The employers were usually very kind to these little maids and were the ones who trained them. “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, with one or two of the younger children of the house to keep them company.” (1)
In larger country houses it was the upper servants who drilled the newcomers in their duties, sometimes with scolding. But the girl who was anxious to learn, willing to work hard, and could mind her tongue, had nothing to fear. What would be in store for Fanny?
When the time came, it was likely that Fanny’s tin trunk was sent ahead by carrier and Phoebe walked to the station with her. What thoughts do you think may have crossed Fanny’s mind as she faced her first train journey alone to live among people she had never met? Fanny tells us about it in her own words:
“It was the most beautiful little town. It was five miles from my home. You had to walk two miles to the [train] station and ride two miles more to get there. In the first job I went to, I was a little kitchen maid in a guest house, doing odds and ends such as cleaning the shoes, peeling the potatoes, and little bits of jobs like that. I think I had three pounds a year; it wouldn’t be hardly dollars a month. It was two old maids that ran it. Then there was one lady that was the regular house maid, and the little kitchen maid. But the ladies that owned it did the cooking.
“Guests would write to make reservations and then come for two weeks, and some for three weeks. The owners were always thrilled when they had a titled lady come to stay with them. But we didn’t think they were near such ladies; they didn’t have the manners of ladies. Of course, they were well-moneyed people, everybody that came to Malvern. It was no seaside, but it was noted for its water and where the atmosphere for a vacation and rest were very nice. I was there until the winter, then they didn’t need me, they needed an older one, because all the gentry would go back home after the holidays.” It was desirable for a girl to progress from being a little maid in her first place of work which was called a “petty place,” to the work of an under- kitchen maid, then get a better position each year until she was next in responsibility to the cook, and finally cook-housekeeper. (2) “At the end of that time she was then so well-mannered and poised as to be able to go anywhere and apply for a good job.”(3)
The employers at her first place, Fanny continues, “ had a cousin that had a chemist shop [drugstore] in the commercial part of town so they asked me if I’d go there. They used to talk about that woman so much and how bad she was to her servants till I was frightened to be there, and I was too young and afraid to tell my mother. You know, you’re so afraid to mention anything. I made up my mind that I would only stay there a month, because you had to have a character. Everywhere you went you had to have a character, a reference from the last place, in order to get another place. As long as they sent me, that was a good enough reference. So I went there for a month.
The lady I was going to, Mrs. Austin... seemed pretty nice, but I had made up my mind I wasn’t going to stay. Wasn’t it funny how I felt that way? I sure did, but I couldn’t help it. “I had a little friend I met in Church, and when my month was up she told me about a lady named Mrs. Widget who needed a little maid about like me. She lived down by the cemetery so I went there. They gave me one lady to take care of and her name, I remember well, was Mrs. Draper. Christmastime was coming and she wanted me to learn a psalm, so I learned the 23rd Psalm, and I’ve remembered it ever since.
“It was at Widgets that they had the greatest time to teach me to set a table the proper way. She’d always find the knife and fork in the wrong place. It was so funny. It lasted for quite a little while, but I got over it. But that’s where I learned to put the tablespoons on each corner of the table. Even now...I ... put them like that. “Mrs. Widget had a maid that had worked for her for years and years, and she was old and had asthma. She was more of an invalid for [Mrs. Widget] to take care of, and all this other maid did was to find fault. Then they had to get someone a bit bigger than me because the maid was such an invalid, so they got me a job with a French lady.
“The French lady gave French lessons to the gentry around. Both of her daughters were grown, and they were nice girls. One of the daughters went away to school and I think she taught music. She was a beautiful girl. And the other one’s name was Blanche. That’s how I got the name for our daughter, Blanche. I loved that name. They were considered pretty nice people, and could put on fancy meals and things like that, but I didn’t have anything to do with that part of it. They had a horse school for ladies and I guess they felt they were like gentle people in a way. It was from them that I learned a little bit of French. “The French lady’s the one that told me that when I had those couple of warts on my hand again that I should steal a little meat from someone and rub it on the warts and then bury it in the garden. She said, ‘You’ll get rid of those warts.’ So, of course, there was nobody to steal it off of, only her. It worked and the warts went away, but I never told her I stole the meat off her. Of course I only took a little bit of the roast when it came in. “They used to deliver everything in Malvern. The meat boy would come around and the fish boy would come around, and the bread boy would come around. Everything came that way. The boys would come right from the stores as soon as it was ordered for the gentry.” The food of the maids was wholesome and abundant, and in a year a girl could grow tall and strong and more fit for her work.4 Within two or three years more they were earning enough to buy some clothes. Having seen their mothers work so hard at stretching their income to feed their families and stay out of debt, it seemed almost like these young girls were on a mission to help them out. When they received their pay at the end of the month, a shilling or more would be sent to “our Mum,” with the amount increasing as the wages grew larger. Their generosity was surprising. Some of the older girls in higher-paying positions would deny themselves luxuries, saving up so they could help pay their parents’ rent, or buy them a ton of coal for the winter.5 As maids the girls had no evenings out unless they had special permission. They were required to go to Church on Sunday, but had to leave their best hats in boxes under their beds and “make frights of themselves in funny little flat bonnets.”7 When the Princess of Wales started wearing her hair in a curled fringe over her forehead and the fashion caught on all over the country, a fringe was forbidden to maids. They had to wear their hair brushed straight back from the brow, which was a great disappointment to them. The mothers were proud of their daughters and anxious for them to “better themselves” by going into service. It’s been said that if you perchance saw a girl well on in her teens in the hamlet, “she would be dressed in town clothes, complete with gloves and veil, for she would be home from service for her fortnight’s holiday, and her mother would insist upon her wearing her best every time she went out of doors, in order to impress the neighbors.”6 Fanny’s wrote “Agnes—a girlfriend” below this picture in her album. It was taken by a Malvern photographer, so she may have been the “little friend” Fanny was telling about when she needed to change jobs. Or perhaps it was the friend who grew up next door to Fanny in Gilver Lane and who also went to Malvern to work. Fanny tells us, “I didn’t go home very much, but when I had a pay day Mam (we called our parents Mam and Dad) came up to buy me things. She bought some goods to make me a cape, because I wanted a cape, and she bought me a ring because I wanted a ring. Of all things, to want a ring! But she was nice to me; she wanted to do things that I wanted. She must have been very lovely. Perhaps I haven’t thought about it as much as I should have done, but anyway she made me a black dress that I needed very badly. She was a seamstress in a way; she always made her friends dresses and her own.” While she was in service in one of the homes, one of the male servants kept making improper advances to Fanny. This worried and distressed her because he was older than she was. She was frightened and afraid to tell anyone. She decided that she had to get away from him so she looked for a job again and moved to another place. That must have been a scary experience for Fanny, but young as she was, she took the responsibility to protect herself. It shows us her strong and good spirit. Fanny was the last one in her family to work that way, and only for two years. When she was fourteen her mother wrote her a letter and told her that Bill, her oldest brother had turned over a new leaf and joined the church down in Wales. He was one of those who had just drifted until then. Will and Phoebe thought it was so wonderful that he even joined a church. Her father wanted to go to Wales too, where he could earn a little more money doing railway work, only on the mine railway instead of for a railway company. Fanny said, “They wanted to know if I wanted to go with them or stay where I was working. Well, I clamored to go with them! They took me and my two younger sisters and brother with them. The older sisters and brothers were married and had moved away, excepting George and Emily that were working away from home.” Fanny didn’t realize at the time that she would never live in England again, nor could she have known the wonderful things that would happen when she moved to Wales.
Pictures
Picture 3
Picture 2
Picture 5
No comments:
Post a Comment