Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [96]
The senior outdoor figure – after the land steward, or estates bailiff, who looked after estate administration – was the head gardener, of whom, according to the Adamses, much was expected:
to understand his business well, and to be capable of undertaking the management of a gentlemen’s garden and grounds, he should not only be perfect in the ordinary business, and the regular routine of digging, cropping, and managing a kitchen garden, but should be also well versed in the nature of soils, manures, and composts, the best methods of propagating plants, shrubs, and trees, the management of the hot-house, green-house, conservatory, hot-beds; and the culture, not only of indigenous, but also of foreign and exotic productions.142
The nineteenth-century head gardener usually wielded considerable authority. One such was Sir Joseph Paxton, made famous by designing Crystal Palace. He was born in 1803, the son of a farm labourer, and at the age of fourteen was working with his brother at Battlesden in Bedfordshire, the estate of Sir Gregory Page Turner, and later at the Woodhall estate in Hertfordshire. It was while working for the Royal Horticultural Society at Chiswick that he happened to meet the 6th Duke of Devonshire, who was the ground landlord.143
Paxton’s good manners, in speaking clearly and carefully to the deaf duke, so impressed the latter that in 1806 he offered Paxton a job at Chatsworth with an annual salary of £70. Besides marrying Sarah Bown, the niece of Chatsworth’s housekeeper, Hannah Gregory, Paxton transformed the gardens there and travelled with the Duke on horticultural tours to Europe.
He made Chatsworth’s gardens the most famous in England, creating a pinetum and an arboretum, and designing greenhouses and hothouses. There included the largest conservatory ever built, a huge glass construction with a double-curved framework of laminated wood. His assistant gardeners were sent to America and India to collect plants. Paxton eventually became the steward or agent of the Chatsworth estates, a trusted senior servant whom the duke consulted on every matter of importance. As well as designing Crystal Palace, he also rebuilt Lismore Castle in Ireland in the popular picturesque style and served as an MP, receiving a knighthood. In the duke’s words: ‘The creations of his talent are remarkable and conspicuous whichever way you turn. . . . [He was] the most zealous, and the least obtrusive of servants.’144
Although Paxton was perhaps exceptional, the elite head gardeners of the great country houses were generally influential, often innovators or experts with national reputations. They also edited and contributed to gardening journals, serving on the committees of the Royal Horticultural Society, founded in 1804.145
In 1886, there were twenty-two gardeners at Hatfield House, plus two women and nine boys who looked after the pleasure grounds and kitchen garden. There were also nine keepers and watchers, assisted by two boys. The stables were staffed by six men and a boy. In addition to the seventeen woodmen, nine parkmen and three boy helpers, Hatfield supported many other estate workers and farm-workers.146 In the late nineteenth century, at Eaton Hall in Cheshire, the Duke of Westminster employed a head gardener and forty under-gardeners. In the 1850s the Benyons at Englefield House in Berkshire employed between fifteen and twenty gardeners.147
In addition to their regular staff, country estates could also call on the services of a large group of retired farm labourers, retained on a small wage as ‘the gang’ to sweep leaves and paths and weed the gardens. This practice explains why, in photographs of late Victorian and Edwardian gardens, everything looks so extraordinarily immaculate – with not a twig out of place: it is an effect that can only be achieved by many hands.148
In examining the relationship between servants