Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  ‘How long have you been walking out, dear?’ Mrs Browning asked, her voice low and almost caressing in its concern.

  ‘Since Easter, ma’am.’

  ‘And now it is autumn. A long time, but some loves are slow.’

  ‘I do not know if it is love, which is always the trouble with me. He is very attractive, I feel his attraction, if I am to confess freely, ma’am.’

  ‘But of course you are, and why should women be ashamed of feeling that physical attraction men exhibit so carelessly and are rather praised for than otherwise? I am glad you are attracted. And for the rest?’

  ‘He is a good man, honest and respectful and reliable, which I like. He is courteous, treating me as a princess, however absurd.’

  ‘It is not at all absurd and makes me like the sound of Mr Righi more and more.’

  ‘I would trust him as to his prospects. He is not likely to turn out a wastrel. But Prato, where he lives, is, they say, a very small place up in the mountains and I have always preferred cities. I should be very isolated, knowing no one but him.’

  ‘That is the key, Wilson – do you need anyone else, dear?’

  Wilson looked up from the tiny dress she was sewing and held her needle suspended. Her mistress’s meaning was unmistakable: she needed no one but Robert. If Leonardo was not sufficient for Wilson then the conclusion was meant to be that she could not be in love. She hesitated, feeling somehow tricked. It was true, Mr and Mrs Browning were everything to each other but it was not the whole truth. Many an afternoon, especially of late, Mrs Browning had pined, and even wept, for her sisters and though she was not close with any of the English women in Florence who paid visits, she enjoyed the distraction they occasionally provided. And only the day before, when told a young woman by the name of Ogilvy had moved in to the apartment above them in the Casa Guidi, and that she had a new baby and was something of a poet and had a pleasant husband, Mrs Browning had been thrilled and suggested she might have a friend at last. It was not honest to pretend that, if she had been Wilson, Leonardo would be enough.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Wilson replied, stitching once more and her eyes lowered conveniently, ‘I fear I do. It would be very lonely with only a husband and no friend or family and I unable to speak the language as fluently as I would like. I would be very dependent on Signor Righi and I have learned to value my independence, which you may not think is very great, having no home of my own and little income, but which feels so to me.’

  There was silence. Wilson felt herself tremble a little and she felt hot about the face. She hoped she had not caused offence with the mention of income. It was another of Sarah Allen’s refrains: ‘What they pay for what you do, Lily, is a scandal and they should be told so. Why, I have twice as much and do half the work and I would not stand for it.’ Hearing from a reluctant Wilson that she had not had an increase in salary in all the four years she had worked for the Brownings, Sarah called her a fool. ‘Every year I claim an increase, even if it is only a shilling or two, and I am given it gladly. Mrs Loftus knows it is an English maid’s market here in Florence, and were she to lose me she would have difficulty replacing me whereas I, I could go anywhere, there being Americans in the city most desirous of such a maid as I. Look at you, Lily, you are comely and neat and expert and you speak the language very well which is unusual in a maid and more than I can manage. You could go where you wished if you were turned off.’ Wilson had ignored her, but since mother’s letter the thought of being able to send more money home had begun to obsess her. She would buy no more new dresses or bonnets nor waste money buying ices to eat with Sarah Allen and she would send mother a money-order every month with Mr Browning’s help. But if she married, there would be no money of her own.

  At last, her mistress spoke. To Wilson’s relief, she did not pick up any reference to money either way. ‘You are uncertain, dear,’ she said, ‘and if I were you I should be guided by your uncertainty. Would it not be wise to wait? And do not think I speak only from self-interest, though I do not deny it is there. In my condition …’ And she made a gesture of such pathos and looked so forlorn, Wilson found herself saying hurriedly, ‘Oh, ma’am, do not think I would desert you until the baby is safely born – I could not be so cruel.’ Once she had said it, it seemed the answer she had looked for. The next day she met Leonardo and they walked over the Ponte Santa Trinita and along the Arno and she told him that if he were willing to wait until the spring, until Mrs Browning’s baby was born, then she would be glad to marry him and gave her word now that she would. He appeared overjoyed and kissed her hand and to her amazement wept a little. It gave her the most curious sensation to think she meant so much to him and that there was evidence of such deep feeling. He did not seem to resent the six months’ interval, once she had reaffirmed the engagement was official, saying it would give him time to prepare a home fitting for her. For the first time he embraced her before he left her – though not before requesting permission to do so – and enfolded in his arms Wilson felt happy and relieved. His excitement and joy were so evident she herself was infected by them and returned to the Casa Guidi quite radiant to tell her mistress of her decision. It was greeted with a measured enthusiasm and a restraint she rather resented but nevertheless her health and ‘Mr’ Righi’s was drunk that night and when, before he departed, Leonardo presented her with a beautiful ring he said had been his mother’s, this was admired with a more genuine pleasure.

  She wore the ring not on her finger, except at night, but round her neck. All day as she worked she could feel the cold little bump of it between her breasts, lying there like a tiny egg, and it made her smile. A ring was something. It made it safe to write to mother:

  — I hope it will not be too great a shock, my dearest mother, for you have suffered enough this past year but I am engaged to be married. I have not told you of my suitor, wondering not only if anything would come of it but also being unsure of my own feelings and not wishing to startle you unnecessarily. He is called Leonardo Righi and as you will easily deduce from that is Italian and has been until this week one of the Grand Duke’s personal guard but this guard being disbanded for reasons that I do not rightly understand he has returned home to Prato, a village in the mountains. His family is good, and he has some money and may start a business of his own. He is tall and handsome and most courteous and as you see I’m more than a little in love with him …

  The moment she had written this, Wilson felt she was in love, as though the mere act of writing the words had settled her doubts. She felt warm and happy towards Leonardo and had quickly found since his departure that his face haunted her and she looked constantly for his imposing figure striding towards her.

  — but we have agreed to wait until March before we marry and oh, mother I would that you could come though I know it to be impossible, and weep at the hopelessness of such a wish. But I have extracted a promise from Leonardo that when the Brownings go to England which they intend to do some day he will release me for some months and I will travel to England with them and see you in your new home. So that is something to hold on to for me, mother, and I hope for you, and now that you have written that letter you dreaded I pray you will continue to write that I might not be shut away from your concerns being tragedies or not. I am vexed with Ellen and wish she could be brought to see the error of her ways and the harm she does you. To abandon the child when it is born is a dreadful thing but if it were possible some kind family might take it and keep it until such time as Ellen had a home for it, but if she sticks with this cruel man what hope is there of that. Ellen is not bad but she is easily led into bad ways and I fear for her. Is there no hope Albert can be shamed into at least providing something for what is his child? Or is he beyond shame, as my poor sister Ellen seems to be. I am glad May stays staunch and true and looks to being a help to you in the difficult days ahead. Would that I were at your side, mother. My life here is easy, were it not for our cook, the disagreeable Alessandro, who however may not be with u
s much longer, and I have plenty of hours strolling in the sunshine which I would wish to spend with you. Mrs Browning continues very well. She felt the child quicken yesterday morning and Dr Harding says that is early, being only, it is estimated, fourteen weeks and means it is a strong child for which we are all thankful. The laudanum is reduced to ten daily drops only which if you will remember it was once forty is astonishing. Sometimes, it is true, when Mr Browning is not there my mistress begs for a little more, but I only pretend to oblige and so far it has satisfied her. By the next month we are to be down to six drops and Mr Browning has hopes to be off it entirely in the last crucial months. If she carries this baby past next week it will be longer than she has ever done and Dr Harding says we are now in the most critical period.

  Mr Browning, of course, as Wilson was well aware, held that every minute of every hour of every day was critical and was beside himself with anxiety if his wife confessed to the smallest ache, pain or sensation of discomfort. She soon grew so tired of his alarm that it was only to Wilson she spoke, in whispers, of any ailment. Together they pondered the significance of a burning feeling high in the abdomen after meals and the sudden cramp at night in her right leg. But at least Wilson had a new confidante and one who seemed most expert in all matters to do with maternity. This was Jeannie, maid to Mrs Ogilvy, the new tenant on the floor above the Brownings’. Jeannie, a straightforward Scottish girl from Dunoon, had been with the Ogilvys three years during which time she had witnessed the birth of Louisa, now two, and Alexander, born only that September. For the slight morning sickness Mrs Browning was experiencing Jeannie confidently recommended five grains of ginger and five of baking soda to be mixed with thirty drops of sal volatile and taken with a small glass of water. This remedy worked and Wilson began to place as much faith in Jeannie as she always had done in mother. The burning feeling, Jeannie informed Wilson, who promptly informed her mistress, was merely indigestion occasioned by the weight of the baby in the womb pushing against the stomach and it would get worse but was of no consequence. And as for the cramp, this was another unavoidable hazard of approaching motherhood but might be alleviated by rubbing the legs before retiring with oil of primrose. Oil of primrose was purchased and rubbed into Mrs Browning’s legs by Wilson and there were no more cramps. Jeannie was at once hailed as a genius.

  ‘Och, I’m nae a genius,’ Jeannie smiled, ‘but I’ve taken Mrs Ogilvy thro’ twa bairns and I’ve listened to the doctors, that’s a’. You larn as ye go.’ What she wanted to learn herself was Italian, for though she’d been in Italy, off and on, these three years with the Ogilvys she had never picked up more than a smattering. Wilson helpfully dug out her old grammar book and gave it to Jeannie and together they began at the beginning, Wilson acting the part of the Italian in the conversational exercises.

  Jeannie Black intrigued her highly. She was not in the normal run of lady’s maids, and was indeed not so much Mrs Ogilvy’s maid as her general help. An Italian girl was employed as nursemaid and there was another woman to do the rough work, but Jeannie ruled the roost and seemed to lend her hand to everything. She was, Wilson, observed, an object of great curiosity to the Italians, who could not get over her bright red hair and endless stream of chatter and her loud, raucous laugh. Though only twenty-six, Jeannie appeared much older, partly through her stoutness. But what fascinated Wilson most was how she treated, and was treated by, pretty young Mrs Ogilvy. Jeannie was maternal towards her mistress but not in the least deferential, sometimes startling Wilson with what sounded like impudence but appeared to be accepted, with a smile, as ‘just Jeannie’s way’. She had always thought her own relationship with her mistress extraordinarily free and had been proud of the friendship between them but now, as she watched and listened to Jeannie and Mrs Ogilvy, she wondered how she could have been deluded and described amusingly to Minnie how

  — you would blush, Minnie, to hear this Jeannie talk back to her mistress as we would call it and all in an accent so thick I could not attempt to reproduce it on this page for fear you would tear it up as gibberish. She is so sure of the regard in which she is held that she thinks nothing of calling her mistress a nuisance if you can believe it for forgetting to tell her that a dress is torn until it is to be worn again and only then discovered. How can I keep your things in good order if you do not tell me you ripped it, this Jeannie says and adds, I do not know what you were doing and you a mother with a young baby climbing in those woods like a boy, and would have thought you had more sense. Well! Could I speak thus? And you may ask if I would want to. But the Ogilvys are devoted to their Jeannie and if she is annoyed and talks of returning to Dunoon they are distraught.

  Would the Brownings be distraught, Wilson had to ask herself, if she talked of returning to England, or of going to Prato forthwith? Somehow she imagined not. Sorry, even worried as to how they would manage without her, but no longer, not for a long time, distraught. The difference saddened her and since her mood was always so quickly reflected in her demeanour, the reason for her downcast air was inquired into. Was it Mr Righi? No, because he wrote beautiful letters of continuing devotion of which she was very proud. What then? On a sudden inspiration Wilson said it was Alessandro and once she had named him as the source of her melancholy she came to believe it. She was tired, she told Mrs Browning, of his boasting and of his untidiness, and was certain her early suspicions of his dishonesty were true. There was a silence, during which she had the strange sensation of feeling she had the upper hand. ‘Dear Wilson,’ her mistress pleaded, ‘try to be patient, as I know you can, and in a while we will replace Alessandro which, you know, is not easy and cannot be done in a moment. Will you bear it, dear, on a promise of resolving the problem as soon as we can?’ Graciously, Wilson said she would. Only afterwards did she see she had missed the perfect opportunity to ask for an increase in her salary.

  As it was, even with the small amount she earned, she sent mother money in November and January and had the satisfaction of receiving prompt thanks. The move to Sheffield was made comfortable because of the extra pounds through which a place in the coach was secured for mother while Ellen and May travelled by cart with the few sticks of furniture the family had. It was, mother related to Wilson, a long and weary journey made more distressing by Ellen’s grieving not for her baby, who had been stillborn, but the disappearance of her lover. She was ‘utterly broken and without hope’ mother wrote and all who looked on her pitied her for a poor dejected creature. Wilson, upon reading this, felt a twinge of guilt. She had not been sorry enough for Ellen, blaming her for adding to mother’s woes, and now she felt a rush of compassion. Poor, silly Ellen – her baby dead and its father proved worthless. When she remembered Albert and compared him to her Leonardo a sense of her own good fortune made her dash off at once a letter to Ellen in which she offered her love, her prayers and strength to endure the ordeal ahead.

  She would much rather write to Leonardo, to whom she poured out a long account of Ellen’s history, managing in the process to confess how fortunate she felt in having a fiancé like him, so respectable and honourable and trustworthy. Perhaps it was this effusiveness, she often felt afterwards, which prompted Leonardo to pause before replying, as if she had given him too much to digest. In December, his weekly letters stopped. Eight she had had since his departure, all posted on a Monday, all four pages long, all full of the building and furnishing of a house for them both. Told there was snow in the mountains, Wilson waited patiently, convinced this was the explanation for the lack of letters. Probably Leonardo had not even received hers and was fretting at the lack of news, as she was. When the new year of 1849 dawned, all Wilson wished from it was a letter from Prato. None came. Each day, concerned at her agitation, Mr Browning redoubled his enquiries at the post office which he was the first to agree resembled chaos. But there was no mistake: no letters for Wilson, c/o Browning. She hardly knew what to do. Alessandro, to whom she had unwisely boasted of Leonardo, feeling it was time she returned boasts on one
subject at least (she had had quite enough of his wife whom he described as a beauty but whom Wilson had been reliably informed was a slattern) was openly derisive, telling her Signor Righi had doubtless found himself a good Italian woman. Furious, Wilson ignored him but cried tears of rage as much as misery in private. Though she imagined it ought to be beneath what dignity she had left, she composed a short note to Leonardo, asking only to be informed of any change of heart. Mr Browning sent it for her, arranging for its delivery to be signed for and a reply paid. The letter was duly recorded as delivered but no reply was forthcoming. That, it seemed, was that. Shaken, Wilson had to write to her mother at the beginning of February that

  — I am no longer engaged, Mother, but do not distress yourself for who knows if it is not for the best, and though I have wept a little it is more from a strong mortification than an upset heart. Mrs Browning tells me I am fortunate to have found Leonardo out before it was too late but though it would be a comfort to think like that I cannot in justice do so but rather fear I asked too much of him, first keeping him waiting for my answer the whole long summer and then making it a condition that I could not marry for another six months which since he was obliged to go home was hard. I believe him still to be a good man who had no desire to trick me and who cared for me truly. I do not know what to do with his ring, which is very precious and beautiful and was his mother’s. Mrs Browning says it would not be right to send it through the post and that it will be sufficient to write once more asking for it to be collected if he wishes and this I will do. Well, Mother, I do not know if this will disappoint you or not for it is true that if I had become the wife of an Italian in Prato, for all I had the promise of a future journey to England, I would have been in a sense lost to you. Now I can tell you for certain that next year I will travel to London with the Brownings and, God willing, their child, and be there several weeks at least and have already had the assurance from them that I may take my holidays then and be with you. I will be thankful by then, I do not doubt, to be in England for all I am happy with Italy. There is much disturbance here with talk of war with the Austrians and I do not like to think of such violence though my mistress laughs at my anxiety and vows she is untroubled and indeed desirous that war should begin and the Austrians be driven out and the Italians have what is theirs. It is not good for her to read accounts of what is happening for she becomes greatly excited and flushed and might cause her child to be born prematurely in which case it is not likely to survive. Her husband begs her to remain calm and swears he will bring her no more newspapers if the contents result in such agitation. Many people have left Florence, among them Mr & Mrs Loftus with their children and maid, Sarah Allen, with whom I have been friendly. My mistress says scornfully that they are cowards all. I do not know that I am not a coward myself and given the chance would flee too but with my mistress in the condition she is in it would be impossible even if she wished it. She is nearly full term and Dr Harding is most pleased with her.