The Housekeeper's Tale

by Tessa Boase

  I confess that I am very slow & most unwilling to believe anything against Mrs Doar–I have always considered her a good & faithful servant, and being still of that opinion I am quite sure that she will not hesitate to show you what has been conveyed away & packed up and then put an end to all the stories that are propagated, and by doing so enable me to proceed in doing what I have been authorised to do for her.

  And with this, after the near revolution of the past week, Loch the workaholic took three days’ holiday.

  VIII

  Every Article Necessary

  The temperature was rising. Creamy May blossom had burst into flower on every copse and hedgerow. After so many weeks of suspense and anxiety, the people of Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding villages turned their minds to new bonnets and spring fairs. Stafford’s May fair swung into life (no change in prices, noted The Staffordshire Advertiser, except for pigs which were ‘very dear’). Outfitters Boulton and Robinson respectfully announced to the ladies of the Staffordshire Potteries that their ‘extensive and elegant assortment of Fashionable Goods for the Spring Season’ was now complete; ‘comprising a splendid and novel collection of rich, plain, and figured Du Capes, and Gros de Naples, in all the fashionable colours’.

  Now that the rioters had put down their cudgels, Stafford County Gaol was busy that week with its more usual suspects: Jon Atkins, charged with stealing a spade; Mary Hargreaves, charged with stealing two pair of stockings; George Woolley, a blind man, charged with assaulting nine-year-old Caroline Green.

  James Loch returned refreshed to his desk in Bloomsbury Square to find an unpleasant saga developing at Trentham Hall–in the very way he had refused to believe possible.

  On 23 May another letter from Lewis had arrived, as follows:

  I duly received your very kind & feeling letter relative to Mrs Doar, and I really don’t know that any circumstance ever gave me much more real uneasiness. She is certainly in great tribulation, still I find from her conversation she does not wish the boxes opened but only the hampers returned from Handford [her husband’s village]. But in my opinion for a thorough justification of her conduct she should not hesitate to open every box & parcel.

  He acknowledged that she was ill–but Lewis was now feeling quite out of sorts himself: ‘the affair altogether so unlooked for proves very distressing to my feelings’.

  The Marchioness of Stafford was to be spared the sordid details until the truth had been extracted. While Lewis had to organise the breaking open of Mrs Doar’s trunks and boxes, his mistress put on her jewels and went to ‘one of the most splendid Balls the annals of fashion could ever boast’, thrown by the Duke of Devonshire at Devonshire House, a mere fortnight after his last rout. Starved of frothy celebrity tattle in this period of hard news, London’s Morning Post gave it the full treatment: ‘All the apartments in that far-famed mansion, glittering with gold and silver, were illuminated with wax tapers only, exceeding a thousand in number, placed not only in chandeliers, girandoles, and candelabras, but in massive candlesticks of the precious metals; even the architraves of the door-ways were refulgent with light’, gushed the reporter.

  ‘In unison with the scene were the Ladies’ dresses, all gold and silver, or diamonds and pearls, with the ostrich plume of fourteen feathers…The Marchioness of Londonderry wore a cestus or girdle of brilliants which attracted every eye.’ As for the food,

  Every viand which art and nature could produce was to be seen there, arranged on gold, silver, and china; the dessert consisting of the finest fruits, pines, cherries, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, and grapes; and fifteen sorts of foreign wines, from the golden Burgundy to the Spanish Fontcarrel…Amid all these attractions the ball-room never for one moment lost its influence, for the ‘mazy round’ was kept up till long after five o’clock.

  This was Regency entertaining at its most lavish.

  Meanwhile, at Trentham Hall, I can see Mr Lewis and Mrs Cleaver sitting in the Pug’s Parlour discussing tactics. Mrs Cleaver is all for bursting in on Mrs Doar and surprising her, for if she has warning, the housekeeper will surely conceal whatever it is she is up to. Mr Lewis demurs: Dorothy Doar is an old colleague and (so he had thought) a friend. He hasn’t the stomach for it. He has also heard from the still-room maid that the door is now kept locked. Could not a search be contrived with civility? Mrs Cleaver thinks not. She stands, ties on her bonnet and stares a mute challenge at the Trentham agent.

  The next day William Lewis sat down to compose the most unpleasant, if vindicated, letter of his career. Twenty-ninth of May:

  After the examination of Mrs Doar’s boxes yesterday which displayed a disgraceful scene of robbery, I was so much agitated & affected that I was really unwell all day–the Hampers were examined first and contained some dozens of home made wine such as gooseberry, ginger. The boxes being after opened, contained nearly a general collection of every article necessary for Housekeeping many of which she claimed as her own property which, however doubtful, Mrs Cleaver & I did not feel disposed to dispute with her. Except as far as the linen went…she gave them up as Lady Stafford’s property. There is still a very great deficiency in the linen.

  We received from out of the boxes 10 Dinner Damask napkins, 7 Table Covers, 35 Chamber towels, 3 Pillow cases, 8 waiting napkins, 1 Damask table cloth, 9 table cloths for Stewards or Housekeepers rooms, 2 Glass cloths, 3 plain sheets. She also exhibited from the boxes quantities of Tea, Sugar, Coffee, foreign wine, soap, candles, mops and many new brushes for shoes & house cleaning, all which she acknowledges to be the property of D Stafford.

  It is dreadful to contemplate such proceeds & to witness such depravity in one who has every confidence placed in her, and it was amazing how hardened she appeared. As for the linen she said it was old & she was entitled to it. But Mrs Cleaver told her that she had taken the best & left the old! Mrs Cleaver is to be again amongst the linen today & will be able to give some account of what is deficient. I can assure you I am much pleased at the conduct of Mrs Cleaver in this affair and it is most desirable for her comfort & the peace of the establishment that Mrs Doar should be removed from the house. She is quite able to be moved but of course I also wish your decisive answer.

  The articles enumerated (except the linen) remain in Mrs Doar’s bedroom. Please say how I am to act with them & her. I never was so deceived in a character in my life.

  Were these things hers, or weren’t they? The slippery subject of ‘perquisites’, or staff perks, was broached in one of the more abrasive little manuals of the era, Domestic Servants As They Are & As They Ought To Be, written anonymously by a ‘practical mistress of a household’.

  ‘The term “perquisite” is so comprehensive, so elastic, and accommodating’, the author writes,

  that it is made to embrace and signify almost everything in the various departments of the house; anything, in fact, convertible or transferable, from damask clothes and silver, to rags, old brass, and metal of every description…Thus, glass, china, &c., often gradually disappear till, the numbers becoming visibly few, an enquiry is instituted, and the missing articles are reported as ‘broken’.35

  There was an ambiguity to ownership below stairs. Much of a house-keeper’s reward came not as cash but as comforts. Favoured suppliers would butter her up with gifts; the best cast-off furniture, clothing and linen from the family was usually passed her way; and at retirement (if she retired–many worked until death) housekeepers to the aristocracy could expect an estate cottage and a pension. Many amassed large savings, as they did not need to spend. Mary Webster of Erddig Hall, who stayed thirty years with the family until her death in 1875, left £1,300 in her will (£60,000 in today’s money).

  But Mrs Doar had no savings. She had a daughter at school, a feckless husband, rent due on the family lodgings, a baby on the way in a matter of days and her long-term job and all future security snatched from her. Pregnancy hormones raged through her body. As she squatted heavily and packed her trunks, one thing must have l
ed to another. She finally gave in to temptation. They were not her things, and yet in a sense they were her things: she had ordered them, cared for them, catalogued and stored them; mended and marked them; ground and sifted them; bottled and corked them. Each item (candle, banister brush, pillow case, tea caddy) had its own complex emotional significance to Mrs Doar, powerfully felt through daily use.

  This is what she might have persuaded herself as she hastily wrapped brushes in sheets and bottles in tablecloths, squashing things flat in wicker hampers and tying them with rope. A small voice in the back of her head told her that this was not right; this was no way to repay the kindness of the noble Staffords. Another, more insistent voice, said–but it is not fair! She had served this family for fourteen years, through the reign of three different kings; and now, abruptly, she was to be shown the door–all for wanting just six weeks of leave. And what was it to them anyway, a handful of mops and dusters? Her Lord and Lady ate breakfast off solid-silver plates under a Poussin and a Gainsborough. All this–stock for her little shop, or there would be nothing to sell and therefore nothing to eat–was mere chicken feed.

  So Mrs Doar might have told herself. But how wrong she was.

  IX

  The Connivance Of The Girls

  The day the housekeeper’s boxes were prised open, 28 May, was the King’s sixty-seventh birthday. The Marchioness of Stafford joined the crowds of grandees at a one o’clock ‘Drawing Room’ in St James’s Palace. So thronged was the grand staircase and Throne Room with obsequious aristocrats that the Queen was a full three hours receiving guests. The Morning Post went on to give a detailed sketch of each noblewoman’s outfit. Dorothy Doar’s mistress wore

  A dress of rich white satin, elegantly embroidered in gold lama; the corsage and sleeves handsomely trimmed with beautiful blonde lace; ornamental vandyked stomacher, with gold, enriched with diamonds and emeralds, very superb; train of Acanthus green moiré, lined with white satin and embroidered with a rich gold lama bordering to correspond. Head-dress, gold, with plume of feathers and costly diamonds.

  On her return, she learnt of Mrs Doar’s crime.

  On 29 May, James Loch replied to William Lewis. ‘The accompanying letter contains your instructions regarding Mrs Doar–who has by her conduct forfeited all the favour of Lord & Lady S.’ They would not now help her in any way. She had burnt her boats. ‘You will tell Mrs Cleaver that her Ladyship approves much of her conduct as reported by you. Let me know whether you (privately) think Mrs Cleaver’s wages are enough–to make people honest & above suspicion they should have enough.’

  The thought that nagged at the back of Loch’s brain was this: Dorothy Doar had been underpaid. As a father of nine children, he knew only too well how money simply disappeared. James Loch condemned, but he also understood her crime. Regrettably, the woman had fallen prey to temptation. On a fresh sheet he wrote another letter addressed to Lewis, to be read out to Mrs Doar. She had now passed the point of meriting direct correspondence.

  I have received your letter about Mrs Doar with the most sincere concern and have read it to the Marquess & Marchioness of Stafford, who desire me to express their severe disappointment that a person in whom such confidence was placed for so many years, should have behaved so little worthy of it.

  They desire me to say that they cannot agree to her remaining any longer at Trentham and that you intimate this to her. And they have further told me that they cannot now agree to that being done for her which they have previously ordered for her. In regard to the things that she has taken, it is their wish that what clearly belongs to the house should be retained…They commend your conduct in this most distressing affair, feeling that while you maintained their interests, you have done so without any unnecessary vigour or hardship.

  Perhaps Lewis wonders whether he should have been more vigilant. How long has this pilfering been going on? Days? Years? He stations a grim-faced Mrs Cleaver and one of the more sharp-witted girls outside Mrs Doar’s bedroom door while he deliberates on what to do next. Lewis is a decent man, a man with a natural delicacy of manner and all the proper inhibitions surrounding women and bedrooms. For Loch’s sake, he must personally see this excruciating matter to its close. But inside that room is a crumple of unwashed bedding; a heavily pregnant woman with flushed cheeks and hair awry; the sweet smell of the sick room. He cannot bring himself to conduct a final search of Mrs Doar’s boxes and bedroom on his own.

  The lowest point of Mrs Doar’s long life in service comes that afternoon, on the first day of June. There is a knock at the door, and a man’s voice: ‘Dorothy?’ It is her husband. Behind him is William Lewis, unable to meet her eye, and behind Lewis crowd Mrs Cleaver and that maid, on tiptoe, craning to get a look.

  By six o’clock that evening, she is out.

  Lewis woke at dawn after an exceptionally bad night. He drew his chair up to the black leather-topped desk, dipped his pen and wrote one further, detailed letter to Loch. Pray God the last.

  The second of June:

  It was necessary for securing back what belonged to the family to have another examination of the boxes and a general look through every drawer in the room which took place yesterday. I thought proper to send for the husband–he came and went through the unpleasantness with me and behaved himself with much propriety–the articles which we claimed were taken from her & the boxes again packed.

  I would not allow Mrs Cleaver & one of the Girls to leave her until all was packed and her out of the house. I went to the inn for a room for her it being a wet day. She goes off tomorrow to her friends in the north. I of course told the husband that Lord & Lady Stafford could not be expected to do anything for her after her infamous conduct.

  Lewis blamed ‘the connivance of the Girls’ for letting Mrs Doar pack up and send away so many things. ‘This deficiency annoyed me much’, he wrote, ‘and when the Girls were told of it by Mrs Cleaver they all declared their innocence.’ The Girls, for their part, had no doubt long known about their housekeeper’s growing belly and had imagined, as girls do, petting and spoiling the baby when it arrived. Of course they closed ranks against Mrs Cleaver.

  The woman that attended the wretch, for I can call her nothing else, was also examined & from her we found that she had been sent out of the room and on her return found the room in an untolerable stench such as if from burning hair brushes, mops and flannel. Glass had been found in the ashes and the nail of a new mop. Not a doubt remains in my view but that the vile wretch had committed many articles to the flames.

  His Lordship may here say that I ought to have taken the boxes away out of her room. But the whole was so bundled up with her own apparel that I felt a delicacy in doing so.

  Lewis was deeply shaken. He blamed himself, but couldn’t see how he could have done anything differently. That he had trusted her, wanted to help her–then had to search, accuse and banish her! ‘Who could have guessed of such depravity?’ he wrote to Loch. ‘Who could guard against such a Devil?’

  On 4 June, the day the Reform Bill was finally passed in the House of Lords by 106 votes to 22, James Loch wrote the last letter on the matter:

  The disposition that could have led to the destruction of the things you mention must have been of the worst description. I am only thankful that it has led to nothing worse or more criminal–I say so most sincerely. As to yourself, I only know I should have acted entirely as you have done. No one could have expected such depravity.

  *

  The housekeeper set off the next day in the rain, in a jolting public carriage. She was heading for her friends in the north.

  Within the year her employer, the newly titled Duke of Sutherland, was dead. His son George set about flexing his muscles. The family seat should, he felt, reflect more sumptuously the status of its owner. His wife Harriet (pregnant with her seventh child) agreed. Within two years Trentham Hall was razed to the ground. Like its cast-off housekeeper, it seemed to belong to a different world. On its footprint rose a swaggering ch
unky Italianate palace with a square tower at one end, designed by the man of the day, Charles Barry. Few staff at Trentham survived the change of regime, and not Mrs Cleaver. When the new house threw open its doors to guests in 1840, a young queen was on the throne and a wholly new team of professionals was at work in the back of the building.

  I searched at length for Dorothy Doar, post-Trentham Hall. Civil registration did not start until 1837 and the first census took place in 1841, but neither of these produced the woman I was looking for. I tried parish registers, records of baptisms, marriages (in case she had remarried and changed her name) and deaths. I looked in local newspapers, lest she was involved in some tragedy or crime that might be reported. I combed through emigrations records and digitised workhouse records. Like her ghostly presence in the Sutherland archive, I felt sure she was languishing in an un-indexed parish register somewhere, her name so badly misspelt that it couldn’t be found.

  And so Mrs Doar slipped away without trace. Did she manage to make a new life for herself with her friends in the north? Her daughter would surely have left school and come with her, but did Mr Doar also leave his new and hard-won situation? Did Dorothy survive childbirth? Did the baby live? Her attempted crime denied her the chance to work again in a country house–and most certainly not as an upper servant, lacking as she did the all-important reference from her mistress.

  Perhaps the Doars emigrated to Canada or America, crammed in squalid conditions on a passage lasting several weeks. Today there are more Doars living in the US than there are in the UK; the family might have been part of the Doar diaspora from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire across the Atlantic. More likely, though, it was worse.