A Poor Man's House Part 23

[Sidenote: _PRESENTS AND TIPS_]

Whether he prefers a present or a tip is doubtful, and depends largely on the amount of money in the house. Presents are more valued; tips more useful. He feels that 'there didn't ought to be no need of tips'; knows obscurely that they are one of the effects, and the causes, of cla.s.s difference; that they are either a tacit admission that his labour is underpaid, or else such an expression of good-will as a man would not presume to give to 'the likes o' himself,' or else an indirect bribe for some or other undue attention. Usually, however, not wis.h.i.+ng to go into the matter so thoroughly--having come in contact with outsiders chiefly when they have been on holiday and least economical--he considers a tip merely as the outflowing of a gen'leman's abundance. "They can afford it, can't 'em? They lives in big houses, an' it helps keeps thees yer little lot fed an' booted."

If, however, he has reason to believe that 'a nice quiet gen'leman' is really hard-up, then he is very sorry, and will reduce the rate of hire by so much as half. In such cases, it is well that the gen'leman should add a small tip, for his niceness' sake. Then is Tony more than paid.

The gentleman, as such, seems to be losing prestige. Gentility is being made to share its glory with education, 'Ignorant' is becoming a worse insult than 'no cla.s.s.' Grandfer, in argument will think to prove his case by saying: "Why, a gen'leman told us so t'other day on the Front.

A gen'leman told me, I tell thee!" Grandfer's sons would like the gen'leman's reasons. In fact the stuff and nonsense that the chatting gen'leman, feeling himself safe from contradiction, will try to teach a so-called ignorant fisherman, is most amazing. If he but knew how shrewdly he is criticised, afterwards....

Education even is esteemed not so much for the knowledge it provides, still less for its wisdom, as for the advantage it gives a man in practical affairs; the additional money it earns him. "No doubt they educated people knows a lot what I don't," says Tony, "an' can du a lot what I can't; but there's lots o' things what I puzzles me old head over, an' them not the smallest, what they ain't no surer of than I be.

Ay! an' not so sure, for there's many on 'em half mazed wi' too much o'it."

8.

[Sidenote: _BESSIE_]

Bessie has finally left school. The excitement, the chatter, the sudden air of superiority over the other children, the critical glance round the room when she returns home.... She has learnt next to nothing of school-work--which matters little, since she is strong, hopeful, and has a genuine wish to do her best. What does matter is, that she is careless, inclined to be slatternly, and has no idea of precision either in speech or work. (Few girls have.) This is in part, no doubt, mere whelpishness to be grown out of presently. She picks up some piece of gossip. "Mother! Mrs Long's been taken to hospital. Her's going to die, I 'spect."

"No her an't gone to hospital nuther. Dr Bayliss says as her's got to go if she ain't better to-morrow. Isn't that what you've a-heard now?"

"Yes--but I thought her'd most likely be gone 'fore this," says Bessie without, apparently, the least sense of shame, or even of inexact.i.tude.

The other day she reached down a cup to get herself a drink of water.

Then she took some pains to see if the cup still _looked_ clean, and finding it did, she replaced it among the other clean ones on the dresser.

Her mother sent her out to the larder for some more bread. Bessie brought in a new loaf.

"That ain't it," said Mrs Widger. "There's a stale one there."

"No, there ain't."

"Yes, there is."

"I've looked, an't I?"

"Yu go an' look again, my lady."

"Well, 'tis dark, an' I an't got no light to see with."

Protesting vehemently, Bessie found the stale loaf. Were I her mistress, she would irritate me into a very bad temper, and then, by her muddle-headed willingness, would make me sorry. She is untrained.

School has in no way disciplined her mind. From early childhood, of course, she has had to do many odd jobs for her mother, but a woman with the whole burden of a house on her shoulders, who has never found the two ends more than just meet, cannot spare time or thought to train her girls systematically. It is so much easier to do the whole of the work herself. Bessie's usefulness, such as it is, speaks a deal for her disposition. After all, how many women in any station of life, have precision and forethought enough to lay a fire so that it will burn up at once? Bessie is only thirteen. It is, indeed, her ability for her age that tempts one to judge her by a standard which elsewhere--except among women discussing their servants--would only be applied to a girl of twenty.

Suppose fathers judged their daughters as mothers judge their servants....

[Sidenote: _GOING INTO SERVICE_]

For the present, Bessie is in daily service at a lodging-house. For a 'gen'leman's residence,' which would be better for her, she is over-young and would, besides, need an outfit of dresses, caps and ap.r.o.ns which she is not yet old enough to take care of, nor will be until she is ready to fall in love. She can go to Mrs Butler's in a torn dress and dirty pinafore. She is not expected to appear before the visitors; only to do the dirty, rough, and heavy work behind the scenes. It was a condition of her leaving school so young, that she should go into service and sleep there. Very naturally, Mrs Widger and Mrs Butler soon arranged that the 'education lady,' when she came to inspect, should be shown Bessie's bedroom at the lodging-house--and that Bessie should sleep at home. It was better for all three; for Mrs Butler who is short of room, for Mrs Widger who wants Bessie's help, and for Bessie who still requires her mother's authority and oversight.

Educationalists don't seem to understand.

In return for two s.h.i.+llings a week and her food, Bessie is supposed to work twelve hours a day, from eight till eight. All she does might possibly be crammed into three hours a day; that is all she is paid for. She brings home her supper in a piece of newspaper. One evening she brought some chicken bones which had been in turn the foundation of roast chicken, cold chicken, stewed chicken, and soup. Bessie rather enjoyed them. Another evening, she unwrapped a whole cake. It fell on the floor, whack! neither bouncing, nor breaking. It was full of dough.

A basin of soup-dregs which she brought home two days ago was found to contain a length of stewed string. Stewed to rags, it was, like badly boiled meat. Bessie says that Mrs Butler did miss a bell-rope.

9

There was a rush and a banging up the pa.s.sage. The kitchen door burst violently open. A girl (though she wore long skirts her figure was unformed and her waist had a stiff youthful curve) ran quickly into the room.

Her eager bright-coloured young face--that also not yet fully formed--was overshadowed by a flapping decorated hat obviously constructed less for a woman's head--less still for a maiden's--than for a cash draper's window. Her chest was plastered with a motley collection of cheap jewellery and lace. Her boots had not been cleaned.

She dropped her cardboard boxes on the floor. Regardless of her womanly attire, like nothing so much as a hasty child, she flung her arms round Tony's neck.

"Hallo, Dad! How be 'ee? Eh? How's everybody? Lord, I'm hungry. Look what I got for 'ee. An't forgot n.o.body this time, though 'tisn't everybody as remembers me. Look, Dad!"

"What is it?" asked Tony, looking blankly, as if he could hardly realise so much clatter.

"Lookse, Dad! What do 'ee think o'it?"

A box was torn open. From it came a couple of gla.s.s ornaments, and various sorts of 'coloured rock' and sticky toffee for the children.

[Sidenote: _BACK FROM SERVICE_]

It was Tony's eldest daughter, Jenny, come home from service. She walked round the room picking up things to examine, things to eat, things that she claimed were hers, and things that she desired given her. She talked without, so far as I could see, any connection between the sentences. Mouthfuls of food reduced her babbling shriek to a burr-burr.

"Be 'ee glad to see your daughter, Dad?"

"Iss...." said Tony, looking at her very fondly, but still puzzled.

"Don't believe yu be. Why didn't 'ee write then if yu loves me so?"

"Thic's Mam 'Idger's job."

"G'out!" said Mrs Widger,--"Jenny, you an't see'd our addition, have 'ee."

I held out my hand. Jenny blushed; then she said: "Good evening, sir"; then she giggled; and finally she turned her back on me. It took a minute or two for her happy carelessness to return.

Domestic servants on holiday, more than any other cla.s.s of people, strain one's tact and rouse one's ingrained sn.o.bbery. They tend to be over-respectful--the sort of respectfulness that presupposes reward,--and to brandish _sirs_, or to be shy and silly, or else to treat one with a more airy familiarity than the acquaintances.h.i.+p warrants. In the matter of manners, they sit between two chairs, the cla.s.s they serve has one code; the cla.s.s they spring from has another, equally good perhaps, certainly in some respects more delicate, but different. In imitating the one code, unsuccessfully, they lose their hold on the other. Their very speech--a mixture of dialect and standard English with false intonations--betrays them. They are like a man living abroad, who has lost grip on his native customs, and has acquired ill the customs of his adopted country. It is not their fault.

Circ.u.mstances sin against them.

Mrs Widger tells me that, when she left her mother's for service, she felt nothing so keenly as the loneliness, the isolation, of being in a house where no one could be in any full sense of the word her confidant, where she was at the beck and call of strangers from the time she got up till the time she went to bed, where her irregular hours of leisure were pa.s.sed quite alone in a kitchen. It seems, as might be antic.i.p.ated, that _mental_ comfort or discomfort is at the bottom of the servant question, and that cla.s.s differences, cla.s.s misunderstandings, are ultimately the cause of it. Often enough the mistress wishes to be kind, but she fails to understand that what she values most differs from what is most valued by her servants. Often enough the servants wish to do their best, but little irritations, unsalved by sympathy and not to be discussed on terms of equality, lead to sulky, don't-care moods which exasperate the mistress into positive, instead of negative, unkindness. So a vicious circle is formed. The covert enmity between one woman and another simply calls for give and take where both are of the same cla.s.s, but when one of them is, for payment and all day, at the disposal of the other.... How many homes there are where the menfolk can get anything done willingly, and the mistress nothing whatever! The girls go out so early. They miss the rough and tumble of their homes. They have their own little ambitions, hardly comprehensible to anyone else. Whether or no they desire to be satisfactory, they do want their own little flutters.

10

[Sidenote: _LITTLE SERVANT GIRLS_]

Poor brave small servant girls, earning your living while you are yet but children! I see your faces at the doors, rosy from the country or yellowish-white from anaemia and strong tea; see how your young b.r.e.a.s.t.s hardly fill out your clinging bodices, all askew, and how your hips are not yet grown to support your skirts properly--draggle-tails! I see you taking the morning's milk from the hearty milkman, or going an errand in your ap.r.o.n and a coat too small for you, or in your mistress's or mother's cast-off jacket, out at the seams, puffy-sleeved, years behind the fas.h.i.+on and awry at the shoulders because it is too big. I see your floppety hat which you cannot pin down tightly to your hair, because there isn't enough of it;--your courageous attempts to be prettier than you are, or else your carelessness from overmuch drudgery; your coquettish and ugly gestures mixed.

I picture your life. Are you thinking of your work, or are you dreaming of the finery you will buy with your month's wages; the ribbons, the lace, or the lovely grown-up hat? Are you thinking of what he said, and she said, and you said, you answered, you did? Are you dreaming of _your_ young man? Are you building queer castles in the air? Are you lonely in your dingy kitchen? Have you time and leisure to be lonely?