Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (8 page)

‘I’m very pleased to hear that,’ I replied. I knew what she was going to say next so I spiked her guns. ‘I must tell you, my lady, that she wore the gold frock. I’m glad it worked.’

I sort of threw away the last line, knowing I was on dangerous ground. She must have been in a good mood for she let it go at that. She couldn’t really have done anything else, you may think, with Miss Wissie being such a success; but as I was to learn later she most certainly could have. The great thing with Lady Astor though was to tell the truth even before she asked for it; it took away the force of her attack.

Lady Astor was very generous to Miss Wissie over her clothes. She had a large and beautiful wardrobe for a young lady, but her mother supervised it. When she was in London we always had to go to her dressing-room together before Miss Wissie went out to a ball or theatre; and many’s the time we’ve been sent back again to change. This didn’t make my position easy with either of the ladies. However, after I’d been with Miss Wissie only a short time I was able to do her a service which I think endeared me to her. After I’d dressed her and we were going through her bits of jewellery to decorate whatever she was wearing, I’d say, ‘There’s nothing here that’s worthwhile but I’m sure your mother has got something.’ The first time I said it Miss Wissie said, ‘You’ll never get anything, Rose.’ But I did. The hardest thing to borrow was her ladyship’s pearls. Miss Wissie only had a small string, her ‘nineteen and eleven-pennies’, I used to call them. Well, one night after I’d discarded them I said, ‘I’m going to try her ladyship once again,’ and down I went.

‘Here comes the sergeant-major,’ Lady Astor cried when I went into her room. ‘Well, what do you want this time?’ She’d had her little joke so I thought, ‘It’s going to be now or never.’

‘It’s your pearls, my lady.’

‘I’ve told you half a dozen times, Rose, you can’t have them,’ she said.

‘I know you have, my lady, but my name must be Bruce and, like him and his spider, I try, try again.’

It worked. She burst out laughing. ‘You’re not an ordinary spider, Rose, you’re a tarantula,’ she said, and threw her pearls at me.

Miss Wissie was both astonished and delighted. Nine times out of ten after that I was able to get them for her. With Lady Astor there was always the tenth time over anything. It was the same with her furs. I was soon borrowing those for Miss Wissie. After all, there’s nothing distinctive about owning your mink, except of course its beauty and value. No one knew therefore that it was her mother’s coat she was wearing.

Miss Wissie enjoyed dancing and the company of young men, though she was never one for gallivanting, not that she and I discussed this side of her life, but I should have heard about it from other sources if she had been. Her interests were few. She enjoyed riding and tennis but she didn’t go in for the arts, at least not then. I was with her for part of the hunting season. We went together to a few country house parties in Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire, where the sport was most fashionable, and to the Duke of Buccleuch’s place in Scotland, Drumlanrig Castle. I was of course responsible for looking after her riding habits and these weren’t easy to cope with. Some evenings she’d come in soaking wet and spattered with mud, yet the next morning she would have to appear looking spotless. Fortunately she had an excellent tailor so the clothes never lost their shape. Both Miss Wissie and her mother rode side-saddle. It was interesting that when it became fashionable for young ladies to wear their hair short, and Miss Wissie had hers cut off, it was made into a bun, a piece of elastic was attached to each side of it and it was worn tucked under the back of her bowler. In that way she and other hunting ladies maintained the traditional style of wearing their hair.

I hadn’t been with the Astors for more than a week or two when my urge to travel was really satisfied. In September 1928 I was asked to go to the States as ladies’ maid to both Miss Wissie and Lady Astor. I was astonished and more than a little frightened; I hadn’t yet become used to Miss Wissie’s ways, let alone her tempestuous ladyship’s. The reason that I was asked to go came about as a result of some double-dealing on Mrs Vidler’s part. She wanted to leave Lady Astor and she knew that if she handed in her notice in the normal way there would be trouble and her life would be made hell. So just before she should have been leaving with the two ladies she let me in on her ploy. It was this: they were expected to be away three weeks, and Mrs Vidler was going to plead that domestic troubles made it difficult for her to go. I would take her place, and directly we were out of the country she would give in her notice to the Astor office. She’d therefore be leaving immediately after we returned.

I didn’t like being a party to it, but Mrs Vidler had my sympathy. It was never easy working out one’s notice and with Lady Astor I could imagine the dreadful time she would have. Then of course there was my great desire to see America. I’d built up a sort of dream picture which can be a disappointing thing to have done, though as it happened the reality more than matched my imaginings. So I quickly agreed to fall in with the plot. Lady Astor wasn’t particularly pleased when the news was broken to her; she didn’t like other people’s arrangements interfering with her own, particularly when she paid them, and she said so, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Mrs Vidler did her packing, gave me one or two hints on how to treat Lady Astor, and suddenly there I was on Waterloo station with our tickets, twenty pieces of luggage and two ladies to protect and look after. If I had had time to think about it I should have felt like ‘little girl lost’, but thinking time was something Lady Astor didn’t allow you when she was around: it was all talk and bustle.

We sailed from Southampton on the
Aquitania
on 22 September 1928, my first experience of a luxury liner, and I didn’t enjoy it for the first two days; I was very seasick. Also I found that I had to share an inside cabin with three other maids. They had got themselves well installed by the time I arrived and I was left with a top bunk and hardly anywhere to put my things. When I tottered round to her ladyship after my first sleepless night I must have looked a pathetic sight because she took one glance at me and said, ‘What on earth’s the matter with you, Rose?’

When I’d explained she went into action. ‘Miss Wissie’s got two beds in her cabin. You must share it with her. Go and tell the purser.’

With the extra physical comfort I soon found my sea-feet and I was able to enjoy the rest of the voyage. I always travelled first-class on board ship after that. Some servants prefer to go tourist. I remember Mr Dean, who had been under-butler to the Astors before I arrived there and was later butler to her ladyship when Mr Billy came into the title, telling me how when he was butler to Prince and Princess Obolensky, he found he was always kept busy running errands for them when he went first-class. ‘It was no holiday for me,’ Mr Dean said, ‘and it was made worse seeing the other servants having a good time in tourist. My opportunity came when I had to go and book to go to America. Six servants were travelling, me as butler/valet, a Russian chef, a footman, Mollie, Princess Alice’s maid, a nanny and a nursery maid, and my lady was complaining at the price of the tickets. “It would save you money if your maid and I travelled tourist,” I quickly said, and it was agreed that we should. Well, I had the time of my life for the first half of the voyage, with the run of the bars and the run of the girls.’ (Mr Dean considered himself a bit of a Romeo.)

‘Then one morning when we were splicing the mainbrace someone came in and said, “Your lady’s outside looking for you.” Well, I slipped out of the bar quickly, down the companionway and into the Prince’s room and started busying myself. She came in a few minutes later and said, “I seem to have spent half this voyage looking for you, Dean.”

‘“I’m sorry about that my lady,” I said, “I can’t have been very far away though, can I?”

‘“I know where you’ve been. Even if I hadn’t seen you it would still be very obvious.” And she made a little sniffing noise. “You’re travelling first-class from now on.” She handed me a ticket with my cabin number. “And here’s another for Mollie” – her maid. No more high jinks for us on that voyage: we had to be at her beck and call from then onwards.’

When we arrived in New York Lady Astor and Miss Wissie left the ship to meet her ladyship’s sister Mrs Dana Gibson. I stayed on deck with the luggage. If I was lost on Waterloo station, I felt like an orphan now. Eventually someone from the Astor office arrived and took the trunks, but I was still left with the twenty pieces of luggage. There were a number of coloured porters about so I asked one if he would see to the cases. He went to great lengths to explain that he was only allowed to carry two pieces, and beckoned to some others. Eventually I and my regiment of porters got down to the quayside to find Lady Astor looking for me. When she saw me she raised her hands in horror. ‘Rose and her ten little nigger boys,’ she shrieked. I didn’t know where to put myself, I felt so embarrassed for the porters. It was my first experience with coloured people and I expected them to take offence. They didn’t: Lady Astor was the offended party. Apparently I’d been taken for a ride, as they say over there. One porter should have got a truck and taken all the cases; as it was I had to tip ten of them – or her ladyship did!

I found it hard to get accustomed to the treatment given to those with a different-coloured skin. The North was supposed to be more tolerant towards them and perhaps, speaking generally, they were, but when we went to Lady Astor’s home in the South in Virginia, they were much more a part of the family than servants were in England. They were almost loved, although rather as a pet dog might be loved, in a superior, tolerant, patronizing sort of way. When you met them they were expected to get excited, wag their tails and do their tricks, while you stroked and patted them. But despite this they still seemed to belong more. Outside the house, coloured people were looked down on, particularly by the poorer whites. It was the same as in England, everyone seemed to want someone they could feel superior to and this as much as anything else, I think, led to the decay of domestic service as an occupation here. Eventually servants were considered as the lowest of the low. Britain now has its own colour problem and shortly, it seems to me, by the way things are going, we shall soon be expected to despise the rich. Then my life will have gone full circle.

We spent the first night in New York at Mrs Dana Gibson’s home on East 73rd Street. The size and the pace of the city seemed to get into me, which was just as well as I had so much to do and so little time to do it in, and since the next evening we had to catch a train to Virginia. Miss Wissie and Lady Astor shared what is called a drawing-room compartment on the train. We arrived at Charlottesville and later went to Mirador, Greenwood, the family home of the Langhornes. Although the family had married and moved away it was kept running by an Englishwoman, Miss White, nanny to Lady Astor’s first son, Mr Bobbie Shaw, and later to her ladyship’s sister Mrs Brand’s two boys by her first marriage, Peter and Winkie Brooks. She was helped by a coloured butler and two cooks, Caley and Estelle, who were duly assembled on our arrival and given their pats on the back with beads and pearls for the cooks and cuff buttons and ties for Stewart, the butler. Although I may seem a bit critical, there’s no doubt everyone enjoyed it and it was a happy occasion with fun, tears and laughter. It was at the time the expected and accepted thing.

Mirador was a large estate on which stood a roomy eighteenth-century house with a pillared porch, a marble hall and a curving Georgian staircase. It was set in the middle of the peach country in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The scenery was very like the English countryside at its best, only on a larger scale with high mountains and massive valleys. I fell in love with the place directly I saw it and never had a change of heart. I was kept very busy during our few days there, for apart from looking after the two ladies I had to keep arranging the flowers that arrived so continually that there was no room left in the house to put them, and answering the telephone that never stopped ringing. At first I left this to Stewart, but he kept forgetting names and getting messages wrong, so eventually Lady Astor insisted that I should answer it.

My main enjoyment on that visit was the food, the wonderful Southern cooking. Her ladyship felt the same way about it and we both put on a few pounds in weight. From Mirador we went to Richmond, staying with Mr and Mrs Sanders Hobson. Mrs Hobson was an old school friend of my lady’s. Mr Hobson confided in me about Lady Astor: ‘She was the wildest girl in Richmond,’ he said. ‘I ought to know, I was raised with her.’ The Governor of Virginia gave a ball in honour of my two ladies. It was done in the grand manner that Americans are so good at, but also it had style. I think it was the occasion they both enjoyed most during their visit. Some of their enthusiasm even washed off on to me. From Richmond we went to Washington for two nights, which we spent at the Canadian Embassy. Then on to Boston, Massachusetts, and back to New York. Talk about a whistle-stop tour, it was all packing and unpacking for me. We’d only one night to spend with Mrs Gibson and I was looking forward to the rest that I hoped to have on board the
Aquitania
on our journey home. But I wasn’t to get it. As our luggage was being wheeled out of the door Lady Astor waved imperiously at me. ‘Take Miss Wissie’s trunks and cases back, Rose. I’ve decided she will stay on here with you for the next three months. She’ll be doing the American season.’

And we did. It was typical of her ladyship, as I was to find out; she’d change her mind as often as she’d change her clothes. But although I was shaken I wasn’t sorry. It meant that I should have the opportunity of seeing more of America and I’d have only one lady to look after, who was much more predictable in her ways and in her moods.

Our permanent home during our stay was with Mrs Dana Gibson, though we travelled widely. Every weekend we’d be away. There was a continual round of dances and I would accompany Miss Wissie to every one. It meant many late nights for me, but her aunt was more considerate than her mother and I was always allowed to stay in bed until midday after a late return. This wasn’t so much perhaps consideration on Mrs Gibson’s part as the fact that in America maids expected much more time off than we did over here, so it was more the rule of the house. It happened everywhere we went, homes like Lady Granard’s and at Vincent Astor’s place near Rhineback, on the Hudson river. I came into contact with the staff of many houses. The thing that I found most extraordinary was that there was no overall mode of behaviour; every house seemed to be run differently, and there were so many nationalities in service there. Of course I was set in my ways when I went there but once I got used to the unexpected I enjoyed it. They were so immediately friendly and helpful, and I seemed to get a welcome everywhere I went. Although their hours were shorter and wages higher, they were expected to work hard. Their employers demanded their pound of flesh. One thing though that I could never get used to was that the butlers were called by their Christian names. I used to imagine an employer calling Mr Lee, Ed, and shuddered at the thought – and the consequences.