among themselves, they want more money, and they don’t want to work hard, and they don’t do the things the way you want them, but there, you see, I have a certain position to keep up and so I must employ them.’
Mrs Cutler certainly looked upon us as necessary evils, so in that house we were always united against ‘Them’ upstairs. In the opinion of ‘Them’, we servants must never get ill, we must never dress too well, and we must never have an opinion that differed from theirs. After all it was perfectly obvious, wasn’t it, that if you’d only stayed at school until you were thirteen or fourteen, your knowledge was very small in comparison to what they knew upstairs. So if you had to have opinions why not take them from those upstairs who knew more than you did?
It was the opinion of ‘Them’ upstairs that servants couldn’t appreciate good living or comfort, therefore they must have plain fare, they must have dungeons to work in and to eat in, and must retire to cold spartan bedrooms to sleep. After all, what’s the point of spending money making life easier and more comfortable for a lot of ungrateful people who couldn’t care less what you do for them? They never tried, mind, to find out if we would have cared more by making our conditions good and our bedrooms nice places in which to rest. No, it wasn’t worth spending your money because servants never stayed with you, no matter what you did for them. After all was said and done, only ‘Them’ upstairs needed luxury living, only ‘Them’ could grace the dining-room table and make witty conversation. I mean there’s got to be a stratum of society in which people can move around graciously and indulge in witty conversation, and no one can do this if they work hard. So make life harder for those who work for you, and the less inclined they’ll feel for any kind of conversation.
But if ‘Them’ upstairs could have heard the conversation the parlourmaids carried down from upstairs, they would have realized that our impassive expressions and respectful demeanours hid scorn, and derision.
17
M R C UTLER was fond of shooting. He was in Africa for some years and if the trophies in the house were any indication, he spent a great deal of his time shooting things there.
The hall was absolutely festooned with antlers of this and antlers of that, I don’t know what the animals were, all I know is that some were curved and some were straight and it was my job to get up and dust them.
Back in England, of course, with there not being the same kind of animals, he shot at birds. I got sick of the sight of grouse and pheasants and partridges. These were sent down from wherever he was shooting as quickly as possible, they were hung until they were high, and high they certainly got believe me.
They used to hang in the basement passage from an iron rod, and many a morning when I came down I would find just a head hanging there and the body on the floor. The maggots had eaten clean through. Then it was considered high enough to cook for their dinner.
It was my job then to pluck them without breaking the skin and then to clean the insides. A foul job; they reeked to high heaven.
When the cook served the pheasant she’d keep the head with all the feathers on it, and the tail feathers, and when the bird went up to the meal its head would be placed at one end and the tail feathers at the other.
Another distasteful job was cleaning the hares he shot. They seemed simply full of blood. I think they must be vampires and live on blood. In the cold weather they used to hang for two weeks at least, and you needed the strength of ten to remove the skin from them.
I used to try and get it off in one go because anything like that, rabbits’ skins or hares’ skins, were my perks. The rag- and-bone man used to give me ninepence for a hare skin that was pulled straight off without being torn in any way.
The cook, she would never let me wash the hares. I had to get them
Mrs Cutler certainly looked upon us as necessary evils, so in that house we were always united against ‘Them’ upstairs. In the opinion of ‘Them’, we servants must never get ill, we must never dress too well, and we must never have an opinion that differed from theirs. After all it was perfectly obvious, wasn’t it, that if you’d only stayed at school until you were thirteen or fourteen, your knowledge was very small in comparison to what they knew upstairs. So if you had to have opinions why not take them from those upstairs who knew more than you did?
It was the opinion of ‘Them’ upstairs that servants couldn’t appreciate good living or comfort, therefore they must have plain fare, they must have dungeons to work in and to eat in, and must retire to cold spartan bedrooms to sleep. After all, what’s the point of spending money making life easier and more comfortable for a lot of ungrateful people who couldn’t care less what you do for them? They never tried, mind, to find out if we would have cared more by making our conditions good and our bedrooms nice places in which to rest. No, it wasn’t worth spending your money because servants never stayed with you, no matter what you did for them. After all was said and done, only ‘Them’ upstairs needed luxury living, only ‘Them’ could grace the dining-room table and make witty conversation. I mean there’s got to be a stratum of society in which people can move around graciously and indulge in witty conversation, and no one can do this if they work hard. So make life harder for those who work for you, and the less inclined they’ll feel for any kind of conversation.
But if ‘Them’ upstairs could have heard the conversation the parlourmaids carried down from upstairs, they would have realized that our impassive expressions and respectful demeanours hid scorn, and derision.
17
M R C UTLER was fond of shooting. He was in Africa for some years and if the trophies in the house were any indication, he spent a great deal of his time shooting things there.
The hall was absolutely festooned with antlers of this and antlers of that, I don’t know what the animals were, all I know is that some were curved and some were straight and it was my job to get up and dust them.
Back in England, of course, with there not being the same kind of animals, he shot at birds. I got sick of the sight of grouse and pheasants and partridges. These were sent down from wherever he was shooting as quickly as possible, they were hung until they were high, and high they certainly got believe me.
They used to hang in the basement passage from an iron rod, and many a morning when I came down I would find just a head hanging there and the body on the floor. The maggots had eaten clean through. Then it was considered high enough to cook for their dinner.
It was my job then to pluck them without breaking the skin and then to clean the insides. A foul job; they reeked to high heaven.
When the cook served the pheasant she’d keep the head with all the feathers on it, and the tail feathers, and when the bird went up to the meal its head would be placed at one end and the tail feathers at the other.
Another distasteful job was cleaning the hares he shot. They seemed simply full of blood. I think they must be vampires and live on blood. In the cold weather they used to hang for two weeks at least, and you needed the strength of ten to remove the skin from them.
I used to try and get it off in one go because anything like that, rabbits’ skins or hares’ skins, were my perks. The rag- and-bone man used to give me ninepence for a hare skin that was pulled straight off without being torn in any way.
The cook, she would never let me wash the hares. I had to get them
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