by Jacky Hyams
Then the decorations are taken in, via the servants’ entrance, so that the butler or footmen can place them wherever they are needed. Big colourful bunches of sweet peas are popular, an emblem of Edwardian times: Edward VII even has one named after him – in crimson. And huge displays of roses and lilac are a must-have for fashionable hostesses.
When really big entertainments are planned, flowers are used to decorate all of the rooms in the house. At such times the gardening team will be around at the crack of dawn to get it all ready.
Given the toffs’ obsession with decoration and appearance, the flower arrangements at the dining table are incredibly important: they contribute to the overall success of their dinner parties. Aristocratic hostesses vie with each other to create the most outstanding displays, often including exotic fruits like pineapples or perfectly ripe peaches wired into the flower displays. There are even external specialist flower arrangers, (usually a genteel woman from a respectable but impoverished background, much like the governess) who may be hired to come to the house to create lavish flower displays when needed. Sometimes the colours of the flowers at the table are chosen to match the dress of the Lady of the house. Attention to detail is all.
THE SEASON
For the landowning aristocrats and the new money elite, ‘The Season’ is the time they spend in London, in their town residence, to socialise and engage in politics. (Members of both Houses of Parliament participate in the Season.) Exclusive events, often including royalty, are held at the town mansions of the super-rich. And The Season is also a big opportunity for the toffs to formally introduce their children of marriageable age to society. (Women are introduced by presentation to the monarch at Court.)
The Season starts at Easter and ends officially on the Glorious Twelfth of August, when the shooting season for red grouse starts. After World War I, when elite society starts to change, the long Season becomes less important. As an important event on the social calendar, its significance peaks in the early years of the 1900s. Yet even today, remnants of The Season are still with us with events like Royal Ascot and the Henley Regatta.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Mostly, the servants’ work in and around the house is very labour intensive. The steam irons, dishwashers, fridge freezers and other household appliances we take for granted are not yet around in the Edwardian era. But there are some helpful developments…
ICE
Artificial refrigeration is developed in the Victorian era and it is used commercially (to transport meat from the Antipodes, for instance). Yet it is largely mistrusted domestically until around 1903–4. Even then, many big houses don’t use refrigerators. They either continue to use ice from open water on their own estate, taken by the servants to the kitchen area to be stored in large ice chests in a separate room. Or storage might be in an ice-well in the grounds of the estate. The housekeeper also has the option of ordering top-quality imported blocks of ice, often from Norway, which can be transported, via rail, to the house.
Ice is an important aspect of the dinner-table display, used in enormous moulds for ice cream and different shapes – ice swans are very popular – but only the handful of country houses who have adopted all the latest mod cons are using their own early versions of fridges.
CLEANING APPLIANCES
By 1903, early types of not-very-effective vacuum cleaners are available; ‘vacuum cleaner parties’ are held in London, where wealthy women sit and watch while the new invention is used in front of them. Yet the more efficient, mass-produced ‘bag on a stick’ upright vacuum cleaners, produced by Hoover in the US, are not imported into the UK until 1912. They are very much a luxury item, costing around £2 to buy, or 3/6d (three shillings and sixpence) a day to hire – only after World War II do they become more affordable for ordinary people.
WASHING AND DRYING
Soap is used in huge quantities in the big country house. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, soap is actually taxed, making it an expensive proposition for most. But by the dawn of the twentieth century branded soaps (like Sunlight) and washing powders are widely available and the washing process becomes slightly less time consuming than in the past.
Hand-operated washing machines with two wringers attached have also been available for some time. But laundry maids hate them because they are so heavy to operate when they are full. In the bigger houses – where the owner has installed their own plant to generate electricity – electrically powered washing machines are in use.
But these are the exception. Most houses now use a hand-operated washing machine for part of the laundry process and continue to run their own laundry. Some opt to use the big commercial laundries, usually in London, where the linens and laundry can be transported to the house and back by rail.
By tradition, there are big drying cupboards in the in-house laundry. But freshly washed items are also dried outdoors whenever possible – bleaching in the sun is important. Some laundry might be spread out on the grass, some on bushes or hedges. Clothes lines, made of hemp or wire, are useful, but stealing clothes from grass or lines became, over time, a common form of theft, so the laundress must be vigilant when drying outdoors – she doesn’t want to have to report any losses to the housekeeper, whose role includes making an inventory for all laundry items – and keeping a sharp eye on any discrepancies.
She may be virtually unseen but the laundress is important to the success of the household routine: she needs to be an expert in every aspect of laundry: the washing, ironing, bleaching, drying and folding are equally important and given the toffs’ obsession with perfection – and gleaming, crisp, white linen – there’s no let-up in the quest for pile after pile of dry, neatly ironed and pressed linens in the cupboards.
STAIN REMOVAL
Before washing, all stains are removed by the laundry maid or lady’s maid. Shop-bought cleaners are not used on stains because they are acid based and quite dangerous to the very delicate silks, cottons and linens that are used: clothing made from man-made fibres emerges in 1910 but the aristocracy, whose clothes are often handmade and who sleep in sheets of the very finest linen, are unlikely to embrace such developments.
Here are a few useful stain removal methods used by country house servants:
Wine stains: Wet the stain with cold water. Then sprinkle it with dry starch and rub into a paste. Avoid washing with soap beforehand as this will fix the stain. Leave the paste to dry for an hour. The stain should then be gone when the paste is rubbed off. If it’s a stubborn stain, salt and lemon juice rubbed on for a few minutes, then removed by pouring hot water through it, will get rid of it.
Blood stains: Wash in cold water if the garment is wet. If it’s dry, soak the garment in cold water with added washing soda. Then wash it as usual and dry in the open. 5Starch paste may also be useful in removing bloodstains.
Fruit stains: Pour boiling water over the stain. Avoid using soap – it will fix the stain.
Ink stains: If the ink is still wet, sprinkle the item with salt. Then rub with a cut lemon. Another method is to soak the item in sour or boiled milk; as the stain is absorbed into the milk, renew the milk. Or try rubbing the stain with a tomato cut in half.
FROM THE COUNTRY HOUSE GARDEN…
Create your own scented Edwardian delights using these two easy ideas:
Rose water (a very popular Edwardian scent). Place some freshly gathered rose petals in an enamel pan, cover with water and very slowly bring the mixture to the boil. Simmer for ten minutes. Then strain the water into a jug or bottle. Use as a facial toner or on irritated skin, for an anti-ageing, rejuvenating effect. (You can also make chamomile water, which also helps firm skin tissue, by soaking chamomile flowers in water and shaking twice daily for two weeks. Then it is ready to be strained and bottled.)
Potpourri: essence of rose. Potpourri is a mixture of dried flowers and other ingredients which, when combined, create a delicate aroma. Flowers that are good for potpourri are roses, carnations, violets, sunf
lower and lavender. Good herbs include chamomile, sage, thyme, lavender and rosemary. Eucalyptus leaves are also very aromatic.
For Essence of Rose you need:
1 cup dried pink rose petals
half a cup dried red rose petals
half a cup dried white rose petals
quarter cup chamomile flowers
half a cup crushed statice (blue or white sea lavender)
half a cup eucalyptus leaves
quarter cup of oak moss
20 drops rose oil
Method:
Combine petals and leaves in a large bowl.
Using an eyedropper, scatter drops of rose oil over the mixture.
Stir carefully. Then place the mixture in a brown paper bag lined with wax paper. After folding the bag, seal it with a paper clip.
Leave it to dry in a dark, cool, dry place for two weeks.
Stir the contents gently to blend it all every second day.
Place the mixture in small dishes or glass bowls topped with tiny pink or white dried rose buds.
Scented paper (to line drawers and shelves). Using wrapping paper or unwanted sheets of wallpaper for the lining, place the sheets of paper in a large polythene bag – and sprinkle over the blended potpourri. Seal the bag, shake occasionally and leave until you’re ready to line the drawers or cupboard shelves with the paper for a beautiful, subtle scent.
NATURAL REMEDIES
Repeated washing up in soapy suds mean that servants’ hands can become chapped and sore. For this reason, they often cover them with black gloves when out and about.
Here’s a simple remedy for chapped hands…
Rub honey into your hands when the skin is dry, moisten a little, rub harder, then use a little more water. Finally, wash hands thoroughly with the water still containing traces of honey, or wash hands with soap and rub them well with oatmeal while wet.
Swollen feet or ankles are another occupational hazard in service. This natural remedy is very useful…
Bathe or soak feet in a mixture of half water and half natural apple cider vinegar. Wrapping feet in a cloth that has been soaked in this mixture will also help ease the swelling.
Chapter 6
Relationships
Here we are in an idyllic setting, a vast house in the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. But is the perfection of the landscape matched by the warmth of the day-to-day relationships of the people living inside? Do they get on? Are they close? Are there strong bonds and friendships?
Hopefully, there are sometimes. By our twenty-first century standards, these relationships are difficult to fathom: servants with no real life of their own constantly running hither and thither at their master’s whim; wealthy landowners whose lives are dominated by matters of inheritance – yet who see very little of their children; mothers who relinquish the baby-bonding process to hired help; relatives whose primary concern is rank, political manoeuvring, or marrying off their heirs into equally rich families.
We are in an odd world of marriage negotiations for fat dowries, entertainment on a grand scale mainly for social position, servants who are snobs because they earn their living by a strange mixture of deference and ordering other servants about. Are there any normal, everyday human relationships in such a world? Let’s look more closely at some of these.
THE ARISTOCRATIC MARRIAGE
The fictional Downton Abbey marriage is one of many similar ‘arrangements’ of the times – it starts out as a ‘cash for title’ deal: rich and beautiful young American girl marries Earl who really needs her money to swell his dwindling resources.
Yet the relationship develops. Gradually they grow close – and loving. So much so that the Countess of Grantham conceives – and loses – a male heir after their three daughters have grown up. With this as an example, it seems that Edwardian aristocratic marriages might be similar to all marriages – some work, some don’t.
But that isn’t quite the case. Not all aristocratic marriages are cold, sterile, unhappy affairs: marrying for love isn’t completely unknown. And, like the Granthams, some marriages begin as a trade-off for cash and status, yet they do work over time, though quite often, unlike the Granthams, they wind up as friends rather than lovers.
However, a lot of these ‘arranged’ marriages, or marriages of convenience, do not work at all when the main objective is money and inheritance rather than love and desire. Once the woman has fulfilled her part of the deal – by producing ‘the heir and the spare’ – there’s often an end to any physical relationship. Separate bedrooms are common. Affluence and privilege mean that these couples don’t need to retain any personal intimacy with each other if they prefer a ‘hands-off’ relationship after children are born. The focus of their world, remember, is not on romantic love – it’s on the clearly defined rules and role-playing which dictate practically every minute of their lives. And, of course, inheritance.
Rich as she may be, the aristocratic wife cannot have an independent role outside the boundaries of the rules, other than as a kind of superior manager of the household. Apart from this, she can only involve herself in charitable concerns. She may be important but hers is a fairly restricted job description.
Essentially, she is close to what we’d call a Trophy Wife. She is required to be attractive, dress beautifully in the very latest styles and look fashionably alluring at all times – a living reflection of the wealth and influence of her husband. She can be intelligent – but she can’t be too clever. In some ways, she is very much akin to her children in the nursery – seen at set times but not heard too much. Conversationally, on a social level, she is expected to make witty, light conversation. But nothing too deep.
If she doesn’t have great interest in the day-to-day running of the household, she can, if she chooses, leave much of it to the housekeeper. And if she is politically minded, interested in women’s rights and drawn to such worldly matters, she may, if she is bold enough, involve herself with such things – but only up to a point because she’s probably going against her husband’s wishes, so needs a strong will to do so. Her status as part of a power couple is more important than anything else.
The rules of the aristocratic marriage mean that the couple are rarely in each other’s company anyway. They dine together at home and when they entertain. They accompany each other to all the big events of the Season, the parties, balls and concerts where they are obliged to be seen together – as well as the local events like the fund-raising fêtes. But that’s it. When at home in the country, most of their time is spent apart – he in his study or on the estate, tending to his affairs, she paying courtesy calls to friends or relatives or visiting the poor (in between those lengthy sessions with her lady’s maid as she changes her outfit and hairdo several times each day). And when the social clique moves to London, through the summer, her husband will frequently spend a great deal of time at his club of choice, maybe the Carlton or White’s or, if he’s a working MP, at the Houses of Parliament. In so many ways, theirs is a marriage in name only.
So is there a get-out clause? Unfortunately, divorce is not really on the agenda. Despite their fabulous wealth and luxury surroundings, a divorced woman, middle class or aristocratic, faces a problem: her valuable social status vanishes if she’s no longer officially part of a couple. Everyone, including her family, rejects her.
So how, you wonder, do such unhappy or loveless aristocratic marriages continue to survive?
There are a couple of reasons – aside from the very restricted status of all women at the time. In the world they live in, constantly surrounded by servants, a ‘private’ life for anyone seeking extra-marital dalliance is somewhat difficult to maintain. You need your peer group to turn a blind eye and maybe servants whom you hope you can trust (not a very reliable premise). And so when either he or she seeks some sort of romantic or sexual satisfaction in their lives, it’s unofficially yet widely accepted among their chums that society will politely turn away from openly criticising any
infidelities.
The other thing that holds the whole thing together, of course, is the very nature of their lifestyles. Because of the way they live, together but apart, provided they fulfil their many social obligations as a couple, the ‘You live your life, I live mine’ deal is something many can live with. Yet again, as with the rest of their lives, only appearance matters.
PARENTAL RELATIONSHIPS
Though there are exceptions, in many aristocratic households the parent-child relationship is emotionally distant and very much hands off: child rearing does not feature in the duties of an aristocratic woman – the servants, nurses, tutors, nannies and governesses fulfill most of that role. As tiny tots, a set time of day is set aside for the children to be brought down from the nursery to see their parents, usually around 4pm or after dinner and, once a son reaches eleven, sometimes sooner, he is packed off to boarding school while his sisters remain at home to be educated by a governess or tutor.
Yet if the aristocratic wife is a hands-off mum for much of the time, her partner, preoccupied as he is with his estate, his politics or his outdoor pursuits, is frequently even more remote from his children: the ‘Distant Dad’ is the kindest way to describe him, an unknown and often unseen authority figure. Some high-born mothers do develop a closer rapport with their children, over time. But essentially, the younger parenting years are left to the hired help.