‘You look like one of them,’ I nudged as we strode out together along Sloane Street.
‘Get away,’ she giggled.
But she really did.
‘How did you get so good at sewing?’ I asked.
‘In my first job as a scullery maid in South Kensington, if I had any spare time I wasn’t allowed out. I’d have to help the housemaids do the sewing and darning for the house. Trust me,’ she sighed, ‘we’ve got it good with old Mr Stocks.’
Kensington High Street was an Aladdin’s cave of wonderful grand old stores. As the season was just starting, the road was full of chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royces and inside the stores glamorous ladies shopped for the perfect outfits for the multitude of balls and parties they had to attend. In Pontings we had a wonderful time, giggling as we tried on elegant hats and draping material round ourselves in the haberdashery department.
‘What about this, Mollie?’ Flo asked, holding up a length of beautiful green fabric.
I wrinkled my nose. It was a bit too close in colour to our uniform. ‘No, what I want is something dramatic,’ I sighed. ‘Something elegant. I want to look like a real woman.’
Just then I spotted the most beautiful woman I’d ever set eyes on. She was being fitted for a dress and a lady with a mouthful of pins was bent double at the lady’s feet, measuring her up. She stood as still as a statue, composed and glacially aloof. She looked like a movie star – Greta Garbo or Jean Harlow. Her tailored day suit had been discarded and she was obviously being fitted for something more glamorous for the evening.
If she noticed a sixteen-year-old scullery maid was staring at her, she didn’t let on.
I gazed at her, trying to see what was different about her, then realized what it was. She had a suntan! Her smooth long limbs were kissed brown, which was more or less unheard of in them days, but this was an era when suntans were coming into fashion and to have one was a vital indicator of wealth. This woman obviously never had to work below stairs and away from sunlight.
She was being draped with a black metallic lamé, which shimmered under the light. The dressmaker positioned it this way and that, until finally the fabric hung and draped in sinuous folds over her tall slim body. The dress was entirely backless, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of the curve of her spine. The material skimmed her figure and the cowl neck at the front showed off her elegant décolletage. She looked like a goddess.
‘I want to look like her,’ I whispered in awe.
Flo gulped. ‘I’ll try me best, Mollie,’ she said. ‘But I ain’t a miracle-worker.’
In the end we plumped for something a little less expensive than the fine material that the grand lady was being draped in. It was a nice black silky-satin material that cost four-and-a-half pence a yard. There was even a bit left over for some green material to line the dress.
As the cashier took my money and carefully wrapped my package in brown paper, Flo linked arms with me. ‘See,’ she grinned. ‘You’re feeling better already. Next stop, tea.’
As we strode arm in arm down Kensington High Street in the direction of Hyde Park, I was just dazzled once again by the sights and sounds. London in 1933 was the most exciting place on earth. Big department stores were all the rage and everyone went to stores like Harrods, Woollands, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges and C&A to shop and Claridge’s and the Ritz to socialize and dine. I suppose they do now, but back then you wouldn’t get tourists traipsing round in jeans and backpacks. Everyone was impeccably dressed. Even the servants like Flo and myself, not to mention the countless office girls who flocked to London in their ever-increasing time off, looked put together and presentable in suits or dresses.
During the fifty years up to 1930, working hours had steadily reduced, meaning that most people had more spare time and ‘leisure time’ was becoming recognized as a concept. This was particularly true in London where increasing regulation of workplaces, including offices and factories, meant that working hours were limited. It wasn’t unusual to see office girls doing just what Flo and I were doing now, window-shopping – and trying to spot society girls – in their time off.
Society girls like the Mitford sisters were the celebrities of their time, before soap stars, pop stars and – that very bottom of the rung – reality ‘stars’ were words we even knew. Spotting a Mitford sister or a member of royalty was the equivalent of spotting Victoria Beckham leave a London store and jump into the back of a blacked-out Range Rover. Knightsbridge and Mayfair were where the wealthy elite flocked to during the season and wherever the gentry went, the servants would follow.
Nowhere else was considered quite as ‘with it’ as Harrods, though. Opened originally in 1849, it was famous for its motto Omnia Omnibus Ubique, ‘All Things for All People, Everywhere’. Harrods could get you anything at all, from the rarest Chinese tea to a lion, if you so wanted. In 1917 they even sold an alligator, bought as a present for Noël Coward. But in 1933, the cost of most of the items on sale put them far beyond the reach of scullery maid Mollie and kitchen maid Flo, so we carried on walking in the direction of Hyde Park.
After her years of working in London, Flo knew her way about and nipped in and out of the crowds with me in hot pursuit, clutching my brown paper package. She pointed out landmarks as we walked.
‘That’s the Hyde Park Hotel, Number 66 Knightsbridge,’ she said knowingly, pointing at a beautiful marbled entrance hall of an imposing red-brick hotel. ‘Famous for its style and glamorous parties, it is. It used to have its official entrance on the other side opening out on to the park, but the queen banned it. Only royals are allowed to use the park entrance, everybody else has to use this side in Knightsbridge.’
I nodded. I doubted we’d ever get to walk through either entrance. The huge walnut doors swung open and shut as society folk streamed in and out, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of a plush marble hall and frescoed ceiling. Stairs of white marble flanked with balustrades led to the upper ground floor. Not since I’d first seen the V&A three years before had I felt so small and dazzled by such an important building. Some buildings have the effect of making you feel like a tiny mouse and all I could do was gaze in awe at its splendour.
‘All the socialites go there for tea dances in the palm court,’ Flo added.
‘Palm court?’ I said, puzzled.
‘Yes, they have actual palm trees in the room.’
‘Well I never,’ I chuckled, shaking my head. ‘Trees inside? It’d never happen in Norfolk.’ I wondered what George would make of that and made a mental note to tell him when we got back to Woodhall.
We went on our way with me still laughing at the thought, when I saw something that wiped the smile clean off my face. As we bustled our way through Hyde Park towards Marble Arch we were assailed by a riot of noise and commotion. About fifteen men were stood on small crates of wood, hollering at the top of their lungs in front of a vast crowd of onlookers. Such noise you can’t imagine. Everybody was competing with everyone else to see who could shout louder. A strange mood of menace and provocation hung in the air. It seemed hard to credit that it was just a stone’s throw from the rarefied streets of Knightsbridge where society ladies danced amongst palm trees and sipped from china teacups.
‘Whatever is this about?’ I gasped to Flo, stopping to stare at these speakers, who were clearly oblivious to the jeers and shouts of hecklers as they ploughed on, spouting their views.
‘Come on,’ Flo said, her mouth tightening as she tugged at my sleeve. ‘We’ll get a tongue lashing if Mrs Jones finds out we’ve been here listening to these motley crowds. It’s not a place we should hang about.’ Her eyes grew wider. ‘I’m serious, Mollie. Trouble breaks out and the police get called.’ But I wasn’t listening. This was just too much of a fun spectacle to pass.
‘I am here to talk about our great empire,’ yelled a small man with a puffed-up chest and a plum in his mouth. ‘An empire that is crumbling beneath us as I stand here and speak. I take great pleasure in coming here to talk to you i
gnorant people.’
‘Oh, sit down and shut up,’ bellowed a man in the crowd. The speaker didn’t even flinch.
‘I am talking to you about our great empire,’ he continued, holding his hands aloft for maximum impact, ‘that in years gone by was great and yet is no longer our own.’
The crowd surged forward. ‘Shut up, fascist!’ one yelled. ‘You don’t speak for us.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he went on pompously, ‘I take great pleasure in speaking to you ignorant people. We need to put Mosley in power.’
The crowd bristled.
‘Go home,’ shouted a lady with a voice like a foghorn. ‘We don’t want your sort here.’
The speaker turned on her and his upper-class accent slipped. ‘Listen, lady, you’re too young to remember the empire when it was great.’
‘Do you take questions?’ shouted another.
‘No, I do not. I am here to warn against the future polluting of our coun–’
‘Well you better take one from me, cos I object to this.’
Suddenly, as one, the crowd started to slow handclap him and sing, ‘Get down, get down, get down.’
A gentleman next to us looked at my stunned face and smiled. ‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You know, people have been speaking here since the mid-nineteenth century. This plot of land is the most famous in London.’ With that, he gestured with his hand over the swathe of land from the pavement of Marble Arch to beyond some trees. ‘Speakers’ Corner,’ he announced, leaning back and thrusting his hands into his pockets. ‘Starts at the site of the old Tyburn gallows to the Reform Tree. People have been coming here to speak, meet, preach, canvas, convert and argue over politics and religion for years. Started with the Chartists holding mass protests about the suppression of rights of ordinary working people.’ He snorted. ‘Police tried to stop it, of course, but in 1872 Parliament granted the Park Authorities the right to permit public meetings. Milestone in the development of our democratic institutions, wouldn’t you say?’
This man seemed so knowledgeable I simply stood and nodded my head.
‘All the greats have been here,’ he went on. ‘Lord Soper, George Orwell, William Morris, Karl Marx.’
And now Mollie Browne.
He gestured to a man nearby. ‘Spiritualist and religious nutters mainly, but the fascists are making their mark here now as you can see. Quite deplorable, most of them, but you have to respect the freedom of speech, wouldn’t you say? It’s what makes the British great.’
I nodded. ‘Oh, absolutely.’
Suddenly another speaker started up next to us with such force I jumped out of my skin.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he boomed in a thick cockney accent. ‘I ain’t come here to be larfed at, spat at, aimed at, charfed at or any other old at for that matter. There are two sides to life. Spiritual and material. We’ve gotta get back to the natural side of life we was created for. We’ve got to accept Christ as our own personal saviour and obtain pardon, peace, patience and prosperity, for none but Christ can satisfy.’
‘What about your old woman?’ heckled a ribald onlooker. ‘I ’ear she can satisfy all right.’ A wave of raucous laughter broke out as the speaker was pelted with clods of earth and mud.
‘Come on, Mollie,’ hissed Flo nervously, dragging me away. ‘It’s turning nasty. Let’s get out of here.’
But as we walked away in the direction of Marble Arch, the jeers of the men still ringing in my ears, I knew I’d be back. Something about this area, so thick with history, and the passion with which these men spoke, stirred something inside me. I was treading on the very ground where criminals had been taken by horse and cart to be hanged at the gallows in front of crowds of bloodthirsty onlookers. Today, in 1933, it seemed the public still wanted to watch blood spilt and enjoy a good old-fashioned spectacle. Unlike slightly more timid Flo, I loved this theatre of noise and commotion.
But what I loved most about London was its diversity. Not two minutes after watching a man get pelted with clods of earth while the fidelity of his wife was questioned, we found ourselves in an altogether more genteel place.
Having tea at Lyons Corner House in Marble Arch was a dazzling experience. Flo led me past the art deco gold entrance and, once inside, all was serene, calm and restrained chatter as ladies and gentlemen took afternoon tea on tables laid with starched white tablecloths.
A waitress known as a ‘nippie’ in a black uniform, starched apron and a frilly hat with a black velvet ribbon in it, led us to a table for two. I smiled warmly and thanked her as she held back our chair. I knew what it was like to wait on others in a uniform so I wanted her to know I appreciated her efforts.
Well, what a tea we had: scones that could rival Mrs Jones’s for lightness, lashings of cream and little silver dishes oozing with strawberry jam. As Flo and I tucked in and relished our surroundings, men in tuxedos played in an orchestra at the back of the vast room.
‘Nice to be serenaded while we have our tea, isn’t it, Flo?’ I giggled, sipping my tea with one finger cocked out like I’d seen Mr Orchard do.
‘I’ll say,’ she sighed. ‘I feel like the other half. Talking of which, we best wolf this down.’
It seemed such a shame to leave this warm haven with people waiting on us for a change, but if we were even a minute late Mrs Jones would square us up. Running outside, we laughed together as we jumped on to the back of a hop-on, hop-off red bus and clambered up to the top deck.
‘What a lovely afternoon,’ I beamed, clutching my fabric to my bosom. ‘Dresses and cake. Aren’t we blessed, Flo?’
‘We certainly are, Mollie,’ she agreed. ‘What more is there to life?’
‘Boys?’ I suggested.
We were still laughing when, all of a sudden, a strange thing happened. The bus was travelling down Park Lane when a man leapt to his feet and jabbed at the window excitedly. ‘145 Piccadilly,’ he said. ‘That must be the Duke and Duchess of York’s children.’
All heads on the bus swivelled left. Situated as we were on the top deck, we could all see over the high brick wall that separated the gardens of a Piccadilly town house from Park Lane. There, enjoying the spring sunshine, were two little girls with their nanny. One was about seven years old and sat playing happily with a younger girl of about two. The two-year-old toddled about on unsteady legs as her elder sister, the seven-year-old, smiled and encouraged her.
A buzz ran round the whole top deck and, as the bus stopped in traffic, we all stared in silence. Little did we know it back then, but we were watching our future queen playing with her little sister, Princess Margaret.
This was some three years before the abdication crisis. Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary York was to become, after the abdication of her uncle and subsequent crowning of her father, Bertie, our future Queen Elizabeth II. But back then she was just a young girl innocently playing in the spring sunshine with her little sister, unaware that a whole busful of people were watching her and equally unaware of the plans that fate had in store for her.
They looked so sweet in their little dresses and I stared, quite spellbound, at their pretty peaches-and-cream complexions framed by soft fair curls. Their nanny, Clara Knight, known as Alla, who was later described as an ever-present benign dictator, kept a watchful eye on them.
It’s a wonder Elizabeth seemed so normal, closeted away in her ivory tower. The rest of the world was quite obsessed with her. Chocolates, china sets and children’s hospital wards, even a territory in Antarctica, were named after her; the people of Newfoundland had her image on their postage stamps; songs were written in her honour and Madame Tussauds displayed a wax model of her astride a pony. Yet there she was, a flesh and blood little girl, enjoying a normal childhood, seemingly oblivious to the attention.
Just as abruptly as it had stopped, the bus pulled off again and we left our future queen behind.
‘Well I never,’ said Flo.
I’ve never forgotten that moment and it seems froz
en into my memory. Today the queen is eighty-six and I think she’s a marvellous woman with all that she does, but I still prefer to think of her as she was back then, a happy, carefree little girl.
We was full of it, but when we got back to Cadogan Square there was a visitor in the kitchen. Mrs Jones’s niece, who worked in service nearby, had dropped in and together she and Mrs Jones babbled away in Welsh. Flo and I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. As we got on with chopping vegetables for dinner, every so often they would throw us a look, jabber something in Welsh and then burst into laughter.
‘Whatever are they talking about?’ hissed Flo.
‘Us most probably,’ I whispered back.
Who knew, who cared, I’d had an absolute gem of an afternoon and I wasn’t about to let them two take the shine off it. I’d clean forgotten my heartache over George and had enjoyed a simply amazing time.
Just then, Mr Orchard swept into the kitchen and turned to Flo and me with an icy stare. ‘Mr Stocks requires your presence in the drawing room immediately.’
We stared at each other, alarmed. Oh no. Had he found out about us hanging around at Speakers’ Corner? Or, worse, about us sneaking out to the village dance?
‘Follow me,’ Mr Orchard spat, turning so abruptly that the coat-tails of his jacket flicked out behind him. As we climbed the stairs that led to the good part of the house my stomach did little flip-flops. I didn’t have a good feeling about this.
We were never summoned upstairs. Ever …
Tips from a 1930s Kitchen
…
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
Nothing tasted as good as the Christmas pudding Mrs Jones cooked. She adapted it from Mrs Beeton’s recipe. Never fool yourself into thinking that a shop-bought one can ever taste as good as this. This makes enough for two puddings so you can keep one for next year. You don’t need to freeze it. Why is everyone so obsessed with freezing? We coped perfectly well without a freezer. Just store it somewhere nice and cool and dry.
Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Page 15