There was plenty of continuity to observe. The servants’ hierarchy was just as rigid as that above stairs, and almost more congealed. The butler, or house steward, came first. ‘He was addressed as Mr So-and-So by the other servants, and his chief concern was to keep everyone, including himself, in his place.’2 Only the two in-house electricians, who were regarded as men of science, equalled him in status. The Duke’s valet was also very important. Like the butler, he wore tails and striped trousers and his role was almost as prestigious. Next in the chain came the groom of the chambers, one of whose tasks was to keep guest bedrooms supplied with pens and writing paper, sometimes removed by visitors who then absent-mindedly used it for their thank-you letters. Then came the under butler and three or four footmen, as well as ‘oddmen’ whose job it was to do odd jobs at the butler’s bidding – such as carrying coal for over fifty grates and washing windows (there were so many that they were only washed once a year). Consuelo quickly learnt that it was easy to offend staff over protocol. ‘On ringing the bell one day I was answered by the butler, but when I asked him to set a match to an already prepared fire he made me a dignified bow and, leaving the room, observed, “I will send the footman, Your Grace,” to which I hastily replied, “Oh don’t trouble, I will do it myself.”’3
The French chef had his own staff of four. There were frequent rows between him and Mrs Ryman, the housekeeper, over serving meals and Consuelo was soon called on to adjudicate. Common sense might have suggested that cooking one part of breakfast in a kitchen several minutes away from the room where the rest of it was being prepared made co-ordination difficult, but there was much resistance to change. Consuelo had her own maid, Rosalie, selected for her by Lady Blandford after Sunny decided that the maid who accompanied them on their honeymoon was insufficiently au fait with English ways. Sunny may have later regretted this decision, for Rosalie died in service to Consuelo, whom she adored, while ‘disliking men in general and my husband in particular’.4 The housekeeper ran her own department. Consuelo thought Mrs Ryman was very understaffed with only six housemaids, five laundresses and the ever-popular still-room maid (who cooked breakfasts and teas); and that the maids, who lived up in ‘Housemaids’ Heights’ – a tower without running water – were not well treated. But housemaids had lived like that at Blenheim for over two hundred years and she quickly learnt that improving invisible arrangements for the servants was not one of Sunny’s priorities.
Blenheim differed from other great country houses in that the upper servants had their own dining room, but they followed the widespread practice of sitting down to meals in accordance with their own hierarchy. ‘Visitors’ servants made quite as much work as the gentry themselves,’5 according to Gerald Horne, for when there were house parties the servants arranged themselves at table according to the rank of their masters and mistresses. (One visitor later reported that he had to lend his valet a dinner jacket when staying at Blenheim because blue serge was not acceptable in the steward’s room in the evenings.) This practice was rigidly observed until 1939, a Blenheim housekeeper told James Lees-Milne. The only exception was that the ‘valet of the eldest son of the house always sat on the housekeeper’s right, taking precedence even over the valet of the most distinguished guest.’6 In Vita Sackville-West’s novel The Edwardians the date of creation of the peerage was taken into account when ranks coincided in the servants’ hall and a copy of Debrett’s was kept by the housekeeper to resolve disputes over placement below stairs.
In keeping with the ostentatious spirit of the age, the physical appearance of the Blenheim house servants was of the utmost importance. Quite apart from the exotic presence of ‘Mike’, the pageboy from Egypt, the six Blenheim footmen wore splendid liveries of a maroon coat and matching plush breeches, waistcoat with silver braid, flesh-coloured silk stockings and patent shoes with silver buckles. To qualify as a footman in 1896 a man had to be at least six-feet tall – and prepared to powder his hair. This was a horrible job according to hallboy Gerald Horne (who was called ‘Johnny’ while he worked at Blenheim because ‘Gerald’ sounded too upper class). ‘You had to powder every day and that meant washing your hair with soap, combing it out, getting it set in waves and then powdering it. The powder you mixed yourself, buying violet powder from the chemist and mixing it with flour …’ When the footmen took their place on the ducal carriage they had to wear hats which spoilt their hair and meant they had to powder it all over again. When it was dry, the powder set like cement. ‘Honestly,’ said Gerald Horne later, ‘I don’t think the gentry realised what you went through doing this kind of thing.’7
Consuelo soon discovered in those early weeks at Blenheim that there was one important difference between the wives of American plutocrats and those of English aristocrats, a difference which Alva had failed to grasp. In America, rich women were excluded from public life but had more or less total control over their households. (Even now, the great ‘cottages’ of Newport continue to be associated with their original female owners: Alva Vanderbilt, Mrs Astor, Mrs Oelrichs, and Mrs Fish.) An English duchess had no such power. In Consuelo’s case, her work was subject to periodic tests and it did not help that some of the Duke’s methods for testing the efficiency of indoor servants were reminiscent of his mother’s more sadistic practical jokes. Consuelo once had to intervene to stop a distraught housemaid from resigning after the Duke hid a small china box to test whether anyone would notice, for the maid thought she was being accused of stealing. Sunny also made a monthly tour of inspection that everyone learned to dread. ‘The Duke was all right but he could certainly make one tremble and when he came round with the steward on his monthly inspection you’d most likely hear a roar and think that what was coming down the passage was a giant,’8 said Gerald Horne.
Everywhere she turned during those first few weeks, Consuelo found British class-consciousness in action. Introductions to country neighbours, with one or two exceptions, were almost as wearing as the first calls to Marlborough’s relations in London. Etiquette demanded that Consuelo stay at least twenty minutes, but most neighbours – and her coachman – wanted her to remain much longer, so that they could give her tea and show off their houses. Here, it was not simply a matter of the English gentry patronising an American arriviste; some county families were just as anxious to patronise the Marlboroughs. ‘It was apparent that the older families whose roots were embedded in Oxfordshire regarded the Churchills, who moved there in the eighteenth century, rather as the Pilgrim Fathers looked upon later arrivals in America. Perhaps also to impress me, they stressed their ancient lineage, seeming to imply that lives lived in a long-ago past conferred a greater dignity on those lived in the present.’9 She greatly preferred her visits to the tenant farmers on the estate, in the company of Mr Angas, the steward, and came to respect them both as farmers and as loyal friends.
Soon after she arrived at Blenheim, Consuelo moved quickly to establish a rapport with the poorer and less fortunate tenants on the estate and ‘domain towns’, local villages on the edge of Blenheim’s park. The day began with chapel at 9.30, before breakfast was served. ‘At the toll of the bell housemaids would drop their dusters, footmen their trays, house-men their pails, carpenters their ladders … laundry maids their linen, and all rush to the chapel in time.’10 The Duchess would often have to scramble too, particularly when she overslept. After the service the curate would tell her who was in need of a personal visit that day. This is where she had always felt she might have a role and her attentions were welcomed. ‘There were old ladies whose complaints had to be heard and whose infirmities had to be cared for, and there were the blind to be read to. There was one gentle, patient old lady whom I loved. She used to look forward to my visits because she could understand every word I read to her while sometimes with others she could neither hear nor follow and was too polite to tell them so. I grew to know the Gospel of St John by heart because it was her favourite.’11
The saccharine flavour of such accounts may grat
e a little now, but there is no doubt that Consuelo’s interest in the less fortunate was quite genuine; that it went right back to her childhood; and that it was an aspect of her daughter’s character that Alva felt should have expression after marriage. Consuelo’s kindness may partly have started in a reaction to the excessively self-interested flight from reality lived out by her parents, but stories about it became almost legendary. ‘She would go out of her way to be kind to everyone,’ said Gerald Horne ‘and of course she was idolised … She was a great lady.’12 ‘Consuelo came to be adored,’ writes David Green, Blenheim’s principal historian. ‘Naturally, when the coach-and-four was heard in the distance cottagers popped in for a spotless apron, to pop out in time to drop a curtsey as the ducal equipage passed; but personal visits by the beautiful American Duchess of course made red-letter days. As an old Long Hanborough woman told me: “I had a dream last night … I dreamt our Duchess visited me, and do you know what she said? She said mine was the cleanest cottage she had ever been in.” Such visits and such dreams were treasured in a way which nowadays might easily be despised; yet treasured they were and made for happiness and self-respect.’13 Years later, when The Glitter and the Gold was published, an admirer from England wrote and told Consuelo that she was still remembered as ‘the angel of Woodstock’.14 Her kindness was so marked that it was occasionally abused by the unscrupulous who put their children to bed and ordered them to look ill when they thought that the Duchess was on her way, but there is no sign that she minded. For her part, Consuelo enjoyed the visits for the strength they gave her, and for the sense of mutual obligation and commitment, which she had never before experienced.
This was all in sharp contrast to the stories told about her husband. The Earl of Carnarvon recalled that when he was staying at Blenheim one Boxing Day and looking forward to a day’s shooting, the butler came in and announced nervously that the head keeper was ill, but had delegated his responsibilities. The Duke’s reply was: ‘My compliments to my head keeper; will you please inform him that the lower orders are never ill.’15 Such differences in perspective meant that it was hard for a new duchess to make changes, but Consuelo quickly introduced one alteration for which the poor could only have been grateful. ‘It was the custom at Blenheim to place a basket of tins on the side table in the dining-room and here the butler left the remains of our luncheon. It was my duty to cram this food into the tins, which we then carried down to the poorest in the various villages where Marlborough owned property. With a complete lack of fastidiousness, it had been the habit to mix meat and vegetables and sweets in horrible jumble in the same tin. In spite of being considered impertinent for not conforming to precedent, I sorted the various viands into different tins, to the surprise and delight of the recipients.’16
In spite of the warm welcome she was given, Consuelo was never reconciled to Blenheim as a dwelling-place. In fact, she lined up with those who denigrated it. ‘It is strange that in so great a house there should not be one really liveable room,’ she wrote. She would not have minded sacrificing comfort if the rooms had been elegant or beautiful, but in her view they were neither. ‘We slept in small rooms with high ceilings; we dined in dark rooms with high ceilings; we dressed in closets without ventilation.’17 A happy life in such a splendid but unforgiving house may have only been possible for a duchess who adored her duke. Since Consuelo did not, it was difficult to love a house so intently devoted to his forbears. And it made matters worse that Consuelo’s sympathy was never enlisted for the Duke’s attempt to reverse the decline of the Marlborough fortunes, his working assumption being that she was lucky to assist.
While her husband deeply admired the vision of his ancestors, Consuelo sided with those who saw only triumphant egotism. ‘Having been confronted with Marlborough’s victories in the tapestries that adorned the walls, having viewed his household in the murals painted by Laguerre, his effigy in silver on our dinner-table, his bust in marble in the library, his portrait over mantels, his ascent to celestial spheres on the ceilings, my feelings as I faced the funeral monument [in the Chapel] were akin to those of the Bishop of Rochester who says in a letter to Alexander Pope, speaking of the first Duke’s funeral … “I go tomorrow to the Deanery [of Westminster] and I believe I shall stay there till I have said Dust to Dust and shut up that last scene of pompous vanity,”’18 she wrote.
After Consuelo had spent a few weeks settling in at Blenheim, she travelled to London for another challenge – her first season as Duchess of Marlborough, when she would be introduced to London society. ‘I might almost say for my coming out, for there had been little gaiety in my previous life … with no time for friendships or even understanding.’19 Before she could take her place in London’s elite, however, she had to be presented at court. By now Sunny had bought a crimson state coach, a grandiose object whose coachman wore a livery of crimson cloth and silver braid stamped with the double-headed eagles of the Holy Roman Empire of which the Duke was a prince. This imposing equipage transported Consuelo and her mother-in-law, Lady Blandford, to Buckingham Palace.
Lady Blandford presented Consuelo at court at an afternoon event known as a ‘Drawing Room’, presided over by the Prince and Princess of Wales who now deputised for Queen Victoria at such functions. In keeping with tradition, Consuelo wore her wedding dress cut low, its long court train spread out on the floor behind her as the presentation began. A Drawing Room was a major opportunity for everyone to show off their jewellery, starting with the Princess of Wales, whose sloping shoulders, breasts and arms were particularly well suited to displaying her glittering jewels. Consuelo wore the tiara her father had given her, the infamous pearl dog-collar and a diamond belt given to her by Sunny.
Years later, she could still remember the thrill of excitement at the sound of the drum roll and the national anthem that accompanied the entrance of the royal procession into the ballroom, preceded by the Earl of Lathom and the Earl of Pembroke walking backwards before the Prince of Wales. It all went off perfectly. Consuelo made the requisite number of curtseys with dignity, feeling that it was her patriotic duty as an American to manage this without looking foolish. The only slight contretemps came afterwards when Lady Blandford breezily assured her that she had done so well that no-one would have taken her for an American. This time, Consuelo rebelled and asked her how she would feel if she thought that no-one would take her for an Englishwoman. ‘“Oh that is quite different,” she answered airily. “Different to you, but not to me,” I countered, laughingly.’20 Even Lady Blandford refrained from making such remarks thereafter. As they left Buckingham Palace, the band of the Household Cavalry played. Crowds had gathered on the Mall to cheer the young women who had just been presented at court and Consuelo later remembered feeling like Cinderella after her pumpkin changed into a coach.
The London season at this time lasted from early May until late July, when it made way for the opening of the grouse shooting season in the middle of August. Unlike the American plutocracy, the life of the English aristocracy was essentially rural. The social season was the metropolitan exception, a period lasting several weeks in the summer when the aristocracy based itself in London. Young unmarried women came out as debutantes early in May and met suitable young men at balls and parties. The end of the season was traditionally marked by a ball at Holland House in Kensington, and many marriages were settled in its gardens before society dispersed again. During these weeks aristocratic families stayed in the family town house, where there was one, returning to the country for large parties at the end of the week – a practice made easier by the advent of the motor car. Since the Marlboroughs had no London base, they took a ‘tiny house’ in South Audley Street for the London season of 1896, where they were close to the London town houses of the Lansdownes, Devonshires and others, in the streets and squares of Mayfair and Belgravia.
‘Those who knew the London of 1896 and 1897,’ wrote Consuelo, ‘will recall with something of a heartache the brilliant succession of festivit
ies that marked the season … To me it appeared as a pageant in which beautiful women and distinguished men performed a stately ritual.’21 Although Lady Diana Cooper cautions against regarding all balls of this era as ‘fairytale’, remarking that they were frequently nothing of the sort, Consuelo looked back with some nostalgia to the days when one still danced quadrilles, with polkas and Strauss waltzes played by Viennese orchestras. The great beauties of those seasons were Lady Helen Vincent (later Lady D’Abernon), Lady Westmorland, and her sisters Lady Warwick and the Duchess of Sutherland; the great hostesses, Lady de Grey and Lady Londonderry.
Lady de Grey championed the opera at Covent Garden and made attendance almost mandatory for fashionable persons. In spite of Lady Lansdowne’s warnings, the Prince and Princess of Wales broke the embargo on music-hall entertainment at the Gaiety Theatre. There were plays at the Empire Theatre, polo matches at Ranelagh, Roehampton and Hurlingham, and attendance at debates in the House of Lords where the oratorical power of many new relations by marriage was frequently on display. The Duke liked to go out in his new mail-phaeton with his own ‘tiger’ (a diminutive groom), and sometimes asked Consuelo to accompany him. Such elegance required that she wore her best clothes to match her husband’s grey swallow-tailed jacket and high grey hat, a white gardenia in his buttonhole. Aristocratic ladies lined up at Grosvenor Gate to see the Princess of Wales pass by as she bowed right and left. ‘We dined out nearly every night and there were always parties, often several, in the evening. Indeed, one had to exercise discretion in one’s acceptances in order to survive the three months.’22
Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt Page 23
