A Life Below Stairs

This my second book on the life story of my favourite aunt was then conceived and it has been a joy to recall the many, often repeated, stories she told me of her life over the period when I knew her from 1944 to 1976. She was renowned in the family for her character, extravagance, and generosity. These stories were of course principally the verbal CV she had rehearsed over many years for interviews which she experienced as she worked her way through the kitchens of the aristocracy during the declining years of household service in the late 19th and early half of the 20th centuries. The only time in her life about which she was reticent was the time between1893 and 1910 when she worked at 4 Carlton House Terrace the London home of Prince George and Princess Mary later King George V and Queen Mary. This largely forgotten about London home was of course only used when their Royal Highnesses were in London on official business. They much preferred their cottage on the Sandringham Estate where the children were based. Her only references to this period were recalling Queen Victoria passing in her open carriage in the Mall below holding a white parasol on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Her rising from kitchen maid to cook, her training at the nearby Ritz Carlton under the famous Chef, Escoffier, where he followed her into the walk-in refrigerator and she slapped him around the face! Her sole other reference was preparing Queen Mary's supper tray. Though she did not reveal she must have performed this task on many occasions as she rose in the household to head kitchen maid. In 1907 she cooked her first dinner for the household, the menu of which she kept as a memento. This reticence was obviously the result of the confidentiality to which she had been sworn at the beginning of her career and explained her disgust in the 1960's when Crawfie wrote her infamous book on the early lives of the two Princesses. During the 1920's she started to rent a small London flat to use as a base. This was initially in Gatliffe buildings opposite the Chelsea Pensioners home for old soldiers, she later was moved by the London County Council to Churchill Gardens before coming to live with my family. I have included a chapter on local history at the end since this is where the story began apart from the Welsh prelude.