When the photographer removed the camera’s lens cap and exposed the negative to the light, he caught Annie and John as they were in May 1869. Mrs. Chapman was no stranger to the fashions worn along the sidewalks of Knightsbridge and the tree-lined promenades of Hyde Park. She sits back in the chair, the shape of her corset visible beneath her dress. Her gown, in a checked pattern, with small black buttons along the front of her bodice and dark piping around her cuffs and shoulders, is draped about her tapered bell-shaped hoop skirt, very much à la mode in 1868–69. Although the Chapmans were not wealthy, Annie’s dress does not lack ornamentation. In addition to her wedding ring, she wears little gold-hoop earrings and a large ornate brooch at her throat, while a dark belt with a prominent gilt clasp cinches her waist. John, in his frock coat, one leg crossed and an arm leaning with easy confidence on the plinth, displays the gold chain and fobs of that essential piece of coachman’s equipment: his pocket watch. Although neither Annie nor John would be considered conventionally handsome by the standards of their era, both convey an air of assurance. Beneath a broad forehead, framed by fashionably braided dark hair, Annie’s large blue eyes stare intently at the camera. John matches her expression with one of pride and a stern, down-turned Victorian mouth.
The Chapmans’ image was recorded in a daguerreotype, an early form of photography widely available by the middle of the nineteenth century. The less prestigious studios, which catered to the better-off working classes, offered customers a very plain image, without furniture or backdrops. The Chapmans might have chosen to celebrate their union cheaply and simply at such a studio. For five shillings, they would receive a set of three cartes-de-visite, small photographs (three and a half by four inches) pasted on card. But John and Annie aspired to something better. They wished to own a photograph that expressed their hopes for a prosperous future, and they were willing to pay for it. The picture they ordered was a cabinet photograph, a larger size intended for framing and typically set on a mantel or a side table in a middle-class parlor.
The couple had been married on May 1 of that year at All Saints Church on Ennismore Gardens in Knightsbridge, where the Smith family had attended services since Annie was a girl. It is likely the couple and the wedding party walked from Montpelier Place, Annie proudly parading through the neighborhood on her bridal day. Emily signed as Annie’s witness, and John was attended by his colleague, a fellow coachman called George White, with whom the newlyweds are believed to have shared a house at 1 Brooks Mews North, shortly after they were married.1
Annie, the daughter of a gentleman’s valet, had done well to marry a gentleman’s coachman. John Chapman was not a hackney-cab driver, the sort known to loaf about in pubs with a glass of brandy, speak in strings of swear words, and spend the night asleep in the back of his cab; nor was John a hassled omnibus driver, who hauled common working people east to west, or north to south. A private coachman was employed by a wealthy family as the head or second driver of his master’s or mistress’s vehicles. The primary coachman had charge of the larger, more prestigious carriages, such as the barouche, which required two horses, whereas the second coachman would drive vehicles drawn by a single horse. Like Annie’s father, her husband had a role that placed him near the top of the servants’ hierarchy. Unlike most other domestics attached to a household, the coachman was granted a certain degree of independence. If married, he and his family were expected to live in the mews, adjacent to or above the stables, where he could keep watch over the groom’s activities, maintain the vehicles, and care for the horses. Although he might opt to dine with the upper servants in the housekeeper’s room, the coachman more regularly took his meals alongside his wife, in their own home. In London, where some extensive residences had their own mews and stabling, a coachman might live rent-free; in other cases he would be granted an allowance permitting him to choose his own lodgings, provided they were nearby.
In the 1860s, a coachman like John could expect to earn between thirty-five and eighty pounds per year, depending upon the social standing of his employer. This sum did not include tips, which would further pad his wages. Employers also typically provided their coachmen with at least one or two sets of stable dress for working and one livery (a uniform), which included two pairs of boots and two hats (because hats tended to blow away in inclement weather). These benefits—a reliable income, possibly a rent-free home, and very few clothing expenses—would allow John’s family a slightly better quality of life than many others of their social class. Money could be set aside and aspirations ignited.
Socially, much like the family of the gentleman’s valet, the private, London-based coachman and his dependents occupied an awkward no-man’s-land within the territory of the working classes. Described as “one of the most important and comfortable” of servants, the coachman was said to preside “over a little establishment of his own; his horses and coach, as well as the stables, are all tended by ‘help.’ ” This allowed him to look “forth from his elevated position with an aspect of stolid gravity.”2 These privileges of the private coachman were sometimes known to give his family, especially his wife, delusions of grandeur. The journalist and social reformer Henry Mayhew comments that the typical coachman boasted that his position meant that his spouse did not have to work; coachmen could “keep [their] wives too respectable for that.” Some families were well enough resourced to hire a maid of their own, or even to send their daughters to boarding school. However, these trappings of middle-class life rubbed against reality. Coachmen generally lived in the narrow mews, strung with laundry lines and smelling of stables. Nonetheless, these humble homes, usually with three or four rooms, one of them designed as a respectable parlor, were located in some of the country’s most aristocratic districts.
This was especially true for John and Annie. During the first eight years of their marriage, John worked for a family in Onslow Square; an employer who lived near Jermyn Street, in St. James; and “for a nobleman on Bond Street.”* Their little houses sat in the shadow of imperial London, a short stroll from the imposing gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall and the gates of Buckingham Palace. Annie’s daily walks would have taken her past the twinkling gaslit shop windows of Piccadilly and Bond Street and through the Burlington Arcade, with its colorful displays of the latest hats, shoes, walking sticks, glassware, jewelry, lace, watches, cigars, flowers, and wine. These busy thoroughfares rattled with the conveyances of statesmen and society beauties, en route to Westminster or the rooms of the newly built Criterion for tea. It is likely that Annie was more than just a spectator of these pleasures, but partook of them as well. John’s salary allowed a few special purchases: gloves, a nice hat, a book from Hatchards, a peek at the wonders of the Egyptian Hall or the Royal Academy at Burlington House.
While life in London held many benefits for a private coachman, John’s work could come and go like the tide. Employers who engaged staff while they dwelt in the capital were often there only temporarily, for a few years or a season or two. An ideal situation would be one of more permanence, with a landed family whose main residence lay outside London. Given the series of tragedies to have befallen the Smiths, it is likely that Annie and John remained in London on account of her reluctance to part with her mother and siblings. As John was the only adult male in the family, he too may have come under pressure to superintend the interests of Ruth, Emily, Georgina, Miriam, and young Fountaine, who had recently won a place as a boarding pupil at the Grey Coat School in Westminster. Even after their marriage, the couple returned regularly for visits and slightly longer sojourns at 29 Montpelier Place. In 1870, rather than summon Ruth to assist her in the birth of her first child, Annie returned to the sanctuary of her mother’s home in anticipation of the first pangs of labor. On June 25, she delivered a little girl, whom she named Emily Ruth, for the two women with whom she shared the closest bonds. By 1873, this child had been joined by a sister, Annie Georgina.
Much as she had done on the occasion of her marriage, Annie would
later insist on having photographs taken of her little girls. At the end of 1878, Annie dressed eight-year-old Emily Ruth in her best clothes: a tartan dress, with a large bow at the neck and a set of buttons running down the front. She put her in a pair of striped stockings and boots, and tied a ribbon at the top of the girl’s shoulder-length brown hair. As a final touch, a large necklace of girlish beads was strung about her neck before her mother took her down the Brompton Road to the studio of Wood & Co. The photographer, an expert in coaxing even the worst-behaved children into position, got the wan, delicate-looking Emily to lean her elbow against a writing table, as if posing in a schoolroom. Three years later, this exercise was performed again with Annie Georgina. During a visit to Ruth, Annie dressed her younger daughter in the same handed-down frock and beads that her sister had worn and once more went down the Brompton Road, this time to the Sutch Brothers studio. Annie showed the photographer Emily Ruth’s picture and instructed him to pose the slightly more robust-looking Annie Georgina in precisely the same manner, though against a different backdrop. Placed side by side in a frame, the daughters, captured at the same age, in the same clothing, gazed toward each other.
The timing of the first of these pictures was significant, in that it marked a change in the Chapmans’ fortunes. It is likely that a copy of Emily Ruth’s photo was intended for her grandmother, for by the beginning of 1879, John had accepted the position of head coachman to Francis Tress Barry, a gentleman of considerable wealth with a country estate in the county of Berkshire. The Chapmans could not have hoped for a more promising opportunity.
Like many nineteenth-century industrialists, Francis Tress Barry had come from a relatively ordinary upper-middle-class family. Born in 1825, he completed his schooling at sixteen and directly entered business. After establishing himself as a merchant in northern Spain, Barry began to explore the commercial possibilities in the copper mines of Portugal. It was here that he made his fortune, eventually becoming the head of his own successful mining firm, Mason and Barry. The honors and sinecures needed in order to rise in society soon followed. In 1872 he was made the consul general for the Republic of Ecuador, and in 1876 he was created Baron de Barry of Portugal. However, acquiring similar recognition in Britain demanded a good deal more patience and strategy. It was not until 1890 that he was elected an MP for Windsor, and nine years later was granted a baronetcy by Queen Victoria.
Barry was a savvy entrepreneur, and his purchase of the estate of St. Leonard’s Hill in 1872 was obviously designed to place himself and his family under the nose of the queen. The 627-acre estate in Clewer, a village at the periphery of Windsor, was said to “yield one of the noblest views of the castle from its eastern lawn.” Additionally, it boasted more than “230 acres of old park and forest,” home to “gigantic oaks, stately beech, elm, fir and Californian redwood.” The property also came with an impressive pedigree. Its manor house had been built in the eighteenth century for Maria, Countess Waldegrave, and later came into the possession of the Earls Harcourt. When Barry acquired it, he intended to create an elegant and impressive stately home in the most modern fashion. His vision was placed in the hands of the architect Charles Henry Howell, who set about constructing an industrialist’s palace in the modish French chateau style. While Howell maintained some of the original eighteenth-century rooms, he rebuilt much of the house and added many unique late Victorian features. When guests entered the Mexican onyx–lined central hall of St. Leonard’s Hill House, they were greeted by frescoes depicting scenes from Greek mythology and by an imposing staircase. There were grand reception rooms: a dining room, large and small drawing rooms, and, through a set of mahogany doors, a winter garden. Upstairs were six suites of bedrooms, and because Japanese decor had become the rage, Barry had one created in this style. On the ground floor, he could entertain lavishly, impressing his guests with a billiard room, a smoking room, a card room, and a library. As Barry wished for St. Leonard’s Hill to have only the most modern conveniences, an early central heating system was installed, as well as conventional fireplaces, gas lighting, hot running water, toilets, and two hydraulic service elevators. Such a residence could not have been managed without a full complement of employees, and so Howell created a downstairs service area large enough to accommodate a staff of thirty servants.
John Chapman had been hired not only to drive Francis Tress Barry’s coach, but also to maintain and supervise the running of his stables, which, like his employer’s home, was a considerable affair. The stable block was built in a style similar to the mansion’s and could house no fewer than thirty horses, along with several vehicles. Upon assuming his position, John became the master of two grooms, four stablemen, and a second coachman. The handling of the stable’s accounts, the ordering of feed, supplies, and equipment, also fell into his charge. As Barry was one of the wealthiest and most prominent landowners in the area, John’s duty was to represent him from atop his employer’s highly polished carriage, in a tall hat and shining boots, and with a clean-shaven face. To most villagers and inhabitants of Windsor, Barry would only ever be known by his passing coach, and his coachman had to ensure his master left an impeccable impression.
John’s prestigious position at St. Leonard’s Hill entitled him and his family to live in the coachman’s house, across the yard from the stables. For Annie, accustomed to life in London’s mews, this was a significant improvement. The coachman’s cottage was a house on an entirely different scale. It included a sitting room or formal parlor, and a living room, where the family would dine and spend most of their time, as well as a kitchen, a scullery, a wash house, a larder, and three bedrooms.3 The family photographs in their neat frames would now have a proper room in which to be displayed.
If Annie aspired to officially enter the middle class, then their arrival at St. Leonard’s Hill was a significant step forward. With a reasonably sized home and a comfortable income, Mrs. Chapman would hire a charwoman or a day maid to assist her with the more laborious homemaking tasks. Once the Chapmans had settled in, they sought to place nine-year-old Emily Ruth in “a highly respectable” young ladies’ school in Windsor.4 Annie and her children (when they were not in school) had the use of Francis Tress Barry’s parkland and forests in which to wander and amuse themselves, and should the coachman’s wife wish to visit the shops in Windsor, she could use one of the estate’s fly carriages to convey her into town.
Annie was proud of having successfully scaled a rung on the social ladder; on occasion, she could be boastful. The way she described her husband’s work reveals something of this attitude. In the spring of 1881, while John remained at St. Leonard’s Hill, Annie brought her children to visit 29 Montpelier Place. Her sojourn at her mother’s house happened to coincide with that year’s census. When John, still at his job in Berkshire, was asked to provide his “rank, profession or occupation,” he did not hesitate to describe himself as a “coachman, domestic servant.” Mrs. Chapman, when the same question was posed to her, stated she was “the wife of a stud groom.” It is possible that John’s responsibilities had been extended to include the purchase and breeding of racing stock for Barry, yet Annie’s way of describing herself may point to more grandiose ambitions. The landed gentry venerated stud grooms, the servants who managed a gentleman’s racehorses. Due to his knowledge of equine flesh and ability to create prizewinners, the stud groom was regarded as a type of racing oracle. He had his master’s ear and his respect, allowing a slight breach in the strict divide between social classes. A stud groom might be invited to carouse with gentlemen, taken to races, and asked to dine with his master. In this, he was something more than a coachman ever could be: a confidant of those in the upper ranks of society.
Francis Tress Barry well understood that the nearer a man placed himself to the social class above him, the better the chance of maneuvering himself into it. Since the completion of St. Leonard’s Hill in 1878, Barry had made a concerted effort to announce his arrival by hosting dinners and gathering
s. He took his place among the established landowners of Clewer—Sir Daniel Gooch, Sir Theodore Henry Brinckman, and Edmund Benson Foster. As it happened, Barry’s conviviality may not have been the cause of his eventual entry into royal and aristocratic circles. He most likely won the friendship of Edward, Prince of Wales, and Princess Alexandra because of the location of St. Leonard’s Hill. It was just four miles from Ascot Racecourse.
On June 15, 1881, Barry obligingly gave his house over to the royal party for Ascot week. Among those hosted at St. Leonard’s Hill were the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl and Countess Spencer, the Countess Lonsdale, the Earls of Fife and Clonmell, Rear Admiral the Honourable H. Carr Glyn and his wife, and a number of the Prince of Wales’s wealthy associates who enjoyed the racetrack and his fast living. Two visits to the races in Semi-State were planned for Tuesday and Thursday, to be followed by a series of private entertainments, including a picnic and boating party at nearby Virginia Water, and a modest ball at St. Leonard’s Hill for “some of the parties in the neighbourhood” on the second-to-last night.5 The preparation for this weeklong house party would have been months in the planning, and while John Chapman would be occupied with juggling the carriages and horses of the royal guests, Annie would have been able to watch the spectacle from afar.
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