Margaret Powell - Servants Hall

Contents

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To my long-ago, but not forgotten, friends, the servants who helped to banish basement blues

The story of Rose is a true one but other names and places have been slightly changed.

In 1922, when at the age of fifteen I entered domestic service after two years as a daily servants were considered less than dusty by those who employed them; and ignorant, even positively not all there by that section of the working class, male and female alike, who wouldnt have been seen alive, or dead, as a servant below stairs.

Regardless of their poor wages and often poverty-stricken home lives, shop girls were the romantic dreamers. Didnt they all day long handle delicate fabrics, perfumes and jewelry? Didnt they serve titled ladies and debutantes; and just serve them, not wait on them hand and foot as domestic servants did? Furthermore, shop girls had the opportunity to meet dashing and obviously wealthy young men, who were not averse to a little dalliance with a pretty girl behind the counter. Small wonder that many a girl had visions of marrying one of those desirable and delectable prizes.

But servant girls too had their dreams. We found them in the pages of Pegs Paper and The Crimson Circle where the heroines, without surrendering a fraction of their innocence and virginity, eventually succeeded in capturing the love and money of the handsome hero. We found romance, excitement and vicarious sexual emotion in the cinema, swooning over such cardboard lovers as Rudolph Valentino or Ramon Navarro. Though, as I used to say to my friend Gladys, it couldnt be all honey being courted by one of those sheik types. When he held you in a passionate embrace, you wouldnt know for sure whether he really cared or was just getting in a bit of practice for his next film. Gladys reckoned that shed take a chance on it, for at least they didnt start off by trying to feel a girl in all the wrong places as the fellows one met at a dance did.

At the films, we too, for a while, could be as sexy as a Clara Bow, or as slinkily seductive as a Pola Negri. But one place where we never at any time looked for romance was above stairs. Although living in the same house, coming into contact in bedrooms, drawing-rooms and kitchen, those above stairs were, to servants, a world apart. None of us dreamed, or thought the prospect even remotely possible, of entering their life, of being one of them. Their style, their money and perhaps even their morals, were totally alien to the way of life below stairs. So, no matter if the sons or nephews occasionally visited the kitchen and servants hall on some specious excuse, we knew well enough they were merely amusing themselves by slumming. And yet, during my years in service, one girl did manage to change her status from downstairs to upstairs by marrying the son of the house; much to the Madams dismay and the Masters fury. I must admit that Rosalie, the parlourmaid, was an exceptionally pretty girl though a bit slow in the uptake. She had a lovely creamy skin, the bluest of eyes, and thick golden hair that waved naturally. Id have thought that with those natural advantages, she could have got a better job than being a parlourmaid. But Rosalies mother was a strict, church-going disciplinarian, the embodiment of respectability. So what better job for her daughter than domestic service; that was eminently respectable.

All this occurred over fifty years ago. There are only two of us left now; Mary the under-housemaid, and me. I am therefore able to write about a unique event and the life of the household.

I was eighteen when I decided that I was fed up with being a kitchenmaid; fed up with having to gauge the disposition of the cook and cater to her whims and fancies; fed up with having to wait on the other servants. I reckoned Id learnt enough about cooking to become a good plain cook. So I decided to give a months notice and then to go home for a couple of weeks Id saved enough money to pay my mother for my keep while I looked around for another job and a new status.

One needed a short interval between leaving the old job and entering the basement of a new one, because working out a months notice was purgatory. The cook was invariably extremely irritated because you wanted to get away from her, and shed also have to start training another girl. Yet, however awful she was, it would have been very unwise to answer rudely because she might tell Madam that you werent a good kitchenmaid, and then, if Madam didnt give you a good reference, youd no hope of getting a decent job.

Id always kept in contact with Mary, the under-housemaid from my first job below stairs, so I wrote to let her know that I contemplated taking a job as a cook. Mary was still an under-housemaid, working now in a large country house near Southampton. Id been home only two days when she came to see me, principally with the object of persuading me to become a temporary kitchenmaid. In a weeks time they would be in urgent need of one.

Its ever such a nice place, Margaret. Madam, Mrs Wardham, is a lovely lady to work for, so considerate. He s a bit of a swine, but then youd never see him, he never goes down to the basement except once in a while to inspect the wine cellar. And its only for a month or two, until the cooks niece can come as a kitchenmaid. Theres a between-maid so youd get help in the kitchen; and Mrs Buller, the cook, though shes a bit churchy, shes easy to get on with.

Dont make me laugh, Mary. Youre always telling me that people you dont have to work under are easy to get on with. Yet when I told you that I quite liked Alice, the upper housemaid where we were at Mrs Clydesdale, you went up in the air and said she was an old witch. Still, you were right about the cook there; Mrs McIlroy was quite nice.

There you are then, Margaret. Shes married now too.

Married? Never! Not Mrs McIlroy. Why, she was fifty at least. Who would marry her?

You remember the butler, Mr. Wade? He got the sack for going out in one of the reverends suits and coming home as drunk as a lord. Mrs McIlroy married him about a month ago. I expect she thought, any port in a storm. Anyway, hes got a good job as a hall porter in a posh hotel. Ah! that was a night, wasnt it, when he got the sack; made a lovely bit of excitement for us. Dyou remember he came rolling in about ten oclock, went into his bedroom and came out with a sheet draped round him like a surplice. Then, waving a whisky bottle in one hand and a Bible in the other, he shouted to us goggle-eyed servants, Down on your knees, sinners like we had to at prayers every morning with that old hypocrite the reverend giving us sermons on counting our blessings. Then Mr Wade said:

Ah! Wasnt Mr Wade the one for making up rhymes at the drop of a hat.

Yes, but worse than that, Mary, was when he went on imitating the reverends voice, saying, Here endeth the first lesson, and then to our horror because we could see the reverend on the basement stairs adding, Im as drunk as I can be, all on the reverends fine whisky. What a stingy old man is he.

We had almost burst trying to suppress our laughter while the reverend was there for we hadnt wanted to follow Mr Wade into the wilderness. But up in our bedroom wed giggled like mad over the thunder-struck expression on the reverends face; such an outrageous event had never been known in the reverends house. That a servant should get drunk and utter blasphemous words! It was worth a months wages, 2, to have been a spectator.