Lark Rise, Flora Thompson [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

to sleep downstairs that the girl might share her mother’s

bed. It is common now to hear people say, when looking at some little

old cottage, ‘And they brought up ten children there. Where on earth did

they sleep?’ And the answer is, or should be, that they did not all

sleep there at the same time. Obviously they could not. By the time the

youngest of such a family was born, the eldest would probably be twenty

and have been out in the world for years, as would those who came

immediately after in age. The overcrowding was bad enough; but not quite

as bad as people imagine.

 

Then, again, as the children grew up, they required more and more food,

and the mother was often at her wits’ end to provide it. It was no

wonder her thoughts and hopes sprang ahead to the time when one, at

least, of her brood would be self-supporting. She should not have spoken

her thoughts aloud, for many a poor, sensitive, little girl must have

suffered. But the same mother would often at mealtimes slip the morsel

of meat from her own to her child’s plate, with a ‘I don’t seem to feel

peckish to-night. You have it. You’re growing.’

 

After the girls left school at ten or eleven, they were usually kept at

home for a year to help with the younger children, then places were

found for them locally in the households of tradesmen, schoolmasters,

stud grooms, or farm bailiffs. Employment in a public house was looked

upon with horror by the hamlet mothers, and farmhouse servants were a

class apart. ‘Once a farmhouse servant, always a farmhouse servant’

they used to say, and they were more ambitious for their daughters.

 

The first places were called ‘petty places’ and looked upon as

stepping-stones to better things. It was considered unwise to allow a

girl to remain in her petty place more than a year; but a year she must

stay whether she liked it or not, for that was the custom. The food in

such places was good and abundant, and in a year a girl of thirteen

would grow tall and strong enough for the desired ‘gentlemen’s service’,

her wages would buy her a few clothes, and she would be learning.

 

The employers were usually very kind to these small maids. In some

houses they were treated as one of the family; in others they were put

into caps and aprons and ate in the kitchen, often with one or two of

the younger children of the house to keep them company. The wages were

small, often only a shilling a week; but the remuneration did not end

with the money payment. Material, already cut out and placed, was given

them to make their underwear, and the Christmas gift of a best frock or

a winter coat was common. Caps and aprons and morning print dresses, if

worn, were provided by the employer. ‘She shan’t want for anything while

she is with me’ was a promise frequently made by a shopkeeper’s wife

when engaging a girl, and many were even better than their word in that

respect. They worked with the girls themselves and trained them; then as

they said, just as they were becoming useful they left to ‘better

themselves’.

 

The mothers’ attitude towards these mistresses of small households was

peculiar. If one of them had formerly been in service herself, her

situation was avoided, for ‘a good servant makes a bad missis’ they

said. In any case they considered it a favour to allow their small

untrained daughters to ‘oblige’ (it was always spoken of as ‘obliging’)

in a small household. They were jealous of their children’s rights, and

ready to rush in and cause an upset if anything happened of which they

did not approve; and they did not like it if the small maid became fond

of her employer or her family, or wished to remain in her petty place

after her year was up. One girl who had been sent out at eleven as maid

to an elderly couple and had insisted upon remaining there through her

teens, was always spoken of by her mother as ‘our poor Em’. ‘When I sees

t’other girls and how they keeps on improvin’ an’ think of our poor Em

wastin’ her life in a petty place, I could sit down an’ howl like a dog,

that I could’, she would say, long after Em had been adopted as a

daughter by the people to whom she had become attached.

 

Of course there were queer places and a few definitely bad places; but

these were the exception and soon became known and avoided. Laura once

accompanied a schoolfellow to interview a mistress who was said to

require a maid. At ordinary times a mother took her daughter to such

interviews; but Mrs. Beamish was near her time, and it was not thought

safe for her to venture so far from home. So Martha and Laura set out,

accompanied by a younger brother of Martha’s, aged about ten. Martha in

her mother’s best coat with the sleeves turned back to the elbows and

with her hair, done up for the first time that morning, plaited into an

inverted saucer at the back of her head and bristling with black

hairpins. Laura in a chimney-pot hat, a short brown cape, and buttoned

boots reaching nearly to her knees. The little brother wore a pale grey

astrakan coat, many sizes too small, a huge red knitted scarf, and

carried no pocket-handkerchief.

 

It was a mild, grey November day with wisps of mist floating over the

ploughed fields and water drops hanging on every twig and thorn of the

hedgerows. The lonely country house they were bound for was said to be

four miles from the hamlet; but, long before they reached it, the

distance seemed to them more like forty. It was all cross-country going;

over field-paths and stiles, through spinneys and past villages. They

asked the way of everybody they met or saw working in the fields and

were always directed to some short cut or other, which seemed to bring

them out at the same place as before. Then there were delays. Martha’s

newly done-up hair kept tumbling down and Laura had to take out all the

hairpins and adjust it. The little brother got stones in his shoes, and

all their feet felt tired from the rough travelling and the stiff mud

which caked their insteps. The mud was a special source of worry to

Laura, because she had put on her best boots without asking permission,

and knew she would get into trouble about it when she returned.

 

Still, such small vexations and hindrances could not quite spoil her

pleasure in the veiled grey day and the new fields and woods and

villages, of which she did not even know the names.

 

It was late afternoon when, coming out of a deep, narrow lane with a

stream trickling down the middle, they saw before them a grey-stone

mansion with twisted chimney-stacks and a sundial standing in long grass

before the front door. Martha and Laura were appalled at the size of the

house. Gentry must live there. Which door should they go to and what

should they say?

 

In a paved yard a man was brushing down a horse, hissing so loudly as he

did so that he did not hear their first timid inquiry. When it was

repeated he raised his head and smiled. ‘Ho! Ho!’ he said. ‘Yes, yes,

it’s Missis at the house there you’ll be wanting, I’ll warrant.’

 

‘Please does she want a maid?’

 

‘I dare say she do. She generally do. But where’s the maid? Goin’ to

roll yourselves up into one, all three of ye? You go on round by that

harness-room and across the lawn by the big pear trees and you’ll find

the back door. Go on; don’t be afraid. She’s not agoin’ to eat ye.’

 

In response to their timid knock, the door was opened by a youngish

woman. She was like no one Laura had ever seen. Very slight—she would

have been called ‘scraggy’ in the hamlet—with a dead white face, dark,

arched brows, and black hair brushed straight back from her forehead,

and with all this black and whiteness set off by a little scarlet jacket

that, when Laura described it to her mother later, was identified as a

garibaldi. She seemed glad to see the children, though she looked

doubtful when she heard their errand and saw Martha’s size.

 

‘So you want a place?’ she asked as she conducted them into a kitchen as

large as a church and not unlike one with its stone-paved floor and

central pillar. Yes, she wanted a maid, and she thought Martha might do.

How old was she? Twelve? And what could she do? Anything she was told?

Well, that was right. It was not a hard place, for, although there were

sixteen rooms, only three or four of them were in use. Could she get up

at six without being called? There would be the kitchen range to light

and the flues to be swept once a week, and the dining-room to be swept

and dusted and the fire lighted before breakfast. She herself would be

down in time to cook breakfast. No cooking was required, beyond

preparing vegetables. After breakfast Martha would help her with the

beds, turning out the rooms, paring the potatoes and so on; and after

dinner there was plenty to do—washing up, cleaning knives and boots and

polishing silver. And so she went on, mapping out Martha’s day, until at

nine o’clock she would be free to go to bed, after placing hot water in

her mistress’s bedroom.

 

Laura could see that Martha was bewildered. She stood, twisting her

scarf, curtseying, and saying ‘Yes, mum’ to everything.

 

‘Then, as wages, I can offer you two pounds ten a year. It is not a

great wage, but you are very small, and you’ll have an easy place and a

comfortable home. How do you like your kitchen?’

 

Martha’s gaze wandered round the huge place, and once more she said,

‘Yes, mum.’

 

‘You’ll find it nice and cosy here, eating your meals by the fire. You

won’t feel lonely, will you?’

 

This time Martha said, ‘No, mum.’

 

‘Tell your mother I shall expect her to fit you out well. You will want

caps and aprons. I like my maids to look neat. And tell her to let you

bring plenty of changes, for we only wash once in six weeks. I have a

woman in to do it all up,’ and although Martha knew her mother had not a

penny to spend on her outfit, and that she had been told the last thing

before she left home that morning to ask her prospective employer to

send her mother her first month’s wages in advance to buy necessaries,

once again she said, ‘Yes, mum.’

 

‘Well, I shall expect you next Monday, then. And, now, are you hungry?’

and for the first time there was feeling in Martha’s tone as she

answered, ‘Yes, mum.’

 

Soon a huge sirloin of cold beef was placed on the table and liberal

helpings were being carved for the three children. It was such a joint

of beef as one only sees in old pictures with an abbot carving; immense,

and so rich in flavour and so tender that it seemed to melt in the

mouth. The three plates were clean in a twinkling.

 

‘Would any of you like another helping?’

 

Laura, conscious that she was no principal in the affair, and only

invited to partake out of courtesy, declined wistfully but firmly;

Martha said she would like a little more if ‘mum’ pleased, and the