Below Stairs

by Margaret Powell

  I hated dropping them into boiling water. Mrs McIlroy said they were killed the instant they touched the boiling water, but were they? I never used to believe they were because I am sure they used to give a terrible squeak as I dropped them in.

  Mrs McIlroy had no ‘arrangement’ with the shops, but nevertheless when she paid the quarterly bills some little gift would often be given to her, and at the end of the year quite an appreciable discount, as they called it, was paid to her.

  It was the cook who really chose the shops, so when she went in they laid the red carpet down for her. Because, although ours wasn’t such a large staff, the food was of a very high quality. So that, apart from her salary, any cook could count on a regular bonus from the shops at which she dealt.

  But to get back to my daily round. I found that what I had thought was work for six was, in fact, work for one, and that one was me from now on.

  Up I got at five-thirty, dragged myself downstairs, and presented myself to the kitchen range. I lit it, cleaned it, and lit the fire in the servants’ hall.

  Then I’d tear upstairs to do the front door, which was all white paint and brass – a thankless task, particularly in the winter, for when I’d got it all bright and shiny the wind from the sea tarnished it again. So by the time Madam saw it, it was something to find fault with.

  Then there were fourteen wide stone steps to be scrubbed. Back downstairs again, and there was Mary waiting with all the boots and shoes.

  I remember the first morning. She said, ‘Carrie’ (that was the head housemaid) ‘says she hopes you know how to clean boots and shoes.’ ‘Well, of course I do,’ I said. After all, I’d done them at home. But I didn’t know how to do them the way they wanted them done.

  The Reverend, he used to wear boots all day; black boots in the week and brown boots on Sundays. In the evenings he changed into black patent shoes. Madam wore black or brown, often both during the course of the day. Then there were the governess’s, and Leonora’s. These I did and I thought they looked very nice indeed. Well, the toes shone anyway.

  When Mary came down for them she said, ‘Oh, they won’t do. They won’t do at all.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter with them? They look all right to me.’ ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll take them up if you like but Carrie will only sling them back at me.’

  About two minutes afterwards down she came again and said, ‘It’s like I said, they won’t do. You haven’t done the insteps.’ ‘The insteps?’ I said. ‘I never knew you had to clean underneath the shoes.’ So I did that, gave them another polish, and Mary took them up again.

  Seconds later back she came and said, ‘You haven’t done the bootlaces.’ I said, ‘Haven’t done the bootlaces!’ ‘Don’t you know?’ she said. ‘You have to iron all the bootlaces, take them all out and iron them.’ I thought she was joking. ‘Iron the bootlaces?’ I said. She said, ‘Yes.’ You see in those days they weren’t the narrow little bootlaces they are now, they were quite half an inch wide. In fact Mrs Clydesdale’s and Leonora’s were nearly an inch wide.

  So I had to take the laces out of the shoes and iron them. Of course, there were no electric irons, just flat irons. They had to be heated in front of the fire and that took nearly a quarter of an hour. Never in all my life have I seen such a footling procedure.

  After that I had to clean the knives because there were no stainless ones in those days. I did this with a large round knife-machine; it had three holes into which I shook the knife-powder, a sort of emery powder. Then I put a knife into each of these holes and turned the handle.

  I felt like an organ-grinder. Indeed the whole business became a musical affair – I sang as I turned.

  ‘A young man stood within the court,

  ’Twas some poor girl he had made sport,

  He heaved a bitter, bitter sigh

  When she upon him cast her eye.’

  (By then three knives were done, and I’d put another three in.)

  ‘She sued him for a thousand pounds

  For breach of promise on these grounds.

  But on the day they should have wed

  He did a dive from church and fled.’

  (Next three).

  ‘Not au revoir but goodbye, Lou,

  I’ve got a better girl than you.

  She loves me for myself you bet,

  And we have bought a basinet.’

  (Then the last three would go in for the last verse.)

  ‘The jury looked at him and grinned.

  The Judge could see she’d got him pinned.

  She won the day, but don’t forget

  She hasn’t got the money yet.’

  By now it was time to take Mrs McIlroy a cup of tea. Then I laid up breakfast in the servants’ hall, and at eight o’clock the staff had their meal.

  After we’d had our breakfast it was time for Mrs McIlroy and me to cook for upstairs.

  Like most of the meals this was very different from what we had. Mrs Clydesdale thought only about our nourishment, so we used to have things like herrings and cod and stews and milk puddings, but none of these nourishing foods ever found their way upstairs. So I was forced to the conclusion that even their internal organs differed from ours, inasmuch as what nourished us did them no good at all.

  There were always economies which had to be made. During my years in domestic service I noticed that all economies began with the servants and always ended with them too.

  The breakfasts they had upstairs were always huge, whether they had visitors or whether they didn’t; there were bacon and eggs, sausages, kidneys, either finnan haddock or kedgeree – not one or two of these things but every one.

  I couldn’t help thinking of my poor father and mother at home. All they had was toast. And all this food going up to them, who never worked. I just couldn’t help thinking of the unfairness of life.

  If I said so to Mrs McIlroy she couldn’t see it, she just accepted her lot. She thought there ought to be the people who had the money and the people who didn’t. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘if there weren’t the people who had the money, what would there be for people like us to do?’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘couldn’t it be equalled out more – more equitably – for them not to have so much, and for us to have a little bit more? Why do you and I have to work in this dungeon with the barest of comforts while they have everything upstairs? After all,’ I said, ‘don’t forget, Mrs McIlroy, our board and our lodging is part of our wages. The two pounds a month that I have in money is supposed to be supplemented by the board and lodging. If the lodging is of the kind that Mary and I have in that attic, and the food is meagre, and the outings are so small,’ I said, ‘how are we getting an equitable wage?’

  Even at that early stage I used to think about these things. Maybe through my father, because the inequalities of life used to cause him a lot of heartache. Mother didn’t take the same notice. So long as she could just have a drink now and again and give us enough to eat, which she could in the summer, she didn’t seem to mind so much, but Dad felt these things more.

  After breakfast had been washed up we started preparing lunch.

  Lunch, according to Mrs McIlroy, was a very simple meal. Soup, fish, cutlets, or a grill, and a sweet. One of the things she taught me was how a dish should be sent up. For instance, when it was cutlets, she would mash the potatoes and roll them in egg and breadcrumbs, in little balls, slightly larger than walnuts, and then she would arrange them in a pyramid on a silver dish and the cutlets would stand on end all round with a little white frill on each bone and parsley at intervals around the dish. It really looked most attractive.

  For us the main meal was the middle-day meal because at night we just had anything that was left over. Although it was our main meal I noticed we never got three courses, we only had meat and sweet; fairly substantial, but not cutlets or fillet steak or anything like that. When it was fish, it was herrings or cod. Still, there was always enough of it, and as I’d never been used to luxurious living, I always ate
anything there was.

  12

  THE MAIN meal was always at night, even when there were only Mr and Mrs Clydesdale, their little girl Leonora, and the governess. These last two had their meals in a separate place altogether except on Sundays, when Leonora was allowed to have her meals with her parents. It was always five, sometimes six courses.

  It would start with soup of some kind. Mrs McIlroy was very good at making clear soup. We used to get lovely bones from the butcher which she’d stew in a saucepan on the side of the range all day long with herbs in a little muslin bag, and with a carrot, onion, swede, or turnip. Towards the end of the evening she would take all these out and put in eggshells, not the eggs themselves, just the shells, and vigorously whisk it. Every bit of scum used then to come to the top, and it was my job – and a jolly long job it was too – to skim everything off the top. When I’d got as much off as I could with a spoon, I had to get greaseproof paper and lay it gently on top of the liquid so that it kept on absorbing the fat.

  Sometimes I had to lay over a dozen pieces. By then the soup was clear – a pale, faintly golden colour, but as clear as water.

  Sometimes it was tomato soup; of course it wasn’t out of tins. No soup was out of tins. For tomato soup again there was the stock – we always had a stockpot going. When I got to be cook I did too. Every single bone that was left over from saddles of mutton, or legs of mutton, or sirloin, every bone or every bit of vegetable we didn’t use went into the stockpot. For tomato soup Mrs McIlroy used to melt butter (we never used margarine; everything was butter) over the side of the range, so that it just gently melted. She then thickened it with flour, added the stock, the tomatoes cut in half, and the whole lot was mixed until it thickened. Then I had to put it through a wire sieve. A long job it was too, getting all the pips and skins out of the way.

  Mushroom soup was another speciality of Mrs McIlroy’s. Made rather similarly, except that the mushrooms had to be put through a hair sieve. She said that if you put them through a wire sieve you got tiny little pieces because they were so soft they went through too easily.

  A hair sieve was like a wire sieve in shape, but instead of being covered in wire, it was covered in very fine hair – it felt like horse hair but yet it seemed a lot finer than that.

  About five minutes before Mrs McIlroy was going to send it up, she would put a whole gill of cream into the tureen – a great big china one with a ladle with a long handle. It always used to remind me of that saying about the devil and the spoon. I used to say, ‘They’re supping with the devil all right, up there with that spoon.’

  If there was any left Mrs McIlroy used to give it to me because there wasn’t enough to share among everyone. I was always hungry, and I used to eat everything there was to eat. She used to say, ‘You’ll go off your food in the finish, you do when you’re with it.’ I never did. I think it was the years of semi-starvation when I was a child. Even now I can eat anything there is to eat.

  Often there was an entrée for the next course. Sometimes Mrs McIlroy used to do pieces of chicken in aspic jelly. She used to make her own aspic jelly, with stock and gelatine; nowadays it’s all bought ready made. If they’d had chicken the night before and there was some left over, I used to cut it up in small pieces and Mrs McIlroy would make this aspic with the gelatine, the stock, and the seasonings, place these pieces of chicken into it, and then put it in an icebox. We didn’t have any refrigerators, of course.

  We used to have a big metal galvanized box, and every morning the iceman would come around with a large lump of ice, which I put in a tray on the top of the box. The food that needed chilling was put in there. Having a larder that was practically all made of slate and in the basement into the bargain, very little food went bad. In any case, nobody tried to keep food, it was brought fresh in every day.

  Then would come the fish course. Sometimes salmon if salmon was in season, sometimes lemon soles, sometimes turbot, each with the appropriate sauce; hollandaise, tartare, or mayonnaise. It was my job to make the mayonnaise sauce. And what a job it was too. I never thought I’d get it right. First I would drop one egg yolk in a basin, then add olive oil, one spot at a time, only one spot, and I kept stirring and stirring and stirring, until I got a lovely thick yellow mixture, rather like custard. But if I tried to hurry it – to put the olive oil in a bit quick – the whole thing curdled and I had to throw it away and start all over again. I threw away a lot of mayonnaise sauce in my time!

  Then came the main course, sometimes a round of beef, sometimes, if they had visitors, it would be a whole saddle of mutton, sometimes just a leg of lamb.

  Mrs McIlroy used to make a beautiful sort of glaze. I really never knew how she did it. You can buy it out of bottles now, but she used to make her own out of a kind of burnt sugar. It used to melt and go a lovely toffee colour, and she would spread this over the leg or saddle before she sent it up; it really looked glorious.

  Then the sweet. This could be anything, but was nearly always something cold; perhaps a chocolate whisk, which used to be made with grated chocolate, eggs, and castor sugar; or perhaps fruit, fresh fruit with sugar boiled down into a syrup and tipped on top of it; perhaps a compote of oranges, or a compote of bananas; not always a savoury because the Reverend Clydesdale wasn’t very fond of savouries. He sometimes liked sardines or anchovies on toast. Nothing too fancy.

  Then came cheese and coffee. That was their dinner.

  What we had at night were the left-overs of the day before or a macaroni cheese or welsh rarebit. It wasn’t Mrs McIlroy’s fault, she wasn’t allowed to give us more. Some of the maids used to moan like mad and say they never got enough to eat. I didn’t moan, but I used to feel it wasn’t fair.

  Although their dinner at night wasn’t until eight, I had to get things ready for Mrs McIlroy before six o’clock because as well as laying out the table, everything she cooked was prepared by hand. For instance, if she was making a cheese soufflé, which was a thing they were very fond of, Mrs McIlroy used to do it with Parmesan cheese because it’s a lighter cheese in texture and in weight than the ordinary kind. Now today, of course, you can buy Parmesan cheese ready grated in bottles; in those days you had a lump of it, and believe me, it was as hard as a rock, and I used to have to grate this on the fine side of the grater. That took quite a long time, and some of my knuckles at first.

  If it was horseradish sauce, that had to be done by hand too. Grating horseradish is far worse than doing onions. The tears used to stream from my eyes. I used to dread having to do it. If it was creamed spinach, this had to be put through the sieve and that was another long chore.

  The worst job of the lot was when they had minced beef cake. The raw beef, generally a fillet, had to go through the mincer. This wasn’t easy. But then I had to get it through a wire sieve, still raw, so you can imagine how long this took. I thought it was impossible when I first tried, but I found I could do it if I kept on long enough.

  The sieved beef was then mixed with herbs and a yolk of egg, tied up in a piece of muslin, and dropped into a little stock and simmered for not more than twenty minutes. So that when it was cut open the steak was still more or less raw, but because it was so fine after going through the sieve, it tasted as if it had been cooked until it was tender. It was a marvellous thing but it took a lot of work.

  If they were serving game they had potato crisps with it. Nowadays everybody buys potato crisps in bags or tins, but in those days they had to be done by hand. First of all you peeled the potatoes, then you got a clean tea cloth and laid it out full length on the table and sliced the potatoes by hand so thinly that when you held them up you could see right through them. They were like little rashers of wind. You laid each one separately on the cloth. Then you covered them up with another cloth until they dried. Then you melted fat – lard, not dripping because that was too coloured. (We used to get our lard not in half-pounds, but in whole bladders as they used to call them. They were about the size of a rugby football and about the sa
me shape.) You melted a portion of that in a frying-pan, a very deep one, and when it was boiling and blue smoke came off, you dropped these crisps in, one by one, because if you dropped two in at a time they stuck together; they wouldn’t separate out. By the time you got the last one in, the first ones were already cooked, so it was one mad rush to drop them in and get the first lot out again. If you left them a minute longer than you should, instead of being pale, golden crisps, they were dark brown chips, as hard as rocks.

  When my mother asked me if I’d learnt much cooking I said, ‘No, Mum, there isn’t any time’, but I suppose I really was absorbing knowledge, because when I took my first place as a cook, I was amazed at the things I found I could do.

  13

  ALTHOUGH MR CLYDESDALE had a gardener/chauffeur and a car of his own, on two mornings a week he used to have a hackney cab call at the door, with a decrepit old horse in the shafts. It looked as if it should have been in the knacker’s yard. It was driven by an elderly man called Ambrose Datchet.

  This Ambrose Datchet, so he told me when he used to talk to me (which wasn’t very often because he mainly talked to the cook), had been a gardener in a large household, far bigger than my mother or I ever worked in. It had two stewards, two chefs, seven footmen, six housemaids, and over twenty-eight gardeners, of whom he was one. He started off as a hallboy, but he didn’t like working inside, and when he saw the footmen, who always had to walk around in uniform and wear white gloves and even wigs, he said he couldn’t stick that life, so he went to the outside and became a gardener.

  I used to hear him talking to Mrs McIlroy about the things that used to go on in this great big place where he worked. I listened all agog – you know how it is when you hear anything you think you’re not supposed to hear, you think it’s something out of this world. Well, according to this Ambrose Datchet, the most outrageous affairs used to go on in this household, and strangely enough, not so much among the women servants as between the footmen and stewards and the people upstairs; not only the people who owned the house but the visitors too. Once I heard Mrs Mellroy say, ‘Not her ladyship!’ Ambrose Datchet said, ‘I saw it with my own eyes.’ So Mrs McIlroy said, ‘What, with her?’ ‘Her, and with him too,’ he said. ‘He was a very handsome young man.’ I gathered it was one of the footmen having an affair with both the lady and the master of the house.