The Real Life Downton Abbey (20 page)

As usual, the men do much better than the women, especially the uppers – a valet or male chef could be the recipient of a handsome present like a Gladstone bag costing three guineas (three pounds and three shillings). Or a head gardener would be given an easy chair of the same value. A first footman might receive a cash gift, as much as £5 if the boss is generous, but ten shillings is more common for a gardener or a housemaid.

Giving gifts of clothing to lower servants is something of an obsession with some country-house bosses, a practical but not very popular – or generous – gift. A lower maid might receive a length of cloth, either black for Sunday or flowered cotton for day wear (to be made up at her own expense) for work-wear. A housemaid is given a petticoat; an under lady’s maid gets a black dress – to work in. As for the female uppers, they too get somewhat practical three-guinea gifts: a black silk dress for the housekeeper and an umbrella and handbag for the lady’s maid.

Sometimes the children of the house are deployed to do the honours, to go down the line of servants, handing each their gift in turn and wishing them a happy Christmas, while the servants try to show gratitude. This is a charming gesture, especially if the children are quite small – and it’s likely the servants will have formed some sort of relationship with the children who run around the kitchen area. But the truth is, anyone who has been working in the household for a few years knows exactly what to expect: yet another reminder of their status and how their employers, mostly, see them in work terms, rather than individuals whose personal qualities are to be valued. It’s a once-a-year opportunity to garner goodwill from those who serve them, to show the staff some genuine appreciation. But it’s usually a missed opportunity which becomes, as usual, yet another formality. Another day, another ritual. ’Twas ever thus…

I
t’s September. A steam train is slowly making its way from Nottingham to Helmsdale, in the Scottish Highlands where the 6th Duke of Portland and his family are heading for the shooting season. The journey takes fourteen hours. But this is a special train: it has four carriages, a caravan of wealth and privilege. Inside the big first carriage – which includes bedrooms, a sitting room and a dining room – sit the owners of Welbeck Abbey, the 6th Duke and Duchess of Portland. In the next carriage, their children William, Francis and Victoria are being supervised by their governess. Inside the third carriage, footmen, the chef, the family’s chauffeurs and the personal servants so necessary to the needs of their masters all travel together. And, true to the rules and strict hierarchy, the fourth passenger car carries the lower servants – the housemaids, kitchen or stillroom maids. The rest of the train is made up of a chain of wagons, each one carrying an automobile. The Portlands are on the move…

Dinner is due to be served to the family by railway staff. The servants are about to tuck in too, although their food comes out of the big wicker baskets they’ve brought with them: sandwiches, fruit, chicken and eggs, packed by the staff at Welbeck Abbey who are already busy with the major
spring-cleaning
session the housekeeper has organised in the family’s absence. There is even a little stove and a teapot, for the uppers to make their own tea.

This is Toff Travel, Edwardian style. It beats Ryanair. Even if it is slow. Everything they need goes with them. Even if there are other helpers available – and there will be plenty of other servants around when they reach their destination – having their own ‘team’ to hand isn’t seen as an indulgence. Nor is transporting all their motorcars across the country. It’s just necessary to their way of life.

Luxury travel by train or boat is commonplace for aristocrats on the move. Only first-class plane travel is still ahead: the first successful plane flight in England takes place in 1900 and while progress in aviation is made in the following years, flying doesn’t become a fashionable means of upper-crust travel until much later.

For the super-rich, getting around, at home or abroad, is more exciting than it ever was: the novelty of the motorcar means that the old horse-drawn cabs or carriages that dominated road transport in the previous century are vanishing. King Edward VII is the first British monarch to own a car, a Daimler Phaeton, purchased in 1900. Four years later, car registration is introduced and there are 8,500 cars on British roads. The first ever Rolls-Royce, the epitome of Edwardian style and luxury is unveiled in l906.

Owning a car is only the province of the wealthy and privileged. But it’s making a huge difference to the way they live: another good reason why the ‘Saturday to Monday’ country-house party has become so important: the toffs can now use the chauffeur to drive them there. And the early need for a man to walk and wave a red flag in front of every car on the road has gone. (The Red Flag Act, introduced in mid-Victorian times but withdrawn in 1896, stipulated that all mechanically powered road vehicles must be preceded by a man on foot, waving a red flag to warn the public.) However, this new, exciting innovation has its drawbacks: not all cars have windscreens. And sometimes their engines just… blow up. Or the tyres explode.

There are 303 people involved in fatal accidents involving the new motorcars in London in 1909 (with 3,488 accidents recorded) yet nothing can diminish the wealthy person’s enthusiasm for the motorcar. The switch to motorised vehicles, of course, means staffing changes in some of the country estates; the new chauffeurs are often resented by existing staff – or seen as being a bit too ‘above themselves’, as indeed some are. But the march of progress is relentless: in their travels between town and country, the motorcar, for short journeys, is now becoming essential to the upper crust way of life. And toffs in London now have motorised cabs or taxis which they can hail to take them to and from parliament or their club.

For longer journeys, Britain’s cross-country railway infrastructure is thriving; the very first restaurant cars have been introduced (on the Great Northern line) in 1879, and these start out as luxurious dining options: the kitchens fitted with coke-burning ranges and a scullery boy to peel potatoes and perform other menial chores on an open platform at the rear of the train. Heating’s initially a bit of a problem: early foot warmers are merely oblong boxes filled with hot water, until steam heating is introduced. Yet despite some initial upper-class disapproval when it becomes obvious that railways will give people of all classes greater mobility, by 1900 trains are a way of life for millions. And a complete underground circuit linking the whole of London has already been established by that year: all the more reason for the wealthy, class-bound toffs to travel around in their motorcars or stay cocooned on a train in their ‘bubble’ of extreme luxury; rubbing shoulders while travelling with the rest of the population is unthinkable.

The travelling toffs can now also take advantage of the huge progress in maritime engineering and shipbuilding: this is the era of the great ocean liner, capable of crossing the Atlantic in a matter of days – and these huge first-class liners are designed specially for the super-rich, usually the wealthy new money industrialists heading for New York and the New World on a business trip.

The ill-fated
Titanic
is one of these luxury liners, launched by the White Star Line, in direct competition with Cunard, who launch the
Mauretania
and
Lusitania
in 1907, the first ever ocean liners to give birth to the phrase ‘floating palace’. Until then, a trip across the Atlantic involved travelling on an early version of a Cross Channel Ferry – not very desirable for those who prefer to travel in luxury and style.

The trip across the Atlantic on one of these new luxury liners is faster too, taking between five and seven days. And everything about these ships has been created with the wealthy passenger in mind. The
Mauretania
’s interiors are designed by the same design duo (Mewes and Davis) who have created the sumptuous interiors for the Ritz Hotel: the idea is to make their first-class customers believe they are ‘at home’ in an environment resembling a grand hotel like the Ritz, which opened in 1906; it was the King’s favourite haunt and built to resemble a stylish block of Parisian flats. Complete with Escoffier cuisine.

These trips are incredibly expensive. A first-class passage, Southampton to New York, costs the equivalent of the price of an expensive car nowadays, around £20–£30,000 return. And when it comes to the comfort of their pampered guests, no luxury is left out by the designers simply because these ships are designed for the new money no object, ‘go for it’ entrepreneurs, captains of industry whose millions are made in commodities or raw materials. But of course, the old money aristos must travel this way too, to keep up in the style stakes – even if it does go against the grain for them to rub shoulders with the untitled new money, they’ll now grit their teeth and join them at the dinner table.

The interiors of the public rooms are very much in the style of the era: lots of polished wood, stained glass and gleaming brass fittings. Thick Turkey carpets, huge tapestries, enormous oil paintings, very rich furnishings – and elaborate fireplaces with electric fires. The
Mauretania
is among the first of the ocean liners fitted with electric lighting. The doomed
Titanic
, which sets sail a few years later, is also one of the new-style electrically-lit liners. Mains electricity is not installed across the UK until after World War I, so this is state-of-the-art innovation. In the bedrooms, there are plug-in electric reading lights by the beds, hyper-luxury – most of the British toffs haven’t yet got round to installing such things at home.