Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-century Britain, by Lucy Lethbridge – review

The first illustration in this absorbing survey of domestic service in 20th-century Britain is a group photograph of the household servants at Erdigg, the Yorke family home in Wales. Each holds an emblematic item; the housekeeper is defined by her bunch of keys, the butler holds a wine bottle and corkscrew, the footman, in full pantomimic rig down to his buckled shoes, bears a salver for the calling cards that formed an intricate and arcane method of communication amongst the upper orders. The picture was taken in 1912. It is expressive of a system governed by age-old rules and unshakable hierarchies. How unimaginable that only two years later the outbreak of war would initiate the great dismantling of this system.

On the last page of illustrations is a photograph taken in 1959, when the dismantling was almost complete. It shows the Duke of Bedford, master of Woburn Abbey, at the Ideal Home Exhibition. His Grace is jacketless, his sleeves rolled up, ready for domestic action — he is unloading crockery from the first Kenwood Fully Automated Dishwasher. The Duke’s grandfather had kept 60 indoor servants; he had specified that all his parlourmaids must be over five foot ten; he had forbidden the workers to look directly at him while they installed electricity at Woburn.

Though one doesn’t seriously imagine that the 1959 duke would actually spend much time in the scullery, the two pictures nonetheless illustrate the breadth of the chasm between the old order and the new. ‘What the devil does one write about these days if one is a specialist in country houses and butlers, both of which have ceased to exist?’ complained P.G. Wodehouse in 1945.

Lucy Lethbridge finds a great deal to write about, all of it fascinating. The inevitable problem with such a mass of material is that enticing avenues open up, to remain only partially explored.