A short time since we were about to change our residence, and my wife,
having need for a fresh lady to cook our chops and manufacture
apple-dumplings, answered two or three of the advertisements which
appeared in the "_Thunderer_," under the heading, "Want Places. All
letters to be post-paid." When after the lapse of a couple of days,
Mistress Martha Jinks called in Whole Jorum Street, and was shown into
the room. Mrs Scribe thought it better that I should be present, to
act as support in case of need, since she is rather nervous over such
matters. Consequently, I sat busy scribbling at a side-table, ready if
wanted--really and truly writing, and lamenting greatly the want of
stenography, so that my report of Mrs Jinks's visit might have been
_verbatim_. A tall, stout, elderly lady, in a snuff-hued front, with a
perpetual smile upon her countenance, a warm colour, and a figure
bearing a strong resemblance to one of those rolled mattresses in a
furnishing warehouse--one of those tied round the middle with a cord,
and labelled "all wool." She was a lady who would undoubtedly have
ruled the roast in her kitchen, and knowing my partner's foibles I
should most decidedly have contrived that Mrs Jinks did not take
possession of our new suburban residence. But my fears were needless,
for after a few exchanges touching wages, privileges, number of
servants, and numerous other little matters, interesting only to those
whom they may concern, my wife mentioned our proximate removal, when
Mrs Martha Jinks, with the evident intention of keeping the ball
rolling, gave her head a most vigorous shake, smiled patronisingly, and
then, after bridling up, unto her did say--
"No, mum, not if I knows it; thank you all the same. I likes the sound
of the place, mum, and I ain't a-finding fault with the wages, nor the
tea and sugar, nor the perquisites, but I'll never bemean myself, mum,
to going to a new house agen. I've been cook in the respectablest of
families, mum, for three-and-thirty years, and after my egsperience in
new houses, I'll never go to one no more.
"Now, of course I ain't a-saying but what old houses has their
doorbacks, sech as crickets, as is allus a-going fuzz, and flying by
night into the candle and into the sugar-basin; and then, agen, black
beatles, as isn't pleasant to walk over if you come down in the dark,
and then a-going pop to that degree that the mess on the floor nex
morning is enough to worry a tylin' and mylin' woman out of her seven
senses.
"You see, mum, I don't dislike the looks of you; for you don't look
mean, and as if you'd allus be a-pottering about in my kidgin, which is
a thing I can't abear; for, as I says to Mary in my last place--Mary,
you know, as married the green-grocer, and sells coals at the little
shop a-corner of the mews,--`Mary,' I says, `a missus oughter be in her
drorring-room--a-drorring, or a-receiving of wisitors, or a-making of
herself agreeable at the winder, not a-poking and a-poll-prying about my
kidgin, with her nose in the dresser-drors, a-smelling and a-peeping
about. What is it to her, I should like to know, if there is a bottle
in the corner of the cupboard next door to the cruets, and if it don't
smell of winegar but of g--, you know? Why, if a missus was troubled
with spazzums to the degree as I've suffered 'em, she'd go and live in a
distillery and never be happy out.' The things as I've put up with in
some places, mum, would give you the creeps, and make yer 'air stand on
end. Me, you know, a cook as has lived in the best of families, to be
told as the brandy-sauce had not got half the brandy in; and when the
tipsy-cake come on the table, for the missus to come downstairs in a
towering fury, and go on like Billinsgate. I'm sure she did for all her
pretence about being a lady; and to say as she did with them brazen lips
of her's, and all the time trembling with passion--
"`Cook,' she says, `Cook, it ain't the cake as is tipsy-cake, it's
summit else;' and me a-sitting in that blessed chair, aside of the fire,
feeling as if all the use was took outer my legs, when I only just put
my lips to the sherry, just to see if it was good enough for the
sponge-cake, as I took so much pains to make, tho' it did get burnt at
the bakehouse to that degree that I was obleeged to cut quite a lunch
off all round. But I wouldn't bemean myself to speak; for `Martha,' I
says to myself, `Martha Jinks,' I says, `if you are a cook, you are a
sooperior woman, and with your egsperiens, you needn't take sauce from
any one.' So I sat looking at her that disdainful that it quite brought
on a sort of sterrical hiccups, and then, I couldn't help it, she went
on so cruelly, I melted into tears, and there they was a-dripping--
dripping--dripping all over the kidgin, and the missus a-going on still
at that rate that I couldn't abear it, and fainted away so that they had
to carry me upstairs to bed, and bumped my pore head agen the
ballisters, so that it ached fearful next morning, and I was obliged to
have the least sup of g--, you know, in a wine-glass, took medicinally,
you know, for if there is any mortial thing in this life as _is_
disgusting it's a woman as takes to sperrits.
"But, there, I wouldn't stay. I couldn't, bless you; for, as I says to
Mary, `Mary,' I says, `you may lead me with a bit o' darning-cotton, but
clothes-line wouldn't pull me.' Oh, no, I couldn't have put up with it
if missus had gone down on her bended knees in the sand on my beautiful
white kidgin floor, and begged of me to stay. Oh, no--I give warning
there and then. `A month's wages or a month's warning,' I says, and she
give me the month's wages, and said I was to get out of the cruel house.
"And then I went to live with some common people, who had just built
themselves a new house out by the Crischial Pallus, and there I stopped
three months, till I was a'most worn to skin and bone, with the worry,
and bother, and want of rest.
"First night I goes there, and takes my trunk, and a bundle, and a
bonnet-box, and a basket, I might have known as all would go wrong, for
the cabman sauced me to that degree it was orful; but I got rid of him
at last, with my boxes a-standing outside the willa gate, out in the
rain; and then no lights in the house, and no gash laid on, and no one
to help me in with my things, and me a-going mosh--posh, pudge--mudge up
the the soft gravel, and losing my gloshes a-sticking in the wet muddy
stuff, and the wind a-blowing to that degree as my umbrelly--a bran new
alpakky--was bust right down one of its ribs, and caught in the iron
railings; while all the while I knowed as the rain was a-getting in to
my best bonnet, and a man a-tumbling over my big box, as stood out in
the roadway-path, and me without strength in my lines to pull it in the
gate.
"`Never mind your shins, my good man,' I says, `help me in with my
things, and I'll find you a bit of cold meat,' and then I recklets
myself as there might be no cold meat in the house, and I turns it into
a pint of beer, being a stranger to the place.
"`And what's your name, young woman,' I says to a fine doll of a
housemaid, a-darning stockings in the noo kidgin, as smelt of paint to
that degree that you might have been lodging in a ile-shop, while the
man stood a-turning over his happince on the mat--I mean on his hands,
and him on the door-mat, and not satisfied till I give him twopence
more, which not having enough I give him a sixpence, to go and get it,
and him never a-coming back, and keeping the whole sixpence and the two
pence, too, as would have tried any woman's temper, if even she hadn't
been a cook, which is the mildest and quietest beings as ever dished a
jynt.
"`And what's your name, young woman?' I says to my fine madam, as she
sat there and didn't seem to know the proper respect to years, though
she did prick her finger till the blood come, and serve her right, too,
and if I did not expect from her looks as she'd be that vulgar to answer
me disrespeckful and say, when I said `What's your name?' `Pudding and
Tame,' like the gals did when I went to school, which wasn't yesterday,
you know; but she didn't, but says, quite huffy, `Jane,' she says.
"`Ho!' I says, werry distant, as I took off my bonnet and shawl, and
laid 'em on the dresser. `Ho!' I says, and then I sits me down afore
the fire, and puts my feet on the fender; for as I had my gloshes on to
come in I wouldn't wear my best boots, but left 'em in my box, and
there, through there being a crack in the side, if the water hadn't
soaked right through, and wetten'd my feet, so that they steamed again.
"At last, seeing as my fine lady meant to be uppish, I says to her, I
says, in a tone o' wyce as showed I didn't mean to be trifled with, and
if she meant to sit in my kidgin she must know who was missus. `Jane,'
I says, `you'd best put some more coals on the fire.'
"`You'd best not,' she says. `It smokes.'
"I didn't say nothing to her then, but I says to myself, `Martha,' I
says, `Martha Jinks, you've made a mistake; for if there is one mortial
thing as I can't abear, it's smoke.'
"At last I says, `Jane,' I says, `I can't abear this smell of the paint
any longer.'
"`Oh!' she says, `this is nothing; the place is noo, and it's worse
upstairs in our bedroom, which was done last.'
"`Worse?' I says. `Young woman,' I says, in a whisper, `it makes me
feel faint. If you've the heart that can feel for another inside your
stays,' I says, `get me a wee drop of g--.'
"And she wouldn't!
"Oh, mum, the sufferins as I went through in that noo willa was
dreadful. The kidgin fire smoked to that degree that the blacks used to
be a-flying about all over the kidgin, and a-settling on everything,
though if there's one place as a black will settle on it's your nose,
when fust time you give it a rub there you are not fit to be seen; while
the water was that hard it was no use to rub or wash. Soap was nowhere;
and I declare to you, mum, sollumly, as I've often washed the smuts off
one side of my face on to the other, and took to black caps outer
self-defence.
"If it hadn't ha' been for the least drop o' g--took inwardly now and
then, I should ha' been a blackened corpse over and over again, for that
fire nearly drove me mad. Cinders will come out into your pan
sometimes, and frizzle and make a smell of hot fat all over the house,
and it's no use for ladies to make a fuss about it, for where cooking's
going on you must smell it sometimes if you wants to taste it, and you'd
be hard-up without your cook. But when the wind sets right down the
chimbley and blows all the smoke wrong way into your face, and making
you sneeze, filling your eyes up, and driving the blacks into custard or
veal cutlets, or whatever you're a-making of, who can help it? And then
they says upstairs as the things tastes bitter.
"`You must have it stopped, mum,' I says to the missus, but she says as
the place has cost 'em five hundred pound now more than the contrack,
and so I says to myself, `As it's for your good, and you won't be led,
you must be drove.' So only outer self-defence I kep a black fire, and
left the kidgin door open, when the blacks all went up the stairs, and a
man came down nex week to take my measure for a patent prize kidginer.
"But then, mum, if you'll believe me, it wasn't only in the kidgin, it
was all over the house, which was designed by the artchyteck to hold so
much wind that it went wentilating about the place and banging the doors
to that degree that if you didn't make haste you were hit on the back
and nearly sent flat. Jane had such a stiff neck--not as that was
anything new, for the baker said she was the stuckuppist gal he ever did
see; but this was a cold stiff neck, and had to be rubbed with 'deldoc,
and slep in flannel every night, so as she was a good half-hour
undressing, and then got into bed with such cold feet as would have made
a saint swear.
"`Jane,' says I, one night, `if you don't sleep in your stockings I
shall be obliged to have a bottle.'
"`Of g--,' she says, in her nasty, aggravating, spiteful way.
"`No imperance;' I says, `a bottle of hot water, wrapped up in a
flannel--a-hem--or I shall be having spazzums to that degree as I must
have a drop of g--took inward, to save me from sufferin' as would make
any one shudder.'
"Then the cold, and damp, and draughts give me the face-ache so that I
had to have a tooth out, and he took the wrong one out, and said I told
him that one, when it hadn't a speck in it, and the other was a regular
shell; when what I suffered no one knows but Jane, with my face swelled
upon one side like a bladder of lard squeezed, and Jane all the time
going on because I would sit up in bed and rock myself to and fro, with
a shawl over my shoulders, and the nasty stiff-necked thing grumbling
and declaring it was like somebody playing with a pair of bellows in the
bed, when it was only the nasty draughty house as she could feel, and me
a-dying amost for a drop of g--took inwardly, on a bit of sugar.
"There was hardly a door that would shut, and when they did they stuck
to that degree that you couldn't get 'em open again till you turned
cross, when they'd fly open savagely and half knock you down, and I
declare to goodness, for a whole month, mum, everything I put in my
mouth tasted of paint.
"`Oh, you beauties!' I says, when after banging and ringing at the gate
for near an hour, I was obliged to go down and let in the workmen as
came battering in the middle of the night amost, for it had only just
gone six. And there they were, smiths, and bricklayers, and plasterers,
a-trampling all over my beautiful clean kitchen till they'd took out the
range and scattered the bricks and mortar all over the floor, as
trampled about all upstairs and got into the carpets. And the time
those men wasted a-poking and pottering about till they'd got in the
patent kidginet, when one stuck-up-nosed fellow begins to light it, and
show me how it would draw.
"`You must keep the boiler full,' he says.
"`Young man,' I says, `have I been in the best of families for thirty
years, and do you think I don't know as a boiler without any water would
bust?' And then I went out of the kidgin, and would not stop to be
insulted by a jumped-up ironmonger's boy.
"And there the nex day, if the thing didn't smoke wuss than ever, not a
bit going up the chimbley, but regularly blinding you, till master and
missus come down, choking and sneezing, and--
"`Oh, cook,' says the missus, `what have you been doing?'
"`No, mum,' I says, `it's not me as has been a-doing anything; it's your
patent kidginer and your noo house, as I'd never have set a foot in if
I'd knowed--no, mum, not for double wages and everything found.'
"`Well, but cook,' says the master, `it's the damper.'
"`Well, sir,' I says, `I could have told you that; but it's my
impression,' I says, `that, when it's the dryer, it won't go a bit
better, and the sooner you soot yourself the better.' And then, instead
of taking the hint to go out of my kidgin, as he would have done if he'd
had the sperret of a man, he actelly went patting and poking about the
things, and opening this and shutting that, till I hadn't patience;
when, because the thing left off smoking, he wanted to make out as I
hadn't pulled out one of the little drawer things in the flue.
"But there never was sich a thing as that kidginer, and nobody never
knowed how to take it; sometimes it would go a-running away and making
itself red-hot, and burning all the blacklead off, and sometimes it
wouldn't go at all, but stopped all black and sulky; when your bit of
fowl, or whatever you were baking--roasting they called it, but if it
ain't baking a thing as is shut up inside a oven, what is it?--p'raps
you'll tell me--and, there now, it would be raw as raw, or else dry,
burnt up to a cinder, while of a night there was no fire to sit by and
make yourself comfortable--nothing at all but a nasty black patent thing
as never looked sociable, and sent all the smell of the cooking
upstairs, specially cabbage.
"No, mum, I'm much obliged, mum; and if you had been going to stop here,
mum, I should have been happy to give you a trial, when you'd no doubt
have found out my wally, for you look a sweet-tempered creetur; but go
to a noo house, mum, I won't--not under no consideration; and so I wish
you good day, mum."
And Mrs Martha Jinks went.