10 BECOMING INVISIBLE
THE DAYS WERE BUSY ones for Hannah, as the Hawleys had been away in Paris for a long time and were anxious to see their old friends in Boston. There were many dinner parties and teas, and when the Hawleys were not entertaining, they were attending parties in other people’s homes, or going to the symphony, or to events at their clubs and the various museums and societies that they belonged to. There was much work for the staff. The poor laundress was kept so busy that a helper had to be hired to deal with all the ironing, bleaching, and starching. Hannah struck a truce of sorts with Jade, who more or less ignored her when she came up with the pan of milk. Lila never spoke to her when they encountered each other. The family, except for little Ettie, tended to peer right through Hannah when she came into the morning room to tend the fire. Hannah realized that she was becoming just what Mrs. Claremont’s book equated with success in terms of domestic service—invisible to her employers. “It is only the surly, clumsy, sloppy, and dishonest servant who attracts attention,” Mrs. Claremont had written. “The perfect servant becomes invisible to the masters of the house.”
The only threat to Hannah’s invisibility was Henrietta. Clarice, the middle Hawley daughter, was both beautiful and dreamy and could often be found with her nose stuck in a book. But it was nine-year-old Ettie who actually spoke to Hannah when she chanced upon her in one of the downstairs rooms.
One morning, as Hannah was laying kindling for a fire in the music room, Ettie came in with a small bouquet of flowers.
“Hi, Hannah, Mama said to put these in water right away and then set them on the little table.”
“Is there to be a party in here?”
“Sort of,” Ettie replied earnestly. She was a child who thought carefully about every word she said. Her hair was a dark chestnut brown. Her solemn gray eyes were set off by thick lashes. She had a little dimple that flashed playfully even when she said the most serious things. And despite Mrs. Claremont’s several admonishments against engaging in nonessential conversations, Hannah often found herself talking with Ettie.
“Now, what do you mean by ‘sort of,’ Ettie?”
“I think there’s supposed to be some musical performance.”
“Does anyone ever play the harp, Ettie?”
“Not really that much anymore. There used to be a lady in Maine who played it, but I think she died. We have an even nicer harp in Maine. But I think Aunt Alice is coming tonight and she sometimes plays the harp.”
“I’ve never heard one,” Hannah said.
“Never heard harp music?” Ettie opened her eyes in wide astonishment.
“No, never.”
“It’s lovely music, the music of angels they say. Although I think angels are sort of boring.”
Hannah laughed. “Is it to be a big party tonight?”
“I’m not sure. And I am considered too young to go. But I know Mr. Wheeler’s coming. So that means Lila is going to spend forever in the bathtub and Clarice shares that tub with her and will be really mad as it is her first grown-up party in Boston. But you know, Lila, she has a terrible crush on Mr. Wheeler, and oh, I nearly forgot! He starts painting us tomorrow and Mama said to be sure my pinafore dress is pressed. Lila wants to wear something that Mama says is much too daring for a girl her age.” A mischievous gleam came into the gray eyes. “You know what I mean, Hannah, very naked-looking. I think she wants to look almost naked for Mr. Wheeler!” She giggled.
“Oh, hush now, Ettie. That’s not a proper thing to say.”
“Maybe I’m not a very proper girl,” Ettie said. She smiled and the dimple flashed.
“I’m sure you’re very proper, Ettie.”
“No,” she said, suddenly serious. “I’m just nine. I think you can’t really judge if a person is proper or not until they get a little older.” Her forehead now creased and she looked at Hannah intently. “I mean it’s like when children do naughty things, that is just what it is—naughty, misbehaving. But you have to be older to be judged improper or proper. It’s as if there is this whole set of rules for older people, grown-up people, that are, in a way, harder to understand and if you break them, it’s not that you are simply bad, but you are not proper.”
Hannah stood up from the fireplace and put her hands on her hips. “Ettie, for a little girl, proper or improper, you do a lot of thinking, very complicated thinking.”
“I like thinking,” Ettie replied gravely.
And I do, too, thought Hannah. Proper for Hannah in this world of the Hawleys meant complete invisibility, clean uniforms, knowing how to pare a radish to Mrs. Bletchley’s specifications—tulip-shaped in spring, roses in summer, winter, and fall.
Suddenly Ettie’s face brightened and all the solemnity fled from her clear gray eyes. “Hannah!”
“Yes?”
“I’ve had a minor brainstorm!” She tapped her temple lightly with her finger.
“About manners and what is proper?”
“Oh, no, no. Nothing so boring. It’s my braids.”
“Your braids?”
“Yes, my braids.” She touched her two fat, glossy braids. “Miss Ardmore braids my hair every morning. She hates doing it and yanks so hard. She’s always angry, or I should say seems angry in case you haven’t noticed.” Hannah had noticed that Miss Ardmore, if not outright angry, did seem slightly vexed all the time. But it was not really pronounced at all and Hannah was yet again surprised by young Ettie for detecting such subtleties of behavior. “It’s as if these braids of mine were made as the perfect objects for her anger—I mean a vent for it. Hannah, I am going to ask Mother if you can braid my hair from now on! Brilliant, isn’t it?”
Ettie did not wait for an answer. She just ran from the room with her brilliant idea.
When Hannah went downstairs, Mr. Marston was discussing with Mrs. Bletchley that evening’s dinner menu. He then turned to Miss Horton and spoke about the china that was to be used. “And not the Georgian silver. Mrs. H feels it’s too heavy and ornate for this time of year, and the same for tomorrow night’s dinner party even though it will be slightly more formal—and—ah, Hannah, for tomorrow night Mrs. Hawley wants yellow tulips, French style. The florist on Pinckney has reserved masses of them. I can’t spare Willy to help you get them. So tomorrow it will take you two trips, I fear. Too bad they didn’t come in today with the roses that she ordered for this evening.”
“I don’t mind, Mr. Marston. I’ll be quick. Will I be helping with the table setting?” There was an awkward silence. Had she said something wrong? Hannah wondered.
“Oh, no, no, my dear!” Mr. Marston chuckled softly. “You’re not quite ready for that. Maybe someday when you’ve advanced, but setting the table is a very precise operation.” From a deep inside pocket of his waistcoat he drew out a ruler. “We measure everything, don’t we, Florrie?” he said, nodding toward her and Daze.
“Oh, yes, sir,” Florrie replied. “Wineglass, two inches from water glass. Napkins one half inch from fork.”
“Excellent, Florrie!” He smiled quickly. “I think everything is going quite well. I must commend you all. The transition of the Hawleys’ return from Paris has gone quite smoothly and I think we are all settling in. It is a well-regulated household, as it should be and will continue to be even when we go to Maine.”
“And when will that be, Mr. Marston?” Florrie asked.
“I have no precise dates yet. But I would imagine that a small contingent of us shall be going up in early June to prepare Gladrock, as usual.”
Gladrock was the name of the Hawleys’ summerhouse in Bar Harbor, Maine. Hannah had seen a picture. It was an immense, sprawling shingle house. The first thing she had noticed was that it was close to the sea. The next thing that caught her attention was that there were so many chimneys poking up she could not imagine how many fires she would be laying. But no matter; it was a small price to pay for living within sight of the sea.
Hannah was in the morning room, where Mr. and Mrs. Hawley often had a second cup of co
ffee after their breakfast to discuss the day’s activities. She was in her upstairs uniform, for she had been asked to go and polish the wall sconces. She was at the far end of the room and perhaps they had not even noticed her when they came in. But she heard a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob.
“Horace, what will we do? She’s been so good and now she insists on the cat.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s that bad, Edwina, I mean it’s better than her in that dress she wanted to wear. It’s a compromise. Compromises can be good.”
“But a cat in a Stannish Whitman Wheeler painting. I don’t know, it just seems wrong.”
“Does he mind?”
“I’m not sure. He didn’t say no. I think he realizes that she’s delicate.”
“Who knows, he might let her pose with it and then paint it out in the end if he doesn’t feel it’s right,” Mr. Hawley said. “Remember how he changed the color of Bettina Lattimore’s dress and painted out the bowl of orchids, prize orchids from her own hothouse? He has a mind of his own. But I think he generally gives people what they want. He doesn’t want her looking grouchy in the painting.”
“Certainly not. But do you really think he’ll be that flexible? He did want us to move the vases into the music room.”
“I know, and I put my foot down on that idea. But I’m not in the painting. So I won’t look grouchy, and I can be a grouch, as you well know, my dear! I want the girls posed in the drawing room. This painting has to look like Boston. Not a Paris salon. This is Boston. We are Bostonians, despite spending so much time abroad.”
“Well, what will a cat in the painting make us look like?”
“The cat is technically a Bostonian.”
With this Edwina Hawley burst into fits of laughter. “Oh, Horace, darling, you are a dear, funny man.” It was at this point that Hannah made her escape through a rear door. If they had noticed she was in the room, they said nothing or didn’t care. She had become invisible. She had two conflicting emotions. On the one hand it was a great boon not to be noticed. But she was like a piece of their furniture. There but inanimate, unfeeling. I am nothing! she thought. Absolutely nothing! Was I not made for something more? Hannah felt almost as bereft as she had on the train heading for Salina, Kansas.
When Hannah came back into the kitchen to change her apron for the downstairs chores, she saw Mrs. Bletchley going over a list with Mr. Marston pertaining to the evening’s entertainment. Mrs. Bletchley was seldom without a list—either a grocery list, or a menu, or a list of tasks that must be completed for a meal preparation, or a schedule. She squinted at the paper and then slid her arm back and forth as if she were playing a trombone. “Susie, where are my specs?” A large part of Susie’s job was keeping track of Mrs. Bletchley’s specs, which she refused to wear on a chain around her neck for she felt it interfered when she was cooking.
“Here they are, Mrs. Bletchley.”
“You’re a dear, Susie,” Mrs. Bletchley said, putting on the spectacles but still squinting at the list.
“All righty, now, Hannah, tonight you’ll have to serve dinner in the nursery for Miss Ardmore and Ettie. I’m trying to have something nice for them because you know how Ettie gets her little nose so out of joint when she misses a big people’s party.”
“Oh, forgive me for interrupting, Mrs. Bletchley,” Mr. Marston said. “But I forgot to tell Hannah that there is a slight change in duties. Mrs. Hawley has requested that you come up each morning after you have finished your downstairs duties to braid Ettie’s hair. I believe it was Ettie’s request, actually.” From the corner of her eye Hannah saw Mr. Marston raise an eyebrow and give a slight nod toward Mrs. Bletchley, which seemed to suggest a hint of amusement mixed with approval. He then added, “What Miss Ettie wants she usually gets.”
But Hannah wondered, would Mr. Marston approve if he knew that Ettie wanted to have “little chats” while she braided her hair? Would such chats be considered unnecessary conversation and confuse the borders that governed the worlds of the upstairs and the downstairs?
11 PROPER BOSTON
THE DAY SEEMED ENDLESS to Hannah. It was just six thirty in the evening and she was far from finished as she walked up the back stairs. She had just put the “nursery dinner,” as it was called, on the dumbwaiter. As she opened the dumbwaiter door on the third floor, she could hear voices coming from the various rooms.
“Daze,” Mrs. Hawley was saying. “Tell Lila that she has to get out of that tub now or there won’t be time for Clarice to bathe.”
Florrie rounded the corner, nearly obscured behind a pile of turquoise silk ruffles. “What’s that?” Hannah asked.
“Miss Lila’s dress. A Charles Worth original. Her first.”
“Who’s Charles Worth?”
“Just the most famous house of fashion in Paris,” Florrie said.
Daze now came dashing back from where she had tried to pry Lila from the tub. “This is proving impossible. That girl!” she muttered.
Then Clarice came stomping out of her bedroom in her dressing gown and headed for her mother’s dressing room. “Mother!” she said in a tone that was seldom heard from Clarice, who was normally quite complacent. “She says that she’ll get out of the tub if you let her wear the emeralds.”
“That’s simply ridiculous. Emeralds are too old for a girl her age. She’ll look like an old lady.”
“I’ll take care of this, madam,” Roseanne said as she charged out of the dressing room. She emanated an air of authority that tolerated no nonsense, especially when it concerned her mistress, to whom she was very devoted. Hannah and Daze stood watching her in awe as she sailed down the hallway. With her wide hips swaying and her skirts swishing, she could have been a square-rigger running downwind with a robust breeze on her stern. Within one minute, Lila was out of the tub and Clarice was in it.
Roseanne came back down the hall, passing Hannah, who had come back with the second tray for the nursery. She gave Hannah a hot glance. “Emeralds, my arse!” Then she turned into Mrs. Hawley’s room and in the refined voice of a ladies’ maid said, “All in order now, Mrs. Hawley. Never you mind. She’ll look lovely in that Worth gown, and Clarice’s in the tub.”
“Ettie! What are you doing?” Hannah whispered as she glimpsed the little girl peeking around the corner.
Her gray eyes sparkled. “Did you hear Roseanne?”
“Yes,” Hannah answered.
“I just love it when Roseanne gets after Lila.”
Hannah went into the nursery with the second tray of the nursery dinner.
Although the room had long since ceased to be a real nursery, it still had a few remnants from its previous life. There was, of course, the dollhouse, along with several of Ettie’s stuffed animals, which she played with more than the dollhouse. A rocking horse and a shelf full of painting and drawing materials sat in one corner. “I think Mrs. Bletchley has a special treat for your dessert,” Hannah said as she arranged the food on the table.
“Oh, how kind of her,” Miss Ardmore said. “She always tries to make something special for you, doesn’t she, when there is a grown-up party?”
“What would be special,” Ettie said, “is if Mummy would let me come to the party.”
“When you’re older, dear,” Miss Ardmore replied.
“Hannah must be my spy,” said Ettie.
“Spy? Whatever are you talking about, Ettie?” Hannah asked.
“Spy…spying! I want to know if Lila makes eyes at Mr. Wheeler.”
“Ettie!” Miss Ardmore exclaimed. “That’s very vulgar.”
“Vulgar for me to say or Lila to do?”
Hannah nearly dropped the tray. This child!
Miss Ardmore sputtered, “Ettie, I don’t want you talking like that.”
“Fine,” Ettie said, and slid her eyes toward Hannah with a look that showed clearly what she expected from Hannah.
“Ettie,” Hannah said. “You know I don’t even serve in the dining room. I’m just in the kitchen.
I won’t see anything. And Miss Ardmore is right. Spying isn’t nice.”
Miss Ardmore nodded primly at Hannah as if to thank her. Of course she wouldn’t actually thank her. Miss Ardmore rarely spoke to those servants who were not official upstairs maids. She clung fiercely to her unique status in this household; as a governess, she did not belong to the serving class. She indeed was quite thankful when Mrs. Hawley had relieved her of the onerous task of braiding Ettie’s hair. She viewed it as a promotion of sorts but at the same time was slightly offended that she was being replaced by a scullery maid. She had offered to supervise Hannah for the first few mornings but Mrs. Hawley thought that was entirely unnecessary.
Miss Ardmore did not wield the power of a butler like Mr. Marston, nor did she possess the intimate knowledge of her mistress that Roseanne guarded like a miser. Though her wages were not as high as Miss Horton’s or Mr. Marston’s, she set herself above them. When she placed the advertisement in the Boston Herald offering her services, she wrote, “Competent to teach reading, writing. Proficient in French, piano, singing, and drawing. Able to assist the lady in domestic affairs on occasion. Willing to do anything not menial.” For Miss Ardmore, worse than any plague or consignment to eternal damnation was her dread of being asked to perform menial tasks. She, like so many governesses, was plain to the point of drabness, and often lonely. She had no prospects—either romantic or economic—beyond winning a position in a respectable upper-class household.
“Well,” Ettie said, ignoring Miss Ardmore but continuing her conversation with Hannah. “Lila can make eyes all she wants with Mr. Wheeler. But Clarice is much prettier.”
Miss Ardmore stood up. “Henrietta Hawley, I insist that…”
Ettie turned to her and said, “I was just going to say that Clarice is so pretty, but still too young. She’s just thirteen and he might be nineteen or even twenty. But she is so pretty.”
“What about yourself, Ettie?” Hannah asked as she set down a plate of sliced bread and butter. “When you grow up? You’re just as pretty.” Miss Ardmore gave her a sharp look. Hannah knew that she had crossed a boundary. This was definitely a nonessential conversation. Miss Ardmore must have read Miss Claremont’s book as well.
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