Читать книгу Period Piece - Gwendolyn Raverat - Страница 19

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From 1878 onwards, the Revised Statutes, which allowed Fellows of colleges to marry without losing their fellowships, came into force in one college after another. Till then, with a few exceptions, only Heads of Houses and Professors could marry, so that the children of the university remained few in number. But after 1878 families began to appear; thus, though not among the eldest, I belong to the first hatching of Fellows' children, and was born into a society which was still small and exclusive. The town, of course, did not count at all.

I was also born into the trying position of being the eldest of the family, so that the full force of my mother's theories about education were brought to bear upon me; and it fell to me to blaze a path to freedom for my juniors, through the forest of her good intentions.

I don't believe that my mother was more subject to attacks of theories than many other parents of her time; indeed many children of my acquaintance had parents who were more addicted to them than she was; and, worse still, many of those parents were much more efficient in enforcing their theory-based laws. There were some children who might not ride bicycles, and others who were forbidden to go in boats; some who were forced to play the violin, and others who always had to wear mufflers; some who might not eat currant buns, and others who were obliged to have cold baths: all kinds of fads and foolishnesses. There were even some children who were forced to go barefoot, and others who were forbidden to do so. Now, my mother's theories often passed off quite quickly; and in any case there were always (thank Heaven) a good many holes and by-passes through the walls built by her pronouncements. Also she was often out, or away from home; and Nana, though loyal, was eminently humane and reasonable in practice. So that, on the whole, we were rather more free than many of our contemporaries.

Her sturdy American belief in Independence made my mother encourage us to do things for ourselves, unlike the well-brought-up English children of our class, some of whom simply did not know that you could make a bed yourself. No doubt it was chiefly because it happened to be convenient, that I was occasionally given a holiday to turn out and clean the locked store-cupboard; but the theory that we could make our own beds, or clean our own bicycles was a great advance. We even sometimes were made to polish our own boots, which we rather enjoyed. We were supposed to learn to cook, too; but that is impossible, where there is an affectionate cook in the kitchen with you, to tell you exactly what to do, and to manage the fire for you. Once, when Margaret had had a course of cooking lessons, she undertook, in the cook's absence, to roast a goose for dinner; and the goose gradually froze to death as the fire went out. There were no gas-cookers then! But the company remarked on the delicious tomato sandwiches she made for tea that afternoon; though it was afterwards discovered that they had been well sprinkled with Keating's Insect Powder, in mistake for pepper. It was partly in consequence of these views of my mother's that when, in 1940, we all came down with a thump to the bare facts of life, we were not quite so helpless as some of our contemporaries; though still idiotic enough, Heaven knows.

Even when I first married it would never have occurred to me that I could possibly be the cook myself, or that I could care for my baby alone, though we were not at all well off at that time. It was not that I was too proud to work—I would not have minded in the least what I did—it was simply that I had not the faintest idea how to begin to run a house by myself, and would not have thought it possible that I could do it, in spite of all my mother's efforts to train us in housework. Of course I disapproved of having servants on principle, even when they were treated with affection and respect, as ours were at home. But this was just an abstract theory; for I had never considered in the least how we should get on without them; in fact it seemed to me quite inevitable that they should be there, a necessary and very tolerable arrangement, both for them and for us. What a distance we have travelled in the last forty years!

Another excellent thing was that we were sometimes left to shift for ourselves, more than was usual for children in our class and time; though this was only partly in consequence of my mother's views on independence. It was also largely a result of the casual happy-go-luckiness—not unaccompanied by laziness—which was one of her most attractive qualities. She was of course inexhaustibly energetic about anything that interested her. She would go to great trouble and make long expeditions to find a cook for someone else; but if a cook for herself was needed, she was bored, and would go to almost equal trouble to get someone else to do the tiresome job for her. 'Very important' committee meetings used sometimes to prevent her from accompanying us on the great family move, when we went to a hired house in Yorkshire, for part of the summer holidays. It was my father who organized and conducted the awful journey, with changes at Ely and York, and piles of luggage and the maids and the dogs and the pram and the parrot and the cot and the bath and us children; particularly Billy, who was always sick in the train. And when we at last got to the house, it was Nana and I who arranged everything; and my mother would arrive comfortably a day or two later, and find us all nicely settled in. We enjoyed doing it, and we did it perfectly well, so all was for the best. But most mothers would have thought it their duty to do more of the fussing themselves.

It was always so. In a sense the maids ran the house; and so long as they showed a certain tact towards her private economies and foibles, she was glad they should do so. But it was very definitely her house all the same; only that was the way she ran it. And on the whole it was a success; it was comfortable, the food was always excellent, and the maids stayed for years: the great Mrs. Phillips for nearly thirty years. (Mrs. was a courtesy title, of course.) It was the most hospitable of houses; the sort of place where you could bring five extra people in to lunch unexpectedly, without upsetting anyone. Of course, during her reign, Mrs. Phillips really ran the house completely, but appearances were always preserved. You should have seen the skill with which Mrs. Phillips and my mother avoided each other if they happened to be annoyed. But even Mrs. Phillips herself had to go through the farce of asking for every pot of jam or box of matches to be given out of the store cupboard, for she herself was never allowed to hold the key for a single instant.

The Inviolability of the Locked Store Cupboard was the rock bottom of all my mother's sacred theories of housekeeping. The Opening of the Cupboard was an unpredictable ceremony. First my mother had to be caught at a propitious moment; then the Key had to be found; and then due application had to be made by each maid in turn for the necessaries of their crafts. If my mother was away, or ill, I was trusted with the Key and performed the rites; when I always gave out twice as much as was asked for, as I thought that being given one piece of soap at a time made things rather difficult for the housemaid. However, with that adaptability which is the chief asset of the human race, the maids soon learnt the ropes: they asked for more than they needed and made little hoards against the future; or they ostentatiously left no soap in my mother's own bedroom; or saw to it that it was the dining-room sugar-basin that was empty. No one really suffered; and her Bad Angel, whose name was Economy, was appeased by the show of worship; while her Good Angel, whose name was Serenity, reigned in all essentials.

This Good Angel also made her allow us to go about alone more than most other children did. By the time I was eleven or twelve, I was even allowed to bicycle alone down the Backs after dark, when I came home from having tea with my cousins. It was very quiet and lonely there at night; it may not have been too safe, but she was always singularly fearless.

I was afraid; but, of course, I never spoke of my fear; for it was above all things necessary to me to see my cousins, and I was more afraid of having my freedom curtailed than of all the terrors of darkness and solitude.

The Backs were a frightening place, even by daylight, because it was there, more than anywhere else, that Mad Dogs were liable to occur; or so my cousin Frances said, and she knew. For she had seen there a very mysterious figure, who was connected with mad dogs: a girl with red-flannel soles to her shoes. (I cannot imagine who she was, unless she was the Goddess of Hydrophobia?) The possibility, the probability, of Mad Dogs was very much in our minds; slinking about, with their red tongues hanging out, slobbering and whining; like Caldecott's picture of the dog it was that died. Of course there were real mad dogs in those days; and sometimes our dogs had to be muzzled for a time; so we had some excuse for our fears.

Even when we were older, and the Backs were less terrifying by day, it was perfectly appalling at night, to have to ride through the great gulfs of blackness between the faint gas-lamps; while shadowy lovers were hiding in pairs behind the great elm trunks. Or perhaps worse than lovers? Murderers? Or footpads? We only had candle or oil bicycle lamps then, and to make matters worse they were blown out by every breath of air; but I clenched my teeth and rode like the wind, and hoped to get through alive. Freedom was worth any heroism. None of my cousins were allowed to do this, so I had the recompense of feeling rather grand about it.

But when all is said and done, our liberty was only relative; we were only just a little more free than some of our contemporaries, and I have no hesitation in saying that all our generation was much too carefully brought up. As we grew towards adolescence the restrictions became steadily more painful, for they prevented us from growing in the natural way, just as the binding of the feet of a Chinese girl prevents growth. Our cousins, Ruth and Nora, were very much more carefully brought up than we were; and they suffered, both then and later, more than we did. Frances was the sheltered and adored only child, and though she was less unhappy at the time, she too suffered in the end from the over-protection.

My own private theory is, that it is better to let children's teeth or morals suffer from laisser-aller, than to be too vigilant about them. But no doubt people who have been really hurt by neglect in their youth will disagree with me. For this is a matter in which it is impossible ever to be in the right.

Dear Reader, you may take it from me, that however hard you try—or don't try; whatever you do—or don't do; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; every way and every day: