Up and Down Stairs (38 page)

It was quite a revelation to see all of the members of the staff in ball dress. Even the prim head housemaid looked quite chic in a velvet gown, and the head housekeeper, who wore a low cut blue satin gown, was almost unrecognizable without her stiff, black dress and her belt of jingling keys . . . [it seemed that] we had acquired a new kind of individuality and gaiety for the evening, and, stranger still, that we were seeing each other from a new aspect – as people not as servants.
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After the sudden death of his sister at a young age, Mr Gorst decided to seek adventure in America, closing his final pages with the Edwardian country house still at its height. The First World War followed hard behind, blowing a chill through every aspect of British life, hard-fought victory though it may have been, and changing the world of the country house for ever. (One side effect was the rapid decline in the use of London town houses, once occupied by many families for only a few months every year and most of which were given up in the 1920s and 1930s.)

The household at Welbeck was so extensive that it is worth describing the servants’ roles in some detail, department by department. Over sixty were employed in the house, with two hundred more in the stables, gardens, home and laundry. Welbeck was a ‘principality’ indeed, with a large estate beyond the house and its immediate dependencies. The indoor staff mostly lived in the house, while top servants such as the duke’s secretary were accommodated in separate houses; farmers, gardeners, stablemen and garage men mostly had their own cottages.
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The kitchen and the service of meals were the domain of the steward, the wine butler, the under butler, the groom of the chamber, the four royal footmen, two steward’s room footmen, two pageboys, the head chef, the second chef, the head baker and the second baker. There was also a head kitchenmaid, two under kitchenmaids, a vegetable maid, three scullery-maids, a head still-room maid with three still-room maids under her, a hall porter, two helpers (both boys), a
kitchen porter and six ‘odd men’. (These were literally odd-job men, whose wide variety of duties included attending to drains and roofs; they tended not to graduate into footman-butler roles.)

For the household and personal ‘body’ service, there was the head housekeeper, the duke’s valet, the duchess’s personal maid, their daughter Lady Victoria’s personal maid, as well as a head nursery governess, a tutor, a French governess, a schoolroom footman and a nursery footman. A phalanx of fourteen housemaids were the cleaners of rooms, the preparers of fires and the makers of beds.

As with many new country houses built in the early twentieth century, as well as those owned by richer or more enthusiastically forward-looking individuals, there was a dedicated electrical plant. This was staffed by six engineers (for the house and the plant itself) and four firemen (who worked on the electrical plant and the steam-heating plant). There was also a telephone clerk and assistant, a telegrapher, and three nightwatchmen. In the early 1900s, the horse and car continued to co-exist uneasily. There was still a head coachman, a second coachman and ten grooms (including an assistant coachman) as well as twenty strappers and helpers. The garage had a head chauffeur, fifteen ordinary chauffeurs, two washers and, remarkably, fifteen footmen (two of whom were to be on the box at all times).

The estate management fell to an estate manager and the duke’s secretary. Spiritual and cultural concerns were the province of a resident chaplain and organist, a librarian (for the famous Titchfield library), a library clerk, and dedicated housemaids just for dusting the books. In the racing stable, the stud groom could command fifteen assistants. Six ‘house’ gardeners looked after the indoor plants, whilst the gardens were cared for by between thirty and forty gardeners, plus forty to fifty roadmen. The home farm was supervised by a head farmer, assisted by between fifteen and twenty men. This was not the end of it: Welbeck had its own fire station, staffed by a chief and six helpers; a gymnasium with a Japanese trainer; a golf course with a head greensman and ten helpers; a laundry, managed by a head laundress and twelve laundresses, plus a staff of three window cleaners.
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The massive size of the household gives some credence to the story that a guest who once arrived at Welbeck Abbey was picked up in a
in retreat from a golden age taxi, rather than a staff car, which he thought rather strange. Later, however, it was explained that he had arrived on the day when the chauffeurs’ XI played the footmen’s XI.
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Former servant Gordon Grimmett catalogued another great household of similar dimensions, at Longleat in Wiltshire, as it was staffed in 1915. There was, he recalled, a steward, an under butler, a groom of the chambers, a valet, three footmen, two odd men, a pantry boy, a steward’s room boy, a hall boy, a lamp boy, a housekeeper, two lady’s maids, eight housemaids, two sewing maids, two still-room maids, six laundrymaids, a cook, two kitchenmaids, a vegetable maid, a scullery-maid, a dairy woman, chauffeurs and grooms (groups who were ‘sworn enemies’), a steel boy (who polished metal) and a ‘tiger’ (a small boy who rode on the coach in livery). The outdoor staff comprised forty gardeners, a home farm staff of around twenty, and a maintenance team including carpenter, bricklayer and painter.
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In 1902, the Earl Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire employed sixty-three indoor servants, and for his funeral that same year twenty-two lady’s maids and valets, accompanying visiting mourners, also stayed in the house. The garden, stables, park, and home farm were cared for by more than three hundred staff. The house, which had not been much modernised by that date, had five miles of corridors, along which fuel for light and heating had to be carried by hand.
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Of the great country houses operating at this level, Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire is memorable especially for the large numbers of gardeners in the early twentieth century, working on what was already one of the greatest and best-staffed gardens of the time. In 1898, after the death of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Waddesdon was inherited by his sister, Alice de Rothschild. She set herself the task of preserving the house, collections and standards of hospitality set by her brother, although her contribution is seen principally in the garden. In this she had a trusted right-hand man, whose career and qualities are typical of the great Edwardian country-house gardener.

George Frederick Johnson, who took over as head gardener in 1904 and remained until 1952,
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first arrived at the age of seventeen, the son of an under gardener working at Swakeleys, in Middlesex. For
the next five years he was trained, as was usual, in all the different departments. He learnt German and went to work in Austria for Ferdinand’s brother, moving on to the garden that Alice owned at Grasse. When the post of head gardener at Waddesdon became vacant, in 1904, Alice offered it to him: ‘Johnson, my head gardener here has given me notice that he does not wish to stay on; he is a very good man and [the] place and plants are in excellent order – I do not like changes and I know you well. I offer you the place of head gardener here.’ She said he could rely on advice from the bailiff ‘until you thoroughly understand the place’ and, indeed, expected him to take counsel from the retired head gardener, Jacques, and from Gibbs, who was gardener at the family’s other house at Eythrope. The job came with ‘a furnished house, coal, milk, potatoes, vegetables, – a horse and cart at your disposal; the doctor and medicine gratis for you and your household’. Not only that but the salary was generous: ‘To begin with I shall give you £100 a year. If you stay with me and give entire satisfaction, you will gradually be augmented up to 130 pounds a year.’
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A handful of letters survive from Alice to Johnson, written when she was regularly away in France, while her other private papers have been destroyed. ‘Quality is the one thing you must study in all your work at Waddesdon, economy too as long as you can effect it by good organisation, but not by lowering the quality of the fruit, vegetable and flowers.’
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As in previous centuries, country-house gardens usually supplied not only flowers to decorate the house, but also a considerable amount of the fruit and vegetables consumed by the household.

Johnson could command around fifty-three staff, with fourteen being employed directly in the greenhouses. The gardeners were divided into different teams, each with its own foreman: the kitchen garden; those tending fruit; those tending specialist plants grown for exhibition or competitions; those supplying bedding plants; those supplying flowers for arrangements in the house. Younger gardeners (many of whom joined in their teens and were usually single) lived together in a bothy, a house that had its own housekeeper and maid who cooked and cleaned for the men; there was also a reading room so that, when they had the time, they could study books and
horticultural journals, although their working hours were long: from 6.30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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Alice’s letters buzz with the minutiae of garden matters, illustrating her competitiveness and showing how she expected confidentiality from her gardeners. One gardener, Marcel Gaucher, working at Waddesdon in the early 1920s, described her as ‘extremely demanding’. His father ‘had the feeling of having to continually pass an examination when working for her, and [remembered] how she always said: “You must never give out the exact name of the plants to my friends, even my closest ones.”’
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During the First World War, some of her letters to Johnson refer poignantly to the deaths of young estate gardeners, as well as those of her own nephews. One is dated 4 April 1917: ‘I am sorry to hear of the death of another Waddesdon man at the front. I should like you to express my most heartfelt sympathy to his mother and to his widow – This war is indeed a very cruel war.’ Another is dated 20 November 1917: ‘thank you for your letter of sympathy. I am profoundly grieved by the untimely death of my two young kinsmen, so brave, so bright.’
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Johnson’s story is not dissimilar to that of John Macleod, the head gardener at Monteviot in the Borders, working for the Marquess and Marchioness of Lothian, appointed to his post in 1903 and remaining there until his death in 1944. He was first apprenticed as a gardener in Strathmore and in 1900 became foreman gardener for the Duke of Wellington. In 1902 he returned to Scotland before taking up his appointment at Monteviot, with more than twenty gardeners under him, at an annual salary of £65.
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According to his grandson, fuel was paid for by the estate, as were the fees for his children to attend grammar school. His terms of appointment included mention of fifty-five tons of coal annually, of which six were for the head gardener, five for the garden bothy, with the balance for the hothouses and glass-houses. In 1915, when he was offered the role of assistant superintendent of parks for the city of Glasgow, his reference was exemplary: ‘he is very good with the men and gets a large amount of work out of them, and in a very quiet way.’ When Lady Lothian heard of the offer, however, she doubled his salary to persuade him to stay.
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Gardeners and other outdoor servants were paid in cash wages and given cottage accommodation; they were not expected to live in the house nor to eat in it. Many head gardeners, such as the two examples above, were much respected and valued by their employers; the gardens of a country house contributed to its setting and were still intended to impress visitors. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, recorded how her own love of gardening was engendered by her head gardener, Mr Barnes, the ‘marvellous and creative’ being who managed thirty-five gardeners, with eighteen in the glasshouses, and ‘fulfilled my extravagant plans’. She was honest enough to add: ‘Of course, I never actually did anything myself; I never dug a hole with a trowel or put a bulb in or anything like that.’
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If gardens added to the prestige of a country house in the early years of the twentieth century, so too did the great shooting parties of the period. These legendary social events, which usually took place over a matter of weeks rather than weekends, would need intricate and careful planning. The steward, housekeeper, cook and the entire indoor staff were involved in preparing ahead for a full house, as well as when the whole event was in full sail.

The gamekeepers – rearing birds and protecting them from depredations by poachers or vermin – would have to ensure that numbers would be sufficient, and at the turn of the century the bags could be in the thousands. One famous gamekeeper, Tommy Taylor, keeper at Elveden for a half a century, confirms in his memoir that by 1914 some 20,000 pheasants were bred annually for the sport, cared for by complex system of underkeepers.
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As well as the rearing of game birds, the shoots themselves would require an almost military-style management of underkeepers, loaders, cartridge boys and beaters, who by walking up from a given point would drive the birds towards the guns. This system provided a great deal of sport to the crack shots of the early twentieth century, while in more recent years wild-bird shooting, using dogs rather than beaters, is increasingly favoured.

The great Edwardian shooting parties – whether at shooting lodges in Scotland, or on the great shooting estates such as Blenheim, Chatsworth and Elveden Hall in Suffolk (bought in the 1890s by the
Earl of Iveagh), not to mention Sandringham – define our image of country-house life. Yet they became increasingly elaborate only in the later nineteenth century, especially after the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, became an enthusiast. Lord de Grey, who was present at one great Edwardian shooting party, contrasted its excesses unfavourably with the past: ‘When I am sitting in a tent taking part in a lengthy luncheon of many courses, served by a host of retainers, my memory takes me back to a time many years ago when we worked harder for our sport, and when seated under a hedge, our midday meal consisted of a sandwich . . . I am inclined to think those were better and worthier days.’
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