Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [146]
Whilst he could see that taxation, meaning estate duty and increased income tax, was primarily responsible for this ‘impending catastrophe’, Gowers thought that problems in recruiting staff could prove almost as decisive:
A secondary factor is the growing difficulty of getting, and the expense of paying, the necessary staff, both indoor and outdoor. In the heyday of these houses wages were low and service at the big house, around which the whole social life of the neighbourhood revolved, was much sought after. Those conditions have disappeared. There is not now the labour available for domestic service; there is not the desire to do it; and there is not the money to pay for it.13
For those who did return to service, there were both disadvantages and advantages. The disadvantages were almost always that the senior posts survived but without the support of the traditional young trainees, learning their skills by serving the servants, and essentially doing the heavier and messier work. In an interview given in 1971, Mrs Davidson, cook at Crathorne Hall, Yorkshire, remembered the impact of the Second World War on the life of the house: ‘the men had to go to war, then we had parlour maids . . . After the war there weren’t nearly so many servants. It was the same as it is now, me and Nanny and Mr Jeffreys [the butler], a housemaid, a kitchenmaid and someone else to help.’ The family shut down a part of the house and created a new kitchen nearer the dining room. ‘We worked harder after the war; you just had to fill in all sorts.’14
The advantages were often the relaxation of the rigid class distinctions that had persisted up until the Second World War. Those skilled servants who returned to service were increasingly highly valued and, despite their extended workloads, were also likely to be treated with greater consideration and given greater independence than they had experienced before the war. Mrs Davidson approved of the removal of social barriers: ‘the young people coming now [as guests], compared with those earlier in the century, are nicer. We were servants, I mean we looked to them [the earlier generation] as if they were superhuman beings, and they weren’t . . . The changes that have taken place are for the better, in the old days you worked hard for people and you never saw them.’ Her employer’s grandson, Lord Crathorne, remembers with gratitude the contribution made by the whole household in Mrs Davidson’s day to his family’s life: ‘They took tremendous pride in their work. I recall Mrs Davidson writing a letter about how hard the work was, and then on the next page she said that they were the “happiest days of my life”.’15
Some domestic servants had remained in service throughout the war and were perhaps in a unique position to consider its impact on their world. When the Second World War broke out, Rosina Harrison, Lady Astor’s lady’s maid, was still a senior figure, if in a much reduced but busy crew: ‘some of the men were called up, others enlisted, and some women went into the Services or industry.’ More time was spent in Plymouth, for which Lady Astor was MP, whilst Lord Astor opened a hospital in the gardens of Cliveden, with a wing given over to nurses and doctors.16
During the war, the house was still managed well by the steward, housekeeper and a skeleton staff, most of them dailies, but Rosina felt that ‘the old order had changed’ before her eyes. It seemed to her a ‘period of stagnation for town and country houses. It was also a time of enlightenment, too, for in many places where for years scant attention had been paid to kitchens and the servants’ quarters below stairs, mistresses were now paying the penalty.’ Before the war they had hardly visited such rooms, but now, ‘They were having to work down there themselves and, suddenly, with the bombing, the basement rooms