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By Root 1143 0

of men and women were strictly separated: ‘All the men slept in the basement.’ Equally typically, for security reasons ‘the under butler [laid] his bed down in the pantry, across the front of the plate room door, so as to guard the plate at night. To get at it, burglars would have to move his bed: if that did not waken him nothing would.’63 One member of staff was subjected to a memorable prank: ‘One night we arranged to have a game with the under butler, so we got a reel of cotton, put it on top of his let-down bed, taking the end of the cotton down the passage round the next corner with us. When we saw him put out his light we gently began to pull the cotton. We heard him get out of bed, strike a light to see what it was rattling on the top of his bed. Then we thought it prudent to disappear to our own rooms in stockinged feet.’64 Mr Horne felt: ‘All this fun helped to neutralise the bullyings and jawings I got from the Bold Bad Baron when valeting him . . . all his money and power did not make him happy.’65 Later Horne described being caught in a pillow fight by the baron, as a result of which the first footman was dismissed.66

The hierarchy and the segregation by gender were also manifested in the dining arrangements:

The maidservants only came into the servants’ hall for dinner and supper, their other meals they got in their own appartments [sic], the kitchen maids never came, except when a dance was on. The laundry maids in the laundry, the housemaids in housemaid’s room; the dairy maid would feed with the stillroom maids; nursemaids in their nursery; butler, valets, groom of chambers, housekeeper, lady’s-maids in the steward’s room. So that there is a lot of one servant waiting on another, the under ones of each department doing it, they in turn being waited on, when promoted.67

Thus even the meals were like minor military operations, but also seen as a way of training junior staff.

The baron liked to impress but had a frugal side: ‘In cases when visitors were staying in the house we wore our dress liveries, with a lot more yellow and black braid plastered up the back and across the front. The butler wore black cloth breeches and black silk stockings. Our silver shoe buckles were on the plate list, and had to be given up when leaving the situation.’68

London visits amused some servants more than others:

As the London season came round, we packed up, and went to town. On going out to dinner, or other functions, the Baron always had two footmen standing up behind his C spring carriage, and the coachman with his curly wig on. The Baron was a big bug at his seat in the country, but when he got to London, among the other big bugs, he was not a big bug after all. A London season is very tiring to servants. There is not only the day work, but the night work as well. They would keep us out regularly till one, two, or three o’clock, but we had to start work at the same time as the other servants. Often during the London season we were kept so short of our hours of sleep that I used to go to sleep on the carriage . . . We were all glad to get back to the country house again after the London season with its dinner parties, tea parties, evening parties and night work.69

At significant moments, Mr Horne felt hemmed in and desperate to leave service, but in the end he stayed the course:

I felt that I was gradually going into a net, and losing all liberty in life: the constraint became almost unbearable, but what could I do? I had no trade in my hands. I knew nothing but gentleman’s service wherewith to get a living. I suppose some men does not feel it, men with no further ambition than to fritter their lives away from day to day in such a calling; a sort of man-woman existance [sic], at the mercy of the gentry’s whims and fancies; cooped up day and night with out variation.70

The pay too was sometimes barely adequate: ‘All this time I had been away in service I always sent the greater part of my wages home, but in those days a second footman only got £28 a year, and had to pay his own laundry bill out