Private Life in Britain's Stately Homes (21 page)

It is interesting to reflect that our imaginary young girl, aged about thirteen, would not be so far removed in her unhappiness from the son of the house, who at the same age would be starting at boarding school. At Eton and Harrow the boys did not sleep in dormitories but in single rooms, and those assigned to the most junior boys would have been the smallest and meanest – about the same size as those in a servants’ corridor. There would be a similar sense of loneliness and of parting from all that was familiar. Though the hours of a schoolboy would not have been as long, and the work less strenuous, it is worth remembering that the ‘fagging system’ that was customary at English schools involved small boys in often menial domestic chores and that the failure to carry these out successfully could lead to bullying and punishment.

The severity of this life was sometimes extreme: ‘privations that would have broken a cabin boy’, as one veteran put it. Lord Holland, a fag at Eton in the 1820s, was disabled for life by having his hands burned because he was made to hold slices of bread over an open fire while making toast. Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, who as Lord Salisbury would serve as Prime Minister three times during the Victorian era, was so bullied at the same school that he wrote piteously – and vainly – to his father begging to be removed, and in later life avoided anyone whom he had known there. Conditions gradually improved during the nineteenth century and society in general became gentler, but any small boy could be a target for bullying. The humblest maid and the heir to the house might have had much in common.

In the meantime our scullery maid would have the camaraderie of the servants’ hall and the company of other young people, the thought of the servants’ dances and occasional outings to provide the brighter moments in life, and one day the chance to go home for an afternoon and show off her maid’s dress and bring gifts of foodstuffs from the kitchen or fruit from the estate. By that time she would long since have learned the snobbish disdain of servants in a grand house for those who worked in places smaller than their own, or for employers who were poorer, less stylish or without titles, and everyone would be impressed by her sophistication.

She would be at the bottom of a ladder, but one that could lead to dizzying heights among what were sometimes called the ‘top stair’ – the senior servants. From learning the skills of service, she could progress to chambermaid – just as the hallboy could hope one day to be a footman or even an under-butler – positions that commanded respect within their class, and which included the outward glory of livery or a smart uniform as well as the prospect of getting tips from visitors. Beyond that, if you could somehow get the training and win the favour of an employer, there were specialist positions in which they would be trusted with the care of individual ladies or gentlemen – as dresser or valet – and these would enable you to travel extensively while accompanying their employer, though to secure such a position they would need a lot of personal qualities and qualifications. And at the pinnacle of a life of service there would be the posts of housekeeper or butler, almost unimaginably grand and far removed though these would seem.

They would quickly take on the snobbery that goes with life in a big house. Whatever your position below stairs, you would be part of something great and important, as far removed from the ‘slavey’ of the small household as a peacock from a crow. They would become vicariously proud of the splendour of their master’s house, the elegance of their mistress’s dresses, the magnificence of the liveried footmen and coachmen, even though none of these would deign to notice them – and the footmen, in particular, would not lift a finger to help carry heavy burdens up the stairs because they would consider it beneath them or have the excuse that they could not get their clothing dirty. Like all those who live in a close-knit community, united by a common purpose and common grievances, the household servants would look on everyone else as an outsider.

Should one wish to leave service, they would find your training had made them highly suitable to work as a shop assistant, a steward on an ocean liner, or in a hotel or restaurant. Indeed if their employer was someone of high position, they might find yourself in great demand, to shed lustre on whatever enterprise or institution you joined next. By the time they had put a decade or more of service behind them, you would have a highly marketable range of experience and skill. This would be worth remembering, while they were scrubbing grates or blacking boots, early on a cold winter’s morning.

The early Victorian era saw considerable changes in the physical surroundings of those who worked for the family. The servants’ wing in many houses became larger, and the number of staff increased for a few decades, before numbers began their inexorable decline. For reasons already suggested, the employers of servants wanted to protect them from idleness and immorality – given that some of the girls and young men in their households were as young as thirteen, it is understandable that employers and senior servants should have seen themselves as acting
in loco parentis
– a situation that would be even more true today as a result of child-protection laws. To discourage temptation, the bedrooms of male and female staff were usually situated in entirely different parts of the house, with men in the basement and females in the attic. There might even, if the design of the house permitted, be separate staircases for the sexes.

It is worth noticing that this notion was starting to disappear before the century was over. By the 1890s servants were still separated by sex, if not as rigidly as before, but the accommodation planned for domestic staff in the new country houses then being built was much less obvious and not so large. The number of available servants was just beginning to decline, the number of part-time staff had increased, the introduction of labour-saving domestic devices was already beginning to be apparent. There simply was less need for doing things on the grand scale.

The segregation of staff made perfect sense to those who employed servants. Flirting and dalliance were a serious distraction from the work for which these men and women were being paid. They caused inattention and might, if a friendship was ended by a quarrel, create an unpleasant working atmosphere. The prospect of a servant ‘getting into trouble’ was a serious threat to the efficiency of a household as well as to the future of the woman concerned. Given the social stigma attached to unmarried pregnancy throughout the whole of this period, employers who kept their young maids from temptation were doing them a considerable kindness, whether the girls appreciated it or not.

As for the banning of ‘followers’, an attitude more common in Victorian times than later, this too was a wise precaution. Apart from suffering the same danger of visitors distracting girls who had much to do, why should householders allow unknown people into the servants’ quarters of their home, where they would be within reach of temptation in the form of both wine and silverware? It was well-established practice for burglars and housebreakers to befriend impressionable maids and thus gain access. They might then either ‘case the joint’ and plan a robbery, or corrupt the girl into acting as accomplice and giving them a key. The most seemingly innocent questions about the household’s routine could yield valuable information about when the owners were away or how many male servants there were. No mistress, in any case, wanted to find a strange man sitting by the servants’ hall fireplace, or listen to obvious falsehoods about him being the maid’s brother, or to know that the doings of herself and her family were being spoken about with outsiders. How much better to keep this danger completely at bay by banning all callers.

From the employer’s point of view it made perfect sense to impose these regulations, yet young and attractive servant girls ran a very considerable risk of getting into trouble not only from the attentions of their ‘followers’ and fellow servants but also from members of their employer’s own family. Any male inhabitant of the upstairs world could make advances to them, and these could not be rebuffed easily, for neither physical force – if they had sufficient strength – nor verbal rudeness could be used. Should a maid consent to the attentions of such a man and ‘get into trouble’, she would be sacked at once, without a ‘character’ and with the prospect of caring for an illegitimate child. Much has been made by writers of the double standards of employers, who overlooked their own sexual adventures yet expected their staff to be celibate, or who used young women for sexual gratification and then dismissed them when the consequences became apparent. Unfortunately this hypocritical behaviour was true of many.

To avoid this situation, young women went to subtle but inventive lengths. On weekdays they often did not see their employers, for they carried out their work before the family was up or after it had gone out. On Sundays, servants were expected to attend church, dressed in their best, off-duty clothes and thus looking as attractive as possible. Wise young women were careful to take trouble to disguise whatever beauty they might have. One, whose mother was in service to an Earl during the 1920s, recalled hearing that they pulled their hats down as far over their eyes as possible – the cloche hats then in vogue could hide much of the face – and that they rubbed starch into whatever hair was visible, to make it look grey. Similarly they whitened their cheeks to make themselves look paler. They no doubt walked with their heads down and avoided eye contact too. This would go on perhaps for years, until the arrival of middle age made genuine the appearance they had striven to use as a disguise.

Though many who were in service would form romantic friendships – after all, they were mixing every day with young people of the opposite sex – these could not become serious without complicating both work and life. Romance or marriage between servants was extremely rare in Victorian times; it was more common and more accepted by the reign of Edward VII, as servants became harder to keep contented and conditions improved, and by the inter-war period it was often considered convenient to have a husband and wife working in a household. They required less complicated accommodation and, settled in life, were less likely to leave a position at short notice.

As for the sons or husbands or uncles who might make nuisances of themselves with pretty servant girls, there was little that could be done about them. Maids would often protest: ‘You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.’ If they were caught, or got into trouble, they would be out at once. It was always their fault and not the man’s, even though resisting his blandishments might get maids into just as much trouble. Rose Plummer, a tough East Ender, was a maid in the 1920s. Her striking looks led at least two men to make serious passes at her. One was the brother of the woman who employed her, then staying as a guest in her mistress’s house. Though he never came close to indecent behaviour, his continued attentions were disconcerting to her and a nuisance. After a few days Rose was summoned to see her mistress. She expected to be given a dressing-down for something, but instead received ‘the biggest surprise of my whole life’. The woman was actually embarrassed as she said: ‘I want to apologize for the fact that you have been very shabbily treated by a member of my family. I’m so sorry you have been upset by it. It’s disgraceful, and if there is anything I can do you must let me know.’ The bothersome man was sent away shortly afterwards. This would not have been a common experience, however.

In a house without servant’s wings, maids were traditionally in the attic. This was because the male staff lived in the basement and the two sexes needed to be kept as far apart as possible. The passageway off which they slept would often be guarded by the housekeeper’s own quarters.

In the basement, the butler was in similarly close proximity to the male staff, with his pantry next to the wine cellar and the strong room where the plate was kept. The housekeeper’s room – unlike the butler, she did not sleep in her ‘office’ but used it only during the day – was also in the basement. It was here, in the ‘Pugs’ Parlour’, that the senior servants dined. This was a custom that, with variations according to different households, was to be found all over Britain. At Welbeck Abbey, home of the Duke of Portland, the senior servants were known as the ‘Upper Ten’, and dined separately each evening in the Steward’s Dining Room. All the other members of staff were known as the ‘Lower Five’. The seniors might take all courses in the Pugs’ Parlour, waited upon by their juniors, or might retire there only to have port and cheese, in precisely the way that the occupants of High Table still do at Oxford and Cambridge colleges. They did not take all meals in this manner, though. At other times they sat with the lower servants, the cook and housekeeper at one end of the table and the butler or the steward at the other, with the juniors in between. Part of their function, after all, was to supervise those under their authority. They would be expected to steer the conversation, discourage flirting, see that no one was volubly critical of their masters, and set an example of good table manners.

Given the general culture of servant-keeping, with its long working hours and scarcity of free time, it may be wondered why so many families seem to have been so strict – unkind, even – to those who worked for them. There was a general perception among those upstairs that if they were indulgent, their servants would take advantage. They had to be kept on a short rein and prevented from becoming too comfortable, too idle, too familiar, too complacent. There is logic in this. If they were able to get away with insolence or even disrespect, their employer’s authority would be undermined, and for the proper running of the household this could not be allowed to happen. If the servants thought they could succeed in doing less work, they would naturally try, despite the fact that they were being paid for a full day’s service. If they were not kept constantly busy they might be tempted to rifle their employer’s belongings, pilfer things, help themselves to the contents of the wine cellar. They must be made accountable for how their time was spent, and kept out of both trouble and temptation.