Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  Back in her own kitchen, where she was used at that time of afternoon to begin supervising preparations for supper, Wilson found herself wondering about the new people. A Mr and Miss Hargreave, brother and sister, come to her through Miss Blagden, as so many of her guests did. She could tell from their accent they were from the north-east of England and when a little time had gone by and it would not feel too familiar she had promised herself the pleasure of discussing that part of the country with them. They were bound to know Newcastle and possibly the Graham-Clarkes and the northern branch of the Barrett family, and perhaps even Fenham where she had been born. But even without this connection, they intrigued her. It was the wrong time of year for such visitors and they did not have the air of being here for pleasure. She wished she had enquired of Miss Blagden who these Hargreaves were but now, with Miss Blagden departed with the Brownings, it was too late. There was something familiar about the woman but she could not imagine what. She had never known anyone called Hargreave, surely, neither in England nor during her years in Italy. The interest this couple kindled in her made her look to the next few days with less loathing – she would not quite be marking time but have this small voyage of discovery to make, a voyage having nothing to do, she thought, with the Brownings.

  But in the event, it had. By the following week she had realised why she had appeared to know Miss Hargreave. It was nothing to do with the north-east: Miss Hargreave and her brother, though not so regularly, had attended the Regent Street Chapel where she had gone all those Sundays while she lived in Wimpole Street. They had never of course spoken, nor sat next to each other, but many a time, according to Miss Hargreave, they had passed each other in the aisle. It was she who revealed this without any questioning from Wilson, who would never have been so impertinent. And she was shy about it. ‘I do believe, Signora Romagnoli,’ she ventured one morning at breakfast, ‘that we are not entirely strangers to each other.’

  ‘Why, madam, I had exactly the same thought myself,’ said Wilson, quite delighted to be so drawn into a conversation, ‘and I thought that since there were indications you and your brother were from the north-east of England, where I am from, that I must somehow have seen you, perhaps visiting a house where I was in service?’

  ‘Ah no,’ Miss Hargreave said, smiling. ‘Not in the north-east, though you are right, we come from Scarborough. No, it was in London, in the Regent Street Chapel.’

  Wilson’s astonishment was genuine. ‘And you noted me there, madam?’ she asked. ‘How can that be? I was a shy servant girl and quite unnoticeable, I am sure, even more than I am today.’

  ‘But I knew whose maid you were,’ Miss Hargreave said, blushing deeply. ‘Miss Elizabeth Barrett’s.’ She spoke the name reverently and cast down her eyes. ‘I am devoted to her poetry,’ she whispered, ‘and to everything to do with her.’

  Wilson contemplated the woman before her with a mixture of exasperation – it was annoying to have such a prosaic solution to the mystery – and pity. She had seen this kind of admiration before and many was the time her mistress had made fun of the likes of Miss Hargreave. Mostly such ladies had written to her, letters Wilson remembered of quite embarrassing flattery, but occasionally they had turned up at the house, seeming to find no shame in begging to pay their respects to Miss Barrett. Always, they had been turned away and often she had had to do the turning. Perhaps she had even seen this Miss Hargreave off but, if so, she could not recall the occasion. She would not bother asking how it had been known she was Miss Barrett’s maid – these adoring disciples had their ways and means and she knew it was quite likely she had been watched pushing her mistress in the park and then trailed from the house to the chapel in the vain hope that by being near her they would be nearer to their heroine.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was never more surprised in my life, but I admit you were by no means the only one who doted on Mrs Browning.’

  ‘And now – now she has been taken!’ Miss Hargreave declared with a passion that startled Wilson. She did not approve of such a display, it was quite inappropriate, and frowned when she saw tears in her lodger’s eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, stiffly, ‘Mrs Browning is dead.’

  At the word ‘dead’, Miss Hargreave covered her mouth with her handkerchief to stifle her sobs. Wilson was about to say something, something she was afraid would come out sharp and unsympathetic, when Mr Hargreave, who had breakfasted earlier and gone for a walk, came into the room. Seeing his sister in tears he said, ‘Now, come, Victoria, you promised there would be no weeping, you promised most faithfully. If you are to get yourself in a state of hysterics we will pack and go immediately.’

  ‘I am sorry, Charles, only it was Signora Romagnoli saying she was – saying a word I cannot abide.’

  Mr Hargreave raised his eyebrows enquiringly and Wilson said, not at all apologetically, ‘I merely confirmed Mrs Browning was dead, sir, which everyone has known for a month.’

  There was another anguished cry at the same word, which Wilson had used quite deliberately, and Mr Hargreave said angrily, ‘Victoria! You have been warned – we shall pack our bags and go if this continues and there will be no visit to the Casa Guidi nor to the cemetery.’

  So that was their game. Wilson supposed she should have guessed it would begin soon, that ladies such as Miss Hargreave would come on a pilgrimage to Florence and visit the grave of their heroine to pay their last respects, but she had been unprepared. What they got out of it she could not imagine, but when Miss Hargreave came back from her visit to the Casa Guidi, which was not yet occupied after Mr Browning had vacated it and where an obliging porter, palm crossed with silver no doubt, had allowed her in, she appeared transfigured.

  ‘Oh, to have stood in the room where she wrote Aurora Leigh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Signora Romagnoli, you cannot guess at the ecstasy!’

  ‘No, I cannot,’ said Wilson drily.

  ‘And to be in the room where she gave birth to her son – it was heaven, it was bliss!’

  ‘It was a long day, a long night,’ Wilson said, her mind of its own accord conjuring up images from that time.

  ‘You were so blessed,’ Miss Hargreave said, ‘to be with her, to be at her side, to touch her …’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Wilson said, ‘I touched her. I washed and dressed her and soothed her brow many a time. She always said none had my touch.’

  ‘So privileged!’ Miss Hargreave gushed.

  ‘Privileged?’

  ‘To have been her maid – I would have died for the honour.’

  All that day Wilson went about her work bemused by Miss Hargreave’s attitude. It ought, she felt, to mean something but quite what she had not decided. There she had been, coming to the conclusion that the best part of her life had been wasted serving the interests of a woman who had never really appreciated her finer points, a woman who had pulled back from true friendship with her maid, while being proud to think she offered it, and now along came this rather silly but undoubtedly sincere woman to tell her that on the contrary she had been privileged and honoured above all others. Which was the truth? And was it of any consequence? It was only when Miss Hargreave came back from the Protestant cemetery that she began to think she knew the answer. The young woman was in tears, naturally, but her brother, permanently discomfited by his sister’s sentimentality, was kinder than usual since now he really could pack his bags and instruct his sister to do the same – his job was over and tomorrow they would return to Scarborough. Wilson made them tea and he left to begin organising their departure.

  ‘There was only a mound,’ Miss Hargreave whispered, ‘such a little mound, and nothing other to mark the spot.’

  ‘There will be a fine memorial in time,’ Wilson assured her. ‘Mr Browning took a deal of trouble over it and the artist is commissioned.’

  ‘Not even a flower laid there,’ Miss Hargreave said, ‘but I placed some white roses at her side.’

  ‘They will shrivel in a few hours in this heat,’ Wilso
n said, ‘and that is why there were none there.’

  Miss Hargreave seemed a mite offended and said, ‘I do not care if my roses do not survive. They are there for the moment and were to express my sorrow and my admiration.’ She paused, dried her eyes, took a sip of tea and went on, ‘You appear untouched by this tragedy, Signora Romagnoli. I wonder at your calmness. Had I been her maid I would have been quite distraught for months after, I am sure, and wishing to throw myself into that grave with her I loved.’

  ‘Well then, madam, you would not, like me, have had two children to think of, perhaps, and as to throwing myself into my mistress’s grave the very idea would be repugnant to her, I assure you. She knew what grief was, true grief, and she knew the strength of life and went with it as long as she could, as I will. And now, madam, I think your brother is in haste to be gone and if you like I will help you make ready.’

  Miss Hargreave looked stricken and seized Wilson’s hand. ‘Oh forgive me,’ she said, ‘I did not think, I spoke stupidly, and I see I have angered and hurt you. Can we not be friends after all?’

  Wilson watched the Hargreaves go, an hour or two later, with a curious sensation of there being a bond between her and that emotional woman. She felt she would see her again though they had nothing in common except Mrs Browning. Miss Hargreave had been most insistent she should take her address in Scarborough and had said that should she ever return to the North-East she must be sure to look her up. When Wilson, for the form of the thing, had demurred and pointed out the impossibility in England of such socialising between their different classes, Miss Hargreave had impressed her with the vehemence of her reissued invitation. It was all a little odd but the genuineness of feeling was there. She had enquired most kindly of Wilson’s personal circumstances and hearing the tale of Oreste, which had not been told now for some time to a new person, she had been interested and concerned. She had reason to go to East Retford the following month and would, she vowed, call on Ellen and then write to Wilson. The thought of such a letter filled her with so much hope and joy that she all but kissed Miss Hargreave on both cheeks.

  That was all that anyone needed in life, Mrs Browning had often said, a little hope, a little joy. For too long, Wilson reflected as she put Pilade to bed, I have looked backwards, fearing to look forwards, but it can and must be done. Her life was far from over. She would have Oreste brought out and would endeavour to make for herself a new world in which the centre was not Mrs Browning. Never again would she tie her life to another person in quite that way but would seek to stand on her own more truly than had ever been possible. And perhaps, after all, it was her mistress’s teaching, in ways too subtle and complex for her to analyse, that had in the end given her the insight to see both what she had once made of herself and what she must now seek to make of herself. Her days as a lady’s maid, which even when they were actually over she had refused to accept as finished, had died with her lady. Now, she could be herself and not poison what was left of her life with regrets and resentments. The yoke was lifted, and what she had been required to do and be, under it, should have no relevance to her future. She was a lady’s maid no longer.

  Afterword

  FACT AND FICTION have been threaded so closely in this novel that it might help to know exactly how much of it is based on truth. Elizabeth Wilson was a real person, born in 1820 in or near Newcastle upon Tyne and she did indeed travel to London in April 1844 to become Elizabeth Barrett’s maid. She had a mother and sisters who are known to have lived in or near Sheffield and one of those sisters, Ellen, did live in Carol Gate, East Retford, after Wilson went to live in Italy. It is true that Wilson went to Ellen’s for the birth of her first son, Oreste, and that when she rejoined her husband and the Brownings a year later she left her child with Ellen. The details about Pilade’s birth and Wilson’s new occupation as boarding-house keeper in Florence are true, as is her relationship with Walter Savage Landor. All the information comes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s letters. There are no surviving letters from, or to, Wilson, although they are known to have been written. Wilson’s two youngest sisters, May and Fanny, are inventions, although she is known to have had other sisters. The circumstances of Ellen’s marriage are also imaginary.

  Wilson’s life after 1861 changed dramatically again, just as it had done in 1846. Oreste finally joined her in Florence in the summer of 1862, but in 1864, after Landor died, Wilson, most surprisingly, returned to England, to Scarborough, where she set up a lodging house. Her husband Ferdinando does not seem to have joined her and I have been unable to establish whether she took her two sons with her. In any case, she was soon back in Italy, destitute, after the Scarborough venture ended in disaster. Robert Browning, for old times’ sake, made her an allowance of £10 a year, though making it clear that he felt no obligation to do so.

  It was Pen Browning who became her saviour. In 1887, when he was 38, Pen had married an American heiress. They bought the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice which Pen restored and furnished. This became the home not only of Wilson but of her husband Ferdinando, who had turned up in Venice working as a cook for an American family. Ferdinando died in 1893 but Wilson survived to move with Pen to Asolo after his wife left him. Here the two of them lived, devoted to each other until Wilson’s death in 1902 (Pen died ten years later). Wilson was remembered as recently as the 1950s by people in Asolo who had seen her wandering over the countryside, talking to herself. What she talked about – presumably all that had happened to her since 1861 – might some day be the subject matter for a sequel to this novel.

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  Copyright © Margaret Forster 1990

  Margaret Forster has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Chatto & Windus

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