Post by Morrigan on Jan 3, 2013 13:26:37 GMT -5
Lucy Green
22 . First Housemaid . Kingsgate House born 12/05/1884
relatives
Dorothy 'Dot' Green - Mother
Gerald Green - Father (d. since 1896)
Gerald Green - Brother
Anna Green - Sister
Edmund Green - Brother
Henry 'Harry' Green - Brother
Lily Green - Sister
sexuality
Heterosexual
relationship status
Unattached
Appearance
Brown-haired and green-eyed, Lucy is quite feline in appearance, her almond-shaped eyes and upwardly-curving mouth giving her a natural catlike expression. In good health she has an English rose complexion with a bit of colour in her cheeks, but most of the time her face is quite blanched and drawn from her long, hard working hours, dark circles cropping up under her eyes. A similar effect takes hold in her hair, dark brown but streaked with lighter gold in bright light, which is capable of being pleasingly springy and bouncy around her face, but tends to be somewhat straggly and is kept tucked up into a cap anyway. Lucy has a heart-shaped face which is finely-structured, her high cheekbones slanting to meet at her slightly dimpled chin, and a button nose.
Lucy is small, standing at only around five foot three, and is slightly built as well. However, she is stronger than she looks, as perhaps she has to be due to the labour-intensive nature of her job. She has the scant wardrobe of all housemaids, her morning print dresses for the dirty work of lighting fires exchanged in the afternoon for the plain dark dress, white apron and white cap which is the uniform of all housemaids. Her personal clothes have always been similarly simple, a pale green dress serving as her Sunday best. When not coal-smudged, sweaty and worn out, Lucy is quite pretty and, scrubbed up, has had her share of admirers downstairs and, very occasionally, among the more lascivious upstairs-dwellers. Generally, however, she is a fairly typical-looking young housemaid, well-practised in the art of being silent and invisible upstairs, but efficient and fast-moving downstairs.
personality
A level-headed older sister, Lucy has always had to be in charge of her younger siblings, particularly once her father died and her mother had to struggle to get work and balance caring for their five children. She is therefore very efficient, practical and down-to-earth, accustomed to lots of hard work and very resilient of spirit. She is also used to putting other people first, which means she sometimes forgets to look after her own interests. She is a good-natured person with a brisk manner and way of dealing with things, and a natural make do and mend spirit means she can keep her chin up despite the drudgery of her station. She is also quite no nonsense, however, and "pull yourself together and stop being a silly mare" is something of a catchphrase of hers when she's encountered with the tetchy problems of younger household staff. Nonetheless, Lucy is known as a go-to for these youngsters if they do have problems, since her motherly mannerisms and firmness give her a reassuring presence.
While some servants are happy to mouth off about the family they serve in the relative privacy of downstairs, and others are almost obsessively loyal, Lucy is somewhere in between and keeps her personal feelings about the members of the household quiet and neutral. Of course she has her opinions about their behaviour and, given her close involvement with the daughters of the family as first housemaid, sees more than most, but she is very discreet and treats them with respect for their privacy. She is particularly fond of the youngest Penroses, Edward and Annie, who remind her somewhat of her own siblings, though of course this is from a distance and outwardly she shows no particular preferences or unusual loyalties. Lucy does miss her family, particularly her sisters, but is too practical to allow this to affect her work.
history
The second child of Dot and Gerald Green, a simple couple who lived all their lives in the countryside cultivating the fields on an extensive farm and producing crops, Lucy is their eldest daughter and therefore the big sister of the family. When she was still a child herself, she began helping her mother out greatly with the other four children who were born at fairly regular intervals after her and so learned efficiency, hard work and responsibility at an early age. Her older brother Gerald is two years older, but was taken out to work with their father practically as soon as he could walk so he could learn the family trade. Lucy was therefore at home with her mother for the first three years of her life, at which point her sister Anna was born. Another two years later, Dot had twin boys, Edmund and Harry. Another four years after that, the baby of the family, Lily, was born.
Anna was a cheerful and sprightly girl, but not much use when it came to working in the house as she grew bored and distracted easily. Lucy found herself having to corral all her siblings on a regular basis, particularly when disaster struck some time around Lucy's thirteenth birthday. An accident on the farm gave Gerald Green Sr a serious injury from which he would never recover. He died within the week, having been seen by the doctor, who declared a head injury which he could do nothing to repair. Devastated, Dot had no idea how the large family would manage without Gerald's income. Lucy's brother Gerald was only fifteen at the time, and could not be expected to support an entire family of seven as a junior farmer.
Lucy quickly established that she would find work as a servant within a couple of years. Her mother was loathe to let her go and felt grievously sorry for her eldest daughter having to shoulder such responsibility, but Lucy, ever the level-headed pragmatist, knew there was no other way. Anna would have to follow suit after her, as would Edmund and Harry as soon as they were old enough, but what Lucy really hoped to achieve was to prevent at least little Lily from having to enter into service as a child too. She resolved to rise in the ranks as fast as she could, so Dot could afford to keep Lily at home.
At fourteen, Lucy set off in search of her first position. The Penroses were in need of a scullery maid at that time, and the butler was happy enough to hire Lucy, having known her father. The pay was poor and the work dire, but it was money to send home, and it was the start of Lucy's long career at Kingsgate. She worked for two years there in the lowest position in the house until the third housemaid married and left her job to live with her husband. The butler, having grown fond of Lucy, advised her to apply for the position.
She did so. Lucy, sixteen, started the hard, long hours of the lowest-ranked housemaid, and kept her head down as she worked. Meanwhile, back home, Anna was talking about going away to find work too, while Edmund and Harry were sent to live with an aunt who lived on the Kingsgate estate in the hope of one day getting a position in the house like their older sister. Harry was soon hired as a stable boy at Kingsgate, while Edmund helped out at their aunt and uncle's shop as there were no further positions available. Gerald remained working on the farm back home, while Lily, missing her siblings, was almost an only child, and wrote to Lucy often.
Lucy was happy to have her little brother on the estate, as she was not entitled to time off to see her family with any frequency, and had missed her little rabble of siblings. However, she could not help but worry, as Edmund and Harry had always had a distinct mischievous streak. She visited her aunt and uncle often to check on them, and made friends with the groom at Kingsgate in the hope of keeping an eye on Harry as well. But Lucy was kept up to her eyes in work in the house and certainly could not supervise her little brother for any length of time, and true to form, he managed to get caught canoodling with a village girl behind the hay bales, which earned him a prompt dismissal.
Angered, Lucy wrote to their mother and threatened to send Harry straight back home, but at his pleading Lucy kept an ear out for further work in Kingsgate. Soon enough, she got wind of an opening to work for Mr Chester, the blacksmith, as an apprentice, and told Harry to apply. He got the position, and there he remained, but Lucy knows both of them still harbour hopes of coming to work at Kingsgate House as footmen.
A few years passed, and Lucy rose up the ranks as housemaids left or were promoted elsewhere. At twenty she became second housemaid, and within the last year she was awarded the position of first housemaid and the privileges which went with it, having curried enough favour with the butler to keep moving up. Known as a discreet and hard worker, she seemed a reliable choice when the old first housemaid moved to a new position. Since then, Lucy has kept at her job with all due diligence and manages to send enough money home to keep Lily, now 13, from having to give up her childhood early as did her other siblings. But she knows one day Lily will have to work as well, and she wonders whether Kingsgate might be a good place for her too.
other information
Full name Lucy Catherine Green
Dab hand with a needle and thread
rp sample
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