Servants' Hall: A Real Life Upstairs, Downstairs Romance

by Margaret Powell

  Back at our local, our spirits lightened considerably over a glass of port and lemon, and a few jokes with Morgan the barman. After a second glass, Mary, giggling, said, ‘If that old dragon of a woman could see us now, she’d be on her knees praying for our souls – what time she wasn’t upbraiding her daughter for having such immoral friends. Margaret, did you notice what Rose said about the black girl, “seduced her too”. D’you think Rose slept with Gerald before they were married’?

  ‘I wouldn’t think so, Mary. Rose would have thought it a mortal sin. In fact, I belive that Rose thinks having relations with one’s husband is mortal sin, unless it’s for the purpose of having children. And I hope Rose doesn’t expect us to find her a house in London, we’ve done our duty looking for her ma’s place.’

  ‘I wonder if Morgan’s married’ said Mary. I could tell that all this talk about the matrimonial state had forcibly reminded her of her single status.

  ‘Of course he is, Mary. Why he’s fifty if he’s a day. But you wouldn’t want to marry a barman, look at the awkward hours they work.’

  ‘I’d marry the devil himself to get out of domestic service, I’ve had too much of it,’ said Mary. She had had three glasses of port and lemon by this time and had become quite lachrymose. Fortunately it was time to leave so, both of us sucking our Phul-Nana cachous – I didn’t want staid Mr Kite to know I’d been drinking – we went back to our respective basements.

  27

  On our one free day each month we were allowed occasionally as a rare treat to stay out until midnight. If we went to a dance this was a great advantage as far as getting an escort home was concerned. Although we were constantly hearing that we’d never find a decent young man at a dance, it was certain that at least we would find a few unattached males there. The young ladies above stairs could meet young men in what I called the proper way, by being introduced to them at debs’ coming-out parties and other social occasions, but where could servant girls meet the opposite sex? There were no clubs for us, for one thing our hours were too erratic. So we picked them up wherever we could; at a dance, in Hyde Park or a Lyons teashop.

  Realising that I’d been on what then seemed a fairly long train journey, Mr Kite was agreeably surprised to see me back at eleven o’clock; he’d never go to bed until he’d made sure that every door was bolted. It was not necessary, nor was it part of his duties in the place to wait up for me; I had a key to the basement door and was capable of seeing that all was safe before I retired. But our butler was loth to relinquish a task which, in his previous situations, had always been his prerogative. I’m sure that he saw himself as the strong male servant guarding the lives – and morals – of the flighty maids. Furthermore, Mr Kite never forgot that his grandfather had held the very highest position open to domestic servants; he was steward in a stately country house. It had to be an extremely wealthy family that employed a steward, because such a high position meant that he had a retinue of house servants under him. In such large establishments, where the ordinary servants seldom saw their employers, the steward and the housekeeper were the bosses.

  Perhaps I flattered myself, but I thought Mr Kite rather liked the rare occasions when he and I sat up over a cup of cocoa when the others had gone to bed, talking about previous situations and employers. Domestic service was, and would always be, Mr Kite’s whole life – I hoped that it wouldn’t be mine. But although he had worked below stairs for many more years than I had, I did know about those even harder times through my mother, who started in service as a between-maid – the worst job of the lot. So now as we sat down at the kitchen table to drink our cocoa, with me hoping that an aura of Phul-Nana cachous was being wafted towards Mr Kite – and not port and lemon – he began to reminisce of the days when he worked in real stately homes, such as the house where Mr Penny had been the imposing butler.

  ‘You’d not have found him such a lively man in those days, Cook,’ and I sensed that our obvious enjoyment of Mr Penny’s tales had rankled with the butler.

  ‘Mind you,’ added Mr Kite magnaminously, ‘he couldn’t afford to be too carefree, he’d have lost his authority over us menservants; as it was, James, the second footman, Sam the pageboy and I went in mortal dread of Horace Penny. He never told you his name was Horace, did he? Behind his back we used to call him “horrid penny”. It’s true he was a good-looking man and, in spite of what he told you about that Jezebel, he was a great one for the girls. Mrs Allen, the cook, would never leave her kitchen girls alone with our butler, not even in the daytime. Although it was all kept quiet, we servants knew that he seduced and got into the family way, Cissie, the head gardener’s daughter – and her, with a bit of education and all. Horace Penny was scared stiff that he’d have to marry Cissie, that would have cooked his goose with the village girls. Lucky for him, George, our second gardener, was in love with the girl and married her. ‘But,’ and Mr Kite smiled at the memory, ‘he made Horace Penny fork out £50 of his savings to buy their furniture. Horace Penny couldn’t bear the idea of being tied down. Ah! Those were the days of real domestic service. Huge staff, houses full of guests, parties and balls; we servants lived like fighting-cocks. This place can’t be compared with the old days.’

  ‘Did you never want to get married, Mr Kite?’

  ‘Never, Cook. Don’t get me wrong, I admire and respect the ladies, but I’ve never loved but one lady in my life, and that was my mother. I’m not saying I didn’t have my chances of holy matrimony – I took that statement with a pinch of salt; nobody likes to admit that there was never a single person who wanted to take them on for life – ‘but Mother and I were so close, I never met a woman who could compare with her. I did once take a young lady to see Mother – she was the housemaid’s sister – but afterwards Mother said to me “My son, you have nothing to do with that young woman. She’ll come to no good, you mark my words.” Mother was right, as usual, for the girl gave up being a parlourmaid; said she was sick of working a sixteen-hour day with no handle to her name and a bloody white blob on her head. Excuse the language, Cook, but that’s the sort of person she turned out to be and’ – here Mr Kite lowered his voice to a sepulchral utterance – ‘she finished up on the streets.’

  As I realised Mr Kite would be unable to see that I was getting at him, I said, sententiously, ‘Perhaps if you had married her, Mr Kite, she might have been a good woman.’

  ‘That’s true, Cook. But it would have upset Mother. Mother was such a wonderful person, always worrying about whether I was well and happy.’

  Unwilling to listen to further panegyrics about his mother, I gave a yawn and said it was time that I went to bed, tomorrow would be a busy day. Mr Kite’s conversation, never at any time calculated to raise one’s blood pressure was, when one was tired, a positive soporific. But for all his prosiness and narrow outlook, he was a kind-hearted man; for when I’d spoken about Uncle Fred’s wife being so poor, Mr Kite had given me money for the children and insisted that I was not to mention the money was given by him.

  Our busy tomorrow was because Mrs Van Lievden’s niece, Elsa, was having an engagement dinner at our house. Though her intended was an Englishman, she’d originally met him in Amsterdam – something to do with the buying and selling of diamonds. Our chauffeur, Ewan Davies, remarked sourly that no doubt the niece, failing to find a possible husband among her own countrymen, had chased Mr Harrison from Amsterdam to London. Before the arrival of the niece, Mr Davies had been used to a fair amount of free time, now he found himself driving Madam and the niece to the shops and hairdresser every morning, and to some function or other every evening. So, as was only natural, our normally good-tempered chauffeur felt ‘put-upon’, forgot all the months of easy-living and thought only that he was working long hours for an outsider. When I pointed out that it was just the same for all of us servants, he disagreed.

  ‘It’s not the same at all, Cook. All of you sleep in, so you have to be here whether Madam entertains or not. But I don’t consider myself a do
mestic servant, I’m used to being in my own home at a reasonable hour in the evening. The sooner that girl gets married the better, as far as I’m concerned, otherwise Madam can look for another chauffeur; with my reference I can soon get another job.’

  Both he and I knew that was an empty threat; he’d be a long time finding as good a place as the Van Lievdens’.

  There was a slight disagreement between Madam and me at this time. Because of the extra entertaining, at lunch and dinner parties, I’d really gone to town on the cooking and made several rather elaborate dishes. One morning, after Madam and I had worked out the menu, she got as far as the kitchen door and stopped.

  ‘Oh, Cook, my niece was so impressed by the dinner last night, she would very much like to see you cooking. Would you mind if she came down one morning? Miss Elsa wouldn’t interfere, just stand and watch you.’

  Never in this world was my immediate thought. Not only did I recollect the previous time one of ‘them’ had invaded my domain, I genuinely disliked anybody – apart from my kitchenmaid – watching me cook. I can talk to people if they are sitting at one end of the kitchen, but to stand over me, never. Madam accepted this explanation, but I could tell from her slightly more austere manner subsequently, that she wasn’t pleased. Not that I worried overmuch, my contact with Madam was only for half-an-hour in the morning and I knew she’d not want to lose a good cook. I didn’t want to leave either, not unless I was leaving domestic service permanently, to get married. The others applauded my stand, none of them wanting a state of affairs where one of ‘them’ might suddenly come below stairs.

  ‘It’s a liberty, Cook, that’s what it is,’ complained Mr Kite. ‘Why, none of us would dare to put our feet up in our own servants’ hall for fear that the master or madam would be looking in on us. It’s little privacy we have now with bells ringing all day long. I’m telling you, Cook, if the Master made a habit of coming into my pantry without warning, I’d soon give in my notice.’

  Years of a life below stairs seemed to have given our butler the fixed idea that as accommodation was part of our wages, the basement was a sort of private flat for servants, no longer a part of the house. And it always annoyed me when our butler referred to Mr Van Lievden as ‘the Master’. In vain did I point out that he wasn’t our master, he was our employer. Just because we had to call them ‘Sir and Madam’, it didn’t mean that they had powers of life and death over us.

  Miriam put her oar in to say her mum had told her that most rich people who employed servants were nothing but parasites. Mr Kite was incensed to hear this.

  ‘Nobody asked your opinion, Miss, you don’t know anything about good service. Anyway, I don’t suppose you know what a parasite is.’

  But nobody could put down that Mariam as she answered, pertly, ‘I do at that, it’s fleas’.

  Afterwards, I told her that she’d never survive in domestic service if she couldn’t hold her tongue before the upper servants, it simply wasn’t the done thing to contradict them. After all, it was the upper servants who had to listen to the complaints if anything went wrong; they got the blame from those above stairs, not the under servants.

  Miriam got her militant ideas from her mother, who’d been brought up in an orphanage and gone into service at fourteen. Miriam’s mother had told her that from the age of eleven, all the girls at the orphanage were unpaid laundry workers and cleaners; and when they left the orphanage to go into service – and that’s where all of them went – they were treated harshly because the mistress knew they’d no real home. No wonder servants were ten-a-penny if all orphanages sent their girls there. But Miriam was a good worker and so grateful for anything I did for her. In my first place, as a kitchenmaid, Mrs McIlroy, the cook, had let me make a large fruit cake every week to take home to my parents – it hadn’t occurred to me at the time that she was being generous with Madam’s goods. Now I did the same for Miriam; our Madam could well afford a few extra raisins, eggs and sugar.

  The engagement dinner was a great success, as were the three chauffeurs in our servants’ hall, who looked very smart in their uniforms; green, brown and plum-coloured. Mr Penny came again and the washer-up for the kitchen. From the basement window I managed to get a glimpse of Miss Elsa’s intended – mostly his legs, as he was about six feet tall. In my opinion, he wasn’t exactly love’s young dream, being about forty and already going bald. But perhaps Miss Elsa thought, better diamonds than a Don Juan.

  It was a six-course dinner; for the entrée I made a salmi of duck and the main course was beef à la mode. During our supper, Mr Kite told me that he had heard the chief guest praising the entrée and the beef à la mode. ‘Now’s the time to ask Madam for a rise,’ Mr Kite said, but of course no one would have ever dared to. Only when one left and applied for another place did one ask for a higher wage.

  I’d noticed that the oldest of the chauffeurs, a Mr McGregor, was reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson, so I sat him next to me at the supper table; it was not often I got the chance to talk about books. I told Mr McGregor that I’d picked up an 1874 edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, for two shillings in the Portobello Road. I omitted to mention that I found the book heavy going and tedious, and, if Dr Johnson had said only half the things attributed to him by Boswell, it would still have been too much.

  ‘Bought the book for two shillings, did you now,’ said Mr McGregor. ‘I borrowed my copy from the public library. Of course, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it’.’

  ‘That Sir, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.’

  We couldn’t explain to the others what we were laughing about.

  Our lady’s maid, Annette, had by now been with us long enough to learn some English and Mick, the Irish chauffeur, was making her laugh by airing his knowledge of the French language – picked up when he was in France during the 1914–18 war. He sang, ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières’ but, as his version of the line ‘Hasn’t been kissed in forty years’ was considerably different, reflecting as it did on Mademoiselle’s constipation, our butler looked very disapproving. As so often when two or more servants were gathered together, the conversation eventually came around to talking about one’s employers. On the assumption that derogatory remarks might have been heard upstairs, it was generally past employers who were discussed. I used to think that no other workers could find their employers such an absorbing topic of conversation as domestic servants found theirs. But then other workers could separate their work from their leisure; once they’d finished and were sitting in their own homes, it was a different life. Apart from one free day per month, one afternoon and evening and an alternate Sunday afternoon and evening, a servant’s whole life was spent in the employer’s home, it was therefore inevitable that the life of those upstairs should provide a diversion for us. So now John, the youngest, and the most handsome of the chauffeurs, was talking about his previous employer:

  ‘The old man wasn’t too bad, but the Madam was a holy terror, maids came and went like the wind in a colander. I was courting the parlourmaid, Gladys, and she told me that Madam was busy every morning making sure the maids had done their work properly. She’d rub her fingers along ledges, lift up the ornaments to see if they’d been dusted underneath, and she’d even deliberately drop money in obscure places not so much to make sure that the servants were honest, as to find out if they’d cleaned everywhere. All the servants were female – no man would have put up with her high and mighty manner. It didn’t affect me so much because I didn’t live in, I had a couple of rooms over the garage. The old man knew what she was like, and in an effort to keep servants he actually had a bathroom put in for them. Gladys said the way Madam carried on about providing this luxury for servants, you’d have thought she was giving them Buckingham Palace. The bathroom was on the floor below the attics where the servants slept and although there was a lavatory in it, Madam had forbidden the servants to use it during the night because she said the noise from the cistern woke her up
. They had a cook at that time, old Mrs May, who was rather too fond of the gin bottle. One night, going down the stairs to the basement lavatory, carrying a lighted candle – every landing light was extinguished at night – Madam suddenly opened her bedroom door and called out, “Who’s that, who’s that?” Old Mrs May, half drunk, and irritable at having to go down to the basement, answered, “Well, it ain’t bloody Santa Claus taken short, lucky for him in this place”. Course, she got the sack next day but it was a laugh all right.’

  We too laughed, and then Ada, the under-housemaid said, ‘Oh, Mr Penny, do tell us one of your funny stories.’

  Mr Penny, endeavouring to appear reluctant to take the limelight, and deprecating the idea that anybody wanted to listen to him, then said, ‘You’d never believe this, though it’s true as I’m sitting here at this table.’

  ‘That’s what you said the last time Mr Penny; of course we believe you.’

  ‘Well, it happened when I was a young footman in a great house in Wiltshire. I went there in the beginning of December, I remember because the snow was thick on the ground. The old Master had just died at eighty years old, genuinely mourned by the servants. They all disliked his widow, thirty years younger and so mean that the butler said she’d have liked to have buried the coffin upright to save buying so much ground. She’d only married her husband for his money, and he was hardly cold in his grave, two months in fact, before she married an effeminate looking specimen of a man called Vivian – what a name for a man. When Christmas came, and they played at charades, he dressed up as a film vamp, makeup and all; and for sure looked the part.’

  ‘Come on, Mr Penny, get to the exciting part, we can’t sit here all night.’

  ‘Well, I noticed that on Madam’s bridge afternoons he always retired to his dressing-room and remained there for over two hours. One afternoon, being idle and full of curiosity, I peered through the keyhole – you’ll never guess what I saw.’