ and ‘the kitchen’ was not uncommon, but Nursie, though no doubt standing on her rights, was a peaceable person and respected and consulted by the young maids.
Dear Nursie–I have a portrait of her hanging in my house in Devon.
It was painted by the same artist who painted the rest of my family, a painter well known at that time–N. H. J. Baird. My mother was somewhat critical of Mr Baird’s pictures: ‘He makes everybody look so dirty,’ she complained. ‘All of you look as if you hadn’t washed for weeks!’
There is something in what she said. The heavy blue and green shadows in the flesh tints of my brother’s face do suggest a reluctance to use soap and water, and the portrait of myself at sixteen has a suggestion of an incipient moustache, a blemish from which I have never suffered.
My father’s portrait, however, is so pink and white and shining that it might be an advertisement for soap. I suspect that it gave the artist no particular pleasure to paint, but that my mother had vanquished poor Mr Baird by sheer force of personality. My brother’s and sister’s portraits were not particularly like, my father’s was the living image of him, but was far less distinctive as a portrait.
Nursie’s portrait was, I am sure, a labour of love on Mr Baird’s part.
The transparent cambric of her frilled cap and apron is lovely, and a perfect frame for the wise wrinkled face with its deep set eyes-the whole reminiscent of some Flemish Old Master.
I don’t know how old Nursie was when she came to us, or why my mother should have chosen such an old woman, but she always said:
‘From the moment Nursie came, I never had to worry about you–I knew you were in good hands.’ A great many babies had passed through those hands–I was the last of them.
When the census came round, my father had to register the names and ages of everyone in the house.
‘Very awkward job,’ he said ruefully. ‘The servants don’t like you asking them their ages. And what about Nursie?’
So Nursie was summoned and stood before him, her hands folded in front of her snowy apron and her mild old eyes fixed on him inquiringly.
‘So you see,’ explained my father, after a brief resume of what a census was, ‘I have to put down everyone’s age. Er–what shall I put down for you?’
‘Whatever you like, Sir,’ replied Nursie politely.
‘Yes, but–er–I have to know.’
‘Whatever you think best, Sir.’ Nursie was not to be stampeded.
His own estimate being that she was at least seventy-five, he hazarded nervously: “Er–er–fifty-nine? Something like that?’
An expression of pain passed across the wrinkled face.
‘Do I really look as old as that, Sir?’ asked Nursie wistfully.
‘No, no–Well, what shall I say?’
Nursie returned to her gambit.
‘Whatever