by Hilda Newman
There was – of course – no alcohol. That’s another thing that always strikes me as completely wrong in the television dramas: they seem to be opening bottles of beer or sneaking a few sips of port at every possible opportunity. I can honestly say that below stairs at Croome Court was always strictly teetotal. Tea – the cup that cheers, as the old advert said – was the only drink we ever saw.
But there would be games – parlour games involving all the staff: pass the parcel or charades were the favourites. And it was during one of these games that Christmas 1938 lived up to the spirit of the year itself. Somehow – I still don’t know how – Winnie fell down some steps while balancing a cup of tea in her hand. She was quite badly hurt and it took us a long time to settle her down and make sure no bones were broken. ‘Here we go again,’ I thought. ‘It’s been a chapter of accidents and it doesn’t look like stopping.’
In fact, the only good thing to come out of that whole day was that I discovered I didn’t like smoking. Once we had got Winnie sat down, more or less comfortably, someone brought out a packet of Craven A cigarettes: these were one cut above Woodbines – well, it was Christmas – and had a little band of cork around the end you put in your mouth (in those days filters on cigarettes were unheard of), which made it look a little more posh than your average cigarette. It was also widely believed – and this was probably a legacy of the war in the trenches of France – that ‘having a gasper’ was just the ticket if you’d had a nasty shock.
‘Go on, Miss Mulley,’ one of the footmen called. ‘It’ll do you good – and what with the time of year, you should live a bit!’
So I took my first pull on a cigarette – feeling very glad that Mum and Dad weren’t here to see such ‘fast’ behaviour by their eldest daughter – and I coughed and spluttered so much I thought Mr Latter would have to call for the doctor. Even when I recovered from that, I felt horribly sick for the rest of the day and I resolved never, ever to touch a cigarette again. Which is why, I think, I have lived a while: for 97 years, in fact.
Chapter Twelve
War: ‘We Have a Clear Conscience’
Sunday, 1 January 1939
Dear Mum and Dad
Happy New Year! I wish that I could be with you and Joan and Jim, but I’m making the best of things here at Croome. Today I went to church as usual in the morning and then Roland Newman took me back to his parents’ house for our traditional Sunday lunch. Do write and tell me what you all got up to at home. I miss Stamford and though the fare was very tasty this lunchtime I would have given anything for a jolly good Stamford pie!
How is the weather with you? It is very blowy here and the wind is positively whistling around the Court. The clouds look very threatening and I shouldn’t be surprised if we have snow before too many days have passed. I am sitting in front of the coal fire in my bedroom to write to you. At least I’m kept warm!
Do write back when you can and send all my love to Joan and Jim.
Your loving daughter
Molly
The first month of January 1939 was indeed a blustery affair. It was as if the weather was taking its cue from the worsening international situation and was doing its level best to depress the whole country. After an unseasonal burst of mildness, by the end of the month the hills were blanketed in drifts of snow, some of them almost three feet deep. It put a dampener on all our spirits below stairs at Croome Court and for a time stopped even the Countess – normally the hardiest of souls – from venturing out in search of foxes.
When the weather did improve, Milady was back riding to hounds and on occasion she took her oldest children with her. I had seen little of Lady Anne and Lady Joan in my time at Croome because they were generally away at boarding school. I had got to know the two youngest children, Lady Maria and little Bill (as we always called him), and I think we had begun to build quite a real friendship. Although they were mainly the responsibility of Mrs Lovett, the governess, when she had her day off, the little ones came to me. In 1939 Lady Maria was eight years old and a lovely, friendly little thing; Bill was five and a little less loving, but all the same they both liked to come and spend time with me in my big room on the top floor – sometimes when they should have been in the nursery or the schoolroom. I rather think that Mrs Lovett didn’t always live up to her name and that the youngsters found me warmer and happier to be with.
The older two girls were by now what we would call teenagers (there was no such word). Lady Anne was 17 and Lady Joan 15, and everything that is difficult and wilful about girls of that age today was concentrated in the younger one – indeed, it was magnified by her privilege and status. I quickly came to realise that my earliest fears about Lady Joan were coming to fruition – and in spades: she was, frankly, a bit of a madam.
This manifested itself mainly in a cast-iron belief that she was allowed to do exactly as she fancied and that no one – certainly not below-stairs staff – could gainsay her. Even a head servant like me or Mr Latter was subject to her whims and her temper.
‘Mulley,’ she said to me one day – all imperious and haughty – ‘Mulley, I want to do this today and you are not to tell me otherwise.’ I can’t recall exactly what it was but I knew right enough that it was something she was not supposed to be up to and, if I allowed her to get away with it, my head would be on the block.
‘I’m sorry, Lady Joan,’ said I. ‘You know that Her Ladyship would not permit that, so I am afraid I must say no to you.’ I said it as politely as I could (although I didn’t feel terribly much like being deferential to this rude little slip of a girl). Still, she was an aristocrat, the daughter of my employer, and a certain courtesy was required of me.
‘If you try and stop me, I shall tell Mama and then you will be in trouble,’ the little minx pouted. ‘In fact, if you dare to get in my way, I shall have you sacked – so there!’ Well, my hands were itching: here was a spoiled little madam who needed a fairly swift spanking for her rudeness – and that’s exactly what she would have got had she tried anything of that sort with my Mum and Dad. Say what you like about corporal punishment but, when I was growing up, a child jolly well knew his or her place – and cheeking an adult, let alone threatening to have her dismissed from her position, would have been dealt with swiftly and finally with the back of a hairbrush. And I tell you what, people like us learned that lesson from an early age and it served us well in later life.
I must confess that it did cross my kind to give into her little Ladyship: after all, the Countess could be abrupt enough when it came to dealing with her servants and I had no way of knowing if crossing her darling daughter wasn’t going to finish up with me out on the big cold step, suitcase in hand and heading back to Stamford in disgrace.
But we Mulleys are made of sterner stuff than that. ‘Don’t you think about that for one minute, Hilda Mary Mulley,’ I told myself sharply. ‘Madam here is not going to stamp her pretty little foot and have you dancing to her tune. Even if it isn’t a big thing that she wants to do today, give in this one time and she’ll have you forever more. Stand your ground – and hope for the best.’
‘Well, Lady Joan,’ I said, trying to sound more confident than I really felt. ‘If that’s what you must do, I suggest you go straight to Her Ladyship and do it right away. That way we’ll both know who was right, won’t we?’
For a moment it looked like she might call my bluff, just as I was trying to call hers. It felt absurd – here was I, a grown woman with a good training in tailoring as well as in life, going toe to toe with a remarkably confident – no, arrogant – young lady of the gentry. I held my breath.
In the finish, she turned on her heel and stalked off in a good old-fashioned paddy. I didn’t see her for the rest of the day – ‘Sulking,’ I thought to myself ‘Sulking little a spoiled child.’ – and I never heard a word about it from my mistress. I took it, therefore, that I had won and that Lady Joan had thought better of running off to tell tales, let alone get me the sack.
But ba
ck in my room that night I did begin to worry. Oh, I was sure I’d been right to stand up to the little madam but there was something in her blazing eyes and unnatural self-importance that boded ill for the future. ‘You’ll come to a bad end, my proud little Lady,’ I thought. ‘A very bad end indeed, if you’re not careful.’
As spring turned to summer, we all of us had much greater worries on our minds. The clouds of war were gathering and casting a sombre, fearful mood over the whole country. ‘If Hitler has his way, we’ll be back in the trenches by Christmas,’ was the gloomy view of the footmen in the servants’ hall – an ironic echo of the optimistic phrase uttered by ordinary people as we prepared for the Great War: it’ll all be over by Christmas.
Nowadays I don’t think so many people know as much as we did about what was going on the world – even with all the television channels and the Internet and suchlike. I wonder sometimes if anyone knows much about the United Nations and who’s doing what in it where, or even if they know what it’s for. Well, the United Nations didn’t exist yet – it would take another world war to bring it about – but after all the suffering and death of the Great War a League of Nations had been set up to try and ensure world peace. It was a pretty inefficient body, that’s for sure, yet people pinned their hopes on it and so we followed the news about its latest failures (and they were legion) with a sort of groaning, inward dread. So when Nazi Germany withdrew from the League, we knew that war was only a matter of time.
Within weeks of Hitler walking out of the League of Nations – ‘taking his bat home’ was how it was seen below stairs – we had a pretty good idea what would be the spark to set all of Europe aflame again. The strutting little man with the stupid moustache told the world that Germany would no longer honour its promise not to attack Poland. Again, I’m struck by how closely ordinary people followed the news and understood its significance back then. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have all the sideshow nonsense of celebrity and glamour but everyone knew that Poland was going to be the sticking point. Czechoslovakia had been bad enough but the Prime Minister had managed to buy time, claiming that it was ‘a little country far away of which we know nothing’. Well, that was largely true – just as it was of Poland – but it didn’t stop us caring and worrying and knowing that, if Britain didn’t do something, Hitler was just going to march all over everywhere. Would people of my age today have had the same sort of understanding and reaction? I wonder: I really do.
Not that we had much chance of not knowing something was coming our way. In April the government reinstated conscription for men ages 20 to 21. Not since the end of the Great War 21 years earlier had Britain set in train a mass mobilisation of the nation’s young men: it was the first peacetime conscription in British history. The first stage was a requirement for them to register for six months of military training but we all knew that this was only a preliminary to the real business of building up a full-time army strong enough to take on Hitler and the Nazis.
Mum wrote to me in the summer to let me know that call-up papers had arrived for Jim. It felt terrible. Jim was my little brother and the person I’d been closest to growing up. How could he be going away to train as a soldier? But he was and I felt useless and powerless to give him any sort of comfort, stuck miles out in the country at Croome as I was.
As if to spite us, the weather turned very warm and blessed the country with a beautiful summer. As Roland and I walked out around the Croome estate, sitting peacefully by the river, lulled by its gentle noises and warmed by the sun on our backs, I looked around and thought, ‘What will happen to all this? Surely it won’t all be swept away?’ But I think I knew in my heart of hearts that the coming war would change England – the old, slow, traditional England with its quaint ways and its rigid class system – and change it forever.
The news on the wireless was our constant companion. I don’t think there was a single bulletin that wasn’t listened to in total silence. But just as the plummy tones of the announcer delivered bad news after bad news, the BBC came up with something inspired to keep our spirits up. It was called ITMA – and I think it was one of the most important weapons we had on the home front for the entire war. ITMA stood for ‘It’s That Man Again’. This had originally been a wonderfully sarcastic headline about Hitler in the Daily Express as he strutted about Europe, shouting and posturing. I like to think that this determination to poke fun at the man who was turning all of Europe into a bloodbath was typical of the English spirit of pluck – ‘It’s that man again. Doesn’t he look ridiculous?’ Anyway, the BBC took the headline and turned it into the title of a radio comedy series, starring Tommy Handley, then the nation’s favourite funny man.
The programme was written as close as possible to transmission because the BBC wanted the scripts to lighten the effect of the latest news with a little gentle send-up. It featured dozens of characters with silly names – Mrs Mopp, the cleaner and Colonel Chinstrap, who was just what you imagine him to be. I read later that the pompous old soldier on whom the character was based was an avid listener to the programme but totally failed to connect the character with himself, and commented, ‘Wonderful character. I knew silly buggers like that in India.’
These characters became a vital part of what we would today call the national consciousness. I don’t think there was a person in the land who didn’t know about Mona Lott, the depressed laundrywoman, or Ali Oop, the Middle Eastern salesman. And the show’s catchphrases were adopted by the whole country – rich and poor. Everywhere you went you heard, ‘It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going,’ ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ and, ‘TTFN – Ta Ta For Now.’ One of the most famous – ‘After you, Claude. No, after you, Cecil.’ – was a natural for below-stairs staff, but would also be taken up by RAF pilots as they queued for attack on German planes during the Battle of Britain.
ITMA, then, was an antidote to all the dire news piling up on everyone’s doorstep. And as August slid to a balmy end, we were going to need as much of that antidote as we could swallow, in the face of Germany’s naked intention to invade Poland – we had all been shocked to read that August how Hitler had called a meeting of his military leadership at Obersalzberg and, in a chilling speech, given instructions to ‘kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language’. If any of us had harboured any doubts, this was the moment we knew we were up against a madman. At the end of the month our country and France signed an agreement to come to Poland’s aid in the event of an attack. When we heard the news on the wireless in the servants’ hall, we all looked at one another: this was the last chance for peace. Faced with fighting another war with Britain, would Hitler back down or return the world to carnage?
On the morning of Sunday, 3 September 1939, the BBC advised the nation to wait by its sets to hear a broadcast by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. We would normally have all trooped up to Croome church for the compulsory service – and done so willingly, since prayers to the Almighty seemed our best hope in this dark time. Instead, we clustered around the wireless. At 11.15am the Prime Minister spoke to the people, rich and poor, commoner and aristocrat, servant and master.
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful.
Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened, and although he now says he pu
t forward reasonable proposals, which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement. The proposals were never shown to the Poles, nor to us, and, although they were announced in a German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to hear comments on them, but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier.
His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.
We and France are today, in fulfilment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack on her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe has become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.
At such a moment as this the assurances of support that we have received from the Empire are a source of profound encouragement to us. The Government have made plans under which it will be possible to carry on the work of the nation in the days of stress and strain that may be ahead. But these plans need your help. You may be taking your part in the fighting services or as a volunteer in one of the branches of Civil Defence. If so you will report for duty in accordance with the instructions you have received. You may be engaged in work essential to the prosecution of war for the maintenance of the life of the people – in factories, in transport, in public utility concerns, or in the supply of other necessaries of life. If so, it is of vital importance that you should carry on with your jobs.