The next day after we had had our breakfast, Aunt Madge said: “Now I know you girls are anxious to be about your business,” and took us into a large upper room where she opened a cupboard containing a deal of plain linen. Then she opened a pretty box (though in truth everything in her house was pretty) which for a moment to my fevered brain appeared to be full of jewels, but it was coloured silks, and they were of every colour of the rainbow and every shade in between – there must have been six or seven greens alone.
“Embroidery!” I said, ravished by their richness and the thought of handling them.
“I need, let me see, twelve, say fourteen napkins.”
“What design?” asked Evelyn.
“Oh, you may choose,” said Aunt Madge.
“What colours?” asked Evelyn.
“You decide, my chick,” said Aunt Madge.
I had only ever used cheap wools and cotton threads before, and all we had been allowed to make were kneelers for the church or samplers with improving mottoes. It fell to our father to choose these and he never chose anything beautiful or uplifting, but always admonishments, such as ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord’, or ‘Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee’, or ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’ (One day Evelyn had made me laugh so hard I was sent to our room, as she pointed out a quotation from the Bible to me, whispering that if father or the Reverend Grimwade wanted a kneeler, she had found a motto for them. It was from Ecclesiastes and ran: ‘Be not righteous overmuch.’) The endless handkerchiefs we also made we had not been allowed to decorate at all as Father thought it would encourage vanity, but in any case, while I stitched, I imagined I was sewing flowers and things anyway.
“Aunt Madge,” said Evelyn, in a tone that made me feel she was going to give voice to a difficulty. “This is not work. You are very kind and I see what you intend, but this is not work. This is what ladies do to pass their leisure time. It is not what women are paid to do – not, of course, Aunt, that we want to be paid. When our brother-in-law wrote to you, he asked that you might give us board and lodging in exchange for real work, as servants do, until we may find our feet in this great city and gain independent employment.”
Aunt Madge sighed and sank into a chair. And then she said that she had all the servants she needed. If she were to give us their work she would have to send them away and they depended on her. This was their home as well as their employment. Some of them, like Sal who looked after the hearths, and her little brother Joe, had no other home and no family. Here Evelyn and I looked and felt very sorry, as we had not thought of any of this.
“Then why, Aunt, why did you agree to have us come to you?”
Again, Aunt Madge sighed.
“You and your sisters came to me for a visit each time there was another baby to give your mother a rest, and then when she died,” here she smiled sadly at me, “I asked you to come every year anyway. I have always been very fond of you girls, and I have only my boys,” and here she stopped and seemed to hold her breath, and we guessed why for we knew Roger was nothing but a source of sorrow to her. “Anyway,” she said, looking kindly at us, “I was never able to do anything for all of you, you being such a numerous family, but when I learned of your father’s death and received Reverend Grimwade’s letter I was pleased to invite you two. To keep me company is employment enough, is it not?”
“This is all very kind, Aunt,” said Evelyn, “but we cannot accept your charity.”
Oh but we can! I thought. I had never thought Evelyn to be so proud. This was becoming a most unhappy interview.
“Well,” said she, standing up. “Let us reconvene this evening. In the meantime I beg you to consider how you may remain here. I should be very sorry to let you go.” And after I dropped my curtsey my head smacked her on the chin as I came up, as she had moved to kiss me. As she rubbed her chin and I apologised she smiled ruefully at us. “Yes, we must indeed come to an understanding,” she said, and swept out.
We immediately set about finding employment. First we went down to the kitchen and asked Cook if there was anything we could do to help her. Having established that “the missus” had authorised this initiative she produced a great greasy book. Laying it on the table and opening it before us upside down we at once understood the nature of the service we could do her.
“My mother gave me this girt book,” she said. “She’s long gone now and it’s all I have of her. She couldn’t read it no more than I can and I should like to know what’s in it.” She looked at us as if she were sizing whether we were equal to this task. “You do read, I suppose?” she said.
We said we did and told her it was a book of recipes which greatly pleased her and agreed to read some of it to her each day, so she could choose those she fancied the sound of and perhaps make them. As a result of this interview we learned that none of the three maids nor Joe and Sal could read, and we offered to teach any of those that wanted it. Cook was doubtful that the maids would bother with it, though Sarah, she said, had a beau who wrote her letters she puzzled over, and she had asked the Potter brothers, who did read a little, to read one to her once, but they had teased her so unmercifully she had never asked again. And she thought Sal and Joe were young enough to learn and it did make life easier after all, especially in these days when everyone seemed to read. I was about to offer to read the Bible to her if she liked, but then remembered she was a Quaker and, as I had no idea what this entailed apart from us all being equal, thought I had better not in case I offended her.
We spent the rest of the day going over the house making a list of all the things we could do, our criteria being that they were useful, but did not encroach on the employment of anyone else. We discovered that the library was in no order, with all kinds of books mixed together, and that we could arrange them more conveniently. We found that apart from the maids’ rooms and our room, no one had gone into the other attic rooms for years, which were full of things useful and useless intermingled. Here was another task. And while the maids did the day-to-day mending of clothes and linen, we found no one was responsible for a frayed cushion here, a curtain with a falling hem there, and so on, and that such items were usually replaced when they got too disreputable rather than repaired before this was necessary. By the time we sat down with our aunt after dinner we had a long list of ways in which we could make ourselves useful. She listened with some amusement as Evelyn explained our plan, and when she had finished asked, “Are either of you clever with figures?”
“I used to do Father’s household accounts,” said Evelyn. “He said they were always very tidy.”
“Excellent,” said Aunt Madge and opened a drawer stuffed with papers. “I am at a loss to comprehend all that – your uncle used to take care of everything, and I have no head for it. Could you assist?”
“I’ll do my best!” said Evelyn.
Aunt Madge seemed very pleased.
“Well, girls, are you satisfied now? I seem to have lost two nieces and gained a secretary and a housekeeper. May I assume you will do me the honour of remaining a little longer as it now seems to me that this household could not have managed a moment longer without you?”