by Hilda Newman
But it was: if Croome Court was my prison, my ‘cell’ was, at least, incredibly spacious. I wandered over to the window – itself bigger than anything I’d ever been used to – and looked out: I saw lawns and a lazy river and, away in the distance, another remarkable building with huge glass windows on which the last of the day’s light was reflected. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The girl was telling me something as she closed the door. I heard the words ‘cup of tea’ and ‘bath’ but really didn’t register them. After she had left, I sat down on the bed, my little suitcase with all my worldly possessions neatly folded inside, looked around at all the empty splendour of my new surroundings … and burst into tears.
I cried myself to sleep that night – as I would do for weeks to come – thinking about the home I’d left behind me and the life I’d so carelessly abandoned. We might not have had much and Vine Street might have been a humble little place but, amid all the magnificence of Croome Court and its surrounding estate, I would have given absolutely anything to return to it.
I was woken the next morning by the same girl. She had a cup of tea in her hand and told me that my bath was ready. The tea I could understand but what was this about a bath? And who could have got it ready? Surely this couldn’t be happening to me. Why would someone have run me a bath? And, anyway, where was it? I looked around, trying to see whether someone had deposited the sort of tin tub I was used to in one of the distant corners of the room. There was, of course, no sign of any such thing.
Instead, the girl – I still didn’t know who, or what, she was – led me along yet another corridor and through a doorway into a room almost as big as my bedroom. In it was a large enamelled bath, brimming with hot, steaming water. It was a very long way from the Mulley household’s Friday ritual of a quick dip in the old tin tub in front of the fire. Was this a special occasion to mark my first day? Or was this to be a regular thing? No one had ever waited on me – surely that’s what I was here to do? Either way, this little bit of my new life was a very pleasant surprise and perhaps I could grow to like at least this part of it.
I wondered, too, about when I would meet my new mistress. I hadn’t seen her since that day in Worcester when I’d had my interview. I wanted to find out what my duties were and that would only happen when she told me. As it turned out, I didn’t see her for the rest of the day. I spent the ensuing hours trying to find my way round the house – or, at least, the bits of it where I was supposed to go. I avoided the first and second floors: they were reserved for the Coventrys and, as I discovered, the staff only went there when they were called, or as part of their work when the family wasn’t around.
First, I had to get to know about the other servants. I quickly found that there was a hierarchy below stairs: a very definite mini-social order, which I would be expected to understand and stick to. There were 15 of us in total who worked in the household, plus gardeners and a houndsman, who never ventured across the threshold. The lowliest of all was the scullery maid, a young girl just starting out in service who – whether because of her position or for family reasons – lived out in High Green, one of the little hamlets that surrounded the estate. Her job was, perhaps, the hardest and least rewarding of all: she acted as assistant to the kitchen maid, who was one rung above her on the social ladder, and there was a definite chain of command when it came to her duties. She reported to the kitchen maid, who, in turn, reported to the cook. Her orders would be passed down to her through each of these other two servants and, likewise, she passed messages back up the line via them. The poor scullery maid’s duties included the most physical and demanding tasks in the kitchen, such as cleaning and scouring the old stone floor, which was so uneven that you swayed from foot to foot as you walked across it. She was also required to scrub the stove, the sinks, and all the pots and dishes. There was no washing-up liquid in those days: she had to scour all the crockery and cooking pans with soap crystals whisked up into a rough sort of lather.
On top of all this, she was expected to help with preparing the food for every meal – cleaning the vegetables, plucking fowl (which came in fresh with all their feathers, heads and claws on). If fish was on the menu, these would be delivered almost straight from the river and it was the scullery maid’s task to gut and de-scale every one before the cook got her hands on them. Her day also began before anyone else’s: while the rest of us still slumbered in our beds, the scullery maid started before 6am, getting the kitchen fire going and make sure the cooking range was lit ready for the day’s cooking. Since she lived out, she had to walk a couple of miles to the Court from her home: woe betide her if she wasn’t on time because all the other staff’s jobs depended on her having got the kitchen and the fires ready for them when they came down. All in all, hers was a hard and backbreaking job and I was distinctly relieved I didn’t have to do it.
I soon learned that the number of kitchen staff had been cut back since the high and heady days of the old 9th Earl’s time. Where once there had been two kitchen maids there was now only one: Doris Jones was her name and she was one of the first of the servants I met that day. Everything in the house ran to a strict clock. Doris’s day began at 6.30am, when she washed and dressed, tied her hair neatly back and pushed it underneath her little white cap. By 7am she had to have made her bed and be down in the kitchen. It was her job to get breakfast ready for all the servants and begin preparing the early-morning tea trays for the master and mistress, as well as making the children’s breakfast.
By 7.30am Winnie Sapsford, who was both cook and housekeeper – another sign that the Coventry finances were coming under increasing strain – arrived in the kitchen. Every television drama you see about life below stairs portrays the cook as a plump and matronly woman. Winnie wasn’t like that at all and on that first morning I must admit I was taken back a bit by the look of her. For a start, she was terribly thin: a little bird-like creature that a breath of wind could have blown over. As I looked around the kitchen, with its huge heavy pots and pans, I wondered how she would be able even to lift an empty one, let alone handle it when it was full. I never knew how old she was – she was probably in her late forties or early fifties – but, to my young eyes, she seemed like an archetypical old maid. The scullery maid and Doris the kitchen maid treated her with the greatest of respect – I think they even had to curtsy when she came into the kitchen first thing of a morning – and they always called her ‘Mrs Sapsford’. But, in truth, there was never a Mr Sapsford because Winnie had never married. She’d been at the Court for many years and I suppose everyone called her Mrs as a mark of respect.
At 8.45am sharp, breakfast was to be put out on the big table in the servants’ hall. But from that first morning I was told that I wouldn’t be taking my meals there – and nor would Winnie. It turned out that she and I were one of four members of the household who were termed ‘head servants’: we were one rung below the Coventry family and – depending on who you compared us to – some levels above the rest of the staff.
Only the lower staff ate in the servants’ hall. While they sat down to their breakfast there, us more senior employees were waited upon by the kitchen maid in a room all of our own. The steward’s room (I never quite worked out why it was called this) was further along the long echoing main corridor in the basement: this was the arterial heart of all the comings and goings below stairs and the cold stone flags would ring with footsteps as the day’s work unfolded.
The four of us who were set apart in the steward’s room were Winnie, myself, the children’s governess and, the grandest of us all, the butler. Alfred Latter had been in the Coventry’s service for more years than anyone cared to remember: he was in his mid to late forties and he ran a strict household, I can tell you. The whole smooth running of the house was ultimately up to him and, if the family ever had any cause for complaint, it would be his ears that heard it and he who took the blame – at least until he got downstairs again.
The moment Mr Latter walked in I was
in awe of him. He was immaculately smart, in dark striped trousers and a black jacket over the crispest of crisp white shirts. Although he was only around Dad’s age, he looked altogether much more severe and forbidding. Yet, as I sat there, trying to keep out of sight as best as I could, he turned to me with a smile and spoke a few words, which instantly put me at my ease and made me think that, perhaps, he might turn out to be a great deal more kindly than he looked.
‘Miss Mulley,’ he said in a quiet yet authoritative voice, ‘I know exactly how you feel. Please don’t worry: you will be very welcome here with us.’
Well, I didn’t know whether to smile in relief or burst out crying again. I had passed such a miserable night and, if truth be told, I was feeling just as lonely and frightened in the light of day as I had when I’d gone up to bed. And just as I had been wondering how I could possibly come to terms with life as a servant – albeit a privileged one – the most important man below stairs had taken the trouble to put me at my ease. I could have hugged him.
Throughout the course of that first day I was gradually introduced to the rest of the staff. Under Mr Latter was a footman and a pantry boy, sometimes known as a hallboy. The way it worked was that a lad went into service at the age of around 14 (just as soon as he’d got a basic education, so that he could read and write and do simple arithmetic): he’d start out as a hallboy, which meant looking after the butler’s clothes and basically being his dogsbody. For the hallboy (and for all the under servants, for that matter), Mr Latter was as close as you could get to God. The next level up was footman, and hallboys were meant to gradually work their way up to this less lowly position: how long it took really depended on the ability and intelligence of the boy in question – as well as how quickly the person above him got promoted or moved on to service in another great household.
The footman’s duties were just as onerous as the kitchen maid’s, though in different ways and parts of the house. Below stairs he was expected to clean and polish all the silverware – cutlery, of course, but ornamental objects such as candlesticks and anything else that might be used by the family on a daily basis – all under Mr Latter’s stern gaze and precise direction. I would, before long, see how this worked in action and get a glimpse of the very serious security measures Mr Latter imposed.
Upstairs the footman would be required to wait upon the Earl and the Countess at breakfast, lunch and dinner. And if they had guests – as most great families often did – there was far too much for one footman to do. There had once, I gathered, been three footmen employed at Crome Court but it was another sign of the straitened times that their number had been whittled down to just one. So, whenever there was a dinner party or other entertainment going on in the reception rooms upstairs, Roland – the chauffeur who had met me from the station – would be pressed into service as a second footman.
Now, I’ve said there was a social divide between the head servants and those classified as beneath them – and it was a pretty strict divide, I can tell you. But there was another demarcation line in the servants’ quarters and that was sex: the people under Mr Latter’s direct control were all men, while the female staff all reported to Winnie. In addition to her two skivvies (as I came to think of them) in the kitchen, there were two housemaids – one senior, one junior. It was the more junior one who had woken me up that morning with a cup of tea and the news that I had a hot bath ready and waiting. Her name, it turned out, was Miriam and, since I can’t remember much about her at all, I rather think that she must have been told to mind her Ps and Qs around me because I was a head servant.
The head housemaid – who was in charge of the other two and reported directly to Winnie – was Elizabeth Burridge. She treated me well and with respect but I didn’t get the sense that I would have an ally in her. However, the second housemaid, Dorothy Clark, was a different kettle of fish and I sensed from that first morning that she and I would get on. Believe me, I was very much in need of a friend in this vast, strange house and just a few minutes chatting with Dorothy in between her numerous duties made me think that I had found one.
Does all this talk of head servants and lesser staff, of hierarchies and a social order within a social order make your head spin? It’s very different to the world we know now, of course, and I shouldn’t blame you if you scratched your head and wondered what it was all for and why it had to be all so formal. The reason I shouldn’t blame you at all is because that’s exactly what I was thinking as the day wore on. Goodness, what a carry-on it all was: I didn’t feel so much like a fish out of water as one who has been filleted, dressed and served up on one of the big silver platters Mr Latter kept safely under lock and key!
And all of this was just downstairs. I hadn’t even met my mistress yet – much less begun to find out precisely what my duties were to be. But that wasn’t to last too much longer. Late in the afternoon Mr Latter came downstairs and told me that her Ladyship wanted to see me in her boudoir. I’d barely time to wonder what a boudoir might be, or the difference between this and a bedroom, when I was led up the big stone steps to the family’s rooms on the second floor. A firm yet respectful knock on a closed door and Mr Latter left me alone, waiting to be summonsed into my employer’s presence. And I wished the floor – which I somehow registered as being richly carpeted – would open up and swallow me, Mr Latter, Dorothy, Winnie and the whole house full of servants and gentry all in one go.
Chapter Six
Addressing and Dressing Milady
‘Come.’
The voice was firm and confident: not loud but it carried and what it carried most of all was strength. With my stomach full of butterflies I opened the door and saw Nesta, Countess of Coventry sitting at her dressing table.
It must have been around 5pm because she was beginning to get herself ready for dinner. She stood up as I walked across the room and the first thing that struck me was how tall she was. I’m only a little shrimp – five foot nothing, just like Mum and Dad – and the Countess towered above me. She must have been six feet if she was an inch. That’s tall even today but 80 years ago people in Britain were shorter than they are now – I think the national diet wasn’t as good back then – and so Lady Coventry’s height was even more unusual.
The next thing I noticed was her hair: it was thick and black and wavy and, my goodness, it was long. I must have looked like a star-struck girl but I was astonished to see that it came all the way down her back to her waist. Just as this was going through my head it dawned on me that I hadn’t the faintest idea how to address my new mistress, nor what she would call me. But the Countess soon sorted that out.
‘Welcome, Mulley,’ she said and I saw quickly how things were going to be: no first names, no Miss Mulley – I was to be known just by my last name from now on. And if that wasn’t enough to let me know my place, the next sentence certainly was.
‘You will address me as “Milady”, Mulley. Not “Lady Coventry”, or “Your Ladyship” – always “Milady”. Do you understand?’
I nodded dumbly.
‘Your duties are to help me with anything I need. You will be in charge of my wardrobe.’
I looked around the room, looking for a big wooden cupboard, but couldn’t see one: what was I supposed to do with a wardrobe? And how, since there didn’t seem to be one visible? If she saw my confusion, my mistress didn’t show it but, in any event, moved swiftly on to an explanation.
‘You will be responsible for my clothes, Mulley: you will get my day clothes ready each evening and, while I bathe the next morning, you will lay them out for me on the bed. On the days when I am going to hounds I shall be up very early, so you must lay my hunting attire out the night before and have a bath ready on my return with freshly laundered day wear for me to put on afterwards.’
Well, that was a first for me: I’d never heard the phrase ‘going to hounds’, nor been involved in anything to do with hunting, and had to make a bit of a leap to guess that she was apparently talking about chasing afte
r foxes. I hoped I wasn’t expected to have anything to do with that! ‘Every morning – whether I go hunting or not – and every afternoon, I shall require you to brush my hair. One full hour in the morning and one half hour before dinner.’
I stole another look at her flowing tresses: didn’t the gentry ever brush their own hair? How strange. Still, it plainly wasn’t my place to say anything, so I just nodded.
‘Now, can you cut hair?’
Well, I was about to say yes, that everyone of my class and upbringing knew how to chop the ends of each other’s hair and generally make it look respectable – no fancy hairdressers for us. But something made me realise that hacking away at my sister’s locks wasn’t quite the same thing as trimming and styling the hair of a Countess: I shook my head.
‘Oh. Well, we shall just have to send you for training. You can, of course, sew and make clothes – that was your trade, wasn’t it?’
Here I knew I was on firmer ground and answered, with an inner confidence, even if outwardly I was quaking in my sensible shoes.
‘Yes, Milady. I’m a trained dressmaker and tailor. I can take care of anything which needs repairing and make any clothes you would like.’
‘Good. You will also look after my jewellery: keep it clean and polished and, of course, be responsible for its safe-keeping.’
‘Oh Lord,’ I thought. ‘Now you know you’ve landed amongst the gentry. She’s bound to have whole boxes of fabulously valuable jewels – diamonds and tiaras and suchlike – and you’re responsible for every one of them. Heaven help you if one of them gets damaged or goes missing: you’ll be out on your ear before you can say sorry.’