[Illustration]
THE BOOK OF MARTHA
BY THE
HON. MRS. DOWDALL
WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY
AUGUSTUS JOHN
[Illustration]
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN
1913
_All rights reserved_
_CONTENTS_
_Page_
_CHAPTER I._ MARTHA 1
_II._ THE COOK 13
_III._ THE HOUSEMAID 25
_IV._ TRADESMEN 36
_V._ THE DINNER PARTY 43
_VI._ THE JOB GARDENER 52
_VII._ THE DOCTOR 61
_VIII._ CHILDREN 74
_IX._ THE SCHOOLROOM 92
_X._ THE CHARWOMAN 102
_XI._ HUSBANDS 111
_XII._ CHRISTMAS 127
_XIII._ THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR 140
_XIV._ HOUSE-MOVING 150
_XV._ SHOPPING IN LONDON 164
_XVI._ THE COUNTRY HOUSE 174
_XVII._ THE BUTLER 183
_XVIII._ THE DRESSMAKER 193
_XIX._ THE LADY’S MAID 205
_XX._ RELATIONS-IN-LAW 214
_XXI._ GENIUS 225
_XXII._ CHARITY 235
_XXIII._ FOREIGN TRAVEL 248
_CHAPTER I_: MARTHA
This book ought by rights to have borne Ruth’s name on the cover
instead of mine. Of the fifty years I have lived the first twenty were
scattered and lost. The remaining thirty were gathered as they came,
and threaded on a wire which formed them into a serviceable chain; that
wire was Ruth. She has now broken off and formed other ties, therefore
the years that remain will probably be scattered like the first, for
there can be no second Ruth. It may be, even, that I shall be driven
to spend my declining days in an hotel. Meantime I have a record of
experiences common to many Marthas.
When I decided on the title it happened to be Ruth’s day out. I had
intended, as a matter of course, to submit the name to her, and then,
suddenly, a wave of mutiny swept over me.
“The book at least shall be mine,” I said to myself. “Ruth has taken
possession of my house, my tradespeople, my children, and, what was
dearer still, my leisure. What little freedom I have enjoyed has been
procured by a wearisome amount of guile, but my pen is still my own and
shall remain in my possession.”
It is true that David would never have burst into immortal song had it
not been for his persecutors who goaded him to lament yet his works are
published under his name and not under that of the Bulls of Bashan.
Therefore I call this the Book of Martha and not of Ruth.
When I married, thirty years ago, I desired to lead a simpler life than
is led by most people. So many women seem to me like parasites living
on the combined labour of husband and servants. My friend Elizabeth
Tique, with whom I often stayed, kept a cook, three maids, and an odd
man, and these wretches somehow contrived to fill every inch of the
small house and garden. It was almost impossible to go into any room
without finding some one aggravatingly dressed in spotted cotton,
rustling along with either a damp cloth or a carpet-sweeper or a tray
laden with food. On one occasion, I remember, I went to my bedroom to
write letters, having left one of the cotton-backs clearing away the
breakfast, and the other, she of the damp cloth, in possession of the
drawing-room. By some marvellous sleight of foot they both contrived to
reach my room before me, and were busily engaged there when I arrived.
“Don’t go away,” I said pleasantly, and gathering up my blotting-pad
and papers I returned to the drawing-room to write. I was in the full
swing of inspiration when the door was burst open by a third skirmisher
in the hated uniform. She made her offence far worse by pretending that
her visit was only one of wanton light-heartedness.
“It’s all right, Miss,” she said, “I can come back by and by; it was
only to do the grate.”
I swallowed the word that rose to my lips--Elizabeth says it doesn’t
do for the servants to know we say these things--and took my papers
to the garden; but my letter was no longer witty. It was full of
short disjointed sentences and tedious information. In a few minutes
I was startled by a terrific rumbling on the gravel. The odd man was
approaching to mow the lawn.
“Sorry to disturb you, Miss; I shan’t be above ’alf an hour,” was the
way he put it. There are many possible variations of the same crime.
“Elizabeth,” I said as politely as I could when she came out on her way
to the shops, “have you a wine-cellar?”
“Yes, a beauty. Why?”
“Do you mind telling me--is this the day for cleaning it out?”
“What nonsense; we don’t clean it out.”
“Then may I sit in it?”
Elizabeth was busy with the fish, but she told me where the key was,
and I went down with a candle. It was cool and quiet and cobwebby, and
I got on nicely. I was just getting my second wind and had refilled
my fountain pen when I heard a voice--that of my enemy with the
cloth--outside the door.
“This is the cellar, Mr. Brown. I think master wished the port put in
the second bin from the left. I’ll just give it a wipe out if you’ll
excuse me.”
I tried the coach-house, but it happened to be George’s day for
swilling it after he had finished the grass, and when I found a place
in the greenhouse away from the drip he came and put manure on the
tomatoes.
I was engaged to be married to a man with the usual professional
income, and I began to see very clearly that if I was to be happy in a
small house the number of people living in it must be reduced as much
as possible. That night when the servants were all in bed I took up my
letters again and explained this theory to James. He agreed with me.
We were married early in January, and went into our house a week
later. I had engaged two maids, both of whom had been recommended
to me as thoroughly capable, and likely to bring light into the dark
places of my inexperience. They did indeed; I saw all its weak points
very clearly in the lurid glare of their bright ideas. But that was
later. On our first day at home I went down to the kitchen as soon as
my husband had gone out. I picked my way through the cinders, crumbs,
bacon-rind, and unclassified fluff upon the floor, and stood for a
moment blistering before the range where a blast-furnace raged behind
the bars. The remains of breakfast, which suggested the snatched meal
of a burglar, prepared in haste and darkness, were on the table, from
which Clara, the housemaid, rose and made a slippery exit after the
manner of a mouse.
I murmured something polite about being too soon, to which the cook
replied that they were a bit late on account of the range, and the
curtain rose on a farce which will run as long as I keep a cook.
The bell at the back door then fell into the first of a long and
distressing series of convulsions, and Ruth went to its assistance.
“Pleas’m, the butcher,” she reported.
There are many ways of saying “Pleas’m, the butcher,” and Ruth’s
was most discouraging. I knew at a glance that she had not properly
masticated her breakfast, and that the arrival of the butcher was not
unlike that of twins at the end of a numerous and undesired family. She
looked as though her morning had been made up of a series of unwelcome
events and this were the last straw.
“Tell him to call again,” I said hastily; “this is an absurd time to
come.” I was going to retire when a second convulsion shook the house
to its foundations.
“Do you wish fish’m?” said Ruth, just as if I had sent the fish. I
hedged and tried to shift the blame on her.
“Do we want fish?”
“Just as you wish’m,” she said, standing still in front of me.
She made no attempt to suggest anything.
“I’ll come,” said I, “and see him myself.”
I found a pert-looking male child writing his name on the pantry
window-sill and whistling.
“What fish have you got?” I asked.
“Plaiceakecoddensole,” he replied, eyeing me up and down.
I ordered something--anything to convey the idea that I spoke with
knowledge and deliberation. The greengrocer behaved like an uncle, and
told me that, whatever else I went without, a nice cauliflower was a
thing I should never regret buying. I expected him to add that it would
last a lifetime and clean again as good as new.
During this time Ruth had disappeared into the back kitchen, whence
she brought what at first I took to be a bucket of castor-oil and a
dead rabbit. With the rabbit (which turned out to be her favourite
dishcloth) she then deluged the table from the contents of the bucket,
and the kitchen was filled with a warm smell of wet onions. When she
had “cleaned up” as she called it--which meant that after her septic
operation on the table she swept the etceteras on the floor into a heap
and drew the fender over them--we discussed the question of food.
One of the trials of my life is the necessity for devising three relays
of food immediately after a good breakfast. It makes me feel as though
I were the owner of a yard full of turkeys, whom it is my painful
duty to prepare for a daily Christmas. James enjoys his breakfast and
forgets about it, returning after a hard day’s work to a dinner as
unpremeditated as that which the ravens brought to Elijah; not so mine,
which brings with it haunting memories of yesterday’s sorrows. I cannot
share his enthusiasm for a _vol-au-vent_ which I have so often met
before in less happy circumstances; I feel about it as an undertaker
might who should meet his clients masquerading in a ballroom. James
came home at one o’clock, and we went indoors at once, as he has only a
short time to spare in the middle of the day. The table was not laid.
“Clara,” I said, “do you know the time? We must have luncheon at once.”
“I think Ruth’s just sending it up now, m’m,” she answered. “The meat
only came ten minutes ago.”
James spilled a good deal in his haste, but what little he was able to
eat in eight minutes he was extremely good tempered about, and praised
warmly. A great many men would have behaved in a manner that might
have made me live and die a bad housekeeper. If he had been sulky, or
violent, or sarcastic, or resigned, or dignified, I should have taken
no steps whatever. My mind would have settled upon a touching picture
of the sorrows of women, and how their life is one long martyrdom to
the habits of men and the want of habits of domestic servants, and
I should have shrugged my shoulders and acquired tastes of my own.
Then this book would never have been written. As it was, my husband’s
smiling farewell and his pathetic symptoms of indigestion bravely
borne gave me pain that vented itself in anger against its original
cause--Ruth--and behind her again the butcher. I flew into the study
and poured out my wrath on a sheet of the best note-paper.
“Mr. Jones,
“Dear Sir,
“Mrs. Molyneux is simply furious because Mr. Jones’s wretched beef
did not turn up till ten minutes to one. If Mr. Jones finds himself
unable to keep a clock, Mrs. Molyneux will be delighted to deal with a
butcher who can.”
I licked the envelope and the stamp viciously and rang the bell. “Post
this at once, please, Clara,” I said, “and when Jones’s boy calls in
the morning for orders, tell him that a thousand years are not as one
day to me, and that he may take his detestable tray of entrails to--” I
stopped just in time--“back to the shop,” I added. “Yes’m,” said Clara,
looking surprised and, I thought, frightened. “Would you like a cup of
tea, m’m?”
If one is what these people call “upset” they always suggest tea. Tea
as a remedy for the butcher’s non-appearance struck me as absurd.
“No, Clara,” I replied, “what I want is not tea but punctuality. All
the same I will have a cup.”
Of course it was impossible to say anything to Ruth that afternoon. It
would have been making too much fuss over what probably was not her
fault.
_CHAPTER II_: THE COOK
A lady who has kept house with marked success for fifty years once said
to me: “My dear, there are only three things of any importance in a
house. First the husband, then the nurse, then the cook, and after that
it doesn’t matter.”
At the time this collected wisdom slid through my head almost without
recognition. I thought my husband perfect, and took it for granted
that I knew all about him. I did not then require a nurse, and in my
limitless ignorance I supposed a cook to be a person who cooks things,
and whom, if she does not cook things well, one replaces by another
cook who does. How, indeed, should I know more of the nature and habits
of cooks than the general public knows of the physiology of the animals
which it sees behind bars at the Zoo? At home I knew that there was
a certain fat striped creature in the kitchen, whom my mother was
obliged to propitiate before we could get scones for breakfast, and to
whom I vaguely believed my father said prayers night and morning. But
meals came up and went down, in winter and summer, autumn and spring,
and that was all that I really knew about them.
How should an outsider such as I was know that the personality of a
cook is as pervasive in a small house as that of a mellow cheese; that
she is as powerful as a dog in a hen-house, as moody as a gipsy, as
amenable to flattery as an old gentleman, and as inured to dirt as a
pig? So far as I had thought at all, I had always imagined that there
was a household formula called “giving orders to the cook.” I had
not been married a year before I knew that this is a term invented
by novelists, and which has no resemblance at all to the fact it is
intended to describe. It is a recognised fallacy like the Cambridge
May week, which is not in May, but every one knows what is meant.
Giving orders to the cook really means a very elaborate process of
mental suggestion. We learn by painful initiation what are the things
she is capable of cooking, and we try, so far as is possible, to
direct her choice of what she is willing to cook within the limits of
her capacity. By the same process of mental suggestion we add to her
repertoire of dishes, and according to the strength of our will and the
receptivity of her mind, she elects by and by to cook more or less what
we want. It is the art of mental suggestion, not the art of ordering,
that makes a mistress the real keeper of a cook.
For instance, when I first knew Ruth I used to make mistakes like
this: “You might make a curry of the mutton, Ruth, and give us some
stewed pears for lunch. We will have fried fillets of fish to-night,
with cutlets from the end of the neck that you have left, and a batter
pudding with jam sauce.” And Ruth would reply, “Yes’m.”
When the luncheon came up there would be haricot and apple tart, and
for dinner fillets of fish done in a wonderful wine sauce, cutlets, it
is true, and a sweet omelette.
“Ruth,” I said next morning, “you did not cook what I ordered
yesterday.”
“Didn’t I, m’m?” she replied, with the candid look of a company
promoter accused of fraud. “I’m sure I don’t know how that happened. I
quite thought you said I was to do up the mutton.”
“Look at the slate.” I pointed out where curry was ordained in large
letters.
“Why, so it was, m’m; I am sorry. I remember now, I hadn’t any chutney
by me, and I knew master wouldn’t fancy curry without a bit o’ chutney
so I just made a nice haricot instead.”
“And what about the fried fish?” I asked. “And the pudding?”
“Ah,” said Ruth, “yes’m, we shall want a nice frying-pan. The one I
have isn’t near large enough to do a nice bit of fish and it’s not the
right shape. A nice enamel one the next time you are going into town if
you can be troubled to remember.”
Now in these days if I wanted the meals I have described I should begin:
“How about the mutton, Ruth? What are you going to do with that?”
“Well, I think, m’m, a haricot would be as nice as anything.”
“Quite so. And I suppose we shall be obliged to have fish for dinner.”
“Yes’m--fried fish I suppose?” (Ruth’s strong point is frying.)
“Some nice little fillets I think master likes, m’m.”
“Yes, Ruth, fish, cutlets, and a pudding. I suppose a batter pudding
would take too many eggs?”
“Oh, no, m’m, not at all. I could manage with two nicely.”
“Very well then; that will do beautifully. We always like your batter
puddings so much better than those they have at Buckingham Palace;
they are so much lighter, and that jam sauce you make is a dream. And,
by the way” (this is just as I am leaving the kitchen), “we must have
another curry some day; Admiral Tobasco said he had never met one to
touch yours that night.”
“Would you care to have the mutton curried to-day, m’m, as a change
from the haricot?”
“Oh, yes, Ruth, that would be delightful. What a good idea.”
But it takes years to learn.
New dishes are acquired in the same way. This is what the novice does:
“Ruth, I want you to try this beef _à la_ Soudanese, it is quite
simple.”
“Beef what, m’m?”
“Beef _à la_ Soudanese. You see it is done in this way.”
I read the recipe, while Ruth turns away in silence and begins sweeping
up the hearth.
“Well, Ruth, what do you think of it?”
“Oh, just as you please’m, of course.”
“It is quite easy, isn’t it?”
There is a sudden convulsion amongst the fire-irons, and Ruth turns
round wiping her eyes.
“Of course, it must be as you like, m’m. It’s your place to give
orders, I know, but I’m afraid I shall never give satisfaction the way
I am. My mother’d tell you--and indeed I’d sooner she came and spoke
to you herself--that I never had no training in fancy dishes, and all
you asked for was a good plain cook, which I am, as her ladyship said
herself when I left. Of course, you’d very likely not know, being a
young lady and having no experience in such things, that we poor girls
have to make our own way, and to be respectable is as much as we can
hope for, and that I always have been, and I’d sooner starve than take
a place where I couldn’t do my duty, and I think it would be better if
you were to get some one more experienced; I haven’t been feeling at
all settled lately, the way things have been”--and so on.
If by chance your mind’s ribs are made of steel and your sympathies of
spun granite, as some women’s are, this network of unintelligible wrath
will have no power to ensnare you, but the average woman takes years
to unwind herself from the thraldom of female hysteria--and then she
wriggles out of it by guile.
“Ruth,” I say now, “we had a lovely dish at the club last night. They
made a great fuss about it, and said only an expert could cook it, but
I believe that your clever brain could find out what it is made of. It
looked like--” and then I describe it.
Ruth makes a wild conjecture and says it sounds very like the _à la_
Marengo that master likes so much.
“I don’t know whether it is quite that,” I say thoughtfully, “but
we might look in one of the cookery books and see whether there is
anything like it to start on.”
Then I turn up the recipe for the dish and suggest that we should try
that, and see how it turns out; perhaps, I add, that she need not
trouble to make scones that afternoon and that the cold tart will do
for dinner.
As regards their pervasiveness and their power, it is a remarkable
fact that although most of the inmates of a house know what the master
wants, and a few know what the mistress wants, and nobody knows what
the housemaid wants, yet every one knows what the cook wants. If the
cook is satisfied the whole house works smoothly; if not, an atmosphere
of awe and discomfort pervades everywhere, meals are partaken of in
silence or in a sort of nervous bravado, no bells are rung, people
fetch their own boots, and are courteous to one another about the toast
sooner than ask for more. And this omnipotent creature in the stripes
and a collar that will not fasten before ten in the morning is, as I
have said, moody and capricious to the last degree. She says it is the
range, but it is not really. Left to myself, as I have been sometimes,
I can spend weeks without having a word with the range. In fact, his
commonplace obedience to rules has often bored me sadly, and I have
wished that he would, just for once, heat up on his own initiative and
never mind the flues, or even that he would get in a temper and smoke
when all was well and the dampers regulated to perfection.
But sometimes he and cook cannot hit it off. I may go down, for
instance, at the proper time, neither too early nor too late, and be
met by a smell that even a very old skunk would find trying.
“My dear Ruth,” I say, “is it the milk again or what?”
“It boiled over,” says Ruth, looking outraged and insulted, “although I
only left it for a minute. I never saw such heat in my life.”
“How extremely tiresome,” I say, frowning at the range. Really he might
have been more tactful on this day when I wanted a special soufflé for
luncheon. “I wonder whether the man did anything to it the last time he
was here?” I say very loudly and distinctly; and then becoming innocent
and diffident I suggest, “You don’t think shutting down that damper a
little might help, do you?”
Ruth pushes in the damper, muttering something about “must have hot
water for washing up,” although the water is already bubbling and
roaring in the cylinder--but there, she is a good girl, and you can’t
have everything. Only, I do wish sometimes that the range had rather
more tact and less common sense.
Talking of ranges reminds me that there are days when she says it
is impossible to keep the range clean. Those are the days when she
boils everything at full gallop so that it slops over with a horrid
frittering noise and the smell gets even into my hair-brushes. I
suppose that there are cooks who have a sense of smell, but they
probably die very young and leave only those who cook from memory. One
question often puzzles me. Does a good chef ever go near the scullery?
Can real art survive within fifty yards of that thing which feels like
seaweed and looks like a tennis net? or that tangle of greasy grey
wire that speeds the departing and welcomes the coming occupant of a
saucepan? Can nightingales’ tongues be prepared at a zinc table where
pink and grey rabbit-skins, potato peelings, white of egg, and the
clammy skeletons of fish are gathered together in reckless confusion?
See a cook’s cupboard and die! It is very like Naples. There are fifty
small tins all exactly alike, except that some are sticky, some greasy,
and some black with coal dust; their lids are bent into fantastic
shapes which prevent them from being opened without a struggle. There
are pepper-pots whose holes are stopped up with fat and rust; glass
jars containing different sizes of corrugated white bullets; nameless
brown powders at the bottom of blue paper bags, screwed up at the
neck, and with a currant sticking to the bottom; copies of last year’s
_Times_ stained with paraffin; a cashmere boot, much worn at the heel;
fire-lighters smeared with glue and sawdust; a spoon with a piece of
cold bacon in it, and one of your best plates from upstairs--chipped.
I suppose Ruth thinks that because we are but dust she had better go on
building us up.
_CHAPTER III_: THE HOUSEMAID
The worst thing about housemaids is their restlessness. Their passion
for traveling about from one room to another becomes at last a sort of
nervous disease. I have already described my discomfort in the constant
traffic of Elizabeth Tique’s small house, and the excellent plans I
made to ensure solitude and peace in my own. But does anyone suppose
for a moment that one single-handed mistress can check the migratory
instincts of a full-grown housemaid, any more than she could impede the
perpetual silent passage of a tortoise from the artichoke bed to the
hot-house and round by the rhododendrons?
I worked hard at the problem for some years. When we are young and
hopeful it is quite easy to imagine that we are altering the facts
of Nature. We talk glibly about our schemes for reforming drunkards,
of the likelihood of the British working man becoming interested in
art, and so on. In the same way I saw no difficulty then in the idea
of persuading a housemaid to finish one room at a time. I spoke very
nicely about it at first. I said:
“Clara, I wish that you would begin one room at a time and then finish
it, instead of going about doing little bits of things in each. It
makes you so ubiquitous.”
“I beg pardon, m’m?”
“So here, there, and everywhere,” I explained. “Of course it is very
nice to have you so active, but now, for instance, why couldn’t you
finish my sitting-room or my bedroom? I don’t mind which, so long as I
could have somewhere to write. You chased me about this morning as if I
were a hen that wanted to sit at the wrong time. You know I hate having
my legs dusted.”
“I was going to do the windows, m’m, as soon as you went out.”
“But, Clara, you know quite well that if I went out I should find
you in the first shop I went to, polishing the grocer’s nose or
something--”
“Beg pardon, m’m?”
It was useless to explain further. I made a schedule of work for Clara
in which each portion of her day was mapped out in such a way that she
would be continuously in one place for at least an hour at a time. I
might as well have made a time-table for the weather. I have heard that
there are mistresses who make schedules for their servants and get them
followed: but whether these people achieve their results by hypnotism
or force I do not know. I have been able now and again to arrest the
disease in Clara for a short time, but I do not believe that there is
any permanent cure for ubiquity in housemaids.
Another infirmity to which all of them are subject is morning
blindness. When I go to bed at night my sitting-room is often far from
tidy. I leave, perhaps, a thimble, scissors, a cherished pen, sheets of
manuscript, some books, and a parcel or two on the table. By the time
Clara has made her mouse-like exit next morning my table is as clear as
a baby’s conscience. I hunt about muttering bad words for some minutes
and then ring the bell. But no, Clara has seen nothing. She never puts
anything away: perhaps master has had them----
“Yes, Clara,” I reply sarcastically, “I have no doubt that your master
is at this moment playing ‘hunt the thimble’ in his office and cutting
out paper boats with my scissors and manuscript. As for my book,
probably the cat has taken it back to the library to be changed.”
Clara becomes huffy, and says she “hasn’t an idea, ’m sure.”
“I know you haven’t,” say I, “I don’t want you to have ideas. I want
you to have eyesight, and a memory, and a little self-control. Why
cannot you leave things where they are? Or, if you must put something
away, why not those crumbs under the table or those empty envelopes or
the mouldy paste that I used last week?”
I have heard of kittens being blind for some days after birth, but it
is my own discovery that housemaids are blind for some hours after they
get up.
I do not know how it is, but I get more tired of my own face and the
housemaid’s than of anything else on earth. Probably no criminal feels
more imprisoned with his warder than a woman can feel shut up in her
own house with one or two servants; and she is so much the worse off
that there is no free future to look forward to. A very unusual touch
of sympathy occurs in a modern play where the writer makes his heroine
retire to an empty room to have a bad headache in peace. Before she
has had time to crumble into a comfortable ruin on the sofa, there is
a knock at the door and in comes a housemaid armed with a tin and some
little fidgety bits of rag to “polish the taps in Miss Iris’s bathroom.”
The public would surely be touched if they realised the fact that there
is often no spot in her own house where the daughter of woman may lay
a tear unobserved. Some women do not want to cry; they have nothing
to fear from Sarah Ann. But to those who do, this constant espionage
becomes a positive torture.
There are few things that I envy men so much as their leisure for
getting on with their work. They have offices, studies, studios, in
which they spend weary hours in a nerve-racking pursuit of guineas, or
the appropriate word, or an elusive idea, but they are generally doing
one thing at a time. They are not harassed by incessant irruptions
from other workers bursting with irrelevant information about their
underclothing or the state of the weather, nor are they pestered
with foolish conundrums about weights and measures and the kind of
subjects that “Old Moore’s Almanac” deals with so willingly. It is
always possible to slam one’s door and lock it, but who really feels
comfortable under the stigma of peculiarity? The comment which follows
unusual conduct is in itself a violation of privacy, and so far from
being alone, the offender is merely isolated the better to be observed.
I do not mind ordering things--it isn’t that; nor do I mind thinking
about them--thinking quite hard. It is “seeing about” them that turns
my blood to vitriol and my heart to dynamite.
Is a general in command of forces expected to see that his subalterns
put on their clothes right side out? When he orders a charge does he
find his men seated facing their horses’ tails? Does the captain of
a ship put out to sea only to be told when he has crossed the Bar
that “the wheel has come off in the mate’s ’and,” and that there is
no more grease for the engines? And yet I believe that is the kind of
thing that would happen if a mistress and her servants started out to
discover America.
It is rarely that a servant in a small house considers herself
responsible for anything. It is thought discreditable to the mistress
alone if the house is dirty and the meals badly served; and yet she has
seldom the skill or the leisure to give point to her criticisms by
setting a working example to those under her orders.
And the poor creature must learn so many trades. It is not enough that
I strain my brains to bursting-point in order to think out new forms of
nourishment for James, but I must learn the anatomy and the personal
habits of the creatures he devours, conduct post-mortem examinations
to discover whether they died too soon or not soon enough, whether
they had eaten too much or not eaten enough, taken too much exercise
or led too sedentary a life. I must be perpetually on the look-out to
circumvent the countless ruses which Satan suggests to half a dozen
intelligent tradesmen. I must know exactly in what combination the
things I have bought will best amalgamate in James’s inside, and I
must then somehow convey my knowledge through the tough skull of my
cook. When at last I have got both food and ideas safely lodged in her
keeping I must find the dish on which she is to serve it, and, worst
of all, besiege her incessantly with alarm clocks and gongs to ensure
its appearance at the right time.
When the meal is sent up only half of my work is done. I have to keep
an eye on the tools with which James is to eat it, otherwise they are
liable to be blunt, sticky, or placed crookedly on the table. After
this James eats his dinner in peace, whilst I make a mental note of
Clara’s personal habits, her flowers to praise, or her weeds to blame,
and either or both to loathe; her elaborate elegancies of manner, or
the fact that she always forgets to hand the sauce before she goes back
to stand on one leg by the sideboard and listen to our conversation. I
have stopped that now and told her not to wait, which means that she
goes off to the bedrooms between the courses and does not hear the bell.
I can hear the efficient female say scornfully that I should get
servants who know their business; but she forgets that if she or I
do not have to train our striped geese in the sweat of our brows it
means that some other mother of a family has done it--or perished in
the attempt--and that Sarah Ann has left to “better herself.” Also one
of the most efficient characteristics of the efficient female is her
powerful fascination for servants of the clockwork-mouse type whom I
abhor. Their machinery has been made by people with different tastes
from my own, and when I have found the key and wound them up they begin
folding table-napkins into wine-glasses with horrid dexterity, or they
play a sort of suburban Halma called “ladies first” when they hand the
courses.
Clara’s migratory instincts, her ubiquitousness, and her morning
blindness were a constant annoyance to me, yet I look lovingly back
upon them now over the heads of a succession of young persons,
all of whom had occupied positions of trust in the houses of the
semi-educated. When Clara left me in order to marry a traveller in
sewing machines I acquired a wonderful insight into the habits of the
public dignitaries in our neighbourhood. I learned that the Mayoress
of Pond never grudged the expense of paper mats under the fruit and
preferred her sandwiches tied with pink ribbon. That Lady Knight
believed in putting out Sir Donald’s clothes herself in the evening,
and that it was not customary in the houses of the commercially great
to clean the silver more than once a week “unless there was company.”
I once asked one of these Belles Brummells whether it was better form
not to wash before dinner unless for a party of eight, and she replied
gravely that it was a matter of taste, and did I wish hot water; she
had no objection to bringing it.
* * * * *
NOTE.--I read this part aloud to the efficient female and she says that
was not what she meant.
_CHAPTER IV_: TRADESMEN
The story of Mr. Jones’s sin, and how he failed to send the meat in
time for luncheon, has been told. But it must not be supposed that this
was the one sin of a lifetime, standing out clear and black against a
white background of habitual punctuality. Nor was he a lonely serpent
in an otherwise spotless Eden of tradesmen who walked with God. They
were all Sons of Belial. If I could turn the whole lot of them into
pillars of salt, and cheese, and mutton, and cabbage, and all the other
dilatory and perverse ingredients of my daily life I would do it, and
they might go on “never coming” as much as they liked. They might stay
there all day making apologies and it would not matter to me. I should
simply come and hack off the pieces I wanted and not listen to a word
they said.
Of course, in one way, a shop answers the same purpose. But there is
not the same pleasure in asking for a thing as there would be in hewing
it off the person of one’s enemy. And, besides, the shops are always
full of women who want to look at everything they buy.
Sometimes I have waited quite a long time while some silly creature
with a long upper lip and a badly balanced hat fiddles about with two
tins of mustard and explains why neither will do. When it comes to my
turn and the shopman says: “Pepper, m’m; yes, m’m; I’ll just show it
you,” and rushes off before I can catch him, it makes me so angry that
I forget all the other things I wanted. I know all that there is to be
said on the other side about the advantages of shopping oneself. It is
not for nothing that I have encountered the efficient female on our own
ground. But if I have been flattered she has had exercise, that is one
thing! Some are born housekeepers, some achieve housekeeping, and some
have the horrid thing thrust upon them.
They say seeing is believing, but somehow I find it impossible to
believe in a tradesman even after I have seen him, and the few things I
do believe about him I don’t like. The ego of the fishmonger, as well
as that of his representative imp who scribbles his name daily on every
available wall-space near the back door, is to me wholly uncongenial,
and I dislike the exaggerated value he puts on the creatures whom he
conjures from the deep.
“Nice plaice,” he says, handing me a thing all face, like a certain
type of person who frequents concerts and goes on deputations and
boards. It has a deep frill of some scaly substance round its small
body, and at one end the frill becomes a regular flounce. “Eightpence a
pound. I’ll fillet it nicely for you, m’m.”
By the time he has filleted away the face, and the frill, and the
flounce, and half a square foot of backbone I am left with four elusive
little rags that no amount of heavy breadcrumbing on Ruth’s part will
make into a serviceable dish for a hungry man.
“I don’t think you are right in calling plaice a nice fish,” I said the
first time this happened. “Haven’t you got anything with a little more
body to it?”
He offered me turbot at two shillings a pound. There was certainly
more of it, but it looked thoroughly wet through and uncomfortable,
and he told me that the oily skin was the best part! There are all the
smaller fish of course, but I cannot help watching James when he has
anything with bones, it makes me as nervous as if I saw him eating a
wet handkerchief full of pins.
And there is nothing like fish for “never coming.” If my own
grandfather were a fishmonger and I saw him being chased up the street
by a mad bull I should refuse to believe that he would “be there as
soon as I was.” With butchers, too, I find that we pay for more than
we either ask or desire. A leg of mutton with a hairy cloven hoof on
the end (I still live in the hope of Mr. Jones lacing a neat boot on
it some day when he thinks I am not looking and then saying it is a
mistake he cannot account for) is an insult both to the living and to
the dead. And there are tongues with a ton of salt in them. Mr. Jones
weighs the tongue as it comes soaking from the tub and charges me for
the heavy dripping mass of salt. He sends it to the house by the hands
of a little boy who is fond of marbles, a keen spectator of football,
and popular with his young associates. By the time Ruth gets the tongue
on to her weighing machine it differs by several pounds from the little
blood-stained hieroglyphic pinned to it. Mr. Jones explains this by the
theory that it has “shrunk on the way from the shop.”
If I might bear a few of Mr. Jones’s misdeeds to the Judgment Seat they
should lose none of their full weight by my loitering on the errand!
I think Ananias the greengrocer became prosperous and has such a nice
large clean shop because he is so resourceful. I have never asked him
any question which he could not answer satisfactorily, and the matter
I speak of always seems to be one which he has already gone into very
carefully on his own account. I asked him once why his potatoes were
dark purple and full of holes, and he said that it was the time of
year. But I was prepared for that and brought in a neat rejoinder.
“Yes,” I said, “that is the proper answer, I know, but how is it that I
can get excellent ones in the shops lower down?”
“Ah, yes, m’m, _those_,” he replied; “of course we can get you _that_
sort of potato if you wish it, but I hardly think, if you knew the sort
of places they come from, you’d fancy them. A very nice, cheap potato
for the price, and has a nice appearance, but----”
He shook his head with an expression of such dark mystery that I let
the potatoes alone. In fact, I had a moment’s vague wonder whether the
other kind were grown in the hospitals or whether white slaves with
maimed hands dug unceasingly for them in a distant rubber plantation.
Another day I asked him why his lettuces were a penny more than anyone
else’s and whether he charged for the caterpillars sandwiched in them.
He said that it was quite a mistake my having had the one with the
caterpillar. He had noticed it at once when they were brought in, and
had particularly told the young lady to destroy the lot. He was very
glad I had mentioned it, and he could give me the best lettuces in the
market for a penny halfpenny if I did not object to their having no
hearts. He always sent those with hearts unless he was specially told
otherwise by ladies who were obliged to consider trifles.
_CHAPTER V_: THE DINNER PARTY
For some weeks after I began housekeeping I had a feeling that all
was not right with Ruth. She would not talk about food when I went to
the kitchen, but somehow or other she always managed to bring in some
remark about the people in the houses near us.
“Underdone, m’m? Yes, m’m, I quite understand,” she said one day in
answer to a criticism of mine. “Speaking of which, m’m, do you happen
to be acquainted with Raws, in Windermere Place?”
“Do you mean Colonel and Mrs. Raw?” I asked.
“Yes, m’m; the young person who lives with them as cook is sister to my
young man, and I just happened to mention who you were, m’m, and how I
was living with you. She was very pleased to think I was so well off,
and asked if we were very busy just now.”
She made two or three more references to the great and good on whose
cast-off legs of mutton we lived so happily (they had the loins and the
shoulders, and we had the necks and legs, and, I regret to say, the
tripe). At last she became more explicit.
“Hardly seems worth while making these fancy dishes just for you and
master, does it, m’m?” she said despondingly. “It would be different if
you were having company and we wanted to show what we _could_ do.”
It dawned on me then that Ruth was craving for morbid excitement. She
longed to be at her wits’ end--that land of the leal where every true
domestic servant loves to wallow and bemoan her lot. It was not long
before she had her heart’s desire. People began to call, and when they
began there was no stopping them. They came in barouches and in motors,
on foot and in four-wheeled flys, from which the chaste kid boots of
the elderly and the Parisian shoes of the rejuvenated descended in
rich profusion. Clara found it more and more difficult to be dressed
in time; in fact, when Mrs. Ajax and Mrs. Beehive took me first on
their rounds and arrived at a quarter to three, it was Ruth, smutty and
indignant, who opened the door.
I spoke severely to Clara afterwards, and found that it was her
migratory instinct which had betrayed her again. She had been upstairs
to get dressed, and had wandered off to the washhouse in the middle of
her toilet to fetch a clean apron.
“Which reminds me, Clara,” I said. “Why does it take you so long to
get tea when people call? You were three-quarters of an hour yesterday
after I rang.”
“The kettle wouldn’t boil, m’m,” Clara replied.
She gave me the impression of having at last lost patience with her
former accomplice, the kettle, and decided to “tell on him.”
“Oh,” I said, “you don’t think we had better have a man in to see about
it, do you?”
Clara wavered for a moment between professional scorn of this
suggestion and the irresistible bait I had thrown out. She hesitated
and compromised.
“Well, m’m, it _ought_ to boil quicker; but perhaps next time Mr.
Whistle is in the house we might get him to have a look at it; it may
be too heavy a make.”
I regard this as Clara’s masterpiece.
But Ruth’s prayers were answered. The “neighbourhood” called, we dined
out, and by and by we had to feed others in return.
James and I decided against the professional cook and “hired help,”
so it remained to break the news to Ruth and Clara. I told them
separately, on a bright morning in June when the little juicy lambs
were hanging in clusters in the shops, and expectant peas burst through
their pods in every market garden of our hospitable suburb. Ruth bore
up wonderfully; in fact, after the first sob of terrified ecstasy I
had very little trouble with her. But Clara cried a good deal, and was
afraid that her waiting would not do justice either to herself or to me.
However, I told her how Napoleon had risen from quite a little chap
to what he afterwards became, entirely by his own efforts; and I also
reminded her of a famous judge in my own family who had once been an
office boy. And then we all three began to “see about” one thing and
another. I felt like an ophthalmic fly by the time we had done, with
all its numerous eyes in a state of acute inflammation. I saw the stock
for the soup. I saw the fish, and the paper it came in (which means a
lot), I saw the sweetbreads, and wondered how James can be so fond of
them. I saw the potatoes and the peas; that was nothing, really--half
an eye did it, and the other half-eye caught the salad, just to be sure
it was fresh. The tournedos of beef took an immense lot of seeing, and
when they came up James saw them all over again, and they were not
good. The efficient female has since explained to me why theirs are
always perfect, but in my soul I believe that there is hanky-panky,
if not plain swank about her fillets. Anyhow, some evil planet always
shines on mine, so I have made up my mind now that Providence does not
wish me to have fillets, and that He knows best, so we have saddle of
mutton instead.
There was more brain-work and less inspection required for the pudding.
When Ruth asked me if I would like to see the eggs, I said no, that
was a question for the hen’s conscience, and one must leave something
to somebody. Neither would I waste precious eyesight on the butter. I
knew it was a lot, and the less seen about it the better. If I could
have seen an ice-machine amongst our kitchen properties I should have
felt less irritable. I know that the efficient female makes hers in
something very simple--a biscuit tin or a boot, I forget which--but
we were all too amateurish for these conjuring tricks. We have to
get our rabbits out of shops like other people, and I would not
trust an omelette made in James’s hat. We bought a machine at great
expense, and when at last, wet to the knee and chilled to the bone,
I hurried upstairs to dress, I saw with my last eye a vision of two
alternatives--one, successive platefuls of congealed cream; the other,
a petrified mass, bounding at the first touch of the spoon from end to
end of our parquet floor. Which would it be?
I once read in the “Book of the Home” that the cook should lie down for
a couple of hours before beginning the serious work of a dinner party.
According to the author of the book all preparations should be made the
day before; then, when the _generalissima_ is roused from her bed at 5
p.m., there is practically nothing to do except to put the heavy guns
in the oven and pass a salamander over the light infantry. The key to
the situation, the brainy part, the staff office, whatever you like to
call it, lies in the sauce-boats, and the gods alone decide what goes
on there.
As a matter of fact, everything turned out quite differently. Ruth
prepared nothing the day before; she rose late on the morning of the
engagement, and omitted to clean the flues. We had a terrific fire
going all day, and she ran about the kitchen at top speed, purple in
the face, trembling and uncomplimentary. Far from the two hours of
peaceful sleep anticipated by the “Book of the Home,” she had not even
time to wash up after luncheon, and, as it was, dinner was more than
ten minutes late. It is sad, but remarkable, that nothing ever happens
to me in the way that books and efficient people claim as a certainty;
but I am sure that Ruth enjoyed the dinner more than Mrs. Beeton
ever enjoyed anything. You lose half the fun of a dish if you know
beforehand what it is going to look like. The range, with his unfailing
common sense and utter lack of artistic feeling, behaved strictly
in accordance with his flues, slightly undercooking some things and
burning others just a trifle: but the ice was perfect. I have often
made ices in the same way, and they have turned out failures, which
just proves what I have always said, that cookery books are written in
the same spirit as “The Home Conjurer,” “Every Man His Own Chauffeur,”
“How to Become a Golf Champion by Post,” and so on. The people who
write them do not want us to know how they do the things, so they keep
us harmlessly employed with a few simple rules while they themselves go
on cooking and conjuring and get paid for it.
Ruth, Clara, the charwoman, and a borrowed housemaid sat up until
twelve washing dishes, breaking a few, and filling the air with
hilarity born of tea, fatigue, and insufficient food. But Ruth was
happy. We had had company and she had been at her wits’ end.
_CHAPTER VI_: THE JOB GARDENER
After all I had suffered at the hands of Elizabeth Tique’s gardener I
determined not to keep one at all. That is the kind of resolution one
makes, judging a whole class from a single specimen, and then buying
experience. But it seemed to me that just as a cook is too pervasive
in a small house, so a gardener occupies too much space in a small
garden. I remembered the mowing machine, and the manure, and one thing
and another, and thought how much enjoyment I should get from doing the
garden myself, with the help of an occasional man. I did not know that
in our neighbourhood that particular breed of garden pest is called a
Saturday scratcher. If I had heard the term sooner I might have guessed
what he would be like, but I engaged one in my innocence, and bought
experience like other people. I engaged him on the recommendation of
an enemy, and he tramped over the flower-beds to my door early one
morning. He was just the sort of working man who gets caricatured on
the music-hall stage: infinitely ugly and full of inane conversation.
His opening remark annoyed me.
“Pretty little bit o’ garden you’ve got ’ere mum.”
“That’s a liar,” I thought, considering the weeds and the seedy laurel
bushes, but I resolved not to give way to prejudice.