by Flo Wadlow
It happened to me. I mixed with them because, if there was a dance or anything in the village, several of the servants would go, and the younger girl who worked in the stillroom, she would go and some of the younger housemaids. We would all go to the dances. I was very friendly with the second footman and he used to take me. We used to play golf as well because there was a lovely golf course at Hatfield. Where he got the clubs from I didn’t enquire into – you don’t go into that.
One day, when I went to the housekeeper with the list of what we needed that day, she asked me if I would like to go to the Servants’ Ball. ‘Oh yes, I’d love it!’ ‘Who would I like to go with me?’ Well the second housemaid, Rose, she was a very nice girl and we had Stanley my favourite footman, and the under chauffeur to take us. But oh, the head kitchen maid was furious because she wasn’t asked to go – but she never went to dances normally. I thought it was only fair. I was thrilled to bits. The ball was at a neighbouring house and this neighbour was some relative I think to Lord Salisbury. They were inviting four servants from Hatfield House.
Before then though I cycled from Hatfield to London – the traffic on the A1 wasn’t quite like it is today – to Selfridges. I put my bike by the railings in Portman Square, at the back of Selfridges, and went in. I bought myself some material to make a long dress because they were all the rage then. I got some pale lilac material and made a dress with a V-neck. It had two little frills to make the short sleeves and then a long skirt from the waist, and two frills at the bottom and a bunch of violets there. I made that to go to the Servants’ Ball, which was fantastic. We had a wonderful time.
You had to have a special pass to go out, because they had night watchmen round the grounds, and there were Alsatian dogs, so you had to let them know the date you’d got a pass for. We’d be late home going to the dance.
I remember too we had a big Fireman’s Ball. They had their own brigade, and their own fire engine at Hatfield. People on the estate all manned it. I remember we all went to this Fireman’s Ball and it was from about eight in the evening until about five in the morning. I know the footmen came home, had a bath and changed into their uniforms straight away and went on duty. I think we did have a few minutes’ rest before we started to get up at half past six. Some of the things we used to do like going to dances – the young people don’t seem as if they’ve got the energy like we had! We worked hard all day long, sometimes until gone nine o’clock at night, or ten, then we’d go up and change and cycle off to the dance.
The year 1935 was King George V and Queen Mary’s Silver Jubilee and there were lots of big activities going on in London that year. I think they had a service at St Paul’s, which Lord and Lady Salisbury attended, and there was a big procession, all through the streets. We could go from Arlington Street to St James’s, which was the next street, and watch all the processions. There was a marvellous concert in the Albert Hall – a Royal Command Concert – but not the stars of the theatre or anything like that. I think there were two men and two ladies from each county from different choirs to make up a big choir. They had all the traditional songs. Mrs Harris, the cook, had a brother who was picked from Dorset, and he had tickets, so I went with Mrs Harris to the Royal Command Performance in the Albert Hall. Mrs Harris also had a cousin who was a chauffeur to Princess Beatrice, who lived in Kensington Palace, and I remember us going round one day to where he lived.
The next year King George V died, so we saw the funeral. His Lordship went to the funeral and they went from London to Windsor Castle. I know that was a very sad day after the lovely year we had for the Silver Jubilee.
I also remember going to a concert at the Queen’s Hall in London, and I will never forget the girl who played the violin. I don’t know who she was. She had a gold lamé dress and she was playing this instrument and I can picture now the spotlight shining on her dress. All round the room were mirrors and you could see her reflection.
I was at Hatfield just over a year. I came in the January 1935 and I left in the February 1936. I left really because my mother was ill. I’d had a little half-brother, and this child had died. So I went home to look after Mother. I was in London when I gave my notice in – ’cause you had to give a month’s notice. Lady Salisbury asked for me to be taken up to the drawing room to see her when I was going to leave Hatfield. She said that Mrs Harris had been very pleased with all the work that I’d done, and would be only too pleased to have me back. So they couldn’t have given me a bad reference.
I didn’t really think about going back to Hatfield however. After Mother got better, I thought I would try and get a job in Norfolk somewhere, so I could get home more easily – perhaps once a week – to see how she was getting on. I’d been home about a month and Mother was a lot better so I put my name down at a local agency to get another job. What I would have liked was to get a job up in Scotland, where they had the grouse parties and all that kind of thing. I wished I could have gone to a big house, or a castle, as a kitchen maid even.
I know we are all supposed to be equal, but these establishments did give you an insight into a different way of life. Somebody asked me once if living in a big house like that, and seeing all the marvellous furniture and silver and everything they had, was I ever envious? I never was really. I was always very interested, but I can’t ever remember wanting it.
The ‘Health and Beauty’ movement found a keen recruit in Flo. ‘One day when his Lordship wasn’t here and the gardeners weren’t about, we went out in the garden and I stood on one of the statues – posed there in my outfit.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Blickling Hall
Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, the owner of Blickling, was at the very centre of world affairs, and greatly respected. Lord Lothian was a Liberal, and as Lloyd George’s secretary, was of immense value to the Prime Minister at the Paris Peace Conference and in the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles. It was said that President Wilson ‘treated him, not as a prime minister’s secretary, but as if he were an emissary to the Conference, and a very important one.’ With no previous diplomatic background, he was appointed to the key position of Washington Ambassador. Churchill described him as ‘our greatest ambassador to the United States’.
When I was at home one day a lady came to the door and asked if I was Miss Copeland, and I said ‘yes’. She asked if she could come in and she told me she was Miss O’Sullivan and she was secretary/housekeeper to the Marquess of Lothian, at Blickling Hall. The cook there had walked out in a bad temper, and they’d got two weekend parties that his Lordship had arranged and they hadn’t got a cook to cook the meals. Would I come and do it for these two weekends? I said I couldn’t possibly do that, as I’d only been a kitchen maid. ‘But,’ she said, ‘you’ve worked at Hatfield House and you’d know what to do.’ Anyway, his Lordship only wanted plain and simple things. I didn’t say that at the time but I had mainly cooked for the servants and not for the dining room. She felt sure that I would be all right, and my mother persuaded me to go. Mother said, ‘You’re not going under false pretences. If the lady is desperate, why don’t you go and help her!’ So of course, off I went – for a fortnight.
At the end of the two weekends (which passed off very well), Miss O’Sullivan told me that his Lordship was very pleased with what I had cooked and would I consider stopping on. I didn’t really want to do that because I didn’t think I was experienced enough. She said that what I had cooked for his Lordship was very nice, but I explained that there were lots of things that I hadn’t done. I wanted to improve myself and have someone to teach me other things. She asked me what kinds of things I wanted to learn, and I said that I’d made buns or big slab cake for the staff but I’d never made cakes, or iced cakes, for the drawing-room teas – anything fancy. Oh, that was no problem at all – she would send me to the ‘Tech’, in Norwich, and I could go there one day a week and learn what I wanted to learn.
It was really against what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to stay there
, but I stayed anyway and I used to go to the Tech. I learnt all different sorts of cake-making and icing cakes, as well as different kinds of puddings – a bit more elaborate than the ones I had been used to. I was there about a term or so. It was the only time I had a teacher to myself. I asked her what recipe book I should have, and she told me, The Fine Art of Cookery, and that’s what I bought.
His Lordship paid for the lessons and they paid my bus fare to Norwich. I used to cycle from Blickling to Aylsham and could catch the bus there. I have to admit that sometimes I used to bike all the way and save my bus fare!
Blickling Hall was built 1616–27 for Sir Henry Hobart. Anne Boleyn is said to have lived in an earlier house on this site.
Flo found herself in charge of the kitchen at Blickling somewhat against her better judgement. Very unusually, she was still in her early twenties and most cooks, certainly in large houses, would be in their forties or fifties. It was a different situation perhaps for the rest of the staff to have to deal with as well. The accepted rules of the hierarchy, and of promotion, had been broken. It was interesting that when researchers from the National Trust were looking for former servants to interview, they managed to find a few butlers and some housemaids, but Flo was the only cook. Flo quite understood why, because her age was half that of the average cook in that kind of position.
Getting the job at Blickling I just feel was an accident. I was the only person they had at the agency who had any experience of a large house, so they suggested me. They evidently had good references. I don’t think I could say there was resentment at Blickling. The head housemaid wasn’t at all supportive because she was older than me. What she might have resented was my age, not that I couldn’t do the work. I was much younger than she was. I was never given the courtesy title of ‘Mrs’ there, like most cooks were. I was always ‘Flo’, but I didn’t mind that at all. I wouldn’t have had quite the respect an elder person would have had but I don’t think they made things awkward. I think the butler was quite pleasant. He was called Mr Dunning and we called him that. We didn’t call him ‘sir’. Mr Dunning lived in a cottage not far from the park gates. He had a wife and a family, so if he had any time off, he’d go home.
There was a footman, who used to come from Aylsham, and he lived in the house. As far as I can remember, he had a little room near the pantry. There was an odd man called Sidney Perts. We called him an odd man but he was a nice gentleman really. He was an older person and his family had lived in Blickling for years and years. They lived in a cottage near the big barn. The odd man would bring all the wood baskets and the coal scuttles in, for the different fireplaces. He would wait on the staff in the servants’ hall while the butler and the footman would take in the dining-room meals. Sometimes the odd man would help in the dining room as well. I remember he always came into the kitchen with a tray to take the servants’ meals to the servants’ hall, but it was all kinds of odd jobs that he did. Apart from the kitchen maid and the scullery maid (my friend Kath) the other servants weren’t allowed in the kitchen, unless they had business to come in for – no more than I was allowed in their part. The housemaids had their own sitting room, the kitchen servants had their own sitting room and the men servants were mostly kept in the pantry. We didn’t mix very much.
There were three housemaids: the head housemaid was Irene, and the other two were Doris and Violet. I think they were two sisters. When they left we had another two sisters come. They did all the housework. They would polish all the fireplaces up, lay the fires in the different rooms, make the beds and sweep and dust. I don’t believe they had any hoovers. The housemaids did my room but the kitchen maid and the scullery maid (they shared a room) they had to do their own. There were three of us in the kitchen so that was nine servants altogether, which was ever so much smaller than Hatfield. There were six housemaids there alone, and they needed them too.
Here the kitchen was so lovely because you could look out onto the gardens. In most of the houses where I’ve been you were all closed in and you couldn’t see out of the windows at all, so you didn’t see a garden like this. We were very fortunate especially in the springtime when the magnolia was out. It was beautiful, with the white flowers tinged with pink, and blue grape hyacinths underneath – a perfect picture. I wished I could paint. (I have done since, but I’m not very good. I’ll have to stick to cooking!)
We didn’t have an Aga and we didn’t have gas either. We still had a big kitchen range, but of course it never bothered me because I didn’t have to light it. Kath had to do that; she was a good girl with the fire. In the range we had two ovens, one on each side. All the cooking for the house was done on the range, but the water heater was separate. The kitchen maids used to get up quite early and light the range. You would have to clean the flues out and all that so many times a week. The range had to be black-leaded and the shiny parts would be all ‘emery-papered’. The kitchen maid would do that every morning. They started work at half past six – not just got up then! I got up at seven o’clock. Sometimes if his Lordship was here with a big party, I might be up a bit earlier, because I always used to make the bread rolls for breakfast. There’d be eggs of some kind with bacon, and there’d be fish – perhaps haddock, kippers or kedgeree. There might be kidneys or sausages, and cold ham on the sideboard. In the old copper utensils I used to make marmalade that lasted the whole year – a certain quantity at a time – about a dozen oranges that would be. Packets of sugar used to come from the Army and Navy Stores, in London. We had preserving sugar, lump sugar, granulated and caster.
We used to have large kettles that we had to fill up at night for the housemaids to fill the hot water bottles, for the beds. And we used to be so angry because they would fill the bottles up and leave the kettles empty!
We had a plain wooden table which was scrubbed every day – twice a day sometimes. The kitchen maid would scrub the kitchen table, and the kitchen floor. But the scullery maid would do the higher part of the kitchen – that was her domain! She would scrub the passages, and the larder. She would do all the ‘donkey work’. She would do all the vegetables and the washing-up and the kitchen maid would do the vegetables for the dining room as well as the cooking for the servants’ hall.
I always tried to treat the other kitchen staff kindly, as I’d mostly been treated. I wouldn’t be sarcastic or be horrid to them, and I tried to show them things. You didn’t have many gadgets, not in them days. You had to whisk by hand. You didn’t even have wheel whisks. That’s why we wanted girls to help – to prepare the vegetables and do the washing-up.
One thing we had at Blickling was a fridge! That was the first place I’d ever had a fridge. And that I think was mainly because his Lordship was a teetotaller, and he loved orange juice to drink, and of course that all had to be fresh oranges. We had crates of oranges delivered locally and the kitchen maid used to squeeze them and put the juice in a lovely glass jug. She’d do it overnight and put it in the fridge ready for breakfast. Then after breakfast she’d do another jug all ready for lunch, and after lunch another jug ready for dinner at night. I think the purpose of the fridge was just to make the orange juice nice and cool. I’d had an icebox before, a big lead-lined chest, but at Blickling it was a fridge for the first time – one of the old-fashioned sort, ever so tall.
Miss O’Sullivan, the housekeeper, she liaised between me and his Lordship. I mainly decided what the menus would be. I used to write out what I thought would be a good idea and Miss O’Sullivan used to come down in the morning and we’d talk these things over. All the menus were written in French. I’d learnt all this, being a kitchen maid. I would plan the whole menu for the weekend, for example, and see if she thought that was all right. Mostly she agreed with what I had written down. We used to have soup first, then fish and then meat and sweet, and sometimes savoury as well. If his Lordship had only one or two guests for lunch they might only have two courses. If there was a big party then they had a starter first – hors d’oeuvres or something.
>
If you was preparing consommé, that would have been a couple of days’ job, ’cause you would have your bones first from the butcher and you’d boil them up and strain them overnight. We always had a big stockpot boiling with the bones and things, and you strained that up so that the fat would all settle on the top. You’d take all the fat off the next day. Then you’d have your stock and you’d have your shin of beef all cut up, and onions and carrots and celery, things like that, all put in, to make the consommé. After that had cooked for an hour or so that would all be strained off. Then it would be cleared with egg white as well, so it was shiny. In some places I would have put some sherry in the consommé, but I didn’t at Blickling because his Lordship was a teetotal gentleman. We didn’t use alcohol in the cooking – but his Lordship had it for his friends.
The head gardener would come and say what fruit and vegetables he’d got in the garden and what he could send in for me to use. One of the under gardeners would bring it all in for me. The kitchen garden was in the walled area just the other side of the Lime Tree Walk – but of course I never did go in the kitchen garden. There was a head gardener, Mr Willey, and he and his wife and little girl lived in one of the buildings near the front of the hall towards the yew hedges. Near where he lived was where the old kitchen used to be but of course we never worked in it. There used to be an underground tunnel to come through for the dining room, but we were in the part where the kitchen is now, although it wasn’t exactly the same.
One evening we would have consommé followed by fish of some kind. If you had consommé, which is brown, you’d probably have a white fish. You might have a crown of lamb or chicken done with grapes. Mostly the chicken was carved up. One of his Lordship’s favourite dishes was an American recipe called Chicken Maryland – where they have the corn pancakes and banana. We’d often have a soufflé – mostly cold sweets at night – or ice cream. And fruit of course. His Lordship was very fond of fruit. Sometimes they would have savouries – cheese, or ‘angels on horseback’ [oysters wrapped with bacon on a little crouton].