Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (16 page)

‘“Within reason you may select any pattern you wish,” was Mr Lee’s noncommittal reply.

‘I went to Maddox Street and was duly measured by Mr Lillico. When he’d finished he drew me aside by the arm and whispered, “Dear boy, you are entitled to a long pair of woollen pants to go under your livery trousers; we give them with each suit. If however like many other footmen you don’t choose to wear them, go downstairs and my brother will give you something in their place.”

‘“Downstairs” I found was the cutting-room. Seated at the table was brother Bob surrounded by three other men who, like myself, were being fitted for livery. All had glasses in their hands. “Ah,” he greeted me, “another no-nonsense pants man, I presume. Come and sit down and join us.” He then took a glass and filled it with whisky from a cask at the end of the table. “Here you are, Astor, this is your reward.” He replenished his glass and wished me luck in my new job.

‘I eventually staggered out into the air a little worse for drink, but not so far gone as not to wonder what my clothes would be like when I got them, for brother Bob was the cutter and how he could work after paying the footmen for their pants and drinking the health of each one was beyond my comprehension. In the event my clothes fitted perfectly and I was later to join Bob in many similar celebrations, but I never ceased to wonder at his capacity.’

For any big dinner and reception Mr Lee would have to engage additional footmen. He had his own list of trained men who were willing to do extra work. They were mostly retired servants from the Colonial Office or the India Office. He was constantly being praised for their smartness and bearing. The business of serving and clearing dishes was done like a drill. It was something that Mr Dean learnt while he was with us, and practised later when he was at the British Embassy in Washington. He recalls an occasion there when Lady Dean, the Ambassador’s wife, decided that they must give a served dinner party for Princess Alexandra during her visit there.

As Mr Dean said to me, ‘The trouble about having royalty in the States, Rose, is the number of people who expect to be invited to meet them, which is why generally they go in for buffet suppers and cocktail parties. But Lady Dean felt that Her Royal Highness must be tired of these affairs and wanted to do it in the old style. “How many could we seat in the ballroom?” she asked.

‘“It’s no good guessing,” I said, “we’ll have to try it and see.” We did a mock layout and decided that we could cope with a hundred and ten guests.

‘“How many footmen will you need?” she asked. ‘“That depends, my lady, on the menu.”

‘“On the menu?” This surprised her.

‘“Yes, you see if you have a simple menu we can manage with one man a table, but if we are serving sauces and side dishes, we shall need two.”

‘She went to the chef and it was decided that it would be a complicated menu. So I needed twenty-two to serve and since with a large party of that kind I would only be able to supervise, I engaged another four to serve the wines. I was able to have a short rehearsal with them, as Mr Lee did. I told them to look to me for their cues to serve and to clear, and apart from one man who jittered with nerves and had to be quietly removed, the whole thing went off like clockwork. The following day Lady Dean asked me to go and see her and, unlike Lady Astor, who could never bring herself to do such a thing, congratulated me on the evening. “How did you manage to control all those footmen?” she asked.

‘“That, my lady,” I said, “was as a result of my training under ‘Lord Lee of Cliveden’, Lady Astor’s butler.” Her ladyship always got some of Lee’s credit, I suppose she deserved it.’

Although Dean is not an uncommon name it was in a way extraordinary that our Mr Dean should have been butler to Sir Patrick Dean. It was also occasionally embarrassing, particularly when he was answering the phone. Mr George Brown, when he was Foreign Secretary, found it all a bit bewildering, as Mr Dean told me. ‘His Excellency and Lady Dean with their two sons had been to meet Mr George Brown at the airport. When they arrived back at the door I opened it and said, “Welcome to the Embassy,” to sort of make the Foreign Secretary feel at home. Some Labour ministers I knew looked on us as a stuffy lot and seemed a bit ill at ease in our presence. Sir Patrick then introduced me: “This is Dean, our butler.” I was wrong to have worried about Mr George Brown not feeling at home. “Another bloody Dean! That makes five. What sort of place is this, Barchester bloody Towers?” Everyone laughed of course, and I took to him right away. He seemed to be able to get on with anyone and his visit was a great success.’

Although our footmen were liveried they did not ‘powder’. ‘Powdered’ service more or less went out after the First World War, though Mr Lee remembers it well. ‘It was only done for the more formal parties. It was not resented by the men even though it made the top of your head feel as if it was in plaster. When we had dressed we put a towel over our shirts, damped our heads and then sprinkled our hair with the flour we’d been given from the kitchen. It pulled a bit at the roots as it dried but there’s no doubt it looked very smart indeed,’ he said, almost wistfully. Nor did we have ‘matching’ footmen. These were what they sound; men of the same height and build. They had them at Buckingham Palace and probably still do, and at ducal establishments.

Again, when I was talking about them to Mr Lee, he went into a reminiscent mood. ‘You know, Miss Harrison, I was only turned down once for a job when I went to be interviewed, and that was for Lord Derby’s place. They wanted to match one of their footmen and I was an inch and a half too short.’

‘Too short!’ I was amazed, for Mr Lee stood six foot one and a half in his stockinged feet.

‘Yes, his lordship liked them tall, it gave tone.’ Mr Lee liked ours tall too, none were under six foot, but they didn’t ‘match’.

I haven’t yet mentioned the food and the kitchens. I think of the kitchens even now with trepidation. On big party days, or even the day before, they were places I kept out of, and if they were sensible so did everyone else. They were hives of activity but you were likely to get stung if you interfered with the staff in any way. Some days beforehand her ladyship would have worked out the menu with the chef. We had two chefs while I was there, though Monsieur Gilbert was the one I knew best. Mr Lee of course had known many. ‘Papillion was the finest of them all,’ he confided to me, ‘a truly great chef.’ Papillion was with the Astors before the First World War. He died in 1914.

As with footmen, the number of extra chefs who had to be called in depended on the size and kind of dishes on the menu. At times we engaged four, one for each main course, but generally it was two. As I’ve said, I kept away from the kitchens, but after I’d been there a number of years and Gilbert had got to know me, my sister Olive, who was working as a kitchen-maid, was allowed by him to watch occasionally when a dinner party was on. She had been used to good service, but our parties were an eye-opener to her. She particularly loved to watch the sugar chef at work. He’d decorate the sweets with spun sugar, and was an artist first and a chef after. Apart from decorating the sweets he made decorative sugar baskets for the petits fours in various designs: beehives, letterboxes, birds’ nests. Once I took a rose basket he’d made home to Mum, she kept it until it became a dirty brown colour and disintegrated in the sun. She said she just couldn’t bear to throw it away.

It was dangerous work this chef had to do, because the sugar had to be kept near boiling-point all the time, but by the way he worked at it you’d have thought that he was playing with plasticine. What most people, and this included Lady Astor, don’t realize is that with a dinner party the kitchen is working to almost split-second timing. One minute a dish is ready to serve and the next it’s past its best, as anyone who has cooked a soufflé will know, and it’s the same with many other dishes. It’s heartbreaking for a chef when he sees hours of his work spoilt, and four heartbroken chefs in one kitchen is the stuff nightmares are made of.

It was another job of Mr Lee’s to co-ordinate with the kitchen, get the guests in and see that courses were served, eaten and cleared on time. Getting the food from the kitchen to the dining-room hot, decorated and ready to serve was the job of the odd men. Every house had at least one, some two or even three. As their name implies they did anything and everything that wasn’t one of the duties of others of the staff, and often some of theirs too if things got hectic.

Some of them were not as other men are, by that I mean they were often lacking in brain power and had little ambition (once an odd man, always an odd man). They were strong – they had to be with the fetching and carrying they had to do. Their interests were mostly limited to beer and baccy. I never knew one who was married, but they were willing workers and good friends. Mr Lee reckoned he could spot an odd man at a hundred yards. ‘It’s the way they walk, Miss Harrison, their legs are buckled, toes turned in and they always look as though they’re carrying something heavy.’ Well, odd men did carry heavy things and very heavy trays for dinner parties. Sailor, one of ours was called. Mr Lee and he got on very well, they were like man and dog. Sailor I think worshipped him, though he’d never have admitted it, but at a word of praise his face beamed; a reprimand was like a whipping. He was excellent at carrying from the kitchen, I never knew him to drop anything. In fact I only once remember that kind of accident: a footman dropped a plate of savouries. Fortunately it was outside the dining-room, in the serving room. Mr Lee heard it go and he and the footman were able to retrieve most of the contents. I was a bit sorry for the offender later when Mr Lee was reprimanding him. ‘The plate was scalding hot, sir,’ he said.

‘Of course it was, and rightly so, lad, but you’re hired to hold it and hold it you will in future, even if it burns you to the bone, do you understand? Fingers heal, food doesn’t.’

Yet Mr Lee could be unexpectedly kind. At a dinner there was once nearly a disaster which could have turned into a social scandal. A public figure of some standing was talking to Lady Astor as a footman was serving him. ‘I need a skivvy for my kitchen, can any of your servants recommend one, do you think?’

Give her ladyship her due, she tried to temper his speech. ‘What kind of servant do you want?’

‘Oh, any little slut will do.’ The footman stepped back and went white as a sheet. ‘I had some sort of sixth sense that things weren’t what they should be with him,’ Mr Lee told me. ‘I moved over as quickly as I could and caught his arm just as he was about to pour the hot sauce over the guest’s head. There was no doubt about it, he told me that was what he was going to do when I got him outside.’

Mr Lee didn’t so much as reprimand him when he’d heard his story. He didn’t say a word; he went to the sideboard, poured a glass of port, handed it to the footman, patted him on the back and said, ‘Come back in when you feel you can.’ Mr Lee saw Lady Astor the following day and complained of her guest’s conversation. ‘He had no right to speak like that about servants, even behind their backs, my lady, and in our hearing, it’s unforgivable.’ He didn’t mention the footman’s reaction to what had been said.

‘You’re quite right, Lee, and that man will never visit us again.’ She asked for the footman to be sent to see her, and she apologized to him. It would seem that my earlier remark to her about her reference to housemaids had struck home.

Mr Lee’s men were kept busy at parties. For dinner he and two footmen received the guests in the hall and removed their cloaks and coats. There was a large cloakroom which was manned by attendants if there was to be a reception later. Arthur Bushell would often be there and of course it was fertile ground for his humorous imitations. He could always be relied on to raise a laugh in the servants’ hall the following day. His mimicry had to be seen to be enjoyed, but his demonstration of Queen Mary twirling around on her feet like a model on a revolving plinth while her coat was taken off can be easily imagined. According to Arthur, King George V grunted in and out of his.

Before dinner drinks would be served in the smaller dining-room, again by the footmen, and after the meal and during the reception the pace would really get hot. Tremendous activity both inside and outside the house. The police were informed beforehand; Mr Lee would tell them how many were expected and from that would be decided the number of police required. He tells a story of how on his first big party as butler, he stopped all the traffic in the area through his inexperience. The Astors were giving a dinner for Lord Balfour with a reception for a thousand. Mr Lee went to Vine Street police station and asked for three constables to report to him for traffic control. It was the time of mixed carriages, both motor and horse. The constables duly came and were given their instructions. Within minutes of the guests beginning to arrive there was a complete shambles: the whole Square was jammed with cars and horses, with chauffeurs and coachmen – never friendly at the best of times – exchanging curses. It appeared that the confusion was the fault of the police; one would not take orders from another, so they each acted on their own initiative.

Poor Mr Lee, it took him the best part of an hour to get order out of chaos. As he said, when he described the incident, ‘It was a lesson to me. If you have to delegate command there should always be a person in command to delegate it to. From then onward I had an inspector to supervise, and a sergeant and two constables to direct operations. We never had any trouble again.’

Another essential employee was the linkman. As the guests left he was the man who called up the carriages to the front of the house, with as little delay as possible because once people have decided to go they don’t want to be kept stamping their heels in the hall, neither are they any longer wanted by the staff, cluttering up the place. Linkmen carried lanterns or torches to signal with, but other essential qualities to go alongside were a strong voice and a piercing whistle, the kind errand boys could produce in my young day by putting two fingers in their mouths and blowing. It was a talent I always envied, but was never able to copy. There was one danger with linkmen: they had a lot of time waiting about with nothing to do except get cold. It seemed they thought that the best way to keep cold out was to put drink in, and the consequences could be more disastrous than twenty bolshie policemen.