Over a Hot Stove Read online

  There was the cook [cum housekeeper] and myself in the kitchen. There was a parlour maid and a housemaid and they had a girl who worked between them – a ‘between maid’ [‘tweeny’]. She would help the housemaid first thing in the morning, and at lunchtime she would change her dress and have a black frock and a little apron, and she would have to go and help the parlour maid wait on the people. She would help wash up in the pantry because they washed up all the silver there. I didn’t have to do the silver or the glass or anything like that. I had all the pots and pans to do and I did have the plates to wash up. The china plates of course that they had in the dining room, they were very particular about them. You washed them up with soft soap that you whisked up in the water. You had to have another enamel bowl in one of them big stone sinks with some plain hot water, which you had to rinse them all in, then put them in the rack. You weren’t really allowed to wipe them up. The cook said there were more germs on a tea cloth than there was on anything.

  I remembered my mother’s words: ‘You mustn’t think that you know what to do. If you’re not sure, you ask the cook how she likes it done.’ And I think the poor cook must have thought I was a complete ignoramus because nearly everything I asked her how she liked it done, so that I got it right!

  They talk about hygiene in a kitchen nowadays but they don’t know a thing, compared to the old cook in that house. My life revolved more or less around cleaning everywhere. The kitchen was scrubbed from top to bottom every now and again. You had to have the sweep every four months I think, on account of the kitchen ranges. I suppose it was really to do with the insurance. There was a wall plate in the basement at the back of the ranges. He would take it off and sweep from there. The cook then thought everything was covered in soot, even in the kitchen, so everything was scrubbed from top to bottom. Every day the kitchen tables would be scrubbed a couple of times, after lunch and after dinner at night – even the legs of the table. The dresser, where all the copper pots and pans were on, that was scrubbed down. People haven’t got any idea nowadays. Once over with Flash and that’s your lot. We didn’t have many chairs, only about two. They were whitewood, and scrubbed all down. The kitchen doors were also, and the cupboards were all scrubbed out. I have never seen so much scrubbing in my life as I did at that first place. The cook was ever so particular and ever so fussy. You had to have a hessian apron to do your scrubbing in. I wish I’d had a photograph of myself. Whatever I looked like I can’t think!

  For the first week, I think, the cook used to come down with me and help me to light the stove. We had a big kitchen range – a monstrosity of a thing which had to be black-leaded. There was a rack over the top and lots of handles, knobs and things on the cooker which were like steel – that all had to be rubbed down with emery paper every day. All had to shine as though it was varnished. I had to clean the flues out every so often, and woe betide me if I didn’t. The cook knew the next minute if I hadn’t done them. That did take a lot of getting used to, lighting the kitchen fire and getting the kettle boiling, because we hadn’t any gas stoves or electric stoves, or anything like that – just this cooker, and that heated the water as well. Normally Cook would come down about seven and she’d make the tea, and then we’d go about our work.

  My next morning job was to polish the doorknob and the letterbox on the front door, and then I had to clean the front doorsteps as well. They had to be whitened with a kind of hearthstone. Those blooming steps, they were the bane of my life. If it was a wet day, and if the postman came after I’d done them, there would be his footmarks all over them, and of course they had to be done again. If there was anybody particular coming for lunch or afternoon tea, you couldn’t have dirty steps, so of course they had to be done again. Sometimes the ladies would have an ‘at-home’ day and have people in for cucumber sandwiches and fairy cakes. The steps would have to be whitened again, so you see it was more or less a regular job. In those days too we used to have quite a lot of fogs in London, and of course fog is one of the worst things for brass doorknobs, so they often had to be done more than once a day, even without visitors. Everyone was so particular and things were much more labour-intensive.

  Another job I had to do before breakfast was to clean the colonel’s boots, and then I helped to get the breakfast. I had to set the breakfast in the servants’ hall for us, and when we’d had that I would go upstairs and make my bed and tidy my room. Then I’d come down and help Cook with whatever she had to do – like prepare the vegetables and help cook the servants’ meals. I’d helped my mother quite a bit so I knew quite a lot of different vegetables, but even so they had some which I had never heard of before, like artichokes. One thing that has always stayed in my mind that the cook told me about vegetables: ‘The vegetables that grow in the ground you cook in the pot with the lid on, and you always put them in cold water. Vegetables that grow on top of the ground, like peas, beans and cabbage, you put in boiling water and you don’t put the lid on.’ But of course nowadays we do put lids on, and we don’t cook vegetables half as long as we used to then. You used to cook cabbage for about twenty minutes in those days, but now it’s in and out of the pan in no time at all.

  There would be other things to help the cook with too, and I’d lay the table ready for her. She had her board, and she would have knives, forks and spoons all ready, and basins and perhaps some spare plates. She would have a few vegetables, like onions and carrots, in case she wanted to make soup. And on the table there would be little canisters, one with flour and another with caster sugar, and there was salt and pepper. Everything was all laid out – you had to have it all ready. You might have other ideas because she used to write the menus out in a book that was in a glass case. You looked at the menu and you could see what she was going to need, and more or less what she was going to prepare. You had to see she had the saucepans ready to hand. She didn’t want to climb up on the dresser.

  And there was the washing-up to do afterwards, and you couldn’t put things in a dishwasher! No electric kettles, no electric mixers, nothing.

  The food was a bit spartan this first job I had, but I think that was because it was in London. They hadn’t got a garden or anything like that, or fruit growing. There, we had so much butter a week – about a couple of ounces. The cook kept really very strict control, for example over how much sugar was used. We had enough food but not overdone. I had my meals in the servants’ hall. It was the only place I ever did. Normally the kitchen staff were just too busy with the servants’ and dining-room lunches and had to take their own lunch in the kitchen, when they could. In the servants’ hall, being a young girl, I wasn’t allowed to speak unless I was spoken to. I suppose they must have asked me all different sorts of things. I told them I used to help Mum do the sewing for the rectory and all that.

  There was no time off in the afternoon in that London house. If there was any time to spare I would have to help to do sewing, darning or whatever. I would help the housemaids and the parlour maid mend serviettes. You had to darn them carefully. There the cook would find you a job, even if it was tidying the drawers up or something like that. And you’d only got to move a drawer and it’d be untidy again. But the cook where I went was a kind soul and she looked after me well.

  I had a half-day off a week and one Sunday afternoon every fortnight. I had to learn to do things when the cook had her half-day. I could get their dinner in the dining room, at night-time, but of course she would make what they had. People seemed to have ever so many courses years ago – sometimes soup, sometimes fish and meat and a pudding and sometimes a savoury. The soup I would only have to heat up. If it was a thick soup I would probably just have to do some vegetables or macaroni – just to pop in at the last minute. She would leave everything ready for me to warm up, so that I hadn’t got a lot to do when she was out. So I really got a fair knowledge of cooking in that job.

  When it was my Sunday off I used to go to the Methodist church – sometimes to the Kingsway Hall and sometimes to the Centr
al Hall in Westminster. The parlour maid asked me one Sunday if I would like to go with her to the Central Hall. I nearly always used to go with the parlour maid – so she knew how much I loved the music. But I also loved going there because in the afternoon there’d be a girls’ meeting, and you could have your tea there – one of those nice sticky buns with a cup of tea. And there they used to have a proper choir concert, at six o’clock. They had a soprano, a contralto, a tenor and a bass – they all sung their solos. I thoroughly enjoyed the music. Then at half past six we’d have the evening service. After that we’d come home. Sometimes in the week I used to go to a meeting there and I often went to Hyde Park and saw Lord Soper [a prominent Methodist minister].

  There were concerts in London for charity, and ladies would buy tickets. If they didn’t want them for themselves, they would probably give them to the staff. The ladies in church often used to buy tickets for special causes and they evidently bought some tickets for Messiah at the Albert Hall. They had been before, and they didn’t want to go again, so they asked the parlour maid if she would like to go, and said she could take somebody with her. She asked me if I’d like to go. Would I like to go to the Albert Hall! Absolutely fantastic. I can picture it now, even though it was over seventy years ago.

  There was the London Philharmonic Orchestra and a great choir, as well as the soloists singing all the main parts, and of course the Albert Hall was filled with people. I shall never forget Dr Malcolm Sargent all my life. He wasn’t made a ‘Sir’ then, when I saw him. I was wafted away on cloud nine. I’ve never forgotten the thrill of it. I wasn’t a kitchen maid at all on that night.

  I loved going to Kensington Gardens and to all the shops in Kensington High Street – Pontings, and Derry & Toms. I’d walk across Hyde Park and go to Selfridges. Even if I didn’t buy anything, I might go and have a look round and try on a few hats! Sometimes at the beginning of the month I might even go to the pictures. I generally had some money for the first week and then the next three weeks I didn’t have any! It didn’t last very long in those days.

  The cook said to me one day that I hadn’t told her that this girls’ club I’d joined was going on an outing. I said that they were going on a Saturday, and I didn’t have a Saturday off. She said that if I had asked her, she could perhaps have arranged it, but I told her that I didn’t like to ask because I couldn’t really afford to go. Anyway she paid for me to go and we went to Buckinghamshire, near Princes Risborough, where there are some lovely woods. While we were out in one of the villages they were selling flowers at a cottage gate, and I thought I’d buy the cook a bunch of flowers. Well I couldn’t have given her anything better. If I had knighted her she couldn’t have been more pleased! She was absolutely thrilled to think I had thought of her.

  Just over the year I thought I’d make a change, because you can get in a rut. They’d have a joint on Sunday, cold on Monday and have it done up on Tuesday. Perhaps some chops on Wednesday – and you got into the same routine. You just cooked what they liked. You had to stay a year because they paid for your fare, but if you didn’t stay, you had to forfeit that. In the summer the family went away for a fortnight so we could have a fortnight off. Having about thirty shillings for my month’s wages, if I paid my fare home, which was nearly a pound, and giving my mother ten shillings for my keep, I wouldn’t have anything for myself. Then just before the family went away, the colonel sent down an envelope, and in it was a pound for cleaning his boots – so I was saved again. I went to the agency and got a job in the village of Shenley, in Hertfordshire, quite near Elstree. The house was called ‘Ridgehurst’.

  Ridgehurst House

  There were two elderly people, the lady and gentleman, and they were German people – naturalised British with German origins – and they were ever such musical people. They used to go to London quite a lot to different concerts. That was a lovely house and beautiful gardens in this little village. And on the end of the house they had a lovely big conservatory or music room, with windows all round. They used to have all their friends come and they used to play music. They’d perhaps have a dinner party first and then they’d play.

  Flo was working for Edward Speyer, a wealthy banker and cousin of Sir Edgar Speyer. Edward was a great friend of Brahms, but also, like his cousin, a friend of Sir Edward Elgar. The composer stayed regularly at Ridgehurst and during one visit, in July 1919, to appease his host’s annoyance with smoking in the house, Elgar wrote a forty-two-second (!) ‘Smoking Cantata’. Another famous visitor to this house where Flo worked was the pianist and composer Paderewski. When Sir Edgar Speyer brought Richard Strauss over to England to conduct Ein Heldenleben, Strauss also visited Ridgehurst. The music room was by all accounts very special, thirty-six feet by twenty-seven feet with a raised platform, panelling and a moulded plaster ceiling.

  Supporting the musical life of the house ‘below stairs’, Flo was aware that the number of staff was just a little more generous. The work and the chores continued as before.

  We had a butler there and he had a boy who he was training up to be a footman. There were two housemaids and there were two maids in the kitchen, so it was just getting a little bit of a bigger establishment. I was climbing up the ladder a little bit. There I did the same kinds of things – I helped Cook with the vegetables – but I didn’t have any front doorsteps to clean. No knocker, and no boots either! I didn’t have quite so much scrubbing except in the kitchen still, and there was the kitchen range to do.

  But I was working entirely in the kitchen, cooking the servants’ meals, and helping to cook the vegetables for the dining room. And I began to learn a bit or two of French because they had all their menus written in French. I would have to know what kind of garnish they would want with different things, like with ‘Consommé Royale’ you would have to make a little egg custard and cut it all up into different shapes to pop in; with ‘Consommé Italienne’ there were little bits of spaghetti chopped up.

  And there too of course they had a garden and gardeners, whereas in London they hadn’t a garden. They had most peculiar vegetables: kohlrabi [like a swollen radish growing above the ground] and cardoons [like giant sticks of celery, up to six feet high], salsify [also called ‘goat’s beard’, with an oyster-like flavour when the roots were boiled], and scorzonera [similar to horseradish]. They used to grow these things years ago but they have gone out of fashion now. They weren’t much to write home about anyhow. I’d much rather have beans and peas and celery and things like that.

  Nowadays you have vegetables all the year round but in those days you didn’t. Vegetables and fruit weren’t transported into the country like they are now, so they grew things in their own kitchen gardens. You had a season for different things.

  We were in the country too, living near Shenley. There was a bus from there where you could go to Radlett and other places, and you could go to the pictures when it was your day off. I don’t think I went much further afield than that. I got friendly with some people in the village because I thought I would go to the WI. My mum belonged to the WI you will remember. I joined not because of the talks or anything but because they had a tennis club and their own tennis court and I liked to play tennis.

  Flo did not find Christmas at all special in service – partly because of the present of hideous black stockings that usually came her way. Her Christmas in Shenley, however, was memorable for cooking some dreadful venison from the Black Forest.

  I always shudder when I think of it. I never really remember Christmas in any of the jobs I’ve been in, except that mostly you had a pair of black stockings for your Christmas present. We always had to wear black shoes and stockings. I swore I’d never wear them again, not in my life! They’re very fashionable now, but of course they look a lot different to the ones I had to wear, I can assure you. We didn’t have nylons in those days – they were either wool or lisle. Terrible things!

  I have always thought that venison must have been buried in the Black Forest, for how long I do
n’t know, because I never smelt anything like it in all my life. It smelt rotten. I couldn’t eat anything on that day. I felt really sick and the smell must have gone all through the house – it was awful.

  But Flo’s lasting memory of working for the Speyers was that it was a house of music. Flo loved it for that, although sadly she was unaware of just who might have been playing the music that she fell asleep to!

  I remember the big music room and the house parties where musical guests brought their instruments to play. I often went to sleep to the sound of music drifting up to the top of the house. From my bedroom I could hear them playing long into the night.

  Flo aged eighteen, in her uniform as kitchen maid at Mapleton near Edenbridge, Kent. Servants were usually expected to provide their own uniforms.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Edenbridge and Hilgay

  Once again, Flo stayed about a year then thought she would move on to gain more experience. Her next appointment was to a house called ‘Mapleton’, between Edenbridge and Westerham, in Kent. This time her employers were younger people. And she was now earning the princely sum of thirty pounds a year.

  Mapleton House, from a painting by Samuel Henry Faudel-Phillips, the owner in late-Victorian times.

  That was a lovely part of the country and they had lovely grounds on the estate, and there was a cricket pitch out at the back of the house and a pavilion, beyond the kitchen garden. Mr and Mrs Pilbrow were such nice people – very kind. The gentleman used to go to London every day on business. He worked in the City, near St Paul’s Churchyard. The chauffeur used to take him to the station at Westerham and he would pick him up at night. We would wait for the car to come and knew that within about half an hour he had had a drink and had his bath and changed, and that it would be dinner time. They had a son, Ashley, who was at Cambridge and they had a younger son of about seven. He had a tutor who came in, in the mornings, to get him ready for preparatory school.