The temperature was rising. Creamy May blossom had burst into flower on every copse and hedgerow. After so many weeks of suspense and anxiety, the people of Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding villages turned their minds to new bonnets and spring fairs. Stafford’s May fair swung into life (no change in prices, noted The Staffordshire Advertiser, except for pigs which were ‘very dear’). Outfitters Boulton and Robinson respectfully announced to the ladies of the Staffordshire Potteries that their ‘extensive and elegant assortment of Fashionable Goods for the Spring Season’ was now complete; ‘comprising a splendid and novel collection of rich, plain, and figured Du Capes, and Gros de Naples, in all the fashionable colours’.
Now that the rioters had put down their cudgels, Stafford County Gaol was busy that week with its more usual suspects: Jon Atkins, charged with stealing a spade; Mary Hargreaves, charged with stealing two pair of stockings; George Woolley, a blind man, charged with assaulting nine-year-old Caroline Green.
James Loch returned refreshed to his desk in Bloomsbury Square to find an unpleasant saga developing at Trentham Hall–in the very way he had refused to believe possible.
On 23 May another letter from Lewis had arrived, as follows:
I duly received your very kind & feeling letter relative to Mrs Doar, and I really don’t know that any circumstance ever gave me much more real uneasiness. She is certainly in great tribulation, still I find from her conversation she does not wish the boxes opened but only the hampers returned from Handford [her husband’s village]. But in my opinion for a thorough justification of her conduct she should not hesitate to open every box & parcel.
He acknowledged that she was ill–but Lewis was now feeling quite out of sorts himself: ‘the affair altogether so unlooked for proves very distressing to my feelings’.
The Marchioness of Stafford was to be spared the sordid details until the truth had been extracted. While Lewis had to organise the breaking open of Mrs Doar’s trunks and boxes, his mistress put on her jewels and went to ‘one of the most splendid Balls the annals of fashion could ever boast’, thrown by the Duke of Devonshire at Devonshire House, a mere fortnight after his last rout. Starved of frothy celebrity tattle in this period of hard news, London’s Morning Post gave it the full treatment: ‘All the apartments in that far-famed mansion, glittering with gold and silver, were illuminated with wax tapers only, exceeding a thousand in number, placed not only in chandeliers, girandoles, and candelabras, but in massive candlesticks of the precious metals; even the architraves of the door-ways were refulgent with light’, gushed the reporter.
‘In unison with the scene were the Ladies’ dresses, all gold and silver, or diamonds and pearls, with the ostrich plume of fourteen feathers…The Marchioness of Londonderry wore a cestus or girdle of brilliants which attracted every eye.’ As for the food,
Every viand which art and nature could produce was to be seen there, arranged on gold, silver, and china; the dessert consisting of the finest fruits, pines, cherries, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, and grapes; and fifteen sorts of foreign wines, from the golden Burgundy to the Spanish Fontcarrel…Amid all these attractions the ball-room never for one moment lost its influence, for the ‘mazy round’ was kept up till long after five o’clock.
This was Regency entertaining at its most lavish.
Meanwhile, at Trentham Hall, I can see Mr Lewis and Mrs Cleaver sitting in the Pug’s Parlour discussing tactics. Mrs Cleaver is all for bursting in on Mrs Doar and surprising her, for if she has warning, the housekeeper will surely conceal whatever it is she is up to. Mr Lewis demurs: Dorothy Doar is an old colleague and (so he had thought) a friend. He hasn’t the stomach for it. He has also heard from the still-room maid that the door is now kept locked. Could not a search be contrived with civility? Mrs Cleaver thinks not. She stands, ties on her bonnet and stares a mute challenge at the Trentham agent.
The next day William Lewis sat down to compose the most unpleasant, if vindicated, letter of his career. Twenty-ninth of May:
After the examination of Mrs Doar’s boxes yesterday which displayed a disgraceful scene of robbery, I was so much agitated & affected that I was really unwell all day–the Hampers were examined first and contained some dozens of home made wine such as gooseberry, ginger. The boxes being after opened, contained nearly a general collection of every article necessary for Housekeeping many of which she claimed as her own property which, however doubtful, Mrs Cleaver & I did not feel disposed to dispute with her. Except as far as the linen went…she gave them up as Lady Stafford’s property. There is still a very great deficiency in the linen.
We received from out of the boxes 10 Dinner Damask napkins, 7 Table Covers, 35 Chamber towels, 3 Pillow cases, 8 waiting napkins, 1 Damask table cloth, 9 table cloths for Stewards or Housekeepers rooms, 2 Glass cloths, 3 plain sheets. She also exhibited from the boxes quantities of Tea, Sugar, Coffee, foreign wine, soap, candles, mops and many new brushes for shoes & house cleaning, all which she acknowledges to be the property of D Stafford.
It is dreadful to contemplate such proceeds & to witness such depravity in one who has every confidence placed in her, and it was amazing how hardened she appeared. As for the linen she said it was old & she was entitled to it. But Mrs Cleaver told her that she had taken the best & left the old! Mrs Cleaver is to be again amongst the linen today & will be able to give some account of what is deficient. I can assure you I am much pleased at the conduct of Mrs Cleaver in this affair and it is most desirable for her comfort & the peace of the establishment that Mrs Doar should be removed from the house. She is quite able to be moved but of course I also wish your decisive answer.
The articles enumerated (except the linen) remain in Mrs Doar’s bedroom. Please say how I am to act with them & her. I never was so deceived in a character in my life.
Were these things hers, or weren’t they? The slippery subject of ‘perquisites’, or staff perks, was broached in one of the more abrasive little manuals of the era, Domestic Servants As They Are & As They Ought To Be, written anonymously by a ‘practical mistress of a household’.
‘The term “perquisite” is so comprehensive, so elastic, and accommodating’, the author writes,
that it is made to embrace and signify almost everything in the various departments of the house; anything, in fact, convertible or transferable, from damask clothes and silver, to rags, old brass, and metal of every description…Thus, glass, china, &c., often gradually disappear till, the numbers becoming visibly few, an enquiry is instituted, and the missing articles are reported as ‘broken’.35
There was an ambiguity to ownership below stairs. Much of a house-keeper’s reward came not as cash but as comforts. Favoured suppliers would butter her up with gifts; the best cast-off furniture, clothing and linen from the family was usually passed her way; and at retirement (if she retired–many worked until death) housekeepers to the aristocracy could expect an estate cottage and a pension. Many amassed large savings, as they did not need to spend. Mary Webster of Erddig Hall, who stayed thirty years with the family until her death in 1875, left £1,300 in her will (£60,000 in today’s money).
But Mrs Doar had no savings. She had a daughter at school, a feckless husband, rent due on the family lodgings, a baby on the way in a matter of days and her long-term job and all future security snatched from her. Pregnancy hormones raged through her body. As she squatted heavily and packed her trunks, one thing must have led to another. She finally gave in to temptation. They were not her things, and yet in a sense they were her things: she had ordered them, cared for them, catalogued and stored them; mended and marked them; ground and sifted them; bottled and corked them. Each item (candle, banister brush, pillow case, tea caddy) had its own complex emotional significance to Mrs Doar, powerfully felt through daily use.
This is what she might have persuaded herself as she hastily wrapped brushes in sheets and bottles in tablecloths, squashing things flat in wicker hampers and tying them with rope. A small voice in the back of her head told her that this was not right; this was no way to repay the kindness of the noble Staffords. Another, more insistent voice, said–but it is not fair! She had served this family for fourteen years, through the reign of three different kings; and now, abruptly, she was to be shown the door–all for wanting just six weeks of leave. And what was it to them anyway, a handful of mops and dusters? Her Lord and Lady ate breakfast off solid-silver plates under a Poussin and a Gainsborough. All this–stock for her little shop, or there would be nothing to sell and therefore nothing to eat–was mere chicken feed.
So Mrs Doar might have told herself. But how wrong she was.