The Real Life Downton Abbey (10 page)

The fact that the male aristos indulge in these pleasures of life whenever they feel like it – and sometimes the sex is with the female servants – is irrelevant. What matters is the façade – a well-run house with loyal, obedient servants – who only have sex if they’re married. And, as we already know, marriage means ‘goodbye job’ for a female servant. When married, she will have her husband and children to look after.

When – and only when – servants are permitted to address the family they have to always remember the following rules:

• The Master and Mistress of the house should be addressed as ‘Sir’ and ‘My Lady’.
  
• The Eldest son of the family is addressed as ‘Mister’ (then his Christian name) and the youngest son as ‘Master’ (then his Christian name).
  
• When referring to the family in correspondence or speaking to a third party, always use the following form of address: ‘Sir John’ (As in Sir John Pelham, for example) Lady Pelham Mister Pelham Master Pelham Miss Pelham.
  
• Greet all guests by their title and family name (as above) or as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’.
  

By the late 1880s, servants start to get a bit more free time. Until then, they usually have to ask permission for any time off. By the early twentieth century, servants are usually getting a half day off (on Sundays) and one day off a month, provided their chores are completed. They also get one week’s holiday a year, which means that many try very hard to save up through the year to afford the train fare home for this one week – which is expensive on a servant’s pay, if their own family are some distance away.

However, even during their time off, there are rules governing their behaviour both in the city and the country: they must return to the house by a set hour, usually around 9–10pm.

A ‘follower’ is a boyfriend or young man, perhaps another servant from another family, who may be trying to court or woo a female servant.

Their presence is banned from the house to avoid even a chance of boy-girl pairing off – but human nature being what it is, such relationships still manage to flourish sometimes, usually when the family are away or not at home. Although below-stairs gossip, one of the few sources of free entertainment available and therefore incessant and sometimes bitchy, can still make breaking the ‘no followers’ rule a risky one to breach, even if a housemaid meets a boyfriend secretly in her time off.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule: a few employers will actively approve a servant’s marriage. But the idea of people in service forming close relationships is, for most employers, beyond the pale, especially if the servants both work in the same household.

No matter what the circumstances, a sacked servant carrying an illegitimate unborn child has nowhere to run. In 1911, nearly 50 per cent of illegitimate children are born to women working in service. City-based charities like the Girls Friendly Society do help illegitimate mothers, though many servant girls in this situation find there is no other refuge than to have their child in the workhouse, a grim option but often the only one.

The risk of unmarried pregnancy is high. There is no sex education. There is no contraception at all (the better-off in society are starting to find more effective ways to prevent pregnancy, but it’s out of reach for the uneducated and poor). In a world where an unwanted pregnancy is always seen as the girl’s fault, men don’t carry any blame at all. And, of course, country-house employers don’t want to lose their manual labour. It might mean an unpolished banister or a less-
than-well
-run kitchen. So, should they surface, the twin evils of sex and its consequence, unmarried pregnancy, must be banished from sight. Immediately.

One of the big concerns of the country house employer is that any outsiders coming to the back entrance might be tempted to steal food. Or, a young servant might start sneaking food out of the house to an eager, but hungry follower. Hence the rules that apply to visitors or friends as well as to boyfriends. Given the amount of good-quality provisions around and the size of the household – and the quantity of food consumed – this is a very obvious temptation.

If anything at all goes missing in the house, all the servants’ rooms or quarters are thoroughly searched, often by the butler. And if the missing item or items are found in a servant’s possession, they are straight out of a job – without that all-important piece of paper, the reference, or ‘character’ as it’s called.

This is what we’d call a written reference. And all servants need a character to move from job to job. Without a character, no employment of any description is likely to be offered.

Not surprisingly, given the nature of much of the work, turnover of lower servants is quite high, though many
middle-ranking
domestic staff switch jobs, too. Upper servants do not move around as much. And it’s not unknown for some families to keep their more valuable – even cherished – upper servants for twenty to thirty years. But if servants do want to move on, it’s often for the usual reasons – more money, promotion, to expand their horizons or, as already seen, to find a suitable marriage partner. Yet if a servant is ambitious, he or she must be careful about moving around too much – two years or more is deemed a sufficient amount of time in one job – otherwise they can get a reputation for being ‘short charactered’, in other words, the characters he or she produces are revealingly brief, simply ‘OK, did the job’.

The rule is: a servant must ask their employer, via the housekeeper or butler, for this ‘character’ to be written when they leave a household. And they do not get to see the contents; the document is forwarded straight on to their new prospective employer.

And if a servant is out of work for some time, perhaps because of illness or a family problem requiring their presence, it’s very difficult to get back in once they step outside the country-house service network with no character to confirm they’ve been steadily working.

It’s not unknown for a servant who hasn’t worked for some time to send a begging letter to a house they’ve once worked in. The response, of course, would hinge on their relationship with their former employer. A woman who has left to marry and then finds herself widowed – not uncommon, given the lower life expectancy – will usually get a warm reception and be invited back into service. But only widows get this cordial treatment.

By this time, there are two routes to employment in service that we are all familiar with: the printed advertisement in newspapers or magazines or the employment agency – more popular in the big cities where the middle classes have a greater turnover of domestic staff.

Yet for the country-house service roles, the toffs also have their own little hiring network if they need a new or replacement servant: the mistress of the house will write to her friends from other aristocratic families to let it be known that there’s a vacancy coming up. Or she might write asking for extra information on a job-hunting servant currently working for another family – their own version of Linkedin (networking website for those employed in business), if you like.

There are a couple of other routes into a job in service.

These are:

Children of those already in service, usually in rural areas, are often seen as having good potential. These youngsters may have already started work at an early age, pre- teen years, maybe looking after an ageing local vicar or acting as an unpaid childminder. And country-house owners prefer rural servants to those from the bigger cities; they tend to be more hard working, more adaptable and less trouble.

A lady’s maid or a footman tends to get around quite a bit in the course of their work, going to London, for instance during ‘The Season’, which means they get to meet other servants like themselves – and can keep in touch with each other, by letter, to find out when jobs at other country houses come up.

The servants in the house have their food and lodging provided by their employer. But the rules around where and how they dine are equally as rigid as everything else.

The eating of main meals is segregated, according to the sex and status of the servant. Not only do the uppers and lowers never socialise together, they have separate rules for how they eat.

Senior servants – ‘the Pugs’ – traditionally eat in a separate Stewards’ or Butler’s room, waited on by lower servants, usually one or two footmen, with better food and drink than the lowers. They drink white wine, claret and beer at lunch and dinner. (Even the china, glass and cutlery they use may be of the finest quality, with napkins rolled into silver napkin rings at breakfast and lunch. At dinner, the napkins and table linens are changed.)

Yet by the early 1900s, in country houses like Downton Abbey, all the servants eat breakfast, dinner and supper in the servants’ hall, a large area which is used both for eating and the lower servants’ brief periods of leisure. (Outdoor staff like stablemen and gardeners tend to eat their meals as a group in their own communal dining areas.)

Table seating is according to rank. The butler sits at one end of the table, the housekeeper at the other end. The first footman sits to the right of the butler, the lady’s maid sits to the butler’s left.

Male servants sit in order of hierarchy down one side of the table, women according to their own status, down the other side. (At Anglesey Abbey in Cambridge, the servants’ hall chairs are painted in a variety of colours, just to make sure they know where to sit.)

No one can sit down until the butler says so. When dining together in this way, everyone must remain silent – unless they are addressed by a superior.

Dinner or supper (a later meal, after dinner, sometimes taken by the uppers or the family upstairs) is the most formal meal.

• A second footman rings a bell to announce dinner.
  
• The upper servants then congregate in the housekeeper’s room. Then they walk, single file, down the corridor into the servants’ hall in order of rank. The butler always leads the way (the first part of the Pug’s Parade).
  
• At dinner, the butler carves the meat and sends the plate down to the housekeeper who then serves the vegetables. The footman takes the plates around – serving, of course, according to servant rank.
  
• After the meal, the upper servants march out, single file, to take their pudding, tea and coffee in the housekeeper’s sitting room (the concluding part of the Pug’s Parade). The first footman is then left in charge of the servants’ hall.
  
• At certain grand houses, like Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, the uppers even dress for dinner like their employers. So any visiting ladies’ maids or valets are required to do this too: the lady’s maid in a ‘dress blouse’ (an evening blouse with lace inserts and elaborate
  pin-tucking
  ) and the valet in a velvet smoking jacket.
  

All meals are served at fixed times with set rituals for the family. Here’s the timetable:

8am.
The lady’s maid and the valet wake their respective bosses carrying a special breakfast tray with tea and toast (or an arrowroot biscuit), a newspaper and any correspondence.

9.30am. Breakfast
is served to the family in the dining room. Food is laid out in silver dishes, arranged across a long sideboard. All adult family members living in the house are expected to attend. The master sits at the head of the table, the mistress at the other end. The mistress pours the tea for everyone and the butler, after enquiring how everyone wants their tea served, hands the cups out.

9.15am.
Everyone in the house is summoned by bell to the main hall for prayers, read by the master of the house, who may also make an announcement to the staff regarding a punishment – or a word of thanks. The session ends with the words: ‘God make my servants dutiful.’

1pm. Luncheon
The ladies enter the dining room first, two by two, followed by the gentlemen. Everyone is obliged to wear outdoor clothing or morning wear (for the women this means a tailor-made two-piece costume; for the men a morning dress coat, waistcoat, shirt, collar, tie and formal striped trousers).

5pm. Afternoon Tea
is served in the Tea Room or the Drawing Room.

7pm.
The sound of a dressing gong warns the family and their guests that it is time to go to their room to dress for dinner – in full evening wear. Dinner is the most formal and longest meal of the day.

8pm. Dinner
The butler announces that dinner is being served. Family and guests make their way to the dining room. Each gentleman offers his arm to a lady and they make their way to dinner in pairs. The master of the household leads the procession with the lady of the leading guest on his right arm, followed by the mistress of the house on the arm of the leading male guest. After dinner, the ladies retire to the drawing room and the men remain at the table, drinking and smoking. Depending on how many guests there are, dinner may last until 11pm or later.