A Spoonful of Sugar

by Brenda Ashford

  Ultimately I think it comes down to this—you must feel comfortable with what you are wearing, otherwise how else can you concentrate first and foremost on being the best nanny you can possibly be?

  After Miss Whitehead’s monologue we all breathed a sigh of relief. But she wasn’t finished with us yet.

  “The rules for all Norlanders are these …” she went on.

  We braced ourselves.

  “You will have one afternoon a week off. Outside of these four walls you are a representative of this institute, which means no smoking or gossiping on street corners like a park nurse, especially when with your charges. I have been known to cycle around these streets to ensure there are no Norlanders on parade, engaging in these unsavory activities.

  “And no male visitors to this establishment under any circumstances.”

  I wondered briefly what the penalty was for any nurse caught smuggling a man into a dorm, but looking at Miss Whitehead then, I found it hard to believe anyone would dare try.

  “Bedtime is ten pm prompt, and your dormitories are to be spotless at all times.”

  This was one doyenne not to be messed with! Every student in the room shifted uncomfortably.

  “Finally,” she said shrilly, “I would like to remind you that none of you are training to be nannies.”

  Every face in the room looked utterly baffled.

  “You are nurses. The word nanny embodies the status and standards that Mrs. Ward was determined to rise above.”

  I don’t remember much more of the rest of the lecture, but when Joan, Margaret, Mary, Yvonne, and I returned to our dorm we sank onto our beds quite exhausted. Just as well that it was supper, evening prayers, then lights out 10:00 PM prompt, as my head was swimming with exhaustion.

  THE NEXT MORNING WE WERE PRESENTED with our black leather-bound testimonial books. I opened mine gingerly, as if it were made of the most fragile lace, marveling at the beautiful gold-embossed cover and marbled endpapers. I gasped. There was my photograph on the inside cover, followed by page after page of subjects to be studied, just waiting for a grade to be marked against them. I swallowed hard. There was a lot of work ahead.

  I read through the institute’s definition of my working conditions. Do not ask your nurse to eat with your servants nor to eat meals in her bedroom. She should not be expected to carry coal or scrub floors. She should be given time off to worship and take exercise.

  I hardly minded if they did ask me to carry coal or eat with the servants, so pleased was I to even be here!

  Half a day off a week doesn’t seem like much, but throughout most of my career those are the hours that I worked.

  I rose when the children rose, usually at 6:00 AM, and my day wasn’t finished until they were all asleep and all my jobs were done, usually at 10:00 PM. I was always promised weekends off, but more often than not the mothers would get a curious headache as my time off drew near. I barely had much time off at all, much less time to read a novel, socialize, listen to the radio. My life was within the nursery and with the children, full stop. Just as well I love children as much as I do.

  Today, a nanny’s schedule would be very different. I believe they work shorter hours and get evenings and weekends off, but then they have to do things that were never expected of me, like driving children all over the place for playdates, sports, and extracurricular activities. It sounds like a hectic pace of life for nanny and children. I’m not sure if I could have coped with that. I never even had a car when I was a nanny.

  I think nannies, and mothers, too, could benefit by simplifying their lives. Does it matter if your child doesn’t have French and violin lessons followed by swimming and dancing? He or she will learn just as much by being around the home with you or their caregiver.

  People are constantly running around these days. We didn’t do those sorts of things simply because they weren’t available. What’s wrong with just letting a child be a child? Of course you can encourage extracurricular activities, but don’t give your child a regimented timetable.

  Childhood is over so quickly nowadays anyway; just slow things down and hold on to it for as long as you can! There’s plenty of time for schedules when children grow older and have to get a job! Keep childhood as innocent, pure, and carefree as possible, that’s my motto.

  We were to have three months’ training at the Norland Institute, followed by three months’ experience of living and working in a London hospital, after which we returned to Pembridge Square for another three months of lectures and practical domestic work. At the end of this we were to take written exams and our certificate was deferred until twelve months’ satisfactory work had been completed in our first post.

  “Your employers will be required to write you a written reference in your testimonial book,” our lecturer informed us. “Forgery is an offense which will result in instant dismissal.”

  AFTER A PUNISHING DAY OF BACK-TO-BACK lectures we returned to our dorm to prepare for supper.

  No sooner had we stepped inside than Yvonne gasped. Her dark eyes flashed with anger.

  “Mon Dieu,” she said, dropping her books on the floor with a thud.

  All her bed linen had been stripped off, her drawers emptied, and their contents placed on the floor in a neat pile.

  “Who has messed up my bed?” she demanded. “I made it this morning.”

  It was a complete mystery.

  “Bally cheek,” blasted Mary. “Who would do such a thing?”

  All was about to be revealed.

  In marched a senior lecturer, who turned on Yvonne.

  “Your bed was a complete mess, child. Most irksome. You will learn to make your bed properly with the crease of the sheet to run in a straight line down the middle. The corners will be neatly tucked in. Your eiderdown will be turned down and drawn tight and neat. Otherwise there will be a mark against your name,” she snapped. “You will be required to make it again properly this time and every day from here on in.”

  Yvonne’s mouth was still flapping open and shut in shock as the lecturer disappeared in a cloud of disapproval.

  Poor Yvonne. Servants had made her bed every morning. She had never learned quite simply because she never had to. I doubted that she had ever made her own cup of tea or cleaned a toilet in her life, either. At that moment I was so grateful to my mother for teaching me the importance of housewifery.

  Later in my career I always made sure my charges made their beds when they were old enough, or at least we all helped make them together.

  When my siblings and I were growing up, Mother insisted we took it in turn to help her make all the beds in the house, boys one day and girls the next. She was the fairest person I know and it really instilled in us a sense of duty, not to mention housewifery!

  This practice taught us that if we weren’t slapdash about even the smallest tasks, then we would not be encouraged to become slapdash in other areas of our lives.

  Children shouldn’t be brought up to believe it’s not their job to help keep a house tidy or clean. Those responsibilities lie with everyone who lives in a house and contributes toward making the mess. How else will they learn when they’ve moved out of home? Making a bed would come as a pretty big shock if you haven’t had to do it until you’re twenty-one.

  It certainly was for poor Yvonne!

  In the coming years I would have many children who led a privileged life, and I always tried to imbue them with a sense of hard work.

  “It’s like being in the army,” grumbled Yvonne.

  I offered to help her redo her bed and showed her how. “Let’s all muck in together.”

  From then on, dorm inspection became a daily occurrence. Our rooms, beds, and belongings had to be spotless, with not a thing out of place. Even our toothbrushes weren’t allowed to have a trace of toothpaste on them!

  But Yvonne wasn’t the only student shamed by the institute. The next day Margaret rushed into the room, her eyes red and puffy and her face as white as flour. She threw
herself onto her bed, sobbing.

  “Whatever is wrong, Margaret?” I asked, alarmed.

  “They want me to have elocution lessons,” she cried in her beautiful, soft, lilting Scottish accent. “I have to learn to speak the Queen’s English so employers can understand me better. I dinnae know there was anything wrong with the way I speak. They cannae do that … can they?”

  It seemed that if Margaret wanted to be a Norland nurse, they could and they would.

  Poor Margaret. I felt so desperately for her and was quite certain that at some point I, too, would be called into the principal’s office and informed I would need to improve my speech.

  Of course I’m certain they wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing now—it seems perfectly archaic—but back then, received pronunciation was quite the norm.

  One thing was for sure: we Norlanders were going to be whipped into shape pretty damn fast whether we liked it or not.

  “Come on,” I said, putting my arm round Margaret. “Let’s go for dinner. Things won’t seem so bad on a full stomach.”

  All the students and lecturers ate their meals in the same room on long, scrubbed wooden tables, with Miss Whitehead and senior lecturers seated at a top table.

  The maidens served us our meals. I always made a special effort to be nice to them. I’m sure I didn’t deserve to be served by them for one moment.

  “Thank you very much.” I smiled at the young maiden as she heaped a steaming pile of beetroot and spinach alongside my meat.

  Mother and the rest of the family always called me the human dustbin for my seeming ability to eat whatever was put in front of me, but aside from junket, which was the devil’s work as far as I was concerned, beetroot was the only food I truly loathed. How could anyone like something so slimy?

  I wolfed down the meat and spinach but left the beetroot.

  Suddenly, an unmistakable voice boomed across the dining room. The infamous Miss Whitehead. “Brenda Ashford. Rule one: never leave anything on your plate. When you are in charge of children, you have to lead by example. How can you expect them to eat everything if you do not? Now eat up.”

  Flushing the same color as my beetroot, I forced it down.

  First the window, now the beetroot. Could I not do anything right?

  Miss Whitehead’s public scolding always stuck in my mind, and I’m not sure that telling children off in such a way is the right thing to do, nor insisting they eat every last morsel of a food they hate. If ever I need to teach a child right from wrong, I do so in a firm and quiet voice, and that usually does the trick.

  As for food? As long as a child at least tries the food on his plate before he says he doesn’t like it, then that’s a start. There is little point in insisting a child scrape his plate clean and instilling in him a lasting phobia of beetroot.

  Nowadays people know more about food and the lifelong issues they can instigate. It’s far healthier to ask children to try but not pressure them too much. Their palates will change as they get older. Provided they eat a balanced diet, why focus on force-feeding them food they don’t like?

  I was always strict on one issue however. If a child said he didn’t want the whole meal presented to him and requested something else, he would always get the same retort: “This is not a restaurant and if you don’t eat that meal, you will be going to bed hungry!” Don’t give him options, otherwise he will expect a menu next! Also, small children don’t know what’s good for them. That is for you, the responsible adult, to decide.

  Besides which, it’s extraordinary how you can learn to like something—even beetroot—when you have to!

  THE NEXT DAY WE BEGAN HOUSEWIFERY, taught by Miss Danvers.

  She was lovely, softly spoken with a kind voice and a gentle manner—the good cop to Miss Whitehead’s bad cop.

  “Our first lesson, girls,” she said, smiling angelically, “is to learn how to clean a toilet properly.”

  Every girl in the room looked horrified. This wasn’t why we had come to the Norland. Where were the adorable children and the strolls in Kensington Gardens?

  I could virtually hear Yvonne weighing up whether to call her mother now and get the chauffeur to come and collect her.

  Instead, she stayed glued to her seat as Miss Danvers handed each of us girls a bottle of Jeyes Fluid disinfectant and a scrubbing brush and pointed us in the direction of the toilets with the command, “Don’t forget to clean under the rim.”

  After that, we learned not to dare to complain and to do everything that was asked of us.

  For three months we scrubbed toilets until they were so clean you could eat your dinner off them; polished shoes to such a high shine Miss Danvers could see her reflection in them when she came to do an inspection. Down in the chilly stone basement, we scrubbed all the Norland’s Marmet coach prams until they gleamed. Pram parade was at 3:00 PM sharp every day. We had to line up our polished prams on the lawn outside in a semicircle so Miss Danvers could conduct her inspection. At these times she was the domestic equivalent of a drill sergeant. Every girl held her breath as Miss Danvers walked slowly past each pram, nodding and making notes.

  The soft leather bonnet had to be well waxed with Johnson’s Wax Polish, the high black sides shining, the white cushions and blankets spotless and plumped up, and the wheels without a trace of dirt. Any unfortunate girl who failed pram parade was sent back to clean it until the pram was up to Miss Danvers’s exacting standards.

  “Please don’t let it be me today,” muttered Yvonne under her breath, as Miss Danvers inspected every nook and corner of her carriage.

  “You bonnet is lacking shine,” she commented.

  My turn. I held my breath as she cast a critical eye over my pram.

  “Very good, Brenda,” she said finally.

  It was backbreaking and exhausting work. It’s amazing no one dropped out, though I am certain it must have crossed poor Yvonne’s mind. The Norland might have required girls of a genteel background, but they had better jolly well work like soldiers in His Majesty’s army.

  Soon I was so hungry I learned to eat every last scrap on my plate, Yvonne was making beds like an expert, and even poor Margaret was starting to sound like a southerner. I doubted her parents would even recognize her.

  We fell into bed exhausted each night, our fingers almost bleeding and our backs aching. I didn’t even mind the freezing wind that blasted through the open dorm windows.

  Slowly it began to dawn on me: I was having the time of my life.

  I was learning a trade and I loved every second. I learned how to sew, cross-stitch, how to knit children’s woollies, and how to make a delicate smock dress out of the finest linen. Miss Danvers showed us how to do the most intricate needlework. Woe betide you if you didn’t do it right; you would stay in that needlework room until you could show her the finished article.

  What’s more, I began to realize I was actually pretty good at it all.

  “Very good, Brenda,” said Miss Danvers one morning as she surveyed me embroidering a little pink cotton dress. “You have a definite knack for this.”

  I basked in the glow of her praise.

  But there was one room we dreaded: the laundry.

  The modern laundry is unrecognizable from those of yesteryear, or certainly the ones we worked in at the Norland.

  Today’s housewife enjoys a multitude of machines to make laundry work a thing of ease. She has a washer with a spin cycle, a number of rinses and temperatures—all at the touch of a button—and even a machine to dry her clothes … not to mention an electric iron. Oh, the luxury of an electric iron!

  Back then, all we had were vast stone sinks, a mangle, a packet of Lux, and the dreaded flat iron.

  As you can imagine, with a large house filled with women and children, there was an awful lot of laundry to be done and cloth nappies to wash.

  Mary, Joan, Yvonne, Margaret, and I plunged our arms into the huge sinks of warm soapy water and scrubbed until our hands were numb.

&n
bsp; The laundry room was fiercely hot, and soon all our faces were flushed red from the heat. Three big copper boilers, heated by gas flames, dominated the room; and all the sheets, pillowcases, napkins, clothes, and nappies went in there to be boil washed.

  Nowadays I hear a baby needs anywhere between six and eight thousand nappy changes from birth until he or she is potty trained. Back then, we used two dozen cloths per baby to see us through, all of which needed regular boil washing and soaking in a bucket of Lux.

  We scrubbed by hand what couldn’t be boil washed.

  Afterward the clothes had to be wrung on a giant mangle, which required the biceps of a sailor to turn. Then everything had to be hoisted up onto giant wooden maidens attached to the ceiling to dry.

  This was easy work in comparison to the ironing.

  We worked beside a hot stove where two or sometimes three irons were heated before use. The knack was to alternate the irons, moving them from stove to ironing table and back again in an endless cycle of heating, pressing, and reheating.

  The irons were heavy, too, and one had to press down with great force to get the result Miss Danvers required. But they also required great delicacy and care, because there were no temperature controls, so it was easy to scorch fabrics. The irons had to be kept spotlessly clean with no trace of ash or dirt to soil the clean laundry.

  It was hot, tiring, relentless work; and we had to complete it all wearing our lisle stockings, uniforms, and aprons.

  When we weren’t scrubbing, cleaning, polishing, sewing, knitting, or lining up for pram parade, we gathered in the drafty, freezing-cold lecture rooms for lessons on neatness, punctuality, speech, and moral tone.

  “Moral tone” sounds very pompous and outdated, but in fact many useful things were conveyed to me in these lectures and have served me well throughout the rest of my life. Lessons on fairness, truth, and politeness are something they should perhaps teach in schools today, instead of computer skills and foreign languages!

  A sound moral compass is a far stronger guiding light and will take your child much further in life than knowing how to browse the Internet.