Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [105]
Kilgallon’s career began at the age often in 1864 when he was first employed by Sir Henry’s brother-in-law, Captain Charles Wynne, as ‘cook and cabin boy’ on his sailing boat, Kilgallon’s father being the skipper of Sir Robert Gore-Booth’s yacht. Mr Kilgallon had to ‘clean all the brass work, keep the cabin clean, help with the sails and do all the messages ashore’. That season his father died in a tragic accident.
Sir Robert’s heir, Henry, took the boy on for the winter, no doubt feeling that the family had some responsibility for him, at first just to look after his boat. ‘A short time after Mr Gore engaged me he wished me to be in his room at all the dressing hours for meals and to call him in the mornings, bring his hot water and learn to valet him. I had £8 a year, [and] one suit of clothes.’ He adds laconically: ‘Wages was small then but most things were cheap. I slept at the stables [in] what is now the outer office. The coachman and his wife and child slept in what is now the inner office. Quite comfortable rooms. Batchelor [sic] gentleman also slept in rooms at the stables. They were equal if not better than many of the rooms in the house.’42
Sir Robert was the MP for Sligo, so the family spent considerable time in London, when typically most of the servants went with them. ‘The housekeeper did not go there as there was a housekeeper for the London house, a Mrs Tigwell. They [took] the first and second housemaids, house steward, groom [of the] chambers, under butler and first and second housemaids, first and second footman and steward’s room boy. All the other servants were put on board wages till they returned . . . [and] allowed milk and vegetables.’43 These were exactly the arrangements in place at the Earl of Kildare’s household at Carton a century earlier.
Henry Gore-Booth became interested in Kilgallon’s education, sending him briefly to a private school and later teaching him himself: ‘All days we were not sailing I assisted the under butler and footman with their work. It was a happy time. I had no master but Mr Gore. When he was away, I had to write to him, telling him what I was doing with reference to my work and nothing else. He always kept my letters and when he returned he showed me my errors.’44
Although senior servants tended to be recruited from the wider world, Mr Kilgallon’s memoir illustrates how many of the servants in the house and on the estate were related, either by being married to other servants, or through the marriages of their children. For instance, Mrs Carter, Henry’s old nurse, who is described as giving him a ‘great hugging’ on the announcement of his engagement, was married to the coachman, and her daughter was married to the head gamekeeper. One daughter of Mr Ball, the house steward, was married to Holmes, the huntsman, and his second son, the estate carpenter, was married to Miss Burchell, maid to Sir Robert’s wife.45
Gentlemen’s houses of this period, and kept in the style as Lissadell was kept had a house steward. Mr Ball was house steward when I came. He paid all expenses in connection with the house, both inside and out that is such as repairs [to] buildings inside or out. He engaged all the servants in the house and stables, paid their wages, and dismissed them when necessary, ordered and paid for all wines. He waited at dinner, but not at other meals. He just handed around the wines.46
Kilgallon evoked the service of meals with a neat brevity, almost a shorthand, that is suggestive of a close attention to detail:
The groom [of the] chamber carved, and with the footmen waited at all meals, dispatched the post, opened