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 Working for Nancy Astor (part 2)

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Tim of Aclea
Triumviratus Rei Publicae Constituendae
Tim of Aclea


Posts : 586
Join date : 2011-12-31

Working for Nancy Astor (part 2) Empty
20120616
PostWorking for Nancy Astor (part 2)

Our uniforms were a honey brown colour, I think, and the cars were the same colour. I had two types of uniforms, one consisted of breeches, stockings and a jacket like an Admirals with a lot of gold braid around my shoulders which was quite smart and was used at Cliveden. The other was a normal Footman’s uniforms consisting of brown trousers, a stripped waistcoat, brown jacket and black shoes for use elsewhere. My pay was £60 per annum and Lord Astor paid for our share of the Health stamp at 9d per week. It should be remembered that domestic servants could not draw unemployment pay at this time and as a result did not have to pay into the unemployment scheme. For most of the time I had my own bedroom at Cliveden, St James Square and at Rest Harrow, their house in Kent.

Lady Astor was a brilliant hostess to the eminent persons of her age. This meant, however, hard work for her staff. At 4 St James Square she had four secretaries, two political and two social, to deal with her large correspondence including often many rude and offensive letters and cards; she also had a secretary based in her Plymouth constituency. Each Monday a list of invitations would go out for people to spend the following weekend at Cliveden. The list seemed to include as many as 60 or 70 people, assumedly on the theory that some people will always decline. On Thursday mornings Lady Astor would visit the kitchen to give the orders for the weekend to the chef who came from Belgium. On one occasion, when I was present, Lady Astor asked the chef where he came from. When he said ‘Belgium’, Lady Astor replied that the Belgium people were not much good. The poor chef was absolutely incensed by this comment but Lady Astor just went out laughing as she was in fact only teasing him.

In the pantry there was the butler (Mr Lee), assistant butler (John – he was responsible for the clearing of the silver and making sure that they were where they were wanted), first footman (myself), second footman, the odd job man (old Bill who I believe had served in the first War), Lord Astor’s valet (Arthur) and Lady Astor’s maid (Rose). Generally speaking the housemaids stopped in the various houses while the pantry and kitchen staff moved to wherever Lord and Lady Astor wanted them to be. This meant that normally I went to Cliveden from Friday morning until Monday morning, then from Monday afternoon to Friday afternoon I was at St James Square, SW1.

I would travel to Cliveden in a van with John, the Second Butler; a lot of silverware, all clean and polished for the weekend, and our own luggage. We had our own lunch as soon as we arrived. After lunch Mr Lee and the second footman appeared, they had had to carry out duties at 4 St James Square prior to that. The priority was to lay the dinner for 40 guests; the table was made larger with leaves. Then it had to be dusted, making sure that nothing collapsed, and padding was put on the table and the head housemaid produced a very large white table cloth. She and her assistant placed the cloth carefully on the table – very important. John and I would lay the silver and glass neatly in each place. One day when the table for the forty guests was completely set and looked absolutely immaculate, Lady Astor said “I want you to move it and we will have tea here”. Mr Lee looked aghast “you try and I will go”, he told her! The two of them would often row and on one occasion Mr Lee gave in his notice. Lord Astor, however, persuaded him to stay on giving him a pay rise and a month’s leave away from lady Astor.

Lady Aster used to arrive straight from the House of Commons. She would produce the list of guests and make sure that she had the guests with common interests next to each other and the most honoured on her right. I remember her saying “I don’t want that man near me; I will put him near Waldorf [Lord Astor]”. Next she would discuss the flowers with the second gardener. The gardener would already have a trolley of flowers outside and subject to Lady Astor’s agreement; he would display the flowers in the silver, glass or ceramic vases such that the dinner would take place in a pleasant environment. Generally speaking there would be about forty members of the Astor family and their guests at Cliveden over the weekend. Lady Astor was at the head of the table and Lord Astor at the other end.

A copy of the guest list was sent to Mr Lee, the butler, and to the head house maid responsible for the beds and bedrooms. Arrangements were made for any who might be coming by train and would want to be picked up at Cliveden station and returned to the station on Monday morning. As soon as Mr Lee had the guest list, he gave each male member of staff their list of three or four gentlemen whom they would valet with their full title and which room they were to stay in. From about 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. the guests would start arriving for the weekend. When a male guest arrived, the valet would take the luggage and show the guest the way to his bedroom. He would then open the luggage and lay out the evening clothes and ask when he would want his early evening tea tray. If they wanted something more substantial before dinner, we would arrange this in the lounge. We also had to get some tea and supper for ourselves. In the morning I would bring the guests a pot of tea with biscuits at 8.00 a.m. but they would help themselves to their own breakfast.

The dinners on Friday, Saturday and Sundays were quite an event for the guests and staff. Two servants would wait on ten guests meaning that a full party of forty guests would require eight servants. I and one other waiter would look after Lady Astor and the chief guest on her right and eight guests on her left. We only had to put food and plates on the places and while they were eating, we stood waiting until they had finished. But during the dinner there would be the chef and his staff busy cooking the food, the servants carrying and serving the food and Mr Lee would take on extra staff to do the washing up. These would often be wives of other members of the Cliveden staff such as of the gardeners.

The meal tended to be more and more humorous and often hilarious with Lady Astor, who was quite a card, mimicking persons of the House of Commons or even more funny when she was mimicking Negro servants of her childhood at Mirador, Charlottesville, Virginia. I noted that when Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary stopped there she would cut his meat since he had a ‘withered left hand’ which he would cover with a black glove. He was a tall, distinguished looking man and the talk was that he would succeed Mr Chamberlain as prime Minister. On the last Sunday in August 1939 he was very poignant and talked to Mr Lee about “the last fluttering of peace before the storm of war”.

We saw all the Kennedy’s at Cliveden. I liked Kathleen and Eunice Kennedy but Mrs Rose Kennedy, the wife of the ambassador was a formidable women. I remember her commenting to Lady Astor that it was their duty to make sure that their children achieved something positive for society. I was valet to Lord Hartington when he started courting Kathleen Kennedy at Cliveden that summer. He was a very tall, well mannered young man and Miss Kathleen was also very easy to talk to. They married during the War but he was killed in 1944, when he was a major in the guards, and she died in an aeroplane crash in 1948. I also saw Mr Joe Kennedy the eldest son of the Ambassador and when I was at Cliveden, people there spoke of Joe not Jackie trying to become the President of the USA!

I was valet to some other interesting people such as Commander Kingston-Hall who did a programme on the radio for 12 - 14 year old children on politics and also produced a weekly briefing note that was used in parliament. He asked me if I could give him any hints for the weekend. He said that he knew Lady Astor but that this was the first time he had been here; he also asked me if I liked his programme. I advised him to be ready for dinner at 8 p.m. and 1 p.m. for lunch. I said that the dinner generally started with everyone in a serious mood but that by the sweet course everyone was normally quite happy and Lady Astor may do a ‘turn’. I told the commander that I liked Lady Astor a lot and that I tried to read all the magazines that come into the house and listened to his BBC talk whenever possible.

A regular guest at dinner was Nancy Astor’s niece, Joyce Grenville, the actress and later television personality, who would sometimes do a ‘turn’ and these certainly made me laugh a lot. I had first seen Joyce Grenville one day in about 1936, when I went to a theatre near the National Gallery to see a Miss Draper, as she then was, do her ‘one person show’ of a young woman, an old woman etc. I was very impressed by her great gifts. But I did not know, until I saw her at Cliveden and St James Square that she was a niece of Lady Astor, but obviously not so well off. Joyce Grenville and her husband lived in a cottage on the Cliveden estate at a peppercorn rent. Lord Astor got her a job on the ‘Observer’ paper that he owned as their theatre critic. Lady Astor told me that Joyce also used to do a ‘turn’ for the Women’s Institute so they would invite her to all the parties so that she would be “known by the right people”.
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