1955 Mrs Able (Mary Adams) by Rumer Godden
From Lacey Green History
Mary Adams is listed in Social Snapshots 1969-2000 inc
also click Jack & Mary Adams for Mary's life story
also click 1978 Mary Adams famous chimney sweep for newspaper interview
MARY ADAMS. By Rumer Godden. Printed in the Readers Digest in 1955.
Ed. Rumer Godden, author, lived first in Speen, then at White House Farm, Highwood Bottom, from 1950 to 1952.
The story was entitled, ‘THE MOST UNFORGETABLE CHARACTER I’VE EVER MET’. In it she called Mrs Adams “Mrs Able”.
“In our village in Buckinghamshire most of the cottages have deep fireplaces with old-fashioned iron basket grates that burn big logs and make a lot of soot; the roofs are thatch which catches fire easily; this means the chimneys must be swept twice a year. A few people clean their own chimneys with ‘Whizzbangs’, terrifying little contraptions that are lit and thrown up the chimney where they are supposed to explode and bring down the soot. A few others have the Vacuum Chimney Sweep from the market town. But the village, the real village, has Mrs Able.
She is one of the few women chimney sweeps in England. When I first knew her I thought that remarkable enough; but after 15 years I have not yet come to the end of the remarkableness of Mrs Able.
The day the sweep comes is, in most English houses, a dreaded day: the furniture has to be sheeted, carpets rolled up, curtains and pictures taken down. Mrs Abel would be offended if we did anything like that. “I make no mess” she says, nor does she. All we do is turn the carpet back from the hearth and spread newspaper there, but it is only for her to put the gear on.
MRS ABLE
Punctually at half past seven Mrs Able wheels her bicycle in at the gate. She is good-looking and surprisingly small for the work she does, but stocky and firm-boned; her hands are firm too, and strong; they are gentle as well; I have seen them plant a seeding and warm a day-old chick. Her face is browned from her long journeys over those cold Chiltern Hills, but her skin where her neck goes down into her breast and shoulders is fine and creamy and soft.
When she comes to sweep she wears a sooty blue overall, buttoned to the throat; her hair, which is brown, is tied up in a kerchief, her face and forehead are smudged with soot, and her hands are black. “It’s from putting the brush on the bike” she says. Her eyes look the way collies do, their whites startling in the grime, but when accustomed to that, you see the deep blueness of them, and something in them that can only be described as zest. She is 50 but her eyes are as responsive as a child’s.
She is what she herself would call a “terrible talker”, and before she begins to sweep we hear all the gossip over a cup of tea. Hers isn’t just gossip about people – it is of animals, gardens, houses, furniture, china, recipes. “Mrs Gilroy has bought a table that would just go with your clock” she tells me. “It has the same little cupids on the inlay. I’m sure it’s Louis Quinze too”.
For when Mrs Able goes into people’s houses she notices things. “That’s why I don’t like everything covered up” she says. And she asks questions and remembers the answers. A Persian carpet, an Adam fireplace, a genuine old Windsor chair – she can talk about them all. “And here’s the recipe for that apple jelly that’s so good. Miss Redddy wrote it out for you. It’s in my pocket here, but you must take it out. If I touch it I’ll make it black.”
I don’t know Mrs. Gilroy or Miss Reddy, but I shan’t be surprised if I soon do. It is like weaving, with Mrs Able as the shuttle; we are drawn closer together and become more neighbourly, and we won’t be disappointed. What Mrs Able tells you is true. The table is Louise Quinze, the apple jelly is good.
CHIMNEY SWEEPING
Sweeping is hard work for a woman. First, rods and brush and bags have to be carried in, then the heavy canvas bags are fitted over the fireplace to catch the soot; a slit is left between them through which the sweep has to work. The brass – ended rods are of cane, about four feet long and they screw together; they are cane so that they will bend to fit a curved chimney. The brush is fitted to the first rod and that is pushed up the chimney, then the next rod goes into the end of the first, and so on, each length pushing the brush farther up, while all the time it is dextrously twirled and turned, its stiff bristles moving against the sides of the chimney to scrape the congealed soot which falls in a continuous heavy shower. This goes on until the brush reaches the chimney pot where a final and vigorous working is needed and Mrs Able shouts to the children to run into the garden and see the brush come out at the top.
The rods as they lengthen are heavy. It takes skill and strength to get the right play on them, and patience to work the brush all round the chimney sides. It sometimes takes 14 rods fitted together to reach the top of a three-floored house, and each fitting has to be done in the dark, the sweeps hands feeling through the slit between the bags. A careless sweep sometimes loses his brush by getting it wedged against the brickwork but good ones, like Mrs Able, have a cord tied to the brush so that id it sticks and comes away from the handle it can be pulled down. The soot is caught in a black load in the bags, then the rods are withdrawn length by length and unscrewed, thhe flues and chimney back are brushed out, the bags closed and gathered up, and the work is over.
With soot and heavy implements and dirty bags it is easy for a sweep to make a great mess; most sweeps do. A man’s big movements send the soot flying. I think Mrs Able is so clean because she is deft and strong. She also has good balance; she never needs to put out a hand – on the white paint perhaps – to steady herself. Above all, she treats her sweeping as a serious art. She never talks when she works.
IT BEGAN WITH TO OLD PEOPLE BEING 'KIPPERED'
If you ask her how he came to be a sweep she will tell you “Well, there was the sitting room full of smoke. No-one would do anything”. She was a kitchen maid then, in one of our big manors.
Her voice is indignant. “There were the two old people being kippered as they sat, so I borrowed some equipment and swept the whole blooming chimney. A perfect wretch it was too. When the people opposite saw the brush come out at the top they came across and begged me to do theirs; and then somebody else, and somebody else after that; soon I was sweeping for five miles around”.
LAYING OUT THE DEAD
That to, is how she came to get into her other kind of work; she helped at it once and then people began to ask for her. We don’t speak about Mrs Able’s other work; it is too intimate. At any time of day, even when she is just setting out with her rods, or has just come in, or sometimes in the middle of the night, someone will come for her. She is the village layer-out of the dead, and very gently, scrupulously and well she does it. For that work she must be spotless.
“Don’t you get the horrors?” I once heard someone ask with a dreadful curiosity. Mrs Able has a way of seeing straight and simply. “It’s only another kind of cleaning up” she said.
In the country it is an honoured calling and carries certain other duties with it; to help with the funeral tea for instance, to be present at the closing of the coffin, to arrange the family wreaths and, if there are 13 mourners, to walk in the funeral procession to make a 14th and break bad luck. I once asked her what her religion was. I thought she must have some special way of getting the strength for all she does. I was right, but she did not know how to put it. “I’m strong church” she said, “and I’m a silent prayer woman”.
FAMILY AND HOME
Her husband is a railway porter. The children are June, who is grown up and married, and Michael who is six. They live in a pebble-wash villa. I was disappointed when I first saw it. I had somehow expected Mrs Able to live in a picturesque old cottage. “I couldn’t do with all that thatch” she says. “Earwiggy!” and she shudders.
Her house has three rooms up and three down and a tiled kitchen and bathroom of which she is very proud. Many of the village houses have no bathroom at all, and some are even without water. Mrs Able repairs and paints the house herself and it is no ordinary painting; she goes in, as she says, for “schemes”. The “best”.