Lady's Maid Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Forster

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Part I: 1844–1846

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part II: 1846–1857

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Part III: 1857–1861

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Afterword

  Copyright

  About the Book

  London 1844, and a shy young woman has arrived to take up a new position in the grandeur of No. 50, Wimpole Street. Subtly and compellingly, Lady’s Maid gives voice to Elizabeth Wilson’s untold story, her complex relationship with her mistress, Elizabeth Barrett, and her dramatic role in the most famous elopement in history.

  About the Author

  Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster is the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady’s Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want?, Over and Isa & May, as well as bestselling memoirs (Hidden Lives and Precious Lives) and biographies. She is married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies, and lives in London and the Lake District.

  ALSO BY MARGARET FORSTER

  Dame’s Delight

  Georgy Girl

  The Bogeyman

  The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff

  The Park

  Miss Owen-Owen is At Home

  Fenella Phizackerley

  Mr Bone’s Retreat

  The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

  Mother Can You Hear Me?

  The Bride of Lowther Fell

  Marital Rites

  Private Papers

  Have the Men Had Enough?

  The Battle for Christabel

  Mothers’ Boys

  Shadow Baby

  The Memory Box

  Diary of an Ordinary Woman

  Is There Anything You Want?

  Keeping the World Away

  Over

  Isa & May

  Non-Fiction

  The Rash Adventurer

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Significant Sisters

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Daphne du Maurier

  Hidden Lives

  Rich Desserts & Captain’s Thin

  Precious Lives

  Good Wives?

  Poetry

  Selected Poems of Elizabeth

  Barrett Browning (Editor)

  For Valerie Grove, another hard-working lass from the North-East

  PART

  1844–1846

  Chapter One

  WILSON SAT UP very straight. This was the first letter she had ever written in her life and she wished it to be correct in every particular. The inkwell, mother’s parting gift and purchased with some difficulty, had travelled with her. It was made of glass, with a hinged lid. The ink itself had travelled separately, tightly stoppered in a small bottle and wrapped for extra security in a piece of green felt. The felt was now spread out with the inkwell resting upon it so that, should there be any spillages, no harm would be done. Taking care to allow the surplus ink to drip off her nib, at last she wrote:

  Dear Mother,

  Dear Mother, we left from the Unicorn Inn at five in the morning in a Coach. I was well wrapped up and though the air was Raw not in the least chilled and by nine when the sun had broken through I removed my heavy shawl the same which you dear mother knitted for me so you can be assured I did not suffer. At ten we made a stop Mrs Maria Barrett pronouncing she was suffering agony from Backache and so we pulled up at an Inn whereof I have forgot the name —

  Wilson paused. It seemed important, so early in her chronicle, to be exact. Mother had begged her to write down every detail, swearing nothing was too trivial for her and Ellen and May and Fanny to want to know. She could see them now in her head, reading this letter, when it arrived, so many times they would almost memorise it. And she could not remember the name of that first inn. But with no difficulty at all she could remember well enough the noise and confusion and her own fear. Mrs Maria Barrett was shown into a private room and her sister with her and both their maids and Wilson did not know what to do. No one directed her, no one troubled about her. Mrs Barrett’s maid ignored her timid request as to where she should go, but then perhaps she had spoken so softly she had not been heard. So she had stood on the threshold of the parlour, not knowing whether to enter with the ladies or not, and then she had been pushed out of the way by a woman bearing a tray of refreshments and the door had closed in her face. She had not had the courage to open it again. And so she turned, heart thumping, seeing nothing for it but to return to the coach and wait. But Mr Barrett had taken pity on her. He found her lurking near the coach and gave a great ‘Hey! What’s this? What’s to do? Not eating, miss?’ She blushed and lowered her head, desperately confused. He held out his hand, which she had been too shy to take, and took her back into the inn and seated her in a quiet corner and ordered the landlord to see to her wants, and chucked her under the chin before he left, saying she would have to learn to speak up for herself if she was going to London.

  She did not want to write any of this to her mother. The thought of her own confusion and distress over such a simple thing as entering an inn was painful to her. She had not known what to ask for, even. The landlord, impatient and irritable, had stood over her and she could only think to say water and bread. Water and bread were what she got, the water brackish and the bread hard. But she chewed and swallowed and tried not to think of her mother’s knead cakes, the warmth of them melting the jam made from their own blackcurrants and the fragrance of the baking still in the air:

  — but we Rested and Fed and went on our way Refreshed. We stopped again at midday, I know not where, and again Mrs Barrett had the Backache and walked about with a deal of groaning, I am sure, and after she had repaired to a bed and lain upon it until two we once more set off. It was a long weary afternoon Mother and though there was much to see I could not look at all the country we passed through without some tears before my eyes for thinking of Home and you dear Mother —

  But it had been her mother who had wanted her to go, to snatch this opportunity and get away from home. Mother said it might never come again and at twenty-three she had to be thinking of this and not find herself slaving and working her fingers to the bone as mother had always done. To go to London and into a lady’s service was a great thing to poor mother who had never done anything but wash and scrub and clean and, most of all, sew and whose ability to read and write had done her little good. Mother, married at seventeen and widowed at twenty-five, for whom nothing had ever gone right. She had kept her cottage only because she was a good worker and the master did not need it, and the mistress valued her as a seamstress, but she had no rights to it, nothing; she was only the widow of an estate worker, she could be turned out at a moment’s notice as she never
tired of reminding her daughters. All of them must find work so when the time came there was a chance they could fend for themselves. And to this end mother drove them all on, snatching a place for Wilson as scullery maid when she was thirteen and urging her to work double-hard and be noticed and rise in the world. Which she had done, though it was hard to be noticed when she was so shy and quiet and afraid. First she was under maid then at sixteen took a place as second parlour maid at the Barretts’ house until Mrs Barrett’s lady’s maid fell ill and she was called to step in and take her place for a month. She had no training to it, nothing, she knew only how to scour pans and sweep floors and open doors and, lately, how to dust and set a table under a housekeeper’s direction. But she did not know how to brush clothes or braid hair or any other essential lore for waiting on a lady. Mrs Barrett taught her. She liked to teach her own maids how to do things as she wanted and no other way and preferred them to come to her without knowing any other person’s ways. But after a month her own maid was recovered and had not been ill since and Wilson had been encouraged by Mrs Barrett to look elsewhere for a situation that was worthy of her. She had done better, she had found one for her herself, with old Mrs Graham-Clarke in Pilgrim Street and mother was thrilled. She stayed nearly seven years with Mrs Graham-Clarke, from 1837 to 1844 until April this year, when Mrs Barrett had come to see her and told her of this very special situation to a young unmarried lady who was a distant relative-by-marriage of hers and lived in London. Mother had been ecstatic. The wage was sixteen guineas a year and all found, six more than she was getting in Newcastle.

  Wilson could not understand mother’s urgent pleas to take this London situation. Did she want to be rid of her? Did she not want her near? But both these explanations were so patently false that she could only fall back on her mother’s given reason, the same she had always given: she wanted all her daughters to do well for themselves. London was, by her standards, doing supremely well, though Mother had never been to London and knew little of it. She said she did not need any first-hand information. London was where the Queen was, London was where the rich and famous were. And, Mrs Barrett had said, this young lady’s family were one of the first families in London, she believed. She gave a guarantee that Wilson would find no better, no more respectable, no kinder household in all of London. The maid whose situation she would take, Mrs Barrett had said, was leaving in tears and only because she was to be married. Everyone loved the lady for whom Wilson would work. Mrs Barrett had tears in her own eyes as she described her distant cousin, Miss Elizabeth Moulton Barrett. She told Wilson what a sad, wasted figure Miss Barrett was, an invalid, almost a recluse, so sweet and delicate and gentle, and moreover a poet of some acclaim. Mother had started to say it was her duty to go to such a lady and help her but Mrs Barrett had interrupted to say it was a privilege. But it was so far away and she had never been out of Newcastle, except once to Durham and then she was glad to get home. She would not see her family for a year and yet there was mother, pushing her to go, not crying at all.

  Except at the parting, when everyone cried, Ellen and May and Fanny as well as mother; but Ellen had cried for jealousy, May because she was frightened and Fanny because everyone else was crying. Ellen knew she would never rise like Wilson. She started out as a scullery maid but did not progress because she was clumsy and had a temper. Both kept her down. Now she was twenty-one and still in the kitchen and never likely to leave it unless she married. May was more likely to follow in Wilson’s footsteps, being neat and docile but then May was twice as timid as Wilson and afraid of any responsibility. She was better as a parlour maid, mother said, under a butler’s eye and guided by a housekeeper. As for Fanny, she was still at home, though fourteen. Mother said she was not strong and should be kept at home longer if it could be managed. Not strong and not bright either. Wilson wondered often if Fanny, born after mother was widowed, was a little more than merely delicate, but the subject could not be mentioned. Fanny was mother’s baby, sent to console her, born in the middle of great sorrow and grief and the mark of this seemed always to be on her.

  Wilson applied herself. This day dreaming, this rambling in the head, would never do. She wrote on rapidly, describing the rest of the journey and making a good story of the horse that tried to bolt and losing a wheel at Doncaster and finally arriving in the city itself:

  — You would cry out to see it dear mother it is so Fine and there are Such Sights I cannot think to tell you in one letter. Mrs Barrett has a very Fine House here full of all manner of good stuff such as you would exclaim to see though in truth I was not there above a day and did not see all the rooms. She brought me here and next day between two and three in the afternoon since the lady was so desirous to see me but not the lady Miss Elizabeth Barrett, as I will be maid to it is another, Miss Henrietta, that I saw and a very pretty lady too. She asked me if I was Quiet because her sister, Miss Elizabeth, had great need of Quiet and I said I was and I was Known to be Quiet in all I did and Mrs Barrett vouched for me. She asked if I understood her sister, Miss Elizabeth, was not strong and needed great care and many things done for her and above all a Kind and Cheerful person about her. I did not know what to make in reply for, dear mother, I fear I am not naturally Cheerful and what reply was I to make? Miss Henrietta saw my confusion and spared me and said she was sure I was Kind because I looked Kind. Mrs Barrett said I was Kind and had no temper. Miss Henrietta said she would consult with her sister but she thought I could come the next day and begin to know Miss Elizabeth if that suited. And so today I came mother and Mrs Barrett sent me in her carriage with my box which was appreciated as it is heavy with all my winter goods. I make haste to send this dear mother and have stamped it and will post it when I can and hope it will find you as it leaves me.

  Your loving daughter,

  Lily.

  Wilson’s name was not Lily or Lilian but Elizabeth, shortened to Lily from Lilabet, as Ellen had called her when a child. She liked to sign her christian name because she so rarely saw it and now she had left home would rarely hear it either. She was Wilson, without any pre-fix, and had been pleased when she became known as Wilson in Mrs Graham-Clarke’s household. It put her above Mary and Martha and Eve who were only under maids. She was Wilson as the housekeeper in this new place, though unmarried, was ‘Mrs’ Robinson and the distinction was clear.

  Mrs Robinson had treated her with some suspicion but with respect. She had looked very searchingly at Wilson when they met that morning. A fine, handsome man had opened the door to her when she plunged down the area steps. She did not dare raise her eyes while she told him who she was. All she had seen as she followed him down a passage were his black clad legs and the stone of the ground. She knew that as lady’s maid she ought not to behave like a scullery hand, that she ought to have presence and speak up and act according to her station but it was not in her to do so. She ought by rights to have gone to the front door but this had not occurred to her. Mrs Robinson did not seem to hold it against her. ‘I like modesty,’ she said and smiled. Wilson stood and blushed until told to take a seat.

  Mrs Robinson, Minnie Robinson, was large and fat, but soft and dimpled, rather than solid and heavy. She had thick, wavy blonde hair under her cap, peeping out all round the edges in tiny tendrils, and bright, sharp blue eyes that looked at Wilson shrewdly. This one, she could tell, would be no trouble. No airs and graces here, maybe a deal too soft for many a taste. What would Crow make of her? Minnie pressed Wilson to a cup of tea and wondered if anyone could be more different from the vigorous, lively Crow who was about to depart among so many tears and sighs. They even looked startlingly different, the two of them. Crow was tall and strong with bold colouring and a great energy of movement which she struggled to control in Miss Elizabeth’s company. This new one, Wilson, was small and fragile, nearly as small and fragile as Miss Elizabeth herself. She sat there now with her head bowed and her hands clasped tightly, tight enough to turn the knuckles white. Minnie poured her some tea, urged
her to remove her coat if she felt the room was warm enough. Hurriedly, Wilson took off her thick cloak, afraid that by not doing so without being bidden she had caused offence. A neat figure, Minnie noted, a good bust in spite of her small stature and air of fragility. But not a flirt, there was no preening, no sign that this young woman knew she had a good figure: there would be no trouble. Minnie asked her about her other positions and watched her carefully as she recited the dates and names. Only occasionally did Wilson look up, little furtive peeps then down with the eyes again. The master would not like that – ‘Look me in the face,’ he always told his servants and frowned if they could not hold his stare. This one would be afraid of the master, it was certain.

  Minnie got up, with some difficulty. She was a little lame in one leg. ‘I’ll take you to your room myself,’ she said, sorting out the keys hanging on the rack. Most of the servants’ rooms did not lock but Crow’s did, as did Minnie’s own. It was a privilege of which she had no need, though Crow had done, of course. She went ahead, telling Wilson to leave her bag for Charles to bring. Slowly, she walked along the passage, Wilson following, and began to climb the stairs, pulling hard on the banister. The first flight, to the hall was steep but after that it became easier until the last flight of all. She did not talk to Wilson – she had not the breath to do so – until the second floor and then she paused on the landing and indicated a door and whispered, ‘Miss Elizabeth’s – sssh’. Another steep flight and then they were there. Minnie opened the door, indicated to Wilson that she should go in. Wilson stepped into the room hesitantly, as though expecting someone to be there. Minnie could smell lemon juice still fresh in the air. Crow, who had only moved out two days ago, used lemon juice on her hands to keep them white. It was pure folly and expensive folly in Minnie’s opinion – there would be no more lemons for Crow to waste on her hands now.

  Crow had left the room immaculate. Wilson could see the chest of drawers had been freshly polished and the cover on the bed, a pleasant sprigged pink counterpane, freshly laundered. There were pink and white curtains at the window and a pink cushion in an old basketweave chair beside the bed. If it had not been for a large and ugly mahogany closet, the room would have seemed too pretty to be that of a servant. Minnie opened the closet with some pride, assuring Wilson it would hold a complete wardrobe, winter and summer, with ease. Wilson blushed. Her few things would be lost in that cavernous cupboard. Minnie sat on the bed, said it was a good bed, that the master had good beds throughout the house for servants as well as family. She said she hoped Wilson would be happy here. Wilson said she was sure she would. Still Minnie went on sitting there until Wilson began to feel embarrassed.