Climbing the Stairs
Page 16
All right, they’d never done a stroke of work in their lives but I could forgive them that. I could see them under the chandeliers and walking down the staircases. And now these things were just there for people to stare at. But it was good to feel they were all in use at one time, that they had to be kept clean by servants, that they weren’t always show pieces.
I thought what a retinue of servants they must have had below stairs to wait hand and foot on those people above. And I was glad that there were lovely houses like that even though I didn’t admire them when I was working. I’m glad too that they are open to the public to see. It’s not the same thing reading about them as being able to visit them.
Nevertheless, I felt a kind of discomfort going round Woburn Abbey. It seemed an invasion of people’s privacy, that my strange eyes should peer at things that the Duke’s grandmothers and great-grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers had 1oved, used, and handled. I was violating these things with my eyes. Maybe the Duke doesn’t feel like that but I did. That I really shouldn’t be there – peering into private places because through force of circumstances or economic or political pressure they’re no longer able to be kept in peace. When I look at lovely things, see them in a home and part of a home, they take on a far more personal and appealing appearance than they do in a museum. Museums are soulless places.
And then there’s the Duke of Bedford not only enjoying taking me round but talking about other visitors that he liked sharing his possessions with. He didn’t feel that fate had dealt him a harsh blow in any way. He really seemed to enjoy the fact that he could share them and that it was by people’s half-crowns that he was able to keep the whole thing going. He thought, it’s just one of those things and that all the stately-home owners were in the same boat and that it was far better than having to give them up altogether.
Although he spoke in a flippant way, too, about his ancestors, I don’t really think he felt flippant. Perhaps to people whom he must realize have got no ancestors they want to acknowledge it’s just as well to be flippant, particularly about those you’ve got hanging on your walls, unless you want to hear some peculiar remarks. None of my ancestors would I ever want hanging on walls, I can assure you. But then I don’t come from the line of stately homes.
Anyway during this personally conducted tour His Grace certainly was light-hearted. He wasn’t in any way condescending. Of course I was interested in the mechanics of throwing a stately home open to the public – how it was kept clean? What kind of floor covering they had? And he described the kind of material which was the most hard wearing. Then he told me he had a dozen or more people coming in from the village every day to dust – thank heaven I wasn’t one of them! I’d have been frightened to pick up anything, let alone put a duster around it.
And it isn’t only the house. The Duke of Bedford’s got a lot of outside attractions as well. You might say he’s an impresario; he believes in giving value for money. Some owners consider they’re doing a great service by allowing the public to see how the wealthy live. For half a crown you see them in the lap of luxury then you can go back home and have a big moan about bloated aristocrats. You’ve got ammunition for your gun, haven’t you?
At some of these stately homes you get a sort of potted history lesson while they take you round. I was glad the Duke didn’t because history as presented by people whose ancestors have lived it on the upper level is not the same as the history you read. Give me the Industrial Revolution and the poor old down-trodden working class of the Victorian days, that’s the kind of thing I like, not how well the wealthy lived.
Then you get other stately-home owners who lightheartedly say there’s nothing to being a lord. In fact if you read some of the remarks of the aristocracy you would think that they feel that there’s a sort of special privilege in being a non-privileged person. It’s a kind of inverted snobbery. But the great British public love them, otherwise they’d get rid of the House of Lords.
I think it’s an anomaly. One peer even had the nerve to say that the House of Lords was the last bulwark against democracy. What he meant by that I don’t know, but it sounds pretty inflammatory. I reckon it’s the working class that need the aristocracy; we have got something to fight against. So keep them there and keep up the struggle. We must continue to fight for the fact all men are equal regardless that some of course will always be more equal than others.
All the time I was going round Woburn Abbey these thoughts were going through my head. The interview went well, largely because His Grace made it all so easy. We talked in his private sitting-room. Afterwards I happened to notice one of the oil paintings on the wall, a Rembrandt it was, the companion picture to one that had recently been auctioned and sold for three-quarters of a million pounds.
When the Duke told me this I said, ‘And is that one worth that much?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I should think so – possibly a little more.’
So I said, ‘Well, why don’t you sell it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘it looks rather cosy up there don’t you think?’
Cosy! I ask you. But after that remark I thought perhaps we’d better keep the House of Lords after all.
Then he delivered his coup de grâce which showed me that I’m the same sort of snob as all of them. As we got up to leave, to my amazement he said, ‘But surely you’re staying for lunch?’ And to my absolute astonishment and fury the producer said, ‘I’m very sorry, we really haven’t time. We’ve got to get this tape to the BBC. It goes out this evening.’
I nearly died with mortification when I heard him say this because to have been able to have gone back to my home and said to my neighbours in the course of conversation, ‘When I had lunch with the Duke of Bedford,’ you can imagine what that would have done for me. It was no good saying, ‘The day the Duke of Bedford asked me to lunch.’ I mean, the idea that I’d refuse! As we drove back home in silence, because I wasn’t speaking to the producer by then, I thought of the number of things that would have reminded me of the day I had lunch with the Duke of Bedford. Then it struck me what the Duke had done for me. He showed me that in spite of all my talk about ‘them up there and us below stairs,’ if one can possibly associate with them, one does so – which makes us all really snobs at heart, or perhaps just ordinary mortals.
Margaret Powell was born in 1907 in Hove, and left school at the age of 13 to start working. At 14, she got a job in a hotel laundry room, and a year later went into service as a kitchen-maid, eventually progressing to the position of cook, before marrying a milkman called Albert. In 1968 the first volume of her memoirs, Below Stairs, was published to instant success and turned her into a celebrity. She followed this up with Climbing the Stairs, The Treasure Upstairs and The Margaret Powell Cookery Book. She also co-authored three novels, tie-ins to the television series Beryl’s Lot, which was based on her life story. She died in 1984.
Praise for Margaret Powell
‘Anyone who enjoyed Downton Abbey or Upstairs Downstairs will relish this feisty memoir’
Dame Eileen Atkins
‘A nurse worked hard, but a skivvy worked harder – brought to life in this wonderful book’
Jennifer Worth, author of Call the Midwife
‘Margaret Powell was the first person outside my family to introduce me to that world . . . where servants and their employers would live their vividly different lives under one roof. Her memories, funny and poignant, angry and charming, haunted me until, many years later, I made my own attempts to capture those people for the camera. I certainly owe her a great debt’
Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey
Also by Margaret Powell
Below Stairs
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First published 1969 by Peter Davies Ltd
First published in paperback 1971 by Pan Books
This edition published 2011 by Pan Books,
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-1-4472-0817-4 EPUB
Copyright © Margaret Powell and Leigh Crutchley 1969
The rights of Margaret Powell and Leigh Crutchley to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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