1900: Housekeeper’s Inventory (Mallard House and Lodges)

(Compiled by Miss Clarissa Blandy, successor to Mrs Prudence Blandy, still Keeper of Keys. The script grows smaller as the list lengthens.)

– Housemaids: 22 (now divided into “upper,” “lower,” and “corridor” ranks).

– Lady’s Maids: 9 (three assigned to the widowed Dowager Lodges).

– Footmen: 28, not counting 12 “probationary boys.”

– Butlers: 2, with an “Assistant Butler” insisted upon by the Duke’s new wife.

– Valets: 5.

– Coachmen and Grooms: 14, plus 40 boys.

– Kitchen: 42 total (including 1 Chef de Cuisine, now Monsieur Lefèvre; his salary doubled to £250, “lest he be lured to Devonshire House”).

– Confectioners: 6 (added to keep pace with French fashions in sugarwork).

– Organist, Choir Mistress and four choristers (to improve Sunday appearances).

– Governesses: 3, Tutors: 4.

– Clerks: 4, Archivist: 1, Librarian: 1.

– Laundresses: 28, Ironers: 6, Seamstresses: 12.

– Gardeners and Groundsmen: 42 in total, including “1 specialist for fernery.”

– Aviary Keeper, Swan Master, Keeper of Duck Ponds (as in 1851).

– New addition: 1 Photographer (retained at £70, “to capture the glories of the estate before they vanish”).

– New addition: 1 Telephone Boy (“Though no one uses it.”).

– New addition: 1 Gas Engineer, 2 Lamplighters (for gas fittings that never quite worked).

Grand Total 1900: 512 indoor staff

(excluding outdoor estate labourers and tenant farmers, reckoned at 800–1,000.)

Margin Note, c.1910, in another hand (possibly a Mallard cousin):

“A house of 500 servants, yet His Grace still insists on trimming his own cigars.

We cannot electrify, we cannot modernise, for then what would these people do?

Better to sink with all hands than dismiss a Blandy.