Leaving aside the life you get in a pub, there was another reason that I resented George not taking me there and that’s the effect drinks have on you. I used to feel amorous after a couple or so and so did any young man. Any fellow I met who had a face like the back of a bus and who I wouldn’t have looked twice at if I’d have been stone-cold sober, looked like Rudolph Valentino after a beer or so. Mind you, I had to be careful not to have too many, there was a borderline, you wanted enough so that they would kiss you and make a fuss of you and so that you could leave them thinking that next time it might be all right to go a bit further, but you didn’t want them dashing at you like madmen the very first time they took you home. After all’s said and done, you’ve only got one lot of goods and if you’re going to distribute them to all and sundry you haven’t got anything worth keeping when the real one comes along! Anyway, every time we got to a pub this George would say to me, ‘Would you like a drink?’ so I’d say, ‘Well, if you would, I would,’ then he’d say, ‘Well, if you would,’ and then I’d say, ‘Not unless you would,’ and by this time we’d passed the pub and I never did get him inside. I didn’t like to look too eager because after all, I was thinking about George as a permanent institution, and I didn’t like it to look as if all I thought about was rushing into a pub.
So after a month or two of going out regular; just going to the pictures, the cheapest seats, gobbling a quarter of sweets between us, and never going in a pub, I very reluctantly decided that George would have to have his cards. After all, if a man doesn’t spend much on you when you’re not married to him, it’s a sure thing he’s not going to afterwards. If he’s not going to take you into a pub when he’s already out with you, you can’t see him leaving the fireside to go, can you?
When I look back on it now, I just made the efforts to keep him, and put myself out that way because the selection was so poor. When all’s said and done, he was a wretched little specimen; he wasn’t even as tall as me, and he had no conversation of any kind. He made these model things, model aeroplanes. He told me he had a marvellous collection. Can’t you imagine it, a lot of old dust-harbourers they are, you can’t do anything with them, and they clutter up the place. I bet somebody’s got him now, and cursing him and his flipping aeroplanes. But the interest I used to show in them! I’d say, ‘Oh marvellous, can you really make them? I’d love to see a model,’ and when he brought one round I stood cooing over it when I couldn’t really give twopence for it. The lies you had to tell men to make out that you were interested in them, simply because there was no selection. Girls nowadays if they don’t like what a fellow does or what he looks like, they tell him to run after his tail. But not then, no fear you didn’t.
Of course, there were some old men about, there always seem to be, and they tell you they’re as young as they feel. That’s all very well but if they look about ninety it does make a difference, doesn’t it? Some of them don’t feel all that good either.
I stayed a year with Mrs Bishop. By this time I thought I really ought to get a job where there were more servants and I could have a kitchen maid. So I answered an advertisement in the
Morning Post
; I thought I’d go back to London again.
The house was in Montpelier Square, Knightsbridge. They were Dutch people, bankers, very wealthy, solid, and respectable. He looked just how I envisaged a Dutch banker should look; tremendous corporation, with a gold watch-chain across it.
It was in this house that I saw the change in the status of domestic servants. In other places I’d noticed what must have been the beginnings, but here I found a complete change. Here we really counted as part of the household.
Including the lady’s maid, there were seven servants, and we each had a bedroom of our own. And very comfortable rooms they were, and our tastes were consulted. I was asked if there was anything I wanted changed, if I had enough clothes on the bed, if I wanted any more lights in the room, and that kind of thing. It was obvious that they really did want you, and appreciated you being there.
The kitchen was furnished with every appliance that was then known, and although it was still in the basement, it was light and airy, painted white, none of this chocolate brown half up the walls, and green the rest. In the scullery the sink was white enamel, not one of those cement affairs, and aluminium saucepans, which was a change from either iron or copper.
Everything had been bought especially for the staff, none of that ‘this will do for the basement’. All our uniforms were provided free. I’d always had to buy all my own uniforms before, the parlourmaid, the housemaid, and the kitchen maid all had striped print dresses, and they were allowed to choose what colour they liked, any shade, pink, or green, or blue. As the cook I was allowed to choose my own colour scheme and style. I had various patterns shown to me. It was all so different.
Madam was very strict. Everything had to be just right, but then she’d paid for it. Meals had to be served absolutely to time, and every dish cooked to perfection. But now I felt she had the right to expect it. She had shown she cared for us. It was up to us to care for them.
Some of the meals she used to plan herself, others I used to work out; sometimes a whole menu, which I’d never been used to doing. I did make some mistakes at first. There were so many things that I’d not done before, or even seen done. But I had old Mother Beeton to rely on. I don’t think she ever failed anyone; she’d got recipes for everything under the sun. I know people laugh today about how it says, ‘Take twelve eggs and a pint of cream’ but of course in those days you did take twelve eggs and a pint of cream.
Having a kitchen maid was quite a help of course, but I wasn’t really a lot of good with her because I had such strong recollections of the terrible time when I was in that position and I was determined that I’d never be that harsh when I was a cook. But I found it was quite true what that old harridan of a Mrs Bowchard used to say; that you’ve got to go around nagging at the kitchen maid.
This one I had there, unless you went for her all the time she didn’t bother, and I couldn’t be strict enough. I wasn’t used to being in a position of authority, I couldn’t order her to do something. I’d ask her to and if she was a long time doing it I’d set to and do it myself. Well, that’s not the right training for a girl, really and truly. Still there it was, I just couldn’t go around nagging at her, saying she was no good, that she’d got to pull her socks up and being generally foul. For one thing it wasn’t my nature and for another it seemed just as quick to do it myself. But it wasn’t good training for her. I think I failed her.
Madam didn’t fail me. At first I found it hard to believe in her interest and concern. I mean after years of poor food, poor surroundings I’d become convinced nothing short of a bloody revolution would get better conditions for domestic workers. Yet after I’d been there a few weeks I realized that Madam really wanted us to be satisfied with our jobs. It’s not that she loved the lower classes, she didn’t, but she believed that a contented staff made for a well-run household, which it did. Because servants that feel they’re being put upon can make it hard in the house in various ways like not rushing to answer the bell, looking sullen, dumb insolence, and petty irritations to make up for what you’re not getting. Not there they didn’t. As I say Madam didn’t love us, we didn’t want her to, we wanted what we got; being well paid and doing a good job in return.
I became very proficient as a cook there and I know my efforts were appreciated not only by those upstairs but by the staff, in particular by the butler, Mr Kite.
He was a man about fifty years old, and he’d been in domestic service since he was thirteen; he started as a pageboy and worked his way up. His first place was a country house where the staff included six footmen, two stewards and still-room maids, six housemaids, a chef, an under-chef, four kitchen helpers, and fourteen gardeners; a tremendous establishment! The outside staff lived in cottages on the estate, but the inside staff had the whole top part of the house to themselves. Mind you the men were rigidly segregated from the women, and if one of the men servants was ever found anywhere in the women’s section after they had retired for the night, he was instantly dismissed without a reference.
I asked Mr Kite what it was like working in those conditions, and he said, ‘Oh, they were real gentry’. ‘In what way were they different from our employers here, then?’ I asked. Mr Kite said, ‘Well, they were so far above the servants that they literally didn’t see them. I remember one evening when I’d risen to be a footman, I was waiting at the dinner table after the ladies had retired and the port was being circulated, and the gentlemen were talking about a very scandalous rumour that involved royalty, and they were all adding their quota to the rumour. One of the guests remarked, “We must be careful that nobody overhears us,” to which the host replied, “How could they overhear us? We’re alone here,” and at that time there were three footmen in the room. But we must have been invisible. So that’s how much above us they were, literally to them we weren’t there.’
One thing I used to envy the people upstairs for was the way they spoke. I used to wish with all my heart that I could speak with their cultured voices. I said to Mr Kite once, ‘You know, if only we could speak in the way they do it wouldn’t matter if we hadn’t got twopence in our pockets, we could walk into the Ritz and as soon as we opened our mouths the waiters would rush to show us to a table; whereas like we are now, if we went in with fifty pounds and asked for a table the only place they would show us to would be the door.’
But Mr Kite was a bit prosy; he sort of mixed with the people above and he got, like so many did, to be like them in lots of ways. He used to bring out platitudes as though they were pearls of wisdom. He really liked being a butler; he used to say, ‘I wouldn’t change places with any man, there’s no shame in honest toil.’ I don’t know what he meant by
honest
toil, there’s a lot of dishonest things being done, but I’m sure toil isn’t one of them! Then he’d say, ‘There’s only two things in life that a man needs; comfort and love.’
Madam supplied all his comfort, I often wondered if I should supply the love. Not that he ever asked me to do so, but I dare say that propinquity and my cooking would have brought him up to scratch if I’d set my heart on having him as a husband. But that would have meant staying in domestic service for ever; a prospect that I couldn’t bear to contemplate. Anyway, this was the time I realized my lifelong ambition, I did get married from this place, and it was my last permanent job in service.
26
L
OOKING BACK
on my years in domestic service I’ve often wondered why the status of our work was so low. Why we were all derogatively labelled ‘skivvy’. Perhaps it was the intimate nature of our work, I often used to think that was it, the waiting hand and foot on, and almost spoon-feeding people who were quite capable of looking after themselves. In some ways we weren’t much better off than serfs, inasmuch as our whole life was regulated by our employers; the hours we worked, the clothes we wore – definitely the clothes we wore at work, and to some extent the clothes we wore when we went out. Even our very scanty free time was overshadowed by the thought that we ‘mustn’t be in later than ten o’clock’. We weren’t free in any way. So maybe that was the reason why the work and those that did it were looked down on, because we were, as it were, bound to our employers.
The employers always claimed that the training they gave you stood you in good stead when you left and married and had a family of your own. When I left domestic service I took with me the knowledge of how to cook an elaborate seven-course dinner and an enormous inferiority complex; I can’t say that I found those an asset to my married life.
My husband was a milkman and he earned three pounds five shillings a week, out of which he gave me three pounds, so the ability to cook a seven-course dinner was no help at all. I promptly had to unlearn all the elaborate cooking I had done and fall back on the sort of cooking that my mother did when she brought us up. And all the pleasure I had in cooking disappeared in having to do that sort of cooking.
Mind you, when I first got married I used to do a lot of fancy dishes. I thought that my husband would like it. I used to go to a lot of trouble, with cheaper cuts of meat of course. It involved a lot of work, and when it was over my husband would say, ‘Not bad, old girl, but I’d just as soon have fish and chips.’ That soon knocked the gilt off the gingerbread to my mind.
Well, every art requires appreciation, doesn’t it? I mean people who paint, sculpt, or write books want an audience, that’s the reason they’re doing it for, and it’s the same when you’re a cook. You need somebody who savours it, not one who just says, ‘Oh, it’s not bad.’
Anyway I soon got rid of the seven-course-dinner complex, but the inferiority complex took me far longer to eradicate. I tried. At that time psychiatry and psychology and all that ballyhoo were beginning to be the big thing, and there were no end of books published about how to avoid blushing and what to do about an inferiority complex; so I got one, thinking I might find out what to do about mine. Not only did I read books about it, but I went to classes where I discovered that the complex manifests itself in two forms; either you’re timid or you’re aggressive. I’d got the latter form. I can assure you it was a far from endearing trait, and it did nothing towards my ambition of ‘how to make friends and influence people’! With no money, not good-looking, and very aggressive, you make very few friends and you influence nobody at all. I came to the conclusion that aggression only achieved results when it was allied to beauty or power. Well, I had neither of these desirable traits, so common sense should have taken over from there and convinced me that my position in life was just to be a sort of downtrodden housewife, one of the great army of housewives who’ve got aspirations, but never manage to do anything about it.