Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (12 page)

For a day or two I went about my work with a light heart and any nasty remarks fell off me like water off a duck’s back. Then one morning in London Miss Dorothy, from Bertha Hammond’s of 16 Old Bond Street, came to do her ladyship’s hair. Perhaps it is interesting to recall here that on my lady’s recommendation, Mr George Bernard Shaw had his hair and beard trimmed and washed at Bertha Hammond’s. As I went in to remove the breakfast tray Lady Astor said, very testily, ‘Rose, give Miss Dorothy a cup of coffee.’ I poured her one from the Thermos jug on the tray, put the cup on the dressing-table and left. About five minutes later my bell rang and I went to her ladyship again. Angrily she pointed to Miss Dorothy’s cup and said, ‘Take that thing away, you should have done it hours ago. How do you expect Miss Dorothy to work with dirty cups lying about?’

I stopped in my tracks and looked long and hard at her ladyship through the mirror. From my expression there was no mistaking how I felt. I then looked at Miss Dorothy, who was obviously thoroughly uncomfortable, and left.

Two more minutes and my bell rang again. ‘Rose, why have you given me a thick dressing-gown to wear in the middle of the summer? Get me a thin one.’

‘I can’t get you what you haven’t got, can I?’

‘Very well, Rose, buy the material and make me one.’

‘No I won’t, my lady. You’ve got the money go and buy one yourself.’ I gave another look at her in the mirror, and another glance at Miss Dorothy who looked as if she was frightened to death, and left.

Three or four minutes later the bell went again; so did I. ‘Rose,’ she said, ‘don’t you ever dare speak to me as you have this morning. I don’t know what’s come over you.’

‘My lady,’ I said, ‘from now on I intend to speak as I’m spoken to. Common people say please and thank you, ordinary people do not reprimand servants in front of others and ladies are supposed to be an example to all, and that is that.’

I left the room feeling triumphant. I’d stood up to her, I’d protected myself, she could sack me if she liked, but if she did she was in the wrong, not me. Half an hour later my bell rang again. ‘This, my gal,’ I said to myself, ‘is it.’ I wasn’t the least bit afraid.

‘Rose,’ she said, as I entered the room, ‘I apologize for my behaviour this morning.’

I’d won. Now I was torn between two stools: should I say, ‘And so do I, my lady,’ so making things easier for her? I didn’t. I thought, ‘No, if I do it will mean things are all square.’ So I just said, ‘Thank you, my lady,’ and went.

Now all this sounds very trivial, but if you want to know how it was possible for two people to live closely for thirty-odd years it is important. For me it was a turning-point and so it was going to be for her ladyship though she didn’t know it then. She couldn’t change her nature any more than I could. I had created a situation between us and named the rules. It was to be a battle of wills and wits and therefore I had to keep mine about me. It wasn’t long before I saw how right I was. We’d been at it hammer and tongs and finally I said, ‘You’re unkind, my lady. I don’t think you realize how hurtful you can be to people.’

‘Oh yes I do, Rose, whenever I’m hurtful I mean it, and I enjoy it.’ She was like a tigress as she said it.

I said, ‘Right, my lady. Now we know where we stand.’

She laughed then, but still I knew she’d meant what she’d said, when she said it. As another argument reached its climax, she cried, ‘Rose, it’s my ambition to break your spirit.’

‘I know it is, my lady. There’s two of you trying to do it. You and the devil. And neither of you will succeed.’

She didn’t care for that one, being coupled with the devil, with her strong preoccupation with religion. I’d got to learn quite a bit about Christian Science while I was with her and I’d throw it back at her. ‘How can you think that way, my lady? Your book says, “A person who thinks good and does good is good.” You must learn to practise what you preach.’ That put her back on her heels. So did my reply to her when she was being critical. ‘You know, Rose, if you were the perfect maid you would arrange my collar for me before allowing me to go down to dinner.’

Quick as a flash came the Christian Science phrase, ‘It’s because I’m imperfect that I am here to try and perfect myself. Remember, my lady, there’s only one perfect person.’

She often tried to get at me through my speech. ‘You and your Yorkshire accent,’ she’d say, ‘why don’t you try and speak properly?’

‘Do you really want me to go around aping the kind of people you entertain, my lady, speaking with a plum in my mouth? Never, I’m Yorkshire and proud of it. Me I am and me I mean to stay.’

Then another time she was finding fault and started making comparisons. ‘The difference between us, Rose, is that I was born to command and have learnt through experience how to deal with people.’

‘The difference between us, my lady,’ I said, ‘is that you have money. Money is power, and people respect money and power so they respect you for having it.’ It wasn’t really true, there were so many other things about her that people respected, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to words. She’d use my rank to belittle me. ‘You’re as bad as a housemaid, Rose,’ she said to me once.

‘You ought to know better than to speak to me like that,’ I replied, ‘my sister Ann is a housemaid, a good one, and she’s a good person. I expect there are a lot of them who are better people than me. You’ve no right to talk of housemaids as though they are the lowest of the low, you only belittle yourself.’

Oh, I let her have it that time, and she took it. Give her her due, after she’d got over the initial shock of my talking back at her, she learnt to accept it and to expect it. It wasn’t long before I began to suspect that she enjoyed it and therefore goaded me purposely. Anyway she never seemed to bear any malice. Another time when she was talking disparagingly about servants, I said, ‘I’m surprised that you think of maids that way, my lady. Wasn’t it only yesterday that you were saying in the House of Commons that more girls ought to go into domestic service? If any possible recruit were to hear you now I should think they’d have second thoughts.’ I got a quick, ‘Shut up, Rose,’ for that one, but now, when she said that, I looked on it as one up for me.

There were times when she suspected that I wasn’t very busy and she couldn’t bear to think that she wasn’t getting her money’s-worth out of her servants. An occasion I remember was when we were down at Sandwich, and she asked me how I was enjoying the holiday. ‘Very much, my lady,’ I said. This must have started her thinking that I wasn’t doing enough because half an hour later she rang for me and told me to produce the sewing work that I’d done for her that week. Well, that was tantamount to me being there on trial. It was an insult and I took it as such. As it happened I’d been very busy making sachets for her underclothes and edging scarves from material that had been sent from Paris. I took it all down, plonked it in front of her and stormed out of the room.

Again my bell rang. Her ladyship said, ‘Rose, I like your work, but I don’t like your attitude when I ask to see it.’

‘My lady,’ I said, ‘you treat me as if I was new and untrained. You show no trust in me at all. I can read you like a book. Just because I said I was enjoying the holiday you thought I wasn’t doing my work, so you decided to check up on me. I don’t like it, my lady, and it won’t do.’

‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ she said.

‘So am I, my lady,’ I replied.

There’s no doubt that some of the blame for our set-to’s lay with me. It was a clash of temperament. Perhaps we both fed on it. Sometimes it used to worry me. I’d end up by saying, ‘You know, my lady, it’s dreadful the way we go on at each other; you make me ashamed of my own sex.’ Once, I remember, things got so heated that she really lost control and landed out at me with her foot. I made to catch it but just missed. ‘You wouldn’t have floored me, would you, Rose?’ she said, when she pulled herself together.

‘I certainly would, my lady,’ I replied, ‘just as you would have kicked me if I hadn’t moved away in time.’ Then of course we both burst out laughing.

As the years passed our relationship mellowed and the rows became more like verbal skirmishes. Apparently, though I didn’t learn this until later, they were a topic of amusement and conversation not only among the servants, but with the family as well. Eventually I was told that Lord Astor would go to his dressing-room when we were having an altercation, to listen in and have a good laugh. When I heard this I was astounded that he allowed a maid to talk to her ladyship as I did. Mr Bushell, his valet, said that he probably thought it better that she should take it out on me and so spare himself. I don’t know. I suppose it could be true. One thing I do know is that I discovered the key to understanding and working for Lady Astor: she didn’t like people who kow-towed to her and she didn’t like ‘yes’ men.

So far I haven’t been very complimentary about her ladyship. While I am at it I think I may as well complete this one side of the picture. That there is another you can be sure, otherwise I could never have stayed with her. She was such a mass of contradictions that it’s impossible to generalize about her. She could be mean, mean over money and sometimes mean in spirit. It was about six years after I had been with her that I thought I deserved a rise in salary. Seventy-five pounds a year wasn’t a lot of money even then. I approached her ladyship. I could see she didn’t like me for doing it, but she said she would see what she could do. She spoke to the secretary. The next month my wages were raised by five pounds a year. I was disappointed and disgusted. I said nothing. Some time passed and one day her ladyship said, ‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Rose, have you got your rise in salary?’

‘Yes thank you, my lady,’ I answered, ‘I’ve got my extra threepence a day.’ She flushed a bit, but no more was said. I’d learnt my lesson. I never asked for another rise, and I never got one. At that time goodness was supposed to be its own reward.

Her ladyship could be mean too over small purchases that I made for her. ‘Fancy buying that! Couldn’t you have made do?’ That sort of thing, and once when I took some cakes to eat myself after they had been taken from the drawing-room, she went for Mr Lee as if he’d lost the crown jewels. He didn’t give me away, but when I heard about it I told her that I was the culprit. ‘Oh, if he’d told me that I wouldn’t have minded; I thought it was one of the other servants,’ she said.

‘And why shouldn’t they have the occasional crumb from the rich man’s table?’ I demanded.

‘Shut up, Rose.’

Black or white, that was Lady Astor. That there was so much white was the wonder. She was spoilt from birth, for despite what her mother is supposed to have said, ‘I’ve had eleven children, all unwanted,’ the Langhornes were made to feel very much wanted, with everything that money could buy and the other things that money couldn’t, like love and happiness. She enjoyed the outdoor life and the débutante scene in New York. All right, her first marriage was not a success, but to what extent did she try and make it one? She ran back home a number of times, beginning with the second night of their honeymoon. She blamed the drink, but a lot of men drink, particularly if their wives are a bit unstable. After she was separated, and later divorced, from Mr Shaw, she toured round Europe so she could forget the unpleasantness. Then she had the wonderful good fortune to meet and marry his lordship, a great gentleman, a kind husband and one of the wealthiest men in the world. From what I’ve heard of their early years together he lavished everything upon her, love as well as his worldly goods. She was pampered in every way. I reckon that treatment would have destroyed most women, but that her ladyship survived it and became the great person that she did shows a phenomenal strength of character that her worst enemy couldn’t help but admire. From what I knew it was her love and feeling for others that saved her from becoming a spoilt darling. Cleverer people than I have talked about her as a supporter of causes. I believe that behind every cause was a person, someone she could identify herself with. She never talked politics to me, she only talked people, and I would later see the plight of these people turned into causes. She is famous for those she entertained. There’s no doubt she enjoyed meeting them. Entertaining with her was like an industry. Many people are said to have used her for their own ends, but she used many of them to make the lot of the poorer and more insignificant easier.

During the First War the Astors built a military hospital for Canadian soldiers. It was a model of its kind and was all paid for by his lordship. By the end of the war it could hold over six hundred patients. One of these, a Mr Guy, stayed on to work for the Astors in the estate office. He never stopped singing her ladyship’s praises. ‘I reckoned I was a goner, Miss Harrison,’ he told me, ‘nothing they did for me seemed to help. Then one morning along came her ladyship, only she was plain Mrs Astor then. “What are you so down in the mouth for?” she asked. “You look as though you think you’re going to die.”

‘“Well, it had crossed my mind, madam,” I said.

‘“Nonsense, that’s not the kind of spirit that’s going to get you better. I’ll tell you what,” she said, “if you pull yourself together and get well quickly I’ll give you a gold watch.” Well, from that moment on, everything seemed to go all right, despite the fact that I had to have four more operations. Every time her ladyship came to the hospital she came to see me and sort of dangled that gold watch in front of me. When I was on my feet again sure enough she gave me one, and here it is.’

I’m sure that gold watch was taken out more often to illustrate his tale than it was ever to look at the time. There were to be many other people that her ladyship assisted, as I was able to see for myself during the next war. Her generosity was not confined to the sick or disabled: she also often helped with the education of the children of the workers on the estate. Mr Lee tells a story which apparently was one her ladyship was very fond of using when she had a party in the lower dining-room at St James’s Square. She sat at the end of the table; opposite on the wall were two pictures, one of the first John Jacob Astor and the other the Sargent portrait of herself. During dinner she would point at them and say, ‘That’s the man who made the millions and that’s the woman who’s spending them.’