Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [140]
She arrived at Cliveden in 1928 to be a lady’s maid to Phyllis Astor, Lady Astor’s daughter, at a salary of £60 a year, nearly three times what she had been earning with Lady Cranborne. She was briefed on the Astor family by the famous steward, Mr Edwin Lee, who had been a sergeant major in the First World War. Her working conditions were good: ‘My room at Cliveden was large, well decorated and comfortably furnished with bed, two easy chairs, a couch and two big wardrobes.’107
Rosina helped Phyllis Astor dress, maintained her clothes and accompanied her on visits: ‘We went together to a few country house parties in Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire . . . and to the Duke of Buccleuch’s palace in Scotland, Drumlanrig Castle. I was of course responsible for looking after riding habits and these weren’t easy to cope with. Some evenings she’d come in soaking wet and spattered with mud, yet the next morning she would have to appear looking spotless.’108 In 1928, Rosina travelled to the United States, after which she became Lady Astor’s personal lady’s maid.
At first she was overwhelmed by her employer’s fiery temper and exacting demands but a turning point came when she stood up to her: ‘My lady, from now on I intend to speak as I’m spoken to. Common people say please and thank you, ordinary people do not reprimand servants in front of others and ladies are supposed to be an example to all, and that is that.’109 Lady Astor later apologised. In an aside that offers us an insight into how these relationships worked, Rosina Harrison observed: ‘Now all this sounds very trivial, but if you want to know how it was possible for two people to live closely for thirty odd years it is important . . . as the years passed our relationship mellowed and the rows became more like verbal skirmishes.’110
In many accounts, the relationship of the family children of a country house to the servants attains a surprising pitch of intimacy and trust. It is notable that many people from aristocratic backgrounds growing up in the 1920s to the 1950s are inclined to say today that they ‘were brought up by the servants’. For many twentieth-century biographers of the English country house, the most interesting aspect is the dynamic between children and domestic servants. One of the most memorable butlers of the late Victorian and Edwardian era is Henry Moat, who joined the household of Sir George Sitwell at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire in 1893, first as footman and then butler-valet, where he took on a primary importance in the lives of the Sitwell children.
Mr Moat’s profile in Sir Osbert’s famous biography, which was written in such detail because of his conviction that his world was vanishing for ever, gives him a special place in English literature. Indeed, it gives him a substantial entry in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Sir Osbert’s nephew, Sir Reresby, had vivid memories of this remarkable man, whose bedroom at Renishaw Hall had its own staircase to the butler’s pantry, and from which a rod of iron was inserted through the plate-room door, thus securing the house’s silver.
Mr Moat, together with the beloved nurse Davis ‘who lived for children and their love’, were for Sir George’s three children, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, the mainstays of their emotional life during their early years. All three became famous writers. In Cruel Month, the first volume of his famous autobiography, Left Hand! Right Hand!, Sir Osbert examined this bond: ‘Parents were aware that the child would be a nuisance, and a whole hedge of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and schoolroom, was necessary, not so much to aid the infant as to screen him off from his father and mother.’111 Thus, he argued, in a subtle way ‘children and servants often found themselves in league against grown-ups, and employers. The female child sought shelter with the nurse and housekeeper and cook, the male in the [butler’s] pantry. Certainly, I learnt more, far more, from talking to Henry and Pare