Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [131]
The point is even more clearly illustrated at Longleat, where the young Gordon Grimmett was responsible for refilling hundreds of oil lamps:
by 1915 electricity was no new invention, and some big houses by that time were either on the mains or if too remote, had their own generators. Others had compromised by using gas.
Not so the Marquis of Bath, who felt that to install either would disfigure the house. The rooms had been designed for oil lamps or candle light, and if he were to change to electricity not only might it mutilate the ceilings and walls but the character of the rooms would change. He had the same feelings about central heating. Many of the gentry agreed over this, mainly I think because it was considered unhealthy, if not downright effete.52
Henry Bennett, a footman at Chatsworth in Derbyshire in the late 1920s and early 1930s, came up against similar attitudes:
when we moved to Bolton Abbey [in Yorkshire] or Hardwick [in Derbyshire] there was no electric light; oil lamps and candles were the order. A man was kept to see that the lamps contained oil, wicks trimmed and lamp glasses cleaned. It was the footman’s duty to put the lamps around the house. His Grace invariably liked candles, so quite a number of lighted candles adorned his study. When the ladies retired at night, the footmen had to extinguish the lamps and place electric torches, silver candlesticks and matches outside the Drawing-Room for guests to pick up and light themselves to their room.53
Lady Fingall’s recollections of the plumbing and lighting at her husband’s family home, Killeen in Ireland, were scarcely any different: ‘all the bedrooms were lit by candlelight. Nothing, of course, could be more becoming than that lamplight and candlelight. Fourteen candles were an average to light a large bedroom . . . Then every drop of bath water was carried, and we all had our baths in front of the fire.’ They had no bathroom at Killeen until after The First World War.54
As these testimonies suggest, large household staffs, close in character to those of the pre-First World War household, generally continued into the 1920s and 1930s. However, there can be no doubt that the demands of wartime dramatically changed the attitude of the generation who might normally have been expected to go into service, not least because so many of the younger servants themselves enlisted. Nationally, four hundred thousand domestic servants left their work, whether for war service in the army for the men, or work in the munitions factories for the women.55
Calls for volunteers were answered by all classes, and employers of menservants found themselves the target of additional appeals. At the beginning of the war, landowners were encouraged, in a leader in The Times dated 12 August 1914, to release any staff they could do without: ‘There are large numbers of footmen, valets, butlers, gardeners, grooms, and gamekeepers, whose services are more or less superfluous and can either be dispensed with or replaced by women without seriously hurting or incommoding anyone.’56
In January 1915, Country Life magazine ran a series of questions, beginning: ‘Have you a Butler, Groom, Chauffeur, Gardener, or Gamekeeper serving you who, at this moment should be serving your King and Country?’ followed by ‘Have you a man preserving your Game who should be helping to preserve your Country?’ The Earl of Ancaster guaranteed an income to the wives and families of volunteers, giving £5 to every man who enlisted.57 John Whittle, a hall boy at Sudeley in Gloucestershire, recalled meeting one servant in 1930 whose employer had summoned him in 1914 ‘and suggested that he “do his duty”. He said that he [would] be joining today, if possible. He joined the Guards and later, in the front line used