The Real Life Downton Abbey: How Life Was Really Lived in Stately Homes a Century Ago

by Jacky Hyams

  But there is sometimes one loving and caring relationship in all this: the children’s nanny. Though there are exceptions – nannies whose demeanour is cold, even ferocious – a good nanny is likely to form a close bond with the aristocratic children in their charge: a source of love and support that many children, semi-ignored in this bewildering world of appearance and convention, treasure and cherish, even cling to, as they grow up. And the children, of course, are the only people in the big country house who might sometimes climb downstairs, so they can have some sort of familial relationship with those below stairs.

  Nanny is often valued. In some country houses with big families, she is kept on as an employee in the house, with different duties, even when the children have grown up. She is, effectively, a surrogate mum. And often a good one at that. Yet her status remains fixed: she may be loved, even adored by ‘her’ children, someone to cuddle and nurture them at all times, someone to guide them, to trust and confide in. But she’s still a servant.

  Even her earnings don’t reflect her true value to the family: she usually earns less than the housekeeper. Or the chef. It’s an odd world, for while good behaviour and manners are high on the list of the privileged person’s rules, the emotional wellbeing of their children, as we understand it, isn’t really a priority.

  As siblings, of course, the children sometimes form close relationships with each other, particularly in the nursery years before the boys are packed off to boarding school. Some form lifetime bonds. Others are quite detached in their relationships with each other. The regimented nature of their existence and the huge distinction between the sexes, where only the boys really ‘matter’ in the aristocratic world, can create resentments as they grow older. Many younger aristocratic women are already rejecting the limitations of a world where only the ‘right’ marriage and having sons matters: at the turn of the century (in 1900) a third of all peers’ daughters remain single.

  So there it is, relationships, Toff style: husbands and wives leading separate lives, children nurtured by surrogates, only siblings sometimes forming closeness with each other. Is the master-servant relationship any different?

  THE MASTER-SERVANT RELATIONSHIP

  THE UPPERS

  While some aristocratic wives have a good relationship with their housekeepers and rely on them heavily, it is the lady’s maid who ventures the closest to what we’d call a close relationship with her boss, partly because of the nature of her work, and also because women, by instinct, have a greater tendency to confide in each other.

  At times, a lady’s maid might be her mistress’s confidante. The lady of the house will correspond with friends and relatives of equal status and share her concerns or thoughts with them but on a daily basis, the lady’s maid is the person with whom she chats and discusses her concerns about her children, her husband, her worries big and small.

  Occasionally, a lady’s maid will know more than anyone else in the house – even the master – about the woman she serves because if she’s really trusted, she’ll hear quite a lot about her boss’s secrets – and what is going on generally within the family. In turn, her mistress will sometimes ask her maid for her views, though it’s more likely to be her opinions on the latest fashion or the nicest hat to buy than anything else.

  If the lady’s marriage is a sexless arrangement and she is tempted towards or indulging in other liaisons or flirtations, the lady’s maid may possibly be aware. (Just as if her boss is pregnant, she’ll be the first to know, since she washes all her undergarments.) The lady’s maid performs so many personal tasks, washing and arranging her boss’s hair, running her bath, helping her dress, travelling with her, that she’s privy to a great deal of information. She’s more than a PA, but a shade less than a chum.

  This puts her in a very odd position because the boundaries of deference are always there, day in, day out. If she repeats what she hears, she risks her job should she be found out. And yet there’s a good chance that she won’t. Sometimes it’s quite easy for a gossipy lady’s maid to repeat the things she’s been told to someone downstairs, and for the gossip to then be passed on, by other staff, to people outside, like tradesmen. Then the gossip and the stories will go beyond the house, right across the county, a local version of email or Facebook, if you like. And because the toffs’ world of rules is so regimented, quite often they’re unaware that this is actually happening: many don’t even regard their servants as human beings, even though their etiquette always warns them: ‘servants have eyes and ears to wag downstairs’.

  More enlightened families, of course, don’t see their servants as inhuman (again, the Granthams are sometimes good role models for how to treat your servants), but many view servants as little more than robots. And so a dinner-table conversation where butlers or footmen must stand, outwardly impassive, yet with ears flapping, taking in every word, all too often winds up as good fodder for downstairs gossip to spread beyond the estate. So a nosy servant who loves to gossip – and relishes the little bit of ‘power’ this gives them – may seem to risk much. But they know the chances are high their bosses will never know what is being said about them. The real downstairs currency isn’t cash – it’s gossip about other people living in the house.

  Gossip aside, many loyal and trustworthy upper servants remain proud of their hard work and their relationship by association with their bosses, especially butlers or valets whose loyalty and feelings for their masters can often be strong, especially if they are valued.

  Even after they leave the job, some upper servants will keep in touch by letter. But the uppers are the servants with staying power, sometimes working with a family for many years, giving them more opportunity to develop closer links with their employers. But even with this ‘insider’ access to their employer’s lives, they must always, at all times, stay on their side of the line; even after years of service, they can’t start a conversation or initiate a topic for discussion. They still have to wait to be asked.

  THE LOWERS

  Generally speaking, the lower servants, some footmen, kitchen staff and housemaids, don’t form any relationship of any description with their masters. They don’t have face-to-face dealings with them as such; many don’t stay in their posts for any length of time, often opting to move around from job to job. Many young women take a position in a big household for opportunistic reasons – because they know it will teach them the household duties and skills they need for marriage. Then, once they find a marriage partner, they’re gone. Many footmen don’t see it as a job for life either, given the restrictions.

  The lowers also move jobs a lot because that’s the only option available to them if they dislike their employers or become angry and resentful of their behaviour. The only other way to ‘get back’ at their bosses – apart from passing on nasty gossip – is to steal from them. There’s plenty of temptation, after all, with so much valuable stuff all over the house. Court records show lots of examples of lower city-based servants stealing – yet not that many steal from country houses. Servants might smuggle out a bit of food for their family, but this goes by largely unnoticed.

  Yet the most difficult, and often poisonous, of all the relationships in the country house – and what affects servants even more than the attitudes of their bosses – is frequently the relationships they have with each other.

  Bad behaviour from co-workers can have a powerful impact on some servants. Because people work so closely for such long hours with little time away from one another, they are forced to tolerate each others’ shortcomings. Combine this with the snobbish distinction the uppers maintain over the lowers and you have a recipe for edginess, tension, unhappiness – and rows.

  As in modern office politics, one viper in the nest can easily make life hell for the rest. And there’s no HR or personnel department to fight their corner. If a housemaid wants to tell tales on a colleague’s behaviour to the other servants after a petty row, there’s nowhere to run. Breaking rank or running to the housek
eeper with such tittle-tattle could mean being shown the door. Quickly.

  Yet some of the younger housemaids sharing their attic bedrooms do bond with each other. They form friendships, simply because they need to: they’re all living in each other’s pockets all the time. Many of these youngest girls have an awful time emotionally, particularly if they’re new to service. A combination of missing the familiar world of family while another servant makes their life hell with bullying behaviour or putting them down in front of the others all the time, is enough to make many homesick young girls desperate to run away. Some do just that, never to return. But a pleading letter home to family, asking to return home, will often receive short shrift: any money the girl can save from her meagre earnings is more important to her family’s survival than her battle putting up with the worst of her colleagues’ behaviour.

  For the servants, emotional support (in the form of letters) from their family may often be all they have if their relationships with each other are poor. Yet even this correspondence can be difficult to maintain on a regular basis. For a lady’s maid or butler, for instance, moving around with the boss means that family communication is sometimes broken or erratic. Changing jobs might not help either – a servant with a good ‘character’ might secure a better position, say a promotion from senior housemaid to housekeeper, yet wind up living even further away from their loved ones.

  Some considerate employers help with small things, like the cost of postage. And some do allow close family members to ‘visit’ for a meal in the servants’ quarters or even, occasionally, an overnight stay in the house. But usually, personal contact with family is a one-off annual event: a train ride to see them – and often to find their loved ones living in cramped conditions with little to eat.

  RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN UPPERS AND LOWERS

  The innate snobbery of many of the upper servants – governesses, for some reason, can be particularly snobbish towards the lowers, perhaps because they are acutely conscious of their mid-ranking status, neither lower class or quite middle – means that relationships between uppers and lowers is, at best, functional. The rules are always there. Being forbidden to speak at mealtimes, for instance, unless an upper addresses you directly, doesn’t do much to foster good relationships, especially if you’re a young and vulnerable new recruit. The best you can say about these social situations is that the lowers are very much the apprentices, there to learn the ways of service. And if they’re willing to work hard, they might be fortunate enough to have an upper servant supervising them who appreciates their diligence. Provided they keep quiet and don’t break a single rule.

  THE UPPERS’ RELATIONSHIPS

  Surely the uppers have some sort of relationship with each other? They do – yet they are more what you’d call work cronies than friends because of the nature of their jobs. The effective bosses of everything downstairs, the butler and housekeeper, do wind up sharing their daily experiences and views in the housekeeper’s sitting room – probably because they can’t express them openly to anyone else – unless the butler has a wife and family, of course, which isn’t often the case.

  Given the huge amount of work that has to be completed and delegated each day, they rely on each other, to an extent, to share their woes. They are their own little clique. Which is probably why the lowers resent them so much.

  SEX AND SERVANTS

  Despite all the restrictions around followers, a job in a big house is regarded by many young female servants as a way of meeting eligible young men, despite the very limited amount of time off. These young men are usually servants in other households or young shop workers or tradesmen who come to the house, their equals in society. And once a link or attraction is established, they can maintain contact by letter. Other lower servants like footmen aren’t expecting to stay single either, so they tend to be on the lookout too. And not all employers are completely rigid in forbidding their servants to form relationships with the opposite sex: sometimes families do permit a female servant to invite her young man to tea in the servants’ quarters. It’s just not a commonplace scenario.

  As for sex between servants in the house, while the toffs do everything in their power to ensure this does not happen, they can’t overcome the power of sexual attraction – and human nature. It might mean a lot of subterfuge and secrecy, given the penalties of unemployment without references if they’re caught. But at times a willing young girl will give rein to her impulses. And, of course, there are always the unwanted advances: the randy footman who pushes a girl into a corner and won’t take no for an answer, and a master – or his sons – who use female servants for sex.

  This is a stereotypical view of servants – yet it seems that Sex with the Servants is something the ruling classes often see as their prerogative: a famous erotic book, My Secret Life, published in 1888, is the detailed sexual memoir of an anonymous but very sexually active gentleman. The book makes it very clear that the writer regards female servants as sexual playthings, ‘ready for service’.

  Frequently, aristocratic parents are all too conscious of this sexual temptation with young housemaids around. And they make quite deliberate efforts to keep their younger sons away from attractive young women working in the house: a new hiring of a really pretty young servant, for instance, is often seen as A Very Bad Idea if there are young sons in the house – to the extent that it’s not unknown for families to dispatch sons to boarding school as early as possible to avoid this kind of temptation. So much effort goes into keeping the sexes separate in the country house. But there are many times when all this effort is in vain.

  GETTING MARRIED

  Sometimes a liaison between servants will lead to pregnancy. Whether they marry or not – and some do – it’s usually the end of their time in the house, though the male servants might be able to remain working in the household. Butlers, footmen or valets can take a wife, but then they have the problem of finding a home for themselves and their family. If their employer provides a home located on the estate, that’s fine, though it may still create an accommodation problem if they wish to move to another employer. And, of course, if their family home is sited some distance away, it may mean living under their employer’s roof still – yet seeing little of their wife and kids. If servants wish to marry in secret and keep quiet about it, they might stay under the same roof – but that doesn’t happen very much.

  Married housekeepers? Not really wanted, thanks. As stated before, if they’re unexpectedly widowed, however, they’re often welcomed back into the household. Even the lady’s maid, well travelled and often better versed in the ways of the world than other servants, can’t marry and keep her job. So there aren’t too many examples of servants marrying each other. Given all the rules and the long hours worked, is it so surprising?

  DIVORCE: THE PENALTY

  In 1913 just 577 divorces are granted in England and Wales. Divorce is avoided at all costs because it means scandal. It is expensive. It completely destroys an aristocratic woman’s reputation. And the divorce laws of the day are complex and very much in favour of the husband. A divorced woman carries a heavy social stigma: she is shunned by her elite circle – the invitations to the posh balls and lavish dinners dry up. In the phrase of the day, she is ‘cut’ by all the people she knows. She often suffers financial losses and she may even lose out where her children are concerned – access to them can be denied her. So while only the very wealthy can access divorce, few do.

  ADULTERY MAKES YOU MAD

  One bored aristocratic woman who pays a severe penalty for her extra-marital dalliance with several men in her circle, including Edward VII, then Prince of Wales (known as ‘Bertie’ or the less flattering ‘Tum Tum’ as he aged), is Lady Harriet Mordaunt, daughter of a Scottish baronet and the beautiful young wife of a prominent MP, Sir Charles Mordaunt. After Harriet confesses to sleeping with Bertie – and other men – her enraged husband threatens to name the Prince of Wales as a co-respondent in what then becomes the most scanda
lous divorce case of the late Victorian era. Their country house, the 72-bedroom Walton Hall in Warwickshire, is, at the time, the most talked about stately home in the land. The Prince finally appears in court as a witness – yet coolly denies sleeping with Harriet. And her family, in a desperate attempt to preserve their honour, declare Harriet insane.

  After the divorce, Harriet is committed to a lunatic asylum, where she remains for the rest of her life. She dies in 1906. And Sir Charles re-marries – to l6-year-old Mary Cholmondeley, a parson’s daughter.

  TURNING A BLIND EYE

  One semi-detached marriage where an aristocratic husband is extremely tolerant of his wife’s behaviour is that of the Countess of Warwick, Frances Maynard, otherwise known as Daisy, and the Earl of Warwick, Francis Brooke (known as ‘Brookie’). Daisy has a string of lovers and admirers after their marriage in 1881. Beautiful, indiscreet and notorious everywhere for her scandalous love life (she is one of Edward, Prince of Wales’s favourite mistresses until she breaks off their relationship with the news that she’s expecting another man’s child), she inspires the music hall song ‘Daisy, Daisy’.

  Yet she remains married to ‘Brookie’ until his death in 1924 – after 43 years of marriage. At one point, friends are told he would rather have been married to Daisy ‘with all her peccadilloes’ than any other woman in the world.