Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (3 page)

Now I have a secret to unfold. It’s something I swore to Dad I would never tell but since it was over sixty years ago that I made the promise, and since there cannot now be any severe consequences I think he’ll forgive me for breaking the confidence. Dad was a poacher. Not, I hasten to add, the kind that goes out in the dead of night with nets and snares, but nevertheless in the eyes of the law he was a poacher. He was a deadly shot with a catapult. He once boasted to me that he’d stopped a mad dog which was about to savage him by shooting it straight between the eyes. Whether that was true or not I don’t know, but what I do know, because I’ve seen him do it often, is that he could hit a pheasant at a hundred feet.

I suppose in a way I was an accomplice after the fact because I acted as lookout and also used to help him make the lead pellets to use as ammunition. There was a field opposite our parlour which seemed to attract the pheasants. Come to think of it now it’s possible that Dad used to put a bit of grain there as bait, anyway many a summer evening would find a bird pecking away in that field. If I saw it first I would alert Dad and together we’d go into the parlour and carefully open the window. He would take aim, there’d be a quick crack of elastic and nine times out of ten down would fall the pheasant.

Now this was when it got difficult: the village policeman lived next door and since there were never any other crimes committed, poaching was his speciality. Dad of course knew his movements – everyone in a village knows everyone else’s movements – so the execution was done when the policeman was on his beat. It was getting the body from the field into our house that was the difficulty. I at first volunteered to do it but Dad wouldn’t hear of that. He didn’t want my young character blackened. He’d wait until it was dark and then he’d collect it in a sack. He never got caught, though he must have been found out. As I’ve said, everyone in a village knows everyone else’s movements and someone must have known Dad’s because quite a few times when he went to collect the booty, it wasn’t there. At first he thought he must have just stunned the bird, but he knew when he’d made a certain kill and it sent him raging mad to think that someone was stealing his property, as he called it. I’d heard a saying about honour amongst thieves and I wanted to repeat it to Dad when this happened, but I didn’t have the courage. So it was, that from time to time our table was graced with a pheasant. On his way to and from work Dad would also use his catapult but only to shoot at jays or snipe. These were considered as fair game by the authorities whereas pheasant, partridge or grouse were sacrosanct.

Milk of a kind was always plentiful. I say of a kind because a farmer friend supplied the Studley Royal dairy at Fountains with milk for their butter. After the cream had been separated he brought the skimmed milk back as feed for his cattle, but he always left a can at the end of our cottage wall for us. We were also lucky with butter because Dad had an ‘arrangement’ with the dairy and they gave him a roll, about a pound and a half, whenever we needed it. Another great treat that I remember was when the farmer gave us ‘beestings’. Beestings is the first milk a cow gives off after it has calved. It was thick, rich and creamy and made lovely curd tarts.

All our bread was baked at home. Flour was ordered by the sack. Meat was bought from time to time but except for Sundays this was for Dad only. In those days the man of the house, the breadwinner, was considered all-important. He had to be kept well fed, fit and healthy. It made sense. Without him at work we could all have starved.

Clothes were expensive. There were no cheap tailors or dress-shops at that time. This might have been a problem for us, but fortunately Mum was friendly with an independent lady who had a house in the village. I think they used to meet when Mum was cleaning the church and this lady was arranging the flowers there. I know Mum was able to help her over a few things. She showed her gratitude by giving Mum clothes, mainly for us children, but sometimes there was a suit for Dad. They were secondhand of course and they didn’t fit straight away but Mum’s needle soon remedied that. They must have been good quality things because they were inherited by both my sisters. My youngest sister Olive moans to this day about never having had any new clothes as a child. She’s made up for it since, I’m glad to say.

Holidays were something we didn’t know about. We never went away as a family. I don’t think we missed anything. I had one day a year at the seaside and that was on our choir outing. I used to look forward to it, but it never came up to my expectations. I remember I was given sixpence to spend and out of that I bought a present for Mum and Dad. Mum went away for a couple of days each year to see her mother in Derbyshire and took one of the youngest children with her. Dad’s recreation was umpiring for the village cricket club, and drinking a glass of ale. Since there was no pub in our village this meant a three-mile walk, which was all right going when he knew there was something at the end of it, but not the same and perhaps a little more hazardous coming back. In his later years Mum would keep a small barrel at home for him, or at least she said it was for him but I noticed she helped herself to a glass from time to time. My main recreation as I grew older was the cinema at Ripon. I’d cycle there and back and spend the fourpence I was now given for cleaning the church and doing the boilers; threepence it was to go in and a penny for sweets. There was one dance a year held in the village, the cricket club dance at the school. This was something Mum and Dad went to together; I was left at home to look after the children.

Our lives were really almost entirely centred on the house. A home which was run by careful planning and was kept going by small personal sacrifices and by us all working together as a team. Unkind people might say that we scrounged food and clothes and accepted charity, that Mum and Dad showed no pride. In one sense they’d be right, but in another my parents were the proudest I have known and for the right reasons. They could walk head high. They worked hard, they lived well, they looked after their own and helped others, they brought up a happy family, they gave us all the will to work hard and the knowledge of the satisfaction of a job well done. It wasn’t the kind of teaching that was going to bring us a fortune, but it was a good grounding for the sort of jobs that were available to us at that time and it must have been rewarding to them both that they had their children’s love and affection to the end.

My father’s funeral was the outward sign of respect that there was for him. The entire village turned out to see him away. My mother lived longer and left Aldfield, otherwise I’m sure she would have been given a similar last tribute.

T
he choice of a career for girls born into our circumstances presented no difficulty. Almost inevitably we were bound to go into service. I didn’t mind what work I did, but there was one personal snag: ever since I could remember I had had the urge to travel. I know today that when you ask any children what they want to do, ‘To travel’ is almost always the reply. It’s the fashionable thing to say. It wasn’t when I was young, it would have been considered foolishness, so I didn’t talk about it.

My mother was the first to know. We were very close and as I got older she used to confide in me and lean on me a bit. To my astonishment she didn’t laugh when I told her; her ‘We’ll have to think about it,’ was almost encouraging. She did think about it, because a few days later when we were alone together she said, ‘Remember talking about your wanting to travel, my gal? It’s not so difficult as it sounds. In service there are two servants who usually go everywhere with their masters or mistresses, valets and ladies’ maids. If you’re prepared to smarten yourself up a bit, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be a lady’s maid.’

So from then on that was my ambition. The ‘smarten yourself up a bit’ wasn’t such a backhander as it sounded. By that Mum meant that I would have to learn French and dressmaking, and ‘You’ll have to stay on at school until you’ve learnt everything they can teach you,’ she added. So the plan was made. It demanded no sacrifices from me, but it did from Mum and Dad. It meant that I should earn no money until I got my first job, that instead of contributing to the family coffers I should be a drain on them. I did suggest that I could go into service as a housemaid or kitchen-maid and then transfer, but Mum wouldn’t hear of that. ‘You’d be classed, you’d never get out of it. No, you’ve got to start as you mean to go on.’

It was arranged that I should have French lessons in Ripon, at sixpence each, and when I left school at sixteen I was apprenticed to Hetheringtons, a big dressmaking establishment in Ripon. The apprenticeship was for five years, but I only stayed for two. I’d got sharp eyes and an inquiring tongue and felt that I had learnt by then all that I needed. I was also getting itchy feet and feeling guilty about not earning any money. So when I was eighteen I told Mum I was ready to apply for my first job. Again Mum’s experience of service came in useful. ‘You’re not ready to be a fully-fledged lady’s maid and it’s no use thinking you are. I’ll write off to an agency and see if there are any vacancies for “Young Ladies’ Maids”.’

She explained to me that young ladies’ maids, or schoolroom maids, as they were sometimes called, were the junior equivalent of ladies’ maids, who had to look after the daughter of the house. In my case it was to be the daughters because I applied for and got a job with Lady Ierne Tufton, and my charges were Miss Patricia, aged eighteen, and Miss Ann, aged twelve. Understandably I was very excited at getting my first position, but strangely as I think about it now I wasn’t in the least nervous. Nor was I frightened of London. I’d never been there but Mum had told me about it. She didn’t warn me of the temptations and dangers there are there as some mums did; she seemed to have trust in me or perhaps she thought that her earlier pronouncement, made in front of all of us, that if we girls got pregnant without being married it was no good us coming back home, she wouldn’t open the door to us, was sufficient. I have often since wondered if she would have abided by what she said, but such was my fear that I never put it to the test. Mind you, at that time there wasn’t much opportunity for thinking about such things, I had to set to making my outfit, print frocks and aprons for morning wear, and dark dresses for the afternoon and evening. Once again it was Mum who found the money for everything.

The train journey to London passed very quickly. I don’t know whether Mum had said anything about not talking to strangers, but if so I ignored it. Everyone in my carriage soon knew where I was going and why, and I chatted to them all the way. I was met at King’s Cross station by Jessie, the Tuftons’ head housemaid. I had written to her and told her what I looked like and what I’d be wearing, so she recognized me and took me by taxi to the Tuftons’ town house, 2 Chesterfield Gardens, Curzon Street, Mayfair. It was a large, six-storey house next door to the Earl of Craven. I particularly mention this because he later married the daughter of the Town Clerk of Invergordon. It caused quite a stir in society at the time. I was introduced to the other servants, shown my room and put to wait in the servants’ hall until it was convenient for her ladyship to see me. I had time to reflect on things as I’d found them so far. The London I’d seen from the taxi was much what I had expected to find, the house if anything was smaller than I’d imagined, my bedroom, which I was to share with Miss Emms, was attractive and well furnished. I was not in the least daunted by my surroundings nor was I ever to be. Many people later expressed surprise at my easy acceptance of my new world but, as I told them, it takes a lot to impress a Yorkshire girl.

It was now that I didn’t seem to be able to find my tongue. I don’t know how long I sat there but it seemed like hours. When eventually I was taken upstairs and introduced to Lady Ierne I found her pleasant but stern. In turn I was introduced to Miss Patricia and Miss Ann and then handed over to Miss Emms, her ladyship’s personal maid, to be shown the schoolroom and to have my duties explained to me. Miss Emms began by giving me a sort of background history of the family and then went on to describe their country estates, Appleby Castle in Westmorland and Hothfield Place in Kent. I learnt that there were two sons, the Honourable Harry who was in the army, the Hussars, and Peter, a schoolboy at Eton; he was the youngest of the family and I was later to become very friendly with him.

My timetable and duties sounded simple as Miss Emms said them, but were complicated in practice by temperament and the course of events. I was called at seven o’clock with tea by the under-housemaid, who also laid and lit my fire. This was a privilege and a distinction bestowed on me by the rules of the servants’ hall. In my turn I had to clean the grate and lay and light the fire in the schoolroom, tidy, sweep and dust it and then go for my breakfast in the servants’ hall, which would be given to me by the underkitchen-maid. At eight o’clock I would call the two young ladies with their morning tea and gather up the clothes that they’d been wearing the night before. Doing this for Miss Ann was quite a task because she would fling them anywhere and everywhere. Miss Patricia was tidier. So indeed was Miss Ann after I’d been there a few months and was in a position to make myself felt. Then I would lay out their clothes for the day and prepare their baths, and finally when they were dressed make sure they were fully presentable.

While they were having breakfast I busied myself in their bedrooms and the schoolroom. I think I should explain here that the schoolroom didn’t look like it sounds. There were no desks or a blackboard; it was an informal sitting-room with comfy chairs, bookshelves, games and a piano. The piano was considered to be Miss Patricia’s property. She was a brilliant and gifted pianist and could have made a career out of music. It was her whole life and was so important to her because she had neuritis of the spine and was therefore unable to ride or play tennis or do the sort of things other girls of her class did at the time.