by Pamela Horn
The servants employed in these prestigious households were recruited either through recommendations from friends and relations or through one of the ‘superior’ servant registry offices. Lady Astor, for example, used Mrs Massey’s Agency, which had offices in London and Derby (the latter town being where the agency had originated). Mrs Milgate consulted another exclusive registry, the Mayfair Agency in North Audley Street in London. It was comparatively rare for staff to be recruited from the immediate neighbourhood of a country house, except perhaps for the most subordinate positions, such as those of hall boy or scullery maid. This was partly because of the high degree of efficiency employers required from their domestics and partly because they did not want gossip about the household to be circulated within the local community.
Discipline was strict, with the senior staff expected to keep their juniors in order and to ensure that they obeyed instructions without quibbling. At Shugborough in Staffordshire, a kitchenmaid employed by the Earl and Countess of Lichfield remembered that the chef never moved from his position at the table when he was working: ‘everything had to be within his reach’. Anything he needed she had to fetch, and when he first appeared in the morning, she was expected to curtsey and say ‘Good morning, Monsieur’.37
All the jams and preserves required at Shugborough were made in the still room, as was the practice elsewhere, and cakes and biscuits were baked there. Every morning the first task in the still room at Shugborough was to produce the hot rolls needed for breakfast. The last thing at night the maids would prepare the ‘calling trays’ for Lord and Lady Lichfield and their family and guests in readiness for the early morning tea. The following morning the trays would be prepared for collection by the housemaids to distribute, so that the head housemaid would take in the tray to the Lichfields themselves, and the second housemaid would be responsible for the trays for any married members of the family staying at Shugborough. The other housemaids would distribute the remaining trays. However, in some households a valet and a lady’s maid might take in the trays for the master and mistress, respectively. According to one of the still-room maids who worked at Shugborough in the mid-1920s, their normal working day extended from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.38
Much the same was true of the housemaids, whose laborious duties included cleaning the huge carpets at Shugborough with a hand brush and dustpan. The wooden surrounds were polished with beeswax and a ‘donkey’, which was a solid stone block with a thick felt pad beneath it and a long handle to push and pull it. When the dust had settled from the floor cleaning, the furniture and fittings were dusted and rubbed, the latter being carried out with a silk cloth or chamois leather. At 8 a.m. the housemaids took off their ‘dirty’ aprons made from a heavy cotton and prepared themselves to deliver the morning tea. Small wonder that the Shugborough housekeeper remembered the pressure under which they were all working: ‘Everybody was running, you didn’t have time to live.’39 Yet she enjoyed her life there. ‘It was just a world of its own. I never knew about the outside world. I devoted my whole life to it.’
The long hours and, often enough, the heavy physical labour required from the Shugborough maids were reflected in the experience of those employed elsewhere. Doreen Whitlock, who was a housemaid at Priestlands House near Lymington in Hampshire, began work as the third housemaid at the age of fourteen. There was a total staff of nine indoor servants and she shared an attic bedroom with the kitchenmaid. Each morning she began work at 6.30 a.m.
sweeping on my knees with dustpan and brush the front stairs carpets, cleaning and laying several large fireplaces, polishing brass fenders, all on a cup of tea, but a good breakfast followed at 8 a.m. I swept, on my knees, all the carpets in all the rooms and carried heavy buckets of coal, wood etc. … Once a year Mrs Tillyer Blunt [her mistress] would, with her lady’s maid, have a week in Worthing, which meant we did a big clean up. We housemaids had to pull all the huge carpets on the front lawn and with a hand carpet beater … on my knees, I did the beating … Once a week the lady would come below stairs with her bunch of keys and open the store cupboards to give Cook her allowance of things to cook with … Also cleaning items were measured out such as soda, black lead and lemon and sand for the kitchenmaid to clean all the copper pans hung around the kitchen. As a housemaid I was given Brasso, soap and beeswax to make my own floor polish.40
As she noted drily, ‘“Priestlands” was a lovely house, and the owners, Major and Mrs Tillyer Blunt, were very wealthy, not that this was apparent from our tiny wages’. Nevertheless she remained at the house for six years, until she married in 1935.
For those who wished to make a career in service, and to become butlers, housekeepers, or cooks, it was normally necessary to move around fairly frequently in their early days, in order to gain experience. However, it was important to move only to another elite household, if they wished to serve wealthy or high-status employers. Gordon Grimmett, for example, began his career at Longleat, home of the Marquess of Bath, as a lamp boy. After a year he was promoted to third footman:
I learnt now how to serve at table, how to clean silver, how to welcome and valet guests, how to appear as if by magic, how to seem not to listen to conversations, how to put rugs round ladies’ knees in carriages or cars with a steady hand, as well as the thousand and one things that are in a footman’s inventory of duties.41
Subsequently he was appointed second footman by the Astors and came under the influence of Edwin Lee. ‘He was perhaps a hard taskmaster, sometimes to be feared but always respected, and a word of praise from him would keep a man happy for a week. There was no job in the book that he couldn’t do, and do superbly.’
Every morning Gordon and the other footmen would go down to the still room to collect the morning tea trays to be distributed round the rooms of the male guests. Curtains had to be opened and the sleeper gently awakened. Then their clothes from the night before were collected and taken to the brushing-room, where they were sponged, brushed, folded and hung up. This was followed by laying the breakfast table and bringing in the various dishes, both hot and cold, as well as constantly ‘running to and fro with fresh toast and hot rolls’. After breakfast the silver had to be cleaned, and then came hall duties. At the Astors’ London house the duty footman would be ‘stationed all day in the front hall sitting in a large leather chair. There were constant callers … to see either Lord or Lady Astor’. Along with this there was the running and taking of messages, despite the availability of telephones in the household. For this he was paid £32 a year, plus 2s 6d a week to cover the cost of beer and of his laundry. Lady Astor, as a strict advocate of the temperance cause, did not supply alcohol to her servants.42
During Ascot week and at weekend parties the footmen had the task of valeting perhaps six gentlemen who had no servant of their own. A list of the guests concerned would be put up in the brushing-room and Grimmett admitted that this was studied with interest, before a selection was made. That decision was made not on the grounds of rank or importance but upon ‘their reputation as tippers. This reputation was based not only on our own experience but that of the underground telegraph of the below stairs world.’ Generous tips could add considerably to a footman’s earnings. Ernest King claimed that when he was employed by Mrs de Wichfeld, as a valet to her second husband, tips from guests whom he also had to valet meant this extra income ‘never came to less than sixteen pounds a week’, which was a very large sum indeed in the 1920s.43
But servants employed by the social elite had rules to observe, too, including restrictions on contact with the opposite sex. For maids this meant ‘no followers’ were allowed in most cases, and there were also prohibitions on sexual relationships between fellow members of staff in the majority of households. That applied at the Astors’ Cliveden, where Gordon Grimmett fell in love with Poppy, the third daughter of the head gardener. She was employed to help with the flower arranging in the house, but when their relationship was discovered, Gordon was dismissed. He and Poppy then married soon
after and he was fortunate to find a new position at one of the Lyons Corner Houses.44
Yet while there were these clear rules and regulations to be observed by those employed in elite private service, there were also instances where warm feelings existed between a master or mistress and a favourite servant. Lady Jean Hamilton told one evidently surprised fellow guest at a dinner party of her ‘wonderful’ lady’s maid, McAdie, and how she had ‘great power in our household, and stage-managed me … I told him she looked after my money and kept my accounts, and when she doled out pounds to me, asked me, when I came back without them, what I had spent the money on.’45 She also depended heavily on the maid’s ministrations when she was unwell, and particularly when she suffered from serious asthma attacks. So when McAdie suddenly died in April 1927, her mistress was devastated. Six weeks later she was still lamenting her loss: ‘I dread … a quiet life and no McAdie’, she wrote in her diary, even though she had recruited a ‘nice new maid’.46
Similarly, Rosina Harrison, Lady Astor’s lady’s maid, joined her staff at the end of the 1920s and remained with her until she died in May 1964. Under the terms of her mistress’s will she received an annuity of £500 per year. It was the largest single bequest made by Lady Astor to any of the servants.47 Similar generosity was displayed by General Sir Dighton Probyn, Comptroller of the Household of Queen Alexandra, from his far more modest resources. Out of an estate with a net value of £6,405 he left £1,000 to his valet ‘and excellent servant’, Edwin James Nichols, in his will.48
Employment Opportunities and the Social Elite
Throughout the 1920s, as had been the case before 1914, some members of High Society were involved in various business undertakings, alongside their traditional connections with the land and the running of their estates. In addition, a number of manufacturers and financiers had been raised to peerages, baronetcies and knighthoods both before 1914 and in the immediate aftermath of the war, under Lloyd George’s premiership. There were, too, major landowners whose agents arranged for the renting, leasing or development of urban land, especially in London, or who exploited coal and other minerals, as was the case with Lord Londonderry. In this context it should be remembered that the ownership of wealth was itself still very highly concentrated at the end of the 1920s, much as it had been in Victorian and Edwardian times. One estimate suggests that the top 1 per cent of British wealth-holders accounted for around three-fifths of the nation’s wealth in the second half of the 1920s. That compared with just over two-thirds of national wealth owned by this tiny minority of the population before the war.49 Many were substantial landowners and prominent members of the social elite, like the Duke of Westminster and Lord Londonderry. In all, in 1923, 242 peers owned between them 7.362 million acres. They formed around a third of the total adult membership of the peerage at that date.50
However, in the post-war era, with declining rental incomes from land and a rising tax burden, there was an increased incentive for many upper-class men to seek additional incomes, away from traditional outlets like the military and the Church, which, since Victorian times, had been regarded as suitable occupations for those waiting to succeed to a title or for younger sons and members of the squirearchy. Hence in 1923 it was estimated that in addition to the industrialists and bankers who had been ennobled in their own lifetime, there were 272 peers holding directorships in 761 public companies of different kinds. The fact that a high proportion of them were directors of banking or ‘commercial’ undertakings merely reflected the general bias of the British economy itself. Thus 106 of the peers were directors of insurance companies, 66 were directors of banks, and 64 were members of the boards of railway companies.51 A number held directorships in more than one undertaking. For their part, company promoters were anxious to recruit peers to their enterprises, on the grounds that the appearance of their names on a company prospectus would inspire confidence in the firm’s probity and assure prospective investors of its respectability.52
But alongside these developments the vibrant atmosphere of the 1920s’ ‘jazz age’ encouraged socialites to move into other fields of employment. That was especially true of younger men who wanted to break the mould of traditional occupations and to meet the needs of the new, more challenging, commercial world in which they found themselves. Some took advantage of the fresh opportunities created in the fields of advertising or the motor trade, or journalism. The latter was particularly affected by the general public’s appetite for accounts of the doings of the more famous, or the more notorious, members of High Society. This encouraged the advent of the growing army of gossip columnists, like Lord Castlerosse and Patrick Balfour. In 1930 Paul Cohen-Portheim commented on this trend.
The interest which the whole nation takes in Society is astonishing. In continental countries for all their snobisme and reverence for the nobility, the masses know very little about the ‘best people’, who remain private individuals; in England people in Society are public characters. Every newspaper tells you about their private lives, every illustrated paper is perpetually publishing photographs of them … Their parties and their dresses, their weddings, christenings and funerals, their houses and their travels are all described and depicted … The first duty of Society is to be a show for the masses, particularly during the three months of the London Season.53
Some budding entrepreneurs invented new occupations for themselves, so that Cedric Alexander started a ‘Social Bureau’ to shepherd Americans and other ‘socially ambitious people’ round Mayfair.54 The post of social secretary, too, was another alternative whose recruitment might appeal to nouveau-riche families, as in the case of the leading High Society hostess, Laura Corrigan. A number of young men were attracted also to the restaurant and night-club business. David Tennant, for example, used some of his substantial income from a family trust to set up a successful night-club, the Gargoyle, which opened in Dean Street in January 1925.55 Two years later it was praised by Vogue for its facilities, with patrons able to ‘dance in an oak-beamed parlour surrounded by jolly family parties, or sit by an open hearth eating a scrambled egg and drinking from an enormous cup of coffee’.56
Lord Bective, who earned a good deal of publicity and the title of the ‘Electric Earl’, established an electrical company which provided the electric lighting in the newly refurbished Embassy Club in 1927, among other commissions. Vogue was much impressed by the lighting in the Embassy, claiming that ‘every one present looked at least four years younger in the becoming light’.57 More problematic was the career choice of Sir Joseph Tichborne, who became a bookmaker, while Harry Lindsay, a grandson of the Earl of Crawford, earned a modest living by exploiting his skills as a furniture and woodwork restorer and as an adviser on interior decorating at Sindlay’s in London, where he was employed on a commission basis.58
Patrick Balfour quoted another social commentator who in 1929 drew attention to the large number of men who had
remained aristocrats by instinct and become democrats by inclination. One young peer I know manufactures margarine. Another bearer of a famous name, sells pills. A third sells underclothes in a large store … Anthony Vivian … Lady Weymouth’s brother … is assistant manager of a theatre and … Ulick Verney, who is a son of Sir Harry and Lady Verney, told me that he sold loose-ledgers.59
With some exaggeration, Balfour stated that by the early 1930s he doubted if there was a single trade or profession which an ‘aristocrat’ would ‘scorn’ to take up. There was a particular involvement in retail trade, for instance, so that Lord Victor Paget, a brother of the 6th Marquess of Anglesey, became a partner in a firm of exclusive furriers, while Colonel the Hon. Fred Cripps and his wife owned a hairdressing salon in Bond Street.60 They, like many other upper-class families, had clearly abandoned the once-almost-universal aristocratic disdain for ‘trade’ and those engaged in it.
Paul Methuen, heir to hard-pressed Corsham estates in Wiltshire, took another path, becoming a successful artist and a keen naturalist and botanist. A
fter an education at Eton and New College, Oxford, he went as an assistant at the Transvaal Museum, Pretoria for four years. In the late 1920s he studied with the leading British painter, Walter Sickert, and subsequently exhibited his work at a number of leading galleries. His father was forced to sell parts of the estate to boost its financial position in the post-war period and it was only Paul’s intervention that prevented Lord Methuen from disposing of the family’s valuable picture collection as well.61
Henry Weymouth, by contrast, was anxious to equip himself to manage the Longleat estate efficiently, and to that end arranged to be apprenticed to the highly proficient agent for the Lockinge estate, near Wantage, in Berkshire.62
However, while some male members of the social elite shared in this diversification process, it should be remembered that many others carried on along traditional upper-class lines. They ran their estates with the aid of agents or bailiffs, took an active part in field sports and in local politics, and continued to lament their declining incomes. A few, like Stephen Tennant, David Tennant’s younger brother, could rely on inherited wealth to enable them to live a hedonistic existence and to spend their time seeking beauty and exercising their artistic talents.63 And for some, as Charles Masterman mischievously suggested in 1923, there was ‘still an almost unlimited field of support possible in American marriages’.64 However, unlike in the Edwardian era, American heiresses do not seem to have been particularly attracted to impoverished British aristocrats in the 1920s; and with the Wall Street stock market crash in the autumn of 1929, even this source became problematic anyway.
For contemporaries, though, it was among the female members of High Society that the biggest change of attitude occurred, as younger women, in particular, rebelled against old-style feminine stereotyping. As Barbara Cartland, herself one of the new generation of ‘bright young people’, declared, ‘We didn’t want to be ladylike in 1920. We wanted to be dashing.’65 Some may have been encouraged in their desire for independence by their experiences during the First World War, and the sense of personal freedom that many of them had then enjoyed. But far more, in Patrick Balfour’s opinion, were affected by the extension of the franchise to women at the end of the war and their subsequent involvement in political and community life as magistrates and even, in a very limited way, as Members of Parliament. It became the rule rather than the exception, according to Balfour, ‘for Society debutantes to take up some sort of employment. They were not too proud to serve as shop assistants, either among many hundred others in a big store, or else, superior, in the smaller and smarter dress-shops, hat-shops, flower-shops, book-shops and so forth.’66 In practice this was much too sweeping a generalisation, but it is nonetheless clear that a number of Society women did open shops, which they often called by their own christian name. Mrs Dudley Coats thus set up ‘Audrey,’ which specialised in ‘scent and wedding-presents’, although by 1927 it had become involved in the fashion trade, too.67 Poppy Baring, a daughter of the banking dynasty and a friend of Prince George, the future Duke of Kent, similarly established a dress shop named ‘Poppy’, while Jean Norton, Edwina Mountbatten’s close friend, ran a cinema called the New Gallery Picture House in Regent Street. The Picture House’s proprietors hoped thereby to attract Mrs Norton’s well-to-do friends by showing films that she thought would appeal to them. Her husband, a film producer, supported the move, thinking she might catch the eye of a movie mogul and make her fortune as a star of screen and stage.68 That did not happen. Other women, in more mundane fashion, ran laundries, beauty parlours and hotels, finding their clientele from among their friends.69
