Sunday, August 27, 1899

Sunday, August 27, 1899

         Well, life at Abbott House is certainly much grander than at the Markams!  I have been here a month and have yet to meet the laird or his lady.  The kitchen and scullery are all I see, except for the attic room I share with three other maids.  We are fed well, mostly on the fare the family would shun.  Soup twice a day, with cheaper fare such as lobster or ground beef or pork, and lots of boiled vegetables from the garden.  Leftovers are always fed to the pigs, who I know will eat anything!  Breakfast is always porridge, which is my responsibility to cook.  Luckily one of the other servants has to get up earlier than me to light the kitchen fires. 

If there is any porridge left over from breakfast, I have to pour it into a wooden form.  It is left to set, and if anyone gets very hungry between meals, they are allowed to hack off a section of the cold porridge.  I have not yet been that hungry!

         We have about six hundred pots and pans in our kitchen, and hundreds of dishes and pieces of silverware.  We maids must set the breakfast trays, one for each of the family members and their visitors, as well as one for the head housekeeper and one for the butler.  The trays are usually delivered by the personal maids or valets.  Later we have to collect the trays and wash the drinking glasses and silverware.  The scullery maids wash the dishes, and there are many of them.

         As well as we kitchen maids, there is a chef and several helpers, housemaids, parlormaids, valets, footmen, houseboys, gardeners, stablehands and groomers.  The whole staff is headed up by the housekeeper and butler.

         The work is long and hard, but made easier by the friendly relations we all have with each other.