Read The Real Life Downton Abbey Online
Authors: Jacky Hyams
Traditionally, the grand country house has a large stabling area, particularly in the years before the motorcar when transport was a horse-drawn carriage. Back then, a very large estate employed a head coachman, a second coachman and up to ten grooms, and maybe a dozen helpers and stable-hands. But in a house where a car and chauffeur had already been introduced, there are less horses in the stables – but grooms and stable boys are still needed because the family continue to ride – and, in some cases, horses are bred here for racing.
There are dogs, too, noisily making their presence felt. In country houses pointers, setters, Labrador retrievers or spaniels are best suited to the world of shooting and hunting. And huge mastiffs might be guarding stabling areas.
For the servants, of course, dogs wandering around the house itself can mean extra work, clearing up their mess or replacing torn items, small details which the housekeeper and her team must be up to speed to spot. And the important outdoor activities like the big shooting parties involve all the indoor staff, too: preparing for these is a big part of the organisational
pre-planning
that goes on all the time.
The gardeners and outdoor servants, however, have a slightly different deal to the indoor servants. They are paid wages. But they do not sleep or eat in the house. Their accommodation tends to be on the estate, in cottages. As a general rule, the younger staff – the under gardeners – live together in shared accommodation, sometimes with a maid or housekeeper who cooks or cleans for them. The head gardeners, stablemen, farmers and estate manager have their own cottages on the employer’s land, in which they can live with their families. Their deal is far less restrictive.
But while they may be free from the day-to-day hierarchical rule within the house, their hours remain long, from 6.30am until it gets dark. And the work is endless and physically demanding.
In some big houses, the gardeners are divided up into separate teams, headed up by a supervisor or foreman. As well as a head gardener and six under-gardeners there may be a kitchen garden team, a fruit-tending team, a specialist plant team, another for bedding plants and a team exclusively devoted to cultivating flowers for the house. The gardener in charge of this gang will be cutting and arranging blooms to decorate the house and dining-room table every day.
When dinner parties are being organised, the head gardener is informed, via an upper servant, which colour flowers are required. Then he, or a gardener-cum-expert in creating flower arrangements, will make up the big arrangements in the greenhouse, securing the flowers with small bundles of rosemary twigs with raffia, so they can be fitted vertically into a container.
Then the decorations are taken in, via the servants’ entrance, so that the butler or footmen can place them wherever they are needed. Big colourful bunches of sweet peas are popular, an emblem of Edwardian times: Edward VII even has one named after him – in crimson. And huge displays of roses and lilac are a must-have for fashionable hostesses.
When really big entertainments are planned, flowers are used to decorate all of the rooms in the house. At such times the gardening team will be around at the crack of dawn to get it all ready.
Given the toffs’ obsession with decoration and appearance, the flower arrangements at the dining table are incredibly important: they contribute to the overall success of their dinner parties. Aristocratic hostesses vie with each other to create the most outstanding displays, often including exotic fruits like pineapples or perfectly ripe peaches wired into the flower displays. There are even external specialist flower arrangers, (usually a genteel woman from a respectable but impoverished background, much like the governess) who may be hired to come to the house to create lavish flower displays when needed. Sometimes the colours of the flowers at the table are chosen to match the dress of the Lady of the house. Attention to detail is all.
For the landowning aristocrats and the new money elite, ‘The Season’ is the time they spend in London, in their town residence, to socialise and engage in politics. (Members of both Houses of Parliament participate in the Season.) Exclusive events, often including royalty, are held at the town mansions of the super-rich. And The Season is also a big opportunity for the toffs to formally introduce their children of marriageable age to society. (Women are introduced by presentation to the monarch at Court.)
TOOLS OF THE TRADEThe Season starts at Easter and ends officially on the Glorious Twelfth of August, when the shooting season for red grouse starts. After World War I, when elite society starts to change, the long Season becomes less important. As an important event on the social calendar, its significance peaks in the early years of the 1900s. Yet even today, remnants of The Season are still with us with events like Royal Ascot and the Henley Regatta.
ICEMostly, the servants’ work in and around the house is very labour intensive. The steam irons, dishwashers, fridge freezers and other household appliances we take for granted are not yet around in the Edwardian era. But there are some helpful developments…
Artificial refrigeration is developed in the Victorian era and it is used commercially (to transport meat from the Antipodes, for instance). Yet it is largely mistrusted domestically until around 1903–4. Even then, many big houses don’t use refrigerators. They either continue to use ice from open water on their own estate, taken by the servants to the kitchen area to be stored in large ice chests in a separate room. Or storage might be in an ice-well in the grounds of the estate. The housekeeper also has the option of ordering top-quality imported blocks of ice, often from Norway, which can be transported, via rail, to the house.
CLEANING APPLIANCESIce is an important aspect of the dinner-table display, used in enormous moulds for ice cream and different shapes – ice swans are very popular – but only the handful of country houses who have adopted all the latest mod cons are using their own early versions of fridges.
WASHING AND DRYINGBy 1903, early types of not-very-effective vacuum cleaners are available; ‘vacuum cleaner parties’ are held in London, where wealthy women sit and watch while the new invention is used in front of them. Yet the more efficient, mass-produced ‘bag on a stick’ upright vacuum cleaners, produced by Hoover in the US, are not imported into the UK until 1912. They are very much a luxury item, costing around £2 to buy, or 3/6d (three shillings and sixpence) a day to hire – only after World War II do they become more affordable for ordinary people.
Soap is used in huge quantities in the big country house. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, soap is actually taxed, making it an expensive proposition for most. But by the dawn of the twentieth century branded soaps (like Sunlight) and washing powders are widely available and the washing process becomes slightly less time consuming than in the past.
Hand-operated washing machines with two wringers attached have also been available for some time. But laundry maids hate them because they are so heavy to operate when they are full. In the bigger houses – where the owner has installed their own plant to generate electricity – electrically powered washing machines are in use.
But these are the exception. Most houses now use a hand-operated washing machine for part of the laundry process and continue to run their own laundry. Some opt to use the big commercial laundries, usually in London, where the linens and laundry can be transported to the house and back by rail.
By tradition, there are big drying cupboards in the
in-house
laundry. But freshly washed items are also dried outdoors whenever possible – bleaching in the sun is important. Some laundry might be spread out on the grass, some on bushes or hedges. Clothes lines, made of hemp or wire, are useful, but stealing clothes from grass or lines became, over time, a common form of theft, so the laundress must be vigilant when drying outdoors – she doesn’t want to have to report any losses to the housekeeper, whose role includes making an inventory for all laundry items – and keeping a sharp eye on any discrepancies.
STAIN REMOVALShe may be virtually unseen but the laundress is important to the success of the household routine: she needs to be an expert in every aspect of laundry: the washing, ironing, bleaching, drying and folding are equally important and given the toffs’ obsession with perfection – and gleaming, crisp, white linen – there’s no let-up in the quest for pile after pile of dry, neatly ironed and pressed linens in the cupboards.
Before washing, all stains are removed by the laundry maid or lady’s maid. Shop-bought cleaners are not used on stains because they are acid based and quite dangerous to the very delicate silks, cottons and linens that are used: clothing made from man-made fibres emerges in 1910 but the aristocracy, whose clothes are often handmade and who sleep in sheets of the very finest linen, are unlikely to embrace such developments.
FROM THE COUNTRY HOUSE GARDEN…Here are a few useful stain removal methods used by country house servants:
Wine stains:
Wet the stain with cold water. Then sprinkle it with dry starch and rub into a paste. Avoid washing with soap beforehand as this will fix the stain. Leave the paste to dry for an hour. The stain should then be gone when the paste is rubbed off. If it’s a stubborn stain, salt and lemon juice rubbed on for a few minutes, then removed by pouring hot water through it, will get rid of it.
Blood stains:
Wash in cold water if the garment is wet. If it’s dry, soak the garment in cold water with added washing soda. Then wash it as usual and dry in the open. 5Starch paste may also be useful in removing bloodstains.
Fruit stains:
Pour boiling water over the stain. Avoid using soap – it will fix the stain.
Ink stains:
If the ink is still wet, sprinkle the item with salt. Then rub with a cut lemon. Another method is to soak the item in sour or boiled milk; as the stain is absorbed into the milk, renew the milk. Or try rubbing the stain with a tomato cut in half.
Create your own scented Edwardian delights using these two easy ideas:
Rose water (a very popular Edwardian scent).
Place some freshly gathered rose petals in an enamel pan, cover with water and very slowly bring the mixture to the boil. Simmer for ten minutes. Then strain the water into a jug or bottle. Use as a facial toner or on irritated skin, for an anti-ageing, rejuvenating effect. (You can also make chamomile water, which also helps firm skin tissue, by soaking chamomile flowers in water and shaking twice daily for two weeks. Then it is ready to be strained and bottled.)
Potpourri: essence of rose.
Potpourri is a mixture of dried flowers and other ingredients which, when combined, create a delicate aroma. Flowers that are good for potpourri are roses, carnations, violets, sunflower and lavender. Good herbs include chamomile, sage, thyme, lavender and rosemary. Eucalyptus leaves are also very aromatic.
For Essence of Rose you need:
Method:
NATURAL REMEDIESScented paper (to line drawers and shelves).
Using wrapping paper or unwanted sheets of wallpaper for the lining, place the sheets of paper in a large polythene bag – and sprinkle over the blended potpourri. Seal the bag, shake occasionally and leave until you’re ready to line the drawers or cupboard shelves with the paper for a beautiful, subtle scent.
Repeated washing up in soapy suds mean that servants’ hands can become chapped and sore. For this reason, they often cover them with black gloves when out and about.
Here’s a simple remedy for chapped hands…
Rub honey into your hands when the skin is dry, moisten a little, rub harder, then use a little more water. Finally, wash hands thoroughly with the water still containing traces of honey, or wash hands with soap and rub them well with oatmeal while wet.
Swollen feet or ankles are another occupational hazard in service. This natural remedy is very useful…
Bathe or soak feet in a mixture of half water and half natural apple cider vinegar. Wrapping feet in a cloth that has been soaked in this mixture will also help ease the swelling.
Chapter 6