Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [51]
In his extreme youth and confusion, he forgot his new job after delivering the horses, and it was a month before he returned to Bargeny to take up the post, by which time another postilion (‘a stout lad about sixteen years of age’) had been hired. He describes a tumult of interviews, in whose outcome not only the whole family but the entire phalanx of their servants take an interest: ‘Amongst the servants there was a division: for me, Mr Maglashan, the butler, Alexander Campbell, Lady Anne’s footman, who afterwards kept the Great Inn at Perth, and Mr Macmorlin, the head-gardener; all the rest being low-country people were against me; but all the ladies were for me.’11
There were clearly a great many staff: ‘The family have eight upper- or lady-maids, four chamber-maids, two laundry-maids, two dairy-maids, a plain-worker, a first and second man-cook, a kitchen-maid, a butler, two footmen, a coachman with positilions and helpers.’ Lady Anne’s two sisters often stayed, bringing their own maid and footman. In time John was given a scarlet livery jacket, trimmed with silver and made in Edinburgh.12
Bargeny estate today (now known as Bargany) remains in the possession of the Dalrymple-Hamiltons, an ancient lowland landowning family, and in the mid eighteenth century the house would have been one of the major such establishments of the region. It survives still, although in separate ownership. The rolling hilly landscape in which it sits, with dense woodland bisected by the river Girvan, offers beautiful views. The house, built in the seventeenth century, is largely as John Macdonald would have known it, although somewhat updated and extended in the nineteenth century. In his lifetime it would have been very remote, the county town of Ayr being twenty miles away.13
Shortly after arriving John expressed an interest in learning to read and was encouraged in this, first by the servants, then by Mr Hamilton and his wife, Lady Anne Wemyss, who ‘put me to school, as there was not much to do, only when the coach-and-six was wanted or when any of those young ladies [Lady Polly or Lady Nelly, Lady Anne’s sisters] went home or a visiting . . . In the course of time I got [learnt] reading, writing and arithmetic.’14
As many able and enquiring servants must have done, John observed with interest the details of gentry and aristocratic life, describing entertainments, as well as landscape, agriculture and architecture, with some sophistication. A willing learner, and in exchange for scraps of meat for the pets he kept (foxes, hares, ravens, otters, magpies), John ‘assisted them in the kitchen, particularly in the evening, when I had nothing to do in the stables. By this I learned a little of the art of cookery.’15
In these remote communities, favouritism could create considerable tensions, and discipline, both fair and unfair, was more likely to come from senior servants than from the employer. Young Macdonald got flogged mercilessly by the coachman, who had become jealous of the young postilion’s favoured place. When this was drawn to Hamilton’s attention it placed him in a quandary, for the coachman had a family. Somewhat unusually for the period, but perhaps owing to the isolation of the situation, ‘When Mr Hamilton got a servant that answered his purpose, he desired him to bring his family; and he gave them houses.’16
Country-house staff were expected to be mobile, travelling between the country seat of the family and its town house: in Edinburgh, in Macdonald’s case. Although offering the benefit of introducing some novelty and variety into the lives of the servants, it also required arduous preparation. The Christmas of