Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [143]
Mrs Birkbeck recalls being aware of the early start made by the maids and how they would not be seen in the front of the house after the family had risen.
There were eighteen indoor staff before the war including Nanny, the nurserymaid, and two ladies’ maids who cared personally for my mother and grandmother. Mr Cole the butler lived with his family in the village and came in every day on a bicycle.
We children lived more or less in the nursery, supervised by Nanny and waited on by a series of nurserymaids. The favourite of these was Violet – known affectionately as ‘Oddy’. She later married William Beechner, the head footman, known by us as ‘Willikins’. The latter often accompanied us, plus Nanny, for happy picnics by the lake where he taught us how to swim – on the end of a rope.
There is no criticism of my parents but it is hard in modern times to realise how little we children saw of them – it was simply not the fashion. Our parents probably saw more of us than most landowning families, in that we were routinely dressed up by Nanny and taken down after tea for a ‘children’s hour’ when we played cards and listened to the gramophone. In the summer they used to take us for picnics. There were always wonderful small ponies led by Jack, my father’s ex-soldier groom who taught us to ride.
For Mrs Birkbeck as a child:
The stables and gardens were full of lovely people – always so nice and kind to the children and inclined to take our sides in the event of misbehaviour behind our parents’ backs. My childhood by any standards was privileged, but it had some disadvantages compared to a modern childhood; for instance, because of the class structure it was incredibly lonely. I was not allowed to go to the village school and we seldom saw other children unless they were brought in chauffeur-driven cars ‘to play’ from other equally privileged establishments.
When war was declared in 1939, ‘Everything changed. Everyone fit to do so was called up for some form of service and Somerleyton Hall itself became an advanced Dressing Station.’ Looking back on those pre-war days, Mrs Birkbeck feels that in many ways she was ‘brought up by the servants’ and stresses her personal view of them: ‘they were wonderful people – my grateful memories of their friendship, loyalty and love know no bounds.’120
Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, former editor of the Telegraph, recalled in his recent memoirs the butler who served his mother and his grandmother, James Burton: ‘James embodied job satisfaction long before it was invented . . . Having him as a member of our family brought us many advantages over and above the advantages of what he did as a butler so well. If we broadened his horizons, he certainly broadened ours.’121
Sir Peregrine also recalled how James, a First World War veteran of the trenches, became as butler: ‘an expert on the care and maintenance of beautiful furniture, pictures silver, objets d’art as well as wines – notably champagnes.’ He was also a walking encyclopaedia on ‘the minutiae of good manners’, famously out-staring Winston Churchill who had tried to grab a bottle of champagne out of his hands at the dinner table.’122
These affectionate accounts of what seems now a different world remind us that such households persisted solidly up to the eve of the Second World War. These communities, and those who grew up and trained in them, are alive in the memories of thousands of people who were in service in the second half of the century, during which country-house staffs have metamorphosed into something rich and new.
8
Staying On: A Changing World
The later Twentieth Century
THE SECOND WORLD WAR was clearly a major watershed in the style, character and condition of the servant body employed in country houses. Nothing would ever be the same. Although some owners of large establishments reassembled their sometimes extensive staffs immediately after the war, many more found it simply too