The Retrospect

by Ada Cambridge

The procession of the hours passed before my eyes when I looked at my old home—one day so like another that I could not lose myself amongst them.

No morning tea, of course. I blush to add, no bath. I do not remember a bathroom in any house—not even that of my maternal grandfather, a physician of some distinction in his day, who dictated the laws of hygiene not only to us but to many county families. A portable bath was part of the furniture of every decent house—we had one so large that the frequent monthly nurse made her bed in it—but, like the warming-pan, it was not for common use; it was a medical appliance chiefly. Such is the case, I find, in many English houses still. We children were severely scrubbed and scoured in washing-tubs every Saturday night—"tub night"—and we did a great deal of sea bathing in summer; between whiles we ran constant risk of being sent from table to obliterate the line of demarcation between the washed and unwashed portions of face and neck. Dirty little pigs! We used to dress first, and then seek the sparing sponge. This was after the nurse of infancy had been replaced by the nursery governess, who, to the best of my recollection, was no more particular herself.

There was some excuse for us in those bitter English winters. To go warm from the "keeping-room" fire to the ice-cold linen sheets was bad enough—I recall the nightly struggle for courage to put feet down into them; to have to get out again into a temperature that froze the towels on the horse so that they would stand up by themselves like boards—that froze one's breath on the sheets so that I have scratched my face on the crystals as on pins—was a sharper ordeal. Small wonder that we hurried into our clothes, or that the stiff, blue, chilblained fingers shrank from wet on the top of cold. I remember a winter night when my ewer split in halves with a loud report, and the water within rolled out upon the floor like a lump of glass; there had been a fire in the room overnight too, a luxury dispensed with, as a rule, in the case of children who had passed out of the nursery into rooms of their own. It was in the same winter that I inadvertently touched an iron railing with my bare hand, and skin and metal stuck together. This, however, was not at T——.

My doctor-grandfather did not pull-to the curtains round his and grandmother's bed. I know, because I used to sleep in their room when visiting them by myself, and gaze upon them from my cot in the corner as they slept—both in nightcaps, hers deeply frilled over the face, his cone-shaped, with the tasselled point hanging over one ear. But it was the the rule to draw them—that is what they were there for—and my father and mother did so. The room itself was made airtight first. To have slept with a window open would have seemed to them the act of a deliberate suicide. Curtains having been drawn over bolted windows, six more (of flowered damask, very thick) were drawn round the canopied four-poster, turning it into a small tent; a pleated valance round the top obviated the danger of ventilation where the rings ran upon the rods. The occupants entered the enclosure by an aperture on either side, closed it carefully, sank into the yielding depths of the billowy feather-bed, and slept like tops. At any rate, I never heard that they did not. More than that, there are people who can sleep under almost the same conditions still. I had had an idea that feather-beds had been extinct for thirty years, at least, but last year I reposed on no less than four separate ones in four separate houses; yes, and slept well upon them all. I got so used to feather-beds at last that on my return home I had to send my hair mattress to be teased before I could reconcile myself to it again. Almost everywhere I went in England I used to go up to bed to find the windows of my room closed and locked under the drawn blinds—part of the housemaid's preparations for the night; whereas I am accustomed to sleep with three wide open, and to wish that roof and walls could be dispensed with. Although I adjusted myself so easily to the feather-bed, I drew the line at the shut-up room; the fresh night air was indispensable. But I would sometimes find the bedclothes damp in the morning, and the clothes I had taken off too clammy to put on again. I had forgotten that peculiarity of English nights.

My mother, when I knew her first, did her hair of a morning in two parts; the hinder half was brushed back, tied tightly, and disposed in braids around a high comb; the front drooped in beautiful golden ringlets on either side of her face. But when she was thirty or so she dressed like the sedate old lady that we took her then to be. She tucked her fair hair under a cap—a large cap, with streamers of ribbon hanging down from below the ears like untied bonnet-strings. There was a dummy head of pasteboard (which went by the name of Jane Winter), with a proper face to it, and a hollow neck with an opening within which to stow away materials, on which her caps were made. It may possibly have been because she was perennially convalescing from confinements that she wore caps as a habit at so early an age, but I think not; I believe them to have been the sign of departed youth. When you became a mother, though you might be still in your teens, a large cap was part of the "sitting-up" costume. I remember standing at mother's side by open drawers, while Cousin E., "expecting" for the first and last time, displayed the elaborate preparations made for her infant and herself. I did not know what they meant, but I see now the white cap of blond lace and gauze ribbon that she twirled about on her doubled fist. I saw her in it too on the happy day when I was first allowed to sit on a stool at her feet and nurse the baby. She looked beautiful in it, with her girlish face and mass of dark hair. On emerging from invalid retirement she left it off, so I suppose it was a sort of glorified substitute for the universal nightcap.

With regard to other clothing, all persons claiming to be gentlefolk—the division of classes was strongly marked in those days—wore Irish linen shifts and shirts and silk stockings; no matter how poor nor how outwardly shabby they went, they must conform in those particulars or lose caste. My two grandmothers, both wealthier than we were, were sticklers for the finest material, and some of their silk stockings (white, like all stockings) and exquisite under-garments came down to their descendants to be darned and darned as long as they would hold together. When they were worn out—no cotton; a lady would live on bread and water sooner than come to that. Much of this linen nether-wear was made in the National Schools, where sewing was an important feature in the education of the poor. The ladies of the neighbourhood gave their material and instructions, and from time to time inspected the process of manufacture. Often have I accompanied a village patroness on this errand, stood shyly by while she studied the fine stitching—one thread drawn and the tiny beading done on the crossing threads, two backward and two forward—and the tiny gathers "stroked" to a regularity that no machine could better, the little craftswomen dropping their dutiful curtsies to her when she deigned to commend their work. I do not know who was paid for it when it was done.

Winter and summer these linen garments were, I believe, worn next the skin. I forget what the fashion of the early fifties decreed to be worn immediately over them, except stays that had busks of solid wood, and had to be laced down the back every time they were put on. But I remember watching, in that room up yonder, my mother tying her bustle round her waist. It was a stuffed roll like a sand-bag, reaching from hip to hip, designed to set her skirts out behind; and the skirts hanging under and over it were numerous and full. As for gowns—the deep point in front, the patterned flounces, bell sleeves combined with white muslin bishop sleeves, large lace collars fastened under a spreading ribbon bow or cameo brooch the size of a small plate, "habit-shirts" (for filling in the long and narrow V of an open-fronted bodice)—memory supplies but a jumble of these things. It does not matter. History has preserved the modes of the time, and I presume we kept up with them as well as country-folk could do.

In the nursery our clothes were more defined in style. Though snow lay on the ground, we went bare-armed and bare-necked—down to the latest baby, whose little sleeves would be tied up with ribbons at the shoulders. To put long sleeves to a child's frock was a thing unheard of; they were given to us with the first "gown," which, with its lengthened skirt and fastenings in front, signified the estate of womanhood. Sandalled shoes, very thin in the sole, were correct indoor wear. The other end of me was showered over with tubular ringlets hanging nearly to my waist. The painful process of preparing them—the relentless thoroughness with which our nurse (mother was gentler) rolled up a strand of hair a few inches, "chucked" it tight upon its rag, rolled it a little more and chucked it again, and finally tied it close to the stretched scalp, with odd hairs dragging at their too tenacious roots, continuing the torture for half-an-hour or more—this was one of the sorrows of childhood in the fifties, and no small one either. Our nursery toilet was completed by the "feeder" tied on before each meal and removed after. We went downstairs—when mother was "about"—to the row of bread-and-milk basins that I, for one, hated the sight of, except in the season when a sprinkle of strawberries or raspberries and a little sugar were dropped into them; the youngest aunt being unaware of such a weak relaxation of rules. Discipline imposed that bread-and-milk upon us every day of our lives, no matter how we rebelled against it. We might be bribed to get it down by promises of a taste of the adults' dishes afterwards—the fat gravy from the bacon was a valued perquisite; but there was no dispensing with the nauseous preliminary. I have not been able to eat bread-and-milk since.

Mother came downstairs with her key-basket. What she did with all those keys I do not know, but they were evidently precious. She carried them, with the plate-basket, to her room, nightly; a maid retrieved the latter when she took up father's shaving water, but the little brown basket of keys was never beyond reach of the mistress's hand. She set it down beside the tea-tray while she administered breakfast. And I had not been three days in England before I saw the exact duplicate of that little brown basket, with all the keys in it, go through exactly the same performance. How oddly it struck me. For in Australia we know not key-baskets—never have done so far as I know. If you were to lock sideboard or store-closet against your respectable maids in this country they would not stay with you. And I should not blame them.

I suppose mother's tea-caddy was locked—certainly tea was a terrible price those days. I often opened the lid of the quaint box, which had two lidded receptacles inside, one for black tea, one for green, and a special caddy spoon to ladle it out with. She made the tea herself from a blending of the two kinds, to which she added a dust of carbonate of soda, apparently to increase the look of strength. She drew the water from the hissing urn, kept at the boil by a red-hot metal core slipped into a cylinder in the middle of it. She and father, like many others, drank the decoction pure, without sugar or milk.