Then there were the expenses of his family and household, by no means small ones. Although there was no bathroom at the Rectory, everyone had as many baths as they do to-day, taking them, however, in tubs in the privacy of their own rooms. My father was revolted by the idea of people meeting and passing on the threshold of a bathroom, or of anyone’s stepping into a bath just vacated by someone else. Such things were not tolerated under his roof. Extra baths had therefore to mean extra work, and we had a constant succession of under-housemaids, nursery-maids, and between-maids, whose chief work was to carry cans of water upstairs. A dim background was built up of charwomen doing the ‘heavy work’—raking out stoves, or scrubbing passages and back stairs.
At one time, six of my brothers were simultaneously at public schools, which must have meant an enormous annual expense; but in spite of these fresh calls on their income, my parents continued to live in the style of their parents before them—formal dinners, with a good many courses, and two waitresses if the number of diners was more than three. My father was an ascetic man with a small appetite, and the length of a dinner was for him purely a matter of decency and good manners. For instance, when one of his friends sent him a present of game, he would never allow it to be treated as a main course. Game had always to appear as an extra following the joint. I remember the pained surprise with which I once heard him say to my mother: ‘Is this our dinner?’, when she once broke this rule and allowed a brace of pheasants to be served as the pièce de résistance. What was in my father’s mind was this. He would not live on his friends, and they would not expect him to do so. Their presents were enjoyable bonnes-bouches: nothing more. In those days no decent people bought game in shops. Owners of shooting did not sell their game, but gave it away in lavish presents to their friends; and it was generally believed that bought game had been killed by poachers, so that its buying ought to be discouraged.
When I remember the number of joints which hung in the larder at Wilton Rectory; and the huge unpacking when ‘the stores’ arrived—tin canisters and earthenware jars of sugar, coffee, cocoa-nibs, tea, rice, raisins, sultanas and prunes—I see that our establishment was run on a scale unknown in the country rectories of to-day. Yet this lavishness was accompanied by economies even more unknown.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, there was of course no central heating at Wilton Rectory; but the hall, the passages, and the wide upstair corridor were all warmed by a huge, hideous, and miraculously effective stove which stood foresquare in the middle of the hall. It was taken away in the summer, and however cold the autumn might be, it never reappeared until after the Confirmation in the middle of November. There was a good reason for this. The Bishop robed in the study, and from there he always began his ceremonial procession to the church, my father marching before him, clad too in his robes, and carrying the Pastoral Staff. Bishop Wordsworth was built on a large scale, and it would have been impossible, with any safety, to manœuvre the vast expanse of surplice and lawn sleeves round the often red-hot stove, so we shivered till the Bishop had paid his visit.
After that, the blacksmith carried in the elephantine black monstrosity, and planted it in the middle of the hall, its long chimney being carried horizontally to a hole in the wall over the door which led to the kitchen regions. From that moment till the end of the winter, the house was bathed in the soft diffused warmth which spread from the stove in all directions. Except for its appearance, it was the best stove I ever knew, but nowadays no house-proud family would tolerate such a hideosity in their midst.
Not one ounce of fuel was ever bought to feed the stove. The ashes from all the grates in the house were collected to be carefully sieved by the garden-boy in the back yard. He threw them against an upright sieve which looked like an easel. The fine dust made the kitchen garden path, and the large cinders were burnt in the stove. Nothing else. In fact the stove shared the economical standards of the day. It refused to burn anything but those old ashes. If a housemaid hoped to start it more quickly in the morning by beginning it with a shovelful of coal, the stove at once ‘clinkered up’ and went out, and all the world knew what she had done. Never was there a more cosy, more permeating, or more effective system of heating.
There was no electric light in Wilton, and when we moved from room to room, we carried our oil lamps with us. A characteristic memory of my father is the sight of him coming from the study, carrying a lamp through the hall to the drawing-room, or leading the way in to dinner with a lamp in his hand, to be placed on the sideboard for the parlour-maid’s use. Candles burnt on the dining-room table, and in the bedrooms only candles were used, so at sundown a row of flat silver bedroom candlesticks was placed on a small cabinet in the hall. These were carried by anyone who went upstairs after dark. A box of matches stood beside the candlesticks; and indeed, as is the case to-day, matches were to be seen on the tables in every room, though they were not then used for lighting cigarettes. Smoking was only allowed in the room which had been the schoolroom, and which was well out of
