The Real Life Downton Abbey: How Life Was Really Lived in Stately Homes a Century Ago
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Jennie’s two sisters, Clara and Leonie, also marry into the English aristocracy, Leonie to one of the sons of Ireland’s biggest landowning families; Clara marries an English aristocrat for love. Her husband, Morton Frewen, a financially incompetent son of English landed gentry has a nickname: ‘mortal ruin’.
Throughout her twenty-year marriage to Lord Randolph, Jennie Churchill is reputed to have many lovers, young and old – among them King Edward VII – yet she becomes well respected and greatly admired as an unofficial ‘ambassador’ for American society in the influential, high-born circles of the time. Following Lord Randolph’s death in 1895, she remarries – twice. She dies in 1921, following a fall down a flight of stairs – in a new pair of high-heeled shoes.
The status hunter’s bible
Rich American mothers on the lookout for a titled spouse for their daughters subscribe to their own quarterly listings magazine called Titled Americans: A list of American ladies who have married foreigners of rank.
The magazine lists all the American women who have already married aristocratic foreigners. And it carries a handy list of all the eligible titled bachelors, where they live, their incomes, the size of their estates and, in some cases, a listing of their debts.
The dancing marquess
Some of the cash-strapped British aristocrats of the time just blow their money for the hell of it. Take the antics of Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, the ‘dancing marquess’. On inheriting 30,000 acres in Staffordshire, Dorset, Anglesey and Derbyshire on the death of his father, plus an income of £110,000 a year – around £10 million in today’s terms – Henry manages to blow the lot in six years.
Where does the money go? Lavish parties, yachts, extravagant theatrical productions – which frequently involve priceless costumes studded with expensive jewels – and Henry’s own elaborate outfits. These include a diamond and sapphire tiara, a turquoise dog collar, ropes of pearls, and slippers studied with rubies. At one point he modifies his car so that the exhaust sprays out perfume. And it is rumoured that he likes to make his wife lie naked while he prances around, covering her body with jewels. Very soon he is mortgaging his estates to cover his mounting debts and, after finally being forced to sell off his jewels, dogs, cars and carriages he is declared bankrupt. He moves to the South of France, where he dies, age 30, in 1905.
The matchmaker
New York society snobs shun wealthy financier’s daughter Mary ‘Minnie’ Stevens because there is a rumour that she was once a chambermaid. But she still manages to up her social ante by marrying into the British aristocracy and becoming the wife of Sir Arthur Henry Fitzroy Paget. Once established as an aristocratic wife, she becomes a top-end marriage broker, introducing American heiresses to British aristocrats looking for wealthy brides. Yet the English toffs claim she has made society ‘more shallow and vulgar’ than before.
Send him the bill
Because male and female roles in the aristos’ world are so rigidly cast, paying the bills is always the man’s responsibility. The mistress of the house never carries any money at all. An English aristocratic wife is never involved in the financial planning of their estates. Yet she can spend – things like expensive clothing and décor are considered part and parcel of the massive effort in maintaining appearances at all times, and, of course, keeping up with the other wealthy women in their set.
THE HAVE NOTS
What servants earn in 1910:
The Butler: £50–£100 a year
The Housekeeper: £40–£70 a year
The Cook or Chef: £18–£500 a year
The Valet: £35–£50 a year
Lady’s Maid: £20–£32 a year
First Footman: £30–£40 a year
Second Footman: £20–£30 a year
First Housemaid: £28–£30 a year
Second Housemaid: £22–£24 a year
Kitchen Maid: £20–£24 a year
Scullery Maid: £10–£14 a year
Chauffeur: £10–£25 a year
Hallboy: £16–£18 a year
Nanny: £30–£40 a year
Governess: £22–£40 a year
Chapter 3
The Pecking Order
Everyone living in or around the grand country estate has a set role to play in the hierarchy of the house. And this strict adherence to the pecking order, the set tasks or duties allotted to each person, isn’t merely a template for the servants.
Even the owners of the estate, the master and mistress of the house, are locked into rigid, firmly set behaviour patterns, a ‘job description’ if you like, of how they must conform to what society expects of them. The pecking order runs from the very top of the tree to the lowliest person in the house. ‘Everyone in their place’ describes it perfectly.
THE FATHER
The father of the aristocratic family heads up the whole enterprise. He’s the indisputable lord and master of the household. In Edwardian Britain, rich or poor, the family is the most important aspect of everyday life – so the father, or man of the house, is always very much the focal point.
The father’s authority is absolute: family members, whatever their feelings, cannot challenge or question his authority. He makes the decisions on everything: money, the estate, their social circle, the children’s education, the family’s religious and political affiliations and the path any sons and heirs might pursue, such as politics. (Daughters are only expected to marry someone equally grand and wealthy.)
No matter how rich they are or how ancient the family lineage, it is the patriarch of the grand country estate who controls the purse strings – and the family’s fortunes. Certainly, he will give out the rewards and the praise to his offspring. But he can also be the one to dish out the punishment. So the penalties for stepping out of line or disagreeing with him are harsh: adult children who fail to obey his wishes risk being ‘cut off’ financially or, in some cases, being packed off out of sight to a foreign country. (Since only the toffs and the wealthy middle classes travel at these times, such banishment abroad is not some kind of treat as we might see it – it means ‘get out of my sight’.)
Yet the wealthier the family and the bigger the estate, the bigger the headache when it comes to running the family fortunes. Inheritance, of course, is always a major problem for aristocrats without a male heir. But even in families with one or more sons and daughters, there needs to be sufficient cash in the kitty to provide a good cash legacy for all the children and dowries for the girls when they marry. And if they don’t marry, there still needs to be a legacy. So this close eye on the financial affairs and the running of the estate is the aristocratic father’s preoccupation: with thousands of acres and hundreds of rooms to consider, let alone a payroll of many servants, indoor and out, it’s a huge responsibility.
He has a battalion of people to help him with this, of course: an estate manager or steward (an educated person with financial skills who lives, with his family, on the estate) plus city-based solicitors and accountants with whom he corresponds or visits regularly. This all takes up a considerable amount of time, particularly if there is more than one estate to run. But this not his only big responsibility. He may sit in the House of Lords, for instance (by tradition, he’s a Conservative). And, of course, his neighbourhood duties, also by tradition, may involve acting locally as a Justice of the Peace or a Lord Lieutenant.
All of this means that as a father he can be a very distant authority figure, a hands-off dad, especially in the case of his daughters; sons are much more important because they are seen as the future of the family’s wealth and prestige.
Essentially, the army of servants, the nannies, the governesses and the nurses are the ones whose lives revolve around the daily aspects of parenting. He’s far too busy with his important duties to spend time just being a dad…
THE MOTHER
Wives, in Edwardian times, are supposed to behave as obedient and compliant partners; equality in marriage doesn’t come into it. The aristocra
tic wife has a major role to play in the organisation of how the house is run, yet she is far too busy with her many and varied duties to have anything like what we’d recognise as a normal relationship with her children. Or her husband, come to that.
There is an allotted time each day to see her children – usually around tea time, for about an hour, and that’s it, though in some exceptions she could find more time for them during the day.
She has so many time-consuming functions, the first being to oversee and liaise with the upper servants – particularly the cook and the housekeeper – on the day-to-day running of the house. There will frequently be large numbers of people to entertain in the house, sometimes for several days at a time. So the organisation and forward planning of all this requires a lot of attention to detail.
Then there is the house itself, its décor and appearance. Overall responsibility for this is a crucial aspect of her role at all times; her husband won’t concern himself with any of this. Yet it is highly important: the family are judged and evaluated by the appearance of the house, the servants and its interior. If the curtains are tatty, it reflects on the entire family. If she notices that a servant looks less than clean, neat and tidy, a comment to the housekeeper can mean admonishment – or even the sack – for the girl. She has to be constantly alert to all the finer details. Yes, there is an army of servants to polish, clean, produce meals and ease the path at all times, but being bang up to date on the latest interior innovations is a must: as style and fashion conscious as she has to be when it comes to what she wears, so it follows that the home has to have the right ‘look’.
As well as her duties as a local Lady Bountiful, she is also, in some cases, a political hostess. So her judgements when entertaining the high and the mighty need to be fine-tuned; she needs to be up to date regarding what’s going on in the social world around her, though it’s not acceptable yet for aristocratic women to ‘meddle’ in politics. Her allies in this need for information might be relatives, particularly unmarried aunts or cousins, who can usually be relied upon to trade gossip when they’re visiting. Or she writes to them regularly, as well as corresponding with the other aristocratic wives in her circle: this kind of networking is also particularly useful when it comes to hiring new servants.
So there it is – a highly decorative hostess, interior decorator, Lady Bountiful dispensing charity to the poor and big-budget party planner. Throw in the travelling and the unending social pressure to behave in a certain way at all times and you can see that behind all the luxury and show, this is a complex role. And there is little real privacy. With so many people around at her beck and call, even her private life can be subject to intense scrutiny. Which might not be a problem if, like Cora, Duchess of Grantham, her marriage is a happy one, a fact well known and discussed below stairs. But if, like some aristocratic wives, her relationship with her husband is a starchy, formal affair, a merger purely for financial or status reasons and very ‘hands off’, (there’s no divorce, of which more later), rather than envy her elevated role you might wonder how she copes with it all.
THE SERVANT ROLES
Each individual job in the pecking order is very clearly set out and compartmentalised. This way, the lower servants can hone their skills over time. Essentially, the older staff teach the younger ones – who have the most harsh, menial and unrelenting workload. In fact, the learning curve means the younger lower servants sometimes have to wait on their senior co-workers. It also means they can pick up the nuances of the household itself. They may not have face-to-face contact with the people they work for, but they still need to be familiar with their whims and fancies.
Not everyone who goes into country house service sees it as ‘a job for life’. Here are the four different types:
The servant who spends their entire life in service.
The servant who wants the country-house lifestyle and regards it as a stage before marrying (on average, women in service marry at around the age of 25, and have worked for around l2 years in 3–5 different jobs).
The impoverished, genteel, educated woman (think Jane Eyre), usually a governess or housekeeper, forced to find paid work because of a change of circumstance in her family’s fortunes.
The local ‘casual’ worker or labourer.
THE UPPER SERVANTS
THE BUTLER
The butler is the highest-ranking servant in the house. He has total responsibility for all the male staff in the house and is, effectively the ‘team leader’ of the servants – and the right-hand man of his master. He is respectful – but never subservient.
He’s in charge of the wine cellar, the arrangement of the dining table, the announcement of dinner and, with the footmen, the serving of all meals and wine. It is the butler’s job to carve the joint of meat and remove the silver covers from the dishes. It is also his job to check that lamps or candles are in working order and that the fires are glowing. At the day’s end he is the person who checks that all doors and windows in the house are locked.
He is responsible for all the family silver and all the arrangements for the reception of guests. Immaculate in appearance, discreet in the extreme, he is superbly well organised; his key priority in life is his boss and the family.
He is on call 24/7 and is the person who has most to do with the people ‘upstairs’. Usually a bachelor (his bosses prefer him not to be distracted by a life of his own), he has worked his way up the servant hierarchy over time, so the butler’s knowledgeable authority over his male underlings is never questioned.
He has his own suite of rooms, usually as near to the main living rooms, usually the dining room, as is practical. Being so close means that whenever he is summoned by a bell, he can reach his employer’s side as quickly as possible. His suite of rooms also includes a dining area for the upper servants, a butler’s pantry, where the silver plate is washed and polished and, nearby, a silver vault which stores the valuables; only the butler is permitted to have the key to this.
He is the ultimate ‘front of house’ man. He opens the front door to visitors – or accepts a calling card if the family is not available. If the family has a phone, he takes the phone calls and messages. Within his suite he also has an office where he interviews prospective employees, draws up timetables for male staff, works out the duties of the day for the footmen, pores over the seating plans for lunch and dinner and coordinates the plans for big social events like the weekend shooting parties.
His cellar duties include storing the wine bottles in their correct place, stocking up on the wines, champagne, port, sherry, brandy and liqueurs – and consulting with the master on which wines are to be served at mealtimes. (He might also be allowed to sell off the empty wine bottles as a little perk of the job.)
His manners must be impeccable at all times. He needs to know every single like and dislike of his employer – and those of the many guests. If his employer insists on having his newspapers perfectly flat before reading, it is the butler who instructs the footman to toast and iron them in readiness for the breakfast table. If he hands a guest a drink, it must be their preferred tipple – they do not need to ask. His calm demeanour and attention to detail are second to none: like everything else in the house, his comportment is a reflection of his employer’s status. Everything must be perfectly organised – right down to the last detail.
THE HOUSEKEEPER
Next in rank to the butler, the housekeeper is the most senior female servant and effectively the second-in-command, the other essential link in the chain making up a well-run household.
In her stiff black dress, silk apron trimmed with beads, lace collar, small lace cap and belt jingling with keys (everything she is held accountable for, from spices to china and linen, must be locked up) she has a lot of responsibility. Though she must defer to the butler at all times.
Her duties include the supervising, engaging and dismissing of female staff (with the exception of the nanny, lady’s maid and cook who are hired personally by
the mistress of the house). The discipline and behaviour of the female staff is part of the housekeeper’s remit.
She is called ‘Mrs’ even though she is usually unmarried, because the rank of a married woman is more important. She needs a good head for figures because her role involves keeping the accounts of the household expenditure, writing down all sums of money paid out, ordering goods from the tradesmen – perhaps getting a discount or ‘commission’ from regular suppliers – and, with the approval of her mistress, paying their bills as well as the accounts for all the other expenses of the house.
It is the housekeeper’s role to allocate all the duties to be carried out by the female staff – and to make sure that all the tasks, the cleaning, dusting and polishing of all the rooms, are carried out properly. She keeps a detailed inventory and ensures that both family and staff have a clean supply of linen and bedding. All the household necessities, things like soap, sugar, flour, spices and candles, must be accounted for in her paperwork. This, of course, is carefully checked with the mistress of the house on a regular basis.
The housekeeper’s quarters include a comfortable and well-furnished sitting room, where the lower servants sometimes wait on her. She has a bell pull which connects with one of the many bells located in the corridor outside to summon staff to her room. Her quarters are also used as a housekeeping storeroom, with huge tall cabinets containing the very finest china and porcelain. She’s responsible for checking all the washing and drying of the china following mealtimes: she must be on the lookout for any cracks or breakages. And she oversees and supervises everything in the still room – a place often used for making jams, homemade wines and distilled waters.