1939

by Angela Lambert

  Chatsworth had a reputation for poor wages. There were no rises and the under-servants did not stay long. … The housemaids were supposed to have one afternoon a week and every other evening off, but there was usually too much work for this and they had very little free time. They had to be in by nine-thirty in the winter and ten o’clock in the summer.

  When tea was substituted for beer, cash was paid in lieu, hence the ‘beer money’ [a bonus equivalent to about 25 per cent of the wages] in addition to the wages. In 1931 income tax rose to 5s in the pound under Ramsay MacDonald and Granny decided on stringent economies and stopped the beer money. As it was a considerable part of the wages and was in the contract of employment it rankled terribly, and no wonder.

  The housemaids had to buy their own uniforms: print dresses for morning, black with little white aprons for the afternoon and black for the evening, and white organdie caps which were fastened with elastic at the back. They made these themselves.13

  By 1939, lesser households were finding it more and more difficult to attract, and keep, good servants. The tradition of domestic service died hard among employers, but among working women a generation almost swept it away. By the 1930s there were many alternative forms of work available to young women, and while they may not have paid significantly more (taking into account the free board and lodging supplied to domestic servants), they all without exception offered more freedom. A survey carried out by Miss F.A.F.Livingstone in 1934 revealed that among the 200 working-class mothers and daughters whom she questioned, the mothers were still divided as to whether domestic service was a good way to earn a living, but the daughters were almost unanimously against it. The job had very low status. Hours were long. Living and working conditions could be appalling. Servants often slept two, three or four to a room, with no privacy, little furniture and no comforts. Employers’ attitudes could be arrogant and unreasonable. Rose Harrison records a telling exchange with Lady Astor:

  ‘The difference between us, Rose, is that I was born to command and have learnt through experience how to deal with people.’

  ‘The difference between us, my lady,’ I said, ‘is that you have money. Money is power, and people respect money and power so they respect you for having it.’14

  One cannot be certain that this exchange ever really took place, for Sarah Norton, who married Lady Astor’s son Bill, reports that Rose’s memory was selective, and she often told stories as she wished they had happened, rather than with strict regard to the truth. Either way, the anecdote is revealing. Equally revealing is this description, by a man who had better be anonymous, of his family’s attitudes towards their servants:

  My parents’ generation knew how to treat their servants and it got a very good response from them. Nowadays you’re supposed to behave, so to speak, as if they were equal human beings. But then, when your personal servant addressed you, they might have found you pompous, but familiarity breeds contempt. Nowadays, people treat their servants very, very well – and they lose them. Our servants were never overpaid: but they never went. There were certain people who had been with us for a very long time, and they could really speak their minds: the very, very old servants. I think we were frightened of them, in a funny sort of way. Looking back, you could say we were inconsiderate in what we expected of our servants. But we got it.

  Lady Troubridge’s Book of Etiquette, first published in 1926, is a guide to what she described as ‘the technique of the art of social life’. Among the minutiae of correct observances that it details, there is a section on servants. Under the heading ‘Manners in General’ Lady Troubridge advises:

  A servant should never be noisy when on duty. He is not supposed to whistle or sing, talk loudly, or call to his fellow-servants. He should not bang doors, and run about or move noisily. He should speak gently and clearly and, if he meets one of the family or a guest upon the stairs or in a passage, he should draw aside and allow them to pass.

  It seems extra hard on the servant that, having been instructed to maintain this prim and self-effacing demeanour, he is then also told that it is his duty to be cheerful.

  Young working-class men and women possessing an education, the vote and above all a range of alternatives to domestic service saw few advantages in the servant’s life. Phrases about the honour or the dignity of service began to ring hollow. As they turned elsewhere in search of satisfying work, the whole edifice of gracious living and hospitality which had depended upon their labour began to crumble. Certainly the Second World War hastened the process, just as the First had done, but it would have happened in any case. Employers were seldom imaginative or generous towards their servants, and saw no reason to improve their working hours and wages, or to make their lives easier by introducing cleaner forms of cooking and heating such as electricity. (As late as 1936, only 6 per cent of households cooked with electricity. The vast majority still used old, cumbersome coal-fired ranges, unreliable to cook with and a nightmare to clean: not at all like the gleaming enamelled Aga of today.)

  The attitudes towards servants and the conditions in which they were expected to live and work uncomplainingly were hard to change because they became fossilized by the memory of the older generations. An upper-class mother brought up in a grand Victorian household in the days when girls were reasonably happy to enter domestic service would often fail to realize how much things had changed since then, and would criticize her daughter for what she saw as a lowering of standards. Attitudes were passed on from elderly mother to middle-aged daughter, and from her to teenage debutante. The world changed, but employers preferred not to – since it meant losing the comfort they had grown up to expect. Evidence of these changes can be read between the lines of comments from the more intelligent or sensitive girls – like Sonia Denison, now Mrs Heathcoat-Amory:

  One sometimes wondered if it could all be justified – the luxury and the waste. Because we were aware of the unemployment and the poverty. I suppose one thought all this – our world, the dances, the clothes – made employment. But … the lavishness of the suppers: and a lot of it just thrown away in the end. We were very conscious and ashamed of it really – well, I think a lot of people were.

  I remember my father saying, if you were to do a job – as I wanted to – you are taking a job from somebody who needs it. None of us worked – none of us earned our living. That was the great difference then. We didn’t need to, but on top of that we weren’t allowed to. I’m sure a lot of brains were wasted. It was a really idiotic life. It was. But we did it and enjoyed it and it’s finished. We were very spoilt – looked after hand and foot. I’d never cooked or so much as packed a suitcase before the war. And then of course all that changed very quickly when war broke out. We were all vads [Voluntary Aid Detachment] and things, and then we really got to work. That was a big change. But it was a very luxurious life before then. Extraordinary.

  Yet the depression did not see any increase in the number of domestic servants. Instead, electrical devices to make housework easier were gradually being introduced. Vacuum cleaners – invented as long ago as 1903 – were becoming more common and so were electric irons.

  Meanwhile – watchman, what of the night? War was now less than three months away. There were still many people who believed that Hitler would back down. In a speech he made at Chatham House at the end of June, the Foreign Secretary said quite plainly: ‘We know that, if international law and order is to be preserved, we must be prepared to fight in its defence.’ He went on,

  We are creating here a powerful weapon for the defence of our own liberty and that of other peoples. With every week that passes, that effort gains momentum, and on every side of life, political, administrative, industrial, we have abundant evidence of how firmly this national effort is driven and supported by the people’s will. Behind all our military effort stand the British people, more united than ever before… .15

  Brave words, when Lord Halifax must have known that the results of an opinion poll carried out that sam
e week showed that 57 per cent of those polled believed that the risk of war had decreased since the previous autumn, and 13 per cent were ‘don’t knows’. This did not, of course, mean that 70 per cent of the British people were not prepared to fight; but it certainly meant that they did not expect to have to do so, let alone so soon.

  The German people felt exactly the same. There is no poll to give a precise figure for their opinions, but the New York Times correspondent in Berlin reported that 90 per cent of the population would have liked to rest content with the land Hitler had annexed so far, and they did not wish – or believe – that Germany would go to war.16 They knew Britain and France did not want war either, and from this naive and optimistic belief in the essential peaceableness of the ordinary man, they drew comfort from the belief that there would therefore be no war. The Germans too had vivid and recent memories of the slaughter of the First World War.

  The truth was simple. People have an indestructible tendency to look on the bright side until faced with dark evidence that there is no bright side; and in a green and sunny June the prospect of war was hard to face. Harold Nicolson wrote to Vita, his wife:

  June 19, 1939

  Why can we not be left alone? We are doing no harm. We care for fine and gentle things. We wish only to do good on earth. We are not vulgar in our tastes or cruel in our thoughts. Why is it that we are impotent to prevent something which we know to be evil and terrible? I would willingly give my own life if I could stop this war. I am so unhappy about the outside, and happy in my own little orbit.17

  Plaintive, peaceable, passive … it was how most people felt.

  The last fortnight in June was the very peak of the Season. The Times listed at least two dances every night, sometimes three ; and there were many people who – perhaps for fear of gatecrashers – preferred not to have their dance announced in the Social Column. Susan Ridley (now Mrs Chaplin), whose dance was on 26 June, recalls the problems uninvited guests could cause:

  My dance was given at 54 Mount Street, in a house that belonged to the Dowager Viscountess Cowdray. (Her daughter had married my cousin, so we were sort of related.) There were always quite a lot of gatecrashers around at deb dances – it was a risk you ran, because everyone knew whose the next party was, and if word got round that it was going to be good, you’d have lots of uninvited guests. Lady Cowdray insisted that we had someone at the door to keep them out, who checked everyone’s invitations – it was, after all, a private house. So we did very well, and only had two gatecrashers, who were caught red-handed trying to get in with two young men, and they were removed from the dance. They were – I won’t reveal their names – but they were ex-debs who’d got a bit past it, but knew the routine and hoped for some free food and a drink. That sort of thing used to happen a lot.

  In the end the party was a huge success – it ended at about five o’clock in the morning, so we all got to bed very late. I adored it.

  On 22 June, the King and Queen returned from their tour of Canada and the United States to a triumphal welcome. The weather, which had hampered their arrival in Canada seven weeks earlier now hampered their return. Mist and rain made it necessary to cancel the spectacular naval and air ceremonies which had been planned. In London, however, the sun shone, happy crowds lined the streets, the little princesses looked sweet in pink coats and white socks and the King looked tanned and the Queen smiled her radiant smile. The bunting and decorations to welcome them back fluttered along the streets and at Waterloo station, where their train drew in from Southampton.

  The same decorations had given quite unintended pleasure to a group of 287 Jewish refugees from the St Louis, the ship that had sailed to Havana and back in a vain attempt to find safe harbour for its passengers. Britain was one of four countries that had finally, reluctantly, agreed to accept the 900 stateless Jews between them. Britain’s quota arrived at Waterloo Station on 21 June, the day before the royal return, where the children were thrilled to find such a lovely show to herald their arrival, at last, in their new country.

  The royal visit had in fact achieved little beyond flattering publicity for the royal couple. The King might have hoped for an unequivocal declaration of American support in the event of war, to be given in practical form: arms, troops, commitments. The Americans hoped to be able to steer clear. A poll among the intellectual readers of the American political weekly the New Republic had asked them what America’s foreign policy should be if war broke out in Europe. Of the 144 replies it received, 47 readers voted to help Great Britain with positive aid – armaments, supplies and, if unavoidable, fighting men; 42 favoured a rigorous policy of keeping well out of it. That left 55, well over a third, ambivalent or undecided. It was not an encouraging response. A question had been asked in the House of Representatives, ‘whether the unprecedented visit of the King does in fact signify an entente between the administration for the preservation of the British Empire at the expense of American blood and American treasure?’ – a loaded question, it might seem. America was finding it difficult simultaneously to preserve neutrality and express its proper democratic hatred of the Fascist dictatorships. America temporized. The King returned empty-handed.

  One of the four dances taking place on the evening of 22 June was given for Eunice Kennedy, the third daughter of Ambassador and Mrs Kennedy, at their official residence at 14 Prince’s Gate. Her elder sister Kathleen (always known as ‘Kick’) must have been a hard act to follow. Kick’s wild success as a debutante the previous year had made her one of the most sought-after girls in the young set. All doors were open to her. Everyone solicited her company. Voted ‘the most exciting debutante’ of 1938, she had a large circle of friends. Elizabeth Leveson-Gower knew Eunice quite well; indeed she was a friend of all the young Kennedys:

  They all had this quality of liveliness – Eunice too: she wasn’t classically good-looking, and certainly not as attractive as Kick, but she was so lovely and energetic, and that was attractive. She had a rather wide face, but her figure was good and she was tremendously good company. Jack was very intelligent – too intelligent and political for me. He liked to dominate the conversation at a dinner-table; he wasn’t interested in making small talk. He wanted to discuss serious issues.

  I remember sitting next to Mr Kennedy at the dinner-party they gave before Eunice’s dance. I liked him. A lot of people since have said he was anti-British, but I found him easy to talk to and a good host.

  That was her account of the evening; but her diary for the whole day is worth quoting in full, for it conveys the sheer crowdedness of a deb’s day:

  Thursday, 22 June: Lunch Ursula Wyndham-Quin. Watched King & Queen in the Procession on their return from Canada from Lord Caledon’s house. Dined Kennedys for their dance – I sat next to Mr Kennedy. Complete riot at end. Everyone formed a chain and ran round the house landing on the floors.

  Home by 4 a.m.

  Joseph Kennedy had come to London in 1938. In the great tradition of American ambassadors, he was a self-made man – and it was not advisable to enquire too closely into just how he had made himself. He had also made a marriage, to a wife of iron will and rigid Catholicism – and they had nine children. Their births spanned seventeen years; from Joe Jr, born in 1915, to little Teddy, born in 1932. At the older end of the family were three who took an active part in the Season: John (later Jack) Kennedy, born in 1917 and thus an ideal age for escorting debs; Kathleen, who grasped the rules of the Season instantly, and played its games with skill and vivacity; and Eunice, who was born in 1921 and was presented at Court in 1939, under the auspices of the diplomatic list. There was another daughter of the right age – Rosemary – but she was backward, more so than her mother would admit, and so, although dutifully shepherded from dance to dance with the other girls, she was something of a liability.

  Ambassador Kennedy claimed – in one of those anecdotes that pepper American history, as though events turned on a chance or a joke – that he outbluffed the President, Franklin Delano Roos
evelt, to get the job. The story is told in a biography of the Kennedy family:

  When Kennedy was ushered into the Oval Office, the President asked him to step back by the fireplace so he could get a good look at him. Puzzled, Kennedy did as he was told. ‘Joe,’ the President continued, ‘would you mind taking your pants* down?’ Kennedy stared back in disbelief, then slowly unhooked his suspenders,† let his pants fall to the floor, and stood in his shorts‡ looking silly and embarrassed. FDR broke the silence. ‘Joe, just look at your legs. You are just about the most bow-legged man I have ever seen. Don’t you know that the Ambassador to the Court of St James’s has to go through an induction ceremony at which he wears knee breeches and silk stockings? Can you imagine how you’ll look? When photos of our new Ambassador appear all over the world, we’ll be a laughing stock. You’re just not right for the job, Joe.’

  Kennedy looked straight at Roosevelt: ‘Mr President, if I can get the permission of His Majesty’s Government to wear a cutaway coat and striped pants to the ceremony, would you agree to appoint me?’

  ‘Well, Joe, you know how the British are about tradition. There’s no way you are going to get permission, and I will name a new Ambassador soon.’

  ‘Will you give me two weeks ?’

  FDR nodded and Kennedy pulled up his pants and went out of the door, leaving the President chuckling. Not long afterwards he returned with the permission he had promised to obtain.18