Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (6 page)

Now that I was a proper lady’s maid I no longer wore print frocks. I was expected to dress simply, plainly, unassumingly yet in fashion. I wore jerseys and skirts with a cardigan in the mornings and afternoons; after tea or if I was going out earlier I changed into a blue or brown dress. A string of pearls or beads was permissible, so was a wristwatch, but other jewellery was frowned on. Make-up was not encouraged; indeed later I was rebuked for using lipstick. When ladies and their maids were out together there could never be any mistaking which was which.

One habit that Lady Cranborne had that I didn’t care for was that she would drive fast and often dangerously; indeed it was a common fault of the upper classes. They wouldn’t be able to do it today, but they seemed to have a way with the police then. At the mention of their names constables would close their notebooks. Many’s the narrow squeak I’ve had in a car with her ladyship. I remember once we were driving through the New Forest in her Lagonda; we’d reached Cadnam and she swung round taking up two-thirds of the road and hit an oncoming Rolls Royce on its side as it tried to avoid us. We rocked from one pair of wheels to the other but we stayed upright. When I recovered from the shock I looked back and there was the Rolls in the ditch. Her ladyship ignored the whole incident and went driving on as if nothing had happened.

‘It’s no good, my lady,’ I said, plucking up my courage, ‘you’ll have to turn back. If you don’t you’ll get all the blame because the evidence is there on the road.’

She didn’t reply, but a few moments later, after she’d thought about it a bit, she turned the car round and went back. It was as well she did because she’d hit Lord Wimborne’s car and he had recognized her. There was a good deal of talk all round, although my opinion was never asked or given. Eventually they shook hands and that was the last we heard about it. No court case, no nothing. I remember that on our way home we broke an axle on Hammersmith Bridge and had to complete our journey by cab – by the way Lady Cranborne spoke you would have thought it was the makers of the car who were to blame, not the punishment she’d given to it.

And she did punish it; on another occasion when we were going to lunch with Lady Apsley, suddenly the car seemed to bounce all over the place. Eventually Lady Cranborne decided to stop and see what was wrong. It was obvious that one of the back tyres was torn to pieces. ‘Oh well, Rose,’ she said, ‘we can’t stop now or we’ll be late for lunch.’

By the time we arrived there was nothing left of the tyre, the wheel rim was flattened and every part of my anatomy seemed to have changed places. Her ladyship didn’t turn a hair, just got out as though nothing had happened. I imagine one of Lady Apsley’s chauffeurs saw to the car because the wheel had been changed when we came out of the house.

I was with Lady Cranborne for five years. I might have stayed with her indefinitely: she was a pleasure to serve, my life was interesting, I was fulfilling my ambition to travel; unfortunately there was one stumbling-block, money. I was still only earning £24 a year and any request I made for an increase was flatly, almost rudely, refused. I don’t know whether there was a conspiracy among the upper classes to keep servants’ wages down, but everyone I knew in service at that time met with the same brick-wall attitude. The only way to get more was to change employers, and this couldn’t be done too often otherwise you earned the reputation of being unreliable and having itchy feet.

Once again I had the emotions of loyalty and affection pulling at my heartstrings, with the added problem of my fondness for the children to contend with. But the strongest pull for me was always my mother and my family. Mum had struggled on gamely after Dad’s death, but it was evident that she couldn’t go on working for ever. I wanted to be in a position to buy her a little bungalow down in the south, nearer to myself and my sisters, and ten shillings a week wouldn’t be enough for me to do this, so I hardened my heart and began to look around. It wasn’t necessary for me to go to an agency. By now I was well enough known to the staffs of the big houses to be able to put the word round that I was thinking of making a change for something to be suggested to me through the grapevine. And there was the added advantage of knowing in that way everything about the job and the person I’d be working for. Employers used to set great store by references. They had to be immaculate, otherwise you stood no chance of the job. In my early days in service I thought that we ought to have the right to demand something of the same from our employers, before we decided whether to take the job on or not, but after a few years in work this wasn’t necessary. We had a ‘Who’s Who’ and a ‘What’s What’ below stairs which contained more personal and colourful information about the gentry than ever the written version did. There was also a black list, and woe betide anyone who got on it. It could spell ruination for any hostess.

As it happened I didn’t need recourse to the underground. Ascot week followed close on my decision to make a change and as always we spent it with the Astors at Cliveden. One evening I was standing outside Lady Cranborne’s bedroom door; she had taken her bath and was making herself presentable before calling me in to dress her. I think that I should explain here that ladies never exposed their bodies to their maids. I never saw any of my ladies naked, except for Lady Astor, and then only when she was nearing the end of her life and needed me to help her do everything. This modesty may seem somewhat incomprehensible now; then it wasn’t. Dignity at all times and in all places was very much the order of the day and while I think all my ladies could have preserved theirs even in the nude, some others had figures so grotesque that the memory of them when they were in the mood to command would have sent many maids into hysterics.

As I was saying, I was waiting outside Lady Cranborne’s door when Lady Astor passed down the corridor talking to her maid, Mrs Vidler. She glanced at me and said, ‘Good evening.’ I’d visited Cliveden many times so my face was familiar to her. As she got farther down the corridor I heard her say, ‘That’s the maid for me.’

I’m sure she meant it as a compliment, but it ruffled my North Country feathers. ‘Not if I’ve anything to do with it,’ I said to myself. I suppose there were two reasons. I knew that over the past year Lady Astor had had difficulty keeping her maids and, as I’ve intimated, there was such a thing as a difficult employer as well as a difficult servant. Also I thought it a slight on Mrs Vidler to say such a thing to her face. I was later to learn to turn a deaf ear to remarks like that and that pinpricks of that kind peppered your body when you served Lady Astor.

When I went down to the Pugs’ Parlour I saw Mrs Vidler. I went up to her and said that I was sorry her ladyship had spoken the way she did. She laughed it aside. ‘It’s all in the day’s work,’ she said, then went on to say that she was leaving Lady Astor anyway as she had decided to go to America to seek her fortune.

‘Would you like my job?’ she asked.

Without really thinking, I said, ‘No.’

‘Miss Wissie wants a maid, why don’t you come to her?’ Miss Wissie was Lady Astor’s daughter, the Honourable Phyllis Astor, later Countess of Ancaster. She was then about eighteen. In a way I would be dropping in status back to a young lady’s maid. ‘Would it’, I thought, ‘be worth it?’

‘What’s the money?’ I asked.

‘Sixty pounds a year.’ That did it; status, like love, flew out of the window. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I shall apply for it.’

I had reckoned without Lady Cranborne. I told her my intentions and asked for a reference. ‘It’s not convenient for you to leave, Rose,’ was her reply. She had me over a barrel: I needed her reference. I’m not the kind that argues in a situation like that, nor do I resort to tears to try and win sympathy. I went away and thought for a bit. I was astonished when I saw her ladyship next that she brought the matter up. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, Rose. I haven’t changed my mind, I won’t recommend you for Miss Wissie but I will for Lady Astor. I understand she wants a maid.’ ‘This was downright duplicity,’ I thought.

‘Not me, my lady, I don’t want to serve Lady Astor,’ I said, ‘and that’s an end of the matter.’ I wasn’t to be daunted though. I’d got a reference from Lady Ierne. I didn’t think it would be enough, but I wrote to Lady Astor’s head secretary, Miss Kindersley, and put in my application. To my astonishment, two days later she replied and told me I had got the job. What’s more I’d struck a blow for freedom, my freedom of choice at any rate. The next day I gave in my notice. Her ladyship accepted it as though I had just passed a remark about the weather. When it came for me to leave she shook me by the hand, thanked me for all I’d done and said she hoped I would get a nice position in the future. She didn’t even ask if I had got a job to go to.

I
went to Cliveden on 14 August 1928, the day after Mr William Astor’s twenty-first birthday, to take up my duties as Phyllis Astor’s, Miss Wissie’s, lady’s maid. It was a red-letter day in my life because, as I’ve said, though I didn’t know it at the time, I was to serve the family for the next thirty-five years. Therefore, while this isn’t intended to be a book about the Astors or Lady Astor, my life in service was inevitably focused on the family, and particularly on her, as indeed was everyone’s around her no matter who they were supposed to be working for or what they were doing. She dominated the scene. ‘Satisfy Lady Astor and everyone will be happy,’ seemed to be the universal creed. I nearly said ‘please’ Lady Astor, but that was impossible: no matter what you did for her, she never let you see she was pleased. It was as though she thought it your bounden duty to serve her. Therefore my life, and the lives of the others whom I shall be writing about, will seem to revolve continually around her ladyship, and this may give the impression that my picture of domestic service is a special one and not a true reflection of the times. It’s not the case. In general other servants lived as we did and other houses were run as ours were. It’s only the personalities and the details that were different.

I was no stranger to Cliveden, as I’ve said, but it’s one thing to visit a place and another to work in it. You see it through different eyes and of course distances become more important, that is the time it takes to get from one place to another. Attitudes towards the staff alter too. It is important to learn to understand their abilities, limitations and temperaments, and relationships have to be carefully developed. It was necessary at the start to learn something of the history of the family, and for this I turned to the man whom I suppose more than any other was to be the important and dominating figure in my life: Mr Edwin Lee, the butler. His Christian name was the most unimportant thing about him; I can hardly ever remember it being used; he was known to everyone who visited us as Lee or Mr Lee. Even royalty never had to be reminded of it. There were other great butlers at that time but Mr Lee I think would be acknowledged by almost all as the greatest. Mr Charles Dean, at one time under-butler to the Astors, later butler to Miss Alice Astor, Mrs Bouverie, Lady Nancy Astor at Eaton Square and the British Ambassador in Washington, although a great figure in his own right, still considers himself puny compared with Mr Lee. Behind his back, in the servants’ hall, he was known as ‘Skipper’ or ‘Skip’. To his face he was addressed as ‘Sir’ by male and female staff alike. I called him ‘Father’. How, when or why this happened I can’t remember. I still marvel that I had the courage to be so familiar and that he allowed it. He never called me by my Christian name and though we are still the greatest of friends today, he addresses me only as Miss Harrison.

Anyway, one evening soon after my arrival, he found time to tell me about the family. The first Astor he thought to be of any importance was John Jacob, who emigrated from Germany towards the end of the eighteenth century, first to England and then to America. He it was who founded the Astor fortunes, through dealing in furs and later buying land around New York Harbour on which the present city stands. His estate was passed on for two generations, increasing in value all the time, until it came in the hands of William Waldorf, my lord Astor’s father. He was an eccentric and a bit of an intellectual. After his father died leaving him all his fortune, he decided to settle in England. This made him unpopular with Americans. Mr Lee thinks it was because he was making his money over there and spending it over here; a sort of absentee landlord. I could see the Americans’ point of view because he really did spend. He bought Cliveden, two houses in London and a ruined castle at Hever which he had repaired. Then he built a mock Tudor village around it, where his guests stayed. He later also bought a title off Mr Lloyd George. A viscountcy was given him for ‘political and public services’, but the size of the cheque was never mentioned. Apparently, although he was hoping that his eldest son Waldorf would marry into the English peerage, he didn’t mind when he met my lady even though she was a divorcee and had a young son. He took to her at once; he must have done because when they were married he gave them Cliveden and several million pounds besides.

Mr Lee met his old lordship shortly after he went into service with Mr Waldorf. Despite his funny ways (he used to sleep with two revolvers by his bed, being in permanent fear that someone wanted to do him in), he seemed to Mr Lee a good-natured and generous sort of man, and not only to his family. He had a butler, a Mr Pooley, who over the thirteen years he was with him started taking to the drink. Eventually the old man could stand it no longer and he decided to sack him. ‘Pooley,’ he said, ‘because of your bad habits when you’re in the drink, I’ve got to ask you to leave, but because of your good habits when you’re out of it and the time you’ve served me, here’s something to take with you,’ and he handed him a bank note.

When he left the room Mr Pooley looked at it and saw it was for a thousand pounds. As he said to his friends in the pub that night, over the drinks that he’d bought them, ‘That’s something worth getting drunk for.’