Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [147]
There were other, fundamental changes: ‘no longer did the distinction of servant and master apply. We were family. We’d soldiered together, looked death in the face and suffered the loss of many friends. We’d been shown qualities which no other circumstances would have demonstrated to us, and had shared emotions that would otherwise have remained hidden.’18
The appalled discovery by Miss Harrison’s mistress of how inadequate and uncomfortable kitchens could be was echoed in the charming memoir, The Private Life of a Country House, 1912–39 (1980), by Lesley Lewis, recalling her country-house childhood in Essex: ‘A scullery opened out of the kitchen, its two wide shallow sinks under the window having wooden plate racks on one side. It was not until I washed up here myself, in the 1939 war, that I realised how inconvenient the equipment was. Possibly the sinks had not been too low in the days when most people were shorter, but the width across them to the taps was singularly ill-adapted to any human frame.’19
Some domestic servants found being in the armed forces almost easy by comparison to the discipline and long hours of domestic service. Arthur Inch, the son of a butler and later a butler himself, was first a footman to the Marquess of Londonderry. He served in the RAF during the Second World War, which seemed to him almost a liberation: ‘In fact, the comparatively shorter hours in the forces was a revelation to me. I’d never had so much free time plus all the free passes when going on leave.’20 After the war, he did not return to work in service until the 1950s, after which he became butler to the Kleinworts, remaining with the family for twenty years. One of his co-footmen from Londonderry House, who also went into the RAF, became a civilian pilot after the war rather than re-enter domestic service.21 When he retired, Arthur Inch was adviser both to the National Trust and to the makers of the film Gosford Park.
The plunge in the customary level of household staff must have hit some country-house owners hard. When asked when he thought the fundamental change occurred, Sir John Leslie replied: ‘In most big houses the staffs stayed the same until the 1950s. The Wingfields, Lord and Lady Powerscourt, certainly had footmen in livery at Powerscourt until the early 1950s, and there was a gatekeeper with a top hat and a cockade. Here at Castle Leslie, there were about ten servants in the house before the war, then it fell to five, then one, and finally only people coming in from the village. It happened gradually, and you just acclimatised to the change. However, we probably took them too much for granted.’22
Barbara Cartland, born in 1901, was familiar with the comfort and security represented by the well-staffed country house. A small section on managing staff in her Etiquette Handbook: A Guide to Good Behaviour from the Boudoir to the Boardroom (1962) is testament to how different that world had become: ‘only a few people today are fortunate enough to have living-in servants, who are no longer called servants but “the staff”. . . . It should be obvious that to retain the services and remain in the good graces of these invaluable people the old-fashioned autocratic attitude is as dead as Victorian bustles.’ Above all, she said, ‘it is no longer good manners to keep people “in their place”.’23
Her advice on giving dinner parties in an increasingly servant-less age is interspersed with comments on how to manage ‘Without staff’. At first, she considers the case with staff: ‘For a dinner party of eight or ten I have four courses: Fish or soup/Meat or game/An exciting pudding/Savoury/Dessert/Coffee/Without staff: Three courses will be plenty for your party.’24 Some aspects of her advice, however, have a curious echo of manuals of housekeeping going back to the seventeenth century: ‘Female servants should always receive orders only from the