Servants' Hall: A Real Life Upstairs, Downstairs Romance by Margaret Powell

Author:Margaret Powell [Powell, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Retail, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781250029294
Google: fKSAtdfi5PwC
Amazon: 1250029295
Barnesnoble: 1250029295
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2013-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

17

Now that Rose had a baby she seemed more contented, though still averse to the idea of moving into a large country house. She wanted to stay with her parents in Manchester while all the moving went on. But Gerald was against the idea, saying that a back-street in the slums of Manchester was not good for Victoria Helen; and furthermore, he wasn’t having his child acquiring a Mancunian accent. Considering the child was only a few months old, I couldn’t see how she could possibly be affected by accent.

One couldn’t in truth describe Victoria Helen as a pretty baby for, as I’ve said, she had the Wardham features, and to a marked degree. It was to be hoped that in disposition she wouldn’t take after her grandfather. It very much grieved Mrs Wardham that she couldn’t have Rose and the baby to stay at Redlands, but the awful Mr Wardham would never allow it. Neither Mary nor I could visualise Rose as one above stairs in the very house where she’d been a servant, and certainly those below stairs would object to waiting on her. They might not begrudge Rose her new-found affluence, but they wouldn’t want her under their noses, so to speak.

Over tea, Rose told us that there was to be a house parlourmaid and a cook general at the country house, as well as a woman from the village who was coming three times a week to do the rough.

Gerald was thinking of going into politics. Ever since the huge demonstration in Hyde Park against the unfair – or believed by the public to be unfair – treatment of Sacco and Vanzetti, Gerald had been talking about the dangers of Communism getting a hold in England. As Rose hadn’t known that Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian communists on trial in America – or even that two such men were in the news, as she seldom looked at a newspaper – she was only bored by her husband’s convictions. As far as I could see, marriage to one of the upper class had not improved Rose in any way. Her outlook on life was still as narrow, her social and intellectual understanding almost non-existent, and spiritually she was still in the slums of Manchester. But she’d changed as a friend. Although she still wanted to see Mary and me, she wasn’t really interested in our personal life; our work, our boyfriends and life below stairs no longer concerned Rose. She really only needed us as an audience, to hear about the strains of coping with a large house and entertaining guests; and to sympathise with her about Gerald’s complaints of her failings.

Mary, more prone to blunt remarks than I was, said to Rose; ‘How is it that Gerald had got so rich? He didn’t do well in Rhodesia, and showed no signs of making money when we were at Redlands, yet now he seems to be rolling in the stuff. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.

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