by Sarah Burton
“I got him when your uncle fell ill,” explained Aunt Madge. “He kept him company when he was confined to his bed. And now he keeps me company.”
“What’s his name?” asked Evelyn.
“Your uncle named him Puss,” replied our aunt, raising her eyebrows.
Our uncle had indeed been a merry man and though we saw little of him as he worked long hours, he would sometimes play with us, which our own father never did, and let us ride on his back like a donkey, and also make us laugh by playing jokes and tricks, mostly on poor Aunt Madge, which he would then blame on us.
Uncle Harry was a spicer and they had this great house in Cheapside with his shop underneath – all the merchants’ houses in that district having shops below, and being often split into several apartments above. After my uncle’s death, my aunt had considered removing to the country (where she had a house and lands I had never seen, left to her by her first husband), and disposing of the whole Cheapside property, or letting it as divided dwellings. However, in the event she had only let the shop to a bookseller and kept the kitchen at the back on the ground floor and all the four floors above. She was too old to face the rigours of country life, she said (though I believe she was not above fifty years of age), London having spoiled and made her unfit for it. She also said the London house would always be worth a deal of money because of where it was situated, at the heart of the city’s trade and commerce, and she could sell it at any time and live comfortably elsewhere.
As it was a great house with ever so many rooms, Aunt Madge had given us each our own bedchamber but Evelyn saw my face, I think, and quickly said, “We should like to share if it is all the same to you, Aunt, and then you will have an extra room for visitors.” Then when we had seen the bedchambers, which were most comfortable, Aunt Madge took us down to the kitchen, which I had never been in before, where there was a stout red-faced woman making pastry, and two brown children, who were filling up a great cauldron with water.
The red-faced woman did not drop so much as a cursory bob to my aunt when we came in, which I thought mighty strange, and was introduced as Cook. The children were Sal, who was about eight years old, and her brother Joe who was a year or two older. Sal looked after the hearths and Joe fetched water, ran errands, carried messages and was a general dogsbody. I wondered how Aunt Madge came to have two little Indians in the house, but held my tongue as I had one question more pressing.
When we came out of the kitchen, I asked my aunt why Cook had not curtsied, or even nodded, as lame servants may, to her mistress. My aunt simply said, “Cook is a Quaker,” and seeing that this did not convey any meaning to me, added, “she believes we are all equal in the sight of God.”
I thought about this reasonable belief for a moment before asking my aunt if she minded. She said no, she didn’t mind, but you couldn’t have a servant like that upstairs as people of quality wouldn’t understand. Emboldened by my aunt’s answers I asked about the brown children and she said it was a long story she would tell us someday. I thought she started to sound tired and resolved to ask no more questions if I could help it. Later on we were to meet the footmen, who were to be addressed by their Christian names, Reg and Ted, as they were brothers, and Potter and Potter would have led to too much confusion, and the maids, Fanny, Sarah and Alice were also introduced to us. They were all very pleasant, but it seemed to me a great number of people to look after just one lady.
Aunt Madge showed us the rest of the house, as she had had some rooms done over after our uncle died. In the main room, where Aunt Madge and we girls were to spend many happy times together, a new picture hung over the fireplace, showing Aunt Madge seated at a table and her twin sons standing either side of her. She said that it was in fact a painting of herself and two Fredericks, as Roger had invariably missed the appointments to sit for the painter, which she seemed a little sad about. We had not seen the painting before as Aunt had commissioned it for her husband and had hung it in our uncle’s office.
“You will recall your uncle was a very busy man, and always in and out and missing meals. The painting was sort of a jest from me, to remind him of what his family looked like. Now I wish I’d had one done of him.”
Lastly, we came to the largest chamber in the house, immediately above the shop, which had been our uncle’s office, and which hitherto I had only glimpsed through the door, it being out of bounds. Here sacks and barrels of goods were stored, and two or three boys had assisted my uncle with inventories, bills of sale, calculations and so on, and used to run up and down the stairs continually between the office and the shop with messages and queries. I was looking forward to having a closer view of this room as Madge unlatched the great door and stood back to enjoy the effect on us. For it was entirely changed. This vast space was now lined entirely with books. We gasped.
“I did not know what to do with this room,” she said, “so I brought the library up from Frocester. We never had space for it in town before.” She could see at once that we approved of the transformation she had effected.
We had had few books at home, and reading, apart from the Bible, had never been encouraged. None of us had been to school. Mother had taught our elder sisters perhaps hoping it would in a manner filter down through the family, which it did tolerably. I could read and write with great facility from an early age, but my general knowledge was lamentable. I was also, as I think Evelyn was, still quite innocent of the ways of the world. Grace’s fate had formed a horrible lesson which seemed to teach that the less we knew the better.
This was like opening the gates of paradise.
“Here, my dears,” she announced, “is your university. Read widely and without prejudice. The whole world is within these walls. It is at your disposal in your leisure hours.”
Evelyn and I looked at each other with open mouths before giggling uncontrollably. We would spend many happy hours in this haven, earnestly bent on improving our minds and attempting to build on the shamefully small stock of our knowledge of this world. However, you should by no means picture two serious little scholars, for we derived much nearer pleasure from reading poetry, and read and re-read one we thought very rude, which was only two lines long and was called ‘Her Legs’. It ran:
Fain would I kiss my Julia’s dainty leg,
Which is as white and hairless as an egg.
We also delighted in horrifying each other with pictures from books of medicine, and making each other shriek with laughter by reading from plays and acting out the parts, especially the great manly parts, huffing at the gods and so on.
Grace’s fate had confirmed in us a healthy respect for the dangers of theatre-going but we did not believe (as our father had) that just reading plays was a vicious pastime. Father had more than once delivered sermons on this subject.
“Nothing is more disappointing than to come upon a young person, in the attitude of study, to discover they are reading…” here he would pause dramatically, “a play-book. For if a young man comes to be in love with plays, the next step will be to love playhouses, and if he does not take great care, the next advance might be perhaps to a bawdy house. For plays make a jest of adultery, a joke of fornication, in short, a mock of sin. Thereby the playhouse is the Whore’s Exchange; the Devil’s Church.”
Aunt Madge and her husbands had also collected a vast array of what my father would certainly have called seditious literature. Amongst these, those we liked the best dealt with women’s lot. Until we came to Aunt Madge’s library, we had no idea that there even were pamphlets and books about women, excepting those that likened us to goddesses and other nonsense or those that taught us housewifery. Here there were writings about things I had never thought to question, but only wondered at, like why a boy should be better than a girl; why a husband should have control of all his wife’s money and property; and a hundred other intriguing matters. It was as if someone had said “there is no God”. These books and pamphlets turned everything upside down and looked at it anew, without being
afraid or thinking it was sinful.
We would read and re-read phrases from these until we knew them by heart and could summon them like incantations at will. After receiving a letter from our sister Clarissa, full of her solemn admonishments to live cleanly and find husbands, we would intone Margaret Cavendish, who was our favourite. I can still remember some of this magic: “We are kept like birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses. We are shut out of all power and authority, by reason that we are never employed either in civil or martial affairs. Our counsels are despised and laughed at, the best of our actions are trodden down with scorn, by the overweening conceit men have of themselves and a thorough despisement of us.” I am not sure I understood it all, but it made me feel stronger and better.
This was all, of course, our secret. We did not venture these opinions at table or in company. We hugged these secret comforters close to ourselves. When I think of that library now I realise I have omitted a most important aspect of the pleasure of being in it, which was the smell, which I can summon even after all these years. The scent of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and all manner of other spices which used to be stored there still clung to the walls and floors, scenting even the books. It added a wholesome sweetness and pungency to our reading.
5
It was an odd sort of a life we led with Aunt Madge. When the Reverend Grimwade had written to her he had offered us as a sort of upper servants in return for our board. We were used to hard work and knew all the domestic arts, as our father had kept no servants but Annie Foster, the cook. The first day Aunt Madge would not let us work; it was a holiday, she said, and we explored the streets roundabout the house which were like rivers of activity and noise. I was most shocked by the fishwives who carried their wares in baskets on their heads with great expertise and let loose torrents of the most foul abuse to one another, including many words I had never heard before. Still, they did not seem to be really angry at each other but only, in a sort, to be prating in their own language. We walked all the way to the real river, and though Evelyn said I had seen it before I must have been little as I did not remember seeing such a marvel.
Londoners perhaps cannot imagine how the Thames seems to a stranger and take for granted this watery thoroughfare, busier, even, than the greater streets, and as full of hazard, with the great boats going up and down its length while the hundreds of smaller boats criss-cross from side to side as well. And the bridge, I think my favourite part in all of London, stretching across, packed tight with shops and houses. I used to dream of living in one of the houses, and wonder what it would be like to look out of the window and see the river flowing underneath you. And I wondered at how it had never been finished, until Evelyn laughed and told me it had been finished, but there had been a fire and the buildings at the end were lost. Still I did not understand how they had not built it up again, as I thought there must be great demand for such houses, and it was not as if there were other bridges. I earnestly wished to have a waterman take us across the river so I could walk back across the bridge, but Evelyn said another day, and besides we had no money, and perhaps I had better learn to swim before gadding in boats and such.
The next day after we had had our breakfast, Aunt Madge said: “Now I know you girls are anxious to be about your business,” and took us into a large upper room where she opened a cupboard containing a deal of plain linen. Then she opened a pretty box (though in truth everything in her house was pretty) which for a moment to my fevered brain appeared to be full of jewels, but it was coloured silks, and they were of every colour of the rainbow and every shade in between – there must have been six or seven greens alone.
“Embroidery!” I said, ravished by their richness and the thought of handling them.
“I need, let me see, twelve, say fourteen napkins.”
“What design?” asked Evelyn.
“Oh, you may choose,” said Aunt Madge.
“What colours?” asked Evelyn.
“You decide, my chick,” said Aunt Madge.
I had only ever used cheap wools and cotton threads before, and all we had been allowed to make were kneelers for the church or samplers with improving mottoes. It fell to our father to choose these and he never chose anything beautiful or uplifting, but always admonishments, such as ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord’, or ‘Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee’, or ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’ (One day Evelyn had made me laugh so hard I was sent to our room, as she pointed out a quotation from the Bible to me, whispering that if father or the Reverend Grimwade wanted a kneeler, she had found a motto for them. It was from Ecclesiastes and ran: ‘Be not righteous overmuch.’) The endless handkerchiefs we also made we had not been allowed to decorate at all as Father thought it would encourage vanity, but in any case, while I stitched, I imagined I was sewing flowers and things anyway.
“Aunt Madge,” said Evelyn, in a tone that made me feel she was going to give voice to a difficulty. “This is not work. You are very kind and I see what you intend, but this is not work. This is what ladies do to pass their leisure time. It is not what women are paid to do – not, of course, Aunt, that we want to be paid. When our brother-in-law wrote to you, he asked that you might give us board and lodging in exchange for real work, as servants do, until we may find our feet in this great city and gain independent employment.”
Aunt Madge sighed and sank into a chair. And then she said that she had all the servants she needed. If she were to give us their work she would have to send them away and they depended on her. This was their home as well as their employment. Some of them, like Sal who looked after the hearths, and her little brother Joe, had no other home and no family. Here Evelyn and I looked and felt very sorry, as we had not thought of any of this.
“Then why, Aunt, why did you agree to have us come to you?”
Again, Aunt Madge sighed.
“You and your sisters came to me for a visit each time there was another baby to give your mother a rest, and then when she died,” here she smiled sadly at me, “I asked you to come every year anyway. I have always been very fond of you girls, and I have only my boys,” and here she stopped and seemed to hold her breath, and we guessed why for we knew Roger was nothing but a source of sorrow to her. “Anyway,” she said, looking kindly at us, “I was never able to do anything for all of you, you being such a numerous family, but when I learned of your father’s death and received Reverend Grimwade’s letter I was pleased to invite you two. To keep me company is employment enough, is it not?”
“This is all very kind, Aunt,” said Evelyn, “but we cannot accept your charity.”
Oh but we can! I thought. I had never thought Evelyn to be so proud. This was becoming a most unhappy interview.
“Well,” said she, standing up. “Let us reconvene this evening. In the meantime I beg you to consider how you may remain here. I should be very sorry to let you go.” And after I dropped my curtsey my head smacked her on the chin as I came up, as she had moved to kiss me. As she rubbed her chin and I apologised she smiled ruefully at us. “Yes, we must indeed come to an understanding,” she said, and swept out.
We immediately set about finding employment. First we went down to the kitchen and asked Cook if there was anything we could do to help her. Having established that “the missus” had authorised this initiative she produced a great greasy book. Laying it on the table and opening it before us upside down we at once understood the nature of the service we could do her.
“My mother gave me this girt book,” she said. “She’s long gone now and it’s all I have of her. She couldn’t read it no more than I can and I should like to know what’s in it.” She looked at us as if she were sizing whether we were equal to this task. “You do read, I suppose?” she said.
We said we did and told her it was a book of recipes which greatly pleased her and agreed to read some of it to her each day, so she could choose those she fancied the sound of and perhaps make them. As a result
of this interview we learned that none of the three maids nor Joe and Sal could read, and we offered to teach any of those that wanted it. Cook was doubtful that the maids would bother with it, though Sarah, she said, had a beau who wrote her letters she puzzled over, and she had asked the Potter brothers, who did read a little, to read one to her once, but they had teased her so unmercifully she had never asked again. And she thought Sal and Joe were young enough to learn and it did make life easier after all, especially in these days when everyone seemed to read. I was about to offer to read the Bible to her if she liked, but then remembered she was a Quaker and, as I had no idea what this entailed apart from us all being equal, thought I had better not in case I offended her.
We spent the rest of the day going over the house making a list of all the things we could do, our criteria being that they were useful, but did not encroach on the employment of anyone else. We discovered that the library was in no order, with all kinds of books mixed together, and that we could arrange them more conveniently. We found that apart from the maids’ rooms and our room, no one had gone into the other attic rooms for years, which were full of things useful and useless intermingled. Here was another task. And while the maids did the day-to-day mending of clothes and linen, we found no one was responsible for a frayed cushion here, a curtain with a falling hem there, and so on, and that such items were usually replaced when they got too disreputable rather than repaired before this was necessary. By the time we sat down with our aunt after dinner we had a long list of ways in which we could make ourselves useful. She listened with some amusement as Evelyn explained our plan, and when she had finished asked, “Are either of you clever with figures?”
