Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (32 page)

Once again there is the other side of the coin. The first occasion came shortly after I’d ceased serving Miss Wissie and had joined her ladyship. It was in the December of 1929. Miss Wissie had gone hunting in Northamptonshire with the Pytchley and had taken a very bad tumble. She was carried on a gate to Kelmarsh Hall where she was staying with her cousin Nancy, wife of the Master of the hunt, Ronald Tree. Doctors were summoned and so was my lady. Fortunately someone also called a radiologist who brought along portable equipment. The doctors found nothing radically wrong, but the radiologist did. Miss Wissie had badly injured her spine, and he told my two so when they arrived with the Christian Science practitioner. Apparently there was a lot of humming and hawing until at last my lady agreed to call a doctor who had once operated on her. He arrived, but he was the wrong kind of specialist. He knew nothing about spines. It was a considerable time before somebody came who had the necessary knowledge, and when he did her ladyship was against him treating Miss Wissie. Eventually she gave way. Now I’m not saying that Miss Wissie received any lasting damage, but I am sure that if the doctors had been left alone Miss Wissie would have suffered less hardship. As it was it took her a long time to recover. What was so irritating was that Lady Astor later pretended that Miss Wissie had had no medical help and put her recovery down to Christian Science. It comes to something when you have to lie to justify your religion!

Then it’s always been my opinion that ordinary medical treatment might have spared his lordship a deal of suffering, and his life might well have been extended. On the various occasions when I was called upon to look after him I would so much have liked the benefit of working under the advice of a doctor. I felt as though I was groping around in the dark. Still, he was a man of principles and he held them to the end.

Another person whose death I believed to have been untimely was Lord Lothian. He was very popular with the staff at Cliveden and was regarded by them as part of the family. He and her ladyship were very close, but there could never be any suspicion that their relationship was anything other than a friendly and spiritual one. I sometimes wondered whether there was a deeper affection on his side for he remained a bachelor. They were in constant correspondence and I suppose he was our most frequent visitor. Both Mr Lee and Arthur Bushell liked him, though Arthur complained about him always singing in the bath in the morning. It wasn’t his voice that Arthur was concerned with. He didn’t think it decent that any man should be quite so cheerful so early. Lord Lothian died in America, where he was British Ambassador at the end of 1940. People put his death down to strain and overwork but I don’t think anyone ever died of that; they can make a sickness worse but they don’t kill on their own. His death was a great shock to my lady. It would have been greater, but it came at a time when she was frantically busy and when the death even of those nearest and dearest is somehow more easy to accept.

I have already said that during the last few years of her life my lady relaxed in her religious practices. I suppose it can be said that she did the same over drink, though she didn’t know it. We heard that Mrs Lancaster, when she was a visitor at Haseley, had given her a little Dubonnet pretending that it wasn’t alcoholic. She told Charles Dean and me that she thought it did her good. It was her ladyship’s custom to drink a glass of Ribena every morning at eleven and every afternoon at four, so from that time on if ever Charles thought she looked a bit down in the dumps he would put a thimbleful of Dubonnet in her glass. As it was of the same colour she couldn’t detect it. It was Charles’s belief that it brightened her up. I am not sure it wasn’t wishful thinking on his part.

Although I have never been a drinker myself it was her attitude towards drink that irritated me most about her. I tried to make her see the comfort it could be to the working man or woman. She refused to. That was her trouble – she could only ever see one side. It was black or white with my lady. When she’d been on about it in Parliament it always hit the headlines. ‘Don’t you see,’ I said, ‘this is all you let them know about what you do. If only you’d leave it alone people might hear about some of the good things.’ It was like talking to a brick wall.

Frank Copcutt, eventually head gardener at Cliveden, who lived in a cottage on the estate near to The Feathers Inn, tells a nice story with an ironic twist. The inn stood in the estate of Dropmore and was a free house, which meant that it was not owned or leased by a brewery, but was let direct to the publican. When the incumbent died, the owners decided to sell it, because licensed premises fetched a good price. Generally such places were bought by local brewers since few individuals could afford them. It was put on the market and the brewers duly put in their bid. Frank is not quite sure whether it was actually offered to the Astors, but the agents who were selling saw to it that the brewery was given to believe that it had been, so, knowing that if they bought it the Astors would close the place, the brewers upped their bid way beyond the market price. In that way the ill wind of temperance blew somebody some good.

Her ladyship tried always to recruit staff who didn’t drink. Both the housekeeper and Mr Lee had their orders on this, but as Mr Lee said, ‘When you’re interviewing somebody he’s hardly likely to admit he’s an alcoholic. In my experience and that of many of the butlers to whom I’ve spoken, it was the men who swore they were teetotallers when they were interviewed that turned out to be the hardened drinkers.’

Mr Lee was also instructed never to engage a Catholic. ‘It’s not a pleasant thing, Miss Harrison, to have to ask a man about his religious beliefs, but I had to do it. I very much admired one man who replied, “What does Lady Astor want, a footman or a bloody parson?” She once converted a footman to Science. He didn’t last long, in service I mean. Once my lady mistook Gordon Grimmett for him and asked how his Bible-reading was going. Gordon looked at her startled. “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know it was you, Gordon. I wouldn’t ask you that question: you’re too far gone for redemption.”’

Some of her secretaries were Scientists but it was impossible to recruit household staff who were. As I have said, it’s not a religion for the working class.

Apart from making rosettes at election time, politics was something I kept out of. My lady used to rattle on at me about it, but I refused to get drawn. As I’ve explained earlier she was mostly concerned where politics affected individuals or groups of people. She was all for women’s rights, but was never a suffragette. I think she believed that if she got labelled as one it would lessen her chances of getting done the things she wanted doing.

There was a time when I became politically interested and so did many of the staff. It was when our house gave its name to a political group, the ‘Cliveden Set’. I’m sure it’s been given many more profound definitions, but the way I understood it was that my two were members of a band of people who believed in what Hitler was doing in Germany, wanted to keep on terms with him whatever he did and were plotting to bring about an Anglo-German alliance. I know a great deal has been written by historians and some of it I tried to understand. I could have saved myself the trouble, it didn’t alter my judgement; if anything it made me more certain that the whole idea was poppycock.

By reason of my job I knew my lord and lady intimately. I didn’t perhaps know a lot about them politically or intellectually, but I knew what by their natures they were capable of doing and not doing. I expect I shall be accused of over-simplifying, but if what I have written about my lady could permit anyone to believe that she was the kind of woman who would have been able to plot with a foreign power, or indeed the kind that any foreign power would plot with, then I haven’t presented her as I should have. It just wasn’t in her nature. She was too open. She didn’t like anything or anybody that was underhand. She wouldn’t have cheated her own political party; she went against them from time to time but she always let them know why.

Then who in his right mind in Germany would have plotted with her? They weren’t a bunch of fools, they were a clever and formidable nation and must have done some research on her character. She could never have kept a secret. She was too changeable, too liable to blow hot then cold. She was too much an individual. I’m not saying she couldn’t be devious. What woman can’t? But when she was it was as a person not as a member of a team.

Then there was his lordship. Straight as a pit-prop. More British than the British. A conventional man if ever there was one. Always trying to persuade my lady to go through the proper channels. Clever people may try to make a meal and earn a coin or two out of the Cliveden myth but anyone who really knew either of them can only treat the idea with scorn.

Arthur Bushell laughed it off but he resented its implications. ‘A pack of lies, Rose, whoever invented them ought to come and work here for a week as a housemaid. They’d find no Nazis under Cliveden beds.’

Mr Lee was of the same opinion. ‘They write about Herr Ribbentrop as if he was a crony of the Astors’. He’s been to lunch once at St James’s Square, never at Cliveden. Most other ambassadors in London would consider this a pretty poor score.’

Later he said to me, ‘I suppose all servants become sensitive to atmosphere; it goes with their job. My men and I would have been bound to have had a scent of what was happening while it was supposed to be going on, so would you. Then if it had been true and we hadn’t, we should have noticed some kind of serious reaction when the press came out with the story. There was only laughter. It was all balderdash, Miss Harrison!’

If it needed anything else to convince me that the story was false, it was her ladyship’s attitude when I spoke to her about it, both at the time and later. She went all airy-fairy. Would neither confirm it nor deny it. It suited her to wallow in the notoriety. She got a kick out of it. She was, as I’ve said, one hundred per cent woman!

Apart from the Cliveden smear, people were saying around that time and indeed since that my two were friendly with Hitler. This again is laughable. If either his lordship or my lady had even been in the same room with him she would never have stopped talking about it. There’s nothing wrong with having looked the devil in the eyes. If my lady had met Mephistopheles she’d have boasted about it.

My only other political encounter was more personal and amusing. It didn’t happen until after my lady had retired from Parliament. She was speaking on the West Hoe at Plymouth in support of Colonel Grand, who was standing as Conservative candidate for her old division. Florrie Manning, the housekeeper at Elliot Terrace, suggested to me that we went to the meeting to hear my lady. It was held in the open air and we had a grandstand view of the platform from a bank at the back of the crowd. It all seemed to be going well, her ladyship was making all her points loud and clear as she always did with me. Then she started talking about her love of Plymouth and how proud she was of the way they’d behaved there during the blitz. At this some women behind me started making nasty audible comments about her. ‘What would she know about how we behaved during the blitz? She wasn’t here.’

I felt my hackles rising, but tried to restrain myself. Then when my lady was referring to the part the men of the city had played during the war, they began again. ‘Men at war. Her husband had it cushy, so did her sons, I’ll be bound.’

That was too much for me, I turned on them. ‘You want to get your facts straight before you start saying things like that,’ I said. ‘I served Lady Astor during the war and I’ll tell you some of the things she did for the likes of you. And I’ll tell you about her sons.’

I went at them hammer and tongs and within seconds had quite a crowd around me. They egged me on. Then Florrie joined in. Our opponents gave way before the attack and fled. Things settled down for a bit but our feathers were still ruffled, so when some man started shouting about how Russia had won the war we waded into him. ‘If it’s such a marvellous place why don’t you go there? We don’t want the likes of you enjoying our freedom and then running the country down.’

He was more formidable than the other two and things got a bit ugly. ‘You’re a couple of capitalist cows,’ he shouted at us, which was probably just as well because a policeman came up and told him he was using insulting language, and moved him away. The rest of the meeting passed off quietly enough.

As I dressed my lady that evening she suddenly said out of the blue, ‘I’ve wasted your talents over the years, Rose.’

‘What do you mean, my lady?’

‘I saw you and Florrie this afternoon taking on the hecklers. In future you must come to all my meetings.’

‘Not for all the tea in China,’ I replied. ‘I was lucky to come away unharmed. I’ll never risk my life like that again.’

I was as good as my word. Opening her rude letters was enough for me.

Politics and religion, I’m told on good authority, are the two subjects most likely to cause trouble, and publicans advise their customers to keep off them. I have tried to be brief, but since they were two of the most important things in Lady Astor’s life, I couldn’t ignore them altogether. I know I must have given offence to some and I apologize, but since I have learnt from my Yorkshire childhood to ‘speak as I find’, I have done just that.

There is one last thought while we’re on the subject. There was something to be said for having a mistress who was a Christian Scientist. I never had to worry about packing pills or medicines.

S
ome two years before the war Lady Astor had said to me, ‘Promise you’ll never leave me, Rose.’

‘That, my lady, is a stupid thing to ask me to do,’ I replied. ‘How do either of us know what the future holds? I’ve no intention of going at the moment so let’s just leave it at that.’

It was during one of her emotional outbursts. She had them from time to time if she felt that someone had let her down. She wanted the assurance of my loyalty to compensate. I suppose if she’d asked me the same question after the war I would have been able to give my promise. Our lives were now it seemed irrevocably tied together.