Diamonds at Dinner

by Hilda Newman

  I have to say that fox hunting never held much appeal for me and I can’t read something like that without feeling a twinge of sadness and sympathy for the poor beasts chased over hill and dale for the pleasure of the gentry. But then again, I had been brought up in a town and knew nothing of country pursuits and it’s fair to say that the Croome Hunt included among its number a goodly proportion of local farmers who presumably had a good reason to get up at 3am and risk life and limb in pursuit of their quarry.

  Ever since the 9th Earl founded the Croome, the Coventrys had always been installed as Master of the Hunt. This was no mere honorary position – though it was that too, since it reflected the fact that His Lordship was the biggest single financial contributor to the cost of running it and paid for the upkeep of the pack, as well as employing the staff necessary for maintaining it.

  The Croome was quartered at kennels over the fields from the estate in the village of Kinnersley. This was where the packs of hounds lived and where the hunt would gather in the darkness to prepare for their day’s sport. Since the crackdown on fox hunting a few years ago, packs like the Croome have been reduced in size and in the number of times they meet. I suppose many people today will never have seen a big hunt gather. Whatever you think about the rights and wrongs – and, as I’ve said, I have my own views on that – it is a remarkable sight. Oscar Wilde may have called fox hunting ‘the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable’ but to see those ‘unspeakables’ in their bright red coats (confusingly called pinks) and the ladies in their smart black coats, their slim necks swaddled in white stocks – well, it’s a piece of Old England and even for me it stirs the blood.

  You might have noticed at the start of that article from the Worcester Evening News that the Master was ill and not able to hunt that morning. As the season wore on, I began to realise that this was a far from unusual occurrence. Whilst my mistress was a dedicated and enthusiastic huntswoman, His Lordship was often ‘too ill’ to join her and lead the pack.

  In the three months I had been in service I had only caught rare glimpses of the Earl. Of course, attending to him was no part of my duties – that was Mr Latter’s responsibility as His Lordship’s valet (as well as being butler to the house). But I did begin to wonder at how little Lord Coventry was seen. In my conversations, such as they were, with Her Ladyship, I had no doubt that she and her husband were truly in love: theirs was not one of those marriages of convenience or arrangement that the aristocracy so often go in for. But she would occasionally let slip that His Lordship wouldn’t be doing this or that – whatever the day held in store for her – because he had taken to his bed. It all seemed a bit mysterious and I resolved to pick up what explanation I could from the snatches of gossip I sometimes heard in the servants’ quarters.

  Milady returned from hunting in the middle of the afternoon. She was flushed with excitement – if not with success, since a brace of foxes had eluded her and the Croome hounds – and covered from head to toe in mud. She stomped in, still wearing her boots caked with earth and, before I could step forward to greet her, Mr Latter had silently arrived and was helping her remove them. They disappeared together. A few minutes later the Countess emerged clad in her dressing gown.

  ‘I’m ready for my bath now, Mulley,’ she said, striding across the floor. ‘Please see to it directly.’ As I rushed to draw the water and prepare everything she would need, it dawned on me that, to the best of my knowledge, my mistress had not eaten a thing all day, had ridden up to 20 miles and jumped countless stiles and fences. Yet, other than looking a bit like she had been dragged backwards through a hedge, she showed no sign of weariness or fatigue. ‘Well, now that just tells you something,’ I thought to myself. ‘While the master is apparently so poorly that he can’t even make it out of bed, Her Ladyship has taken half the county in her stride without so much as a pause. Your mistress is made of strong stuff, my girl, and you’ll have your work cut out to keep up.’

  While Her Ladyship bathed, I went back down into the servants’ quarters in search of Mr Latter. I wasn’t sure what was to be done about the Countess’s muddy clothes but, since she might very well be needing them again the next day, I was determined to make sure everything was washed, dried and ironed ready, just in case.

  I found the butler patiently scraping mud off Milady’s riding boots onto an old newspaper. Of her jacket, chemise and stock there was no sign.

  ‘It’s all right, Miss Mulley,’ he said, sensing my uncertainty. ‘I take care of Her Ladyship’s boots and her clothes have been taken to the laundry. If you would be so good as to iron them when they return that will be as much as your duties require.’

  It only took me one look at the state of the boots and the mud-splattered newspaper to feel rather relieved on that score. If my duties were as limited as this on hunting days, the Countess could ride to hounds every day of the week so far as I was concerned.

  Since we’re on the subject of duties and newspapers, I’d like to share with you an article published in the Worcester Evening News that year. It reported on an apparent trend among servants to demand – and be granted – lavish salaries and a whole heap of luxuries. I have to say that it made my eyes water because nothing in it matched my experiences at Croome Court – and I was pretty certain that, when Dorothy Clark or Mrs Sapstead saw it, they would explode with laughter.

  EXCLUSIVE MODEL MAID:

  THE MODERN GIRL’S DEMAND

  The modern housemaid demands so much in the way of facilities for her pleasure that what some mistresses regard as the model maid seems about as elusive as the scarlet pimpernel. Mistresses broken and shattered in health by the constant worry, seek her here, seek her there, indeed they seek her everywhere, and what a treasure should they find one … ‘I am beginning to think that the model maid is as extinct as the Dodo,’ lamented a mistress who told an Evening News representative that she had tried four servants in less than six months. ‘They want all and give little,’ she added irritably. Other employers were equally emphatic and some of them declared that they would prefer to do their own housework than be dependent upon maids who left without the slightest provocation.

  The head of a large servants registry office consoled with these harassed mistresses. ‘Girls will not go into domestic service,’ she said, ‘unless they are assured of every possible comfort. The position is almost as embarrassing for us as for the mistresses. It is almost impossible to persuade a girl to take a position where she would be lonely. In any case she invariably demands the use of the wireless and gramophone and two or three evenings off a week to go to the pictures.

  There is a parlour-maid employed near Hampstead Heath who owns her own house and goes riding on the heath at least once each day.

  ‘Maids have even been known to ride in Rotten Row,’ an employer told the reporter. The Duchess of Atholl once suggested that mistresses did not give sufficient thought to providing servants with prettily decorated bedrooms or offer sufficient facilities for indoor and outdoor recreation. ‘We have even gone to that length,’ was the comment of a mistress. One employer said she had discovered the secret of keeping her maid. ‘I allow Phyllis to entertain her young man in the kitchen when she is not off-duty.’

  I have to say I’d never read such rubbish in my life. Three evenings off per week? Going riding in Rotten Row (which I’d never heard of but turned out to be a famous pathway in London’s Hyde Park)? And owning a house? Good grief, if this was the life some servants were living, I can assure you it wasn’t what we were used to at Croome. And as for ladies being ‘broken and shattered in health’ – well, from what I’d just seen, my mistress was as healthy as a horse and probably a great deal less shattered than the one she’d just ridden for a full day. No, the newspaper was not to be relied on, I decided.

  As it happened, I was closer to the truth than I knew. For that year trouble was brewing – trouble which would eventually turn the country on its head, despite the best efforts of newspapers to keep it all
under wraps. It began in December with word that the King’s health was declining. His Majesty had been seriously ill for many years, the result, largely, of his habit of chain smoking cigarettes. But 1935 was the silver jubilee of his accession to the throne and, in a way that I don’t think people understand today, he was both a distant and severe father figure to the nation and, at the same time, genuinely loved.

  So news of his latest illness was received with solemnity and sadness. In the servants’ quarters at Croome it was discussed in hushed voices, as if our chatter could somehow disturb the King in his bed more than a hundred miles away at Windsor. It cast a shadow over the growing excitement of the season.

  Christmas was coming and what a sense of excitement began to take over the Court. Deliveries of food and drink began arriving almost daily, keeping Winnie busy in her pantry, while in his room Mr Latter set to, to write down all the fine wines, ports and brandies in the large ledger he kept as the necessary records of what was in the vast cellar full of alcoholic drinks. The Earl and the Countess were never great entertainers but, as the month wore on, so did the frequency of their dinner parties increase. These were grand affairs and Winnie would hardly know if she was coming or going, what with making all the courses – and there were several on each occasion – from scratch. I, of course, had little part in the proceedings but for the poor kitchen and scullery maid it was a time of constant scrubbing of vegetables and beating of eggs, while the ovens positively groaned with freshly baked bread and whatever fish, fowl or flesh was on the menu. But if I was, by dint of my position, somewhat apart from all that was going on, the Coventrys’ dinner parties did bring me two very welcome benefits.

  The first was that Winnie put aside the leftovers (and some which might not strictly ever have seen the tables upstairs!) and we head servants had first go at them. In truth, this was something of a double treat since, not only were we dining on very fine fare indeed but, when it came to our normal below-stairs meals, Winnie was not what you could call the most careful of cooks. Many was the time in that year – and those which followed – when a row would break out in the kitchen over the vittals we were served up. It would typically start with a sigh from Mr Latter and a regretful expression as to the delights of our dinner. ‘Winnie, Winnie – what have you done to this?’ would be his normal opening remark, to be followed by a generally good-natured – though undoubtedly pointed – ribbing over something that was overdone, or underdone or just plain not there at all. Now, Winnie Sapstead was, in many ways, quite highly strung and it wouldn’t take long before her dander was up and she and Mr Latter would be going at it hammer and tongs – and (at least figuratively) soup ladles and saucepans as well. But give Winnie her due, the dinners she and her staff prepared for the gentry – well, they were a fine sight to see and a delight to taste. And so when we got to sup from their menus, it was very welcome indeed.

  The other benefit which came my way walked into the servants’ quarters on the first fancy dinner party that December. Roland Newman had put aside his chauffeuring and waterworks duties to come and help out as an assistant footman. He was quickly put to work by Mr Latter, whose job it was to make sure that the servants waiting on the groaning tables upstairs did so almost without being noticed. But I noticed him, and he noticed me, and both of us were pleased to do so.

  Christmas wasn’t just about the increased pace of life upstairs: it meant a little something coming our way below them too – and also the highlight of the year for people in service: the Servants’ Ball.

  In those days every great house had a Servants’ Ball – though not, for reasons you’ll see, all at the same time of year. In the grandest of them all – places such as Welbeck Abbey, where the Duke of Portland employed more than 60 staff in the house, with a further 200 labouring away in the stables, gardens and home farm – the Ball would be an incredibly lavish affair, more grand even than many of those held by royalty today. For example, Welbeck’s annual Servants’ Ball was so huge and so posh that the Duke paid for an orchestra and 50 waiters to be brought in from London.

  At Croome – and this was possibly another sign of the money worries that were bearing down on His Lordship – the Earl didn’t go in for anything so expensive. The music was to be provided by a gramophone and, as for servants, well, we all mucked in to serve the food ourselves. But the food was good (although no alcohol was permitted) and there was to be dancing.

  ‘Her Ladyship will open the dancing by taking a turn round the floor with me,’ Mr Latter told me as the great day drew near. I looked at the floor of the servants’ hall and wondered if its rough and uneven flagstones might not catch Milady’s dainty slippers and the whole evening would come crashing down. But evidently nothing like this had ever happened and Mr Latter moved on to my role in the proceedings.

  ‘After that His Lordship will approach you and ask you for the second dance. You are, of course, to accept graciously.’ Well, I don’t know about being gracious but I certainly knew my place – and in any case, I couldn’t resist a little thrill at the prospect: here I was, Hilda Mulley, just a slip of a girl from a very humble background and, within a few months of leaving Stamford, I would be dancing cheek to cheek with one of the oldest and most noble aristocrats in the land. That was something to write home about, to be sure.

  But that thought also brought a little sadness to my mind. I would have to write and tell Mum and Dad that for the first time ever I wouldn’t be with them at Christmas. One of the prices paid for being in service was that work didn’t stop for the season: the Croome Court would still need to be kept running. For all of us below stairs, that meant that work didn’t stop as it might if you were working in a factory or in an office. Christmas Day was the one day off we were given – and even then all of the staff were required to attend the morning service in Croome church. The knowledge that I wouldn’t see Mum and Dad, or Joan and Jim, at Christmas took a bit of the edge of my excitement.

  When Christmas Eve came – the night of the Servants’ Ball – what a hustle and bustle there was throughout the house. Our routine duties continued as normal: I brought the Countess her cup of tea, ran her bath and laid out her clothes just like any normal day and, for Winnie, the work was, if anything, even more demanding than usual. But I think I detected in my mistress’s rich strong voice – which now I had come to know it, had a tinge of a lovely Welsh accent to it – a little less formality and a little more warmth.

  For my part, I was anxious to get ready for the evening. I had made myself a new dress for the occasion – a lovely long gown in my favourite dark green and trimmed with white ‘fur’ (of course, it wasn’t real fur – I couldn’t afford that on five bob a week) and I needed to make the final adjustments to it.

  The evening was set to start at 6pm and by late afternoon I was freed from my duties in time to put the finishing touches to my dress. Winnie and Mr Latter knew I had been hard at work on it for several weeks and one or other of them produced a camera – a little old Box Brownie, which, if you’ve never seen one, was really no more than a cardboard box and a tiny lens. To my absolute astonishment, they told me I was to go and put on my new gown and make my way up to the very top of the Court and then out onto the rooftop. There was a sort of a walkway up there between the roof tiles and the ornamental topping and I was to meet them up there.

  I scurried along the basement corridor and flew up the great stone staircase – I made a mental note that, if I wasn’t careful one day, I would come a cropper on the slippery steps – until I gained the sanctuary of my room. Here, with my fingers all a-fumble, I somehow managed to get into my gown and, after flapping and fussing with the trim, I climbed the steep staircase to the roof and stepped out onto what seemed to me like the battlements of some great castle.

  Mr Latter and Winnie were waiting for me and for the first time in my adult life I was told to pose for the camera. Looking at the picture now, I can see a grin on my face that stretches from ear to ear. Fancy little old me having th
eir portrait taken on the very roof of such a great house. By the time I clambered my way back down to the servants’ quarters I must have looked like the Cheshire Cat!

  At 6pm sharp my mistress swept into the big room where our ball was to be held. But of the Earl there was no sign.

  ‘His Lordship is indisposed and I am afraid he will not be able to join you all tonight,’ the Countess announced. Hmm, there it was again, that slight sense of something not being quite right. The Earl was quite a young man in those days – just 35 years of age, which was younger than Mr Latter and, indeed, Winnie. Could he really be so poorly as not to be able to spend just a few minutes with his servants on Christmas Eve?

  ‘Well,’ I thought to myself as the Countess took to the floor for the first dance with Mr Latter, ‘at least I shall be spared the embarrassment of having to step out with His Lordship this evening.’ Much as I loved dancing, I had been quietly dreading the moment when I would have to join hands with an aristocrat and, for all I knew, one or other of us was quite likely to turn the whole business into a ridiculous spectacle. ‘It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good, at least,’ I thought.

  My mistress didn’t stay long with us that evening but before she left she handed out Christmas gifts to all the staff. I think for most of them she placed a small brown envelope with a few silver coins in their outstretched hands. But for me she had something special: it was a beautiful brooch, which sparkled and shone as if the stones in it were real diamonds. I wasn’t so silly as to think that they would be real but, to me, it was the most precious thing I had ever owned and I pinned it on my new gown with pride and with a promise that I should never, ever let it go.