It’s got about. I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world; but Mr. Wilkins has got to know that I write stories. He told me the other evening that he was going to buy my book, and he hoped I’d write my name in it. “What book?” I said, going very red.
“Why, your ‘Memoirs,’ ma’am,” he said. “My daughter up in London, that I went to see last week—she’s a great reader, and I do believe that she has read everything, ancient and modern—and we were having a lot of conversation about you, and I was saying what a nice lady you were, and about your husband being a sailor, and one or two things I dropped made her prick up her ears, and she asked me a lot of questions, and presently she said, ‘Father, what’s Mrs. Beckett’s christian name?’ Well, of course I knew what it was, through your having written it in the visitors’ book, as you remember, when you asked me to write mine too, when it was new, and you wanted to take it up for ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ to put their names in. So I said, ‘Mrs. Beckett’s christian name, my dear, is Mary Jane.’
“‘I thought so,’ said my daughter.
“Of course I asked her why she should think your name was Mary Jane, ma’am, and then she said, ‘She’s a celebrated authoress. She’s written a book all about us (my daughter is in domestic service), and it’s the truest book I ever read about servants. It’s her “Memoirs” and all about the places she lived in, and the people she lived with. She said in the book she was going to marry Harry and have a country inn.{113}’
“‘Harry’s the landlord’s name, right enough,’ I said; and from one or two things my daughter told me were in that book, ma’am, I’m sure I have the honour of addressing the talented authoress.”
I blushed more than ever when Mr. Wilkins said that, and I felt very uncomfortable. I never thought it would get about that I wrote books, and I felt that if it was known it might injure our business, as folks wouldn’t like to come and stay at an hotel, if they thought the landlady was studying their characters to make stories about them for print. I saw it was no good denying it, so I put a bold face on the matter, and I said, “Mr. Wilkins, it is quite true; but I want you to give me your promise you won’t say a word of what you have found out to anybody else.”
“Good gracious, ma’am!” said Mr. Wilkins. “Why should you hide your candle under a bushel? It’s a great thing to be a writing lady nowadays.”
“Yes: but I’m not a lady, Mr. Wilkins,” I said, “and I’ve my husband’s business to attend to, and I don’t want the people about here to know me as anything else but the landlady of the ‘Stretford Arms.’”
I explained to him as well as I could why it wasn’t advisable for me to be known as an authoress, especially an authoress who wrote about what she saw, and put real live people in her books; and, after a little talk, Mr. Wilkins said he saw what I meant, and he thought I was right, and he gave me his word of honour he wouldn’t breathe my secret to a soul.
After that, of course, I was obliged to take him a good deal into my confidence, and as once or twice he had seen me writing, it was no good my denying that I was at work on more “Memoirs,” and he very soon jumped to the conclusion that it was our inn and its customers, and the people in the place, that I was writing about. Then he asked me point-blank if he was in, and I said, “Yes, Mr. Wilkins; you are.”
Bless the little man, you should have seen him when he heard that. He positively glowed all over his face, and begged and prayed of me to let him see what I’d written about him. I said he should one day, that I’d only just{114} put down some notes at present, and that they weren’t in shape yet.
After that, he was on at me whenever he got a chance about my new “Memoirs.” “I can give you a lot of things to put in,” he said, “because I’ve lived here man and boy, and there isn’t a soul whose history I don’t know. When are you going to publish ’em, ma’am?”
“Oh,” I said, “not yet. It wouldn’t do while we’re here. A nice time I should have of it, if the people here got hold of the book, and came and asked me how I dared put them in!”
“But you aren’t going to leave here?”
“Not yet, of course; but I hope we shall have a better house some day. If we make this a good business we shall sell it, and buy another—a real hotel, perhaps, with waiters in evening dress, and all that sort of thing; but there’s plenty of time to think about that.”
Poor little Mr. Wilkins! certainly he couldn’t have taken more interest in my new work if he’d been writing it himself; and I really believe he did think he was what they call collaborating; for, after a time, whenever he brought me a bit of information, he would say, “Won’t that do for our ‘Memoirs’?”
Our “Memoirs!” It made me a little cold to him at first, because I have an authoress’s feelings; but I saw he didn’t mean any harm, and I soon forgave him, and we were the best of friends. I will acknowledge here that he was of very great service to me; and having been the parish clerk so many years, and his father before him, and having an old-established little business in the place, he had many opportunities of knowing things which I couldn’t have found out. I can say what I like of him. now, because the old gentleman, at the time I am writing, is far, far away, and isn’t likely to see or hear of my book. But I must not anticipate. I shall tell you his story by-and-by in its proper place, as it happened long after this.
He certainly kept his word, and never told anybody of what he’d found out, and nobody here ever said anything to me about my “Memoirs,” except one person, and when that one person said it, it took my breath away more than Mr. Wilkins did.{115}
I must tell you about that now, or else I shall forget it. It shows the danger of expressing your opinions too freely in a book.
We were always changing our cooks—in fact, cooks were our great difficulty; and female cooks in hotels generally are a difficulty, and even harder to manage than cooks in private families.
The one I had the most trouble with was a middle-aged woman, who came from London, very highly recommended from her last place. She was capital at first—punctual, clean, and as good with her vegetables as she was with the joints and pastry, and that was a great thing, for some English cooks think vegetables are beneath their notice and ought to be left to the kitchenmaid; but I am very strong on vegetables in plain English cooking—especially in an hotel. I know from our customers, who have travelled about, that the vegetables are the weak points in most hotels, and potatoes and cabbage will be served with an expensive dinner that would be a disgrace to a cookshop.
A gentleman told me one day, after he’d had his dinner, when I’d cooked the vegetables myself, that he’d been travelling about the country, and it was the first time he’d eaten a well-cooked potato since he’d left home. He said vegetables were murdered as a rule, and were so badly served, that the waiter didn’t even give them their names, but called them “veg” (pronounced vedge). I’ve heard that said myself at a restaurant in London where Harry took me to dinner, so I know it’s true. “Veg on five,” said our waiter. That was for the boy to put vegetables on table No. 5. Then another waiter put his head into the lift and shouted, “Now, then, look sharp with the veg, there!”
Yes, and “veg” was the word for what we got. Three nasty, half-boiled, diseased-looking potatoes, that had been out of the saucepan half an hour if they had been a minute, and a dab of cabbage—“dab” is the only word—and the cabbage was tasteless, sodden stuff, floating in water; and not a particle of salt had that cabbage or potato seen.
That was a lesson to me, because I felt what I didn’t like I couldn’t expect our customers to like. So I said to{116} myself, “No veg at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ Mary Jane; you’ll give your customers good sound, honest vegetables, cooked well, with as much care as the meat or the pastry or the pudding.”
I’ve wandered a little bit, I know, but I can’t help it. I do feel so strongly on the shameful treatment of vegetables by the ordinary English cook. Now, to come back to the cook I was telling you about. She went on beautifully for a month, and I thought I’d got a treasure; and then she went and fell in love with a young fellow in the village—a very decent young fellow, but a bit too fond of gallivanting. He was a good-looking chap, and the girls encouraged him, as they will do, for I’ve noticed that if a man’s at all decent-looking there are always plenty of girls ready to encourage him to be a flirt. He fell in love with our cook—at any rate, he walked out with her once or twice, and then she told me they were engaged.
Unfortunately, he left off his work at seven every evening, and when our cook couldn’t go out with him, I dare say he wasn’t particular if he laughed and joked with the other young women of the place, who could get out.
Cook got to hear of something of the sort, and it made her dreadfully jealous, and she was always coming to me and saying, “Oh, please, ma’am, we aren’t very busy this evening; can I just run out and get a piece of ribbon?” or, “Oh, if you please, ma’am, could you spare me for ten minutes this evening?” And if I couldn’t let her go she’d be careless and ill-tempered, and work herself up into quite a rage—of course, fancying that her young man was “up to his larks,” as the kitchenmaid used to call it, when she chaffed poor cook about it.
I let her go out as often as I could when we were slack; but when we were busy, and there were late dinners to cook, and meat teas and early suppers, it wasn’t possible, and I had to be firm, and say no.
One evening, when we’d let the best sitting-room to a London lady and gentleman, and they’d ordered dinner at seven, cook came to me about ten minutes to, and said, “Please, ma’am, everything’s all ready, and Mary can dish up and see to the rest, if you’ll let me go out. I won’t be long.{117}”
“No,” I said; “I really can’t, cook. I’m expecting people by the next train, and they’ll very likely want something cooked at once.”
“Oh, ma’am, do, please; it’s very particular.”
“Nonsense, cook,” I said; “you’ve been out twice this week. You only want to see your young man, and I can’t have it. You’re making yourself ridiculous over him, and neglecting your work. Go back to the kitchen at once.”
“Oh, then, you won’t let me go?” she said, turning fiery red.
“No. I’ve told you so.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” she said. “That’s your fellow-feeling for servants, is it? But it ain’t the sort of stuff you put in your ‘Memoirs.’”
“My what?” I gasped.
“Your ‘Memoirs’! Oh, you know what I mean, Miss Mary Jane Buffham. You’re a nice one to stick up for the poor servants, you are! Why don’t you practise what you preach?”
I never was so insulted in my life. It was all my work to prevent myself taking that woman by the shoulders and shaking her—the idea of her daring to throw my “Memoirs” in my face—my own servant, too!
But I kept my temper, and I said quietly, “Cook, you forget yourself.”
“No, I don’t,” she said, with an exasperating leer. “It’s you that forget yourself. You’re a missus now, but you weren’t always, and when you weren’t, you could reckon missuses up as well as anybody.”
“Go out of the room directly,” I said.
“Oh, I’m a-going! You can give me notice if you like. I’m sick of your twopenny-halfpenny public-house. I’ve always lived with gentlefolk before, and been treated as such.”
“Go out of the room!” I shouted, stamping my foot; “and go out of the house.”
“Yes, I will. I’ll go now, this very minute; but I want a month’s money.”
“You sha’n’t have a penny more than’s due to you, you impudent hussy!” I said. “There!” and I banged{118} her wages up to date down on the table; “there’s your money. Now go and pack your box and be off, or I shall have you turned out.”
She took the money, counted it, and then threw it on the table.
“I want a month’s money or a month’s notice,” she said.
“Then you’ll have to get it,” I said. “Be off, or I’ll send for a policeman.”
“Oh!—hadn’t you better send for the one who used to cuddle you in the kitchen, while your other chap was away at sea?”
I did lose my temper at that. It was more than human flesh and blood could bear. I gave a little scream, and then I ran at her, took her by the shoulders, and ran her right out of the room, and banged the door in her face and locked it. And then I fell back into a chair; and if I hadn’t cried I should have had hysterics.
Harry was just outside when I turned cook out, and she began at him. He saw how the land lay, and he made short work of her, though she kept going on about me all the time. He made her pack and be off within a quarter of an hour; and I had to go into the kitchen, hot and crying and excited as I was, and the kitchenmaid and I had to dish up the dinner, and do all the rest of the cooking that evening.
When I had five minutes I went upstairs and bathed my face and put myself tidy; but I had such a dreadful splitting headache, I could hardly see out of my eyes.
When I came down again, Harry was in the parlour smoking his pipe and staring at the ceiling, and he didn’t look very good-tempered.
“Oh, that wretched woman,” I said; “she’s upset everything.”
Harry didn’t speak.
“Harry,” I said, “haven’t you anything to say? Aren’t you sorry for me to have been so upset?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “I’m sorry; but I wish that d——d policeman was at Jericho!”
That cat!—that ever I should call her so—to go and drag that policeman off the cover of my book and throw him at Harry, and all because I wouldn’t let her go and{119} see her young man before she’d cooked the best sitting-room’s dinner!
It was a blow to me to have what I’d said in my book thrown in my face by my own servant. After that I felt inclined to ask a girl before I engaged her if she’d read my “Memoirs,” and if she said she had, to say, “Then you won’t suit me,” because that book puts wrong notions into girls’ heads. If ever there’s a second edition, there’s one or two things about servants in it that I shall certainly alter. And every bit about that policeman will come out. I made up my mind to that long ago.
Writing about the cook who threw my “Memoirs” in my face, and the rage she put me in, has quite put poor Mr. Wilkins’s nose out of joint. I told you how he was always bringing me things to put in my “Memoirs” of the village and our inn. Lots of ............