by Hilda Newman
The new King – George VI – was to be crowned on the day originally planned for Edward’s coronation: Wednesday, 12 May 1937. And the Earl and the Countess were among the gentry invited to be part of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey.
The servants’ quarters at Croome Court were positively bustling with excitement. After the shocking events of the previous year and the national condemnation of Edward for his selfishness in putting his own feelings before that of the country (and let me tell you that no group of people understood the idea of sacrifice so much as those of us who were in service), the coronation seemed to be a much-needed shaft of sunlight. With the Coventrys to be away from Croome, there was, in truth, very little additional work for most of the staff to do. But I, at least, was to play a part in the great day: my mistress told me that she would need me to travel with her and His Lordship down to London and to help her get ready for the ceremony.
My first task was to find and see to the gorgeous deep red shoulder-to-floor robe that she – as the wife of one of England’s most senior hereditary peers – had to wear. When I located it and went to lift it off its hanger, I let out a gasp of astonishment and nearly fell over: not because of its magnificence – though the velvet fabric was exquisite, the colour like nothing I had ever laid eyes on, and the trim of ermine softer to the touch than I would have thought possible. No, it was the sheer weight of the robe which was truly astounding. How could anyone possibly bear this on their backs for a few minutes, let alone the many hours I knew my mistress would have to wear it? Once again I was struck by just how strong Milady was.
Of course, the garment hadn’t been used for many decades – I think, in fact, it was something handed down from one Countess to the next – and needed a few nips, tucks and tweaks here and there. I can tell you that, as I laid the fabulous robe on my bed, never have I taken more care and never was my needlework so neat and precise. It felt like an enormous honour simply to touch this magnificent velvet and the prospect of my young fingers doing some careless damage filled me with dread. But happily, my hand steadied and my needle stayed true and, when I brought it back to my mistress, she expressed herself pleased with my labours.
‘Now, Mulley, we shall travel to London the day before the Coronation. We shall be staying at the house of my sister, Lady Suffield. His Lordship’s mother is sending her man to drive us: London is a long way and Roland has never been there and so will not know the streets.’
Well, I was a bit disappointed in that. It would have been lovely for Roland to have driven us down – not just for me but because he would have seen the sights of half of London decked in ribbons and bunting. I was sad he would miss this but then Milady surprised me again.
‘The BBC is, it seems, planning to film the Coronation and to show it on the new television service. I am hopeful that all the staff who remain here at Croome will be able to find someone with a set and to watch the Coronation on it. His Lordship has given the servants the day off to mark the occasion.’
Now, here was a thing! We had all heard about the BBC’s new television service but it was only available in very limited areas and, of course, no one that any of us knew could afford the enormous price of one of the television sets. I made a mental note to ask Mr Latter if there was some arrangement to be made. And then it dawned on me that, in attending the Countess on the great day, perhaps I might be captured on film and people across the country might see me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that idea but I decided to write to Mum and Dad to let them know.
‘When we arrive in London,’ my mistress continued, ‘I will need you to go to the bank and draw out my jewels. Lady Suffield’s chauffeur will accompany you and you must sign a paper to say you have received them. You will take care of them, won’t you? They are terribly valuable.’
Needless to say, that got my heart beating faster all over again. I’d never been to the big city and, as far as I was concerned, all I knew about London came from newsreels and gangster movies. Yet here I was being trusted to withdraw goodness-knows-how valuable items. What if I got robbed? Or dropped something? It was one thing cleaning and polishing Milady’s jewels here at Croome but at least they never left the four solid walls of her boudoir while I was responsible for them. It was quite a different matter to carry a King’s ransom across London – and on the day of the Coronation itself to boot. ‘Hilda, my girl, this is quite a pickle you’ve got yourself into,’ was the thought running through my mind. ‘But you’re just going to have to get your chin up, put your best foot forward and not let anyone down.’
Just as the Countess had said, on the morning before the Coronation a big Black Bentley – much grander than the Coventry’s Standard 20 – swept up the driveway to the front of the Court and the Earl, his wife and I were seated in the back. Somehow the succession of suitcases containing their clothes was stowed away in the boot and, with a purr of its powerful engine, the car set off for London. I was terribly excited but it wouldn’t have done to have shown this, so I sat demurely, speaking only when spoken to and generally trying to be as invisible as was possible in the confined space.
The 10th Earl had done away with the expense of maintaining a London address. But Lady Suffield was plainly less pressed financially, for her house turned out to be one of those great Georgian places in one of the nobbiest streets in London. As was usual, the servants’ entrance was down a steep flight of steps underneath the main front door. I made my way down them, praying that I wouldn’t come a cropper again, while struggling with my suitcase. A footman took the Earl and Countess’s luggage: at least I didn’t have to lug them inside as well.
I was a bit surprised to find that the room I was allocated was tiny and rather poky – the difference, I supposed, between living in the crowded terraces of London, rather than the space and grandeur that I had become used to. And I didn’t find Her Ladyship’s servants noticeably friendly. But nothing could spoil the tremendous thrill I felt at what was to happen on the morrow. I had been excused my normal morning duties of bringing tea and running my mistress’s bath. Instead, I was instructed to be outside the servants’ entrance at 9am sharp, respectably attired in hat, coat and gloves. At the appointed hour I ensured my modest little hat was pinned to my hair and that the seams of my stockings were perfectly straight. On the dot of nine, Lady Suffield’s chauffeur appeared at the wheel of the great Bentley. It felt very strange to be sat in the back just like one of the gentry, and there was a little glass window between the driver and me, which rather put paid to any conversation.
Off we went through the streets of the capital. On every pavement and at every corner the entire population of London seemed to have come out and be waiting for a glimpse of someone – anyone – who was part of the procession. I sunk down into my seat, not wanting anyone to think that inside the black Bentley there was a person to stare at and cheer.
I couldn’t tell you where the bank was – or even what its name was. The chauffeur escorted me into a big open hall that seemed as hushed and as reverential as a church. I barely spoke – and when I did, it was in a whisper – as I signed the papers to collect the Countess’s jewels. And when I saw what was written on the bottom of the document – the value of the items in my care was £20,000 (£2 million at today’s prices) – I was so terrified I could barely breathe. I couldn’t wait to get back to the sanctuary of the Bentley and I didn’t dare move a muscle again until I had handed over the whole lot to my mistress.
As we laid them out, one by one, my eyes must have opened wider and wider. These were not merely beautiful jewels – the like of which I had never seen – but they looked like something out of a storybook. There was even a slender diamond tiara sparkling in the morning light. I knew I would have a lot to tell Mum ad Dad in that day’s letter home. It took nearly two full hours to prepare my mistress and, when we were finished and she joined His Lordship on the steps of Lady Suffield’s house, I could have burst with pride. I had never seen anyone look so glamorous, so regal and so re
fined, and I felt truly privileged to have played my part.
Because the robes were so cumbersome and the risk of them being crushed or creased so great, I was to ride in the Bentley to Westminster Abbey with the Coventrys. Once again I drove through the streets of London and heard the cheers of the crowd, saw the sea of little paper flags being waved and had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. ‘This is a long way from Number 5, Vine Street, Stamford, Hilda Mary Mulley,’ I thought. ‘A very long way indeed and no mistake.’
As the car pulled up at the Abbey, I jumped out, ready to assist Milady and catch the back of her robe as she stepped on to the pavement. And then she and His Lordship walked calmly past the wildly cheering throng and into the cool darkness of the historic building.
‘Hop back in sharpish, please, miss,’ the chauffeur said. ‘We need to scarper from here before we block the place up solid. And if we get a bit of a move on, we can be back in time to watch the procession.’ He was as good as his word: I got back to Lady Suffield’s residence in time to join a crowd of her servants perching precariously on the edge of the house’s top-floor windows and straining to catch a glimpse of the magnificent pageantry as it paraded past our very eyes.
‘Not many people get such a bird-eye’s view of something so important,’ I told myself. ‘You’ll remember this for the rest of your life.’ And I’m pleased to say that I was not wrong.
That evening all of the servants crowded round the wireless set to witness another first: King George VI was making an address to the nation on the BBC.
It is with a very full heart I speak to you tonight. Never before has a newly crowned King been able to talk to all his peoples in their own homes on the day of his coronation. Never has the ceremony itself had so wide a significance.
I was astonished as I sat there listening to the King. Not just because it felt like he was talking directly to me – or at least to the whole country, which included me – but because his speech seemed awfully slow and laboured. His brother’s abdication address hadn’t sounded like this: maybe that’s because he wasn’t meant to be King and this, today, is what a real monarch sounds like. I couldn’t have known then that King George had a terrible stammer and that just getting the words out past his lifelong speech impediment was a truly heroic battle for a man who was just as shy as me.
I felt that the whole empire was in very truth gathered within the walls of Westminster (pause) Abbey. I rejoice that I can now (pause) speak (pause) to you all (long pause) wherever (pause again) you may be … in this personal way, the Queen and I wish health and happiness to you all, and we do not forget at this time of celebration those who are living under the shadow of sickness (a silence which seemed to last forever) and to them I would send a special message of sympathy (another pause) and good cheer.
Well, at that we did cheer. Partly out of loyalty to our country and our King; partly out of gratitude that he had finally got the words out. And then he continued with two sentences that filled me – filled all of us – with a pride in being British, which, had we but known it, we would need to rely on before too many years had passed. ‘To many millions the Crown is a symbol of unity. By the grace of God and by the will of the free peoples of the British Commonwealth, I have assumed that Crown.’
Because there were clouds gathering on the horizon that spring day in 1937. Clouds that would soon burst and wash away the last traces of the old, traditional British life. And with it, the life I had come to know.
Chapter Eleven
‘My Roll’
1938 began much in the same way as the previous year. The first dark shadow on my life appeared via the unusual event of a telephone call for me at Croome Court. The telephone in the servants’ quarters was strictly under the control of Mr Latter. The ungainly, stick-like instrument sat outside his room in the long echoing corridor and all of us – whether head servant or housemaid – knew that only he could grant the privilege of making or receiving a call. Whether because of my station in the hierarchy or whether from his habitual kindness, knowing that unlike the rest of the staff I was a long way from home, Mr Latter did let me use the telephone to speak with Mum and Dad. Of course, they didn’t possess one themselves but an arrangement had been reached whereby I would place a call to Aunt Beat at the Crown Hotel and she would nip out to bring my parents to the receiver.
But an unscheduled phone call for me was distinctly rare and, from the moment Mr Latter came to find me, I knew that it couldn’t be good news. Growing up in Stamford my best friend had been a girl called Mary Russell: we had gone to school together and played together and we were inseparable right up until the time I left to go into service. While I was away we would write to each other and she told me that she had a boyfriend who had asked for her hand in marriage. I was thrilled – she was the first person I knew and loved to be engaged.
It was my Dad on the phone. ‘Molly,’ he said (like all my family, he still called me by my childhood nickname), ‘do you think Her Ladyship would give you leave to come home for a few days? There’s been an accident.’
Even as I think about this now, my eyes fill with tears and my mind wonders at the appalling stroke of ill luck – quite literally as it turned out – which befell my closest friend. It’s the sort of random accident that today might make headlines in your local paper or an item on the local news: Mary Russell had been electrocuted in the bath.
It seemed that she had been having a bath when a terrible and violent electrical storm landed right on top of Stamford. Amid ear-piercing peals of thunder, a bolt of lightning had hit her house and had somehow ended up earthing itself on her bath water. She had been killed instantly.
I can’t remember what I said to Dad, or even if I was capable of saying anything. Big sobbing tears seemed to belch out from my slight frame and I shook with the pain of them. Mr Latter must have wondered what this terrible news was and I think he took the phone from me, told Dad that he was see to it I placed a call back shortly and sat me down in his room. Winnie probably brought me a cup of tea – a big steaming cup of tea, stirred stiff with sugars was the ground state of first aid in those days – though I don’t remember drinking it. And the more I thought about poor Mary, the more I sobbed and the more Mr Latter grew alarmed.
He must have slipped away and found the Countess at some point because a little while later he returned to tell me that I was to have a few days off immediately and that I must make arrangements to go home to Stamford so that I could be at the funeral and (just as importantly) so Mum and Dad could take care of me.
‘But what about Her Ladyship?’ I asked. ‘What will she do and who will take care of her?’
‘Do not concern yourself with that, Miss Mulley,’ Mr Latter told me kindly and calmly. ‘All will be taken care of, and the most important thing is to get you home directly.’
Well, I was taken aback: I’d never heard of any of the servants at Croome being given time off. We weren’t even given our birthdays off and, although we would have been allowed to attend a family funeral, Mary wasn’t a relative, let alone a close one and, no matter how cut up I was, in the normal scheme of things I would have been expected to take it on the chin and carry on. As things turned out, I wasn’t actually given time off: my mistress had merely agreed for me to take a few days of my one week’s holiday a little early. Still, at least she let me go.
I was shaken by Mary’s death: it was my first encounter with the passing of someone I knew and cared about and it hit me hard. Even when I returned to the Court I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were somehow all living under a curse – or at least were going through a spell of truly rotten luck.
The misfortune carried on. My romance with Roland – or Roll as he was to me now that I knew him much better – had continued, although we had to be very careful about keeping it under the strictest of wraps, at least from the Countess. Mr Latter, of course, spotted the signs and was very good about keeping mum, but he did let me know that, if Her Ladyship f
ound out, it would not go well for me.
‘You know the rules, Miss Mulley. Fraternisation between the servants is not permitted at Croome. And whilst you are young and I have no wish to be, as you might say, a wet blanket, you must know that, if the veil of discretion ever slips and word reaches the Countess, I should not, I fear, be able to help you.’
But I was young and Roland and I were falling in love. I think our romance had really started during those times he drove me to Worcester for my hairdressing course and, the more we had got to know one another, the more it seemed silly to deny our feelings. We began not just to look forward to our Sunday lunches at his parents’ home but to feel they were an essential part of our lives.
I suppose it was inevitable – even without the run of bad luck that seemed to have dogged the lives of everyone at the Court – that we would be found out sooner or later. But I don’t think either of us could have imagined the dramatic way our secret would be exposed.
Our Sunday jaunts to Severn Stoke always followed the same routine. After church Roland would fetch his big leather coat and his motorcycle and wait for me a little way off from the house. We had grown used to meeting secretly in the Temple and the Rotunda (my early hopes for their romantic potential had been realised!) and it was easy to find a place to rendezvous in the vast Croome estate. At the start of the year Roland had bought a leather coat for me to wear while clutching on to him on the pillion. And, as it happened, it was a good job he did – though I wish we’d had helmets as well.
One Sunday just like any other we met up, set off and were puttering along happily with nothing more on our minds than the prospect of a big nourishing lunch and an afternoon of walking hand in hand through the fields. The road that leads into Severn Stoke had – and has to this day – a very sharp hairpin bend, just beside the pub. As we turned the corner, rumbling along at a decent lick, we saw a beer lorry parked sideways across the entire width of the road. There was no chance of braking and no chance of going round it: without a shadow of doubt we were heading straight for its middle.