Part 6 (1/2)

Deadly dull they would be to us to-day, I know. I saw something of the life, about the eastern counties, in several families that had brought it down unchanged to the twentieth century, and I asked myself, ”How could I stand this now?” I could not stand it, with all my love of peace and quiet, of which I have never been able to get enough. It would drive me melancholy mad. But in the days to which these self-contained and unawakened homes belong, it was not dull. Was it, reader? To the best of my recollection, we did not know what boredom meant.

The procession of the hours pa.s.sed before my eyes when I looked at my old home--one day so like another that I could not lose myself amongst them.

No morning tea, of course. I blush to add, no bath. I do not remember a bathroom in any house--not even that of my maternal grandfather, a physician of some distinction in his day, who dictated the laws of hygiene not only to us but to many county families. A portable bath was part of the furniture of every decent house--we had one so large that the frequent monthly nurse made her bed in it--but, like the warming-pan, it was not for common use; it was a medical appliance chiefly. Such is the case, I find, in many English houses still. We children were severely scrubbed and scoured in was.h.i.+ng-tubs every Sat.u.r.day night--”tub night”--and we did a great deal of sea bathing in summer; between whiles we ran constant risk of being sent from table to obliterate the line of demarcation between the washed and unwashed portions of face and neck. Dirty little pigs! We used to dress first, and then seek the sparing sponge. This was after the nurse of infancy had been replaced by the nursery governess, who, to the best of my recollection, was no more particular herself.

There was some excuse for us in those bitter English winters. To go warm from the ”keeping-room” fire to the ice-cold linen sheets was bad enough--I recall the nightly struggle for courage to put feet down into them; to have to get out again into a temperature that froze the towels on the horse so that they would stand up by themselves like boards--that froze one's breath on the sheets so that I have scratched my face on the crystals as on pins--was a sharper ordeal. Small wonder that we hurried into our clothes, or that the stiff, blue, chilblained fingers shrank from wet on the top of cold. I remember a winter night when my ewer split in halves with a loud report, and the water within rolled out upon the floor like a lump of gla.s.s; there had been a fire in the room overnight too, a luxury dispensed with, as a rule, in the case of children who had pa.s.sed out of the nursery into rooms of their own. It was in the same winter that I inadvertently touched an iron railing with my bare hand, and skin and metal stuck together. This, however, was not at T----.

My doctor-grandfather did not pull-to the curtains round his and grandmother's bed. I know, because I used to sleep in their room when visiting them by myself, and gaze upon them from my cot in the corner as they slept--both in nightcaps, hers deeply frilled over the face, his cone-shaped, with the ta.s.selled point hanging over one ear. But it was the the rule to draw them--that is what they were there for--and my father and mother did so. The room itself was made airtight first. To have slept with a window open would have seemed to them the act of a deliberate suicide. Curtains having been drawn over bolted windows, six more (of flowered damask, very thick) were drawn round the canopied four-poster, turning it into a small tent; a pleated valance round the top obviated the danger of ventilation where the rings ran upon the rods. The occupants entered the enclosure by an aperture on either side, closed it carefully, sank into the yielding depths of the billowy feather-bed, and slept like tops. At any rate, I never heard that they did not. More than that, there are people who can sleep under almost the same conditions still. I had had an idea that feather-beds had been extinct for thirty years, at least, but last year I reposed on no less than four separate ones in four separate houses; yes, and slept well upon them all. I got so used to feather-beds at last that on my return home I had to send my hair mattress to be teased before I could reconcile myself to it again. Almost everywhere I went in England I used to go up to bed to find the windows of my room closed and locked under the drawn blinds--part of the housemaid's preparations for the night; whereas I am accustomed to sleep with three wide open, and to wish that roof and walls could be dispensed with. Although I adjusted myself so easily to the feather-bed, I drew the line at the shut-up room; the fresh night air was indispensable. But I would sometimes find the bedclothes damp in the morning, and the clothes I had taken off too clammy to put on again. I had forgotten that peculiarity of English nights.

My mother, when I knew her first, did her hair of a morning in two parts; the hinder half was brushed back, tied tightly, and disposed in braids around a high comb; the front drooped in beautiful golden ringlets on either side of her face. But when she was thirty or so she dressed like the sedate old lady that we took her then to be. She tucked her fair hair under a cap--a large cap, with streamers of ribbon hanging down from below the ears like untied bonnet-strings. There was a dummy head of pasteboard (which went by the name of Jane Winter), with a proper face to it, and a hollow neck with an opening within which to stow away materials, on which her caps were made. It may possibly have been because she was perennially convalescing from confinements that she wore caps as a habit at so early an age, but I think not; I believe them to have been the sign of departed youth. When you became a mother, though you might be still in your teens, a large cap was part of the ”sitting-up” costume. I remember standing at mother's side by open drawers, while Cousin E., ”expecting” for the first and last time, displayed the elaborate preparations made for her infant and herself. I did not know what they meant, but I see now the white cap of blond lace and gauze ribbon that she twirled about on her doubled fist. I saw her in it too on the happy day when I was first allowed to sit on a stool at her feet and nurse the baby. She looked beautiful in it, with her girlish face and ma.s.s of dark hair. On emerging from invalid retirement she left it off, so I suppose it was a sort of glorified subst.i.tute for the universal nightcap.

With regard to other clothing, all persons claiming to be gentlefolk--the division of cla.s.ses was strongly marked in those days--wore Irish linen s.h.i.+fts and s.h.i.+rts and silk stockings; no matter how poor nor how outwardly shabby they went, they must conform in those particulars or lose caste. My two grandmothers, both wealthier than we were, were sticklers for the finest material, and some of their silk stockings (white, like all stockings) and exquisite under-garments came down to their descendants to be darned and darned as long as they would hold together. When they were worn out--no cotton; a lady would live on bread and water sooner than come to that. Much of this linen nether-wear was made in the National Schools, where sewing was an important feature in the education of the poor. The ladies of the neighbourhood gave their material and instructions, and from time to time inspected the process of manufacture. Often have I accompanied a village patroness on this errand, stood shyly by while she studied the fine st.i.tching--one thread drawn and the tiny beading done on the crossing threads, two backward and two forward--and the tiny gathers ”stroked” to a regularity that no machine could better, the little craftswomen dropping their dutiful curtsies to her when she deigned to commend their work. I do not know who was paid for it when it was done.

Winter and summer these linen garments were, I believe, worn next the skin. I forget what the fas.h.i.+on of the early fifties decreed to be worn immediately over them, except stays that had busks of solid wood, and had to be laced down the back every time they were put on. But I remember watching, in that room up yonder, my mother tying her bustle round her waist. It was a stuffed roll like a sand-bag, reaching from hip to hip, designed to set her skirts out behind; and the skirts hanging under and over it were numerous and full. As for gowns--the deep point in front, the patterned flounces, bell sleeves combined with white muslin bishop sleeves, large lace collars fastened under a spreading ribbon bow or cameo brooch the size of a small plate, ”habit-s.h.i.+rts”

(for filling in the long and narrow V of an open-fronted bodice)--memory supplies but a jumble of these things. It does not matter. History has preserved the modes of the time, and I presume we kept up with them as well as country-folk could do.

In the nursery our clothes were more defined in style. Though snow lay on the ground, we went bare-armed and bare-necked--down to the latest baby, whose little sleeves would be tied up with ribbons at the shoulders. To put long sleeves to a child's frock was a thing unheard of; they were given to us with the first ”gown,” which, with its lengthened skirt and fastenings in front, signified the estate of womanhood. Sandalled shoes, very thin in the sole, were correct indoor wear. The other end of me was showered over with tubular ringlets hanging nearly to my waist. The painful process of preparing them--the relentless thoroughness with which our nurse (mother was gentler) rolled up a strand of hair a few inches, ”chucked” it tight upon its rag, rolled it a little more and chucked it again, and finally tied it close to the stretched scalp, with odd hairs dragging at their too tenacious roots, continuing the torture for half-an-hour or more--this was one of the sorrows of childhood in the fifties, and no small one either. Our nursery toilet was completed by the ”feeder” tied on before each meal and removed after. We went downstairs--when mother was ”about”--to the row of bread-and-milk basins that I, for one, hated the sight of, except in the season when a sprinkle of strawberries or raspberries and a little sugar were dropped into them; the youngest aunt being unaware of such a weak relaxation of rules. Discipline imposed that bread-and-milk upon us every day of our lives, no matter how we rebelled against it. We might be bribed to get it down by promises of a taste of the adults'

dishes afterwards--the fat gravy from the bacon was a valued perquisite; but there was no dispensing with the nauseous preliminary. I have not been able to eat bread-and-milk since.

Mother came downstairs with her key-basket. What she did with all those keys I do not know, but they were evidently precious. She carried them, with the plate-basket, to her room, nightly; a maid retrieved the latter when she took up father's shaving water, but the little brown basket of keys was never beyond reach of the mistress's hand. She set it down beside the tea-tray while she administered breakfast. And I had not been three days in England before I saw the exact duplicate of that little brown basket, with all the keys in it, go through exactly the same performance. How oddly it struck me. For in Australia we know not key-baskets--never have done so far as I know. If you were to lock sideboard or store-closet against your respectable maids in this country they would not stay with you. And I should not blame them.

I suppose mother's tea-caddy was locked--certainly tea was a terrible price those days. I often opened the lid of the quaint box, which had two lidded receptacles inside, one for black tea, one for green, and a special caddy spoon to ladle it out with. She made the tea herself from a blending of the two kinds, to which she added a dust of carbonate of soda, apparently to increase the look of strength. She drew the water from the hissing urn, kept at the boil by a red-hot metal core slipped into a cylinder in the middle of it. She and father, like many others, drank the decoction pure, without sugar or milk.

After breakfast he went to his farm work; she also--and she was the better farmer of the two, although he was bred to the trade and she was not. His soul was in the hunting-field and the lighter distractions of his life, and money slid through his pockets as water through a sieve; it was she, from first to last, who kept things together as best she could. She had had the sheltered and dainty girlhood of the well-born and well-to-do, who had such (to us, and especially to us who are British colonists) strange ideas of the privileges and immunities of their cla.s.s; needless to say she had never done ”work,” in the real sense of the word, for that was the portion of the ”common people.” But now she sent fowls and eggs to market; and b.u.t.ter of her own manufacture--b.u.t.ter in large quant.i.ties, as I remember, for I used to sit on a high chair in the dairy with her and watch her make it. She always made a special pat for me, with no salt in it; which is how I like b.u.t.ter to this day. I could see again, as I looked along the side of the old house, that cool dairy, with the shelf of crockery pans all round it and the big churn in the middle, on the red-flagged floor; I leaned again on the edge of the table where she worked under my studious eye, her white arms bare to above the elbow, the dim green light on her lily-fair face--light filtered through a wooden lattice and the shadows of an elderberry-tree, from the fruit of which was made yearly many a stone jarful of strong wine, for mulling with sugar and spices to warm us for bed o' winter nights and before going to an unheated church on winter Sunday mornings.

Besides elderberry wine mother made gooseberry wine, currant wine, ginger wine, cowslip wine--all manner of wines; the cellar was kept stocked with a large variety, costing next to nothing. She used them where the modern hostess uses tea in the entertainment of company.

Afternoon callers had cake and wine offered to them, and the careful wife of a wasteful husband did not squander the port and sherry. They were for the solemn dinners--to swim upon a s.h.i.+ning mahogany sea in the best decanters, set in baize-bottomed boats of pierced silver--and for Christmas and other festivals. There was always a ”best” of everything--gla.s.s, china, silver, napery--sacred to state occasions.

Every year also she brewed beer in the brew-house, barrels of it, for the supply of the field labourers (to whom it was given at eleven A.M.

to wash down their luncheon of bread and pork), as well as for household use. Her cordials, her jams and jellies, her pickles of all sorts, her mushroom ”ketchup,” her raspberry vinegar and cherry brandy, her bottles of capers (the seeds of nasturtiums), her jars of garnered honey, her ropes of onions, her carefully cured hams and bacons, hanging thickly from the beams of the timbered kitchen ceiling--punctually were all these things stocked in their season, excellently prepared, by her own hands, when illness did not compel her to use a deputy. She and the other village ladies were rival cooks. Each had her special family recipes, and they took pride in comparing them.

Baking day occurred twice a week. Then was the great oven in the wall filled with blazing f.a.ggots, and the kitchen tables with the dough of bread and pastry and the batter of cakes; anon the smouldering ashes were raked out, and the long-handled flat shovel fed loaves and meat pies and sweet confectionery into the warm-breathing cavern; presently the house was odorous with appetising scents, and the pantry was stocked for the time being. Amongst the delicacies would be a little cake of my own making. I would spend the morning over that bit of material, brought to the colour of a slate pencil, while mother manipulated the rest, going and coming, flushed and busy, but loving to keep me by her, to prattle to her while she worked. It seems to me that I must have been her constant companion before the governesses came.

The joint for dinner was not baked--never. It was hung by a ”jack” over a dripping-pan before the square red fire, which roasted it crisp and brown as the machine slowly turned it round and round. Sometimes the machine went wrong (it wound up like a clock), and sometimes a coal would fall into the pan and make the gravy gritty, but, on the whole, I fancy that way of cooking meat has not been much improved upon. The outside fat seemed to take on layers of richness with every spoonful of fire-cleared dripping poured over it. The gravy that was the residue of this had a surpa.s.sing quality, particularly when upheaved upon the bosom of a puffy-edged Yorks.h.i.+re pudding, or when mingled with the cream that hares were basted with. Unsoddened and undiluted by the steam of the ovens, the whole goodness was preserved to flesh and juice. Unless it is that distance lends enchantment to this roast of old.

The Yorks.h.i.+re pudding or the roast gravy with some other plain pudding--boiled batter or Norfolk dumplings--made the first course of the midday dinner (as it does still in some conservative families), and the midday dinner was moved on to three o'clock for company and on state occasions. The meat and vegetables made the second course; after these the sweets and cheese (home-made), as now, with dessert only on Sundays and holidays. A jug of brown ale, drawn from a barrel perennially on tap, would grace the table, which had no decoration of flowers, but relied for distinction upon the quality of its napery and silver. We dined with our parents mostly, and were not oppressively treated in respect of good things, unless the youngest aunt was present.

After dinner father took his arm-chair and his long-stemmed churchwarden, mother her indefatigable needle. Or perhaps she and I would walk out together to call upon our neighbours--those who received us in the keeping-room (aptly named), where we could enjoy the informal intercourse that was in character with the place, or those who invited us to the parlour, the primness, comfortlessness, reserve and artificiality of which were reflected in our demeanour, as in that of the lady of the house. When Mrs H. was summoned without notice to interview a caller here, she kept that caller waiting while she changed her gown, put on her best cap, got out her best decanters and silver cake-basket; her daughter similarly revised her costume before she allowed herself to be seen, although they always ”dressed” for midday dinner and the afternoon, after their kitchen and farm work of the morning. But when we appeared unexpectedly, Mrs H.'s up-thrown hands and H.M.'s ”Lawk-a-daisy-me!” would express not consternation but ready welcome; and in that dear old keeping-room, with its beamed ceiling almost on our heads, we were friends and not company, and could open hearts and mouths as freely as we liked. That is, the grown-ups could--not I. ”Little girls must be seen and not heard,” was the admonition addressed to me when I attempted to join in the conversation.

My part was to listen, which I did so well that I could almost fill a book with the interesting family secrets and village scandals unconsciously confided to my retentive child's memory.

There was a lady spoken of who went to bed when her baby was dying, and who, on rising in the morning, showed disappointment that it was not dead, and resentment towards the Good Samaritan (H.M. herself) who had sat up with it all night, and whose skill had pulled it through. There was another lady who, having come into a fortune of thousands, had wept because a hundred or two belonging to it had been left to someone else, the reason of those tears being that the odd money would have enabled the weeper to refurnish her house without breaking into the rounded bulk of the big legacy. There was yet another, a devoted whist-player, who had been caught by some extraordinarily smart person in the practice of an ingenious swindle. She would say to her husband, clearly her partner in guilt as in the game, although somehow he escaped censure: ”Dear, it is your turn,” or: ”How warm the room is!” or: ”Come, go on,” or ”See what the time is ”--_i.e._ drop some seeming innocent remark beginning with a certain letter, according as she wanted him to lead diamonds, hearts, clubs or spades. This was evidently regarded as a most horrifying tale, and I could not see why--for a long time. Nor was it easy to fathom the significance of that one about the governess and tutor, who were expelled together from a great house in the neighbourhood, because they had been discovered love-making when they should have been attending to their duties. The warning about ”little pitchers”--dropped, it was fondly supposed, unnoticed by me--would now and then spoil the denouement of a story; but there were dozens and dozens that came to me complete, to be understood in later years, if not at the time. On our way home from these casual symposia I would question mother upon points that puzzled me. Often she would say: ”Never mind,” or: ”You would not understand”; but more often she gave me the information I wanted. She excused herself for this unfas.h.i.+onable weakness in a mother of the period by explaining (the plea for all indulgence) that I was ”different from other children.”

Five-o'clock tea was not afternoon tea. It was the family evening meal.

Ham, brawn (we called it pork-cheese), or some fancy meat, cold, and laid out in slices on a plate, was there for sandwiching between bread and b.u.t.ter similarly prepared; or the savoury might be shrimps or crab, or radishes or cress; jams of great variety, and particularly cakes, filled the rest of the table s.p.a.ce that was not occupied by the tea-tray, crowned with its hissing urn. And for this meal no white cloth was used; nor do I remember such a thing as a finger-napkin at any meal.

It seemed to be the adjunct of the finger-gla.s.s, which we did not aspire to.

Tea was made as at breakfast, but not for us; we had ours in the nursery, of bread-and-treacle or bread-and-dripping, and our mugs held milk and water--except only on such great occasions as Christmas days and birthdays, when we were allowed what we called ”gunpowder tea,”