Lark Rise to Candleford (24 page)

Of course there were queer places and a few definitely bad
places; but these were the exception and soon became known and avoided. Laura
once accompanied a schoolfellow to interview a mistress who was said to require
a maid. At ordinary times a mother took her daughter to such interviews; but
Mrs. Beamish was near her time, and it was not thought safe for her to venture
so far from home. So Martha and Laura set out, accompanied by a younger brother
of Martha's, aged about ten. Martha in her mother's best coat with the sleeves
turned back to the elbows and with her hair, done up for the first time that
morning, plaited into an inverted saucer at the back of her head and bristling
with black hairpins. Laura in a chimney-pot hat, a short brown cape, and
buttoned boots reaching nearly to her knees. The little brother wore a pale
grey astrakan coat, many sizes too small, a huge red knitted scarf, and carried
no pocket-handkerchief.

It was a mild, grey November day with wisps of mist floating
over the ploughed fields and water drops hanging on every twig and thorn of the
hedgerows. The lonely country house they were bound for was said to be four
miles from the hamlet; but, long before they reached it, the distance seemed to
them more like forty. It was all cross-country going; over field-paths and
stiles, through spinneys and past villages. They asked the way of everybody
they met or saw working in the fields and were always directed to some short
cut or other, which seemed to bring them out at the same place as before. Then
there were delays. Martha's newly done-up hair kept tumbling down and Laura had
to take out all the hairpins and adjust it. The little brother got stones in
his shoes, and all their feet felt tired from the rough travelling and the
stiff mud which caked their insteps. The mud was a special source of worry to Laura,
because she had put on her best boots without asking permission, and knew she
would get into trouble about it when she returned.

Still, such small vexations and hindrances could not quite
spoil her pleasure in the veiled grey day and the new fields and woods and villages,
of which she did not even know the names.

It was late afternoon when, coming out of a deep, narrow lane
with a stream trickling down the middle, they saw before them a grey-stone mansion
with twisted chimney-stacks and a sundial standing in long grass before the
front door. Martha and Laura were appalled at the size of the house. Gentry
must live there. Which door should they go to and what should they say?

In a paved yard a man was brushing down a horse, hissing so
loudly as he did so that he did not hear their first timid inquiry. When it was
repeated he raised his head and smiled. 'Ho! Ho!' he said. 'Yes, yes, it's
Missis at the house there you'll be wanting, I'll warrant.'

'Please does she want a maid?'

'I dare say she do. She generally do. But where's the maid?
Goin' to roll yourselves up into one, all three of ye? You go on round by that harness-room
and across the lawn by the big pear trees and you'll find the back door. Go on;
don't be afraid. She's not agoin' to eat ye.'

In response to their timid knock, the door was opened by a
youngish woman. She was like no one Laura had ever seen. Very slight—she would have
been called 'scraggy' in the hamlet—with a dead white face, dark, arched brows,
and black hair brushed straight back from her forehead, and with all this black
and whiteness set off by a little scarlet jacket that, when Laura described it
to her mother later, was identified as a garibaldi. She seemed glad to see the
children, though she looked doubtful when she heard their errand and saw
Martha's size.

'So you want a place?' she asked as she conducted them into a
kitchen as large as a church and not unlike one with its stone-paved floor and central
pillar. Yes, she wanted a maid, and she thought Martha might do. How old was
she? Twelve? And what could she do? Anything she was told? Well, that was
right. It was not a hard place, for, although there were sixteen rooms, only
three or four of them were in use. Could she get up at six without being
called? There would be the kitchen range to light and the flues to be swept
once a week, and the dining-room to be swept and dusted and the fire lighted
before breakfast. She herself would be down in time to cook breakfast. No
cooking was required, beyond preparing vegetables. After breakfast Martha would
help her with the beds, turning out the rooms, paring the potatoes and so on;
and after dinner there was plenty to do—washing up, cleaning knives and boots
and polishing silver. And so she went on, mapping out Martha's day, until at nine
o'clock she would be free to go to bed, after placing hot water in her
mistress's bedroom.

Laura could see that Martha was bewildered. She stood,
twisting her scarf, curtseying, and saying 'Yes, mum' to everything.

'Then, as wages, I can offer you two pounds ten a year. It is
not a great wage, but you are very small, and you'll have an easy place and a comfortable
home. How do you like your kitchen?'

Martha's gaze wandered round the huge place, and once more
she said, 'Yes, mum.'

'You'll find it nice and cosy here, eating your meals by the
fire. You won't feel lonely, will you?'

This time Martha said, 'No, mum.'

'Tell your mother I shall expect her to fit you out well. You
will want caps and aprons. I like my maids to look neat. And tell her to let
you bring plenty of changes, for we only wash once in six weeks. I have a woman
in to do it all up,' and although Martha knew her mother had not a penny to
spend on her outfit, and that she had been told the last thing before she left
home that morning to ask her prospective employer to send her mother her first
month's wages in advance to buy necessaries, once again she said, 'Yes, mum.'

'Well, I shall expect you next Monday, then. And, now, are
you hungry?' and for the first time there was feeling in Martha's tone as she answered,
'Yes, mum.'

Soon a huge sirloin of cold beef was placed on the table and
liberal helpings were being carved for the three children. It was such a joint of
beef as one only sees in old pictures with an abbot carving; immense, and so
rich in flavour and so tender that it seemed to melt in the mouth. The three
plates were clean in a twinkling.

'Would any of you like another helping?'

Laura, conscious that she was no principal in the affair, and
only invited to partake out of courtesy, declined wistfully but firmly; Martha
said she would like a little more if 'mum' pleased, and the little brother
merely pushed his plate forward. Martha, mindful of her manners, refused a
third helping. But the little brother had no such scruples; he was famishing,
and accepted a third and a fourth plateful, the mistress of the house standing
by with an amused smile on her face. She must have remembered him for the rest
of her life as the little boy with the large appetite.

It was dark before they reached home, and Laura got into
trouble, not only for spoiling her best boots, but still more for telling a
lie, for she had led her mother to believe they were going into the market town
shopping. But even when she lay in bed supperless she felt the experience was
worth the punishment, for she had been where she had never been before and seen
the old house and the lady in the scarlet jacket and tasted the beef and seen
Tommy Beamish eat four large helpings.

After all, Martha did not go to live there. Her mother was
not satisfied with her account of the place and her father heard the next day
that the house was haunted. 'She shan't goo there while we've got a crust for her,'
said her Dad. 'Not as I believes in ghostesses—lot o' rubbish I calls 'em—but
the child might think she seed summat and be scared out of her wits an' maybe
catch her death o' cold in that girt, draughty, old kitchen.'

So Martha waited until two sisters, milliners in the market
town, wanted a maid; and, once there, grew strong and rosy and, according to
their report, learned to say a great deal more than 'Yes, mum'; for their only complaint
against her was that she was inclined to be saucy and sang so loudly about her
work that the customers in the shop could hear her.

When the girls had been in their petty places a year, their
mothers began to say it was time they 'bettered themselves' and the clergyman's
daughter was consulted. Did she know if a scullery-maid or a tweeny was required
at any of the big country houses around? If not, she would wait until she had
two or three such candidates for promotion on her list, then advertise in the
Morning
Post
or the
Church Times
for situations for them. Other girls secured
places through sisters or friends already serving in large establishments.

When the place was found, the girl set out alone on what was
usually her first train journey, with her yellow tin trunk tied up with thick
cord, her bunch of flowers and brown paper parcel bursting with left-overs.

The tin trunk would be sent on to the railway station by the
carrier and the mother would walk the three miles to the station with her
daughter. They would leave Lark Rise, perhaps before it was quite light on a winter
morning, the girl in her best, would-be fashionable clothes and the mother
carrying the baby of the family, rolled in its shawl. Neighbours would come to
their garden gates to see them off and call after them 'Pleasant journey! Hope
you'll have a good place!' or 'Mind you be a good gal, now, an' does just as
you be told!' or, more comfortingly, 'You'll be back for y'r holidays before
you knows where you are and then there won't be no holdin' you, you'll have got
that London proud!' and the two would go off in good spirits, turning and waving
repeatedly.

Laura once saw the departure of such a couple, the mother
enveloped in a large plaid shawl, with her baby's face looking out from its
folds, and the girl in a bright blue, poplin frock which had been bought at the
second-hand clothes shop in the town-a frock made in the extreme fashion of
three years before, but by that time ridiculously obsolete. Laura's mother,
foreseeing the impression it would make at the journey's end, shook her head
and clicked her tongue and said, 'Why ever couldn't they spend the money on a
bit of good navy serge!' But they, poor innocents, were delighted with it.

They went off cheerfully, even proudly; but, some hours
later, Laura met the mother returning alone. She was limping, for the sole of
one of her old boots had parted company with the upper, and the eighteen-months-old
child must have hung heavily on her arm. When asked if Aggie had gone off all
right, she nodded, but could not answer; her heart was too full. After all, she
was just a mother who had sent her young daughter into the unknown and was
tormented with doubts and fears for her.

What the girl, bound for a strange and distant part of the
country to live a new, strange life among strangers, felt when the train moved
off with her can only be imagined. Probably those who saw her round, stolid little
face and found her slow in learning her new duties for the next few days would
have been surprised and even a little touched if they could have read her
thoughts.

The girls who 'went into the kitchen' began as scullerymaids,
washing up stacks of dishes, cleaning saucepans and dish covers, preparing vegetables,
and doing the kitchen scrubbing and other rough work. After a year or two of
this, they became under kitchen-maids and worked up gradually until they were
second in command to the cook. When they reached that point, they did much of
the actual cooking under supervision; sometimes they did it without any, for
there were stories of cooks who never put hand to a dish, but, having taught
the kitchen-maid, left all the cooking to her, excepting some spectacular dish
for a dinner party. This pleased the ambitious kitchen-maid, for she was
gaining experience and would soon be a professional cook herself; then, if she
attained the summit of her ambition, cook-housekeeper.

Some girls preferred house to kitchen work, and they would be
found a place in some mansion as third or fourth house-maid and work upward. Troops
of men and maid-servants were kept in large town and country houses in those
days.

The maids on the lower rungs of the ladder seldom saw their
employers. If they happened to meet one or other of them about the house, her ladyship
would ask kindly how they were getting on and how their parents were; or his
lordship would smile and make some mild joke if he happened to be in a good
humour. The upper servants were their real mistresses, and they treated
beginners as a sergeant treated recruits, drilling them well in their duties by
dint of much scolding; but the girl who was anxious to learn and did not mind
hard work or hard words and could keep a respectful tongue in her head had
nothing to fear from them.

The food of the maids in those large establishments was
wholesome and abundant, though far from dainty. In some houses they would be
given cold beef or mutton, or even hot Irish stew for breakfast, and the midday
meal was always a heavy one, with suet pudding following a cut from a hot
joint. Their bedrooms were poor according to modern standards; but, sleeping in
a large attic, shared with two or three others, was not then looked upon as a
hardship, provided they had a bed each and their own chest of drawers and
washstands. The maids had no bathroom. Often their employers had none either.
Some families had installed one for their own use; others preferred the
individual tub in the bedroom. A hip-bath was part of the furniture of the
maids' room. Like the children of the family, they had no evenings out, unless
they had somewhere definite to go and obtained special leave. They had to go to
church on Sunday, whether they wanted to or not, and had to leave their best
hats with the red roses and ostrich tips in the boxes under their beds and
'make frights of themselves' in funny little flat bonnets. When the Princess of
Wales, afterwards Queen Alexandra, set the fashion of wearing the hair in a
curled fringe over the forehead, and the fashion spread until it became
universal, a fringe was forbidden to maids. They must wear their hair brushed
straight back from their brows. A great hardship.