Country House Society

by Pamela Horn

  The couple departed for a honeymoon in Devon and Cornwall, and when they returned they moved into a house on Montague Street, which Lady Cunard had provided as a wedding present. Almost immediately, Nancy found the new relationship unbearable. As Lois Gordon, one of her biographers, points out drily, ‘It was one thing to spend an evening with a wounded soldier; another to marry him.’ Later Nancy described the twenty months she spent with Sydney before he again departed for the front as one of the most miserable periods of her life. Although he survived the war and for some time during it Nancy continued to write to him, they never lived together again, and separated in 1919. They finally divorced in 1925.54 The brevity of their courtship may have contributed to the marriage failure, and in this connection it is significant that after the war there was a general upsurge in the divorce rate, as couples who had married in haste found that in peacetime they had little in common.

  Meanwhile, on a purely domestic front, even affluent households found increasing difficulty in recruiting servants. At the Duke of Richmond’s Goodwood, where there had been an indoor staff of over twenty before the war, numbers dropped to twelve in 1917, of whom only three were male.55 Similarly, when Rosina Harrison was appointed a lady’s maid to the two daughters of Lady Ierne Tufton in London during that year, she discovered that only the chauffeur was a man. All the rest of the staff were female, with Major Tufton’s valeting being carried out by the second parlourmaid.56 Even women servants were becoming scarce, as more attractive wartime employment became available. Lady Cynthia Asquith noted the despair of her sister-in-law, Katharine, in April 1916 as a result of her fruitless efforts to recruit a new parlourmaid. As Lady Cynthia commented, ‘They are almost as extinct as the dodo.’57 These changes were the result of male military conscription as well as the appearance of alternative employment outlets in factories and in other war work. Household expenditure, too, was reduced as a result of war-time restrictions, even in larger households and despite the general sharp rise in prices. At Goodwood it fell from £8,922 in 1913 to £3,248.58 Given the inflation of the war years, with retail prices on average more than doubling between 1914 and 1918, the reduction in real terms was very considerable.

  Country Life would have approved of the changes. On 15 August 1914, it declared sternly that ‘the rich ought to live more sparingly, so that they may not consume food that might otherwise be available for the poor. Let it be fully understood that indulgence in luxury is not only a foolishness but a crime.’ Early in the following year it sought to shame grandees into ensuring that they did not employ any male servant who was fit enough to fight: ‘Have you a Butler, Groom, Chauffeur, Gardener or Gamekeeper serving you who, at this moment should be serving your King and Country? Will you sacrifice your personal convenience for your Country’s need? Ask your men to enlist TO-DAY.’59 However, not all its readers welcomed this hectoring tone. On 5 September 1915, ‘Country Invalid’ wrote angrily to the editor to deplore the way in which the ‘patriotic wave which has now swamped England’ had brought

  in its train some ugly followers, an unchristian disposition to judge others and a total inability to calculate another’s circumstances … Great folk, dwelling in palaces, may well dispense with three-fourths of their retainers without feeling any pinch of inconvenience, and dwellers in towns with shops and taxis handy, may think a chauffeur unnecessary; but does that give them any right to abuse a dweller in the wilds of the country, perchance an invalid who retains one or two menservants ineligible for the Army.60

  Some of the heat was taken out of the debate in 1916 when conscription was introduced for men of military age.

  The scarcity of domestic labour was matched by the growing shortages of food and fuel. Members of High Society were often better able to cope with disruptions to food supplies than was the population at large, as they were able to grow vegetables and fruit, and raise poultry and livestock, on their country estates. Fuel was more problematic, despite the availability of timber for felling on most estates, and there were, of course, difficulties with imported consumer goods like sugar; not until 1917 was a rudimentary system of rationing introduced, initially to cover sugar.61 On 6 February 1917, Lady Cynthia Asquith, who was staying with a sister-in-law in London, noted in her diary that there was a ‘great domestic crisis – poor Frances! Cellar quite empty and no coal to be procured for love or money. The phenomenal cold still worse than ever and now we can’t even “keep the home fires burning”. We all shivered … but we got through the evening very well with the help of silly round games.’ The next morning she breakfasted in her fur coat. ‘At last we are beginning to feel the pinch of war in material things … [These] last days each hostess’s brow has been furrowed by mentally weighing meat, bread, and sugar. Frances says the allowance of sugar is larger than what she consumes, on the other hand the meat allowance could mean a reduction by one half.’62

  But those with great wealth and influence could circumvent some of the shortages. Lady Cynthia wrote enviously of the wealthy American Consuelo Duchess of Marlborough, now living apart from her husband. She had invited a friend to dinner and had provided a six-course meal, much as she might have done pre-war. And when a relative arrived to stay with her at Brighton, where she was currently living, the duchess offered her a choice of six bedrooms, in each of which a fire had been lit ‘in case it should be chosen!’ ‘Enjoyed being shocked over this impious extravagance’, added Lady Cynthia acidly.63

  Some grandees responded to the scarcity of food by converting their pleasure grounds and gardens to more utilitarian purposes in order to boost food production. At Blenheim Palace in 1915 the Duke of Marlborough substituted ‘sheep for mowers in the gardens’ and planted cabbages in the flower beds. ‘The national food problem,’ declared The Times wryly, ‘may not have been greatly lessened by these practices’, but it was a patriotic gesture.64 On a more ambitious scale, the widowed Countess of Airlie, despite her formidable range of duties in connection with VAD recruitment nursing training and hospital provision, as well as her role as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, managed the family’s Cortachy estate. Her sons were away at the war and her elderly factor had retired. Consequently, much of her time at Cortachy was occupied ‘in teaching such workers as she could get the rudiments of farming and gardening necessitated by the national drive for food production. “My entire horizon was bounded by potatoes,” she wrote. “Every vine house was stuffed full of them; even the little hut at the back of the gardens was stacked with potato boxes from the floor to the roof.”’65

  Furthermore, despite the determination of members of the social elite to follow at least some of their pre-war pleasures, including the holding of house parties, the copious consumption of alcohol, dancing, gambling and flirtations, plus, in a limited fashion, the field sports of hunting and shooting, they were also under serious financial pressure. The cost of goods and services was rising inexorably and yet landowners could not benefit from the increased agricultural prices by raising rentals, because of war-time restrictions. Taxes, too, were becoming increasingly burdensome, thereby further eroding living standards. On the Earl of Pembroke’s Wilton estate, income tax, which had ‘taken barely 4 per cent of gross rents … before 1914, was taking over a quarter by 1919’.66 A similar situation existed at Savernake, and overall on these estates the burden of direct taxation, including land tax, rates and income tax, had risen from 9 to 30 per cent of income. In those circumstances, some landowners began to sell outlying parts of their estates in order to raise capital, despite the difficult wartime conditions. Lord Pembroke disposed of a detached estate he owned in North Wiltshire in 1917. He followed this by the sale of 8,400 acres of outlying portions of the Wilton estate itself in 1918, with many tenant farmers taking the opportunity to buy their holdings.67 Likewise, Sir Francis Ashley-Corbett, whose seat and main estate were in Lincolnshire, sold his entire 4,500-acre Everleigh Manor property in Wiltshire, while at the end of 1918 the sale of outlying portions of the Marker estates in Dev
on and Somerset realised over £70,000. In these circumstances Country Life claimed that the record of land sales in 1918 would ‘take a lot of beating’.68 In the event, they were to be comfortably exceeded between 1919 and 1921. Among the purchasers were tenant farmers and businessmen who had profited from the war and were anxious to acquire the social status attached to land ownership.

  Other hard-pressed estate owners, like the Earl of Carnarvon, who were concerned about their rising tax bills, adopted a different solution. In May 1918 Lord Carnarvon sold some of the furniture from one of his subsidiary houses at Bretby in Derbyshire.69

  In the meantime many wives and daughters wanted to support the war effort in other ways than through nursing and hospital provision. The future Lady Curzon, for example, ran a night canteen at Waterloo station and Lady Victoria Bentinck, daughter of the Duke of Portland, worked in a munitions factory. Others, like the Hon. Mrs Gell and Lady Horner, arranged village sewing and knitting parties to provide ‘comforts’ for the troops and set up Red Cross branches where participants could roll bandages and make swabs. At Mells in Somerset, Lady Horner organised a large work party in the loggia of her home where the women could meet to make shirts and socks and gossip to one another. Lady Horner read aloud to them while they sewed. But, most important in her view, was the opportunity it gave them to meet and to feel they were ‘working for their men, and hearing all the latest news I could get for them’.70

  At Glamis Castle, which was quickly converted for hospital use to receive wounded or sick soldiers sent to convalesce after treatment at Dundee Infirmary, the young Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth, remembered that during the first few months of the war ‘we were so busy knitting, knitting, knitting and making shirts for the local battalion – the 5th Black Watch.’ Parcels were despatched containing thick shirts, socks, mufflers, belts and sheepskins, the latter to be made into coats and painted with a waterproofing varnish. The Earl and Countess of Strathmore, Lady Elizabeth’s parents, apparently intended to provide every man in the thousand-strong local Black Watch battalion with a sheepskin. ‘Socks were packed with presents of cigarettes, tobacco, pipes or peppermints in the toe.’ Lady Elizabeth remembered that one of her tasks was ‘crumpling up tissue paper until it was so soft that it no longer crackled, to put into the lining of sleeping bags’. And when the soldier patients arrived, she helped to entertain them, visiting their ward for a ‘lively game of whist before supper’. There were sing-songs in the ward, too, with Elizabeth’s older sister playing the piano, and trips to the village shop to purchase cigarettes and tobacco for the men.71 Her sister eventually departed to train as a nurse in London but as the younger girl was not old enough to take a nursing course, her principal responsibility was ‘to make the soldiers feel at home’, something she, with her bright personality, was well-fitted to do.

  Even Queen Mary and her ladies-in-waiting joined in the war effort. At Sandringham in early October 1917, Bertha Dawkins wrote to Lady Airlie to tell her that among her other activities they had been ‘very busy … picking up chestnuts for making acetone, & we have already got over a ton. I am very well … which is lucky, as chestnut picking is extremely hard work when done for 4½ hours every day!’72 In February 1918, when the Royal Family had returned to Buckingham Palace, she also told Lady Airlie of the nightly air raids they were then enduring: ‘Three of my windows were blown out on Saturday evening by that very big bomb in Chelsea.’73

  Edith Castlereagh, or the Marchioness of Londonderry as she became in 1915 on the death of her father-in-law, had far more ambitious plans. At an early stage in the war she was invited to become Colonel-in-Chief of the Women’s Volunteer Reserve, which she saw as a means of enabling women of all classes to replace the men who were now joining the armed forces. This meant taking on work in a variety of different spheres. However, she quickly became dissatisfied with the militaristic spirit that underlay the Reserve and left to form a breakaway organisation of her own, called the Women’s Legion. The new body grew rapidly under Edith’s dynamic and determined leadership, and soon had women available to work on the land. A special section was then set up to equip women to take on military cooking. After a few months’ trial working in convalescent homes, comments Lady Londonderry’s biographer, ‘their work was so appreciated that by July 1915’ it was agreed ‘to allow the Legion to provide cooks for … convalescent hospitals … at £26 a year, with free rations and accommodation’. The scheme proved very successful and within a few months this section of the Women’s Legion was taken over by the War Office and put under the control of the Inspector of Army Catering. The next section to be set up in 1916 was that for Army Service Corps drivers, who drove anything from generals’ cars to heavy lorries. ‘They wore General Service buttons and the ASC badge in addition to their Women’s Legion badges, had the same hours and did the same work as men but … were paid less. They were quickly followed by women dispatch riders and mechanics.’74

  It is often claimed that by contributing to the war effort in these ways and through their employment in munitions factories and the transport system generally, women helped along the cause of female suffrage. For despite the determined and sometimes violent pressure exerted by suffragettes and suffragists before 1914, they had in practice achieved little. Female suffrage was, incidentally, a cause to which Lady Londonderry was committed, not because she saw the vote as an end in itself but because she regarded it as a means of raising the status of women. Before the war, among the most determined opponents of the female vote had been the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and most of his Cabinet. However, in December 1916 he was replaced as head of the coalition government by a fellow Liberal, the energetic David Lloyd George, who was not so ideologically hostile to the issue of women’s suffrage. As a consequence, in February 1918 an Act was passed giving the vote to women householders and the wives of householders who were aged thirty or over. In contrast, all men aged twenty-one or over were enfranchised, whether they were householders or not. In the first post-war election, held on 14 December 1918, 6 million women were entered on the electoral register for the first time.75 At the general election the Asquithian wing of the Liberal Party fared very badly, Asquith himself losing his seat, to his wife Margot’s bitter disappointment. Her one consolation was that, as a strong opponent of female suffrage, none of the women candidates who stood for election in Britain itself succeeded. The solitary female victor in 1918 was a Sinn Fein candidate in Ireland, Countess Constance Markievicz, who had been imprisoned for her part in the Dublin Easter Rising and had contested the election from Holloway prison. Like other members of her party she refused to take her seat in Parliament. In a diary entry for 28 December 1918, the day the polls were declared, Margot noted with some satisfaction that ‘all the women were beaten. This … gave me the only Pleasure to be got out of the most cruel wicked election ever concocted by Foolish men.’76

  Edith Londonderry, by contrast, was dissatisfied with the limited electoral concession extended to women. She wanted full equality, and in 1919, still determined to increase both the franchise and women’s place in public life, she wrote a pamphlet which stated that what she and other like-minded women sought to achieve was a removal of ‘the sex disability and to extend the franchise to all duly qualified [females] on the same basis as that possessed by men at the present day’.77 Not until 1928 were women granted an equal franchise, in the way she desired, with the introduction of the so-called ‘Flapper’ vote.

  Lady Londonderry, however, did not confine her wartime activities to the Women’s Legion and the cause of female political emancipation. She also embarked on a round of entertaining at Londonderry House. Each Wednesday from early 1915 a group of friends, labelled ‘The Ark’, met for a late dinner on the top floor of the house, since the greater part of it had been converted into a hospital. The aim was to give Edith’s friends the opportunity to relax in a congenial atmosphere of fun, gossip, jokes and ‘silly games’. But what made The Ar
k unique was that each member was given the name of a real or mythological beast, with an appropriate fictional address, with the name matching the first letter of the Christian name of the respective members.78 Edith herself, as the central figure, called herself Circe, the legendary Greek sorceress. Lady Cynthia Asquith regarded the whole idea as ‘ridiculous’, but Edith broke new ground by inviting an eclectic mixture of society figures, politicians, artists and writers. The Ark was established on more formal lines after 1918, and it continued to flourish into the post-war period.79 So while many hostesses were confining their invitations to fellow members of High Society, Lady Londonderry was ‘fascinated by artists and writers no less than by politicians long before it became the fashion to lion-hunt’, by searching out celebrities.

  The Human Cost of the War

  Overshadowing these developments on the home front, there was the tragedy of the war itself, as the deaths and injuries of young soldiers, particularly young officers, mounted from the early days of the hostilities. C. F. G. Masterman later wrote emotionally that in the retreat from Mons and the First Battle of Ypres, during 1914 to 1915, ‘the flower of the British aristocracy’ had perished. At some stages of the war the average life expectancy of an infantry subaltern on the Western Front was put at only about three months. As Masterman commented despairingly, ‘In the useless slaughter of the Guards on the Somme, or of the Rifle Brigade in Hooge Wood, half the great families of England, heirs of large estates and wealth, perished without a cry. These boys, who had been brought up with the prospect before them of every good material thing that life can give, died without complaint, often through the bungling of Generals.’80

  Particularly vulnerable were the youngest and most inexperienced. According to J. M. Winter, of those aged under twenty in 1914 who came from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and who served as army officers during the war, 23.7 per cent from Oxford and 26.7 per cent from Cambridge were killed. Among those aged twenty to twenty-four in 1914, 27.2 per cent and 21.8 per cent, respectively, were killed. In 1917 H. A. L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education, ‘spoke with some justification when he said: “The chapels of Oxford and Cambridge display long lists of the fallen and no institutions have suffered greater or more irreparable losses than these ancient shrines of learning and piety.”’81