FROM KITCHEN TO BOUDOIR

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 211, 22 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

FROM KITCHEN TO BOUDOIR

.STRANGE ROMANCES OF MAIDS-OF-ALL-WORK.

The eves of the world have often been •dazzled' by the sudden translation of anaids of low degree from the stage to -th'e glittering circle of the Peerage. Their romantic stories have been written in manv volumes. But the modest aiaid-of-all-work. who finds herself transported from the kitchen to the fcoudoir, or even to the splendours of -a Royal Court, has few chroniclers to tell her story. And yet it is often as full of romance as any told of the soubrette who has blossomed into a countess or a duclvess. When William Cobbett, then a sergeant in the 54th Foot, took a stroll through the streets of Halifax, Nova Scotia, one day in 1791, he as little dreamt that he was walking towards his matrimonial fate as that he would m the iyears to come help to make our laws at Westminster and win "« d .y ln g fame as an author and as the Liberator' of the English Press." He had not walked far when his eyes were drawn to the s'ght of a girl stooping industriously over a wash-tub by tho road-s : de,'her soft, round arms smothered in soap-suds. There was something so arresting 'n -the sight and so seductive in the pretty •flushed face and the laughing blue eyes turned up to challenge the curioui stranger that he entered into conversation with the mad of the laundry, and found her as charming as she was beauitiful. And before the sergeant resumed his walk he learned the address of her parents, and made up his mind that before the- dav closed, he would secure the. : r consent to make their daughter his wife. Thus romantically began qn« -of the happiest of wedded lives which linked the g'rl of the wash-tub with ■one of the great names in our liistoty

DOMESTIC SERVANTS WITH FAMOUS NAMES. No less romantic was the meeting of Sir Honrv Partes, the famous Prune Minster of New Sonth Wales, with the wife who was destined, to quote ha •words, "to crown my lifa with a happiness too great for words to describe. One day the great statesman was din ing at the hoew of a friend when he was so struck by the mad who waited at the table-by her sweet face her madesty, and the grace of her movements, that he persuaded his host to allow her to enter his service. "There can be no doubt, bir ±ieniy •himself says "that I loved her from the first, and each day she lived under my roof gave such evidence of her angular qualities of head and heart that within a year I deeded that she was indispensable to me, and won her Consent to be my wife." Thus ,t was that the pretty housemaid blossomed into Lady Parkes, to become one ot the most popular and beloved women in all frr Gervaiee Clifton, the historian ~f Jamaica, Is said to have married seven times, and every time his bride was chosen from his own domestic servants .each becoming in turn "my ladj anrt «faft«3laine of the house which As had entered as a menial. Whether she found happiness with her elevation_ hisory does not tell us. We know, how*ver that a seventh Lady Clifton outlived her lord, while her »« predtec«. ws were laid to rest m the family mausoleum, which had cost £oo,ooo to "Less fortunate in his wooing was Thomas Day, a man of wealth and position, known to fama as the author A •Sanford and Merton,' who when e deeded to marry a.maid of humble hTtli, selected two girls, one a b.onde from a neighbouring .workhouse, the other a brunette from a foundling asylum, and took them into his house as servants, to be trained for the position of mistress. , . His benevolent scheme, however, miscarried; for when in process o» tme, he offered his hand and heart to Honora, tho blonde, she po;nt-blank refused them; while Elizabeth, the brimnette, after say ng 'yes to his p.eu.l ing, withdrew her consent on the Wound that he was " too ridicu.ous and eccentric a man for any girl to ma. ry Thus, Thomas Day's heart was left desolate until, a few years later, Esthe Milnes, a tender-hearted heiress, took pity 911 him and consented to wear his wedding-ring. , Few of these stories are more rcmai b. Able than that of Elizabeth Starkey, commonly called "Betty," who, m the latter part of the eighteenth century. was kitchenmaid to .lames Coutts, on* of tho founders of the famous London bank which bears his name Betty, who had brought a comely face and buxom figure to London from the country, was a girl "full of fun and witti a rea'dv tongue. Often," we are told, "when wringing at her wasn-tiij m~ young bank-clerks used to tease her but were soon routed by a shower ot .soap-suds, accompanied by her peal oi merv laughter." Betty had many admirers of her rustic charms and lie* clever, saucy tongue; but the most ardent of them all was Thomas Coutts brother and partner of tho master, who gave her no peace until she had consented to marry him. And seldom has wedded life proved happier. The banker was as devoted to his illiterate wife of the good heart as she to him. bne became the mother of three beautiful trirls. one of whom became Marchionesi of Bute; another, Countess of buldford; while the third had for husband Sir Francis Burdett, and for daughter the alte Baroness Burdett-Coutts. But in spite of these splendid alliances and : n spite of all the luxury with which her husband's love and wealth could surround her, Betty retained to her last day the same simple nature which she took to James Coutts' kitchen as n iiirl.

LUCKY AMERICAN GIRLS. When Charles M. Schwab lost his neart to Emma Dinkey, maid-ot-al!-work at Lonetto, a generation ago, she littla dreamed of the future that was destined to be hers as his wife. At the time, her lover had just been promoted from a grocery counter at Braddock and ten shillings a v.Vek for wages, to the work of stake-driver for t\w Carnegie Company at what seemed riches to him, a dollar a day, and when the young people stood together at til ■ Loretto altar one day in 1883, the prospect of £3OO a year would have been dazzling to contemplate. But mark the sequel'. Within a year of his weddingda v Schwab" was earning £I,OOO a year as' .superintendent of the Braddock works; and his later progress to wealth was so rapid that, with.'n twenty years. he was supreme head of the wreat American Stcyl Trust wth « <ap : tid of over £229,000 000 —at a salary of £160.000 a y,ear, and in addition, he was holder of Trust stock io the value of £8,000,000. A score of years before diaries Schwab went a-courting Emma Dinkey at Loretto. the wharf of St. Paul. Minnesota, was tha scene of a romance no !<>ss remarkable, of which Marv M'ih njr»n, a pretty, brown-haired, blir-ercd Irish girl, wii.s the heroine. Ma 'V '':;• general servant at n small inn wh <!• was the favourite calling-house of tit > thirsty wharf porter*, who cured freight to the docks of th • Miss ssippi and who, to a rmn, wor-

shipped the winsome Irish lass. Bui Mary's sweetest smiles were reserved for James Hill, the handsomest of them all; and when he asked her to he his w.'fe she was the happiest maid in St. Paul.

And well might sha be, for not onli* did James Hill, the " roust-about,' prove the hest and most devoted of husbans, but in later years, when he became a multi-millionaire, he was able to instal her as mistress of a £140,000 mansion, from th-3 windows of which she could look down on the roof of the inn of which she was household drudge when Fortune came to smile on her. BEAUTY CONQUERS. Nor among these serving-maids must we forget Emma Lyon, daughter of a Cheshire blacksmith, who was a nursemaid at Hawarden and general servant to a London greengrocer leng years before her rare loveliness won the heart, first of Sir William Hamilton and later of England's hero, Lord Nelson, to each of whom in turn she was the " incomparable Emma," the most idolised woman of her day. As Lady Hamilton, wife of the British Embassador at the Court of Naples, the blacksmith's daughter was the bosom friend and "adopted sister" of a Queen, receiving the homage of. the greatest men of Europe, and greeted with a salute of twenty guns when she vis'ted a British warshp. That there is no height too giddy for a maid-servant to reach was proved when Peter the Great made an Empress of Martha Skovronski, the Livonian scullery-maid. One day, so the story is ' told, the Czar, calling on his favourite, Mensliikoff, was astonished to see the cleanl ; ness of his surroundngs and poison. "How do you contrive." he asked, "to have your house so well kept, and wear such fresh and dainty linen P'V Menshikoff's answer was to open a door, through frhieh the Emperor perceived a handsome girl, aproned and sponge in hand, bustling from chair to chair, and go ng from window to window scrubbing the window-panes. So struck was Peter by the opulent charms and comely, good-natured fae.a of the cleaner of windows that he lost his heart to her; and, before many weeks passed, had installed her in his Palace as his wife and Empress of Russia.