domestic crisis after another. She was the most accomplished of her
accomplished class, and the most willing. She was never discouraged by
the magnitude of the tasks I set her, nor did she ever take advantage of
my dependence upon her. On the contrary, she let me take advantage of
her willingness. She cleaned up after the British Workman had been in
possession for a couple of months, and one of the few things the British
Workman can do successfully is to leave dirt to be cleaned up. She
helped me move in and settle down. She supported me through my trying
episode with 'Enrietter. And after 'Enrietter's disappearance she saved
me from domestic chaos, though the work and the hours involved would
have daunted a woman half her age and outraged every trade-union in the
country. She arrived at seven in the morning, and I quickly handed over
to her the key of the front door, that I might indulge in the extra hour
of sleep of which she was so much more in need; she stayed until eight
in the evening, or, at my request, until nine or later; and in between
she "did" for me in the fullest sense of that expressive word. There
were times when it meant "doing" also for my friends whom I was
inconsiderate enough to invite to come and see me in my domestic
upheaval, putting their friendship to the test still further by inducing
them to share the luncheons and dinners of Mrs. Maxfielde's cooking.
Many as were her good points, I cannot in conscience say that cooking
was among them. Hers might have been the vegetables of which Heine wrote
that they were brought to the table just as God made them, hers the
gravies against which he prayed Heaven to keep every Christian. But I
thought it much to be thankful for that she could cook at all when, to
judge from the amount she ate, she could have had so little practice in
cooking for herself. She did not need to go through any "fast cure,"
having done nothing but fast all her life. She had got out of the way of
eating and into the way of starving; the choicest dish would not have
tempted her. The one thing she showed the least appetite for was her
"'arf pint" at noon, and that she would not do without though she had to
fetch it from the "public" round the corner. I cannot say with greater
truth that Mrs. Maxfielde's talent lay in waiting, but she never allowed
anything or anybody to hurry her, and she was noiseless in her
movements, both excellent things in a waitress. I cannot even say that
in her own line of scrubbing she was above suspicion, but she handled
her brushes and brooms and dusters with a calm and dignity which, in my
troubles, I found very soothing. Her repose may have been less a virtue
than the result of want of proper food, but in any case it was a great
help in the midst of the confusion she was called to struggle with.
There was only one drawback. It had a way of deserting her just when I
was most in need of it.
We are all human, and Mrs. Maxfielde was not without her weakness: she
was afflicted with nerves. In looking back I can see how in character
her sensibility was. It belonged to the old shawl and the demure bonnet,
to the meekness of pose, to the bobbing of curtsies,--it was Victorian.
But at the time I was more struck by its inconvenience. A late milkman
or a faithless butcher would bring her to the verge of collapse. She
would jump at the over-boiling of the kettle. Her hand went to her heart
on the slightest provocation, and stayed there with a persistency that
made me suspect her of seeking her dissipation in disaster. On the
morning after our fire, though she had been at home in her own bed
through all the danger of it, she was in such a flutter that I should
have had to revive her with salts had not a dozen firemen, policemen,
and salvage men been waiting for her to refresh them with tea. It was
only when one of the firemen took the kettle from her helpless hand,
saying he was a family man himself, and when I stood sternly over her
that, like an elderly Charlotte, she fell to cutting bread and butter,
and regained the calm and dignity becoming to her. But I never saw her
so agitated as the day she met a rat in the cellar. I had supposed it
was only in comic papers and old-fashioned novels that a rat or a mouse
could drive a sensible woman into hysterics. But Mrs. Maxfielde showed
me my mistake. From that innocent encounter in the cellar she bounded up
the four flights of stairs, burst into my room, and, breathless, livid,
both hands on her heart, sank into a chair: a liberty which at any other
time she would have regarded as a breach of all the proprieties. "Oh,
mum!" she gasped, "in the cellar!--a rat!" And she was not herself again
until the next morning.
After her day's work and her excitement in the course of it, it seemed
as if Mrs. Maxfielde could have neither time nor energy for a life of
her own outside our chambers. But she had, and a very full life it was,
and with the details as she confided them to me, I got to know a great
deal about "how the poor live," which I should have preferred to learn
from a novel or a Blue Book. She had a husband, much older, who had
been paralyzed for years. Before she came to me in the morning she had
to get him up for the day, give him his breakfast, and leave everything
in order for him, and as she lived half an hour's walk from our chambers
and never failed to reach them by seven, there was no need to ask how
early she had to get herself up. For a few pence a friendly neighbour
looked in and attended to him during the day. After Mrs. Maxfielde left
me, at eight or nine or ten in the evening, and after her half hour's
walk back, she had to prepare his supper and put him to bed; and again I
did not have to ask how late she put her own weary self there too. Old
age was once said to begin at forty-six; we are more strenuous now; but
according to the kindest computations, it had well overtaken her. And
yet she was working harder than she probably ever had in her youth, with
less rest and with the pleasing certainty that she would go on working
day in and day out and never succeed in securing the mere necessities of
life. She might have all the virtues, sobriety, industry, economy,--and
she had,--and the best she could hope was just to keep soul and body
together for her husband and herself, and a little corner they could
call their own. She did not tell me how the husband earned a living
before paralysis kept him from earning anything at all, but he too must
have been worthy of his name, for now he was helpless, the parish
allowed him "outdoor relief" to the extent of three shillings and
sixpence, or about eighty cents a week; it was before old-age pensions
had been invented by a vote-touting Government. This munificent sum,
paid for a room somewhere in a "Building," one of those gloomy barracks
with the outside iron stairway in common, where clothes are forever
drying in the thick, soot-laden London air, and children are forever
howling and shrieking. For everything else Mrs. Maxfielde had to
provide. If she worked every day except Sunday, her earnings amounted to
fifteen shillings, or a little less than four dollars, a week. But there
were weeks when she could obtain only one day's work, weeks when she
could obtain none, and she and her husband had still to live, had still
to eat something, well as they had trained themselves, as so many must,
in the habit of not eating enough. Here was an economic problem
calculated to bewilder more youthful and brilliant brains than hers. But
she never complained, she never grumbled, she never got discouraged. She
might fly before a rat, but in the face of the hopeless horrors of life
she retained her beautiful placidity, though I, when I realized the full
weight of the burden she had to bear, began to wonder less how, than
why, the poor live.
Mrs. Maxfielde came in the early spring. By the time winter, with its
fogs, set in, age had so far overtaken her that she could not manage to
attend to her husband and his wants and then drag her old body to our
chambers by seven o'clock in the morning. It was she who gave notice; I
never should have had the courage. We parted friends, and she was so
amiable as not to deprive me of her problems with her services. When she
could not work for me, she visited me, making it her rule to call on
Monday afternoon; a rule she observed with such regularity that I
fancied Monday must be her day for collecting the husband's income from
the parish and her own from private sources. She rarely allowed a week
to pass without presenting herself, always appearing in the same
Victorian costume and carrying off the interview with the same Victorian
manner. She never stooped to beg, but her hand was ready for the coin
which I slipped into it with the embarrassment of the giver, but which
she received with enviable calmness and a little curtsy. The hour of her
visit was so timed that, when her talk with me was over, she could
adjourn to the kitchen for dinner and, under Augustine's rule, a glass
of wine, which, though beer would have been more to her taste, she drank
as a concession to the poor foreigner who did not know any better.
Before a second winter had passed, Mrs. Maxfielde was forced to admit
that she was too old for anybody to want her, or to accept a post if
anybody did. But, all the same, the paralytic clung to his shadow of
life with the obstinate tenacity of the human derelict, and she clung to
her idea of home, and they starved on in the room the parish paid for
until it was a positive relief to me when, after more years of
starvation than I cared to count, she came to announce his death. It was
no relief to her. She was full of grief, and permitted nothing to
distract her from the luxury she made of it. The coin which passed from
my hand to hers on the occasion of this visit, doubled in token of
condolence, was invested in an elaborate crape bonnet, and she left it
to me to worry about her future. I might have afforded to accept her
trust with a greater show of enthusiasm, for, at once and with
unlooked-for intelligence, the parish decided to allow her the same
weekly sum her husband had received, and Mrs. Maxfielde, endowed with
this large and princely income, became a parent so worthy of filial
devotion that a daughter I had never heard of materialized, and
expressed a desire to share her home with her mother.
The daughter was married, her husband was an unskilled labourer, and
they had a large and increasing family. It is likely that Mrs. Maxfielde
paid in more than money for the shelter, and that her own
flesh-and-blood was less chary than strangers would have been in
employing her services, and less mindful of the now more than seventy
years she had toiled to live. Perhaps her visits at this period were a
little more frequent, perhaps her dinners were eaten and her wine drunk
with a little more eagerness. But she refrained from any pose, she
indulged in no heroics, she entertained me with no whinings, no railings
against the ingratitude sharper than a serpent's tooth. However she got
her ease, it was not in weeping, and what she had to bear from her
daughter she bore in silence. Her Victorian sense of propriety would
have been offended by a display of feeling. She became so pitiful a
figure that I shrank from her visits. But she was content, she found no
fault with life, and wealth being a matter of comparison, I am sure she
was, in her turn, moved to pity for the more unfortunate who had not
kept themselves out of the workhouse. Had she had her way, she would
have been willing to slave indefinitely for her daughter and her
daughter's children. But Death was wiser and brought her the rest she
deserved so well and so little craved.
A couple of years or so after the loss of her husband, and after she had
failed to appear, much to my surprise, on three or four Mondays in
succession, a letter came from her daughter to tell me that never again
would Monday bring Mrs. Maxfielde to my chambers. There had been no
special illness. She had just worn out, that was all. Her time had come
after long and cruel days of toil and her passing was unnoted, for hers
was a place easily filled,--that was the grisly thing about it. J. and I
sent a wreath of flowers for the funeral, knowing that she would have
welcomed it as propriety's crown of propriety, and it was my last
communication with the Maxfielde family. I had never met the daughter,
and I was the more reluctant to go abroad in search of objects of
charity because they had such an inconsiderate way of seeking me out in
my own kitchen. I was already "suited" with another old woman in Mrs.
Maxfielde's place. I was already visited by one or two others. In fact,
I was so surrounded by old women that Augustine, when she first came to
the rescue, used to laugh with the insolence of youth at _les vieilles
femmes de Madame_.
My new old woman was Mrs. Burden. Had I hunted all London over, I could
not have found a more complete contrast to Mrs. Maxfielde. She was
Irish, with no respect for Victorian proprieties, but as disreputable
looking an old charwoman as you would care to see; large and floppy in
figure, elephantine in movement, her face rough and dug deep by the
trenches of more than fifty winters, her hair frowzy, her dress ragged,
with the bodice always open at the neck and the sleeves always rolled up
above the elbows, her apron an old calico rag, and her person and her
clothes profusely sprinkled with snuff. In the street she wrapped
herself in a horrible grey blanket-shawl, and on top of her disorderly
old head set a little battered bonnet with two wisps of strings dangling
about. When I knew her better I discovered that she owned a black shawl
with fringe, and a bonnet that could tie under the chin, and in these
made a very fine appearance. But they were reserved for such ceremonial
occasions as Mass on Sunday or the funeral of a friend, and at other
times she kept to the costume that so shamefully maligned her. For, if
she looked like one of the terrible harpies who hang about the public
house in every London slum, she was really the most sober creature in
the world and never touched a drop, Mr. Burden, who drank himself into
an early grave, having drunk enough for two.
I cannot remember now where Mrs. Burden came from, or why, when I had
seen her once, I ever consented to see her again. But she quickly grew
into a fixture in our chambers, and it was some eight or nine years
before I was rid of her. In the beginning she was engaged for three
mornings, later on for every morning, in the week. Her hours were from
seven to twelve, during which time my chief object was to keep her
safely shut up in the kitchen, for no degree of pretending on my part
could make me believe in her as an ornament or a credit to our house. It
mortified me to have her show her snuffy old face at the front door, and
I should never have dared to send her on the many messages she ran for
me had she not been known to everybody in the Quarter; but once Mrs.
Burden was known it was all right, for she was as good as she was sober.
Hers, however, was the goodness of the man in the Italian proverb who
was so good that he was good for nothing. She was willing to do
anything, but there was nothing she could do well, and most things she
could not do at all. She made no pretence to cook, and if she had I
could not have eaten anything of her cooking, for I knew snuff must
flavour everything she touched. To have seen her big person and frowzy
head in the dining-room would have been fatal to appetite had I ever had
the folly, under any circumstances, to ask her to wait. Nor did she
excel in scrubbing and dusting. She was successful chiefly in leaving
things dirtier than she found them, and Augustine, whose ideal is high
in these matters, insisted that Mrs. Burden spent the morning making the
dirt she had to spend the afternoon cleaning up. There were times when
they almost came to blows, for the temper of both was hot, and more than
once I heard Mrs. Burden threaten to call in the police. But the old
woman had her uses. She was honesty itself, and could be trusted with no
matter what,--from the key of our chambers, when they were left empty,
to the care of William Penn, when no other companion could be secured
for him; she could be relied upon to pay bills, post letters, fetch
parcels; and she was as punctual as Big Ben at Westminster. I do not
think she missed a day in all the years she was with me. I became
accustomed, too, to seeing her about, and there was the dread--or
conviction would be nearer the truth--that if I let her go nobody else
in their senses would take her in.
Mrs. Burden did not improve with time. She never condescended to borrow
qualities that did not belong to her. She grew more unwieldy and larger
and floppier, a misfortune she attributed to some mysterious malady
which she never named, but gloated over with the pride the poor have in
their diseases. And she grew dirtier and more disorderly, continuing to
scorn my objection to her opening the front door with the shoe she was
blacking still on her hand, or to her bringing me a letter wrapped in
an apron grimier than her grimy fingers. Nothing would induce her not to
call me "Missis," which displeased me more, if for other reasons, than
the "Master" she as invariably bestowed upon J. She bobbed no curtsies.
When, on Saturdays, coins passed from my hand to hers, she spat on them
before she put them in her pocket, to what purpose I have not to this
day divined. Her best friend could not have accused her of any charm of
manner, but, being Irish, she escaped the vulgarity bred in the London
slums. In fact, I often fancied I caught gleams of what has been called
the Celtic Temperament shining through her. She had the warmth of
devotion, the exaggeration of loyalty, the power of idealizing, peculiar
to her race. She was almost lyrical in her praise of J., who stood
highest in her esteem, and "Master good! Master good!" was her constant
refrain when she conversed with Augustine in the language fitted for
children and rich in gesture, which was her well-meant substitute for
French. She saw him glorified, as the poets of her country see their
heroes, and in her eyes he loomed a splendid Rothschild. "Master, plenty
money, plenty money!" she would assure Augustine, and, holding up her
apron by the two corners, and well out from her so as to represent a
capacious bag, add, "apron full, full, full!"
She had also the Celtic lavishness of hospitality. I remember Whistler's
delight one morning when, after an absence from London, he received at
our front door a welcome from Mrs. Burden, whom he had never seen before
and now saw at her grimiest: "Shure, Mr. Whistler, sir, an it's quite a
stranger ye are. It's glad I am to see ye back, sir, and looking so
well!" Her hospitality was extended to her own friends when she had the
chance. She who drank nothing could not allow Mr. Pooley, the sweep, who
was her neighbour and cleaned our chimneys, to leave our chambers after
his professional services without a drop of whiskey to hearten him on
his sooty way. And, though you would still less have suspected it,
romance had kept its bloom fresh in her heart. The summer the Duke of
York was married I could not understand her interest in the wedding, as
until then she had not specially concerned herself with the affairs of
royalty. But on the wedding-day this interest reached a point when she
had to share it with somebody. "Shure, Missis, and I knows how it is
meself. Wasn't I after marrying Burden's brother and he older than
Burden, and didn't he go and die, God bless him! and leave me to Burden.
And shure thin it's me that knows how the poor Princess May, Lord love
her! is feeling this blessed day!"
Not only the memory, but her pride in it, had survived the years which
never brought romance to her again. The one decent thing Burden did was
to die and rid the world of him before Mrs. Burden had presented him and
society with more than one child, a boy. He was a good son, she said,
which meant that he spent his boyhood picking up odd jobs and, with
them, odd pence to help his mother along, so that at the age when he
should have been able to do something, he knew how to do nothing, and
had not even the physical strength to fit him for the more profitable
kinds of unskilled labour. He thought himself lucky when, in his
twentieth year, he fell into a place as "washer-up" in a cheap
restaurant which paid eighteen shillings a week; and he was so dazzled
by his wealth that he promptly married. His wife's story is short: she
drank. Mercifully, like Burden, she did the one thing she could do with
all her might and drank herself to death with commendable swiftness,
leaving no children to carry on the family tradition. Mrs. Burden was
once more alone with her son. Between them they earned twenty-eight
shillings a week and felt themselves millionaires. Augustine, for some
reason, went at this period once or twice to her room, over the dingy
shop of a cheap undertaker, and reported it fairly clean and provided
with so much comfort as is represented by blankets on the bed and a
kettle on the hob. But after a bit the son died, the cause, as far as I
could make out, a drunken father and years of semi-starvation; and Mrs.
Burden had to face, as cheerfully as she could, an old age to be lived
out in loneliness and in the vain endeavour to make both ends meet on
eight shillings a week, or less if she lost her job with me.
She did lose it, poor soul. But what could I do? She really got to be
intolerably dirty. Not that I blamed her. I probably should have been
much dirtier under the same circumstances. But a time came when it
seemed as if we must give up either Mrs. Burden or our chambers, and to
give our chambers up when we had not the least desire to, would have
been a desperate remedy. She had one other piece of regular work; when I
spoke to her about going, she assured me that her neighbours had been
waiting for years to get her to do their washing, and she would be glad
to oblige them; and, on my pressing invitation, she promised to run in
and see me often. At this new stage in our relations she showed a rare
delicacy of feeling. Mrs. Maxfielde, no longer in my service, was eager
to pay me visits, and her hand, if not held out to beg, was open to
receive. Mrs. Burden did not keep her promise to come, she gave me no
opportunity to know whether her hand was open in need or shut on plenty.
She was of the kind that would rather starve than publish their
destitution. I might have preserved an easy conscience in her regard but
for Mr. Pooley, the sweep. The first time he returned in his
professional capacity after her departure and found himself deprived of
the usual refreshment, he was indignant, and, in consequence, he was
very gruff and short with me when I inquired after Mrs. Burden. She
hadn't any work, not she, and he supposed, he did, that she might starve
for all some people cared.
I could scarcely ignore so broad a hint, and I had her round that same
morning, for her slum was close by. I learned from her that Mr. Pooley,
if gruff, was truthful. She had no work, had not had any for weeks. She
was in arrears to her landlord, her shawl with the fringe and her
blankets were in pawn, she hadn't a farthing in her pocket. J., to whom
I refer all such matters, and who was in her debt for the splendour of
wealth with which she had endowed him, said "it was all nonsense,"--by
"it" I suppose he meant this sorry scheme of things,--and he would not
let her go without the money to pay her landlord, not only for arrears,
but in advance, and also to redeem her possessions. I do not think she
was the less grateful if, instead of bobbing humbly, she spat upon the
coins before her first "Shure and may God bless ye, Master." Nor was J.
comfortable until provisions had followed her in such quantities that he
would not have to be bothered by the thought of her starving to death,
at any rate for some days. Even after that, she scrupulously kept away.
Not Christmas, that in London brings everybody with or without excuse
begging at one's door, could induce her to present herself. It was we
who had to send for her, and, in a land where begging comes so easily,
we respected her for her independence.